Conflict in Cabinda

Although Portuguese sailors first appeared in the Cabinda region at the end of the 15th century, until 1885 this region retained formal independence, and various native states were located on its territory. In 1885, the Simulambucco Treaty between Portugal and the African Kingdom of Ngoyo concluded a series of treaties between the African kingdoms and Portugal, transferring their territories under the protectorate of Portugal ^[3] . Since 1900, this protectorate has been known as the Portuguese Congo . In 1933, the constitution of the Portuguese New State affirmed the status of both Cabinda and neighboring Angola as separate parts of Portugal. However, in 1956, the colonial administrations of the Congo and Cabinda were merged ^[1] .

In 1960, the Liberation Movement for the State of Cabinda ( port Movimento para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, MLEC ) was founded , and in 1963 two more organizations that set the same goals - the National Action Committee of the people of Cabinda ( port Comité de Acção da União Nacional de Cabinda, CAUNC ) and the National Mayombe Alliance ( Port Aliança Nacional Mayombe, ALLIAMA ). Soon after, the two new groups merged with MLEC into a single Front for the liberation of the Cabinda enclave (FLEC; port Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, FLEC ). The proclamation of the creation of the Front took place in Pointe Noire ( Republic of the Congo ) ^[1] .

In 1964, Cabinda became a member of the Organization of African Unity as the 39th African state to undergo decolonization. In 1974, the Portuguese authorities gave permission to deploy FLEK structures in Cabinda. On August 1 of the same year, the government of Antonio Spinola in Portugal announced his intention to hold a referendum on self-determination in Cabinda. However, the subsequent change of power in Portugal put an end to these plans, and already in January 1975, the Portuguese government and three Angolan paramilitary organizations (as “the only legal representatives of the people of Angola”) signed the , in which Cabinda was proclaimed an integral part of Angola ^{[ 4] [5]} . On November 11, 1975 , on the day of the declaration of independence of Angola, armed units of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola - Labor Party (MPLA), which was the main military force in Angola, were introduced into Cabinda through Pointe Noire. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the MPLA received money from Chevron Energy Corporation to establish control over Cabinda's rich oil fields. The collaboration between Chevron and the Angolan government continues to this day; Sonangol , a state-owned enterprise, produces almost a million barrels of oil from the Cabinda fields per day, providing most of Angola’s gross national product ^[1] .

After the establishment of military control in Angola in Cabinda, a mass exodus began from the region (the number of refugees in the neighboring Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire), according to GlobalSecurity.org, is 950 thousand people ^[1] ). By the end of the 1990s, five refugee camps from Kabinda were located on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and four on the territory of the Republic of the Congo. FLEK, which did not recognize the military occupation of Cabinda, has been waging a guerrilla war for decades, using bases on the territory of these two countries. The head of the Republic of the Congo from 1992 to 1997, Pascal Lissuba supported FLEC and the idea of ​​independence of Cabinda, which in October 1997 led to the invasion of the troops of Angola on the territory of the Republic of the Congo and the capture of Pointe Noire, where the FLEC branches were located. The nationalist militarized organization FLEK-FAK ( port of Forças Armadas de Cabinda, FLEC-FAC ), which arose as a result of a split in FLEK, also controls the vast Mayombe forest, on the territory of which about 40 thousand refugees shelter ^[6] . The conflict sometimes moved to the territory of Angola itself: for example, in 1981 six FLEK militants were sentenced to death by an Angolan court for bombing strategic economic facilities, schools and hospitals in Angola. In the mid-1990s, FLEK was an ally of the Angola anti-government organization UNITA , which operated in Angola with reliance on bases in Cabinda ^[7] .

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Angolan leadership has been demonstrating its readiness for negotiations with FLEK representatives on the cessation of hostilities and joining the region’s administration ^[1] . In 1995, the representative of Angola at the UN visited the Kondi Mbaka refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and during this visit made an appeal to the leaders of the liberation movements of Cabinda to develop a single platform and approve a mediator authorized to negotiate with Angola ^[8] . Nevertheless, hostilities continued after that, in particular, in violation of the ceasefire signed in May 1996 and August 2006. In the early 2000s, both FLEK-FAK and the FLEK-Renovada faction, which usually did not resort to force methods, organized hostage-taking in Kabinda. After that, the 30,000-strong military contingent of the Angolan armed forces launched a large-scale operation against the separatists, during which several strong points of FLEK-FAK and FLEK-Renovada were captured, as well as numerous human rights violations listed in the 20-page report of Angolan human rights defenders ^{[1 ]} . In 2004, the Angolan government banned the activities of the local human rights organization Mpalabanda in Cabinda, accusing it of incitement to violence ^[7] . In 2010, international attention was drawn to the conflict in Cabinda, when FLEK militants fired on a bus carrying Togo football team on the eve of the African Nations Cup match in Angola on its territory. As a result of the shelling, two crew members and a bus driver were killed, and the Togo team withdrew from the competition ^[9] .

• Cabinda // Yearbook 1997 - Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. - The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998 .-- P. 56-60. - ISBN 90-411-1022-4 .

• Cabinda (neopr.) . GlobalSecurity.org. Date of treatment January 6, 2015.