Angola celebrates 10 years of peace

where Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle on February 22, 2002.
Savimbi’s death paved the way to a peace deal signed in the capital Luanda on April 4, 2002, ending the 27-year civil conflict that erupted soon after independence from Portugal in 1975. But despite the parades and the peace monument tensions remain, with not everyone content at the dominance of Dos Santos.
Angola is well used to international influence. Cold war powers turned the country into a proxy battle that pitted the then-communist MPLA-government against Unita and the Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). Cuba and the Soviet Union supported the MPLA, while the United States and apartheid South Africa assisted the rebels.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, international pressure led to a peace agreement in 1991. Dos Santos won the first round of a 1992 election, but Savimbi rejected the result and pulled Angola back into war.
The conflict left an estimated 500 000 dead and displaced four million others. Roads, bridges, farms and entire towns were destroyed. This legacy is still visible, even as Angola emerged from the ashes of war as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Nearly 2,4 million people, almost a fifth of the population, still live in areas riddled with landmines, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Angola is running behind on pledges to destroy all the landmines, and last month applied for an extension to its deadline under the Ottawa Treaty to complete de-mining by 2013. Basic services are still trailing and education levels are very low because a whole generation of Angolans didn’t study during the war, he told AFP.
Youth and opposition groups held several protests over the past year to demand reforms, but police quickly broke up the demonstrations. Still, they marked a rare sign of dissent under a government that allows none. New elections are expected later this year, despite worries about the organisation of the polls, only the third since 1975. — Sapa-AFP.