Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: The Disinformation War Escalates: Biowarfare and Kidnapping Targeting UNITA?

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Disinformation War Escalates: Biowarfare and Kidnapping Targeting UNITA?

In November 1999 came shocking news from Angola: authorities there were allegedly considering the use of biological agents against fugitive UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. But as I quickly learned, regional analysts suspected the purported secret plan was just part of an ongoing Angolan misinformation effort.

With accurate information about the fighting in Angola virtually impossible to obtain, foreign and domestic observers of the civil war are being inundated with statements and documents related to the civil war that cannot be independently confirmed.

Perhaps the most shocking piece of such unconfirmed information has just emerged. It is a purported secret document suggesting the Angolan military might use air-dropped biological agents such as smallpox against fugitive UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi once his hiding place has been pinpointed.

The document, now circulating among Western diplomats, is said to be from the Operational Command of Angola's Secret Services.

But analysts familiar with the plan say they do not believe it represents a genuine military option. Instead, they say it appears to be part of a continuing government misinformation campaign designed to instill fear among UNITA troops and supporters inside Angola.

It is one of several purportedly secret Angolan documents now in Western hands. Among the others is an alleged authorization to government troops to cross into Zambia in hot pursuit of rebel leader Savimbi.

Yet another is an order to Angolan embassies in Europe and Africa sanctioning the abduction of senior UNITA representatives.

A UNITA official in Brussels recently claimed the abduction plan was already being implemented. He pointed to what he described as the kidnapping of a son of rebel leader Savimbi from Togo to Luanda. The son went before journalists in the Angolan capital and denounced his father.

But UNITA claims the youth's accusations were "lies" forced on him by Angolan authorities.

The war in Angola intensified in September when government troops launched their latest offensive against the rebels. Since then, UNITA has been driven out of its traditional strongholds in the country's Central Highlands.

Angola's army chief of staff said this week soldiers are tracking rebel leader Savimbi and suggested his death or capture could be imminent.

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Disinformation War Escalates: Biowarfare and Kidnapping Targeting UNITA?

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