Angola: A case where sanctions are justified

By William Pomeroy

The longest and most brutal war in Africa, which has persisted in Angola ever since that country gained its independence from Portugual in 1975, has led the United Nations to endorse tougher sanctions to force it to an end.

They are directed against the illegal diamond trade carried on by the rebel movement UNITA, headed by Jonas Savimbi.

Sanctions have acquired an unsavory and inhuman aspect as concocted and pushed through the U.N. by U.S. policy-makers to serve imperialist aims, but terminating UNITA's war would be to the benefit of Angola's long-suffering people.

Over the past 24 years more than 1.5 million people have died as a result of the conflict, large numbers in UNITA massacres often of entire villages and many others due to malnutrition and disease as the economy has been devastated.

Once the third-biggest food producing region in Africa, particularly of the African staple crop of maize, Angola's agriculture has been ravaged as mass displacement of the population occurs.

At the outset in 1975, Savimbi's movement, which had western backing to head the independence government, lost out to the rival and more widely-supported MPLA, which has governed Angola since then. Savimbi and his group refused to abide by the independence headed by the MPLA and began guerrilla warfare against it. Savimbi became a cold war ally of the west, while the MPLA government, as in the case of other liberated countries of Africa, was strongly supported by the Soviet Union, the GDR and other socialist countries.

UNITA in that period was heavily funded, armed, trained and advised by the CIA, which channeled aid chiefly through the Mobutu regime in Zaire and through apartheid South Africa. The South African role was greatly stepped up as UNITA was losing and apartheid armed forces invaded Angola in support of Savimbi. They were badly defeated by Cuban troops who were sent to Angola in fraternal assistance at the request of the MPLA government. Cuban support stiffened Angola's ability to resist the western-backed rebellion.

Savimbi's tactics have been to enter negotiations when suffering setbacks, to come to agreements on a settlement, to build up his army in the interlude and to resume the war when rearmed.

A 1989 cease-fire and subsequent prolonged negotiations led to agreement for an election. Held in 1992, it resulted in an MPLA victory. A number of UNITA members were elected to parliament.

However, Savimbi, running for president, was heavily defeated by the MPLA's Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Savimbi refused to accept the popular vote, refused to accept the offer of the vice-presidency, and returned to warfare.

Another cease-fire, in 1994, was also broken by UNITA. The U.N. had undertaken to monitor the 1994 cease-fire with a peacekeeping force. As part of the agreement UNITA troops were supposed to be sent to joint camps to be integrated with the Angolan army. They failed to do so and engaged in repeated violations of the cease-fire and seizure of more territory.

The chief U.N. representative, Maitre Aliyoun Blondin Beye, was killed in a UNITA-caused plane crash. Last year the U.N. peacekeeping force pulled out, charging UNITA with lack of faith and criminal sabotage of agreements.

With the end of the cold war and of apartheid, UNITA lost its role as an ally of imperialist forces in Africa. Western interests, oil and mining companies, find the MPLA government in Luanda easier and more profitable to deal with. Without its past backing, UNITA turned to the international sale of diamonds from the rich diamond-bearing regions it controls in northeastern Angola. Legally, the Angolan government is the owner of the resources and the official producer for the world market. The UNITA operations are illegal and smuggled diamonds to markets.

Between 1991 and 1998 it is estimated that UNITA obtained up to $4 billion from illegal diamond sales, used for a massive rearming of its armed forces. They have tanks, heavy artillery and even aircraft for a major offensive.

In June 1998 the U.N., after working for a lasting negotiated settlement in Angola and experiencing the constant sabotage by UNITA, established the U.N. Angola Sanctions Committee. The sanctions are against UNITA and its illegal diamond trade.

In December 1998 UNITA launched large-scale offensives in central and northern Angola. However it is unlikely either side will be able to achieve an outright victory over the other. UNITA controls over 65 percent of the countryside, but the MPLA holds all of the 18 provincial capitals with over 65 percent of the population, all of the rich oil facilities and the largest of the diamond mines.

An aim of the present UNITA offensive is to drive people from the countryside into the MPLA-held cities where they are a grim economic burden. Typical of this campaign, was the massacre reported from Angola on July 16 in the village of Sachitembo, 330 miles southeast of Luanda, where 50 women and children were slain and babies thrown in a river.

Over 1.6 million people, a tenth of the population, are believed to have been displaced in this way since January. more than three million people require food aid and the year's harvests are abandoned by peasants fleeing UNITA attacks. Angola faces a crisis of hunger.

In these circumstances, the U.N. has stepped up the activity of its sanctions committee. Diamond smuggling routes are to be more closely watched, monitors sent into countries suspected of receiving Angolan diamonds illegally, and better aerial surveillance of UNITA is to be mounted.

The illegal trade in Angolan diamonds is profitable not merely for Savimbi and his ruthless rebel forces but for all those along the illegal route to the European diamond market, especially for big dealers like De Beers, which controls most of the world market.

De Beers has admitted buying diamonds from UNITA prior to the U.S. sanctions last July, but claims it no longer does so.

The trouble is, U.N. sanctions lack penalizing power. Powerful mass pressure on the diamond trade to stop the slaughter, hunger and destruction caused by the inhumane power-seekers is needed.