|
For interest: A report from the SA Mail and Guardian on Angola, which I
mentioned a few weeks ago.
Jenny Robinson
WHILE the world's attention is focused on the refugees from
Kosovo,
another war-induced tragedy is unfolding in Angola, unreported
on TV
screens. One million people have fled their homes since war
erupted last
December. Farming families have left their crops to rot in the fields,
missed the
February short planting season, and will miss the main season as well.
Luanda, the capital, a disaster in social services, hygiene and
criminality in times
of peace, is swollen with refugees from all over the country. Some
belong to the
bourgeoisie in the provincial capitals: their cars cram Luanda's
narrow, potholed
streets. Most are rural poor: they stand out by dress and demeanour as
they sell
pineapples and avocados. Women and girls join the ranks of prostitutes
who
emerge at dusk. Children join the ranks of the homeless, who sleep on
doorsteps
and in sewerage pipes.
The mood is sombre in the usually lively capital. Food prices have
skyrocketed.
Shortages of basic goods occur when the army and police commandeer
supplies.
Forced conscription of black able-bodied males, regardless of their
age,
intensifies. Unita's troops are a mere 70km away, perhaps closer.
The World Food Programme is alarmed about food security. "Angola is
becoming the forgotten emergency," says its country director Francesco
Strippoli.
Donors have given 42% of the US$63-million requested by the United
Nations
for 1999. In April, WFP asked for an additional US$8,8-million to
airlift food to
provincial capitals cut off from road transport. Unita controls
two-thirds of the
country and makes roads dangerous by planting landmines or ambushing
vehicles,
including aid workers'. Relief agencies have pulled out international
staff from
besieged cities.
Where there is food, it does not always get to the needy. Malanje is
swollen by at
least 200 000 displaced people and has been shelled heavily by Unita
since
January. Sometimes WFP was able to deliver food by air or by road at
grave risk
to the truck drivers, some of whom undertook the journey because they
had
relatives in Malanje.
When shelling stopped between May 12 and 19, a WFP team flew in. It
found
food was being diverted. It did not say by whom.
Since Kuito's airport reopened one month ago, WFP has been flying in
food for
70 000 displaced people. Before the food flights, people resorted to
"batidas",
foraging expeditions for food. The safe area around Kuito is no more
than 30km.
New landmines have been laid during several waves of fighting since
December.
Aid workers in Kuito say that the hospital receives mine casualties
daily -- hungry
people looking for food in places newly mined.
As fighting extends to Moxico province,
people flee into Cuando Cubango
province. Even Lubango in the south,
until now untouched by war, has
recently received 60 000 displaced
people
Militarily, Unita holds the upper hand,
with the Angolan army holding
defensive positions, said a senior army
officer, Lieutenant General Jose Ribeiro
Neco, when he briefed Parliament in
May. Relations between President Jose
Eduardo dos Santos and army supremo
Joao de Matos are reportedly strained.
The government postponed its offensive
on Unita's headquarters in Bailundo and
Andulo, planned for the early dry
season in May, for lack of trained
soldiers and equipment. Earlier attempts
in December and February were
repelled with heavy losses on both
sides.
The offensive is now scheduled for
July-August, giving time for the 60-day
training of new recruits that began on
May 15 in Kwanza Sul, and for newly
acquired military equipment to arrive.
But the government is finding it difficult to pay for its orders.
Weapons trickle in
but the government says it needs more rocket launchers and artillery.
The government has publicly recognised it has reached the limit of its
borrowing
capacity. Oil prices dropped from US$18 to US$10 a barrel, diamond
production is down due to insecurity, and war eats 40% of the national
budget.
In early May the government granted prospecting rights for new
deep-water oil
deposits to Exxon, Elf and Petrogal, with the national oil company
Sonangol
holding a 20% share in all blocs. This netted about US$900-million --
but the
government admits Sonangol's revenues go straight to pay the
US$12-billion
debt.
On May 7 the United Nations Security Council ordered experts to look
at how
Unita breaks sanctions and how these can be tightened. In typical UN
tempo, a
preliminary report will be presented by July 31, and the final version
by the end of
the year.
It will be difficult to enforce sanctions on illegal diamond trading
-- one reason
being that the government does it as much as Unita. The accounts of
the national
diamond company Endiama are secret. Its young chief executive Paulino
Neto
was recently sacked, accused of illegal trading.
The Security Council also complained about the delay in making public
the report
on the causes of the airplane crash that killed the UN Special
Representative to
Angola, Maitre Alioune Blondin Beye, in Cote d'Ivoire in May 1998. The
UN
promised the report would be ready by November 1998.
In mid-May, a parliamentary delegation of all political parties
visited London.
Among them was Unita's senior intellectual, Jaka Jamba. He and a
handful of
other Unita MPs condemn Savimbi for returning to war, but have not
joined the
splinter group Unita Renovada, widely seen as a government puppet. His
comments officially launch the "third option" among Unita.
Dos Santos, recently treated for recurrent prostate cancer in France,
has
repeatedly denied he will ever talk to Savimbi again. People
understand this:
Savimbi has again and again broken peace agreements
But real politik does not look at broken promises and moral niceties:
on the
ground, neither side can win the war. Only the Angolan people stand to
lose.
From Washington to Pretoria, diplomats are quietly saying: negotiate.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
