The nature of ethnic conflict

Overview

Civil disobedience, communal or intercommunal violence and civil war.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is civil disobedience?

   Model answer

   Civil disobedience is the deliberate and usually public refusal to comply with laws, orders or arrangements regarded as unjust, undertaken as a political act and generally without violence, with participants accepting arrest and penalty as part of the strategy. Typical forms include marches and sit-ins, occupations, rent, rates and tax strikes, boycotts of businesses or institutions, refusal to cooperate with official processes, and the withdrawal of elected representatives from a legislature.

2. 2

   What does a campaign of civil disobedience aim to achieve?

   Model answer

   To make the existing arrangements unworkable and to force a response. Non-payment and non-cooperation impose administrative and financial costs; mass demonstrations show the depth of support; and public, non-violent action seeks to win over uncommitted opinion at home and to attract international attention and pressure. It also aims to place the authorities in a dilemma, since ignoring the campaign concedes ground while suppressing it visibly may generate sympathy for the protesters.

3. 3

   Explain why campaigns of civil disobedience often escalate into violence.

   Model answer

   Several mechanisms operate. Policing decisions about routes, bans and the use of force can turn a demonstration into a confrontation, and images of that confrontation mobilise more people. Counter-demonstrations bring the two communities into direct contact at interfaces. Arrests and injuries generate grievances of their own. Within the protest movement, those who argue that peaceful methods have failed gain support each time the campaign is suppressed without result, and organisations willing to use force can grow from the margins of a non-violent movement.

4. 4

   What is communal or intercommunal violence, and where does it typically occur?

   Model answer

   It is violence between members of the two communities themselves, rather than organised armed campaigns, taking the form of rioting, attacks on homes, businesses and places of worship, arson, and intimidation to force households to move. It concentrates at interfaces where the communities adjoin, in mixed areas, and around occasions that bring the two into contact such as parades, anniversaries and matches. Its most durable effect is usually demographic: households flee mixed and boundary streets, so segregation increases sharply and does not reverse.

5. 5

   What is a civil war?

   Model answer

   A civil war is a sustained armed conflict fought within the territory of a single state, between the government and one or more organised armed groups, or between such groups, in which the parties are organised enough to conduct continuing military operations and the level of casualties is substantial. It is distinguished from riot or terrorism by the scale, the degree of organisation and the fact that the parties contest control of territory and population, often maintaining front lines and administering areas they hold.

6. 6

   What features typically characterise a society during a civil war?

   Model answer

   Contested or divided control of territory, with checkpoints and de facto internal borders; mass displacement of civilians both internally and across international frontiers; deliberate targeting of civilians and of the other group's property and heritage; the collapse or partition of public services, education and healthcare; a war economy based on smuggling, extortion and control of resource exports; and external states supplying weapons, funding or sanctuary to one or more parties, which lengthens the conflict.

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