Focus on prospects for peace talks

The Angolan government’s six-week-old offensive against UNITA rebels has been met by an uncharacteristic lack of a military response from the veteran guerrilla movement, according to regional analysts. “The feeling in Luanda is that the war is over,” one long-time observer of the Angolan conflict told IRIN. “Of course it’s not, but that’s the mood.” Angolan officials and senior military officers have fuelled the optimism with a stream of reports alleging that UNITA has been “incapacitated”, groups of troops are surrendering, that key members of the movement have been wounded and, at a press conference in Luanda this week, presented a son of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi who denounced his father. Military setbacks For its part, UNITA maintains that the war continues. Although acknowledging the loss of its bastions of Bailundo and Andulo in the central highlands, a UNITA statement on its Web site dated 28 October said: “What is most important to note is that our forces are intact.” It added that Savimbi was “well and in good health” and the movement has the “strength, firmness and determination to withstand the (government’s) onslaught.” UNITA forces are believed to have moved north from the central highlands into areas bordering two national parks south of Malanje, and reportedly northeast into the diamond-rich Cuango valley. UNITA troops have also fallen back to the eastern province of Moxico, the movement’s birthplace, where it has reactivated old bases. There has been longstanding speculation that UNITA would respond to its military setbacks with bombing campaigns inside Luanda. Analysts also suggest that the government’s lines are overstretched, and that with the heavy rains beginning soon, UNITA would re-emerge from the bush and challenge the armies hold on the roads and towns in the interior. So far, that is yet to happen. In comparison with government forces, UNITA’s armed wing FALA, is noted for its rigid discipline and professionalism. “They have contingency plans for everything,” one regional analyst who worked with UNITA during the UN-backed Lusaka peace process told IRIN. “They would have foreseen this. They are withdrawing to areas where they feel relatively safe so they can reorganise.” But, according to Alex Vines of Human Rights Watch’s London office, military pressure combined with UNITA’s international pariah status under UN sanctions could precipitate a leadership crisis. “If UNITA starts to lose symbolic and strategic areas, the unity of the military wing of UNITA could be increasingly challenged,” he told IRIN. “It is very clear that cracks were there anyway” - a reference to reports of recent purges within UNITA related to differences over strategy, and the elevation of younger military commanders. Without Savimbi, “we would be dealing with a very different animal.” Savimbi and UNITA UNITA is very much the creation of Savimbi, 65, a man variously described as charismatic, astute and ruthless. After returning from military training in China in 1966, he turned down an offer to join the now ruling MPLA and moved into the bush to build a Maoist-style liberation movement, supposedly rooted in the African peasantry as opposed to the historically urban-based and faction-ridden MPLA. UNITA draws the bulk of its support from Savimbi’s Ovimbundu, the country’s largest ethnic group representing some 37 percent of the population. The Cold War and apartheid allowed UNITA to develop into a “state within a state” in the south of the country. From independence in 1975 to 1990, it was shielded by the South African military, supported by the United States in opposition to the Soviet and Cuban-backed MPLA, and clandestinely aided by several African countries. UNITA has been able to maintain links to the outside world and fund its war machine through diamond sales. FALA is organised along hierarchical lines of local militia, guerrillas, and conventional battalion and brigade-sized regular troops, plus mechanised units and Special Forces. FALA cadres are reportedly deeply “indoctrinated” and pride themselves on their obedience to their commanders and their “cause”. Over the years, UNITA has built a myriad of bases, fuel and arms dumps, and airstrips hidden in the bush. Control is reportedly pervasive in UNITA-held areas, with an administration concious of the contrast with the corruption and disfunction in the rest of the country. Law and order - and Savimbi’s security - is allegedly maintained through fear, and the ferocious punishment of infractions. Networks of spies are run by senior officials with Savimbi overseeing them all. Life under UNITA is harsh. Barter is the main means of exchange in UNITA zones, with the peasantry supplying food and recruits to FALA on demand. Peace fails Following the end of the Cold War, diplomatic pressure and exhaustion in Angola after 30 years of civil war opened the window to a peace settlement. A shaky truce held until UN-supervised elections in 1992. The MPLA won an overwhelming majority in parliament with 129 seats to UNITA’s 77. In the presidential poll, Savimbi took 40 percent of the vote to President Eduardo dos Santos’ 49.5 percent, but protested the result alleging widespread rigging. The war resumed with even greater ferocity for two more years until, with the government gaining the upper hand, UNITA returned to the negotiating table in Lusaka, Zambia. It accepted a UN-brokered agreement in 1994 under which both armies would be demobilised, a government of national unity created, and UNITA-held territory handed over to state administration. However, the agreement slowly unravelled largely over UNITA’s lack of compliance. In December last year the government launched an offensive against the rebels. The death of key rebel officials in Luanda in 1992, purges and isolation in the bush of the hardline UNITA militants, means little is now known of the movement’s leadership structure. According to Vines, a longstanding Angola analyst, in the last few years a much younger generation of military commanders have been brought into key positions, in what has traditionally been a highly secretive organisation. Lusaka II The government, however, has sought to exploit perceived divisions within UNITA. Last year, it encouraged the formation of a splinter group opposed to Savimbi, UNITA-Renovada, from among the 77 UNITA parliamentary deputies stranded in Luanda. Some formerly senior UNITA figures such as ex-foreign minister Abel Chivukuvuku have distanced themselves from both Savimbi and UNITA-Renovada. Aware that it cannot decisively defeat UNITA, the government’s strategy appears to be to severely weaken its military capacity before entering into negotiations. “We won’t see anything this year, but come early next year talks could be on,” one Angola-watcher in Luanda said. But the government publicly makes a distinction between dialogue with Savimbi, and UNITA. It has repeatedly stated it would not negotiate with Savimbi - whom it accuses of breaking two past peace agreements in his lust for power. It has also demonised Savimbi in the official media, but says it would talk with anybody else in UNITA. The problem for the UNITA dissidents in Luanda is that they are widely perceived as having been bought off by the government and crucially do not have the support of the hardline military commanders. “The guys in the bush would never go with them,” one diplomatic source, in contact with UNITA, told IRIN. “You would need someone strong enough, and militant enough, who could come to the table with dignity.” Western diplomats point out that if Savimbi remains in firm control of UNITA, some “imagination” would be needed to overcome the stumbling block of the government’s refusal to negotiate with him. But, according to Vines, prior to the capture of Andulo, government officials were privately conceding that “once caged” Savimbi could be brought into the process. A new deal The blueprint for any future talks would be the Lusaka agreement, analysts suggest. The government, critical of the UN’s alleged role in the collapse of the 1994 accord, has apparently rejected the world body’s involvement in a future peacekeeping mission to secure a settlement. But Zimbabwe’s presidential spokesman George Charamba told IRIN earlier this year that key members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) would consider a military deployment as part of a multinational force to “guarantee” a peace deal. Vines, who authored a hard-hitting report in September on “the rise and fall of the Lusaka peace process”, said any new agreement would this time around have to be properly implemented “without the international community turning a blind eye, with proper demobilisation and proper human rights building.” Equally importantly, he said, the government has to be held to account for the behaviour of its police and army, whose looting and killings in UNITA areas played a part in the unravelling of the peace accord. “The government is notoriously bad at investing in hearts and minds,” he added. “They have to show they are very, very different from UNITA, and erode in people’s minds what’s been fed to them for years and years.”