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Will Peace Break Out in Angola?
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15632 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1989 |
2,482 Words |
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Henry Kriegel
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Has a breakthrough on negotiations with Angola been achieved? Officials from Cuba, Angola, South Africa, and the United States believe so. They have agreed that Cuba should withdraw its troops from Angola within 24 months and that South Africa will ensure UN-supervised elections. The final round of negotiations was concluded in December 1988. Despite the fact that his agreement appears to represent an important breakthrough, the Angolan question is far from resolved.
The U.S. State Department will have to convince conservatives and President Bush that this deal represents the United States and its allies' best interests. South Africa must likewise convince its military and those Afrikaners who are skeptical of the motives of the communists in these negotiations.
Some observers, like Senator Gordon J. Humphrey, feel the proposed Angolan settlement smacks of the Geneva accords on Afghanistan, which Humphrey referred to as a "slow-motion sellout." There is a good deal of evidence to support this comparison.
In both cases, the resistance movements--UNITA (National Union of the Total Independence of Angola) and the mujahideen--did not participate in the negotiations. In the Angolan accords, both the Soviet Union and SWAPO (South-West African People's Organization) had observer status. The 14-month-long timetable for withdrawing Soviet troops in Afghanistan and the length of the proposed Cuban withdrawal from Angola are significantly longer than what is logistically necessary for their removal. Some analysts speculate that these extended timetables allow for strategic turnabouts, should they be deemed necessary.
The Geneva accords legally allow the Soviets to continue aiding the Kabul regime just as the Angolan accords enable the Cubans and Soviets to continue aiding the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola). The Soviets have rejected the U.S. right to aid the mujahideen and will likely do the same if the United States insists on aiding UNITA. Humphrey brings this rejection to light in an October 6, 1988 Washington Times column. "The April 10, 1988, Soviet letter," he writes, "completely rejected the State Department's claim to a unilateral right to continue aid." To avoid Senate and public condemnation of the Afghan accords, this letter was released by the State Department long after the Geneva documents were signed. "Meanwhile the State Department continued to insist that the Soviets had agreed [to the U.S. position on aiding the mujahideen], in order to mollify the Congress and the American people," Humphrey added.
South Africa and Zaire, both of which give aid to UNITA, can be expected to come under increasing domestic and international pressure, just as Pakistan, which is a supply base for the mujahideen, has. If Namibia is lost to pro-Soviet SWAPO, UNITA would lose its conduits of outside aid.
Not surprisingly, many experts feel that president Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan was killed by the KGB and/or KhAD (Afghan secret police) for his untiring commitment of aid to the mujahideen.
The importance of comparing the proposed Angolan accords with the Geneva accords cannot be underestimated. Gorbachev and Najibullah Ahmadzai, the president of the Kabul regime, asserted last April that the Afghan
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