The Angolan Civil War is a very strange period of history for me. By all logic it doesn’t make sense that there are not only two large, powerful communist parties but that they were fighting each other - with one even being backed by the West of all people. I’ve heard the division was caused primarily by an ethnic dispute with the two parties representing two different ethnicities.
Is this accurate or was there more to it than that? I’d appreciate any insight anyone has - or at least resources if available - in order to better understand why this war happened.
Angolan Civil War seems less complex
MPLA has a typical Soviet Marxist Leninist urban working class approach, not being sectarian regarding tribe or ethnicity, and so thus supported by USSR, Warsaw Pact and Cuba
UNITA has support from majority peasant Ovimbundu and supported by Maoist China early on but mostly Amerikkka and Apartheid South Africa, and I’d argue they ceased to be Maoist by then and purely reactionary.
But tell me about Horn of Africa and it’s a huge fuck up of Communists fighting each other over ethnicity
DERG VS SOMALI VS Eritrea VS Tigray
But ah well, to destroy a deviationist Communist party is no loss, to keep them is not gain, even if they’re under the ML banner
Derg main issue was Amhara chauvinism (I think it wasnt really set out to be that way, just amhara socialists ended up not dying & Ethiopia was an empire with its own baggage), Somalia wasnt an ML/socialist state more like Niger or Mali today thats why the soviets eventually switched to the derg primarily, Eritrea was a liberatory fight against Ethiopia due to aforementioned chauvinism and geopolitical concerns, it was actually supported by the arab states and cuba at first, while israhell & usa supported imperial Ethiopia but then the roles switched lol
Eritrea acted as the gulf/Zionist guard against Yemen & Houthis, but their relationship has tapered off, Eritrea kicked out UAE bases recently.
Tigray was in allied to Eritrea at first but wanted a soviet union style Ethiopia not balkanization, there is also historic cultural & religious tensions between the two (Eritrea as coastal territory got more investments by the arabs, turks and then italians), which eventually led to their falling out, TPLF became the leaders of post-communist Ethiopia (a conflicted mediated by Jimmy Carter), so it kinda becomes obvious why they would eventually be captured by Zionist interests.
Horn politics are underrated, sadly marxist barely have good resources for the whole conflict - so whacko african warlord stories are the norm.