About Us |
Country Profiles |
Themes |
International |
Home
|
| Home ::: |
| Contact Us ::: |
|
NEWS STORY
Augusta Conchiglia July 1999 The opposition cannot be disarmed. In the early 1990s it seemed that an end was in sight to one of the cold war’s symbolic confrontations, the 15 year-old conflict between the Luanda government and Unita. By giving priority to the political rather than the military aspects of the 1994 Lusaka Protocol, however, the UN played into the hands of the armed opposition and failed miserably to achieve its aims. As the fighting resumes, the exhausted country is preparing to face shortages and famine. The United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (Monua) finally pulled out of the former Portuguese colony at a low-key ceremony on 20 March. The withdrawal took place at the request of the Angolan authorities although their civil war with Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) resumed in December 1998 and fighting is more intense than ever (1). According to Angola’s president, José Eduardo dos Santos, "it was during the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol that he (Savimbi) strengthened his military capacity, launching a new war of greater proportions. In view of this, the monitoring role of Monua has been irremediably compromised. Besides having nothing to monitor, it could carry out no tasks in Unita-controlled areas, due to the total lack of security" (2). After monitoring the withdrawal of South African and Cuban troops from Angola, decided in New York in December 1988 at the same time as Namibian independence (3), the UN was immediately mandated to monitor the peace accords signed at Bicesse in Portugal in 1991. The Bicesse accords, brokered by the United States, the former Soviet Union and Portugal, provided for general elections to be held after the demobilisation and disarmament of both Unita and government forces, and for the formation of a national army comprising troops from both sides. Despite many warnings, the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (Unavem) promptly decided that the conditions existed for holding the country’s first free elections. A few hours after the official announcement of his defeat at the polls in November 1992, Savimbi withdrew his generals from the national army, brought thousands of fighters out of the bush and launched a full-scale offensive. Within a few months he had gained control of two thirds of the country. Margaret Anstee, the UN secretary-general’s special representative, accused the international community of indifference to the fate of Angola, which she described as "an orphan of the cold war" (4). Unavem had been given no more than a few hundred men to carry out the enormous task of demobilising 150,000 soldiers. The UN learnt a lesson from this bitter experience. In 1984 it decided in Lusaka to boost its observer mission to almost 8,000 men. And on 30 June 1997 the Security Council set up Monua to take over from Unavem (5). Although Savimbi had refused to sign them personally, the peace accords had been concluded under favourable auspices. After years of open hostility to the "Marxist" regime in Luanda and unconditional support for Unita, the US had given many friendly signals to the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, with which it finally established diplomatic relations in May 1993. For its part, the Angolan government had shed its skin and declared allegiance to the principles of the market economy. Emerging from a war that had laid the country waste, Luanda was counting on aid from the international community, especially the US. The financial support never materialised. Nor did the firm pressure on Unita which Washington had promised. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has no doubt that Unita is mainly to blame for the failure of the peace process. But he also criticises the Angolan government for compounding the situation "by a lack of political tolerance and an unwillingness to engage in mutual accommodation" (6). The regime’s political intolerance is mainly directed at its own members. It took a consistently conciliatory attitude to the Unita rebels, at least until last summer. Countless concessions were made to Unita with encouragement from the three observer countries monitoring implementation of the peace accords, especially the US, and from the UN. These concessions concerned both the arrangements for applying the accords and the schedule for their implementation, which was repeatedly postponed. In particular, the government embarked on endless negotiations on a special status for Savimbi, which resulted in a draft amendment to the constitution allowing the creation of an office of vice-president. But several months later the amendment was rejected by the Unita leader several months later. The government has been extremely accommodating, yielding even to Savimbi’s most extravagant demands such as the right to protection by 400 bodyguards. Even more striking was the regime’s agreement in April 1997 to form a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation (Gurn) including members of Unita before the rebel movement had given up an inch of the vast territory it had conquered at the cost of so much bloodshed, and despite the fact that the Lusaka Protocol had required the prior reestablishment of state authority throughout the country. In March 1998, after its second solemn declaration of "total disarmament" since 1994, the rebel movement was recognised as a "civilian" party, authorised to resume political activity, and invited to re-open its headquarters in Luanda. The premises were repainted for the purpose but, not surprisingly, never inaugurated. The murky role of Unita Unita’s obstinacy was all the more worrying as converging information from a number of sources indicated that the movement was rearming, especially at Bailundo, 80 km from Huambo, in the centre of the country. However, neither the Angolan government