How refugee relief efforts across globe are thwarted

REFUGEE MANIPULATION: WAR, POLITICS, AND THE ABUSE OF HUMAN SUFFERING

Edited by Stephen John Stedman and Fred Tanner

Brookings Institution Press, $46.95, $15.95 paper, 214 pages

REVIEWED BY SOL SCHINDLER

Are refugees manipulated for political reasons? Just how badly and completely they are is examined in a book entitled “Refugee Manipulation” edited by Stephen John Stedman and Fred Tanner, originally suggested by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), funded by several foundations and published by the Brookings Institution.

Together they have produced a commendable examination of the problems of refugee relief, and the abuses that can arise. They focus on the three great refugee movements of recent years: Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, each of which involved a million or more people.

The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia drove a huge number of refugees into neighboring Thailand where they were housed and fed by the United Nations, the United States, the Thai government, and a large assortment of charitable organizations. Most of the camps came under the rule of genocidal Khmer Rouge elements who seemed to have the only military organizational abilities that worked. The United States, which subsidized much of the relief work, was faced with the difficult question of how it should relate to the Khmer Rouge, once its sworn enemy and the murderer of its once Cambodian allies.

The Khmer Rouge, however, were the only ones capable of resisting the still violently anti-American Vietnamese and thus became in a way a political asset. Equally important, denying them aid directly affected the well being of hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees. The United States made the painful decision to facilitate aid to the refugee Cambodians despite the fact that such aid prolonged a despotic rule over a hopeless multitude.

In time the Vietnamese left Cambodia, with the aid of the U.N. a new somewhat more democratic regime was installed and the refugee population has disbursed. International aid did manage to save the lives of some innocents.

In Pakistan, the communist take-over, the Soviet Occupation, the subsequent Afghan revolt, the Russian retreat, and the rise of the Taliban all resulted in waves of refugees fleeing the country. Here too what was originally a humanitarian problem soon became political. The United States and Saudi Arabia on the assumption that an armed revolt in Afghanistan would critically affect the Soviet Union poured both arms and food into the refugee camps. These became recuperative areas for militants who crossed and recrossed the border.

The Pakistani secret service, entrusted with the distribution of both aid and arms, purposely chose militant Islamic groups rather than the traditional tribal chieftains of the Pashtun dominant majority of southern Afghanistan. Their purpose was to defuse Pashtun nationalism, which could easily affect the large number of Pashtuns in northern Pakistan, and unite the resistance under the banner of Islam with Pakistan as its natural leader. As a result a refugee in Pakistan had to be a member of one of seven designated parties, clearly Islamic, to receive aid, and that aid was distributed through party chiefs.

The political aims of the United States and Saudi Arabia were achieved, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, and eventually their regime disintegrated, but one could legitimately wonder whether the misery and grief that Afghanistan has endured might have been mitigated by a different and more careful aid distribution.

In the spring of 1994 a radical clique of the Hutu government in Rwanda began a genocidal assault on the Tutsi and moderate Hutu population. After 800,000 deaths Tutsi armed forces drove the Hutu troops and their followers into neighboring Zaire. Although the international community had done nothing to stop the initial genocide they were able to provide assistance to the huge number of Hutus (1.8 million) that had fled Rwanda but were unable to distinguish between actual refugees and escaping killers.

The camps became staging areas for militant Hutus and resulting raids and counter-raids led to the eventual dissolution of Zaire. Whether aid here, which was plentiful, saved lives or prolonged warfare with resultant loss of life can be debated.

The editors purposely avoid the Palestinian refugee problem, which they state is the most highly politicized of them all. A special U.N. agency, UNWRA, had been established to handle that problem and it consequently lay outside UNHCR’s purview. They also avoid discussing the partition of British India with the bloodshed and massive refugee problems it entailed, probably because there was no U.N. involvement. It is interesting to note that 55 years after both crises refugee camps with ever increasing populations exist in Palestine and are funded and maintained by the U.N. In the Indian subcontinent refugees were assimilated into existing populations in approximately two years.

Giving food to the hungry is a noble endeavor, but as the editors show, noble intentions do not always suffice. Bureaucratic inertia, media hype, and the lack of rational leadership may prevent reasonable solutions from being reached. We need studies like this to remind us of the pitfalls that accompany good intentions and knee-jerk reactions to crises. One hopes that a copy will accompany every relief team that ventures forth.

Sol Schindler is a retired Foreign Service Officer who writes and lectures on international affairs.