Ethnic Cleansing (review)

The ethnic conflicts that exist today in Bosnia, Russia, Northern Ireland, and a number of other geographic locations demonstrate the continuing quagmire of “ethnic cleansing” as described by the author. While a precise definition remains elusive, cleansing results in tremendous suffering on the part of people who are expelled from their homelands. Bell-Fialkoff differentiates “cleansing” from other forms of population control, such as genocide and emigration, with the following definition:

Population cleansing is a planned, deliberate removal from a certain territory of an undesirable population distinguished by one or more characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, race, class, or sexual preference. These characteristics must serve as the basis for removal for it to qualify as cleansing. ¹

Throughout history, according to the author, cleansing has been conducted against subpopulations that are viewed as “other,” and not part of the dominant/primary culture of a nation. Because of perceived “differences,” this minority is believed to lack loyalty to central authorities and, therefore, is capable of siding with external enemies. It is this perceived threat that is used to justify cleansing.

Over the last 3000 years, cleansing activities have gone through three distinct phases. In the first, cleansing was employed primarily to maintain control over vanquished peoples. Lacking the ideological component of the other two phases, these activities were a political weapon designed to remove the leadership who were most likely to guide a rebellion. However, there was an economic aspect as well since conquered peoples also were viewed as a steady source of slaves and revenue.

During the Middle Ages, because of the spread of Christianity and Islam, cleansing activities were redirected from ethnic to religious minorities. In this period, religious identity became the primary distinguishing characteristic of early modern empires, and tolerance of other religious groups was unacceptable. According to the author, “the world was divided into believers and nonbelievers, with the assumption that nonbelievers were not completely acceptable and had to be either converted or cleansed.” ²

With the decline of religion as a political force during the eighteenth century, modern nationalism, with its unique blend of ethnicity superimposed over “the old religious core,” gave birth to many of the most chilling human rights violations of our time. ³ From colonial cleansing of aboriginal peoples in America and Australia, based on race or genetic makeup, to the atrocities inflicted by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia on internal and external populations defined as “different,” and therefore “dangerous,” this third period of cleansing combined ethnicity, race, religion, and class as appropriate criteria to define “other.” Modern background is then used by Bell-Fialkoff to examine the current situations in Bosnia, Cyprus, Karabakh, Kosovo, Israel, Russia, Rwanda and Burundi, Sri Lanka, Transylvania, and Ulster.

If the great strength of this book is the historical context of ethnic cleansing, the weakness is the proposed solution. After describing the horror of forced expulsions through time, the author contends that the only viable solution to many ethnic conflicts is “population transfer.” As support for this conclusion, he states that in “many societies . . . ‘compromise’ is a dirty word because it implies a betrayal or lack of sacred principles.” ⁴ Thus, Bell-Fialkoff believes that resettlement is “moral when it serves the purpose of saving lives and assures the rights, individual and group, of future victims.” ⁵

His approach begs the question of which group is allowed to maintain their lives in their home country, and which group must leave. To help answer this question, Bell-Fialkoff proposes the “Resettlement Index,” which takes into account historical precedence, victimization, external threat, and numerical superiority. Of course, a host of additional issues must also be resolved including placement, property rights, pensions, health care, etc.

Personally, I have serious reservations about this solution. First, the Resettlement Index is unlikely to have much of an influence unless it happens to favor the population with the most political, economic, and/or military power. Second, it fails to consider micro-level issues related to the serious physical and emotional damage suffered by those who must leave their homes. Third...