Political Islam and the Failure of Development in North Africa
Following the suspension of planned elections in 1992, the dissolution of Parliament and the assumption of power by the military, there has been a state of civil war in Algeria. The government's foes are Islamist groups associated with the political party that was expected to win the cancelled elections, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS). In Egypt, sporadic violence became war in 1992. The government of President Mubarak also confronts political Islam, in this case the activists and urban guerrillas of al-Gama'a al-Islamiya and al-Jihad al-Islamiya. Thus the inheritors of radical, secular Arab nationalism - once the most dynamic force in Arab politics - are besieged by movements, many of whose leading activists were themselves once secular nationalists. The Islamist movements have also adopted some of the programme of nationalism. They have placed it in a quite different context of concern with social welfare and discipline and the programme for an Islamic state in which law and jurisprudence are based on the Islamic legal code, the Shari'a.
The Islamists agitate and some of them fight for a religious objective. They are moved by faith and, in its name, will sacrifice much, even their lives. Do these wars between secular and religious conceptions of society have anything to do with economics? The answer, without denying or qualifying the central role of religion, is that they have everything to do with economics.
After independence in 1962, the Algerian economic strategy was based on state planning and the nationalisation of key assets and enterprises. Heavy restrictions were placed on the import of "luxury" and consumer goods. Economic planning put emphasis on developing the capital-intensive sector, then on developing better agricultural methods, housing, health, job-creation and training. The single biggest source of government revenue was petroleum.
The desire to increase the production and distribution of consumer goods persuaded the government to initiate a policy of gradual economic liberalisation. In 1981, Algeria's giant state corporations were reorganised into smaller, more specialised units. In 1982 a new business code was introduced, encouraging private savings and growth in the service industry. Several deregulation measures were implemented during the 1980s.
Much of Algeria's industrial investment and its welfare projects in the 1970s were financed by debt. After 1983 the government began to borrow heavily again, owing to a steady erosion of its earnings from hydrocarbons. Algeria was still credit-worthy but towards the end of 1985, the international banks became more nervous about further loans. Though it offered terms that were highly favourable for the banks, Algeria was unable to meet its financial needs in 1985-86. Even so, by 1988, it had amassed a debt of $24,000 million, with annual interest of $6,000 million. This was an almost impossible burden, owing to the depressed price of oil and gas which still brought in some 97 per cent of the country's foreign exchange.
The government was unwilling to accept the World Bank's intervention. It refused to reschedule the debt and instead reduced imports, 70 per cent of which were foodstuffs. Although the World Bank was kept out, market forces took over anyway, thanks to the cost and scarcity of basic food. Exposing the economy to market forces while trying to service the debt precipitated crisis. Prices of basic commodities rose while wages remained static. Meanwhile, FLN officials lived in luxury, with access to special shops. They were able to fill their swimming pools during the severe summer drought while water supplies to the poorer areas of Algiers were cut. The increasing hardship and sense of inequality produced a wave of strikes from July 1988 onwards.
On the evening of 4 October 1988 as many as 5,000 youths destroyed shops selling luxury goods and on the following day widespread looting occurred. Government buildings in Algiers were also targets for attacks. On 6 October a state of emergency was declared, and a curfew imposed on Algiers. The army, equipped with tanks, suppressed the disturbances, making no attempt to avoid civilian casualties. Special military courts were also established to punish the rioters. On 10 October President Chadli promised to present a programme of reforms when the violence, which had spread to other cities, subsided. Officials stated that 159 people were killed during the disturbances, but unofficial estimates indicated at least 500 deaths. More than 3,500 were arrested, some of whom were reported to have been tortured.
The reform programme was a complete break with the past, shifting Algeria from the socialist into the western capitalist group of nations. Slow liberalisation and the entry of market forces by the back door were replaced by an open embrace for market logic. Perhaps the economy was simply too weak to respond well to such treatment, or perhaps the programme was doomed by the US recession that started the following year and led to a general downturn in world trade. In April 1989 there were demonstrations against sharp rises in food prices, and in May there were strikes and riots against the slow pace of reform and the corrupt practice of local officials. In May and September, there was further violence, expressing anger at the slow pace of building new housing - promised in the reform package.
It is thus in an economic context of crisis, defined by both development failure and the introduction of a free market economy, that the Islamist movements was seen as not just the only viable opposition to the government, but as the only viable government. In Algeria, the failure of one development model created problems; the attempted solution, market development, made the problems worse. This is also the broad pattern in Egypt. Algeria's policies in the 1960s were a slightly more radical version of Nasir's economic policy in Egypt during the 1950s. In both countries, nationalisation of major economic assets and enterprises, a large state sector and government control of the economy were seen as the key to success and became the route to failure.
