One of the first theoretical approaches linking ethnic identity to civil conflict is primordialism. This suggests that attributes are parentage-based and relatively visible and are therefore difficult to modify. The primordialist image looks at how ethnic groups are assimilated to various stones which then constitute a “wall” that is society. Between the stones there are clear and enduring boundaries and this same logic applies between different ethnic groups. Each group has a distinct set of characteristics based on common ancestry, language, history, culture, race, or religion. The primordialist view emphasizes the “affective properties of ethnicity” and asserts that individuals’ ethnic consciousness is “deeply rooted in the constitution of the self.” Ethnicity is seen as the natural result of biological differences or a long historical process. Belonging to ethnic groups is therefore fixed and transmitted from generation to generation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay Looking at the conflicts in northern Mali in 1990 and southern Senegal in 1982, we can see how primordialism can be extremely useful for understanding contemporary civil conflicts. Both involved attempts at separation by movements dominated by minority groups; the Tuaregs and Moors in Mali and the Diola in Senegal. In Mali, Tuaregs and Moors were easily identifiable and were known as "Whites", which meant that ethnicity could be used to pressure members of these groups into joining rebel movements. . It also allowed "black" groups to carry out reprisals against arbitrary Tuareg and Moorish civilians. This led to huge communal violence. However, in Senegal, identifying ethnic groups was much more difficult. As a result, ethnicity was not used to the same extent to target individuals and the intensity of violence was much lower. This suggests that greater ethnic identifiability leads to more violent ethnic conflict. Primarialists propose that ethnic violence results from antipathies and antagonisms that are enduring properties of ethnic groups. They argue that decolonized states were new, but ethnic or communal animosities were old and therefore deeply rooted in history. The primordialism of ethnic groups provided a stronger bond and a more powerful motivator for human conduct than the civic bonds forged by the new states. As Connor observes, primordialism explains the passions that led to the massacre of the Bengalis by the Assamese, Punjabis or Sikhs in 1971, known as one of the worst genocides in history or the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Acts of rape, torture, genocide, mass displacement, mutilation, brutal murders and many other atrocities committed in conflicts like Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo can be described as behavior motivated by feelings of fear, anxiety and hatred. However, although primordialism can be useful in explaining civil conflict, there are a number of weaknesses that limit the usefulness of this theory. For example, if ethnic antagonisms were so deeply rooted, why did ethnic violence increase and decrease at different times? Throughout history, ethnic groups have been hostile to each other, but this has notbeen an eternal situation. Longman further mentions how primordialists focused on how ethnic hatred was the main force motivating the Rwandan genocide; However, there is little empirical evidence and the extent to which ethnic hatred motivated the killing remains to be proven. It is further simply assumed that ethnic ties involve “emotion” or “passion” because of their “nature.” However, too often little explanation is given as to why ethnic motivations should be more powerful than, for example, materialistic motivations. Primardialists also fail to explain why ethnic groups change over time. The instrumentalists' main criticism of primordialism focuses on its failure to see that some examples of ancient hatred were "selectively co-opted by the knowledge elite, ignoring the many examples of cooperation and coexistence." Furthermore, why did the same groups live peacefully in some places and not others? Tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India are an example. Violence has often broken out in some parts of India between the two different ethnic groups, but not across all of India. Additionally, most ethnic groups continued to interact cooperatively and peacefully rather than violently. In primordialism, boundaries and group membership are assumed to be common knowledge, suggesting that political actors have information about the identities of other actors that they may not in fact possess. For example, during the 1997 massacre by Hutu rebels in Buta, southern Burundi, a group of rebels gathered 70 students in a room and demanded that they be separated into Hutus and Tutsis. The students refused and remained united, leading the rebels to fire their grenades at the Hutu and Tutsi students. This example illustrates how clear it was that the Hutu rebels wanted to kill selectively, wishing to eliminate the outside group (Tutsi) while protecting their own co-ethnics. However, they could not easily categorize the two different ethnic groups. This shows that ethnic categorization is not always as easy as primordialists claim. Finally, primordialism ignores the economic, structural, and political processes within which these conflicts arise and implies that in ethnically heterogeneous societies there will naturally and inevitably be violent ethnic conflicts. However, this is not a fact as some societies like Botswana, an ethnically heterogeneous country which, compared to many African countries, maintains peaceful ethnic relations. These examples illustrated above show that there are a number of limitations to primordialist theory in explaining why civil conflict arises. As an extension of primordialism, instrumentalism can be useful in explaining how ethnic identity leads to civil conflict. The central idea of ​​instrumentalism is that ethnicity is neither inherent in human nature nor intrinsically valuable. Ethnicity hides a core of deeper interests, which are either political or economic. According to instrumentalists, ethnicity is a resource used by elites to define group identity, regulate group membership and boundaries, and to claim and extract resources from the state. They argue that such situations became serious in the late postcolonial period, where declining resources intensified competition and patronage on an ethno-regional basis. Ethnic identification has become acrucial resource in the context of violent political struggles. It has been fueled by sections of the elite who have used ethnicity for personal gain and to mobilize mass support