IT is difficult to appreciate the dimensions of national conflicts until the victims include some distant and unintended targets. The attack on the Togolese team to the Nations Cup in Angola again restates the unresolved conflicts in Africa and their implications for the global village. We may mouth the import of globalisation, but we fail grossly to see that what hurts one, affects all.

Angola has had its wars. Officially the wars are over. The rebels are supposed to have signed peace accords with the government. Media reports that rebels posed security risks are treated with the official response of most African government, arrest the journalists.

Togolese players said they wanted to stay and compete in the African Cup of Nations in honour of their assistant coach, a team spokesman and the Angolan bus driver who died in last Friday’s rebel attack. Their government wanted them home, saying the host and the African Football Confederation did not ensure their safety. Lome understood Togolese would hold it responsible, especially if there were further attacks on the team.

It is unlikely the attacks were specifically for the Togolese. Rebels the world over seek attention and they have found that international sports competitions, with the media attention that attend them count among the best spots to strike for maximum media coverage.

Tiburcio Tati Tchingobo, Minister of Defence in the self-declared Federal State of Cabinda, denied his Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda, FLEC, was responsible for the ambush. He however warned that more violence was possible. “The tournament can go on, but we are worried about security.

We don’t have any problem with our fellow African brothers,” yet Tchingobo’s self-proclaimed independent government blamed CAF’s Issa Hayatou for ignoring warnings from separatists that matches should not be held in Cabinda.

The conflict in Cabinda, an oil-rich region cut off from other parts of Angola by a bit of Congo, is unrelated to earlier wars within Angola. Cabinda says it is distinct culturally and historically from Angola. The Angolan government refuses the claims.

The decision to hold part of the African Cup of Nations in Cabinda, building a new stadium for it, is a reflection of the position of the government in Luanda. It wants to prove it controls Cabinda.

For Angola, the Africa Cup of Nations was a great opportunity to restore confidence in the country, exhibit its tourism which is often lost to its better known riches in petroleum resources. The incident in Cabinda casts a slur on the tournament and the points the government wanted to make.

More importantly, it stresses the imperative of global efforts for resolution of conflicts, wherever they are. Togo, thousands of kilometers from Cabinda could not have thought that its citizens could die in a conflict it did not understand. A global village has its prices.