THE REBELS: UNITA'S STATE WITHIN A STATE THRIVING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870008-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: July 28, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870008-9
APT EA.
IED
WASHINGTON POST
28 July 1986
ANGOLA: Two FACES OF WAR
Second in a Five-Part Series
The Rebels:
UNITA's State Within a State Thriving
By Patsiolr L ler T
washiN{ton rater
CUANDO-CUBANGO PROV-
INCE, Angola-Old Land Rovers
never die here. Their aluminum
shells are cut and pounded into
cooking utensils, and their springs
are hammered by blacksmiths into
ax heads. The restis cannibalized
to keep other Land Rovers going.
The corn crop in the Lomba
River valley stretches 20 miles to
the horizon. It reminds you of Io-
wa.
And the screaming industrial
lathes in the jungle workshops at
Jamba and Likua sound like De-
troit.
The crops will feed the rebel
army and the large civilian Doo-
ulation in this remote bush coun-
try, and the open-air workshops
seem, to a visitor, to be building
enough motorized weaponry to
transform Jonas Savimbi's guer-
rilla force into a relatively pow-
erful conventional army.
This has become a land of in-
genuity where Savimbi's National
Union for the Total Independence
of Angola (UNITA) has created a
state within a state, a thriving
mini-economy within a battered
national one.
There is no currency. The sys-
tem is GI: Everything is govern-
ment issue, from food, clothing
and tools to the "luxury" items,
such as cigarettes and soft drinks,
that come in from South Africa
and are dispensed from grass warehouses run by a cen-
tral administration.
Liquor is not available. In fact, it is prohibited.
Savimbi says the people can drink when the war is over.
Thus, Savimbi's UNITA functions not only as a po-
litical and military front, but also as the central govern-
ment for half a million people who live in the "liberated
territory" he controls.
UNITA's total revenues have never been disclosed.
Savimbi claims that he receives assistance not only
from South Africa, but also Morocco, Burkina Faso,
Senegal, Saudi Arabia, France and the United States. In
an interview, Savimbi said he is also receiving "some
few millions" of dollars from the sale of diamonds taken
from captured mines, and from trading Angolan teak to
a South African lumber firm. Other estimates put the
total in the tens of millions of dollars.
UNITA Aims for Self-Sufficiency
But beyond this direct aid and outside barter, UNITA
since 1980 has established an industrial and agricultural
base that takes advantage of the natural resources and
war booty available in the region.
In the Jamba garment factory, soldiers learn to sew
on 46 old Singers that the plant's manager said are
turning out 10,000 uniforms a month from bulk cotton
cloth purchased outside the country.
Savimbi's Jamba headquarters, which did not exist
before 1980, has grown into a hidden city of 12,000
guerrilla and civilian residents. A policeman in white
gloves directs traffic at the main crossroads.
Here and at Likua (pop. 8,000) six hours up the road,
people live in modest grass huts. But rebel engineers
have built power plants out of captured diesel gener-
ators and have strung wires through the forest to light
hundreds of these grass-roofed homes.
Diesel fuel and gasoline are among the commodities
essential to keep Savimbi's mini-state operating, and
during a heavy month of consumption his camps and
fleet of 700 trucks may burn nearly 100,000 gallons,
according to the logistics officer here.
Road graders can be seen putting a hard pack over the
soft, sandy path to the Jamba airstrip, where too many
heavy trucks have buried their axles in the deep ruts.
Health care is distributed from more than 20 small
hospitals, according to Dr. Henrique Raimundo,
UNITA's health secretary and a Lisbon-trained Dhvsi-
cian, and dozens of open-air classrooms operate year-
round for the children.
Col. Ernesto Mulato, a civil engineer before the war,
is in charge of the expanding agricultural projects
UNITA has undertaken to feed its population. But the
thick, fine sand underlying most of this bush land forced
Mulato to look farther north for good soil. He found it
just outside Mavinga, where the Lomba River has de-
posited a thick layer of topsoil drained from the rich
earth of central Angola.
After UNITA captured Mavinga in March 1981, it
was safe to plant there. Today, the entire valley is
shoulder high in bloom.
