wfn.org | Angola's former rebels face uncertain peace

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 23, 2002 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71BP{313}

NOTE: Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #312, are available.

By Paul Jeffrey*

LUCUSSE, Angola (UMNS) - The war is finally over for the more than 1,300
soldiers who have carved a new home out of the bush near the eastern Angolan
village of Lucusse.

Yet peace remains an uncertain concept. While the fighting is probably over,
what happens next is anyone's guess.

Action by Churches Together, the international alliance of churches and
church agencies responding to emergencies, is working to ensure a better
future for the former fighters and their families, thus helping to lay the
foundation for a lasting peace in Angola. The United Methodist Committee on
Relief is a major member of ACT.

The soldiers who've set up a demobilization camp in Lucusse fought for
UNITA, the rebel army long headed by Jonas Savimbi, who was killed in
February. The Angolan Armed Forces had thrown their entire weight against
UNITA during the preceding months in a counterinsurgency campaign that
displaced tens of thousands of civilians.

The military burned fields and houses as it closed the circle around
Savimbi. With assistance from Israeli technicians, the army tracked
Savimbi's satellite phone and finally hunted him down a few kilometers from
here. Government soldiers brought Savimbi's body to the town square of this
village, propped it up against a tree and shot a video to prove that the
warrior was indeed dead.

Within hours of the demise of its cult-like leader, UNITA collapsed. In
April, UNITA's top generals hammered out a cease-fire with the government
army during an encounter that had to be extended for several days because
the rebel leaders were frequently too weak to come to the table.

By early July, some 84,160 UNITA troops, along with 256,900 family members,
had moved into 36 demobilization camps - so-called quartering areas - around
the country. Some 5,000 of the former combatants will be absorbed into the
country's military starting in July; the remainder will supposedly return to
civilian life.

The number of rebel combatants who showed up at the quartering areas
surpassed the 55,000 soldiers that UNITA generals had predicted. Some of the
upstarts reportedly thought the aid promised to former combatants was an
irresistible deal in a country where hunger afflicts many families.

Yet life in the camps has been far from easy. Many of the soldiers and their
families showed up weak and hungry, having marched for weeks. Malnutrition
and sickness is common. And assistance to the camps has been slow
materializing.

Initially, the government promised to provide food to the demobilized
soldiers while the United Nations' World Food Program would assume
responsibility for feeding their families. Yet the corruption-plagued
Angolan government quickly claimed it ran through what it had allotted. The
World Food Program, caught between the world's worst humanitarian crisis and
international donors who've been slow to respond to appeals to help Angola,
has been struggling to catch up.

At the same time, the former UNITA soldiers turned in only 26,698 light
weapons, along with a few grenade launchers and mortars. It wasn't long ago
that UNITA was flush with money and could field tanks and Stinger missiles.
That was before a crippling U.N. attack on the rebels' bank accounts and
diamond sales. However, there is enough concern that some of those weapons
are still around that World Food Program flights into Luena, the nearest
airport to here, still conclude with a dizzying corkscrew descent over the
city to avoid possible missile attacks from the outlying bush.

The Catholic Church's Radio Ecclesia has reported that a few former UNITA
fighters have become bandits in order to survive the crisis. While UNITA's
tight discipline -- brutally and often arbitrarily enforced by Savimbi --
will help keep most in line for a while, hunger will doubtless prove to be a
poor counselor in Angola's war-torn economy. If the demobilized rebel
soldiers and their families don't get help soon, post-war Angola will turn
out to be far from peaceful.

The Lutheran World Federation is working to ensure that the UNITA families
get a new start. On July 13, a caravan of Lutheran World Federation/ACT
vehicles brought the first load of assistance to families here. Several
families had eaten little in the last two weeks.

The 140-kilometer road is a testament to the war's ferocity. Marked by
craters and littered with twisted ruins of more than 90 tanks, armored
personnel carriers and heavy trucks, as well as two crashed helicopters, the
road was only opened on July 2 after a team from the Mine Awareness Group,
financed by Finchurch Aid/ACT and coordinated by the Lutheran World
Federation/ACT, swept the roadbed for unexploded mines. The Mine Awareness
Group has yet to certify the road as safe for normal traffic, and only
vehicles carrying emergency humanitarian aid are allowed.

A truck carrying emergency food into the demobilization camp at Ndele in Bie
province struck an anti-tank mine on July 9, injuring two people. U.N.
Humanitarian Coordinator Erick de Mul ordered the road closed until further
demining can be carried out. In addition to the danger of land mines, De Mul
said that broken bridges and roads in a bad state of repair made
humanitarian operations in the country "a logistical nightmare." 

Lutheran World Federation/ACT's assistance to the demobilized soldiers and
their families here consists of food, kitchen kits, blankets, soap, medical
supplies and soccer balls. The federation also will help construct new wells
and work with UNITA's health workers in designing preventative health
campaigns. Vocational training is planned, and camp leaders have asked for
assistance with seeds and farming tools. 

The federation is providing similar assistance in four other demobilization
camps in the eastern part of the country.

"The reintegration of these people into Angolan society isn't going to be
easy, but the alternative is a continuing disaster," said Moises Gourgel,
the director of the Lutheran World Federation/ACT's Luena office. "If the
international community doesn't come to their assistance now, things will go
bad. Discontent will grow, prostitution and delinquency will become bigger
problems, and society will end up paying the price."

The soldiers and their families are slated to remain in the camps until
April of next year, but Gourgel said the return to civilian life will be
complicated. "Many haven't decided what they want to do or where they want
to go. Most aren't from this province, and they haven't seen their families
in years. Some may go home and find their families have moved out, displaced
by the war."

Among the soldiers here is Pedro Pedrito, a 29-year-old former captain who
hasn't had contact with his family in Huambo since he joined UNITA a decade
ago. Asked whether he wants a transfer into the government military or to
return to civilian life, he answers the way most UNITA troops respond: he'll
follow orders. "Whichever they decide for me, I'm ready and willing," he
said.

Yet when pressed for his personal preference, Pedrito finally admits he'd
prefer to be a civilian. He'd like training in computers.

Despite all the difficulties in the camp, Pedrito is confident that this
time - unlike two short-lived cease-fire periods during the 1990s - peace
will endure in Angola.

"This time around, things are different because the peace was agreed to by
the two militaries. The politicians had nothing to do with it. Those who
fought with weapons in their hands are the ones who have made peace,"
Pedrito declared. "We're done with war in Angola."

# # #

*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America. He was on
special assignment in Angola for ACT International.

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United Methodist News Service
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