UNITA feels the pinch

The UNITA rebel movement may now be feeling the pinch of a UN sanctions policy which in the long term could have an impact on the Angolan conflict, international observers told IRIN on Thursday. “There’s a lot of myth-making and a lot of exaggeration over what is going on,” Alex Vines of the London office of Human Rights Watch said. “But from what I can see it’s quiet on the sanctions-busting front.” Vines pointed out that the diamond multinational De Beers has made it clear its intention to work with the Angolan government and abide by a UN resolution passed last July embargoing the trade in unofficial diamonds, UNITA’s main source of revenue. And, apart from a suspected trickle of military spare parts, there has recently been little in the way of significant violations of sanctions on military equipment to UNITA. Also under UN embargo is fuel supplies for the rebel movement. “Fuel really is one of the achilles heels of UNITA,” said Vines, a respected Angolan researcher. “It is important for their mechanised units. In the first offensive (in December) UNITA ran out of fuel in hot pursuit of government troops on the road to Kuito.” Although there have in the past been external deliveries, more significant has been the domestic diversion of fuel from the state-owned oil refineries. “There was a problem, and the Angolan government has moved against it now with a number of arrests in Benguela, Lobito and Huambo,” Vines told IRIN. But while UNITA’s supplies may have been disrupted, the Angolan government is rearming and cautiously preparing for its next offensive. “Equipment is arriving from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine and it’s quite significant,” Vines said. Hefty signature bonuses from oil companies awarded drilling rights to Angola’s offshore fields has helped the government cover equipment orders in the short term, analysts told IRIN. For the rights to three new deep-water blocs awarded last month, those down payments reportedly amounted to around US $300 million. According to Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based newsletter ‘Africa Confidential’, military hardware suppliers have equity stakes in all three blocs. Meanwhile, although UNITA is far from short of arms and ammunition, it increasingly may not be able to find the conscripts. The Angolan conflict, which resumed in December after the breakdown of the UN-monitored 1994 peace accords, has depopulated vast swathes of the country with the displaced fleeing into government-held towns. “If you look at the numbers of young people moving out of UNITA areas, you realise the real problem is maintaining recruits and motivating them,” Vines said. “In the long term UNITA is on a downward curve, and if the sanctions package begins to work, time is on the government’s side.”