Making and Unmaking Nations

War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa

Scott Straus

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780801455674
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Genocide & War Crimes
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Winner of the Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 2018
Winner of the Joseph Lepgold Prize
Winner of the Best Books in Conflict Studies (APSA)
Winner of the Best Book in Human Rights (ISA)

In Making and Unmaking Nations, Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place—and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing countries in which genocide occurred and where it could have but did not. Why have there not been other Rwandas? Straus finds that deep-rooted ideologies—how leaders make their nations—shape strategies of violence and are central to what leads to or away from genocide. Other critical factors include the dynamics of war, the role of restraint, and the interaction between national and local actors in the staging of campaigns of large-scale violence. Grounded in Straus's extensive fieldwork in contemporary Africa, the study of major twentieth-century cases of genocide, and the literature on genocide and political violence, Making and Unmaking Nations centers on cogent analyses of three nongenocide cases (Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal) and two in which genocide took place (Rwanda and Sudan). Straus's empirical analysis is based in part on an original database of presidential speeches from 1960 to 2005. The book also includes a broad-gauge analysis of all major cases of large-scale violence in Africa since decolonization. Straus's insights into the causes of genocide will inform the study of political violence as well as giving policymakers and nongovernmental organizations valuable tools for the future.

PART I

Concepts and Theory

CHAPTER 1

The Concept and Logic of Genocide

Writing a book about genocide requires a clear operationalization of the term. Unfortunately, the meaning of genocide remains contested, the essential differences between genocide and other forms of political violence remain unclear, and the term remains embedded in a legal framework. For these reasons, some social scientists balk at studying genocide as a distinct, explainable phenomenon.

This chapter addresses these definitional problems. I argue that genocide is a form of large-scale, group-selective violence, or what I term “mass categorical violence.” In addition, I argue that a logic of group destruction animates genocide. Both of these qualities distinguish genocide from other types of political violence and generate a series of theoretical propositions.

In particular, group-selective violence typically requires perpetrators to command effective territorial domination over target populations. Local actors in general possess the information necessary to identify and sort target populations. Local actors are thus key to most forms of group-selective violence. Furthermore, given the widespread, sustained nature of genocide, perpetrators typically need to mount large operations that involve multiple agencies. There are exceptions. In particular, where a target population is highly spatially concentrated, perpetrators can attack that population aerially or through a blockade, diminishing the need for local information or multi-agency coalitions of violence. But such circumstances are empirically rare.

These dimensions—territorial domination, local actor integration, and large, multi-agency operations—suggest that national state involvement and capacity are nearly necessary for genocide and extreme forms of mass categorical violence to occur. National states have the institutional foundation to dominate territory, though not all states do, and states have the authority and hierarchy to incorporate local actors and command coalitions of violence over space and time. Nonstate actors, such as rebel organizations, could execute genocide and mass categorical violence, but they would need to dominate territory where target populations exist and possess enough internal organization to command sustained, far-flung coalitions of violence. That scenario is possible but empirically rare. Coalitions of local actors could commit violence against target groups, but on balance the scale of such violence should be lower than national-local coalitions of violence because of the difficulty of local actors to coordinate and sustain operations of group-selective violence in the absence of a central authority.

The chapter also focuses on the purpose of violence. Most political violence conforms to a logic of coercion and communication where the purpose is to force a change in behavior or policy. The premise of such violence is built on an expectation of future interaction. The logic of genocide is different. The signature of genocide is crushing opponents in the short term and destroying their ability to pose a long-term challenge. Genocide is therefore about extinguishing human interaction, not seeking to shape it. For this logic to operate, I hypothesize that perpetrators are likely to see target groups as inherently dangerous, uncontainable, and unwinnable (in the sense that they cannot be coopted or cowed; they cannot be won over). Putting these two sets of points together, I propose that the conditions most likely to give rise to genocide entail the unlikely combination of territorial domination and organizational capacity, on the one hand, and a profound sense of danger associated with a civilian group, on the other. Most states or organizations that possess the capacity to manage large-scale, multi-actor operations of violence do not simultaneously experience great vulnerability and a sense of threat emanating from civilian populations.

Unpacking Genocide

The original author of the term genocide, jurist Raphael Lemkin, provides a useful and succinct starting point for any conceptual analysis. His invention combines the Greek word for “race,” nation, or tribe (genos) with the Latin word for killing (cide). In an efficient and enduring conceptualization, Lemkin writes that genocide is the “destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.”¹ He claims:

Generally speaking, genocide … signif[ies] a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves…. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.²

Similarly, Lemkin wrote:

The crime of genocide involves a wide range of actions … to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups, as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.³

After rounds of negotiations, in which certain political forces came to bear on the exact wording, the United Nations in 1948 adopted the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.⁴ That Convention defines genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.” The Convention in turn specifies five methods of genocide: (1) killing members of the group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

None of these definitions is completely satisfactory to most scholars who devote themselves to the study of genocide, and many have sought to redefine the concept of genocide or to develop cognate concepts.⁵ The main points of disagreement are the nature of the groups and the nature of the violence. On the former, many scholars seek to broaden the concept to include political, class, or gender groups.⁶ Others argue that Lemkin’s genocide definitions and the United Nations Convention imply an essentialist reading of “groups” as real definable entities, rather than as socially constructed categories and in particular categories that perpetrators create.⁷

The second major debate concerns how much and what kind of violence constitutes “genocide.” Does a group need to be physically exterminated? How much “partial” destruction, as the UN Convention implies, is needed? Is cultural destruction genocide? Lemkin himself was not always clear on these questions; his formulations varied across his written work, and there is debate about what Lemkin meant and about the quality of Lemkin’s historical understanding.⁸

These debates matter, but regardless of one’s conclusions, it is still possible to distill a core meaning of genocide, and that is intentional group destruction. Etymologically, that is the central idea—the killing of groups. Lemkin’s core formulations are simply that, such as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.”

