By Peter Strandberg.

Angry with Namibia for allowing the Angolan government staging posts to attack Unita from Namibian territory, Savimbi's rebels attacked Namibia in mid-January and killed scores of people along the border, including three French tourists. Now there is mounting uneasiness in Zambia which is barely coping with an influx of Angolan refugees.

Since October, Namibia has offered bases inside its territory to be used by Angola to launch attacks on Unita. Namibia's decision has so angered Unita that its secretary for foreign affairs, Alcides Sakala, has publicly said: "The Namibian government is now part of the conflict...and Unita has the right to retaliate."

This is a most trying time for Unita, as it is under extreme pressure both at home and abroad. Since the recent capture of Unita's headquarters at Bailundo, the Angolan government has upped the stakes by either trying to woo (through bribery) or frightening Unita members around the world. The government action is said to be part of its worldwide intelligence scheme to terrorise Unita's top brass living abroad.

Recently, Araujo Sakaita, one of the 28 sons of the Unita leader Jonas Savimbi, was kidnapped in Ghana and flown back to Angola to face his father's enemies. Put before the press in Luanda, the 22-year-old Sakaita, not surprisingly, called his father "a brutal monster that has to be killed if the war in Angola is to come to an end".

Saikata who was a student in Togo where Unita has close connections with President Eyadema's government, was tricked into taking a weekend trip to neighbouring Ghana where, according to unconfirmed reports, he was drugged and put on a flight to Luanda.

Other reports from Cote d'Ivoire have claimed that the Angolan government must have a hand in the coup which toppled President Konan Bedie's government on Christmas eve. The Ivorian government has had close ties with Savimbi since the 1970s, and Abidjan, the capital, hosts one of Unita's important offices in the world. Though no conclusive evidence has been provided, the reports have claimed that in early December, two weeks before the coup, the Angolan government suddenly increased the number of its embassy staff in Abidjan from 10 to over 50, and no explanation was given for the increase.

A leading Unita official told New African that in the past few months, Angolan intelligence officials had been trying to woo some high-ranking Unita officials in Europe, USA and Africa through bribery. He said some Unita officials abroad have also received death threats.

In November, reports in the Portuguese press claimed that professional hitmen had been hired by Angola to eliminate important Unita officials in Portugal and other European capitals. Sources in the Portuguese intelligence services confirmed the report and admitted that they had increased the protection of potential Unita targets in Lisbon.

The strategy to eliminate Unita's most prominent members outside Angola is being interpreted as an attempt to isolate Savimbi and demoralise his troops who are now barricaded in remote, sparsely populated parts of the country.