Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
Ethnic Nationalism Causes Conflict
Most of the armed conflicts that have
taken place during the last two decades
have been among ethnic groups; recent examples
being Sudan, the Balkans, and Tibet
War used to be mostly about countries fighting each other; more recently it’s been dominated by conflict among ethnic groups.
Past injustices within groups fuel resentment. Devious leaders are able to harness that and turn it into hatred. The followers are taught to believe that their future will be secure if only they can have a nation of their own. This new nation will be led, of course, by those who stir up the bitterness. The result is ethnic nationalism, a force that all too often leads to conflict.
Sometimes, the grievances that drive ethnic nationalism are ancient and sometimes modern. They can be about one group feeling dominated by another and fearing the loss of its identity. They can be about religious differences; one group imposing its beliefs on another. They can be about economic exploitation. There are scores of sparks that can ignite the fire of conflict.
Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson says ethnic nationalism is the “central point of tension and violence around the world.” Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff has called it the battle over “blood and belonging.” Its horrors have dominated front pages and newscasts for the last 20 years.
Sudan Torn by Conflict
Sudan has been the scene of ethnic nationalist fighting for even longer. Many ancient kingdoms governed the area, which came under British rule in 1882.
The modern nation’s boundaries were drawn by Egypt and Britain in the 1950s. But, those boundaries contained two very different peoples. In the north were Arab Muslims, while in the south the people were African and Christian, or followers of their traditional faiths.
When the British governed Sudan they treated it as two separate territories. The result was increased isolation between the already distinct north and south. The policy probably planted the seeds of conflict in the years to come. But, when Britain handed the country its independence in 1956 it was as a single country.
Nothing has run smoothly since. From the start, the country was dominated politically by the Arab north.
The first round of fighting lasted from before independence until 1972. The World Council of Churches managed to get both sides to lay down their weapons in a peace agreement that gave the south a fair degree of independence from the north.
From independence, there had been several shaky elected governments before the army took over. In 1983, Major General Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri tore up the peace agreement of 1972 and created a state that brought the south back under the control of the north. The general also extended fundamentalist Islamic law to cover the whole country.
The south rebelled and the fighting took an estimated two million lives. Both sides used extreme cruelty in their conflict. But, after two years of intense diplomatic pressure a peace treaty was signed in 2005. The accord provides for a high degree of political freedom for the south. The region will also share oil revenue equally with the north.
Genocide in Darfur
But, as the south was quieting down the west of the country was blowing up. The region
of Darfur is dry, poverty-
The government (although it claims to have no connection to the action) turned loose a bunch of murderous thugs called the Janjaweed. A BBC report says “Refugees from Darfur say that following air raids by government aircraft, the Janjaweed ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women, and stealing whatever they can find.”
In March 2004, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, called Darfur the “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis.” But, beyond talk, the international community has not done much.
The African Union has sent a small force to try and help. The United Nations has
been unable to do much because it lacks the financial and military support of major
powers. But, beyond a lot of hand-
Balkan Violence
Military intervention has been tried before and the results have been mixed, as has been seen in the Balkans.
For centuries Slavic people have lived along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea and into the mountains behind: an area known as the Balkans.
At a European crossroads, the region has seen more than its fair share of conquering armies pass through. Each left its mark on the area while the mountains divided groups from one another.
All this served to create diversity among the south Slavs. Slovenes, Serbs, Macedonians,
and Croats developed their own languages and cultures. Bosnians broke with the Christianity
of the others and adopted Islam. There are sub-
Despite the mutual hostility, there were movements to unite all these south Slavic people into a single nation, but nothing came of them until 1945. That’s when Josip Broz Tito brought them all under his control as prime minister of Yugoslavia.
Tito established a communist dictatorship over the country. Dissent was squashed, so the various groups kept a lid on their enmities. Tito died in 1980 and the country began to split apart along ethnic lines.
Ethnic Cleansing
Serbia had been the dominant force in Yugoslavia and its armies were thrown into battle to hold the country together. Between 1991 and 1995 there were four wars marked by monstrous cruelty.
A new and chilling phrase entered the English language: “ethnic cleansing” is a loose
translation of a Slavic expression. It means mass murder and it took place all over
the former Yugoslavia. The worst example was in a place called Srebrenica, Bosnia.
In July 1995, about 8,000 
men and boys were killed by Serbian military forces. It
was the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. Thrown into mass graves,
the bodies have since been exhumed (above) and given a proper burial.
Throughout all the conflict, United Nations peacekeepers tried to control the violence. The action cost 16 Canadian soldiers their lives and another 120 were wounded. Soon, all that was left of Yugoslavia was Serbia and Montenegro. And then, even this started to fall apart.
Violence broke out in the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1998. The province is one of the poorest regions in Europe; its people, 90 percent of whom are of Albanian descent, complained about unfair treatment by the Serbian government.
The bullets started flying and the Serbs began another bout of ethnic cleansing. Western nations under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened to protect the Kosovars. The Serbs stood down and Kosovo was administered by the United Nations.
