One fallout from this North/South split is that I believe the north Sudanese government will harden it’s daily Islamic screed, and things will be a lot more religiously strict. They are now a majority Islamic country; the social liberties that were enjoyed by people living in the urban cities could evaporate once hard-line clerics start whipping the people into being ‘the good Muslims that they should be’ (IOW Wahhabists).
This might seem unlikely because Sudan has a strong history of Sufism, but that was also true for Somalia which (in the past 6 years) has almost completely fallen to foreign equipped Jihadists who got their foothold in Somalia fighting a foreign invasion by western equipped Ethiopians.
Another concern, that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet, is what happens to the southerners living in the north - who number anywhere from half a million to two million depending on who you believe. (I assume there are also northerners in the south although I haven’t seen the figures.) Not all of them are going to go “home” after the split, at least not voluntarily. Northern officials have apparently indicated they aren’t going to automatically extend citizenship to southerners who choose to remain there and they might not be entitled to citizenship of the southern state, either, so we could be seeing another nationality crisis along the lines of Eritrea/Ethiopia. If they also lose their UNHCR protection (no longer IDPs, and not entitled to refugee status due to cessation of the conflict) there could be another humanitarian crisis as well.
Sorry, I made a mistake with that one. It’s actually Kenya’s Kelenjin ethnic group that became a coherent ethnic identity in the 1950s through British radio broadcasts. I’ve been reading Paul Collier’s Wars, Guns and Democracy, which has a lot of insightful stuff to say on ethnic politics.
I wouldn’t say this is an example of the “European origins” of an ethnic identity, as much as an example of the fact that ethnic identities are not immutable categories, but rather performed identities that form and change quite fluidly to the circumstances around them- which in Africa will of course include the influence of colonialism.
Modern ethnic identities in Africa do not have to be dealbreakers for nations, but they can be.
I’m finding Guns, Wars and Democracy to be a more insightful book. The Bottom Billion is more of a general overview and doesn’t say too much that isn’t common sense, but Guns, Wars and Democracy has made me think pretty hard.
You and wmfellows have implied I don’t understand the Hutu Tutsi history. You and wmfellows have suggested that the Belgians are the root cause of the Rwandan slaughter. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t talked about absolving anyone of anything. I do lay the blame for the Rwandan genocide on the butchers themselves. I’ve defended my grasp of Rwandan history to the point where you now have backed off on the pretense their pre-Belgian labels had “barely any meaning.” “Barely any meaning” does, in fact, leave the impression that Tutus and Hutus were a happy family prior to the Europeans “creating…murderous divisions.” As I mentioned, that’s all noble savage bullshit. It results from a worldview which automatically assigns to Europeans the responsibility for Africa’s internal savagery. And it demeans Africans by assigning to them a passive position in which they are pawns at the whim of outsiders–like good children turned bad by evil invaders.
Read your quote above in my prior post along with your other posts and explain to me where your worldview is not as I have painted it, or that it does not imply that the Rwandan genocide was the fault of Europeans. If your new tack of distracting the Hutu-Tutsi division conversation by bringing in the “kikuyu” is meant to paint a broader picture that “African ethnic identities…are modern things” may I politely say your ignorance of things African is astounding, and various “ethnic” divisions do, in fact, go back to “the dawn of time” despite being subject to “modern forces” both in Africa and the rest of the world.
Chief Pedant, I think we all agree that the primary responsibility for the genocide lays with the Hutu genocidaires themselves. (It’s important to note, BTW, that many Hutu were horrified by the slaughter and refused to have anything to do with it.) But is it your position that the Belgians had no responsibility for strengthening and institutionalizing the ethnic divide?
Well then it is a good thing that nobody, anywhere in this thread, is advocating that worldview! Nearly every post of yours has referred to a straw-man argument that exists nowhere but your own head.
Of course pre-colonial Africa was not “one big happy family.” Africa, of course, has a long and diverse history with the kinds of ups and downs that every collection of civilizations can expect to experience. This includes both stuff like arts and learning and war and violence. No doubt there have been plenty of other identities in Africa that fought bitterly. Of course it was not a Utopia. Nobody ever said that.
This does not change the fact that the modern power of the “Hutu” and “Tutsi” identities (specifically) have evolved in the modern era, which in fact does include a long period of European influence. Surely you cannot say that the Europeans were in power for that long and had zero effect on anything African! Modern Africa comes out of modern influences.
This is nothing you can’t also apply to Europeans. Italian identity, for example, is a pretty recent new comer. Stuff changes and evolves, even in Africa.
My understanding of Rwandan history is that the “Tutsis” had carved out for themselves positions of superiority that generally favored the Tutsi when they overtook areas of Rwanda previously under Hutu control (and prior to that, perhaps, under Twa control). Until the arrival of the Belgians, apparently the Tutsi domination was such that the Hutu were more or less resigned to their station in life and I haven’t read of any major Hutu-Tutsi wars in pre-colonial times (there may have been; I just don’t know). The Belgians generally promoted the existing structure which had mostly Tutsi elite controlling a mostly Hutu lower tier. The basic hierarchy of Tutsi over Hutu and Twa was already there, so this idea that they “institutionalized” or “strengthened” the ethnic divide is a judgment call, given the prior lack of institutions, government structures, modern economies and so on. The Hutus (and Twa) always had the short end of the stick pre-Belgians–perhaps there was less total stick to get the short end of. In any case, the Belgians seemed to have considered the Tutsis as more competent, perhaps closer to European races, and more likely to be capable of being the locals in charge, so to speak.
Post-Belgian direct control (that is to say, during the transition from their absolute control all the way to Rwanda settling down post-1994), Hutus and Tutsis battled between themselves for power and control, most notably during the '94 genocide, but certainly well before then in any number of violent interactions.
One line of argument is that the Belgians created and promoted a previously-benign and very malleable division among classes. I suspect that’s over-stated and naive. Were there not already class divisions and hierarchies between “Tutsi” and “Hutu” it would be difficult to promote the Tutsi. In any case, what seems to have most altered whatever historical hierarchy there was is democracy itself–when the Belgians stopped being the Deciders and populace could vote itself power, obviously the Hutus voted in Hutus. There now existed a shift in the power balance not exactly OK with the Tutsis.
Had colonial powers never touched Rwanda would any of this have occurred? Well, no. Some other ongoing machination reflecting the forces that drive human evolution and culture would have been the precipitating factors for change.
Does that mean the Belgians “created” the Hutu and Tutsi murderers who did the slaughtering in the Rwandan genocides? It does, if that’s your world view, I guess. Such a world view assigns to the murderers external forces as ameliorating reasons for behaviour, making an assumption that previously peaceful and gentle co-existing inhabitants of Utopia were turned into murderers against their volition.
I am, instead, reminded of a turkey hunt story I read. This guy shoots the lead Tom in a group of turkeys. A few moments of silence from the remaining turkeys. Then the next Tom runs back to the dead Tom and starts dancing on it in triumph. Did the hunter create a demonic murderer from the previously subservient Tom? I don’t think so. We are all turkeys, and when it’s our turn at the top our nature expresses itself.
I am pleased, then, that it is not your world view that Europeans led to the Rwandan genocide and that responsibility for said genocide was the Rwandans themselves. It was your choice of phrase about “creating new and murderous divisions” that had me confused that you were assigning responsibility to the Belgians as if the Africans were too stupid to figure out who their real oppressors were, accidentally murdering one another instead of blaming the Belgians. I got the idea you were representing that if left to themselves, they would be living in gentle harmony with no class divisions at all. I hope we agree they are perfectly capable of murdering one another all on their own.