INTERVIEWER: OK. Would you say that using refugee... Are they used to destabilize regions? Are they used for land grab reasons?

FRELICK: Refugees can be simply the collateral damage that results as a fight between two armies. They can be used to try to prevent one military force from gaining a foothold, a supporting population, a counter-insurgency strategy. Or refugees can be used in one of three ways. First they can be the collateral damage of war, where they're targeted particularly. Two armies are fighting and these are the people that have to flee the flying bullets.

Secondly, refugees can be used as part of a counter-insurgency strategy to try to prevent the support for a global movement that has the support of the local population, and so to try to depopulate an area so that it complicates the work of the guerillas - they maybe have to end up supporting the civilian population instead of waging war, and it also prevents the civilians from in fact supporting the guerillas and giving the food and shelter and that sort of thing.

And finally, and most recently, and perhaps most disturbingly, is ethnic cleansing, where refugees themselves are targeted by armies. Its armies fighting against civilians - unarmed people - in order to destroy them, perhaps with genocidal intent because they are a member of a different ethnic group and the army is seeking to gain territory for its ethnic group, and to displace those people.

INTERVIEWER: Great. I guess shifting into Turkey: can you explain the background for the civil war in Turkey?

FRELICK: Well the background is of course a long, involved history involving the minority Kurdish population and the Turkish population of the country of Turkey. Kamal, the leader of modern Turkey, basically had an ideology of nationalism that sought to assimilate all minorities into a Turkish nation. It wasn't specifically ethnic in the way that he envisioned it, but I think over the years it has become increasingly a Turkish ethnic nationalism. And the Kurdish movement was really, initially at least, a quite separatist movement to have a separate Turkish state and identity.

And so you had two conflicting ideologies and desires for self-government, basically. What developed was a civil war, a very bloody one, particularly in the early 1980's, and part of the strategy of the armed forces was to what they called evacuation of villages in the southeast , which is where the Kurds are concentrated. And it was a classic counter-insurgency strategy to deny support to the PKK, which was the armed opposition group that was waging this war against the Turkish state.

Its been a very long war, its been a very involved war, and I would even suggest that militarily the war is probably at the end game at this point. And large numbers of people have been displaced, hundreds of thousands. The governments own figures are about 380,000; the State Department's Human Rights Bureau figures about 560,000 and human rights organizations within Turkey itself go as high as two million. So there are a large number of displaced people. Its hard sometimes to find the exact cause and effect of the displacement. Some were...the army went in and actually evacuated villages. In other cases people simply left, gravitated out of that danger area, where again they had no jobs and the economy is depressed, into the western part of the country where they would have a chance to live in peace, security, and make a living for themselves.

INTERVIEWER: You kind of touched on my next couple questions a little bit, but maybe if you could address each one just briefly. Can you go over again....there sounds like there's a policy of forced migration against ethnic Kurds.

FRELICK: Well there's forced migration and spontaneous migration at the same time, and I think that's true of most migration flows in history, that there is some combination - its not all one thing or all another thing.

The army did go in, particularly in the early 1990's, between '91 and '93 and forcibly evacuated a large number of villages in the southeastern part of the country, which is where the PKK was waging its war and where the Kurds are largely concentrated.

In addition to that, many people fled the region, including many non-Kurds that fled because the PKK was committing terrorist acts against them to try to, to force those people out as well.

And large numbers of people left because there were no jobs in the area, because the war was going on, and so they saw economic opportunity elsewhere, even if they weren't specifically forced out at the point of a gun.

So you have a mixed flow of people leaving this area, but by and large they left because it was a dangerous area, whether they were specifically forced out at gunpoint or not.

INTERVIEWER:Are there any military accomplishments to be achieved by this forced migration. Sounds to me like it seems to be pretty much pegged to the PKK and their...

FRELICK: Well, I work for a humanitarian agency and I have a humanitarian approach to such things, however I think that some of these military strategies - depopulating areas, has succeeded in some cases. And militarily the Turkish government has succeeded in pushing the PKK into the mountains. They don't have the ability to find support in villages that are no longer in existence, so they're really in the margins, on the borders, across the borders into neighboring countries, in areas where they find little support from a populations that's no longer there. So in a sense it has been a successful military strategy.

This has created its own difficulties, political dynamic because I think that where the situation really calls for a political solution to resolve the issues, the Turkish government, because of its military successes has continued to press ahead militarily and to seek a solely military solution.

INTERVIEWER: What is the US role in Turkey, if they have one?

