A Visit to Cabinda

For over 20 years, a sporadic insurrection by armed separatists created turmoil in Angola's Cabinda enclave, a small but oil-rich and economically important coastal territory, separated from the rest of Angola by a narrow strip of the former Zaire. I traveled to Cabinda City in May 1998 as the insurrection continued but found that fear of separatist activity had been matched by fear of the Angolan police and military.

In a small tailor shop in Cabinda City, two middle-aged seamstresses speak of their security concerns.

One says she won't travel outside the tattered town, into the lush countryside where the shadowy separatists of the Cabinda Liberation Front are known to operate. The other voices alarm over the behavior of troops stationed near her home to counter separatist attacks. She claims they steal from civilians.

Amnesty International charges government security personnel with doing far worse in the Cabinda enclave. A recent report accuses Angolan troops and police of killing and torturing unarmed civilians. It says the overall human rights situation in the enclave has deteriorated.

Angolan officials acknowledge political and military conditions in Cabinda are worrying. They recently announced plans to seek a negotiated peace settlement with the separatists.

But in an interview in which he voices concern over the situation in Cabinda, Portugal's Ambassador to Angola, Jose Duarte Ramahlo Ortigao, makes no mention of that peace effort. Of particular concern, he says, is the recent kidnapping of two Portuguese citizens working in the enclave. They are being held by suspected separatists.

Oil workers involved in massive drilling operations off the Cabinda coast also are wary of the separatists, who were blamed for a 1994 mortar attack on a large workers' compound near Cabinda City. Foreign employees are now essentially barred from travelling outside the heavily-guarded compound.

General Manager Larry Jostes explains. “We feel ourselves to be an economic target, and our people to be potential targets. we're very comfortable here inside the camp ... our ability to go out is very limited, because we just can't take the risk.”

While oil officials welcome the security provided by the Angolan military and police, aid workers -- speaking on condition of anonymity -- say they are suspicious of recent government activities. They say authorities have barred them from carrying out any assessments of humanitarian needs in Cabinda. They wonder why.

They are also suspicious of a recently-announced crackdown against illegal Congolese immigrants in the province. Aid workers believe this may be a cover-story for a crackdown against Cabinda's large proportion of separatist sympathizers -- a figure some estimate to be as high as 80 to 90 percent of the province's population of about 175-thousand people.