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Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

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  • Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

    1 of 8

    International Security
    Spring 2008

    Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

    Carter Johnson.

    Carter Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland,
    College Park, where he is writing his dissertation on population
    migration during and after war. He received his M.Sc. from the London
    School of Economics and was Visiting Fellow with the Civic Education
    Project at the University of Uzbekistan and State Pedagogical
    University of Moldova. He is the former Project Coordinator of the
    Minorities at Risk Project.; For their helpful comments and
    suggestions, the author would like to thank Mark Lichbach, as well as
    Christian Davenport, Diana Dumitru, Chaim Kaufmann, Corinne Lennox,
    Maren Milligan, Jillian Schwedler, the anonymous reviewers, and the
    participants of the DC Area Workshop on Contentious Politics.



    Some scholars have proposed partition as a way to solve ethnic civil
    wars. Partition theorists advocate the demographic separation of
    ethnic groups into different states, arguing that this is the best
    chance for an enduring peace. Opponents argue that partition is costly
    in terms of its human toll and that its advocates have yet to
    demonstrate its effectiveness beyond a limited number of self-selected
    case studies. This analysis systematically examines the outcome of
    partition, highlighting the centrality of demography by introducing an
    index that measures the degree to which a partition separates ethnic
    groups. This index is applied to all civil wars ending in partition
    from 1945 to 2004. Partitions that completely separated the warring
    groups did not experience a recurrence of war and low-level violence
    for at least five years, outperforming both partitions that did not
    separate ethnic groups and other ethnic war outcomes. These results
    challenge other
    studies that examine partition as a war outcome. The results also
    have direct implications for Iraq's civil war, postindependence
    Kosovo, and other ethnic civil wars.

    Since the early 1950s, civil wars have been longer lasting and more
    frequent than international wars, producing high levels of death and
    disability. 1 Ethnic wars have been especially common, comprising 55
    percent (70) to 72 percent (91) of all civil wars between 1945 and
    1999. 2 Moreover, cross-national evidence suggests that ethnic wars
    last longer than nonethnic wars. 3 These numbers are even more
    troubling given that, during the 1990s, more than 200 ethnic
    minorities and subordinate majorities throughout the world were
    contesting their political status. 4 In addition to the challenge of
    ending civil wars, one of the most vexing problems has been their high
    recidivism rate, with postconflict countries facing up to a 50 percent
    chance of experiencing renewed war within the first five years of
    establishing peace. 5

    Since the mid-1990s, one solution to preventing the recurrence of
    ethnic civil war that has gained international policy and scholarly
    attention has been partition. 6 The debate surrounding partition
    emerged at the end of the Cold War, as ethnic conflicts came to the
    forefront of Western policymakers' attention and international
    boundaries were once again open to large-scale change. Still, Western
    governments have demonstrated a certain ambivalence toward
    partition. Although they have opposed the recognition of several de
    facto partitions, such as Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan, they have
    promoted the incorporation of partitions into the peace plans of Sudan
    and Papua New Guinea. 7 The negotiations surrounding the final status
    of Kosovo further reflected Western ambivalence, with the independence
    of Kosovo from Serbia fiercely contested within the European Union;
    there is also the possibility of a further partition of Kosovo into
    majority Albanian and
    Serbian regions, which is the de facto political composition of
    independent Kosovo. 8 In addition, policymakers have increasingly
    proposed partition as one way to solve the civil war taking place in
    Iraq. 9

    Scholarly debate about the relative merits of partition is not new. 10
    Since the end of the Cold War, however, the debate over partition has
    primarily emphasized humanitarian issues. When scholars and
    policymakers have proposed partition, it has been as a last resort, to
    end ethnic wars when widespread massacres and forced population
    transfers have already begun to occur and where long-term military
    commitments by the international community are either not forthcoming
    or are unable to produce peace. 11 Partition advocates argue that
    under these conditions, partitioning groups into separate states where
    they can protect themselves militarily provides the best chance for
    ending ethnic wars and establishing an enduring peace. They do not,
    however, support the blanket application of new borders to solve
    ethnic civil wars. Rather they argue for the need to separate warring
    populations--with population transfers where necessary--in an effort
    to create
    relatively homogeneous units where ethnic groups' security fears are
    reduced and demobilization and reconstruction efforts can begin
    without the need for long-term commitments of international troops.

    Studies on the debate over partition have largely remained theoretical
    or focused on case studies and policy prescriptions. 12 Evidence has
    pointed to some successes, such as the 1974 partition of Cyprus, which
    led to decades of peace, and some failures, such as the partition of
    British India, which led to widespread massacres and ultimately
    resulted in war. This article offers a systematic, cross-national test
    of all partitions that followed ethnic civil wars between 1945 and
    2004. It finds that partition is a uniformly effective tool in
    preventing a recurrence of war and low-level violence, but only if it
    includes the physical separation of ethnic groups. This finding
    challenges that of Nicholas Sambanis. who, in 2000, produced the first
    empirical study of partition using a large-n, cross-national
    database. 13 Based on his results, Sambanis concluded that "partition
    does not significantly prevent war recurrence [, which] suggests, at
    the very least,
    that separating ethnic groups does not resolve the problem of violent
    ethnic antagonism." 14

    Sambanis's analysis helped to further scholarly understanding of
    partition's relationship to the recurrence of conflict, but it did not
    test the core theoretical argument of partition advocates. The
    Sambanis analysis suffers from a methodological error because it
    identified new borders (i.e., sovereignty) as the critical independent
    variable to represent partition, and not the demographic separation of
    warring ethnic groups. Testing the relationship between sovereignty
    and conflict recurrence does not capture, and therefore cannot refute,
    the position of partition advocates. 15 This article, in contrast,
    introduces an index to calculate the amount of unmixing of ethnic
    groups that occurs with partition, therefore capturing partition
    advocates' core argument.

    The article is divided into six sections. First, I review the
    theoretical and empirical literature on partition. Second, I examine
    partition's empirical record and raise critical questions about
    Sambanis's main conclusion that partition is not particularly
    effective at preventing war recurrence. Third, I propose an
    alternative variable--the Postpartition Ethnic Homogeneity Index
    (PEHI)--for testing whether partition is a viable solution for ending
    ethnic wars. Fourth, I demonstrate that, where the index shows warring
    ethnic groups were in fact separated, neither war nor low-level
    violence reoccurred for at least five years, suggesting that partition
    advocates are correct. Fifth, I compare complete partitions with both
    incomplete partitions and other forms of ethnic war termination, such
    as government victory. Sixth, I discuss some of the policy
    implications that follow from the analysis, in particular for the
    final status of Kosovo and proposals to
    partition Iraq.

    Partition as a Means to End Civil Wars
    Since the mid-1990s, scholars have produced a number of theoretical
    and empirical studies on how civil wars end and how to create an
    enduring peace. Factors that can influence the termination of civil
    wars and help to prevent their recurrence include the length or cost
    of the war, the ability of a central government to make credible
    commitments, the presence of mediators, the strength of state security
    forces, and a willingness to address grievances. 16

    In cases where long-term military commitments by the international
    community are not forthcoming or do not establish interethnic peace,
    some scholars have suggested partition. 17 Further, given the high
    percentage of civil wars that recur within the first five years of the
    establishment of peace, advocates of partition argue that it may be
    the best way to bring about an enduring solution to at least some
    kinds of intractable ethnic conflicts. 18

    Partition theory rests on two primary principles. First, ethnic civil
    wars are qualitatively different from other kinds of civil
    war. Second, warring ethnic groups confront a security dilemma that
    prevents them from de-escalating and demobilizing. As a result, ethnic
    groups must be separated and given sovereignty to produce long-term
    peace.