FRELICK: The United States is the principle arms supplier to Turkey. In the years between 1991 to 1993 the United States provided 80% of the weapons that were used in Turkey. And since 1980 to the present, the United States has sold and transferred about $15 billion worth of arms to Turkey. Other countries like Germany have suspended arms transfers to Turkey on the basis of their human rights record.

Today there's a real tension, there's a debate going on within this administration on the extent to which Turkey's human rights record ought to affect the transfer of arms. There have been some recent transfers of armored personnel carriers, export/import bank loans to support to support... General Dynamics for example sending armored personnel carriers to Turkey, where the government decided not to support those loans for those areas that are still under martial law. General Dynamics has to support those loans themselves.

The Bureau for Human Rights has documented quite a number of cases where Cobra helicopters, Black Hawk helicopters were used in the forced evacuation of villages, where armored personnel carriers, U.S. made, were used in such human rights abuses as well. So its not that there's a lack of information that U.S. arms have been used to commit human rights abuses in Turkey. The question really is what to do about it. Turkey is a key ally to the United States and is very aggressive in supporting their right as they see it, sovereign right not to have the interference of other governments in their internal affairs. And at certain points they've even refused military aid if it was conditioned on human rights evaluations.

INTERVIEWER: Let's shift from Turkey to Kosovo. Can you explain how refugees were used as weapons in Kosovo.

FRELICK: The Kosovo war, of course, went through a number of key changes over the course of the last couple of years. In 1998, I would say that the war was built on a fairly classic counter-insurgency strategy, and here I think its important to illustrate that refugees can be used as a weapon of war by both sides.

The KLA, which is the Kosovo Liberation Army, set up blockades of roads outside of certain villages, and in a sense challenged the Yugoslav army and the Serbian police to attack those areas. And there's a cat and mouse game that was played in and amongst civilians the whole time, and I think that some of the bloodshed that occurred was as a result of sort of you know, I punch you in the nose and then you come back and retaliate. And by that time some of the armed KLA forces would have gone into hiding leaving exposed civilians that would bear the brunt of their retaliatory attacks, after the ambush, for example, of a police patrol. This was done I think in a tactical way to raise international condemnation of the Serbian police and the Yugoslav army for their over-reaction, which in fact, they did over-react and they did commit these horrendous human rights abuses. But there were provocations that occurred along the way, and the KLA, which was not in the position to fight straight out battle between standing armies used the civilian population as a part of its tactic to win international support and to really bring the international community as an ally in their struggle against the Serbs. And they succeeded in doing that.

So yes refugees were used as a weapon of war. There were at least a quarter of a million internally displaced people in 1998. There's a great deal of suffering that occurred at that time. And yes it was the Serbian police and the Yugoslav army that were committing atrocities and that were displacing people from those villages. But in large part they were doing it, at I believe, at that time not a strategy of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population, but as their way of trying to defeat the KLA, and then to control and oppress that same population.

Now in 1999 the strategy changed. And the international community became involved through the bombing campaign, and they almost saw this complete disconnect militarily between the international military strategy, which was a bombing strategy from 30,000 feet, which really did open the door for what perhaps had been an intention or a goal, a latent goal on the part of Milosevic and the Serbian forces there, which was, as their best case scenario, which was to depopulate the area, was to ethnically cleanse Kosovo, and to drive the ethnic Albanians out. This gave them an opportunity, the military forces, the bombing could pretty much hit only stationary targets -- building, bridges, the infrastructure, and in the meantime his forces on the ground with little more than sidearms and billy clubs could go through against unarmed civilians, and displace 800,000 people over a course of a very short period of time. And so then that of course complicated military picture on the ground.

I don't have to probably bore you with all the details of that. But it was quite a fascinating use of a war, two different wars essentially being fought. From the U.S. side or the NATO side, against infrastructure, long-term grinding down, eroding the war machine in Serbia. And the Serbian military strategy was directed entirely against the civilian ethnic population. And of course the two forces never engaged. You didn't have a single NATO casualty. You didn't have any fighting between these armies. There was of course some skirmishing with the KLA during that time, but primarily it was a war that was directed in each case against completely different targets, and in both cases did create displacement as well.

INTERVIEWER: I guess if you could just give me maybe a shorter little soundbite at a military, or why, what they're hoping to gain by moving the refugees around...Serbs.

FRELICK: Initially in 1998 I think that the Serbian strategy was a counter-insurgency strategy. They were provoked by the KLA. At various points the KLA was seeking independence. They were trying to sort of Boston Tea Party, or to provoke the Redcoats, so to speak. And the Yugoslav army and the Sebian police overreacted, hitting civilian populations. But essentially it was directed at the KLA at that time. I don't think that the strategy, at that time was ethnic cleansing per se.

