Howard Barrell
A hiatus in attempts to bring peace to Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo is threatening catastrophe in Central Africa with dangerous spin-offs for neighbouring states, including South Africa.
Security analysts are warning that Central African could become a wasteland of wandering, starving people excluded from tiny pockets of economic activity conducted by foreign mining companies and guarded by heavily armed private security outfits.
Senior regional politicians involved in the search for peace in Angola and Congo, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity this week, also expressed pessimism about prospects of bringing an end to the fighting.
Continued escalation of the civil wars in Angola and the Congo, in which the armed forces of at least seven foreign countries are now involved, would probably mean the “Haitianisation of Central and Southern Africa”, according to Richard Cornwell, head of the early warning centre at the Institute of Security Studies.
“Anybody with skills will travel to South Africa or abroad. This will give South Africa short-term advantages, but will lead to economic collapse in countries to the north of us and the collapse of markets, which together are as important to us as the European Union,” he said.
Foreign countries with troops in Congo already include Angola, Chad, Namibia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In the war in Angola, there are also unconfirmed reports of foreign African troops helping Unita rebels.
Politicians and diplomats involved in the search for peace said this week that the rebels now advancing against President Laurent Kabila’s regime in Congo are themselves bitterly divided – a fact which promises no end to war once Kabila has left the scene.
They also pointed out that a variety of contradictory peace plans have been mooted, though none has been acted upon. And an agreement in principle to a ceasefire reached in Windhoek last month by five of the seven foreign countries with troops in Congo, though not by Kabila or the rebels, has still not been translated into reality.
In Angola, sources say that Unita, which has recently hit government forces hard in three areas, have hardly drawn on extensive reserves of men and matriel. Militarily, Unita is now stronger than it has ever been, the sources say.
About 100 South African mercenaries – former members of the defence force – are helping Unita, as are Ukrainian and Serbian mercenaries. Three shiploads of arms for Unita have been offloaded in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, over the past three months, the sources add.
At the same time, diplomats say the Luanda government appears convinced that it can militarily crush Unita, a notion Cornwell describes as “dangerous nonsense”. Hawks won out at the MPLA’s congress last year and a number of hardliners have been promoted in the armed forces since the beginning of the year, sources say.
The Angolan government has left itself little room to manoeuvre for peace. It has asked – and got – United Nations peacekeepers to leave its territory. And it has been behind demands that Unita leader Jonas Savimbi be declared an international criminal – that is, someone with whom only the UN may negotiate.
South Africa is among a number of countries concerned at the aggressive mood in Luanda and urging caution on the Angolan government. On Wednesday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo carried a message to Angolan President Jos Eduardo dos Santos from President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, appealing for an end to Luanda’s threats against Lusaka.
Angola has accused Chiluba, his family and his government of providing aid to Unita and warned of military action against Zambia unless this stops.
There is also rising concern among the big powers about the deterioration in the region. Senior British, French and United States officials met with their counterparts from Belgium, once the colonial power in the Congo, in Brussels on February 15 to discuss the crisis. No specific proposals emerged from the meeting. On Tuesday, Tony Lloyd, minister of state in the British Foreign Office, held talks with government ministers in South Africa as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s special envoy on the war in the Congo.
Lloyd’s trip has also taken him to Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It ended with a stopover at the headquarters of the Organisation for African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was exploring ways in which Britain and the European Union could help strengthen African mediation initiatives in Congo and the search for peace in the full-scale civil war that has resumed in Angola.
In the case of Congo, a major stumbling block is how to police a ceasefire. If the standard UN model were applied to this vast country, it would require tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of foreign troops. There is also little likelihood that the major Western powers would pay for a large peacekeeping operation.
A plan drawn up by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and circulated in December, although flawed, is considered the most realistic. It proposes building a peacekeeping force out of units from the different warring armies and welding them together under neutral foreign command.