Word: luanda
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...call this civil strife anymore," said one Portuguese official in Luanda last week. "This is war." The latest and bitterest round of bloodletting between rival liberation groups had, in fact, left the Angolan capital a shambles. As thousands of whites sought to get out of the country, entire families crowded into the airport, waiting for any available flight out. Thousands of others, mostly blacks, jammed into the downtown section of the city in an effort to escape the fighting in outlying muceques (slums). After two hospitals closed down for lack of staff, medical teams were simply unable to cope...
...latest fighting broke out when the M.P.L.A. decided to wrest control of Luanda from the bigger and better armed F.N.L.A. Using the truce as a cover, M.P.L.A. troops attacked and destroyed F.N.L.A. offices in Luanda, forcing its leaders to flee to the north of the country. Fearful for their lives and property, storekeepers and many industries shut down. As food and fuel ran out, the Portuguese High Commissioner, General António da Silva Cardoso, appealed to the United Nations for emergency relief supplies...
...Alvor accords began to collapse as soon as they were signed. The FNLA attacked MPLA muceques in Luanda and arrested MPLA literacy teams in their own territory. The new Portugese administration openly favored its ideological comrades of the MPLA. Street fighting between the MPLA and the FNLA erupted. The real fireworks, however, have been in the last two weeks--the MPLA and the FNLA have battled it out in the muceques of Luanda with mortars and bazookas. Having been driven from the capital, the last FNLA troops are now besieged in an old cliffside fort dangerously close to Angola...
...FNLA is numerically superior but somewhat isolated while the MPLA has strategic position, control of Luanda. Portiguese support and little else. The prospect of civil war is further complicated by the presence of close to half a million Portuguese settlers, who are being evacuated as fast as possible, if civil war breaks out the Portuguese government will be obliged to intervene to extricate its citizens...
...there are two key issues: the territorial integrity of Angola and the nature of its path to economic development. Angola could be partitioned along political tribal geographical lines: the Bakongo and the Ovimbundu might rejoin their countrymen to the north and the south, leaving an MPLA rump consisting of Luanda and its hinterland. This solution is certain to be opposed by responsible African leaders, such as Kaunda of Zambia and Nyerere of Tanzania, but would be welcomed by South Africa...