ANGOLA: More Action Needed Against UNITA, Say Activists

By Lahai J. Samboma Reprint | | Print |

LONDON, Jan 21 1995 (IPS) - Urgent international action is needed to prevent the latest crisis in Angola from degenerating into the kind of fighting seen last year in the war-ravaged African state, say London-based campaigners.

“Many thousands of people have been killed in the (Angolan) central provinces,” said Ian Bray of British charity Oxfam, “and the international community must act now to prevent us witnessing again the tragedy last year, when one thousand a day were dying.”

A ceasefire signed on Nov. 20 is crumbling. The government blame Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) for attacks near the conquered rebel capital of Huambo, in central Angola, and in the Bengo and Benguela coastal provinces.

Last week U.N. special envoy Aluoine Blondin Beye made a personal appeal to front-line fighters to hold their fire after UNITA rockets hit government targets in a wave of attacks on small towns and military posts.

In the town of Cuito UNITA attacks have forced humanitarian groups, including Oxfam, the Red Cross, Save the Children and others, to relocate staff to safer areas.

“They have intensified artillery bombardment of Cuito, and when you move around the town you can see the dead and wounded lying in the streets,” said an Oxfam official. “The town is on fire.”

In 1992 UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi rejected the government’s victory in U.N. monitored free elections and ordered his troops to restart the 19 year old war, until last November’s ceasefire call.

But activists here say Savimbi is deliberately prolonging the fighting. The west and the former apartheid regime in South Africa backed UNITA at the start of the war in 1975, historic links that have tempered western responses to Savimbi’s repudiation of the election verdict, say the activists.

“Since the West has been supporting Savimbi morally and militarily all these years, they have failed to take any decisive action against him,” said Peter Brayshaw, co-chair of the London based Mozambique Angola Committee (MAC)

The country is rich in resources, including gold, diamonds, oil and fertile soil, but much of the continuing fighting is reported in the areas where these resources can be found, notably Cabinda — the oil-rich enclave between Zaire and Congo that provides the Angolans with it primary source of foreign income.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has written to Savimbi offering to meet anywhere on national territory to discuss what official spokesmen call “unresolved issues which threaten to disrupt the peace process”.

Beye is due to meet Savimbi on Wednesday in the rebel-fortified village of Bailundo, 70 kilometres north of Huambo in central Angola. Beye hopes to persuade Savimbi to meet with dos Santos.

“Even though they (UNITA) lost the elections, the government is still trying to accommodate them, but they refuse to accept the concessions,” said Marga Holness of Angola’s London embassy.

UNITA’s representative in London was unavailable for comment.

Offered concessions reportedly include a seat for Savimbi on the council of state and 11 ministerial and deputy-ministerial portfolios, several governorships of provinces and overseas diplomatic posts for UNITA allies.

Brayshaw said the meagre U.N. sanctions on UNITA are failing to take effect. “The existing arms and fuel embargo against this illegal army, widely flouted by airlifts particularly through Zaire, to Huambo and other UNITA-seized areas, must be fully enforced,” he said. “No more fuel, arms and ammunition should be allowed to reach their war machine.”

He urged countries with satellite and air surveillance aircraft volunteer their use to the United Nations and a second round of sanctions should be imposed on UNITA’s travel, communications and its operations in foreign countries be curtailed.

“UNITA should no longer be permitted to exploit the sanctions’ open-ended nature to prevaricate and keep on shifting the goal posts,” he said.

The U.N. Security Council is due to vote Feb. 8 to give final approval to the 7,000-strong contingent, ten times that which supervised Angola’s failed 1991 peace treaty.