Healing Communities in Conflict: Chapter Five

State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity

Kimberly A. Maynard

1999

5. Communities In Conflict

Unhealed severe trauma from any source destroys the unnoticed substructure of democracy, the cognitive and social capacities that enable a group of people to freely construct a cohesive narrative of their own future.

—Jonathan Shay (1994:181)

Although the ruinous effect of war has been documented since ancient Greek times, the plebeian and widespread nature of contemporary conflict necessitates renewed examination of its effect on the individual and community. Ironically, although international attention focuses first on refugees and second on internally displaced persons, the majority of war victims never leave their homes for any length of time. As yet, survivors in their own communities have received minimal recognition as another category of victim in complex emergencies.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, an international NGO, these survivors can be divided into three categories: those targeted as a “stake in the conflict,” those threatened by being trapped in the conflict, and vulnerable populations weakened by disruption in food and health care provision (Jean 1995:129). Amid the animosity and adversity of a violence-ridden community setting, they each face the ruins of their lives alone. Beyond physical reconstruction, they carry the extra burden of having to support now-marginalized members with extremely limited resources. Eventually, when displaced neighbors return, they are forced to confront the issues of contention—both the original problems that led to the violence and the repercussions that ensued.

The fact that in the literature as well as the field the experience of resident survivors goes largely unexplored in international circles could be the result of several factors. It may be because grassroots identity conflicts are a relatively new and unfamiliar phenomena, because the common citizen in his or her home lacks visibility, or because, in contrast to refugees, resident victims of violence have no mandated caretaker. Therefore, the international eye has not yet been trained to look closely at the ground. Because the plight of the community has been relatively absent from our list of concerns, we know less about conditions pertaining to communities caught up in armed violence than we do about other aspects of complex emergencies.

Whereas the previous two chapters looked at uprooted populations, this one explores those who remained. Using literature on related issues such as psychological trauma and community development, case studies of specific incidents, personal experience, and anecdotal evidence, it offers a view of identity conflict and complex emergency from the inside. It attempts to speak not only to the tangible reality of this experience but the consequences within the community and the long-term issues confronting its members. Because today’s armed violence so thoroughly permeates the grassroots, attempting to understand its impact on the community is critical to our larger perception of complex emergencies.

A Close Look at a War-Torn Community

Local populations ravaged by identity conflict often see little in the way of help and even less in the way of hope. Taking a walk through a fictional mixed-identity community reeling from recent extreme violence, we might find the following scene.

Physical devastation is everywhere. Large sections of the residential areas have been razed or indiscriminately destroyed by shelling and attacks. Acres of land are blackened and the few live animals to be seen are roaming at will. The community center, at the heart of the battlefield, shows severe damage. Many structures were simply the casualty of erratic shelling, while other businesses were specifically targeted and looted. Rubble and burned-out automobiles clog several streets. Some buildings are boarded up; some remain eerily open and empty, their windows broken. The normal trading, markets, and street life are barely visible; only small-scale commerce shows any evidence of life.

Many members of this community fled before or during the fighting; the survivors who remain are mostly women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. Some suffer from serious injuries. Lack of physicians, medical facilities, and supplies forces them to rely on second-rate care, if any, and some die as a consequence. What facilities may be operating are viewed with distrust, and even the most needy may not seek their services.

Individuals are shell-shocked by the violence, by personal loss, and by the breakdown in community integrity. Some are incapable, as a result, of caring for themselves. In the trying postconflict period, community members of like identity share resources and assist each other in daily survival, offering food, care, and manual labor. Women take in children who have lost their parents in the chaos. The destruction of homes has forced large numbers of people to live together in single dwellings. Furthermore, the loss of community leaders in the carnage and flight has compelled remaining members to take on leadership roles.

Some members who fled to nearby areas returned almost immediately. Similarly, many of those who crossed international boundaries came home in the refugee ricochet process. More return daily. The community is thus faced with newly arriving members, some of whom are homeless and destitute. Their presence increases the level of tension in the community, reigniting hidden animosity over the original problems and sparking new contention over responsibility, retribution, and atonement. Suspicion runs high about participation and allegiance in the struggle. Other contentious issues such as leadership, rehabilitation, and community process loom ahead as well.

