11 John Marcum University of California, Santa Cruz WAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN ANGOLA Three decades of internal war have devastated the people and economy of Angola. The fretricidal, protracted neture of that war has brutalized its protagonists. Reports of new and continuing violations of human rights in the conilici should come as no surprise. History suggests that internal insurgency 300 counterinsurgency that endure over long periods of time tend to degenerate into especially violent, dehumanizing wartare. TOgether. ruiers and rebels become the victims of a degenerative culture of violence. The Philippines, Uruguay, El Salvador and Mozambique are among recent examples of this process that immediately come to mind. In 1975, tollowing thirteen years of anticoloniel insurgency, Angola fell victim to the horrendous destruction of externally fueled civil war. Fifteen years later, that war continues unresolved by the international accord that has committed Cuba and South Afnca to military withdrawal from Angola and Namibia, respectively.
in the period immediately after assuming power in 1975 with the assistance of Cuban and Soviet intervention, leaders of the nationalist People Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, acted with the early cealotry and intolerance characteristic of revolutionaries heady with newly won authority. It banned and jailed political opposition curtailed religious freedom, barred independent trede unions, declared tseli a MeristLeninist party and established centralized political controi gwer the press and economy. The result S economic ruin, except for an enclave economy of largely foreign run oil production along the country north coas!
Exploiting popular grievances and putting to good use material, logistical and instructional assistance from South African forces in Namibregrouped and reinvigorated competing movement, the Union for the Total