UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Artificial Borders and Mass Violence Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wm727mt Author Gonzalez, Nathan Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Artificial Borders and Mass Violence: How Colonial Legacies Fuel Ethnic and Religious Strife A dissertation in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Artificial Borders and Mass Violence: How Colonial Legacies Fuel Ethnic and Religious Strife by Nathan Gonzalez Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Steven L. Spiegel, Chair The Arab Spring demonstrations varied in size and efficacy across the Middle East and North Africa, but the demands were similar: Protesters generally sought economic and political change. The government repression that ensued was also comparable throughout the region, with states responding with a combination of low-level violence and reforms. The two glaring exceptions were Libya and Syria, where government brutality was severe, and the conflicts escalated into full-blown civil wars. The Arab Spring case is consistent with this dissertation’s conclusion: That countries such as Syria and Libya, whose foreign-drawn borders gave way to the forced cohabitation of politically relevant ethnic groups, are more likely to descend into the kind ii of large-scale organized violence we would expect to witness during periods of state formation. For some time scholars and policy observers alike have suggested that “artificial,” or foreign-drawn borders, are in fact to blame for ethnic conflicts in postcolonial states. So far, however, there has been no empirical evidence to support this assertion. This dissertation’s contributions are twofold. First, I provide the first empirical evidence linking foreign-drawn borders with ethnic civil war outbreak, one-sided government violence against civilians, and foreign military intervention. Second, the dissertation provides a refined theory of forced cohabitation as a framework for understanding the relationships between these seemingly unconnected correlations. iii The dissertation of Nathan Gonzalez is approved. David C. Rapoport Richard H. Dekmejian Steven L. Spiegel, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv For Tamara and Sofia v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. ETHNIC CONFLICT AND THE STATE: 1 2. FORCED COHABITATION: 33 3. HOW BORDERS ARE CROSSED: 73 4. ARTIFICIAL BORDERS AND ETHNIC DISPERSION: 111 5. MINORITY RULE IN ARTIFICIAL BORDER STATES: 140 6. CONCLUSION: WHY NOT PARTITION?: 157 Appendix: 165 References: 174 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to Dr. David C. Rapoport, my longtime mentor and friend, who has supported and inspired me throughout my time as a student of political science. More than anything else, it has been his feedback and encouragement that made it possible for me to attain a doctoral degree. This dissertation would not have been possible without the care and attention that my chair, Dr. Steven L. Spiegel, offered. Despite the fact that he was initially not very familiar with my work, and despite a busy schedule, he went out of his way and moved very quickly to nurture and help me develop the ideas that ultimately comprised this work. I am grateful to Dr. Richard H. Dekmejian and Dr. Deborah Larson, both of whom served on my committee and made critical early contributions to my understanding of this topic. None of this would have been possible, of course, without the patience and tireless support of Joseph Brown, J.D., my graduate advisor. It goes without saying that numerous teachers and friends, more than I can mention here, also paved the way for this accomplishment, and I am very grateful to all of them. Finally, I thank my parents, my wife, and my little daughter Sofia, for their patience and love throughout the process. vii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Nathan Gonzalez earned his Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004. In 2007 he received his Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York. In 2008 he joined the doctoral program in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. While pursuing his doctoral degree, Nathan Gonzalez has served as a part-time lecturer of political science and international studies at California State University, Long Beach, and at other local universities and community colleges. He has given several panel and lecture presentations on Middle Eastern politics, and is the author of two published books on the Middle East. His dissertation, Artificial Borders and Mass Violence: How Colonial Legacies Fuel Ethnic and Religious Strife, was supervised by Dr. Steven L. Spiegel. viii 1. ETHNIC CONFLICT AND THE STATE The first day, a messenger from the municipal judge went house to house summoning us to a meeting right away. There the judge announced that the reason for the meeting was the killing of every Tutsi without exception. It was simply said, and it was simple