    ETHNIC CIVIL WARS
    In the social science literature, "ethnic conflict" refers to
    conflicts involving ascriptive group identities, identities that are
    very difficult, if not impossible, to change and that are often based
    on an individual's descent (e.g., language, religion, or race). 19
    Wars involving groups with different communal identities (e.g., Sunni
    and Shiite Arabs in Iraq) or linguistic identities (e.g., Ossetian and
    Georgian groups in Georgia) fall into this category. It is this
    component of an ascriptive identity, and the politicization of that
    identity, that distinguishes ethnic civil war from other forms of
    civil war. The ascriptive component can lead militant organizations to
    identify entire ethnic groups as loyal or disloyal within a country's
    population in a way that ideological conflicts cannot. 20 In fact,
    ethnic group members often go to great lengths to find out who is a
    member of an "enemy" group, including the use of census data in Nazi
    Germany,
    electoral lists in Sri Lanka, and identity cards in Rwanda. 21

    The concept of ethnic civil war does not assume primordial identity in
    the sense that groups are fixed and unchanging, nor does it require
    fixed individual identities. 22 In fact, the concept of an "ethnic
    war" is still compatible with mainstream constructivist understandings
    of individuals sharing multiple, overlapping identities, some of which
    become more salient than others depending on the context. 23 Advocates
    of partition need not accept ethnic identity as given, only that it
    becomes given under certain conditions. In pre-colonial Rwanda and
    Burundi, for example, Hutu and Tutsi identities were flexible, but
    this was certainly not the case during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when
    some Hutus targeted all Tutsis because of their ethnic identity. 24 In
    the words of one individual caught up in the Bosnian ethnic civil war,
    "I am a Croat. . . . I was Yugoslavian, and now I am a Croat. I always
    knew that I am a Croat, but I didn't feel it so much. Now, you
    have to be Croat, Serb, Muslim, xxxish, or whatever.... For me
    personally, these identities didn't interest me at all: my being a
    Croat wasn't important. But now, you have to be." 25

    In contrast to ideological wars, where loyalties are more fluid both
    during and after combat, in ethnic wars, members of one ethnic group
    are far less likely to fight for the opposing side, 26 dividing
    communities and making postwar reconciliation in an intermingled state
    very difficult--some would argue impossible. 27 As Chaim Kaufmann
    states, "War hardens ethnic identities to the point that cross-ethnic
    political appeals become futile, which means that victory can be
    assured only by physical control over the territory in dispute. Ethnic
    wars also generate intense security dilemmas, both because the
    escalation of each side's mobilization rhetoric presents a real threat
    to the other, and even more because intermingled population settlement
    patterns create defensive vulnerabilities and offensive
    opportunities. . . . Once this occurs, the war cannot end until the
    security dilemma is reduced by physical separation of the rival
    groups. 28
    ........
    What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

  • #2
    Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

    2 of 8

    International Security
    Spring 2008

    Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

    Carter Johnson.
    .....
    THE ETHNIC SECURITY DILEMMA
    A security dilemma can develop when, in an anarchical system, one
    state's defensive action makes other states feel less secure, drawing
    two or more states into a conflict, even where none originally sought
    it. 29 Scholars have noted the presence of security dilemmas in ethnic
    conflicts. 30 As empires collapse and states fail, the resulting
    anarchy causes competing and distrustful ethnic groups to engage in
    defensive actions that may seem threatening to other groups, thereby
    heightening tension. The mixture of different ethnic populations
    influences the intensity of a security dilemma and can encourage
    offensive military action even when defense is the overriding
    consideration: members of one ethnic group may try to save their kin
    located within the territorial confines of another ethnic group or,
    conversely, preemptively expel members of other ethnic groups located
    inside their own territory. 31 Some scholars have identified
    ethnically mixed regions as
    particularly prone to violence in ethnic wars. In discussing the
    former Yugoslavia, Hurst Hannum states, "Keeping 'trapped' Serbs
    within Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (and trapped Croats within
    the latter) may have actually contributed to continuation of the
    violence, since peaceful means of redrawing borders seem to have been
    excluded." 32

    Empirical results from Jaroslav Tir's study of postsecession war
    recurrence support this conclusion. 33 His examination of every
    secession and partition in the twentieth century finds that the
    presence of stay-behind minorities increases the likelihood of
    conflict. 34 To build a lasting peace, therefore, warring ethnic
    groups must be separated into homogeneous regions capable of
    self-defense. Kaufmann argues, "Solutions that aim both to restore
    multiethnic civil politics and to avoid population transfers, such as
    institution building, power sharing, and identity reconstruction,
    cannot work during or after an ethnic civil war because they do not
    resolve the security dilemma created by mixed demography." 35



    THE ROLE OF SOVEREIGNTY IN PARTITON
    Scholars have differed on the role of sovereignty in ending ethnic
    wars and ensuring long-term peace. Supporters of partition, such as
    Kaufmann, initially argued that demographic separation with regional
    autonomy was sufficient, as long as that autonomy protected the
    group's key interests and provided for "regional defense
    capabilities." 36 Alexander Downes, on the other hand, later stressed
    that sovereignty is an essential ingredient. 37 Moving beyond the
    security dilemma, Downes suggests that even where populations have
    been separated, autonomy alone is not enough to maintain peace. The
    very process of ethnic civil war, he claims, "makes reconstructing a
    multiethnic state afterwards problematic because it destroys the
    parties' ability to trust each other not to violate any agreement
    negotiated." 38 Downes and others therefore maintain that to be
    successful, partition must include both political sovereignty (i.e.,
    independence) as well as the separation
    of ethnic groups. 39



    POPULATION TRANSFERS AND HUMANITARIAN OBJECTIVES
    Debates over partition that had traditionally focused on the normative
    goal of self-determination started to change in the mid-1990s, when
    academics such as Kaufmann, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Van Evera
    began to propose partition as a way to minimize the number of deaths
    and reduce the human suffering in ethnic civil wars. 40 Since borders
    can rarely be drawn to create ethnically homogeneous states, advocates
    of partition recommend population transfers to accomplish what would
    otherwise occur under worse conditions for civilian populations. The
    argument is that a third-party transfer would be better than forced
    transfers perpetrated by enemy militias aiming for ethnic cleansing or
    worse. 41

    Population transfer is a controversial subject that has been open to
    serious criticism for at least two reasons. First, even organized
    population transfers, if involuntary, are a violation of fundamental
    human rights enshrined in international law. 42 Second, there is
    debate about the degree to which any power can conduct "humane"
    population transfers. A cursory look at examples from the twentieth
    century reveals a chaotic and lethal record, primarily affecting
    civilians. 43

    In addition to raising serious concerns over the ethics of population
    transfers, critics of partition theory level two broader objections:
    first, partitions transform internal wars into international ones; and
    second, they do not solve ethnic antagonisms. Advocates of partition
    counter that postpartition wars tend to occur where populations were
    not separated (e.g., postpartition Ireland, British India, and
    Palestine). 44 In addition, they note that conflicts between
    postpartition states are often the subject of greater international
    attention and diplomatic pressure, and thus are likely to be brought
    to an end sooner than if they remained internal conflicts. Moreover,
    the partitioned states are subject to international laws regulating
    war, potentially rendering any conflict less inhumane. 45 As for
    solving ethnic antagonisms, it is not clear whether this is within
    anyone's power. At a minimum, the separation of warring ethnic groups
    reduces the security
    threat, which may give moderate politicians within each group a
    chance to be heard. 46

    If separating warring ethnic groups through partition can be shown to
    prevent the recurrence of ethnic war, then the international community
    should accord it greater consideration when seeking solutions to such
    conflicts. It was with this challenge in mind that Sambanis undertook
    his cross-national study, arguing that "beyond a handful of
    self-selected cases, partition theorists have not presented proof that
    partition is the only viable and credible solution to ethnic civil
    war. They have not even proven that partition outperforms other war
    outcomes in terms of peace-building potential." 47 The following
    section outlines both Sambanis's evaluation and the data set used in
    this study.

