Angola – where the Cold War still is a silenced reality

Those who like investigating the meaning of countries’ flags will certainly be fascinated by the flag of Angola. The latter presents two parallel and horizontal stripes (red and black) which serve as background for the iconic, golden symbols of communism: the hammer and the sickle shown with the support of a star. 

On the one hand, it is quite easy to imagine that Angola, a colony of the Portuguese Empire until 1975, was directly involved in the Cold War between the communist block and Western society during the late 70s and throughout the 80s. On the other hand, it seems harder to understand the reason why Angola’s flag still possesses communist elements nowadays. 

However, this aspect becomes clearer if one considers the socio-political situation of Angola in the last decades. In the country, the Cold War between sustainers of communism and supporters of the Western model never ended and since the very beginning, it turned into an authentic civil war between the two opposite sides.  

Even though in the biennium 1990-1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and hostilities between the communist bloc and Western society ended, in Angola, the civil war did not finish and continues to negatively affect the life of the Angolan population, which suffers from brutalities, extreme poverty, and hunger. 

It is certainly possible to find many on-site criminals from this sad history. Nevertheless, it is particularly important to point out the following argument: the deplorable situation of Angola was and is completely ignored by the international community. No international actor sincerely stood up for Angola and warned the world of the Angolan catastrophe. Everything was covered in 2002 by a fake end of the civil war and now everything is concealed by the silence of the international community. 

This silence must finish now, the Angolan crisis must become central in international debates immediately! The international community must intervene to stop the spiral of hatred and violence that is destroying Angola and its population.