That changed dramatically with the bombing campaign that NATO embarked upon on March 24, 1999. At that point you had a disconnectance. No longer the KLA that was the main threat, you now had bombers at 30,000 feet knocking the infrastructure down, trying to erode the Yugoslav war machine that would take a long time to accomplish. In the meantime, armed with only sidearms with clubs the police and the army could go in and displace the entire civilian population, and they saw an opportunity to do that. And so in a systematic way they really attempted to depopulate Kosovo, to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population.

INTERVIEWER: Now that the war is over, I've seen several reports that Serbians are being forced out of Kosovo. Can you explain what's going on there?

FRELICK: Well Kosovo had about a population of two million roughly, ethnic Albanians, about 200,000 ethnic Serbs in the territory, so it was sort of an apartheid regime for the years prior to the outbreak of war. And of course during the course of the last year, year and a half, Serbs committed a tremendous number of atrocities against the ethnic Albanian population. So what you had was a system of winners and losers. The ethnic Albanians were oppressed, they were repressed, and they were on the losing end for years and years, and in the last year and a half in a very acute way suffered tremendous abuse. Now riding in on the coattails of NATO, they find themselves to be the victors it appears. Even though NATO hasn't really endorsed their aim of an independent state.

So there's a question mark, a political solution's still not at hand, at least hasn't been clearly resolved. And the Kosovars, the ethnic Albanians want to still stake that claim for indepenence. They don't want to be under any kind of dominations by the Serbs or part of Serbia at all.

In addition to that on a very gut level and personal level, people are retaliating and feel hatred and revenge for the sufferings that they have experienced and the losses that they've experienced. So there's an emotive level. Refugees can repatriate but that doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation. Reconcilation can take years and years and years to occur. And its going to be a real fight to see whether you can begin to achieve a rule of law, a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo today, where the tradition is simply absent, its not there. Kosovars have not been treated fairly and the expectation that they would turn around and be magnanamous and say to Serbs, "oh we trust you" is a tough one, and I don't think its going to come easily at all. I know that the international community is committed to that, and I think its in the abstract it's the right thing. We want to support the rule of law, and certainly protect any minorities that are trying to .... remain in Kosovo and work for a tolerant, multi-ethnic society there and everywhere in the Balkans. However its not going to be easy.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think there's a way that the roles have been turned...are the Serbian refugees being used as weapons or tools?

FRELICK: Well, I don't know whether it's a weapon or tool, in so far as there isn't sort of a war going on now between armies. There isn't fighting in that way. But what it is, is a knock on the door at night if you're a Serb living in Pristina. To have thugs essentially, I think, Albanian thugs, knock on your door, threaten you, tell you to leave, and that's ethnic cleansing. It's done door to door, person to person, through threats. And here, again, I think to understand the distinction, in the classic case, refugees have been considered to be well found - have - people with a well founded fear of persecution. And there's a notion that war refugees didn't qualify under the refugee convention, the 1951 refugee convention, because they aren't being individually persecuted. They were just displaced as a result of war.

Now, however, with ethnic cleansing, with this new sort of approach to warfare in the world today, you can have war visited on large numbers of people, but it is persecution now. It's persecution, it may not be visited on you as an individual because of your particular belief, but it could be visited on you because of your last name, because of your nominal religious affiliation, and it can result in little more than that, and you can be persecuted en-mass, whole villages, whole apartment blocks, or the people that happen, the minority living in a village.

INTERVIEWER: What happens to refugees once they are forced from their homes? Where do they go, how are they taken care of?

FRELICK: At the end of the Cold war, there was a dramatic change in the way the international community approached the refugee question. Rather than accept as a given that people would not be able to go home again, as was the case for most of the people who had fled various communist countries, the idea was that they ought to be able to return and the international community should seek their quick return, really as soon possible, to put the onus on the country of origin.

So during the Persian Gulf war, 1991, rather than allow the Kurdish refugees to go into Turkey, the international community essentially blocked their exit and created, carved out, a safe-haven zone in northern Iraq. This was really unprecedented in many respects to keep refugees at home. And in a sense almost to create internally displaced people, which are people that are, look like refugees, but they haven't crossed an international border. And this has had tremendous consequences and we're still sorting this out.

In the case of Kosovo, people did flee an international border for the most part, but again, the international community made it one of it's key points for the war, the return of those refugees as soon as possible.

Of course, all of this has an ulterior motive which is not to want to host large refugee populations in the United States, in Germany, in France, in these other countries, keep refugees where they are, keep them at home as much as possible. So there's sort of an anti-immigrant strategy, if you will, that is at work as well as trying to attenuate the causes of a refugee flow.