Identity Conflicts never begin as identity conflicts
Literature Review:
In ‘The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflicts’, John Bowen argues that although conflicts may at face value appear to have been simmering for hundreds of years under the surface, this is not always the case as can be seen in the former Yugoslavia conflicts.
In ‘Ethnic and Nationalist Violence’, Brubaker and Laitin argue along similar lines to Bowen but they also delve into the problem with far greater detail demonstrating that perceptions of violence may not always be what they seem or what they appear. This is further reinforced by the fact that the former Yugoslavia led a relatively peaceful existence before being broken up.
In ‘Clash of Globalizations’, Stanley Hoffmann argues that although we have seen arise in nationalist identity, globalization has not reduced the influence of the superpowers on world affairs.
Fearon and Laitin in ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’ provide an extensive analysis on the major civil and ethnic conflicts since the Second World War focusing particularly on the era when ethnic conflicts were on the rise especially in Africa
Mueller in ‘The Banality of Ethnic War’ attempts to debunk certain myths and misconceptions about ethnic conflicts which may also appear to be quite media driven in an attempt to coerce violence.
In: Impact of Faith on Political Conflict, Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Content, Hasenclever and Ritterberger focus on how religion can be seen as a sticking point especially with regard to inter ethnic conflict and how this sort of religious fervor is on the rise in several countries.
Introduction:
Identity is always a crucial issue in any political scenario and in today’s day and age life has taught us not to focus too much on identity in itself if one is to succeed. Globalization has brought about changes in the way we perceive things and issues.
Ethnicity is always an issue in every sense and here one can observe that life is not always what is being observed at face value. Although globalization has brought forward several conceptual points in this regard, the issue of national identity has to be taken into account if any reason is to be found to inter ethnic conflicts.
Normally ethnic views may be rather fuzzy at first level but everything becomes clearer when issues are brought to the fore. For example colonialism in Africa had its fair share of violence and brutality but the end result was that countries ended up at war with each other on several grounds.
Ethnic and nationalistic violence
According to Brubaker and Laitin (2012)1, Ethnicity, Violence, and Ethnic Violence Attempts to theorize ethnic and nationalist violence have grown from the soil of two largely nonintersecting literatures: studies of ethnicity, ethnic conflict, and nationalism on the one hand, and studies of collective or political violence on the other.
Within each of these large and loosely integrated literatures, ethnic and nationalist violence has only recently become a distinct subject of inquiry in its own right. In the study of ethnicity, ethnic conflict, and nationalism, accounts of conflict have not been distinguished sharply from accounts of violence.
Violence has generally been conceptualized-if only tacitly-as a degree of conflict rather than as a form of conflict, or indeed as a form of social or political action in its own right. Most discussions of violence in the former Yugoslavia, for example, are embedded in richly contextual narratives of the breakup of the state.
But one should argue that although the state was eventually broken up, the causes of the ethnic violence that followed were not always inter related. There was the issue of Muslim influence in Bosnia Herzegovina where the Muslim minority was intrinsically persecuted and received some horrible forms of torture. Still the nationalists in Serbia were adamant at enforcing their point of view constantly and consistently with the result that the wanton ethnic violence imparted on the minority was simply a result of years of hate and social exclusion. In this case, the situation continued to come to a head with bloody ethnic cleansing and other forms of violence which demonstrated that everyone was intent on exterminating the Muslim minority. Nationalism took a back seat in favour of the worst excesses of basic human hatred.
Bowen2 (1996) states that: “Nowhere does this notion of a prevailing ethnic conflict seem more apt than in the former Yugoslavia. Surely the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians are distinct ethnic groups destined to clash throughout history, are they not? Yet it is often forgotten how small the differences are among the currently warring factions in the Balkans. Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians all speak the same language (Italy has greater linguistic diversity) and have lived side by side, most often in peace, for centuries”.
Although it is common to say that they are separated by religion--Croats being Roman Catholic, Serbs Orthodox Christian, and Bosnians Muslim--in fact each population includes sizeable numbers of the other two religions. The three religions have indeed become symbols of group differences, but religious differences have not, by themselves, caused intergroup conflict. Rising rates of intermarriage (as high as 30 percent in Bosnia) would have led to the gradual blurring of contrasts across these lines.
