With independence from Portugal fast approaching, Angola is careering toward a bloodbath even more rapidly than the mother country. Last week, when the Portuguese high commissioner, General Antonio da Silva Cardoso, flew home for consultations in Lisbon, he left behind a torn and bleeding land. Fighting among rival liberation movements engulfed the last of Portugal's African territories and posed the prospect of a Nov. 11 changeover that will be anything but orderly. Said a bitter Silva Cardoso: "Perhaps they can just mail the flag to Lisbon."
An estimated 4,000 people, mostly blacks, have died in the fighting since the first...