Togo bus attack puts Cabinda independence movement in the spotlight

The Confederation of African Football says it is satisfied with Angolan Government assurances on security after the Togo team bus attack on Friday in the northern province of Cabinda. The attack which killed three people including the team’s assistant coach and wounded two players has left the football world in shock and thrown light on one of the world’s more obscure long-running separatist conflicts.

Cabinda is officially part of Angola but the Atlantic enclave is geographically separated from the rest of the country by the Democratic Republic of Congo to the south. Europeans have been in Cabinda since the 16th century trading for palm oil and timber. Portugal, Holland and England all established trading posts along the coast leading to squabbles between them over sovereignty. The matter was resolved in 1885 with the Treaty of Simulambuco which awarded the colony to Portugal.

At the time Angola was directly to the south, and also part of the Portuguese Empire. But when the genocidal Belgian king Leopold II wanted a path to the Atlantic Ocean for his sprawling Congo Free State, Portugal granted him the land south of Cabinda to the mouth of the Congo. Cabinda continued as a Portuguese colony until the 1970s. In the 1960s an independence movement called the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) was formed to fight against colonial rule.

When the Portuguese junta collapsed in the Carnation Revolution of 1975 so did its rule of the colonies. In January 1975 Portugal signed the Alvor Agreement with Angola granting it independence. Cabinda was included in the agreement though FLEC was excluded from the negotiations. Similar to East Timor, FLEC proclaimed Cabindan independence from Portugal in late 1975. But just as in Timor, a big neighbouring power launched an invasion. Angolan forces quickly took over the towns and the poorly armed FLEC fled to the mountains.

But unlike Fretelin in Timor, FLEC was unable to keep a cohesive centre. It split in several splinter groups, some of which sided with the South African-backed UNITA rebels in Angola. There are now about a dozen separatist groups demanding independence for Cabinda. But with 80 percent of Angola’s oil off the Cabinda coastline there was little chance Luanda would willingly cede to enclave demands. And when Angola was awarded the rights to host the 2010 African Cup of Nations Cabinda’s Estadio Chimandela was selected as one of the four grounds to hold the games.

Togo were due to play Ghana in the first game in Cabinda tomorrow night. The team were travelling by bus with a security escort from mainland Angola through the DRC and into Cabinda. The team bus had just crossed the border into Cabinda when it came under heavy gunfire. The driver was killed immediately leaving the bus stranded and officials and players cowered under their seats. The attack lasted half an hour and two others died, the team’s assistant coach Hamelet Abulo and a Togolese journalist.

Initially Togo’s captain and star player Emmanuel Adebayor said it was likely Togo would withdraw from the tournament. "I think a lot of players want to leave,” he told the BBC. “I don't think they want to be at this tournament any more because they have seen their death already.” But in the last 24 hours, the players have announced a change of heart and say they will play. The game will go ahead in Cabinda. Initially it also seemed likely that the ground would be pulled as a venue. But the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced today games would be held in the enclave’s 20,000 seater stadium.

Angola’s leaders have been in severe damage control after this high profile attack. According to a statement released in the name of the Prime Minister Paulo Kassoma, Angola “considers the incident in Cabinda as an isolated act and repeated that the security of Togo’s team and the other squads is guaranteed.” But they may not be able to live up to their words. One of the independence factions claimed responsibility for the attack with an ominous warning signed by FLEC's secretary general Rodrigues Mingas. “This operation is just the start of a series of planned actions that will continue to take place in the whole territory of Cabinda.”

Unita disputes ruling MPLA landslide victory in Angolan election

The opposition Unita Party has claimed elections were rigged after Angola’s ruling party won a landslide victory claiming 80 per cent of the vote in Friday’s election. The poll was the first in 16 years. The right-wing Unita (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), which fought a bitter civil war for 27 years, claimed just 10 percent with two-thirds of the vote counted. With final results expected later today, Unita has lodged a complaint with Angola's electoral commission over the running of the vote. "The final result might not fully reflect the will that was expressed by the people of Angola in the ballot," Isaias Samakuva, Unita's leader, said yesterday.

The ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has claimed victory and called Unita “bad losers”. The MPLA has ruled Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975 and fought a civil war with Unita which was supported by the South African apartheid regime and also covertly by the US. Half a million people died in the 27 year war which ended when Unita’s leader Jonas Savimbi was killed by government soldiers in 2002. Within six weeks of his death, the two sides then agreed on a ceasefire and Unita became the official opposition party.

The 2008 election is the first poll since the failed 1992 poll sponsored by the ill-fated Portuguese sponsored Bicesse Accords. In that election, the MPLA won with 54 percent of the vote to Unita's 34 percent. Like this time, Unita disputed those results and resumed a civil war with immediate success. However, when they threatened to disrupt the supply from the oil-rich province of Cabinda, the Clinton administration withdrew their support in favour of the Luanda government. Unita have spent the last few years attempting to shore up their political support in advance of this year’s promised election.

Now many are wondering whether Unita’s failure will be a trigger for a return to war. The government has denied they have been up to any electoral shenanigans though have admitted the existence of “administrative glitches” in some areas, particularly in the capital, Luanda , home to nearly a quarter of the country's almost 8.3 million registered voters. Unita and three smaller rivals have called for the election to be annulled in the Luanda province. They claim a new poll is necessary because controls over the ballots were inadequate and many people were denied the opportunity to vote,

There are mixed reports from the 1,200 foreign election observers from 17 international organisations in the country. Monitors from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said the vote had been "transparent and credible" among the eight million voters. However an EU observer who visited several polling stations said the voting in Luanda was a “disaster” caused by poor planning and inadequate infrastructure. Luisa Morgantini, chief of the EU observer mission, said problems included lack of polling officials, ballots and the ink used to mark voters' fingers and prevent multiple voting. "Voting was a disaster in Luanda following woeful organisation," she said. “The situation was better outside the capital, though there also were problems there.”

The vote took two days to complete. Candidates from 10 parties and four coalition groups contested 220 parliamentary seats. If the MPLA gets its expected two-thirds majority, it will be in a position to make sweeping changes to Angola’s constitution. The result will also shore up the position of long-standing President Jose Eduardo dos Santos who is up for re-election next year. Santos’s international position is solid thanks to the country’s rich oil interests. And Dos Santos is perfectly placed to take advantage of the boom. During the Soviet era, he graduated from Baku’s Oil Academy with a degree in Petroleum Engineering after studying six years on scholarship there.

Angola has recently joined OPEC and has replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s leading source of crude oil. But little of the proceeds have trickled down to Angola’s poor and the country's dilapidated infrastructure also affected its ability to hold an election. Millions of Angolans have moved to Luanda in recent years as they are unable to make a living in rural areas and civil war land mines remain an ever present danger. 22-year-old unemployed Pai Bando told AFP he would not vote for Unita, despite its promise of a fairer distribution of wealth, because he feels only the MPLA is strong enough to make changes. But he remained sceptical of the promise of all parties. "They (the elite) get all the money from the oil and the diamonds, they get everything and we get nothing," he said.

No one can stop the rain: a story of aid workers in Angola

On Saturday, Angola celebrated the 20th anniversary of one of the most important battles of the civil war. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale on 22 March 1988 was a key episode in the conflict between the Marxist rulers of Angola supported by Cuba and the UNITA rebels supported by apartheid-era South Africa. While victory was claimed by both sides the conflict was significant as media criticism in South Africa led both sides back to the negotiation table, the departure of all foreign troops from Angola and the eventual independence of neighbouring South West Africa as Namibia.

The Angolan war itself dragged on for well over another decade. It took the death of charismatic UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in 2002 to be the catalyst for a lasting ceasefire. One of the cities worst affected by that war was another Cuito or Kuito as it is better known. Set in the middle of Angola 600km from the capital Luanda, Kuito is the administrative capital of Bié Province and was the scene of a nine month siege by UNITA in 1994. The city was also attacked in 1998 and was left a crumbling and heavily landmined ruin. Only now is the city beginning to plan for the future with the announcement of a new thermal power station comprising four diesel ten-Megawatt generators to be built within 30 months.

