Ethnonationalism: The Wars of Tribe and Faith Return
DRoshani
March 18, 2010
Ethnonationalism: The Wars of Tribe and Faith Return
By Patrick J. Buchanan
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, most Americans likely had never
heard of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.
Yet the ethnonationalism of these Asian peoples, boiling to the
surface after centuries of tsarist and communist repression, helped
tear apart one of the great empires of history.
There swiftly followed the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Yet, if one knew nothing of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires or the
First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, one would likely have been
surprised by the sudden emergence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia,
Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo on the map of Europe.
What the splintering of the Soviet Union and of a Yugoslavia whose
baptismal certificate dated to the Paris peace conference of 1919
revealed was the accuracy of Arthur Schlesinger's insight in his 1991
Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society:
"Nationalism remains after two centuries the most vital political
emotion in the world -- far more vital than social ideologies such a
communism or fascism or even democracy. ... Within nation-states,
nationalism takes the form of ethnicity or tribalism."
Ethnic ties, Schlesinger wrote, might prove more powerful and
historically important than the forces of globalism and democratism,
which then seemed ascendant. He only neglected to mention religious
faith as often a "far more vital" emotion than ideology.
And though the Iraq elections have been hailed as a triumph of
democracy, they would seem to prove him right.
Kurds voted for Kurds, Shia for Shia, Sunni for Sunni on a slate led
by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia who campaigned on a unity ticket.
The election results resemble a national census.
In the struggle between Allawi and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to
put together a government, both are courting the Kurds, whose near-
term goal is Kirkuk, control of which would mean control of 40 percent
of Iraq's oil reserves. If the Kurds, who have been forcing their way
into Kirkuk and pushing Arabs out, can annex the city, they will have
the economic base of a Kurdistan nation, the dream of a people whose
kinfolk are spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The Kurds are using democratic means for ethnonational ends.
Maliki's strength is in the Shia south and the capital, Baghdad, that
has been slowly cleansed of Sunni.
Among Allawi's weaknesses is that the Shia majority may not support as
Iraq's prime minister a Shia secularist whose strength comes from a
Sunni minority that was the bulwark of the Baath Party of Saddam
Hussein.
Among the Shia are leaders who spent the Iran-Iraq war in exile in
Iran, and whose ties to the Iranian Shia seem stronger than any ties
to their Sunni countrymen.
Hence, as we indulge in self-congratulation for having brought
democracy to Iraq, Iraqis seem to be using the process to advance
ethnonational and sectarian ends that are the antithesis of U.S.
democracy. We see democracy as an end in itself. Many in that part of
the world see it as a means of establishing their ascendancy and
hegemony over other religious and ethnic minorities.
In 2005, George W. Bush, then promoting global democracy as the answer
to all of mankind's ills and an essential precondition for any
permanent security for the United States, demanded free elections in
Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. The winners: the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas. A perplexed Bush refused to
accept the results or recognize and talk to the winners.
Before the invasion, most Americans were probably unaware of the
tribal and sectarian divisions in Iraq that may yet produce a new
Saddam to keep that country from coming apart in sectarian and civil
war.
And how many Americans were aware of the ethnic divisions in
Afghanistan, among Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Pashtun, before we
invaded? A program is underway to bring more Pashtun into the army and
police, lest the Pashtun in the south feel invaded and occupied by
alien tribes.
Globalization is no longer on the march, but on the defensive.
Economic nationalism is rising. Across the Third World, we see an
upsurge of ethnonationalism and fundamentalism, especially among the
Islamic peoples. From Nigeria to Sudan to Mindanao, Muslims battle
Christians, as Christians are persecuted in Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan.
In India and Thailand, Muslims battle Hindu and Buddhists. In the
Northern Caucasus, they fight Russians.
Ethnonationalism, that relentless drive of peoples to secede and dwell
apart, to establish their own nation-state, where their faith is
predominant, their language spoken, their heroes and history revered,
and they rule to the exclusion of all others, is rampant.
In China, Tibetans fight assimilation and the mass migration of Han
Chinese into what was their country, as do the Uighurs in the west who
dream of an East Turkestan breaking away and taking its place among
the nations of the world.
In speaking of the rising tribalism abroad, Schlesinger added, "The
ethnic upsurge in America, far from being unique, partakes of the
global fever."
Indeed, separatism and secessionism seem to be in the air.
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