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Africa Confidential 24 September 1999 Vol 40 No 19 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL ANGOLA ANGOLA 2 Military-minded The UN tries again The government is deliberately downplaying its latest military After its spectacular failure, the UN is back - helped by smarter moves after its disastrous offensive sanctions but facing the same political problems last December. UNITA wants to United Nations’ attempts to keep a presence in Angola are being frustrated by the United States lure government forces into unsustainable attacks and then Congress. Jonas Savimbi’s União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola has for decades trap them. This time it seems the enjoyed special access to some senators and congressmen, notably the veteran isolationist, Senator FAA forces under General De Jesse Helms (Democrat, South Carolina). Now Michael Westfal, one of Helms’s aides, leads a Matos are better prepared. group of four congressional staff members who have blocked progress on a draft UN resolution, drawn up by diplomats of the Angola ‘troika’ (USA, Portugal and Russia) at the UN and circulated KENYA 3 on 26 August. Westfal says that the proposed 30-strong UNOA (UN Office in Angola) is not a peacekeeping operation and should not get US funding. Phone sects Another UNITA sympathiser, Malik Chaka, was for years information officer in UNITA’s Washington office; when UN sanctions forced the closure of the office, he was appointed to the staff A major row is brewing over the independence of the regulators of the House of Representatives Africa Sub-Committee. Congressional staffers are also holding up overseeing the privatisation of funding for the UN’s sanctions committee, to the embarrassment of the State Department’s main Kenya's beleaguered telecoms Angola policy-maker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Witney Schneidman. sector. Companies bidding for the UNOA was dreamed up after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had wooed the Luanda country's second cellular licence government for months. He ditched the previous, much larger, UN mission, MONUA, in February. are convinced that the regulators bowed to pressure from senior There followed a series of political manoeuvrings between senior UN officials and Security Council politicians to disqualify several members. Angola’s Foreign Minister, João Bernardo de Miranda, had initially opposed a bids. continued UN operation but in July, he met Annan in Algeria and agreement was reached to start a new mission. It’s intended as a holding operation, to keep Angola on the Security Council’s agenda pending a more favourable climate. SUDAN/AFRICA 4 UNITA's Washington lobbyists Blow up Subsequent delays have been caused by internal UN wrangling over which department should lead, The opposition fighters who blew a and therefore fund, the new operation. Eleven members of the team are human rights specialists. A hole in the government's pipeline few people from the peacekeeping office were added. There are special budgetary arrangements for on 19 September also blew apart peacekeeping and the pro-UNITA lobby in Washington has seized upon that to delay the whole its campaign to convince the world thing. that it has security under control The plan is that UNOA’s human rights specialists, led by an Australian, Nicholas Howen, would and that serious talks about ending Sudan's war are now possible. investigate and report to the Security Council, with Issa Diallo, the UN Special Envoy to Angola, remaining in Geneva for service ‘as required’. Disillusioned with the failed Lusaka ‘peace process’, Annan had hoped to replace the Angolan troika with a UN ‘committee of friends’, comprising China, SOMALIA 6 Côte d’Ivoire, France, Gabon, Russia, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, United Kingdom, USA and Zimbabwe. The committee is chaired by Gabon’s ambassador, who has done little; there are Building blocks suspicions that Luanda has leant on him. Lisbon and Moscow see the committee as an erosion of their Countless peace conferences have special relationship with Angola. failed to pacify Somalia. Yet lately Since Canada’s Ambassador, Robert Fowler, took over the Angola Sanctions Committee in it seems that some warlords are January, Annan thinks the UN has regained some credibility in Angola. The Security Council wants losing power and that new local administrations can offer internal Angolan sanctions to be effective, if it is to enforce sanctions elsewhere. Fowler commended a four- peace, some economic success year study of the subject by Human Rights Watch when it was launched in New York last week (1). and incentives for others to follow. The record is feeble. The UN Sanctions Committee (under Kenya’s Njungana Mahugu) failed to deal with UNITA’s sanctions-busting during the Lusaka peace process and turned a blind eye to POINTERS 8 violations of a 1993 UN oil and weapons