THE SPINE JANUARY 10, 2011
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Perhaps it was fated that Sudan, possibly the most preposterous of African states and certainly among the most murderous members of the United Nations, should after two wars waged against populations imprisoned within its borders be the first to actually break up. Of course, it depends on two uncertain circumstances. The first is that secession wins the vote in the south. The second depends on whether Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan who is under indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, would allow the choice of independence to stand. Frankly, I doubt it.
But Jimmy Carter, who almost comically always sees hope in dread circumstances, announced today that al-Bashir has promised him that Sudan would pay Southern Sudan’s share of the national debt. If you believe this you’ll believe all of Carter’s characteristic nonsense.
It is important to understand the differences between the two wars Muslim Arab Sudan has pursued against other groups in the country. In Southern Sudan the war was fought against some five million Christians, many of them Roman Catholic, and animists of the Dinka, Nuer and Balanda tribes. Two million people were said to have died in this conflict. An edgy truce has held there for five years, and now is the moment of decision.
In Darfur, the victims of the Arabs were mostly other Muslims but from non-Arab tribes. Whatever happens in the south will leave Darfur and Darfurians still in peril.
The nightmare that faces almost all of the African states is that very few of them consist of one integral people. In fact, I don’t recall one of them. But identity is an important factor in the lives of most Africans and these identities divide and sever. In the early sixties, when I studied African nationalism with Rupert Emerson at Harvard, we concentrated on the aggression the European colonial powers had committed against the indigenous populations, and of that there was plenty. What we did not pay much attention to were the internecine conflicts among the ethnic, tribal and religious groups of the states that emerged from the colonies, mostly with suspicious, almost tell-tale geographically regular territories. Straight lines is what I mean.
Bennett Ramberg has just published an insightful piece about the ups and downs of certain nationalisms in Europe and Asia. The successful ones had split up, like Sweden and Norway, Singapore and Malaysia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, to say nothing of the split-aways from the Soviet Union. Belgium, which is an exception to this rule with its Flemish and Walloon populations in not quite mortal conflict, is not a coherent state. Were it not for the European Union seated in Brussels Belgium with its pert monarchy would long ago have disappeared. Its decline started when the Congo, which the king himself had owned, became independent. It is now two states.
Here, in a nutshell, is Ramberg’s argument:
Given the consequences of troubled unions, why not voluntary separation? Consider the fatal costs of civil wars to retain national unions: Biafra, 1 million or more. Chechnya, 200,000. Yugoslavia, 260,000. Kashmir, 60,000. Sri Lanka, 70,000 and so on. Can anything justify such consquences?
Like all divorce, state break ups generate downsides such as the loss of common infrastructure — ports, water works, power plants and roads. Enormous compensatory costs follow. But like a bad marriage, the economic benefits of state togetherness cannot compensate for the emotional pains and/or abuse and, too often, civil bloodshed.
Ramberg’s last article in TNR was about Israel’s nuclear weapons.
5 comments
"In the early sixties, when I studied African nationalism with Rupert Emerson at Harvard, we concentrated on the aggression the European colonial powers had committed against the indigenous populations, and of that there was plenty. What we did not pay much attention to were the internecine conflicts among the ethnic, tribal and religious groups of the states that emerged from the colonies, mostly with suspicious, almost tell-tale geographically regular territories." You make an interesting point, and I mostly agree with you. However, I see more strife that would not necessarily result in breakups because some of these countries have seen significant intermingling of tribes over the decades. While internecine inter-tribal conflicts surely existed pre-colonization, what we're seeing as a result of the states put together by the colonialists is something else. For example, the Ewes of Ghana were split in half, part of them in Ghana (what used to be the Trabs-Volta togoland, now the Volta region of Ghana) while the rest ended up in Togo - they essentilly became minorities in two countries. Meanwhile, the Fantes of Ghana used to be part of the Ashanti federation pre-colonization, and while they did have disagreements, it was always resolved in less violent ways. Once the Europeans arrived, they armed the Fante and encouraged them to fight against the Ashantis, supposedly for their independence (the spoils of war being a cheap source of slaves for the Europeans). There are contless examples of how the colonialists set things up to ensure perpetual conflicts long after they were gone, your example of Sudan being one of them.
- wkwami
January 10, 2011 at 9:45pm
Oops, I meant the Trans-Volta Togoland
- wkwami
January 10, 2011 at 9:48pm
Mr. Peretz: Given your apparent support of Mr. Ramberg's views about the break up of nations, what do you say about our own Civil War to preserve the Union, which claimed more than 600,000 lives? I think that would be worth a blog entry. Yes, slavery was a paramount issue, but even Lincoln was willing to compromise on the issue. Perhaps it would have been preferable to let the South go off on its own while doing all possible to support the end of slavery including encouraging fugitives and imposing economic sanctions. On the other hand, the South would have controlled the mouth of the Mississippi, etc., etc. PS: I read in New York Magazine that you intend to discontinue The Spine. Please don't. Even at those times when you are out to lunch, you are always interesting and informative. And you have always had the class to offer a forum to your critics, even the most vehement and obnoxious ones.
- PeteBeck
January 11, 2011 at 9:55am
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/weekinreview/09gettleman.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all was Jeffrey Gettleman's view of post-colonial Africa with a map showing ethno-linguistic Africa, possibly a more fraught divide than tribal rivalries, or even the herder vs farmer divides. Ignoring JCarter, other reports indicate that Bashir appears to know that China will build a pipeline from South Sudan through Ethiopia instead of supporting another Bashir-led civil war. However badly the borders of Africa were drawn, or the artifical nations created by the British, I continue to think Stalin's mosh of Central Asia still rates as absolute worst imperialist mapmaking ever. PeteBeck: of late, I sometimes wonder if the U.S. Civil War was worth the death, destruction, and political legacy. As to your point about the South having control of the lower Mississippi, I think the loss of Manhattan, which tried to secede due to the importance of the cotton trade, was also a worry. However, slavery was already becoming financially unsustainable, even for cotton. Frederick Law Olmstead's reportage from 1860, published as "The Cotton Kingdom" in 1861, might have made the difference in the debate, if the war had not already started.
- K2K
January 11, 2011 at 11:53am
A state that can be divided neatly into two parts, like Czecho-slovakia, may well do better divided. But what of more complex states? (1) The destruction of the Habsburg Empire is widely reckoned one of the worst blunders by the victors of WW I. Instead of a reasonably humane confederation, we got a squabbling collection of mini-states that would become easy prey for Germany and Soviet Russia. (2) The separation of Pakistan from India is still a raw wound 63 years later. (3) The Igbos who tried to separate "Biafra" from Nigeria in 1967 overlooked the fact that "Biafra" (the former Nigerian eastern region) itself contained restive minorities unwilling to accept Igbo rule. As these minorities welcomed in federal Nigerian forces, the Igbo heartland was left without land frontiers, a seacoast, or the oilfields of the Niger Delta.
- hcunn
January 11, 2011 at 8:20pm