The Third World after the Cold War ideology,economic development and politics July 5 - 8, 1995

War as a Source of Losses and Gains

David Keen

Queen Elizabeth House Oxford

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WAR AS A SOURCE OF LOSSES AND GAINS

David Keen Queen Elizabeth House ( Oxford University )

This paper contains some thoughts about war , and civil war in particular . It looks briefly at some of the conceptual frameworks that might contribute to our understanding of war , and some of the weaknesses of these frameworks . It then attempts to move towards a way of looking at war which might , conceivably , contribute to more imaginative thinking about how to minimise the human suffering arising from war . 1. The bureaucratic

model and the military historians

According to a conception of war which owes a great deal to Clausewitz as well as other military historians , war is conducted by professional arm ies and is fought between rival states . According to this very common conception , war is something that is "declared ", with processes of violence following more or less automatically as each "side " commands its respective forces according to its perception of the tactics most likely to "win the war ". War , as Clausewitz put it, is "the pursuit of politics by other means ". The model analyses war rather as one might analyze a wargame . When applied to civil wars , this kind of "bureaucratic " model again envisages two "sides", each with its own political programme and each trying to gain the tactical advantage that will allow it to "win ". The best chance for peace , correspondingly , is seen as getting the leaders of the two sides together , and engineering some kind of compromise . This model would appear increasingly outdated , however . Not only are contemporary wars for the most part civil wars rather than wars between states . In addition , when we look closely at civil wars , it is often hard to discern two neatly delineated "sides" which are unambiguously in command of their own fighters . The loyalty of fighters , indeed , is often highly problematic . And there are frequently three or more factions . Moreover , civilians , contrary to Clausewitz ' s conception of war , are frequently deliberately targeted by one or more factions . The process by which resources are raised for fighting may be highly problematic , rather than following more or less automatically from the declaration of war . And , rather than consisting of battles which lead to some kind of conclusion and a clear winner , wars are increasingly protracted . For example , civil war in Sudan has been going on for the past 12 years and , on and off , for the past 30 years . 2 . Economic analysis It would be wrong to underestimate the economic analysis of war

that has been conducted . Paul Collier and Frances Stewart are among those who have written fruitfully in this area , and the economic dynamics of warfare have recently attracted increased attention even from the International Monetary Fund . However , economics as a discipline has largely failed to come to terms with the importance of war , and of violence in general . Too often , as Stewart ( 1993 ) points out , warfare is treated as an exogenous variable , with large international organizations assuming war away when making economic plans . And , as Stewart notes , "While war has ... been identified as a reason why adjustment programmes do not work , no effort have been made to consider what adjustment policies are appropriate during war ." The long duration of many contemporary civil wars makes it particularly important to avoid conceiving of them as temporary abberations . Consider a brief selection of definitions of economics . Economics "is about choice subject to constraints " ( Layard and Walters , 1978 ) . Economics is "descriptive of the productive and trading relationships between people ..." Begg , Fisher and ( Dornbusch , 1991) . Economics is "the study of how human beings go about the business of organizing consumption and production activities " ( Samuelson , 1980 ) . Whatever definition one accepts , it is difficult to see how these processes can be adequately understood without looking at the role of violence in shaping , sustaining and distorting particular economic systems . Yet discussion of war and violence are almost entirely excluded from these texts , except a brief mention of the inflationary effects of war in Samuelson and the comment that "Wars have always been great disrupters of an economy " ( p .242) . Significantly , war and violence have also been largely marginalised from the study of famine . In his seminal "Poverty and Famines ", Amartya Sen 1981) gives relatively ( little attention to the relationship between war and famine. In their wide-ranging study , Dreze and Sen ( 1989 , p . 22) emphasise : "It would be , particularly , a mistake to relate the causation of famines to violations of legality . . . the millions that die in a famine typically die in an astonishingly 'legal ' and 'orderly ' way ". Sen ' s entitlement approach deals specifically with the legal framework , with the bund le of goods to which people can claim access within the existing system of laws . Yet violations of legality are a key feature of civil wars . How do economies work in time of civil war? It is not a question many economists have addressed . Yet just as analysis of economic processes is relevant to the study of war and violence , so also analysis of war and violence is surely relevant to the study of economics . If we imagine that economic processes can be underst ood without an understanding of violence , we might do well to remember that

