Angola: Deadly Rite of the Rainy Season

A new offensive produces the same old stalemate

Caked in grime, ragged in their new-grown beards, the South Africans had finally begun to withdraw. The last of some 2,000 soldiers were making off with booty ranging from Soviet-made guns to Russian-language maps. Some of their trucks were still decorated with Christmas tinsel. But the condition of the 30-mile-long column was hardly festive. At the village of Mupa, they had to put up a rickety bridge across a swollen river; farther south, they drove past a treasure trove of Soviet-made equipment, including recently developed...

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