WHEN CIVIL WAR SPREADS
Story from BBC NEWS:
s/magazine/6614929.stm
Published: 2007/05/03 11:01:05 GMT
Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, but could the violence draw in
the rest of the Middle East? Here, in a personal opinion, historian
Niall Ferguson weighs the evidence.
As a consequence of a botched Anglo-American occupation, Iraq is now
in the midst of a civil war – already one of the biggest in the world
since 1945 – with the kind of escalating cycle of tit-for-tat killing
and ethnic cleansing that can last for years, even decades.
Debate currently centres on how quickly the United States can wind
down its involvement in Iraq and on whether or not neighbouring
countries can be persuaded to help stabilise it.
The really sobering lesson of the 20th Century is that some civil
wars can grow into more than just regional wars Niall Ferguson But
what if it’s Iraq that destabilises its neighbours? It, after all,
is not the only Middle Eastern state to have a mixed population of
Sunnis Muslims, Shias Muslims and other religious groups.
There are substantial numbers of Shias in Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Yemen, to say nothing of Afghanistan and
Azerbaijan. Even predominantly Shia Iran has its Sunnis, among them
the persecuted Ahwazi Arabs who live in the strategically vital
south-western province of Khuzestan.
So how likely is the scenario of a regional civil war, beginning in
Iraq but eventually extending right across the greater Middle East?
Lessons from Rwanda
One obvious parallel is with Central Africa a decade ago. In 1994
extremists from the Hutu majority attempted to exterminate Rwanda’s
million or so Tutsis. In response, an army of Tutsi exiles invaded from
Uganda and drove the Hutu killers – and many other Hutus – across the
border into Congo and Tanzania. Soon nearly all of Congo’s neighbours
had become embroiled in a monstrous orgy of violence.
Altogether, it has been estimated that up to three million people
lost their lives in Central Africa’s great war, the majority from
starvation or disease as the entire region plunged into anarchy.
Not all civil wars spread in this way, admittedly. About the same
time as the genocide in Rwanda, a war raged between Serbs, Croats
and Muslims in a disintegrating Yugoslavia. But there was never much
danger this war would spread throughout the Balkans.
This was not just because of Western military intervention. It
was because Yugoslavia’s neighbours – Italy, Austria, Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania – were far less combustible
than Yugoslavia. More or less ethnically homogeneous in each case,
they never seemed remotely likely to go the way of Bosnia, the worst
affected of the former Yugoslavian republics.
The Balkan War was much smaller than the Central African war. The
most exhaustive database that has been compiled of all those killed
and missing in Bosnia – including members of all ethnic groups –
contains fewer than 100,000 names.
Seeds of war
Yet this can hardly be regarded as an encouraging story as far as
Iraq is concerned. For it was no accident of history that Yugoslavia’s
neighbours were so ethnically homogeneous. It was a direct consequence
of the prolonged and bloody wars of the mid-20th Century, which had
already destroyed most of the ethnic diversity of Central and Eastern
European countries.
Sixty years ago, Central and Eastern Europe was entering the final
phase of a succession of wars and civil wars that originated with
the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Prior to 1914,
the Habsburg lands had been characterised by high levels of ethnic
heterogeneity. Consequently, the transition from empire to the nation
states of the post-1918 era proved painful in the extreme.
Two minorities were especially ill-placed in the new order of the
1920s: the Germans and the Jews. The former fought back against
their minority status in places like Czechoslovakia and Poland
and, under the leadership of a messianic Austrian – Adolf Hitler –
temporarily created a Greater German empire. The latter were among
that bloodthirsty empire’s principal victims.
Only with the expulsion of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe
and the creation of truly homogeneous – but Soviet-controlled nation
states – was peace restored. It is no coincidence the one country
that remained both heterogeneous and independent – Yugoslavia –
was the scene of Europe’s last great ethnic conflict in that century.
Empire breakers
The aftermath of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire (also dealt its
death blow during World War One) has taken a different, more protracted
course. The Turks did not submit to the break-up of their empire as
readily as the Austrians.
After the deaths of Armenian Christians under the Young Turk regime,
they expelled the Orthodox Greeks from Asia Minor and consolidated
their Turkish nation state (albeit with a few troublesome minorities
like the Kurds remaining, to whom they granted minimal concessions).
But the rest of what had been the Ottoman Empire did not immediately
adopt the model of the nation state. Unlike in Europe, the victors
of the WWI established "mandates" (de facto colonies) in the losers’
former possessions – Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria.
Independence did not come to most of the Middle East until after 1945
and was seldom accompanied by democracy (Israel being the exception).
Instead the multi-ethnic states of the region were ruled either by
feudal monarchs or fascist strongmen.
And a new empire – which preferred to be known as a superpower –
generally helped keep these rulers in place, and the region static,
if only to keep another superpower at bay.
Only in our time, then, has the Middle East reached the stage that
Central and Eastern Europe reached after the WWI. Only now are
countries like Iraq and Lebanon experimenting with democracy.
Safety in numbers
The lesson of European history is that this experiment is a highly
dangerous one, particularly at times of economic volatility and
chronic insecurity, and particularly where tribes and peoples are
mixed up geographically, both within and across borders.
The minorities fear – with good reason – the tyranny of the
majorities. People vote on the basis of ethnicity, not class or
ideology. And even before the votes are counted, the shooting begins.
What will the US do if ethnic conflict continues to escalate in Iraq
and begins to spread across its borders? A cynical answer would be to
leave the people of the Middle East to kill and displace one another
until ethnic homogeneity has been established in the various states.
That has essentially been US policy in Central Africa.
The trouble, of course, is that Iraq matters more than Rwanda,
economically and strategically. Does anyone seriously believe that
a regional conflagration would leave Israel and Saudi Arabia – the
US’s most important allies in the Middle East – unscathed?
Ask a different question. Did anyone serious believe that a war in
Central and Eastern Europe in 1914 or 1939 would leave the UK and
France unaffected?
The really sobering lesson of the 20th Century is that some civil
wars can grow into more than just regional wars. If the stakes are
high enough, they have the potential to become world wars too.
Niall Ferguson’s is The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred,
published by Penguin.