ANGOLA
Why is Washington quiet about this human catastrophe?
By G.
Dunkel
Another human catastrophe has broken out in Angola.
In the past four months, 10,000 people--6,000 soldiers and
4,000 civilians--have died in fighting between the government
and the rebels of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. Some 600,000 people
are new internal refugees; 20,000 people have fled to
Congo--formerly Zaire--which itself is undergoing a civil
war.
Estimates of the total number of internal refugees in Angola
range from 1.2 to 2 million, out of a total population of 12
million.
A meeting of the foreign ministers of 36 African countries
in Addis Ababa March 23 condemned UNITA for beginning the
hostilities and called for its total isolation. (Agence
France-Presse, March 23) The Angolan government kicked United
Nations "peacekeeping" forces out of the country shortly before
this meeting, basically because they have consistently sided
with UNITA.
The number of Angolans who have lost limbs due to mines is
over 100,000, by far the greatest number in the world. Most of
the mines in Angola were laid by UNITA and made in the United
States.
The whole stability of southern and central Africa is
tottering. Angola told Zambia it may take measures to defend
its interests, because Zambia supplies bases to UNITA. South
African President Nelson Mandela has offered to mediate the
dispute.
UNITA soldiers are fighting in Congo on the side of the
rebel forces who oppose the government of Laurent Kabila.
Rwanda and Uganda, the Congo's neighbors to the east and U.S.
client states, back the rebels. (The Scotsman, March 27)
UNITA has just obtained six Russian MiG-23 fighters from
Ukraine, shipped through Uganda, according to Johannesburg's
Institute of Strategic Studies. (Deutsche Press-Agentur, April
1) It has also laid siege to four important provincial
capitals.
A Lexus-Nexus search of major North American papers reveals
that all together they have devoted no more than 2,000 words to
these developments. Whatever their motivations, the media only
describe and reveal human catastrophes when Washington is
directly involved and can use them to justify its policy, as in
Kosovo. But the U.S. does have a long and sordid history of
support for UNITA and its destruction of Angola.
History of U.S. involvement
in Angola
The MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola,
which is the party now running the government, had begun the
armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in 1961.
UNITA was founded in 1963 by Jonas Savimbi. By the early
1970s, UNITA had a formal agreement with the Portuguese army
for military cooperation in the struggle against the MPLA. (See
William Minter's book "Operation Timber: Pages from the Savimbi
Dossier" for detailed documentation.)
After the MPLA, with significant aid from revolutionary
Cuba, defeated an invasion by the apartheid South African army
in 1975, the CIA took over the care and construction of UNITA,
while apartheid South Africa supplied the military muscle.
The role of the CIA in Angola, until 1978, is detailed in
John Stockwell's book "In Search of Enemies." Stockwell was the
CIA station chief in Angola but turned against the agency.
The struggle continued with ups and downs until the
Angolans, Namibians and Cubans decisively defeated the South
Africans at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. This defeat
led to an agreement that involved the withdrawal of Cubans from
Angola in return for the independence of Namibia and the end of
South African invasions.
After Cuito Cuanavale, the U.S government stepped into the
breach and began pouring supplies into UNITA. The ensuing
stalemate led to a peace agreement, brokered by the UN, signed
in Portugal in May of 1991. Both sides agreed to disarm and to
hold elections in 15 months.
The MPLA basically held to its side of the disarmament
agreement and put together a mass mobilization for the
elections. UNITA violated the agreement in a sustained and
massive fashion, which the UN "peacekeepers" and the U.S. media
ignored. Nevertheless, the MPLA won the elections in 1992 and
the UN declared them "free and fair."
MPLA rearmed the masses
What UNITA lost in the elections it tried to win in a coup
against the government, which had disarmed and disbanded a good
part of its army. The fighting was very sharp and the MPLA
would have lost except that it started arming the masses.
Militants and cadres who had been driven out of the MPLA as
it moved to the right after the fall of the Soviet Union came
rushing back, picked up weapons and drove UNITA out of Luanda,
the capital. (See Victoria Brittain, "Death of dignity:
Angola's civil war.")
During this period, the UN, following the lead of the U.S.,
called for "reconciliation" between the two parties rather than
condemning the aggressor UNITA.
After two years of grinding warfare, in which as many as
1,000 Angolans died a day, the Angolan army was poised to smash
UNITA and drive it out of the country. Under tremendous
pressure from Washington--which wanted to avoid losing its
agent in Angola--the Angolan army pulled back. The government
then signed the Lusaka agreement giving UNITA four ministries
and a share of the army.
UNITA used this de facto partition of Angola and its control
of the diamond mines to finance itself by shipping $1 million
worth of diamonds a day through Zaire. Then it could buy its
own weapons. It still relies on the U.S. for vital political
support.
Mobutu's fall in Zaire removed UNITA's rear bases and
financial pipeline. So it went back to war four months ago with
hardly a peep from Clinton and company about a "vast human
catastrophe."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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