Step-by-step explanation:
also reinforced by a number of Cuban armoured and motorised units, who had become more directly committed to the fighting for the first time since the beginning of Cuba's military intervention in Angola in 1975.[20] The SADF and UNITA launched six heavy assaults on the Tumpo Triangle under the auspices of Operation Packer. The defending FAPLA and Cuban troops held their lines in the Tumpo Triangle.[21] The SADF and UNITA disengaged in March 1988, after laying a series of minefields southeast of Cuito Cuanavale to dissuade a renewed FAPLA offensive.[21]
Both sides claimed victory.[22][23] The Cuban and FAPLA defenders had interpreted the SADF's Tumpo Triangle campaign as part of a larger effort to seize the town of Cuito Cuanavale itself and presented their stand there as a successful defensive action.[21] The SADF claimed that it had achieved its basic objectives of halting the FAPLA offensive during the Lomba River campaign without needing to occupy Cuito Cuanavale, which would have entailed unacceptable losses to its expeditionary force.[24][25][16]
Today, the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale is credited by some with ushering in the first round of trilateral negotiations, mediated by the United States, which secured the withdrawal of Cuban and South African troops from Angola and Namibia by 1991.[26]