In the aftermath of disruption, assistance for this typical community is extremely minimal, save for some food aid and plastic sheeting from the ICRC. Relief workers from an international health NGO visit intermittently, attempting to revitalize the local health care center. Under these conditions, community members are forced to rely on each other, an extremely difficult undertaking given the animosity between the identity groups.

The Pandemicity of Intimate Combat

This dismal walk through a violence-ravaged community makes evident the comprehensive effect of communal violence and the difficulty of reintegration and rehabilitation. Although each situation presents distinctive circumstances, identity conflict seems to pose two common challenges that stem from its unique characteristics.

Personal Involvement

First, the nature of intergroup fighting, as we saw in chapter 2, is extremely intimate, invasive, and largely unavoidable. Since identity conflicts are based on personal attributes, it is nearly impossible for individuals to escape being drawn into the battle. All members in society, depending on their religion, tribe, race, or birthplace, are involuntarily identified with one side of the conflict or another, for the most part regardless of personal beliefs. They may subsequently become targets for intimidation, abuse, forced movement, or extermination.

The inability to prevent such random attacks can spawn rampant fear and distrust. In many circumstances, the current of anxiety and suspicion may begin with mere social segregation and grow into isolated cases of verbal abuse and frequent threats. Eventually it can develop into acts of aggression, from scuffles to disappearances to physical destruction and armed violence.

The animosity feeding this progression can occur between contending towns or regions where communities are internally relatively homogeneous. In towns containing greater comingling, violence may erupt between communal members themselves. In either case, belligerents are presumably familiar with each other and may have once lived in harmony, conducted business together, and relied on each other for everyday needs.

Intermarriages may be common, particularly in integrated communities, producing children of dual heritage. Twenty percent of all marriages in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, were of mixed ethnic background (Gurr 1993). Relationships of every category may be at stake in identity conflict, even those between spouses, between neighbors sharing common living areas and child care, between friends, and between teachers and their students and doctors and their patients.

All social institutions become drawn into the conflict. The impartiality not only of civil government, the military, and any form of authority structure, but also of school systems, health facilities, civic welfare agencies, and all other institutions is now called into question. I recall an injured Rwandan man adamantly refusing to visit the hospital because he feared to submit himself to the care of an unknown physician.

When the act of violence occurs in an intimate setting where well-acquainted rivals meet in familiar territory, it does more than physical harm. House-to-house massacres can wipe out whole families or, alternatively, leave children, the elderly, and women to witness the brutality. Rape is a common and extremely invasive tactic. Often women are taken as hostages for sexual as well as military purposes. Human Rights Watch’s description of the Abkhaz-Georgian identity conflict exemplifies the horrors of internal violence. “Troops on the ground terrorized the local population through house-to-house searches, and engaged in widespread looting and pillage, stripping civilians of property and food. We have received countless reports on both sides . . . that combatants raped and otherwise used sexual terror as an instrument of warfare” (Human Rights Watch 1995:3).

I have seen how the technical weaponry and offensive tactics used in today’s identity conflicts can also have serious personal repercussions. Random attacks on villages, or sniper fire (such as occurred repeatedly in Sarajevo, for instance), have a terrifying effect on populations, as opposed to a broad offensive through the countryside, which is undoubtedly ominous but at least offers some warning. Similarly, whereas air raids, shelling, and even machine-gun fire are fast and effective in destroying large numbers of people rather indiscriminately, hand-to-hand combat demands explicit personal rancor and determination in order to kill.

Rwanda’s genocide, in which the machete was the primary weapon, is the modern-day extreme of intimate violence. A few months after the massacres, a UN colleague spoke with one of the leaders who illustrated this point. He explained that because each murder required several blows, he and his fellow perpetrators eventually became exhausted. At that point, they hobbled the survivors by severing their Achilles tendons and went home to drink and sleep. The following morning, well-rested, the slayers returned to the houses to continue the carnage.

