Trade and financial aspects of the war in Angola

Poelhekke framed the discussion quite neatly at the beginning of the session. 'The tragedy of Angola is that it is too rich a country, that the natural resources, especially diamonds and oil, are literally fuelling an ongoing conflict. I think that it is the task of everybody who wishes Angola well for the future, to try to curb the financial flows coming into Angola from arms and war into ploughs, to give a biblical example.'

There are three groups involved in milking Angola through the ongoing war:

1. the non-legal opposition, i.e. the UNITA rebels, because it is using illegally traded diamonds to fuel their war,
2. the legal Angolan government that is using too much of the resources coming from diamonds and specially also from oil, to fuel the war instead of using this money for the benefit, the development and the survival of its own population, and
3. as the third party the international operating companies in the diamond trade and the oil production who are also co-responsible for the fact that the money with which they buy the resources from Angola is used in such a detrimental way for the Angolan population.

Ana Garcia commented on the role of the two Angolan actors: 'We should make a distinction between UNITA which is a rebel group and the government which has responsibilities towards its citizens and not put them on the same plan. You should make a distinction between having sanctions against UNITA covering all trade in arms, but for the government that has also a task of preserving national integrity and security you should not think of a complete ban of buying arms but at least of transparency regarding this issue so that you can see what is entering the country.' Daniel Ntoni Nzinga agreed. 'The arms trade by the government of Angola should not be prohibited but controlled; the buying of weapons should be justified by the need to use them and not just because the government wants to have them. A serious problem is that weapons are often distributed within the country by the security forces themselves (security forces: the police and the army). This is a very big danger, because it is done in name of security, and in the end not even the state is able to control the use of all these weapons. Therefore we, as civil society, are striving towards having rigorous checks on the trade and use of arms by government forces. This is linked to our very strong feeling and position that any form of illegal arms trade that not only benefits UNITA but also other armed opposition groups in Angola (such as FLEC in Cabinda) should be completely stopped.'

Most trade in and out of Angola goes unrecorded, which hampers exposure, as Ntoni Nzinga made clear. 'We know that most of Africa is surviving on the basis of what we call informal trade. It is not only Angolan diamonds that are involved in this, but also diamonds from Sierra Leone, and other mineral resources from Liberia are also in that situation. In all those years that UNITA was struggling against the Angolan government they did not only sell diamonds, in the past it has also been documented by former South African army officials that UNITA sold other items illegally to finance the war, ivory for instance. The point really is, that it is not only trade, but also the revenues of large investments that finance the war. It is not only UNITA as such, it is a lot of other individual Angolans that are selling diamonds illegally and that are getting considerable revenues from them. There should come a system that controls all forms of selling diamonds.' Which is why the Fatal Transactions campaign was started, as part of an appeal, also made by Angolans from civil society, to expose those manufacturers, transporters and dealers who profit from the war, as NiZA's Joost Hartog explained. Joost Hartog (NiZA): 'Our contribution to the peace process is to get the way the war is financed more transparent and it is a direct appeal to the public, to business and to governments to stop the illegal trade in diamonds. We have chosen for diamonds, not because we are totally in favour of the government or against UNITA, but it is just a start and it might even be so that also the government is willingly or unwillingly involved in the illegal diamond trade.'

Diamonds for war on the UNITA side; oil for war on the government side. That is the usual equation, which Ana Garcia was not entirely happy with. 'We should take care not to treat diamonds and oil in the same way, because as far as the oil revenues are concerned, the little that is being done within Angola in the education and health sector is also being financed by oil revenues. So you should take a different stance if we talk about oil revenues.' Having said that, it is true to say that both government and international oil companies are profiting from a trade which is not benefiting the overwhelming majority of the Angolan people and are being less than forthright around it. Ntoni Nzinga: '(International) companies, for instance Chevron in the USA, ELF Aquitaine in France, BP in England produce annual reports I assume to their company shareholders, to their governments. It would be very good if civil society organisations and groups in Europe, America and elsewhere could spend some time and check those reports they are producing, we did it in the anti-apartheid movement, checking what the companies were claiming to be doing in South Africa when in fact they were doing something else. In addition, let me inform you that the government of Angola does not provide any information to the public, on all those dealings. The only thing you can read is an article in the Jornal de Angola (the government controlled daily) saying a contract has been signed of, say, 60 billion. What it is meant for nobody knows, what the footnotes are nobody knows, and you are not allowed to ask, because if you ask as a journalist or as a lawyer or whatever, you might end up in prison.' As Ntoni Nzinga already indicated, this also calls for international scrutiny, which has in the meantime resulted in the Global Witness publication called "A crude Awakening".

The lack of openness about one's business dealings also stems from a sense of insecurity. Ntoni Nzinga pointed this out: 'Security is more concerned with the security of government, than with security of the people, and that is the biggest challenge that we face. One of the biggest issues of civil society, which is now starting to organise itself, is to link the concepts of security and peace. Because it is our position that it is impossible to have peace in Angola without justice, and you can not speak of justice if this can not guarantee security for everybody. At the moment, the security forces are more directed in the sense of controlling than in the sense of providing a service to the people. That is one of the main reasons why the human rights issue in Angola is a very serious problem. We have to get away from the idea of coercion.' The human rights issue can of course be extended to include the issue of child soldiers, which was briefly raised by Pedro Bruno Kiafuka of the Iniciativa Angolana Anti-Militarista para os Direitos Humanos.

Ntoni Nzinga saw advocacy as a means of education at the same time. 'We will have to build the capacity of the Angolan civil society to start asking questions, because our government is not used to be asked questions, everything they do is correct and right. We must learn on both sides, the government and ourselves, to develop that new culture of accountability.' This also requires knowledge - as Pacheco indicated in Workshop A. Ntoni-Nzinga had a practical suggestion. 'All the 400 NGOs that are functioning in Angola are all providing service. It is only now that groups are emerging to reflect together and then address the issues. That is why as GARP and GAP we decided to start a process of establishing an institute, an Angolan institute for peace and development which should concentrate on research and advocacy rather than providing services of humanitarian kind or whatever. Those kinds of activities need to be encouraged, so that the Angolan authorities can hear from within Angola itself how people think.'