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Former political prisoner, Rafael Marques, argues that no matter what the revelations
about the role of oil and diamonds in the Angolan war, for the majority of Angolans
they will be little more than excuses used to justify the carnage. The core issue is the
right of the Angolan people to live in peace.
Angola: war as a way of life
Rafael Marques
Nowadays, the Angolan war has become silentalmost perfect for both the
warmongers and the outsiders who profit from the death and destruction of the
country. The Angolan war does not disturb public opinion any longer. It is an old
and intractable affair. It causes indifference.
In a recent interview with the Catholic-run Radio Ecclesia, the Angolan minister of
defence, Kundy Paihama, dismissed the civilian death toll of a rebel attack against
the capital of the Northern province of Uíge. If people dont die of war, they die of
sickness anyway, said the minister, to justify that in war a persons life counts for
very little, if not nothing. Such a statement did not trigger any public outcrypeople
are used to it. Angolan society is both structured as and revolves around a war
system and a war mentality.
Conscription as class war
However, the first public signs of hope in changing this system appeared in January
and February 1999 when a group of journalists denounced conscription as a
discriminatory practice that sends only the children of the poor and unprivileged to
the frontlines as cannon fodder. In consequence, four journalists were legally
prosecuted and one beaten by a soldier.
During the same period, a group of 500 women took to the streets of the centre of the
oil rich and secessionist-minded province of Cabinda [a tiny part of Angola
seperated from the rest by a small strip of land controlled by the DR Congo], to
protest against the conscription of their childrenfor a war they consider
unjustifiable. As expected, the protesters were repressed. But after the demonstration
only two young men volunteered to join the army. With timid steps, Angolan civil
society is coming to terms with reality.
In June 1999 a group of people put out a peace manifesto that was signed by over 200
prominent members of Angolan civil society. It was attacked by the regime, which
pressed some of the signatories to make public statements against the peace
manifesto, as though they had been misled in signing it. However, the initiative has
paved the way for a more progressive call for an internal and peaceful settlement of
the war in Angola.
By the end of July 2001, the Catholic Church organised a Peace Congress that
brought together the backbone of the fragile Angolan civil society. The call for a
peaceful settlement and an internal solution involving civil society grew stronger
and is now moving towards consensus among the people.
Credible representation
Nevertheless, the lack of credible and vocal leadership within civil society has long
been the main factor hindering the raising of local and international awareness of the
Angolan peoples plight. Both the government and the rebel movement have long
been symbols of war and oppression. Yet both seem to be the only representatives of
the Angolan people that are capable of influencing international diplomacy in how to
address Angola. Thus, the interests of the people that are beyond the government
and UNITAs claims are still faceless to the world.
The Angolan conflict has been de-humanised over the years. The human, social
and economic costs of the war have never been priority topics in the discussions on
Angola. The cold war (1975-1989), the contesting of the general election results by
Jonas Savimbi (1992-1994) and his lack of compliance with the Lusaka Protocol (1998
to date) are the international landmark arguments for the maintenance of war in the
country.
Power struggle
In November 2000, the Angolan president, José Eduardo dos Santos, addressed the
nation in celebration of 25 years of independence. The current perspectives are
encouraging as, first, the great military victories recently achieved have neutralised
completely any threat of power being seized by force, he said. President dos Santos
also added that the military actions were confined to certain regions, at a low
intensity, and that they could no longer hinder the reconstruction and development
of the country.
Dos Santos has been in power for 21 years, and so far his main objective in the war
remains the same, to crush any scenario that challenges his power. On the other
hand, for almost the same period of time, the UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi has
been fighting for the opposite, to seize power by force.
Showing no mercy
The casualties of the Angolan 40 year old war (including 25 years of civil war)
continue to mount at the same level as 15 or 20 years ago. But while the Angolan war
is internationally recognised as the bloodiest and most sophisticated of the African
wars, official statistics claim just 500,000 dead. Following the outbreak of the current
phase of the war in October 1992, the United Nations reckoned that during 1993 over
a 1000 people were dying every day. Thus, over 360,000 people must have perished
in that period alone. Both contenders have never shown any mercy for their own
country and their own people.
