Contenu du sommaire : Sociétés dans la guerre

War and its aftermath
The outbreak of war (whether expected or sudden), the way it is carried out, the reasons for its development, the strength of opposing forces, its outcome (whether final or temporary): war has been analysed and researched from every viewpoint possible. Once over, war disappears from the headlines, at varying degrees of rapidity, and makes way for the next conflict, relegated into a time and space capsule and left for historians to study. And yet, the end of an international war or a civil rebellion – in as far as such a distinction can be made – rarely results in a return to the status quo. In most cases, the aftermath of war tends to create a new, more long-lasting situation: continued violence in other forms, population movements, social recomposition, construction of new identities, cultural change... Even when war is no longer a pressing issue on the international scene, war-induced conditions remain an essential element of daily life for the country and its inhabitants, leaving indelible scars on social development and on individual memories.

In Maré, social and territorial organisation of local chiefdoms is based on military alliances. After a long period of terrible wars, the ancient chiefdoms were overthrown at the beginning of the 19th century but war continued throughout the period of colonial evangelisation until the early 20th century. The social conditions generated by perpetual warmongering led to the emergence of a tacit debt which places the young men in a position of subservience to older men of the family. As long as the debt is not challenged, peace will be upheld. To ensure that the debt is respected by the next generation, the older men take advantage of their “right to speak” and have recourse to violent magic. War, however, offers the youths an opportunity not only to demonstrate their valour in the face of death but also to attain the status of “great warrior”. Freed from the fear which reduces them to silence, young men cancel the debt which cripples their lives and at last obtain the right to speak.

In 1915, the inhabitants of the vast region stretching from the Bani river (Mali) to the Volta river (Burkina-Faso) declared war on the colonial administration and vowed never to surrender arms until the last European had left the country. From the beginning of the First World War, the war-chiefs promised victory, despite the obvious military disadvantage, and called, inter alia, for protectorates guaranteed by the Great Powers and for a lighter colonial regime. During the twenty years since the region had been conquered, the population had adopted a policy of apparent acceptance which in fact was merely a temporary response to a new political situation. Although obviously influenced by colonial tradition, the war chiefs decided on a strategy of reviving pre-colonial alliances. Oral tradition tells of a war between two equal and independent adversaries, rather than of a rebellion against a superior authority: a view shared by several contemporary colonial administrators. The belligerents' inability to agree on – and indeed the anti-colonial forces' denial of – the unequal nature of the conflict renders the task of interpreting colonial war all the more difficult.

War – with its bloodshed – tends to accentuate ethnic distinctions. We see the development of two situations: regrouping of population in military enclaves or refugee camps on the one hand, and exodus abroad or, at the very least, outside the native lands on the other. Case studies carried out in the Sudan and Somalia illustrate these responses to war. In the Sudan, an authoritarian regime attempted to divide and conquer in order to crush the Southern rebellion, by stimulating internal dissensions among the guerrilla forces. In Somalia, the government's collapse led to the intervention of humanitarian agencies. Whereas tribal identities used to be defined with great precision, the procedures for attributing refugee status have tended to encourage refugees to claim links with clans among the “vulnerable minorities”.

During wars, spaces are created to deal with new situations: camps, humanitarian refugee centres, transit centres, security zones. Created as temporary way stations, they gradually evolve from vague groups of housing into quasi-towns, gradually taking on a more permanent existence. At the same time, refugee centres are required to “respect the right” of refugees to return home, or “fulfil their obligation” to send them back. These are presented as the only long-term solution for the reintegration of refugees. This article questions the original concept of identity, which underlies such policy positions, drawing on a study of an HCR site for Angolan refugees in Zambia. In response to the opportunity to return home following signature of the Angola peace treaty in April 2002, refugees reacted in a number of different ways and expressed a range of concerns which need to be taken into account. This article analyses their identification with a temporary home in exile and war-generated social structures, by the presence of humanitarian aid, and by social relationships developed in the camps – a living space, with a past, in spite of its inherent limitations.

The question of Palestinian refugees has been at the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict for more than 50 years. The wars which have torn the Middle East during the second half of the 20th century and the armed struggle of the Palestinian resistance at the end of the 1960s have had a strong influence on the structure of the Palestinian national movement leading to an important redefinition of Palestinian society. With no end in sight for the conflict, refugee camps take on new significance as memorials for the loss of Palestine. In 1969, the Palestine Liberation Organisation took over the running of Lebanese refugee camps. Since then, the image of the refugee surviving thanks to international aid has gradually been replaced by that of the fedayin. Thanks to their growing importance in the camps, the fedayin have created a concept of society based on the Palestinians' desire to control their destiny.

