Ethnic Civil War Research Articles

So that Peace May Reign

Post-colonial Africa's political stability, economic growth, and human development have been impeded by a vicious circle of ethnic rivalry and civil wars. This article examines the various attempts in Africa to move beyond the traditional lens of pacifism and just war theory in curtailing the deleterious effects of war. These attempts, which are also consistent with the theoretical proposal of just peacemaking, have had mixed results on the continent. The article focuses on Liberia and Rwanda to illustrate the

Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars

The effect of ethnic division on civil war and the role of political systems in preventing these conflicts are analyzed, using the importance of religious polarization and animist diversity to explain the incidence of ethnic civil war. Findings show that religious differences are a social cleavage more important than linguistic differences in the development of civil war, and being a consociational democracy significantly reduces the incidence of ethnic civil war.

Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?

A booming quantitative literature on large-scale political violence has identified important economic and political determinants of civil war. That literature has treated civil war as an aggregate category and has not considered if identity (ethnic/religious) wars have different causes than nonidentity wars. The author argues that this is an important distinction and that identity wars are due predominantly to political grievance rather than lack of economic opportunity. Ethnic heterogeneity is also associated differently with identity than nonidentity wars. Some systemic variables are also important determinants of civil war, and these have been neglected in the existing literature. An important new result is that living in a bad neighborhood, with undemocratic neighbors or neighbors at war, significantly increases a country's risk of experiencing ethnic civil war.

Causes of Communal War: Fear and Feasibility

Communal war results from two types of change-increases in fear and increases in the feasibility of gaining aims by force. Fear, or insecurity, becomes a trigger of war when an oppressed group perceives a heightened threat to its cultural or physical survival. Fear of domination or extinction leads to war when a threatened group believes that it can reduce or avoid danger by using violence. Indicators of increasing feasibility of violence include shifts in relative military capability, heightened international legitimacy, and false optimism. The combination of a security dilemma and the ability to act determines when, and if, simmering ethnic tensions will erupt into violence. The propositions presented in this article are tested using the cases of ethnic civil war in Nigeria and Sudan. Those conflicts broke out when fearful communal groups saw violence as a practical solution to political oppression. The analysis of causation suggests that prevention of conflict must deactivate the volatile mix of fear and feasibility in order to achieve a stable peace.

Air‐power, land‐power and the challenge of ethnic conflict

As recent events in Kosovo have demonstrated, demands for the international community to intervene in ethnic conflict and Civil Wars have become common currency in the post‐Cold War era. While much attention has been focused on the ethical imperative behind such interventions, little attention has been paid to the doctrinal aspects of such intervention, including matching the military force required to the political objective. By examining the current debates surrounding the efficacy of air‐power over land‐power — a debate, as the author reminds us, that has long been a feature of debates over limited war‐the author argues for a re‐examination of the way outside military force should be employed in future internecine conflicts.

Transnational Dimensions of the Transnistrian Conflict

Rarely does an ethnic conflict remain wholly confined to its country of origin. Because ethnic groups often have members across international borders, their civil wars can have a strong influence on neighboring countries’ politics, impelling kindred communities to push for their state to intervene in support of imperilled relatives across the border. At the same time, strategic thinkers often find it tempting to destabilize neighboring countries, or to oppose groups acting as proxies for regional rivals. Because of such considerations, intervention in ethnic civil war becomes a political issue for the neighbors, with the emotional stakes often strengthening the hands of nationalists in the neighboring countries.

Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars

Ethnic civil wars are burning in Bosnia, Croatia, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Sudan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Kashmir, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, and are threatening to break out in dozens of other places throughout the world.1 Many of these conflicts are are so violent, with so much violence directed against unarmed civilians, and are apparently intractable, that they have provoked calls for military intervention to stop them. As yet, however, the international community has done little and achieved less. Advocates of international action seek to redress the failures of local political institutions and elites by brokering political power-sharing arrangements, by international conservatorship to rebuild a functioning state, or by reconstruction of exclusive ethnic identities into wider, inclusive civic identities.2 Pessimists doubt these remedies, arguing that ethnic wars express primordial hatreds which cannot be reduced by outside intervention because they have been ingrained by long histories of inter-communal conflict.3

Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars

Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars

An occasion for war: civil conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860

Leila Fawaz's pioneering study tells the story of the 1860 civil wars that began in Mount Lebanon and spilled over into Damascus. This period witnessed the most severe outbreak of sectarian violence in the history of Ottoman Syria and Lebanon. The author's close analytical narrative of the dramatic events of that year is set against the broader themes of nineteenth-century social, political, and economic change. Fawaz shows how social conflict, including ethnic civil wars, cannot be explained without analyzing the regional and international currents that play upon both central state power and local autonomy. She also demonstrates the important role of the communal balance between social and political institutions within regions. Fawaz's new insights into the formation of sectarian identities and conflict will make An Occasion for War essential reading for all students of the modern Middle East.

Burundi: Alternatives to Violence

Burundi society has become polarized along ethnic lines. In 1972 a series of increasingly violent confrontations erupted into an ethnic civil war. The two ethnic coalitions which faced each other were the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Tutsi are the socio-politically dominant minority in control in Burundi.