MS. NEWLAND: Refugees have been used by both their supporters and their enemies as weapons of war, probably throughout the ages but certainly in the past few decades. And I suppose the way we most commonly think of it is in terms of the dictum that Chairman Mao articulated which is "if you want to attack the fish, empty the sea in which they swim." So the creation of refugees, that is, expelling them from their homes making it impossible for them to live either by attacking them directly or by depriving them of their means of livelihood, has been a way of depriving a fighting force of their logistical base, their supplies, their cover, as depriving them of their ability to blend in with the general population. So that is probably the most common way in which refugees have been used as weapons of war is by creating a refugee population, by depopulating an area, you essentially drain the water so the fish can no longer swim.

INTERVIEWER: When you are talking about preventing logistical support, is that the main military goal or are their a wide range of goals they are hoping to achieve?

NEWLAND: I think the main use of refugees as weapons of war by the side in a war that is opposing the group of fighters from which the refugee from - which refugee population is surrounding has been depriving them with a base for logistical support. But there are other military objectives.

One is simply terror. By striking terror in the heart of a civilian population, driving them from their homes, you may demoralize the fighting force that's associated with them. And that, I think, is one of the ways in which refugees have commonly been used. If the fighters are too preoccupied with thinking about the safety of their families, the long term fate of their farms and villages and so on, it's probably more difficult for them to keep their minds on military affairs. Up to a point. That kind of thing can backfire of course if the attacks on civilian populations that are creating refugees engender such a desire for revenge, such a powerful sense that fighting is their own defense that they can put new life into a fighting force.

I would say also, it's true that refugees have also been as weapons of war

[Interruption]

NEWLAND: Shall I start over with how refugees are used by their supporters as well as their enemies?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

NEWLAND: Refugees are also used as weapons of war by their supporters as well as their enemies. And I think that we've seen in a number of cases that the manipulation of refugee populations to gain sympathy in the outside world, maybe even to provoke an external intervention. One of the first instances was the war in Biafra where the Biafran political leaders and military leaders were accused at the time, and later, of actually making things worse for their own people so that they would provoke sympathy and encourage an external intervention of that war. The images of refugees and accusations of mistreatment of refugees have been bandied about by most wars recently that I can think of, certainly in Kosovo, certainly in most of the civil wars including the one in Colombia now and in Turkey there have been accusations and counter accusations about who is - who is the source of the attacks. Which side is behaving most badly. So refugees are an important weapon in the propaganda war as well as in the actual military fighting.

INTERVIEWER: That kind of segues into my question about Kosovo. How were refugees used as weapons in Kosovo and what were the military goals?

NEWLAND: I would say that in the case of Kosovo, the manipulation of refugee flows was one of the main elements of the arsenal of the war, almost substituting for military means. The refugee flows were an end in themselves in the Serbs desire to alter the demographic balance in the province, so that it would no longer be an overwhelming predominately Albanian province. So if they had been able to succeed permanently in creating enough refugee flows so the demographic balance was permanently altered, they wouldn't have even needed to fight. Of course military means was one of the use - one of the ways that they drove people from their homes, but not even the predominate way. Just sheer terror tactics which might not even involve the use of weapons but just the threat to use them, one or two demonstration executions and the pervasive sense of threat and destruction was enough to send large numbers of people fleeing. And that was a way of accomplishing their military objective.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned supporters used refugees to get international support. Do you think that was the case in Kosovo? I've heard theories that the KLA opened up civilians to attacks from the Serbs with the hope that the international community would get involved. Do you think this is true?

NEWLAND: I did not have the sense in Kosovo that the KLA was deliberately encouraging or participating in the creation of refugees or increasing the vulnerability of civilian populations for military purposes. I think they were very willing to make sure that those images were fully exploited for their benefit, but I think the interests of the KLA throughout the campaign were primarily in keeping control of territory, keeping - which involved having a civilian population there in which they could mix. Very much in the classic guerilla tradition of blending into the civilian population.

INTERVIEWER: OK.

NEWLAND: I think one way in which this, the fighters associated with the refugee populations have used those populations as weapons of war is as a base of recruitment, a base of supply, and a sort of safe haven. From the time of the war in Cambodia, the fringes of combat areas that have large refugee camps have very often been used by guerilla forces as sort of places they can go for rest and recreation. Where they can go and be with their families very often they can be fed by the international community which is looking after the refugee populations and of course, if they are in need for fresh recruits for the fighting force, the young men who are sitting in a refugee camp are prime candidates for being recruited. So refugee camps have been very important military resources for guerillas and for National Liberation movements and for all kinds of combatants at the fringes of conflicts.

INTERVIEWER: I heard villages that were known NATO targets and abandoned would be repopulated with Albanian refugees by the Serbs with the hopes they would be bombed by NATO. Was this really happening?

NEWLAND: There were, in Kosovo, a number of accusations of using civilians as human shields around defense installation, around military equipment or just in - around facilities that the Serbs hoped to shield from NATO bombing. At the very worst if they didn't succeed in preventing the bombing because of the congregation of the civilians around them, the bombing might produce civilian casualties that would also (inaudible) to the Serbs benefit because they could use that to show how brutal and unjustified NATO bombing was. So either way, having civilians around a military target could be beneficial to the Serbs.

