Dear All,
I found this article to be very concise, Sam Bahour forwarded the link to me. Thank you!
Please note that Howard Adelman and Ervin Staub are both on our Advisory Board.
Most warmly!
Evelin

Battling to understand our genocidal instinct
by Olivia Ward
Jun. 5, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/
Reproduced with permission - Torstar Syndication Services

"Animals fight, but they don't wage war," says the German social critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger. "Only man — unique among the primates — practises this large-scale, deliberate and enthusiastic destruction of his fellow creatures."

With scenes of near-anarchy in Iraq, murder and destruction in Israel and the Palestinian territories, slaughter in Sudan and new killings in Chechnya fresh in their minds, a group of international scholars will gather at University of Western Ontario this weekend to examine a topic that underlies much of the current news: Why Neighbours Kill.

Subtitled "Explaining the Breakdown in Ethnic Relations," it is the 10th international conference of the university's Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Research Group. And at a time of ongoing warfare in many parts of the globe, it will look at such vexing questions as "how do groups that share economic ties, social space and public facilities come to engage in deadly violence against each other?"

For many people, such topics merely spark anger, anguish and despair. And as one war follows another with barely a pause for breath, they wonder if discussing them has lost its point. The urge to kill is widespread: Endless war has become part of the 21st-century psyche.

Howard Adelman, a visiting professor at Princeton University and senior scholar at York University, has studied the question closely, in the Middle East and currently Rwanda, where one of the worst genocides in modern history took place in the 1990s.

"We've learned a lot about why and when people kill each other," he says. "But we still haven't learned our lessons well enough. Countries can slide toward war, while people cry out for something to be done. In Sudan just now, a crisis has been going on for a year. There were many committed people willing to help, but the peace process foundered. The information was there, but it wasn't used for a constructive policy."

The case of Sudan has many of the elements of the catastrophic recent wars of Africa, Asia and Europe. There, in the western province of Darfur, two anti-government guerrilla groups began an uprising last February, and the government responded by backing local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, to attack suspected rebels. A humanitarian disaster followed, with thousands killed, a million driven from their homes and more than 100,000 fleeing to Chad.

The drastic outcome is similar to that of the ethnic cleansing wars that swept across the Balkans after the regime of strongman Josip Broz Tito, the destruction of Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the killings in Rwanda.

One of the most powerful elements common to those cases was a breakdown of order and lack of institutions that provide a system of justice.

Once the slaughter begins, it is often too late to prevent the worst excesses. But the question of how individuals make the transition from neighbours to enemies, and eventually killers, is the one of the most vital to understanding the nature of conflicts.

Landon Hancock, a specialist in conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University in Virginia, says seeds of war are planted from the time humans first develop a sense of identity as part of a group.

"It could be an ethnic group, a religious group, a tribal or purely national affiliation," he says. "The key element is that we all divide ourselves into those who are inside the group and those who are not: what psychologists call the `self' and the `other.'" Once trouble strikes, many people retreat to the security of that group, and polarize their identities. `Us and them' becomes the order of the day.

"One good example was the increase in patriotic sentiment in the United States following the attacks of Sept. 11," he says.

When the threat worsens, a "fear of extinction" sets in, says Hancock. The threat need not be real; it could be the result of propaganda. Governments and guerrillas often exploit primitive fears in a cynical way, to turn anxious people to violence.

"To get a war going you need the people on the top policy level to create the vision," says Adelman. "You need the people in the middle who administer the plan and give the orders. And you need the `little guys' who actually kill. They are usually not motivated at all. They need different kinds of inducements, like fear, peer pressure and drugs. It's a distasteful thing they are going to do, and it's hard work convincing them."

Most ethnic and religious wars are not spontaneous, analysts say. Although small skirmishes may result from local incidents, a network of planning is required to motivate a society to fight.

One element that drives the fighting instinct is a history of injustice. In time of instability, groups look back at a "chosen trauma" that reminds them who their enemy is. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, for instance, recalled a 14th-century battle in Kosovo that led to the occupation of Serbia by the Ottoman Empire, as added justification for "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanian Muslims from Kosovo.

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`Children must not be taught absolute obedience, even though it seems to contradict the wishes of the state'

Ervin Staub, University of Massachusetts

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When past and present traumas are part of the scenario, the result is even more intractable. Israelis and Palestinians, says Daniel Bal-Tar of the University of Tel Aviv, "violently confront each other through 100 years over social identity, territory, natural resources, self-determination, holy places, economic gains, personal and collective security and values."

Even more important to perpetuating killing is discrediting the enemy. Once a group is convinced its foe is untrustworthy and murderous, it is easier to endorse any form of violence against it.

"It's a progressive situation," says Adelman. "First you have to designate somebody as the `other,' then he becomes a lesser person. Then he's a threat. And finally, he must be excluded. If you can't force him out, the only way is to kill him."

Once killing starts, he says, the perpetrators will go to any length to exterminate their enemies: "You don't just kill, you dismember and humiliate. In Rwanda, sexual mutilation was common. It's a form of purification, a way of taking back the territory."

Ethnically, politically or religiously motivated conflict isn't waged only in Third World countries and dictatorships. Those who believe democracy is a bar to mass killing are wrong, says John Dovidio of Colgate University in New York state.

Studying black and white communities in the United States, Dovidio found that even when classic racism is no longer visible on the streets, subtle, unacknowledged racism can have destructive consequences.

The line between those who commit crimes against neighbours and those who resist the urge to kill may be skepticism about authority.

Ervin Staub, a psychology professor at University of Massachusetts, says that the pressure to conform is intense in democratic as well as authoritarian countries, but those who question propaganda, or orders that go against their morality, do exist in every society, though they may be in the minority.

"It's important for people to be educated not to have total respect for authority," he says. "Children must not be taught absolute obedience, even though it seems to contradict the wishes of the state."

Since Hungarian-born Staub was rescued from the Nazis at age 6, he has spent his life trying to understand why people turn against each other murderously. Working with Rwandans, he has applied his knowledge to preventing future massacres.

"When genocide happens it's because the victims were first dehumanized. The survivors also dehumanize the perpetrators. One of the first steps toward reconciliation is the humanizing of the people who committed these awful acts."

Once a war ends, Staub says, it's vital to begin reducing discrimination and building a pluralistic society in which everyone can speak out without fear. Freedom of expression and the media are keys to moving on from violence to tolerance.

"One thing to remember is that those who commit terrible acts are also wounded by what they have done. They must be able to talk about their suffering, and acknowledge the suffering of their victims. Otherwise, when new threats occur, people will retreat into their own traumas and feel they must lash out. That keeps up the cycle of violence."

And the cycle can very easily spin out of control. The wildfire looting of Iraq's national treasures by its own people in the recent conflict, and the trashing of hospitals, schools and sports facilities that serve the same community that vandalizes them, are as incomprehensible to outsiders as killing.

"In the collective running amok," says Enzensberger, in his essay "Civil War," "the concept of future disappears. Only the present matters. Consequences do not exist. The instinct for self-preservation, with the restraining influence it brings to bear, is knocked out of action. One is reminded of Freud, who felt he had no alternative but to postulate the existence of a death drive."

Before the bloodshed reaches that nihilistic level, however, analysts say there is often ample chance to stop it. Understanding how wars are launched is a first step.

But for observers on the sidelines, having the political will, decisiveness and experience to halt violence is more difficult:

Sometimes neighbours kill because they are allowed to.

"In Rwanda, it was the easiest possible scenario to stop," says Adelman. "But knowing what to do didn't translate into action."

Posted by Evelin at June 16, 2004 03:02 AM