Global Policy Forum

By Victoria Brittain

The Unita rebel movement has sharply escalated military activity in Angola with a series of attacks in Uige and Bengo provinces which left more than 100 civilians dead and saw the kidnapping of 60 children aged between 10 and 18. The rebel attacks followed an unprecedented speech to a university conference on democracy by President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, which was widely interpreted as an olive branch towards the Unita leader, Jonas Savimbi.

The attacks coincided with a six-day visit to the country by Dr Ibrahim Gambari, the UN secretary general's special adviser on Africa, for whom new action on the failed peace accords in Angola is a high priority.

The children, all war orphans, were seized at night from a boarding school at Caxito, 35 miles from the capital, Luanda, last weekend by a group of about 50 Unita men dressed in regular police uniforms, and led away into the bush to be used as porters by the rebels. Only one child was left behind, a girl with an artificial leg, and a teacher was left to look after her. Nine other girls were abducted with 51 boys and one teacher.

Last year Unita kidnapped 21 children from an orphanage in the Central Highlands town of Huambo which Unita took over for many months after the failure of the 1992 UN-supervised election. For 20 years there have been frequent Unita kidnappings of large groups of children, with a devastating impact on tens of thousands of rural families.

Those who have later escaped have given graphic testimony of the terror under which they lived. The girls were forced to cook, carry loads and provide sexual services, while the boys were made to join the fighters. The Caxito school is a typical Unita non-military target. It is one of several respected boarding schools run by the Danish charity, Help for the People (ADPP) and has several foreign teachers, including some from the United States and the Netherlands.

The attack is the closest Unita has come to the capital since 1994. Unita also tried to destroy the bridge over the river Dando at Caxito, according to military sources, before moving into the town and looting extensively. As the town was raked with gunfire, 20,000 people fled into the bush or took the road towards Luanda, and more than 100 were left dead.

Attacks by Unita forces near the Central Highlands town of Uige, previously held by the rebel movement in the intense war of the early 1990s, followed on two successive days. Dr Gambari was due to travel extensively in the country, depending on the security situation. Air travel between cities remains the only safe way foreigners can visit anywhere outside the capital.

The UN official's visit is an important milestone in the international community's fresh attempts to address both the problem of 3m internally displaced people and to relaunch some kind of peace process. The last peace accord was signed in Lusaka in 1994, but repudiated by Mr. Savimbi, and the Unita official who signed on his behalf then fled from the organization and now lives in Luanda heading a rival Unita movement.

The present political situation is complex. In the present government of national unity there are several Unita ministers who won seats in the 1992 election, and there are numerous high Unita army officers in the national army. Since November dozens of rebels have surrendered in response to a new amnesty law.

Unita is currently under UN sanctions, which include a diamond trade embargo and travel restrictions on its leaders. Unita's old circle of African allies has shrunk to only the discredited leaders of Togo and Burkina Faso. Two years ago the Southern African grouping SADC declared Mr. Savimbi a war criminal.

However, in an area the size of France the Angolan army has not succeeded in capturing Mr. Savimbi nor in preventing his supply aircraft landing on remote airstrips.

In his first interview for 18 months Mr. Savimbi recently spoke by satellite phone to Voice of America and appeared to indicate that the Lusaka accord could be revived'. In his university speech, Mr. Dos Santos welcomed this as a possible contribution to peace.

Despite the history of failed agreements with Mr. Savimbi and the widely acknowledged terrorist tactics of Unita, there is new pressure from the Bush administration, the Angolan churches, Angola's neighbors in SADC, and - from the UN - on the Angolan government of national unity to open a dialogue yet again with Mr. Savimbi personally.

But there is extreme skepticism among Angolan officials that the only possible alternatives to a military solution - Mr. Savimbi going into voluntary exile or his accepting a peaceful role within Angola - have any chance of being accepted by him.

However the UN cannot afford to allow the humanitarian catastrophe to continue without further loss to its reputation in the country. The UN has been deeply involved in Angola since its humiliating experience of the failed election in 1992 and subsequent new war begun by Unita. UN planes were shot down and road transport ambushed by Unita in the first year of the new war.

Then the secretary general's special representative who tried to mediate thereafter, Alioune Blondin Beye, was killed in a mysterious plane crash. The UN spent Dollars 1.5bn (almost pounds 1bn) between 1994 and 1998 on the fruitless peace process. The security council is due to discuss Angola before the end of the month.