Dividing Divided States. Gregory F. Treverton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to return should not be construed by policy makers as a mandate to enforce their return. The freedom of movement—and therefore local integration in a new area—should simultaneously be respected.

      Sometimes, even activities to ensure the protection of human rights can be construed as political. The UNHCR provided protection to Bosnian Muslims fleeing their homes in the 1990s and was later accused of being an accomplice to ethnic cleansing. Later, when the UNHCR protected ethnic communities that remained in their place of residence, it was criticized for sparing neighboring countries from receiving floods of refugees. Table 2.1 summarizes the policy suggestions.

       Partition of British India

      Issue and Outcome

      At independence, British India was partitioned into two countries: on August 14 and August 15, 1947, respectively, the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India came into being. The former was composed of the two nonadjacent regions of East Pakistan (which is now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, separated by one thousand miles of Indian territory. The partition derived from a deep religious divide between Muslims and Hindus dating back to the early 1900s, as well as between Muslims and Sikhs, and from the desire of some Muslims to set up a separate state made up of the provinces with Muslim-majority populations. They felt the predominantly Hindu leadership in India would not adequately represent their interests.¹

Table 2.1. Policy Suggestions for Refugee Issues

Issue	Policy suggestion	Relevant cases
When to start public education?	Start early—indeed Sudan had the advantage of already having de facto separation.	India-Pakistan as starkest negative example of failure to prepare.
How to understand refugee intentions?	Carefully assess intentions, perhaps in surveys.	Both India and Pakistan thought refugees created by division would be temporary. In Bosnia, too, it was assumed that return would undo ethnic cleansing.
What is the role of formal agreements?	They are important but need to be based on real agreement between the parties; almost all formal agreements can be stalled or evaded.	Formal agreement between Georgia and Abkhazia meant little because there was no real agreement that the IDPs should return to Abkhazia.
How to prepare for the returnees?	This is very important, in terms of not only housing and jobs, but also legal institutions. Transparency is also key.	Russia did little to prepare, and thus returnees were disillusioned. Neither India nor Pakistan was prepared; worse, Pakistan favored Punjabi over Bengali refugees.
How to protect the returnees?	Even given tension between the two states, it is possible to fashion arrangements to protect refugees and returnees.	India-Pakistan Military Evacuation Organization is an example.
What role for third parties?	The strong lesson all the cases is that third parties—especially UN organizations but also NGOs—can be invaluable as honest brokers and as providers of assistance.	Caution: third parties must be impartial. The UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was composed entirely of Russian troops and thus seen as pro-Abkhazia.
How to avoid refugees as bargaining chips?	This is a key aim for negotiations, so that the right of return for those who wish to return does not become a bargaining chip.	Georgians displaced from Abkhazia became, in effect, hostages to Georgia’s determination that they return, and suffered as a result.
How to deal with those who don’t wish to return?	Right to return can’t become the obligation to do so. Thus, it is critical to protect the rights of those IDPs who want to stay.	Russia was very active in seeking protections for those Russians who wished to remain in other states of the former Soviet Union.

      The run-up to the partition and the immediate aftermath were marked by riots and violence resulting from religious persecution of minorities on both sides. An estimated half million people were killed, and mass displacements of religious minorities in turn touched off mass population movements between the new borders and a major refugee crisis in the border provinces.² An estimated seven million Muslims fled India for Pakistan, while some eight million Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan for India.³

      The extent of the violence and the ensuing exodus took both governments by surprise. At independence neither had put in place mechanisms and institutions either to protect minorities or to facilitate their evacuation. Furthermore, the two countries received very little help from the international community, as Western governments did not view the two countries as geopolitically important and the UNHCR did not at the time have any provision for dealing with “partition” refugees. As a result, the massive population movements caused appalling loss of life, rocked both newly established countries, and nearly collapsed state infrastructures.⁴

      Nevertheless, after the initial months of chaos, particularly in the western part of the subcontinent, the authorities in the two countries were able to organize the evacuations of religious minorities as well as to provide some security during the migration process through the creation of two joint institutions, the Military Evacuation Organization (MEO) and the Joint Refugee Council. Yet both countries assumed that the refugees were temporary and would go back to their original homes once the violence had died down. As such, the formidable challenge of resettling refugees took center stage only starting in 1948.

      Course of the Dispute

      While religious tensions had existed in India since at least the early 1900s, the violence began shortly after the British government decided in 1945 to grant India its independence. On August 16, 1946, the All India Muslim League (AIML), a party created in 1906 to promote Muslim interests, called on Muslims to participate in the “Direct Action Day” to pressure the government to accept the two-nation concept at independence. This however led to riots in Calcutta, in which over four thousand people died. Over the next couple of weeks, the unrest spread into other areas, with communal riots in several other provinces including Bihar and Punjab.⁵ These events convinced the British government that the partition of India was unavoidable, and London’s plan for partition was announced on June 3, 1947.

      The borders between the two countries, known as the Radcliffe Line, were announced on August 17 and were determined on the basis of the religious distribution of the population: provinces with a majority Hindu population became India and those with a majority Muslim population became Pakistan.⁶ This meant that Pakistan was made up of two nonadjacent enclaves. In the west, Punjab province was separated into East Punjab, located in India, and West Punjab, located in Pakistan, and likewise in the east, Bengal province was divided into West Bengal and East Pakistan, located respectively in India and Pakistan.⁷

      Partition immediately touched off riots and unrest in many cities (Lahore in Pakistan, Amritsar, Delhi, and Calcutta in India). In the western part of the former British India, this translated into the persecution of religious minorities. Many of them fled their homes by foot or by train under very perilous conditions, risking attacks by opponents who killed and tortured on a large scale, and raped and abducted women in the migrating convoys. In sum, within three months of the partition—between August and November 1947—an estimated half million people were killed as 4.5 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from Pakistan СКАЧАТЬ