|
|
|
|
|
« Return
|
|
Church leaders in Angola call for help in rebuilding after civil war
2002-190-3
8/9/2002
|
[Episcopal News Service]
Prominent church leaders in Angola are calling for help in rebuilding the southern African nation after a disastrous 27-year civil war. 'The great superpowers acknowledge that our country has been destroyed but they don't want to acknowledge their role in destroying it,' said the Rev. Daniel Ntoni-Nzinga, a Baptist pastor who serves as executive secretary of the Inter-Church Committee for Peace in Angola.
While the war began among factions fighting for control after independence from Portugal in 1975, it soon became a proxy contest of the Cold War with Cuba and the Soviet Union backing the government and the United States and South Africa backing the rebels. The war stopped abruptly when rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed last February and the rebels were integrated into Angolan society after a cease-fire was signed in April.
The United Nations considers Angola the worst humanitarian crisis in the world with serious food shortages and four million people displaced, almost a third of the total population. Many donor nations have been slow to respond to appeals for emergency assistance because of lingering concerns about corruption. The government has refused to release information on its oil income to the International Monetary Fund while it continues to request loans from the IMF.
'If we don't manage this humanitarian crisis well, we'll just be planting seeds for the next conflict,' Ntoni-Nzinga said. 'We need the world's help.' He said that foreign companies contributing to the corruption 'should be punished both in Angola and in their own country.'
|
|
|
|
|
|
