Deciding to Let the UNITA Scoop Slip Quietly Into Oblivion

As days went by and my efforts to obtain additional information about UNITA’s purported acquisition of MiGs, Hinds and Frogs proved fruitless, I decided to drop the story. Nonetheless, others were taking the information, and the threat it posed to the peace process, quite seriously.

The Angola Peace Monitor, for example, in its newsletter (Issue no. 8, Vol. V 29th April 1999), wrote:

“There have been several reports claiming that UNITA has bought six MiG-23 fighter jets (the London-based journal Southscan suggests that the aircraft could be Sukhoi-5's), and six Hind Mi-25 assault helicopters. If true, it would represent a spectacular increase in UNITA's capacity. However, a weapons expert quoted by the South African-based Mail & Guardian, said that six MiG's were too few to fundamentally alter the balance of power, and that 18 would be needed.

“According to reports the aircraft are being operated by mercenaries from either South Africa or Ukraine. Reports vary on where the MiG's are kept, with some saying that they are in Jamba in the south of Angola, with others claiming that they are kept in Togo in West Africa.

“However, many commentators doubt the veracity of these reports, pointing to the difficulties in maintaining and fuelling the aircraft, along with problems of airstrips and hiding the aircraft. The general consensus is that whilst it is possible, it is unlikely that UNITA has assault helicopters and improbable that they have fighter aircraft. One source has told the Angola Peace Monitor that UNITA did attempt to buy MiG's over a year ago, but were unable to complete the deal due to logistical problems.

“Despite the belief among commentators that the story is likely to emanate from UNITA itself for propaganda purposes, the upsurge in fighting in December 1998 showed that UNITA is much better armed than expected.

Human Rights Watch issued a lengthy report by Alex Vines in 1999 titled “ANGOLA UNRAVELS: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process” in which he wrote:

“Richard Cornwall of the Pretoria-based Institute of Security Studies has made more dramatic claims. He claims that UNITA recently obtained six Russian-made MiG-23 fighter aircraft, six MI-25 combat helicopters, fifty tanks and seventy armored troop carriers. He said the weaponry came mainly via Ukrainian suppliers. Cornwall has also claimed that the rebels have recently obtained more than twenty Russian-built unguided ground-to-ground mini-scud missiles, knownas FROGs, from North Korea and three Fox 7 surface to air missiles. To date Human Rights Watch has not independently confirmed this information.”

A footnote to this section stated: “Sean Cleary, Director of Strategic Concepts Ltd in South Africa, claims that he possesses evidence of one shipment of FROG rockets to UNITA from North Korea via Benin. He also claimed that UNITA may have obtained a couple of Alouette helicopters and two Mi-8 helicopters but that he did not believe the reports that UNITA had MiG-23s. Human Rights Watch interview , London, April 13, 1999.)”

In a few days, I will post the information I obtained in November 2002 from a senior UNITA official about these alleged arms purchases. I also have fresh queries out to some of my original sources to see if, with the passage of time, they might be willing to shed additional light on the origins of this scoop-that-wasn’t.

These Angolan Frogs Would be Weapons of Terror

Despite international sanctions, Angola's UNITA rebel movement continues to acquire new weapons -- including powerful rockets that could be used in terror attacks on government-held cities. It was a dramatic new development in the reporting of Angola's ongoing civil war – but this report, in April 1999, proved later to be wrong, according to a senior UNITA official. Still, look at who was supporting the story this time: the Angolan government and intelligence sources in the west.

A senior Angolan government official says the UNITA rebels have acquired Frog-7 ground artillery rockets. These weapons can carry a massive 550-kilogram conventional warhead and have a range of 70-kilometers.

Military analysts familiar with the weapon say it is not particularly accurate. But they call it a “terror weapon" which if fired into a city or town could create widespread panic.

The Angolan official, interviewed in Luanda on condition of anonymity, could not say how many of the Frog-7’s UNITA has deployed or where the rebel rockets are located.

However, independent security sources say that earlier this year, at least four of the rockets were spotted around UNITA's Central Highlands stronghold of Andulo, apparently deployed as a defensive weapon against government assaults. There have been no confirmed reports of any of the rockets being fired in the current fighting in Angola.

Some diplomats in Luanda appear skeptical that UNITA has such weapons, and have asked if the rebels have them, why have they not used them?

Despite this, intelligence documents indicate UNITA is increasing its arsenal of Frog-7’s. According to these documents, now circulating among regional governments, 12 more Frog-7’s, manufactured by North Korea, arrived recently in the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam and were awaiting shipment to the rebels in Angola.

African security sources say Dar es Salaam is a main port for UNITA's large shipments of weapons and other supplies. The sources say this equipment is then transported by both air and road. It is often addressed to private businesses in Malawi and Zambia.

Since November of last year (1998), at least three cargo ships from North Korea and the Ukraine are understood to have docked in Dar es Salaam and unloaded military equipment destined for UNITA.

In addition to the Frog-7 rockets, intelligence documents say the latest supplies shipped to the rebels have included rocket-propelled grenades, mortar bombs, and rockets for multiple rocket launchers.

My Scoop on UNITA's New Air Power Gets Support

In early April 1999, I finally gained company in reporting on UNITA’s alleged air arms acquisitions. The “Mail and Guardian” newspaper in South Africa reported new allegations of Zambian complicity in helping the Angolan rebels obtain MiG fighter-bombers.

The "Mail and Guardian" reports six MiG-23 jets, piloted by Ukrainians, spent nearly two weeks earlier this year at Zambia's Ndola airport. The publication says airport authorities initially claimed the aircraft belonged to the Zambian air force and were undergoing repairs.

But the "Mail and Guardian" says that explanation was abandoned after it was pointed out to Zambian officials that their country's air force did not have any MiG-23's.

However the UNITA rebel movement recently was reported to have taken delivery of six MiG-23's, which security sources say were purchased from suppliers in the Ukraine.

A senior Angolan official has charged Zambia's government brokered the purchase of the jets as well as the acquisition by the rebels of several Mi-25 Hind helicopters. The official claims that in return for arranging the arms transfer, Zambia received an unspecified number of aircraft for itself, paid for by UNITA.

Zambia has denied the charges.

The UNITA MiGs are understood to be based in rebel-held territory in southeastern Angola. So far, there have been no confirmed reports of the aircraft being used in attack missions.

The "Mail and Guardian" report about Zambia's alleged assistance to the rebels follows a summit meeting in Luanda that brought together the leaders of Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to sign a defense pact and to discuss regional security issues. A communique on the talks included a new appeal to other African countries to strictly observe United Nations sanctions barring aid to UNITA.

Meanwhile, a leading Zambian opposition politician claimed the Angolan charges are true. Exiled opposition leader Rodger Chongwe insists Angola has a legitimate case and believes that it should take action to shut down UNITA's Zambian connection.

“I'm not advocating that Angola should be invading neighboring countries. But if Angola is being provoked by heads of state of neighboring countries because of their greediness in money by selling arms to rebel movements, I'm sure that if I was in the Angolan government, I would hold Mr. Chiluba and even his Vice President -- who I understand is also involved -- personally liable for this crime. And I think they should be dealt with severely.”

Analysts say there is evidence to suggest that Zambia is guilty -- perhaps not of officially-endorsed government support for UNITA, but certainly of private, for-profit involvement with the rebels, and of allowing the use of Zambian territory as a conduit into UNITA-held areas of Angola bordering Zambia.

Richard Cornwell of the independent Institute for Security Studies outside Johannesburg, South Africa, says the arms trade in the region often links the political and business elites of countries.

