Global Policy Forum

UANDA, Angola -- After five years of trying to make peace in Angola, having spent at least $1.5 billion and having seen 60 of its staff members lose their lives, the United Nations is now an unwelcome guest here.

Both the government and the rebels have essentially indicated that they want the peacekeepers to leave so that the two sides can fight to the finish without interference in this country that is one of the most troubled, and potentially one of the richest, in Africa.

Now, the United Nations seems set to give in. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended in a report to the Security Council on Sunday night that after four years of operation, the organization withdraw its peacekeepers. So far, some U.N. aid organizations have indicated they will continue in the country, but it is unclear whether they would be able to operate.

"There are things we are not supposed to witness," Issa B.Y. Diallo, the U.N. special representative to Angola, said Monday. "That's why we're asked not to be here."

"But we can't just leave a population that's suffering. And tomorrow it will be worse. War is spreading all over this country."

The war has been rekindling for weeks. It is said to be fiercest around the central highlands towns of Huambo, Cuito and Malanje. There are reports that rebel troops are moving toward Soyo, a northern oil area, and there have been attacks on diamond mines in the northeast that the rebels are trying to retake.

There appeared to be no particular nervousness on Monday, though, in the capital, Luanda, which is part of the coastal strip the government considers secure.

After many years of guerrilla warfare in Angola, a peace agreement was reached in May 1991 calling for elections in 1992. A government victory at the polls led the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, to renew the fighting. After government offensives in 1994, a peace treaty was signed with the rebels, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known by its Portuguese acronym, Unita. The agreement called for demobilization of the rebels and the formation of a joint government, but Savimbi has not joined the government, demobilization did not succeed and fighting began anew.

Recently, the U.N. force has dwindled to 1,000 observers, from nations as diverse as India, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria Sweden, Spain and Kenya. Thinly spread across a country almost twice the size of Texas, they were able to do little but report troop movements near their camps and odd bits of gossip back to headquarters, and sometimes do good works like help operate clinics. Unlike peacekeepers in Kosovo, they did not even have the reassurance of a powerful NATO force nearby.

The hints that the United Nations should go had become viciously unsubtle. Last week, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in his New Year's address to foreign diplomats, said the United Nations had "lost control over the peace process, whose derailment already is a reality," and expressed his hope that Annan would fold up the observer mission on its Feb. 26 expiration date. Annan has recommended closing it by March 20.

And in what some diplomats believe was a message from the rebels, two U.N.-chartered planes were shot down, one on Dec. 26 and one on Jan. 2, with a total of 23 people aboard. Both crashes are officially unexplained. The refusal by both sides to let the United Nations launch prompt search-and-rescue missions only pointed out the organization's helplessness.

"Was there a message?" said a diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Yes. It was: 'Don't fly -- stay the hell out because we want to kill each other in peace."

But observers say that both sides are foolish to believe that victory awaits them at the end of the fighting, aside from bringing back the misery of war to a country that has had a respite after 30 years of fighting.

"In the short term, it doesn't appear that either side can annihilate the other," said one diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Diallo, the U.N. envoy, was asked if anything could end the war short of the death or capture of one of the two chief antagonists -- the rebel leader, Savimbi, or dos Santos. Diallo answered with an emphatic, "Yes, yes, yes."

"People can learn from war," he said. "The Angolans will. But this one will be very tough."

The U.N. announcement came as no surprise to people in the capital. "When did it happen?" Maria Manuela, 26, asked about the announcement as she walked home from work. "It's the same as it's always been. Savimbi is crazy." One of her brothers died a soldier, she said, and another is now of draft age.

Some young men said they were nervous. Last week the government said that all those ages 17 to 19 would have to register, and "enlistment" centers would open. In 1992, when the fighting was last at its height, military press gangs set up roadblocks in the capital and the vast slums south of it, stopped young men and carried any in the right age group off to police holding cells until trucks could take them to far-away boot camps. Many never came back.

The road from the airport to a presidential residence was lined Monday with armed soldiers spaced about 100 yards apart, but that was apparently for an official visit by Presidents Laurent Kabila of Congo and Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the neighboring Congo Republic. The downtown traffic, in what was once a lovely beachfront city but now has shell-pocked buildings full of squatters interspersed with its $200-a-night hotels, was, as usual, a necklace of traffic circle melees on strings of jammed streets.

There was no unified opinion among passers-by. "Let them go," Walter Figuerrado, 40, said of the peace observers. "In all the years they were here, they did nothing. And they camouflaged the fact that the disarming of Unita's troops wasn't happening."

But a 43-year-old man at a bus stop, who said he was a judge but would give his name only as Pedro "for security reasons," said he lamented the departure. "It's going to be a tougher war than before," he said. He said he believed that Unita should have been disarmed before the elections in 1992. The drift back into war has been slow but steady. It became obvious months ago that Savimbi had kept his bush army, sending old men and boys with rusty guns to the demobilization camps.

Then, saying he feared for his safety despite being offered a bodyguard of 400 troops, Savimbi never moved to Luanda to join the government. Some of his top advisers and generals did, though, so his party has splintered into three factions. The government recently named another faction as the official Unita. On the back page of the same issue of the party newspaper in which that announcement was made, it printed a "wanted" poster of Savimbi, calling him a war criminal and comparing him unfavorably to Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and vampires.

Diallo, who blames both sides for a "lack of political will to make peace," tried to keep dialogue open between the two sides, but the government went to great lengths to prevent him. It repeatedly refused him permission to fly to Savimbi's informal capital, Bailundo.

Also, according to Voice of America radio, government representatives tried to scare Diallo by contending that Savimbi is a drinker and drug abuser who would attack him or take him hostage.

Even though the observers are likely to pull out, many U.N. aid agencies will remain. The World Food Program now feeds about 800,000 people, nearly a tenth of the population. The United Nations is already worried about crises that may be on the way, including swarms of refugees, famine and tribal clashes.

"There's no question we'll be here whether the observer mission is or not," said Maria Flynn, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program.