The war that we are concerned in these fascicles rolled up in the territories of Angola, Guinea and Mozambique in the period from 1961 to 1974.
They were confronting the Portuguese Armed Forces and the forces organized by the liberation movements of each of those colonies.
The first incident occurred in Angola in the area that the Portuguese doctrine would call North Sublevada Zone (ZSN), especially covering the districts of Zaire, Uige and Kwanza Norte. The uprising in this area was carried out by UPA and translated from March 15, 1961, in barbarous massacres of white people and black workers from other regions of Angola. The reoccupation of the entire region has been achieved through the commitment of Portuguese forces in major military operations, which, despite the initial success, could not prevent the progressive spread of guerrilla actions to other regions of Angola, as Cabinda, East , the Southeast and the central plateau. These actions were not only the initiative of the UPA, then transformed into FNLA, but also and especially the MPLA and later UNITA.
In Guinea, the guerrilla actions were initiated by the PAIGC in January 1963 with an attack on the barracks of Tite, south of Bissau, along the river Corubal, although other small actions had occurred before. Operations spread quickly to almost the entire territory, continuously growing intensity, which required the commitment of the Portuguese workforce increasingly numerous.
In Mozambique, Frelimo performed the first action in September 1964, with an attack on the town of Chai, in the Cabo Delgado district, after extending its activities to Niassa, Tete and the center of the territory.
In the three theaters, the staff of the Portuguese forces were steadily increasing in relation to the enlargement of the front lines, reaching, in the early 1970s, the critical threshold of resource mobilization capacity.
The Portuguese side, the war was sustained by the political principle of defense of what was considered the national territory, based on the concept of pluricontinental and multiracial nation. For the part of the liberation movements, the war was justified by the inalienable principle of self-determination and independence, an international framework of support and encouragement to your fight. The New State, first with Salazar and then Marcelo Caetano, kept with great rigidity the essence of colonial policy, closing all doors to a credible solution to the problem of any territory. Maintained, moreover, as a fundamental theory, the indivisibility of cases, never admitting able to find different solutions for different problems.
