Chris McGreal
Tens of thousands of Angolans are flooding into overcrowded cities to escape fighting during the latest government offensive to break the siege of major centres by the Unita rebels.
The predicted assault to recover ground lost during a disastrous army offensive earlier this year comes amid increasing international pressure on the Angolan administration to open new talks with the Unita leader, Jonas Savimbi.
The government is apparently keen first to strengthen its hand militarily, by rolling back some rebel gains. But if the offensive were to fail or stall, it could prove a severe blow to the administration’s war effort and political survival.
“There was an inevitability about this,” an aid worker in Luanda said. “I can’t say we welcome more fighting, but it is difficult to see what the government could do if they weren’t to leave people to starve in the trapped cities.”
The main attacks have come from the besieged cities of Kuito, Huambo and Malange toward the heavily fortified rebel headquarters at Andulo and Bailundo. Unita has accused the government of using napalm and phosphorous bombs, but there was no independent evidence to back up the charge.
The government is claiming some success around Kuito, saying it has driven Unita back about 30km. But the city continues to come under rebel shellfire.
Aid agencies say about 40 000 people poured into Kuito last weekend to escape the fighting. The city – largely ruined by shelling years ago – was already coping with more than 150 000 refugees.
The regional governor, Luis dos Santos, said there was an acute food shortage and too few tents just as the rainy season was about to begin.
The number of malnourished children is rising rapidly.
But the United Nations refugee agency has warned that many more Angolans are too weakened by hunger to flee the fighting. “They lack the physical strength to move. People are suffering in a way that seems indescribable,” said the assistant high commissioner for refugees, Soerren Jessen-Peterson.
The humanitarian situation is little better in the other besieged cities which receive supplies intermittently.
Almost one in five of Angola’s 11- million people have been forced from their homes by the war. The UN estimates that 200 people a day are dying from starvation, and 400 000 are said to be malnourished. There are another three million in Unita-held territory whose fate is unknown.
The Angolan government has come under pressure from South Africa and Portugal in recent days to open negotiations with Unita.
President Jos Eduardo dos Santos said last Friday that his administration was willing to talk to Unita representatives but that its leader could not be trusted. Dos Santos described Savimbi as a continual cause of instability after he took the country back to war when he lost the 1992 election and when he breached the 1994 Lusaka peace accord.
The Angolan government has responded to South African pressure by accusing it and other countries of permitting Unita to break UN sanctions. Last week the Angolan Foreign Minister, George Chicoty, called for sanctions against South Africa, Ukraine and Uganda for selling weapons to the rebels.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad denied South Africa is breaching the arms embargo.
Savimbi has been able to re-equip his forces with tanks and artillery using billions of dollars raised from illegal diamond sales.
The Angolan government is also under pressure from a collapsing economy. Many shops and street traders are refusing the latest high-denomination bank note printed by the government to keep up with soaring inflation. A shortage of foreign exchange has further devalued the currency.
A Unita member of Parliament, Joao Galangombe Jacob, was shot dead in the Angolan capital at the weekend.
Even though the organisation is at war with the government, 70 Unita MPs continue to sit in Parliament. Their movements are restricted and four are held in prison, accused of maintaining secret contact with Savimbi