There are signs in 1988 that some of the most intractable Third World struggles may be coming to an end, which would allow millions of refugees to go home. The most encouraging factor of all is that the great powers that have manipulated, supplied and financed these wars now seem to be at the forefront of peace efforts.
Most dramatic, in terms of numbers, is the Soviet Union`s pledge to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, which may mean that in a year or two the largest single group of refugees, 5 million Afghans, can go home. Why the Soviets have unilaterally decided to leave is not clear, though its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan has not been popular with Third World regimes with which the Soviets have been trying to gain influence.
The Soviets and the Chinese seem to be the main players in current negotiations to put an end to the struggle for Cambodia. The two have been trying to patch relations, and Cambodia has been a source of bitter conflict for them. The Soviets, perhaps wearying of the constant drain of resources into its client state Vietnam, have given their blessing to a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia after 10 years of occupation. China is scrambling to neutralize its most powerful client in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, in favor of a moderate government for that stricken nation.
The United States and the Soviet Union appear to be the main forces behind renewed efforts to end the long civil war in Angola. Negotiations center on the removal of 55,000 Cuban soldiers on the Angolan government side, and tens of thousands of South African troops from the rebel, pro-Western side. But the U.S. reserves the right to arm and support the insurgent forces, so the Soviets likely will continue to arm the government forces, and the fighting probably will go on.
Does the recent spate of diplomatic efforts by the great powers to achieve peaceful, political settlements in nasty Third World conflicts mean that they finally have learned some lessons? Certainly the lessons of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan seem clear. Neither of the great powers is capable, despite vast military superiority, of overcoming the will and determined nationalism of much smaller, poorer nations. Bombers, attack helicopters and legions of modern soldiers can win battles, but they ultimately lose wars against barefoot soldiers brandishing small arms and the indomitable human spirit.
Unfortunately, there always will be war. This is the age of ”wars of liberation” in the Third World as people and nations try to sort out their destinies in the postcolonial era. The world is an overcrowded place, and there is not enough of the most basic of resources, including arable land and water, to go around in much of the Third World. There is plenty to fight over, and it will be fought over.
That means the great powers will always be tempted to meddle, to sponsor a client to gain strategic advantage. In facilitating and even enlarging local warfare, the great powers also prolong these conflicts into stalemate.
The great-power meddling in the Third World has not paid many dividends. Military aid lavished on the Third World has bought short-term influence in governments, to be sure, for the communist bloc and the Western alliance. But governments are not as enduring as people.
With the possible exception of Cuba, the Soviet Union has no ally in the Third World that shows much promise of becoming an enduring Marxist state in the Soviet mold. Egypt, firmly in the Soviet camp in the 1960s under Nasser, quickly reverted to the pro-Western camp when he died. Vietnam, now in the Soviet camp, seems more interested in opening itself up again to Western aid and technology. Despite its open belligerence to the United States, Marxist-dominated Nicaragua seems desperate, too, to reopen its doors to American aid and trade.
In Africa, emerging nations have labeled themselves Marxist or democratic but show no classic characteristics of either. Africa is ridden instead with venal tribal politics and increasingly bloody dictatorships that openly play off East and West great-power politics for favors sought.
Are the great powers learning from their mistakes? Perhaps. The Soviets sent out what appears to be a trial balloon for lessening Third World tension earlier this year in an article in Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper. The article, by historian and U.S. specialist Sergei Rogov, suggested that war was not providing solutions to the world`s regional conflicts:
”It is becoming clear that not only nuclear but any war cannot serve as a means of policy.
”Naturally, it is necessary to establish rules of conduct for the great n.”
The Soviet Union and the United States, Rogov said, should work instead to establish a balance of interests through mutual compromise.
Rogov`s idea is engaging, even revolutionary, if it were to be embraced by the two superpowers. It would not end regional wars, but it might scale them down to what they essentially are, local battles fought by local people, without benefit of the massive killing power of state-of-the-art weaponry. And surely it would go a long way in ending the obscenity of keeping victims of war penned up indefinitely in refugee camps that stretch the imagination to be called ”humanitarian.”
If there are heartening signs of peace breaking out in the world`s troubled regions, there also is disheartening evidence of expanding war. Just this last summer, 350,000 people fled as refugees from Somalia into Ethiopia. In Burundi, 55,000 people fled for their lives into Rwanda after an estimated 20,000 people were slaughtered in an orgy of tribal violence. Turkey received as many as 100,000 Kurdish tribal refugees from Iraq after the Iraqi army turned its guns and poison-gas bombs on them in late August. Thousands of contra forces and their families crossed from Nicaragua into Honduras because of declining military support from the United States.
”It`s unrealistic and probably undesirable to expect nations to put humanitarian considerations above political considerations,” said Zia Rizvi, secretary general of the Geneva-based Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues. ”But because politics dominates is no excuse to use human suffering as a political tool. If the contests are no longer blatant confrontation, then you find refugee situations as part of foreign policy are a self-defeating proposition, morally, economically and politically.
”In the end, you may well have to appeal to enlightened self-interest. Solving refugee problems or preventing them is in the enlightened self-interest of the great powers.”
One night last December while I was working on this project, I woke up in terror. There was a shadowy figure rustling around in a bedroom I did not recognize. Befogged with jet lag, my mind raced to determine where I was, how best I could avert being robbed or assaulted. I rolled off the edge of my bed and crouched defensively, snarling obscenities, hoping to scare the intruder off. My wife screamed. It was my first night home after spending 3 1/2 months in refugee camps in Israel and Africa. It was a small but humbling lesson to me on the fear and confusion of constant dislocation, the anxiety of continual vulnerability, the dread of being visited in the dead of night. I was at home, not in a refugee camp, yet I reacted in self-preservation not unlike the Palestinians in Israel.
Almost a year has passed since I spoke with Feliciano Makanjira on the Mozambique border as he faced his first day as a refugee. I wonder if his wife and son survived to join him. I wonder if Sophy Juda, born a refugee, has been caught up in the intifada in Israel, if Alemi Quick planted his crops in Uganda and had a fruitful harvest on his third start in life, if Hamid Reza Hashemi is contemplating going home, now that the Iran-Iraq war is over-at least for the moment. I think of each of the refugees I met on what turned out to be an incredible journey through the alarming discontent of our world. And I thought of Sam Neang Moul when I sat at my computer to write this story. What would she think if she could see me swear at this technological marvel when the system goes down and I lose several hours of work? Such ferocious roaring and cussing over a relatively minor glitch would no doubt puzzle and offend her.
The technology of our age, however, has failed the 13 million-by now almost 14 million-refugees around the world. That is not a minor glitch. The system has gone down permanently for those who measure out their lives in limbo in refugee camps. Like a shattered piece of crystal, their cultures and their families have been irrevocably splintered, first by war and then by the brutality of refugee life. Nothing can glue those broken lives together again. If there is any hope, it is for those who are not yet victims, the potential pawns in games the superpowers can refuse to play.
