Relationship between Armed Conflict and Genocide - Essay Example

?Relationship between Armed Conflict and Genocide Introduction to Genocide and Armed Conflict Raphael Lemkin, the Polish jurist coined the term “genocide” to refer to the massacre of Armenians by Turks during the First World War and the massacre of Jews by Nazis during the Second World War. However, massacre during both times happened during a general war, which made Lemkin think of genocide as one of the kinds of warfare. Lemkin coined the word genocide to explain the massacre against civilians in his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Lemkin described genocide as “a concentrated and coordinated attack upon all the elements of nationhood” (Shaw, 2007, p. 21). Genocides have become more frequent over the time and a potential contributing factor to it is the advancement of technology (Kuper, 1983). The Uppsala University (2011) defines armed conflict in these words, “An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility which concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths” (Uppsala University, 2011). In light of this definition of armed conflict, genocide does not qualify as an armed conflict, since one of the two parties is armed in genocide but the second party is a victim. In a conflict, both of the two parties make use of force against each other in one way or another but in the genocide, the force is used by just one party against the other, and the other suffers because of a number of reasons that include but are not limited to the lack of force, lack of technical equipment, lack of skill and training in the use of equipment, and most importantly, lack of political support. “Apart from cases of subaltern genocide, the defenders and deniers of some of history’s worst genocides often justify the killings on the grounds of legitimate defensive or retributory action against traitors and subversives” (Jones, 2011, p. 50). Comparison of Genocide and Armed Conflict The difference between armed conflict and genocide is that in the former, it is at least two states that are fighting with each other whereas in the latter, a state fights with a nation. “Genocidal regimes thrive on the very types of social categories that anthropologists analyze and deploy – peoples, cultures, ethnic groups, nations, religious groups” (Hinton, 2002, p. 18). Thus, when people belonging to a certain community are victimized by another community particularly with the support of the government, the violence classifies as genocide. “Genocide is an extreme method by which a polity eliminates ethnic conflict” (Palmer, 1998). Genocide resembles armed conflict as a campaign and takes place in the context of armed conflict. However, there is a lot of difference between genocide and armed conflict: “Genocide is the antithesis of the ... doctrine (…) [which] holds that war is directed against sovereigns and armies, not against subjects and civilians. In its modern application in civilized society, the doctrine means that war is conducted against states and armed forces and not against populations. It required a long period of evolution in civilized society to mark the way from wars of extermination, which occurred in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, to the conception of wars as being essentially limited to activities against armies and states.” (Lemkin, 2008, p. 80). From this statement, it can be inferred that defining the genocide as a form of violence different from armed conflict relies on the difference between an uncivilized and civilized warfare. Genocide can be distinguished from armed conflict only by understanding the difference between armies and civilians. Relationship between Armed Conflict and Genocide Genocide was initially identified in the war’s context. In the contemporary age, the terms war and armed conflict are used interchangeably. Although the military prefers to refer to it as the “law of armed conflict”, yet the term “international humanitarian law” is also used by commentators to cover the wide array of principles and international treaties related to armed conflict. The main objective of the international humanitarian law is to put constraints in the techniques of armed conflict, and to safeguard the interests of the noncombatants including both civilians and soldiers. Genocide is an advanced type of the historic extermination wars, and can be defined as an activity of violence that takes place principally during the peacetime in the absence of the conventional warfare. These links between armed conflict and genocide have played an important role in the first legal uses of genocide in terms of meaning. The United Nations considered the prosecution of the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg because of the occurrence of genocide in the context of a war, though UN considered it different from war as reflects in the subsequent definition of genocide according to which, it is a supreme international crime. Genocide differs from armed conflict in that in genocide, the enemy does not need to be conquered like a competitor in war unlike the armed conflict. “In the mind of the perpetrator, the enemy is a wholly alien “other”—the sinister force behind society's ills—that must be utterly destroyed. In genocide the enemy is diabolical” (CLG Portal, 2012). The perpetrators collectively think that the victims are a cause of huge threat in the future, which is the fundamental reason why they expose them to genocidal violence. “The offence of genocide requires a special intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group (or part thereof). Murder as a war crime requires a close nexus between the acts of the accused and an armed conflict, which is not required by genocide” (Intersentia, 2005, p. 756). Case Study 1: Genocide in Darfur 2003 One of the largest genocides in the 21st century happened in the first three years of the start of the new century when the February of 2003 marked the beginning of murder of over 70,000 civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan. Civilians belonging to the black African tribes in Darfur were massacred by the Arab militias. Whether or not to consider the mass-murder of the black civilians as genocide was a complicated decision for the international community to make. Finally in July 2004, massacre of the black civilians in Darfur was classified as genocide in the resolution passed by the US Congress. The term was subsequently used by Colin Powell in September 2004 who was the Secretary of State at that time, and by the President George W. Bush in the speech he made to the UN. The UN Security Council sent a force of African Peacekeepers to Darfur. With the genocide in Darfur, many other regions have been exposed to the risk of similar genocides in the future including Sudan, Nigeria, and Chechnya. “Countries at risk of genocidal episodes in the near future are likely to be authoritarian, centralised, with very few checks on power; and they are likely to exclude significant groups in society from power and from fair terms with respect to economic and social resources” (Stewart, 2011, p. 29). Darfur is in Sudan and is approximately as large as Texas. The total population of the people of Darfur in the year 2002 before the commencement of the genocide was about 6 million, out of which, about 2.6 million have been moved (Daniel, 2010). The Arab militias stole the animals, land, and