directly to Cuba (Angola also reportedly gives some 43 million dollars monthly to help pay for the Cubans. As mentioned, keeping the troops occupied is a morale problem. Cubaos are restricted from any contact with the local population. They are rarely, if ever, allowed to go outside Luanda on their own. In areas where UNITA has operated, there is serious friction between the locals and the Cubans, as the locals tend to support UNITA.
The Cubans mistrust the FAPLA for several reasons The FAPLA performs poorly. Second, the Cubans suspect, and apparently rightly so, that the FAPLA. or at least some people in it. sympathizes with UNITA.
If there have been advantages for Cuba in its intervention in Angola, there have also been perhaps even greater disadvantages. Cuba involved itself in Angola during the heyday of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro interventionism in Latin America and Africa It may well be that the Soviet Union encouraged the Cuban role. Today, 12 years later, Cuba is still heavily involved in Angola, and Angola has sometimes been referred to as Cuba Vietnam. Cuban youths do not want to serve there, and evidently the officers are not too happy about going there either.
Youths fleeing Cuba in rafts and small boats say when they reach the United States that they did not want to serve overseas. Cuban General Rafael del Pino, who in the mid 1970s commanded Cuba air force in Angola and who defected to the United States in May 1987, stated. The people do not want to go to Angola. The people, the officers resist going to Angola. This is not only because we have converted ourselves into a mercenary army but it is that our officers see that the problem is that neither the sons of the members of the Politburo or the sons of the principal leaders of the government go to Angola, do not go into military service.
Del Pino said that Cuban casualties in Angola (missing, wounded, and dead) totalled approximately 10, 000. He reported that during three years 56, 000 deserters from the Cuban armed forces had been captured (including repeaters. 13