Resolving ethno-national conflicts: Contested Lands by Sumantra Bose

Introduction

Ethno-national conflicts are amongst the most powerful and persistent features of global politics. The pattern usually is one side attempts to establish complete dominion over a part of its territory populated by a different people who view it as alien intrusion into their homeland. The stronger side responds to dissent with repression deepening the hostility harboured by the repressed against their oppressor and sparking in them an urge to break away. This urge transforms over time into a staunch demand for freedom and self-determination. Mutual antagonism then breaks out into an all-out war which doesn’t end immediately, but prolongs for many years and even decades. 

If one probes into the reasons behind the instances of many ethno-national wars across the world, one finds that in several cases two peoples who define themselves in opposition to each other are forced to live together. Most of these (although not all) occur in the post-colonial world where the colonial masters; either merged disparate regions into a unified whole for the sake of administrative convenience; or alternatively, actively engaged in stoking ethnic animus, following the traditional principle of “divide and conquer”, in order to entrench their supremacy. Whilst these tools may have served the colonial empire well, it wreaked havoc in the political trajectory of independent third-world countries after the imperialists left.  

Let us look at Britain and some of its colonies. Palestine was granted to the United Kingdom (UK) by the fledgling League of Nations. London’s responsibility was to “prepare” the former Ottoman territory towards self-rule. During World War 1, Great Britain had promised British support to the Zionist enterprise through the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. But soon after the first British High Commissioner to Palestine, Herbert Samuel, arrived in Palestine in the early 1920s, UK realised that fulfilling the promise was not so easy. There were two people at each other’s throats, staking claim to the same land and viscerally detesting the other. Around 25 years later, Britain had still not been able to put in place the most basic necessities of an independent state; no legislative body, no local governance set-up, nor an effective local police force. Britain initially pandered to Zionist demands, then attempted to understand Palestinian grievances, brutally repressed protests, set up commissions to arrive at a solution, none of which helped in satisfying or reconciling the contrary demands of the Yishuv (pre-Israel Jewish community) and the Palestinains. It ultimately threw its hands up in the air, passed the buck to the United Nations (UN) and made an ignominious exit. 

In the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of the Empire, Britain’s exit was equally disgraceful. As the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into two sovereign states, Muslims and Hindus killed each other in large numbers as the colonial officials packed up to leave for home. The carnage and anarchy was unprecedented. By forcing an enormously diverse subcontinent into a single administrative structure, the Crown sowed the seeds of ethnic conflict. Whilst Pakistan broke away, the fate of a hypnotic valley abutting both India and Pakistan hung in the balance. Responsible intervention by Britain might have resolved the issue amicably, but it was not forthcoming. The new-born states then fought amongst themselves for control over Kashmir, a conflict that has still not been resolved.  

In British Ceylon, located a few kilometres south of British India, the powder keg exploded a little later, but with an enormous impact. As elsewhere, the Crown had contrived a common system of government, modelled on its own Westminster system, for two disparate ethnic groups. It gave no regard to the fact that the “Westminster model” was unsuitable for multi-ethnic regions like Ceylon. In a realm where “majority” and “minority” is defined in terms of ethnicity, it was a recipe for catastrophe.After the imperial government left, the “pro-majority” system it bequeathed took care of the rest of the business; depriving the minority of their political rights, disenfranchising them and according supremacy to the voice of the majority. A series of pogroms of the Tamil minority by the Sinhalese majority, beginning right after independence, culminated in the outbreak of war in 1983. 

In Cyprus, the much shrunken Empire deliberately recruited Turkish Cypriots in its brutal repression of the Greek Cypriot movement against British rule through 1955-1959. It was a conscious act to whip up ethnic animosity between the two communities. It laid the foundation to repeated confrontations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, breaking out into open civil war in the early 1960s and climaxing in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and its mass expulsion of the Greek Cypriots in 1974. 

