[Peace-discuss] Angola

[Al Kagan]

Following up on a comment at the last aware meeting concerning 
Angola, here is an overview article from Foreign Policy in Focus, 
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0202savimbi.html

The author is a UIUC grad student in African Studies.


Jonas Savimbi: Washington's "Freedom Fighter,"
                                Africa's "Terrorist"

                                             By Shana Wills
                                            February 27, 2002



     0202savimbi.pdf

                              Peace is back on the agenda, if not yet 
on the horizon in Angola. With the death of rebel
                              leader Jonas Savimbi and the state visit 
to Washington by Angolan president Jose Eduardo
                              dos Santos, there is again a glimmer of 
hope that the country's 27-year-long civil war may
                              finally be coming to a real end. As 
Salih Booker, Director of Africa Action, puts it,
                              "Savimbi's death removes the principal 
obstacle to peace in that country. So long as he
                              was alive, it seemed virtually 
impossible that Angolans would ever be able to conclude and
                              implement a peace settlement. But his 
death does not automatically ensure that peace will
                              follow."

Following the February 22nd ambush and murder of the 67-year-old 
veteran rebel leader by the Angolan army, obituaries in
the American press have described his remarkable charisma and 
ferocious drive for power. He is, indeed, an African paradox,
who as leader of sub-Saharan Africa's longest running civil war, 
continues to perplex and shame many of his own
co-conspirators. Savimbi is widely seen as responsible for a nearly 
nonstop war that has taken nearly one million lives and as
the principal spoiler of the Angolan elections and United 
Nations-backed peace plans in the early 1990s. As the Namibian
government said in announcing his death, "Savimbi chose the way of 
terrorism and turned Angola into a land of many killing
fields." When news of Savimbi's death reached the Angolan capital of 
Luanda, people took to the streets chanting, "The
terrorist is gone."

The United States bears some blame for Angola's brutal civil war 
because Savimbi was long the darling of American
right-wing, conservative politicians and the CIA. Some fifteen years 
ago, President Ronald Reagan invited Savimbi to the
White House and hailed him a "freedom fighter" for his efforts to 
oust dos Santos and the leftist Popular Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (MPLA)--the party that has ruled Angola since 
its independence in 1975.

President George W. Bush's meeting with dos Santos, just four days 
after Savimbi's death is both illustrative of the
Washington's erratic involvement in Angola and a signal that these 
days Washington is more interested in Angola's
resources--oil and diamonds--than its ideology. But, if war is to end 
in this troubled country, the international community must
work quickly and persistently to broker a peace deal and disarm the 
rebel combatants.

Savimbi first took to the bush in the early 1960s as Angolans began 
organizing against 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule.
Billed as an anticommunist during the height of the cold war, Savimbi 
was actually no more than a power-hungry opportunist
who changed his colors to suit the tastes of his particular financial 
backers. His enigmatic character confounded a great number
of powerful people over the years. In 1999, for instance, one former 
U.S. diplomat told me in an informal conversation just
how unsettling Savimbi's personality could be. This official, who had 
met the rebel leader over 25 times while he was in
hiding, conceded each time he felt that he was in the presence of 
"pure evil." He explained that Savimbi was "so charming,
intelligent, articulate, and dangerous" that he frequently had to 
spend return flights to Luanda "deprogramming
African-American delegations who were charmed into thinking that 
Savimbi's vision for Angola was the right one."

Jonas Savimbi, a member of Angola's largest ethnic group, the 
Ovimbundu, was born and raised in the southern Angolan
province of Moxico. A bright, charismatic, former doctorate student, 
Savimbi became fluent in more than six
languages--including Portuguese, French, and English. His knack for 
learning languages boosted his credibility among the
various groups with whom he negotiated. His gift in European 
languages facilitated his dealings with political opponents,
diplomats, and foreign reporters, while he switched into Umbundo when 
rallying his followers among the Angolan people.

At the start of the Angolan independence struggle in 1961, Savimbi 
originally tried to acquire a leadership post within the
MPLA, the principal national liberation group. However, the MPLA, 
which was backed by the Soviet Union, only offered him
a rank-and-file militant position. Feeling rebuffed, Savimbi aligned 
with rebel commander Holden Roberto's anti-colonial
group, the Union of Peoples of Angola (UPA), as it offered him a more 
prestigious rank as minister in its government in exile.

By 1964, Savimbi decided to resign from the UPA, claiming that 
Roberto (who was related to and backed by Zaire's
pro-American dictator Mobutu Sese Seko) was a stooge for the 
"American imperialists." In 1966, Savimbi launched a third
movement, the United Front for the Total Independence of Angola 
(UNITA). Savimbi and other top UNITA leaders had
received guerrilla warfare training in China from 1965 to 1966. And, 
over the next decade, China supplied the rebel movement
with weapons and war material.

