Angolan Civil War
The Angolan civil war has a strange history when it comes to being involved in a proxy war. It would start as a civil war within the country, morph into a proxy war, and return to being an internal conflict after the end of the Cold War, seeing pockets of peace and stability in the nearly three decades.
Over those decades of war, more than half a million people would lose their lives. The origins of the civil war would begin in the immediate aftermath of the country gaining its independence from Portugal.
In 1974, there would be a leftist military coup in Lisbon which overthrew the semi-fascist Estado Novo regime known as the Carnation Revolution. This would have a knock on effect for the Angolan people as the Portuguese that lived there fled as soon as the country’s independence was known.
As they made up the majority of skilled workers the economy would quickly crash, causing an economic disaster. The power vacuum left by the Portuguese would soon be filled with three main political groups, each one representing a different ethnic group.