Western capitalism - or large parts of it - was built on the infliction of m assive violence , and that it is sustained by the infliction of more moderate violence as well as by a variety of taboos on the use of particular kinds of violence . The very idea of private property ( a cornerstone of economics as discipline ) was in many parts of the world for example , the ( United States ) only established through large-scale violence against groups occupying land according to a different set of conventions . Once property had become established as an idea , it was defended with punishments for theft , punishments either consisting of violence or underpinned by the threat of violence . If such punishments were to be seen as fair and measured , this demanded the existence of a strong and effective state apparatus which could dispense violence in a moderate and routinized manner . Meanwhile , to take the United States as an example , the idea that it was legitimate to use violence in the economic endeavour of settlement gradually gave way to the idea that it was illegitimate to use violence to make money . And there were other taboos restricting the individual s ' freedom to make money . One was the taboo on government officials selling favours for money ( including the granting of immunity from retaliatory violence to those who broke the law ). This , then , was not so much a "free market " as a market constructed out of violence , and sustained partly by violence and partly by social mores defining legitimate and illegitimate ways of making money 1 . All this may seem an unwarranted detour from a discussion of civil war . The important point is that violence and taboos on violence affect economic life at all times , whether in peace or war . We would be well advised to try to understand how violence affects economic transactions , rather than assuming violence is banished during peace and that it somehow "replaces " economic processes in wartime . Perhaps , economics - which is after all a relatively recent discipline tends to look only at the historical point after mass use of violence to create a particular economic system . If we were pessimis tic - and rising violent crime rates in the industrialised world combined with increasing numbers of civil wars in the world as a whole give grounds for pessimism - we might go further and suggest that economics deals only with that relatively brief period of history before the descent back into violence as states and taboos on particular kinds of money -making collapse . One of the most promising areas where economic analysis could enhance our understanding of wars , as Stewart has suggested , is Insofar as capitalism wants to suggest that " everyone should try to make as much money as possible ", it may contain the seeds of its own destruction in a way different from that envisaged by Marx :in some sense , crime and government corruption which may ( include complicity in crim e and decentralised violence ) follow naturally from the injunction to make money .

in assessing the indirect costs of wars , that is the costs in terms of economic devastation and reduced state services which war may give rise to . Such an analysis - which forms part of the focus of a major research project at Queen Elizabeth House offers the prospect of suggesting economic interventions that might reduce these indirect costs of war - both inside and outside the zone in which fighting is actually taking place . While investigating these costs of war is undoubtedly valuable , there may be dangers in focusing too much on the costs of war if it leads us to assume that war is all bad . Insofar as "liberal " analysis of war is anxious to show up war as an unmitigated evil , this may actually be unhelpful in certain ways . In particular , if war is so bad for everyone , why does it occur? And why , moreover , does it persist ? many Among analyses suggesting that war is economically irrational is a recent piece by Douglas Rimmer ( 1995 ) in which he notes that : "The data on the basis of which businesses operate are the more reliable , and business is therefore easier to conduct , where life and property are reasonably secure , contracts enforceable , institutions stable and government policies predictable . Business , in short , is an interest entrenched in peace ." While much of the reasoning here is sound , the validity of the conclusion is open to question . Much will depend on what kind of "business " we are talking about , who is conducting it, and , to put it rather crudely , whether you have something they want . 3 . War as "chaos " It is common , particularly in journalistic accounts , to see contemporary warfare depicted as essentially chaotic . Closely related accounts portray war as "madness ", as "m indless ", and/or as the result of "ancient ethnic hatreds ". Many accounts of the conflict and recent famine in Somalia suggested that the country had lapsed into anarchy , and "The Coming Anarchy " was the title of a highly influential recent article by Robert Kaplan ( 1994 ) in the Atlantic Monthly . Kaplan warned of the imminent danger of escalating violence and a collapse of state control not just in West Africa - his main focus - but also in much of the industrialised world .

