Ahmad Hussein is 12 years old. "My greatest wish," he says, "is to learn to read and write, to have warm shoes, and eat as much as I want to." But Ahmad's wish has long been thwarted. He is one of more than 3.6 million Afghan refugees--the largest refugee population in the world--who are presently living primarily in Pakistan or Iran, having fled the vicious civil war that's plagued Afghanistan since the Soviet occupation in 1979.
In one sense, Ahmad is lucky. One in every four Afghan children dies beforethe age of five. Every 30 minutes, on average, an Afghan mother dies inchildbirth. Last January, 480 displaced people, including 220 children, froze todeath in a camp inside Afghanistan near the city of Herat; and in May, 25 morechildren succumbed to heat stroke in a Pakistani camp.
When they survive, Afghan refugees face lives that promise little buthardship. In Pakistan they have been housed in makeshift quarters that are oftenunder the control of armed Afghan factions; scores of refugees have been murderedin the very places they fled to for safety. Educated Afghan women who haveoffered support to other refugee women and children have been especially targetedfor violence in the camps, with Pakistani authorities doing little, if anything,to protect them.
In Iran, by contrast, the refugees have been permitted to live among theIranian population and even find employment or pursue education. But since thedownturn in the Iranian economy in 1998, many have been forcibly returned to anuncertain fate in Afghanistan. When the United States began threatening militaryaction following the September 11 attacks, the flow of Afghan refugees increaseddramatically. Over the next two months, a quarter of the population of Kabul andhalf the population of the southern province of Kandahar fled their homes. Thevictories of the United Front appear to have halted that exodus, for the timebeing at least, and UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations, reports thatas many as 1,000 refugees a day are now heading back to assess the new situationon the ground. But there is little reason to believe that most of those forcedfrom their towns and villages over the past few years will be able to return homesoon.
The United States owes these refugees much, for we played astarring role in creating the conditions that led to the Afghan debacle in thefirst place. Between 1980 and 1991, this country, gripped by fear of a Sovietvictory in Afghanistan, supplied rebel forces--including, ironically enough, suchfactions as Harakat-i-Inquilab-i-Islami, out of which the Taliban wouldeventually arise--with more than $3 billion in covert aid. Working throughPakistan's brutal General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the Carter and Reaganadministrations aligned the United States with some of the region's most radicalIslamists in the name of Afghan "self-determination." Then, with the signing ofthe Geneva accords in 1988, the subsequent Soviet withdrawal, and the end of theCold War, the United States, having provided many of the weapons with which thewarring parties would continue to tear the country apart, left Afghanistan tostew in its own juices.
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, the U.S. government hailedthem, at least initially, as principled reformers prepared to bring order out ofchaos. Some critics claim that the United States in fact facilitated their riseboth as a check on Iran and with the expectation that Afghanistan would become afriendly avenue through which to ship oil and gas extracted from Central Asia.Even the Clinton administration--though it quickly came to denounce Talibanabuses, particularly against women--put little energy into curbing the regime.
As part of the current military campaign, the United States has promisedmassive assistance both to aid displaced Afghans and to rebuild their country.Such largesse, if indeed it is forthcoming, is the very least the Afghans aredue. But it is still an open question whether the Bush administration has learnedfrom recent events how crucial it is to provide refugee aid not just in thisinstance but in general.
Perhaps in no other foreign-policy area do Americans display more ambivalencethan they do about refugees. On one hand, private citizens are famously generousto charities that supply food and other assistance to displaced people. On theother, the U.S. government contributes to refugee agencies at an annual percapita rate of only $1.40, compared with the Netherlands' $5.10 and Norway's$12.55. The United States may be the world's single-largest contributor torefugee agencies, but it ranks only ninth in the world on a per capita basis.Moreover, total U.S. spending on nonmilitary foreign aid represents a mere 0.15percent of gross domestic product, placing the United States last among the 21industrialized nations. Yet Americans consistently believe that their governmentis giving about 20 times that amount.
