In 2012 Angola unveiled a peace monument in Luena, the capital of the eastern province of Moxico, in Lenin Park, near the site where UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle on February 22, 2002, paving the way to a peace deal signed here on April 4, 2002. The monument features two giant hands releasing a white dove to the sky.
The 27 year-long Angolan Civil War began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. It was ostensibly a power struggle between two anti-colonial guerrilla movements, the communist MPLA and the anti-communist UNITA but was also seen as a proxy war between the USA and South Africa vs. the USSR and Cuba.