The policy implications of this chaos " model are far from clear . " Probably the most important implication is simply that little that can be done , and that the industrialised countries should steer clear of areas "beyond the pale ", perhaps making some attempt to seal themselves off from this gathering "chaos ". This line of action appeared to gain some approval from military historian Martin Van Creveld in a recent appearance on Panorama when he suggested that gathering chaos would lead to attempts at mass emigration and that Western governments might want to "blow couple of those boats out of the water " as an example to the rest . Van Creveld added ( in reference to recent Italian conflict with Albanian immigrants ) that "This may be in the long-run a more humane solution both for the Italians ... and for the immigrants " ( Panorama , March 20th 1995) . Kaplan 's brand of scare -mongering was well summed up in his opening contribution to the same Panorama programme , when he observed : "You have a lot of people in London and Washington who fly all over the world , who stay in luxury hotels , who think that English is dominating every place , but yet have no idea what is out there , and what is out there is that this thin membrane of luxury hotels , of things that work , of civil order is proportionately getting thinner and thinner and thinner ." The apparent psychological importance of keeping this perceived "chaos " at bay reminds one of the fear of the wilderness among the Europeans who settled , or unsettled , the Americas ( cf Stannard , 1992 ) . The power of Kaplan 's perhaps derives from a sense of excitement and horror that the wildness of "the other ", the sphere of the unpredictable , is actually not so far from home as it might seem - something , perhaps , that the bombing of Oklahoma has now brought home all the more starkly . One is reminded of a passage quoted by Stannard .

in Conrad 's "Heart of Darkness ",

"The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of the black and incomprehensible frenzy ... we glided past like phantoms , wondering and secretly appalled , as sane men would before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse . . . It was unearthly , and the men were - No , they were not inhuman . Well , you know , that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman . It would come slowly to one . They howled and leaped , and spun , and made horrid faces ; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar ." In a context where the bureaucratic model of warfare is clearly breaking down in important respects , it is possible to observe growing tendency for observers simply to throw up their hands

and declare "It ' s all chaos !". Perhaps traditional economics with a focus on peaceful markets ) and traditional political ( science ( with a focus on elections and voting ), as well as traditional m ilitary history ( with a focus on bureaucratic war ), are simply too rigid and narrowly defined . Each attempts to focus on a restricted area which is ordered and predictable . And when "messy " phenomena like contemporary civil wars do not fall easily within the orbit of these "disciplines ", the temptation to wheel out the label of "chaos " is very great . In the natural sciences , it has been suggested that theories positing particular kinds of predictability may similarly depend on limiting attention to a relatively small sphere ( excluding , for example , phenomena that , without being random , frequently defy predictability like the evolution of the weather and the movement of water ) . For all its attractions as visceral thrill or fall-back explanation , the label of "chaos " is not analysis . Rather , it is the death of analysis . Even in physics , "chaos theories " still embrace the possibility of certain "organizing principles ". Reading many newspaper reports of contemporary conflicts , one might frequently wish to ask : is it the violence that is mindless or the analysis ? Such accounts do , however , have the great advantage that the more you fail to explain war and violence , the more convincing your explanation ("chaos ") becomes . 4. The functions of conflict The progress of an infectious disease is something more that the breakdown of the body . For the germ , indeed , it may be a triumph albeit a triumph which may ultimately destroy it as the body ( dies ). In the same way , the processes of conflict ( and the , often related , processes of famine ) may have beneficiaries as well as victims . To interfere effectively in these processes ( as with the processes of disease ), one needs to be aware not simply of the suffering arising from them ( the symptoms , as it were , of conflict )but also of the groups who may be benefiting from ' them . We need to know about war 's functions as well as its causes and effects . By examining which groups the costs and benefits of wars fall upon , we may have a powerful tool for explaining why wars persist , or come to an end . The functions of war may be quite complicated . Contrary to the bureaucratic model of warfare , the point of war may not be simply to win it, as one would win a sporting contest between two teams . The point may be to engage in profitable crime under the cover of warfare .War may involve actions that are militarily counterproductive and could reasonably be predicted in advance ( to be militarily counterproductive ). An important example of this might be large -scale attacks on civilians in retaliation for rebel or "terrorist " activity , something that has frequently

Van Creveld ( 1991) has an interesting relationship between crime and warfare .

