Condemn Tactics of Human Displacement

When 400,000 Somalis fled their East African homeland last summer, it was one of the largest concentrated flights of refugees ever. Yet it barely entered public consciousness in the United States or in much of the rest of the world.

To be sure, there were some press accounts, but Somalia is an obscure country to most Americans. Also, the conflict there did not register because, though the Somali government is supported militarily and economically by the United States, the conflict between government troops and a guerrilla force, the Somali National Movement, cannot be portrayed readily as part of a global struggle between American and Soviet-backed forces.

It arises out of the grievances of a large clan, the Isaaqs, against a repressive regime. Most important, because so many other refugee flights have taken place in recent years, it no longer startles us when vast numbers of people are so terrorized that they abandon their lands, their livelihoods, their homes, their possessions, their communities and--at times--their families for the misery of exile or displacement.

To deal with the worldwide “refugee problem” requires first that the world community condemn unequivocally the attacks on innocent people--attacks that force them to flee or that prevent them from returning to their homes.

Unfortunately, though images of squalid refugee camps have become familiar, the causes of displacement are less so. It is not to get out of the path of battle between combatants that most people flee. It is that they themselves are targets because they are assumed by government to be supporters of the insurgency movement. They are deliberately forced out of their homes and homelands.

In the 30 to 40 guerrilla wars now under way in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, there are few pitched battles. Rural residents are targets in these wars because they are presumed to be sources of food, information and potential recruits for opposing forces. By destroying their cattle and their crops, and by killing and maiming them, they can be driven away. Thus, it is thought, the enemy can be deprived of sustenance, intelligence and manpower.

Massive displacement of civilians has been a deliberate tactic of Soviet-backed forces in El Salvador and Somalia, and less clearly of aligned forces such as the Iraqis, whose brutal attacks against Kurdish civilians caused an exodus last fall. Guerrillas in a number of countries also deserve condemnation for adopting similar tactics; in the case of Mozambique, for example, attacks on civilians by a rebel force were probably the main cause for the flight of a million persons to neighboring countries in recent years and the internal displacement of a comparable number.

In most cases, the effectiveness of condemning the forces that drive people away from their homes or that prevent them from returning home can be enhanced by also condemning the foreign governments that back those forces diplomatically, economically and militarily. The superpowers are not the only culprits. Italy has backed Somalia, China has backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, South Africa has backed rebel forces in Mozambique and in Angola, Cuba has backed Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia has backed the Sudan, and so on.

As much of the world is responsible directly and indirectly for driving people from their homelands, and because we have common humanitarian responsibilities, the world at large should share the burden of providing refuge, with due consideration for differences in resources among nations. If the burden is too great, the way to lighten it is to mobilize the pressure to end the practices that force people to flee.