One of the consequences of the Balkan conflict has been the distraction of international attention from other equally serious conflicts worldwide. Such is the case of Angola, a country that for the last several years has been plagued by a ruthless civil war. While world nations and international aid organizations have pledged over $2 billion to rebuild Kosovo, famine threatens vast sectors of the Angolan population. Also, as Johannes Linn, the World Bank's vice president for Europe and Central Asia, has remarked, the amount pledged for Kosovo far exceeds the amount needed for immediate repairs and to restore order in that ravaged region.
Angola has been at war for most of the last 30 years. Following its independence from Portugal in 1975, a civil war soon began. The two parties in conflict were the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, now headed by Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's current president. The other was UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), lead by Jonas Savimbi. In 1994, the United Nations brokered the Lusaka Protocol peace accords, which held a fragile state of peace until last December, when hostilities resumed.
One of the consequences of the war is the increase in the number of internally displaced people from 4,000 in April of 1998 to over 950,000 in June of 1999. Renewed fighting has also adversely affected the delivery of relief aid. In addition, the situation of both the residents and the internally displaced is expected to deteriorate even further due to the impossibility of carrying out normal agricultural tasks because of the fighting, the limited resources carried by the refugees and the persistent threat posed by mined areas throughout the country.