discussion

of the

increased rather than diminished the strength of opposition , as for example in the current conflicts in southern Sudan and eastern Turkey . However , the mere fact that such an action might strengthen the opposition does not prove that it is irrational . It might be that raiding the civilian population is a primary aim of many of those doing the fighting . It might be that raiding , by creatin g a rebel movement , provides legitimacy for itself . It might be , and this argument has been made in relation to the Turkish government repression of the Kurds , that parts of the military actually favour a strong rebel movement in order to enhance their own budgets and status . It might be that raiding creates the impression of continuing conflict and so legitimates the presence of army officers in areas where they can make money from illegal economic activities - an argument that has been made in relation to Sierra Leone . It might be that soldiers in one faction sell arms to another , motivated partly by the money they can make from doing so - an argument that has been made in relation to Cambodia . It might be , as John Simpson suggests in his analysis of conflict in Peru , that government soldiers habitually set free rebel fighters ( in this case from the Shining Path ) in order to perpetuate insecurity in areas where officers can benefit from illegal trading ( in this case , principally , the trade in cocaine ) . And it might be , finally , that encouraging particular patterns of violence is a way of diverting the discontent of disgruntled social or ethnic groups or of distracting a potentially mutinous army by engaging it in perpetual combat . Both arguments have been made in relation to Sudan ( Keen , 1994). Perhaps , to modify Clausewitz , war is the pursuit of economics by other means . We hear a lot about economically rational behaviour . But what are the circumstances in which it is economically rational to carry out acts of violence ?3 War is not simply a breakdown of society ; it is a re-ordering of society in particular ways . In wars , we see the creation of a new type of political economy , not simply the disruption of an old one . As Mark Chingono has argued , the gains from war may in some circumstances be quite widespread , particularly when a decline in the state ' s ability to control economic life encourages an expansion in the informal economy . The pre-existing political economy will affect - and will in turn be affected by - the course of the war . number of possible distinguished .

economic

functions

of

conflict

can

be

i) ( . Theft . Theft may effect a major transfer of assets from one group to another , perhaps from one ethnic group to another . During famine

We might also want to ask which groups ( youth , perhaps ) have a comparative advantage in the use of violence .

in Sudan in the 1980s , such transfers included transfer of grain , cattle , land and , it was hoped , mineral resources . While this organised theft was a key cause of famine , it also yielded substantial benefits . Transfer of assets may include the illegal seizure of lands from large landowners in revolutionary violence . ( ii) "Forced markets " /While much of the most influential analysis of famine ( notably Sen , 1981) has focused on market forces , the costs and benefits of famine and civil war may better be understood using the concept of "forced markets " ( Keen , 1994 ), that is, markets which are shaped not simply by supply and demand but by the use of various kinds of force . Grain , livestock and labour markets may be distorted by raiding and resu ltant famine . Threats of violence may reduce the price of labour to something approaching slavery . Violence may be used to create or preserve trade monopolies , a goal that Lenin saw as feeding into international wars but which may also feed into civil wars . iii) Protection rackets -"( People may be made to pay money or surrender commodities in return for "sparing " their lives and /or property or in return for allowing them to move around . Aid agencies may be made to pay money to groups in a position to attack their aid convoys . iv) Pay ( Money can be made from payment as a soldier or as a member of a militia . v ) Supplies ( Money can be made from providing arm ies , including weaponry .

supplies

and

equipment

for

( vi) Relief Money can be made from controlling conflict may conjure up.

the relief

supplies

that

vii ) State resources ( Finally , money can be made from gaining , or retaining , control of the state . It will be important to examine war as a complex , shifting phenomena occurring in the context of weak states . Civil war in the Sudan cannot adequately be characterised as "north versus south ". Civil war in Sierra Leone cannot adequately be characterised as "government versus rebels ". Rather , these are complicated processes in which a variety of actors use violence for a variety of purposes . These purposes are very frequently economic , perhaps increasingly so as conflict progresses .

