Global Policy Forum

By Rachel L. Swarns

A mile beneath the emerald waves lies some of the hottest real estate in the world. Next year Angola hopes to pump a million barrels of oil daily from the ocean floor. By 2010 rigs like this one in the South Atlantic may export more crude than Kuwait.

Twenty-five years ago, Angola's first black government dreamed of harnessing this energy to improve the lives of its desperately poor people. But if the gods rained gold on Angola, the wealth has been largely consumed by the government and its war machine, fueling the continent's longest-running civil conflict.

Yet Angola, a symbol of the worst kind of subversion of natural riches, now teeters on the brink of fresh opportunity. With the civil war ebbing and oil prices soaring, the government is taking tentative steps to redirect its vast oil revenues toward rebuilding the country.

In a detailed agreement with the International Monetary Fund made public last month, the government has promised to increase spending on health and education nearly threefold and to allow independent auditors to scrutinize its figures on oil profits, which make up 90 percent of export income and have not previously been fully disclosed.

The government apparently hopes to gain access to the fund's low-interest loans and to shed its image of callous corruption that has allowed a generation to grow up with only faint memories of electricity or running water or houses without bullet holes.

Angola's history is littered with broken promises and squandered opportunities, and whether President José Eduardo dos Santos will make good on his commitments remains unclear. But the government's shift corresponds with strong signals that the public is increasingly unwilling to keep enduring misery.

For the first time, people have stood up by the thousands to protest the endless war, corruption and wasted revenues in a country that is at once the eighth-largest supplier of oil to the United States and one of the world's poorest nations.

In June, in the largest of a series of protests that began eight months ago, about 6,000 people walked through the cracked and buckled streets of the capital, Luanda, to a stadium to call for peace.

This week, Catholic leaders met in the provincial town of Uige to press the government to respect human rights and to begin a dialogue with the rebels, who have been considerably weakened by government soldiers in the past year.

They are small but significant steps for a people who have shied from challenging a government that often arrests and jails journalists and demonstrators who question the status quo. But it only takes a visit to Angola's crumbling cities to understand the discontent.

So far this year, as the country marks a quarter-century of independence from Portugal, at least eight people have starved to death in prison because the government did not provide enough food, the state-controlled newspaper reported.

More than a third of the children admitted to the country's best pediatric hospital die, partly because they get inadequate care there, the hospital's annual report concedes. And while oil revenues have surged, the government investment in health has dropped from 8 percent of total spending in 1991 to 2.8 percent in 1999, according to the International Monetary Fund and health experts.

Still, the unusual convergence of recent events has ignited unexpected flickers of optimism. An international campaign against diamond smuggling, the primary source of income for the rebels who have opposed the government for virtually the entire period of independence, has made it difficult for them to rearm.

The government no longer threatens to kill the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, and promises pardons to rebels willing to lay down their guns.

Over the last four years, more oil has been found in Angola than in any other country, and companies are expected to offer millions just to peek below the waves. This month, the world's biggest oil companies began frenzied bidding for the right to explore the latest underwater expanse opened by the government.

And these days, some dare to dream that this bountiful oil — which has increased profits of American companies like Chevron and Texaco, helped buy government tanks and AK-47's and reportedly lined some official pockets — may someday end up helping the hungry.

"Just a few years ago, this hope we have now would have been unthinkable," said Luis Marí­a Pérez de Onraita, the bishop of Malanje Province and one of the most outspoken Catholic leaders in the fledgling peace movement, which held its first national congress in July.

He has seen two peace accords collapse over the past ten years. He has watched children die from malnutrition in a country that once exported food to the world. He is 67 now, and creases line his forehead and silver glimmers in his hair. He has grown old waiting for peace.

"At times we feel like voices in the desert, worthless," the bishop said. "Perhaps we are fighting for a utopia. But we cannot continue as we are. Angola is rich, but what good is that if the Angolan people themselves do not benefit?"

The Portuguese, who began exporting oil in the 1950's, made no pretense of sharing the wealth. And after independence in 1975, Angolans watched their own leaders turn on one another in cold war battles.

On one side was Mr. dos Santos's party, the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, backed by the Russians and the Cubans. On the other was the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by Mr. Savimbi and supported by the United States and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

When the cold war ended, the fighting continued, financed with the profits from diamond and oil sales. Mr. Savimbi violated both peace treaties of the 1990's and returned to war, most recently in 1998.

But even during a period of relative peace from 1994 to 1998, the government accomplished little, despite huge oil revenues. Today, fewer than 5 percent of municipalities have functioning justice systems and fewer than half of school-age children attend school, according to the United Nations.

And without the World Food Program, about 1.5 million people would be at risk of starvation. Yet the nation's oil accounts have remained largely secret until now.

"People talk about corruption, and I think there is corruption here and there," conceded Hendrik Vaal Neto, the minister of communications, who works in a shabby office where the elevator seems permanently frozen between floors. "But I don't think this a corrupt government or a corrupt country, no. There is corruption everywhere in the world. People seem to forget there was a need for rapid re-equipping of the army and air force, and you don't get that for nothing."

The situation now is different, he continued. "We are in a better position, and the economy and social problems of the people are our main concern. Can we miraculously solve our problems? No, no one can do that. But now you will see the government doing more."

In fact, as he was speaking earlier this month, government officials were scrambling to meet the International Monetary Fund's December deadline. The United States needs Angola's oil, and some American officials concede that this need dampens their willingness to chastise Angola or demand too much, too quickly. The government, which has billions of dollars in bad debts, needs the fund's seal of approval to restore its creditworthiness. And while it is unlikely that officials will meet that December deadline, economists familiar with the negotiations said it would probably be extended to allow the government more time to redirect its spending and to carry out reforms.

"This is the best chance at the moment that we have of any leverage on the government," said Alex Vines, the Angola researcher for Human Rights Watch, who has been critical of the government.

"There is a possibility, a glimmer of hope," Mr. Vines said in a telephone interview from London. "They understand they have to improve their image. But whether their action is very cosmetic and superficial is the question."

In their report last month, officials of the fund said they were "encouraged by the authorities' commitment to the reform program." But the disparity between oil revenues and the lives of ordinary people is still enormous.

On the Pride Angola, the deep- water drill bores through the seabed, using technology unavailable even 10 years ago. The British oil company BP-Amoco has been exploring this stretch of water known as Block 18 for more than two years now. So far, every place it has drilled it has hit gold.

Interest among foreign oil companies is so intense that the government plans to inaugurate direct corporate jet service between the oil capitals of Houston and Luanda by the end of the year.

"There are not many places around to make these kind of discoveries," said Martin Eldon, the managing director of Texaco's Angola office. "That's what all the excitement is about."

But that means nothing in Uige, where the town clock is stuck at 3 o'clock and the only oil anyone seems to know about are the metal cans of kerosene and gasoline sold in the state oil company shop.

There was a time when electricity and piped water coursed through the town, and the authorities lined the avenues with street lights and installed faucets and sinks in hospitals and schools. These days, hospital orderlies lug in sloshing jugs and buckets of water to bathe patients and flush latrines. And at night, the town sinks into a smoky haze of charcoal fires and candlelight.

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