Angola’s Legacy of Conflict
J.B. Russell
Jonas Savimbi, the charismatic and ruthless leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known as UNITA, was ambushed and killed by government forces on February 22. The civil war between the government forces of the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and Savimbi’s rebel army was one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. It has killed more than a million people, driven almost a third of the 13 million Angolans from their homes and inflicted hunger and disease on a scale few other places in the world have seen. Angola is a large, fertile country with a relatively small population, vast reserves of oil and veins of high quality diamonds.
The country could potentially have the equivalent wealth and standard of living of a Gulf State, however its resources have been exploited to finance a war which has laid waste the country, impoverished and crippled its people. Within weeks of Savimbi’s death UNITA’s military commanders signed a peace accord with President José Eduardo dos Santos’ ruling MPLA; however peace has proven elusive in Angola, with previous initiatives quickly unraveling into a resumption of bloodshed.
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Angola's remote, eastern province of Moxico was the birthplace of UNITA and where Jonas Savimbi was finally cornered and killed. Like the rest of the country, it has long paid a punishing price for the civil war. Years of sanctions and a crackdown on diamond smuggling, which financed the rebel movement, significantly weakened UNITA’s ability to carry out conventional war. After several peace negotiations ended in failure, the Angolan Armed Forces opted for the military option, conscripting thousands of young men and mounting a major offensive in the region to finish off UNITA once and for all. The decaying provincial capital Luena was the advanced command post for those operations and where the consequences of the war on the civilian population were centered.
Road and rail connections to the region have been cut for many years as a result of the war. All goods and humanitarian aid are flown in by cargo plane, providing minimum essentials for the local population. As government troops advanced into UNITA-held areas thousands of people per month were displaced by the fighting. They arrived in Luena by foot, by truck or by military helicopter after days or weeks on the move in combat zones. UNITA rebels rely on villagers for sustenance - either through willing donations or by wholesale looting of crops and supplies. Fighting and lack of food drove some civilians to seek protection from government forces, however the military were suspected of conducting a policy of forced evacuation of the rural population in order to starve the rebels out and to allow the army to pursue UNITA unhindered by a civilian presence. Daily arrivals of hundreds of internally displaced people (IDPs), often in abysmally poor condition, adding to the more than 70,000 already present in Luena, put an enormous burden on a community devastated by war and overwhelmed the limited humanitarian organizations in the region.
Years of war have riddled the country with landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) making Angola the most heavily mined country in Africa. In a region with virtually no economy and thousands of displaced people, the population survives by subsistence farming and foraging in the bush for food and firewood, activities which are extremely dangerous in a mined environment. Hundreds of people, the vast majority civilians, are killed every year and thousands more maimed by landmines and UXOs. Due to the protracted nature of Angola's war and humanitarian crisis, aid organizations have a hard time raising the funds to maintain, let alone expand, their programs in the country.
The death of Jonas Savimbi and the signing of the cease-fire between UNITA and the MPLA is an important first step toward lasting peace in Angola, but divisions still run deep in the country. Even with a cessation of fighting, Angola has a long battle ahead to overcome the legacy of more than 27 years of brutal civil war.
I would like to thank the British NGO MAG (Mines Advisory Group), www.mag.org.uk, for their assistance in producing this reportage and for the extraordinary work that they do in Angola.
