Dateline ACT

Angola 03/02

Making peace work: Churches confront post-war Angola's humanitarian crisis

Luanda, Angola, July 10, 2002
Paul Jeffrey

Members of Action by Churches Together (ACT), the Geneva-based international alliance of churches and church agencies responding to emergencies, believe the victims of lengthy conflict shouldn’t have to wait any longer to receive assistance, and have been working to assist Angolans struggling to make peace meaningful.

Four million people - almost a third of the country’s population - are currently displaced by the conflict, according to aid officials. More than 400,000 of the displaced are living in camps. The most recent arrivals, who fled fierce fighting during the final months of the war, are in desperate condition, aid agencies report. Cut off from the rest of the country as long as the fighting continued, their emergence has shocked even aid workers accustomed to Angola’s brutal poverty. "Many of these people are barely alive," said Lisa Grande, Angola director of the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The UN considers Angola the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, with as many as three million people receiving emergency assistance. In addition to those displaced internally, some 470,000 Angolan refugees live outside the country, mostly in Zambia, Namibia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The war had its roots in the struggle to control Angola following an end to colonial rule by Portugal in 1975. Three major liberation movements fought for control of the country. Yet Angola soon became a battleground in the Cold War, with Cuba and the Soviet Union backing the new government while the U.S. and South Africa backed the main rebel group, UNITA, headed by Jonas Savimbi.

With an end to the Cold War, the Angolan conflict was interrupted twice by cease-fire agreements during the 1990s. Yet global business kept the fighting going by buying petroleum from the government and diamonds from UNITA. A U.N.-sponsored embargo of UNITA finally crippled the rebel army financially, and the government turned on the heat militarily, effectively decimating UNITA but forcing the displacement of thousands of civilians who were in the way of war. While controversial, the government’s policy worked, and Savimbi was killed in February near the eastern town of Luena.

Savimbi’s death led to an April cease-fire between the government army and UNITA’s remaining military commanders. By June, some 84,000 UNITA troops, along with a quarter million family member, had moved into 34 demobilization camps around the country. Some 5,000 of the former combatants will be absorbed into the country’s military; the remainder will supposedly return to civilian life.

The rainy season begins in September, yet only a few of the displaced are expected to try returning home in time to plant their fields for the next year. Most of the former soldiers and the displaced families–especially those most recently arrived–are too weak to travel, having survived for years in the bush, feeding only on roots, herbs, and wild animals. Many had their fields and houses burned to force them to leave. Some will come home to fields that are now occupied by others. Millions of landmines, no one knows exactly how many, are seeded along paths and roads and around wells.

International assistance for the victims of Angola’s civil war has been slow to materialize in the wake of the April cease-fire, with donor nations arguing that Angola’s oil-rich and corruption-plagued government should pay more of the bill for caring for and relocating people. Angola’s leaders claim they mortgaged future oil receipts to pay for the war, and argue that world superpowers - who used Angola as a battleground during the Cold War - have a moral responsibility to help repair the damage.

In the eastern provinces of Moxico and Lunda Sul, where the war’s end game was fought with brutal consequences, The Lutheran World Federation (LWF)/ACT is working in five demobilization camps, assisting the families of 3,000 former UNITA combatants.

In 15 camps for the displaced, LWF/ACT is providing food and other assistance to 15,000 families. The UN’s Grande considers the organization’s work in the camps to be a model. "LWF/ACT runs the best displaced camps I’ve seen anywhere in the world," she said.

LWF/ACT works closely with the Mines Advisory Group, which is clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance from key roads and paths in the region. As soon as routes into rural communities are safe to travel, Luena-based LWF/ACT staff are carrying out assessments of what’s needed to save the lives of victims and make return home possible.

Once it is relatively safe, LWF/ACT will provide a variety of assistance to returning families, including seeds and tools for planting, plastic sheeting for housing, wells and pumps for drinking water, rehabilitation of schools and clinics, and additional training for community health promoters.

LWF/ACT will also assist refugees returning through Moxico, and in coming days will open offices in Luau near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Cazombo on the border with Zambia.

Reconstructing war-torn Angola is more than just material assistance, however, and LWF/ACT is carrying out a variety of activities to help build a lasting peace. Child protection workers are being trained to protect the welfare of orphaned and traumatized children. Soccer balls and organized games are providing laughter where it has long been absent.

LWF/ACT is making it possible for local pastors and church leaders in the war-torn eastern provinces to be trained by the UN as human rights counselors, and seminars on peace and reconciliation are planned in cooperation with local church leaders and traditional village authorities. LWF/ACT is also supporting the work of the Interchurch Committee for Peace in Angola, an ecumenical group seeking to provide Angola’s churches with participation in the national debate about Angola’s post-war future.

"It’s much easier to distribute food and blankets, but this work of building peace and reconciliation is extremely important. One of the reasons that past cease-fires didn’t succeed was that no one was speaking up about human rights violations," said Carl von Seth, the LWF/ACT representative in Angola.