Intervention, Ethnic Conflict and State-Building in Iraq

A Paradigm for the Post-Colonial State

Michael Rear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415964661
• eBook ISBN: 9781135924850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

External intervention by the U.N. and other actors in ethnic conflicts has interfered with the state-building process in post-colonial states. Rear examines the 1991 uprisings in Iraq and demonstrates how this intervention has contributed to the problems with democratization experienced in the post-Saddam era. This timely work will appeal to scholars of International Relations and Middle East studies, as well as those seeking greater insight into the current conflict in Iraq.

Part I
Literature Review

Chapter One
Theories of Ethnic Identification and Conflict

INTRODUCTION

As indicated in the Preface, the aim of this study is to develop and test a theory which seeks to integrate the phenomena of ethnicity/ethnic conflict, state-building, and external intervention in the post-Cold War era. The first step in this process is to survey the ways in which these phenomena have been addressed in the scholarly literature in the past. Accordingly, this first part is devoted to a review of three discrete bodies of literature which have developed over the years. Since it is my contention that previously these three phenomena were addressed largely independently of one another, the first three chapters will each take up a different area of study. This will facilitate the process of theory-building in Part II.

The development of a theory is a complex and contradictory process. On the one hand, no theory emerges full-blown ex nihilo. Every theory draws upon previous scholarly works. In this sense, every theorist stands upon the shoulders of those who came before. On the other hand, every theory seeks to distinguish itself from what has come before by identifying some issue or phenomenon which the literature has not adequately addressed and to offer some solution or explanation. Consequently, the purpose of conducting this survey is twofold. One is to identify some of the key issues and themes in each body of literature as well as some of the leading theories which have been developed thus far. From this, it will be possible to discern the role that previous scholarship has played in the development of my own theory. The other purpose is to critically evaluate these theories in terms of certain questions which are left unanswered thereby highlighting the need for a new theory.

Although there are individual contributions made by this or that aspect of my theory, by far the most important contribution from a theoretical standpoint is the suggestion that one of the things which separates the post-Cold War era from its predecessor is that the subjects of ethnicity/ethnic conflict, state-building, and external intervention need to be re-conceptualized in an integrated manner. Part II will be devoted to precisely this task.

As a prelude to this endeavor, this chapter will look at the question of ethnicity and ethnic conflict. The emphasis will be on the questions which have preoccupied theorists up to this point. Foremost among these have been the attempt to explain the reasons for ethnic identification and the reasons why conflict develops between various ethnic groups. This discussion will make it possible to distinguish my own work from what has come before. The key difference lies in the fact that I am less concerned with the causes of ethnic identification or conflict than I am with their effects upon other developments—specifically, the process of (re)building states.

In the next chapter, the focus will shift to the issue of state-building. Although a number of issues will be addressed, the primary concern will be to understand the role that violence has played (and perhaps still plays) in the building of states. Without this discussion, it would be impossible to understand the ways in which my own theory seeks to connect the interruption of violent ethnic conflict in the post-Cold War era to the interruption of the state-building process in post-colonial states.

Finally, the third chapter will look at the evolution of UN peacekeeping. Beginning with the original concept of peacekeeping as an interposition force or group of unarmed observers placed between belligerents with the consent of the parties, this chapter will explore some of the newer issues raised by the end of bipolarity. Of particular concern are comparatively recent attempts to develop more muscular and intrusive forms of external intervention in the absence of consent by the belligerents. Such efforts are based upon a looser construction of the provision in the Preamble of the UN Charter calling for the preservation of international peace and security. This newer interpretation calls for UN action in situations, such as internal conflict, which were previously thought to be within the domestic jurisdiction of states and, therefore, beyond the scope of the UN as articulated in Article 2 Section 7.

