Anarchy, State and Genocide

While I have only recently begun to read Nozick's seminal tome, the play on the title called to me. After reading more and more literature pertaining to philosophical anarchism and natural rights theory, I could not help but wonder whether the concept of the (modern) state (not just particular examples of the state) deserved more specific analysis with respect to the phenomenon of genocide. Jews, Armenians, Rwandans (not to mention those murdered en mass within Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia) were all murdered at the behest or with the guidance and approval of the state. This simple and obvious feature of these genocides is no accident or coincidence. Systematized mass murder on a grand scale requires a degree of organization over a large geographical area seldom seen outside of centralized hierarchical organizations, of which the state is the ultimate example. Furthermore, since one of the defining characteristics of the state is the monopolization of force within its territory, not only must the state be complicit--either tacitly or explicitly--in the genocidal project, the ability of targets of genocidal intent to defend themselves is invariably weakened to the point of nonexistence. While the most obvious necessary points of intersection with the genocidal project are the force and logistical support the state supplies, there are other requisite components. The twin combination of mass education and mass communication are necessary to promulgate and reinforce the mythical intrinsic identities that serve to rationalize the subjects of premeditated mass murder.

What is so interesting about this is how it relates to "State of Nature" arguments for the state. Whether Hobbesian, Lockean or some other famous interlocutor for the state (e.g. Kant), the protection provided by the state to its citizens is always provided as one of the primary arguments for the state. However, with the factual reality of genocide inserted into the conversation, that particular line of reasoning while not rendered void is greatly weakened. If the very institution that is to provide protection of rights can also be the same tool required for the most severe violations of rights--a degree of violation verging on an escalation in kind (beyond that possible without a state) not just degree--the rationale for that institution's existence is highly questionable.

The Dangerous Dilettantism of Journalism

I sometimes wonder if anyone who has a great deal of knowledge on a particular subject is bound to be outraged regularly by reputable journalistic enterprises when those organizations discuss his area of expertise. I am sure the New York Times and BBC News and the other paragons of journalism regularly annoy scholars the world round. It truly causes me to wonder how many other things journalists misrepresent as thoroughly as the Rwandan genocide and the history that preceded it.

As usual today, I compiled my list of material to read by sifting through my RSS feeds. One of the stories I selected for closer reading was the story of a Rwandan in Germany, a Mr Murwanashyaka, whom German prosecutors were considering investigating for war crimes in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the side of that story was a heading titled Background, and under that heading was a link called How the genocide happened. It came as no surprise that what followed did a terrible job of living up to its title. It did not take long for the article to blunder into the realm of the thoroughly misinformed. Under the heading History of violence, the article immediately states: “Ethnic tension in Rwanda is nothing new.” That is an amazingly wrong sentence. It actually hurts me to read things that wrong—hence the current post. I suppose if people had only lived in the geographical location now called Rwanda for 50 or 100 years, “ethnic” tension might be something that could be referred to as nothing new. Unfortunately, Rwanda has been inhabited for thousands of years, and the sectarian strife that resulted in the Rwandan genocide is new and is not ethnic in nature.

As I have stated in an earlier post, there are not multiple ethnic groups in Rwanda. Hence, “Ethnic tension in Rwanda” is an absurdity. Obviously there was a tension of some kind in Rwanda—hundreds of thousands of dead Rwandans attest to the very real nature of that tension. But it was far more complex than the ethnic paradigm implies. There is no question that groups believing themselves to be “Hutu” were set against people they called “Tutsi”. However, this Hutu-Tutsi dichotomy is a contrivance, a fiction. These words are the tools of political fraud: a fraud that relies upon the creation and maintenance of a minority group that can be vilified and scapegoated as necessary.

Do the terms "Hutu" and "Tutsi" have meaning? Of course. However, they do not locate people on a Cartesian plane of ethnic identity. That these two words are so important today says more about European colonizers than it does about Rwandan identity. Rwanda prior to colonialism was a complex society with permeable boundaries between groups. Peasants could become pastoralists and vice versa. The complex topography of Rwandan society was flattened by European eyes that only saw what they knew: rigid class structure and ethnicity. This is not to imply that Rwanda was an egalitarian utopia. The Kingdom of Rwanda was hierarchical and increasingly centralized by the time it came under German rule. However, the rigidity of the terms “Hutu” and “Tutsi” was introduced by the Belgians through the institution of identification cards that mandated the stipulation of Hutu, Tutsi or Twa. These three terms broadly refer to primary means of production and social reproduction: agriculture, pastoralism and craftsmanship respectively. However, as befits a complex society, the relationship of the terms “Hutu”, “Tutsi” and “Twa” to the three categories of social reproduction is not one-to-one.

The pseudo-ethnic paradigm used so effectively to orchestrate mass murder was synthesized by elites to maintain power. It is a cudgel that prior to the genocide and since just before independence had been used intermittently by those in power to distract a poorly governed populace from the inadequacies and corruption of the policies of those in power. It is truly sad when respected sources of information such as the BBC recapitulate the fraudulent identity politics that was used to kill so many.

Ethnicity and Rwanda

Ethnicity is a problematic concept when considering Rwanda. What is ethnicity? Here we have the root:
ethnic
Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.
Being a member of a particular ethnic group, especially belonging to a national group by heritage or culture but residing outside its national boundaries: ethnic Hungarians living in northern Serbia.