That's happened in a number of conflicts. It's one of the primary things that the laws of war explicitly forbid is the use of civilians as human shields. And it's long been one of the more illegitimate ways of using civilians as weapons of war. The civilians don't have to be refugees of course, any innocent civilian standing around will do.

INTERVIEWER: Now that the Albanians are coming back, Serbians are being forced out. Is this a reversal of roles? Are the Serbs being used as weapons, and if so, what are the Albanians hoping to achieve.

NEWLAND: I think that the Albanian forces in Kosovo now, the KLA, are - at least some elements within them are trying to encourage Serbs to leave the province, by creating an atmosphere of insecurity for them. It's hard to separate how much of that is a deliberate tactic on the part of the KLA and part of it - how much - Let me start over again.

It's hard to say how much of the attacks on Serb civilians are part of a calculated strategy by the KLA designed to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of the remaining Serbs, and how much of it is a, sadly sort of normal reaction, of desiring revenge for the destruction and the death, and the suffering inflicted on the Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs. I'm sure there's a lot of both going on. It happens to serve a political purpose that I think many Albanian Kosovar politicians would like to see with - the achievement of an ethnically pure Kosovo.

INTERVIEWER: Shifting to Turkey. Can you talk a bit about how refugees have been used to achieve military accomplishments there?

NEWLAND: In southeastern Turkey, in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, there has been a long standing, since the early '90's at least, of depopulating the country side that is seen to be supportive of the Kurdish autonomy forces, or the Kurdish liberation forces, the PKK, in order to deprive the PKK of their basis of support. Again their logistics, their sources of supply, they natural cover, being able to blend in to a civilian population. This seemed to be particularly intense between 1993 and 1995. That the Turkish army was destroying villages, burning villages, forcing their populations to leave, forbidding them to return, or at least forbidding a large portion of the population to return. So there are whole swaths of southeastern Turkey that are pretty thoroughly depopulated at the village level.

The result has been the swelling of shanty towns at the outskirts of larger towns and cities. And a real economic crisis for people who are dependent on their farming income or were pasturealists. But it's a classic tactic in combating a guerilla force to try to empty the country side of their supporters so the fighters are left standing on their own.

INTERVIEWER: Would you say that it's working?

NEWLAND: I think that in Turkey, the tactic of depopulating the country side of PKK supporters has been pretty effective. It's hard to say that that accounts for the weakness of the PKK and their withdrawal into - over the borders into Iran and Iraq. But it seems likely to me that it is a part of the reasoning for that.

Also I think for many guerilla organizations that are genuinely based in the civilian population, and perceive themselves to be fighting for the interest of that population, to make the calculation of how much suffering is worth enduring, and how much destruction it's worth provoking before it's worth while trying another kind of tactic that doesn't bring the civilian population under so much threat.

INTERVIEWER: Moving onto Colombia. Again, generally what ways have refugees been used as weapons and what are the goals that are trying to be met?

NEWLAND: I think you will find other speakers who are more knowledgeable about Colombia, but let me give it a shot.

My impression in Colombia is that both sides, or perhaps I should say all sides because there seems to be a lot more than two in Colombia, have exploited the civilian population, created extreme insecurity for them in almost random ways. Using terror as a way of securing compliance with their defacto taxation policies, that is being able to live off the civilian population, of forcing them to defacto side with either the government forces or the guerilla forces. It seems to be a pattern that has just evoked a random terror within the civilian population without much of an accompanying civilian or military program to use the people to accomplish specific goals.

My impression from the areas where there has been the most assassination, destruction of villages, of forcing people to flee, is that it's not attached to a particular constructive program that can in any way be seen as constructive for either side's purposes. The "pacification" of the country side seems to be just depopulating and destroying people's livelihood without establishing an alternative form of governance on the part of the guerillas or really bringing people into the governmental camp. That seems to be more purely destructive than most of the other conflicts that I am familiar with.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the United States will become more heavily involved in any of these three, or all of three of these areas in any time in the future?

NEWLAND: Well in the cases of Kosovo, Turkey, and Colombia the United States is already involved in all three places though to varying degrees. Turkey is a major ally within the NATO framework and of course within the entire Middle Eastern context where we count on Turkey as an ally against Iraq and Iran and an ally that is also friendly to Israel an important strategic consideration for the United States. So we are heavily involved in military support and military sales in Turkey.

In Colombia the dynamic is different because their interest there is the war on drugs. And we have been giving very substantial military assistance to the Colombian government in the name of promoting instability and particularly furthering their efforts which are in doubt in many people's minds, to dampen down the drug trade. There is a great deal of concern about the uses to which military assistance to Colombia is put. Because civilian populations are suffering so heavily in the government's clash with the guerillas and I think that is a question that really needs to be put very forcible to our government and a great deal of accountability should be demanded.