Since the start of the Angolan liberation struggle, Savimbi had 
touted himself as a nationalist fighting for independence from
Portuguese colonialism. However, Savimbi showed more hostility toward 
the other indigenous freedom parties and forged a
clandestine alliance with the Portuguese colonial government and its 
secret police, PIDE, according to University of Southern
California professor Gerald Bender and a series of subsequently 
released documents. As part of this alliance, code-named
"Operation Timber," Savimbi and PIDE engaged in military actions 
against rival movements, and Savimbi provided the
Portuguese with information regarding the activities of the 
opposition forces. After the Portuguese withdrew from Angola in
1974, Savimbi thwarted an agreement for multiparty, nationwide 
elections in November 1975, returned to the bush, and
plunged the nation into another two decades-plus of war.

During the liberation struggle when Savimbi was receiving most of his 
aid from China, he boasted to reporters of his Maoist
ideology. However, following independence, Savimbi strove to cut a 
better deal in the West. Declaring himself a capitalist, the
charismatic rebel leader had, within a short time, joined Holden 
Roberto on the CIA's payroll in a civil war against the
Soviet-backed MPLA.

Roberto soon fell by the wayside, but Savimbi, as Washington's 
favorite, received in the early 1980s over $15 million in
covert military aid from the Reagan administration, and, in the late 
1980s, another $15 million from the Bush Sr.
administration. This thrust the U.S. into an unsavory alignment with 
white-ruled South Africa, which not only supplied
UNITA with money, arms, and material, but also frequently deployed 
troops into Angola and launched air strikes on MPLA
positions. The U.S. was repeatedly warned against aligning with South 
Africa and backing UNITA. In a January 1986
statement, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) said, "Mr. Savimbi 
is a known agent of apartheid South Africa, and has
been responsible for the wanton killing of civilians, the destruction 
of economic infrastructure of the country, and the
destabilization of the legitimate Government of the People's Republic 
of Angola. Any American involvement in the internal
affairs of Angola ... will be considered a hostile act against the OAU."

Even U.S. officials warned against such unsavory alliances. Wayne 
Smith, a former career Foreign Service officer, cautioned
that entering into a joint U.S.-South African pact would "undermine 
U.S. relations with black Africa for years to come."
Richard Moose, former Assistant Secretary of State, also advised 
against the U.S. joining with South Africa in its battles
against the Angolan government. In testimony in 1986 before the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Moose cautioned that
to join or replace the South Africans as Savimbi's primary supporter 
"would be more than the Russians could hope for."
Moose speculated, "In fact, I sometimes wonder whether Savimbi, 
educated in Marxism and trained by the Maoists, is not still
the Communists' secret weapon in southern Africa."

Whatever the case, Savimbi certainly showed his skill as a political 
chameleon. In 1988, several former UNITA members
reported to the Portuguese newsweekly, Espresso, that UNITA's 
political elite all followed the precepts of Savimbi's Practical
Guide for the Cadre, which was described as "a manual of dialectical 
materialism and Marxism-Leninism with a distinct trait of
Stalinism and Maoism." The UNITA dissidents claimed that the Guide 
was taught in a room filled with Lenin and Mao
Tse-Tung busts, where the anthem of the Communist International was 
sung every day. These former UNITA members
denounced as fraudulent Savimbi's widely publicized pro-Western 
ideology and defense of democracy. They pointed out that
there was a huge discrepancy between what UNITA claimed abroad as its 
objectives (i.e., negotiations with the MPLA,
reconciliation, and coalition) and what the Guide taught. The Guide, 
said to be written by Savimbi, was considered a secret
book accessible only to the political elite of UNITA.

For decades, Savimbi's forces fought Angola's MPLA government, which 
was supported militarily by the Soviet Union and
thousands of Cuban troops--and was recognized by every country in the 
world except South Africa and the United States. In
order to instill terror in the population and to undermine confidence 
in the government, Savimbi ordered that food supplies be
targeted, millions of land mines be laid in peasants' fields, and 
transport lines be cut. As part of this destabilization effort,
UNITA frequently attacked health clinics and schools, specifically 
terrorizing and killing medical workers and teachers. The
UN estimated that Angola lost $30 billion in the war from 1980 to 
1988, which was six times the country's 1988 GDP.
According to UNICEF, approximately 330,000 children died as direct 
and indirect results of the fighting during that period
alone. Human Rights Watch reports that because of UNITA's 
indiscriminate use of landmines, there were over 15,000
amputees in Angola in 1988, ranking it alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia.