    Cross-National Statistical Testing of Partition Theory
    Sambanis compiled a data set of all civil wars between 1945 and 1999
    to compare the effectiveness of partition with that of other causes of
    war termination and peace building. 48 Sambanis tested each of these
    independent variables, including partition, on three dependent
    variables: its ability to prevent war recurrence; its ability to
    reduce low-level postwar violence; and its ability to promote postwar
    democratization. Based on his analysis, Sambanis concluded that
    "although it may seem like a clean and easy solution, partition fares
    no better than other outcomes of ethnic civil war." 49 He also
    concluded that "the evidence does not support the assertion that
    partition significantly reduces the risk of war recurrence." 50 He
    went on, "I can point to only very weak evidence in support of the
    hypothesis that partitions help end low-level ethnic
    violence. . . . More importantly, the positive impact of partitions
    seems fragile and extremely dependent." 51

    Sambanis used a broad definition of ethnic civil war, which allowed
    him to draw on a variety of civil war-related databases. 52 He based
    his definition on six criteria: the war caused more than 1,000 battle
    deaths; it challenged the sovereignty of an internationally recognized
    state; it occurred within the recognized boundaries of that state; it
    involved the state as one of the principal combatants; it included
    rebels with the ability to mount an organized opposition; and it
    involved parties concerned with the prospect of living together in the
    same political unit after the end of the war. 53

    Sambanis's definition of low-level violence follows largely from Peter
    Wallensteen and Margareta Sollenberg's data set that coded all armed
    conflicts causing 25 or more deaths but falling short of war. 54
    Sambanis defined partition as "a war outcome that involves both border
    adjustment and demographic changes." 55 This article follows Sambanis
    and includes instances of both "partition" and "secession."
    Traditionally a partition was understood as a "fresh division" of
    territory, usually executed by a sovereign (often great) power that
    occurred at the time of decolonization. 56 In my study, however, who
    imposes partition is relatively unimportant: the critical factor is
    whether dividing warring groups into separate entities can prevent war
    recurrence. 57 Further, whether it is possible to accurately
    distinguish between secessions and partitions is unclear: Kaufmann,
    for example, codes Cyprus (1974) as a "partition" but Abkhazia
    (1992-93) a "secession,"
    even though both Turkish Cypriots and Abkhaz were involved in
    separatist movements that were ultimately successful because of
    assistance from an external power (Turkey and Russia,
    respectively). 58 Moreover, given that the implications of partition
    theory affect partitions and secessions equally in the minds of
    academics and policymakers, it is logical to code both. Finally, it is
    relatively unimportant whether a postpartitioned entity achieves de
    jure sovereignty (as in the case of Bangladesh's internationally
    recognized separation from Pakistan) or de facto sovereignty (as in
    the case of South Ossetia's unrecognized separation from Georgia);
    therefore both types are included. Although some scholars have begun
    to include wars of decolonization in data sets of civil wars (e.g.,
    Algeria's independence from France and Mozambique's from Portugal),
    this practice remains questionable conceptually. 59 Moreover, because
    I am primarily interested in
    reevaluating Sambanis's analysis, like him, I exclude such
    wars. Using Sambanis's data set, I was able to reproduce his
    estimates.

    My cases differ slightly from those used by Sambanis. First, I
    excluded Tajikistan because it did not undergo a recognizable
    partition during or after its civil war, and because most experts
    deemed it a regional and ideological, not ethnic, conflict. 60 Second,
    I included the case of Bosnia, but where Sambanis uses the 1992
    partition, I used the 1995 partition. The 1992 partition of Bosnia
    from Yugoslavia did not occur at the end of the war, which raged for
    three more years. 61 I coded the Dayton accord 62 as a partition of
    Bosnia between Serbs, on the one hand, and Bosniaks and Croats on the
    other. 63 The territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into two
    de facto states in 1995, each maintaining separate armed forces that
    cannot enter the other's territory. 64 This qualifies Bosnia as a
    partition. As the realist scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
    confirmed at the time, Bosnia "produced a partition
    settlement. . . . The settlement is a
    veiled partition but a partition nevertheless." 65 Third, I excluded
    the 1992 Croatia case because of the difficulty of categorizing it as
    a war end. Although there were cease-fires between the Zagreb-based
    Croatian authorities and the Knin-based Republic of Serbian Krajina
    (RSK), 66 the conflict between Yugoslavian/Serb and Croatian forces
    continued in many regions, including the Serb siege of Dubrovnik and
    the Croat siege of Bihac. In addition, serious military operations
    between the forces of the RSK and Croatia's army resumed soon after
    each cease-fire. 67 I therefore excluded this case from the
    analysis. Given the ongoing violence between Yugoslavian/Serb and
    Croat forces between 1991 and 1995, 68 it is more appropriate to
    consider this a Croatian "war of independence," ending with the
    partition of Croatia from Yugoslavia in 1995, which is what I included
    in my analysis. 69 Finally, I updated all relevant variables for all
    cases of ethnic civil war
    through mid-2004. This update includes the 1999 partition of Kosovo
    from Yugoslavia.

    More important, I introduce a new independent variable for
    analysis. This new variable is critical because Sambanis's definition
    of partition relies on the existence of border and demographic changes
    but not the degree of separation between ethnic groups. The following
    section outlines my alternative approach.
    .....
    What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

      3 of 8

      International Security
      Spring 2008

      Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

      Carter Johnson.
      .....
      The Centrality of Demography
      If, as supporters of partition argue, the critical independent
      variable is demography, and if partitioned countries with new
      minorities increase the security threat, then demographic changes need
      to be captured for use as an independent variable. Social scientists
      have not developed many demographic indicators to capture degrees of
      ethnic heterogeneity. Tatu Vanhanen, for example, created the ethnic
      heterogeneity index to explore the general relationship between ethnic
      conflict and ethnic division. 70 Daniel Posner developed an index
      based on politically relevant ethnic groups. 71 Neither index,
      however, can identify which groups were at war and the degree to which
      they separated after the war. To address this problem, I created the
      Postpartition Ethnic Homogeneity Index (PEHI).


      POSTPARTITION ETHNIC HOMOGENEITY INDEX
      In constructing the PEHI, I began with a state that contains a titular
      ethnic group and a minority ethnic group. The two groups engage in a
      civil war, and at some point, their territory is partitioned in the
      hopes of ending the conflict. The result is two countries, each with
      its own titular majority as well as a potentially "stay-behind"
      minority from the other ethnic group. Determining the degree to which
      the ethnic groups were separated requires knowing (1) the percentage
      of the minority group in the original country (recorded as OSM, for
      original state minority); (2) the percentage of the original minority
      left in the rump state after partition (RSM, for rump state minority);
      and (3) the percentage of the original titular group now found as a
      minority inside the new state (NSM, for new state minority).

      Given the theoretical focus on demography, with an understanding that
      leaving sizable minorities on either side of a new border could
      increase the chances of renewed warfare and low-level violence, this
      index uses both new minorities to calculate the degree to which
      partition and population transfers succeeded in separating the warring
      groups. For countries with more than two ethnic groups at war, groups
      were aggregated if they fought on the same side or if they were
      treated as one by the opposing force; 72 if there were separate
      warring ethnic dyads within a civil war, they were treated as separate
      wars.

