NEUROLOGICAL disorders spotted among Unita soldiers in the late 1980s and described at a conference in Pretoria this week have given rise to suspicions that chemical weapons were used in the Angolan war.
Dr Brian Davey told the first Africa regional seminar of the Chemical Weapons Convention that he had seen several patients after 1986 with an abnormal walk: the “steppage- gait phenomenon … commonly a spastic scissor-gait”.
Davey, who examined six such patients in 1988, said there appeared to be at least 36 “and possibly many more”. He had, in one rehabilitation centre, seen a group of 35 patients suffering from lower limb neurological symptoms, but there had been no time to examine them and record clinical details.
Six of 18 soldiers examined by Western doctors claimed to have developed their symptoms after battlefield exposure to smoke-releasing munitions.
Davey said he had not seen a woman or child with such disorders. “The Unita soldiers lived in close association with the local population of southern Angola and … dietary/infective causes would be expected to have a broader effect over age and sex.”
Moreover, doctors who had worked in the affected areas for many years had no prior experience of such syndromes and “were themselves convinced that military toxic exposures” had occurred.
Even the rumour that chemical warfare might be used affected the outcome of battles. “Certain battles were lost when information spread that use of chemicals was imminent,” he said. The side believed to be ready to use chemical weapons achieved “significant military advantage. There are few troops who will stand fast … in the face of battlefield smoke that they suspect will poison them.”
There was, he said, “no definite proof yet” on the use of chemical warfare agents during the Angolan war.
“Vast and sometimes featureless bush terrain renders it extremely difficult to pinpoint the location of an incident.” The hot, humid climate makes such work more difficult, particularly in the protective clothing necessary, and limits “the persistence of delivered chemicals and viability of samples”. Most important, the situation would have to stabilise before a “thorough and scientific investigation of the steppage-gait phenomenon” could be attempted.
“The most important path to finding an explanation for these cases will lie in a thorough epidemiological investigation conducted by experts conversant with local and tropical medical conditions,” he said — Robyn Green