PITY ANGOLA. UNLIKE SOMALIA OR Bosnia, tragedies that high-profile diplomacy, front-page headlines and vivid television footage have kept center stage, the plight of southern Africa's most fought-over country has gone all but unnoticed by a disaster-fatigued world. But whether the world is watching or not, an 18-year-old civil war that has become bloodier than ever in the past 12 months threatens to make Angola Africa's latest horror zone.
Nobody understands Angola's ranking on the distress scale better than Dr. Joaquim Neho, director of the hospital in Malanje, one of five inland cities under siege for the past year. His wards are filled with the pathetic detritus of conflict and famine, and the staff -- all of two doctors -- is overwhelmed. Ten children a day are succumbing to malnutrition and disease; for lack of beds, the dying lie on unscrubbed floors. Parents feed toddlers watery porridge. A skeleton-thin infant with bulging eyes silently gasps for milk from her mother's wilted breast.
The trauma ward too is overflowing. Dozens of civilians are being killed or maimed every day in land-mine explosions as they scour the countryside for sustenance. The mutilados, as the amputees are called, relive their nightmares every time the sound of mortar fire echoes across the city, but mostly they just wait. "We lack food, medicine, beds, mattresses and linen," says Neho. "I appeal to anybody in a position of authority to help."
Compounding Angola's tragedy, which threatens as many as 3 million lives, is the loss of hope: a year ago, Neho and millions of others were queuing at voting stations, thrilled by the prospect of peace. The first free elections, held under U.N. auspices, were designed to end the war between the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, once backed by the Soviet Union and now recognized by the U.S., and Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the UNITA rebel movement. Savimbi refused to accept the government's 129-to-91-seat election victory and plunged Angola back into ferocious conflict that has so far claimed an additional 100,000 lives.
Last week there was some cause for hope when the government in Luanda agreed to resume peace talks in response to a UNITA announcement that it was ready to accept last year's election results. But the rebel movement, which will be hit next month by U.N. sanctions that include a freezing of its global assets and the expulsion of its diplomats from world capitals, has yet to demonstrate its bona fides by relinquishing its hold over 65% of the country, a territorial concession demanded by the government as a precondition for peace.