force
Chris Gordon
Details are beginning to emerge of a vast resupply operation carried out by Unita, as the rebels strike at the north-west of Angola.
Jonas Savimbi’s rebels are now better armed than in 1992, the Angolan government claims. It is a claim borne out by Unita’s new tactics and reports of the type of weapons Unita now has at its command.
Paul Beaver, representative of the military specialists, Jones’s Information Group, confirmed that Unita is employing completely new tactics that make it a greater force for destabilisation than its guerrilla methods ever did. “It is beyond Unita’s capacities to have achieved this alone,” said Beaver.
And Unita is not achieving this alone. Savimbi has won support from business interests in Eastern Europe, promising concessions within a stabilised Unita zone once it wins the war.
This gave Unita easy access to the arms bazaar and allowed it to carry out its military build-up. Unita’s latest offensive has been planned operations, not a response to government attacks.
Unita has brought an arsenal from the Ukraine and Bulgaria, says Beaver, and paid for it and the support to operate it with diamonds traded directly to the supply companies in a grim form of barter.
A Bulgarian state armaments company, based in Carno and fittingly called Arsenal, has long experience in arming rebels. Beaver said it is known to have sold arms to South Yemen and recently to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Unita has not won the fierce battle for Kuito, which began in early December and demonstrated a newly developed capacity to fight conventional battles – it used tanks for the first time.
Angolan diplomats said the Angolan army, FAA, has estimated that Unita has at least 60 tanks. The T55a tanks were bought from the Ukraine and are being operated by Ukrainian mercenaries, whose presence in Unita territory has been confirmed by defence and risk analysts. South African supporters of Unita are fighting alongside them, as well as militia from the Congo rebel group.
Unita is using mercenaries as its new tactical thinkers and for training its fighters on the ground to use the new equipment. The FAA has identified some of the equipment on the battlefields of Kuito: D30 medium-range howitzers, a standard Soviet system; G5 155mm howitzers, 106mm field guns, ZU23 anti- aircraft guns, which use high-explosive shells. It also has BM-21 truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers called “The Grad” – in use on every battlefield in the southern hemisphere. BNP1 armoured vehicles carry Unita troops.
All that saved Kuito from capture was that Unita ran out of diesel, giving the FAA time to regroup. The FAA says it has recaptured three areas around Kuito and Huambo and strengthened the security cordon around the towns.
Airports at Kuito and Huambo are now open, but the food situation is critical following a huge influx of refugees. More than 100 000 people have fled into these cities in the past month.
Unita has opened a second front in the north-west of the country, attacking the coastal oil town of Soyo and M’Banza Congo, the capital of Zaire province. Malange, 300km from the capital, Luanda, has been shelled for two weeks, and much of the province is under Unita control.
Analysts believe Unita wants to isolate Luanda from the interior to create a Savimbi-ruled zone, almost certainly ruled from Huambo.