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In no other time a war who leads a country into chaos and death for over 20 years caused so less interests in the western country medias. That happened because the CIA and other western security agencies controlled and manipulated the information from Angola to destroy the image of the MPLA government. It was a war East against West and nobody cares that a lot of innocent people had died because of this imperialistic actions.
The following text shows the social-politic aspects of the war in Angola.
After the Portuguese military has overtaken control in Lissabon by a putsch, at the 25. April 1974 the decolonisationwar in Angola stopped and Angola became an independent country. Three political parties were born. The MPLA, the UNITA and the FNLA. But the FNLA disappeared because of the inability of their leader.
The UNITA was supported by South Africa and the USA and the MPLA by the USSR and Cuba. But nether the MPLA or the UNITA could win a war and so the UNITA started to destroy the country and to attack the people who live on the country. After some years the agricultural farming has been totally destroyed and millions of fled from the country to the cities. Angola's economy should have been ruined by the rebels. 300000 people have been killed in the war but a lot more died because they had no food. 20 percent of the babies died and 37 percent of the children between 1 and 5 did so to. 827000 were displaced and 300000 escaped into Samibia and Zaire. The life expectancy was at 46 years. And a lot of hospitals or schools have been destroyed by rebels. Most people in Angola were farmer, but because of the war most of them fled to the cities and huge slums (Musseques) were built. In Luanda the capital of Angola more than 75% of the people lived in Musseques. And the living conditions were very bad there. A lot of people died because of Cholera.
The economy in Angola was very bad. There was no agricultural farming and after the Portuguese had gone, there was no trade to. And because of the bad educating system there were no people who could work at industrial work. So most of them were self-sufficient.
One other big problem of Angola are the mines. More than 15 million mines were in the ground of Angola and nobody knows where. The specialists of the central minebureau in Luanda will need 15 years to reconstruct all the roads and rails. The mines were from South Africa, China, USSR, CSSR, Italy, France, Romania, USA and Cuba. But there were also mines from Austria. 160 000 people were hit by mines.
Because the UNITA could not win, they started to starve the civilians. They attacked UN-transports and destroyed all helpgoods. Kuito and Batida were two examples how the UNITA captured a town. They besiege the town and starve the people inside to death. UNITA troops also attacked people from the foreign aid. They destroy Christian missions and killed aid worker.
Crime also had became a big problem of Angola. Because of the war the government could not control the crime. So the crime rate is extremely high, and the biggest freelandmarket is at the seaside. But without this black market Angolan economy would have been broken. The government tried to rebuilt the economy by selling all their resources and Angola is full with oil, diamonds and other resources. But also a lot of Drugs came into the country. Daily 50 kilos of cocaine arrived in Angola. Angola is a country with seven big different ethnic groups inside. The MPLA tried to give them a feeling of all are equal and there are no differences between the races. But the UNITA was a very nationalistic group and Savimbi only accepted people from his race to fight with him.
But the government did not work very well. So the peoples in the cities were preferred and the people in the country discriminated. But Angola is like most other African countries structured on farming and so they depended on imports from other countries.
While Angola was an Portuguese colony the Angolan culture was negated. But now people remember their culture, mixed with western influences.
This war which was fought over 20 years formed Angola. On the one hand UNITA-rebels destroyed the country and the economy so that Angola needs help from other countries. And on the other hand the bureaucracy of the government and the corruption of high situated politicians hinder the rebuilt of the country. And because the UNITA did not accept that they have lost at the elections 1992 and because the MPLA government has not understood their responsibility for their people this will not be the last war in Angola and there will be a lot of dead and a lot of fugitives again.
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