Angola's long agony ended in 2002 when the surrender of the UNITA rebels brought 30 years of civil war to a close. The government had won a hard-fought victory. Dr Steve Kibble, the Catholic Institute for International Relations' Advocacy Officer for Africa and Yemen, asks whether it can now win the peace.

The Angolan civil war -- a 30-year struggle that cost 1.5 million lives and brought poverty, squalor and chaos to the resource-rich country -- ended in 2002 when the UNITA rebels finally gave up.

Their leader, Jonas Savimbi, was dead; their troops were losing battles and losing heart. It was time, judged the remnants of the UNITA leadership, to try politics instead of war. More than 85,000 soldiers were demobilised and the once inaccessible rebel strongholds were opened up.

What did this mean for Angolans? The immediate issues were obvious: feeding people in inaccessible areas; clearing land mines and helping those who had been driven from their homes.

Longer-term issues were just as obvious, perhaps, but much more intractable: democratisation, reconciliation; land reform; help from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund; dealing with corruption, generating civil society, holding elections -- the necessary conditions for creating a lasting and sustainable peace.

Donor countries, the U.N. and non-governmental organisations stress the importance of transparency and accountability in government as a condition for investment.

Free elections and a revision of the constitution to guarantee basic liberties are needed urgently.

Can the Angolan government meet these challenges? Will it seize the opportunity to bring peace, national reconciliation and to use the oil-generated wealth of the country to end corruption and poverty?

How do Angolan churches and civil society help bring peace and international support when the entire recent history of their country has been one of internal repression and war aided by external, mostly malign, intervention?

Success seems unlikely where elite negotiations and U.N. interventions have failed so spectacularly, but there are hopeful signs and some possible pressure points.

GENUINE PEACE

Gustavo Silva, the editor of the Luanda-based Catholic radio station Radio Eclesia, doubts that genuine peace -- "not just the absence of fighting" -- could emerge unless the Luanda government addresses issues of transparency and democracy, listens to the poor and marginalised and commits itself to the fair and efficient use of economic resources.

The worry is that the death of Savimbi and the collapse of UNITA could strengthen the government so much that it feels able to ignore these issues¾and there is even concern that the UN will be complicit in this process.

So there is a need to support civil society by pressing for good governance and democratic accountability, backed up by international pressure on Luanda.

Angola is not only the site of a destructive war, but also the graveyard of attempts to bring sustained peace and prosperity to its people, in spite of the country's abundant natural resources.

Ideological and ethnic divisions, external interference and the way in which the elite has plundered economic resources have combined to make peace difficult to sustain.

A million and a half people have been killed since 1975; more than four million people (31 per cent of the population) are internally displaced and Angola has some of the worst health indicators in the world.

The economy is in chaos and basic public services such as health and education have broken down. As many as 63 per cent of people in the capital, Luanda, rely on the informal economy to survive.

Little preparation appears to be under way for an expected rise in HIV/AIDS. Among the authorities there is a culture of impunity derived from colonialism, war, and corruption.

This has lead to abuses of human rights, including restrictions on press freedom, that underpin the Luanda government.

NO REDRESS AVAILABLE

The police are often involved in crime and there is no redress available under the justice system -- although the government appears unlikely to return to the crude totalitarianism of the 1970s and 1980s.

The country's resources enabled the protagonists to resist international pressure for an end to the armed conflict.

The government could use oil, its most valuable asset, to maintain its client population and meet the otherwise crippling cost of the war.

Even when it lost control of the diamond fields to UNITA, it was still able to buy arms on a large scale.

Equally, UNITA used diamond sales to finance its increased military expenditure, earning an estimated $1.7 billion between 1994 and 1998.

Although the Angolan government is aware that it needs international assistance and expertise, it is wary of the conditions demanded in return and critical of the past role of the U.N.

The international community wants to see that the Angolan government is committed to spending its own money on its own citizens before appealing to outsiders.

Since so many things need to be achieved urgently, however, the international community must know that there is a lack of capacity in Luanda to solve all the problems and a real need for outside help. But will that help be there? And will it be the right kind of help?

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