In Kosovo again, the United States is very heavily and explicitly involved militarily. We don't have as many troops on the ground there as some other countries have had with the KFOR forces, but American troops are there, and of course the United States took the lead militarily in the bombing campaign. So I expect that our involvement will continue to be at a pretty high level in - not only in Kosovo, but throughout the Balkans. We have a very large military investment there, and I don't expect to see U.S. forces pulling out or being drawn down very substantially until we feel that investment is secure.

INTERVIEWER: Is there a goal the international community should be working towards with the refugee crisis in general and in particular with refugees being used as weapons?

NEWLAND: I think that one of the patterns that emerges when you start looking at the manipulation of refugees by - of either side, or many of the many sides in civil wars or in international wars, is that there are benefits to be had from manipulating refugees. And the approach to managing the refugee problem that I would like to see followed much more systematically is to make it not worth while for fighting forces to manipulate civilian populations, particularly in way that force them to become refugees.

Now, in terms of the international law and long standing practice we do have some tools for trying to protect civilian populations from that kind of manipulation. The laws of war started being codified back in the 1860's and have - there - a number of treaties have been put in place ever since. But I'm afraid what we have seen in the 1970's, 80's, 90's, really the post WWII period, is a deterioration in the observance of the laws that countries agreed to about how they were going to restrain themselves in attacking civilian populations in a ..... in attacking the sources of their livelihood in randomly targeting cities or the kinds of infrastructure that civilians depend on, and whose destruction very often creates massive refugee flows. If people are unable to sustain themselves where they are, that's when they start thinking about moving on. So renewed emphasis on acceptable ways of fighting a war.

For those of us who think it is too idealistic to imagine that we're going to succeed in abolishing war any time soon, I think there needs to be a lot more attention to protecting civilians in the context or war. And making it clear to forces that aspire to become a recognized government or to establish an independent country, that their recognition in the eyes of the international community really depends on their acknowledging and adhering to the rules of war which involve protecting civilians as much as possible from the effects of combat, not using them in a destructive way for their own military and political purposes.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have anything you want to add?

CAMERAMAN: Are there any new wrinkles in the way refugees are being used as weapons?

NEWLAND: I don't - I wouldn't say that there's a lot, that that's a new thing, but I do think that there, that the immediacy of the images, that the availability of the .... that the marketing of human suffering has become a very powerful factor in war....

CAMERAMAN: Can you address the interviewer: I think we need to show that there is something new now.

NEWLAND: I think that two of the things that have changed the ways in which refugees are used as weapons of war in the last decade or two have been the immediacy of the images that are available on a world wide basis, that bring these conflicts and their human consequences, literally into people's living rooms, and raised the stakes for both sides in the battle for public opinion.

We've seen, probably the Nigerian civil war was the first, what I like to call postmodern civil war, in which the image was almost more important than the reality of what was happening in Biafra. There was terrible starvation and suffering and the Biafran side in that war realized what an ally they had in the world's mass media. They realized that their most powerful weapons were not their guns but their fax machine hooked up to an outlet in Lisbon that could get the pictures of those starving children out to the world. And that had, in the case of Biafra, not a decisive impact, but it had a considerable impact and many would say that it prolonged the war. And I think that dynamic has become one that the opponents in civil wars have become very very sophisticated in using, particularly in the last ten years.

In the Bosnian war, there are even those who accused the Bosnian side of staging massacres in order to provoke an outside intervention or certainly in order to provoke a stronger political support in the outside world for their case. If not outright military intervention, at least very strong political support ...

CAMERAMAN: What about consciously sending refugees to one country versus another to destabilize areas?

NEWLAND: That's true not only in the context of war, also, but the .... The prospect of being on the receiving end of a large refugee flow is a prospect that makes almost any country extremely nervous and the threat of directing refugee flows toward a particular country is a threat that I think has been used in a very sophisticated way by some political leaders. Milosevic very consciously directed refugee flows toward Macedonia rather than toward Albania because Macedonia had a much more complicated ethnic mix, was politically more fragile, and had its own problems with its own Albanian, ethnic Albanian population. And I think that by directing refugee flows toward Macedonia and threatening to destabilize Macedonia that perhaps he hoped, not so much as to make the government of Macedonia fall, but to make the allies to back off from the pressures that they were exerting on him about Kosovo for fear that it would destabilize the entire region.

In this hemisphere we've seen the Cuban regime very consciously manipulate refugee flows from Cuba. First at the time of the Meriel Boat lift and more recently in 1994 where Castro has let it be know within Cuba that the government wasn't going to aggressively go after people who were trying to leave the island illegally, and boom, a hundred thousand people heading for southern Florida was enough to change the dynamic of the way the U.S. was approaching that problem. And indeed, the only diplomatic agreement we have with Cuba now is a migration agreement that was negotiated in 1994 as a way of stopping that large irregular flow. Developed countries are very intolerant of large refugee flows aimed at them. Ironically it has tended to be poorer countries who are less able in conventional ways to support a refugee population that have been more hospitable toward them. In Africa particularly, although I think even in Africa we are beginning to see the welcome wear pretty thin.