Nationalist Conflict

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Nationalist Conflict

• Causes, Myths, and Solutions

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What is nationalist conflict?

• a conflict in which a sub-national (minority)
  group challenges the policies of the state or
  other political actors, usually by asking for
  group rights or recognition of some sort.

Note for our purposes, ethnic and national
conflict can be seen as virtually synonymous
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• 60 percent of the worlds 20 million refugees are
  fleeing ethnopolitical conflicts and repression
  

Top photo a woman from Abkhazia, Georgia who was
forced to flee her home bottom right, Chechen
refugees. Photos Fred Clarke, International Red
Cross
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• Since the end of World War II, 16.5 million
  people have died in internal conflicts, compared
  with 3.3 million in interstate wars. There have
  been about 122 civil wars since 1945, compared
  with 25 conventional wars. Many are between
  different ethnic groups.

Youths in Kabul, Afghanistan, sift through rubble.
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• There are currently about 250 active
  ethnopolitical movements using various forms of
  protest and rebellion.
  

• Nationalist conflict occurs in all regions of the
  world
  
• Serious conflicts, 1995-98
• 16 Europe
• 10 Middle East
• 31 Asia
• 31 Africa
• 7 Latin America

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Myths of nationalist conflict (1)

• MYTH Nationalist conflict occurs because of
  ancient tribal or ethnic hatreds.
  (primordialism)
  
• NO. Nationalist conflicts nearly always occur
  because of economic and political policies
  pursued by modern-day states.
  
• In other words, so-called nationalist conflict
  is rarely a conflict over ethnicity, and much
  more a conflict about politics.

Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
Photo BBC.
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What are some of the practices that might create
nationalist grievances?

• Creation of an official language
• Banning of certain forms of cultural expression
  (music, dress)
  
• Preferential employment opportunities
• Preferential political opportunities
• Changing of place names

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What causes nationalist conflict? Various theories

• State-building nationalism ? sense of
  discrimination among culturally coherent ethnic
  group ? peripheral nationalism and ethnic
  conflict
• Competition over resources ? inter-elite
  competition ? nationalist mobilization
  (instrumentalism)
  
• Note Nationalism is often the framing ideology
  of ethnic conflict even when nationalism is not
  at the root of the conflict

State-building nationalism in Turkey Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk
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Myths of Nationalist Conflict (2)

• MYTH There is more nationalist and ethnic
  conflict today than in any other time, and the
  number of such conflicts keeps increasing.
  
• NO. The rate of nationalist conflict rose
  steadily from the 1950s to the early 1990s and
  has since been dropping.

Source Minorities at Risk Project
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Source Minorities at Risk Project
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Myths of nationalist conflict (3)

• MYTH Nationalist conflict usually occurs
  between two or more different social groups or
  ethnic communities.
  
• NO. Most nationalist conflicts occur between a
  minority group (or PART OF A MINORITY group, and
  a state (and its forces).

A Russian tank in Chechnya.
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Modes of nationalist conflict

• Conventional politics
• Nonviolent protest and direct action
• Rebellion
• 70 ethnic groups have waged armed conflicts for
  autonomy or independence since the 1950s (not
  including liberation movements of former European
  colonies)

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Note the most common form of nationalist
conflict is NOT violence

• Of 161 groups pursuing self-determination in
  1998-2000, only about 41 (a quarter) used
  violence. The rest used conventional politics and
  nonviolent protest.

Kurdish-rights activist Osman Baydemir on the
campaign trial in Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 2004.
Photo NF Watts
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What factors help determine whether an ethnic
conflict will be violent? (Gurr and Harff)

• Level of group cohesion
• Regime type
• Level of external support
• Depends in part on status of target state

A Kurdish fighter in northern Iraq, 1996. Photo
Eddy van Wessel
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Resolving nationalist conflict

• State acknowledgement of collective rights and
  provision of institutional means for pursuing
  interests
  
• Federalism (Hechter)
• independence
• Only 5 new states emerged from ethnic conflict in
  the last 40 years (East Timor, Slovenia, Croatia,
  Eritrea, Bangladesh)

Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka have been negotiating
with the government and are seeking to change
their image.