In a country that is 74 percent Christian, thousands of people fled to churches for safety. When their pursuers discovered their whereabouts, sometimes with the help of the pastor, and sometimes literally across his dead body, they locked the doors to prevent escape and systematically butchered the occupants. Those suspected of still breathing after the hand-slaying were shot; when no movement was detected, the attackers left. Another eventual colleague was among the more fortunate. Like several others, she survived by lying beneath the carnage for several hours pretending to be dead while she listened to the moans of her mother several meters away.

Another tactic used in Rwanda was the intimate involvement of vast portions of the population. Through manipulation, encouragement, incitement, or sheer pressure, the perpetrators forced ordinary citizens to participate in the massacres. This technique not only expedited the killing but created a base of support through popular involvement, polarizing the groups further. In merely one hundred days in Rwanda, possibly 800,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands are suspected of participating (Ransdell 1994:68). That is nearly three times the killing rate of the Holocaust in World War II. These conditions exemplify the intrusion of the conflict into every inviolable aspect of life. The personal disruption and invasive effect of such intimate exposure to violence is vast, pervasive, and long-lasting.

Combat Tactics and Physical Destruction

The second common factor in identity conflict is the prevalent demolition of community buildings and infrastructure. Because of its grassroots nature, such widespread devastation tends to have a long-lasting effect on nearly all aspects of, and individuals in, society.

In the process of communal aggression, physical structures may be specifically targeted or simply stand in the way of reaching the human objectives. The aftermath leaves dilapidated houses, dead animals, polluted fishing waters, burned crops, broken telephone, gas, and electric lines, contaminated water systems, torn-up and obstructed roads, ruined community buildings, and burned and looted businesses, stores, and warehouses. In addition, institutions such as schools, hospitals, health centers, worship centers, and civic monuments may be ruined.

The type and extent of the damage depends partly on the tactics used. In Tajikistan, for instance, I saw how local aggressors had retrofitted bulldozers with homemade spikes, which they used to ram houses and break apart the mud-brick bond. In some cases, nonresident belligerents target the viability of a community by destroying just enough to render it incapable of survival. They may destroy roads leading into the area, burn agricultural land, cut off incoming water sources, electricity, and gas, or deprive whole communities of food supplies. At the same time, they may strike a town, or individuals within it, with periodic attacks. In the early 1990s, the whole world watched as Sarajevo suffered just such a siege. I witnessed Kosovo residents being subjected to each of these tactics in village after village in 1998.

Alternatively, antagonists may sweep through a community destroying, killing, and moving on, or they may occupy it for long periods of time. When the violence comes from within the community, the aggressors will likely use tactics of scapegoating and intimidation along with threats and assault. As Meyer-Knapp notes, “Dreadful human suffering and environmental destruction become the medium in which [the] contest for guardianship [over land] plays out” (forthcoming, 19).

The Fallout from Communal Warfare

Though all armed conflict is destructive, grassroots violence is unique in that it offers virtually no one immunity. Identity conflict lays waste to nearly all aspects of society, not only the physical infrastructure and the economy but also self-reliance, social services, social networks, leadership, and the psychological health of the population.

Self-Reliance

The physical damage discussed earlier not only impairs electrical lines, water and road systems, houses, crops, and herds, but destroys structures that housed commercial ventures and industry. Their loss can affect the proprietor, the consumer, the sharecropper, the landlord, and the employee, and can ultimately lead to economic degradation. Lack of production and trade means lack of resources, which in turn inflates local prices (Cuny 1983).

All commerce may shut down entirely during the heart of the fighting, leaving remaining citizens without necessary goods. Industrial production in Georgia, for example, fell by 80 percent and agricultural production by 60 percent between 1989 and 1994, largely as a result of identity conflict (Gluck 1995:11). Except in subsistence-farming communities where the land was basically undamaged, this demise in output can result in a severe humanitarian emergency, such as occurred in Somalia in 1992 when as many as 240,000 people died from starvation and related illness (Sommer 1994a:120). Loss of human resources to death and migration can further limit the recuperative capacity of war-torn communities. In Tajikistan, the dearth of laborers severely hurt the production capability of the agricultural communes. Other areas that may have been physically untouched by the turmoil suffer from isolation and disruption in trade, which leads to commodity shortages and declining markets for their own products.