“There are a number of networks across southern (and) central Africa which make up the really thriving pieces of the economies of the region. And these are basically illicit networks that are well connected, politically. And it's the interaction between political elites and business elites, the co-opted business elites that are running these illicit networks, that makes up so much of the story of south, central Africa. And you can see (that) if the flow of weapons, equipment, supplies to UNITA would be staunched, there would be some major business people who would be in very grave difficulty.”

Angola Newsflash: Elections at Last (Maybe)

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos says his country will hold long-delayed legislative elections next September.

In an end-of-the-year address to the nation today (Thursday), Mr. dos Santos said the elections will take place on September 5th and 6th, 2008.

The vote would be only the second multi-party election in Angola's history, and the first since the end of a 27-year civil war in 2002.

President dos Santos' government has delayed the election several times, citing Angola's poor roads and infrastructure as reasons. He said today that next year's vote must express the will of the Angolan people "with truth and without limitations."

The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or the MPLA, has governed the country since independence from Portugal in 1975. It will compete against the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, and several smaller parties.

The civil war between MPLA and UNITA killed an estimated 300-thousand people and displaced one-fourth of the population.

Angola's last national election -- a 1992 presidential vote -- was aborted when UNITA rejected first-round results.

After the death of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in an ambush in 2002, the two sides signed a peace deal and formed a government of national reconciliation.

Note the line about the elections having been delayed several times before. Let's wait and see what happens this time.

Zambia Denies Helping UNITA Get MiGs

A senior Zambian government official is calling on Angola to stop using Zambia as a scapegoat for Angola's own internal problems. The official's comments came at the end of March 1999 in response to Angola's latest charges that Zambia is assisting the UNITA rebel movement.

The chief Zambian government spokesman, Newstead Zimba, says that if UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi has backers, Zambia is not one of them.

He tells me in an interview from Lusaka that Angola should stop singling out Zambia as a scapegoat for what he says are its own internal problems.

“If there are problems within Angola, please let us not be a scapegoat. If there are surrogates somewhere of (UNITA leader Jonas) Savimbi, we are not one of those.”

Mr. Zimba, who is Zambia's Minister of Information and Broadcasting, was speaking in the wake of new Angolan charges of official Zambian assistance to the UNITA rebels.

A senior Angolan official claims Zambia helped the rebels acquire combat aircraft from Ukraine -- a charge Mr. Zimba vehemently denies.

“Angola should understand that we cannot do such stupid things because Zambia, as far as I know, as far as people know, as far as the inner policies of this government in brokering peace in the southern region and indeed in any part of Africa, has been very genuine. We have invested a lot in seeing that Angola enjoys peace and also develops itself.”

Mr. Zimba says Zambia's investment includes its hosting of the negotiations in Lusaka that led to Angola's 1994 peace accord, the agreement that broke down late last year as fighting resumed across the country. He notes Zambia also dispatched troops to Angola to participate in the abortive UN peacekeeping mission there.

“We love all our neighbors and have no aim of picking quarrels with anybody. We want peace to prevail in Angola just as we want peace to prevail in Democratic Republic of Congo and indeed in any part of Africa.”

Despite this, Angola has made repeated charges that Zambia is involved in helping the UNITA rebels -- both as a government and through private businesses and individuals based in Zambia. The Zambian minister says his government has offered continuous assurances to Angola that such charges are not true. He says he prays that one day the truth will be known because Zambia does not want to be the target of such allegations.

“We pray that the truth will come out. But as far as we are concerned, we do not want to be victims of such particular allegations.”

Zambia's biggest fear is that Angola may attack it militarily. Angolan officials have in the past issued veiled warnings they may be forced to take such action unless UNITA's alleged support network in Zambia is shut down.

The "UNITA Gets MiGs" Story Gets Legs

As you will see from the following post, the story about UNITA obtaining aircraft and missiles quickly took on a real life, even though the story was eventually to prove false.

At the end of March 1999, just one day after the original "UNITA gets MiGs" story was released, Angola levelled serious new charges against neighboring Zambia over its alleged support for the UNITA rebel movement.

A senior Angolan government official is accusing Zambia of facilitating UNITA's recent purchases of MiG fighter-bombers and attack helicopters.

The official, speaking by telephone from Luanda on condition of anonymity, claims Zambian authorities acted as the middlemen in the transaction that saw the rebels acquire the aircraft from suppliers in Ukraine. The official claims that in return for arranging the transfer, Zambia received an unspecified number of aircraft for itself, paid for by UNITA.

The accusations are the latest and perhaps the most serious in Angola's recent allegations of Zambian support for the rebels. Zambian officials have responded to the new claims the same way they have responded to Angola's past allegations -- by denying them categorically.

Zambia's Minister of Information and the government's chief spokesman, Newstead Zimba, says the latest Angolan charge is a lie.

“This is a total fabrication and a very heinous lie by whoever is involved in fabricating such types of accusations.”

Angola earlier this month presented the United Nations Security Council with an extensive document outlining its charges against Zambia. The document, dated March 9th but only recently made public, contends Zambia's government has provided direct support to UNITA. It says private Zambian companies and individuals have also been involved in the sale of what are termed "lethal materials" and foodstuffs to the rebels.

In addition, the Angolan letter lists alleged UNITA facilities inside Zambia used in the rebel support network. It says these include airports as well as fuel storage tanks. It also lists several overland routes through Zambian territory allegedly used by the rebels and their suppliers. It claims a senior UNITA official is based in Zambia with Zambian government consent, apparently to oversee the support operation.

UNITA’s MiGs: The Scoop That Wasn’t

One of the problems journalists face is determining whether something they are told by a source is true or not. For some journalists, it doesn’t matter. They just want the story --- the kind that is said to be “too good to check out.” Others face the conundrum of what to do if the source is a senior political or government leader. If you know what the leader says is false or misleading, do you report what he or she says anyway? Or if you don't know, do you just take the official's word? What if that official is intentionally giving out misinformation? In other cases, the sources have a proven record of accuracy, giving the journalist confidence that he or she can go forward with a story. But sometimes these reliable sources are wrong, maybe innocently so but possibly they are spreading mis- or disinformation. That is what may have happened in the following case, a story that developed a life of its own, only to be proven false years later. Here is my Christmas present to you all.

A startling new dimension has been added to the Angolan civil war -- the UNITA rebel movement has acquired jet fighter-bombers as well as attack helicopters. I had this report in March 1999:

African intelligence and security sources say the UNITA rebels have acquired jet fighter-bomber aircraft as well as helicopters that can be used both for attack missions and to carry troops.

Until now, the rebels have had no offensive air capability. Analysts say UNITA's acquisition of an air arm could change the course of the ongoing civil war in Angola.

A senior UNITA official, interviewed by satellite telephone, refuses to confirm or deny the information.

However the rebel official, General Paulo Lukamba Gato, says UNITA will, in his words, "defend itself with all its means and whatever else it takes

The intelligence and security sources, speaking on condition of strict anonymity, say UNITA's six jets, believed to be MiGs, were flown to a rebel-held airfield in southeastern Angola earlier this month. An eyewitness says the planes were piloted by white men.

It is understood the aircraft come from Ukraine. It is not known how soon the jets could be ready for missions. But analysts say UNITA could use them in surprise strikes -- not only against government-held bases and cities but even to disrupt flights by government aircraft. These analysts say Angola's government forces may be hard-pressed to deal with the new threat as their anti-aircraft capability has been long neglected.

