Chris Gordon
Unita is continuing to recapture small areas in the Angolan countryside on a daily basis, sowing terror to reach their objectives.
Diplomats in Luanda believe Unita leader Jonas Savimbi now wants the Lusaka protocols renegotiated, with a better deal for Unita. Savimbi described the protocols as being the destruction of Unita. They should have led, on Unita’s side, to complete disarmament and transition into a political party. Savimbi’s inability to take the final steps of this process provoked the present crisis in Angola.
Observers here suggest that Unita is attacking in order to be able to renegotiate the protocols from a position of strength. The atrocity at Bula, where 88 garimpeiros (farmworkers) were burned alive, was the worst of many such attacks on the unarmed population. The attack was carried out by 440 heavily armed men who robbed the population of about 700 mainly Zairean diamond miners, money, food and equipment.
Monua, the United Nations’s monitoring force in Angola, could not verify that it was Unita who attacked since many of the killers wore civilian clothes. Monua said that attributing the attack to Unita is hostile propaganda. Survivors of the massacre and workers in the region say they believe it was a Unita attack, in revenge for being forced out a few weeks earlier.
More than 105 000 newly displaced people are fleeing either Unita attacks or the threat of them. Valerie Julliand, deputy director of the UN’s Unit for the Co- ordination of Humanitarian Assistance (Uncah) told the Mail & Guardian that the situation in the interior has deteriorated rapidly since May, when Unita went on the offensive.
Uncah is expecting the number of people displaced by Unita attacks to reach 200 000 and aid agencies are finding it more difficult to reach them. Aid workers have been pulled back into provincial capitals as ambushes, landmines and attacks on agency teamsites by Unita have made the countryside unsafe . The reduction of Monua means that only 500 armed escorts for food convoys are available – and conditions on the ground are getting more dangerous.
For the aid agencies, responding to a new humanitarian crisis when they had moved on to the resettlement of those displaced by the previous war is difficult. Donor funding was given for development projects, not emergency aid.
While there is enough food, there is a critical shortage of other items: no water purification tablets, not enough buckets and cooking kits. If the political situation doesn’t improve in the next few months, it will mean a humanitarian disaster, Julliand believes.
The visit of UN special envoy Lahkdar Brahimi to Angola has resulted in Unita agreeing to send their representative, Isias Samakuva, back to Luanda for further talks on the hand-over of Unita’s headquarters region, and the towns of Bailondo and Andulo.
Lahkdar met President Jos Eduardo dos Santos and Savimbi, as well as Monua and the representatives of the monitoring nations, the United States, Russia and Portugal. The outcome has been an apparent step back from the brink, although this may only have the effect of buying more time for Savimbi.