SKOPJE, Macedonia — The news from Iraq has been particularly bad this week, as militiamen from assorted communities within the country have started killing fellow Iraqis only on the basis of their names and religious affiliation. Blowing up mosques by rival Sunnis and Shiites has become almost routine, as has the understandable response by many families who are fleeing their ancestral homes and communities to find refuge among people of their own religious or ethnic identity.
This is neither new to the Middle East nor unexpected in Iraq in the wake of the Anglo-American removal of the former governance system. The deeper question it raises is about whether the powerful, ancient identities of religion, sect, ethnicity and tribe can be easily accommodated in the nation-state structure that has defined the world for the past few centuries.
I am following the Iraq situation this week from Macedonia and Kosovo, two Balkan areas in south-east Europe that have suffered the same sorts of ethnic and religious tensions that plague many parts of the Middle East. These areas within the former Yugoslavia represent a modern tradition of nationalist-ethnic-religious discord that has made the Balkans synonymous with political strife and violent conflict. Macedonia last suffered a round of tension and fighting in 2001, following somewhat similar confrontations in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia before that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state of Yugoslavia. Tensions still persist in parts of this region, as (typically)religious or ethnic minorities seek to escape their status as second class citizens and form their own countries. Kosovo remains a lively example of this phenomenon that remains to be resolved.
When the Middle East and the Balkans are viewed side-by-side, with their similar problems of ethnic-religious and national strife, two particular issues arise: What is needed to allow multi-ethnic communities to survive and even to flourish? Is the sovereign, independent nation-state the most appropriate way for people in such societies to configure themselves politically? These are universal issues, not just problems for war-torn societies in the Balkans and the Middle East. Wealthy and stable Spain is going through its own exploration of how to mesh regional nationalisms like Catalan and Basque identities with the larger Spanish idea, and Canada has similarly grappled in recent decades with the most appropriate blend of Quebecois nationalism with the federal Canadian identity.
The events in Iraq will spill over into other parts of the Middle East in due course, whether in positive or negative forms. The positive outcome in Iraq would be a stable, peaceful and democratic country in which sub-identities of religion and ethnicity would be accommodated within the unified Iraqi state. The negative outcome would be continued sectarian strife, leading to all-out civil war and an eventual break-up of the country into smaller units based primarily on ethnic or religious identity. Iraq could go in either direction, as most of its citizens and leaders valiantly try to achieve the positive result, while others succumb to sectarian fears and the instincts of revenge and self-defense and carry the fight to their neighbors who are different from themselves.
There are no easy or universal solutions to the question of how to mesh diverse ethnicity-religiosity with the concept of a single national identity. Countries respond to this challenge in different ways. The situation is always easier when socio-economic conditions are good. The Swiss and Belgians, for example, have developed wealthy and stable societies that also include a variety of religious and other identities, while avoiding major strife. Most parts of the Balkans and the Arab world that face similar challenges do so at a time of socio-economic stress, which tends to promote fear and violence. When ordinary people feel that their basic material needs are not met and they also feel insecure in the face of threats to their communal identity, the door is open to two widespread phenomena: firebrand demagogues who play on nationalist feelings, and militia leaders who organize the community to defend itself and attack its perceived opponents.
Both of these phenomena have appeared in the Middle East and the Balkans in recent years, and they will continue to do so until the people in these areas figure out the appropriate relationship between their narrow communal identities and their larger national or nation-state identities. Foreign countries and global powers usually cannot do very much or intervene in any meaningful way in such situations. Sending in troops provides only temporary relief and quiet. Kosovo today is something of an international protectorate, but foreign troops cannot be expected to remain there forever. Iraq also reveals powerful local communal sentiments that will fully assert themselves once the foreign troops go home, and a more natural local and regional power balance reigns.
It is dangerous to generalize, but some trends do seem universal. Perhaps the most basic is that individual human beings who do not feel that their rights, needs and identities are adequately affirmed by the institutions of the modern secular nation-state will revert easily and happily to the older forms of protection and self-affirmation that come from their narrow communal, religious and ethnic identities. Ethnic cleansing and killing people on the basis of their identity cards are two common consequences. Such savagery, whether in Europe or the Middle East, will not go away easily. It requires a much more diligent review of the institutions of the modern nation-state that Western Europe bequeathed the world in the second half of the second millennium. Modernity may be in need of an overhaul, or at least some serious tinkering.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 12 July 2006
Word Count: 926
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