The Angolan Civil War begins in Angola after the end of the war for independence from Portugal in 1975.

The war features conflict between two primary Angolan factions, the Communist MPLA and the anti-Communist UNITA.

Yet a third movement, the FLEC, an association of separatist militant groups, fights for the independence of Cabinda.Formally brought to an end in 2002, an estimated 500,000 people are killed in the 27-year war.

The Angolan Civil War is one of the largest, longest and most prominent armed conflicts of the Cold War.

Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. consider it critical to the global balance of power and to the outcome of the Cold War.In addition to the war's two primary factions (the MPLA and UNITA), several other factions also are engaged in the conflict.

The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA) base is among the Kimbundu people and the multiracial intelligentsia of Luanda.

The MPLA, supported by the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, fights against the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), an organization based in the Bakongo region of the north and allied with the United States, the People's Republic of China and the Mobutu government in Zaïre.

The United States, apartheid South Africa, and several other African nations also support Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), whose ethnic and regional base lie in the Ovimbundu heartland of central Angola.