(Page 9 of 43) - "Draining the Sea or Feeding the Fire?": The Use of Population Relocation in Counterinsurgency Operations authored by Greenhill, Kelly.

DRAINING THE SEA, OR FEEDING THE FIRE

family’s essential needs and rely on his own institutions to maintain his social and
psychological security; change, when it permits the peasants to participate increasingly in
and enjoy the benefits of the society as a whole. What is distinctive in the resettlement
programs in Vietnam, Algeria, and Angola is that they almost totally undermined the
traditional social and economic institutions and removed the inhabitants even further from
participation in the larger colony or territory. In Algeria and Vietnam [and Angola, too],
the insurgents successfully exploited the social and economic chaos (sic) which followed in

the wake of the resettlement programs.

[43]

In other words, ironically support will tend to rise for insurgents due to the negative externalities
associated with resettlement at the very same time as counterinsurgents are trying to undermine
support for insurgents through the active use of resettlement.

If one accepts the idea that population relocation can actually increase support for the insurgents
due to the problem of unfulfilled expectations, whence do these unfulfilled expectations come?
They originate with the counterinsurgents themselves. Eager to sell the idea of resettlement to an
often reluctant population, to encourage the same population’s continued fidelity to the sitting
regime, and (ever more frequently) to persuade skeptical outsiders that the settlements are not in
fact “concentration camps,” counterinsurgents tend to towards the hyperbolic when touting their
virtues and the potential rewards they offer. They also tend to make expansive promises about
the array of new and/or improved services that will be made available to settlement inhabitants.
At the same time, they also often make promises of improved economic opportunities and
employment prospects, as well as offers of immediate financial incentives, like cash, tools, and
equipment. All of these promises significantly raise the expectations of the civilian population.

This set of circumstances is then made worse by the fact that more often than not resettlement
schemes fail to live up to their promises and/or to meet the population’s expectations. This tends
to be the case for several inter-related reasons. First, whether by design or necessity, only rarely
are sufficient resources allocated and appropriate governmental structures installed to make
fulfilling the promises made possible. For instance, when referring to the inability of the
Portuguese government to deliver on its promises, the then Governor-General of Angola referred
to an “abyss between ‘good intentions’ and ‘realistic possibilities of carrying them out’ and noted
that if the national budget were apportioned equally between Angola and the metropole, Angola’s

budget in 1970 would have been 250 million contos rather than seven million contos.”

[44]

Sometimes, fulfilling promises made is never actually intended, because doing so would run

counter to the interests of the sitting regime.

[45]

For instance, in Vietnam, since many of the

peasants were reluctant to move, coercion had to be used. Homes were destroyed and reportedly
“there was no attempt to provide compensation, as had been done in Malaya, to soften the
harshness of moving. Indeed, it seems probable that little of the money allocated for distribution

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