Cuban Military in Africa

riffmongous · 10-07-2014 10:38am #1

I often see it mentioned but never in great detail. The most common reference is to the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and Angola, but I also read on wiki they were decisively involved in the Ogaden war between Somalia and Ethiopia. I haven't come across any specifics beyond Cuito though, like accounts of battles, equipment, structures (Soviet financed and influenced of course but more detail would be nice) etc., does anyone else have any more information on them?

riffmongous · 10-07-2014 11:11pm

I found a reference to this movie, I havent had a chance to watch it in full yet though, nor do I speak Spanish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsuMLeRtVII

Cork boy 55 · 12-07-2014 3:31am

The Panama News
Castro in Africa: Cuba’s Operation Carlotta, 1975
by Russ Stayanoff, MA

On December 2, 2005, Cuba's aging Fidel Castro addressed his nation's armed forces in his last personally delivered Revolutionary Armed Forces Day speech in Havana. The speech commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Cuban army’s Angolan intervention. The speech was the archetypal “Castronic” socialist diatribe long-time Fidel watchers have come to expect. However, during this speech Fidel, for the first time, shed some light on the history of the secret deployment of some 36,000 Cuban troops, sent in 1975, to defend the newly declared independent Marxist government of Angola. “Never before,” declared Fidel, “had a Third World country acted to support another people in armed conflict beyond its geographical neighborhood.” The Cuban leader declared that contemporary historical assessments of the region consistently omit the contributions of the Cuban expeditionary forces. Castro called the contributions of the Cuban army "decisive in consolidating Angola's independence and achieving the independence of Namibia.”

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_14/issue_03/travel_03.html

The domino theory in action,
All thanks to the traitor JFK and his failure to support the bay of pigs invasion.
The Castro's coup should have been liquidated at birth.

riffmongous · 12-07-2014 4:16pm

But considering one of those dominos was the rascist apartheid regime, was that really such a bad thing?

Thanks for the link btw, very interesting reading, just what I was looking for!

meathstevie · 12-07-2014 5:10pm

The SADF took their measure fairly handily and of course the carnage they helped unchaining in the ancient state of Ethiopia and the chaos and famine that followed for decades after is a prime example of African foreign inspired Marxism as well.

I for one am quite happy that the SADF didn't back down, one Zimbabwe is quite enough by anyone's reckoning. Sometimes I even wonder if Apartheid was all that different from how the rest of sub-Saharan Africa goes about it's internal political business. Racism/tribalism is far from a white prerogative.

riffmongous · 12-07-2014 6:28pm

The Ethiopian intervention was part of a defensive war against Somali aggresion no?

And also Namibia has successfully managed to make the transfer to a stable democracy,when the SADF did back down after Cuito and Caleque, would you rather it was still white dominated?

meathstevie · 12-07-2014 11:59pm

riffmongous wrote: »

The Ethiopian intervention was part of a defensive war against Somali aggresion no?

And also Namibia has successfully managed to make the transfer to a stable democracy,when the SADF did back down after Cuito and Caleque, would you rather it was still white dominated?

Not particularly, I've not much of an opinion on South African internal politics.

What I do know though is that a lot of African dictatorships have been ran along tribal / ethnic lines and that brutality was often dished out along those lines. Looking at South Africa the way it was from that perspective I think it can be argued that South Africa was not that awfully different from other African countries.

Dusty Philosopher · 22-07-2014 9:21am

There where a lot of reason why Somalia invaded Ethiopia, in the end of ww2, when British empire took over all of Somalia (refer to the map below) due to shady deals the Ethiopians did with the Americans to get bases in East Africa, America asked the British and they obliged, the land that Kenya and Ethiopia took where 100% ethnic somalis, following the work of the Somali youth league, north and south got united, following the years, a lot of the Somali military where trained overseas, especially in Russia, which obviously had a strong influence Siad Barre the future dictator, planned assassinations, which was most likely funded by the Russians to get a base in East Africa, funny thing is America pulled out of Ethiopia and Russia plugged in the hole.

Huge works got done in a short amount of time, at that time Somalia had the largest standing army in Africa, with over 40% of gdp being spent on the military, this hadn't gone unnoticed, the people where angry, so Siad Barre channelled that angry, in the form of hate towards Ethiopia,There was of course clannism in Somali which is a barrier to the nation's aspiration to establish a better society.

He used his connection and clan to back him, after losing the war his time was short, his handler aka the Russians throw him out like a stray dog.

85% of the population is ethnic Somali, and the rest is populated by arabs and somali bantu.

No matter who you are in the developing world, if your country is in a strategic point or if you have resources, you either go down or stay down.

media.maps.com/magellan/Images/SOMCLA-W2.gif (can't post links)

Fabio · 05-09-2014 5:12pm

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

The Panama News
Castro in Africa: Cuba’s Operation Carlotta, 1975
by Russ Stayanoff, MA

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_14/issue_03/travel_03.html

The domino theory in action,
All thanks to the traitor JFK and his failure to support the bay of pigs invasion.
The Castro's coup should have been liquidated at birth.

Traitor to who? Batista and his crew of merry and corrupt "leaders". Castro's coup had popular support. It was not until after Eisenhower rejected meeting Castro, because of him nationalising the sugar crop, that Castro turned to Moscow.

It's a little off topic I know but I wanted to add some proper historiography to the debate.

j80ezgvc3p92xu · 10-09-2014 11:29pm

For some reason the US abandoned Angola after they poured in cash and some CIA advisers and left SA to stem the red tide and fight the Cuban intervention as well. I wonder who was responsible for that decision? The US would throw in serious weight behind stopping Commies in South America and the Caribbean, but their involvement in Africa was always lackluster (another example is the fall of Katanga).

Jawgap · 01-10-2014 10:35am

Was reminded of this thread when I saw this while looking for something else.....

"Cuba's First Venture in Africa: Algeria, 1961-1965"
Piero Gleijeses
Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 159-195

If you've access to JSTOR, you can read it here - www.jstor.org/stable/157991

ChicagoJoe · 31-10-2014 4:09pm

Fabio wrote: »

Traitor to who? Batista and his crew of merry and corrupt "leaders". Castro's coup had popular support. It was not until after Eisenhower rejected meeting Castro, because of him nationalising the sugar crop, that Castro turned to Moscow.

It's a little off topic I know but I wanted to add some proper historiography to the debate.

Yes, like Vietnam, Washington/CIA/take your pick, pushed Castro into the hands of the Soviets.

Cuban Military in Africa

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