Word: namibia
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...transition period dawned on April 1, some 1,300 SWAPO troops armed with AK-47 rifles swarmed into Namibia from their bases in southern Angola. Even as thousands of red-green-and-blue-clad SWAPO supporters chanted "Freedom is in our hands" at noisy celebrations in the capital of Windhoek, the guerrillas were coaxing donkeys carrying rocket launchers and other artillery through the thick sand of the bush. According to captured prisoners, SWAPO commanders told their troops that UNTAG would allow them to establish military bases in Namibia, where they would be "confined to barracks" like the South African battalions...
...regime in Angola, which gives sanctuary to the militant exiles of the South West African People's Organization, whose guerrilla army has been battling Pretoria's rule since 1966. The U.S.-brokered agreement was signed last December under the auspices of the U.N., which took on responsibility for policing Namibia's transition with an international peacekeeping force (UNTAG...
Though few had predicted violence in Namibia on the scale that erupted, UNTAG was woefully unprepared even for the minor clashes that were all but inevitable. Scarcely 1,200 of the 4,560-man force from Kenya, Malaysia and Finland that is scheduled to oversee the transition period was in place. At week's end UNTAG officials were considering emergency airlifts to bring in military personnel, many of them aboard navy vessels days away...
...establish a military presence made little sense. Militarily, the guerrillas invited maximum reprisals by Namibian security forces that were all too ready and able to oblige. Politically, the bloody incursions gave the guerrillas' opponents ammunition to challenge their claim that they are the "sole and authentic" representative of Namibia's 1.25 million people...
SWAPO is still expected to win a majority in next November's elections. But to gain complete control over the assembly that will write Namibia's new constitution, a party must capture two-thirds of the total vote, and there is considerable doubt that SWAPO can do that. It will face at least six opponents, the strongest being the moderate Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, a mixed-race consortium of ethnically based parties with considerable appeal to Namibia's 80,000 whites. Says Alliance Chairman Dirk Mudge, a white former Finance Minister: "It won't be a SWAPO landslide, believe me." Last...