Cuban intervention in Angola Africa gained its independence from South Africa. Cuban military engagement in Angola ended in 1991, while the Angolan civil war continued until 2002. The Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 in Portugal took the world by surprise and caught the independence movements in its last African colonies unprepared. After smooth negotiations, Mozambique's independence was granted on 25 June 1975, but Angolan control remained disputed between the three rival independence movements: MPLA, FNLA and UNITA in Angola-proper and Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) in Cabinda. Until independence, the independence movements' priority lay in fighting the colonial
Angola–Soviet Union relations United States, the People's Republic of China and the Mobutu government in Zaïre. The United States, South Africa, and several other African nations also supported Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), whose ethnic and regional base lies in the Ovimbundu heartland of central Angola. The government of the Soviet Union, well aware of South African activity in southern Angola, flew Cuban soldiers into Luanda one week before November 11, 1975, the date on which Angolan nationalists had agreed to declare independence. While Cuban officers led the mission and provided the bulk of the troop force,