So here we have the notion that ethnic conflicts do not actually rise up due to the close proximity of differing peoples who have to co-habit with each other. The observation on the religious differences is uniquely interesting as it demonstrates that such religious diversity need not mean that conflict will eventually prevail or that is in essence the whole argument here.
But why do problems arise when a certain loss of control is eventually reached? The eventual breakup of the former Yugoslavia saw warring factions tear each other apart with the eventual result that a certain level of ethnic cleansing resulted and this could certainly not be avoided. The pale intervention of the United Nations and the United States did not stop the violence which escalated into mass ethnic cleansing and which demonstrated that one cannot always adapt to certain circumstances easily. A controlled or planned economy is never ideal but at least it can reduce certain levels of inequality which are brought about by no holds barred capitalism
Hoffman (1996)3 argues that globalization has perhaps reduced the possibility of ethnic conflicts but the creation of new nations with new identities has also shown that this could lead to land grabbing and ethnic conflicts on a really huge scale. Additionally he argues that the conflicts between superpowers have not disappeared, actually they have increased since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the concern with domestic policy has grown even greater in this respect.
Then we have the problem of national politics which tends to override international relations and here one can also observe problems of an ethnic nature if these are not addressed properly. The Serbs used this issue constantly in stirring up hatred for their Muslim counterparts and the end result was that these had to suffer unimaginable racial persecution which was rather comparable to the Jewish problem in the Second World War.
Cases of violent conflict in Yugoslavia are clear examples of how changing group relations can eventually contribute to the outbreak of a conflict. This happened due to the fact that the 1980’s eventually saw the erosion of communal ties within areas which were ethnically heterogeneous. This resulted in politicians enhancing their support to fanning out grievances which may have appeared to be small scale but which eventually grew out of proportion and spiraled out of control. This eventually led to a rise in ethno-nationalism as a cause for support which led other smaller countries to resort to ethnic violence to reach their goals of independence. The Serbs managed to create fears among the smaller nations that they were going to resort to brutal nationalist tactics and the strength of the Communist Party which brought all the nations together dissolved into practically nothing.
The Rwandan Genocide
Mueller (2000)4 focuses a great part of his article on the case in Rwanad where more than a million Rawndans were massacred solely on the basis of their ethnic derivation. Again this was essentially a whipped up form of violence which demonstrated that both sides had lived together for centuries in peaceful harmony and co-existence but the intrusion of French colonial practices resulted in the extreme cases of genocide which permeated the country. Mueller states: “Far from a spontaneous eruption, the basic elements of the genocidal process had been planned for years by Hutu extremists who were substantially in charge of the ruling party, the government bureaucracy, and the police.58 Throughout the country Hutus and Hutu police were urged-or ordered-to engage in the killing, and many do seem to have responded enthusiastically Joining was the Presidential Guard, numbering 700-1,500 men, and the Hutu army, which consisted of some 50,000 men, most of them hastily recruited in the previous few years from landless peasants, the urban unemployed, and foreign drifters who had chiefly signed up not for ideological reasons, but rather for the guaranteed food and drink”.
This demonstrates in no uncertain terms that the genocide had been pre planned beforehand but it also shows that in no uncertain terms, ethnicity took a back seat when compared with all the killings and pre planned executions. Mueller further argues that this demonstrates the ‘banality’ of ethnic warfare as there is simply no scope in engaging into such mass killings without any hope of achieving something tangible or concrete.
The mass killings which are also chillingly portrayed in the seminal film, ‘Hotel Rwanda’ show that there was no real ethnic reason behind the genocide. It was simply a way of fanning nationalistic tensions and aspirations to ensure that the ruling class of Hutus continued to prevail and as such crush the rest of their opposition.
Interestingly, Fearon and Laitin (2000)5 reveal that: there were 127 conflicts of which 13 were anticolonial wars. This makes for 127 civil war starts in a sample of 6,610 country years, a rate of 1.92 per 100. The periods following major international systemic change had the highest onset rates. Civil wars broke out in the late 1940s and the 1950s at 4.6 and 2.2 per 100 country-years, respectively, followed by the 1990s, at 2.0. In absolute terms, the largest number of civil wars began in the 1990s (31), followed by the 1960s and 1970s (19 and 25, respectively).
