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Angola Troop Strength, Recruitment, and Conscription
Unavailable
A female member of the People's Armed Forces for the
Liberation of Angola
Courtesy United Nations (Y. Nagata)
FAPLA relied heavily on conscription to meet its
staffing
requirements. Voluntary enlistments were important too,
especially
in FAPA/DAA and MGPA, where greater technical competence
was
required. Recruitment and conscription were carried out by
the
General Staff's Directorate for Organization and
Mobilization
through provincial and local authorities.
Although two-year conscription had been initiated in
1978
pursuant to the Mobilization and Recruitment Law, the
First
Extraordinary Party Congress held in 1980 decided that
increased
troops requirements warranted introduction of universal
and
compulsory military training. Angola thus became the first
black
state in sub-Saharan Africa to make its citizens subject
to
compulsory military service. Of Angola's more than 8.2
million
people, males in the fifteen to forty-five age group
numbered
almost 2 million, half of whom were considered fit for
military
service. About 87,000 reached the military recruitment age
of
eighteen each year, but a sizable proportion, perhaps a
majority,
were unavailable because of rural dislocation and UNITA's
control
of at least one-third of the country. The Ministry of
Defense
issued periodic conscription orders for all men born
during a given
calendar year. Thus, for example, in February 1988 the
Ministry of
Defense ordered all male Angolan citizens born during
calendar year
1970 to report to local registration centers to be
recruited and
inducted into active military service as of March 1.
Separate days
were reserved for teachers and students to report, and
officials in
charge of workplaces and schools were instructed to deny
admission
to anyone not properly registered for military service.
After
military service, all personnel were obliged to enroll in
the
Directorate of People's Defense and Territorial Troops.
Particularly in the late 1980s, FAPLA apparently
resorted to
other means besides conscription to satisfy military
requirements;
political needs were sometimes also met in the process.
For
instance, in the 1980s several hundred former FNLA rebels
were
integrated into FAPLA after accepting amnesty. According
to UNITA
sources, FAPLA also had begun to organize new recruits
into
battalions formed along ethnic lines, with Mbundu and
Bakongo elite
forces kept in the rear while Ovimbundu, Kwanhama (also
spelled
Kwanyama), Chokwe (also spelled Cokwe), and Nganguela
(also spelled
Ganguela) were sent to the front lines
(see Ethnic Groups and Languages
, ch. 2). Children of government and party
leaders were
reported to be exempt from conscription or spared service
on the
front lines. FAPLA was also reported by UNITA to have
forcibly
conscripted hospital workers, convicts, youth, and old men
after
suffering heavy losses in the offensive of late 1987.
Women played a definite but poorly documented role in
national
defense. They too were subject to conscription, but their
numbers
and terms of service were not reported. FAPLA included
women's
units and female officers, whose duties included staffing
certain
schools, particularly in contested areas. Other details on
the
size, type, and activities of these units were not
available.
Data as of February 1989
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