Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process
Sustained by bountiful deposits of oil and diamonds and prolonged by inept politicians and their corrupt international accomplices, Angola's civil war now lurches into its 26th year. This Human Rights Watch report recounts the failures of the Angolans and the United Nations to consolidate the peace process begun by the Lusaka accord of November 1994, detailing the abuses committed by the warring parties since that date. Although rightly placing most of the blame for Angola's nightmare on Jonas Savimbi, the report also underscores the repeated inability of the U.N. to intervene decisively, take human rights violations seriously, or enforce its own sanctions. After backing Savimbi's ruinous ambitions for a decade and a half, the United States changed sides in the early 1990s and has since supported the peace effort. The report finds that had foreign governments and the U.N. done less to placate elites and more to encourage civil society, Angolans would have suffered less.
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