In analysing the Shaba wars of 1977-78, in which Angola-based Katangese rebels invaded and destabilised Zaire, this article analyses the complex interaction between local forces, national states and the wider Cold War in Africa. As well as a case study of the National Front for the Liberation of Congo (FLNC) which carried out these invasions, the article seeks to provide new understanding of the ways in which both contemporaneous Cold War protagonists and subsequent historians have often failed to understand the underlying motivations of local forces which fought in conflicts that existed in problematic relationship to the wider Cold War. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
