ANGOLAN STING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300054-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: April 10, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
` Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300054-2
10 April 1986
Angolan sting
By Robert I. Rotberg
D ELIVERING a covert big sting to Angola will es-
calate existing regional conflict and add unnec-
essarily to tension between the United States
and the Soviet Union. But that is precisely what the
Reagan administration mistakenly intends.
The Central Intelligence gency, acting on instruc-
tions from the White House, plans to supply the rebels of
Jonas Savimbi's antigovernment Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA) with Stingers, the
portable, heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles. The .United
States also wants to give some to insurgents in
Afghanistan and the anti-Sandinista cadres in Nic-
aragua/Honduras.
Leaders of both the Senate and the House Select Com-
mittees on Intelligence are attempting to rush bills
t trough Congress denying covert assistance to UNITA if
the Stinger transfers are not reversed.
Since 1978 UNITA has successfully prevented
Angola's Soviet-backed government from exercising
control over about 40 percent of its territory. UNITA has
often struck close to Luanda, the nation's capital; UNITA
power has closed the central rail line and made Angola's
southern half unsafe for government forces.
The official government of Angola is supported
financially and militarily by the Soviet Union. Soviet and
East German officers advise the regular Angolan Army.
But the government's main defense against UNITA is the
presence of 35,000 well-armed Cuban troops.
UNITA would be a less formidable fighting force if it
were not assisted financially, militarily, and logistically
by South Africa. Indeed, it is easy to argue that UNITA
has packed a robust punch only because of the steady
transfer of supplies from South Africa and because of
the direct assistance of a South African-officered
battalion, and the provision of South African air cover,
radar surveillance, and shared intelligence.
Aiding UNITA aids South Africa. That is one serious
strike against the US administration's current effort to
back UNITA. To do so aligns the US squarely with that
apartheid regime at a time when the administration
seeks to demonstrate its abhorrence of apartheid and its
preference for a peaceful, democratic-majority solution
to the turmoil in South Africa.
The US seeks regional peace. It has condemned South
African attacks on Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique, and
Angola. But supplying Stingers would attempt to tip the
regional balance toward South Africa, in accord with the
hegemonic designs of South African foreign policy.
Equally serious, if not more so, is the impact that
supplying Stingers can have on Soviet and Cuban inter-
ests in the southern African region. It enhances them at
the very time the US is trying desperately to deprive the
Soviets and the Cubans of legitimacy in Angolan and Af-
rican eyes. Sending Stingers plays into the hands of the
Soviets. It gives the USSR, as Angola's best friend,
glittering credibility when Soviet influence was other-
wise waning. The Angolan government would prefer the
Cubans to leave, but now must urge them to stay.
The war for Angola has for many years been compar-
atively low level. The Stingers, useful against troop-
carrying helicopters and other low-flying gunships,
escalate the potential for war. Soviet and Cuban leaders
are unlikely to refrain from matching the Stingers with
sophisticated weaponry of their own. Thus the introduc-
tion of Stingers is bound to increase rather than reduce
the war in southern Africa as well as the competition
within the region and globally between the US and the
Soviet Union.
The administration believes that covert aid to Mr.
Savimbi will twist the tail of the Soviet bear so hard that
it will relax its hold on Angola, Nicaragua, or Afghan-
istan. But the opposite result is at least equally likely. As-
sisting UNITA diminishes the credibility of the US in Af-
rica as well as with Africans in South Africa, bolsters the
Soviet Union, links Washington squarely with Pretoria,
and compounds the folly of "constructive engagement"
by adding a policy of covert aid to Angola which is illogi-
cal and counterproductive.
Rvberl , 1. - Rotberg ii g professor o
-4 of political
science and history at tie Massoilinsetts Institute of
Technology. - = - -.- - - - - - - - - - - - -I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300054-2