Dos Santos would not declare war against UNITA, in December 1998, without the
tacit backing of the United Nations, and of the international powerhouses that, at the
time, believed in a surgical military victory against Jonas Savimbi. Dos Santos, in
fact, waged war on the grounds that UNITA was not complying with the Peace
Agreement signed in 1994 in Lusaka, Zambia, in which it was obliged to hand over
all the territory it occupied to the state administration.
Waging war to foster peace
One of the points missed in such a strategy is that there was only a peace process
because the parties had agreed that there was no military solution to end the conflict.
So waging a war to foster the peace process was simply a grim joke. If the
international intervention in the peace process was intended to end the war and
bring about national reconciliation and democracy to the country, it has proved
otherwise.
A case in point is the governments systematic violations of freedom of the press and
of expression, as well as its scorn for the rule of law; they are evidence that what is at
stake in Angola is not about the good of Angola and its people.
On 31 January 2001, a government soldier from the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA),
Francisco José Manuel, was executed in public, at an airstrip in the Southern
Province of Cunene, for crashing the military vehicle he was driving. According to
the soldiers wife, the chief of staff of the Operational Comand of Cunene, Colonel
Álvaro António, gave the execution orders. His family witnessed the event as the
firing squad emptied their machine guns into the soldier, ripping apart his body.
Since Angola does not have a death penalty law, nor was the victim of such a brutal
murder tried, one would think that the authorities would have to distance
themselves from this deed. No, it is unnecessary for them to do so, as long as oil
keeps pumping out to buy international diplomatic support. There was no outcry,
nor any reaction from the United Nations Human Rights Mission in Angola.
Business as usual
Currently, the Angolan war is also being addressed as a business matter. Since
September 1997, the trade of Angolan gems has come into the spotlight as a crucial
matter in resolving the conflict. On 23 September 1997, a United Nations official told
the South African paper the Star that if the government and UNITAs private talks
over diamond spoils succeeded, then the normalisation of the country will happen
immediately.
Sanctions were imposed against UNITA and mechanisms were put in place to cut
UNITAs main source of revenues and force it back into compliance with the Lusaka
Protocol. Whatever the effect of such efforts, the Angolans are in a far worse
situation now than ever before.
A quarter of Angolas 12 million people have been displaced, while over a million
and a half people desperately rely on international food aid. For the current school
year, in the capital Luanda alone, the government has sent home over 40,000 children
who were enrolled in the education system. War has never disturbed Luanda before.
Most of the presidentially sanctioned reconstruction and development is carried out
in Luanda. According to the Ministry of Education statistics, over 70% of Angolan
children of school age are already out of the school system. UNICEF estimates that
half of the Angolan population is below the age of 15.
Since the release of the Global Witness Report on Angola, A Crude Awakening, in
December 1999, the reputation of the oil industry in Angola has been tarnished and
associated with the war. More recently, the government has been tainted with the
revelations in French courts that it violated the international arms embargo in 1993
and 1994 by rearming itself, through murky oil deals.
A lack of transparency
Yet, nothing has changed. On 24 January 2001, a group of 25 leaders of a small
political party, PADPA, staged a hunger strike in front of the presidential palace, to
demand an explanation on the scandals. The Rapid Intervention Police tortured
some of the demonstrators, arrested six of them, and threatened the president of the
party, Carlos Leitão, with death. Once again, the government walked away,
unaccountable for its brutality.
In Angola, there is very little thought paid by civil society to the role of diamonds
and oil in fueling the war, because both the government and UNITA have never been
transparent or accountable for any national income.
No matter what the international findings are, and whatever recommendations are
made on the role of such riches in the Angolan war, for the majority of Angolans
they will be little more than excuses used to justify the carnage. The core issue still to
be addressed in the Angolan Problem is the right of the Angolan people to live in
peace and enjoy human dignity.
If the time spent in searching for political and economic explanations to address the
war was spent in building up and encouraging new voices within society, to express
the peoples will, the Angolan conflict would no longer be a personal matter
belonging to the warlords. It would take people into the streets to debate and discuss
it. And thats how it should be.
Rafael Marques is a representative of the Open Society Institute in Angola and a free-
lance journalist. He has previously been imprisoned by the Angolan government and
adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience.
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