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Two New York Times Pro-Ban
Column
The
Angola Mirror If we want to fathom how countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan could possibly support terrorists, we might peek into a mirror. Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel who was killed 10 days ago, murdered and tortured countless civilians over the years; the Angolan civil war that he sustained may be responsible for more than 500,000 deaths since 1975. But he was our warlord, not the other side's, and so we were as blind to his brutality as the Saudis and Pakistanis are to the sins of their terrorists. As we engage in a new struggle today - against terrorism, not Communism, it's worth grappling with the lessons of our mistakes in Angola, so that we do not repeat them in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. It is embarrassing to look back to see how we hailed Mr. Savimbi during the cold war. Jeane Kirkpatrick toasted him as "one of the few authentic heroes of our time." President Reagan described him as Angola's Abraham Lincoln. Oh? Mr. Savimbi personally beat to death a rival's wife and children. He also shelled civilians, sowed land mines and then bombed a Red Cross- run factory making artificial legs for victims of mines. "We have to call him Africa's classical terrorist," said Makau Mutua, a professor of law and Africa specialist. "In the history of the continent, I think he's unique because of the degree of suffering he caused without showing any remorse." We were oblivious to Mr. Savimbi's faults because we were locked in a cold-war rivalry in which ideology trumped all else. And in any case, the Angolan government was wretched and brutal as well as pink. Mark Huband, the author of a book about the cold-war legacy in Africa, says about American involvement in countries like Angola, Zaire and Liberia: "In all cases, the results have been disastrous, creating decades of region-wide conflicts." As I see it, there are three key lessons to learn from our mistakes: Lesson No. 1: Be wary of warlords who parrot back our own lines. Mr. Savimbi was a chameleon who started off as a pro-Soviet Marxist, became a Maoist to get Chinese support, then proclaimed himself an anti-Communist to get American support in the cold war, and after the collapse of Communism declared himself a supporter of free markets. He was expert at saying what we wanted to hear, but in retrospect it's clear that he never believed in anything but power. It's a useful caution these days, as foreign leaders jostle to whisper sweet nothings about terrorism in our ear. The Philippines has cleverly wangled$100 million from us by exaggerating the links between a gang of kidnappers and Al Qaeda. In the Horn of Africa, every faction insists that its enemies are tied to Al Qaeda and must be destroyed. Likewise, every commander in Afghanistan these days seems to regard himself as a secular humanist. Then there are the Iraqi opposition leaders, who spend much more time pushing our buttons than bothering with Saddam Hussein. Lesson No. 2: Support democracy as a whole, not simply elections. Angola held elections in 1992, and there's general agreement that they were held hurriedly - before rival armies could be tamed, before democratic institutions could be nurtured, before enough observers could be found - and so they solved nothing and perhaps made problems worse. As Afghanistan moves ahead, it's worth remembering that elections are not a panacea. What is needed is not just a plebiscite but a process, ranging from demobilization of combatants to freedom of speech, that creates democracy and stability. Lesson No. 3: Land mines often last longer than our alliances. The Bush administration is now conducting a review to determine its policy on antipersonnel mines. The policy makers might visit Angola, where thousands of maimed children will be one of the longest- lasting legacies of our support for Mr. Savimbi. Now that he is gone, Angola has another chance. And so do we. We should be twisting arms to try to bring about peace in Angola. And in the new battlegrounds, like Afghanistan and perhaps Iraq, let's be doubly careful about picking our next Lincoln. And rather than just anointing a winner, let's promote institutional changes - like schools, liberties and free markets - that are the third world's real freedom fighters and "authentic heroes." The
Hidden Enemies ALI KHUJA, Afghanistan -- Abdul Taher is a slight 14-year-old farm boy facing a choice that would baffle any grown-up: Should he risk starvation or risk having his leg blown off by a land mine? His family lives in this village 30 miles north of Kabul, in an area that is heavily mined, so it would be crazy to walk through the family's farmland, even after such primitive Afghan-style mine-clearing methods as driving a flock of sheep through first. (This is a tough country for livestock as well as humans.) Yet the family has to eat, and the only way to get food is to work the land - even if every step is dangerous. This makes the problem of land mines central to any discussion of Afghanistan's future, for the mines are a critical impediment to the country's recovery. Long after Osama bin Laden is buried, after a new government is presiding over Afghanistan's reconstruction, land mines will continue to haunt this country. The Bush administration is now conducting an interagency review to determine its policy on land mines, and every signal is that it will pull back from President Bill Clinton's quasi-pledge to join the international ban on antipersonnel mines by 2006. Instead of belatedly joining the Ottawa Convention to ban mines, we seem determined to walk away from it. The outcome of the review on land mines will help determine how many children lose their legs and lives in the coming decades, how many countries find their economic recovery blocked by buried mines. This is an area where we have a strong national interest, as well as a humanitarian interest, in playing a leadership role to help evict land mines from the arsenal of wars, and yet Pentagon complacency and President Bush's allergy to treaties together make it very likely that we will be part of the problem rather than the solution. The laying of mines is the 21st- century equivalent of what the Romans did to Carthage: plow salt into the ground so that it could never again sustain a population. The number of mines in Afghanistan is usually wildly exaggerated, because estimates come from nongovernment organizations trying to raise money to clear them (figures of 10 million are sometimes thrown about, when a more careful extrapolation from areas that have been cleared suggests fewer than one million, perhaps only 300,000). But still, whatever the exaggerations, on average three Afghans a day are maimed or killed by mines. To clear a mine, a worker waves a metal detector over the ground until it buzzes, then uses a metal rod to probe -gently - from the side, and then a trowel to uncover it. If it is a mine, he uses a charge to blow it up. The job, which pays $105 a month, requires intense concentration. The Afghan who showed me how to clear mines recalled a colleague who had had a bitter argument with his wife one night and was still upset as he showed up for work the next morning. Distracted, he probed too aggressively -and blew himself up. Along roads and footpaths of Afghanistan, painted stones mark the safe zones - white on the inner, cleared side, and red on the outer, dangerous side. And yet one constantly sees Afghans walking into the minefields to gather fuel or till their fields. It is not that they are stupid or oblivious; it is that they feel they have no choice. New technologies and new kinds of wars have eclipsed the usefulness to us of land mines. They protect soldiers stationed for long periods in enemy territory, as Americans were in Vietnam and Korea, or as Russians were in Afghanistan, but they endanger our troops in modern wars like our deployments in Afghanistan or Somalia. Eight retired generals have written to President Bush saying that mines are not critical to our operations in Korea or elsewhere, and would slow a counter-invasion of North Korea in any war. The nub of the problem is that it will be impossible to restrain irresponsible users of land mines unless the entire international community, including the United States, is four- square against them. The mines in this village, for example, were mostly laid by the Northern Alliance, our new ally. If its leaders feel threatened, their impulse will be to lay new mines - and how can we tell them not to when we reserve the right to lay mines ourselves? This is an issue where the United States could and should get out front and lead the world, thus saving future generations of kids from the excruciating choices faced by Abdul Taher. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company |
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