Ethnonationalist Movements Research Articles

Two Nigerian Ethnonationalist Movements: A Comparison of the OPC and MASSOB

AbstractThe proliferation of ethnic militia organisations in Nigeria raises questions about the factors responsible for the development. Although reasons adduced from the rhetoric of these organisations point to the politics of exclusion and marginalisation in Nigeria, this form of ethnicity is a new phenomenon. The growth of these militant formations pervading the length and breadth of the country is attributable to the nature and character of the Nigerian state. Perceptions of marginalisation in the distribution of power and resources, and the repressive tactics of the state to sub‐national dissent, have encouraged their growth. The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) are prominent ethnic militia groups that draw membership from major ethnic groups in southern Nigeria. Rivalry and hegemonic competition for the control of the state among the major ethnic groups led to a civil war in the late 1960s, but wartime experiences were not harnessed for a nation‐building project. The result was the systematic perversion of the state, which has resulted in throwing up new forms of ethnicity in Nigeria as reflected in the emergence of these organisations.

Produzioni e trasformazioni discorsive nel e sul nazionalismo basco: il caso della Dichiarazione di Lizarra-Garazi

When it comes to research on the ethno-territorial movements, the case of the Basque nationalism seem to be one of the more popular subjects for investigation. It presents an especially interesting case for analysis with a mix of violent and nonviolent forms of mobilization. During the democratic post-Franco era, all the attempts to end violence seem to be doomed to fail; the divisions remain as strong as before both within the Basque nationalism and between Basque and Spanish political forces. Consequently, the misunderstandings, different interpretations of the same facts, different narratives creating even deeper divides between the political actors flourish as much as before. In the article is examined just one particular episode in the development of the Basque (and Spanish) nationalism: i.e. the events surrounding the signing and further interpretation of the 1998 Declaration of Lizarra. Already at a time when it was signed the Declaration of Lizarra became one of the most controversially interpreted documents in the Basque politics, and it had been shaping the Basque( and Spanish) political debate also in the following years. Studying this case it is illustrated the difficult relationship between violent and non-violent parties in ethnonationalist movements, as well as the complicated interaction between the regional ethnonationalist political parties and the state ones. Furthermore, the case serves as a good illustration of how the political is transformed and as an illustration of the importance of interpretation in politics and of the use of historical discourse in these interpretations. It will show how the new political myths are created and how they inform the future interrelations between the involved parties.

The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements. By Jugdep S. Chima. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010. xix, 314 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements. By Jugdep S. Chima. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010. xix, 314 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

Explaining Social Mobilization in Pakistan: A Comparative Case Study of Baluchistan and Azad Kashmir

The striking ethnic and linguistic diversity within Pakistan's highly centralized state makes it a prime target for social mobilization, especially in the form of secessionist movements. However, Pakistan's various states and territories have experienced extreme variation in social mobilization since the nation's creation. This article addresses this variation by looking at two opposing cases: Baluchistan and Azad Kashmir. Baluchistan, a tribal land of distinct culture and tradition, has experienced five ethnonationalist movements since 1947, including the ensuing insurgency. Azad Kashmir, by comparison, has experienced no major anti-Islamabad movements despite its independent culture and ample grievances. Employing a comparative case study methodology, I argue that social mobilization in the Pakistani state is the result not simply of grievances, as other scholars have argued, but of a combination of unique opportunities that encourage rebellion, including economic viability and organizational advantage.

‘Without Women, Nothing Can Succeed’: Yoruba Women in The Oodua People's Congress (OPC), Nigeria

This article examines the role of women in the politics of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), a militant ethno-nationalist movement of the Yoruba people in south-west Nigeria. Women's inclusion in the organizational structure and their typical roles within the OPC, the article suggests, expand the political agency of women but at the same time ensure that their contributions are contained within the OPC's overall politics. Women play important roles within the OPC, primarily by enabling and supporting the vigilante activities of male OPC members. In the provision of this support, women overwhelmingly draw on the knowledge and powers associated with typically female life experiences. As a result, women's interests are represented within the overall agenda of the OPC, but on the basis of complementary rather than egalitarian gender roles.

