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Brian_Ghilliotti's avatar

What was the Yugoslav Army doing in the Angolan Civil War?

Asked by Brian_Ghilliotti (328points) May 26th, 2017

According to the following wikipedia article, Yugoslavia was deployed in some capacity during the Angolan Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Yugoslavia

If this is true, it is remarkable in that it deviates from the country’s traditional Cold War policy of strict neutrality and non-intervention. Why did it chose to deploy there and what was it doing? Were Yugoslavian forces in Angola acting in a non combative way, limited to just combat support roles such as providing medial services to pro-communist forces, logistics, and intelligence? Did the Yugoslavian military provide military advisors to the pro-communist forces in Angola? Or did they actually engage in direct contact with South African and anti-communist rebel forces? If so, was it limited to air support, or did they actually have ground troops engaged in the front lines? An even more fascinating question is why did the Yugoslavian military chose to get involved in Angola in the first place? Was it simply to provide its forces with “real life” operational experience? The wikipedia article is not clear about any of this… I presume that the Yugoslavian military must have been out of Angola way before the break up began in the early 1990’s.

Brian Ghilliotti

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2 Answers

PullMyFinger's avatar

This is purely hypothetical, of course, but here are my answers:

No idea.
Maybe.
Possibly (but not probably).
No.
Perhaps.
Definitely not.
That is an interesting theory.
Most likely correct, but needs further discussion..

Espiritus_Corvus's avatar

Helping the Cubans fuck with Chevron Oil of California’s oil installations. Ten percent of the net profit went to Angola, which represented 90% of their economy. It was a typical guerrilla action to damage the infrastructure. Pissed the US off. So Reagan gave 100 million bucks to Savimbi, who turned right around and bought Czeckoslovakian AK-47s from the East bloc instead of M-16s from us. LOL. Pissed us off again.

Strangly enough, they found a bunch of dead Cuban soldiers with M-16s just outside of the Angolan Chevron Oil refinery after a battle with Savimbi. Opened up a whole can of worms stateside. They had an investigation. Turns out there were daily secret CIA flights from Miami to Havana packed with new American small arms without the Senate Arms Committe’s knowlege.

LOL. You had to have been there. It was complicated.

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