Intervening in Angola

Sen. Charles McM. Mathias’s (R-Md.) article (Editorial Pages, Dec. 8), “No Meddling in Angola,” is an excellent exposition of what the United States should and should not do about Angola. My only criticism is that he should direct his anger for Daniel Gearhart’s death against the United States rather than Angola, for Gearhart was a victim of a poorly conceived and most miserably executed U.S. government (covert, of course) plan.

In spite of what seems to be an overwhelming case against U.S. involvement, the Reagan Administration is apparently preparing a multimillion-dollar plan for furnishing covert military aid to Savimbi’s rebels fighting the government in Luanda. What else is new?

The Administration position seems to be that threatening to aid Jonas Savimbi will put pressure on Luanda to negotiate with Savimbi as well as to encourage Luanda to send the Cubans packing. This is so obviously unrealistic--the Cubans will go when and only when any threat to Angola’s security, especially from South Africa, is eliminated--that one must write it off as simply made to influence American public opinion and seek elsewhere for its genesis. My guess is that the real reason is to be found in the never-never land of Reagan ideology--the crusade against the worldwide communist conspiracy.

Mathias makes reference to Angola’s ethnic divisions of which there are three--the Mbundu, the Kongo (remember Holden Roberto?), and the Ovimbundu. These groups had been fighting on and off for 500 years when then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger back in the early 1970s discovered that the Mbundu were “Marxist” and the other two “pro-Western.” (Savimbi’s “conversion” from Marxism is a story in itself.)

Be that as it may, it is not true that the United States intervened in Angola in response to Soviet actions. Russian materiel and Cuban soldiers (and other types) came in on Soviet planes as a direct result of U.S. actions, which included sending in a ragtag bunch of mercenaries and discouraging accommodation among the tribal entities.

But the Reagan Administration seems to want to do the same thing in Angola that it is doing in Nicaragua--help finance a contra army that has no chance of winning but at the cost of alienating, in the case of Angola, the sympathies of all of black Africa.

Like most Third-World countries messing around with Marxist percepts, Angola’s economy is in bad shape--in spite of the more than 1 billion dollars derived annually from its major trading partner, the United States. (Gulf Oil Co. likes it in Angola.) The United States could accomplish much more with carrots than with sticks.

As for Savimbi, that’s an internal problem and none of our business. If we were really concerned with trying to right injustice, we would be much better advised to get after Mobutu in neighboring Zaire, a real police state. After all, Mobutu was our man.

ROBERT HAYES

Altadena