wfn.org | Churches confront post-war Angola's humanitarian crisis

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 23, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-31-71BP{312}

NOTE: Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #313, are available.

By Paul Jeffrey*

LUANDA, Angola (UMNS) - After a quarter century of war, Angola is at peace.
Yet an immense humanitarian crisis has emerged in the wake of the armed
conflict, leaving international aid organizations struggling to meet the
urgent needs of the war's many victims. 

Among those seeking to help are members of Action by Churches Together, the
international alliance of churches and church agencies responding to
disasters. The United Methodist Committee on Relief is a major ACT member.

Four million people - almost a third of Angola's population - have been
displaced by the conflict, according to aid officials. More than 400,000 of
the displaced are living in camps. 

The most recent arrivals, who fled fierce fighting during the final months
of the war, are in desperate condition, aid agencies report. Cut off from
the rest of the country as long as the fighting continued, their emergence
has shocked even aid workers accustomed to Angola's brutal poverty. "Many of
these people are barely alive," said Lisa Grande, Angola director of the
United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

The United Nations considers Angola the worst humanitarian crisis in the
world today, with as many as 3 million people receiving emergency
assistance.

In addition to those displaced internally, some 470,000 Angolan refugees
live outside the country, mostly in Zambia, Namibia and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.

The war had its roots in the struggle to control Angola following an end to
colonial rule by Portugal in 1975. Three major liberation movements fought
for control of the country. Yet Angola soon became a battleground in the
Cold War, with Cuba and the Soviet Union backing the new government, while
the United States and South Africa backed the main rebel group, UNITA,
headed by Jonas Savimbi.

With the end of the Cold War, the Angolan conflict was interrupted twice by
cease-fire agreements during the 1990s. Yet global business kept the
fighting going by buying petroleum from the government and diamonds from
UNITA. A U.N.-sponsored embargo of UNITA finally crippled the rebel army
financially, and the government turned on the heat militarily, effectively
decimating UNITA but forcing the displacement of thousands of civilians who
were in the way of war. While controversial, the government's policy worked,
and Savimbi was killed in February near the eastern town of Luena. 

Savimbi's death led to an April cease-fire between the government army and
UNITA's remaining military commanders. By June, some 84,000 UNITA troops,
along with a quarter-million family members, had moved into 34
demobilization camps around the country. Some 5,000 of the former combatants
will be absorbed into the country's military and police; the remainder will
supposedly return to civilian life.

The rainy season begins in September, yet only a few of the displaced are
expected to try returning home in time to plant their fields for the next
year. Most of the former soldiers and the displaced families, especially the
recent arrivals, are too weak to travel, having survived for years in the
bush, feeding only on roots, herbs and wild animals.

Many of the displaced had their fields and houses burned to force them to
leave. Some will come home to fields that are now occupied by others.
Millions of land mines, no one knows exactly how many, are seeded along
paths and roads and around wells.

International assistance for the victims of the civil war has been slow to
materialize in the wake of the April cease-fire, with donor nations arguing
that Angola's oil-rich and corruption-plagued government should pay more of
the bill for caring for and relocating people. Angola's leaders claim they
mortgaged future oil receipts to pay for the war and argue that world
superpowers, who used their country as a battleground during the Cold War,
have a moral responsibility to help repair the damage.

Members of the ACT alliance believe the victims of the lengthy conflict
shouldn't have to wait any longer to receive assistance. They have been
working to assist Angolans struggling to make peace meaningful.

The Lutheran World Federation has been designated the lead ACT agency in
Angola. In the eastern provinces of Moxico and Lunda Sul, where the war's
end game was fought, ACT is working in five demobilization camps, assisting
the families of 3,000 former UNITA combatants. 

In 15 camps for the displaced, ACT is providing food and other assistance to
15,000 families. The U.N.'s Grande considers the organization's work in the
camps to be a model. "ACT runs the best displaced camps I've seen anywhere
in the world," she said.

ACT works closely with the Mines Advisory Group, which is clearing land
mines and unexploded ordnance from key roads and paths in the region. As
soon as routes into rural communities are safe to travel, Luena-based ACT
staff members are carrying out assessments of what's needed to save the
lives of victims and make return home possible.

Once conditions are relatively safe, ACT will provide a variety of
assistance to returning families, including seeds and tools for planting,
plastic sheeting for housing, wells and pumps for drinking water,
rehabilitation of schools and clinics, and additional training for community
health promoters.

ACT will also assist refugees returning through Moxico, and in coming days
will open offices in Luau near the border with the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, and in Cazombo on the border with Zambia.

Rebuilding war-torn Angola involves more than just providing material
assistance, however, and ACT is carrying out a variety of activities to help
ensure a lasting peace. Child protection workers are being trained to
protect the welfare of orphaned and traumatized children. Soccer balls and
organized games are providing laughter where it has long been absent.

ACT is making it possible for local pastors and church leaders in the
war-torn eastern provinces to be trained by the United Nations as human
rights counselors, and seminars on peace and reconciliation are planned in
cooperation with local church leaders and traditional village authorities.
ACT is also supporting the work of the Interchurch Committee for Peace in
Angola, an ecumenical group seeking to provide Angola's churches with
participation in the national debate about the country's post-war future.

"It's much easier to distribute food and blankets, but this work of building
peace and reconciliation is extremely important," said Carl von Seth, the
Lutheran World Federation/ACT representative in Angola. "One of the reasons
that past cease-fires didn't succeed was that no one was speaking up about
human rights violations."

# # #

*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary based 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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