Cuban intervention in Angola the requested financial assistance (100,000US$) it received from Yugoslavia. Portugal's sudden retreat from Angola and Mozambique in 1975 ended a history of South African military and intelligence cooperation with Portugal against the Angolan and Namibian independence movements dating back to the 1960s, later formalized in a secret alliance codenamed Alcora Exercise. It also ended economic cooperation with regard to the Cunene hydro-project at the Angolan-Namibian border, which South Africa had financed. South African involvement in Angola, subsumed under what it called the South African Border War, started in 1966 when the conflict with the Namibian independence movement, South West Africa
History of Angola nationalist's demands for independence, thereby provoking the armed conflict that started in 1961 when guerrillas attacked colonial assets in cross-border operations in northeastern Angola The war came to be known as the Colonial War. In this struggle, the principal protagonists were the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), founded in 1956, the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), which appeared in 1961, and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), founded in 1966. After many years of conflict, the nation gained its independence on 11 November 1975, after the 1974 coup d'état in Lisbon,