This shows that the highest prevalence of civil wars is in countries where colonial domination was the norm and one must also reflect upon how the colonial period actually encouraged and fomented ethnic tension. This is similar to the case in India where the partition of India and Pakistan brought about incredible ethnic rivalry and a civil war based on religion which continues to this day, based principally on the problems in Kashmir. Eventually Pakistan itself was to split in 1970 when Bangladesh declared independence and again ethnic tensions rose substantially but when one views the standpoint of the conflict, one has to ask why these inter-ethnic tensions were not intrinsically present in the first place.
Hansenclever and Ritterberger (2000)6 argue that religion remains an important and crucial element in inter ethnic rivalry although this may not seem to be actually clear in the first place. Notwithstanding all this they also argue that: Often the political resurgence of religious communities is accompanied by violent clashes in and between nations. Take, for example, the bloody conflicts in Algeria, Bosnia, East-Timor, Kashmir, Nigeria, Palestine, and Sri Lanka, to name but a few.
Clearly countries where sectarian violence is commonplace, such as Algeria and Nigeria have the greatest problem in addressing the issue of ethnic conflict. In fact even today we are observing continual ethnic conflict in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast as well as other countries such as Sri Lanka where a civil war has been ongoing for several years.
Intercultural communication is hugely important in today’s day and age as it creates a sort of bond between different cultures and different lifestyles which may be important in establishing and confirming world peace. The importance of preserving ethnocentrism in the context of globalization as this continues to dominate world politics is something which is argued by Mueller but one also has to take this in the context of the ever rising ethnic and sectarian tensions which are constantly affecting the world.
The importance of understanding other cultures remains paramount of intercultural communication if we are to succeed in understanding why identity cannot be part of inter ethnic conflict. Cross cultural knowledge is grossly inhibited by the attitudes of certain governments, especially with the war in Iraq and the situation in North Korea as the article argues. However it is also crucially important to note that understanding other countries’ styles and lifestyles may not always be a harbinger to world peace as this may lead to misrepresentation and misidentification. In fact the situation in Korea could be a sort of eye opener in the point of the preservation of ethnic identity as this could also mean that the division which is artificial shows that two peoples cannot continue to remain apart forever.
Further projects of this nature should be implemented to ensure that intercultural communication continues to remain at the forefront of all efforts for peacekeeping. Actually the policy undertaken by the present US administration is heartening in the sense that there is much emphasis on dialogue than confrontation or belligerence. Here one can see a further emphasis on intercultural communication as a tool to bring people together and to understand how the different cultures and attitudes can build bridges to make the world a much better place.
Inter ethnic tension will always remain but the issue at this stage will be how this tension can be calmed and assessed so as not to produce the bloody sectarian violence which has dominated world history for the past decades since the Second World War. Perhaps the question where sectarian violence was highest on the agenda was in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the wanton massacre of the Muslim minority still shocks us all today. However this article has attempted to explain that sectarian violence is not always something which happens due to rivalry but is often something which is intrinsically provoked for selfish needs and aspirations.
Identity is definitely not an issue in sectarian violence which is almost always brought about by ulterior motives which have nothing to do with actual ethnic tension.
Bibliography:
Hoffmann S; Clash of Globalizations; Foreign Affairs 2002
Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin; Ethnic and Nationalist Violence; Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 423-452
Bowen J; The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict; National Endowment for Democracy 1996
James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin; Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 75-90
John Mueller; The Banality of "Ethnic War” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer, 2000), pp. 42-70
Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger Impact of Faith on Political Conflict
Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict; Millenium Journal of International Studies 2000
Friedland R, Hecht RD.. Profane violence at the sacred center: the case of Jeru-salem and Ayodhya. Unpublished manuscript, Depts. of Sociology and Religious Studies, Univ. Calif., 1998
Santa Barbara Gaborieau M. From Al-Beruni to Jinnah: idiom, ritual and ideology of the Hindu-Muslim confrontation in South Asia. Anthropol. Today 1(3):7-14 1985.
Gagnon VP.. Ethnic nationalism and international conflict: the case of Serbia. Int. Secur. 19(3):130-66 1994-1995
Gagnon VP.. Ethnic conflict as demobilizer: the case of Serbia. Inst. European Stud. Working Paper No. 96.1. Inst. European Stud., Cornell Univ. 1996
