Africa Notes: Angola's Elusive Peace - March 1996

Various incarnations of anticolonial and civil conflict in Angola have endured for three and a half decades. Perhaps a half million people (relative to a 1992 population of some 10.6 million) have perished, half of these during the "Third War," a devastating round of fighting that began shortly after the antigovernment guerrilla movement União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) renounced the results of national elections held in September 1992. Unlike previous phases of conflict, this "Third War" was primarily a struggle over key cities and the political advantage to be derived from controlling urban centers. The violence continued until a government offensive in late 1994 drove UNITA into a series of concessions that were formalized in the November 1994 peace agreement known as the Lusaka Protocol.

John Prendergast & David R. Smock