In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
was delivering predictable cliches: "UNITA is the hope for Angola";
"We have defeated the Portuguese; we will defeat the MPLA";
"UNITA will prevail." After his speech he sat down calmly.
Others rose to speak, representing different regions. This could go
on all afternoon, I thought apprehensively. But after perhaps an hour
Savimbi arose, made a brief statement, and left the room nodding to
me to foil ow.
Savimbi was all business. First we would talk. Then we would tour
the local UNIT A garrisons. What was my mission, he asked, listening
carefully while I told him. He had already been briefed by my
colleague in Lusaka, I said, and I was here from Washington to study
UNITA's strengths and catalogue his needs. Savimbi then began to
speak quietly, simply, in detail. Troop strengths and dispositions? He
unfolded a map and pointed out his principal bases and the current
battles. He said he had about 300 men with him in Silva Porto. Later
I counted a total of 323 divided in two groups, one at the garrison
in town and the other in a camp a few kilometers out a rough dirt
road.
Then came a walking, verbal reenactment of his force's expulsion
of the MPLA from Silva Porto a week earlier. "My commander
advanced his company across here, firing on those buildings there.
We didn't have to waste much ammunition before they surrendered.
No one was killed. I didn't want to fight them, but they fired on my
jet before it landed. We sent fifty MPLA prisoners to Lobito on
trucks."
Roberto would have exaggerated and called it a major victory, and
the difference would have lain not so much in subeterfuge as in their
relative combat experience. Since 1967 Savimbi had committed himself
to the Angolan bush, personally leading the fighting and building
the infrastructure of the UNIT A movement. Also, sparing the lives
of the fifty MPLA fighters probably reflected Savimbi's vision more
than humanist sympathies. He suggested repeatedly in the next two
days that the ultimate hope for Angola still lay at the conference
table rather than on the battlefield.
Savimbi's strategic objectives seemed to lie in central Angola: the
Ovimbundu heartland and the Benguela railroad. Luanda was far
away, and less important.
We drove to the camp outside of town and found the garrison
assembled in three company-sized ranks. On the way there, along the