for their political agenda, and it can provide greater security for the masses. In Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria, colonial practices favored one ethnic group over another, leaving some ethnic groups economically, politically and culturally disadvantaged. This then led to civil conflicts in these countries. For example, the 1994 Rwandan genocide was fueled by Belgian colonization which led to hatred between Tutsis and Hutus. When Belgium colonized Rwanda, it believed that the Tutsis had “nobler” and more “naturally” aristocratic dimensions than the Hutus and therefore gave them all positions of power while the Hutus were forced into labor camps. This helped create racial divisions between the two groups and subsequently gave rise to a number of civil conflicts between the two groups, revealing how ruling elites can exploit ethnic groups for their own personal gain. Once group identities have been established and concretized, stereotypes have contributed to dehumanizing the other side and identifying them as the enemy, it is also possible to create a feeling of victimization, based on real or perceived facts. historical or contemporary grievances, which can then function as another precursor to internal war. This is the second strategy employed by entrepreneurs in conflict; it’s the story of how “communities of fear are created from communities of interest.” In Burundi, for example, political actors appealed to ethnic sentiments by emphasizing the threat posed by the other group. Tutsi extremists pointed the finger at all Hutus against acts of Tutsi violence in order to foster a sense of community against the Hutu threat and thus consolidate their hold on the state. The Tutsi elite's justification for monopolizing power has been fear of Hutu-led genocide against them, with constant reference to the Rwandan crises of 1959 and 1994 and acts of violence against Tutsi in Burundi in 1988 and 1993. This was also the case in the former Yugoslavia. In Serbia, the official press began publishing articles about the rapes of Serbian women by Albanian Muslims, the expulsion of Serbian families by Albanian officials, and the desecration of Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo. Leaders often believe that the very survival of the nation is at stake, especially if communities are geographically mixed, “when the boundaries between us and them do not run along defensible territorial boundaries but cut through the middle of towns and villages.” They speak of enemies who must be disarmed and neutralized through exile or extermination. These examples illustrate through instrumentalism how ethnic identity has been used to manipulate individuals into participating in civil conflicts. Additionally, this theory explains why some ethnically disjointed societies choose to recover rather than cooperate. The decision depends on the cost and benefit calculations made by the groups and when the cost of cooperation is greater than the perceived benefits, ethnic conflict tends to be inevitable. Instrumentalism also explains why some people get involved in ethnic violence even if they are not personally convinced but decide to follow the crowd. Ethnic mobilization is a coordination game in which it is rational for individuals to cooperate as long as others cooperate. The opportunity costs of participating in arebellion are small while the benefits in terms of share of the spoils are often quite substantial. The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is often described primarily as a product of elite manipulation, state failure, and illegal exploitation of mineral resources. However, like primordialism, instrumentalism has a number of weaknesses that further undermine its usefulness in explaining civil conflict. . For example, why do leaders in multi-ethnic societies so often believe that ethnicity is the means to gain power or extract resources from the state, not mobilization based on economic or ideological agendas? Furthermore, if all behavior in ethnic conflict is explained at the individual level as being dominated by the desire for individualistic material gains of a few elites, how can atrocities committed by members of these ethnic groups, such as rape, genocide and torture, do they contribute to these gains? ? It is argued that war rape is sometimes a political instrument to intimidate, humiliate and degrade the "enemy", as was the case with the Serbs during the Bosnian War, whose aim in raping Bosnian Muslim women was to produce small “Chetniks” or Rwanda. case where genocide is described as a political strategy of the elite aimed at buying the loyalty of one group by allowing the extermination of the other (ibid.). Although these arguments are plausible, they are incomplete without the emotional content mentioned in primordialism. Furthermore, if the masses also played a determining role, wouldn't ethnic collective action be paralyzed by free-rider problems? We can perhaps understand why it would be rational for someone to join an ethnic movement when they are about to take power, but why would ethnic mobilization begin? Why is it easy to mobilize mass participation effectively along ethnic lines? How do the elite know they can effectively use ethnicity to achieve these gains? These mass feelings and sentiments associated with ethnic identity are not manufactured by the elites, they simply recognize and appeal to it. This is not to say that elite manipulation or the desire for material gains are not an important cause of ethnic conflict, but rather that rational elite "conservation of power" strategies alone are not sufficient to address the problem. complexity of this phenomenon. Finally, if there is a good chance that ethnic mobilization or protest will lead to violence by another group or disciplinary action by the state, why should anyone participate in ethnic mobilization? Why would instrumentally rational people take such high risks? The final theoretical approach that links ethnic identity to civil conflict is constructivism. This is the most useful theory because it combines elements of the primordial and instrumentalist approaches. “Consistent with primordialists, constructivists view ethnic identities as cultural wealth; but, like the instrumentalists, they view ethnic identities as malleable. For example, constructivists reject the primordialist claim that members of ethnic groups A and B have always been part of the same ethnic group and that the boundaries between them are fixed. They argue that individuals known as Croats and Serbs with different political histories in the 19th century would be known as South Slavs or simply Serbs. This assertion is that not only the content of.