Following the disaster of the Six Day War in 1967, Nasir's economic policy began to shift. In the first instance, the new direction led not towards the free play of market forces, but towards international borrowing in order to subsidise inefficient economic sectors. The process accelerated under his successor, President Sadat, whose path to Jerusalem, Camp David and the historic peace agreement with Israel arguably led on from there to favoured access to western banks. Loans were also used to import arms and build up the military. By the end of the 1980s, Egyptian debt totalled nearly $50 billion, yet economic conditions within Egypt had not improved. The Mubarak government was under increasing pressure to accept IMF conditions for a new round of loans and debt rescheduling. Finally, in a package deal in late 1990, Egyptian participation in the US coalition against Iraq after the August invasion of Kuwait led to forgiveness of nearly half the Egyptian debt, either by the US or at its instigation. This was contingent upon Cairo's acceptance of the usual IMF set of economic policies. Market reforms that had already been introduced were extended and accelerated. By the end of 1993, there was no sign that this had either led to an economic recovery or in any other way satisfied the demands of the majority of the people.
Once again, therefore, the context within which the Islamist movements become strong and some parts become increasingly militant is not simply religious but also economic. Political Islam is, indeed, in part a critique of the corruption and indolence of leadership elites who, whether desert monarchies or secular urban nationalists, have in common that they have failed to provide the mass of people with a decent standard of living. The explanation of this failure is provided in terms that are simultaneously economic (corruption and inefficiency), political (western power) and religious (departure from the true path of Islam).
New Markets, New Inequalities
In analysing conflict causes, the key difference between Algeria and Egypt is that the identifiable role of market liberalism is much smaller in the latter case because its introduction came at a much later stage in the process. Even there, however, it is possible to conclude that the relaxation of state controls on market relations may have exacerbated conflict. Examples from the former Soviet bloc are instructive in this regard. In Poland, one observer reports
"widespread and growing resentment over an obviously increasing polarisation of wealth. It is undoubtedly the case that many people are doing very well these days, and there is a new, ostentatious cult of wealth, which seriously grates on the many more who are not doing so well... (S)ome people seem able to levitate above the general dilapidation."15
Indeed, the quick appearance of the new rich in the ex-USSR and the former Warsaw Pact states is one of the most widely remarked social epiphenomena of the transitions in those countries from state planning to market economies. Sometimes the old elite uses its power to grab market opportunities. Sometimes, the new rich are essentially the old (and often current) underworld, the only other group apart from the nomenklatura to have the organisational capacity and resources to make a quick success out of the new system. While this process varies from place to place under the impact of local particularities, it is found wherever the market system is expanding. The process is not simply about making some people rich - it is also about making others poor and making yet others feel poor because they have gained less than they hoped. Economic inequality and social division is an inherent product of spread of the market system. The contemporary development model, by spreading the market system, generates economic and social division.
Ethno-nationalism
This is particularly likely to lead to violent conflict if the economic and social divisions coincide with ethnic differences. We have seen with political Islam how economic elements enter the conflict equation. The same is true in ethno-nationalist conflicts. As with political Islam, any attempt to reduce ethnic identification and nationalism to purely economic elements would be misleading. In both cases, focusing on the economic issues at the expense of culture and belief would miss the depth of emotion and, therefore, the difficulty of resolving the conflicts. Equally, it is often economic failure and a sense of social collapse that explain why the Islamist or nationalist diagnosis of the situation and their programme start to make sense for very large numbers of people.
The prospects of one potential conflict or set of conflicts breaking out in eastern Europe depend on how the various Hungarian communities outside Hungary fare as the market systems develop. There are between 2.75 and 3.3 million Hungarians living in Romania (between 1.6 and 2 million), Slovakia (around 600,000), Serbia (between 340,000 and 400,000, declining rather rapidly), Ukraine (160,000 to 200,000), Croatia (25,000 to 40,000) and Slovenia (up to 10,000). What matters is not simply whether Hungarians suffer economic discrimination and, as a group with, doubtless, a few exceptions, lose out in the new economic circumstances. Certainly, that could lead to violent conflict in which nationalist politicians within Hungary might feel virtually compelled to intervene to defend their compatriots. But it is equally possible for conflict to arise if the Hungarian diaspora enjoys striking economic success. That could lead to attacks on them from members of the ethnic majority who are doing worse.
What will be decisive is not how the Hungarian communities outside Hungary fare. The important issue is, first, whether the relative prosperity of individuals is determined by their ethnicity. If it is, then whether the group is rich or poor, they have become a minority, target of resentment, scorn or discrimination. The second issue, if that happens, is how politicians respond, whether they intensify it or play it down, make political capital out of it or recognise and seek to minimise the risks of serious conflict.