Irish Republican Politics and Violence before the Peace Process, 1968–1994

Analyses of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland tend to underplay the influence of political strategy in the 1970s, preferring to emphasise militarism. Similarly, the persistence of militarism in the 1980s is often obscured by the attention paid to a ‘new’ republican political orientation. This article seeks to draw attention to the IRA's evolving attitude to the ‘problem’ of Ulster unionism, and republicanism's various estimations of the likely efficacy of violence throughout the period. Republicanism is best understood as a deeply rooted working-class ethno-nationalist movement interacting closely with the other agents of the Northern Ireland conflict: constitutional nationalism, unionism and the British government. ‘Armed struggle’ became a declining asset for republicanism as it came to be seen less as a form of ‘popular guerrilla warfare’ and more as ‘terrorism’.1

Civil society organisations and human security: transcending constricted space in Meghalaya

This paper examines the limitations on civil society organisations (CSOs) in India's Northeast, specifically the state of Meghalaya, and suggests some strategies they must pursue to overcome them. The majority of literature concerning the Northeast tends to focus on national security, insurgency and violence, with a limited analysis of the role of CSOs and the human security of people living in these circumstances. CSOs in the Northeast face restrictions from above by the central government and the military, and from below by insurgent organisations and ethno-nationalist movements; in other words, by civil society itself. While the struggle for autonomy and rights in the Northeast looks set to continue, the effectiveness of CSOs is being further jeopardised as they are caught between these more powerful actors. The functioning of CSOs is being curtailed, and the lives and needs of people living between these poles are being neglected. Using Meghalaya as an example, this paper discusses the consequences for human security and the limitations faced by CSOs operating in the region. The paper argues that, in order to more effectively empower the people in the region, CSOs need to transcend co-optation from above and below, and focus on local human security issues rather than nationalist or ethno-nationalist agendas.

The origins of the Tigray People's Liberation Front

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), at its inception, was grounded in an ethno-nationalist consciousness generated by the cumulative grievances of Tigrayans against successive central governments of Ethiopia. An association of Tigrayan elites, the urban-based Tigrayan National Organization (TNO), prepared the groundwork for the formation of the TPLF. The TPLF, for its part, utilized class and ethnonationalist ideologies to mobilize Tigrayans until it ousted the Mengistu government in 1991. This article analyzes how this ethno-nationalist organization emerged, grew and finally came to dominate Ethiopia a state with an emerging multi-national character. LITTLE HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE TIGRAY PEOPLE'S LIBERATION FRONT (TPLF). Even less has been written by any author with inside knowledge.1 As a founding member of the TPLF, who was part of its leadership for eleven years, I believe I have something relevant to share on this subject with anyone interested in contemporary political developments in Ethiopia. The TPLF started in February 1975 as a small guerrilla band in the northern region of Ethiopia and eventually grew to provide the core of the Ethiopian government. It was originally an ethno-nationalist movement that aimed to secure the self-determination of Tigray within the Ethiopian polity. It succeeded in mobilizing the people of Tigray to such extraordinary effect that, in 1991, it won state power in Ethiopia in the name of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The latter the government of Ethiopia today is often accused by opponents of being 'simply a Tigrean front'.2 During an armed struggle that lasted for 16 years, the TPLF mobilized Tigrayans behind the front and created a Aregawi Berhe is a research associate at the Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden, the Netherlands. He is grateful for the comments of Jon G. Abbink as well as those of an anonymous referee. 1. Former senior TPLF members Giday Zera-tsion, Kahsai Berhe and the present author have written critical articles on their differences with the TPLF leadership after they broke with the organization. Though valuable documents, they were not published and remain in private hands. 2. Solomon Gashaw, 'Nationalism and ethnic conflict in Ethiopia', in Crawford Young (ed.), The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The nation-state at bay (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1993), p. 156.

