UNITED NATIONS, DECOLONIZATION, AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN COLD WAR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 1960-1994, THE

The Cold War confrontation impacted other parts of Africa with ruinous effects which persist to this day and had profound implications for the role of the United Nations in Africa. Independence came late to the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, for example, where both emerging postcolonial states immediately became entangled in the geopolitical struggle of the Cold War. In Portuguese, or Lusophone, Africa the crisis of decolonization became inseparable from the Cold War as nowhere else, spawning civil wars in both nations with profound humanitarian consequences and challenging the United Nations on numerous levels.

Angola's experience of European contact and colonialism helped set the stage for its postcolonial crisis. Europeans subjected Angola to one of the most disruptive of slave experiences, the consequences of which are still felt today. Even by the standards in Africa, the Portuguese colonial experience was particularly harsh and backward, so much so that Portugal refused to ever report to the UN on the status of its colonies. Portugal left behind a colony in economic and political turmoil when independence was achieved in 1975, precipitating a civil war which became a theater of the ideological objectives of the superpowers. The divisions of tribal society in Angola were intensified by the politics of the Cold War, with the three largest tribal groups allying with various factions backed by either the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, or the United States. The United Nations mounted four missions to Angola in the 1990s to verify the departure of foreign troops, monitor the implementation of peace accords, and promote reconciliation. But, by 1999, with the UN's work only partly accomplished, Angola asked the United Nations to depart, leaving behind only a rudimentary UN presence to liaise with the various combatants. Angola remains one of the most tragic legacies of Cold War Africa.24

In Mozambique, civil war erupted only a few years after independence in 1977, when a postcolonial Marxist government faced a growing resistance movement backed by the white regimes in neighboring Rhodesia and South Africa. The war raged for more than a decade but, by 1992, much progress toward peace had been achieved when the security Council authorized the deployment of more than 7,000 military and civilian personnel as part of an effort to implement a peace agreement, monitor a ceasefire among the factions, oversee the withdrawal of all foreign forces, and establish and observe the fragile electoral process.25

CHALLENGES IN THE POST-COLD WAR PERIOD: "SECOND GENERATION" PEACEKEEPING AND HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS

The end of the Cold War fundamentally changed international politics, but also offered the possibility of a new role for the United Nations in Africa, one removed from the zero-sum framework of the East-West conflict. The paralysis which had plagued the Security Council seemingly disappeared overnight, inspiring much optimism for the UN to play a greater role in a new, post-Cold War, Africa. But, this initial optimism was not completely justified. The United Nations would indeed face new opportunities, but also a host of new challenges, as the end of the Cold War provoked unanticipated crises, new demands, and a reprioritization of the many missions of the UN in Africa.