The threat of violence and an inadequate food supply typically incites hoarding, creating a superficial food deficit. The laws of supply and demand inflate prices, which soar out of reach of the average citizen, who at this point may not have sufficient purchasing power anyway. The combination of all these forces creates famine conditions, not from drought or crop damage so much—though they may be an additional factor—as from economic and labor disruption (Deng and Minear 1992). The Ethiopian famine in 1984 is an example of how political instability and violence, compounded by an accompanying drought, eroded the capacity of the country to feed itself. We are witnessing this same cycle repeat itself in Sudan in 1998 and 1999.

Social Services

Social fallout from internal warfare is generally more difficult to assess and reverse at the community level than the physical and economic effects. Many of the essential services to the community, such as education, health, and welfare, may have disintegrated with the destruction of buildings, loss of personnel, lack of equipment and supplies, apprehension, and insecurity. Without education, children not only may become listless, they may turn to antisocial behavior both for entertainment and profit. And without intellectual influences to challenge war’s ever-present dominion, they become subject to the dominant paradigms of violence, antagonism, fear, and mistrust.

With the reestablishment of stability, however, schools may recommence and continue to run on an irregular basis, provided teacher availability and a semblance of facilities, such as renovated school rooms. In Somalia, I helped organize “classrooms” which initially consisted only of a large tree, a teacher, students, and a smattering of paper, pencils, and books. Still, a multitude of problems may reduce attendance, such as insufficient clothing or shoes, mental health problems from exposure to extreme violence, physical wounds and disabilities, lack of transportation, unwillingness to integrate in the schoolroom, shortage of food, or distrust of faculty.

Conflict-induced disruption in the public health system—due to lack of adequate buildings, equipment, supplies, personnel, or, as in other social institutions, segregation based on distrust—also affects the community. In Rwanda, for example, an estimated 80 percent of the medical professionals either fled the country or were killed in the fighting, including many of the traditional healers (Kumar et al. 1996:50). Interruption of immunization campaigns is one of the more serious consequences of a fractured health system. This not only leaves many children susceptible to rapid-onset deadly diseases such as measles—which can kill 10 to 20 percent of the children infected (Jean 1995:159)—but the destruction of records and regularity of the program breaks down the community- and country-wide health coverage. Polio—a disease once thought nearly eradicated—reemerged in Kosovo in 1998 during the disruption in comprehensive immunization campaigns. In the absence of medical facilities and prevention programs such as prenatal care, nutrition, sexually transmitted disease and HIV intervention, family planning, and women’s health care, the community faces higher public health risks in general.

State, community, or extended-family assistance for the vulnerable elements of society tend to be among the early casualties of armed conflict. The elderly, mentally ill, widowed, infirm, and orphaned, who once depended on such services, are often left to the mercy of local benefactors for their survival in a war-torn community. This occurred in Tajikistan when canteens and nursing home facilities were shut down during the violence and social assistance was drastically reduced. I spoke with many, mostly minority, elderly Russians without families, who had become homeless or homebound without means of support. Although ethnic Russians were not the primary antagonists in the civil war, they were considered partisan and therefore became a focus of hostility. Outreach to these marginalized individuals, therefore, was minimal (Maynard 1993). Moreover, extensive violence inevitably leaves a disproportionate number of community members disabled and without a safety net to aid their recovery or any means with which to support themselves. Amputees from land mine accidents who are unable to farm or ply a trade fall into this category (Chabasse 1995).

In some cases, the recovery from a collapsed social system may never be complete, leaving whole sectors of the population without literacy skills and suffering from high morbidity, mortality, and malnutrition rates (Deng and Minear 1992). Haiti’s deplorable social conditions show the results of years of repression and violence. As of 1989, Haiti had 80 percent illiteracy, the highest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, and consumed the second lowest level of calories per capita in the world (Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo 1989:193).

