Jonas Savimbi - Military Career

Military Career

Following Angola's independence in 1975, Savimbi gradually drew the intrigue of powerful Chinese and, ultimately, American policymakers and intellectuals. Trained in China during the 1960s, Savimbi was a highly successful guerrilla fighter schooled in classic Maoist approaches to warfare, including baiting his enemies with multiple military fronts, some of which attacked and some of which consciously retreated. Like the Chinese Red Army of Mao Zedong, Savimbi mobilized important, although ethnically confined segments of the rural peasantry - overwhelmingly Ovimbundu - as part of his military tactics. From a military strategy standpoint, he can be considered one of the most effective guerrilla leaders of the 20th century.

While Savimbi originally sought a leadership position in the MPLA; rebuffed, he joined forces with the FNLA in 1964. The same year he conceived UNITA with António da Costa Fernandes. Savimbi went to China for help and was promised arms and military training. Upon returning to Angola in 1966 he formally launched UNITA and began his career as an anti-Portuguese guerrilla fighter, but also fought the FNLA and MPLA, as the three resistance movements tried to position themselves to lead a post-colonial Angola. Portugal would later release PIDE archives revealing that Savimbi in fact signed a collaboration pact with Portuguese colonial authorities to fight the MPLA.