(taken from Dictionary.com)
How does the conceptual framework implied by "ethnic" apply to a discussion of the internal dynamics of Rwanda? As defined above the only ethnicity in Rwanda is that of Rwandan. Granted, there are distinctions to be made aplenty. However, the word "ethnicity" just is not descriptive in the Rwandan case. Moreover, the word interferes with the attempt to understand Rwandan history and culture. The use of a word to describe a situation on which it has no baring instantly inserts an external paradigm that distorts further discourse. Discussion of inter and intra group dynamics in Rwanda has suffered greatly from the insertion of the ethnic paradigm. Unfortunately the ethnic paradigm is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Call two groups who share the same culture, religion, language and geographical location separate ethnicities long enough--say the entire 20th century--and eventually that discourse is actually to some degree descriptive of the situation on the ground.

To be or not to be. . .

During a recent conversation with a friend I was asked: “What are the necessary/sufficient conditions for a conflict to be considered genocide?” Upon further consideration, I realized this was an excellent question, which I had not thoroughly pondered. Was the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima genocidal? My intuitive answer is no. Buy why? Immediately I am in danger of doing something I detest: arguing backwards from my conclusion. I should start instead with examples of genocide and ask why are they examples of genocide? What are the shared characteristics that qualify these events for the appellation genocide?

While the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide—I chose these particular cases because they are the ones with which I am most familiar—are geographically and temporally remote from each other, they do share defining characteristics:

1. Thoroughly unwarranted (essentialist) claims about identity


2. Identity politics as a means to acquisition/maintenance of political power


3. The vilification and persecution of a minority (power) group (a grouping that could be essentially arbitrary and externally imposed)


4. Political organization (which is necessary for sustaining the killing)


5. Geopolitical and economic stressors


6. Systematized mass killing based on (essentialist) identity claims with the ultimate purpose of eliminating in whole or in part the target group

In my studies (which are admittedly limited) genocidal events share all six of these characteristics. I have had these characteristics floating in mind for some time. However, it was my friend’s question that pushed me to put them down in words. I have organized the list in roughly the order in which I think genocide as a social machine for killing operates, although number five could also fall between one and two as well as four and six.

So, why is the wanton bombing of civilians in the cases cited above not genocide? Or as my friend asked (in response to a somewhat different context) why are all military conflicts not considered genocide? That is still a difficult question to answer. The explicit targeting of civilians is without question horrible. These acts may in fact qualify as war crimes (a phrase with its own definitional issues)—as some have suggested. However, one clear difference is that the deaths of civilians in Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima were not ends in themselves. While genocidal killing is a means to political ends, the extermination of the target group is also an end in itself: it is seen/claimed as desirable based on the unwarranted essentialist claims about the identity of the target group. That does not diminish the atrocity involved in the targeting and mass killing of civilians as a means to military victory.

Great Lakes Geopolitics

The Rwandan genocide is geopolitically a bit of a misnomer. It implies boundaries that are far too limiting. Rwanda is best viewed historically, politically, economically and culturally as part of the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Once viewed in this regional context, the Rwandan genocide can be analyzed as part of a much larger conflict, which includes eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, western Tanzania and Burundi--not just Rwanda.

Although in the literature about Rwanda it is often noted that Rwanda is one of the few states in Africa whose borders actually approximate that of the pre-colonial state (the Kingdom of Rwanda), the Great Lakes region has for centuries been the site of extensive population movements. In the last 50 years alone hundreds of thousands of people have moved either into or out of Rwanda. Uganda and Tanzania both have had significant Rwandan refugee populations. Indeed Uganda's Rwandan refugee population was large enough to be a source of internal political disruption. Furthermore, while there was a Kingdom of Rwanda where the modern Rwandan state is located, significant portions of what is now Rwanda were never actually incorporated into the Kingdom of Rwanda prior to the arrival of Europeans. These particular areas were only subdued with the aid of European colonizers. This is one of the many reason there are significant regional differences within Rwanda.

Ironically--from an American perspective--much of Rwandan politics breaks down on a north-south divide. With Juvénal Habyarimana's coup in 1973, political power was firmly concentrated in the favor of the north. In the twenty years between Habyarimana's seizing of power and his death in a plane crash--which was the impetus for full-scale genocide--the north-south division became a divide predicated not just on historical relationships among differing polities, but a divide based on socio-economic privilege and deprivation. While a few localities within southern Rwanda were predominantly Tutsi (ignoring for the moment what such a statement even means), the southern region was still by far a majority Hutu region (Hutu, like Tutsi, is unproblematized in this statement). This implies that one of the major internal divisions within Rwanda had little if anything to do with "ethnicity."
Rwanda's extensive external linkages and complex internal divisions make even the term "Rwandan genocide" problematic. And this leaves aside temporal considerations. When did the Rwandan genocide start? When did it end? Did it end? Time further complicates the picture.

The issue of boundaries is not to be taken for granted. Just as the ethnic boundaries "Hutu" and "Tutsi" seem to imply are permeable membranes at their sturdiest, the obvious geopolitical boundaries carry their own descriptive inadequacies.

Intent

Writing is as much for those who do the writing as it is for those who choose to read it. With that idea clearly in mind, this blog is as much an attempt at encouraging myself to write as it is an attempt at producing for others’ consumption. I am starting this blog primarily to spur my academic writing. As such, it will be rather dreary reading much of the time since my academic focus is genocide. However, as with any endeavor that is in part based in the stream of consciousness this blog will in all likelihood ramble over a wide range of topics. If anyone actually does read this I welcome any comments.