Istwa Nou

Decolonisation happened inside the Cold War, and the continent was treated the way Southeast Asia and Central America were treated, as ground where the two blocs could fight without meeting. African governments and liberation movements tried to use the rivalry, taking money and weapons from whoever offered them, and became its casualties. The effect was to start some conflicts, extend others, and give Western governments a public reason to fund rulers they could not otherwise have defended, from Mobutu in Zaire to the apartheid government in Pretoria to Mengistu in Ethiopia while Moscow was paying him. In the Horn, Ethiopia sold itself as the Western position against communism, which is part of why Eritrea was refused independence and why the Americans built a large base on the coast. In Angola and Mozambique the wars of liberation turned into competitions between Soviet, American, Cuban, South African and Chinese interests, and lasted longer for it. When the Cold War ended the money stopped, and several of the governments it had propped up fell over.