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 Tutsis 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 Tutsis. 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 US 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 misjudgment. Two thirds of all new campaigns of ethnic protest and rebellion in the last 15 years began between 1989 and 1993. Since 1993 the number of wars of self-determination has been halved. During the 1990s 16 separatist wars were settled by peace agreements and 10 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 farther 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 maneuvre.
Jonathan Power is a freelance columnist based in London.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry