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Angola in the Post-Cold War Era of Savimbi: An Analysis of the Role of Natural

Resources in Fuelling Violent Conflict

By

Adolf Mavheneke

Introduction

A focus on the conflict in Angola during the post-Cold War period reflects how to a larger

extent natural resources have been implicated in shaping the profile and the levels of intensity

the conflict took. It is no exaggeration that at the end the struggle became a vicious one for

and within resource source(s) and the revenue accruing thereof. Each side of the belligerents

had one resource that they had control over, and the revenue from that helped to shape the

conflict in Angola. The collapse of the Cold War called for inward looking strategies in terms

of funding war activities since external funding and support had significantly withered with

the end of the Cold War. At that point diamonds and oil in the Angolan case came to play a

pivotal role in the conflict, aptly in sustaining the belligerents’ war efforts.

However this should not overshadow the critical resentments against the government that lay

at the heart of the Angolan society especially along the ethnic divide over governance issues.

The conflict that saw its outbreak in the 1990s mirrored the imbalances that the society had

inherited from Portuguese colonialism since independence in 1975. Thus a focus on natural

resources alone is an unfortunate assumption that ignores the unstable socio-economic fabric

of the society, therefore overly amplifying the role of natural resources in the conflict

discourse.

For proper understanding of the discussion, the idea of “fuelling” conflicts needs to be

captured properly in the context of this monograph. Fuelling is not the same as a causal

relationship, but refers to the way in which natural resources affected the dynamics of the

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conflict through increasing the intensity, pace, thus influencing the course and duration of the

Angolan conflict. A contextual appreciation of what constitute conflict(s) is also critical for

purposes of building the framework of the discussion. A conflict represents an incompatible

relationship manifest by clashes of violence, or general disagreements between two or more

people, among groups, or within groups.1 Whilst general disagreements are normal in the

public sphere as a result of differences in perception and or understanding it is the violent

option as in a civil war that is detestable and a subject of discussion in terms of what

motivates it. The task, thus, is critiquing the position of natural resources mainly diamonds

and oil on how might have influenced the start, nature, and course of the conflict in Angola in

the period after 1990.

The natural resources-conflict discourse and the post-Cold War Angolan conflict

The foregoing fits well within the contentious debates scholars have revealed in the natural

resources-conflict discussion. The neo-Malthusian conception looks at natural resources’

scarcity as tied to the potential for increasing conflict in societies. Societies facing rapid

population growth are likely to face increasing environmental pressures and degradation as

well as natural resources scarcity leading to bitter struggles for survival for the only available

resources. Thus the scarcity variable becomes essential in understanding the role of natural

resources in conflicts. Essentially natural resources scarcity carries and assumes silent subtle

attributes that cause and sustain conflicts.2

On a directly opposite framework, natural resource abundance and exportation has linked

natural resources to the outbreak of violent conflicts. Belligerents would therefore position

themselves to exploit the opportunities provided by lootable resources like diamond in the

rebels’ greed objective(s) of doing well out of conflict than a genuine grievance fight for

1http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conflict

2 Mwanika (2010), p.3

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reform, or societal change3. The primacy of this view is that rebel activity is an act of greed,

and they are prepared to do anything to capture the resource source, and the trade for funding

the war and personal enrichment. This propensity to capture the resource and revenue

therefore explain the violence and predation that characterised the conflict. And this could

only be made easier by the lootable nature of alluvial diamonds which were mined,

transported and smuggled easily across Angola’s borders to the international markets, and the

MPLA’s access to offshore oil deposits which were out of reach for UNITA.

The conflict in Angola went through various metamorphoses which were marked by

changing levels of escalating violence, all being catalysed by the motivation and greed to

capture the resource rents.4 For UNITA the lootable nature of diamond served well for them

to finance the war. Whilst the resource scarcity argument seems hardly significant in

understanding the Angolan conflict, it is the resource abundance framework that seems to

find relevance in the abundance of oil and diamonds, and that abundance explained the

greedy propensity exhibited by belligerents to the war.

An analysis of the conflict in Angola from 1992 serves to justify greediness which was

motivated by control of the diamond mines, artisanal mining activities and the diamond

revenue by UNITA. A discussion on situating the political economy of civil war(s) noted that

fighting to win the enemy, or bringing the conflict to an end becomes invalid for key parties

and belligerents than landing their hands on benefits coming from the perpetuation of the

conflict.5

If Savimbi had been fighting for genuine peace, and fundamental redressal of the challenges

befalling Angola at the social, political and economic framework then the elections in 1992, 3Collier (2000), p.96

4 de Soysa(2000), p.114

5 Berdal &Keen (1997), p,798

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provided an opportunity to work for it and win the election. The first round of elections had

not provided an outright winner, and the proposed second round was another great chance for

UNITA and Savimbi to redeem themselves, and show the Angolan society that they were a

viable democratic option. But UNITA had other options for Angola, at least for themselves,

violence. No sooner had the decision to go for a second round of election been made than

UNITA was back at war. In that decision UNITA showed that at any stage they were not

prepared for the road to elections and democracy as a panacea to achieve what Angola had

been missing for a long time. That act of abrogating demands and expectations for peace was

an effigy of a greedy proposition which saw the war option as providing more returns for the

rebel elites than what peace would entail and offer to them.