      To calculate the PEHI, I subtracted the new minority percentages (RSM
      and NSM) from the original minority percentage (OSM). I then divided
      this percentage by the original minority percentage (OSM) and
      multiplied the result by 100. This simple calculation yields the
      percentage change in the size of ethnic minorities produced by
      partitioning the country, thus indicating the degree of ethnic
      separation:

      PEHI = OSM-(RSM + NSM)/OSM x 100.

      The higher the PEHI number, the greater the degree of separation
      achieved by partition. The maximum score a partition can receive is
      +100, indicating a complete separation of the warring ethnic
      groups. This number falls as the size of the stay-behind minorities
      grows relative to the original minority percentage. 73



      CODING OF THE PEHI
      Timely data on minority populations in the aftermath of ethnic civil
      wars proved difficult to find. For coding, I relied on a staple set of
      books and encyclopedias. 74 The guiding principle in gathering the
      data was to have at least two credible sources provide the same
      numbers; when these numbers were close but not exact, an average was
      taken. Where two sources could not be found among the staple, I
      consulted case-specific academic publications and news reports gauging
      refugee flows of ethnic groups. 75 Where data were unavailable for the
      year immediately after partition, I used the first available data.


      RESULTS
      Table 1 presents the PEHI component figures from the seventeen cases
      of partition that occurred after ethnic civil wars between 1945 and
      2004. For example, in Azerbaijan the OSM--in this case, the
      Armenians--formed 5.8 percent of Azerbaijan's population before the
      civil war. After the civil war, approximately 20,000 Armenians
      remained in rump Azerbaijan, creating an RSM of 0.25 percent. The
      number of Azeris found in the new state of Nagorno Karabakh after the
      war ended was negligible (NSM < 0.01). The following equation reflects
      the PEHI for the case of Azerbaijan:

      PEHI (Azerbaijan-Nagorno Karabakh) = 5.8 -(0.25 + 0)/5.8 x 100 =
      95.69.

      Table 1. Calculation of PEHI Values for Partitions after Ethnic Civil War

      Original Rump New Postpartition
      State State State Ethnic
      Country Minority Minority Minority Homogeneity Index
      Azerbaijan-Nagorno Karabakh 5.8 0.25 <0.01 95.69
      (1994)
      Bosnia (1995) 31.2 2.30 3.20 86.40
      Cyprus (1963) 18.2 11.90 <0.01 34.60
      Cyprus (1974) 12.3 <0.01 <0.01 100.00
      Ethiopia-Eritrea (1991) 6.4 0.12 <0.01 98.13
      Georgia-Abkhazia (1993) 1.8 <0.01 0.08 99.83
      Georgia-South Ossetia (1994) 3.0 <0.01 0.05 98.33
      India-Kashmir (1965) 10.4 10.40 3.00 -28.85
      India-Kashmir (1989-94) 10.4 10.40 3.00 -28.85
      India-Pakistan (1947-48) 24.4 10.40 1.60 50.82
      Israel-Palestine (1948) 33.3 <0.01 13.80 58.56
      Moldova (1992) 31.0 24.00 40.50 -108.06
      Pakistan-Bangladesh (1971) 46.0 0.30 0.20 98.91
      Russia-Chechnya (1996) 0.6 0.30 2.50 -366.67
      Somalia (1992) 27.4 25.00 28.00 -93.43
      Yugoslavia-Croatia (1995) 19.7 1.10 4.49 71.62
      Yugoslavia-Kosovo (1999) 14.0 0.70 6.00 52.14

      NOTE: Scores of <0.01 assume a value of 0 for calculation of the
      Postpartition Ethnic Homogeneity Index.


      The PEHI shows what was achieved with partition. Rather than a simple
      binary code indicating if de facto sovereignty was achieved, the PEHI
      captures the degree to which minorities were separated. For example,
      the 1963-64 partition of Cyprus, where Turks migrated into small
      defensive enclaves during intense interethnic war, failed to
      significantly divide the populations, leaving a large number of Turks
      outside the defensible enclaves. According to the PEHI, this partition
      homogenized the territories by a paltry 34.6 percent, reducing the
      security dilemma only marginally. Partition theory would expect a high
      likelihood of war recurrence under these conditions, which is what
      took place. In contrast, Azerbaijan's partition succeeded in
      separating Azeris and Armenians, with a PEHI of close to 100
      percent. As predicted by partition theory, there has been no
      recurrence of war.


      Examining the PEHI
      I added the PEHI to the Sambanis data set to assess its impact on the
      most crucial dependent variable: war recurrence. Using binary probit,
      the variable warend2 (no war recurrence for at least two years after
      the end of the civil war) was regressed on the continuous variable
      PEHI only for ethnic wars that experienced partition, controlling for
      the original minority percentage. The results demonstrated a positive
      coefficient (i.e., the higher the ethnodemo-graphic separation, the
      less likely war will recur within the first two years), significant at
      the 0.1 level for a one-tailed test. Due to a small n, however, these
      results are at most suggestive, given the statistical problem that, as
      yet, there have been too few partitions. For these statistical
      results, see the appendix.

      The PEHI indicates whether any one partition selected from the
      database would be considered a "complete" partition or an "incomplete"
      partition by partition advocates. A complete partition is one in which
      the warring minorities are fully separated, leaving negligible
      stay-behind minorities; an incomplete partition is one in which the
      minorities are not separated, leaving sizable stay-behind minorities
      in either of the two emerging states. For this study, any partition
      that succeeded in separating the warring parties by a PEHI of 95
      percent or more is considered a complete partition. The threshold of
      95 percent is not fixed, but rather should be seen as a guide to
      indicate partitions where ethnic groups have been effectively
      separated in their entirety, a critical demand by partition
      advocates. 76

      Table 2 compares complete and incomplete partitions against the two
      main criteria established by Sambanis: recurrence of war either two or
      five years after the end of a civil war, and recurrence of low-level
      violence within two or five years. 77 This five-year threshold is
      particularly significant given World Bank data suggesting that "the
      typical post-conflict country faces a 50 percent risk of renewed
      conflict within the first five years of reaching peace." 78

      Table 2. Complete and Incomplete Partitions

      Low- Low-
      War Level Level
      Postpartition Ended War Violence Violence
      Ethnic for Ended Ended Ended
      Homogeneity Complete Two for Five for Two for Five
      Country Index Partition Years Years Years Years
      Azerbaijan-Nagorno 95.69 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      Karabakh (1994)
      Bosnia (1995) 86.40 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
      Cyprus (1963) 34.60 No No No No No
      Cyprus (1974) 100.00 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      Ethiopia-Eritrea 98.13 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      (1991)
      Georgia-Abkhazia 99.83 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      (1993)
      Georgia-South 98.33 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      Ossetia (1994)
      India-Kashmir -28.85 No Yes No No No
      (1965)
      India-Kashmir -28.85 No Yes No No No
      (1989-94)
      India-Pakistan 50.82 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
      (1947-48)
      Israel-Palestine 58.56 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
      (1948)
      Moldova (1992) -108.06 No Yes Yes No No
      Pakistan- 98.91 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
      Bangladesh
      (1971)
      Russia-Chechnya -366.67 No No No No No
      (1996)
      Somalia (1992) -93.43 No No No No No
      Yugoslavia-Croatia 71.62 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
      (1995)
      Yugoslavia-Kosovo 52.14 No Yes Yes No No
      (1999)

      As the results in Table 2 indicate, for all partitions achieving a
      PEHI separation score of 95 percent or higher, there were no
      recurrences of war for at least five years, nor were there recurrences
      of low-level violence for five years. In fact, no partitioned state
      achieving a PEHI score above 70 percent experienced a recurrence of
      war or low-level violence, suggesting the threshold of 95 percent
      could even be lowered. For partitions with lower PEHI scores, the
      results are mixed, with most countries experiencing either war
      recurrence or a return of low-level violence. This suggests that a
      partition that successfully separates warring ethnic groups produces
      substantially different results from partitions that do not separate
      the groups, which is what partition advocates predict. This further
      underscores the need to disaggregate partitions into those that
      separate the warring ethnic groups and those that do not. Although the
      number of cases is
      small--there have been only six cases of complete partition--the
      results are consistent and unambiguous. Given the small number,
      however, these results must be treated with caution. While partition
      advocates cannot be faulted for the lack of complete partitions since
      1945, it is important to recognize the limits of currently available
      data.
      ......
      Last edited by Siamanto; 05-11-2008, 08:31 PM.
      What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

        4 of 8

        International Security
        Spring 2008

        Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

        Carter Johnson.
        .....

