Reaping the whirlwind
By Nuno Andrade

I was born in Angola, four years into a civil war that has yet to end. In 1975, immediately after gaining its independence from Portugal, Angola became one of many staging grounds for the battles of the Cold War. In a country with more land mines than people, the effects of the struggles for world domination between the United States and the Soviet Union are still being felt. This is the environment in which I was born, and the context within which I experienced the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

As a child living in Angola’s capital, one of the only areas not ravaged by war, I didn’t understand the environment I was living in. My mind was not yet sophisticated enough to understand why there was a bullet hole in my parents’ closet. It was not sophisticated enough to understand why my father had loaded weapons in the house. Nor was it sophisticated enough to understand why we housed a man in army fatigues. Even so, my existence was a privileged one.

I left Angola at the age of six and have never returned. For the past 13 years, I’ve called the United States my home. I’ve spent the last three years living in and around New York City.

My immediate feeling, on seeing the World Trade Center towers collapse, was one of utter amazement. How could this be happening? It wasn’t possible. I shared in the sadness for those who had perished, and for so many families who would have to cope with so many losses. That sadness quickly turned to anger. But my anger was not directed at those responsible for these heinous acts of terrorism. I was angry at the United States.

To fully explain just how much the course of Angolan history was altered by external influences, one would have to write a book. I won’t attempt to do that, but let me say this: in the ’60s and ’70s, the U.S. government covertly aided Jonas Savimbi, the leader of one of the factions fighting for dominance in the Angolan Civil War. In the ’80s, Savimbi had his own lobby in Washington, which he used to fund that war. When the Cold War ended and the communist threat was gone, Savimbi was tossed aside-as were the Angolan people. Savimbi, now discredited and lacking financial support, has nevertheless been able to continue the war with the surplus weapons provided to him by the U.S. government.

I was saddened by the deaths of so many people on September 11. But I am also saddened by the millions of people who have died or been displaced in Angola as a result of over a quarter century of civil war, just as I am saddened by the 2.5 million people who have died in only three years in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. My anger is not directed at the American people, solely at the U.S. government. I am angry that, for the sake of American interests, the United States helped to install and support, for over three decades, a dictator in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire). I am angry that the United States attempted to do the same in Angola with would-be dictator Savimbi.

This was U.S. policy toward Third World countries during the Cold War, and it continues to be so today. American foreign policy of this sort is visible not only in African countries, but also in South American countries and, for that matter, the Middle East.

According to Khaled Fahmy, a professor of Middle Eastern social history at New York University, there is no shortage of U.S.-supported anti-democratic regimes in the Middle East. "The U.S. is supporting tyrannical regimes, as a matter of policy, because these are deemed to be more stable," he says. According to Professor Fahmy, this has been the source of a lot of feelings of hatred towards the United States. "[Some of] those allies of the U.S. have a miserable record of human rights, and the U.S. has consistently been turning a blind eye to their abuses. This is felt in the region very strongly."

Those who planned and partook in the attacks of September 11 are murderers and should be brought to justice. I would never condone the actions of those responsible for the deaths of innocent people-regardless of whether those responsible are so-called Muslim extremists or agents of the U.S. government, or whether those innocent lives are lost in Manhattan or the Congo. Nonetheless, simply capturing those responsible is not enough. In order for this country to minimize the chance of more attacks, the U.S. government must accept responsibility for its foreign policy. What happened on September 11 has a direct correlation to the imperialist actions of the United States government in foreign countries. To paraphrase Malcolm X’s famous comment on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the chickens have once again come home to roost.

Nuno Andrade is a senior at NYU, majoring in journalism and Africana studies. He is also the news features editor of Brownstone Magazine, a monthly insert in NYU’s daily newspaper, the Washington Square News.