Angola's Three Troubled Neighbors

The bloody Angolan civil war ground grimly and indecisively on last week. Meanwhile, from Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa to Moscow and London there was a flurry of diplomatic maneuverings that raised hopes a negotiated settlement might still be possible. One push came from a group of Black African leaders, including Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, who have already recognized the Soviet-backed Luanda government of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.). The group was reportedly urging M.P.L.A. President Agostinho Neto to enter into negotiations with the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA), which still controls the southern half of the country. Britain and France were also engaged in separate but coordinated soundings in Black Africa and South Africa designed to achieve the same end. In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim was said to be ready to act as a go-between, should the Organization of African Unity seek U.N. help to bring about a ceasefire.

Moscow may well hold the key to a solution. U.S. and British Kremlinologists last week differed strongly in their assessment of a recent Izvestia article calling for a coalition of "all patriotic forces" in Angola. Shrugged a Washington Kremlin watcher: "That kind of talk is cheap." British policymakers said the Soviet involvement in Angola has been the subject of debate in the Politburo for the past three weeks. One faction, led by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Premier Aleksei Kosygin, has argued that the M.P.L.A. will have a hard task subduing UNITA, which has the support of some 2 million Ovimbundu, the country's largest tribe. In Whitehall's view, this group is winning over the faction led by Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev by their argument that Moscow is in danger of being sucked into a potential African Viet Nam that could mean the collapse of detente.

Troop Airlift. Some Western observers read the comparative lull in the fighting last week as a sign that the kind of debate going on in Moscow was also going on in Luanda. As one longtime British Angola watcher put it, Neto and his lieutenants may be realizing that "even if they win the next battle, it's going to be tough to win the war." The Luanda government, moreover, denied that it was solidly in the Soviet camp.

The M.P.L.A. announced last week that it would pursue a policy of nonalignment and deny military bases to any foreign power. At the 15th anniversary celebration of its revolt against Portuguese colonial rule last week, Luanda circumspectly kept Cuban troops and Soviet advisers out of sight. Intelligence sources, meanwhile, said that the Cuban troop airlift has been halted for two weeks. Some observers speculated that a secret quid pro quo had been worked out in exchange for the South African withdrawal.

The facts of military, political and economic life point toward an M.P.L.A. coalition with UNITA as the most sensible course for Angola. That view is increasingly shared these days by Zambia, Zaire and South Africa, three neighbors of Angola that have all suffered seriously from the war. A look at their problems:

ZAMBIA: A Victim of Its Principles

Over the past few years, Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda, 51, has stood out as a beacon of black statesmanship and moderation in Africa. Because of the Angolan civil war, Kaunda's landlocked country (pop. 4.5 million) faces economic collapse; rumblings of coup attempts and anti-government feelings threaten to bring down his eleven-year-old regime. To counter what he called "subversive elements," Kaunda last month declared a full state of emergency and left little doubt that he was doing so to combat Soviet influence in Angola.

Zambia is dependent on copper exports for 90% of its foreign exchange earnings. It has been caught in a cruel transport squeeze that comes hard on the heels of a savage fall in copper prices (down from $2,800 a metric ton in April 1974 to $1,160 at the end of 1975). Roughly half of Zambia's copper exports used to go through Angola via the Benguela Railway. This has been closed for the past six months. A rail line through Rhodesia to Mozambique was closed three years ago by Kaunda himself, in an effort to put pressure on the racist regime of Prime Minister Ian Smith. That left only the 1,163-mile-long Tan-Zam Railway to Dar es Salaam, which will not be ready for full traffic for another year.

Zambia supported all three of Angola's liberation movements during the guerrilla war against Portugal. When they began righting with each other for control of the territory last year, Kaunda sided with Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. Fearing possible Soviet influence next door, he closed bases that the M.P.L.A. had used for years in western Zambia. In the view of many observers, Kaunda has become a victim of his principles. He is in the embarrassing position of supporting a movement (UNITA) also backed by South Africa. Should the M.P.L.A. win the war, Zambia might be permanently cut off from the vital Benguela Railway connection.

Out on a Limb. Kaunda's plight is particularly tragic since he has worked hard to establish detente with the white regimes of southern Africa, primarily to gain greater political freedoms for those countries' blacks. Last August, for example, Kaunda held a summit meeting at Victoria Falls with Rhodesia's Ian Smith and South African Prime Minister John Vorster. It was decided to pursue a peaceful settlement of Rhodesia's decade-old constitutional crisis on the basis of ultimate black majority rule. Kaunda's conciliatory approach seems to have backfired on him. One Western diplomat went so far last week as to say that Kaunda had "fallen in with the reactionaries and conservatives of Africa." That is clearly overstated. Certainly, Kaunda went out on a limb in joining the U.S. diplomatic effort to prevent recognition of the M.P.L.A. by the Organization of African Unity in January. But he also worked hard to get the

South Africans to withdraw their troops from Angola. Kaunda has repeatedly warned that the dearth of Western support for the moderates in Central Africa is being exploited by the Communists--a plea that has moved the British government to consider helping him out with economic aid and credits. Kaunda needs them: to stay afloat, Zambia was forced to borrow $300 million last year; its 1976 deficit is expected to be $1 billion.

