Foreign Policy: Think Again: Ethnic Conflict

Foreign Policy
Summer 1998

Think Again: Ethnic Conflict _*

By Yayha Sadowski _**

If the peace accord in Northern Ireland manages to hold together, one of its most beneficial spinoffs might be the demise of a popular myth: namely, that the end of the Cold War unleashed a global frenzy of ethnic and religious conflicts. In fact, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, a long list of seemingly perennial ethnic struggles—the Lebanese civil war, the Moro insurrection in the Philippines, regional clashes in Chad, the Eritrean secession, and fratricide between blacks and whites in South Africa—have been grinding to a halt. Indeed, the most striking trend in warfare during the 1990s has been its decline. There were just 27 major armed conflicts documented in 1996, down from 33 such struggles in 1989.

How, then, did everyone get the idea that the end of the Cold War was ushering us into a violent new era of ethnic pandemonium? This perception is one of those optical illusions that round-the-clock and round-the-world media coverage has helped to create. The agonizing battle that pitted Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims, and Serbs against each other occurred on Europe’s fringes, within easy reach of television cameras. The wars in Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Tajikistan, while more distant, were still impressive in the way that they humbled the former Soviet colossus. Many observers mistook these conflicts as the start of a new trend. Some were so impressed that they began to reclassify conflicts in Angola, Nicaragua, Peru, and Somalia—once seen as ideological or power struggles—as primarily ethnic conflicts.

And once they designated these wars as ethnic conflicts, it became routine to refer to them as products of "ancient" tribal or religious rivalries. But the reality is that most of these conflicts are expressions of "modern hate" and largely products of the twentieth century. In the former Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats coexisted with one another, and both claimed Muslims as members of their communities, until World War II. Muslims and Jews had no special history of intercommunal hatred until the early 1920s, when nascent Arab nationalism began to conflict with the burgeoning Zionist movement. Contrary to public perception, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda are not members of warring "tribes." Originally, they were two different social castes within the same ethnic group, sharing the same language, religion, and culture. It was not until the Belgians occupied the country after World War I and began backing the minority Tutsis at the expense of the majority Hutus that the seeds for genocide were planted.

Of course, the agitators in all these conflicts tend to dream up fancy historic pedigrees for their disputes. The Arab-Israeli conflict is described as a Biblical struggle 4,000 years in the making; Bosnian Serbs imagine that they are fighting to avenge their defeat by the Ottoman Turks in 1389; Hutus declare that Tutsis have "always" treated them as subhumans; and ira bombers attack their victims in the name of a nationalist tradition they claim has burned since the Dark Ages.

Unfortunately, pundits and policymakers have taken this rhetoric seriously—so seriously, in fact, that they often throw up their hands and declare there is no solution. In her book On the Edge, Elizabeth Drew writes that Bill Clinton had intended to intervene in Bosnia as early as 1993, until he read the book Balkan Ghosts, which convinced the president that "these people had been killing each other in tribal and religious wars for centuries." Two years later, however, Croat ground forces, with the support of NATO airpower, brought an abrupt end to this so-called insoluble conflict.

In fact, the principal challenge to ending conflicts in Bosnia and Northern Ireland has not involved defeating fanatical adversaries or overcoming the burdens of history. Rather, the primary problem has been that ethnic conflicts are fought among neighbors, among people who live intermingled with one another, forced to share the same resources and institutions. When two states end a war, they may need only to agree to stop shooting and respect a mutual border. But in ethnic conflicts there are often no established borders to retreat behind. Convincing the combatants that they must share power peacefully and learn to coexist is often the only long-term solution. This is the objective of the Dayton accord on Bosnia and the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland.

Just a few months ago, Clinton told a group of high-school students that combatants in Northern Ireland were "still arguing over what happened 600 years ago between the Catholics and the Protestants." The Irish peace agreement proved once again that mythic past struggles are no match for the appeal of a better common future.

Tribal Wisdom