 

These ethno-national conflicts took distinct trajectories, but all of them involved much bloodshed and human suffering. Prof. Sumantra Bose, who teaches Comparative Politics at the LSE, analyses and attempts to lay out a plausible, if not practicable, solution to each above-mentioned case (in addition to Bosnia) in his excellent book Contested Lands. Published in 2007, it still remains a relevant study of protracted and violent ethno-national disputes that continue to rack the areas discussed in the book to this day, namely; Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kashmir and Israel-Palestine. Each theatre of conflict is discussed in chapters of roughly fifty pages (Israel-Palestine gets nearly ninety) giving the reader an insightful overview of the historical background and the scope for peace-making in the present. Perhaps the most notable merit of Contested Lands is its lucidity. Prof. Bose writes in simple language without obfuscating the already complicated nature of the politics of contested lands. 

Another virtue of the book is that Prof. Bose makes certain sensible and generic recommendations to advance the cause of peace that apply to realms of ethnic strife across the board. Firstly, he emphasises the indispensability of a neutral third-party in peace negotiations. “Without some kind of third-party engagement the bitterness and distrust between the parties in conflict will combine with the vested interests of spoilers hostile to settlement to overwhelm the prospects of peace,” he writes. The short-lived truce between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government in 1995 and the seemingly endless conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir stresses upon the need for a third-party. Secondly, Prof. Bose favours a rapid peace process over a gradualist approach epitomised by the Oslo Agreement between Israel and Palestine. A “nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed” approach to peace is preferable to an incremental strategy that provides room for mischief. “A process that drags on at a snail’s pace can be a recipe for failure, and the cost of failure may be a disastrous relapse into armed conflict.” 

Whilst these suggestions make eminent sense in general terms, Contested Lands comes up short in certain parts particularly while discussing the particular aspects of individual cases. A deeply-researched scholarly work, there is no question about its commitment to facts. However, it is when laying out solutions that Prof. Bose sometimes fails to make accurate analyses of their plausibility. 

Sri Lanka

Look at what he has to say about Sri Lanka; “A serious, durable settlement will involve the reconstitution of the Sri Lankan state into a federation of the north and east, as one unit…” and “the autonomous government of the north and east will enjoy extensive self-rule powers…” However, Prof. Bose fails to hint at how such a settlement could be arrived at. He acknowledges in the same chapter that the Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) proposed by the Tigers in 2003 during the Norwegian-mediated peace talks was anathema to the Sinhalese polity. The following line provides further proof as to why Sri Lanka would not tolerate substantial devolution of powers to the Tamil provinces under a federal system. Prof. Bose writes,

“The JVP’s rhetoric touches a chord with a substantial cross section of the Sinhalese people, who have been deeply socialised in the majoritarian-supremacist worldview and who feel, at the very least, discomfited by a process that acknowledges the Tamil minority as equals and the Tigers as a legitimate political movement.”

This begs the question, if a “substantial cross section of the Sinhalese people” feel “discomfited” to even acknowledge the Tamil minority as equals, how does Prof. Bose believe they will be prepared to permit the “reconstitution” of the state in favour of Tamil autonomy? He fails to answer this and therefore the proposed solution comes across as quixotic and impracticable. 

Why not external self-determination for Tamils? Prof. Bose does not even touch upon this question, wholly ignoring the central demand of one party to the conflict. This makes the chapter on Sri Lanka seem incomplete. 

Another galling and inaccurate aspect in the book’s analysis of Sri Lanka is its frequent reference to the Tamil district of Trincomalee as “multi-ethnic”. Look at what Professor Chelvadurai Manogaran has to say about Trincomalee in his classic work Ethnic Conflict and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka;

“With the establishment of the Kingdom of Jaffna, the northern part of the island as well as a large portion of the Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts were almost entirely populated by Tamils. Very little land that extends from the hill country to the coast, including the Batticaloa District (which is also referred to as the Bintenne), was occupied by Sinhalese.”

In another passage, he notes;

“The Tamil speaking people maintained a clear majority in all the districts of the Northern and Eastern provinces, but the ethnic composition of some of these districts, especially Amparai, Trincomalee, and Vavuniya began to change dramatically after the 1930s as large numbers of Sinhalese were settled in these districts under government-sponsored colonization schemes.” 