The costs and benefits of the Afghan War for Pakistan

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was a major cause of worldwide anxiety and a turning point in international politics. The Soviet expansionism created a challenge to the security of Pakistan, and the country emerged as a 'front-line' state, the major player in the game and the principal channel through which assistance was provided to the Afghan majahideen (holy warriors). This article critically analyses and evaluates how the Afghan War benefited Pakistan's economy and defence, including the death of Pakistan's ethno-nationalist movements. At the same time, the article shows that the Afghan War had grave implications for the internal and external security of Pakistan because of the huge influx of Afghan refugees who not only created political, economic, social environmental and ecological problems, but also posed an alarming threat to Pakistan's security. In many areas of the country, the refugees have destroyed the ecological balance, causing desertification and consequent soil erosion, and promoted drug trafficking, a Kalashnikov culture, sectarianism, and endless law and order problems. The Afghan War also corrupted Pakistani elites.

Returnees, resettlement and power relations: the making of a political constituency in Humera, Ethiopia

In the mid-1970s an ethno-nationalist movement, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), emerged in North Ethiopia. In 1984-85 the guerrillas managed to lead a large part of Tigray's people, threatened by famine and civil war, to the Sudan. The fugitives stayed there for six to seven years in camps led by TPLF people. They received training in ideology and self-sufficiency. In 1991 the TPLF ousted the dictatorial Dergue regime in Addis Ababa and shortly thereafter the fugitives returned to resettlement villages in Humera, set up by the new TPLF-led government. This study describes the flight to the Sudan, the sojourn there and the life in two of the new settlements in Humera: Mai Kadra and Rawyan. The author calls attention to the political dimension of resettlement programmes in general and of this top-down mass migration in particular. This aspect is often overlooked amidst the welter of humanitarian, organisational and administrative issues.

Ethno–Nationalist Movements in Europe: A Debate

Ethno–Nationalist Movements in Europe: A Debate

Modern democratic experiences of territorial management: Single houses, but many mansions

The epoch-making events of 1989 in Eastern Europe heralded the onset of a period of great change and uncertainty throughout the continent, not least because their consequence underlined the fact, too often shelved during the Cold War congealment, that states are contingent and not necessarily permanent. Some states in Eastern Europe have subsequently disappeared from the map, just as Burgundy, Saxony and Scotland did in previous centuries. We have witnessed the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and ongoing turmoil in several of its successor states, the violent and bloody explosion of Yugoslavia, the peaceful but tense end of Czechoslovaki a. All of this provided ethnonational politics with a renewed prominence. But the Western world, too, remained infected by the spectre of nationalism. Across Western Europe - from Sweden to Italy, from Belgium to Austria there has been in recent years a reawakening, albeit as yet limited, of extreme right-wing nationalism, fuelled in part by popular worries about floods of immigrants overwhelming and destroying indigeneous cultures and societies. The unease in several quarters about the European Union — about what it means for state sovereignty and national 'independence', and about where it might be headed in the new millenium - is but one further link in a chain of contemporary events and trends that has re-emphasized the contingency of states, the political significance of nationalist questions and of geography, and what Feagin and Capek (1991: 34) have called 'the theme of the social control of space'. Inter alia, a more fluctuating environment poses the question of whether there will be a changed and broadened political opportunity structure for minority ethnonationalist movements in Western democracies.1 That opportunity structure is what shapes the context within which ethnonational movements determined their strategies and tactics. It incorporates not only the rules and practices which impose parameters upon their activities, but also the degree to which and in what way the state decision-makers are prepared to consider ethnonational claims. In the Western world the democratic record to date has been that of a positive opportunity structure

The politics of identity in a Russian borderland province: The Kuban neo‐Cossack movement, 1989–1996

(1997). The politics of identity in a Russian borderland province: The Kuban neo‐Cossack movement, 1989–1996. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 49, No. 8, pp. 1485-1500.