The role of political movements and leaders in generating ethnic conflict is crucial. Sri Lanka is an example of a country in which the relative economic success of one group compared to another was irrelevant. When the country, then Ceylon, became independent from Britain, the Sinhalese majority comprised just under three quarters of the population. The Tamils, largest of the minority groups, comprised just under one fifth. For the Sinhalese, however, or at least for the many politicians prepared to articulate the argument, the Tamils were no minority but the advance guard of an overbearing majority - the Hindus of India. Moreover, though the Tamils and Sinhalese as a whole were no more nor less disadvantaged than the other, the minority population - as so often in the British Empire - did provide a disproportionately large number of government officials and professionals such as lawyers and doctors. After independence, the Sinhalese majority, resenting Tamil predominance in these fields, began to erode it; well educated Tamils began to resent their lost opportunities.
This situation need not have led to war if successive political leaders had resisted the temptation to enhance their popularity among Sinhalese voters by anti-Tamil rhetoric and policies. Sinhalese became first the national language and then the sole official language, Tamils were driven out of professional jobs and their protest demonstrations were brutally suppressed. As the economy went into a profound recession in the 1960s, structural unemployment grew in both communities. The government avoided blame by implicitly encouraging anti-Tamil extremism in the Sinhalese community, which inevitably encouraged anti-Sinhalese extremism among Tamil activists, which simply confirmed ethnic hatred in the other community. Once such a circle of hatred is constructed, it is desperately hard to break it. Communal violence in the 1960s and 1970s included an extremist Sinhalese uprising in 1971 that threatened the government itself.
By the late 1970s, Tamil guerrillas were being trained in India. The war began in 1983; the goal of the uprising was secession, the creation of a state called Tamil Eelam in north-eastern Sri Lanka. When India intervened 1987 to impose peace by the threat of force, coercing the Tamil Tigers into agreeing a cease-fire, the chance of peace was destroyed by another Sinhalese extremist uprising. Almost immediately, the Tigers started guerrilla operations against the Indian army and terrorism against Sinhalese living in the area they wanted to make into Tamil Eelam. After the Indian army pulled out in January 1990, there was only a brief respite before the war escalated to yet greater violence.
Those political leaders whose short-term self-interest was met by stirring ethnic resentments into hatred presumably did not know what they had started. That does not excuse their irresponsibility.
The economic role in causing the Sri Lankan conflict is not primarily a matter of the success or failure of one ethnic group. Its real influence was that the economic wreckage of then-Ceylon in the 1960s produced a desperation that, in both the major communities, was channelled into ethnic conflict. That it was not directed into, for example, class conflict was partly because the Colombo government for much of that time operated a half-baked, highly subsidised, inegalitarian policy it called socialism. In Sri Lanka, then, economic ruin provided the context of desperation in which desperate choices are made; those choices were then made on ethnic lines.
Communal violence in the Rift Valley in Kenya shows some similarities. The government's development strategy is no more productive for most people than that of most Third World governments. This has led to one of the periodic upsurges of unrest and protest that have been faced first by Jomo Kenyatta and since 1978 by Daniel Arap Moi, the two post-independence Presidents. This time, however, it is more of a threat than in the past, not only because the government has effectively run out of development options and has no alternative other than further austerity measures. The problem is also the wave of political change that, whether or not it leads to lasting democracy, has toppled several dictators since in the 1990s and caused others to wobble. The outbreak of violent clashes between opposing tribal groups in the Rift valley region in the first half of 1992 provided the pretext for the government to ban opposition parties, despite the lack of direct evidence that they were involved in the violence. This seemed rather too convenient to not a few observers who looked for and in many cases report that they have found firm evidence that the violence in 1992 and 1993 was stirred up by government agents. Once again, the economy provides the context for violent conflict and deficient political leadership provides the trigger.
In other ethnic conflicts, the economic element has a much more direct impact. The war in Tadzhikistan, for example, amounts to a direct conflict between the old nomenklatura, who, upon the demise of the USSR, managed to grab the key levers of political and economic power, and those who were previously and are still largely excluded from power and who are Muslims. They have turned to Islamists in Afghanistan for aid, as much because of opportunism as shared beliefs.
The war in Tadzhikistan is a classic post-independence war of the kind that occurred that on large and small scales throughout the former European colonies. Within the former USSR, the multiple wars in Georgia can in part be understood in that light. The former elite has allied with various other groups and has the support of Moscow. It is led by Eduard Shevardnadze, who was still clinging on as President at the end of 1993. This coalition battles it out with nationalists led by the former President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The latter's intense nationalism had led to a well justified fear of discrimination and deprivation in South Ossetia and Abkhasia. The wars of secession which then started continued even after Gamsakhurdia was ousted, evidence again of how difficult it can be to break the circle of violence once it is established.