In the early 1990s, as the cold war and South African apartheid both 
ended, Jonas Savimbi could no longer claim to be a
bulwark against communism. With Russian and U.S. support suddenly 
withdrawn, both the MPLA and UNITA agreed to a
ceasefire in 1991 and elections in 1992. However, despite the MPLA's 
internationally recognized electoral win, Savimbi, the
perennial rebel fighter, proved incapable of adapting to the new era 
of pragmatic democracy. In his quest for power, Savimbi
quickly scuttled the elections and ordered his forces to return to battle.

In Washington, the new Clinton administration made a grave error in 
not recognizing the election results, granting diplomatic
recognition to the MPLA government, or explicitly calling for Savimbi 
to abandon violence. Although the rest of the world
(except South Africa) had officially recognized the new Angolan 
government, the U.S. rationalized its decision to delay
recognition as a means to pressure the MPLA government to offer UNITA 
a greater share of power. In his confirmation
hearings, Secretary of State Christopher Warren practically gave 
UNITA the go-ahead to continue fighting when he said U.S.
diplomatic recognition depended on the Angolan government 
demonstrating effective control of its territory.

In May 1993, acting on the advice of the State Department and the 
National Security Council, the Clinton administration finally
announced its recognition of the government of President Jose Eduardo 
dos Santos. This signaled the end of U.S. support for
Jonas Savimbi. Yet it did not halt Savimbi's rampage.

Instead, Savimbi quickly launched an attack on the diamond-rich areas 
of northern Angola, established control of the region,
and proceeded to wage the war almost entirely through the trade of 
diamonds for arms. Diamonds enabled Savimbi to sustain a
military force at a relatively high level of sophistication. Although 
the United Nations eventually imposed a ban on the purchase
of UNITA diamonds in 1998, it came too late to hold any promise for 
prospective peace.

When I arrived to Angola in January 1993, the country and its 
citizens were fully engaged in another serious bout of bloodshed
and suffering. UNITA was aggressively attacking and invading five 
provinces considered MPLA strongholds. In December
1992, UNITA troops had invaded a school for orphans in the northern 
province of Bengo. The 75 students fled their school,
walking the long and rough terrain to an alternate school at which I 
worked in Luanda's slum district of Cazenga. These kids,
most of whom had seen their parents killed by Savimbi's forces, 
described how UNITA soldiers had robbed their school of
money, food, and clothes and then taken up residence in the 
children's dormitory. For a period of nearly six months, UNITA
consistently launched attacks on Luanda's main water source and 
electrical plant. People throughout the city stood in lines and
paid for whatever water that they could locate, as the water shortage 
caused an increase in cholera and dysentery. According to
the UN, more than 100,000 people may have been killed during this 
period alone and another 3 million Angolans were put at
risk of starvation. When the MPLA government finally regained control 
of Bengo province, I joined the children on their first
trip back to their school. In addition to the discarded UNITA 
uniforms, ammunition shells, and UNITA propaganda graffitied
across the kids' bedroom walls, we uncovered several landmines.

Savimbi's death offers an opportunity for the U.S. to help end such 
brutalities. As Salih Booker explains, "I think the Bush
administration, being very much oriented toward the oil sector and 
with many of its key officials coming from the oil industry,
sees Angola as a strategically important country in economic terms 
... in terms of energy, specifically." As Africa's second
largest oil producer and with more potential oil reserves off its 
coast, Angola could conceivably entice the Bush administration
to play a constructive role, together with other countries under the 
auspices of the United Nations, in brokering a permanent
peace deal in this war-torn country.

SOURCES

Cilliers, Jakkie and Christian Dietrich. Angola's War Economy: The 
Role of Oil and Diamonds. (Pretoria: Institute for
Security Studies, 2000.)

Conchiglia, Augusta. UNITA, Myth and Reality. (London: ECASAAMA, 1989.)

Hodges, Tony. Angola From Afro-Stalinism to Petro-Diamond Capitalism. 
(Oxford: The International African Institute,
2001.)

Minter, William. Operation Timber: Pages from the Savimbi Dossier. 
(New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1988.)

Minter, William. Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry Into the Roots of 
War in Angola and Mozambique. (London: Zed Books,
1994.)

Stockwell, John. In Search of Enemies. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.)

(Shana Wills <ShanaWills at aol.com> worked with several grassroots 
organizations in the Angolan provinces of Bengo,
Luanda, and Benguela from 1993 through 1995, and has made several 
trips back since. She is a graduate student of African
Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.)

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Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu