Offering "peace" or "justice" is never a Political Solution, where a conflict is in play. All sides are always in favor of general ideals, which have universal appeal. The Nazis and Saddam Hussein constantly invoked Justice, and Pol Pot made a "theme" of Peace, a leitmotif of the Killing Fields.
Conflicts tend to break down into two competing strategies, both equally available to all sides: Unity and Partition. All sides will invoke both strategies. Both sides attempt to "unify" enough people to prevail, and to "separate" themselves from those they want to be seen as fighting.
It turns out as a matter of genes, "personality" profiles, and even "culture", a person will have more in common with a large segment of the population in any part of the world, than with his or her immediate neighboring group. In other words, if you take a statistically significant group of people out of ANY fighting element, many of the individuals will have MORE IN COMMON with their assigned "enemies" than with their designated fellow-combatants.
This is why UNITY almost always makes the most "scientific" sense. However, where there is injustice, there is always the tendency to revolt, and this leads to revolution, the "separation" dynamic. For people to be free, they must free themselves FROM a coersed "unity".
In spite of the fact that the "groups" overlap, Partition remains a vital strategy, and in the absence of a political opportunity for participation of a minority group in the Unity, it should be recommended. Partition was used by European colonial powers in 1920 in Ireland, in South Asia in 1947, in Palestine in 1948, in Cyprus in 1974, and in the Balkans in the 1990's. Should it be used in Iraq? Sudan? Chechnya? Montana?
The bloodiest Partition? The Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 and the provenience of Pakistan, is still the record-holder. Some 12 millions of people crossed borders on either side of the dividied Punjab, often leaving almost all they had behind.
ReplyDeleteAll persons of integrity should DEMAND to know what happened to the abandoned property. Who would come into the homes and take the title? What sort of people would so reward themselves at the expense of others, and why are they permitted to keep what is so obviously the fruit of theft and criminality?
The injustice is what explains the unanticipated violence that followed the partition. The scale of the killing has never been confirmed but it exceeded 250 million men, women and children.
There are still "refugee camps" dating back to 1947 in the province of Bengal, and in the chronically violent Kashmir region.
There are subtle distinctions in the historical record. I am still trying to figure out if the Karelian tragedy, and the abortion of Kurdistan, were due to the failure to partition. Unity is not always real, or just.
However, Unity is almost always more rational. Who can seriously say there is an "Us" against "Them"? Once you get to "us", the "Them" disappears.
Reference: Yasmin Kahn, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2007). The figures of 12 million displaced persons and 250 million dead as a result of the 1947 partition are ranges, but there is no doubt about the scale and that by any measure it is a catastrophe. It appears to be the record-holder for deaths resulting from a deliberate "political" resolution, although since it was not anticipated by anyone, it is unnecessary and even impossible to assign "blame". Still, it makes historians choke when Nehru and Mohammed ali Jinnah are hailed as triumphant heroes for "self-determination".
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