Of post-independence wars, the most violent now is in Angola. Independence from Portugal was gained in the middle of an unresolved three-sided power struggle. The largest independence movement managed to form a government but war continued without pause. The conflict was for a long period complicated by its role in the Cold War. The USSR supported the government side through Cuba; the USA and South Africa, without much acknowledging each other's role, supported the UNITA insurgency. In the early phase of the end of the Cold War, the outside powers withdrew and, with difficulty, a cease-fire was negotiated 1991 and elections arranged for 1992. UNITA's leader Jonas Savimbi, declared himself dissatisfied with the result when it went against him and launched a new war of even greater levels of violence and brutality than before. Here the political divisions are also ethnic divisions. The two sides exploit their communal power bases because they have no other base to exploit.
Part of the explanation for upsurges of nationalist sentiment and/or ethno-politics most often turns out to be unequal access to wealth and power. Development is always uneven and always has a differential regional impact. Problems arise when differences between regional levels of prosperity coincide with ethnic boundaries and when political movements set out to exploit that fact. The whole social and cultural psychology of nationalism cannot be explained in economic terms - but a part of it most certainly can. In the long view, moreover, that part of the psychology of nationalism is easiest to address. It is possible to craft economic policies that avoid promoting one ethnic group at another's expense. It is possible to build politics on either tolerating ethnic difference or uniting across ethnic divides, even if many will always be tempted to exacerbate and exploit division. What seems much more difficult, once the ethnic and economic issues have become not only inter-twined but also highly visible and the source of bitterness, is to stop the process. The wars in former Yugoslavia display the same combination of causes and the same build-up of momentum.
Ex-Yugoslavia
The history of the Balkans as the meeting ground in the battle of eastern and western empires seems to have resulted in communities needing an especially strong sense of collective identity. As the Ottoman and Habsburg empires receded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nation-building and state-building efforts in the Balkans were ultimately incomplete. Thus, the formation of Yugoslavia after World War I led to peculiarly intense and competitive national feelings being frustrated. The new country was an artificial amalgam. Tito made it work after 1945 through a combination of his own unique status as a Croat who was a Serbian hero, a Federal structure in which the republics had considerable degrees of independence in economics and a tight, centralised political control that took great care in specifying the extent of allowable freedom of expression. Tito's death in 1980 left the Federation without unifying leadership.
A normally submerged but essential part of the story, however, is economics. One gets a hint of it simply by recognising that the first two republics to break away were the two with the highest per capita wealth; Slovenia was the richest and declared independence first, followed by Croatia. It was the latter's declaration of independence that meant that, unless speedy preventive action were taken by outside powers, war in Bosnia-Hercegovina was inevitable.
The economic part of the story has two elements. One is simply that the two northern republics were economically more efficient and productive than the others. For most of Tito's period there was plenty of suppressed resentment in Croatia and Slovenia at what was perceived to be the use of their wealth to subsidise the wastrel south. After Tito died, beggar-my-neighbour nationalism became increasingly acceptable and eventually took power in the three richest republics - Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.
The other part of the economic story revolves around debt and credit. In February 1965, the Federal Fund for the Accelerated Development of the Underdeveloped Republics and Kosovo (FADURK) was created. It was financed by a small tax paid by all the republics. Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo were eligible to receive assistance in low interest loans with repayment periods of ten to fifteen years. For the northern republics, this was like the Official Development Assistance programmes of OECD countries, with one key difference: the northern republics had not voted for it. The FADURK system had been imposed on them from the Federal level.
For their part, the least developed republics saw FADURK as an instrument of income redistribution and saw little point in themselves contributing to the fund. Thus, FADURK, far from being the instrument of enlightened economic co-operation it might initially have seemed to an outside, became an issue of division, pushing the republics to declare and act on their interests which, in time, would be increasingly defined in ethno-nationalist terms.
To make it worse, the fund did not work. It did not strengthen the development process. Though interests rates were below two per cent, the poorer republics and Kosovo were soon caught in a spiral of indebtedness. They were unable to generate a surplus for further investment, nor could they service their debt. The more their debt mounted, the less effective new loans became. As early as December 1969, Kosovo officially requested forgiveness for all its FADURK debts. This was eventually agreed, but with the condition attached that future loans were to have higher interest rates and shorter repayment periods. Oddly, Kosovo having failed to maintain repayments on easy terms, the solution was to make future terms harder for everybody.
It continued to prove impossible to use FADURK to close the north-south development gap. By 1980 Croatia and Slovenia wanted it replaced by a market oriented institution that would provide or deny loans according to strictly commercial criterion. This was, of course, another way of expressing the increasingly standard northern contempt for economic inefficiency in the south.