Ethnonational Rebellions and Viable Constitutionalism

Pioneering work by Karl Deutsch on the dynamics of national ism, rooted in its evolution as a modern European phenomenon, helped to pave the way for an understanding of the post-imperial development of ethnonationalist movements in contemporary states of the Second and Third Worlds. The eruption of such movements in multi-ethnic societies is a modern and growing phenomenon. It reflects both the widespread acceptance of self-determination as a democratic ideal and the availabil ity of contemporary communications technology, organizational skills, and weapons of mass violence. The brutal realities of authoritarianism and anarchy in many countries contradict the hopes raised by modern dreams of democracy and economic prosperity. In this context, we need to under stand that viable systems of constitutional government—where power is exercised responsibly and effectively—offer the only hope that ethnona tional violence can be replaced by the nonviolent politics of ethnic compe tition. External interventions designed to resolve violent communal conflicts are less likely to succeed than are systemic transformations that replace authoritarianism with constitutional governance—but both pose a huge challenge to the will and capabilities of the more advanced indus trial democracies.

The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The Use of History in Political Disputes

Historical myths play a particularly important role in the mobilization of ethno-national movements. Elites or 'political entrepreneurs', that is the potential leaders of ethno-nationalist movements and their ideologues, often find that potential members of their target group are politically passive, isolated from one another, and/or more interested in private goals, and therefore difficult to mobilize politically.' Historical myths, however, are an extremely effective means of firming up a target group's collective identity, encouraging group coalescence, and stimulating political mobilization.2 The more effective historical myths help to provide an ethnic group with a sense of its own identity as a historical and political subject, to connect a given group with a sense of its own past (imparting powerful emotional appeal by linking the fate of present generations with that of both ancestors and descendants), and, by relating to the individual's own sense of identity, time and space, helping to make sense of the present. In recent times Serbs have been inspired by the myth of heroic defeat at Kosovo Field as an obvious analogy with their current state of isolation, Balts have idealized their interwar 'democracies', while Belarus'ian nationalists have sought to compensate for their lack of a tradition of statehood by propagating the notion that the Lithuanian kingdom of the Middle Ages was really a Belarus'ian state in disguise (as its court language was Belarus'ian). The power of a historical myth, however, has little to do with actual historical truth, whatever that may be; 'it is historicism, rather than ethnic history itself, which is the essential base for nationalist movements'.3 A given group's historical memory is a secondary phenomenon shaped by how the past is constantly being reinterpreted in the present, as much as by what 'actually happened' in the past.4 Moreover, the academics, politicians and poets

Do Ethnic Groups Exist?: A Cognitive Perspective on the Concept of Cultures

Two years after the publication of an ethnographic case study of a village in the province of Friesland, the Netherlands (Mahmood 1989), a team of investigators returned to the site to explore reactions to the study. While the local population and the Netherlands academic establishment expressed a variety of opinions with regard to the book itself, the more interesting question quickly became the issue of whether there is such a thing as Frisian culture in the first place. The authors used this question and the dialogue that developed around it to pursue the broader theoretical issue of how anthropologists define cultural groups in general, and came to the conclusion that many anthropological difficulties with the categorization of cultures stem from an inadequate understanding of the cognitive dynamics of categorization itself. Drawing on developments in the field of cognitive psychology, we propose a revised conception of ethnic affiliation that accommodates the new interpretive strategies without neglecting the reality of identifiable cultural groups. We further examine the role of categorization in constructing social realities and re-explore the meaning of the Frisian culture that has been so elusive to anthropologists, and yet is obviously very real to many of our interlocutors. It became immediately apparent upon our arrival in the village of Eastermar in June of 1990 that most people in the community were completely incognizant of the fact that a book had been written about them. This was unexpected insofar as: first, the community is a highly literate one, with a substantial proportion of its inhabitants capable of reading English; second, the community is tied by gossip networks that normally inform an individual at one end of the village of any event that has befallen an individual at the other end within a matter of hours; and third, very few foreign books about the Frisians exist, in a province in which an ethnonationalist movement has been in full swing for several decades. Despite these reasons why one might expect any volume on the Frisians to make something of a splash, the first reaction of the villagers to Mahmood's book amounted to what can only be described as studied neglect. The second stage in the response of the local population to the book, prompted only by the continued presence of the author, was an array of highly specific criticisms. These ranged from complaints about particular photos to comments

