employed in the defense of people, lines of communications and sensitive installations. It included a central provincial command and a district command in each of the Angolan districts. It is estimated that by the end of the conflict there were 20,000 OPVDCA volunteers. The irregular paramilitary forces, included a number of different types of units, with different characteristics. Under military control, were the Special Groups (GE) and the Special Troops (TE). The GE were platoon-sized combat groups of special forces made up of native volunteers, which operated in Eastern Angola, usually attached to Army units. The TE had similar characteristics, but were made up of defectors from FNLA, operating in Cabinda and Northern Angola. Under the control of the civil authorities were the (Faithfuls) and the (Loyals). The was a force made up mostly of exiled Katangese gendarmes from the Front for Congolese National Liberation, which opposed Mobutu regime, being organized in three battalions. The was a force made up of political exiles from Zambia. Race and ethnicity in the Portuguese Armed Forces From 1900 to the early 1950s the Portuguese maintained a separate colonial army in their African possessions, consisting mainly of a limited number of (native companies). Officers and senior NCOs were seconded from the metropolitan army, while junior NCOs were mainly drawn from Portuguese settlers resident in the overseas territories. The rank and file were a mixture of black African volunteers and white conscripts from the settler community doing their obligatory military service. Black were in theory also liable to conscription but in practice only a limited number were called on to serve. With the change in official status of the African territories from colonies to overseas provinces in 1951, the colonial army lost its separate status and was integrated into the regular forces of Portugal itself. The basis of recruitment for the overseas units remained essentially unchanged. According to the Mozambican historian João Paulo Borges Coelho, the Portuguese colonial army was segregated along lines of race and ethnicity. Until 1960, there were three classes of soldiers: commissioned soldiers (European and African whites), overseas soldiers (black African or ), and native soldiers (Africans who were part of the regime). These categories were renamed to 1st, 2nd and 3rd class in 1960—which effectively corresponded to the same classification. Later, although skin colour ceased to be an official discrimination, in practice the system changed little—although from the late 1960s