In addition, children who grow up in such chaos-ridden countries as Haiti, Nicaragua, or Palestine often have few influences beyond the culture of violence. Eventually, fighting becomes a way of life, weaving its way into the social fabric. In prolonged wars such as Lebanon’s, militia factions may attempt to control certain areas by establishing their own social welfare systems (Hansen 1995). Under such circumstances, children learn to associate force with problem resolution, and the perpetuation of violence with community survival.

Social Networks

Another, more subtle casualty of communal conflict is the interrelationships and interaction among individuals. In a normal community social system, members rely heavily on each other for everything including products, labor, subsistence support, guidance, information, services, and security (Cuny 1983). When this structure breaks down, the divisiveness within society disrupts normal operations, potentially seriously damaging community viability. The effects are presumably all the more ruinous in communities that have had close intergroup ties, including mixed marriages, neighborhoods, business associations, church membership, and academic fellowship.

No longer might a shop, for example, be able to count on buying goods from farmers or producers from across identity lines. Because of the rampant distrust, only those from the same identity group might patronize the store, diminishing the income of the owner. In agricultural regions, as another example, farm labor is often shared between members of the community. When the full complement of community members is no longer available, crops may go to waste and fields may lie fallow for lack of planting. This was the case in Tajikistan, where there was sometimes inadequate help to tend to the family’s own garden plot. This vital source of income, consequently, was unavailable (Maynard 1994).

Experience shows, moreover, that the initial divisions of conflict based on identity may subdivide into other cleavages, such as between those who remained and those who fled, or those receiving assistance and those not, thus further hindering community reintegration. In the aftermath of the most heated violence in Somalia’s nomadic northern region, for instance, severe contention arose between clans with deep roots in the region and those who had migrated more recently to the area. Such inability to depend on normal support, assistance, and interaction seems to devastate community cohesion. Once trust is destroyed, returning the community to a level of deep faith and assurance requires serious effort, commitment, and time (Montville 1993).

Particularly in protracted conflicts, hostilities may have debilitated the more formal social networks and internal mechanisms to assist in the process of rehabilitation, such as elders’ councils, community legal and quasi-legal procedures, review boards, and guidance committees. The system may now be tainted by a degree of distrust or bias, rendering it no longer capable of community guidance. This occurred in Burundi, where the traditional mediators lost official status and were overcome by the extent of intergroup animosity (Refugees International 1995).

Leadership

Fighting also frequently takes its toll on local leadership. Given their position in society, religious authorities, elders, political officials, union heads, civic leaders, and social administrators are often more at risk of physical attack than the average citizen. They are, therefore, highly likely to flee when conditions warrant.

These same people who once provided moral and directional guidance may be instigators of the conflict, and their fate may therefore depend on the outcome. The preplanned and well-executed massacres and evacuations in Rwanda, for instance, were reported to be the work of thousands of community religious and civic leaders who led their followers to kill as well as to leave by the hundreds (Ransdell 1994). In 1995, an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the refugees in camps, primarily those in Zaire, may have been such individuals, according to the multidonor evaluation of the Rwanda crisis (Kumar et al. 1996:98). At the same time, some of the first killed were political and community leaders who stood out as moderates in the eyes of the assailants (Ransdell 1994).

Whether by evacuation, death, or peer rejection, the end result is that communities lose their customary leadership. Decision-making capacity may be damaged, leaving remaining community members to devise new power structures, take on leadership roles, and become more involved in the process. Though necessary, this may be extremely difficult, particularly if leadership roles are chosen by specific members of the community, or dictated by hierarchy or inheritance. At the same time, certain individuals who have traditionally been excluded from decision-making, such as women, members of the lower class, and certain identity groups, are unlikely to get involved.

Psychological

Finally, war-torn communities may suffer from psychological damage as a result of exposure to extreme, intimate violence. Such mental trauma among civilians appears similar in some ways to that found in combat veterans, which was first seriously studied in the 1980s among U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War (Maynard 1997). Subsequent research conducted in Western countries examined matching symptoms in such groups as survivors of rape, incest, and physical abuse, and adolescent Vietnamese war survivors immigrating to the United States.