In the context of a weak and impoverished state , it is unlikely that either government leaders or rebel leaders or other factional leaders will be in a position to "command " a large band of followers who have sufficient training and a sufficient salary to make them a disciplined force . Where the state or ( alternative sources of authority ) lacks resources , leaders may also need to raise the money for warfare from private investors , who may seek an economic return for such investment . The Spanish conquest of South America was in large part funded by merchant and noble partnerships in Spain ( the Spanish crown being in no position to finance the venture ) . These investors were looking for a quick return , notably in the form of gold and silver extracted by Indian slaves . These minerals in turn helped finance further conquests . Today , those providing finance perhaps indirectly ) for warfare may include foreign -owned ( multinationals , as has been the case in Sierra Leone and Liberia . These companies may also seek a return on investment in terms of privileged access to local resources . Such companies are likely to be drawn into the business of providing security for their own operations , as well as certain rudimentary welfare operations , trend no doubt encouraged by pressure from international financial institutions for the "privatisation " of many functions previously carried out by the state . Where violence relies on the private initiative of investors and /or economically -driven fighters , it is quite probable that even wars which began over an overtly "political " or religious dispute will "mutate " into something else , with economic goals gaining increasing importance . As with the mutation of viruses , such changes add to the difficulty of finding effective interventions . But , again as in the case of viruses , these mutations need to be understood . As war is turned against civilians in the pursuit of profits , these civilians may themselves be forced to resort to violence in order to survive . The impoverishment of particular geographical and ethnic groups may also precipitate a "spreading " of war to new areas as predatory groups seek new assets to appropriate . This pattern can be seen , for example , in Sudan . In a context of a "normal economy " devastated by war , the economic attractions of violence may be particularly strong . 4 Although we have come to regard strong states capable of commanding a disciplined army as somehow "normal ", these states only emerged in Europe from a long and difficult struggle with local warlords . In many parts of the world , this kind of state has never properly been established , or at least only in a fragile form . Insofar as the resources available to states in Africa are diminishing not least through ( programmes of structural adjustment ), the opportunities for prospective warlords to challenge state sovereignty would appear to be considerable . The disintegration of states like Liberia shows

This is evident not only in the recent fighting between Kurdish factions in economically -blockaded northern Iraq but also in the fighting between rival rebel factions in southern Sudan .

this process is already under way . As when the monarchies of Europe were attempting to impose their sovereignty on errant warlords , many African states are today forced to try to confront economically -powerful regional warlords with government forces that are underpaid and undermotivated . 5 This creates conditions in which we might expect a military a coup , a defection to the rebels, and/or a peeling away of government troops into their own attacks on civilians or their own illegal economic activities . Like the state , regional warlords may seek to establish a civilian base through providing welfare as well as through threatening violence . Thus , it is not simply that the state is collapsing ; in many countries , it is being reconstructed in new forms , notably through the emergence of "mini -states ". Moreover , rather than simply is sometimes "collapsing ", the state sponsoring its own demise , attempting to maintain itself by harnessing local resentments and resource conflicts and by farming out violence to those it may eventually prove unable to control . Ashort paper cannot discuss particular cases in adequate detail , or properly convey their complexity . Nevertheless , it may be worth taking a central issue emerging from the above discussion the discipline or indiscipline of soldiers - and discussing it in an empirical manner . Undisciplined looting by soldiers has frequently been a response to not being paid or fed . Indeed , intense need among soldiers has often undermined any idea that warfare should be "civilised " and should exempt civilians . Among the Franks ( the German tribes who settled in northern France and Rhineland in fourth century), pillaging even of friendly territory was common when rations ran out and foraging proved difficult . Spanish atrocities in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century were directly linked with the failure to pay the Spanish forces on time . Political suppression of the Netherlands revolt turned into something rather different , as plunder became more and more widespread . The brutal suppression of revolt in Ireland in 1647 ( including forced starvation ) was , in part , a way of occupying disgruntled British Parliamentarian soldiers , whose pay was in arrears and who , finding little prospect of alternative employment in an economy dislocated by the English civil war , refused to disband . 6

There are parallels here with the attempts by governments in industrialised countries to confront drug barons with police forces that may also be underpaid and undermotivated . There are parallels here with many contemporary civil conflicts . For example , continuing economic scarcity in northern Iraq has made it difficult to achieve a lasting disbandment of

