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<span class="post_date" title="2015-11-05">November 5, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/05/cubas-operation-carlota-40-years-later/"
rel="bookmark">Cuba’s Operation Carlota 40 Years Later</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/matt-peppe/"
rel="nofollow">Matt Peppe</a></span> </p>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/05/cubas-operation-carlota-40-years-later/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/05/cubas-operation-carlota-40-years-later/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>After 40 years, Republic of Guinea native Alpha Diallo still
remembers the emotion he felt as a 20-year-old college student
in Cuba when he made a decision that would change his life. The
Cuban government had just decided to send troops to Angola to
fight the invading South African army, which had crossed the
border into Angola several weeks earlier on Oct. 23, 1975.
Diallo, who had come from western Africa to Havana on
scholarship two years earlier to study agricultural engineering,
attended a rally of 800,000 people in the Plaza of the
Revolution as Fidel Castro announced the military mission to
support the anti-colonial Angolan movement and fight apartheid.</p>
<p>“I followed Fidel’s speech and it was compelling. Among the
Guineans, 15 of us decided to give up our studies to go fight,”
Diallo recalled recently in a phone interview from his home in
Washington D.C. “We were so impressed and we were excited to
go.”</p>
<p>Diallo said that as Africans, he and the other students felt a
special obligation to help the Cubans fight for the liberation
of other African countries. Since the early 1960s, Cuba had
provided crucial support to movements throughout Africa seeking
to free themselves from colonialism.</p>
<p>In Guinea-Bissau, Cuba had provided military instructors and
doctors, enabling the rebels to gain their independence from
Portugal two years earlier. After the Portuguese dictatorship
fell in 1974 and Portugal prepared to grant Angola independence
on Nov. 11, 1975, three local movements fought to take power.</p>
<p>The largest rebel group with the most popular support was the
People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). They had
gained a decisive advantage internally and were poised to take
control of the government. The MPLA was providing critical
training and safe haven to other anti-colonial rebel groups
opposed to minority rule from neighboring countries such as
(Nelson Mandela’s) ANC of South Africa, SWAPO of Namibia, and
FRELIMO of Mozambique.</p>
<p>By early November, the South African Defence Force (SADF) was
advancing 45 miles per day toward the capital Luanda. South
Africa’s invasion jeopardized not only Angola’s revolution, but
the struggle for liberation throughout the continent. The
racists were set to install a puppet regime led by former
Portuguese collaborator Jonas Savimbi that would be amendable to
white rule in South Africa and willing to work with apartheid to
crush the liberation movements. The situation in Angola was
bleak.</p>
<p>“The MPLA leaders, who had been prepared for a guerilla
struggle rather than a full-scale war, then understood that only
an urgent appeal for international solidarity would enable them
to rout this concerted attack by neighboring states, supported
by the most rapacious and destructive resources of imperialism,”
wrote Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez in 1977.</p>
<p>The Angolans had only one unlikely country they could turn to:
Cuba. The poor Caribbean country, suffering under a vicious
economic war waged on them for 15 years by the world’s most
dominant superpower, had already provided military instructors
to assist the MPLA. But they would not be nearly enough on their
own. MPLA leader Agostinho Neto would appeal to Fidel Castro on
Nov. 3 for reinforcements to ward off the racists.</p>
<p>The answer came less than 48 hours later on Nov. 5. Yes. “The
Communist Party of Cuba reached its decision without wavering,”
García Marquez wrote. He noted the date had historical
significance for Cubans: “On another such November 5, in 1843, a
slave called Black Carlota, working on the Triunvirato
plantation in the Matanzas region, had taken up her machete at
the head of a slave rebellion in which she lost her life. It was
in homage to her that the solidarity action in Angola bore her
name: Operation Carlota.”</p>
<p>On Nov. 7, the first 82 soldiers, dressed in civilian clothes
and carrying light artillery, set off on a Cubana Airlines
flight to Luanda. Over the coming weeks and months, Cuban troops
would pour into Angola by air and by sea. By the end of the
year, they would number nearly 10,000 . More than a decade
later, before the end of apartheid, there would be as many as
36,000 troops throughout the country.</p>
<p>Fidel Castro, Commander of the Cuban Revolution, would immerse
himself in the battle.</p>
<p>“There was not a single dot on the map of Angola that he was
unable to identify, nor any feature of the land that he did not
know by heart. His absorption in the war was so intense and
meticulous that he could quote any statistic relating to Angola
as if it were Cuba itself, and he spoke of its towns, customs
and peoples as if he had lived there all his life,” writes
García Marquez. “In the early stages of the war, when the
situation was urgent, Fidel Castro would spend up to fourteen
hours at a stretch in the command room of the general staff, at
times without eating or sleeping, as if he were on the
battlefield himself. He followed the course of battles with pins
on minutely detailed wall-sized maps, keeping in constant touch
with the MPLA high command on a battlefield where the time was
six hours later.”</p>
<p>After landing in Angola, Cuban troops went straight to the
battlefield and proved decisive in keeping the racist South
Africans at bay. On Nov. 10, Cuban troops ambushed the SADF’s
Zulu column, inflicting heavy casualties on the apartheid army.</p>
<p>At the Battle of Ebo on Nov. 23, Cuban soldiers attacked the
Zulu column as it approached a bridge, according to historian
Piero Gleijeses. They killed and wounded as many as 90 racist
troops and knocked out seven or eight armored cars. The victory
bought Cuba time as reinforcements poured in, and Angola
received a shipment of weapons from the Soviet Union. The
apartheid army tried to advance, but were pushed back by heavy
resistance. By Dec. 27, they were ordered to fall back.</p>
<p>“As 1975 came to a close, the tide had turned against
Washington and Pretoria. It had turned on the battlefield, where
the Cubans had stopped the South African advance, and it had
turned on the propaganda front: the Western press had noticed
that South Africa had invaded Angola,” writes Gleijeses in
Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976.
