WHY DO ETHNICITIES ENGAGE IN ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE? Key issue 4 WHY DO ETHNICITIES ENGAGE IN ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE?

ETHNIC CLEANSING is a process where a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful group in order to create a culturally homogeneous state

The point in ethnic cleansing is not to subjugate or defeat a perceived ‘enemy,’ but to entirely remove them from an area.

Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people in an attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence.

Before, during, and after WWII, some of history’s largest-scale ethnic cleaning and genocide took place in Europe. Millions of people moved or were forced to move to areas populated with ‘like’ peoples. Millions of others were relocated in order to be exterminated.

FIGURE 7-37 FORCED MIGRATION OF ETHNICITIES AFTER WORLD WAR II The largest number were Poles forced to move from territory occupied by the Soviet Union (now Russia), Germans forced to migrate from territory taken over by Poland and the Soviet Union, and Russians forced to return to the Soviet Union from Western Europe.

In recent decades, ethnic cleansing has occurred in Europe, while both ethnic cleansing and genocide has occurred in Africa.

Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans

The breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s provides some of the best recent examples of ethnic cleansing. First, we must look at the history of conflict and nation-building in this region.

The Balkans

Conflict in this region has produced an important term with 2 forms. Balkanized refers to a multiethnic country where longstanding ethnic divisions and conflicts make the formation of a cohesive state impossible. Balkanization refers to the breakdown of a formerly stable state along ethnic lines.

Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1913 After WWI, the Allied powers created Yugoslavia from part of the fallen Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1913 Yugoslavia

It was believed that since the peoples of the region spoke ‘similar’ South Slavic languages, that they would peacefully coexist in a single state.

Between WWI and WWII, conflict between ethnic groups quietly simmered. Despite lingual similarities, major cultural differences divided the various peoples of Yugoslavia- as did shared histories of antagonism. Between WWI and WWII, conflict between ethnic groups quietly simmered. Serbs Croats Bosnians

During WWII, a man named Josip Broz Tito rose to power as head of the military. Tito’s victories over the Nazis won him the adoration of his people.

Tito would go on to rule Yugoslavia for over 40 years with an iron fist, brutally suppressing ethnic conflict with military power- but bringing stability. As a strongman, Tito brought relative peace to the region; over time, many began to identify as ‘Yugoslav’ by nationality.

A Communist, Tito modeled the country on the Soviet Union, with semi-autonomous ‘republics’ dividing its territory and peoples.

The federation worked because in reality the voice of only one man counted - that of Tito himself.

When Tito died in 1982, the system he had created unraveled. Ethnic divisions fractured Yugoslavia as its republics each clamored for independence, fighting for resources and territory perceived as ‘theirs.’

Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia & Herzegovina

When Tito died, the republic of B&H was 48% Bosnian Muslim, 37% Serb, and 17% Croat. Although they held a plurality, the Bosnians were economically and politically subjugated by the other two groups.

Both Serbs and Croats wanted to break away and become part of their respective republics. In order to boost their nationalist claims, they engaged in ethnic cleansing to forcibly eject the large Bosnian population.

After international outcry arose, an accord was signed in 1996 which divided B&H into three autonomous regions. The Bosnians, nearly half the population before being ethnically cleansed, received less than ¼ of the land.

Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo

Serbia, the most powerful republic within Yugoslavia, sought an ethnically pure homeland upon independence. The greatest challenge to this was its southernmost region, Kosovo, which was 90% Albanian Muslim.

In order to evict the Albanians from Kosovo, the Serbs engaged in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign.

Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo followed four steps:

Serbian military vehicles and soldiers would arrive at a targeted Albanian town. All of the people in the village were rounded up with whatever possessions they could carry. Often, the strongest men were killed. The entire population would be forced to walk in a convoy toward the Albanian border. The town would be torched, erasing its presence.

Once again, international outcry arose, and NATO launched an air attack against the Serbs- forcing their withdrawal.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and more than 60 countries recognize it- but not Serbia, or Russia, its powerful benefactor.

Sadly, if peace comes to the Balkans, it will be because ethnic cleansing ‘worked.’ Ethnically cleansed (homogenous) areas of the Balkans are more stable than they used to be.

Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Africa Africa has been site to some of the most intense campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing in recent decades.

Conflict & Genocide in SUDAN

Animosity has long raged between the Muslims who control the government and military of Sudan in the north and the various minorities in the south.

A war was fought between 1983 and 2005 when the Arab Muslims tried to impose Islam in the South. More than 1.9 million died as entire villages were slaughtered for resisting conversion.

South Sudan became independent in 2011, but fighting has continued as both sides disagree over their borders.

More recently, ethnic conflict in the western region of Darfur has attracted international attention. There, the black African population has been subjected to both ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Sudan’s government supports Arab marauders known as JANJAWEED, who attack black villages, kill all of the men, and rape all of the women to erase black Sudanese communities entirely.

Some governments label actions there as genocide. Although 500,000 have been killed and almost three million made to flee their homes, the international community has remained largely silent about Darfur, despite campaigns to raise awareness. Some governments label actions there as genocide.

FIGURE 7-45 DARFUR REFUGEE CAMP Refugees from Darfur are living in a camp in Adré, Chad.

Genocide in RWANDA

Rwanda is populated primarily by two groups- the Hutus and the Tutsis Rwanda is populated primarily by two groups- the Hutus and the Tutsis. These groups share similar language, culture, and customs.

This built animosity between the two groups. Rwanda became a Belgian colony after WWI. The Belgians gave the minority Tutsis political power, while almost fully excluding the Hutus. This built animosity between the two groups.

The Belgians also introduced highly unscientific ways of ‘defining’ the Hutus and Tutsis by the shape and size of their nose, creating a physical division between the two very similar groups.

When Rwanda became independent in 1962, the majority Hutus assumed power and attempted to drive out their rivals, the Tutsis. Fighting continued for decades until a power-sharing agreement was signed in 1993.

A year later in 1994, the Hutu president’s plane was shot down, and Hutus blamed Tutsi rebels. Murderous crowds ravaged the country, with hundreds of thousands of Tutsis beaten or hacked to death with machetes along with sympathetic Hutus.

After three months of carnage, Tutsi militias finally pushed back the Hutu death squads. Today, an uneasy peace exists between the two groups in Rwanda, who each have very different memories of that bloody era.

COLONIAL IMPACT Many of today’s most bloody ethnic rivalries can be placed at the feet of European colonialists, who divided the world in ways that have produced long-lasting conflicts. Few colonially-drawn boundaries match the zones inhabited by ethnic groups, a problem particularly evident in Africa.

FIGURE 7-50 AFRICA’S MANY ETHNICITIES The territory occupied by ethnic groups in Africa rarely matches the boundaries of countries.

When much of Africa achieved independence in the 1950s and 60s, countries largely assumed the borders drawn for them by colonialists. Thus unlike groups were brought together, and like groups were divided by artificial borders.