In contemporary southern Sudan , raiding of civilians by the rebel Sudan People ' s Liberation Army ( SPLA ) has often been linked with interruptions in the supply of food to SPLA troops . In Sierra Leone , raiding of civilians by government soldiers posing as "rebels " has been widely linked with the poor pay and minimal training for these soldiers . The poor pay itself appears to reflect a government failure to channel money raised for warfare towards soldiers on the front . Among those who have pointed to the importance of pay and training in shaping contemporary civil wars in Africa is Bishop W . Nah Dixon , Resident Bishop of the Don Stewart Christ Pentecostal Church in Liberia . He said of the genesis of the Liberian civil war : "It is needless to say that one of the great lessons the civil war has taught us is that the security of the nation depends on the level of training and discipline of its armed forces ... Incapable of facing the enemy on the battlefield to fight it out , they turned against innocent civilians , holding them as hostages , killing them on suspicion of abetting and hiding the rebels - even though these civilians were far removed from the scene of the conflict ... The number of soldiers should be reduced and well paid . This will help prevent the lust of looting and armed robbery , and the staging of military coups ." The use of wars to distract potentially rebellious troops is a historical phenomenon of long standing . This tactic has frequently led to patterns of warfare that prove deeply damaging for civilians , though profitable for the raiders and perhaps of lasting economic benefit for groups seeking the retain the benefits of state office . European contemporaries and historians have observed that the Spanish conquest of the New World helped to keep some limits on the violence within Spain in the sixteenth century , particularly as it provided an outlet for those who did not return to ordinary employment after the wars of Grenada against the Moors . In the early nineteenth century , the conquest of Nilotic Sudan by Mohamed Ali ' s Turko -Egyptian regime offered a means of distracting his Albanian troops from the insubordination to which they were prone . In the Ottoman empire during the late nineteenth century , the Ottoman government armed Kurdish militias and gave them a "licence to raid ". This appears to have served somewhat similar function in appeasing the Kurds , while at the same time offering a way of suppressing dissent ( in this case , among the Armenians ) .

the Kurdish militias that fought against Saddam Hussein ' s forces in 1991 .

In modern -day Sudan , warfare has been used as a means of deflecting the resentment of the potentially -rebellious ( and economically marginalised )Baggara group by turning them against politically marginalised southern Sudanese . Such tactics offered heavily -indebted Sudanese administration the prospect of defeating rebellion ( and gaining access to oil) "on the cheap ", that is, without having to pay for a large , conscript army . 6. Some implications for interventions It may be helpful at this stage to go back the three conceptual frameworks discussed earlier , and to wonder what light the above discussion can throw on the policy prescriptions that arise within each of these conceptual frameworks . Much of current policy in relation to peacemaking and aid is constructed within the old-fashioned , bureaucratic model of warfare . Outsiders endeavour to create a sphere of neutrality for civilians . They insist on the immunity of humanitarian aid from interference ". They attempt to get the "political respective leaders together , and to secure some kind of compromise agreement . However , this approach is severely called into question when we remember that in most contemporary civil wars , the control and exploitation of civilians have become central goals for those carrying out violence , rather than deviations from "normal " warfare . The manipulation of aid in order to control civilians and to make money has also become a key goal during conflict . Finally , the diversion of aid and the infliction of violence have become sufficiently decentralised that merely securing an agreement among "leaders " is unlikely to secure lasting respect for aid and peace among those who are ( conveniently ) assumed to be their "followers ". The way forward may lie in interventions that provide realistic economic alternatives to the economic gains from violence . These alternatives will have to be provided not just to "leaders " but also to all those who engage in violence , lest they desert their leaders . In some circumstances , the need to "wean " particular groups from violence may mean , in effect , "rewarding " individuals who have carried out human rights abuses , rather than punishing them . There are obvious dangers in such a policy . But simply offering punishment may be a recipe for abusers to "dig in" and continue fighting until the bitter end . Turning to the existing economic analysis of warfare , the above analysis suggests that a focus on the costs of war only takes us so far. Unless we look also at the functions of war , it is difficult to see how wars can be brought to an end . If we assume that war is bad for everyone , then it is difficult to see how any observer or outsider could be expected to contribute to the process of peace - except by telling the warring parties to "see reason " and pull themselves together ? Secondly , if the indirect costs of warfare are to be reduced in

