Jenne, E. (2016) ‘The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing’

Jenne, E. (2016) ‘The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing’, in K. Cordell and S. Wolff, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2. ed, London, Routledge, 110-18.

1. Ethnic cleansing (‘EC’): “expulsion of an ‘undesirable’ population from a given territory”: “deliberate policy of homogenizing the ethnic make-up of a territory” both during war and peace; removal of targeted minorities from a territory and replacement with members of a dominant group: both ethnic expulsion and resettlement, violently or non-violently (110-111).
2.  EC accompanies almost every deadly conflict.
3. Some view genocide (extreme) and population transfers (moderate) as subsets of ethnic cleansing (111).
4. They differ in ethical and legal standing: Genocide is a crime under international law – implies responsibility by international community to halt violence; ethnic cleansing is a war crime / crime against humanity perpetrated by ‘our’ enemies; population transfers are neither – we undertake them to ‘save lives and rebuild peace’ (112).
5. Ethnic populations mix in Europe became a problem when national self-determination entitled territorialized national minorities to assert self-government rights.
6. Art 7, Rome Statute of International Criminal Court: population transfers are a crime against humanity. But realists still assert it is in some cases the least violent outcome (Mearsheimer, Kaufmann – 112).
7. EC use force to force / other intimidation methods to force targeted members of the group to flee; then they resettle abandoned homes with displaced members of dominant group (facts on the ground); then they destroy targeted group’s sites of national significance to “severe both the corporal and symbolic links between the targeted group and the desired territory”. Mass rape and impregnation are also methods of ethno-territorial conquest: “rape as genocide” (113).
8. Displaced minorities tend not to return, but to resettle where they are in a majority. Old territory becomes effectively ‘rebranded’ for the dominant group.
9. “As a general rule, ethnic war nearly always involves ethnic cleansing, but ethnic cleansing need not involve ethnic war” (114).
10. Argument that EC is product of ‘system-level variables’: modernity, state formation, national self-determination (114).
11. M. Mann: EC is outgrowth of democracy conflating ethnos and demos.
12. Others argue that nationalism and national self-determination are key drivers.
13. Essentialist perspective: EC results from past grievances and desires for revenge of ethnic communities.
14. Grass roots explanations focus on ecological drivers for conflict: deeply divided societies, redistribution of wealth, fear of losing status, mobilization of state institutions to mobilize people to engage in violence. Here, ethnicity is not original motivating force, but an ‘ordering device’ allowing politicians to organise their campaigns (115).
15. EC as Elite-driven project rooted in leaders’ special interests or ideologies – not product of inter-group dynamics, where monolithic collective actors inform elite preferences (both personal and geo-political): clear difference between responsibility of ‘ordinary people’ and of their ‘elites’ who are the architects of such EC campaigns.
16. ‘As a rule, programs of ethnic cleansing are designed and executed by aa handful of elites based on perceived strategic or economic imperatives, ideological convictions or personal self-interest” (116).
17. Negative popular support / compliance is more critical to success of EC campaigns than active support.
18. Elite and mass-level theories of EC are not incompatible.
19. EC should encompass both violent expulsions and quiet EC during peace time: implies need for interventions with broader mandate than just ending violence and keeping peace.
20. International community should “identify and target the architects of ethnic cleansing using a mix of legal and economic (and possibly even military) sanctions” (117).
21. Changing elite behavior can be more effective in preventing EC than large-scale social engineering: need for an effective early warning system monitoring elite behaviour.