[1]</p>
<p><strong>Imperialism and Apartheid Conspire Against African
Self-Determination</strong></p>
<p>South Africa had tried to disguise its involvement in the
invasion of Angola by pretending that mercenaries, rather than
the regular South African army, had invaded. The Americans,
meanwhile, tried to distance themselves by claiming they had no
involvement in South Africa’s military operation. But it is
clear from the documentary record that Washington’s fingerprints
were all over South Africa’s actions.</p>
<p>In a June 1975 meeting of the National Security Council,
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President President Ford
he was not “in wild agreement” with the options presented by an
interagency task force: “The first is neutrality – stay out and
let nature take its course… As for the second course, my
Department agrees, but I don’t. It is recommended that we launch
a diplomatic offensive … and encourage cooperation among the
groups.” The absence of American intervention, Kissinger
admitted, would lead to a victory for the MPLA and for Neto to
“gradually gain the support of other Africans.” [2]</p>
<p>Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger offered: “We might wish
to encourage the disintegration of Angola. Cabinda in the
clutches of (Congolese military dictator) Mobutu would mean far
greater security of the petroleum resources.” Ford was in
agreement that the United States must prevent Angolan
self-determination: “It seems to me that doing nothing is
unacceptable.” [3]</p>
<p>The most damning evidence, though, was admitted publicly by
apartheid South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha in the House
of Assembly in 1978. Botha declared that when the SADF invaded
Angola: “we did so with the approval and knowledge of the
Americans.” [4]</p>
<p>By the end of 1975, Cuban troops had routed the apartheid army
and prevented their takeover of the country. There is no doubt
that had Castro and the Cuban government declined to confront
the apartheid regime on the battlefield, the MPLA would have
fallen. A South African victory would have solidified apartheid
and devastated the decolonization movements across southern
Africa.</p>
<p>“Without the Cuban intervention, the South Africans would have
seized Luanda before anyone reported that they had crossed the
border. The CIA covert operation in Angola would have
succeeded,” Gleijeses writes. [5]</p>
<p>Diallo and his fellow countrymen in Cuba would not, in the end,
join the fight against apartheid. When the Cuban government
found out that the African students wished to take part in the
military mission, they informed them through the university that
they should stay in Cuba.</p>
<p>Even though he had never been to South Africa, Diallo said he
understood the injustices black South Africans faced under the
apartheid system. “I was aware of that, the humiliation of
people telling you that you weren’t as good, telling you where
you could live and restricting your ability to move around,” he
said. Ridding Africa of apartheid, what Castro himself called
“the most beautiful cause,” was worth fighting for. [6]</p>
<p>But Diallo is glad the Cubans made it clear that the students
should serve in a civic capacity, rather than a military one.
“They told us: ‘Your country needs you. We appreciate your
offer, but let us handle this. Stay here and finish your studies
and then go back and help your own countries,’ ” Diallo said.</p>
<p><strong>References</strong></p>
<p>[1] Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington,
and Africa, 1959-1976. The University of North Carolina Press,
2002. Kindle edition.</p>
<p>[2] June 27, 1975, NSC Minutes, “Angola” (Document obtained
from Gerald Ford Library, NSC Meetings File, Box 2)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/gleijeses6.pdf">http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/gleijeses6.pdf</a> (pg.
3-4)</p>
<p>[3] Ibid. (pg. 7)</p>
<p>[4] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2002</p>
<p>[5] Gleijeses, op. cit.</p>
<p>[6] Instructions to the Cuban Delegation for the London
Meeting, ‘Indicaciones concretas del Comandante en Jefe que
guiarán la actuación de la delegación cubana a las
conversaciones de Luanda y las negociaciones de Londres
(23-4-88)’,” April 23, 1988, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, Archive of the Cuban Armed Forces. Obtained and
contributed to CWIHP by Piero Gleijeses and included in CWIHP
e-Dossier No. 44.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/118134">http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/118134</a> (pg. 5)</p>
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<div>
<p class="author_description"> <i><b>Matt Peppe </b>writes about
politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his <a
href="http://mattpeppe.blogspot.com/">blog</a>. You can
follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/PeppeMatt">twitter</a>.</i>
</p>
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