Once a crisis is over, the social impact of humanitarian aid agencies tends to encourage reinforcement, acceleration and distance. Between 1995 and 1999, the presence of NGOs influenced, and even exacerbated, problems and divisions in Rwandan political structures without achieving any real improvements. In particular, procedures for consultation and for joint leadership of the nation were established without reference to prior practices in the hill country and have had little impact. The social fissures have endured, rather than evolved, because the existing power structures have not been called into question. In line with the national policy of villagisation, which combines humanitarian principles and development priorities, NGOs have promoted projects which were unable to attenuate potential negative effects (violation of human rights, loss of economic feasibility), nor guarantee long term success.

During periods of endemic war, a nation's health tends to deteriorate gradually. This article discusses a specific aspect of public health: the development of chronic illnesses and their link with the state of war, based on a study of war-torn Beirut between 1975 and 1990. During the second half of the war (1983-1992), there was a marked increase in the instance of various chronic illnesses in all age groups and this can be linked to events during the war. Reports from people working in the field describe illness as a response to violence and to social and economic crisis. Illness in war can be examined using various approaches, including an analysis of daily life in a war-torn environment, the impact of war on the individual, and the significance of chronic illness in extreme circumstances.

The relationship between drugs and war is well established throughout history, but its importance became particularly significant during the Cold War. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, drugs have become more popular and have increasingly influenced wars in localised areas. Because of this development, it is now possible to modelise this relationship. Its specificity arises from the modalities of drug trafficking, and in particular the “upward profit spiral” whereby armed groups become involved at every level of the drug industry cycle, whether at the drug refinement phase or by removing obstacles along drug supply routes between production areas and consumer markets. A study of conflicts involving Colombian guerrillas, the Afghan Taliban and other insurgents suggests that armed groups in production areas take advantage of their ability to defend drug producers to move into the drug distribution system and that they tend to become involved in drug trafficking rather than farming. In so doing, they run the risk of becoming as “mere” criminals, a fate they share with the forces of law and order.

After Colombia and before Bolivia, the Andean foothills in Peru have been taken over by an alliance of drug traffickers and terrorists. The situation in Alto Huallaga since the late 1970s demonstrates the way that family farms moved into mass production of coca and the creation of a network bringing farmers from the Sierra and the Costa to the Amazon region to plant coca and exporting the final product to developed countries. This was made possible by the metamorphosis of the Shining Path guerrilla army into a terrorist movement in the pay of drug traffickers and by the heavy involvement of politicians and national and international banking systems in the local mafia. Then in the 1990s, the State launched a tough war against the drug trade, destroying more than 80% of coca plantations. The violent nature of this war left every family mourning its lost ones. At the same time, most of Alto Huallaga's natural forests were destroyed and the land devastated. All is not solved, however, as similar networks are ready to take over with new illicit plantations.

In Brazil, public law and order is often presented as a “war against crime”. This article suggests that this concept is not simply a question of promoting the police and armed forces in their struggle against criminals. Three major issues are addressed: is the “war against crime” really a war? Does it presuppose a social conflict between rich and poor? Or is it the precursor of civil war? Our research shows that it is, in fact, the “ideological militarization” of the Brazilian police forces developed under the military regime between 1964 and 1985 which gives birth to this concept of war against crime and which now encompasses all social relationships in Brazil. Strongly instrumentalised, this concept is linked to the continued existence of “socially implanted authoritarianism” at the heart of Brazilian society and constitutes one of the principal tools for maintaining Brazil's heavily discriminatory social order.

Today in Colombia, there is so much violence that it is impossible to identify participants, reasons or circumstances: there is a state of total war and of terror which has wiped out all indications of morality, of political adherence, of territory, of identity and which makes violent death a permanent part of daily life. With so many bodies mutilated and dismembered to render them unidentifiable, many families are unable to mourn their lost relatives. At the same time, a new phenomenon is emerging in city cemeteries: through the holding of services for unknown corpses elected to sainthood or for personalities famous for their violence, people are able to find a mourning closure. These ceremonies linking the dead and the living have become particularly predominant in Medellin. Here the tombs of the sicarios, young killers (assassins designated to be the next victims), have become the focus for huge popular rituals, festive debaucheries during which stories from the collective past of the Creole colonial population are told and new identities are created for the dead by their nearest, aware that they may soon die in a similar way. In a context of total violence, socialisation, collective memory, mourning for others and for oneself have become inexorably linked to violent death as the ultimate and unique certainty.