nor the observers from the three countries seemed to be prepared to denounce this double-dealing and, if necessary, suspend application of the peace accords. Monua made no official protest when Unita refused UN peacekeepers access to airports under its control, for which the rebel movement was condemned by the Security Council in October 1997 (7). It confined itself to recording the number of flights to rebel bases, sometimes more than a hundred a month. The UN did not publish the results of the inquiry into the crash last June of the plane carrying the secretary-general’s special representative, Alioune Blondin Beye, to Abidjan. Nor did it publish the inspection reports on the two UN aircraft shot down last December and January over areas controlled by Unita (8). While not hiding its irritation with Savimbi, the Luanda government was for a long time convinced that there was no alternative to the peace accords, however flawed. It came in for lively criticism on this score from part of the leadership of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) (from which it derived) and from public opinion. The critics failed to understand why so many concessions should be made to rebels who were responsible for the destruction of two thirds of the nation’s infrastructure, for hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and for creating millions of displaced persons and refugees since 1992. By June 1998, despite numerous threats and summonses from the Security Council, there was total deadlock. Not only was Unita preventing normalisation of the situation in Bailundo and Andulo, it was re-occupying many areas, committing countless breaches of the November 1994 ceasefire, and carrying out numerous armed attacks on police stations. The sanctions voted by the Security Council remained largely without effect, despite repeated commitments to strengthen the monitoring arrangements (9). So Savimbi was able to continue the lucrative traffic in diamonds, via various African and European networks, that brought in several billion dollars in a few years, more than enough to pay for his war preparations (10). The crisis that erupted in ex-Zaire last August completed the break between the Angolan government and Unita. Fearing a political vacuum if Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s regime was toppled by a rebellion supported by Uganda and Rwanda, the Luanda government decided to intervene on the side of Kinshasa. Contradictory rumours were circulating in the Angolan capital about Unita’s murky role in the conflict. There was talk of a military alliance - some said with pro-Mobutu groups and the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), others with the Congolese rebels and Uganda - in which Unita headed a centralised force working to destabilise the whole region from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Luanda finally broke off all contact with Unita on 4 September 1998 against the advice of Monua. In the aftermath of a successful military intervention in the lower Congo, the Angolan authorities decided to recapture the Unita strongholds by force. But before the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) could enter into action, Savimbi’s rebels launched a powerful counter-attack using a surprising panoply of expensive high-performance weapons smuggled into Angola with the help of international and regional accomplices. Among other things, Unita was able to deploy large numbers of Russian armoured vehicles and T-55 tanks equipped with long-range cannon. After repelling the FAA, Savimbi’s army even tried, unsuccessfully, to occupy the central cities of Huambo and Kuito, which had been hammered by its artillery for several weeks. Since then, the combat zones have spread north and northeast as far as Malange, Uige and the oil province of Zaire. Unita dropped its mask. It had never demobilised, let alone disarmed. Monua had played into its hands by stressing the political aspects of the peace accords to the detriment of the military issues. Nevertheless, the UN mission did succeed in splitting Unita and isolating Savimbi from the great majority of his own officers. They were only too pleased to escape from the clutches of a despotic leader who had no compunction about threatening the families of his associates in order to ensure their compliance (11). The men who split with Savimbi were leading figures in the rebellion. Some, like the present deputy defence minister, Demostenes Chilingutila, became members of parliament or ministers. On 2 September 1998 they launched a movement for the renewal of Unita (Unita-Renovada, or Unita-R), whose first decision was to oust Savimbi. Luanda recognised Unita-R as the movement’s only official interlocutor. However, Unita’s historic leader still has control of the movement’s military wing, and its troops appear to be unquestioningly loyal to him. Under threat from determined rebel forces who had probably yet to reveal the full extent of their resources (12), the Angolan government finally embarked on the rearmament race. The FAA had already been complaining last year about a lack of resources. Too confident in the peace accords, the government had been slow to draw up a coherent plan for modernising its defence equipment and establishing a logistics system capable of functioning in a crisis. Huge sums of money had been spent on arms but, according to officers on the spot, no great attention was paid to their quality. The corruption spreading through the state like gangrene is likely to prove the real Achilles heel of a regime now facing the most serious social and economic crisis in its history. Meanwhile, the country is sliding ever deeper into war and the Angolans are awaiting the coming dry season with foreboding. It may herald the start of another Thirty Years’ War. story url
|
|
| ::: External Links |
|
:: Le Monde diplomatique |
| ::: Country Profiles |
|
:: Angola |
© 1999-
The Children and Armed Conflict Unit