During the Cold War, under Ronald Reagan's Reagan Doctrine, the term freedom fighter was used by the United States and other Western Bloc countries to describe rebels in countries controlled by communist states or otherwise under the influence of the Soviet Union, including rebels in Hungary, the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua, UNITA in Angola and the multi-factional mujahideen in Afghanistan.

By then the largest part of the roads were controlled by UNITA and heavily mined.

During the Angolan Civil War ( 1975 – 2002 ), following the departure of the Portuguese, the mine of Cassinga was controlled by UNITA and the coast by the communist government of the MPLA, so no export was possible.

Throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, Cuando Cubango served as the location for the primary base camp of Angola's UNITA rebel movement, led by Jonas Savimbi.

Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola ( UNITA ) lobbied in the US Congress and the White House ( spending as much as US $ I million ) in USA through many lobbyists who were successful in repealing the Clark Amendment which resulted in USA supplying small arms to the rebels.

In political terms, the Angolan parliamentary elections of 2008 reflected an important shift in Ovimbundu loyalty: while most of them had voted UNITA in the previous ( 1992 ) election, their majority now voted MPLA-because ( after the death of Jonas Savimbi ) UNITA had lost much of its credibility, but also because strengthening UNITA was seen as implying the risk of a renewal of armed violence.

According to the U. S. State Department, UNITA came to control " vast swaths of the interior ( of Angola )".

Born in Kunji, Bié Province, Samakuva joined UNITA in 1974.

Most other cities in the Central Plateau were occupied too by UNITA at the time, through no less violence and massive destruction.

As Huambo and other major towns in the Plateau were being shelled from Bailundo and other positions still in possession of UNITA, two C-130 Hercules aircraft chartered by the United Nations with 23 people on board were shot down over Vila Nova ( Dec. 26, 1998 and Jan. 2, 1999 ), as they were trying to evacuate to Luanda the last remains of the UNAVEM III mission in Huambo.

An the other hand, the armed forces of the MPLA ( now the official armed forces of the Angolan state ) and of UNITA fought each other until the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, was killed in action, in 2002.

From the mid-1980s through at least 1992, the United States was the primary source of military and other support for the UNITA rebel movement, which was led from its creation through 2002 by Jonas Savimbi.

It was here that Jeremias Chitunda, UNITA's long-time vice-president and other UNITA officials were killed while fleeing the city culminating in the Halloween Massacre.

When, towards the end of the decade of the 1980s, during a book-launch ceremony for one of the foreign editions of Another Day of Life, someone asked Kapuściński whether, in the interests of impartiality, he had explored the motivations of the other players in the Angolan conflict, specifically the points of view of UNITA and of FNLA, he replied: " Nobody gave me an opportunity to do so " ( reported in Artur Domosławski, Kapuściński non-fiction ).

The United States, the apartheid government of South Africa, and several other African governments also supported a third faction, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola ( UNITA ).

In 1962 the UPA formed the National Front for the Liberation of Angola ( Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola – FNLA ), which became one of the three major nationalist groups ( the other two being the MPLA and UNITA ) involved in the long and bloody war of independence.

Upon Angolan independence in November 1975, the MPLA held power in Luanda, but the new MPLA government faced a civil war with the other political formations UNITA and FNLA ; the civil war continued for most of the period until 2002.

Houphouët-Boigny maintained an ardently anti-communist foreign policy, which resulted in, among other things, severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1969 ( after first establishing relations in 1967 ) and reestablishing them in February 1986, refusing to recognise the People's Republic of China until 1983, and providing assistance to UNITA, a United States-supported, anti-communist rebel movement in Angola.

The Reagan doctrine called for American support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA movement in Angola, among other anti-communist groups.

His government developed close links with the Soviet Union and other nations in the Eastern bloc and other Communist states, particularly Cuba, which aided the MPLA considerably in its war with the FNLA, UNITA and South Africa.

By mid 1976 the Cuban expeditionary force had established its most important structures in Huambo town in the area of San Pedro, Lufefena and Cruzeiro, and strong garrisons in most of the other municipal capitals and main towns, but UNITA had the control of nearly all of the territory in between.

I n early December the Government launched an offensive aimed at taking the last strongholds held by UNITA in Huambo and Kuito, this new war outbreak soon extending to other regions of the country.

After Soviet and Cuban military forces were deployed to Angola with the goal of eliminating Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA resistance forces, a Vietnam War-era statute that had prevented the Reagan administration from coming to the aid of Savimbi and UNITA was repealed and Johns and other conservatives quickly made a successful case that the U. S. had a moral and strategic obligation to promptly come to Savimbi's defense.

