During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the super powers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed and over the decolonization of Namibia. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. This book provides an international history of this important theater of the late Cold War.

The author offers insights on Egypt's failed revolution: how it happened and why it did not succeed. Samuel Tadros argues that, as Egypt continues on its destructive downward path, it is important to examine the role that its revolutionaries played in that trajectory. Tadros raises long-unanswered questions about those revolutionaries: Who were they and where did they come from? What was their ideological and organizational composition? Why were they angry at the Hosni Mubarak regime? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they attempt to achieve them?
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• Cuito Cuanavale: an overview
• The Cuban forces
• The South African forces
• The FAPLA Soviet advisors
• The Angolan FAPLA
• The Angolan UNITa
• General Ben Ben
• The beginning of the end
• Commandant Robbie Hartslief
• The retreat
• The siege of Cuito Cuanavale
• The air war
• Casualties of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale
• Prisoners of war
• Ceasefire.

As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The result was the largest battle on the dark continent since Al Alamein. The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcements-the army of Communist Cuba. Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, largely unknown in the U.S., but which raged for three months in the entirely odd match-up of South African Boers vs. Castro's armed forces, which for the first time in the Cold War proved what it could achieve. The South Africans were no slouches at warfare themselves, but had suffered under a boycott of weapons since 1977. The Cubans and Angolan troops had the latest Soviet weapons, easily delivered. But UNITA had its secret U.S. supply line and the South Africans knew how to fight. Meantime the Cubans overcame their logistic difficulties with an impressive airlift of troops over the Atlantic, while the Boers simply needed to drive next door.
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In Motherland Lost, Samuel Tadros provides a clear understanding of the Copts-the native Egyptian Christians-and their crisis of modernity in conjunction with the overall developments in Egypt as it faced its own struggles with modernity. He argues against the dominating narratives that have up to now shaped our understanding of the Coptic predicament - their eternal persecution, from the Roman and Byzantine emperors to the rule of Islam, and the National Unity discourse - asserting rather that it is due to the crisis of modernity. Linking the Egyptian and Coptic stories, the book argues that the plight of Copts today is inseparable from the crisis of modernity and the answers developed to address that crisis by the Egyptian state and intellectuals, as well as by the Coptic Church and laypeople. The author asserts that the answers developed by Egyptian intellectuals and state modernisers to the challenge modernity poses revolved around the problem of Islam. The Copts, then, although affected, like their fellow Egyptians, by the challenge of modernity, were faced with a separate crisis: a specific challenge to their ancient church and the need for a new orientation and revival to be able to deal with modernity and its discontents. Tadros concludes that the prospects for Copts in Egypt appear bleak and are leading to a massive Coptic exodus from Egypt.
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• Preludio
• Preparativos
• La batalla
• Reflexiones
• Cubanos en Cabinda
• Anexos.

• The gates of tears
• In the land of the mad mullah: Somalia
• In the land of the imam: Yemen
• In the land of the mahdi: Sudan
• War at sea
• The rise of the shabab
• Al Qaeda redux
• The sad lands.

Camille Pecastaing looks at the twenty-first-century challenges facing the region around the Bab el Mandeb-the tiny strait that separates the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean-from civil war, piracy, radical Islamism, terrorism and the real risk of environmental and economic failure on both sides of the strait. The author takes us with him into Somalia and Yemen, Eritrea and Djibouti, with excursions into Ethiopia and the Sudan, as he reveals how the economic and environmental crisis currently in gestation could lead to more social dislocation and violence in this strategically important region.
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• Introduction
• 1. Operational and strategic context
• 2. Operation Eastern Exit
• 3. Operation Provide Relief
• 4. Operation Restore Hope : prelude and lodgment
• 5. Operation Restore Hope : operations and transition
• 6. Operation Continue Hope : operations and conflict
• 7. Operation Continue Hope : reinforcement and withdrawal
• 8. Operation Untied Shield
• 9. Operational and strategic observations
• Appendix A. The Weinberger doctrine
• Appendix B. The Powell doctrine
• Appendix C. UNITAF component commanders
• Appendix D. UN Security Council resolutions
• Appendix E. Seven-point agreement
• Appendix F. Somali clans and political factions
• Appendix G. Participating nations
• Appendix H. General Zinni's considerations for humanitarian and peace operations
• Appendix I. Major events chronology
• Appendix J. Acronyms and abbreviations.

"From January 1991 through March 1995, the United States conducted numerous incursions into Somalia, undertaking a variety of missions and objectives. All of the actions had humanitarian elements, yet the operations that made up this mosaic of American involvement ranged from benign to aggressive, from purely humanitarian to clearly combative. Somalia . . . From the Sea is an account that attempts to explain and analyze these actions and place them within the overarching strategic and operational concepts developing in the first years following the end of the Cold War."--Introduction

• I. Documents and reading list
• II. Chronology of events
• III. List of persons
• IV. Documents from U.S. archives
• V. Report on U.S. archives
• VI. Documents from Russian archives / collections
• VII. Belgian Communist Party archives
• VIII. Bundesarchiv
• IX. Belgian parliamentary commission documents
• X. Other published sources
• XI. List of secondary sources / background material.

• Introduction and Historical Background-- Bibliographical Aids, Surveys, Memoirs and Archival Sources-- The Conventional Military Campaigns-- "The Last of the Gentlemen's Wars"-- Conclusion.
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One hundred years after the Boer War, the British continue to debate what went wrong, while the war has significant nationalist overtones in today's South Africa. This book examines changes in interpretations of the war and provides a bibliography of major sources on the Boer War, now sometimnes called the South African war. The bibliography focuses on the military history, but also includes some historical accounts of the political debate. The first part of the book provides an extended historiographical essay, while part two provides an annotated bibliography of the titles discussed in part one. Historiographical questions concerning the Boer War are numerous. Discussions of military operations focus on the early use of modern weaponry and the effect of guerilla tactics on a traditional force, while other historians debate the question of British military leadership and organization. Questions also revolve around British military leadership and organization. Questions also revolve around British imperialism and the "scramble for Africa". Frequently called the second war for freedom by South African authors, the war was the reason that South Africa, unlike other British colonies, gained independence without majority rule. This makes the war of continuing relevance to the turmoil in South Africa, the collapse of the minority government, and the continuing problems of the current government. This book should provide a useful tool for those wishing to research the war.
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This text is a pocket handbook to the beautiful city of Cape Town featuring accounts of all the top attractions, up-to-the minute reviews of the best places to eat, drink and stay as well as full-colour maps with grid references.
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A collection of Michael Martin's images of Africa. The enormous, awe-inspiring stretches of land reveal the true cultural and spiritual heritage of Africa. The people are also unveiled in all their diversity. The book comes with a free compact disc of desert music.
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