Litany of world`s wars suffers from lack of distance from the carnage

Win some. Lose some. Some get bombed out. Peacekeepers scored few outright victories in the 1990s, but consider the odds. Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Chechnya, East Timor -in many of the world`s wrong places, the 20th century`s final years were the wrong time.

"Deliver Us From Evil" is not a short book, but given the pace and complexity of international politics, it`s not long enough. With the notable and unexplained exception of Latin America, William Shawcross tries to squeeze the world`s woe between two covers. Focusing on the U.N.`s missions of mercy in the 1990s, "Deliver Us From Evil" is an updated "Around the World in Eighty Days" crossed with "Dracula." A typical chapter opens in Zagreb, hops to New York, eavesdrops on Washington natterings, then overflies Rwandan refugee camps in eastern Zaire and Tanzania.

Of course, there`s a lot of ground to cover. Mid-decade, the International Red Cross estimated that 56 wars were raging, 17 million people were refugees and 26 million homes had been lost. An additional 300 million were enduring drought, pestilence and "acts of God," many of the latter caused or worsened by acts of men.

"The human cost of disasters - mostly man-made - were overwhelming the world`s ability to respond," Shawcross writes.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. While Shawcross deftly outlined the politics and economics of international aid in an earlier book, "The Quality of Mercy," here he only scans the peacekeepers`s books. (This cursory glance sometimes backs the U.N.`s critics. The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, Shawcross archly notes, "had not found a missing Cypriot in 22 years." The Committee on Decolonization`s vital work includes $150,000 junkets to Papua New Guinea.)

Overall, though, the book supports Secretary General Kofi Annan, who argues that the U.N. is asked to save the world and save money. Portugal`s education budget is five times that of the secretariat.

This wouldn`t matter if the West, squirming before televised images of starving Somalians or massacred Kosovars, did not spend unlimited amounts - of rhetoric.

Here`s President Clinton in March 1999, after U.S. bombers forced Yugoslavian troops out of Kosovo: "Whether you live in Africa, in Central Europe or anywhere else, if someone intends to commit massive crimes against innocent civilians, he should know that, to the limit of our capacities, we will prevent it."

That limit was soon tested. On Aug. 30, 1999, 98 percent of the electorate in the Indonesian province of East Timor voted in a U.N.-sponsored referendum overseen by the U.N. On Sept. 4, the results were announced. Almost 80 percent had voted in favor of independence.

Within hours, pro-Indonesian militias embarked on a killing spree. Victims included priests, nuns, doctors, people wearing eyeglasses - seen as "intellectuals," Shawcross explains - ex-government officials and advocates of independence. When a U.N. force finally arrived in Dili, 16 days after the massacre began, the peacekeepers numbered a mere 3,500.

But the U.N. can only act as swiftly and as forcefully as its member nations. Since 1993, when a U.S.-led mission to famine-wracked Somalia ended with dead American soldiers dragged through Mogadishu, the U.N. has been slow to enter conflicts and quick to exit.

This is what former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali sneeringly called "the American syndrome: pull out at the first encounter with serious trouble."

Or don`t enter at all. When Rwandan Hutus began to murder Rwandan Tutsis, the U.N. shut its eyes and watched its words. In an Orwellian instance of political semantics, nations refused to call the slaughter of nearly 1 million Tutsis "genocide."

Why? A 1949 U.N. treaty requires member states to "prevent and punish" genocide. No "genocide"? No requirement.

In the 1990s, though, even the most compassionate questioned the value of intervention. Why send food and medicine to refugee camps, for instance, when armed bands training for the next war seize these supplies? "Humanitarianism has become a resource," Shawcross quotes one philanthropist. "Sometimes we just shouldn`t show up for a disaster." Other times, though, what`s needed is a novel approach. When elections were called during Sierra Leone`s civil war, one province hired South African mercenaries to keep the peace. "They were far from a humanitarian agency," Shawcross acknowledges, "but they appeared to be immensely popular in the areas they policed because they protected the people from the rebels."