Following the meeting, Reagan spoke supportably of Savimbi " winning a victory that electrifies the world ," suggesting that a UNITA victory in Angola would raise the spirits and prospects of other anti-communist movements around the world and possibly within the Soviet Union itself that were engaged in resisting Kremlin-backed communist governments.

Among other examples, Kagame claimed that his forces fought a pitched battle against UNITA near Kinshasa towards the end of the war.

The result was that, in addition to Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine was rather quickly applied in Angola and Nicaragua, with the U. S. providing military support to the UNITA movement in Angola and the " contras " in Nicaragua, but without a declaration of war against either country.

Several thousand Cuban troops remained in the country to combat UNITA insurgents and bolster the regime's security.

Johns visited with Savimbi in his anti-aircraft-protected compound in Jamba, Angola, where he provided private counsel to the Angolan rebel leader, and while U. S. military aid for Savimbi was kept covert, presumably to protect third party countries such as South Africa, Zaire and others involved in delivery of it, U. S. aid to Savimbi's forces quickly bolstered UNITA as a major military and political opposition force in the country.

With Cuban help the Angolan Army ( FAPLA ) almost annihilated the FNLA and Zairians and drove UNITA, after the South Africans retreated, to remote southeastern pockets of the country.

In July fighting again broke out and the MPLA managed to force the FNLA out of Luanda ; UNITA voluntarily withdrew from the capital to its stronghold in the south from where it also engaged in the struggle for the country.

The renewal of civil war immediately after the elections, which were considered as fraudulent by UNITA, and the collapse of the Lusaka Protocol, created a split situation.

The Angolan Armed Forces ( Portuguese: Forças Armadas Angolanas ) are the military in Angola that succeeded Forças Armadas de Libertação de Angola ( FAPLA ) following the abortive Bicesse Accord with UNITA in 1991.

Integration was never completed as UNITA went back to war in 1992.

Later, consequences for UNITA members in Luanda were harsh with FAPLA veterans persecuting their erstwhile opponents in certain areas and reports of vigilantism.

In 2002 one was lost during the civil war with UNITA forces.

Since 1998, Angola has successfully worked with the United Nations Security Council to impose and carry out sanctions on UNITA.

More recently, it has extended those efforts to controls on conflict diamonds, the primary source of revenue for UNITA.

Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau served as stop-over points for Cuban troops on their way to Angola to fight UNITA rebels and South African troops.

Namibia's ruling party SWAPO sought to support the ruling party MPLA in Angola against the rebel movement UNITA, whose stronghold is in southern Angola, bordering to Namibia.

The defence pact allowed Angolan troops to use Namibian territory when attacking Jonas Savimbi's UNITA.

They fought against UNITA rebels, based in Angola, and the apartheid-era government in South Africa who supported them.

Nelson Mandela mediated between the MPLA and UNITA factions during the last years of Angola's civil war.

During Angola's civil war Cuban forces fought to install a Marxist-Leninist MPLA-PT government, against Western-backed UNITA and FLNA guerrillas and the South-African army.

* 1934 – Jonas Savimbi, Angolan political leader, founded UNITA ( d. 2002 )

Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau served as stop-over points for Cuban troops on their way to Angola to fight UNITA rebels and South African troops.

In the process of these operations, there were allegations in 2001 that the army has tortured people suspected of being UNITA sympathisers.

IRIN reported that the Ministry of Defence had admitted that two Namibian soldiers died fighting suspected UNITA rebels in southern Angola in July 2001.

Switzerland also has joined UN economic sanctions imposed on Libya, Sierra Leone, UNITA ( Angola ), Liberia, and Serbia / Montenegro.

During the next decade, it actively supported movements such as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola ( UNITA ) under the independence war and under the subsequent civil war, the Zimbabwe African People's Union ( ZAPU ) and in Southern Rhodesia, the African National Congress ( ANC ) in their struggle against apartheid in South African Republic, and the South-West Africa People's Organization ( SWAPO ) in their struggle for independence for Namibia.

He actively supported UNITA during the Angolan liberation and civil war, SWAPO during their fight for Namibian independence from apartheid South Africa, Southern Rhodesia ( now Zimbabwe ), and the African National Congress in their fight against apartheid in South Africa.

* The Angolan Civil War ( 1975 – 2002 ), once a major proxy conflict of the Cold War, the conflict ended after the anti-Communist organization UNITA disbanded to become a political party.

* May 1 – Angolan Civil War: The MPLA and UNITA agree to the Bicesse Accords, which are formally signed on May 31 in Lisbon.