Ethnic Conflict

Dimensions of Conflict

Closer examination reveals that so-called ethnic conflicts all have a political character, and that other kinds of difference, like religion, can be as important, or more important, than any difference in ethnic origin. The major ethnic conflicts have occurred when minorities have been regarded as threatening the security of the state; some were attempting to secede from the state, as in Northern Ireland (from the United Kingdom after 1969), Biafra (from Nigeria in 1967), Bangladesh (from Pakistan in 1971), Northern Cyprus (from Cyprus in 1974), Tamil Nadu (from Sri Lanka in 1981), and Chechnya (from the Russian Federation in 1991). These were all armed conflicts.

[Page 451]In other, less-violent conflicts, the political issues have been associated with language difference, as with French Canada and the Fleming-Walloon division in Belgium. The conflict between Arabs and Jews over Palestine is political, but it has religious and ethnic dimensions as well. Comparisons demonstrate that although all conflicts are inherently political, some have ethnic, national, religious, or linguistic dimensions. When one group enjoys economic advantages envied by another group, this adds a class dimension. The more dimensions there are to a conflict, the more difficult it is to resolve.

The history of the Balkans provides some striking examples. The Republic of Yugoslavia, as it existed from 1918 to 1990 (first as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), was an outstanding example of a multiethnic state. There were six national republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia) and two autonomous provinces (Voivodina and Kosovo). During Marshal Tito's presidency of Yugoslavia (1953–1980), people of different ethnic origin and religion lived together peaceably in many towns and villages. After his death, the different units competed for the distribution of state resources, and some politicians built careers upon appeals to nationalist sentiment. After Croatia and Slovenia seceded in 1991, a sequence of armed conflicts ensued. The killing, by Serbs, of 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica was only one of a series of organized atrocities. By 2006, the federation had broken into six independent states with the possibility that Kosovo might become a seventh. The rise in ethnic hatred was an important element throughout this sequence of events.

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