The news will be greeted with delight by Karin Moorhouse and Wei Chang, an Australian-Chinese couple who were posted to Kuito in 2000-2001 as aid workers. The pair documented their experiences in the book “No One Can Stop the Rain”. The title comes from a poem by Angola’s first president Antonio Agostinho Neto written in a Portuguese colonial prison in 1960.

In 2000, Wei Cheng was a Hong Kong-based paediatric surgeon, and his wife Karin Moorhouse (her author uncle Frank Moorhouse wrote the introduction to the book) was a senior marketing executive for Nestlé. The pair decided to act out a long-term ambition to work for an overseas aid agency and they signed up for Médecins Sans Frontières. They were assigned to Kuito, Wei as a surgeon and Karin as a financial administrator at the MSF project. They would be arriving at the end of 2000, with the civil war petering to a close and Kuito in government hands, but military violence a very real presence in the nearby countryside. Kuito was a safe haven in an otherwise dangerous landscape just beyond the city limits.

Due to the desperate need to get a surgeon on the ground, Wei arrived in Kuito some eight weeks ahead of his wife. He flew into a hot, listless town that was devastated by years of war. Every house façade was peppered by mortar spray and there was no running water and heavily rationed electricity. His place of work would be the Provincial Hospital of Bié ostensibly managed by Angola’s Ministry of Health. They provided the nurses and administrative staff. But it was MSF who provided most of the drugs and equipment and all of the doctors.

Facilities were rudimentary as was hygiene. Wei was horrified to see people walk into theatre wearing street shoes while scrubbing for an operation simply meant washing hands with soap. Many of Wei’s operations were on victims who had stood on a landmine. Typically the victims had travelled large distances to get to the hospital by which time their wounds were foul smelling and ridden with maggots. More often than not, Wei was left with no option but to amputate. In his first week there, he visited the British humanitarian de-mining organisation called HALO Trust. Here he found out where it was safe to move and where it wasn’t. It was at a HALO Trust site near Kuito where Princess Diana made her famous minefield walk in 1997.

At the time, Kuito’s population of 100,000 was almost doubled by a vast amount of Internally Displaced Persons from neighbouring areas. The IDPs camped around the outskirts of the city in search of security, care and food. But because they had not crossed any international borders they could not come under the jurisdiction of the UNHCR. Despite two million IDPs in Angola, the government in Luanda consistently downplayed the problem. In 2001 Angola exported 800,000 barrels of oil a day, yet the majority of the country lived in abject poverty.

Wei had settled into a rhythm of almost endless surgery by the time Karin arrived in Kuito. Wei forewarned her of what to expect with a photomontage of the patients he had treated. It was a catalog of legs blown away by landmines, children’s arms shredded by bullets, festering wounds, shattered bones, gunshots and distorted limbs. When Karin arrived, Kuito’s dry dusty air struck her as resembling outback Australia. That impression would change quickly with the coming of the rainy season.

Wei and Karin had to deal with a constant stream of children though the hospital. UNICEF have claimed Angola is the second worst country on the planet to be a child. One in three die before the age of five. In 1999 Angola ranked 146th out of 162 nations in terms of human development, despite its oil and mineral wealth. Angola was also the sixth most corrupt country in the world and a million people had died in the 25 year civil war. The capital Luanda had only one doctor for every 50,000 people. This statistic was even worse for the country: one doctor for every 400,000 people, the equivalent of just 50 doctors for the whole of Australia.

The couple gradually got used to life in Kuito. They became “desensitised” to the lack of fresh food, the constant power blackouts and the litany of cruel injuries they had to deal with on a daily basis. Even harder to deal with were the patients they had to turn away because their wounds were not serious enough. Prioritisation was their toughest task. Most of their patients were civilians as the army treated their own. Wei and Karin survived and even thrived due to their strong love for each other, the occasional break in South Africa and Luanda, and the bonds they made with fellow staff, patients and locals. They celebrated Christmas by giving out simple presents to the children in the orthopaedic ward and enjoying a rare food order from Luanda.