A small but growing literature explores the incidence of psychological trauma in civilian combat survivors, particularly as a result of identity conflict. The growing but still insufficient data, however, requires observers to assume some transferability of the findings from the larger literature on psychological trauma to the context of identity conflict. (In making this leap, I think it is important to consider not simply the dissimilarities between combat soldiers and civilians but also between Western and non-Western cultures. While it is easy to assume culture-blind responses to violence, Western understandings of trauma may not apply to other societies. Furthermore, in my view, the animosity inherent in identity conflict plays a substantial role in the psychological effect of violence.)

The research has shown that psychological trauma at the individual level stems from continual physical threat, such as prolonged exposure to low-grade violence, the persistent fear of land mines, intimidation, military infiltration, exposure to mistreatment either as the object or witness, or from basic insecurity. Jonathan Shay, in his study of combat soldiers, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, describes four clusters of traumatic war experiences that contribute to psychological trauma: exposure to fighting; exposure to abusive violence; physical deprivation; and loss of meaning and control (1994:123). Civilians living in combat zones have very similar experiences.

Physical danger can be a daily occurrence in combat zones. A study conducted in Lebanon in 1988 found that over 90 percent of the children sampled had been exposed to shelling or combat, 50 percent had witnessed violent acts such as physical injury, intimidation, or the death of a friend or close relative, and 26 percent had lost someone close to them. Sixty-eight percent, moreover, had been displaced, and 21 percent had been separated from their families (International Peace Research Association 1990). Rwanda’s 1994 civil war produced remarkably similar figures (Kumar et al. 1996).

The symptoms of psychological trauma range from anxiety to depression, substance abuse, social withdrawal, hostility, estrangement, despair, isolation, meaninglessness, anticipation of betrayal, hypervigilance, destroyed capacity for social trust, and post-traumatic stress disorder at the far end of the spectrum (Shay 1994). Different individuals and cultures may manifest their own variations of these symptoms. My observations in Guinea, for example, were that many traumatized Liberian refugees were unduly confused, apparently depressed, and unable to engage in coherent conversation.

Women and children appear to be particularly susceptible to psychological trauma as combat moves onto the home front. In today’s conflicts, women who survive the indiscriminate violence have often lived to witness attacks on family members or have been victims of abuse themselves. Rape, which thrives in violent conflicts, causes profound psychological injury. In Rwanda, where rape was widespread and often public, the multidonor evaluation found that mental trauma was a serious outcome. In addition, rape resulted in an estimated 5,000 pregnancies and an inordinate amount of sexually transmitted disease, possibly including HIV (Kumar et al. 1996, 66). ₁

The loss of family members is especially psychologically deleterious to those who depend heavily on a provider, such as women, children, the disabled, and the elderly. The multidonor study of Rwanda reports that between one third and one half of all women in the hardest-hit areas of the country were widowed in the genocide, according to government statistics, while 95,000 to 150,000 children were either orphaned or temporarily separated from their parents (Kumar et al. 1996:61&-;63). Despite their lack of resources or familial support, many women, including widows and single women, took in the unaccompanied children of relatives and neighbors. ₂ Understandably, the evaluation concludes, “the de facto foster system . . . places extreme financial and psychological pressure on the care-givers,” who led an already marginal existence (Kumar et al. 1996:64).

In a community ravaged by war, normal psychological support, in the form of extended family, friends, elders, and religious figures, usually deteriorates along with the community’s social structures, such as schools, religious institutions, community organizations, and medical facilities (Maynard 1997). In a 1995 UNICEF training course on psychological trauma I attended, a survivor of Rwanda’s genocide reported, “In a normal situation, one can get support and assistance from school, extended family, work, the state. All these are gone in war. There is nothing. You can’t trust anyone. All is gone. There is no protection. The teachers, the mayors, even the family has killed.” This loss of familiarity in routine and trust in leadership is likely exacerbated by estrangement following migration. Individual self-esteem plummets as a result of such disruption, compounded by the inability to provide for oneself from the loss of manpower, economic erosion, and ruined income sources. This process can have devastating psychological effects.

