Angolan Fields Again Becoming Threat to Life and Limb

Drivers hauling food to refugee camps on the outskirts of this embattled provincial capital have been given some life-or-death advice: Stay within the tire tracks of the vehicle that passed before you.

The same concern for safety has kept thousands of uprooted Angolans dependent on international food handouts, as they hastily flee renewed fighting between government and rebel troops.

“We would like to plant our own crops, but we are very afraid of the land mines,” said Bartolomeu Manjolo, a barefoot farmer in a ragged white shirt at a slapdash settlement about 10 miles out of town. “We are not able to go anywhere.”

Worries about antipersonnel mines in Angola have existed longer than this southwest African country has had independence. For more than three decades, mines have been a favorite tool of terror, as rival political groups first battled Portuguese colonialists and then turned on each other with the backing of the United States, the former Soviet Union and other Cold War adversaries.

But Manjolo and other Angolans living near the country’s newly charged battlefields are not just fretting about the past. Many of the land mines that have them fearing for their lives are as fresh as this season’s tropical rain showers.

After four years of internationally acclaimed progress in removing mines, both sides in Angola’s reignited civil conflict are once again laying the devices with a vengeance.

The Angolan government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola--the rebel group known by its Portuguese acronym, UNITA--have acknowledged to U.N. monitors that they began re-mining last year after their peace agreement, signed in 1994, started to rapidly unravel. The Angolan government has signed, but not yet ratified, a 1997 convention banning land mines, which took effect last month.

Of the many tragedies surrounding the return to fighting here, perhaps none is more distressing than the reintroduction of the deadly booby traps, dispirited humanitarian aid workers say.

“The situation is going very badly,” said Andrea Lari of Jesuit Refugee Service, among several international groups that condemned the re-mining in letters to the government and rebels after a rash of deadly explosions several months ago. “It is a great frustration. With the country going back to war, we are seeing all of the efforts made in the last few years disappear very quickly.”

The resumption of mine-laying has been so aggressive that at least a quarter of the painstaking progress in removing minefields since 1995 has been numerically offset by the planting of fresh fields, according to United Nations officials. Until last year, the laying of new mines had been largely restricted to out-of-the-way areas controlled either by defiant rebels or diamond barons worried about marauders.

Undoing the good work, mine experts say, has been frighteningly simple: New mines scattered across vast stretches of territory are being laid in a matter of hours, while de-miners, usually working by hand, require an entire day to clear an area smaller than a squash court.

“The mines that are now being redeployed are not necessarily in the same areas that we have cleared, but I don’t exclude that possibility,” said Oystein Gudim of Norwegian People’s Aid, the largest de-mining organization in Angola. “My impression is that the new mines are mostly being put in areas where there is new fighting.”

Some Help from Princess Diana

There are an estimated 70,000 amputees in Angola, most of whom are said to have lost limbs in mine explosions before the 1994 peace accord brought an end, at least temporarily, to hostilities. Although several other countries, such as Cambodia and Afghanistan, have equally intractable land-mine problems, Angola’s maimed became a poignant symbol for opponents of the munitions after Britain’s Princess Diana visited the heavily mined central highlands shortly before her death to console young amputees.

With the peace deal now shattered, the numbers of dead and wounded are once again skyrocketing. In February, in Bie province, one of the flash points of the new conflict and a focus of Diana’s visit in 1997, 26 people were reportedly killed and 47 wounded by mine explosions. About six of the country’s other 17 provinces are also heavily mined.

U.N. officials say the best indication of how things have worsened in recent months is the increase in mine-related accidents.

During most of 1998, there was an average of 11 incidents a month, killing a total of five people and seriously wounding five, according to Gerard Chagniot of the U.N. Office for Project Services, which collects mine-related statistics. But by November, the monthly tally had jumped to 56 accidents, and a total of 30 dead and 26 wounded.

“It is terrible what is happening,” said Laurie H. Boulden, a former researcher for the South African Institute of International Affairs and co-author of a recent book on de-mining in southern Africa. “Villages are emptying out again.”