The sources say UNITA has also acquired between three and six helicopters, identified as Mi-25 Hinds. Analysts say the helicopters could be used to ferry troops or to strike at key installations, possibly including Angola's important oil facilities. The sources say UNITA has ordered more such helicopters from its suppliers in Ukraine and is awaiting their delivery.

Angola has had no public comment on the new UNITA military purchases, which are also understood to include crude ground-to-ground missiles known as Frogs with a 70 kilometer range. But officials in Luanda have privately confirmed they know about the planes and helicopters.

Diplomats in the Angolan capital say they have had no confirmation of the purchases, which are believed to have been financed through the sale of diamonds mined from territory under UNITA control.

Angola's UN backed peace process, launched in 1994 with the signing of a peace agreement between the rival sides, collapsed late last year amid government frustration over UNITA's failure to demilitarize and turn over territory. The government claims UNITA used the peace process to rearm itself and to reinforce its bases.

South African Authorities Expel Foreign Planes and Aircrews Over Illegal UNITA Flights

South African police in March 1999 concluded their investigation into the misuse of South African airfields for illegal supply shipments to Angola's UNITA rebel movement.

A police spokesman tells me the investigation launched a year ago has led to the expulsion of 43 foreign air crew members and 23 foreign-registered aircraft that had made unauthorized use of South African airfields to fly equipment to the UNITA rebels.

Police Superintendent Faizel Kader declines to identify the nationalities of the expelled foreigners or the registry of the aircraft forced to leave South Africa. But he says the planes and their crews were responsible for about 200 violations of South African civil aviation regulations, including unauthorized take-offs and landings.

Most of these occurred at Pietersburg airport, about 250 kilometers north of Johannesburg. He says investigators heard allegations that the illegal flights transported military equipment. But he says the police discovered only building materials on the planes they inspected.

Superintendent Kader says the police turned their findings over to justice department authorities. But he says they declined to prosecute any of those involved. He says no further police investigations into illegal supply shipments to Angola are under way at the present time.

The disclosure comes as the special South African unit probing corruption cases is still awaiting formal approval from President Nelson Mandela's office before launching its own probe of illegal arms transfers from South Africa to Angola.

Word of the anti-corruption unit's interest in such transactions was first reported earlier this month. The unit has recovered millions of dollars in state assets lost through fraud and other corrupt practices since its establishment three years ago.

Sources close to the unit, speaking on condition of anonymity, say their investigation will be targeted at the possible recovery of unpaid duties on any military or other equipment brought into South Africa from abroad and then shipped to UNITA.

Angolan authorities have frequently expressed concern about South African involvement in illegal transfers of weapons and other military equipment to the UNITA rebel movement. South African officials have said they fully support all United Nations sanctions against UNITA, but concede enforcement is difficult because there are many uncontrolled airfields in the country.

No Peace Train Will Be Passing Through Caala Station Anytime Soon

Renewed fighting in Angola has again brought suffering to hundreds of thousands of civilians forced to flee the latest clashes between government troops and rebels of the UNITA movement. In March 1999, I visited some of the most recent displaced victims of Angola's civil war during a trip to the town of Caala in the country's embattled Central Highlands region.

Because of the war, trains do not run through Caala anymore. So the empty rail yard with its abandoned freight storage buildings and open track areas makes a convenient place for aid workers to distribute relief supplies.

Several thousand people are gathered here, patiently waiting to get their handouts of maize, beans, salt, and cooking oil. For many, it will be the first food they have had in days after fleeing homes and fields in the surrounding countryside. That is where government troops and forces of the UNITA rebel movement have been battling it out since late last year following the breakdown of Angola's peace process.

Not far from the rail yard is a battered, dusty four-story apartment building where hundreds of these displaced Angolans have taken temporary shelter. It is little more than an unfinished concrete shell. But each room is smoky and packed -- mainly with women and children huddled around open cooking fires.
“They say they are hungry.”

Up a dirty stairwell, one roomful of women and babies greets a group of visitors eagerly, hoping that maybe they have some food. Speaking through an interpreter, one of the women says they had to flee their village 50 kilometers to the south in January as UNITA rebels moved in.

“She says we had to run with nothing, no clothes. We have absolutely nothing because they took it away from us.”

Perhaps more critically, these people had to abandon their crops at harvest time. Another woman says it is not safe to return to their fields to take in the harvest because they might be kidnapped by the rebels.

“You cannot go after the harvest because they come after you and they will grab you so they are afraid to go back to get the harvest...”

It is not only the rebels who they fear. Another woman in the building says she fled government troops who moved into the area to block any UNITA advance on Caala or nearby Huambo, the provincial capital 30 kilometers away. Soldiers of the national army often have been accused of helping themselves to food, crops, and other possessions of rural Angolans. Both sides have also been accused of pressing men, women, and children into military service involuntarily.

Because of the unsettled conditions in the countryside, these people are not going back. That is putting pressure on aid workers and relief agencies like the UN World Food Program, who have stayed on to work in Angola despite the recent decision to shut down the unsuccessful United Nations peacekeeping mission.

Their job has been complicated by the cutting of most key roads in the Central Highlands. Bagged maize and other relief supplies now have to be flown in -- a costly process that also limits the amount of aid that can be delivered at any one time.

The aid is essential. Already cases of malnutrition are emerging. In Huambo province, aid workers estimate seven percent of the registered displaced are considered to be severely malnourished. Another 14 percent are "moderately" malnourished. WFP officials say the malnourished have become very vulnerable to disease, with incidents of tuberculosis, malaria, and meningitis on the rise. Foreign relief officials are already predicting a humanitarian catastrophe unless donor countries respond quickly to their latest appeals for more aid.

Under Fire in Cuito Again

Renewed civil war in Angola again brought death and destruction to cities already devastated by fighting. In March 1999, I travelled to one such provincial city, Cuito, a key rail and road junction about 550 kilometers from the Angolan capital, Luanda.

If there is any one city that symbolizes the misery of Angola's long and painful civil war, it is Cuito. Once a picturesque example of Angola's colonial-era charms, Cuito is now Africa's Dresden -- the German city razed during brutal World War Two bombing raids.

Most of Cuito was destroyed between 1992 and 1994 in an earlier phase of Angola's civil war. But when fighting between government troops and UNITA rebels resumed last December (1998) after an abortive peace effort, Cuito sustained even further damage in shelling attacks that left more than 150 people dead and more than 500 injured.

In a year-end message to the nation, Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos paid tribute to what he called the heroic residents of Cuito. But the long-suffering residents of Cuito do not feel heroic.

Although government troops have forced the rebels back out of shelling range, they remain scared and dispirited.

Antonio Gomes is the Vice Governor for Social and Economic Affairs for Bie province, where Cuito is located. In a dark room of the battle-scarred government office building where he works, he spoke through an interpreter about the city's recurring traumas and their impact on the people.

“There was such a horrendous trauma -- the people suffered in '92 -- the whole world saw it and then after that people began little by little kind of building up some hope. And the fact that now they were once more from one day to the next bombarded again, people being killed again, it was a major shock to the point that a lot of the people that fled to Luanda, they still haven't come back. They're still reluctant to start building again for fear the whole thing will happen again.”

It is precisely that kind of terror that analysts feel UNITA is trying to create with its attacks on key provincial cities. No one thinks the rebels actually intend to take and hold them. But the raids could be aimed psychologically at stirring popular resentment against the Dos Santos government, militarily at pinning down government troops in defending population centers, and politically at giving UNITA a stronger bargaining position should peace talks ever start again.

