This week, events in Angola may confirm that neither side in the long and bloody civil war can really hope to win. Through the weekend, the Unita rebels pushed closer to the strategically important northern city of Malanje, capturing most of its outlying villages and meeting no resistance from the army. The Government, last Friday, issued a surprisingly blunt statement, acknowledging that Unita was on a roll but promising that it will soon peak and the Government will then re-assert itself. Western diplomats in the capital, Luanda, are not so sure.
The Government also took the opportunity to have a swipe at the United Nations. Its argument is that the UN, in monitoring the peace agreement of 1994, failed to stop Unita subsequently arming itself to the teeth. There can be no doubt that this is what Unita did but there is much evidence that the army also used the peace accord to stock up on hardware. It says something about the efficacy of the Angolan government with all its oil revenues that Unita managed to re-arm more completely.
Last December, the Government, tired of Unita's unwillingness to come to Luanda and enter fully a coalition dominated by its rivals, sent the army into Unita headquarters at Bailundo to give the rebels a thrashing. The Unita troops defeated the army comprehensively and since then have taken a provincial capital and large swathes of land. Unita now controls nearly 60 per cent of the country.
But Unita does not have control of much valuable land, in particular the diamond-rich Luanda region and the oil-rich Cabinda region which is separated from Angola by a slim slice of Congo land. Unita clearly intends a takeover of Malanje; it is dropping more than 100 mortars a day onto the city but taking care not to destroy either its oil supplies or its airport. Occupation of Malanje would represent a strategic leap forward for Unita in its ambition to move towards either Cabinda or Luanda. The Government always thought that if it could not beat Unita outright that it would keep it contained in valueless and strategically unimportant territory. If Unita takes Malanje, the Government will have to think again.
One strategy that the President, Mr Jose Eduardo dos Santos, seems unprepared to contemplate is reopening dialogue with Unita, at least for as long as it continues to be led by Mr Jonas Savimbi. The Government is persuading a reluctant population to side with it by demonising Mr Savimbi in the tightly-controlled media. Tactic seems to be working.
But the longer that Unita wins territory, the more civilians will be driven to government-held cities where they put added strain on inadequate services. If Unita manages to threaten Cabinda's oil output, the outlook for the government will be less than propitious. It owes its support not just to demonising Mr Savimbi but also to its control of $4 billion a year in oil revenues. Any loss of oil revenue would not just disaffect civilians, it could cause dissent in President dos Santos's ruling MPLA party. Small wonder then that the president has decided to abolish the office of Prime Minister and concentrate power in the president's office.