Tito died in 1980. Within a year, violence had begun in Kosovo, the first eruption of conflict that led to the unravelling of the Federation. FADURK was an effort to overcome divisions within Yugoslavia. Its success might have prevented the horrors of the 1990s. Its failure can be traced both to the pre-existing divisions between the republics and to the depressive effect of indebtedness on the development prospects of the poorer, southern republics.
Economic Insecurities
In three Latin American countries, the problems of development enter the conflict dynamic in a different way. The spread of the market system tends to marginalise many people. This may provide a feeding ground for conflict. It can also have a much more direct effect through narcotics.
For the peasant who has been pushed into cash crop production, and then finds no stable future because of price fluctuations on the world market over which he has no influence, coca growing and processing offers a hardy crop, an expanding market and commodity buyers who pay cash up front. Cocaine accounts for about half of Bolivia's export income. It is the single most valuable export from Peru and Columbia, representing in each case about one fifth of total export income.16 In all three countries, cocaine makes a crucial contribution to the governments' ability to service their external debt:
"The importance of cocaine revenues to the Andean countries increases in direct proportion to how tightly the international banking community squeezes them to repay their loans. To finance these debts, the countries of the region have little choice but to accept revenues from any source - legal or illegal."17
Cocaine revenues, however, finance not only the increasingly rickety states but also the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru and the powerful, rival drug barons of Bolivia and Colombia.
In all three countries, economic stagnation seems insurmountable. It provided the necessary context for two major guerrilla wars in Colombia and Peru. In the former, the largest guerrilla group, the M-19, abandoned warfare in 1990 and opted for an electoral strategy. The other major groups also withdrew from guerrilla fighting, but the smaller ones continued. In Peru, the Sendero Luminoso began armed struggle in 1980, two years after the restoration of parliamentary democracy following a decade of military rule. The country was in the midst of economic recession and conditions had hardly improved when the Sendero Luminoso launched a major offensive in urban areas in 1985/6. The government's capacity to fight the war was hampered on two sides. A wave of strikes started in 1987 in response to hardship and economic deterioration. And dissatisfaction among army officers was so intense that there were apparently well founded rumours of a planned coup in February 1987, though it never materialised.
Throughout the 1980s, the government resisted the demands of the international debt managers of the World Bank and IMF for economic restructuring. Consequently, further international loans were unavailable and, in the absence of any other viable economic strategy, the economy simply continued to deteriorate. Inflation was at over 1700 per cent in 1988. Unemployment in the poorer parts of Lima stood at 60 per cent. The government ordered a massive devaluation combined with huge price increases in a desperate effort to regain control over the economy, but to no avail. Inflation merely accelerated, exceeding 5500 per cent in 1989. Gross National Product declined by 20 per cent in a two year period. Meanwhile, the Sendero Luminoso had taken firm control of large areas of the countryside including, not by chance, some of the major coca growing areas in the Huellaga valley. Both the guerrillas and the army are brutal in their treatment of the peasants.
Hardly surprisingly, the government was deeply unpopular. In June 1990, Alberto Fujimori was elected President and immediately and swiftly implemented the IMF/Bank package of policies. The results were disastrous. The dismantling of the public sector removed what little social safety net still existed. Hardship became even more intense, the slums larger and more hopeless. Price rises in both petrol and water mean that clean water, previously brought by trucks, became unaffordable in the Lima slums. The result was a cholera epidemic, beginning in 1991 and quickly spreading to other regions of Peru and then to other countries. The political consequences were a growing hostility between President and Congress and inability to work together. Fujimori began to rule by decrees. In the last quarter of 1991, he designated two-thirds of the country as "emergency zones" and gave effective control of them to the military, which has a terrible human rights record. But Sendero Luminoso was already established in Lima itself. Political violence escalated remorselessly. In April 1992, acting consistently with his resort to rule by decree, Fujimori suspended Congress and, supported by the army, established a "Government of Emergency". Repression of the political opposition was increased and implementation of the new economic policies continued. In September 1992 the army achieved its first major success for some years by arresting the Senderista leader, Abimael Guzman, was arrested. The war nonetheless continued and, by the end of 1993, the Government of Emergency had not yet justified its actions for the majority of the population in terms of either economics or security, let alone human rights.
With its combination of poverty, a political tradition containing both democracy and dictatorship, a barely controlled military and a record of human rights abuses as well as war, Peru could symbolise the destination of several Latin American countries if they cannot change course. One is Venezuela whose wealth, largely based on petroleum revenues, was until the early 1980s distributed rather evenly in society in a way that is unusual in Latin America. The country's debt burden began to grow at about that time. In 1988, the government implemented austerity measures demanded by the IMF. In February 1989, this policy resulted in widespread civil disturbances. Until then, Venezuela's human rights record had been one of the best in Latin America. But in the anti-austerity protests, 300 people were killed in clashes with security forces. Constitutional rights were suspended. Social unrest in the major cities has since become a permanent feature. An attempted coup took place in February 1992, staged by a nationalist and populist faction of junior officers opposed to the economic reform programme. The coup was soon put down by forces loyal to Government but a second coup came only eight months later. Suppressing it cost over 100 lives. In 1993 political violence continued, as did the deterioration of democracy, as provincial elections were suspended early in the year.
