The Forgotten War

By SCOTT MACLEOD MALANJE

PITY ANGOLA. UNLIKE SOMALIA OR Bosnia, tragedies that high-profile diplomacy, front-page headlines and vivid television footage have kept center stage, the plight of southern Africa's most fought-over country has gone all but unnoticed by a disaster-fatigued world. But whether the world is watching or not, an 18-year-old civil war that has become bloodier than ever in the past 12 months threatens to make Angola Africa's latest horror zone.

Nobody understands Angola's ranking on the distress scale better than Dr. Joaquim Neho, director of the hospital in Malanje, one of five inland cities under siege for the past year. His wards are filled with the pathetic detritus of conflict and famine, and the staff -- all of two doctors -- is overwhelmed. Ten children a day are succumbing to malnutrition and disease; for lack of beds, the dying lie on unscrubbed floors. Parents feed toddlers watery porridge. A skeleton-thin infant with bulging eyes silently gasps for milk from her mother's wilted breast.

The trauma ward too is overflowing. Dozens of civilians are being killed or maimed every day in land-mine explosions as they scour the countryside for sustenance. The mutilados, as the amputees are called, relive their nightmares every time the sound of mortar fire echoes across the city, but mostly they just wait. "We lack food, medicine, beds, mattresses and linen," says Neho. "I appeal to anybody in a position of authority to help."

Compounding Angola's tragedy, which threatens as many as 3 million lives, is the loss of hope: a year ago, Neho and millions of others were queuing at voting stations, thrilled by the prospect of peace. The first free elections, held under U.N. auspices, were designed to end the war between the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, once backed by the Soviet Union and now recognized by the U.S., and Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the UNITA rebel movement. Savimbi refused to accept the government's 129-to-91-seat election victory and plunged Angola back into ferocious conflict that has so far claimed an additional 100,000 lives.

Last week there was some cause for hope when the government in Luanda agreed to resume peace talks in response to a UNITA announcement that it was ready to accept last year's election results. But the rebel movement, which will be hit next month by U.N. sanctions that include a freezing of its global assets and the expulsion of its diplomats from world capitals, has yet to demonstrate its bona fides by relinquishing its hold over 65% of the country, a territorial concession demanded by the government as a precondition for peace.

The renewed fighting has turned into Frankenstein's monster running amuck, largely beyond the control of its original superpower sponsors. The West, which for years backed Savimbi, overtly and covertly, as an anticommunist African democrat, finds itself with little leverage over a rogue warlord whose control of Angola's diamond deposits could enable him to finance his operations indefinitely. Backed by oil revenues of $3 billion a year, the government too has looked determined to fight to the finish. Thus, unless this week's developments lead to a lasting truce, the worst is perhaps still to come. In the countryside, the fighting has disrupted the planting season, and without a harvest in early 1994, says World Food Program spokeswoman Mercedes Sayagues, deprivation could envelop all of Angola. Even Luanda, the capital, has not gone untouched. On its northern outskirts 10,000 refugees have pitched camp, and in Josina Machel hospital, the country's largest, scores of amputees lie in unlighted corridors.

If the outside world averts its gaze, one reason may be, or so relief workers believe, that with the cold war over, Angola no longer has strategic value. Another is that much of the country's misery is confined to small pockets of inaccessible territory. One such pocket is Malanje, 330 km east of Luanda and one of the largest provincial capitals. Despite a population of 250,000, swollen by the arrival of 50,000 refugees during the past year, it remains a ghost town. At a government health office, 100 children, mostly orphans, beg for meals. In a center run by nuns, men scuffle violently over food.

And relentlessly the refugee numbers increase. When two trucks with 200 more evacuees arrive, officials are close to despair. "These are the last we can receive," says Maria de Conceicao Araujo, who heads Malanje's social-welfare effort. "The local people don't have enough to eat." Yet Malanje is more fortunate than other enclaves. Kuito, the besieged capital of Bie province, has not seen one foreign aid delivery since January.

AS IN SOMALIA, SAYS ANA LIRIA Franch, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Angola, "the country's strong are eating its weak." In Malanje government employees steal and sell medical supplies intended for the hospital. Bandits have been making off with an estimated third of the U.N.'s food aid as soon as it hits the ports. There is profiteering in the refugee camps by local chiefs appointed as middlemen in the food-distribution chain. "Given the hardships of everyday life here, they don't see anything wrong with what they are doing," says a relief official.

Playing politics with food, both sides are blocking aid to rival regions. The U.N., many argue, must also share blame for the aid debacle. After one of its relief planes was hit by UNITA gunfire in Mbanza Congo in July, U.N. special representative Alioune Blondin Beye, arguing that the flights had become too dangerous, ordered a halt to further air deliveries. Levels of food aid to cities like Malanje plummeted. Some U.N. officials claim that Beye would rather spend his time negotiating an overall peace than haggling with the contending factions about which relief flights can land where.

Philippe Borel, the operations director for the U.N. World Food Program in Angola, has put his career on the line by discreetly underwriting aid flights chartered by private relief groups. "I don't want to criticize anybody," he says, "but we feel our mandate to help people is more important than politics." Borel says three times more food could be delivered if the U.N. ban were lifted.

But even if a truce comes and humanitarian aid resumes unhindered, the help will be too late for those trapped in the ravaged hinterland. At the Malanje hospital, Ernesto Antonio, 15, lies on tattered sheets stained with blood and urine. His legs have been amputated above the knee. "I stepped on a mine while I was looking for firewood in the fields," he explains. "My neighbor brought me here." Now Ernesto owns only the T shirt he received during last year's electoral campaign. It is emblazoned with the words O FUTURO CERTO, or "The Certain Future."