Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How large is Angola?
At 1,246,620km2 (481,321sqmi),[38] Angola is the world's twenty-third largest country - comparable in size to Mali, or twice the size of France or of Texas. It lies mostly between latitudes 4° and 18°S, and longitudes 12° and 24°E.
Federação Nacional dos Trabalhadores de Angola ('National Federation of Workers of Angola', abbreviated FNTA) was a small Angolan trade union organization in exile, based in Kinshasa. FNTA was founded in mid-1964 by dissidents from UNTA. S. David N'Dombasie was the general secretary of FNTA. FNTA was largely based in the Bazombo ethnic group.
About 18.4% of Angola is classified as forest and woodland. Angola’s large timber resources include the great Maiombe tropical rain forest in Cabinda. In addition, eucalyptus, pine, and cypress plantations cover 140,000 hectares (346,000 acres). In 2003, roundwood production was estimated at 4,518,000 cu m, and exports amounted to 1,000 cu m.
A largely Ovimbundu guerrilla initiative against the Portuguese in central Angola from 1966 was spearheaded by Jonas Savimbi and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).[24] It remained handicapped by its geographic remoteness from friendly borders, the ethnic fragmentation of the Ovimbundu, and the isolation of peasants on European plantations where they had little opportunity to mobilise.[25]
In a conversation between American Ambassador Dan Mozena and Chinese Ambassador Bolum Zhang, Zhang said, "the CIF made many promises to Angola, and that while the company has a large presence in Angola, its weak management and lack of leadership have stalled many of the projects. Zhang said that as the CIF is a 'private company,' the Chinese embassy does not actively participate or monitor its relationship with Angola. He added that CIF continues to benefit from the Hong Kong-based owner's 'close relationship' with President Dos Santos." It was involved in the construction of the Angola International Airport.
Umbundu, or South Mbundu (autonym "úmbúndú"), one of two Bantu languages of Angola called Mbundu (see Kimbundu), is the most widely spoken language of Angola. Its speakers are known as "Ovimbundu" and are an ethnic group constituting a third of Angola's population. Their homeland is the Central Highlands of Angola and the coastal region west of these highlands, including the cities of Benguela and Lobito. Because of recent internal migration there are now also large communities in the capital Luanda and its surrounding province, as well as in Lubango.
The larger part of Angola’s income derives from oil production and by 2008 the country was Africa’s second largest producer of crude petroleum. Angola is also the fourth largest producer of diamonds in Africa. Diamonds are obtained both from alluvial deposits and from the hundreds of kimberlite pipes which are scattered along a northeast – southwest line through Angola. The country is also a gold producer, the most important source being alluvium originating from Archaean greenstones dominantly around Cabinda. Angola also has, as yet largely untapped copper, gypsum, phosphate, iron ore, manganese and other base metal reserves.
According to the Cubans, the overriding priority of their mission in Angola was humanitarian, not military. In the wake of Operation Carlota, around 5,000 Cuban technical, medical and educational staff were constantly posted in Angola to fill the gaps the Portuguese had left behind. "For a generation of Cubans, internationalist service in Angola represented the highest ideal of the Cuban Revolution" and for many it became a normal part of life to volunteer for an internationalist mission, principally in Angola, which lasted 18 to 24 months. In the following years, tens of thousands of volunteers were processed each year. By 1978, Angola's health system was almost completely run by Cuban doctors. After the Portuguese left the country, there was only one doctor per 100,000 inhabitants. The Cubans posted a large medical team at Luanda's University and Prenda hospitals and opened clinics in remote areas all across Angola.
The history of rail transport in Angola began during the nineteenth century, when Angola was a colony of Portugal. It has involved the construction, operation and destruction of four separate, unconnected, coast-to-inland systems, in two different gauges. Operations on three of those systems have been largely restored; the other system has been closed.
Angola is the third-largest trading partner of the United States in Sub-Saharan Africa, largely because of its petroleum exports. The U.S. imports 7% of its oil from Angola, about three times as much as it imported from Kuwait just prior to the Gulf War in 1991. The U.S. Government has invested US$4 billion in Angola's petroleum sector.
Howe writes that Angola's defence minister acknowledged that senior officials profited significantly from weapons purchases; a newspaper sympathetic to the MPLA, "Angolense" reported that senior officers made US$320 million in commissions.
In November 1975, on the eve of Angola's independence, Cuba launched a large-scale military intervention in support of the leftist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against United States-backed interventions by South Africa and Zaire in support of two right-wing independence movements competing for power in the country, the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By the end of 1975 the Cuban military in Angola numbered more than 25,000 troops. Following the withdrawal of Zaire and South Africa, Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the MPLA government against UNITA in the continuing Angolan Civil War.
The Catholic Church in Angola is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Approximately 56% (9,486,960) of the population profess the Catholic faith, due largely to Angola's status as a former Portuguese colony.
The relationship between Angola, Cuba and the Soviet Union was ironically heavily funded by sales of oil to capitalistic countries. Both the Soviet Union and Angola were large scale exporters of oil providing funds for the various Cuban initiatives. During the years 1984 to 1988 the world price of oil tumbled (eventually leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union) and Angola's ability to fund Cuban ventures was severely cut to the point that Angola could no longer afford to pay for any foreign assistance and went into debt. With no money to go around and internal strains between the Angolans and Cubans, by the mid to late 1980s the bi-lateral relationship changed dramatically. For Cuba there were no longer any revenues from Angola but instead a very expensive operation of funding a military and civilian force in Angola. Cuba was also suffering their own hardships based on a command economy that had systematically become too expensive to run. Although the two sides still had a respectful relationship the soon departure of the Cuban occupiers was a foregone conclusion.