By referring to the traditionally Tamil city of Trincomalee as “multi-ethnic”, Prof. Bose gives the incorrect impression that the district had always been shared by Tamils and Sinhalese and neglects to note that the sizeable proportion of Sinhalese population in the city is a result of state-sponsored colonisation intended to alter the ethnic composition of the Tamil homeland. 

In the conclusion of the chapter, Prof. Bose mentions another phrase which also gives a false idea of the true nature of Sri Lankan polity. “Sri Lanka must complete its transformation into a society and polity with which all Sri Lankans can feel a sense of identity and belonging.” “All Sri Lankans” is a term that merits careful scrutiny and investigation. Tamils in the island have perpetually felt left out in the political organisation of Sri Lanka, particularly after the “Sinhala Only” Act of 1956. Subsequent acts by the state, including the renaming of the island to Sri Lanka from Ceylon and the enshrinement of the overriding importance of Buddhism in the Constitution of 1972, deepened the Tamils’ estrangement from the Sri Lankan state. Therefore, to speak of “all Sri Lankans” in a state where citizens are discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity is to strengthen the majoritarian agenda of eliminating difference. An article in the Tamil Guardian clearly lays out what it means to ask a Tamil in the island to be “Sri Lankan:”

“For many, ‘Sri Lankan’ continues to be a term and identity that the state has been violently trying to impose upon them. Being ‘Sri Lankan’ - under a flag that bears a Sinhala lion and stripes for Tamils and Muslims - means accepting and not challenging the supremacy of Sinhala Buddhism in the island. Being ‘Sri Lankan’ means accepting a subservient place in the island’s order that has been articulated by extremist Buddhist monks, built by Sinhala politicians, and violently forced by the military. To this day, the island’s Tamils mark Sri Lanka’s independence day by raising black flags, not Sri Lankan flags.”

Cyprus and Kashmir

Prof. Bose’s solutions for Cyprus and Kashmir similarly leave something to be desired. Cyprus is an island in the eastern Mediterranean with a Greek Cypriot majority and a sizable Turkish Cypriot minority. Britain reluctantly granted independence in 1959 following a brutal repression of a Greek Cypriot campaign for freedom spearheaded by the EOKA (National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters). The colonial regime was so successful in pitting the Turkish Cypriot community against the Greek Cypriots that the confederate system, that sought to adequately represent both in the national government, crumbled soon after independence leading to savage ethnic riots. Turkey invaded the country in 1974 to protect its kinsmen and, in the process, expelled Greek Cypriots almost totally from much of Northern Cyprus. Ankara continues to occupy the areas it invaded which in territorial terms exceeds the amount of land Israel holds illegally in the West Bank. A serious peace process was initiated in the 1990s by the United Nations (UN) when the (Greek) Republic of Cyprus began to negotiate an entry into the European Union (EU) with Brussels. The UN-devised settlement framework known as the Annan Plan, was left to be decided by a referendum on both sides of the Green Line that divides the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. 

The Annan Plan involved the creation of a confederate system consisting of two units with substantial autonomy for both communities. The federal government would be composed of both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot officials, as would other federal institutions like the judiciary. The Turkish Cypriot side voted largely in favour of this system in the 2004 referendum. However, the Greek Cypriot side rejected it so overwhelmingly that then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan observed “the sheer size of the No vote raises...fundamental questions.” 

The main reason behind the majority of No votes in the Greek Cypriot side was that the Annan Plan was grossly unfair to the Greek Cypriot community. Particularly, the confederate system it envisaged for a reunited Cyprus accorded enormously disproportionate powers to the Turkish Cypriot minority that it seemed absurd to the Greek Cypriot majority and to any dispassionate observer. Author Perry Anderson writes in his remarkable essay on the subject for the London Review of Books,

“...the plan accorded a minority of between 18 and 25 percent of the population 50 per cent of the decision-making power in the state...Ethnic minorities need protection but to make of this a flagrant political disproportion is to invite hostility, rather than restrain it.” 

