Where are the US warplanes? Where are the demands that the peace accords worked out after the war in the early 1990s be adhered to? Where is the US outrage backed by military force? Iraq is obviously different from Angola. Angola was only of interest to the US when it was seen as part of the Cold War, when there were goodies and baddies that fitted neatly into the then bi-polar view of the world held by the US State Department.
In 1994 peace accords were signed between the two warring sides in Angola and UN peace-keepers were sent in. In the past two weeks, two aircraft carrying UN peace-keepers have been shot down. Up to 22 people are dead or missing. The aircraft were apparently shot down by rebels from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) who are not happy with the power-sharing arrangement worked out with the UN, but want sole power.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US saw UNITA as an ally fighting what it saw as a Marxist Government which had filled the power vacuum after the withdrawal of Portugal in 1975. Of course, the fighting in Angola never was ideological. It was tribal. The warring sides just latched on to the major powers for arms and money, much of which is still being used in today’s civil war.
We are reaping the legacy of Cold War folly. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is in an invidious position. He can call for UNITA to stop violations of the peace accord, but unless he has the wherewithal to enforce it, his calls will mean nothing and the UN will have no choice but to withdraw. At present though, the main powers that can provide the back-up, the US and Britain, appear very selective in their choice of villains. It points to a grave weakness in the structure of the UN — on that should be addressed new millennium or not.