ZAIRE: An End to Sentimentalism

For ten years, Zaire Strongman Mobutu Sese Seko championed the third liberation movement involved in the civil war--the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.), headed by his friend Holden Roberto. Zaire poured in money and arms to the F.N.L.A. in its struggle against the Portuguese in Angola without receiving any benefit in return. But the F.N.L.A. has been roundly beaten, and Mobutu is having a change of heart. Last week, Mobutu announced that mercenaries headed for the F.N.L.A.-UNITA front would no longer be able to pass through Zaire.

Like Zambia, Zaire has been forced to reappraise its Angolan policy. Landlocked, except for a 23-mile stretch of Atlantic coastline, Zaire shares a 1,600-mile southern border with Angola and is locked in by the M.P.L.A-controlled Cabinda enclave in the north. Although Zaire has not suffered nearly so much economic damage as Zambia, it too has been hit hard by the loss of the Benguela-Lobito outlet for its copper and other exports. Should the F.N.L.A-held city of Santo Antonio do Zaire, at the mouth of the Congo River, fall to the M.P.L.A., the Luanda regime would have control over Zaire's only major outlet to the sea. Mobutu is due to meet sometime this month with his cross-river neighbor, Congo President Marien Ngouabi, a past Mobutu foe who strongly supports the M.P.L.A. The betting is that Mobutu will approach Ngouabi for some sort of deal with Neto to protect his Atlantic access.

The poor fighting record of Mobutu's 60,000-man army may also have something to do with his about-face. The 2,000 troops Mobutu committed to helping the F.N.L.A. were pushed back repeatedly. An abortive attempt by Zaire-backed forces to seize oil-rich Cabinda last November was quickly routed by the M.P.L.A. with the aid of Cuban-operated Soviet tanks and rocket fire. At least 100,000 Angolan refugees have recently fled into Zaire, seeking protection from the Zaire-F.N.L.A. force, which, they charged, frequently faked attacks in order to loot their homes.

For all his troubles, Mobutu seems politically safe for the moment. Signs of open discontent are quickly stifled. A ubiquitous network of informers tips off security police to complainers, who simply disappear. Mobutu regularly rotates military commanders to prevent coup-prone cliques from developing in the ranks. But falling standards of living (inflation is running around 50% a year)--which contrast with Mobutu's own conspicuously opulent tastes--could threaten his rule in the long run.

SOUTH AFRICA: The High Price Tag

Some South Africans these days like to compare themselves to the Israelis--backs to the sea, vastly outnumbered by hostile hordes on their land borders.

Says Major General Neil Webster:

"South Africans, like the Israelis, must get used to the idea of living with a warlike situation for some years to come."

The analogy is more indicative of Pretoria's fortress mentality than of any real threat. South Africa's well-trained 50,000-man armed forces, supported by Buccaneer fighter-bombers and Mirages, would have no trouble combatting external guerrilla movements. Nonetheless, Vorster's government in recent weeks has undertaken the biggest defense call-up in South Africa since World War II. The measures include 1) broadening the Defense Act to enable Pretoria to send soldiers anywhere in the world, 2) tightening up internal security to permit imprisonment of security suspects without trial or appeal, and 3) building a huge new military base at Grootfontein in South West Africa, 120 miles from the Angolan border, which is capable of handling the biggest military aircraft made.

South Africa's primary concern is the disputed territory of South West Africa, also known as Namibia, which separates Angola and South Africa. Vorster has ignored repeated calls from the United Nations to get out of the territory. When South Africa entered the Angolan war on behalf of the UNITA forces last year, it used the "hot pursuit" of terrorists belonging to the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) as the rationale for incursions into Angola. Said Vorster recently: "When you are chasing a man, it's hard to know when to stop. In this case, we chased him a very long way indeed."

Biggest Bogey. Although South Africans have been withdrawn from the front lines in Angola, they apparently have not given up the chase. Defense Minister Pieter W. Botha admitted for the first time last week that between 4,000 and 5,000 South African regulars are occupying a 1,000-mile border area that extends 35 miles inside Angola. Another 5,000 to 10,000 troops are poised just back of the border. Explained a defense official: "If we have to fight, we're going to do it in Angola, not in South West Africa. I'd say [the troops] will be there indefinitely."

But the price tag for intervention in Angola may come high. "It was a typical cold-war type of ploy," says a Capetown lawyer, "and Vorster doesn't realize that in African eyes an apartheid South Africa is by far the biggest bogey, bigger than Communism ever could be." It was a serious miscalculation that swung uncommitted African states behind the M.P.L.A. Vorster will have to scramble to salvage anything at all from his hopes for black-white detente. One theory is that to help shore up Kaunda, he may be forced to abandon support for Ian Smith; that could mean he would be reluctant to send South African troops to aid white Rhodesians.

So far, there has not been widespread discontent, either among South Africa's 18 million blacks or its 4 million whites. But Pretoria's fortress mentality is going to mean more money for defense and less for the civilian economy, not to say big hikes in both prices and taxes. "We're a twitchy society, in the best of times," reflected Africa Affairs Editor Dennis Gordon of Johannesburg's Rand Daily Mail last week. "But this Angola business has made us twitchier than usual. Suddenly we discover that our boys are directly involved, fighting and sometimes dying."

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