Although the specific issues and dynamics underlying these instances of international reactions to communal violence are substantatively distinct, they bear enough in common as challenges to the evolving order to be considered together. On one hand, all three involved large-scale violence and atrocity by one group within a country against other group(s), and violence that was made dramatically public by Cable News Network (the Kurdish refugee camps in Turkey) and the new Independent Television Network (the Bosnian detention camps), and the universal coverage of Somali suffering. Publicity has made it impossible for the world to ignore the bloodshed, a likely general reaction in the days before global television. On the other hand, the crises appeared at the extremities of the area stretching east from the Balkans across Asia minor into central Asia where Islam and Christendom (as well as sects of both) collided, leaving latent and simmering conflicts of similar natures and dimensions. What is principally different is in the international reaction to each: swift and effective succor for the Kurds, much handwringing and little curative for the Bosnians, and massive humanitarian aid for the Somalis. Operation PROVIDE COMFORT seemed at first appearance to have been little more than a footnote to the general Persian Gulf War, a loose end in the implementation of the U.N. Security Council cease-fire conditions contained in Resolution 687. [19] The cause of the problem, of course, lay in the conduct of the war itself. As a tactical move during the air campaign against Iraq, President Bush called on the Iraqi people on February 15, 1991 to rise and "force Saddam, the dictator, to step aside." [20] The administration's motivations were probably mixed: the entreaty was presumably aimed at "moderate" Sunni Iraqis, since the administration opposed successful rebellions by either the Kurdish or Shiite populations on the grounds that the result could be three successor states to Iraq, none of which could serve as a postwar counterweight to Iran. Additionally, any rebellious activity in Baghdad could only undercut the effectiveness of Iraq's resistance to the anticipated ground war, thus protecting American lives. The administration, of course, got the rebellion it did not want, as both the Kurds and Shiites, presumably emboldened by Bush's call, rose against the regime. When Saddam Hussein's army was freed of the allied onslaught, it turned its largely intact fury against the rebels. Iraqi helicopter gunships were unleashed with particular effect against Kurdish villages in the Zagros mountains, leading to widespread panic and rumors of genocide. [21] In this situation, large numbers of Kurds fled their homes. Some fled to Iran; the rest to the barren mountainsides of Turkey, where CNN found them. Because he watched CNN avidly, President Bush discovered them as well. When Secretary of State James Baker returned from a hastily arranged and conducted visit to the camps and reported that the scenes on television were only too real, some reaction had to occur. The options were not great. The Kurds could not just be left where they were. Large numbers would die, and it would all be chronicled on global television. The connection between Bush's calls to overthrow Saddam and the situation was being realized, meaning we were partly (if not wholly) to blame. Moreover, the Turkish government, with a serious Kurdish minority problem of its own, did not want them to stay and add to that problem. As a NATO ally, the United States had to be sensitive to Turkish sentiments. But what to do? The first problem was alleviating the disease and starvation that were killing mounting numbers of Kurds daily. The response was U.N. Security Council Resolution 688, [22] which empowered the provision of "humanitarian assistance" to the Kurds by member nations and forbade Iraqi interference with relief efforts. The United States responded with military forces and supplies to implement that entreaty; Operation PROVIDE COMFORT was born. The problem then became what to do for the Kurds in the longer haul; they could not live on the mountainside forever, and the Turks did not want them to stay. At the same time, they feared the renewed wrath of Saddam Hussein if they returned unprotected too much to leave. The answer was to move them back into Iraq under the protection of American (and other Gulf War allied) forces. The method was to create an exclusion zone from which Iraqi troops were barred and which would be guaranteed by allied military might. The zone and the forces were a necessary mechanism to convince wary Kurds to return home. The zone remains in effect over a year and a half later and forms the base for an increasingly autonomous Kurdistan that says it is not interested in full independence but increasingly acts as if it is. Moreover, the mood of independence has spread to the Kurds of Turkey, which was one of the things the exclusion zone was supposed to preclude. The importance of the exclusion (or "security") zone, now also in effect in Southern Iraq to protect the Shiites and enforced by allied air rather than ground forces, is that its existence and continuation are in direct violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The United States has never indicated it considers the areas as anything other than sovereign Iraqi