        One case that stands out is the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict. Although
        this partition meets the criteria established by Sambanis, with no
        recurrence of war or low-level violence between Ethiopia and Eritrea
        for at least five years after their partition, these countries did
        return to war in 1998, after a seven-year peace. Partition advocates
        do not claim, however, that separating warring ethnic groups will
        always prevent a return to war or low-level violence forever into the
        future; rather they claim that it is often the best option to give
        peace a chance. In addition, for this particular case, had more
        population transfers occurred at the time of partition, the tens of
        thousands of Eritreans remaining in Ethiopia would not have faced the
        horrific expulsions that occurred during the 1998-2000 war. 79

        Further, as mentioned earlier, partition advocates argue that any
        future war between partitioned states will be an improvement over a
        return to civil war, because the two sovereign states will be
        subjected to greater international attention and diplomatic pressure,
        increasing the likelihood of the war ending quickly. Ethiopia and
        Eritrea exemplify this logic: the civil war the two sides fought
        lasted more than fifteen years, whereas the interstate conflict of
        1998 ended within two years following heavy international
        pressure. This positive result must be tempered, however, by the fact
        that international wars, though relatively infrequent in today's
        world, can be very lethal. 80

        There are several countries that experienced incomplete
        partitions--that is, partitions that do not completely separate the
        warring ethnic groups--and yet did not experience war recurrence or
        low-level violence within the first five years of the end of their
        civil wars. Although this indicates that demographic separation is not
        the only way to prevent war recurrence, a close look at the cases of
        states that did not experience war recurrence for five years reveals
        troubling insights. The conflict over India-Pakistan (1947-48) did not
        recur in the first five years, but the incomplete partition, which
        left substantially intermixed populations in place, was followed by
        three wars over the proceeding half century. The incomplete partition
        between Israel and Palestine (1948) was similarly followed by
        low-level violence and war recurrence over subsequent
        decades. Moreover, it was arguably the reintroduction of significant
        ethnic intermingling after Israel's
        occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 that has led to
        heightened conflict. Croatia's "war of independence" (1991-95) also
        ended with an incomplete partition. Although the degree of ethnic
        unmixing was not enough to be deemed a complete partition by the
        strict criteria outlined in the article. The final Croatian military
        operation of the war in 1995 forced approximately 200,000 Serbs to
        flee Croatian territory, reducing the percentage of Serbs in Croatia
        by almost two-thirds by the end of the war, and therefore
        substantially unmixing the populations. 81

        A potential concern with the results of this analysis may be over the
        issue of endogeneity, or whether a selection bias has taken place
        where cases of complete partition occurred in states where ethnic
        minorities were already compact and homogeneous, and thus relatively
        easy to separate after a war without ethnic cleansing or large
        population transfers. Few communities are ethnically homogeneous,
        however, and even those ethnic groups that are territorially
        concentrated typically have a significant minority in their midst. In
        this analysis, all of the complete cases involved large-scale forced
        population transfers during the countries' wars, with the possible
        exception of Bangladesh. 82 Militias and government armed forces
        displaced hundreds of thousands of people during the two ethnic wars
        in Georgia, during the war over Nagorno Karabakh, and during the
        ethnic war in Cyprus. In the other partition reaching a high
        PEHI--Bosnia (86.4 percent)--armed forces
        displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians based on their ethnic
        identity in what had been an ethnically intermixed territory.



        Complete Partition versus the Alternatives
        A comparison of countries that experienced complete partitions with
        those that experienced other outcomes between 1945 and 2004 (i.e.,
        incomplete partition or no partition) reveals the benefits of
        separating warring ethnic groups. Table 3 shows a cross-tabulation of
        countries whose ethnic wars ended for at least two years. Seventy-one
        percent of these wars did not recur. Nevertheless, in cases of
        complete partition, no country experienced a return to war (100
        percent). The chi-square test produced a statistic of 3.92 for a
        probability of 0.14, although three cells have expected counts of less
        than 5.00.

        Table 3. Comparison of Alternatives for War Recurrence

        Did the War End for Complete Incomplete No
        At Least Two Years? Partition Partition Partition Total
        Yes 6 6 45 57
        (100%) (55%) (71%) (71%)
        No 0 5 18 23
        (0%) (45%) (29%) (29%)
        Total 6 11 63 80

        Chi-square = 3.92 (df=2), Pr = 0.141

        In 68 percent of the cases, countries did not experience a recurrence
        of war for at least five years, while all cases of complete partition
        (100 percent) avoided a recurrence. The chi-square statistic is 6.07
        for a probability of 0.048, statistically significant at the 0.05
        level; again, three cells have an expected count of less than 5.00.

        Turning now to low-level violence, an even greater contrast is evident
        between complete partition and the alternative of incomplete partition
        or no partition (see Table 4). In 60 percent of the cases, low-level
        violence did not end for the first two years. Strikingly, for those
        civil wars that ended with a complete partition, none experienced
        further low-level violence during that period. The chi-square value is
        10.06 for a p-value of 0.007, statistically significant at the 0.01
        level, although three cells have expected counts of less than 5.00.


        Table 4. Comparison of Alternatives for Recurrence of Low-Level Violence


        Did Low-level Violence End Complete Incomplete No
        for At Least Two Years? Partition Partition Partition Total
        Yes 6 3 23 32
        (100%) (27%) (37%) (40%)
        No 0 8 40 48
        (0%) (73%) (63%) (60%)
        Total 6 11 63 80

        Chi-square = 10.063 (df=2), Pr = 0.007

        In addition, countries in 60 percent of the cases were unable to
        prevent the outbreak of low-level violence for at least five years
        after ending their ethnic wars, while all cases of complete partition
        proved successful in preventing the recurrence of low-level violence,
        producing a chi-square of 9.24, with a p-value of 0.01; again, three
        cells have expected counts of less than 5.00.

        These figures strongly support the position of scholars who advocate
        partition. Complete partitions that separated warring ethnic groups
        prevented a return to war for at least five years. For the period
        under review, complete partition was a sufficient
        condition. Partitions that separated warring ethnic groups have also
        terminated low-level violence for at least five years. This, too, was
        a sufficient condition. This finding is all the more significant given
        that a majority of post-civil war countries continue to experience
        low-level violence, a plague that haunts civilian populations for
        years after combat operations formally conclude.

        This study's results suggest that partition should be considered by
        policymakers under certain conditions. This is particularly relevant
        to postindependence Kosovo as well as to considerations to partition
        Iraq.