The government side was taken by surprise late last year when the well-armed rebels responded quickly and aggressively to an attempt by Angolan troops to seize UNITA’s Central Highlands strongholds not far from Cuito. Government soldiers were forced into retreat by the advancing rebels who, besides Cuito, also beseiged the nearby city of Huambo. Since then, the tide appears to have shifted in the government's favor. The rebels have reportedly run short of fuel for their tanks and other heavy equipment.

By pressing a conventional-style war, analysts like Richard Cornwell of South Africa's Institute for Security Studies say UNITA quickly became overextended. But Mr. Cornwell predicts the rebels will eventually revert to traditional, guerrilla-style warfare -- something he says they can wage indefinitely.

“At the moment, their (UNITA's) supplies are overextended to a degree because of the conventional warfare they've been waging. But when they fall back into a guerrilla mode, as they must do if they want to fight a protracted war because they're not interested in taking major cities, major centers of population, what they're interested in is bringing the government to its knees or at least to have it crawl on its knees to the negotiating table, if they go back to a guerrilla war, they can sustain it indefinitely.”

Despite this, the government says it is intent on destroying what officials call UNITA's "war machine." They say rebel leader Jonas Savimbi deceived the Angolan people and the international community by using the peace process to rearm. They say he doesn't deserves a second chance to sit at the bargaining table.

President Dos Santos calls it "the final battle for peace." A top aide predicts it will not be too long before the war is over. In the meantime, people living on the front lines in places like Cuito are just hoping to survive.

Angola: A Massacre to Remember

The 1999 US State Department report on human rights abuses in Angola noted in just 24 words a massacre of civilians that was carried out in late December (1998) by UNITA rebels. It happened on the outskirts of the embattled Central Highlands city of Cuito. I went to the rail yard at Cunje where the slaughter occurred and spoke with a survivor of the incident.

As he speaks, the elderly man in tattered clothes clutches nervously at a faded leather cap with a bullet hole through it. It is a vivid symbol of just how close he came to death in late December when UNITA rebels attacked and occupied the town of Cunje, just five-kilometers outside Cuito.

The old man recalls how he and other residents of the town who did not flee the rebel advance took shelter in a derelict railway maintenance facility as Cunje was being bombarded by UNITA. The shelling attack lasted through the night.

In the morning, rebel soldiers moved in and discovered the hidden civilians. An interpreter picks up the man's story of what happened when the people tried to tell the rebels they were just innocent civilians hoping to save themselves.

“They were saying we are just people, we are just the people. We are not doing anything here. We are just hiding and they (rebels) said, no, what you are doing here is giving up your life. And they (rebels) took grenades and started throwing the grenades inside of the hole (maintenance pit) where they were hiding.”

After the explosions, the man says the rebels opened fire with automatic weapons. He says many died in the massacre. UN human rights investigators say at least 25 people were killed and four times that many were wounded.

The old man fled as the shooting began. That is when he had his next narrow escape from death. Again, an interpreter relates his story.

“He hid underneath one of the train wagons, like the one over there. And he managed to get out on the other side and one of the shots came right through his hat. He said, that shot which could have killed me, but instead it went through my hat and did not kill me and that is how I escaped...”

The old man spent the rest of the day hidden inside the boiler of an abandoned locomotive, emerging after dark to make good his escape -- after first going back to pick up his cap and a bag of ground maize he had dropped during the shooting.

Cunje is now back in the hands of government troops, who have pushed the rebels out of shelling range of Cuito.

But the old man, when asked if he feels secure, gives a resounding 'no'. He says he is always afraid, always afraid.

The man's name is known to me. It is being withheld to protect him against possible reprisals, should UNITA retake the town in what has become a back-and-forth, fluid war. His story has been corroborated by another survivor of the attack who showed this reporter the scarred shoulder wound he received from a rebel bullet in the same bloody incident.

Note: Human Rights Watch referred to this report. See http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/angola/Angl998-06.htm The HRW study says, in part: “In December UNITA military forces briefly occupied the town of Cunje and killed twenty-five civilians; many more who were wounded took refuge in the town's train station.80 Alex Belida, an American journalist, interviewed an elderly man who was a survivor of the massacre.”

The UN Mandate In Angola Expires Amid Accusations of Corruption

The expiration of the UN peacekeeping mandate in Angola came on February 26th, 1999. It was accompanied by a litany of accusations over who was to blame for the breakdown of the 1994 peace agreement brokered by UN mediators. I was in Luanda, the Angolan capital, and reported on one of the more troubling claims.

Angolan authorities have publicly criticized the UN mission, accusing it of ineffectiveness and partiality toward the UNITA rebel movement. Privately, they have taken an even harsher line -- claiming some of the multinational troops and police sent in to monitor UNITA's demilitarization were also corrupt.

Such allegations have been circulating for weeks throughout southern Africa. Respected analysts like Richard Cornwell of the Institute for Security Studies outside Johannesburg, South Africa, mentioned the suspicions in a recent interview when asked to assess the UN's track record in Angola.

“One begins to wonder whether certain people in the United Nations system weren't indeed paid to look the other way.”

African sources, speaking on condition of strict anonymity, have charged that senior-ranking UN military officers as well as groups of military observers deployed in Angola took pay-offs from UNITA in the form of diamonds and other valuable commodities.

In return, they say, UNITA was allegedly allowed to sneak in arms, ammunition and other military equipment in violation of its demilitarization commitments under Angola's 1994 peace agreement.

UN officials acknowledge there were some minor incidents of impropriety, including smuggling for personal gain and one case in which a low-level employee was repatriated. But none of the more serious allegations has been substantiated.

Overall, the United Nations vehemently denies suggestions that the credibility of the peacekeeping mission was undermined in any way by collusion-for-profit withUNITA.

Other sources close to the peace process over the years say the problems that marred the mission were not cases of UN malfeasance but instead cases of UNITA duplicity. They note UN monitors in the field were often physically prevented by UNITA from carrying out inspections. In other cases, the rebels actively deceived UN officials.

A UNITA defector recalled in an interview with Angolan state television last month instances where the rebels used grass to camouflage the tracks of their armored vehicles in areas visited by UN teams. He also recalled occasions when UNITA headquarters dispatched a light plane to the location of his unit to give advance warning of impending UN patrols.

Diplomats also point out the areas that needed to be monitored for UNITA violations were so vast and often so remote that it was not surprising the rebels were able to mask their arms and troop build-up.

Analysts are not surprised by the claims of UN corruption along with various other rumors and conspiracy theories now circulating in and around Angola. They attribute these to what they see as an almost natural form of anger and bitterness that has accompanied the breakdown of the peace process and the resumption of fighting.

The UN Mission In Angola Runs Out Of Time

The United Nations began winding up a decade-old military presence in Angola in February 1999 as the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in the southwest African country expired. I was again in the Angolan capital, Luanda, and had this assessment.

The effort in Angola has cost 1.5 billion dollars and at one time numbered seven-thousand soldiers, police, and civilian personnel -- the largest UN peacekeeping effort in the world.

But with civil war once again raging in Angola, time has finally run out for a controversial mission that failed to win the confidence of the government and the cooperation of the UNITA rebel movement. Critics are already charging it is another abysmal UN failure in Africa -- like the peacekeeping mission driven out of Somalia by rival warlords and the one in Rwanda that failed to prevent the genocide of up to a million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

But Issa Siallo, the UN Special Envoy in Angola, takes issue with such criticism. In an interview in Luanda, he tells me the 1994 peace agreement mediated by the United Nations brought Angola four years of relative calm -- more than the country has enjoyed at any time during the past three decades. He says while the foundations for a lasting peace have been set down, the real problem remains a lack of genuine support from the government and UNITA.