The malign role of austerity measures imposed in countries where there is already too little economic security for most people is also an element in the unrest and violence in Argentina, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Gabon, Honduras, Mauritania, Niger, and Zambia. Table 3 shows a survey of earlier (1976-86) protests against austerity measures. Most of the countries listed there reappear in Tables 1 and 2 as current conflict countries. For several countries, the economic therapy of the IMF and World Bank is socially too harsh.
In the Philippines, when the Marcos dictatorship was overthrown, he left behind him an external debt of $24,500 million, on which the interest payments came to over 40 per cent of export earnings. The elected government of Cory Aquino also had to deal with two long-running insurgencies. One was a general uprising led by the Communist New People's Army (NPA). The other was the separatist war of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)18 in Mindanao and Sulu. The new government opened negotiations with both the NPA and MNLF, releasing political prisoners as a sign of good faith, to make the talks possible. It proved to be not so complicated to come to an accord with the MNLF based on regional autonomy for the Moro provinces. The Moro movement split but the war has been quiescent for some years. In 1993, however, there was significant military activity, which might indicate that the conflict will shortly escalate. The reason for this, if it does happen, can perhaps be found in the Aquino government's failure to come to terms with the NPA.
The Aquino government was hampered from the outset and eventually failed because it found no alternative to appeasing two demanding groups. One was the military, whose acquiescence had been essential in the ousting of Marcos. Military opinion was constantly ready to accuse Aquino of being soft on Communism. Consistently, she preferred not to take the enormous risk of challenging the military. Its activities were never brought under her control; there was no effort to brandish a budgetary whip at it, threatening cuts. Talks with the NPA broke down at an early stage when troops opened fire on a peasant demonstration in Manila in January 1987. The army's practice of killing villagers in retaliation for NPA attacks on army posts went unchecked. The army also resorted to "disappearances". Despite all this indulgence, there were numerous attempted coups against Aquino's government. When she decided not to stand for re-election in 1992, her successor was the military Chief of Staff, General Ramos.
The other group that the Aquino government always felt it must appease were the Philippines' international creditors. The government's economic policy was almost entirely subordinated to a single purpose - to keep up payments on the debt. Combined with military spending, this mean there could never be the resources available for a programme of rural development with which the base of the NPA's support might have been fatally undermined. Aquino was never able to buy peace. As always, the price of being allowed to continue servicing the debt included austerity measures, introduced in the second half of 1990, at the same time as the Gulf War had severe economic effects by increasing the price of oil and removing the inflow of funds from Filipinos and Filipinas working in Kuwait. Strikes were the immediate response and a further erosion in Aquino's popularity.
The NPA's support did decline in the early Aquino years but recovered after
that. The economic conditions in which the NPA insurgency first grew were
kept in place by the debt burden and the political conditions also barely
changed. The same factors mean that, although rural development projects were
directed at Mindanao and Sulu, the more militant of the Moro groups have been
able to retain enough support to survive. That war may yet return.
In Somalia, UN forces are operating in an extremely difficult situation, with an unclear mandate, attempting to provide humanitarian aid and political stability, facing determined opposition. The lack of any structures of government power only makes the tasks more difficult. Whatever criticisms may be made of the UN forces, should be made in the awareness of the complex, thankless nature of their work. They should also be made constructively, in a way that makes it possible to learn applicable, operational lessons. For it is certainly possible that the UN will soon be called on to operate in similar circumstances. It is worth speculating, even if it is unpleasant:-
Afghanistan may have stepped closer to the edge of the abyss in 1993 than at any time since warfare began in 1978. As in Somalia, the pattern is of a conflict continuing after it is won, as the victors fall out and contest the spoils. It is possible that the apparently more or less equal balance of military power will lead to an accommodation between the contending groups. Power-sharing, however, rarely proves equally satisfactory to all; it is therefore an unstable arrangement. It is not out of the question that, even such an agreement is reached, it will not last long. In those circumstances, the possibility exists of a decline into a Somalia-like condition. In the first instance, however, it is extremely unlikely that the UN would either be invited to send forces in or, if invited, would agree. It is far more likely that those neighbouring powers whose clients have been involved in the struggle would enter the fray, perhaps more likely by stepping up their financial support to their favoured groups. This would not make a solution more likely, however; it would simply prolong the problem.