As alarming as the situation has become, many international organizations caution against overstating the problem. Some are even reluctant to draw attention to the new mines because of fears that financial support for mine clearance programs will dry up.

“Many of us are working as volunteers since the beginning of this year because there is no money,” said Hendrick Ehlers, director of MGM, a German-based de-mining organization. “I would feel bad to leave the Angolan people alone now. It is not fair to the people. Why punish them for what is happening?”

Norwegian People’s Aid is so concerned about local and international sensitivities to the issue of re-mining that it refused to endorse the letters of condemnation by the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, the Mines Advisory Group and Medico International.

The Norwegians said there is insufficient evidence that the rash of mine accidents, however deplorable, can be blamed on newly planted devices rather than on forgotten or shifting old explosives disturbed by the country’s sudden wave of refugees.

Donors to De-Mining Effort Begin to Balk

The European Union, among other big international donors, has expressed second thoughts about spending money on de-mining at such a volatile time in Angola. Some contributors have also begun complaining that roads cleared of mines for humanitarian purposes are being commandeered as transit routes by military forces, thereby facilitating the latest bloodshed.

A joint de-mining program of the U.N. and the Angolan government, which has a history of mismanagement and funding problems, has become particularly unpopular with foreign donors because of the Angolan government’s role in laying new mines. Money and security concerns have grounded the program’s operations since December, officials said.

Roderik Wols, a Dutch diplomat in Luanda, the Angolan capital, said the country’s worsening military, political and humanitarian situation is forcing well-intentioned foreigners to be more discerning in handing out assistance.

“This is an extremely big country. If you have war in one area, you don’t necessarily have it in another,” said Wols, whose government has contributed $13 million to de-mining operations since 1995. “There are concerns, but we believe overall progress is still being made. More de-mining is going on than re-mining.”

Although the figures are closely guarded, the United Nations De-mining Program, which is compiling a register of antipersonnel mines in Angola, estimates that the government alone has laid 50 new minefields since April 1998, said Pieter de Villiers, program manager. Estimates for UNITA are unavailable because the rebels have allowed only limited access to territory they control, he said.

According to the mine register, about 200 of the country’s 2,229 known minefields have been cleared since 1995, mostly by internationally funded organizations from Norway, Britain and Germany. About 60 different types of antipersonnel and antitank mines, some dating to the 1960s, have been uncovered during the clearance operations.

U.N. officials estimate that there are between 9 million and 14 million land mines in Angola, but there is no accurate count and estimates vary widely.

Donald K. Steinberg, the former U.S. ambassador to Angola who now heads the U.S. Office of Global Humanitarian Demining, said determining the exact number of new mines becomes a secondary issue in humanitarian crises. The psychological damage of a new field is achieved with the sighting or triggering of just one explosive, he said.

A Few Mines Can Go a Long Way

The newly laid mines in Angola are serving their intended purpose, by terrorizing ordinary Angolans and paralyzing the movement of refugees, he said.

“You don’t have to plant a million mines to have the effect you are looking for,” Steinberg said. “A few land mines planted in strategic areas where refugees are returning, and it scares people off.”

To make matters worse, many of the people displaced by the new fighting--estimated at 650,000--have never been educated about mine hazards, refugee workers say. At the camp here, Manjolo, the displaced farmer, complained that he was afraid to venture into the thick grass to collect firewood because he didn’t know anything about land mines.

Kara Greenblott of Catholic Relief Services, which offers mine awareness courses in small towns across the country, said there has been a dramatic increase in attendance at classes in recent months.

“We have more participants than ever before. We think,” she said, “it is because more people are coming into the towns to get away from the problems but also because mines are becoming an issue again.”

Lari, the Jesuit Refugee Service official, said the resumption of mine-laying has left most humanitarian aid groups with little choice but to concentrate efforts on preventing accidents. The letters demanding a halt to re-mining went unanswered by the government and the rebels, Lari said, except for a local army commander in Luanda, who accused the authors of lying.

“It is very difficult to continue, but we have to continue,” Lari said. “We can’t give up. Otherwise, evil will always win.”