As a result, few objected last May when the Bush administration proposed thatoverseas refugee assistance be cut by $5 million even though the number ofrefugees worldwide-- 14.5 million--was at an all-time high and UNHCR wassuffering a $100-million worldwide shortfall in funds. This cut meant that incurrent dollars the United States would be spending $57 million less on themiserable of the world than it had in 1996. The proposal was hard to square withthe president's rhetoric about a humane foreign policy. But just as important--asit is admittedly much easier to see in retrospect--the proposal was supremelyunwise from a pragmatic point of view. For the squalor in which the world'srefugees are living must be eliminated not just for moral reasons: Refugee campsare also notorious incubators of instability, alienation, and violence.
Consider, for example, Pakistan, whose long-term political stability is vitalto U.S. interests now that, in addition to having nuclear arms, it has become alinchpin of our antiterrorism strategy. Pakistan is a poor country, and evenbefore the Bush administration proposed to decrease American spending onrefugees, thousands of new arrivals to Pakistani camps were going without suchbasics as latrines and water systems, to say nothing of vocational-skillstraining. This deprivation makes the message of Islamic extremism even moreappealing than it might otherwise be, and it has certainly contributed to theroiling unrest that has long plagued the northwestern part of Pakistan.
The Bush foreign policy before September 11 failed to position the UnitedStates for the challenges it now faces. That foreign policy was not isolationist.The president warned repeatedly that "America's first temptation is withdrawal,"a course that he called "a shortcut to chaos." Rather, through the electioncampaign and their first seven months in office, Bush and his foreign-policyadvisers advanced the notion that U.S. relations with the rest of the worldshould be driven solely by our own interests. As Condoleezza Rice, now Bush'snational-security adviser, put it in an article in Foreign Affairs before the election: "Foreign policy in a Republican administration ... will proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community."
And what did the national interest prescribe? Among other things, adisdain for "nation building" and a skepticism about international institutions,particularly the United Nations; a refusal to take an active role in trying toresolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and an almost prideful willingness toadopt unilateral positions--on missile defense and the Kyoto treaty, mostnotoriously--that were at odds with the rest of the world.
Every one of these policies turned out to be counterproductive in a worldpreoccupied with the threat of terrorism. It is hardly surprising, therefore,that almost every one of them has now been abandoned or reversed. As thepresident and his national-security adviser have busied themselves seekingpartners in a global alliance against terrorism, it takes restraint not to remindthem of their former convictions about the "illusory" nature of the internationalcommunity and its interests.
None of this, of course, is meant to upbraid the president for failing toanticipate what no one else did either. Nor is it intended to absolve the Clintonadministration and its predecessors from responsibility for their own errors. Thefailure to confront Saudi Arabia and Egypt over their human-rights abuses, forexample, left the United States effectively fostering environments that in theirlack of democratic avenues for airing frustration about corruption and povertyprovided Islamic extremists with fertile ground.
It has not helped one bit that the United States has appeared to promote oneset of human-rights standards for its allies, including Israel, and another forits adversaries. It does untold damage to the nation's reputation when we leaveourselves open to the charge, whether valid or not, that American sanctionsdeprive Iraqi children of food and medicine (especially since those sanctionsappear to have done little to retard the production of biochemical weapons).
The fact is, however, that foreign-policy realists--from George Kennan (whoreiterated his long-held belief not too long ago that the United States shouldget out of the business of promoting democracy and human rights because "it hasmore important things to do") and Henry Kissinger (who in his most recent bookridiculed notions of humanitarian intervention and universal jurisdiction as,quoting Chesterton, "virtue run amok") to Condoleezza Rice--have for too longgotten away with the notion that the U.S. national interest has little to do withsuch "soft issues" as protecting refugees, promoting democracy, supportinginternational institutions, serving as peacekeepers, and defending human rights.Realists love to quote John Quincy Adams, who, as secretary of state in 1821,railed against intervention in the Greek struggle for independence from theOttoman Empire. The United States, he said, "is the well wisher to the freedomand independence of all [but] the champion and vindicator only of her own."
That approach may have worked in 1821, when it took six months or more for aletter to get from Boston to Paris, but it doesn't work today, when the "freedomand independence" of others--not to say their political stability and economicwell-being--are profoundly intertwined with our own. If nothing else good comesfrom September 11, perhaps what will emerge is recognition of those connections.
Refugees represent a particularly poignant instance of interdependence. Beyondthe human tragedy, their existence is also a symptom and a cause of largerpolitical and economic problems. If we fail to relieve their misery, wecompromise our own security. And if we fail to address the proximate causes oftheir suffering, we will never stanch their flow.
