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Northern
Ireland's Peace Process Is One More Indication of the
Muting of Ethnic Conflict
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 10, 2000
LONDON - The private schools of Britain, the Etons,
Harrows, Winchesters et al produce the Tutsis of my land.
I grew up as a rank and file Hutu, part of the majority,
graduating from the city high school of Liverpool- along
with my classmate, Paul McCartney- and then on to the red
brick university of Manchester. The Tutus in large
numbers colonized Oxford and Cambridge- and still do
despite a generation of educational reforms- taking a
good half of the places. All my journalistic life I've
struggled against the Tutsi. They take most of the top
jobs in the BBC and the classier papers. If it hadn't
been for the American paper in Europe, the International
Herald Tribune, I might never have made it.
Yet not for one moment did I consider rallying my
putative majority to fight the Tutsis. Years of
conditioning bred me to accept the virtues of a calm
society. I would rather accept a measure of disadvantage
than upturn the apple cart. Besides the gates weren't
exactly closed in my face; it was just rather harder for
a Hutu than a Tutsi to get through them.
In Northern Ireland this British ability to stratify
society has been far more rigid and much more complex.
The division between Catholics and Protestants is rooted
in the 17th century when British settlers, made up of
English and Scottish nobles and war veterans, settled on
land confiscated from the Irish Catholics. For most of
the time the Catholics sublimated their yearnings; the
advent in the 1960s of the civil rights movement and
subsequently the re-birth of the Irish Republican Army
(IRA) changed all that. Britain paid for its obduracy
with quarter of a century of bitter civil war. Finally it
seems peace is at hand. The IRA has made the critical
concession to allow inspection of its arms caches.
Doubtless, the Protestant ascendancy will live in ways
both large and small for another century at least. Yet a
functioning power sharing executive with a devolved
parliament will allow the Catholics to feel they have an
important say. Another Tutsi-Hutu situation in the
British Isles (although with the majority-minority roles
reversed) looks as if it too is becoming manageable.
It is this coming to terms with partially deferred
gratification that is a large part of the essence of
civilization. Something that the real Tutsis and Hutus
have not yet learnt to acquire. Neither have the Serbs
and the Kosovars, though the Bosnian Muslims and the
Croats may be getting there. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese
and the Tamils are certainly not. Nor are they in the
Congo or once again in the Philippines. But, hopefully,
in Indonesia with East Timor settled, the ethnic dispute
in the dissident province of Aceh will be too.
Fortunately, Indonesia, with its new democratically
elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, has as leader a man
apparently suffused with the timeless qualities of
patience and forgiveness.
So is the world progressing or regressing on the
ethnic conflict front? The media and conventional wisdom
hold that tribal and nationalist fighting is still rising
on a frightening scale. But they are wrong. The modern
era of ethnic warfare peaked in the early 1990s. I have
been arguing this in my column for years but now there is
confirmation from a major study carried out by the
Minorities at Risk Project at the University of Maryland.
As Professor Ted Gurr observes, "The brutality of the
conflict in Kosovo, East Timor and Rwanda obscures the
larger shift from confrontation towards accommodation.
But the trends are there: a sharp decline in new ethnic
wars, the settlement of many old ones, and a pro-active
effort by states and international organizations to
recognize group rights and to channel ethnic disputes
into conventional politics".
It was only a few years ago that U.S. Secretary of
State Warren Christopher, commenting on the outbreak of
ethnic strife in countries as Somalia, Zaire and
ex-Yugoslavia, asked, "Where will it end? Will it end
with 5,000 countries?" It was a gross mis-judgement. Two
thirds of all new campaigns of ethnic protest and
rebellion in the last fifteen years began between 1989
and 1993. Since 1993 the number of wars of
self-determination has been halved. During the 1990s
sixteen separatist wars were settled by peace agreements
and ten others were checked by cease-fires and
negotiation.
Governments and media have been culpable in
cultivating a weary cynicism about the inexorable growth
of ethnic conflict. They have misled us. Concerted effort
by a great many people and organizations, from UN
agencies, to Amnesty International, from Medicines Sans
Frontieres to religious groups, from Sweden's small,
private, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future
Research to the large intergovernmental Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe have helped bring
about a sea-change.
The list of the countries where the problems of ethnic
conflict looked until quite recently potentially ominous
but which are now vastly improved is a long one. Baltic
nationalists have moderated their treatment of Russians.
Hungarians in Slovakia and Romania are no longer under
threat. Croatia's new moderate government is respecting
minorities. Likewise, conflicts between the central
government and India's Mizo people, the Gaguaz minority
in Moldova and the Chakma tribal group in Bangladesh's
Chittagong Hills have all diminished. Nationalists
willing to continue fighting for total independence like
the rebel leaders in Chechnya and East Timor are fewer
and farer between. Central governments, for their part,
appear to becoming more flexible and sensible about
devolving power. One of democratic Russia's most
important but least-noted achievements has been its
peacefully arrived at power sharing agreements with
Tatarstan, Bashkiria and forty other regions.
A list almost as long can still be made for ethnic
disputes unsolved. But what we learnt the last few years
is that the pool of ethnic conflicts is not infinite;
that the ultra pessimism of just a few years ago was
misplaced; and that human beings can settle for less, as
long as the dominant party recognizes the underdog's
integrity and gives it enough room for manoeuvre.
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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