to understand. … There were some guys who asked if there were any priorities. The judge answered sternly: “There is no need to ask how to begin. The only worthwhile plan is to start straight ahead into the bush, and right now, without hanging back anymore behind questions.” From Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (Hatzeld 2006, 11) The Rwandan genocide involved the killing of anywhere between half a million and eight hundred thousand members of the Tutsi ethnic group. The violence in Rwanda, like all examples of genocide, is as incomprehensible as it is rare. Seldom does ethnic, racial, or religious conflict culminate in the efforts to completely eradicate a people. But what the Rwandan experience teaches us is that many of these tragedies are perpetrated by governments that couch their actions in the language of defense, however hollow such justifications may ring. Leading up to the genocide Tutsi rebels based in neighboring Uganda had fought against the majority Hutu-led government. Although a fragile peace was brokered, Hutu intellectual and political circles began to coalesce around the idea that Tutsis should be sidelined and excluded from both political and social influence. Through what was most 1 likely a well-orchestrated coup by hardline members of the Rwandan military,1 the president’s airplane was shot down, and this was blamed on Tutsi rebels before the killings began. Although the genocide was marked by intimate violence against neighbors, it was planned. Pre-killing meetings took pace in soccer fields every morning, and money was raised to pay for faraway killing expeditions, particularly those carried out by the paramilitary Interahawme (Hetzfeld 2006, 12). The radio blared libelous material against Tutsis—referring to them as cockroaches—and government officials would gather groups of Hutus with simple directions: kill everyone, loot everything. As unique as the Rwandan genocide is, its background is not so rare among theaters of ethnic- and religious-based violence. What Rwanda has that Myanmar, Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Syria and Sierra Leone, all have in common, is a legacy of foreign-drawn, or “artificial borders,” which forced ethnic groups to remain in the same country, often in an environment marked by mutual fear and hostility. As such, artificial borders may very well have been the reason for the Tutsi insurgency based in Uganda, just as they were the main reason for the horrific government reprisals that sought to stamp it out along with the Tutsis. Artificial borders, as drawn by colonial powers, have been and continue to be one of the most important factors contributing to the outbreak of ethnic-based violence around the world. Here, ethnicity is defined as any politically salient identity form that is inherited from birth, can be externally perceived without much difficulty, and has limited 1 The long-suspected allegations were confirmed by a French investigation. “Report: Rebels Cleared in Plane Crash That Sparked Rwandan Genocide.” CNN (January 11, 2012) 2 malleability. As such, ethnolinguistic identity, as well as religion, race, and in some cases tribe (see next chapter on tribe caveats) can be thought of as “ethnicity,” assuming the category is politically relevant in the country studied. For this reason, I use the adjectives “ethnic,” “religious,” and “ethnosectarian” interchangeably in cases where sect plays a major role int eh formation of political identity. BOUNDARIES AND THE STATE In the field of political science, the year 1648 AD is theoretically considered the beginning of our international system of sovereign states. That year, representatives from various kingdoms, republics and principalities gathered in the Westphalia region of western Germany to sign two treaties that would formally end the Thirty Years War. Like the 1919 Versailles Treaty after World War I, or the 1815 Congress of Vienna following the devastating Napoleonic wars, the Peace of Westphalia was meant to rein in the kind of violence that had gotten out of control in the continent. In the infamous Siege of Magdeburg alone, Catholic troops raped and killed an estimated 20,000 - 30,000 people. And if one adds the killing to the famine and pestilence, up to one quarter of Germany’s population perished during those thirty years—compared with 12 percent of the country in World War II. Westphalia did not end the bad blood between Catholic and Protestant states, and in fact the reason that two treaties had to be signed—one in the city of Osnabrück and one in Münster—was that the delegations wanted to avoid being in the same room with each other. But the Peace of Westphalia set guidelines that would eventually end religious-based intervention across borders. Countries were to no longer gang up on each 3 other on the basis of religious affiliation, and Protestant and Catholic rulers, including the Pope himself, would no longer interfere to stoke unrest in others’ domains.