Although one of their staff was killed in an ambush, Wei and Karin kept out of harm’s way during their stint in war-ravaged Kuito. The closest they came to trouble was related to Angola’s Independence Day, 4 February, when a bomb exploded at an already gutted premises near the house where they lived. They were away at the time so were not impacted. After eight eventful months, their assignment came to an end. Wei later spoke about his hopes for the book of their experiences. “One could believe that the flickering light of humanity we witness almost daily in this world of conflict and tragedy is not about to be extinguished,” he said, “but rather can be given new energy through the efforts of ordinary people.”

Save the Children report paints shocking picture of child mortality

Save the Children UK have released a new report that says that nearly ten million children die worldwide each year before they reach the age of five. The figures get worse as the children are younger. Four million of these die within the first 28 days of their life. Three million die in the first week and two million die on the day they are born. An incredible 99 per cent of all these deaths occur in developing countries. The report also contains a new 'Wealth and Survival Index' which compares child mortality to national income per person. This shows which nations are squandering their resources and Angola is ranked as the worst offender.

The report (pdf) blames three major causes for child deaths. Firstly, poor access to treatment and prevention means for major diseases such as pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and AIDS. Secondly are infrastructure factors such poor health systems, undernutrition, lack of clean water and female illiteracy. The third factor, says the report, are the outcome of political and policy choices that are the responsibility of governments and other agencies. Bad governance, violent conflict and worsening environmental trends are additional underlying causes that profoundly impact children’s survival prospects.

The countries with the worst child mortality rates are among the world’s poorest and to have experienced war or violent conflict, such as Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia and Sierra Leone. Five countries: India, Nigeria, DRC, Pakistan and China account of half of all deaths of children under five. Sierra Leone has the worst mortality rate, closely followed by Angola. Afghanistan is third worst and the only non-African country in the top ten. But on the Wealth and Survival Index oil-rich Angola is considered the worst offender. Although it now has a per-capita income high enough to put it in the "middle income" category, 20 percent of all Angolans still die before their fifth birthday.

Angola is still recovering from a 27 year civil war which ended in 2002. The former Portuguese colony was supported by the Soviet Union after independence in 1975. However they faced a long and debilitating war against Unita rebels backed by the US and apartheid-regime South Africa. After several broken ceasefires, it took the death of Unita leader Jonas Savimbi to bring the rebels to the table. However a separate struggle still remains in the enclave of Cabinda where 60 per cent of Angola’s oil resides. There have also been strong allegations that oil revenues have been squandered through corruption and mismanagement. Most Angolan still live in desperate poverty on less than $1US a day. The Index shows that Angola’s child mortality is strongly related to grossly unequal distribution of wealth.

Angola’s problems are not unique in sub-Saharan Africa. A child’s risk of dying on their first day of life is about 500 times greater than their risk of dying when they are one month old. The first few hours of a baby’s life are therefore critical, but far too often basic steps that could save the life of a child are not taken. A 2007 study in Ghana showed that 16 percent of neonatal deaths could be prevented by breastfeeding infants from birth. That figure rises to 22 percent, if breastfeeding begins within one hour of birth.

With two million victims annually, pneumonia is the largest single killer of children under five and is responsible for more deaths than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. However the underlying cause is malnutrition. Children without food do not have a strong immune system, and are unable to defend themselves against diseases. Pneumonia can be treated through community diagnosis and the use of antibiotics. However many poor countries do not have access to such successful antibiotics as Cotrimoxazole and Amoxicillin. In the 1990s, just one in five children who developed pneumonia was treated with antibiotics. Costs have dropped all over the world but the price is still beyond the means of most poor people.

Save the Children’s director of policy David Mepham concludes that a child's chance of making it to its fifth birthday depends on where it is born. But he disputes this is beyond human control. While poverty and inequality are consistent underlying causes of child deaths, all countries, even the poorest, can cut child mortality if they pursue the right policies and prioritise their poorest families,” he said. “Good government choices save children's lives but bad ones are a death sentence.”