Chris Gordon
As increasing Unita military activity is reported across Angola, the United Nations has imposed a fresh set of conditional sanctions on Angola’s intransigent rebel movement, in what is now a bid to avert serious conflict.
These sanctions will come into force on June 25 if Unita does not surrender its headquarter towns and the “sensitive zones” around Andulo and Bailondo by June 23.
This third tranche of sanctions has been imposed as the UN recognised the degree of the crisis. David Wimhurst, New York-based UN representative defined the situation as “a crisis of the endgame” – almost the end of the diplomatic road in Angola.
Two weeks ago Alioune Blondin Beye, UN special representative to Angola, declared that Unita is still armed, following attacks on villages and on UN monitoring and observation forces. Unita had declared full demobilisation on March 6. This, the UN now says, is “patently untrue”.
The UN came under threat of imminent attack in Luau, Lunda Sul, on Monday, Wimhurst said. The UN said Unita is massing troops in the north of the country and Cazomba in Moxico Province has been attacked.
The UN has moved to impose further sanctions because Unita has “persistently and relentlessly delayed completing the Lusaka protocols. This has been going on far too long.”
The evidence of Unita’s failure to demilitarise is incontrovertible. Many would say it is predictable. The experience of 1992 should have warned the UN that Unita is at its heart – or at its leader, Jonas Savimbi’s heart – a military, not a political organisation.
Unita has ascribed the attacks to banditry, but the UN pointed out that bandits do not lay landmines, or organise concerted military action.
The sanctions are economic; they freeze international bank accounts owned by Unita and immediate relatives of Unita members. They sanction all diamond trading which does not have a government export certificate. Finally, they aim to cut off all Unita communications
The immediate point of these sanctions is to produce a political response from Unita. If it cannot, conflict is imminent, though unlikely to be on the scale of what happened in 1992.
The UN now has the unenviable task of investigating two of the world’s most secretive business sectors: Swiss banks and the diamond industry. Switzerland is not a UN member.
Unita surrendered most of the Cuango valley diamond mines by the end of December. This now looks like a pre-emptive move on the movement’s part to prevent identification of its mining operations – and small batches of diamonds from scattered mines are more difficult to identify.
A visit to Luzamba in May confirmed that Unita is still mining in the north of the Cuango valley, and on a river to the east of the valley.
It has also been working deposits near Andulo, and possibly in Cuando Cubango, near Jambo. The Cuango mines provided Unita with an income of at least $600-million last year.
The diamond sanctions make any smuggled diamonds from Angola illegal, not just Unita’s. The problem will be to trace the pipeline; diamonds are easy to “launder”, and Antwerp is an open market for diamonds.
Over its years of diamond trading, Unita has had buying contracts with dealers in Antwerp, and Zairean and Belgian buyers based in Luzamba. Most of the diamonds have ended up in London, bought on the open market by De Beers.
Even if the threat of sanctions is effective and Unita surrenders Bailondo and Andulo, guarantees of peace are little nearer. There is still a loophole for Unita: it does not have to demilitarise to avoid the imposition of sanctions, and could move back to its old headquarters at Jamba.
The sanctions are the last throw of the diplomatic dice, in a peacekeeping operation which has never had a mandate to enforce peace. “Our patience is exhausted; we have no other option,” said Wimhurst.