An Explosive Warning

When a time bomb ripped apart an oil pipeline in northern Angola on July 12, the former Portuguese colony's Marxist leaders felt the shock waves. The blast could not be dismissed as simply another act of sabotage by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the guerrilla group battling to set up a government of national unity. For the first time, UNITA had struck at Angola's oil industry, which accounts for 75% of the country's revenues, and had launched an attack hundreds of kilometers from its bush-fringed stronghold in southeastern Angola.

The rebels blew up the pipeline, owned by the U.S.-based Gulf Oil Corp., as a warning to foreign firms that they can no longer conduct business safely in Angola. There has often been speculation that Washington tacitly supports the guerrillas, although such a connection has never been stated. Only State Department hands with a keen sense of irony, however, could fully appreciate the action of guerrillas wrecking the property of a U.S. company in order to score points against a Marxist regime.