If Shawcross has strong opinions about international aid, perhaps that`s because he belongs to that fraternity. "Deliver Us From Evil" grew out of his experience with the International Crisis Group, vaguely described here as a "watchdog organization."

The book also draws on long interviews with Boutros-Ghali and Annan. This access may have yielded some unique insight, but entire chapters read like outtakes from a U.N. secretary general`s diary. What`s missing is a critical assessment of these men and their mission. Shawcross may have been too close to bring his subject into focus. Like a hastily snapped photo of a moving object, "Deliver" gives us a blurred picture. - Peter Rowe

"The Battle For God," by Karen Armstrong; Knopf; 448 pages; $27.50.

When "A History of God" exploded onto the best-seller list in the 1990s, Karen Armstrong established herself as a religion scholar to be reckoned with in the 20th century.

Now, with her newest book, "The Battle for God," Armstrong takes her place of leadership in these new times as well.

Her latest subject is fundamentalism. And Armstrong, a former nun turned Oxford-trained religious commentator, begins by pinpointing a single date in history and then meticulously guides the reader through centuries of events to explain how segments of Islam, Christianity and Judaism took such right turns.

That moment in history: 1492, when out of western Europe rose the beginnings of a modernity that would spawn a religious backlash that we`ve come to know as fundamentalism.

The world was on the brink of great discoveries and explorations; yet campaigns against Islam, Sephardic Jews and certain Christians were becoming precursors of an assault that would shape today`s suspicions and fears.

The best of times? Sure, for some. But they were the worst of times for a simmering stew of religiosity that would come to see this modernity as the enemy. At stake was more than just survival. Their eternity was being threatened.

The world was discovering new and wonderful things. But as science would realize, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As logos, or reason, rose in prominence, mythos, or the mysteries of faith, became discredited. What some would see as liberating, others would view as oppressing. And sometimes those others were right. The Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and other purges through history would show that the dominant culture can be dangerous for others.

Armstrong lays out her findings in painstaking - and sometimes mind-numbing - detail. You know it`s heavy-duty stuff when the glossary spills onto seven pages, the author`s notes fill 27 pages and the bibliography occupies another 16. But the result of her research is nothing short of amazing.

By the time Armstrong reaches the 1970s, the reader is wondering why the world was taken by surprise at the fundamentalist assault of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the Gush Emunim in Israel and Jerry Falwell in the United States. Backed into the corner, fearing annihilation and destruction, they would rise up to try to save their world.

"Modern society had achieved a great deal, materially and morally," she writes. "It had reason to believe in its righteousness. In Europe and the United States, at least, democracy, freedom, and toleration were liberating. But fundamentalists could not see this, not because they were perverse, but because they had experienced modernity as an assault that threatened their most sacred values and seemed to put their very existence in jeopardy. By the end of the 1970s, Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditionalists were poised to fight back."

Movements to privatize religion have backfired - even today. Religious conservatives would not hear of it. Don`t believe Armstrong? Take a look at this year`s primary campaign for presidential candidates. Many of them sounded as if they were running more for chief pastor rather than chief of state.

Even today in American politics, fundamentalists such as Falwell and Pat Robertson control influential voting blocs. The candidates know this and so does Armstrong, who teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism in London.

Fundamentalism, she writes, is now entrenched in the modern world: "It represents a widespread disappointment, alienation, anxiety and rage that no government can safely ignore. So far, efforts to deal with fundamentalism have not been very successful; what lessons can we learn from the past that will help us to deal more creatively with the fears that fundamentalism enshrines in the future?"

With that, Armstrong has posed a question for the ages. She has also crafted a book that should not be ignored. If you want to know why fundamentalists do what they do, read "The Battle for God." (c) Copley News Services

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Author: Sandi Dolbee