angola: the roots of conflict

Rafael Marques, an Angolan journalist currently working for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa in Angola, presented a paper at a Conference on Conflict and External Interferences in Barcelona last year. In the paper, Marques explores the causes of the Angolan conflict by observing that numerous failed peace agreements perpetuated and nurtured the conflict instead of helping to resolve it. He further states that the illegitimacy of power, internal contests for power, ethnic divisions, corrupt elites, social fragmentations, and colonial and Cold War legacies contribute to the continued conflict.