Word: civilian
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...plump target was the tradition of civilian control of the military. If only the bureaucrats had stayed out of the way, victims complained, the soldiers might have got the job done. As upwards of 20,000 troops flooded into what Dade County officials call the war zone, the army had clearly won new allies -- unlike the haggard representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Soldiers bivouacked on the ground, sharing prepackaged MRES (meals ready to eat) and carrying groceries for tired refugees. Day and night, they put up tents, folded linens and stuffed welcome packages of toiletries for tent cities...
...without declaring martial law, even the military cannot impose its will on a civilian area. Unlike Desert Storm, there is no unified command, no General Norman Schwarzkopf. The Army, for instance, promised to have tent cities for 20,000 up and running by the first weekend after Andrew. But for the next week military and local jurisdictions quarreled over sites, facilities, building codes and, in the case of Florida City -- a city virtually wiped out by the hurricane -- a federal demand to kick in 10% of the cost...
...FEMA official, observing the magnitude of Hurricane Andrew's destructive force and the governmental disorder it caused, had an even gloomier thought. He wondered how Washington ever imagined FEMA could handle its ultimate disaster assignment: preserving the civilian government in a nuclear war. For FEMA, and indeed for the entire government, Andrew has provided an unwelcome lesson, one in humility...
Bosnian and Serb leaders also signed an agreement to place the artillery of both sides under U.N. supervision to pinpoint who is responsible for shelling civilian areas. General Satish Nambiar of India, who was heading the U.N. forces, publicly doubted that his 1,500-man contingent was large enough to monitor the long-range weapons. In any case, the agreement did not take effect, and Sarajevo continued to suffer nighttime bombardment from the surrounding hills...
...proof of individual murders is still rare. But there are numerous accounts of starvation, beatings, interrogation and miserable sanitation. Western diplomats think many of the camps will turn out to be similar to the few they have been allowed to see: harsh but not murderous detention sites where enemies, civilian and military, are warehoused before expulsion or exchange. Yet there is the fear that other camps could be much worse...