The Integration of Ethnicity: Notes On a Social Scientific Opportunity for Religious Studies

Differentiating once and for all a social science of religion from the history of religions and certainly from theology remains a conceptual and methodological difficulty. Fortunately, this will have to occur at a time when the main line disciplines have taken up inter-disciplinary methodology, and have opened their horizons to permit the foundation of numerous new sub-disciplines. Not only will scholars of religion have to forge working relationships across nelds, they will have to show that these connexions are capable of producing research of empirical utility. An excellent opportunity for such collaboration has arisen in the last two decades with the enthusiasm for ethnicity sometimes manifested in minority or ethnic studies. The existence of a myriad of nationalist and sub-nationalist movements in both western ?nd developing areas has necessitated greater interest on the part of political scientists and sociologists in historical and cultural facets. The study of ethnic movements is complex: what is now called ethno-nationalism, especially by the anthropology contingent, is not satisfactorily' explained via the approaches of the Frankfurt School: while analyses too dependent on issues of economy and class have always shown limited predictive ability in the Third World, ethno-nationalism has displayed a western kettle of fish not altogether western. For instance, the Northern Irish Republican movement cannot be completely grasped via the relative deprivation focus of Gurr: deprivation is most definitely a strong and tenacious aspect; however, the models involved simply do not account for ongoing mobilization. The same is true of Sri Lanka's broadly supported ethno nationalist movement: the Tamil minority have been deprived, akin to

Language or race?: The choice of core values in the development of Catalan and Basque nationalisms

Abstract Using the concept of core values, this article sets forth a comparison between Catalan and Basque nationalisms. It uses the declarations on language made by the main leaders and intellectuals of the respective nationalist movements. While Catalan nationalism has given paramount importance to language since its inception, the Basque movement was beleaguered by an overall ambiguity and fluctuating attitude over the core values to be promoted. This ambiguity is reflected in the profound changes to be witnessed in Basque nationalism from its beginning to the present day. The article claims that existing anthropological and cultural preconditions can affect political developments. Notably, since ethnic languages play such an important role in most ethnonationalist movements, their vitality can influence political outcomes. Furthermore, ethnic languages rather than other values (such as race or religion) offer better prospects for peaceful and successful mobilization in democratic states if these langu...

Conflict Resolution, Ethnonationalism and the Middle East Impasse

The intractable Middle East conflict is examined from the prism of `ethnic' conflict resolution. The resolution of conflicts between states and ethnonationalist movements (placed under fourteen different headings) is distinguished into `denial' solutions and `acceptance' solutions - policies that accept the other side as a people apart and as an interlocuteur valable. Denial policies are by definition non-negotiable. They need to be enforced. As a result, they are unlikely to resolve conflicts that are basically ethnic, such as the one of the Middle East, particularly under present circumstances of world-wide ethnic assertiveness. Only acceptance solutions may lead to a process of conflict resolution through negotiations between the two main parties concerned, in this case the State of Israel and the PLO. To the extent that states and ethnonationalist movements are implacably irredentist, they cannot present the other side to a conflict with other than non-negotiable denial policies. Ten problems are identified as instrumental for the Middle East impasse and suggestions are made as to how they can be settled. They are the objective (zero-sum) conflict of interest, conflict attitudes, the domestic factor, the positive functions of the conflict, ethnonationalism, the asymmetry between state and revolutionary movement, the role of the superpowers, the religious-cultural dimension, regional expansionism and the regional arms race.