Perhaps
the end of
Africa's 27-year war
By
Jonathan
Power
February 27, 2002
LONDON - Jonas Savimbi was like the war in Angola
itself: he went on and on, seemingly forever. Whatever
peace deal was negotiated he was sure to break it, sure
to find another sponsor who'd trade diamonds for guns. He
outlasted most of his principal rivals and he certainly
outlasted his godfather, the Cold War, and the earnest
need of the superpowers to woo friends who were prepared
to engage in a proxy war against the friends of the rival
superpower. In the end, such was his tenacity and his
masterly improvisation, he showed that he could survive
and live to fight another day without a superpower behind
him.
When America finally but belatedly turned against him
he wooed the malevolent and rich dictator of neighbouring
Zaire, and when that ended with Mobutu's death he
befriended the presidents of Togo, Rwanda and Burkina
Faso. Anyone who'd sell him a gun or a howitzer or buy
his diamonds.
Now he's dead, shot in the neck. Twenty-seven years
after the war began the army of his principal rival
finally got him. They always said they would. But it took
a long time, a very long time and in these endless years
the country has been laid low. The hospitals in the war
zones are all closed, the roads destroyed, the earth
scorched, children wasted, often orphaned, living in
sewers in Luanda, the capital, for want of a roof over
their head. According to the Red Cross Angola has
suffered more from the agonies of war than any other
country in Africa.
In 1975 Portugal, recently having succumbed to
revolution itself against its long time fascist dictator
Salazar, decided to wash its hands of its rebellious
African colonies. It agreed to negotiate a hand over to
three rival independence movements, which had consented
to abide by elections. If democracy had been allowed to
prevail then more than a million lives might have been
saved.
But the U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
believed he knew better. He was obsessed with the
ideological bias of one of the factions, the MPLA
(Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) toward
Moscow and Havana and he talked president Gerald Ford
into a clandestine adventure that was to lead Angola away
from the ballot to the bullet.
Only days after the peace agreement with Portugal was
signed, establishing a transitional power-sharing
government, the CIA intervened and sent $300,000 in cash
to a rival faction, the CIA's long term client the FNLA
(National Front for the Liberation of Angola), which used
the money to launch an all-out military attack on the
MPLA.
The CIA payment, although made without the knowledge
of the U.S. Congress or public, was soon known to Moscow
which quickly resumed large-scale arms shipments to the
MPLA and in March 1975, Cuba sent in 230 advisers. The
ratchet of superpower competition began. The United
States dispatched $28 million in covert aid to the FNLA
and to a third faction, Jonas Savimbi's UNITA, the
National Union for Total Independence of Angola which
soon eclipsed the FNLA.
White-ruled South Africa watched closely. Believing it
had been given a wink and a nod from Kissinger it invaded
Angola on August 5th. The MPLA besieged called in the
Cubans.
President Ford was angry. He announced that Cuba had
committed "a flagrant act of aggression". Fortunately
wiser heads prevailed in Congress, and Senator Dick Clark
piloted through an amendment outlawing any more
clandestine aid to Angola.
Jimmy Carter became president and his Administration
worked hard to resolve the Angolan imbroglio and the
linked issue of independence from South Africa for its
southern neighbour Namibia. But once Ronald Reagan
supplanted Carter in the White House the U.S. quickly
reverted to its old habits. Reagan, persuading Congress
to rescind the Clark Amendment, resumed military aid to
Savimbi and South Africa reverted to total intransigence
on Namibian independence. The war went through another
savage cycle until a massive onslaught by newly arrived
Cuban tanks and MIG fighters in June 1988 routed the
South African forces and demoralized its troops.
South Africa announced it was prepared to agree to
both a timetable for Namibian independence and to pull
out of Angola. The Cubans, likewise, agreed to go home.
It was hardly a triumph against communism. If anything it
was the opposite since in the ensuing elections the
Marxist-inclined MPLA routed the opposition.
A thousand international observers monitored the first
free election in September 1992. But no outsiders were
going to make Savimbi give up his personal struggle for
power. Even though America, his patron, moved to
ostracise him as his behaviour became increasingly
uncompromising and belligerent he refused lay down the
sword. The carnage continued and has continued until this
day, apart from a short-lived peace agreement in 1994 and
again in 1997.
Savimbi's death doesn't end the war; some of his
acolytes will doubtless want to continue where he left
off. But it is doubtful if any of them have the charisma
or the drive to make much of a go of it. The MPLA
government in Luanda has now offered UNITA the chance of
peace. Twenty-seven years on this time it might
arrive.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
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