Toronto Star , Canada
May 23 2009
Civil wars never end, they just move to Canada
How the conflicts of the 21st century are being waged by other means
right here in the mosaic
May 23, 2009 04:30 AM
Olivia Ward
Foreign Affairs reporter
In the smoky, near-darkness of the ramshackle schoolhouse that served
as a barracks for the Georgian army, I huddled against the wall
listening to the sputter of machine guns and the deep throaty boom of
mortar shells.
"I believe you speak English," said a soldier sitting next to me, his
face barely visible above his sweat-stained flack jacket. "I’m from
the United States."
My neighbour, one of several hundred weary troops who joined the fight
against separatists in western Georgia in 1993, was not only American
but also a professor at an Ivy League university. And he told me:
"When my country is threatened, I put down the books and pick up my
gun."
He was not alone in his desire to fight for the country of his birth,
despite a comfortable life in a new land. Even when guns fall silent,
the fog of war often hangs heavy over the new countries where diaspora
populations from far-flung conflict zones have settled.
But in the 21st century, when global migration affects nearly every
country and one in every 35 people on the planet is an international
migrant, it would be naïve to expect that what happens in the
old country stays in the old country ` or the country of one’s
forbears.
Toronto’s recent Tamil demonstrations, protesting the killing of
civilians in a Sri Lankan military operation against the Tamil Tigers,
ignited new controversy over the limit to which diasporas can continue
their struggles in Canada. The burning of a mainly Sinhalese Buddhist
temple sparked fearful and furious reactions from those who declared
that "foreign conflicts" had no place here.
The media, too, have been caught up, as cyberspace sizzles with angry
diatribes from both sides.
The Sri Lankan conflict is not unique. As electronic communication
burgeons, so have journalists’ email baskets and Twitter lists,
overflowing with complaints or entreaties from pro-Israeli and
pro-Palestinian groups, Serbian and Kosovar exiles, Iranian dissidents
and advocates for Armenia, Tibet, Burma, Afghanistan, Somalia, Darfur
and Haiti ` to name a few.
While some diasporas have been actively engaged in reconstruction,
development and peace-making in their original countries, others are
more hardline than the people they left behind, and the polarized
debates they arouse make it more difficult to find accommodation or
peace.
"Politics these days is often acted out by populations who are
geographically removed from the sites of conflict," notes a paper by
Camilla Orjuela of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. "But
although politics is to a large extent `deterritorialized’ ` it can be
carried out (no matter) where you are ` it has not ceased to be about
territory."
Diasporas have the power to shape debate at home and abroad, to push
local politicians to take part in international events and to use
their money to support political or military movements that can change
history for better or worse.
In some cases their power increases in their adopted countries, where
they have less direct influence but more, and safer, access to
communication tools. And for dissidents who oppose dictatorial
regimes, it is easier to defend human rights while staying out of
range of murderous revenge.
But political lines may also harden as distance increases. And as
years go by, second- and third-generation diasporas may be most
adamant, and inflexible, about a solution for their families’
homelands, which they see in idealized terms.
They also lack one of the main ingredients of settlement: the sheer
war weariness that takes over when one or both parties have suffered
enough destruction.
Some Irish-descended Americans, for example, backed the IRA’s violent
campaign for a united Ireland, while the exhausted population of
Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, were ready for a peace
process that was forged in compromise.
The difficulty diasporas may have in coming to terms with
less-than-ideal solutions is clear. The 250 or so conflicts simmering
throughout the world guarantee that they or their families will have
fled quickly, with few resources and deep psychological wounds. Their
view of their familial countries is flash frozen in an agonizing
moment of time.
"For years I woke up screaming," a young Rwandan-born woman who lost
her family in the genocide told me. "It was something I lived with. In
the daytime I could feel normal, but at night it was different."
The first generation of traumatized refugees spends its lifetime
coping with the horror of murder, torture, ethnic cleansing and
violent seizure of their homes. Their nightmares are passed on to
their children and grandchildren, who suffer their own forms of
trauma, including the guilt that comes from leading double lives,
inside and outside of their own families and communities.
Multiculturalism ` encouraging communities to preserve their own
cultures, languages and traditions ` fosters pride, but may make
adaptation more difficult for the young, who receive mixed
messages. Some soothe their sense of alienation by identifying with
the struggles in their parents’ homelands, creating an ideal future
from a sometimes-mythical past.
Even in the U.S., where the melting pot trumps multiculturalism,
emotional attachment to a cultural "motherland" remains. The diasporas
have long arms, supporting "foreign" struggles through lobbying and
fundraising for their causes.
"It’s the most important work I could do right now," said an
impeccably dressed American businessman smoking in the lobby of a
rundown Albanian hotel during the 1999 Kosovo conflict. Of Albanian
descent, he had come to hand over funds raised for the guerrillas who
were battling the Serbs for an independent state. And he said, he
would continue until the fight was won.
It’s a sentiment that many feel about many national causes. And one
that is questioned by others who see no room for "dual loyalty." But
in the new transnational landscape, where boundaries are virtual as
well as real, identity has taken on a new dimension. And so have the
conflicts that once seemed so far from our shores.
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