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CHAPTER SIX
IDENTITY AS A SOURCE OF CONFLICT
There is probably no greater instigator of conflict than identity. This view is corroborated
by Appleby (2000), who posits that approximately 67% of contemporary wars are based on issues
of religious, ethnic, or national identity.
Violence instigated by religious identity is an ancient phenomenon, but the 9/11 attack on
the World Trade Centre by an Islamist group appears to reinforce Huntington's thesis that global
conflicts in the post-Cold War era would be civilization - especially between the Western
civilization (Christian culture) and Islamic civilization. The wars in Chechnya,
and between India
and Pakistan have been advanced as examples to support Huntington’s hypothesis. Likewise,
religious cleavages between the Catholics, the Serb Orthodox and Muslims of former Yugoslavia
have been cited as a distinctive factor in the disintegration of the country (Yamin, 2008). India's
partition at the time of liberation from the British Raj in 1947 was also based on the struggle for
identity by Muslims of British India, during which an estimated two million Hindu and Muslim
faithful were killed (Yamin, 2008). The global war on terror is without a doubt an identity-based
conflict, as this has led to a palpable escalation of tensions between the West and Islam. The 2006
cartoon caricature of Prophet Muhammad by a Danish newspaper in 2006 offended, the religious
sensibilities of Muslims everywhere, leading to violent reactions including in Nigeria, where some
Christians paid with their lives for the indiscretion of some journalists in far away Europe.
The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in the former USSR is a fulfillment of Marx's prediction
that at the appropriate moment, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie
would lead to the defeat of the latter by the former and ultimately the enthronement of a classless
society. Marx (1930) had urged all the workers of the world to unite against the
oppression of the
owners of the means of production, the bourgeois class. Although the Bolshevik revolution was
short lived, the fact remains that the oppressed class everywhere is a potential source of conflict.
Gender-based conflict rears its ugly head in the form of hegemonic masculinity, a situation
whereby men prove their "manliness" by displaying tough, aggressive, violent attitudes and
employing same for the subjugation and oppression of women.
Gender oppression may be
expressed in the form of domestic violence, rape, genital mutilation, restriction of movement, etc.
Sometimes,
though seldom, men are the victims and women the agents.
The conflict in Somalia provides a paradigm of how clannish identity can become the basis
for violent conflict. The Somalia conflict followed the collapse of the regime of Siad Barre. Then
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clans within the country warring in the leadership vacuum set the country ablaze (Rice and Loomis,
2007). Though a relatively homogeneous country, clans formed coalitions to compete for influence
in the rudderless Somalian state. By September 1992, according to Rice and Loomis (1992), the
International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that as many as 1.5 million Somalis faced
imminent starvation, as many as 5 million more relied on outside assistance for food, and nearly a
million people had fled the country.
In Rwanda, the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups had historically held each other in suspicion
following issues of political domination of the latter by the former, who were favoured by colonial
policy. The Hutu, the majority group,
resented being dominated, and when independence from
Belgium came in 1959, they turned the table and took control (Orend, 2006). This was followed
by a genocide in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered, mostly by
mobs of Hutu youth (Rice and Loomis, 2006).
While the roots of ethno-religious and other identity-based conflicts in Nigeria have been
linked to "colonialism and the Cold War" (Machava, 2008:2), other scholars have argued that such
conflicts
are rooted in bad governance, politicization of ethnic and religion identities, and
competition for access to political power by the various ethnic and religious communities (Anarfi,
2004). Despite strong optimism that the enthronement of democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999 would
avert or mitigate violent identity-based conflicts, "the country has rather witnessed a resurgence in
high level ethnic, religious, communal and citizenship conflicts with devastating consequences"
(Kwaja, 2009: 105).One of the claims for the enthronement of democracy as well as democratic
consolidation in Nigeria lies in the fact that as a centripetal force, democracy is the only
institutional arrangement that can guarantee "the peaceful resolution
or management of ethnic,
religious and other identity conflicts" (Olayode, 2007:134). Sadly, democratic rule has not
achieved this objective in Nigeria.
According to Ibrahim (2000:69), ethno-religious and communal conflict in, Nigeria are
linked to citizenship within the context of identity, which is rooted in the politics of inclusion or
exclusion. These are tied to claims and counter-claims over identity as a basis for determining
who is excluded or included from decision making as well as access to opportunities and
privileges under the 'we' versus 'them' cliche (Kwaja, 2008; 2009). Thus, the ethnic, religious and
communal groups that feel marginalized by the major ethnic groups (Hausa and Fulani, Yoruba,
and Igbo) are forced to adopt constitutional and extra-constitutional means to challenge the
hegemony of the major ethnic groups.
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The
main cause of violent, identity-based conflicts is that most minority groups have
remained permanent minorities, while the majority groups are permanent majority, a trend which
has serious implications for inter-ethnic and religious relations among the diverse ethnic and
religious identities. In this way, the incentives for cooperation, consensus and compromise are
undermined, thereby posing an enormous challenge for the task of peacebuilding,
as diverse
ethnic groups are forced to co-exist in an environment of mutual mistrust, apathy and suspicion.
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