Angola: The Crisis You Aren't Hearing About

Angola: The Crisis You Aren't Hearing About 

By Sean Healy 
ZNet 
Article Dated 5/27/2002


Out of sight of the world, a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions
is unfolding in Angola, as perhaps hundreds of thousands of people flee
the "gray zones", the 90% of the country which have until now been closed
to outsiders, including humanitarian aid agencies and even civilian medical
structures. 

Many are dying of starvation on the roads. Others find themselves in
towns and regional centres, which have no food and no medical infrastructure
and are too weak to go further. Those lucky enough to get to areas where
humanitarian organizations can reach are still in grave danger, as the
amount of international aid, which has so far reached the African nation,
is far less than what is needed. 

If there is not a massive mobilization of humanitarian aid soon, tens
of thousands may die. 

As part of its 27-year effort to overthrow the government of President
Eduardo dos Santos and his MPLA movement, the rebel UNITA army has long
employed terror tactics to force people off the land by raiding villages,
murdering locals, burning crops and mining fields. Rounded up by UNITA,
many villagers were forced into a state of semi-slavery, gathering food
or carrying ammunition for the troops and forced from place to place
as the frontline shifted. Many women were forcibly "married" to UNITA
soldiers. 

Those who fled to the government-held towns found their situation little
better, however. The Angolan military, which ran the towns, paid little
if any attention to the food and medical needs of civilians and put no
resources into building the infrastructure required to take care of the
local population. Humanitarian emergencies were routinely ignored, resulting
in very high levels of malnutrition and mortality. Those displaced into
these towns found themselves just as trapped as those in the UNITA areas.


Now this is starting to break up and the full scale of the devastation
is emerging. 

On February 22, UNITA's leader, Jonas Savimbi, was killed in a battle
with government troops. Six weeks later, on April 4, UNITA commanders
signed a ceasefire agreement with the government. Since then, the once-powerful
rebel force has begun to break up and its hold on much of the country
has slipped. 

Now free to move again, Angolans have hit the road, in a desperate search
for food and medical care. 

International medical relief organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors
Without Borders) is only international agency, which has as yet managed
to mount exploratory missions into the interior. It has visited nearly
a dozen different towns in the central provinces of Angola and has been
horrified by what it has found. 

To judge the severity of a humanitarian crisis, aid agencies use a measure
called the CMR, the crude mortality rate. One death per 10,000 people
per day is considered crisis level. In the towns it has managed to reach,
Medecins Sans Frontieres teams have estimated death rates four, five,
in one case even seven times crisis level. 

In the latest town the agency has managed to reach, Galangue, its doctors
counted 31 freshly dug graves in two weeks and estimated a CMR of 5 per
10,000 per day. One-fourth of children are suffering severe malnutrition
and another 18% moderate malnutrition. Four children died on the first
day of the team's mission. 

Medecins Sans Frontieres has established an emergency mobile team in
the town and is about to begin food distribution. Those with the most
severe cases of malnutrition are being transferred by truck to one of
the agency's Therapeutic Feeding Centre in the nearby town of Caala.


Some of the agency's workers believe the crisis in Angola is among the
worst they have dealt with in a decade. 

Those few aid agencies who are working in Angola are appealing for an
emergency influx of food and medicines to cope with the tens of thousands
who desperately need help. 

As yet, there has been little response from the international community,
which is apparently suffering from a severe case of "compassion fatigue"
when it comes to Angola. Even UN agencies like the World Food Program
are dragging their feet. 

But the international community's culpability stretches beyond turning
its back on Angola's current tragedy. Western governments and corporations
have long been involved in stoking Angola's civil war, first as part
of a crusade against leftist and national liberation movements and then
as part of a grubby attempt to plunder one of Africa's most resource-rich
countries. 

From the moment Angola won independence from its colonial master Portugal
in 1975, after a long and bloody war, the country has been the venue
for an even longer and bloodier proxy war, in which the United States
and apartheid South Africa sought to contain the spread of communism
and national liberation struggles. Despite (or perhaps because of) its
terrorist tactics, UNITA was backed to the hilt with arms, money and
even South African troops. 

Meanwhile, Cuba intervened on the side of the leftist MPLA government,
seeing a victory for a movement backed by apartheid South Africa as a
defeat for left-wing movements through Africa. In 1988, Cuban and MPLA
forces were able to decisively defeat UNITA and the South Africans at
the battle of Cuito Canavale, forcing South Africa's withdrawal. The
Cubans themselves withdrew soon after, while Bill Clinton formally ended
US support to UNITA shortly after assuming the presidency in 1992. 

While Western intervention into Angola's civil war in the 1970s and 1980s
may have been motivated by ideology and anti-communism, its involvement
in the 1990s was far more prosaic. Motivated by greed, Western companies,
particularly in the oil and diamond industries, have willingly participated
in the plunder of Angola's natural resources. 

UNITA has long funded itself through the sale of diamonds mined in the
country's east. Technically, the sales have been banned under a UN embargo
since. But in practice the international gem industry has showed little
interest in stopping the flow of these "blood diamonds". It's estimated
that the illegal trade out of Angola is worth some U.S. $500 million
each year. 

Just as damaging to the peace as UNITA's control of the diamond trade,
however, has been the MPLA's control of the oil industry. Once at the
head of a genuine national liberation movement, Eduardo dos Santos and
the MPLA leaders have long since abandoned any commitment to socialism
and has embraced free-market capitalism with enthusiasm, enriching themselves
in the process. 

Taking advantage of the opening to grab a stake in what will soon be
Africa's largest oil industry, Western companies including Chevron-Texaco,
ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco have entered the country - and have corrupted
the government with millions of dollars in royalties and payoffs. 

The Angolan oil industry brought in revenues estimated to be between
U.S. $3-5 billion in 2001. But little if any of this went to dealing
with the country's dire humanitarian crisis - in a report issued in December,
Medecins Sans Frontieres noted "Oil production in the country is estimated
at close to 800,000 barrels a day ... yet [in the town of Cuito] there
is not a drop of diesel for the hospital generators, the only source
of power in most large hospitals." 

In a report released in March, All the President's Men, the NGO Global
Witness detailed the extent of the corruption ("state looting", it called
it) and the complicity of the oil companies. It estimated that US$1-3
billion, about one-third to one-half of all state revenues, went missing
in 2001. 

Unlike in other developing countries, Western oil companies refuse to
give any details of their payments to the Angolan government. The report
calls for the introduction of international transparency regulations
aimed at preventing companies from acting in such a way. 

The break-up of UNITA presents the best chance Angola has had in a generation
for peace and development, but that won't happen without the help of
the international community: first, to end the present humanitarian crisis
and then to rein in those who would plunder the country's wealth. Surely,
the Angolans have suffered enough. 


--*--
Marc Rodrigues
*Voicemail/Fax: 866.206.9067 x4217
*Students for a Free Society: http://qcsfs.tripod.com

"We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected
as a human being, to be given the right of a human being in this society,
on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by
any means necessary." -Malcolm X