Ethnic/National Conflict

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Ethnic/National Conflict

• Violence, Genocide, and Interventions

Rwanda
Nazis in WWII
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What is an Ethnic Group?

• A large group of people who share ancestral,
  language, cultural, or religious ties and a
  common identity.
• Thus, this is very subjective and abstract, but
  has importance when many people begin to agree.
• Ethnicity and Nationality have very similar
  definitions and sometimes are one-in-the-same for
  the Kurds, Kosovars, Chiapas, etc.

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I believe this is from Cambodia The effect of
the Pol Pot Regime
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• Why should we study ethnic conflicts or civil
  wars?

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Why Ethnicity/Nationality is relevant to IR and
world politics

• Nations often identify with territory.
• Claim to Self-Determination.
• Groups spread across borders.
• May lead to terrorism or civil war that crosses
  borders.
• Affects the foreign policy of states.
• States may aid or instigate problems with groups
  in foreign states

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How is ethnicity related to conflict and violence?

• In-group/out-group phenomenon Other groups seem
  to be different and foreign, and thus potentially
  threatening.
• In the worst case situations, people become
  dehumanized, which makes it possible to kill them
  like lesser beings.
• Nazis with the Jews and Slavs
• Yugoslavia
• Tutsis and Hutus in Africa

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Ethnicity and violent conflict contd?

• Past (sometimes long) histories of conflict that
  spiral.
• Becomes impossible who was to tell for original
  sins that set in motion continuous ethnic hatred
• Notable feuds Israel-Palestine,
  Armenia-Azerbaijan, Armenia-Turks, Serbs-Croats,
  Hutu-Tutsis (Burundi, Rwanda, Congo), Kurds vs.
  everyone around them.

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Ethnicity and violent conflict contd?

• Cultural differences such as religion pour fuel
  on such fires.
• Leaders manipulation Ethnic conflict does not
  just happen, it has to be instigated.
• Often used to exploit differences between people
  that may not be that important.
• Intentional spread of fear and threat against
  groups by national leaders Hitler-Jews, Idi
  Amin-Indian merchants, Milosevic in Serbia vs.
  Croats and Muslims.

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Other Important Points

• Sometimes the differences between warring groups
  are slight or by degree.
• The dehumanization of people makes it possible to
  forget similarities of culture.
• Are Serbs and Croats really drastically
  different? Only by Religion and to a lesser
  extent language. How can outsiders identify a
  Kurd or a Shiite from Sunni Iraqis?

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Case Study Former Yugoslavia
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Brief History of Yugoslavia

• Area controlled by Austrians and Turks for
  hundreds of years.
• Though most people are Slavic, different
  languages and religions (Eastern Orthodox,
  Muslim, Catholics)
• Ethnic conflict goes back many centuries
• Most recent periods of ethnic conflict and
  genocide WWII when many Croats helped Nazis
  exterminate Jews, Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims.
  Then again after Cold War

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Brief History of Yugoslavia, contd

• Yugoslavia independent Kingdom after WWI.
• Yugoslavia means Land of the Southern Slavs as
  opposed to northern Slavs of Poles and Russians,
  but did not include Bulgaria which is also Slavic
  but earlier won its independence.

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Brief History of Yugoslavia, contd

• Croat-Slovene communist Marshall Tito led
  resistance that liberated Yugoslavia from Nazi
  occupation during WWII.
• Later became ruler of the country and
  successfully prevented ethnic conflict.
• Died in 1980 from cancer leaving a power vacuum.
  Certain leaders manipulated ethnicity to mobilize
  others for political support. This lead to the
  breakup of Yugoslavia when Slovenia and Croatia
  declared independence, later followed by Bosnia
  and Macedonia

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The Serbian led Yugoslavian government first
tried to stop Croatia from leaving the country
but lost. Then, Yugoslavia attempted to help
Serbians in Croatia and later Bosnia establish
their own governments, that would eventually be
reunited with Serbia. Serbs in Bosnia turned to
ethnic cleansing as a way to eliminate the
opposition ethnic groups. Defined as Forced
displacement of an ethnic group from a particular
territory, accompanied by massacres and other
human rights violations. Goldstein
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Ethnic Diversity of Yugoslavia

• Republic of Croatia (4.67 million)
• Religion 77 Roman Catholic 11 Serbian
  Orthodox
• Nationality 78 Croat,12 Serbian
• Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (including Kosovo,
  and its refugees) (11.21 million)
• Religion 65 Serbian Orthodox, 19 Muslim, 4
  Roman Catholic, 1 Protestant, 11 other
• Nationality 63 Serbian, 14 Albanian, 6
  Montenegrin, 4 Hungarian, 13 other

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Ethnic Diversity of Yugoslavia

• Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• (3.36 million)
• Religion 40 Muslim, 31 Serbian Orthodox, 15
  Roman Catholic
• Nationality40 Serbian, 38 Muslim,  22 Croat
• Big Problem The nations overlap from town to
  town.

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• Ethnic Cleansing meant forcing other ethnic
  groups out of their homes and villages, and if
  they refused killing them. The goal was to
  homogenize the land for your ethnic group.
• The Bosnians and Croats, and later the Kosovars
  fought back and reciprocated with their own
  massacres.

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An ethnically cleansed town
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Human Rights and Intervention
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Western European nations, along with the US,
became enraged over the bloodshed and eventually
intervened to stop the Serbs, and their
compatriots in Bosnia, with the authority and
force of the United Nations. Later NATO troops
replace UN peace-keepers in Bosnia. Though the
people of the area were very similar in most
respects, and actually much more intertwined
nationally, leaders succeeded in convincing other
people that other ethnic groups posed a risk. In
reality, many of the people were of multinational
lineage, though this was ignored and treated as a
fiction. The ethnic lines were never quite as
clear as some have claimed. There are few pure
Croats, Serbs, etc.
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Later the Serbians again in 1999 attempted to
cleanse the Kosovo area of Albanian Muslims, the
Kosovars. But NATO acted to stop Serb
aggression.
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War Crimes

• Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic turned over to UN
  for war crimes in 2001 for crimes against
  humanity and genocide, and is still under trial.
  He is defending himself without legal
  representation and sees the Criminal Proceedings
  as illegitimate.
• Radovan Karadzic of the Bosnian Serb forces was
  also indicted of such crimes but has not been
  apprehended.