        Policy Implications
        If the international community wants to end ethnic civil wars but it
        is not prepared or not able to invest the long-term resources
        necessary to achieve this militarily, then partition may be an
        option. Partition should be considered, however, only where
        populations are already largely separated at the time of intervention,
        or where interveners are prepared to separate groups using mass
        population transfers. If neither of these conditions holds, partition
        will provide no increased protection against war recurrence or other
        forms of violence. The saliency of this point is evident in debates
        over Kosovo's final status. Post-1999 Kosovo is an example of an
        incomplete partition, and based on the results here, a final status
        agreement that does not transfer Serb-controlled regions (or Serbs
        themselves) back to Serbia will not provide the much-desired peace
        dividend offered by complete partition. 83 Indeed, in spite of the
        presence of international
        peacekeepers, clashes in 2004 led to large-scale interethnic violence
        and the ethnic cleansing of Serb villages. 84 Therefore, despite
        Kosovo's declared independence, the international community should
        give serious consideration to the further partitioning of Kosovo into
        homogeneous Serb and Albanian regions before withdrawal. 85 As it is,
        the northern, Serb-dominated region effectively controls its own
        affairs, and does not recognize the authority of Pristina. 86

        Regarding Iraq, my results may appear to support calls for
        partitioning the country, especially given the large amount of
        communal unmixing that has already taken place. The accelerating speed
        with which religious targeting and displacement occurred between 2005
        and 2007 strongly suggested the emergence of a security dilemma
        between the Shiite and Sunni communities, where families whose homes
        were in the "wrong" area were threatened with death if they did not
        leave. 87 The question faced by the international community, and the
        United States in particular, is whether to permit this separation to
        be organized by unregulated communal militias under conditions of
        large-scale violence, or whether to facilitate this process under less
        inhumane conditions through organized population transfers.

        Implementation of a partition strategy, however, would face huge
        challenges given the conditions in Iraq, and would likely worsen the
        situation for civilians. Although the data from my study suggest that
        partitioning Iraq along communal lines would have a strong chance of
        creating a lasting peace within the Shiite-Sunni conflict, 88 Iraq is
        not divided into homogeneous regions, despite claims to the
        contrary. 89 There are large geographical regions of the country that
        are relatively homogeneous, but there are nevertheless several densely
        populated, multiethnic regions in the center of the country that would
        need to be demographically separated under any partition plan, not to
        mention multiethnic flash-point cities elsewhere in the country, such
        as Kirkuk. 90 How to accomplish this in a way that protects civilian
        lives would be a major challenge.

        Because partition without the separation of ethnic groups does not
        increase the likelihood of securing peace, population transfers become
        necessary. This poses at least two problems. First, the implementation
        of such transfers may sound procedural, but the reality would be far
        from it. Let us imagine, for example, that considerable numbers of
        minority group members refuse to move to their new home state. Would
        the U.S. military be prepared to use force to deport those civilians,
        the very civilians that partition is supposed to protect? Unmixing
        populations can require great force, as the twentieth century
        demonstrated. One solution to that problem is to keep transfers
        "voluntary," where civilians are given the choice to move to "their"
        new state or remain a minority within the other group's new
        state. Given the uncertainty of life under a new state dominated by an
        enemy group following intense warfare, most members of the minority
        group would likely
        move. 91 If such "voluntary" transfers do not materialize, then
        U.S. military force against civilians would become necessary. If the
        United States is not prepared to use deliberate force against Iraqi
        civilians, then partition should not be considered.

        A second, more troubling difficulty for the situation in Iraq is that
        partition advocates call for international interventions when a
        long-term commitment of troops is not forthcoming, and this is
        decidedly not the situation in Iraq. U.S. and other coalition forces
        have had a huge military presence in Iraq for years and, if anything,
        have demonstrated their inability to ensure even basic security for
        many Iraqi civilians, especially in central regions of the
        country. Any announcement of a decision to partition the country would
        almost certainly lead to a large increase in the number of families in
        mixed regions seeking refuge in "their" new states, emboldening local
        militias that are pressing for separation. While U.S. and Iraqi forces
        could attempt to minimize the violence that such a mass migration
        might encounter, the ability of the military to ensure the safety of
        hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on the move, given the difficulty in
        providing even
        basic security, is highly questionable. 92 In this case, the decision
        to partition could make the situation considerably worse for
        civilians, thus taking away the humanitarian rationale of partition
        advocates.

        Partition could also be considered for other ethnic civil wars, such
        as Sri Lanka's war with Tamil separatists, Sudan's war in Darfur, and
        the Philippines' war against Moro separatists. The key is to consider
        this as a solution only where borders can be drawn around relatively
        homogeneous groups, or where an intervener can be sure that population
        transfers will occur under less inhumane conditions than the war
        itself produces. As I stated above, this latter condition may be too
        difficult to achieve in practice, suggesting partition simply may not
        be viable in some cases.
        ......
        What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

          5 of 8

          International Security
          Spring 2008

          Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

          Carter Johnson.
          ....
          Conclusion
          This article has examined partition as a way to prevent the recurrence
          of ethnic war and low-level violence. After reviewing theoretical
          issues involving the dynamics of ethnic war, I reexamined the first
          large-scale, cross-national empirical study of partition conducted by
          Nicholas Sambanis. Sambanis relied on the presence of a new political
          border as his indicator for partition, concluding that partition does
          not significantly prevent war recurrence and should not be promoted by
          the international community. Using the Sambanis data set, I tested the
          variable suggested by partition advocates--demographic separation--for
          all partitions that ended ethnic civil wars between 1945 and
          2004. Introducing a new index to evaluate ethnodemographic separation,
          the Postpartition Ethnic Homogeneity Index, I reanalyzed these
          partitions and found that in all cases where the PEHI showed a
          complete separation of warring minorities, there were no war
          recurrences and no
          occurrences of low-level violence for at least five years after the
          end of the ethnic civil war. These results trump the alternatives of
          incomplete partitions and no partitions, providing strong evidence for
          advocates of partition.

          I considered some of the policy implications of the results of this
          study for countries experiencing ethnic warfare today and in the
          recent past, in particular Kosovo and Iraq. I concluded that partition
          should be considered in ethnic civil wars only where populations are
          already separated demographically or where the intervener is able to
          implement population transfers safely. This suggests that partitioning
          Kosovo into majority Serb and Albanian districts may have long-term
          benefits for regional peace. Partitioning Iraq, however, given its
          highly populated, multiethnic regions, would likely increase the level
          of conflict and human suffering, and therefore may not be a viable
          option.

          This study suggests some promising areas for future research. First,
          the PEHI could be extended to incorporate not only the presence of
          minorities, but also their location and territorial concentration
          after partition. Several scholars have identified group concentration
          as a powerful predictor of rebellion, and Barry Posen has argued that
          the location of minorities may increase the security dilemma risk. 93
          For example, minorities living near a state's borders might increase
          the likelihood of renewed violence. Second, the frequency of
          militarized interstate disputes among postpartitioned states could be
          compared with that in all other states to see if these new dyads are
          more or less at risk of interstate warfare. Third, an examination of
          ethnic reintegration after ethnic war could be made to test partition
          advocates' claims that reintegration after war is either impossible or
          likely to lead to renewed conflict. Although all wars produce high
          levels of
          displacement, the degree to which displaced populations return, even
          after ethnic cleansing, is surprisingly variable both across cases and
          temporally in the years following the end of ethnic wars. Many in the
          international community are normatively committed to the idea of
          multiethnic societies and yet are confounded by the realities of
          protracted refugee problems and intransigent postwar communities long
          after the war has ended. Does lack of reintegration stem from a
          top-down process led by political elites, or a bottom-up process led
          by local communities? Do returns increase or decrease the risk of war
          and violence? Answers to these questions are not only of great
          theoretical interest but extreme practical value.


          Appendix: Statistical Examination of the PEHI
          I added the PEHI to the Sambanis data set to check for significance on
          war recurrence. Using binary probit analysis, I regressed the variable
          warend2 (no war recurrence for at least two years after the end of the
          civil war) on the continuous variable PEHI only for ethnic wars that
          experienced partition. The PEHI is affected by the prewar minority
          percentages; as a control, therefore, the prewar minority variable has
          also been included in the model. The results show a positive
          regression coefficient for the PEHI, as one would expect based on the
          theory, with a p-value significant at the 0.1 level (see Table 1).


