“Ethnic Warfare on the Wane,”

By Prof. Ted Robert Gurr

Foreign Affairs [Vol.79, Number 3; May/June, 2000]

Prof. Ted Robert Gurr’s article is relevant to the situation in Sri Lanka because it clearly identifies the liberal Western establishment’s allegiance to the use of devolution of state power, autonomy and power sharing for the amelioration of ethnic conflicts within existing state boundaries. We have been aware of the outlines of this thesis with respect to Sri Lanka, but we may not have known that the idea has a global dimension.

Prof. Gurr directs the Minorities at Risk Project at the University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management. He has a book coming out soon entitled Peoples Versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century from the US Institute for Peace Press. The data on various minorities for the book and this article are available at www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar. Rohan Gunaratne was attached to this project for a short while during the middle 1990s.

Gurr begins his thesis with the assertion that “a new global strategy to contain ethnic conflict” has successfully produced “a sharp decline in new ethnic conflicts and the settlement of many old ones.” The strategy’s “essential principles are that threats to divide a country should be managed by the devolution of state power and that communal fighting about access to the state’s power and resources should be restrained by recognizing group rights and sharing power.”(p.52) Gurr’s evidence is based on tracking 300 ethnic and religious groups over half a century. He classifies Sri Lanka as a war of self-determination, along with Aceh and southern Sudan.

Not only has there been a decline in ethnic conflicts, but the number of protest movements has also declined and “Recent history shows that ten years of nonviolent political action generally precede the start of a new ethnic rebellion.”(p.53)

According to Gurr, the decline is a clear result of the easing of discrimination and the recognition and guarantee of minorities’ political and cultural rights by governments. “A corollary is the right of national peoples to exercise some autonomy within existing states.” He calls the recognition and active protection of minority peoples’ rights a ‘new regime’ governing inter-group relations in heterogeneous states and “an emerging domestic and international consensus on how to respond to ethnic repression and violence.”(p.55)

“Four regional and global forces reinforce the trend toward accommodation in mixed societies. First is the active promotion of democratic institutions and practices by the Atlantic democracies.” This promotion is based on the belief that democracies temper their repression against internal opponents, which explains why the ‘Atlantic democracies,’ as Gurr terms them, are so enthusiastic about Sri Lanka’s democratic system. The second set of forces pushing for accommodation of minority rights is engagement by the UN, regional bodies and NGOs. Third is “the virtually universal consensus among the international political class – the global foreign policy elite – in favor of reestablishing and maintaining global and regional order.”(p.59) Fourth, the costs of ethnic conflict are a deterrent to both governing elites and rebel leaders.

At this point in his argument, Gurr turns from declaiming that this is The Way Things Are, to admitting that what he has been describing is “the new liberal wisdom,” and that things are not quite this neat in the real world, the one in which the major Western powers do not always get their way. “The new liberal wisdom holds that sovereignty can be trumped by humanitarianism and that the international cavalry will ride to the rescue of minorities who face genocide. Chechen and Tibetan nationalists remain unconvinced.”(p.61)

“For several reasons, however, creating autonomy within the state for minorities is harder than simply banning discrimination. Most governing elites want to hold on to central authority. Many also fear that autonomy will lead to outright secession. Finally, negotiating arrangements that satisfy all parties and address each situation’s unique quirks is not easy.”(p.56) Gurr claims that in very few cases has the granting of autonomy led to secession and the ethnic statelets that won de facto independence in the 1990s (Somaliland, Abkhazia, the Trans-Dniester Republic and Iraqi Kurdistan) did so in the absence of negotiations, not because of them.

The system affecting minority rights is multilayered, according to Gurr, and made up of three sets of actors – states, ethnic movements and the regional and international organizations that are “increasing responsible for managing relations between the two…Most states are held back by a growing network of mutual obligations…Countries that ignore these obligations [including those toward their own minorities] risk their future world status, prosperity, and amicable foreign relations.”(p.61) Not every state, of course, is as susceptible to these obligations, and of course we know that international organizations expend different levels of effort to resolve different conflicts. “When prevention fails or is not pursued in the first place, the international challenges are different: providing humanitarian aid and keeping the fighting from spreading throughout the region.”(p.63)

In examining the possibility of new ethnic wars, Gurr states, “Ethnic identity and interest per se do not risk unforeseen ethnic wars; rather the danger is hegemonic elites who use the state to promote their own people’s interests at the expense of others. The ‘push’ of state corruption and minority repression probably will be a more important source of future ethnic wars than the ‘pull’ of opportunity.”(p.64)

Sri Lanka’s unwillingness to share power with any non-Sinhalese has been at the crux of what has been called its ‘national conflict.’ What will be the nature of the state and who will hold the reins of power has been in contention during almost the entire twentieth century. It has been so obvious to outsiders and to the significant non-Sinhalese section of the population that power must be shared that discussions about the form this sharing will take has been a constant feature of political discourse at the same time that power has actually become ever more centralized.

Sri Lanka’s latest phase of discussing the form power sharing will take has occurred under Pres. Chandrika Kumaratunge’s PA government. This government’s inability to pass its token ‘devolution plan’ has disappointed those, like Gurr, who placed faith in “recognizing group rights and sharing power” as a means of containing ethnic conflict within the structure of a single state.

With this disappointment and with Sri Lanka’s inability to eliminate the armed opposition to centralized power, the tactic of negotiations between the warring parties is being tried again, this time with Norway as facilitator. If negotiations ever do begin, the pressure from Sri Lanka and the international community, particularly India, to maintain a single state will be immense. From hard experience, however, those who have lived under a centralized state dominated by one sector of the population will be supremely determined not to put themselves at the mercy of that state again.

Will those who advocate a single state be willing to accept the breakdown of negotiations and a return to war for this ideal? Or, alternatively, will they accept the immense number of safeguards that will be required to permit these two peoples to live together within the framework of a state with one name? Will they be willing to help pay for these safeguards and guarantee them? Which will threaten the stability of the current government (not to mention the democratic system of government itself) more - a majority that wants the whole nation for itself forced to permanently deal with a minority that insists on standing up for its rights, or a neighborhood with good fences?