Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976

Based on unprecedented archival research and firsthand interviews in virtually all of the countries involved--Gleijeses was even able to gain extensive access to closed Cuban archives--this comprehensive and balanced work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations. It revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War.

Gleijeses' thesis is rather simple. Castro's Cuba was sincerely motivated to encourage revolution in Africa, and from the early sixties onward sought to encourage it by sending advisors, soldiers, desparately needed doctors and other assistance. In doing so Cuba acted out of its own concerns and not as a puppet of the Soviet Union. The first major action was when Cuba helped Algeria ward off Moroccan aggression in 1963. A larger intervention was to assist rebels in Congo/Zaire against the corrupt Tshombe and Mobutu governments. Although not very skillful themselves the Simba rebels were able to repel the hopelessly demoralized army. As it happened the United States secretly arranged for white mercenaries to buck up the Congolese. By the time that Che Guevera went over personally to assist the rebels in 1965, the mercenaries' brutal actions had essentially won the war. Gleijeses is particularly good on the sources for this affair, about how the United States managed to keep their sponsorship of the mercenaries out of the press, and how the media gave these brutal thugs an astonshingly free ride. ... Gleijeses also shows that Jon Lee Anderson is probably wrong in suggesting that Guevera was pushed into going to Zaire, and he ably shows that Dariel Alarcon's own controversial account is vitiated by the fact that he was never in Zaire.

Gleijeses also discusses Cuba's awkward arrangements with the pseudo-radical government of Congo (Brazzaville) and the crucial assistance it gave to the liberation movement of Guinea-Bissau. Gleijeses helpfully reminds us of the Nixon policy's support of white supremacy: in the November 1972 vote that declared the PAIGC the legitimate government of Guinea-Bissau there were only six opponents. One was Portugal, the occupying power. The rest were militarist Brazil, quasi-fascist Spain, apartheid South Africa, and oh yes, Edward Heath's Britian, and Richard Nixon's America.

But it is Gleijeses' account of the Angolan crisis that makes this book so valuable. It contains a point by point refutation of Kissinger's account in the latter's Year of Renewal. Very simply, when Portugeuse dictatorship collapsed in 1974, there were three rebel groups in Angola struggling for power. There was the quasi-Marxist MPLA, and the anti-Marxist FNLA and UNITA. American intelligence noted that the FNLA was "totally corrupt", "subservient" to the vile Mobutu regime, and it paid him a generous subsidy. Although Jonas Savimbi, the head of the UNITA became something of a conservative hero in the eighties, Gleijeses points out that he collaborated with the Portuguese before 1974. We also get to see him double-talking, approaching the South Africans to assist him. He fully agreed to sell out SWAPO, the liberation movement of Namibia, which links Angola to South Africa and at the time was illegally occupied by the latter. Once South African intervention could not be concealed Savimbi pretended to be defending Angola along with the MPLA and SWAPO.

As for the MPLA although it was at time militarily weak and time and the stresses of war would enhance its corrupt and authoritarian features, the Portuguese army stated "it remained the most important movement in Angloa." Those Americans who were actually in Angola (and whose advice was ignored by Kissinger) agreed that it was "the only Angolan organization that had any national representativeness, that could be considered an Angolan-wide organization." The same Americans agreed that it had the support of the most intelligent and politically conscious people in the country. And so Gleijeses refutes arguments that Russian and Cuban aid for MPLA before October 1975 massively swamped aid for the FNLA and UNITA. Contrary to the arguments of UNITA supporters, American intelligence agreed that the Portuguese officials in the transition to independence were not supporting the MPLA. Gleijeses also reminds us that the MPLA was winning before either South Africa or Cuba intervened. He also points out that the problems Kissinger was having with detente in 1975 over SALT, the Middle East, Italy and Portugal had nothing to do with Russian aggressiveness, but that intervening in Angola would strengthen his hand in Republican Party infighting. All in all, this is a superb autopsy of a callous and ill-thought out policy, and should be read by anyone who admires Kissinger.


A new understanding of this forgotten involvement   December 8, 2003
Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel)
10 out of 14 found this review helpful

A wonderful account of Cuba's role in Africa. Few if any books exist describing the epic of the Cuban missions to Africa which cost thousands of lives and impacted a continent. Che's diary and `Guerrilla Prince' are the few books that detail this important facet of Cuban Policy. This book goes a step further from analyzing Che's first failed mission to the Congo to the final victory over South Africa in the Congo. The author describes the Battles as well as the diplomatic missions to such diverse places as Algeria. Everything is covered, from the breakup of the Portuguese empire to the revolutions in Guinea-Bissau. A wonderful singular account that will make you respect Cuba's exporting of revolution and introduce you to many interesting figures, especially opening up the void of African politics, which is all too often ignored.

Seth J. Frantzman


first-rate brilliant study   June 24, 2003
9 out of 12 found this review helpful

This magisterial, first-rate study sheds important light on a fascinating and much-neglected chapter of the cold war and authoritatively reveals the decisive contributions of Cuba to liberation movements in Africa. Extremely well-written and documented. Brilliant!!!


An important contribution to Cold War History   May 3, 2006
Jane Risker (United States)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

CONFLICTING MISSIONS is a brilliant, impressive, and important book. It not only teaches us about the dramatic differences between US and Cuban policies in Africa during the Cold War (until 1976), but it also stretches our minds to see the Cold War "from below." Virtually all Cold War history has been written from the US (or Western)perspective, based on US archives. Gleijeses is the only scholar to have gained access to the Cuban archives; the result is that CONFLICTING MISSIONS contains not only new information but also a new perspective. Gleijeses challenges the reader to reconsider established truths. In his narrative -- which is voluminously supported by research not only in Cuba but also in US, Belgian, West German, East German, and British archives, as well as almost 200 interviews -- Fidel Castro, not the Americans, is shown to be the leader pursuing an idealistic foreign policy.



Superb book on Cuba's "selfless aid" (Mandela) to Africa   September 22, 2004
William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful

This superb book is based on research in Cuban, American, Belgian, German and British archives. Piero Gleijeses is an expert on the USA's role in Latin America. He has written The Dominican crisis, the best account of the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, and Shattered hope, the classic account of the US overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government in 1954.

Gleijeses stresses Cuba's internationalist role in Africa, from sending teams of doctors to Algeria in 1963, to the 2000 doctors in 21 African countries today. It is a unique example of a country's selfless aid.

By contrast, US and British foreign policy in Africa has been squalid and self-interested. In 1964, in a secret CIA operation, assisted by MI6, the US state armed, organised and transported 1000 mercenaries (mostly South African and Rhodesian) into the Congo. The mercenaries raped, pillaged, tortured and killed the Congolese people. Cuba provided valuable aid to the national resistance.

Belgium, Britain, France and the USA all backed Mobutu's coup there. Henri Spaak, the Belgian Prime Minister, one of the key figures in the founding of the EEC, at US orders allowed Zaire's government to recruit mercenaries in Belgium, breaking Belgian law.

The USA and South Africa cooperated in arming and training terrorist UNITA forces in Angola in 1975. In October 1975, South African armed forces invaded Angola. The US, British and French governments all pressed the South African government to keep going, to capture Luanda, Angola's capital.

Cuban forces entered Angola in November, and played the decisive role in turning back the invaders - a historic defeat for apartheid, which should never be forgotten. In 1976, Britain's Labour government aided the recruitment of mercenaries to support UNITA's efforts to destroy Angola and its newly elected government, allowing 200 of them to leave Britain, many without passports.

In 1991, Nelson Mandela visited Cuba and rightly said, "We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa?"