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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 01.07.2003 |
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| FEATURE: Hope for a Peaceful Future - Angola Awakens from 27 Years of Civil War |
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The Lutheran World Federation Supports Reconciliation Work
LUENA, Angola/GENEVA, 1 July 2003 (LWI) - She was lucky, very lucky, insists Glaudet Lomba as she places her crutches under her left thigh, so she can stand more comfortably and have her hands free. Over two years ago Lomba, now 24, stepped on a landmine near the provincial capital Luena, eastern Angola. Her left leg was shattered and had to be amputated above the knee. She calls herself lucky because she survived.
Smiling, Lomba affirms that the war is finally over and she believes that the peace will hold. As if to support that conviction, her neighbor’s little girl reaches out and holds onto one of the crutches. Those standing around her nod in agreement.
Lomba lives in Chicala, a transit camp for former National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) soldiers and their families, located almost 40 km west of Luena in Moxico Province. Some 105,000 former UNITA rebels and their relatives, altogether almost 500,000 people, were rounded up into demobilization camps and disarmed, as called for by an April 2002 cease-fire agreement signed in Luena between the military commanders of Angola's arch rivals for 27 years, UNITA and the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). It became possible to end the war after UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in an ambush by government troops on 22 February 2002 near Luena.
A few months ago, there were around 10,000 people including 2,500 former UNITA soldiers living in Chicala with their families, reports Isaac Luciano, a member of the camp administration. After the November 2002 official peace agreement between the government and UNITA, more people have been gradually resettled into their home areas, leaving around 1,000 former UNITA fighters still in Chicala.
"It is Politicians who Make War, not the People"
Luciano, 45, fought for UNITA for many years and ended up as a high-ranking officer, he says in a whisper. He is happy that there is peace, but adds that he was not responsible for the war. It is politicians who make war, not the people, he emphasizes. Half a million people have been killed and more than four million were displaced from their homes.
For more than a year Luciano has been working closely with aid organizations such as the Angola Program of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS). They regularly distribute food, seeds and plastic sheeting as well as kitchen equipment, and organize the installation of sanitary and drinking water systems. He proudly shows off the make-shift clinic - the improvement in nutrition and hygiene has drastically reduced diseases.
But he is concerned about unfulfilled promises made by the government, 700 km away in the capital Luanda. Many former UNITA soldiers had not received the payment which had been agreed, or the farming tools that were promised. About 5,000 former rebel soldiers have been integrated into the Angolan army, but that is hardly enough. “Where should the other 100,000 go?” Luciano asks. With unemployment rates exceeding 70 per cent, the majority of them have scarcely any prospects. He also doubts whether all of them will be able to make their living as farmers. Most of them have no idea what to do with a piece of land and a hoe.
Reports from those who have returned home underpin his concerns. In some cases, former fighters have been rejected by their home villages. Luciano adds that those disabled in the war, and mine victims like Lomba, are also in a difficult situation. Rehabilitation treatment is not available outside Luanda.
Peace in a Mined Country
For Carl von Seth, who has directed the LWF’s country program in Angola since April 2000, the peace in Angola is a real gift. No one could have believed that a cease-fire could be reached so soon after Savimbi's death. Since the end of the war the LWF/DWS Angola program has been responsible for 15 refugee camps and five camps for former UNITA soldiers in Moxico and Lunda Sul Provinces. Of the original 90,000 persons, more than half have been able to return to their home areas since March.
Much has changed in recent months, says Seth, 60, who is from Sweden and has in the past worked for aid organizations in Mozambique, Sudan, Congo, Pakistan and the Middle East. He notes that people who return to their home villages and towns immediately begin to repair and paint their houses. Life is returning to Luena. In the market there are products from Zambia and the Democratic Republic Congo, of which the most popular are bicycles, a major means of transportation in Angola. Von Seth says people believe the peace will hold.
But he expresses great concern for the immense tracts of land which are still strewn with land mines. Experts consider Angola one of the most densely mined countries in the world. There are over ten million land mines for a population of 14 million. Like Lomba, most of the victims are civilians. In Moxico Province, the LWF is working with mine-clearing teams, but it will take decades, von Seth points out, until the fertile land is cleared of mines and unexploded shells. Moxico alone has an area as large as Great Britain.