“One element -- which is a key element -- is missing so far: the political will of the Angolan authorities. If this political will is not on the table, there is nothing anyone can do for them because what we have done is to help them, to assist them. Now, can they show us this political will? This is what we consider as a challenge to them.”

But the government of Angola says the United Nations is to blame for the resumption of fighting and the breakdown of the peace effort. President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos has repeatedly accused UN officials of bias in favor of the rebel side. In a sternly-worded speech to diplomats last month in Luanda, Mr. Dos Santos said it was the government side that was always ordered to make concessions, while UNITA -- in his words – was continually shown tolerance and understanding and given the benefit of doubt, as if it were a victim.

UNITA has also accused the UN of partiality -- even though, unlike President Dos Santos, rebel leader Jonas Savimbi now says he favors a continued peacekeeping presence.

Most observers -- as well as the United Nations -- say UNITA and Mr. Savimbi are largely to blame for the breakdown of the peace process in Angola. They say the rebels never honored their pledge to demilitarize and turn over territory under their control to the government in Luanda. Instead, UNITA rebuilt its forces to such an extent that they surprised government troops when hostilities resumed late last year.

Many analysts say the United Nations shares the blame because it never devoted sufficient resources to enforce the agreements it hoped would restore peace to Angola. Richard Cornwell is with the Institute for Security Studies outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

“Even when the elections were being held in 1992, the United Nations monitors went in with an insufficient mandate and insufficient people to do, actually do, a serious job, which left the way open for Savimbi to cry foul and say that the election had been stolen from him. Then when it came to monitoring the Lusaka peace accords in 1994, the United Nations again went in with too weak a mandate, too small a force and evidently without the desire to be serious about what it was doing.”

UN officials and diplomats involved in the peace process admit mistakes were made. In an effort to keep the process alive, they often looked the other way -- choosing to focus, for example, on UNITA's talk of peace instead of its preparations for war. They concede it might have been better had the peacekeeping effort been tougher -- with more intrusive inspections and air surveillance to ensure compliance with the demilitarization aspects of Angola's 1994 peace pact.

As a result, some analysts are calling for a serious UN review of its global peacekeeping methodologies. In the meantime, the mission in Angola will be winding down. UN officials say they hope to repatriate the last one-thousand police and military observers by late March and to physically close down the entire peacekeeping operation during the next four-to-six months.

Angola and Zambia: At Loggerheads Again Over Supplying UNITA

In February 1999, Angola and Zambia were once again at loggerheads over allegations that the UNITA rebel movement was receiving critical supplies, including weapons and ammunition, through Zambian territory. Even then-President Nelson Mandela of South Africa got involved.

The contrast could not be sharper. Zambia's state-controlled dailies were trumpeting praise for President Frederick Chiluba from the US State Department over Mr. Chiluba's role as a mediator in the Congo-Kinshasa crisis.

But the independent "Post" newspaper in Lusaka was at the same time casting the Zambian leader in an altogether different light. It published a front-page report linking Mr. Chiluba -- along with other senior government officials -- to Illegal arms sales to Angola's UNITA rebels.

Zambia's alleged role in UNITA's clandestine supply network has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks, with Angolan authorities asserting they have conclusive proof of a Zambian role. Angola's official news media have even named names -- not Mr. Chiluba's.

But one of the president's sons has been linked to a company allegedly involved in the illegal shipment of supplies to UNITA along with Zambia's Vice President. The Vice President, Christon Tembo, declined to comment on the Angolan allegations.

But another of those named by Angola denounced the charges. Current Zambian Energy Minister and former Defense Minister Ben Mwila called the allegations false. He denied longstanding claims that he was related to UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi and that he lost his defense ministry job because of his involvement in gun-running for the Angolan rebels.

Zambia says it is investigating the latest Angolan allegations and will comment on them at the appropriate time. But in the meantime, Vice President Tembo has urged journalists to independently probe the claims of Zambian involvement in illicit dealings with UNITA.

The "Post" newspaper says diplomatic and Zambian government sources it has spoken to have linked President Chiluba, the Vice President, minister Mwila and others to the supply network. It gives few details in its report but says an Angolan-born South African businessman who was recently deported from Zambia was a key link between Zambian officials and UNITA.

The newspaper reports a shop owned by the businessman near Zambia's border with Angola was attacked last month by armed men who the "post" says were believed to be supporters of Angola's ruling MPLA party.

Last year, Angolan authorities threatened to invade Zambia to cut off the flow of supplies to UNITA coming from Zambian territory. The threat still hangs over Zambia this year. Angola's new Defense Minister (Kundi Paihama) this month said African countries assisting UNITA should be careful. He said Angola was no invader, nor did it have expansionist ambitions. But he said it had a right to defend its dignity.

"This is a friendly warning," the Angolan official said.

Angola has proved it is willing to invade a neighboring country in defense of what it sees as its own interests. In recent years, Angolan troops have entered both Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville to help oust leaders the government in Luanda considered pro-UNITA.

At about the same time in February 1999, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa put his prestige on the line once again in accepting assurances by Zambian leader Frederick Chiluba that he was not involved in gun-running to UNITA.

Maybe he was just being diplomatic. But analysts say Mr. Mandela may have made a big mistake in publicly accepting the Zambian President's assurances and by promising to forward those assurances to the Angolan government. The South African leader announced his decision after talks with Mr. Chiluba in Cape Town. He spoke to reporters as the Zambian president stood by his side.

“The accusation by Angola, by the government of Angola, that my president here (Chiluba) is helping UNITA in the civil war, he has given me the assurance that is not correct. We have taken a decision which we are going to convey to President Dos Santos of Angola.”

Analysts say that in their private talks, Mr. Mandela may have taken a sterner line. South African officials were not available for comment on that possibility.

But the analysts believe there is compelling evidence that Zambian officials, possibly including Mr. Chiluba, have indeed been involved in supplying UNITA -- not necessarily as a matter of government policy but certainly for private profit.

A researcher with the Institute for Security Studies outside Johannesburg, Jakkie Potgieter, has just been in Zambia.

“Officially supplying UNITA might or might not be Zambian government policy. If one listens to what they say, it's not. But that does not deter any government official to do that in his private capacity and I think that is what the information at this stage tends to point at.”

Information gathered from several sources both in and outside of Zambia, some of it published by the Zambian news media, have identified companies allegedly involved in illegal trading with the Angolan rebels. Government officials and/or family members are alleged to have interests in these businesses.

What? Me No Gun-runner: Senior Zambian Official

In February 1999, the question of UNITA gun-running through Zambia resurfaced when a powerful Zambian government official accused of involvement in the rebels’ illegal support network denied the charges.

Zambian Energy Minister Ben Mwila has angrily rejected charges that he and the Zambian government are involved in illegal gun-running to Angola's UNITA rebels.

In an interview published by Zambia's independent "Post" newspaper, Mr. Mwila says Zambia helped broker Angola's 1994 peace agreement. “How can we be involved in gun-running?" he asks, challenging the Angolan government to produce tangible evidence linking Zambia to UNITA.

Both the "Post" and the state-controlled Zambian "Daily Mail" newspapers also carry reports about the abrupt cancellation of a scheduled news conference by a visiting Angolan delegation. Angolan sources are quoted as saying the group was to have revealed the names of people involved in supplying UNITA from Zambia. The reports say the news conference was called off after alleged intervention by Zambian authorities.

