Shell-shocked

Caught off guard by UNITA, Luanda is trying to replay its previous military comebacks

No one in Luanda wants to take the blame for the government's string of military defeats by Jonas Savimbi's rebels over the past five months. It has been particularly embarrassing because the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola government had confidently predicted that its forces would wrest Bailundo and Andulo from União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola control by mid-December. Instead it is now desperately trying to recapture the positions it lost in the first two weeks of that ill-fated campaign in the planalto last December and UNITA is threatening traditional MPLA strongholds such as Malanje and Cuito.

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