Angola
Angolan rebels defiant after Savimbi's death

Misanet.com / IPS, 25 February  - As expected, UNITA's first communiqués after the death of Jonas Savimbi were defiant and angry. "Anyone who thinks that the ideals of UNITA died with its leader is mistaken," said the movement as Savimbi's corpse was put on display in Lucusse, Moxico province. UNITA, according to its own propaganda, is "a cause", its cadres and combatants fighting for "justice, peace and reconciliation." 

But such rhetoric carries little weight outside UNITA's own ranks. To most observers, what remains of UNITA in the field is a pitiful rump. Over the past decade, a series of defections and desertions have confused the movement's internal structures. There is no obvious dauphin or successor to Savimbi. 

The trio under him, Secretary-General Paulo Lukamba Gato, Vice-President Antonio Dembo and Chief of Staff Gerldo Abreu ''Kamorteiro'' have all contributed years of service to the struggle. But rarely was a guerrilla movement so identified with one man and Savimbi's demise casts a huge shadow over UNITA's future. 

In the last UN report on "Monitoring Mechanisms on Sanctions against UNITA" released last year, the researchers concluded that: "there is no longer any civilian administrative UNITA organisation of importance in the country."

The state within a state, which Savimbi used to preside over, has collapsed with not a hint of the token services, in education and health for example, which UNITA once aspired to.

In 1993, UNITA held Huambo and three other provincial capitals, while laying siege to cities like Kuito, Luena, Malange and Menongue. But Huambo fell to the government in November 1994, just prior to the Lusaka peace agreement. The alternative capitals of Andulo and Bailundo were wrested back by government troops in 1999. 

In recent months, UNITA's main forces appear to have been concentrated in Moxico. As in the past, UNITA has taken advantage of Angola's vastness and damaged infrastructure, but the movement cannot hide forever. The old slogans, "the motherland or death" and "patriotism demands sacrifice" sound ever hollower. 

The Angolan government, with the help of increasingly supportive governments, particularly in North America and western Europe, has sought the destruction of UNITA as a political, military and economic entity. 

Luanda has extended an invitation to UNITA's rank-and-file "to reconsider their options and reintegrate themselves into Angolan society, so as to contribute to the consolidation of democracy and national reconciliation."

But the government will only deal with a neutered UNITA. There will be no posthumous rehabilitation of Savimbi. It is difficult to imagine the UN mending fences frantically as it tries to persuade Gato to take on the vice-presidency of the country, as happened with Savimbi in the mid-1990s. 

Politically, UNITA looks extremely weak. Gato has often been identified in the past as a hawk, intensely suspicious of any rapprochement with the government. Dembo supposedly had strong support in UNITA's northern bases in Uige and Zaire, but has hardly been seen as a pivotal figure in the movement and certainly not as Savimbi's heir apparent. 

After losing Huambo and signing (at best half-heartedly) the Lusaka peace accords, UNITA rallied its forces with a special Congress in Bailundo. It was the opportunity for Savimbi to give a three-hour speech, reminding the movement of its roots and priorities and sounding an early warning that Lusaka would count for nothing in the long run.

Savimbi's successors can hardly do the same. Ironically, Savimbi died only 100 kilometres from Muangai, where UNITA held its inaugural congress in 1966.

Despite UN requests to close offices, confiscate passports and freeze bank accounts, UNITA still has its representatives and its front organisations. Carlos Morgado has been predictably prominent as UNITA's man in Lisbon. There is still a UNITA lobby in the United States, but George W. Bush's election did not herald a revival of the relationship Savimbi had with Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior in the 1980s. 

The UN's sanctions team has called for websites to be closed, and host countries like Portugal, Burkina Faso and Ireland to be more vigilant. But UNITA has little diplomatic clout anyway. UNITA has been written off repeatedly as a military force in recent years. Many observers believe Lusaka saved Savimbi from military humiliation in 1994, that the government was ready to take every last citadel. 

Since the war resumed in 1998, dos Santos's subordinates have talked regularly of being on the verge of victory. The government's recent green light to the Unite Nations to initiate contacts with UNITA came from a position of strength. But it would be dangerous to write off UNITA completely or accept at face value the government's version of the conflict. 

The Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), which soaks up a vast chunk of the national budget, has never been a formidable military machine. UNITA's fighters are also more a rag-tag army than a crack fighting force. But that does not mean any immediate surrender. 

The size of UNITA's hidden economy remains a mystery. As the United Nations has ruefully concluded, Savimbi and his lieutenants have proved extremely adept at shuffling money, arms and diamonds, helped by a network of suppliers used to operating in the shadows.

Despite the ubiquity of its spokespersons and its fondness for highly charged propaganda, much about UNITA remains unknown and Savimbi liked it that way. Sometimes described as a peasant guerrilla movement, UNITA has kept its own secrets. 

Savimbi's death will be hardest for the true believers and they will be expecting fresh offensives rather than olive branches.

By Chris Simpson, IPS

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