ANGOLA: Armed Clashes, Donor Stalling Hamper Demobilisation

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 25 1997 (IPS) - Fresh outbreaks of fighting in Angola and donors’ delay in coughing up promised funds are jeopardising the United Nations programme for the disarmament and demobilisation of UNITA rebels.

The programme, being implemented by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) due to the former rebels’ status as internally displaced persons, was agreed on in the framework of a peace agreement – the Lusaka Protocol – signed in 1994 by the government and UNITA (National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola), to put an end to a 19-year-old civil war.

IOM spokeswoman in Geneva Regina Roucault said Friday that armed clashes that had broken out recently between UNITA and government troops, mainly in Lunda Norte Province, presented the most serious threat the peace process in Angola had yet faced.

Civil war erupted in Angola after independence from Portugal in 1975. Since the 1994 signing of the peace agreement, the United Nations has overseen a shaky cease-fire and managed to prod the two sides towards a permanent peace. But despite UNITA’s joining a unity government headed by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in April, the country still lives in a state of near war, analysts in the southwestern African country say.

The effective application of the peace accord did not begin until this year, with the start of the demobilisation of the guerrillas and the incorporation of members of UNITA into parliament and the government in Luanda.

Roucault said the funds for carrying out the demobilisation programme would run out in late August if donors failed to provide the 4.1 million dollars still owed IOM.

Only 61,600 of the roughly 159,000 rebels and their families have been demobilised. Just over 20,500 of the 61,600 are former fighters, while the rest are family members, said Roucault.

The UNITA guerrillas have postponed demobilisation in the town of Licua, in the southeastern province of Cuando Cubango, with the argument that they are waiting for authorisation from their central headquarters in Bailundo, in Huambo Province.

IOM failed in its efforts to overcome the obstacles in Licua, and was forced to order the return to Luanda of international personnel sent in to airlift the demobilised fighters.

In other areas of the country, demobilisation operations are being held up due to the lack of safety. A number of truck drivers hired to transfer former rebels have refused to drive through the most conflict-ridden areas, IOM reported.

An IOM communique mentioned the possibility of a meeting between President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and UNITA chief, Jonas Savimbi.

Savimbi, under pressure from the U.N. Security Council to live up to the terms of the Lusaka Protocol, lost one of his last outside bases of support this year with the toppling of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the former Zaire.

In spite of his international isolation, Savimbi, sustained by income from the trafficking of diamonds produced in the northeast, still has influence in his command post in Bailundo, and in the country’s central plateau region.

Experts quoted by the daily ‘Financial Times’ of London said UNITA took in around 500 million dollars from diamond sales in 1996.

Meanwhile, the IOM demobilisation programme has a total cost of 10 million dollars.

The U.N. agency also reported on a programme being carried out in conjunction with Angola’s Ministry of Rehabilitation and Social Assistance, for the reintegration of some 1,000 Angolan students returning from Cuba, eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Over half of the students have already been housed in two camps in Luanda.

Many of the students who were studying with scholarships in the former socialist countries have professional formation in areas of crucial importance to Angola, such as agriculture, primary and secondary education, community health and rehabilitation of the rural infrastructure.