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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Dealing with Savimbi's Ghost: The Security and Humanitarian Challenges in Angola
February 2003
Abstract
Emerging slowly from decades of civil war, Angola stands at a crossroads between a spectacular recovery or further cycles of instability and crisis. The government that won the fighting must now move on a number of fronts - with international support - to win the peace.
Although there are critical longer term political and economic issues (to be considered in a subsequent report), several immediate security and humanitarian challenges must be addressed to avoid laying the foundations for a return to conflict. The late rebel leader Jonas Savimbi's ghost, the legacy of a war that killed a million people and uprooted a third of the population, will haunt the country for years. Millions who are either internally displaced or refugees in neighbouring countries must be resettled in their areas of origin. 105,000 fighters of the former rebel organisation UNITA - each with an average of six civilian dependents - must be reintegrated into civilian life on an urgent basis. The removal of millions of mines laid over the past half-century has to be accelerated.
