Global Policy Forum

By Don Melvin

Cecilia Namutumbo is 5 years old. She has no parents, she's missing one leg, and she is in a rehabilitation center in the bombed-out Angolan city of Kuito all alone.

She spots a stranger. Using her prosthetic leg with remarkable dexterity, she starts to show off by demonstrating how well she can walk.

She lost her leg when she took a bullet in the knee. Her mother and father were killed in the same attack. She has a teenage sister who visits now and then, and with whom she will live when her training with her new leg is done. But for now, she lives here alone.

It is difficult to say for certain by whom Cecilia and her family were attacked. But given the location, the attack was probably staged by UNITA rebels. And the bullets that cost her a leg and her family were likely fired from AK-47 assault rifles obtained in violation of an international arms embargo.

The 26-year war in Angola has been fueled in large measure by small arms from former Soviet bloc countries that are cheap, plentiful and easy to obtain.

The U.N. Security Council imposed an arms and fuel embargo on UNITA in 1993. Five years later, the council added a ban on diamond exports, which are estimated to have supplied the group with up to $4 billion since 1992.

The embargoes were intended to stop a civil war that has devastated Angola since 1975, leaving the country in ruins and its people among the poorest in Africa. But the war between the UNITA rebel movement --- the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola --- and the government of Angola continues.

The government, which is not under an embargo, buys weapons with revenue from the country's rich offshore oil fields. UNITA, which controls parts of the interior, buys weapons with diamonds from the country's bountiful mines.

Not only has the embargo failed to stop the war, but in recent months the frequency of rebel attacks has increased. The rebels have managed to rearm and launch guerrilla attacks near Luanda, the capital, as well as elsewhere in the country. Experts say the embargo is porous primarily because of the availability of inexpensive small arms from countries that were once part of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence.

"It's been a major factor," said former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, who has worked on Angolan issues for years and currently represents the Chevron oil company there. "I've flown or driven over most of Angola. If the United States can't protect the Mexican border, how can Angolans protect their borders? Angola's twice the size of California. It's virtually an indefensible country militarily."

The country has more than 3,200 miles of border, more than half again as long as the U.S.-Mexico border. Much of it traverses remote areas beyond the reach of governments on either side, including a 1,500-mile border with vast, ungovernable Congo.

Last year, when rebels staged attacks --- almost always against lightly guarded places where food or other supplies were available --- they brandished weapons but rarely fired, an indication of a need to conserve ammunition, according to an international security official working in Angola.

But this year, rebels have been firing with abandon, proving that they have replenished their supply of ammunition, the official said.

News accounts of recent rebel attacks show the effect this rearmament has had on the Angolan people: April 15: Rebels raided a town in an eastern province, Benguela. Seven people were killed and 50 kidnapped. May 19: Rebels attacked Caxito, 40 miles northeast of Luanda. About 30,000 civilians fled and 60 children were kidnapped from a home for orphans and street children. The children were released three weeks later, but not before they had been forced to walk hundreds of miles through the bush. May 21: Rebels overran the northern town of Golungo Alto, triggering a stream of refugees and leaving 16 Angolan workers from the U.S. aid group World Vision missing. Four of the workers were found later. May 22: Rebels killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 13 in an ambush on two vehicles carrying traders about six miles from Catchiungo, in the eastern region of Huambo Province. A survivor said he saw about 40 men armed with AKM assault rifles --- a newer version of the AK-47 Soviet-designed Kalashnikov --- and mortars. Early June: Three planes from the U.N. World Food Program were fired on as they delivered food on which people displaced by the war, including malnourished children, depend. On June 8, one plane was hit but made an emergency landing.

According to the international security official, the rebels have obtained more than new bullets. "When they attacked Caxito, they used brand new weaponry," the official said.

The government has no doubt where the weapons came from.

"UNITA has been receiving weapons from the East European countries," said Joao Pedro, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. "UNITA has been using the mechanism of international organized crime to arm themselves with weapons."

Pedro said many of the weapons come from Bulgaria and Ukraine and that the West African countries of Togo and Burkina Faso are common transshipment points. Other observers say Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Congo are also used.

The government is sensitive about suggestions that it cannot control the country's borders, but Pedro acknowledged that weapons may be reaching the rebels overland. "This is a possibility, and we don't have to deny it," he said.

A high-ranking Western diplomat in Luanda said some light weapons are arriving through neighboring Zambia and Congo. From there, they are carried into Angola on foot. UNITA's ability to wage conventional war has diminished recently, the diplomat said, but its ability to launch guerrilla attacks is increasing.

Those attacks have strangled economic activity and prevented people from returning to areas where they used to live. Because of the war, an estimated 3.8 million of Angola's 12 million people have been driven from their homes.

The country's people are among Africa's poorest. Thousands of children are malnourished; more precise estimates are impossible to formulate because guerrilla attacks make much of the country too dangerous for aid workers to enter. Disease runs rampant. As a global campaign to eradicate polio proceeds, experts predict Angola will become the last country on earth where the disease persists. Some of the imported weapons have the potential to harm people even if the fighting ends or moves to other areas. Angola is known for its concentration of land mines. But mines are not the only weapons that render the fields dangerous to farm, the roads deadly to drive and the paths to water risky to walk. So-called unexploded ordnance litters the land. A demining agency called the Halo Trust has worked in Bie province, around Kuito, since 1994. Since then, Halo Trust deminers have cleared 2,301 mines from the area --- and 1,089 pieces of unexploded ordnance.

These are mostly mortars and grenades, weapons that could still explode, said Antonio Pinto, operations manager for the Halo Trust in Kuito. In a field near the city recently, Pinto showed dozens of unexploded weapons laid out on the ground and ready for demolition. Included were many of Soviet make: 57 mm rockets, 60 mm mortars and 82 mm mortars. Most of UNITA's weapons, including mortars and AK-47 assault rifles, currently come from Ukraine and are shipped through other African countries that are not encumbered by an embargo, Pinto said, even though the ultimate purchaser is UNITA.

The arms are frequently delivered to UNITA by planes that fly into Angola at night and push the weaponry, attached to parachutes, out the hatch, he said.

And the long war goes on, sometimes chasing thousands of people from their homes all at once, sometimes damaging lives forever, one person at a time.

When the stranger at the rehabilitation center moved on, 5-year-old Cecilia stopped showing off. Using a single crutch and her artificial leg, she walked to her cot in the large room she shares with other patients.

She reached under the bed to fetch a favorite toy. Then she tucked the dolly under her arm, grabbed her crutch and walked out the door and down the path alone.