Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

In much of the developing world — most notably Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East — ethnic strife, more so than class conflict or other types of social cleavage, has been the major source of political friction and violence during the past half-century. Indeed, since the middle of the 20th century ethnic clashes have led to the death of perhaps 20 million people in such countries as Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Turkey, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan. Note, however, that firm data on deaths due to ethnic massacres or purposeful starvation are generally unattainable in any country with substantial numbers of dead, and worldwide estimates are obviously even more difficult. Some thirty years ago, Harold Isaacs (1975: 3) estimated that ethnic bloodshed had cost some ten million lives since the end of World War II. Massive ethnic violence since the early 1970s in Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Guatemala and elsewhere have likely at least doubled that figure.