"We are gradually becoming self-sufficient in our food
production," Mulato said.
The most impressive structure UNITA has erected
is at Likua. It can only be described as a five-acre, open-
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870008-9
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870008-9
K
air factory where the battlefield hulks of Soviet-made
trucks, tanks and armored personnel carriers are being
rehabilitated and altered to give Savimbi what his en-
emy has: motorized striking power.
In charge of Likua and UNITA's military logistics is a
onetime guerrilla commander, Altino Sapalala, whose left
hand was sheared off by machine-gun fire as he was lead-
ing an ambush on a truck convoy in July 1978. He goes by
the nom de guerre Brigadier Bok and is among Savimbi's
most senior and trusted strategists.
`We Throw Nothing Away'
In Bok's open-air shop, changes are made to machinery
and weaponry to improve their performance in the harsh
climate and terrain of southern Africa. The weapons and
trucks come mostly from the Soviet Union. Others are
West German-made.
After a 1985 offensive in which Savimbi's forces drove
the Angolan Army back from Mavinga, Bok said UNITA
captured the greatest haul of tanks, armored cars, trucks
and weapons in the history of the war.
"Every time they attack Mavinga," he said, "we get a
lot of equipment." It is all dragged back to Likua and
Jamba where, Bok said, "We throw nothing away until it
is of absolutely no use to anyone."
And, he added, "Out of every three captured truck en-
gines, we get one good one."
UIYITA has learned who makes the best machinery for
the kind of abuse it takes here. For instance, Bok said the
Soviets make the best heavy truck in the world and the
worst gasoline engines of any industrial country.
As a result, Bok's engineers have designed a way to
drop the old engines out of Soviet trucks, custom tailor
new motor mounts and install a high-quality West Ger-
man diesel (purchased from South Africa) in its place.
The new truck has been dubbed the "Yankee" and its
engine, shocks and gear box will hold up longer than
any guerrilla transport UNITA has tried, Bok says.
His men are now studying how to remove the weak
gasoline engines from a dozen Soviet armored assault
vehicles to get them back on the road for UNITA with
sturdier power plants.
Transport is all-important here because Savimbi's
army and small guerrilla units are strung out along sup-
ply lines that stretch several hundred miles north from
his southeastern enclave.
To ensure that his trucks can run at night in danger-
ous areas near the battlefront, Bok said his men have
extracted the infrared night-vision scopes from Soviet-
made T55 tanks captured last year at Mavinga and in-
stalled them in some of UNITA's heavy transports.
Now, he said, UNITA drivers "don't have to use their
headlights" for risky deliveries.
About 300 UNITA soldiers work at the Likua facto-
ry. A few had mechanical skills in the beginning and
they have taught the younger ones. Frayed repair man-
uals have been gathered into a small library to help the
apprentices learn how to tear down engines, do valve
jobs and fire up an arc welding machine.
0 200
MILES
^-NORTH
CABINOA CUANZA
(Angofa))PROVINCE
1 / -
Luanda* ' Canfunfo
Attend, N'dalatando
Ocean - ANGOLA CUANDO-
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PROVINCE
MaNi" a- ZAMBIA
Likua? Jamba
NAMIBIA 1BOTSWANA
They are using this knowledge to rehabihtate sopms-
ticated Soviet weapons. Among UNITA's booty from
last year's offensive are a half-dozen multiple rocket
launchers mounted on mobile Soviet trucks. These are
the deadly "Stalin's organs" that can lay down, in a mat-
ter of seconds, a fearsome barrage of 27 rocket bombs
on a target 15 miles distant.
The latest model Stalin's organ has a computer-driv-
en fire control system, according to Fonseca Santos,
Bok's engineering chief in Jamba, where the weapons
are under repair. In recent months, Santos said,
UNITA has mastered the system and will deploy the
rocket launchers, equipped with captured rockets, in
time for the expected 1986 offensive.
The rebels call all that they have built since 1980
their "infrastructure," and if the war ends, some of the
people are talking about staying here. Others will take
skills they have learned here back to the towns.
But the future is still too murky for most to think
about. After all, when the war is over, said one young
officer, "We may be dead."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870008-9