Since exposure to intimate violence is recognized as a primary cause of mental trauma, it can be assumed that psychological damage has become more pervasive as the number of identity conflicts has increased. Moreover, the sheer number of individuals exposed to violence potentially multiplies the personal nature of traumatic psychological injury. While single incidents may be disturbing, more numerous cases can understandably overwhelm a community plagued by physical and social chaos. In such circumstances, psychologically traumatized individuals may quickly become marginalized and burdensome to society. This was evident in Tajikistan’s identity conflict, where many repatriating widows, devastated by the fighting and the loss of their families, were incapable of functioning rationally. They required complete care and could no longer contribute to productivity. Yet the communes, reeling from civil war, were unable to provide for them adequately (Maynard 1993).

The paranoia and distrust common among the mentally traumatized, moreover, may influence the community mindset at a time of extreme vulnerability. This distrust can lead to prolonged segregation and hostility, which decrease the odds for community rehabilitation and reintegration. At the same time, ruined social institutions and intergroup relations further the impression of disorder, exacerbating psychological vulnerability (Maynard 1997). As a result, the initial shock of identity conflict seems to have extremely deleterious and long-term ripple effects on the psychosocial health of communities subjected to violence, which disrupts the intricate network of society far beyond the immediate physical destruction.

The Challenges of Community Rehabilitation and Social Reconstruction

Under these conditions of economic, social, and psychological breakdown, the challenge of rebuilding a community can be daunting. Several factors tend to exacerbate the situation, such as problems of security, inadequate and inappropriate rehabilitation assistance, and diminished democratic participation. These issues deserve greater scrutiny.

Continued Security Issues

Severe, protracted disputes are not easily overlooked and naturally continue to produce suspicion, accusations, and demands for remuneration. They can lead to further scapegoating, incidents of individual reprisal, group fear tactics, political repression and, possibly, renewed armed conflict. As a result, security becomes a constant concern for community members (Stein 1991).

The more apprehensive families and individuals, I have observed, may be unwilling to venture outside of relatively safe areas, even for the purpose of production and commerce. Both in the northern nomadic region of Somalia, where I was living, and in many parts of southern Sudan, intergroup fighting cut off normal animal migration routes and made pastoralists reluctant to herd their cattle and camels in regions governed by opposing groups, for fear of losing their herds (Lowrey 1995). One can see how fear can pervade intergroup interaction and social relations, and diminish the ability of the community to heal.

Deteriorating living standards can increase this sense of insecurity. The demise in productivity and resulting reduction in income and employment can contribute to distrust and hostility and potentially lead to a continuation of the revenge cycle (Anderson 1994). Basic competition for resources often leads to overprotectiveness, defensive attitudes, and intergroup fighting (Cuny 1991). Returning members who fled during the violence, moreover, may inundate the struggling community.

In this climate, returnees may find themselves in an intensely hostile environment. In the worst-case scenario, they may be completely ostracized, targeted, or abandoned. The confluence of the divergent experiences and attitudes of returnees and those who remained may renew the original dispute. In Tajikistan, for instance, returning community members accused of participating in the fighting were sometimes killed, and their family members threatened, beaten, and raped during the earlier phases of repatriation (Anderson 1995a). Such conflict clearly exacerbates insecurity and creates a very difficult setting in which to attempt community reintegration.

Inappropriate or Inadequate Rehabilitation Assistance

Another potential factor in the rehabilitation equation is outside assistance. Under conditions of instability and destitution, relief aid can provide a critical boost to the recovery process. It also, however, can bring new difficulties to the community.

First, assistance from the state, national organizations, or international agencies generally does not benefit the whole community until the late stages of the reconstruction phase. At that point, the bulk of the assistance will likely be in the form of seeds and tools for agricultural rehabilitation, health center and school renovation, and possibly shelter reconstruction. Initially, however, aid is usually directed specifically toward returnees or special groups such as unaccompanied children. ICRC is the only international agency whose mandate it is to assist all resident victims in need; other organizations routinely give priority to the requirements of select subsets of residents, such as children, or populations other than local citizens. This pattern can create several problems. In cultures or circumstances where sharing resources is rare, the needy who are neglected may become the most marginalized members of their community (Prendergast 1995). In addition, those excluded from assistance may not tangibly benefit from any indirect economic boost that comes with aid. If they represent a large percentage of the population, they may, in fact, adversely affect the community economy (Cuny 1990). Furthermore, limited assistance can create significant tension between those who benefit and those who do not (Anderson 1994). In Tajikistan, for example, a housing reconstruction project focused attention on the ethnic group most affected by the destruction. Animosity developed over the perceived favoritism, leading to a potentially violent incident in which the offended demanded equal benefit (Anderson 1995a).