In 2006, Montenegro quit the Serbian federation. Then, in February 2008, Kosovo declared itself to be an independent nation. Many Western nations moved quickly to recognize it as an independent state. Canada held back from doing so but, eventually fell in line with the others.
All that’s left now of the once multi-
In May 2008, the country’s Democratic Party captured substantial support among voters in an election; this party, along with President Boris Tadic, favours creating closer ties with the European Union. That means turning away from the ethnic nationalism that has fuelled Serbian politics for a long time.
The extremists who would fight to keep Kosovo part of Serbia are by no means down and out. They are still a significant power in Serbian politics and could rise to take control again.
Chinese Control of Tibet
Who has sovereignty over Tibet depends on how far back in history you want to go. At times, Tibet has been an independent nation governed by Tibetans. At other times, Tibet has been part of China governed by the Chinese.
Most recently, after a brief military conflict, Tibet declared itself an independent
country in 1912. With some world recognition as a sovereign state it governed itself
until 1950. China then pointed out that Tibet was part of ancient China under the
Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1260-
In 1950, the Chinese army invaded and totally overwhelmed Tibet’s tiny military. Since then there has been what the BBC describes as “Widespread mistreatment of the Tibetan population and a denial of religious and political freedom.”
Several times, Tibetans have risen in protest against Chinese domination. These uprisings have been crushed brutally. Most recently, riots in the capital Lhasa were timed to coincide with the beginning of celebrations leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Chinese authorities put down the dissent but with less violence than in previous years. Tibetan sympathizers around the world disrupted the Olympic torch relay. This made a mess of China’s attempt to use the sports extravaganza to show the world what a progressive country it had become.
China’s policy is to make Tibetan culture disappear. It has resettled large numbers
of Chinese people in the Himalayan outpost. It has banned Buddhist observances among
students and the families of civil servants. It has trash-
However, history suggests that trying to stamp out a culture, especially one as unique and vibrant as Tibet’s, only makes that culture stronger and more resistant.
Sources
“Q&A: Sudan’s Darfur Conflict.” BBC News, February 23, 2010.
“Peace and Conflict.” Monty G. Marshall, et al, Centre for International Development and Conflict Management, May 2005.
“Q&A: China and Tibet.” BBC News, June 19, 2008
Photo credit: Almir Dzanovic
© Canada and the World, October 2008
Updated December 2009
All rights reserved
WAR CRIMINALS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE
The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide in connection with the Srebrenica killings.
His trial started in The Hague, Netherlands in July 2008.
Earlier, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was undergoing trial by the same tribunal when he died in March 2006.
Two Serbian army officers have been convicted of crimes against humanity; one was
sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, the other got an 18-
“Repression and political discrimination against ethnic minorities…have declined
significantly, coinciding with the dramatic decline in autocratic regimes since the
late 1980s. Since 1950, the number of minorities benefitting from policies aimed
at remedying past political discrimination has increased five-
“Many of the world’s problems stem from the fact that it has 5,000 ethnic groups but only 190 countries.”
Scientific American September 1998
TWO KINDS OF NATIONALISM
Ethnic nationalism bases membership in the nation or group on heredity. To be welcomed into the group a person must be able to trace their descent from its original members. So, ethnic nationalists exclude all those whose bloodlines are not pure.
Civic nationalism, on the other hand, is inclusive. Its core belief is that race, gender, religion, language, or ethnicity don’t matter. A person who accepts the founding principles of the nation is a member.
HOW TO CREATE
A NATION
The concept of the nation state emerged in 17th century Europe, although there were plenty of “nations” before that time.
The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended decades of war in Europe. What the treaty did was establish the fact that each nation had complete sovereignty within its boundaries. There was to be an end to priests, monarchs, countries, and others trying to pinch territory from each other.
Boundaries were drawn where geography (mountain range, river, coastline, etc.) gave an obvious line. Common languages and culture were used to group people within a region. But, national boundaries did not always follow such rules.
The British historian Eric Hobsbawm says France is typical. He has written that at the time of the 1789 French Revolution, only half of the “French” people spoke some French.
The geographic position of Poland has moved east and west and back again over the years. As well, national boundaries frequently divide ethnic groups into separate countries while forcing others that didn’t much like each other to live in the same nation.
Entire villages in Darfur have vanished, at the hands of the Janjaweed (above), along with their inhabitants; estimates of the death toll range from 200,000 to 400,000, with refugees numbering two million.
The Janjaweed have also used systematic rape as a method of terrorizing the inhabitants.
FADING MEMORIES
Time is the great healer with many conflicts based on ethnic nationalism. But usually, the healing takes several generations.
Between 1066 and 1815 the English and French fought at least 15 wars against each other. They are still not greatly fond of each other but at least they haven’t come to blows for almost 200 years.
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden spent centuries fighting among themselves before they settled down to live peacefully with one another.
How far back in history can territorial claims go? That’s an issue at the heart of many, many conflicts. Who has the strongest historical claim to Israel/Palestine? Should the Italians be able to claim Britain by virtue of their Roman ancestor’s invasion of the island in 43 CE? India was once occupied by Mongols; should their descendants get it back?