Operation Askari, launched on 6 December 1983, was the SADF's sixth large-scale cross-border operation into Angola and was intended to disrupt the logistical support and command & control capabilities of People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) the military wing of the South West Africa People's Organisation SWAPO, in order to suppress a large-scale incursion into South West Africa that was planned for the beginning of 1984. The People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Angolan governing party, were targeted during this mission as PLAN bases were close to FAPLA bases and had been used as a place of refuge during SADF operations.
Health in Angola is rated among the worst in the world, and only a large fraction of the population receives even rudimentary medical attention.
The Portuguese Army steadily pushed the UPA back across the border into Congo-Kinshasa in a brutal counteroffensive that also displaced some 150,000 Bakongo refugees, taking control of Pedra Verde, the UPA's last base in northern Angola, on 20 September 1961. Within the next few weeks Portuguese military forces pushed the MPLA out of Luanda northeast into the Dembos region, where the MPLA established the "1st Military Region". For the moment, the Angolan insurgency had been defeated, but new guerrilla attacks would later break out in other regions of Angola such as Cabinda province, the central plateaus, and eastern and southeastern Angola.
By most accounts, Portugal's counterinsurgency campaign in Angola was the most successful of all its campaigns in the Colonial War. Angola is a large territory, and the long distances from safe havens in neighboring countries supporting the rebel forces made it difficult for the latter to escape detection. The distance from the major Angolan urban centers to the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia were so large that the eastern part of Angola's territory was known by the Portuguese as "Terras do Fim do Mundo" (the lands of the far side of the world).
Islam in Angola is a minority religion with 80,000-90,000 adherents, composed largely of migrants from West Africa and families of Lebanese origin. The Association of the Development of Islam in Angola is the primary proselytizing organization. Muslim Angolans are represented by the Supreme Council of Angolan Muslims of Luanda. The constitution of Angola prescribes freedom of belief, however, there have been press accounts the Muslim community is especially targeted by the Angolan government. Muslims are currently de facto are denied the permit to pray in or build mosques. 
The Museu Nacional de História Natural de Angola (National Museum of Natural History of Angola) is located in Largo do Kinaxixe, in the city of Luanda, Angola. It was established in 1938 as the Museu de Angola, and was originally housed in the Fortress of São Miguel, initially with departments of Ethnography, History, Zoology, Botany, Geology, Economics and Art. A library and colonial history archive was added. In 1956 it moved to its current 3-storey building, and it today features a large collection related to the country's natural history and rich and varied fauna. The museum features spacious lounges, which contains stuffed specimens of mammals, fish, whales, insects, reptiles and birds.
The new airport is designed for around 13 million passengers per year and will receive 12 fingerdocks. The construction company is China International Fund, which was founded in Hong Kong in 2003. The Chinese have also built a large new construction village named Vila Chinesa, meaning "Chinese village", with accommodation for workers and materials depots, east of Luanda in Viana.
Since the end of the civil war in 2002, the pace of economic growth in Angola has accelerated. To link the increasing international business with the rest of the world and to secure the drastic increase in logistics networks in Angola, the construction of a new, large international airport was necessary.
Angola has a large HIV/AIDS infected population. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated adult prevalence at the end of 2003 at 3.9% – over 420,000 infected people. Angola's 27-year civil war (1975–2002), deterred the spread of HIV by making large portions of the country inaccessible. Angola was thus cut off from most contact with neighboring countries that had higher HIV infection rates. With the end of the war, transportation routes and communication are reopening, therefore enabling a greater potential for the spread of HIV/AIDS. Current statistics indicate that the border provinces, especially certain areas bordering Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, currently have higher prevalence than the rest of the country.
In Portuguese Angola, the rebellion of the ZSN was taken up by the União das Populações de Angola (UPA), which changed its name to the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) in 1962. On February 4, 1961, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) took credit for the attack on the prison of Luanda, where seven policemen were killed. On March 15, 1961, the UPA, in a tribal attack, started the massacre of white populations and black workers born in other regions of Angola. This region would be retaken by large military operations that, however, would not stop the spread of the guerrilla actions to other regions of Angola, such as Cabinda, the east, the southeast and the central plateaus.
Angola has a large HIV/AIDS infected population, however, it has one of the lowest prevalence rates in the Southern Africa zone. The status of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Angola is expected to change within the near future due to several forms of behavioral, cultural, and economic characteristics within the country such as lack of knowledge and education, low levels of condom use, the frequency of sex and number of sex partners, economic disparities and migration. There is a significant amount of work being done in Angola to combat the epidemic, but most aid is coming from outside of the country.
In 1975, in response to the demands of the Carnation Revolution, Portugal decided to pull out of its African colonies. By this time Cuba had already infiltrated and commenced large scale activities in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola. Of these African colonies, Angola has vast amounts of oil and an abundance of other natural resources. Given that the 1970s became the awakening of the oil age and knowing that Angola's large oil reserves would serve well to make it a rich and strong backer of a Marxist expansion, Cuba focused on primarily supporting Angolan Marxist rebel movements over the liberation movements of other Portuguese colonies, thus beginning the special relationship between Cuba and Angola.
The sentiment of the Pretoria government at the time was expressed in a speech by Botha before South African parliament on 17 April 1978, in which he charged the U.S. with "defaulting on a promise to give them all necessary support in their campaign to defeat the MPLA": "Against which neighbouring states have we taken aggressive steps? I know of only one occasion in recent years, when we crossed a border and that was in the case of Angola when we did so with the approval and knowledge of the Americans. But they left us in the lurch. We are going to retell that story: the story must be told and how we, with their knowledge, went in there and operated in Angola with their knowledge, how they encouraged us to act and, when we had nearly reached the climax, we were ruthlessly left in the lurch".