Angola has already seen a UN operation - under-funded, under-staffed and terminated too soon, but reasonably effective even so in arranging elections. Since Jonas Savimbi disliked the result, he started the war again. At one point during 1993, it was reported that more than 1,000 people were killed each day. It is not impossible that the two sides will fight themselves to a standstill. A renewed UN operation would have to be conducted amid famine, with enormous numbers of seriously injured people needing long-term medical care, with the risk of epidemics, and with arms widely and cheaply available. Scepticism about the UN's effectiveness and about the worth of making a second try at peace will probably generate a culture of despair that will be extremely hard to penetrate and dispel.
Azerbaijan looked to many outsiders to be the villain of the piece in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The population of the region is, after all, predominantly Armenian and it was never difficult to see why they would wish to be united with their compatriots. There was also sympathy with Armenia because of the pogroms in Baku in 1990 and 1991. Views have changed since Armenia's offensive that began in Spring 1993 revealed that its territorial aims had expanded, that it was no longer going to be satisfied with securing the enclave and a narrow corridor to link it with Armenia proper. The loss of that territory will not itself deal a fatal blow to Azerbaijan but may prove the spark for an escalation of internal conflict. There is no political leadership in Azerbaijan with a popular base, which suggests that one possible outcome is a continuing, multi-sided civil war. Even if the conditions seemed propitious, there is no neighbouring power that can safely intervene to provide stability. Armenia and Russia are both out of the question; neither Iran nor Turkey could accept the other operating alone. Though there are many difficulties, their forces might operate alongside each other. If that were not possible, there could be pressure for "blue helmets" to go in to maintain basic services and hold the ring until an acceptable political leadership emerged. How long that would be is impossible to predict.
Bosnia-Hercegovina is a place where it seems the bad can always get worse. When the Serbs and Croats have each gained the territory they want and expelled from it the people they do not want and are therefore prepared to stop fighting, there will be a peace agreement but probably not much peace. It is possible that the present Bosnian government will lack both the credibility and the will needed to continue. It is possible, indeed, that no credible government will be available. There will, however, be armed groups of Bosnians, bitter at the war's outcome, at their treatment, at how their rights and interests have been not just neglected but trampled on, at the declarations in their support that have not been backed up by actions. They will likely be a source of lawlessness within what is left of Bosnia-Hercegovina and of terrorism outside it. Serb and Croat reprisals will likely follow. In these circumstances, after all political efforts have failed, largely through being half-hearted and late, UN forces will be asked to operate to provide law and order, a stable framework for political administration, post-war economic aid and reconstruction. They will have the added handicap that dissatisfaction with their role since 1992 will generate suspicion about their motives and loyalties in the future.
Haiti has long been both a political and humanitarian nightmare, but it has also had effective if repellent government. So myopically content with its privilege does the narrow, ruling elite seem that it is possible it will continue to resist democratic norms. In that event, sanctions will slowly bleed a weak economy. If at some point the legitimate government were restored, a major operation would be required to provide external assistance for a considerable period. Any such operation would have to disarm the army entirely and, even then, would have to guard against the prospect of coups and destabilisation by the current elite.
Liberia is already another Somalia. The insurrection against the dictator Doe began on 24 December 1989 in the north-eastern border region with a force of 40 led by Charles Taylor, a former government official. This was the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). The rebellion spread, became a general uprising and then a communal war as the different tribes and clans fought for their interests. The rebels closed in on the capital Monrovia by April 1990. The summer saw heavy fighting in the capital, with both government and rebel forces committing atrocities against civilians and against each other. In August, a force provided by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in which Nigerians formed the largest contingent, landed in an attempt to restore order. In September 1990, Doe was ambushed by NPFL forces and hacked to death while on his way to visit the ECOWAS headquarters. Since then the rebels have fought each other, rejecting every attempt to negotiate a cease-fire. The ECOWAS troops have managed to be neither peacekeepers (there is no peace to "keep") nor peace-enforcers. An ECOWAS offensive against the NPFL in August 1992 indicates a shift in its objectives since its arrival. In November 1992, the US government suggested ECOWAS forces could no longer be thought neutral and should be replaced with UN forces. The suggestion may yet be taken up. Meanwhile, ECOWAS forces launched a new offensive during in 1993, extending the territory they control.
Nicaragua has been neither prosperous nor stable since the end of the war in February 1990. Indeed, the sketch in Table 2 makes it clear that this is a country to which war had almost returned by the end of 1993. If that happens, it will reflect the inability of two bitterly opposed political groups to tolerate each other. There is every reason to suppose that both will opt for a fight to the finish - only total elimination of the other will suffice as a war aim. That is the war psychology in which it seems logical to destroy what is supposed to be defended or won. Looking some way into one possible future, it is not hard to see Nicaragua in even worse condition than it was at any time during the 1980s, unable to recover from the complete debilitation of total war without prolonged external humanitarian, economic and political assistance.
