Demilitarized Zone

“ For the great military machine which exists in order that an unshakable bulwark may be set up between the invader and the civilians whom he would crush is, in its turn, and in order to keep that bulwark firm, obliged to crush them himself. In the War Zone (it is not too much to say it) the civilian is an incubus, an impediment, a most infernal nuisance. He gets so confoundedly in the way. And he is swept out of it as ruthlessly as a hospital matron sweeps dust out of her wards. ”

“ Meet the conditions of international distrust, if you will, by establishing a neutral zone ten miles broad along the frontier free of all defences. Let the Grays guard five miles of it on the Brown side and the Browns five miles on the Gray side, as insurance against surprise or the ambitions of demagogues. What an example for those other nations beyond Europe, as yet lacking your organization and progress, whom you must aid and direct! What a return to you in both moral and commercial profit! Keep armed, in reason; keep strong, but only as an international police force. ”

“ Is there any truth or substance to this statement?
We know that there has been killing of civilians in the safe zone, because the LTTE has, as they did in the other safe zone on 26th January, fired into it. One reason obviously is to ensure that civilians do not use the safe passages from the safe zones into government controlled territory that have been suggested. ”

“ Incidentally, it was shameful to hear at least one UN official engaging in apologetics for this tactic in asserting that the safe zone had been declared without consultation of the LTTE. Theoretically that position was correct, and if one side declares a safe zone it cannot complain legally or morally if its own forces in that zone are fired upon. ”

“ The Commander in Chief urged me to visit some of the camps in the Reich myself as soon as possible and to report to the proper authorities in order to bring about immediate relief. The Army zone is by no means satisfied. All the circumstances of discontent contribute more and more to more people joining the bands or wandering away to the camp of the Bandera esp. other groups hostile to us.
The best propaganda of all would be to treat the workers of the East well; great demands are not made by the Ukrainians anyhow. ”

“ When a district is infested by guerrillas, or held by the enemy, horses and mules, wagons, forage, etc., and all means of war, can be freely taken, but must be accounted for as public property. If the people do not want their horses and corn taken, they must organize and repress all guerrillas or hostile bands in their neighborhood. ”

“ In the city of Najaf, an illegal militia is attempting to incite violence and seize control. The 1st Armored Division is steadily and systematically defeating these enemy forces, while seeking to protect the people and the holy sites of that city. ”

“ Thus, from the purely military point of view, the solution hinges on the capability of the armed forces to protect the very lives of the people - to include government functionaries, from mounting communist assassination and intimidation. In the far-flung villages, especially those isolated from governmental protective power in point of time, space and force, this is most difficult. The guerrilla, because of mobility and a battle-tested plan, together with the unique situation here, has been able to seize the initiative by taking the military offensive. ”

“ Many obstacles exist, and numerous milestones remain to be reached before we can fully realize our shared vision of a stable, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan.
We have to travel further. Private militias pose a threat to the consolidation of stability and democracy in our country. They continue to oppress our people and challenge law, order and government authority. The Afghan people demand and insist on disarming and demobilizing private militias. ”

“ Dealing with Iraq's militias will require long-term attention, and substantial funding will be needed to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate militia members into civilian society. Around the world, this process of transitioning members of irregular military forces from civil conflict to new lives once a peace settlement takes hold is familiar. The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of militias depends on national reconciliation and on confidence-building measures among the parties to that reconciliation. ”

“ To corps commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc.; and for them this general principle is laid down:
In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested, no destruction of each property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. ”

“ The question is now to be met, whether, in a hostile, rebellious part of the state, where this very murder has been committed by the militia, you are to stop in the operations of the field to put down servile insurrection, because the men and women are terror-stricken? Whenever was it heard before that a victorious general, in an unsurrendered province, stopped in his course for the purpose of preventing the rebellious inhabitants of that province from destroying each other, or refuse to take command of a conquered province lest he should be made responsible for their self-destruction? ”

“ At the most critical moment of the war the New Jersey militia not merely deserted, but captured and took with them nearly the whole stores of the army. As the General truly wrote, “the Dependence which the Congress have placed upon the militia, has already greatly injured, and I fear will totally ruin our cause. Being subject to no controul themselves, they introduce disorder among the troops, whom you have attempted to discipline, while the change in their living brings on sickness; this makes them Impatient to get home, which spreads universally, and introduces abominable desertions.” ”

“ The result, as might be expected, is frequent anarchy, whilst the subordinate rulers along the frontier district tyrannise over the people and plunder their neighbours at discretion. For a century past, indeed, the people, instigated by their chiefs, had incessantly committed depredations in our territories in the plains: carrying off men and women as slaves, and also elephants, buffaloes, and property of all kinds. ”

“ Political and military leaders of Congolese militias receiving support from outside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who impede the participation of their combatants in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes ”

“ When to this singularly embarrassing position, those other difficulties which have been passed in review are added, such as an exhausted and ravaged country; an unfed, unclothed, unpaid and deserting army; [FN-3] extensive disaffection among the people immediately at home; continual irruptions of hostile partisan bands in every quarter; mobs of insurgents setting the laws at defiance in one direction; the militia regiments in the district thus lawless, more than half disposed to join the disorganizers; with an actual and somewhat formidable invasion from the west ”

