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G21 AFRICA - CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS OR EMERGENCE OF REALITY: Lecturer X.N. IRAKI posits the case that the end of the Cold War was not the boon celebrated but rather the resultant imbalance allowed simmering social divisions to return to their boiling points.Frankfort, KY, USA - The end of the Cold War opened a Pandora's Box. September 11emptied the contents. CNN, Al-Jazeera and other media shed light on the contents.
X.N. Iraki What did we find in the box? We found hidden forces based on human emotions and instincts. ?It is surprising how much the fear of death from an all out nuclear war could freeze and masks of our real selves for half a century.
The hidden forces were mainly cultural (ethnic) and religious.
Samuel Huntington, a Harvard don, observed in 1993 that post Cold War conflicts would be a "clash of civilizations" based on culture. We could add: and its close ally, religion. Under the fear of nuclear war; religion and ethnicity laid low, hibernating and waiting for the best time to re-emerge. That time is now.
Look closely at all the major conflicts worldwide, you will definitely see the "invisible hand" of religion or ethnicity. The conflicts in Kashmir have a religious connotation, so does that of the Palestinian and Hezbollah-Israeli conflict.? The Russian-Chechnya conflict has religion also.
The Balkan conflict pitted Christians against Muslims.
Yet all religions preach love for one another; one wonders who the other is!
The other latent force was ethnicity. Ever heard of Tartars, Uighur or Uzbeks? Until after the end of the Cold war, we never heard of Kosovars, Croatians or even Serbs.? Driven by ancient prejudices and stereotypes, ethnicity can be a very dangerous force. We saw it in the 1992 and 1997 tribal clashes in Africa. In Rwanda, the border between man and the beast blurred for once in 1994.
When Siad Barre, the former president of Somali realized that Somalis talk the same language, he decided to go a step farther and divide the Somalis into clans. The wars in Somali are based on clans, not tribes.
The conflicts are more potent when religion and ethnicity come together to reinforce one another, as they often do, for historical reasons.
In Africa, the two forces are more powerful because they were deliberately used to make conquest easier by colonialists. Tribes were set against one another, yet some had never fought in recorded history. After independence, the ethnic groups were left to sort out their grudges with politics as the dishonest mediator.
The bloody nature of conflicts in Africa has nothing to do with the fact that Africans are more blood-thirsty than other people. The truth is that some communities have never had a chance to "ventilate" or exhale. When they get a chance to, they show their once-friends that they are not "small". Repressing our feelings for too long often spawns extremism.
Add the fact that certain leaders in Africa get their positions by accident, already suffering from inferiority complexs, and their only sure way to show their? "superiority" is through bloody wars.
The number of people who have died since the end of the Cold War puts into the question the popular claim that the cold war never became hot.? It only failed to burn the two former powers who were the main contenders in a proxy war. It is burning the proxies now.
Look at Iraq; who knew of Shiite and Sunnis? ?Despite the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq is a still battleground for cultures, ideologies, religions and ethnic groups.
The Israel-Hezbollah fighting is about, religion and ideologies. We are yet to know who won.
Closer to home, the Ugandan conflict was (is) based on ethnicity; so is the Sudanese, which has both ethnic and religious dimensions.
Where do we go from here?
There are those who fear that Iraq will degenerate into a mighty conflict between Muslims and Christians, into crusade or jihad. I do not foresee that. We shall not have a clash of civilizations, if we deal with the reality.
Ethnicity and religion will not go away instantly. We have to be sincere about that.
Despite globalization, we are not about to forget our identities. In fact, the alienation resulting from globalization may make us more conscious of our identities. A good example; why do Kenyans start using their traditional names once in the US?
This alienation, coupled with rapid social change, great calamities and upheavals, and our inability to solve global problems, will ensure religions will remain central to our lives.
We have two alternatives. One, we can allow people to follow their religions and ethnic beliefs and prejudices until they find it takes them nowhere or somewhere. The "velvet revolution" in former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia) resulted from that approach.
Or we can forge differing groups of people into one or another former of allegiance. How did US or Switzerland manage to assimilate so many people into one? It was a deliberate policy, which took time but paid off.
Governments ought to settle historical grudges. The solution to out social and economic conflicts lies in a fair and just system. We need systems that ensure everyone has fair access to societies' privileges, power and resources.
We need institutions that function - from courts to schools, hospitals, football clubs, and government. When our institutions fail to work, we blame one another and mostly those who do not look like us or share our beliefs, what scape-goating is all about.
Yet, one of the most unappreciated institutions is the government. The government tames the beast in us, while harnessing the social creativity and energy for our common good. See the effort being put to have functioning governments in Iraq and Somali.
With well thought out regulations, laws and rules, there is no reason why a nation cannot progress and conflicts subside. Such rules or laws are not just in the constitution, some are unwritten like the way we bring up our children. If we face the reality as individuals or as policy makers and leaders, there's no reason why there should ever be a clash of civilizations.
DR. X.N. IRAKI, a Lecturer at the University of Nairobi's School of Business, is currently on an extended visit to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, USA.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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