"Conflicting Missions is an account of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent.

Piero Gleijeses's fast-paced narrative takes the reader from Cuba's first steps to assist Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65 - where 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara clashed with 1,000 mercenaries controlled by the CIA - and, finally, to the dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-1976, which stopped the South African advance on Luanda and doomed Henry Kissinger's major covert operation there.

The Cuban victory damaged U.S. and South African prestige, weakened detente, and gave heart to black Africans."--BOOK JACKET.