ETHNIC COLONIALISM 

by Madiha Sultan

The potential for colonialism is inherent in a world composed of political entities at radically different stages of economic and technological development. In THIS world there are about 8,000 distinct cultures and the disbalance of power is taking the world towards the ethnic colonialism. Ethnic war has existed since time immemorial. But the history of the twentieth century has transformed its nature. Before the Second World War the concept of colonialism was more in process than afterwards. Colonialism could be religious, ethnic, linguistic, political, economic or regional but the characteristics and the goals are same.

With the end of World War II, the victorious nations, with much rhetoric about a New World Order, established the United Nations to govern this New World Order. The Charter of the UN, however, was based on two theoretically opposed principles: territorial integrity and national self-determination. The first principle stated that all states were completely sovereign within their territory and no other state had a right to interfere with their internal affairs. The second principle maintained that all nations had a right to self-determination – that is, to their own state and government, independent of all other states and governments. These principles sounded eloquent on paper, but they rested on a faulty assumption – that the world was made up of nation-states; in other words, that the boundaries of nations and states coincided perfectly. They did not.

This became apparent as leaders of the Third World seized the principle of self-determination to champion decolonization. As colonies clamored for the independence to which they, as nations, believed they had a right, they discovered that within their own borders were other national minorities that desired the same right. Wars broke out. These wars of ethnic group against ethnic group were not traditional interstate wars, however. They were internal wars, between a state and its own citizens. Thus, legally, the UN could do nothing about these conflicts, as this would violate the given states territorial integrity. The UN tried, however, to bend these rules in order to find a solution to the new internal nature of ethnic conflict. The 1950s struggle in Congo was the most vivid example. As the Belgian imperial rulers pulled out, they left a power vacuum behind them, and ethnic groups violently struggled for the right to primacy within the new state. Colonialism is in excusable because it conflicts directly with the right of national integrity and self determination.  19^th century empire builders believed they bore the moral responsibility to sire "backward peoples" and bring them the fruits of Western civilization. The effects of colonialism has existed since antiquity. The most moral continental of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. Modern European colonialism dates from the 15 ^th century and can be divided into two overlapping phases. The first phase, Western Europe, led by Spain and Portugal, expanded in the East Indies and the Americas in the second, Great Britain spearheaded European expansion into Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

Conflict Resolution

There could be various methods of resolving the conflicts. It could be by Negotiation, Mediation, Arbitration, by restraining it, treaties, co-existence, arms control, prevention and many other ways which depends totally on the type of a conflict.

We ought to adopt the measures for conflict resolution with the respect of ethnic colonialism. We have an example of In Afghanistan we have a total dualt of power because, Talibinisation has caused a great harm to respect of peace in a sense that it is considered to be Islamic fundamentalist laws in the State. There are conflicts which are more internal and can not be resolved internationally as it effects the self-determination right of a group or people in a country, It can not be suspended as a recial or rebal conflict. But in place of that it is more effective because of people to people direct contact on ethnic terms.

The UN made a meager attempt to bring stability to the new country, but soon left with its tail between its legs (see Meisler, 115-13 4 for a descriptive summary of the UN's first peace-enforcement mission).

Because of the Cold War, no other attempts were made to solve ethnic conflicts unless these attempts could be defined in the ideological terms of the Cold War. Thus, if it was not a blow against a communist-backed government or rebellion, it was not worth Western attention. The end of the Cold War, though, saw the explosion of hundreds of internal ethnic conflicts, from Indonesia to Africa to Eastern Europe. In Europe, because of the Bosnian crisis, many people began to believe that modern ethnic conflicts had become "the most prominent security issue in Europe for the foreseeable future" (Karkoszka, in Cuthbertson and Liebowitz, 212) and, consequently, made efforts to resolve them, but with little success. Desperation in the West began to set in. In the words of a prominent scholar of conflict resolution, "the failure to stop the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia is causing pessimism and frustration to overshadow European thinking and action" (Rabie, 167). Even the cease-fires attained in both Bosnia and Kosovo have done little to dampen this pessimism. The violence has been stopped, but the conflicts continue to go unresolved.

Conclusion

This pessimism is unfounded. These conflicts can be solved. But to do this, two factors must be recognized. First, traditional methods of international conflict resolution (mainly, power-based third state mediation) fail to resolve modern ethnic conflicts because these methods were not designed for modern ethnic conflicts. They were designed for traditional interstate conflict. Modern ethnic conflict is different in nature than traditional interstate conflict. An effective method of conflict resolution must take into account these differences.

Second, an effective method of conflict resolution must be based on insights gained from a wider perspective. Westerners are too often narrowly focused, being so obsessed with the case of Yugoslavia that raging ethnic conflicts in other regions of the world go completely ignored. Through a wider perspective, we will gain a broader understanding of the real nature of modern ethnic conflict. But first, we must specify what we mean by modern ethnic conflict.

All content (C) Department of International Relations, Karachi University

Website designed and maintained by Techdorado Web Technologies Inc.
Disclaimer Email Webmaster, KUIRD.org