This document gives ten arguments for why the United States should not support Jonas Savimbi and the UNITA movement in Angola. Approximately 500 scholars of Africa in 40 U.S. states signed a petition that was circulated by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) calling on President Reagan and the Congress not to provide military and non-lethal assistance to UNITA or other insurgent movements devoted to civil war, sabotage, and destruction in Angola. The signers include five current and former presidents of the African Studies Association, directors of major university African studies centers, two former U.S. ambassadors in Africa, the co-chairpersons of the Association of Concerned...
This document gives ten arguments for why the United States should not support Jonas Savimbi and the UNITA movement in Angola. Approximately 500 scholars of Africa in 40 U.S. states signed a petition that was circulated by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) calling on President Reagan and the Congress not to provide military and non-lethal assistance to UNITA or other insurgent movements devoted to civil war, sabotage, and destruction in Angola. The signers include five current and former presidents of the African Studies Association, directors of major university African studies centers, two former U.S. ambassadors in Africa, the co-chairpersons of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, and specialists on African politics. 1. Supporting civil war in Angola will damage U.S. economic interests • 2. Supporting a civil war in Angola will hurt U.S. strategic interests • 3. Supporting civil war in Angola will isolate the United States from both European and NATO allies and from many African nations • 4. The aim of the U.S. to dislodge Cuban troops in Angola will not be furthered by aiding UNITA • 5. Under any circumstances, UNITA is not the type or movement the U.S. would want to support • 6. Even if supporters want a UNITA victory, U.S. funding, even at the highest proposed levels of $200~300 million, cannot put UNITA in power • 7. Supporting a civil war in Angola will delay settling the Namibia problem • 8. Supporting UNITA or other dissidents in Angola places the United States in direct alliance with the Republic of South Africa and its policies • 9. Support for Savimbi in the USA is not fundamentally oriented toward the welfare and freedom of the Angolan peoples but is an expression of U.S. domestic politics and of conflict with the Soviet Union • 10. The best opportunity to ensure that UNITA followers and villagers in that region have freedom and a good life is by ending the war.