South Sudan has a black African population with a variety of religious beliefs, united only by their determination never to be completely integrated into Sudan, dominated as it is by the Arab Islamic population to the north, with the present government run by Islamists. It is unlikely but not impossible that Khartoum would simply bid the south "farewell". The effort to control the southern regions is impossibly expensive and does little but bring international opprobrium. The use of famine as a strategic weapon in 1992 and 1993 has devastated the people and the countryside. The lack of unity in the South has led to a war between rival guerrilla factions. Were the South to be set adrift by Khartoum, international assistance would be necessary for humanitarian purposes, to negotiate an accommodation between the warring factions and to provide aid in establishing an infrastructure of government.
Tadzhikistan's prospects largely depend on its neighbours. Were central authority in Afghanistan to collapse completely and were Russia simultaneously to face irresistible secessionist pressures within its borders, neither would be a source of influence and intervention in Tadzhikistan. This could be a mixed blessing and even a curse, if the war had lasted for some years with high casualties and a lot of economic destruction. The other new states in central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, might be able to provide some economic and political stability but, depending on exactly when it happened, the effort might put too much stress on Kazakhstan itself, overstretching thin resources. Thus, this country too could in some years be needing UN forces to compensate for its inability to provide governance and stability itself.
None of the above, of course, stands as prediction. But other "Somalias"
may happen. It is all too easy to identify possible candidates.
A further speculative exercise is possible to identify missed opportunities for peacefully settling various of today's conflicts. Wisdom after the event is, of course, rather easy and rewriting history can be misleading, making it seem as if avoiding undesirable events is straightforward. But as should be shown by the outline above of the role of economic rivalry in entrenching the resentments that fed into the eventual wars of Yugoslavia's disintegration, a complex chain of causation can establish a momentum towards war that gathers considerable force before it is even identified. Many conflicts reach a point where, even retrospectively, preventing their eruption into violence looks more or less impossible.
With those reservations in mind, the following speculations are offered:-
Angola would have not faced a second war if the USA had stopped supporting UNITA when democratic elections were being prepared. Failing that, blocking UNITA's profitable diamond exports would cripple it.
Austerity measures in countries where there is already serious conflict and widespread deprivation are likely to produce worse conflict. Preventing war is more important than servicing debt.
Bosnia-Hercegovina might have been saved if Croatia and Slovenia could have been persuaded to co-ordinate and negotiate their independence in early 1991. Failing that, a very large international contingent could have been established as a blocking force on Bosnia-Hercegovina's northern borders in late 1991. At least 70,000 soldiers were required. Failing that, western powers should have confessed their inability to do anything.
Burundi and Rwanda will only avoid repetitions of their pattern of inter-communal violence if the two countries' two rival groupings - the Tutsi and the Hutu - are integrated into every major political, economic and administrative institution.
Bolivia, Colombia and Peru would not produce, process and export so much cocaine if other economic activities were more profitable. A collapse in coca exports from Peru would deny Sendero Luminoso its economic base. Stable world commodity prices would do more for Andean peace than more US anti-narcotics assistance.
Cambodia would find peace if the Khmer Rouge were deprived of their economic base in the timber trade and of their support from the Thai military. Both steps depend on action in Thailand, where the military administration could be forced to act by a combination of US and ASEAN economic pressure.
Georgia would have avoided war if President Gamsakhurdia had not been carried away by his own nationalist rhetoric. Realpolitik is sometimes preferable to romantic idealism.
Israel and the PLO have a slim chance of fulfilling the hopes of their September 1993 peace accords if the West Bank receives a massive injection of investment finance.
The Philippines could have decisively ended both its civil wars if the USA had been prepared to support a radical programme of restructuring the armed forces and debt forgiveness. When the debt is incurred by a dictator, why do his democratic successors have to force the people to continue paying the interest?
South Africa shows that, however difficult the path is, progress towards peace can be made from the least propitious starting point imaginable.
Sri Lanka is torn by war only because of the irresponsibility of political
leaders in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Less focus on short-term self-interest
is hard to expect but essential.
14. Except where other wise indicated, the in formation in this section is drawn from sources listed at the end of Tables 1 and 2.
15. Lawrence Wechsler, "Deficit", The New Yorker, 11 May 1992.
16. United States Anti-Narcotics Activities in the Andean Region, US Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Government Operations, Washington, DC, November 1990, pp 53, 67 & 81.
17. Peter Andreas & Coletta Youngers, "U.S. Drug Policy and the Andean Cocaine Industry", World Policy Journal, Summer 1989.
18. "Moro" is the Filipino term for Moslems, introduced by the Spanish.