territory nor that its actions represent an advocacy of the rights of individuals and groups over the rights of states. The United States just maintains that the government of Iraq cannot exercise its sovereign control of the population in the exclusion zones. The decision, at least based on the public record, appears to have been sheerly tactical (finding a way to get the Kurds to go home); its potential implications are far broader. Bosnia and Herzegovina The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina offers parallels. The problem began, of course, with the long-anticipated breakup of Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991. Titoist policies of population migration and intermixing created a federal structure where some of the "republics" (notably Bosnia and Herzegovina) were unnatural historical phenomena. Thus, as disintegration of the country proceeded, religious/ethnic conflict emerged. It was worst in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where three major "nationalities" collided: the largely Roman Catholic Croatians, the Greek Orthodox Serbians, and those who call their nationality Muslim (most of whom are ethnic Serbs but do not think of themselves that way) . [23] The result was panic that rapidly turned ugly and violent. Croatian enclaves in Bosnia and Herzegovina sought to throw out Serbs and Muslims, to set the scene to be attached to Croatia; the Serbs did the same in parts of Croatia and especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they declared the existence of the "Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina." The Muslims, who make up 40 percent of the original Bosnian population, are fighting to maintain an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. If they are successful and if parts of Bosnia are cannibalized into Serbia/Yugoslavia and Croatia, what is left would presumably become the first Muslim-dominated state in modern Europe (a prospect that some use as a rallying cry to avoid). The ongoing sieges of Bosnian towns, the public symbol of which has become Sarajevo, must be seen in this light. The Bosnian Serbian policy of "ethnic cleansing" -- which is specifically condemned in Resolution 771 [24] -- seeks to exclude non-Serbians (mostly Muslims but also Croats) from greater and greater parts of Bosnia, thereby strengthening their claims that the areas are Serbian and thus should be annexed to Serbia/Yugoslavia. Croats are doing much the same to Serbs and Muslims in parts of Bosnia they consider part of greater Croatia. The method for "persuading" the Muslims to leave are the sieges, ancient but repulsive methods to bring urban populations into submission. Like all other sieges in history, they are not pretty; the Bosnian Serbian militias that surround the Muslim towns seek to terrorize the civilian population and, ultimately, to starve them out if necessary. Like all other sieges, they are cruel and nasty. Unlike other sieges, these are on television; thus it is impossible to ignore what is going on. Just as the CNN pictures of the Turkish mountainsides forced Western governments to respond, so have ITN transmissions from Bosnia. Operation PROVIDE COMFORT had as its first stage the airlifting of food, medicine and the like (humanitarian assistance) to the Kurds, followed by the military intervention that created and enforced the exclusion zone. The UNPROFOR mission to Sarajevo is the equivalent of the first stage of the PROVIDE COMFORT effort; to date, there has been no equivalent second stage aimed at lifting the sieges. Anarchy underlays the Somali crisis. The factions that collectively were capable of overthrowing Siad Barre in early 1991 were individually too weak and fractured to form a government to replace that which they had overturned. Instead, the structure of government crumbled, and "armies" of young thugs (the so-called "technicals") nominally loyal to one warlord or another (the leading contenders being Generals Mohomad Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohamed) took to the streets, terrorizing the populace and stealing or ransoming most of the food supplies intended for starving victims of long-term drought and civil strife. As these interruptions created alarmingly steepening death rates, the United States, under U.N. auspices as described earlier, moved to break the cycle by imposing order to "create a secure environment," [25] in President Bush's own words. A parallel seems to exist between the Somalian and PROVIDE COMFORT examples: both were apparently largely tactical decisions reached to solve a current, concrete problem with little apparent concern for the longer term strategic implications. As The New York Times opined on the day Resolution 794 was adopted: "Thus thousands of American troops are about to be committed to a distant land, for ill-defined purposes, without real consultation with Congress or President-elect Clinton, without serious debate or even a semblance of executive leadership." [26] In the obvious immediacy of the situation, such concerns formed the minority. When RESTORE HOPE is over and can be placed in greater context, it may be a more important criticism. Back to Table of Contents Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace-Enforcement: The US Role in the New International Order Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com