Global Policy Forum

By Holger Jensen

How do you stop a war that profits not only generals on both sides but also Belgian diamond dealers, multinational oil corporations, international arms merchants and Americans at the gas pump? You don't.

Which is why one of Africa's longest running wars, in Angola, has killed a million people, created 3 million refugees and sucks up huge amounts of foreign aid, including $1.5 billion for a failed United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The war began in 1962 as a liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, then evolved into an ideological conflict. After winning independence in 1975, the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) took control of the country only to be opposed by its ally of 14 years, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Cuba backed the MPLA, led by Jose Eduardo dos Santos, while the United States and South Africa backed UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi. After the Cold War, the MPLA abandoned Marxism and the United States dropped its support of Savimbi, motivated perhaps by Angola's huge oil reserves.

Peace was negotiated in 1991 but collapsed in 1992 when Savimbi refused to accept his defeat in Angola's first free elections. Another peace accord in 1994, known as the Lusaka Protocol, was never honored by UNITA, which refused to disarm. It broke down completely in 1998 when government forces attacked rebel strongholds.

By then, greed had eclipsed ideology. Angola had become a commercial battleground with MPLA leaders getting rich off $3 billion a year in oil revenues while UNITA made an estimated $4 billion off diamond smuggling.

Sanctions, imposed on UNITA in 1993, did little to stem its business dealings.

A new U.N. report blames Belgium, Burkina Faso, Togo, Rwanda, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Congo Republic, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Zambia, Morocco, Bulgaria and Ukraine for supplying UNITA with arms and fuel or facilitating its illicit diamond trade by allowing UNITA couriers to visit or pass through their territories in violation of an international travel ban.

Most of UNITA's diamonds end up in Antwerp, Belgium, the largest market in the world for uncut stones, where the guerrilla group has a virtual branch office. It also maintains a presence in France, Portugal, Switzerland and the United States, suggesting that they too do not enforce the travel ban. While Savimbi is now demonized by the Western governments that used to support him, little is said of their dealings with the Dos Santos regime, which may be as guilty as he is of prolonging the conflict.

Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, and recent discoveries are expected to make it the largest. With oil prices the highest in a decade, government receipts from the country's booming offshore oil industry are fat, topped off by $870 million in bonuses recently paid by major oil exploration companies for drilling rights. Some of the money has paid for new weapons and allowed the government to start paying soldiers' salaries, boosting morale after months of despondency.

But much of it has simply disappeared into the bank accounts of Dos Santos and his cronies. In a report issued last year, the London-based human rights organization Global Witness said "a significant portion of Angola's oil-derived wealth is being subverted for personal gain and to support the aspirations of elite individuals, at the center of power around the presidency."

It named a long list of individuals and companies linked to oil exploration and weapons deals that would profit from an ongoing war. At the top of the list is Dos Santos himself, who controls a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that has a $720 million contract to supply the Angolan Armed Forces for the next five years.

They lead lives of luxury while 11 million Angolans live in abject poverty, with 1.6 million being fed by the World Food Program. The United States does not seem to care as long as it gets 7 percent of its oil from a country recently described by UNICEF as "the worst place in the world to be a child."

Holger Jensen is international editor of the Denver Rocky Mountain News.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.