The principal purpose in discussing this literature is to identify what I would regard as a failure on the part of theorists in this area to consider the issue which is at the heart of this study: the violent nature of the state-building process. This failure has resulted in a tendency to either reduce issues of peacekeeping to narrow legal questions concerning the definition of the concept of the domestic affairs of states and the right of the UN to intervene in these so-called affairs or to questions of whether the success of peacekeeping missions should be defined in terms of ending the violence or resolving the underlying conflict (whatever this phrase might mean). Absent from the scholarly literature is any discussion of whether intervention is preferable to nonintervention in terms of the question of its positive or negative impact upon the state-building process in host states. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature.

It is to the literature dealing with the matter of ethnicity and ethnic conflict that this discussion now turns.

MAJOR TRENDS: PRIMORDIALISM VERSUS INSTRUMENTALISM

Over the years, a vast literature has developed dealing with ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Theories abound as to the causal antecedents for ethnic identification: “Ethnic attachments are variously seen as ways to preserve a precious cultural heritage; to soften class lines; to protect or to win economic and political advantages for disadvantaged groups; to furnish a more intimate and flavorful connection with large, impersonal societies; and to retard the shift of overwhelming power to the state.”¹

Given the multifaceted nature of human behavior and the difficulty often encountered by social scientists seeking to isolate causal variables in the real world, where the experimental controls often present in a laboratory generally do not exist, it is perhaps not surprising that these theories of ethnicity oftentimes are additive rather than cumulative. In other words, theories tend to proliferate but without building upon one another. Although there is considerable overlap, these attempts to explain ethnic consciousness generally can be grouped into one or more of the following categories: biological, cultural, economic, and/or political depending upon those factors which a particular scholar regards as salient in producing this sense of group awareness.

Although the approaches to ethnicity may vary widely, there are at least a couple of common questions shared by most, if not all, members of the scholarly community who have studied this subject. These questions have tended to focus upon two fundamental issues: Why do individuals attach significance to membership in ethnic groups as an organizing and mobilizing principle? Why does ethnic identification sometimes result in conflict between groups? Some scholars would add a third question: What, if anything, can be done to manage these conflicts when they do occur? This last question will be dealt with separately as it touches upon the other issues of state-building and UN intervention.

The ambiguous nature of ethnicity has given rise to two very different approaches to the study of this phenomenon among social scientists: primordialism and instrumentalism.² Broadly speaking, primordialists see ethnicity as a fixed quality which provides for continuity across generations; instrumentalists, on the other hand, see ethnicity as contextually based and forever in flux depending upon the particular characteristics assigned importance by a given society.³ Thus, for example, an instrumentalist would argue that while a Mexican and a Colombian more than likely would be seen, and would see themselves, as members of two distinct communities throughout Latin America, these same two individuals would more than likely both be viewed as members of the “Hispanic/Latino” community by the wider population of the United States and, consequently, would likely come to view themselves this way within this particular social context. As a place to begin a discussion of ethnicity, it is useful to start with a further explication of these two fundamentally different approaches to the subject.

Perhaps the closest thing to a biological theory of ethnicity would be the primordialist approach. According to Milton J. Esman, primordialists believe that “ … ethnicity as a collective identity is so deeply rooted in historical experience that it should properly be treated as a given in human relations.”⁴ This approach represents a minority viewpoint within the scholarly community. Whether this means that the assumptions underlying primordialism are flawed or whether it merely reflects a bias within the social science community against the idea that ethnicity represents a distinct phenomenon independent of other social antecedents is, of course, an open question.

Adding to the complexity of this subject is the fact that even some members of the primordialist school do not see biology as the driving force behind ethnicity. Primordialists can be subdivided into those who see ethnicity as a biological phenomenon rooted in the need to transmit certain genetic qualities to the next generation through the maintenance of ethnic solidarity in order to ensure ethnic purity and those who focus on the cultural rather than the alleged biological aspects of ethnicity. While not necessarily denying that ethnicity is inherited, the latter group understand inheritance more in terms of cultural legacies rather than the transmission of genetic material. They tend to emphasize the role of socialization processes in the formation of ethnic identity. For them, the focus is on the transmission of shared cultural experiences and historical memories, whose unique character forever ties the youngest members of the ethnic community to those who came before them and forever separates them from those outside the group.

