Beyond / Retrieval

How the US Intervened to Sabotage Angola’s Independence

Fifty years ago today, Angola gained its independence from Portuguese domination. But the US was already working hard to snuff out the hopes of liberation.

by Elizabeth Schmidt via Jacobin on November 11, 2025

...must not be used in Lisbon’s African wars, it turned a blind eye when its ally funneled US weapons, tanks, planes, ships, helicopters, napalm, and chemical defoliants into its African colonies. Meanwhile, US military personnel trained thousands of Portuguese soldiers in counterinsurgency methods.

By 1974, the colonial wars had drained the Portuguese economy and taken a heavy toll on the lower classes, whose conscripted sons bore the brunt of the fighting. In April, young army officers overthrew the Portuguese regime. They established a government of national unity that included leaders of the Portuguese Socialist and Communist parties and promised to end the colonial wars.

In Angola, the Portuguese coup dramatically altered the lay of the land. China immediately intensified aid to both the FNLA and UNITA, and the CIA followed suit. In August, the Soviet Union announced its moral support for the MPLA but did not provide material aid. Instead, Moscow urged the three movements to resolve their differences through negotiations.

The result was an African-led peace initiative that produced the Alvor Agreement. Signed by Portugal and the three liberation movements on January 15, 1975, the agreement obliged the signatories to form a transitional government that included representatives from all three movements and to hold constituent assembly elections in October. The elected assembly would choose a president, and independence would be granted on November 11, 1975.

Kissinger’s War

The Alvor Agreement was violated almost immediately. Although the FNLA was the strongest movement militarily, the MPLA was far better established among the civilian population. It had developed a broader base and achieved greater popular mobilization than either the FNLA or UNITA. War would play to FNLA strengths, while peaceful political activism would benefit the MPLA.

Henry Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations as both national security advisor and secretary of state, considered the MPLA to be a Soviet proxy and was determined to eradicate it. Rejecting the cautionary advice of Africa experts in the State Department, he promoted a CIA plan to undermine the organization.

With Washington’s public endorsement of the Alvor Agreement as a cover, the CIA resumed covert support for the FNLA less than a week after its signing, providing escalating amounts of military and economic aid. From March through May, the FNLA launched a series of attacks that killed MPLA activists in the capital and elsewhere in northern Angola.

More significant, Washington offered substantial military and economic support for the FNLA through Mobutu Sese Seko’s military regime in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A few months after the Alvor Agreement was signed, more than one thousand Zairian soldiers infiltrated Angola to fight on the FNLA’s behalf.

Convinced that Africans were incapable of responsible government, Kissinger considered them easy targets for Soviet propaganda. Certain that Congress and the US public would oppose another distant war in the aftermath of the Vietnam fiasco, Kissinger hid his war from both Congress and the US citizenry, using proxies to fight for US interests.