However, Prof. Bose ascribes the failure of the Annan Plan to a “sense of contentment” amongst Greek Cypriots rather than pointing to the inherent flaws in the Plan. He goes on to say that any settlement of the Cyprus issue would likely remain “within the parameters established by the Annan Plan.” How is that plausible even though over 70% of Greek Cypriots have already rebuffed it? 

As regards Kashmir, it is suggested that the Line of Control (LOC) be converted into a permanent frontier between India and Pakistan, but one that is ‘soft’ and permeable. Prof. Bose argues that a permanent solution to the issue would require India and Pakistan to devolve autonomy to the parts of Kashmir each country controls, with Kashmiris on both sides being able to easily cross the LOC and meet their kith and kin. The problem with such a solution is not just that it is incredibly hard to actualise, but it also ratifies Pakistan’s invasion and subsequent occupation of a part of Kashmir since 1948. In addition, it leaves the fate of the Kashmiris to the tender mercies of two ruthless powers. Prof. Bose himself meticulously documents the Indian government’s brutal crackdown of dissent in the valley since it formally acceded to the Indian union out of desperation. Even if an idealistic settlement of the dispute materialises, there is no guarantee that India or Pakistan could be trusted guardians of the Kashmiris’ right to determine their political future. 

Israel-Palestine

By far, the most effective solution in Contested Lands lies in the settlement recommended for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Prof. Bose throws in his lot with the two-state solution and puts forth three basic prerequisites for that goal to be achieved. Firstly, the mediator to the conflict, America, must be a neutral party rather than one that overtly favours one side over the other. Secondly, the schism in Palestinian polity between Hamas and Fatah must be reconciled in order to present a united front. Thirdly, any peace process must be proactive and address all core issues rather than be an incremental process similar to Oslo that creates room for failure. 

Finally, Prof. Bose makes a particularly important point, something that is frequently ignored in contemporary discourse. He writes, the failure of the Oslo process “lies in insufficient Israeli recognition of the fact that in Palestinian eyes ‘Oslo itself is the historical compromise - an agreement to concede 78 percent of mandatory Palestine to Israel.’” Therefore, any peace deal would require Israel to recognise the sacrifice of the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspirations of building their own state in the 22% territory of historic Palestine. 

Conclusion

In the fifteen years since Contested Lands was published, the predicament of domains of ethno-national conflicts have only worsened. In Sri Lanka, the climax was the genocide of Tamils in 2009 by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism currently reigns supreme in the island as the Tamil homeland continues to be colonised by Sinhalese settlements with support from the military. In Kashmir, Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted unique status and autonomy to the province, at least in paper, was unilaterally abrogated by the Hindu-nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019. Kashmiris have been subjected to blackouts and curfews even as their homeland is swamped with military deployments. In Israel, settlements have expanded across the West Bank with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even planning to annex some of them into Israel proper in 2020. Israeli politics have moved further to the right and a settlement for the Palestine issue does not figure in the political agenda of any major party. 

Perhaps these examples provide justification to the cause of partition over confederation in realms of bitter ethnic strife. If Palestinians get their own state, they might at last be saved from a growth of Jewish settlements in their sovereign territory. But remaining in a confederate system of Sri Lanka or India would pose a constant threat to the aspirations of Tamils and Kashmiris, respectively. As Thomas Hobbes put it, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The government of the day might be moderate, leaning towards an amicable settlement with the opposite side. But such a peace deal is always liable to sabotage by an ethno-nationalist populist who might come along later on. That would bring the players to the conflict back to square one and spell trouble for all time to come. 

Nevertheless, Contested Lands is a very useful and valuable book and must be read by anyone interested in the concepts of nationalism, self-determination and ethno-national conflicts. Its clarity in narrating the history of long-standing disputes is remarkable. Even though its ideas to resolve them are sometimes inaccurate, the reader benefits from it by probing into its inaccuracies and thinking about a more plausible solution. To quote philosopher J.S. Mill, engaging with Prof. Bose’s recommendations for conflict-resolution produces “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”