practice , then one will need to consider carefully the functions of warfare . These will include the economic functions of inflicting sufficient suffering on civilians that they migrate en masse from economically -coveted areas . Insofar as interventions aim to minimise the costs of warfare , they will need to bear in mind that governments ( and other parties ) are often seeking to maxim ise the costs of warfare - either as part of a military tactic that seeks to control civilian populations or as part of an economic lactic that seeks to gain access to resources controlled by civilians . Unless the functions of human suffering are understood , donor organisations will risk deepenin g the costs of war , for example by assisting in policies of depopulating particular geographical areas and concentrating in controllable people and often ( disease -ridden ) camps . Hostility to targeting the most needy in the areas where they live should be anticipated , and measures taken to push relief through . Thirdly , if the indirect costs of warfare are to be reduced , one of the best ways may lie in modifying the pattern of warfare , so that attacks on civilians become less common . This may mean supporting state institutions , even supporting ( perhaps indirectly ) the creation of a disciplined , trained and well -paid government army . Insofar as the new "barbarisation " of warfare can be traced to the collapse of states , then those designing interventions will need to think about supporting state structures rather ( than , as has been more fashionable , dismantling them ) .7 This is an important adjunct to Stewart 's argument that supporting states can help reduce the indirect costs of warfare by maintaining welfare and health services . Insofar as foreign governments seek to "punish " states abusing human rights by withdrawing resources perhaps ( thereby reinforcing policies of adjustment and austerity ), these foreign governments should remember that resource shortages ( and weak state institutions )can themselves contribute powerfully to human rights abuses . This is one of the problems with the European Union decision to freeze aid to Rwanda in the wake of the massacre of Hutus by Rwandan government troops in the Kibeho camp in April 1995 . Such a decision can only impede the rebuilding of judicial and police structures , making it more difficult for the new government to re-establish the rule of law in Rwanda . Earlier , as African Rights has argued , the international drive towards democratization in Rwanda appears to have run aground , in part , on the resource shortages generated by internationally generated austerity packages . The role of resource shortages in prompting inter -Kurdish conflict in northern Iraq also throws a sceptical light on recent suggestions that aid to Iraqi Kurdistan should be cut in the wake of an Amnesty report on human rights abuses among the Kurds . Finally , existing attempts to address the symptoms and costs of wars without looking at their functions may just be recreating

Perhaps they administrations .

should

also think

about

supporting

rebel

the conditions for conflict . Let us suppose that it was possible to achieve repatriation , reintegration , rehabilitation , reconstruction and all the other re ' s" to which United Nations " documents habitually refer . At this point , one would be able to declare the "madness " of war was truly behind us . And yet , assuming external factors remained constant , the war would simply begin again - for precisely the same reasons that it began in the first place . Attempts to "recreate " a strong central state in Somalia may fall within the category of endeavours that recreate the conditions for war . An alternative strategy , as Mark Bradbury has suggested , would be to work with the diverse forms of local government and clan institutions that have been revivified by the collapse of the Barre regime . Turning to the last of our three conceptual frameworks , the "chaos " model of warfare is disabling in many ways . It can easily induce a sense of hopelessness , and indeed appeared to play a role in weakening international reactions to the genocide in Rwanda . At another level , the "chaos " model makes it easier for governments to confuse the international community by manipulating ethnic tensions and by playing up to Western stereotypes of "ancient tribal violence ". An alternative analysis seeking to describe the concrete functions of violence , whilst difficult , offers at least the chance of working towards the construction of a political economy that would be less susceptible to the tactic of inciting interethnic violence . A more geographically - and ethnically -even pattern of economic development is likely to be essential in this endeavour .

Select Bibliograph y Begg , D., S. Fischer and Maidenhead : McGraw -Hill .

R . Dornbusch . 1991 . Economics .

Bradbury , M . 1993 . The Somali Conflict : Prospects Oxford : Oxfam Research Paper no . 9.

for Peace .

Dreze , J . and A . Sen . 1989 . Hunger and Public Action . Oxford : Clarer-don Press . Kaplan , R . 1994 . "The Coining Anarchy : How scarcity , crime, overpopulation , tribalism , and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet ", Atlantic Monthly . February . Keen , D . P. 1994 . The Benefits of Famine : Apolitical Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan , 1983 -89 . Princeton and Chichester , UK : Princeton University Press . Layard , P. R . G . and A .A . Walters . 1978 . Micro -Economic Theory ^ New York and Maidenhead : McGraw -Hill . Rimmer , D . 1995 . "The Effects of Conflict , II:Economic Effects ", ed . in Furley , 0. ( ). Conflict in Africa , London : Tauris Academic Studies . Samuelson , P. A . 1980 . Economics . McGraw Hill . Sen , A . 1991 . Poverty and Famines : an Essay on Entitlement Deprivation . Oxford : Clarendon Press .

and

Stannard , D . E. 1992 . American Holocaust : Columbus and the Conquest of the New World , Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press . Stewart , F. 1993 . "War and Underdevelopment : Can Economic Ana lysis Help Reduce the Costs ", Journal of International Developmentr vol . 5, no . 4. Van Creveld , M . 1991 . The Transformation Free Press .

of War . New York : The