“ Just as the preparations for an insurrectionary general strike in case of war tend to break down the power and prestige of the army, even if war is never declared, so the teaching of insubordination and desertion have the same effect, even if the compulsory armies are replaced by a compulsory militia, having only a few weeks of drill every year, as in Australia, or by a voluntary militia, as in this country. ”

“ The people prefer to die in the forest instead of doing this work. If a chieftain refuses, it is war, and this horrible war—perfect firearms against spear and lance. A chieftain has just left me with the complaint: ‘My village is in ruins, my women are killed.’ But what can I do? I am often compelled to put these unhappy chieftains into chains until they collect one or two hundred porters. Very often my soldiers find the villages empty, then they seize the women and children. ”

“ We can dismiss at once the idea that the native is suppressed by military despotism, for the Posts are isolated and the number of troops in them merely sufficient to guard property and stores, that is to say, to fulfil the duties of policemen in England. At any moment the thousands of natives who live in or near the Posts, could overwhelm these small forces long before help could arrive from the next Government Station, in many cases a week's journey distant. The fact that they do not do so, is at least negative evidence that the white men do not ill treat the people. ”

“ We saw only one other building in the village which had been damaged. The inhabitants explained that it was a jewelry shop and that the invaders had wrecked it hoping to find hidden valuables. We did not [Pg 89] have time to investigate this statement. There had been no fighting in the streets other than the battle with the British patrol and we considered the condition of the place a credit to the force which had occupied it. The inhabitants, indeed, protested that all food supplies had been confiscated but agreed that no civilians had been injured and that no women had been molested. ”

“ And why could they not be left on the veldt? Because we had destroyed the means of subsistence. And why had we destroyed the means of subsistence? To limit the operations of the mobile bands of guerillas. At the end of every tragedy we are forced back to the common origin of all of them, and made to understand that the nation [99] which obstinately perseveres in a useless guerilla war prepares much trouble for its enemy, but absolute ruin for itself.
We have pushed our humanity in this matter of the refugees so far that we have looked after our enemies far better than our friends. ”

“ The condition of the public order has aggravated today in the face of an escalating communist insurgency. The Greater Manila area, now the target of sabotage and terrorism, is virtually on a war footing. ”

“ If, again, it is attempted to put down this lawless guerilla state by national forces, then the result will be to have established an interminable warfare of a mixed character, private and public, civil and foreign, infesting the frontiers of all states like a fever, and in substitution for the occasional and intermitting wars of high national police, administered with the dignified responsibility that belongs to supreme rank, with the humanity that belongs to conscious power, and with the diminishing havoc that belongs to increasing skill in the arts of destruction. ”

“ It covers much the same time as the other two, and is drawn from the Equateur district. Here is the system in full swing:
“They refuse to bring the rubber. Then war is declared. The soldiers are sent in different directions. The people in the towns are attacked, and when they are running away into the forest, and try to hide themselves, and save their lives, they are found out by the soldiers. ”

“ Two violations of the rights of non-combatants are in that order. The requisitioning of inhabitants on military work where they are exposed to the fire of their own nation; pitiless severity applied to every non-combatant on the least suspicion of a hostile act.
Actually the state which the simple soldiers obey so utterly is an inner clique of landed proprietors, captains of industry, and officers of the army—men of ruthless purpose and vast ambitions. The sixty-five [193] millions of docile peasants, clerks, artizans and petty officials are tools for this inner clique. ”

“ Our whole frontier is in commotion, and I fear it will be difficult to restrain our citizens from revenging by a resort to arms this flagrant invasion of our territory. Everything that can be done will be by the public authorities to prevent so injudicious a movement. The respective sheriffs of Erie and Niagara have taken the responsibility of calling out the militia to guard the frontier and prevent any further depredations. ”

“ In the districts of the interior, bandit suppression is much more difficult, because guerilla warfare inevitably develops.
Communism a challenge to the authority of the Central Government.But, though the personal armies of local Generals and the prevalence of bandit hordes throughout the country may disturb the internal peace of the country, they are no longer a menace to the authority of the Central Government as such. There is, however, a menace of this kind from another source—namely, Communism. ”

“ To refuse supplies to the Army, therefore, is to compel the complete cessation of all its operations and its practical disbandment, and thus to invite hordes of predatory savages from the Western plains and the Rocky Mountains to spread devastation along a frontier of more than 4,000 miles in extent and to deliver up the sparse population of a vast tract of country to rapine and murder. ”

“ To garrison the whole frontier with regular troops would expose the province to large expenditure, and the troops, when called upon to act, to calumny and misrepresentation. He accordingly conceived the plan of organising a local militia of 40,000 men, recruited from all classes of the population, Christian and Mussulman alike, to whom the defence of their own localities should be entrusted, and they were to be indemnified if called upon to act beyond the boundaries of their district. ”