Angolan Civil War in the context of Cabinda (province)

In political science, a proxy war is an armed conflict where at least one of the belligerents is directed or supported by an external third-party power. In the term proxy war, a belligerent with external support is the proxy; both belligerents in a proxy war can be considered proxies if both are receiving foreign military aid from a third-party country. Acting either as a nation-state government or as a conventional force, a proxy belligerent acts in behalf of a third-party state sponsor.

A proxy war is characterised by a direct, long-term, geopolitical relationship between the third-party sponsor states and their client states or non-state clients, thus the political sponsorship becomes military sponsorship when the third-party powers fund the soldiers and their materiel to equip the belligerent proxy-army to launch and fight and sustain a war to victory, and government power. However, the relationship between sponsors and proxies can be characterized by principal-agent problems whereby the sponsor may be unable to control the actions of the proxy. A proxy war also can be a civil war, as in the Korean War and the Vietnam War during the Cold War.

Angola was first settled by San hunter-gatherer societies before the northern domains came under the rule of Bantu states such as Kongo and Ndongo. In the 15th century, Portuguese colonists began trading, and a settlement was established at Luanda during the 16th century. Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951. After the Angolan War of Independence, which ended in 1974 with an army mutiny and leftist coup in Lisbon, Angola achieved independence in 1975 through the Alvor Agreement. After independence, Angola entered a long period of civil war that lasted until 2002.

The People's Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República Popular de Angola) was declared on 11 November 1975 by leaders of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), at the time a Marxist–Leninist organisation, as a communist state. The Angolan War of Independence from Portugal which had begun 14 years prior in 1961 ended with the Alvor Agreement, which granted independence to Angola under a transitional government that initially included groups such as the FNLA and UNITA along with the MPLA.

Disagreements between these factions resulted in civil war, which escalated following the MPLA's unilateral declaration of a people's republic in November; it competed with the rival Democratic People's Republic of Angola (UNITA), backed by South Africa and the United States, and received aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union, to which it was aligned to in the Cold War until its dissolution in 1991. The landmark Tripartite Accord of 1988 led to the withdrawal of South African and Cuban forces from Angola, and following the Bicesse Accords Angola transitioned into a multiparty democracy that was finalised with the adoption of a new constitution in 1992 while civil war between UNITA and MPLA forces continued until 2002.

The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Portuguese: Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, abbr. MPLA), from 1977 to 1990 called the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party (Portuguese: Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – Partido do Trabalho), is an Angolan social democratic political party. The MPLA fought against the Portuguese Army in the Angolan War of Independence from 1961 to 1974, and defeated the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) in the Angolan Civil War. The party has ruled Angola since the country's independence from Portugal in 1975, being the de facto government throughout the civil war and continuing to rule afterwards.

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Portuguese: União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, abbr. UNITA) is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) in the Angolan War for Independence (1961–1975) and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war (1975–2002). The war was one of the most prominent Cold War proxy wars, with UNITA receiving military aid initially from the People's Republic of China from 1966 until October 1975 and later from the United States and apartheid South Africa while the MPLA received material and technical support from the Soviet Union and its allies, especially Cuba.

Until 1996, UNITA was funded through Angolan diamond mines in both Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul along the Cuango River valley, especially the Catoca mine, which was Angola's only Kimberlite mine at that time. Valdemar Chindondo served as chief of staff in the government of UNITA, pro-Western rebels, during the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002). Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, allegedly ordered Chindondo's assassination.

The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War.

Following several years of unsuccessful petitioning through the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for Namibian independence from South Africa, SWAPO formed the PLAN in 1962 with material assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and sympathetic African states such as Tanzania, Ghana, and Algeria. Fighting broke out between PLAN and the South African security forces in August 1966. Between 1975 and 1988, the SADF staged massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLAN's forward operating bases. It also deployed specialist counter-insurgency units such as Koevoet and 32 Battalion, trained to carry out external reconnaissance and track guerrilla movements.

The Alvor Agreement, signed on 15 January 1975 in Alvor, Portugal, granted Angola independence from Portugal on 11 November and formally ended the 13-year-long Angolan War of Independence.

The agreement was signed by the Portuguese government, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and it established a transitional government composed of representatives of those four parties. It was not signed by the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) or the Eastern Revolt as the other parties excluded them from negotiations. The transitional government soon fell apart, with each of the nationalist factions, distrustful of the others and unwilling to share power, attempting to take control of the country by force. This initiated the Angolan Civil War. The name of the agreement comes from the village of Alvor, in the southern Portuguese region of Algarve, where it was signed.