embargo. In October 1997, the UN imposed extra restrictions on UNITA, blocking foreign travel by its officials and closing its offices abroad, and in Africa/Europe, June 1998 it targeted the export of diamonds from UNITA’s areas and froze its bank accounts (AC Vol 40 No 13). Zimbabwe, France/ Diamonds paid for rebuilding UNITA’s army; most were smuggled to Europe via the Congos or Africa through Namibia, South Africa, Rwanda and Zambia. Officials in Togo, Burkina Faso and Busting the busters; unmoved Central African Republic are paid to turn a blind eye to staging flights. Human Rights Watch movers; and another Euroland. thinks diamond exports during the Lusaka process netted the rebels some US$1.72 billion. By 1998, 24 September 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40 No 19 Military-minded Worried about a re-run of its disastrous December offensive, the a surface-to-air missile near the west-central town of Ganda. Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola government is Savimbi works hard on the psychological war-front, at which deliberately downplaying its latest military moves. Meanwhile, he excels. He emerged from a long period of isolation in hoping to ridicule the government, officials of the União August to give some well publicised interviews and call for Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola are playing new negotiations. Above all, he wants to freeze the military them up, claiming that Luanda forces are advancing on four position; this, he believes, would put UNITA on a stronger fronts against Jonas Savimbi’s headquarters in the central negotiating foot than at the 1994 Lusaka talks. Things are highlands. going against UNITA financially but the government has had This is only partly true. We hear that some battalions of the a windfall: rising oil prices, huge oil signature bonus payments Forças Armadas Angolanas are about 15 kilometres from this year and a large new loan organised by Union des Banques UNITA’s headquarters at Bailundo, south of its main airstrip in Suisse enable the FAA to build up their armoury. the central highlands at Andulo. The FAA’s strategy, it seems, Savimbi hopes that if he calls loudly for talks while the is to hammer UNITA’s bases before the rains set in and weaken MPLA continues its military campaign, he can win back some Savimbi’s position before any negotiations start. The government international sympathy and maybe help put pressure on still insists it will never negotiate with Savimbi, so it wants to government for a ceasefire. Most importantly, he hopes this put enough military pressure on UNITA to provoke a serious might goad the Luanda politicians into telling the FAA to split. That still looks a long shot. launch an offensive before the generals are ready. The FAA There has also been some fighting recently, especially in the would then risk repeating the mistakes of the first two failed north, but UNITA’s claims are exaggerated. The government is offensives. De Matos, we hear, is insisting on military control concentrating on bombing UNITA positions to soften up its of the war strategy. opponents, rather than moving armoured and infantry brigades Savimbi’s other tactic is try to split the MPLA by pressuring towards their strongholds immediately. FAA Chief of Staff the towns. UNITA has been pushing people out of the General João de Matos is determined to avoid more routs by countryside, aiming to cause a social explosion. The biggest UNITA’s defensive forces. towns on the coastal belt surrounded by shanty cities and are at In August the FAA pushed towards the northern towns of breaking point. By offering to ease pressure on them now, Damba and Maquela do Zombo, important points in UNITA’s Savimbi hopes to split the MPLA. President José Eduardo dos supply lines. The FAA were not immediately successful and the Santos has ‘ceased to embody national unity’, he said, in an fighting continues. UNITA attacks near Uige have displaced open letter to the MPLA at the end of August. But there are thousands more people recently, though the army has managed unlikely to be many takers. to reinforce its defences around shattered towns such as Huambo, Angola’s long suffering povo and some MPLA members are Kuito and Malanje. disgruntled with the social and economic breakdown and the The UN and other aid agencies are struggling to find the corruption of Luanda’s nomenklatura. Prior to last December's money for food and high cost transport. Most food must be return to war, dissidents in both parties were gaining ground. delivered by air and the charter companies incorporate high But Savimbi’s hopes of a party split or revolt against Dos surcharges: Angola is near the top of the world league. In July, Santos are self-delusion. In a choice between the two, most a UN World Food Programme plane was fired on (but not hit) by Angolans regard Dos Santos as by far a lesser evil than Savimbi.
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