Angola has previously announced it had what a Luanda television broadcast described as "irrefutable proof" of Zambia's involvement in aiding UNITA. The broadcast identified Mr. Mwila, Zambia's former Defense Minister, as a key player in the rebels' support network in Zambia.

In the "Post" interview, Mr. Mwila denies he was moved from the Defense Ministry to the Energy Ministry because of such allegations. He also denies persistent reports that he is related to UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.

Despite his denials, independent researchers say Zambia is one of UNITA's last remaining supply links to the outside world, following the imposition of international sanctions against the rebel group. These sources say weapons, ammunition, diesel fuel, food and medical supplies pass through Zambia en route to UNITA-controlled territory inside Angola.

UNITA and the Angolan government late last year resumed their civil war following the breakdown of the 1994 peace agreement they signed in Lusaka, Zambia. UNITA claimed in a communique last week that it was seizing large quantities of military equipment in engagements with government forces.

In an apparent reference to reports about its foreign arms suppliers, it said the government of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos was, what it termed, "our main supplier of war material."

A No-Win Situation That May Only Be Resolved When Dos Santos and Savimbi Die

The conflict in Angola was often referred to as one of Africa's "forgotten wars." By 1999, fighting had gone on for so many years and so many efforts to halt it had proved futile that few people outside of Angola were bothering to pay much attention. It was in January 1999 that I traveled to what might be called a "forgotten city" to report on this "forgotten war."

In this more than three-decade-old forgotten war, there are a host of what are, essentially, forgotten cities -- places, outside of the Angolan capital, that never make headlines and whose residents' plights go all but unnoticed.

One such city is N'dalatando, about 200-kilometers east of Luanda. It is the government-held capital of Cuanza Norte Province.

To be truthful, it is not much of a city. Though some buildings look renovated, most still show signs of heavy battle damage from earlier bouts of Angola's civil war. Many structures remain roofless. A few are just collapsed piles of shattered concrete.

But people still live here -- about 100-thousand of them -- and their numbers have surged as fighting has spread in recent weeks between government soldiers and the UNITA rebels. More than 45-thousand additional people have sought sanctuary in N'dalatando after fleeing homes in the lush surrounding countryside.

One of them is 34-year-old Sebastiao Domingues. As UNITA forces moved into the area around his home in Bula Atumba 50-kilometers to the north in December (1998), he fled with his wife and four children. He says they had a good life on rich, productive farmland, but now all they own has been destroyed.

36-year-old Francisco Tomas Santos and his family had to abandon their farm north of N'dalatando to escape the fighting as well. He says it is not the first time they have had to flee because of war.

Looking tired and dejected, the two men say they just want peace. But asked when the fighting will ever end, Mr. Domingues says with a sigh, “only God knows.”

They and others live in a camp for displaced persons, a collection of mud-walled huts with straw roofs on the outskirts of N'dalatando. They say they feel safe here.

But there are indications their sense of security is not shared by local government officials and aid workers. Some foreign aid workers have been evacuated while those that remain no longer go more than a few kilometers outside the city limits for fear of ambush or attack. As for the government, its security forces are digging fresh bunkers and setting up sandbagged machine gun emplacements on the potholed main streets in anticipation of an assault by UNITA.

The presence of armed civilians at roadblocks suggests authorities are bolstering their defenses by once again passing out weapons to members of the general population.

The rebels held N'dalatando for two-years during the last phase of Angola's civil war. It occupies a strategic position on the road between Luanda and Malange city, which is currently under rebel attack. Thousands of Malange residents are passing through N'dalatando on ramshackle trucks and buses, making their way to the oceanside Angolan capital.

Similar displacements have taken place by the tens-of-thousands around Angola following the outbreak late last year (1998) of renewed fighting that has shattered a UN backed peace effort. The international community and the Angolan government blame UNITA for the breakdown, charging the rebels failed to honor their commitments under a 1994 peace agreement to disarm and demobilize.

Instead, the rebels appear to have used the last four-years to rebuild their forces, importing new tanks, armored personnel carriers and long-range artillery. All this despite international sanctions and the presence of UN peace monitors.

But diplomats and analysts say the fundamental problem in Angola remains the deep mistrust between the government and UNITA -- and an abiding rivalry between President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.

It is a no win situation which some analysts think may only be resolved when the two men die. Until then, though, the real losers will remain the forgotten people like those living in forgotten Angolan cities like N'dalatando.

The Sewer Kids of Luanda: It’s Not Just That They Are Ignored, They’re Not Even Noticed

Human suffering is an everyday occurrence in Angola. It is a country of seemingly endless war and boundless poverty where individual misery no longer comes as a great surprise. But in early 1999, I found some street children whose plight was truly shocking.

In the short half-light of an Angolan dawn, a bizarre apparition: a head pops up from a grimy drain hole along the curbside of a Luanda street, followed quickly by two arms. A young boy wearing a filthy t-shirt and tattered shorts hoists himself out of the hole and stands barefoot on the sidewalk, stretching and yawning.

As cars and trucks roar past, 13-year-old Osvaldo Mingo is followed by several other sleepy-looking young boys, all of whom emerge from the same drain hole.

These may be the most pathetic street children anywhere in Africa. They actually live in a section of the city's sewage system, emerging by day to scrounge through garbage cans for food or to scoop water from puddles to drink.

They say they wash cars to earn a bit of money and now and then residents of the neighborhood where they live give them something to eat. But people claim the boys sometimes steal.

Their clothing is torn and dirty and they quickly attract flies. Several of the boys have ugly open sores on their arms and legs. Some, apparently ill, cough deeply. They have few possessions and sleep on bits of cardboard. When it rains heavily, they are driven from their subterranean home by the waters that rise quickly in the garbage and dirt clogged sewage system.

It seems a miserable life -- barely a human life by any standard.

One of the boys, Pedro Laurenco, says he wants to leave but claims no one has offered to help him or the others get out of the sewers. He says a few people are occasionally startled to see them emerge from their hole but most passersby seem unmoved.

“People just simply stand next to the hole and watch [us] come out.”

Aid workers contend boys like these often prefer what they see as the freedom of the streets over the restrictions of life at home or in juvenile centers -- even if staying in the streets means exposure to death and disease.

The boys claim two youths who lived with them have been killed -- one struck by a vehicle as he emerged from the drain hole. They say the other died after being bit by a rabid dog.

It is impossible to verify the boys' stories. Ask them where they are from and most will say places like Huambo or Malange, two of Angola's latest embattled provincial capitals. They tell questioners their parents are either dead or sent them to Luanda for safety.

But social workers say many street kids in the capital often tell the same kind of story -- hoping for sympathy, whether from police or passing motorists and pedestrians. They admit they do not know these children, but suspect they may have run away from homes in Luanda or were abandoned.

Whatever the case, it is a shocking example of the extremes that typify life in present-day Angola, a country rich in natural resources but undeveloped and plagued by decades of civil war. The fruits of Angola's oil and diamond wealth are enjoyed by just a tiny minority. As for the rest, one Angolan relief official complains, their plight is not that they are just neglected or exploited. Like these sewer kids, sadly, they are often not even noticed.

One of the great news photographers and a wonderful traveling companion, Joao Silva, is pictured here along with a photo he took in Luanda of a begging naked child. Joao and New York Times reporter Donald McNeil were with me when we gathered the material for the story above on the sewer kids.