crops of the Darfurians and denied them access to water, leaving many Darfurians with no choice but to flee the land. The indignities inflicted by the Arab militias upon the Darfurians ranged from stripping off the clothes to raping, and making the people witness their relatives being killed in front of their eyes. “There is no official count for how many lives have been lost, but according to an MSNBC report, the United Nations estimates that somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 Darfurians have been murdered since the genocide began.One-third of Darfurians now live in crowded refugee camps in neighbouring Chad” (Daniel, 2010). Case Study 2: Genocide of Muslim Burmese 2012 One of the most suitable examples of armed conflict and genocide in the 21st century is the massive killing of Muslims of Myanmar in Burma that has taken place since June 2012. The fundamental purpose of the Buddhist armed groups behind killing the Muslim citizens is to make Burma a Buddhist country in its entirety so that there are no Muslims in Burma any more. Since June 2012, thousands of Burmese Muslims have been assassinated, and thousands have been left homeless and injured as a consequence of religious intolerance by the extremist Buddhist groups in Burma which is a predominantly Buddhist state. The military government of Burma has played a fundamental role in promoting this genocide by silently conniving with the Buddhist armed groups rather than making objective attempts to solve the problem and safeguard the rights of the Muslim Burmese that are a minority in Burma. There is no objective reason for the commencement of this genocide in Burma since June 2012 other than the periodic outbursts of anger among the Buddhist extremists in Burma against the helpless Muslim minority. Common perception regarding the genocide of Muslims in Burma is that it has been purposefully orchestrated by the rioters with due support and assistance from the government. In spite of this, this issue has failed to attract the attention of media anywhere in the world in general and in the Muslim countries in particular. Even the UN is silent over the genocide of Muslims in Burma. “The brazenly hypocritical and unscrupulous woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, is very prompt at accusing the Burmese military of human rights violations when she is under house arrest. But she finds nothing wrong when the military helps the Buddhist mobs to murder the innocent Muslim minority of her country” (My Opera, 2012). It is noteworthy that the genocide of Muslims in Burma is occurring as a result of armed conflict between the extremist Buddhist groups and the Muslims of Burma and cannot be declared as a consequence of war since war is an overt declaration of fight between two nations. War not only occurs at a much larger scale than such armed conflicts, but also is an overt expression and use of force by one party against the other whereas in the case of genocide of Muslims in Burma, the government apparently sympathizes with the Muslim victims, though it actually supports the massacre. This is consistent with the social theory as it relates genocide to social as well as political structure (Fein, 1993). The victims tend to find a way to escape the violence because they are not strong enough to fight back. In a vast majority of cases, the victims leave the land where the genocidal violence occurs along with all their property and assets. The victims migrate to other areas as refugees in search of food and shelter. Considering the most recent genocidal violence that has commenced in Burma since June 2012, thousands of Burmese Muslims have moved from Burma towards Bangladesh with the hope that Bangladesh would allow them to enter so that they can live there in peace. However, owing to the limited resources and over-population, Bangladesh has shown reluctance to allow the Burmese Muslims entry in Bangladesh. In addition to these factors, Bangladesh also does not accept the Burmese refugees partly because it wants to maintain good relations with the government of Burma. Most of the refugees have been returned to Burma. Despite the huge risk of assassination, the Burmese Muslims are helpless and have no option but to go back to Burma and wait until it is their turn. It is essentially a one-way use of force because of which the genocide qualifies more as violence than an armed conflict. Nevertheless, armed conflict may be a causal factor of genocide. In many cases, armed conflict between two parties subsequently leads to genocide at a later point in time when one of the two parties does not remain quite as strong and technically equipped as compared to the other. Conclusion Concluding, armed conflict and genocide are two different kinds of warfare. Armed conflict is more like a battle between two parties whereas genocide qualifies as a violence in which the powerful party victimizes the weaker party by mass-killing it. In an armed conflict, both parties are armed whereas in a genocide, one party is armed while the other is not which is why, the victims cannot defend themselves and hence fall prey to the violent party. An integral relation between armed conflict and genocide is that both are facilitated with the use of technology. Increase in the number of genocides over the passage of time can be attributed to the development of technology. Two very dreadful genocides that have happened in the 21st century are the genocide in Darfur that happened in 2003 and the genocide of Muslim Burmese in 2012. In both of the genocides, only one party was armed and this party was essentially the one that caused the violence e.g. the Arab militias in Darfur and the Buddhist extremists in Burma, whereas the second party was weaponless which was the Darfurians and the Muslim Burmese. Besides, conflict occurs when two parties have a common interest for which they fight unlike genocide, in which the violent party tends to subjugate the fundamental right of living of the victims. Hence, armed conflict and genocide both involve murders and killings but the two differ in the causes, nature, and level of preparation of the parties involved. Bibliography CLG Portal 2012, What Makes Genocide Different from Other Types of War? [Online] Available at . Daniel, A 2010, Darfur: Genocide in the 21st Century, [Online] Available at . Fein, H 1993, Accounting for genocide after 1945: Theories and some findings, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 79-106. Hinton, AL 2002, Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, USA: University of California Press. Intersentia 2005, Annotated leading cases of international criminal tribunals, UK: Hart Publishing. Jones, A 2011, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, USA: Routledge. Kuper, L 1983, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, Yale University Press. Lemkin, R 2008, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange. My Opera 2012, Why the Genocide of Burmese Muslims? [Online] Available at . Palmer, A 1998, Colonial and modern genocide: explanations and categories, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 21, Issue 1. Shaw, M 2007, What is Genocide? UK: Polity Press. Stewart, F 2011, Economic and Political Causes of Genocidal Violence: A comparison with findings on the causes of civil war, [Online] Available at . Uppsala University 2011, Definition of Armed Conflict, [Online] Available at . Read More