(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Individuals often retain their allegiance to an ancestral
group, but Americans probably misread what that alle-
giance is. My reading of Nigerians and of other West
Africans is that it is not an ethnic allegiance-—rather it
is a more diverse allegiance to the ancestral place. The
Yoruba of southwest Nigeria are clearly the major
group, yet little Yoruba consciousness exists except
for such cases as the recently aborted election, in
which a Yoruba was elected president but not allowed
to take office. The Yoruba fight among themselves as
much as they fight with other groups, and the same
thing holds true for the Ibo. They are only pulled
together when they go up against the other groups.
In Nigeria, one major factor in modern political life
has been the hegemony of the north. Every Nigerian
president has been a general or a Muslim alhaji. 8 In
most cases, they have been both.
In Nigeria, there has been a politicization of ethnic
identity and of ethnicity, even to the point of creating a
new ethnic group. According to a Nigerian colleague
of mine, the major ethnic group of"the country, the
Hausa-Fulani of the north, is something very new.
Within Nigeria, there has recently been a reemergence
of the national question: is Nigeria a given? Professor
de Blij was right; Nigeria’s continued existence is in
jeopardy.
The power of the state, of the current state, is
extremely important. The state is the source of money;
international money gets funneled into countries pri-
marily through the state apparatus, as do the revenues
from the country’s major source of income-—the
petroleum sector. The preeminence of the state in the
formal economy has been important, and, in looking
at how the economy works, we need to recognize that.
The power of the state to coerce has also increased.
What are the prospects? Clearly, economic depression
leads to violence; that occurs in a lot of places. Part of
Africa’s problem is that, in immediate terms, much of
Africa is not crucial to the West. South Africa is more
crucial, given that country’s wealth. That is not to say
that we should not pay attention but that we do not pay
attention.
‘ One who has made the hajj to Mecca.
What can be done? We have to reconsider sovereignty
and the relationships of what goes on in states. When I
am optimistic, I look at the European Community as
the model to address some problems that Africans
face. In Europe there is a multitiered, flexible sover-
eignty that allows the movement of people and trade
within the larger area but maintains local autonomy
for cultural issues.
The colonial boundaries are a continuing problem.
The peoples of Africa never chose what their bound-
aries should be—they were imposed by outsiders. The
Organization of African Unity (OAU) has a policy on
boundaries that essentially says the boundaries are
fixed and should not be reconsidered; what would
happen if that policy got turned upside down? How
can we formulate some kind of political process so
that Africans can choose it without killing each other?
That presents a problem in terms of self-
determination; and without self-determination, how
do ethnic groups have rights‘? If ethnic groups do not
have rights, then conflict will occur in those groups,
and it is in out interest to take a look at that and see
what kinds of-things can be done and how we can be
involved. I do think that important questions remain in
terms of what the United States can do alone, which is
not much. I would echo Professor de Blij’s concern
that inserting our forces over there may simply exac-
erbate the problem.
General Discussion
QUESTION: What type of a role do you see the
United Nations playing in Rwanda and Liberia?
DR. DE BLI]: The UN’s policy has been either to
have a massive presence with a clear direction toward
a particular goal or to have no presence at all. It is one
of the tragedies of the New World Order that this con-
flict has to be allowed to run itself out as West Europe-
ans are allowing it to do in Bosnia. Political scientists
say that, when a situation like this occurs, an average
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268