Another potential problem stemming from long-term assistance to displaced populations is its tendency to encourage dependence on outside sources and, thus, to discourage self-reliance, motivation, and self-esteem (Cuny 1990; Hakovirta 1986; Prendergast 1995). This dependence can have serious long-term repercussions on community rehabilitation, not the least of which is the diminished potential of individuals to reenter society as self-sufficient, productive members. Not only do long-term beneficiaries generally contribute less to the community’s development, but, should the outside benefits decrease, their dependent attitude and loss of skills may cause them to become a burden to the rest of the population. I visited families in Kosovo who had received international assistance for six years, due to the oppressive job environment and consequential massive unemployment. One household of seven was hosting twenty-three displaced persons, many of whom had also received assistance before fleeing. The disruption in outside aid due to the outbreak of violence seriously threatened the ability of the household to sustain itself.

Diminished Democratic Participation

The damaged trust and intergroup reliance makes cross-conflict cooperation in helping the needy and rebuilding the community much more difficult. Inasmuch as individuals distrust others, fear for their safety, have a limited sense of the future, and tend to see the world in black and white, their ability to contribute to group decision-making and constructive future planning is negligible. As a result, both immediate and long-term needs may go unmet.

Real benefit from relief programs, in my experience, requires strong community participation. Humanitarian agencies generally need assistance in locating, counting, and supplying vulnerable members of the community, many of whom cannot make their own needs known. Since they are unfamiliar with local particularities, international organizations are less able to determine specific shortfalls, appropriate priorities of assistance, nearby resources, gender-specific requirements, and other issues pertinent to the locale. The earlier example in Tajikistan, where homebound elderly women were unable to meet their own needs, illustrates the necessity of community participation in locating the most vulnerable. A community that, because of a disintegrated decision-making process, cannot pro-actively engage in the relief strategy to meet its own requirements may suffer as a consequence. In addition, it may miss out on the substantial opportunities for developing community capacity through training, participation, and employment with international organizations.

Furthermore, the relief-to-development cycle finds its return to the disaster stage precisely in this kind of environment. In the throes of rehabilitation and reintegration, communities that cannot plan for the future, design reconstruction programs, and move forward into development because of an inability to make decisions, may find themselves back in the heart of turmoil. Conversely, where a community is able to develop a joint strategy for development, its clear need for reconstruction and the presence of international organizations offering potential funds and technical assistance give it a chance to progress beyond minimal repair. Such efforts can result in substantial development and improved local resources, structures, and standards.

While the challenges in reestablishing community cohesion are real, there is nevertheless equally real opportunity to renew community relations and begin the healing process. The loss of customary leadership and fractured social and civic institutions, for example, can potentially remove the normal reliance on authorities for community planning and provide space for other decision-making strategies to emerge. The willingness of the displaced to risk return, moreover, and the weariness of the resident community, may provide additional incentive for positive reintegration.

This brings us full circle, having discussed the conditions of the displaced and those of the community residents. We are thus poised to examine approaches to reintegration and eventual community renewal in the second part of the study. The next chapter will explore the conceptual process of recovery, looking at the nature of conflictual relationships and the necessary evolution in their healing.

Endnotes

Note 1: In a limited survey conducted in three préfectures, of the 241 women medically screened, 60.5 percent had survived single, multiple, or protracted rape, 29.5 percent were pregnant, and 34 percent presented symptoms of sexually transmitted disease as a result. This was not necessarily representative of the entire Rwandan population (Kumar et al. 1996:66). Back.

Note 2: An estimated 21 percent of all Rwandan families have had foster children, according to a Food and Agriculture Organization/World Food Program survey conducted in August 1995 (Kumar et al. 1995:66). Back.