Group-Selective Violence

Working from this core meaning, I propose that one key empirical property of genocide is that it is group-selective, or categorical, violence. Lemkin’s formulations are clear: “The acts [of genocide] are directed against groups, as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”⁹ Much scholarship recognizes the fundamental group orientation of genocide,¹⁰ and most subsequent scholarly definitions retain some focus on groups—or “collectivities” or “social categories”—as fundamental to genocide.¹¹

Group selection is frequently a central organizing principle of violence. In many circumstances, perpetrators attack, maim, punish, and kill individuals not because of actions those individuals have taken but because of their categorical associations, whether those associations are ethnic, religious, racial, clan, political, gender, regional, and so forth.¹² The point is not that such groupings are real phenomena; they are constructed categories.¹³ But in the minds of the perpetrators and according to the logic and patterns of violence, the violence is directed against categories of people.

Stathis Kalyvas has influentially introduced the distinction between selective violence and indiscriminate violence.¹⁴ For many analysts, genocide is a form of indiscriminate violence. My argument is different. Genocide is discriminate violence that exhibits strong group selection.¹⁵

The group-selective aspect of genocide has several empirical implications. Such violence will be against civilians.¹⁶ By definition, social groups encompass noncombatants (unless somehow every single person in a said social category is a fighter, which would be highly unlikely). Furthermore, mechanisms to identify and sort groups are necessary. In some locations, there will be latent mechanisms for group identification, such as family name, phenotype, dress, religious practice, national identity cards, and even neighborhood. In other locations, the mechanisms for group identification will have to be created or newly emphasized through the passage of national laws, dress requirements, or other means that would establish boundaries between groups.

In addition, attacks will likely target not only persons but also the symbols, markers, and indicators of social categories. This might include mosques, synagogues, churches, graves, bakeries, butchers, or specific retail outlets. In short, the logic of group-selective violence should translate into attacks on the symbolic markers of the social category and other forms of “extra-lethal” violence.¹⁷

Group-selective violence also implies that perpetrating authorities exercise territorial domination over target populations. Group-selective violence involves sorting using information; it involves distinguishing between those who are said to belong to a targeted category and those who are not. All this implies a degree of territorial control—the ability to identify, locate, and separate people on the basis of their social categories. Such circumstances are different from typical cases of indiscriminate violence. In those cases, perpetrating authorities lack control and information, so they target indiscriminately.¹⁸

Moreover, identification and sorting into groups is most likely to come from local actors—from actors who live in proximity to the target populations and who have information about who is who. National actors typically lack the information necessary to find, and sometimes identify, target populations.

The one exception to both of these conditions is when a target population is so geographically concentrated that a perpetrating authority could simply bomb or blockade that territory. In that case, neither territorial domination nor local actor participation would be as necessary.

Large-Scale—“Mass”—Violence

A second major characteristic of genocide is its extent. As an effort to destroy a human group within a specific territory, genocide implies a large scale. Genocide is about sustained violence that is repeated across time and space against a substantial part of a target group.¹⁹ The recurring, repetitive, systematic nature distinguishes genocide from a massacre or a riot, which are more one-off events. Genocide is sustained and widespread. The violence will not be restricted to one neighborhood, one town, or one city; it will exhibit a pattern of target selection and civilian destruction that is repeated across those spaces where the group is located.

Those qualities have implications. For example, such violence is deliberate. The question of deliberateness is often self-evident, especially when individuals are killed. But in genocide, those in the target group sometimes die from indirect causes associated with displacement, such as lack of food, water, health care, or shelter. The question to ask is whether the displacement and deprivation are the result of deliberate actions by the perpetrator against the civilian members of the target group.

But the key theoretical implication is that scale requires a significant degree of organization and coordination. Genocide is about the destruction of human groups within territories. In most circumstances, the targeted human population will live in multiple localities across a national territory. To mount operations large enough and long enough to attack the targeted group, perpetrators need to manage broad coalitions of actors. Those actors typically include local collaborators and civilian officials who identify, sort, and sometimes attack groups. They also typically include national agencies whose role is to manage public security or defend territory, such as the police, army, or sometimes paramilitaries. Those agencies are the ones who control violence in national territory and have the capacity to inflict or prevent such violence. Genocide therefore implies at a minimum the tacit approval and support of national agencies and more typically their active participation.

Putting these characteristics together, I propose that genocide requires some capacity to organize and sustain multi-agency, multi-level coalitions of violence across time and space. These coalitions are necessary to inflict violence against a target group on a large scale and in a consistent fashion across multiple locations.

Establishing and sustained coalitions of violence is likely achieved in two ways.

The most common scenario is vertical coordination by the territorially sovereign state, which centralizes orders and planning across multiple agencies and across multiple locations. States are hardwired to perform this task, even if some states lack the capacity for effective coordination. States have t...