A Little Help From Some Friends

"If only outsiders had stayed out," observed a Portuguese businessman in the Angolan capital of Luanda, "this might have remained a low-level civil war in the bush. But now everybody's in, and the thing is beyond solution." That seemed to be an accurate appraisal last week, as Angola was engulfed in civil war.

Largely because of Angola's huge oil and mineral wealth, foreign interests have long been active behind the scenes in support of one or another of the country's three rival liberation movements. But since independence day (TIME, Nov. 24), these nations no longer pretend to conceal their activities. Arms, advisers and mercenaries from at least a dozen countries have been pouring into Angola. Even the aging British mercenary, Colonel Michael ("Mad Mike") Hoare, 55, leader of the fabled Fifth Mercenary Commando that fought in the Congo during the early '60s, seemed to be gearing up for action. Said one of the commandos at Hoare's annual reunion last week in Johannesburg: "There's something in the wind. I believe that negotiations are taking place. We feel there may be a role for us in Angola."

If the commandos swing back into action, they presumably would go in on the side of the Democratic People's Republic of Angola (capital: Huambo), which was formed by a coalition of Hoiden Roberto's F.N.L.A. and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. The F.N.L.A. has the open support of a peculiar combination: Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, the U.S. (which funnels money through Zaire for weapons), Western business interests -and China. Savimbi's group, ,meanwhile, has been bankrolled by South Africans and wealthy white Angolans who fear their property will be confiscated by the country's other government, the Luanda-based People's Republic of Angola. Founded by the Soviet-backed M.P.L.A. of Agostinho Neto, the People's Republic has already been recognized by Moscow, most of the Eastern European bloc and ten African nations, including the nearby Congo Republic.

Both sides seem desperately eager for outside help from their friends. The M.P.L.A. now admits that Cubans (an estimated 3,000, half of them combat soldiers) have joined its side. There are also some 4,000 refugees from the 1960-63 Katanga rebellion, most of them diehard opponents of Mobutu, who are fighting for the M.P.L.A. A hundred or more Algerians, Brazilians and North Vietnamese are also involved as advisers, technicians and tacticians. Moscow reportedly has dispatched 400 technicians to train Angolans to use Russian equipment, including light artillery and antiaircraft guns being disgorged daily at Luanda's Craveiro Lopes Airport.

Shrill Reports. The ranks of the F.N.L.A. and UNITA, meanwhile, have become equally internationalized with Zaire regulars, former members of the Portuguese army including a leader named Colonel Santos e Castro, white Rhodesians, Angolans and Mozambicans. There are even a few American veterans acting as advisers. South Africa has denied persistent reports that its army regulars are fighting in Angola, but admits that its units have crossed the border in "hot pursuit" of guerrillas belonging to the SWAPO independence movement in Nambia (South West Africa). Forces on the South West Africa border have been put on "low-key alert," and some of the country's toughest combat troops have been dispatched to the area. Last week South African Defense Minister P.W. Botha ominously called for countries in southern Africa "separately and collectively " to act to ward off a Russian plan to subvert the African subcontinent.

Both the Russians and Chinese obviously see Angola as crucial to their interests in Africa, and indeed both sides in the fighting are using Communist-made weapons. Although the M.P.L.A. is better armed at the moment, it is losing ground to the rival forces. By last week, the Neto government had abandoned the Atlantic coastal cities of Nova Redondo and Porto Amboim, and there were reports that an F.N.L.A.-UNITA column was only 60 miles south of Dondo, where a dam on the Cwanza River supplies all of Luanda's power.

Apparently reacting to the M.P.L.A. losses, reports from Moscow about the Angolan fighting grew increasingly shrill. In a particularly vituperative broadside against Peking, Tass accused the Chinese of plunging a "knife into the back" of Angolans seeking self-determination, and charged that Peking had entered into a conspiracy with the U.S. and the racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia.

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