In Leua, a small town 50 km east of Luena, DWS - Angola has been working for many months together with the British non-governmental organization (NGO) Mines Advisory Group (MAG). In the mid-1990s numerous international aid organizations undertook mine-clearing operations in the area, but their efforts were halted when fighting flared up again in 1998 and more mines were planted.
One of the MAG teams is led by Cashala Mbuyi Moises, 48. There are 24 well-trained Angolan staff members meticulously searching square meter after square meter with detectors and shovels. They find about 12 mines a week, which they then either disarm or destroy by controlled explosion.
In the months to come, the Danish church aid organization DanChurchAid (DCA) will take over the mine clearance in Moxico on behalf of the LWF. With DCA's help, the mined areas will be marked and strategically important paths, roads and bridges will be cleared. Information campaigns are also planned, to educate people about the dangers of mines and how to deal with them. Heavy rainfall remains a major challenge, since mines that are washed up and moved around are continually causing tragic accidents, von Seth explains.
LWF Helps People to Help Themselves
In the past year, the DWS Angola program has shifted its emphasis from strict emergency relief to rebuilding communities. The priority is to help those who have been displaced by the war to return home and become reintegrated. Out of around 450,000 refugees who have fled to neighboring countries in recent years, 80,000 returned last year, and another 170,000 are expected this year. Official sources say that out of the four million internally displaced persons, over half have returned home.
According to data provided by aid organizations, the nutritional situation of a large part of the population continues to be a problem. Forty per cent do not have access to clean drinking water. Angola’s child mortality rate is among the highest in the world, and over half of the children eligible for schooling are not in school. LWF staff have begun concentrating especially on building wells, schools and clinics.
Another important task is education about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, says the director of the Angola program. Awareness-raising and information seminars are supplemented by free distribution of informative pamphlets, condoms and leaflets, in which LWF staff work closely with the churches in Angola. In Luena, says von Seth, they have succeeded in starting a church network with representatives of eleven different churches, who cooperate closely on AIDS education as well as in reconciliation work. Together with the churches, staff members are trained to work in preventive health care, advocacy for peace and reconciliation and building a democratic civil society.
The future of Angola depends on whether people can be reconciled with one another, says von Seth - and the churches must play a central role here. The church is one of the very few institutions in Angola that people still trust. About 90 per cent of the population is Christian. He notes that three years ago, the largest Angolan churches joined hands to work together to end the civil war.
The Angolan government acknowledges the churches' commitment to reconciliation, according to von Seth. Representatives of the large churches spoke at an April 4 ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the cease-fire.
War in Angola began in 1961 with the struggle for liberation from the former colonial power Portugal. Independence in 1975 did not bring the much-sought peace as the erstwhile allies in the fight for independence began a bloody war for power over one of the potentially richest countries in Africa. The Cuba and then Soviet Union-backed MPLA took control of Luanda, and became the ruling party under President Eduardo dos Santos. The Savimbi-led UNITA was supported by South Africa and the United States. Peace agreements of 1974, 1989 and 1991 collapsed, and UNITA refused to accept the results of a 1992 election held during a cease-fire, resulting in renewed fighting. Another attempt at peace with the 1994 Lusaka accord finally broke down in 1998, and the country returned to war.
While the Angolan government troops had mortgaged gigantic oil deposits to international corporations to finance their weaponry, the UNITA rebels controlled the rich diamond mines in the northeast. Only after a worldwide ban on trade in “blood diamonds” issued by the United Nations Security Council in July 2000 did the international diamond industry begin to limit the trade. And although UNITA still controlled large areas of the country, it was becoming increasingly isolated. With the peace in place now, reconciliation, rehabilitation and reintegration remain a major challenge.
(Article by LWI German editor Dirk-Michael Grötzsch, following a visit to Angola.)
*The tenth article in an LWI features' series focusing on the LWF Tenth Assembly theme, "For the Healing of the World." The aim is to highlight the theme in the different contexts of the worldwide Lutheran communion.
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