General Question
What was the Yugoslav Army doing in the Angolan Civil War?
According to the following wikipedia article, Yugoslavia was deployed in some capacity during the Angolan Civil War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Yugoslavia
If this is true, it is remarkable in that it deviates from the country’s traditional Cold War policy of strict neutrality and non-intervention. Why did it chose to deploy there and what was it doing? Were Yugoslavian forces in Angola acting in a non combative way, limited to just combat support roles such as providing medial services to pro-communist forces, logistics, and intelligence? Did the Yugoslavian military provide military advisors to the pro-communist forces in Angola? Or did they actually engage in direct contact with South African and anti-communist rebel forces? If so, was it limited to air support, or did they actually have ground troops engaged in the front lines? An even more fascinating question is why did the Yugoslavian military chose to get involved in Angola in the first place? Was it simply to provide its forces with “real life” operational experience? The wikipedia article is not clear about any of this… I presume that the Yugoslavian military must have been out of Angola way before the break up began in the early 1990’s.
Brian Ghilliotti
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