The Road to Sectarian Conflict: Lessons from the Balkans
By Don Sutherland
Danish physicist Niels Bohr once observed, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” As sectarian conflict is the most common form of violence that tears states apart, wreaking both economic and human, prediction as to the possibility of such conflicts is an essential task for policymakers. Failure to understand the risk of sectarian conflict can have devastating consequences, as one is witnessing each day in Iraq and Sudan, among other places.
According to the United Nations Development Program, the 1990s saw 53 “major armed internal conflicts” that resulted in 3.6 million deaths. Among those conflicts were two that occurred in the Balkans. There, the tremors of sectarian violence and rising ethnic rivalries began manifesting themselves anew beginning in the late 1960s. That process accelerated with the death of Yugoslavia’s President Josip Tito in 1980. The late-20th century experience in the Balkans provides a representative case of high-risk states.
Areas at risk of sectarian conflict exhibit a number of common characteristics. These concern ethnic rivalry, historic experience, economic shocks, and erosion in state authority. Harvard University Professor of History Niall Ferguson observed, “Three factors explain the timing and the location of the extreme violence of the twentieth century: ethnic disintegration, economic volatility, and empires in decline.” In the post-imperial age, “empires in decline” could readily be replaced with a decline in state authority.
The presence of differing ethnic groups alone does not explain the outbreak of sectarian conflict. According to David Lake and Donald Rothchild, Professors of Political Science at the University of California at San Diego, it is “fear of the future” that can lead to the kind of destructive ethnic rivalries that erupt into conflict. Particularly prominent in sparking conflict, the professors explain, is the “fear for their physical safety and survival—especially when the groups are more or less evenly matched and neither can absorb the other politically, economically, or culturally.” In a June 2000 report, Paul Collier, Director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group observed, “If there is one dominant ethnic group which constitutes between 45% and 90% of the population—enough to give it control, but not enough to make discrimination against a minority pointless—the risk of conflict doubles.”
Historic experience can give rise to grievances or perpetuate them, especially if that historic experience included a recent civil war. Collier found that “immediately after the end of hostilities there is a 40% chance of further conflict.” That risk falls about 1% for every year of peace that follows the conclusion of a civil war.
Collier’s research also revealed that “low income and economic decline” increase the risk of civil conflict. Nations that depend heavily on the export of primary commodities are especially vulnerable given the volatility of commodities prices. Rapid economic growth can also add to the risk of conflict. Ferguson explains, “This is especially true in multiethnic societies, where booms can appear to benefit market-dominant minorities disproportionately…”
The decline of empires or erosion of state authority can be instrumental in sparking ethnic conflict. According to Ferguson, the decline of empires can leave minorities that cooperated with the rulers “vulnerable to reprisals.” Lake and Rothchild add, “When central authority declines, groups become fearful for their survival and, in turn, tend to rely upon their own capabilities. They invest in and prepare for violence, and thereby make actual violence possible.” In part, because state authority can keep possible sectarian rivalries in check, the end of authoritarian rule or the early years of a transition to democracy can be marked by sectarian violence. In 2002, the United Nations Development Program warned that “the early years of building a democratic state tend to be the most perilous: both for democracy and for civil peace.” Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq represents a classic example of a state that experienced the emergence of significant sectarian violence following the demise of authoritarian rule. The dynamics in the Balkans prior to the two major sectarian conflicts (Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia and Serbia/Kosovo) fits the above framework very closely.
In October 1885, The New York Times described the Balkan Peninsula as “being made up of mingled races” and noted then that it “cannot be divided geographically into complete nationalities…” In 1980, John Darnton of The New York Times observed, “Yugoslavia remains an unmelted pot—of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians, plus Albanian and Hungarian minorities.” By 1990, on the eve of sectarian conflict, Yugoslavia’s ethnic character remained essentially intact. The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook: 1990, observed that Yugoslavia was comprised of Serbs (36.3%), Croats (19.7%), Muslims (7.8%), Slovenes (7.7%), and Albanians (5.9%). “Muslims,” in this case referred mainly to what became the emergent Bosnian nationality. In terms of religion, the breakdown was Eastern Orthodox (50%), Roman Catholic (30%), and Muslim (9%). Although neither the Serb nor Croat groups measured up to Collier’s threshold for the dominant ethnic group, the relatively large share of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims hinted that there was potential for significant and violent competition among Yugoslavia’s major ethnic groups. In terms of religion, the Eastern Orthodox majority met Collier’s criteria.
The region’s historic experience also indicated a high risk of sectarian conflict. Ethnic rivalries dated back to A.D. 395 when the Roman Empire split into two. The rise and fall of the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires animated the rivalries. By the early 20th century, the Kosovo area, in particular, had become established as “the powder-keg of Europe.” The Library of Congress’s Country Study of the former Yugoslavia summarizes the region’s history as follows:
Before Yugoslavia became a nation, the Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians had virtually independent histories. The Slovenes struggled to define and defend their cultural identity for a millennium, first under the Frankish Kingdom and then under the Austrian Empire. The Croats of Croatia and Slavonia enjoyed a brief independence before falling under Hungarian and Austrian domination; and the Croats in Dalmatia struggled under Byzantine, Hungarian, Venetian, French, and Austrian rule. The Serbs, who briefly rivaled the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, suffered 500 years of Turkish domination before winning independence in the nineteenth century. Their Montenegrin kinsmen lived for centuries under a dynasty of bishop-priests and savagely defended their mountain homeland against foreign aggressors. Bosnians turned to heresy to protect themselves from external political and religious pressure, converted in great numbers to Islam after the Turks invaded, and became a nuisance to Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century. A hodgepodge of ethnic groups peopled Macedonia over the centuries. As the power of the Ottoman Empire waned, the region was contested among the Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks, and Albanians, and also was a pawn among the major European powers. Finally, the disputed Kosovo region, with an Albanian majority and medieval Serbian tradition, remained an Ottoman backwater until after the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century.
Near the end of the Tito era, Yugoslavia had become increasingly weak economically. Unemployment was rising and inflation was soaring. Disparities in per capita income among Yugoslavia’s various ethnic groups were substantial. In the early 1980s, the per capita incomes among Croats and Slovenes were 6-7 times those of the ethnic Albanians residing in the Kosovo area. Yugoslavia was also buffeted by a series of economic shocks in the 1980s. By 1983, austerity had decreased the standard of living by 10% among Croatians. By the late 1988, Yugoslavia was experiencing its “worst economic crisis in four decades” following a Government decision to freeze wages and allow prices to increase.
Following the death of President Tito, Yugoslavia’s central governing authority rapidly eroded. By 1987, The New York Times reported, “…virtually the only remaining operable levers of power in the hands of Belgrade is the ruling party… But the party organization has been so greatly fragmented… that it has extreme difficulty in exercising…central control…” The decaying central authority created fertile ground on which old ethnic rivalries could reassert themselves and nationalist movements could blossom. As a result, the groundwork was laid for a fresh collision among Yugoslavia’s sectarian groups.
On December 29, 1989, The New York Times opined, “Will Yugoslavia be the next Eastern European state to erupt—or can free elections help contain its explosive nationalist rivalries?” Less than two years later, Yugoslavia proved unable to manage the combination of its sharpening ethnic rivalries, historic experience, economic crises, and eroding central authority. As a result, the Balkans exploded in sectarian nationalistic conflict.
Don Sutherland has researched and written on a wide range of geopolitical issues.
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