Angola: Beating Down the News Media

With fighting between government troops and rebels of the UNITA movement spreading around Angola, authorities appeared in early 1999 to be tightening their control over the news media. I was in the capital, Luanda, at the time and reported on the challenges of covering the conflict in Angola. Question of the day: how much have things changed since then?

Angolan authorities have warned journalists working for the country's few private news organizations not to publish or broadcast material that officials feel will incite the public against the government.

Angolan news organizations have been specifically warned not to incite young men to oppose the country's recently-ordered compulsory military draft registration. A letter containing the warning from the Minister of Social Communications and sent to various private publications and broadcasters says news organizations violating the country's laws could be shut down.

The tightening climate has also affected foreign journalists trying to report on the latest conflict in Angola. Officials have already ordered the expulsion of a Portuguese reporter because of an article claiming Cuban military advisors were in Angola. Both the Angolan and Cuban governments have denied the report.

Other foreign journalists have also experienced difficulties in trying to work. A South African photographer who wanted to take a picture of what might arguably be Luanda's most attractive building -- the renovated oceanside National Bank building -- was chased off by two submachine-gun toting guards. A man claiming to be a bank security officer then threatened to confiscate the photographer's cameras.

Outside Luanda, journalists -- both foreign and Angolan -- are also reporting problems. Some Angolan reporters based in the provinces claim they have been threatened by local authorities upset by stories they have filed. Foreign journalists have found provincial officials unwilling to be interviewed or to allow pictures to be taken in their cities -- not only about such potentially sensitive subjects as troops or police or security, but also about subjects related to humanitarian needs and the suffering of war victims.

The Portuguese publication whose reporter was expelled from Angola has complained such measures reveal what the publication charges is the Luanda government's authoritarian nature. Officials respond by saying they have legitimate security concerns at a time when the country is again at war.

But analysts say Angola's authorities are not above using disinformation to advance their cause. A government General was, for example, quoted recently as saying 14 people aboard a UN chartered aircraft -- apparently shot down over the embattled Central Highlands area -- were alive and in the hands of the UNITA rebels. However UN investigators discovered when they finally reached the crash site days later that all aboard had been killed. UNITA accused the government of seeking political advantage with its original claim.

As a result, all government reports about the latest fighting are being treated with caution by journalists.

For its part, UNITA's only real contacts with reporters are by satellite telephone. Not only are journalists unable to determine the accuracy of the rebels' war statements, unless they recognize a voice, they can never be sure who they are actually talking to. They also remain uncertain about exactly where that person is located -- no matter what the UNITA representative claims.

Unfortunately, independent reports on the war are difficult to come by because access to battle zones on either side is generally impossible. Most foreign reporters rely on United Nations relief agencies or other humanitarian groups for flights or ground transportation to areas where fighting is taking place. But aid organizations routinely stop traveling to destinations where combat is a risk.

Feeling the Blues in N’dalatando

With Angola's UNITA rebels regularly shelling the city of Malange in recent days, thousands of city residents have been fleeing in the direction of Luanda, the country's capital. In January 1999, I ventured out on the road between Luanda and Malange and had this report.

The town of N'dalatando is about 180-kilometers west of Malange and lies about half-way between that embattled city and the Angolan capital, Luanda.

These days it is a bustling transit point, where trucks and buses laden with exhausted-looking refugees from Malange stop briefly before heading to the capital along the badly-potholed road.

Local officials say although N'dalatando suffered badly in past episodes of Angola's long-running civil war, it is reasonably quiet these days from a security standpoint and its 100-thousand residents are essentially safe.

But government forces appear to be bracing for possible trouble -- perhaps from an extension of the fighting around Malange or from UNITA forces known to occupy positions just 50-kilometers to the north, near the town of Bula Atumba. There are freshly-dug bunkers and newly-erected machine gun emplacements scattered about the main streets. Soldiers and police are visible everywhere. Even armed men in civilian clothes were seen by reporters passing through roadblocks outside N'dalatando.

Aid workers are no longer allowed to leave town for security reasons and so-called non-essential personnel from the United Nations and its agencies have been evacuated.

Aircraft landing at N'dalatando's dirt strip now spiral in from high altitude to limit their exposure to possible rebel anti-aircraft fire.

Although aid workers say most refugees from Malange are headed for Luanda, about 45-thousand displaced Angolans are currently living in N'dalatando, at least temporarily. They are receiving assistance from the World Food Program and other groups.

But many have arrived dangerously weakened from their often lengthy and arduous escapes on foot from the nearby fighting. As reporters met with one group of these displaced on the outskirts of N'dalatando, a father made a rough coffin for his seven-month-old daughter. She had just died of malnutrition.

In Angola, Misery Is A Way of Life

In January 1999, I was back in Angola where I found the human suffering brought on by renewed fighting wasn't just limited to the victims of the combat actually taking place in the Central Highlands and other parts of the Angolan interior. What I found was that misery had become a way of life for many in the oceanside capital, Luanda -- and residents there expected their lives to worsen.

On the surface, there doesn't appear to be any great panic in Luanda over the civil war that has erupted once again in the Angolan countryside. But there is an underlying sense of nervousness, as residents of this seemingly secure but squalid and overcrowded coastal capital brace for the increased hardships inevitably accompanying another round of fighting between government troops and rebels of the UNITA movement.

A 33-year-old man, a heavy machinery operator trained in Europe but with no steady employment, bemoans the fact that Angola has been at war virtually all of his life. The man, who asked not to be identified, says he feels tired, psychologically exhausted. He says war is not the answer to Angola's problems. He says he, his wife and their three young children already live in what he calls "dog-like" conditions and often go hungry while he looks for odd jobs. He fully expects their lives will worsen.

Life is not easy for many of the three-point-five million other people estimated by government officials to live in Luanda -- a city they say was intended to hold no more than 600-thousand. That number of three-point-five million is about a third of the entire Angolan national population. Aid workers say the number is likely to increase as more people flee to Luanda to escape the turmoil in outlying areas. Many now live in miserable squatter camps built on dangerously sloping hillsides overlooking the harbor.

There are also an increasing number of street children roaming Luanda, many of them orphans whose parents have been victims of war. They can be seen throughout the city picking through piles of garbage, looking for something to eat.

In addition, there are the hapless crippled victims of past fighting, hobbling through the dirty streets, often on makeshift crutches, begging for hand-outs of food or money.

In his new year's address to the nation, President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos expressed hope for a more prosperous year for Angolans in 1999. But analysts say lower world prices for Angola's major export, oil, along with the diversion of increasing amounts of government money for defense expenses means living conditions for most Angolans are unlikely to improve anytime soon.

A Struggle Between “the Unpalatable and the Unacceptable”

Analysts were not altogether surprised by Angola's descent into renewed civil war. Richard Cornwell of South Africa's independent Institute for Security Studies said in late 1998 that the conflicting ambitions of President Dos Santos and UNITA leader Savimbi had long spelled trouble for the country:

“Sometimes one comes to doubt the sanity of the people involved. Rational choice does not appear to be in it. President Dos Santos obviously has his own interests in retaining power. He's saddled the tiger, he can't get off. There are all kinds of rumors about the amounts of money that are being made at the Presidential Palace by skimming the oil revenues. For his part, Jonas Savimbi has made it quite clear that he is not interested in material gain, [but] he is interested in being President of Angola. So there you have got the stand-off. It is between the unpalatable and the unacceptable.”