Whether emphasizing culture or biology, the common feature which distinguishes all primordialists from instrumentalists is the belief by the former that ethnicity as a social phenomenon has an independent existence that is not rooted in any particular social context. Consequently, people do not define their ethnic identity; they are defined by it. This is in marked contrast to the instrumentalist belief that ethnicity represents a social construct that is a function of a particular social context.⁵

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTALISM

As with primordialism, instrumentalism takes a variety of forms. Within the instrumentalist category, opportunistic theories conceptualize ethnicity as a resource to be used by individuals in pursuit of some other end which may in turn be discarded if some alternative method better serves those same ends.⁶

A variation on this theme is the rational choice approach, which attempts to explain behavior in general (and ethnicity in particular) by borrowing from economics the notion of rationality and applying it to ethnicity. From this perspective, ethnicity becomes a rational choice which is made by an individual in an effort to acquire individual, mainly economic, values.⁷

While reserving final judgment, J. Milton Yinger argues that this theory appears to suffer from the same fallacy of reductionism as does the sociobiological approach to ethnicity advocated by scholars such as Pierre Van den Berghe. In a similar fashion, rational choice theories downplay the importance of structural conditions and assume that ethnicity is primarily, or perhaps exclusively, a function of individual choice or decision making.⁸

A subcategory of this rational choice approach is known as constructivism. The notion that ethnic affiliation represents some sort of calculated decision by individuals or groups is popular with those constructivists who seek to explain ethnic mobilization and ethnic conflict in terms of manipulation by ambitious ethnic entrepreneurs. Constructivists are less concerned with the role of economics than that of politics. In particular, they focus upon appeals by ethnic entrepreneurs to ethnic identity as a means of acquiring and/or maintaining power and influence within what is seen as essentially a socially constructed community.⁹ Thus, for example, constructivist theorists would explain ethnic conflict in places such as the former Yugoslavia as the result of efforts by ethnic entrepreneurs, including the Serbian Slobodan Milosevic and the Croatian Franjo Tudjman, to cynically utilize ethnicity as a way to secure for themselves a power base through the manipulation of whole populations in the aftermath of the collapse of communism. In this case, the prospect of losing economic and personal security to members of other ethnic communities is especially potent as a tool to be manipulated by skillful politicians interested in rallying other individuals to identify with the ethnic group and the agenda of its leader.

Such contrived appeals are particularly effective when accompanied by violent conflict between groups because, as Chaim Kaufmann points out, ethnic violence tends to generate a security dilemma.¹⁰ The symbiotic nature of these security dilemmas and the appeals of ethnic entrepreneurs can be seen in the spiraling effect of increased conflict and ever-hardening ethnic identification as the two together provide a rationale for the self-perpetuation of ethnic identity.¹¹

Milica Zarkovic Bookman offers a somewhat different approach to this idea of ethnic manipulation. Instead of focusing on the efforts of entrepreneurs to create insecurity through the artificial manufacturing of ethnic differences leading to security dilemmas and the hardening of ethnic identification, the emphasis is placed instead upon what is termed the “demographic struggle for power.” While accepting the general notion that ethnicity is itself a manufactured phenomenon, the key to this concept is not the manipulation of ethnic symbols but the manipulation of ethnic numbers within the population of a given multi-ethnic state.¹²

There is much to recommend in the Bookman thesis, and elements of it are incorporated into the present study. In particular, the notion that ethnic conflict is tied to the territorial state and that the goal of the “demographic struggle for power” is the creation of ethnically homogeneous states. In this sense, ethnic conflict may be seen as a mechanism for the building of states, whose boundaries more accurately reflect the cultural characteristics of the populations living within those territorial parameters. This view ...

Table of contents

• STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Literature Review
• Part II Theory-Building
• Part III Case Study
• Part IV Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index