Global Policy Forum

It is hard to imagine a sorrier lot than the 15,000 Angolan refugees in Mayukwayukwa refugee camp in Zambia. For almost 20 years they were used by Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebel movement, forced into carrying arms or mining diamonds. Anyone who resisted was killed. Then the government seized that part of rebel territory and the slave-workers were chased out of their homes. Many who attempted to stay were executed by government soldiers as enemies. But some of the others, before fleeing, pocketed a few of the diamonds they had been digging for UNITA. Visitors to the camp find themselves accosted by starving fugitives, dressed in rags, offering top-quality gems for sale.

It would be illegal to buy them. Since 1993, the United Nations has slapped three rounds of sanctions on UNITA, making it illegal to fly into areas held by the rebels, to sell them weapons or fuel, or buy their diamonds. The aim was to sever UNITA's supply lines, and so end the war. But, despite sanctions, UNITA managed to rearm itself during the four-year UN-sponsored "peace process" in the mid-1990s. And since the fighting restarted in 1998, sanctions have made the rebels' lives more difficult, but have certainly not crippled them.

The UN itself acknowledges that sanctions are not working. In the past two years, two expert committees have been appointed by the Security Council to examine ways of enforcing them. The experts have produced three reports. The latest, released in April, acknowledges that UNITA last year sold $100m-worth of diamonds, that this year it will sell about the same, and that, even without selling diamonds or buying arms, it will be able to continue guerrilla warfare "for a long time" because of its arms caches throughout the country.

Yet the outside world has continued to rely on sanctions to end a savage war, which in the past two years alone has made almost 3m Angolans homeless. After the failure of its peace effort, the UN not only cast UNITA in the role of villain but completely ostracised it. The Angolan government, as the lesser of two evils, was supported in its stated refusal ever to negotiate with Mr Savimbi, and in its unfounded belief that with "one last war for peace" it could annihilate the rebels within a few months.

But now, with UNITA clearly far from annihilated and under pressure from his domestic pro-peace lobby, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos may be preparing for a U-turn. In March, Mr Savimbi, in the first interview he has given since August 1999, called for a dialogue. Last month, Mr dos Santos unexpectedly agreed that the government might indeed, at some point, negotiate once more with Mr Savimbi. The rebel leader then increased the pressure in two ways: his forces launched a spectacular attack on Caxito, a city just 65km (40 miles) from the capital, Luanda. And he wrote a letter to the Roman Catholic church in Angola, confirming his desire for talks, and asking the church to mediate.

Huge stumbling-blocks remain. Both sides insist that the other stops fighting first. But there is at last a glimmer of hope for Angolans who now cannot walk to their fields without fear of stepping on a landmine, or falling into an ambush, or being labelled an enemy and executed.