Guinea-Bissau War of Independence

Guinea-Bissau War of Independence
Part of the Portuguese Colonial War and the Cold War
Portuguese plane shot down in Guinea-Bissau with PAIGC soldiers, 1974
PAIGC soldiers with a downed Portuguese aircraft, 1974
DateJanuary 23, 1963 – September 10, 1974
(11 years, 7 months, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location
Result

PAIGC victory[4][5]

  • Unilateral declaration of independence in September 1973
  • Diplomatic agreement securing the independence of Guinea-Bissau in September 1974
Territorial
changes
Independence of Guinea-Bissau from Portugal
Belligerents
PAIGC
 Guinea (1970 only)
 Cuba
Material support:
 China
 Soviet Union
 Sweden [1]
 Senegal
 Libya
 Yugoslavia
 Romania
 East Germany
Diplomatic support:
Brazil Brazil[2]
 Mexico
 Algeria
 Portugal
Supported by:
 Israel[3]
Commanders and leaders
Amílcar Cabral 
Luís Cabral
João Bernardo Vieira
Domingos Ramos 
Pansau Na Isna 
Francisco Mendes
Osvaldo Vieira
Estado Novo (Portugal) António de Spínola
Strength
~10,000 ~32,000
Casualties and losses
6,000 killed[6] 2,069 killed
3,830 with permanent deficiency (physical or psychological)
5,000 civilian deaths[6]
7,447 African former Portuguese Army soldiers executed by PAIGC after the war.[7][8][9]

The Guinea-Bissau War of Independence (Portuguese: Guerra de Independência da Guiné-Bissau), or the Bissau-Guinean War of Independence, was an armed independence conflict that took place in Portuguese Guinea from 1963 to 1974. It was fought between Portugal and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, PAIGC), an armed independence movement backed by Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. The war is commonly referred to as "Portugal's Vietnam" because it was a protracted guerrilla war which had extremely high costs in men and materiel and which created significant internal political turmoil in Portugal.[10]

After the assassination of PAIGC leader Amílcar Cabral in January 1973, the military conflict reached a stalemate: Portuguese forces were largely confined to major cities and various fortified bases and were patently unable to dislodge PAIGC from the so-called liberated zones. In September 1973, the PAIGC-dominated People's National Assembly unilaterally declared the independence of a new Republic of Guinea-Bissau; the declaration was recognised by several foreign countries. After the Carnation Revolution, the new Portuguese government agreed to grant independence to Guinea-Bissau in September 1974 and to Cape Verde a year later. PAIGC thus became the first sub-Saharan African liberation movement to achieve independence – if only indirectly – through armed struggle.[5]

  1. ^ {{Cite https://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A241772&dswid=7949}}
  2. ^ Selcher, Wayne A. (1976). "Brazilian Relations with Portuguese Africa in the Context of the Elusive "Luso-Brazilian Community"". Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. 18 (1): 25–58. doi:10.2307/174815. JSTOR 174815.
  3. ^ Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin (1987). Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin. The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and why. p. 64. "Though Israel was busy establishing ties with newly independent African nations in the 1960s, it did not support all forms of decolonization. When it came to Portugal's colonies, Israel was on the side of continuing European rule.". Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-394-55922-3.
  4. ^ Katagiri, Noriyuki (2014). Adapting to Win. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 148–150. ISBN 9780812246414.
  5. ^ a b Chabal, Patrick (1981). "National Liberation in Portuguese Guinea, 1956-1974". African Affairs. 80 (318): 75–99. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097302. ISSN 0001-9909. JSTOR 721431.
  6. ^ a b Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lloyd-Jones, Stewart p. 22 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ PAIGC, Jornal Nô Pintcha, 29 November 1980: In a statement in the party newspaper Nô Pintcha (In the Vanguard), a spokesman for the PAIGC revealed that many of the ex-Portuguese indigenous African soldiers that were executed after cessation of hostilities were buried in unmarked collective graves in the woods of Cumerá, Portogole, and Mansabá.
  9. ^ Munslow, Barry, The 1980 Coup in Guinea-Bissau, Review of African Political Economy, No. 21 (May - Sep., 1981), pp. 109-113
  10. ^ Elizabeth Buettner (2016). Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-521-11386-1.

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