Angola’s Cabinda Wants Independence : Africa: The oil-rich coastal enclave is rife with separatist sentiment. Since the government signed a peace agreement with UNITA rebels, the local conflict has intensified.

Orange gas flares from Cabinda’s offshore oil rigs light up the horizon at night. Onshore, the spirit of independence flares in people’s hearts.

Separatist sentiment is rife in this coastal enclave of 200,000 people, cut off from the rest of Angola by Zaire’s narrow corridor to the sea.

When Angola held its first free elections last September, only 7% of Cabinda’s electorate voted.

“The people of Cabinda never had the intention to integrate with the rest of Angola,” said Hilario Martinho Bala, a member of the Support Committee for the Independence of Cabinda.

The separatist guerrilla movement FLEC--Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda--has been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for the independence of this former Portuguese colony for the last 30 years.

FLEC urged an election boycott and the people of Cabinda paid heed.

Ironically, the conflict has heated up since the government signed a peace agreement with Angola’s main rebel movement, UNITA--the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola--in 1991.

FLEC’s rival factions now control much of Cabinda’s jungle interior, paralyzing road traffic.

FLEC felt left out by the 1991 peace accord and began ambushing civilian vehicles and kidnaping foreigners who were held for ransom.

But the government controls Cabinda city, where nearly half the population lives, and Cabinda’s offshore oil industry, which FLEC and UNITA have refrained from attacking.

Oil was discovered in Cabinda in 1966, when it was still a Portuguese colony. The Cabinda Gulf Oil company, which is owned by the U.S.-based Chevron Corp., produces 315,000 barrels per day from offshore wells--60% of Angola’s entire output.

Cabinda had a different colonial statute from the rest of Angola and was administered by Portugal as a separate entity until 1956.

“We are a different people and we demand a different statute. We were arbitrarily annexed by Angola under the Alvor agreement (between the mainstream Angolan nationalist movements and Portugal) at independence in 1975,” Martinho Bala said.

“The ideal option would be to have a referendum so that the people of Cabinda could say democratically what they want,” he said.

The government has opened a dialogue with FLEC’s different factions to discuss the possibility of an autonomy statute that would guarantee Cabinda a percentage of local oil revenues.

“Cabinda is a special problem that needs special treatment,” said provincial governor Augusto Tomas, who has proposed that 10% of all oil revenues from Cabinda should be spent in the territory.

At present prices and production rates, this would amount to more than $100 million a year.

UNITA took up arms again after rejecting its defeat by the ruling MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, in last year’s U.N.-supervised elections, but has remained militarily inactive in Cabinda.

Drivers are nervous about going 20 miles along the coast from Cabinda city to the Malongo base camp of Cabinda Gulf.

FLEC kidnaped a United Nations official on this road in February, and guerrillas frequently ambush other traffic.

Cabinda Gulf now flies all its 400 expatriate personnel from Cabinda airport to Malongo by helicopter.

The U.S. company receives 30.2% of Cabinda’s oil under a production-sharing agreement with the Angolan state oil firm, Sonangol, and other minority investors, but proclaims itself politically neutral.