As the violence in Angola mounted during 1998, the prospects for a new humanitarian disaster grew. By year's end, relief workers were reporting hundreds of thousands of Angolans had been forced from their homes by the latest fighting and were in need of assistance.

Angolan Government Attacks and UNITA Counter-attacks

In December 1998, heavy fighting erupted in Angola's Central Highlands between government troops and UNITA rebels, raising the prospect of renewed civil war throughout the battle-scarred country. Having just completed a visit to Angola, I had this assessment.

Just a little more than four-years ago, UNITA and the Angolan government signed a peace agreement in Zambia to end two decades of bloody civil war.

Under the provisions of what is known as the Lusaka Protocol, the rebel movement was to have demilitarized completely -- demobilizing and disarming all its soldiers. It was also supposed to turn over all territory under its control to central government authorities.

In return, UNITA officials were to be integrated into the national government and armed forces.

But UNITA, while talking of its commitment to the peace process, never fully trusted the government in Luanda. And, as a result, it never complied with all of its obligations.

The United Nations and foreign diplomats overseeing the peace process complained repeatedly, eventually imposing an array of sanctions against UNITA in a bid to force its compliance. But it was to no avail.

UNITA kept a hidden army of about 30-thousand men and continued to purchase modern weapons, circumventing international sanctions to sell diamonds for arms. It also continued to hold onto several areas, including its twin strongholds of Andulo and Bailundo in Angola's Central Highlands.

Frustrated Angolan officials earlier this year decided enough was enough. They cut off all contacts with UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, prevented the UN Special Envoy in Angola from meeting the rebel chief, and recognized a breakaway UNITA faction based in Luanda.

They also eventually decided to stage a surprise attack against Andulo and Bailundo with the aim of capturing or killing Mr. Savimbi and his top aides. Calling the UNITA leader a man who knows only how to kill, destroy, and divide, Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos said this month the only way to deal with Mr. Savimbi was to neutralize him, politically and militarily.

But the government's effort to wipe out UNITA has backfired. Well-equipped UNITA forces not only repelled the government's assaults on Andulo and Bailundo, they counter-attacked.

In recent days UNITA troops in the Central Highlands have besieged the key government-held town of Cuito and threatened the nearby government-held town of Huambo.

The fighting has once again created a humanitarian nightmare in Angola -- with tens of thousands of Angolans forced from their homes and in need of relief aid.

The United Nations has all but said it can do nothing to stop the renewed warfare, saying its peacekeeping mission in Angola, now numbering fewer than 700 soldiers, is simply too small.

It is not clear what will happen next. Even before the latest fighting, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the prospects for reviving the peace process in Angola were bleak.

UNITA says it is willing to consider fresh negotiations. But the government side, having already severed contacts with Mr. Savimbi, has not bothered to respond to the offer.

On the military side, the situation seems equally uncertain. No one believes UNITA has the military strength to take control of the entire country. On the other hand, it appears the government does not have the capability to wipe out UNITA -- unless it can draw in troops from other countries to help. Authorities in Luanda are understood to have discussed that prospect with other countries in the region, but their responses are so far not known.

Blood Diamonds Are The Rebels’ Best Friend

A resumption of heavy fighting in Angola in late 1998 between government forces and UNITA focused fresh attention on how the rebel group managed to obtain sophisticated weapons despite international sanctions aimed at forcing its demilitarization. As I reported at the time, a London-based human rights organization said diamonds had proved to be UNITA's best friend.

The investigative human rights group Global Witness says UNITA has continued to sell diamonds on the world market despite United Nations sanctions aimed at blocking such trade. It charges the failure of UN member states and the diamond industry to fully implement these sanctions has allowed UNITA to rearm. The group says this has fatally undermined the Angolan peace process.

In a report released as heavy fighting resumed in Angola's Central Highlands area, global witness claims its investigations have revealed that significant diamond exports still take place, mainly by air and in small quantities, through neighboring countries like Zambia.

The human rights group says most of the diamonds are sold in Belgium, a key world diamond market. It says UNITA has earned an estimated three-point-seven-billion dollars from its diamond sales since 1992.

Global Witness says there is what it calls an urgent need for the diamond industry to change the way in which it works. It says it is unacceptable for diamonds to be used as a major source of revenue in a conflict and asks how many people, when buying a diamond for a loved one, have any idea of what it calls the horrific price Angolans have had to pay.

Global Witness calls on all UN member states to rigorously enforce the sanctions against UNITA. It says the diamond industry also should tighten its controls to prevent trading in UNITA-sourced gemstones.

The United Nations has imposed various sanctions against UNITA in an effort to force its compliance with the 1994 peace agreement signed in Lusaka, Zambia that ended two decades of civil war. Under the terms of that agreement, the rebel group was to have handed over all its weapons and demobilized all its soldiers.

However security experts say UNITA kept most of its best and most modern arms and retained an army estimated in size at 30-thousand men. Experts say UNITA also has purchased new arms, including long-range artillery, tanks and missiles.

UN officials have decried the resumption of fighting in Angola. But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said there is little the world body can do because of the relatively small, one thousand-person size of its peacekeeping mission in the country.

South Africa has called on both the Angolan government and UNITA to seek a negotiated settlement to the conflict, saying there can be no military solution.

In the meantime, the human rights group Amnesty International has appealed to both sides to avoid what it calls the deliberate and arbitrary killings of unarmed people.

Angola: Displaced, Burned Out Then Flooded

In Angola in November 1998, new raids by suspected UNITA rebels once again triggered a mass exodus of frightened people, fleeing their homes in threatened areas to seek safety and assistance in parts of the country under government control. I reported on the plight of some these latest displaced.

Anyone in doubt of just how close the latest fighting in Angola has come to the capital, Luanda, does not have to travel far to see the evidence.

Caxito lies just some 55 kilometers northeast of Luanda. There, on the outskirts of town, nearly 20-thousand refugees have gathered in a crude camp known as Cambambe. Another four-thousand are on their way down the road to Cambabme by foot, fleeing insecurity further north. Relief officials say they are expected any day now.

It is a fairly small plot of low-lying land close to the banks of the Dande river. With Angola's seasonal rains underway, Cambambe has become a muddy, disease-ridden swamp where everything is wet and dirty.

Ironically, some three-thousand of these refugees lost what little they had when a fire swept through their crude shelters during the dry season just a month ago. Local authorities and relief workers are now trying to move these displaced victims of the latest phase of the Angolan conflict to a new camp on higher ground at a nearby abandoned sugar plantation. Trucks are already moving the ones living in the most flooded areas.

But Maria Flynn, a spokeswoman for the UN World Food Program, says many are reluctant to go.

“First, they were burned out and now they are being flooded out. And, of course, they like to keep together with their relatives and friends and so on, so they are reluctant to move to another place. But as you can see around you, this is pretty soon going to be a lagoon.”

The WFP hopes the refugees will eventually be able to raise crops at their new location. But for the time being, these displaced Angolans need help. The WFP is feeding all of them. A private relief group called "Inter-SOS" is providing medical assistance.

Dr. Clara Frasson of Inter-SOS says that what she calls a vicious cycle of malnutrition and sickness is taking a toll among the hapless residents of Cambambe, especially among the youngest children. Still, speaking through an interpreter, she says they are, in a bizarre way, the lucky ones.

“The ones who managed to arrive here are the ones who managed to survive. There were people that were killed back there, there were people that died along the way...”

More than a quarter million Angolans like these have been displaced by fighting in recent months. With more incidents reported nearly everyday around the country, it seems unlikely that they will be going back to their homes anytime soon.