The Angolan government and the rebel UNITA movement are on a recruiting drive to boost their troop strengths and, with an increase in armed incursions, the nation appears headed for a new round of warfare, say UN officials.

According to one UN official, who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) have begun a nightly round-up of youths in the capital, Luanda, to gather recruits for combat in zones held by the forces of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in central and eastern Angola.

“Even local UN staff are saying they have to pay off the FAA or send away family members so they won’t be recruited to fight,” the official said, adding that both the government and the rebels seem ready to renew an offensive.

“The risk of a resumption of full-scale hostilities has increased significantly,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a report to the Security Council, released Monday. “Evidently, UNITA has maintained a significant military capability, despite its past declarations on the demilitarisation of its forces.”

The UN Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA), a peacekeeping force comprising more than 700 soldiers, has gathered evidence that UNITA has tried to re-occupy some 70 localities which it was to have turned over to government authority under the terms of a 1994 peace accord. In recent months, UNITA leader Jona Savimbihas failed to hand over four rebel strongholds – including his base in Bailundo – despite several rounds of UN-brokered talks.

Meanwhile, FAA troops “have started laying protective minefields around their positions in the Huambo, Saurimo and Luena regions” and have carried out “military training and live-firing practise around population centres,” Annan says in his report.

Following the death of UN envoy Alioune Blondin Beye in a June plane crash, political efforts to bring the government and UNITA closer together – even after the two have shared power in a unity government over the past year – have faltered. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos warned last month that Angola is in a state of “undeclared war”.

The situation has deteriorated so badly that Annan threatened in recent weeks to pull out the MONUA peacekeepers, whose latest mandate expires Aug. 15. Annan now has recommended, however, that the Security Council renew MONUA’s mandate until mid-September, to allow special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi time to plan its role for the future.

The world body’s major worry is that, if UN troops pull out now, the two sides may resume full-scale fighting – much as they did after UNITA lost 1992 elections and kicked off the worst phase of the nation’s long civil war. Most of the half-a-million Angolans killed in the civil war died in the two years that followed.

This time, says the UN official, the government is convinced it can defeat UNITA, which has lost most of its key allies, including the United States and the ousted Mobutu Sese Seko dictatorship in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). However, the official adds, neither side is likely ever to maintain full control over the vast Angolan countryside.

In any case, the UN official says, the struggle remains one simply to control the nation’s resources – comprised largely of oil reserves in the north and the diamond wealth in many northeastern zones dominated by UNITA supporters. “The government has extended state administration to some areas for more than a year now, and it hasn’t built one school or road there,” she said. “At best, they send some police there.”

Savimbi’s supporters also are keen to keep their grip on their remaining diamond-rich bases. The focus on diamonds has persisted over several decades in which the UNITA rebels first presented themselves as opponents of Portuguese colonialism, then as Cold War antagonists of the then-Marxist ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and still later as supporters of ethnic Ovimbundus.

The rebels’ fortunes have declined sharply. With UNITA officials included in the government of national unity, Savimbi’s attempts to play the ethnic card have fallen flat. At the same time, the defeat of Mobutu and Congolese President Pascal Lissouba by Angola-supported movements last year have complicated rebel diamond and arms trade routes.

Finally, the UN Security Council last month implemented new sanctions against UNITA, including a freeze on the movement’s overseas funds and assurances that governments will only allow diamond imports certified by the Angolan government.

The pressure on the rebels has been accompanied by a new push for negotiations. Brahimi met with both dos Santos and Savimbi last week, and is expected to report back to Annan by next week on the prospects for a peaceful solution. The secretary-general also told the Security Council on Friday that he will appoint Guinean diplomat Issa B.Y. Diallo to replace Beye as his special representative for Angola.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is stepping up efforts to boost humanitarian aid for Angola.

Annan estimates that since March some 120,000 Angolans have been internally displaced by fighting, while the estimated total number of internally displaced persons is as high as 1.3 million – or a tenth of the entire population. Angolan refugees have also been fleeing into Zambia and Namibia.