          Table 1. Probit Results for No War Recurrence after Two Years

          Variable z-value >|z|
          Postpartition Ethnic 0.01 1.56 0.06
          Homogeneity Index
          Prewar minority -0.03 -0.91 0.18
          Constant 0.93 1.35 0.09

          NOTE: N = 17. is an unstandardized coefficient; z is a z-test of ; and
          is the -value for a one-tailed z-test.

          The results suggest that the greater the separation of warring
          minorities produced by a partition (i.e., the higher the PEHI), the
          greater the expected likelihood is of not experiencing a return to war
          for at least two years. Given the small n (17), however, these results
          are only suggestive. It should also be noted that if any other control
          variables are entered into the probit analysis, all results become
          insignificant; this is almost certainly due to the small n.



          FOOTNOTES
          1 James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin write, "Between 1945 and 1999,
          about 3.33 million battle deaths occurred in the 25 interstate wars
          that killed at least 1,000 and had at least 100 dead on each
          side. These wars involved just 25 states that suffered casualties of
          at least 1,000 and had a median duration of not quite 3 months. In
          contrast, in the same period there were roughly 127 civil wars that
          killed at least 1,000, 25 of which were ongoing in 1999. A
          conservative estimate of the total dead as a direct result of these
          conflicts is 16.2 million, five times the interstate toll. These civil
          wars occurred in 73 states--more than a third of the United Nations
          system--and had a median duration of roughly six years." Fearon and
          Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political
          Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 75-90, at
          p. 75. The number of ongoing civil wars has declined since its peak in
          the late 1980s and early 1990s,
          but it remains high (ranging between 20 and 30 wars since 1993), and
          recent data show a second upward trend beginning in 2004. See Joseph
          Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict,
          2008 (Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm, 2007). For a discussion of the toll of
          civil wars on civilians, see Hazem Adam Ghobarah, Paul Huth, and Bruce
          Russett, "Civil Wars Kill and Maim People--Long after the Shooting
          Stops," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (May 2003),
          pp. 189-202. See also Paul Collier, Lani Elliott, Håvard Hegre, Anke
          Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, and Nicholas Sambanis, Breaking the
          Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, D.C.:
          World Bank, 2003).

          2 In his study of civil war duration, James D. Fearon codes his cases
          as "ethnic," "nonethnic," and "ambiguous." Ethnic wars made up 55
          percent of all civil wars between 1945 and 1999, and ambiguous wars 17
          percent. See Fearon, "Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer Than
          Others?" Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3 (May 2004),
          pp. 275-301.

          3 Roy Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil
          Wars, 1945-1993," American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 3
          (September 1995), pp. 681-690.

          4 Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical
          Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press,
          1993); and John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, "Introduction: The
          Macro-Political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict," in McGarry and
          O'Leary, eds., The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation (London:
          Routledge, 1993), pp. 1-40.

          5 See Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom, "On the Duration
          of Civil War," Policy Research Working Paper, No. 2681 (Washington,
          D.C.: World Bank, September 2001); Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis,
          "Understanding Civil War: A New Agenda," Journal of Conflict
          Resolution, Vol. 46, No. 1 (February 2002), pp. 3-12; and Licklider,
          "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars." For other
          war recurrence statistics, see Barbara F. Walter, "Does Conflict Beget
          Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War," Journal of Peace Research,
          Vol. 41, No. 3 (May 2004), pp. 371-388.

          6 John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary present a taxonomy of
          macro-political forms of ethnic conflict regulation identifying
          partition as one of eight. See McGarry and O'Leary, "Introduction";
          and Nicholas Mansergh, The Prelude to Partition: Concepts and Aims in
          Ireland and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

          7 Sudan's comprehensive peace agreement that ended the war between the
          Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army
          (SPLM/A) included a provision for a referendum on independence for the
          south. See International Crisis Group, "The Khartoum-SPLM Agreement:
          Sudan's Uncertain Peace," Africa Report, No. 96 (Brussels:
          International Crisis Group, July 25, 2005). Similarly, the 2001 peace
          agreement between Papua New Guinea's government and the separatists in
          Bougainville included a referendum on independence. See Conciliation
          Resources, Bougainville Peace Agreement, August 31, 2001,
          http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/p...ey-texts37.php.

          8 On August 28, 2007, the Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen,
          became the first European foreign minister to state that partition of
          Kosovo into majority Albanian and Serb political territories would be
          an acceptable outcome. This was followed by a similar comment by
          Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, on August 31, 2007. See
          Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Dutch Minister Says Partition of
          Kosova Acceptable," RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 11, No. 160, Pt. 2 (August
          29, 2007); and "Russia Rules Out Crossing 'Red Line' on Kosova, but
          Would Accept Partition," RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 11, No. 163, Pt. 2
          (September 4, 2007). As far as I am aware, no state actively lobbied
          for a further partition of Kosovo, though some had suggested that such
          an outcome would be acceptable if Kosovo and Serbian leaders accepted
          this compromise. See Dan Bilefsky, "In a Divided Kosovo City, a
          Resounding Vow to Remain Part of Serbia," New York Times, February 19,
          2008.

          9 For suggested partitions of Iraq, see Peter W. Galbraith, "Iraq's
          Salvation Lies in Letting It Break Apart," Sunday Times, July 16,
          2006; Chaim Kaufmann, "Separating Iraqis, Saving Iraq," in "What to Do
          in Iraq: A Roundtable," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 4 (July/August
          2006), pp. 156-160; and Leslie H. Gelb, "Last Train from Baghdad,"
          Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 4 (July/August 2006), pp. 160-165. One
          of the earliest proposals on partition came from Leslie H. Gelb, "The
          Three-State Solution," New York Times, November 25, 2003. See also the
          symposium "Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Partition, and U.S. Foreign
          Policy," sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington,
          D.C., January 15, 2003. On September 27, 2007, the U.S. Senate passed
          a nonbinding measure calling for Iraq to be divided into federal
          regions, with the likely outcome of separate Kurdish, Shiite, and
          Sunni states. See Alissa J. Rubin, "In Iraq, Repeated Support for a
          Unified
          State," New York Times, October 1, 2007.

          10 In 1985 Donald L. Horowitz stated, for example, "Separating the
          antagonists--partition--is an option increasingly recommended for
          consideration where groups are territorially concentrated." Horowitz,
          Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press,
          1985), p. 588.

          11 Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars,"
          International Security, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 136-175; and
          Chaim D. Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers
          and Partitions in the Twentieth Century," International Security,
          Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 120-156. Jaroslav Tir has also
          suggested that peaceful partitions are extremely unlikely to produce
          the onset of war. See Tir, "Keeping the Peace after Secession:
          Territorial Conflicts between Rump and Secessionist States," Journal
          of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 49, No. 5 (October 2005),
          pp. 713-741. Although Tir's addition to the literature is useful, it
          does not address the problem of how to prevent the recurrence of civil
          war.

