Conflict is a part of every day human existence. It could be said that it is part of even animal and all life existence. But to look at the one specific thing and to see that the conflict is great anywhere, is to know that one thing better than to know just a general principle about humanity. What I mean is conflict is often related underlying factors. One of these factors is the ethnicity of groups, where they stand on the financial socioeconomic scale, and their culture and religion. This essay explores the issue of conflict and uses as examples two different regions, Nigeria and Guatemala, to establishes a relationship between these categories and conflict.
An ethno-religious conflict is one in which the conflict has a relation or it’s roots in either the ethnicity or the religious affiliation of both parties. A country in Africa which has a long history of ethnic clashes is Nigeria. Part of the reason for this is that the country of Nigeria as we know it today was not always as it was. As a country it is composed of fifteen different kingdoms, each which has it’s own culture and leader. Nigeria also has over 400 ethnic groups, which belong to a variety of different religious sects. Long since the formation of the Nigerian state, and according to B. Salawu from the university of Ilorin Nigeria in his study “Ethno-Religious Conflicts in Nigeria: Causal Analysis and Proposals for New Management Stategies” Nigeria as a country Is a “multi-ethnic nation state, which has been grappling and trying to cope with the problem of ethnicity on the one hand, and the problem of enthno-religou conflicts on the other” (Salawu, 345).
The heart of the problem as Salawu, who is a Nigerian himself, is that because across time there has been a problematic problem of ethno-religious conflicts. Some of the religious groups have encouraged the formation of ethnic militias. A few examples are the Igbo People Congress, Ebgesu Boys, The Ijaw Youth, and many more.
Salawu points out that there is not currently much good data out there to quantify the scope of these ethno-religious conflicts. It is relevant today because there has been a recent increase in the number of ethno-religious conflicts that have broke out within the country. These conflicts, stemming from the similar terms employed in this essay take on many forms including: riots, assassination, armed struggles, sabotage, guerilla warfare and succession. (Salawu, 345). ‘The effects of the conflicts lead to a general feeling of insecurity, especially where the acts of violence occurred.
One specific example of such violence in Nigeria was the Kaduna Riots, in which the Igbo tribe, which is mostly Christian and of the same ethnic group, was mostly affected. The riots occurred this last year and left over a dozen dead. The news coverage of it paints an instability that stems from religious and ethnic differences. 247Ureports called it a day in which “blood and fire lined the streets.” The violence started following explosions in three churches and continued for nearly a week.
The violence seems to have stemmed from a simple misunderstanding between a Christian and a Muslim at a local market. If it were not for the ethical question in this matter, it is possible that things would not have become as violent as they did. It could have been a normal disagreement between two people, but instead it became a fight between two different groups each considering the other group “them” while thinking of themselves as “us.”
The fights were of clear separation between Christian and Muslim. Both belong to different ethnic groups so it becomes a bit of a gray area when deciding which are the underlying differences between the groups. Is the different religions a symptoms of the differences in ethnicity or is it the other way around?
Historically, there were riots between the two groups, also called the Kaduna riots, which are now thought of as the “Prelude” between for the Civil War in Nigeria, which occurred between 1967-1970.
Nigeria has a long history of small things, neighborly misunderstandings, leading to all-out warlike conflicts and violence. Often what is these misunderstandings can be traced backed to a specific causes, but mostly the literal causes is not as important since it is the underlying tensions which allow for small things to turn into large scale clashes between groups.
Nigeria is also a country where the income equality remains extremely unequal. Between 2004-2009, a time when many countries in the region with similar problems as Nigeria were improving, income equality in Nigeria disapproved. When Nigeria returned to Civilian rule in 1999 military and religious violence increased, not decreased. (Aigbokhan, 1). Ben. E. Aigbokhan, writing for the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), notes that poverty is one of the biggest social problems facing Nigeria and ties it in with the tensions that the country often experiences between groups. The causes for the poverty come from a variety of sources. From the varying prices of oil, the main export, to the growing debt, and domestic policy mistakes.
Distinct from Nigeria in people, geography, and history, Guatemala as a country’s one similarity with Nigeria is it’s impoverished people, the differences in languages spoken, and a historical tension between the Spanish brought Catholicism and existing religion.
Generally speaking, the Ethnic conflicts in Guatemala are most pronounced in the clashes between the Spanish blood that came with the conquistadores, and then the indigenous people, who while they form their own group, have not had the scale of clashes as they have had with the Spanish.
Poverty, like in Nigeria, is also a large problem within the country. In the 80s and 90s while most of the world—even the poor countries—were seeing economic advances, Guatemala was experiencing an economic decline, prompting economist Jeffrey Sachs to include it on his list of countries that while not destitute themselves contained, “destitute populations within them.” (The End of Poverty, Pg 71)
The British economist, Jeffrey Saches in his book “The End of Poverty” saw three overriding factors that led to this state of economic affiars 1) geography, 2) deep social divisions and 3) natural disasters.
- Mix of mountains and low lying tropical rain forest provide challenges
- Occur along ethnic lines
Regardless of how we determine who was right side and who was the wrong side, the status quo won the war. One of the first presidents in Guatemala to be elected democratically was Jacobo Arbenz, had a government that initiated changes to benefit not the wealthy of Guatemala but the poor, the destitute, and after his assassination a 36 year long war was fought on the grounds that the government owed the people the right to work hard. Everyone who was a good leader who spoke out against injustice is six feet under the ground. (Sachs, 74).
Many Guatemalans are mestizos, decedents of indigenous and Spanish blood. In the capital, the elite have for the most part maintained their European bloodlines with the poorest indigenous villages retaining their Mayan identity. The Caribbean coast is where descendants of Africa, Garifunas can be found, brought by the slave trade.
The major religion is the Catholicism brought by the Spanish but changed by the Mayans who held tightly onto their traditional beliefs
As Saches points out, many problems have their roots in ethnic, religious and economic factors. Applying this and looking at all of the conflicts that have erupted and are currently erupting within humanity, it seems the vast majority stem back to these.
Conflicts may be apart of human nature, but in looking at the factors that bring them about, such as those that lead to them in Guatemala and Nigeria, and one can argue that they are not necessary parts of the human condition but avoidable. If income levels rose to such a point that no one suffered from poverty, it people learned religious tolerance and also not to feel like they are in competition with the members of a different ethnic group, than such incidences of violence would be less frequent.
References
Sachs, Jeffrey. The end of poverty: economic possibilities for our time. New York: Penguin Press, 2005. Print.
Salawu , B. . "Ethno-Religious Conflicts in Nigeria: Causal Analysis and Proposals for New Management Strategies ."European Journal of Social Sciences – 13 (2010): 345-353. Print.
Stanton, Andrea L.. Cultural sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa an encyclopedia.. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2012. Print.