Revenue accruing from exploitation of diamonds put UNITA in a position to shift decisions

binding their fighting in the war. This led UNITA to think and propose that they could fight

the MPLA government in a conventional war than the guerrilla tactics that they had been

employing before.6 Under the imaginative influence of diamond wealth they abandoned

guerrilla war tactics, and assumed a predatory conventional warfare soon after the 1992

elections. The same revenue also led to UNITA turning the violence on their traditional

supporters-rural peasants- and shifting from earlier Maoist nationalist principles which had

won them hearts among the population because now they thought they could not rely on the

support of the rural population as guerrilla Maoist revolutionary ideology defined.7That shift

thought it recorded initial success was to be UNITA’s greatest undoing; with rural support

lost because of the indiscriminate nature of their violence, it was to be the harbinger of

UNITA’s downfall.

6Malaquias ( 2007), pp. 110-111

7Ibid, p.111

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Diamonds created a financing valve through which UNITA could determine its course

without taking heed of the mandate and expectations of the 1991 Bicesse Peace Accord and

the 1994 Lusaka Agreement. Unlike RENAMO in Mozambique which had no resource base

to fund continuation of insurgent activities UNITA control over diamonds made them

sluggish and reluctant on sticking to peace protocols as they perceived losing much in

eventual peace in Angola.8Reluctance to observe peace agreements motivated by diamond

revenue on the part of UNITA would therefore explain the duration of the conflict.

Whilst UNITA counted on diamonds the MPLA government was scoring at their luck

through exploiting oil resources to fund their counter insurgency activities. In the 1990s the

MPLA response and strength on the war front followed the trajectory of oil prices at the

international market, prices whose value determined MPLA’s purchase of war weaponry

therefore its resistance pattern to UNITA.9 In the same manner UNITA used diamond

revenues, oil existed at the survival stream of the government forces. In a clear show of the

linkage between the nature and intensity of MPLA’s counter-insurgency and the role of oil,

the collapse in oil prices in 1998 saw UNITA taking back ninety of the two hundred and

seventy-two areas the Lusaka Agreement had given to government control.10

Improvements in

oil prices by the end of 1999 saw the government later launching successful attempts against

UNITA. Likewise UNITA became married to diamond revenue to the extent that when

sanctions were imposed on their trade in the late 90s it also saw the decline of revenue for its

war activities, and foretold its subsequent collapse with the death of Savimbi in 2002.

The role of oil in influencing the direction of the conflict in Angola is best captured in the

role of global capital; oil companies and government oil transactions. The activities in as

much as they were laid to benefit the companies provided an open cheque for the MPLA

8Frynas &Wood ( 2001),p. 597

9Ibid, p. 594

10 Ibid, p. 594

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government to remain in a position to reincarnate itself and resist UNITA incursions. That

role clearly saunters the discussion to implications of governance both at local level and

international level in terms of oil and diamond exploitation in Angola in terms of resource

extraction and trade. Admittedly, in the absence of oil and diamonds both the MPLA

government and UNITA would have found it close to impossible to continue fighting

following the fall of external funding with the end of the Cold War in 1990.11

But the

presence of international capital flows for both oil and diamonds provided an opportunity for

the two parties to extent their hostilities beyond the post-Cold War era.

International capital took advantage of the opportunity provided by the conflict to further

their economic gains. Diamond companies did not stop buying both illegal and legal

diamonds from Angola since 1992, though it was clear the cash inflows stood at the heart of

fuelling violence. 12

Thus there was always ready revenue and a readily available market to

finance the war. The international trade in diamonds in Angola was to become a major

stumbling block to peace efforts from 1992. It did not only make UNITA replenish its war

artillery but stood at the centre of the rebel movement’s dishonour of the 1991 peace accord,

1992 elections, 1994 peace agreement, and further future negotiations and obligations for

peace.13

In the oil sector international capital again played a decisive role in sustaining the conflict.

Government forces managed to effectively push back UNITA after the government secured a

loan for US$575 million dollars from an international investment bank that had oil interests

in Angola, and a further US$900 million dollars was paid to the government of Angola as

money to have the government sign oil licences by multinationals in the oil industry in

11

Ibid, p.594 12

Global Witness (1998), p.5 13

‘Ibid, p.4

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Angola.14

It does not need further discussion that much of these monies were used to acquire

war artillery to fight UNITA, and explained MPLA’s recovery against UNITA from this

period onwards. In both principle and practice the government’s resistance to UNITA could

only do well when oiled by revenues from the oil trade.

Understanding the Angola conflict outside the natural resource complex

The role of natural resources in financing the war in Angola takes the analysis of the natural

resources-conflict discourse to an interesting dimension on how governance issues in

themselves as isolated from natural resources per se are responsible for understanding the

profile of conflicts. The following remarkably shows that mere presence of oil and diamonds

in their abundance would not in itself tell the occurrence of the civil war as it did, and in a

manner it took in Angola. This is one big shortfall of the natural resource abundance and

greedy motivation thesis as it tries to assume that resources abundance would literally

translate to sections of the society becoming greedy, therefore engage in bellicose tendencies

to capture the state or control resource sources and revenue.

The notion that oil resources have a critical potential to undermine government governance

issues; transparency and accountability exist at the crux of understanding the Angolan

conflict.15

The foregoing needs to be understood in the context of how a patrimonial state

fuelled the conflict, than the natural resource itself, though oil would always be found at the

centre of the transactional processes. The state in Angola degenerated to a corrupt and unfair

public institution in the international trade in oil. Oil companies even furthered the state’s

patrimonial hegemony in their clandestine funding on structures like the Eduardo do Santos

Foundation, a charity organisation which was set by the President, and served as a tool for

14

Frynas &Wood (2001) , p.594 15

Ibid, p.596

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rewarding and maintaining structures and networks that supported him.16

Oil revenue and

other linked benefits in as much as they were directed to finance the war helped to sustain a

patrimonial regime at the expense of the wider population.

The state’s corrupt action exposed it, and it remained vulnerable. Thus the state’s position in

the eyes of citizenry led by its greedy and unavoidable abandonment of its responsibilities

built a grievance mode among the population than necessarily being greed to seek redressal

of their concerns. This explains the initial support that UNITA received from a wider cross

section of the rural population. The state had declined into self-serving enclaves within public

offices, leading to growing weakness of the state, loss of confidence and legitimacy of its

operations in the public view. Most of the state financial transactions in diamonds and oil

trade remained hidden from the public domain, and even to the line Ministry of Finance; all

in addition to how the war had lost all sense but personally motivated greedy17

Thus very little linkage exists between natural resources and the outbreak of conflict than the

prevailing visible governance regimes and processes in place.18

The governance regime(s) in

place saw a state alienated from its obligations of serving the citizens in utmost good faith.

Cases of a country like Botswana with remarkable natural resource governance regimes have

managed to avoid violent conflicts besides abundance of diamond deposits justify the

foregoing.

A study of the conflict in Sierra Leone noted how the state had failed to the extent that it was

viewed as the enemy’s institution that had to be fought and destroyed, and therefore the

motivation for people to enlist with the rebel forces.19

Similarly in Angola the state collapsed

to a corrupt and greedy proclivity that ignored its citizens, and effectively the oil rents

16

Ibid, p.598 17

Hodges (2004), p.62 18

Abiodun (2002), p.x 19

Keen (2005), p.40

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separated the state from the people, and the former cocooned in patrimonial extravagance and

accumulation. In reality the oil rents for the MPLA elites even led the party which had also

been founded on Marxist-Leninist principles to renegade on them in pursuit of private wealth

accumulation in the fog of the war violence.20

Given such an exploitative state, Savimbi’s

decision to continue the war after the inconclusive election in 1992 resonate the fundamental

grievances at the heart of Angola.

Savimbi and UNITA therefore cannot be dismissed as rogues, or war criminals, but they had

a statement to make against the inequities that defined the Angolan society at the behest of a

government which was enshrouded in corruption, greedy and plunder. The use of violence by

UNITA was part of the scheme against social decay, a fight for recognition and status, and

violence had theatrical liberating psyche effects.21

The inconclusive nature of the elections of

1992 and the need for a second round of presidential elections showed that UNITA was not

irrelevant in Angolan politics and social life. The plebiscite was significantly contested with

Savimbi taking 40.1% of the vote against Dos Sandos’ 49.6 %.22

This was a testimony that a

good number of Angolans perceived UNITA as an option to settle the decay in the MPLA

government.

The natural resource-conflict linkage is not a linear model to understanding conflicts

especially after the end of the Cold War, and the Angolan case is one. The concept of natural

resources fuelling conflicts overshadows fundamental issues to the conflict. It is an

ahistorical approach that does not completely see long held socio-economic, political,

governance, and at times ethnical dimensions to the conflict. These exist as long held

resentments waiting for an opportune time for expression. Outside the absence of the Cold

War support, and revenue from oil and diamonds, both belligerents sought ethnic founded

20

Malaquias (2007), p.115 21

Keen (2005), p.56 22

Malaquias (2007), p.101

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identities as a major source of power that drove the conflict.23

These ethnic motivations were

constructs of Portuguese colonialism, and represented the fault line of social structural

inequalities that fuelled the conflict and continue to exist in the era after Savimbi.

Conclusion

Post-Cold War Angola represents a period were both belligerents to the conflict configured in

the context of what predominantly lay before them (natural resources), which critically

influenced their decisions on the war. It is important to understand that war for its own

survival requires resources both human and financial. That the war in Angola went on with

financial support from natural resource rents, that the rents transmuted belligerents’

motivation and behaviour, that the revenue influenced intensification of the fight is clear.

Diamond and oil defined the architecture of the conflict to the extent of precluding earlier

historical, socio-political underpinning issues to it. However, the natural resources-conflict

conjunction posits human motivations for greedy, failing in the process to significantly link to

fundamental socio-political processes at the base of the conflict.

23

Ibid, p.101

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