Correspondence: The Dynamics of Internal Conflict

To the Editors:

John Mueller's recent argument about the banality of "ethnic war" contains a curious glitch. ¹ Mueller would lead us to believe that the large-scale killings in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s "could happen just about anywhere" (p. 67), without acknowledging that what took place in both countries has occurred repeatedly in each. By failing to adequately consider past events, he then cannot satisfactorily explain why those he labels "thugs" preferentially target only certain categories of fellow citizens, or how interethnic violence can lead to what he is so anxious to dismiss--namely, ethnic war.

This omission is unfortunate because Mueller is correct in his general observation: "Small groups of armed thugs" do play a catalytic role in intrastate violence. ² Also, he is astute to lump together Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, because in neither place did the state per se fail (though it did neglect to protect members of particular groups). Violence did not spread to the center from the peripheries, as it did in Somalia and Sierra Leone, two other countries torn asunder by ethnic conflict in the 1990s. ³ Nor was it the goal of disaffected citizens to capture (or destroy) the seat of government. Rather, as Mueller points out, the governments helped direct Hutu and Serb perpetrators to pillage, rape, and murder, but always with an unmistakably ethnic bias.

As Mueller himself points out, the thugs could have gone after left-handers or right-handers, or people of a different class or ideological allegiance. But they did not. Instead they were directed to selectively terrorize the populace. In Mueller's view, they were unleashed and allowed to wreak havoc on those who "were on the wrong side of the political fence" (p. 60). But although the Interahamwe's hatchet men did kill moderates of all stripes in Rwanda, all Tutsis were considered fair game. Nor was this the first time that Tutsis had been collectively targeted simply for being Tutsi. Modern Rwanda has known a succession of ethnic massacres, beginning in 1959, spiking in 1963-64, and resuming in 1990. ⁴ So has neighboring Burundi: in 1965, 1972, 1988, 1989, and 1993. ⁵ In fact, the timing of events in Rwanda cannot be adequately understood without taking into account the ebb and flow of interethnic relations throughout East-Central Africa. Refugee flows from Tutsi-ruled Burundi have always heightened tensions in Rwanda. ⁶ But even domestic Ugandan politics figured into the 1994 genocide, as the formerly Uganda-based Rwanda Patriotic Front (considered a predominantly Tutsi army) launched a series of offensives against President Juvénal Habyarimana's forces in 1991, and then again in February 1994. ⁷

Mueller ignores these and other historical and regional complexities. He may have to in order to knock down his straw man, which is the notion that ethnic war is a war of "all against all and neighbor against neighbor" (p. 42). It seems that for Mueller, ethnic conflict has to be grounded in mass hate; so long as "the vast majority" (p. 43) do not take up arms, the conflict cannot be considered ethnically motivated--never mind that most genocides have been perpetrated by a relative few supported by a willfully neglectful many, ⁸ or that those who use thugs may have a cunning rationale because any undisciplined, armed gang is likely to generate fear.

Fear, not hatred, is the prime motivator in ethnic conflicts. ⁹ People normally fear contamination, competition, and crime. Propaganda (like terrorism) feeds on this fear, and did so in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Whenever citizens feel threatened by too much insecurity, they seek protection from the state. Should the state fail them, because officials are either inept or corrupt, individuals then take matters into their own hands. We see this even in the United States in benighted neighborhoods, where heads of households install security systems, purchase guard dogs, and own guns...