          12 Alexander B. Downes, "The Problem with Negotiated Settlements to
          Ethnic Civil Wars," Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer 2004),
          pp. 230-279; John J. Mearsheimer, "The Case for Partioning Kosovo," in
          Ted Galen Carpenter, ed., NATO's Empty Victory: A Postmortem on the
          Balkan War (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2000), pp. 133-138;
          Alexander B. Downes, "The Holy Land Divided: Partition as a Solution
          to Ethnic Wars," Security Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Summer 2001),
          pp. 58-116; Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails"; Kaufmann, "Possible and
          Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars"; Radha Kumar, Divide and Fall?
          Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (New York: Verso, 1997); Radha
          Kumar, "The Troubled History of Partition," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76,
          No. 1 (January/February 1997), pp. 22-34; Mansergh, The Prelude to
          Partition; Robert Schaeffer, Warpaths: The Politics of Partition (New
          York: Hill and Wang, 1990); Jan Tullberg and Brigitta S. Tullberg,
          "Separation or
          Unity? A Model for Solving Ethnic Conflicts," Politics and the Life
          Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 2 (September 1997), pp. 237-248; John
          J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera, "When Peace Means War: The
          Partition That Dare Not Speak Its Name," New Republic, December 18,
          1995, pp. 16-21; John J. Mearsheimer and Robert A. Pape, "The Answer:
          A Partition Plan for Bosnia," New Republic, June 14, 1993, pp. 22-28;
          and Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence
          Created a War without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

          13 Nicholas Sambanis, "Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An
          Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature," World Politics,
          Vol. 52, No. 4 (July 2000), pp. 437-483, at p. 479.

          14 Quoted in ibid., p 479.

          15 Alexander Downes notes this flaw in the Sambanis analysis in
          Downes, "The Holy Land Divided."
          ....
          What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

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            International Security
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            Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

            Carter Johnson.
            ....
            16 Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil
            Wars"; T. David Mason and Patrick J. Fett, "How Civil Wars End: A
            Rational Choice Approach," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 40,
            No. 4 (December 1996), pp. 546-568; T. David Mason, Joseph
            P. Weingarten Jr., and Patrick J. Fett, "Win, Lose, or Draw:
            Predicting the Outcome of Civil Wars," Political Research Quarterly,
            Vol. 52, No. 2 (June 1999), pp. 239-268; Barbara F. Walter, Committing
            to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, N.J.:
            Princeton University Press, 2002); and Barbara F. Walter and Jack
            Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York:
            Columbia University Press, 1999). Walter examines the difficulty of
            states in credibly committing to peaceful coexistence with rebel
            organizations after war, as it applies to all civil wars. See Walter,
            Committing to Peace. For a discussion of the commitment problem as it
            applies to ethnic conflicts in
            particular, see James D. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread
            of Ethnic Conflict," in David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The
            International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and
            Escalation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998),
            pp. 107-126. For grievance-based arguments of ethnic minorities, see
            Ted Robert Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New
            Century (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press,
            2000). For a focus on individual motivations for joining rebel forces
            and reducing these motivations, see Walter, "Does Conflict Beget
            Conflict?" For the relationship between security force strength and
            civil war, see Jeffrey Herbst, "African Militaries and Rebellion: The
            Political Economy of Threat and Combat Effectiveness," Journal of
            Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3 (May 2004), pp. 357-369, at
            p. 358. Although Herbst does not explicitly claim to focus on war
            recurrence, the countries within
            his regional focus of Africa have experienced renewed warfare, and
            therefore his conclusions about the need to strengthen state security
            forces to prevent civil war are relevant to this debate.

            17 Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars"; and
            Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails."

            18 The dangers of leaving both sides to "fight it out" are immense:
            from a security standpoint, there is a real danger that the war could
            spread, through diffusion or contagion, into a wider regional war;
            from a moral standpoint, there is a threat of the mass killing of
            civilians and potential genocide. For arguments on this topic, see
            Lake and Rothchild, The International Spread of Ethnic
            Conflict. Third-party peacekeeping has proven viable where a third
            party has vested interests to commit troops and resources. Although
            many analysts have argued the case for greater intervention, most
            recognize that the preponderance of obstacles, national and
            international, leaves little hope for such commitments even in
            ethically justified interventions. For a normative argument in support
            of greater intervention, see Stanley Hoffmann, "The Politics and
            Ethics of Military Intervention," Survival, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter
            1995-96), pp. 29-51.

            19 For detailed discussion, see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict,
            pp. 41-54. See also Ashutosh Varshney's discussion of broader and
            narrower usages of the term "ethnic violence," in Varshney, Ethnic
            Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven,
            Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002). Varshney refers to "communal"
            groups as "religious" groups, whereas Ted Robert Gurr defines them as
            "cultural and religious identity groups." See Gurr, "Why Minorities
            Rebel: A Global Analysis of Communal Mobilization and Conflict since
            1945," International Political Science Review, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April
            1993), pp. 161-201, at p. 161. See also James D. Fearon's discussion
            of ethnicity with its emphasis on descent and "social relevance" in
            Fearon, "Ethnic Mobilization and Ethnic Violence," in Barry
            R. Weingast and Donald A. Wittman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of
            Political Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006),
            pp. 852-868.

            20 Numerous definitions of ethnic war exist. The Political Instability
            Task Force (formerly the State Failure Task Force), a
            U.S. government-sponsored research project to build a database on
            major domestic political conflicts, focuses on the political
            mobilization of ethnic groups as the key factor, defining ethnic wars
            as "secessionist civil wars, rebellions, protracted communal warfare,
            and sustained episodes of mass protest by politically organized
            communal groups." See Daniel C. Esty, Jack A. Goldstone, Ted Robert
            Gurr, Pamela T. Surko, and Alan N. Unger, "Working Papers State
            Failure Task Force Report" (McLean, Va.: Science Applications
            International Cooperation, November 30, 1995). Ethnic wars may also
            involve different goals, recruitment patterns, and in some cases,
            forced population migration based on ethnicity (sometimes called
            "ethnic cleansing"). Coding ethnic civil wars typically involves the
            ethnic groups seeking changes in their status or
            in government policies directed toward them, whether that be an end
            to repression, increased power at the center, or secession. For a
            comprehensive discussion, see Nicholas Sambanis, "Do Ethnic and
            Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes? A Theoretical and Empirical
            Inquiry (Part I)," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 45, No. 3
            (June 2001), pp. 259-282; and Nicholas Sambanis, "What Is an Ethnic
            War? Organization and Interests in Insurgencies," unpublished paper,
            Yale University, 2006.

            21 Helen M. Hintjens, "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,"
            Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2 (June 1999),
            pp. 241-286; Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic
            Wars"; and William Seltzer, "Population Statistics, the Holocaust, and
            the Nuremberg Trials," Population and Development Review, Vol. 24,
            No. 3 (September 1998), pp. 511-552.

            22 Some scholars do not agree. Kaufmann, for example, states that
            "ethnic identities are fixed at birth." See Kaufmann, "Possible and
            Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," p. 140.

            23 Rogers Brubaker has been at the forefront of challenging his
            colleagues to move beyond "constructivist cliches" that characterize
            identities as multiple, unstable, contingent, and so on, and to
            examine the ways in which the practice of reification works: "As
            analysts, we should . . . try to account for the ways in which--and
            the conditions under which--this practice of reification, this
            powerful crystallization of group feeling, can work." See Brubaker,
            Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
            2004), p. 10. See also Frederik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and
            Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston:
            Little, Brown, 1969).

            24 Hintjens, "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda"; and René
            Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Washington, D.C.:
            Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997).

            25 Michael Fahy and Jonathan Mogul, "An Interview with Lidija Fekeza:
            An Archeologist in Sarajevo: Culture under Siege," Journal of the
            International Institute, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 1995),
            http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.4750978.0003.109. Similar quotes can be
            found in endless news reports, where some claim not to know which
            ethnic group they belonged prior to the conflict. One such individual
            stated, "Before this crisis I didn't even know if I was a Serb or a
            Croat." Quoted in Paul McGeough, "Fortress of Fear: First Battleground
            of a Civil War?" Sydney Morning Herald, May 18, 1991. See also
            Slavenka Drakulic, The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side
            of War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), pp. 50-52, quoted in Rogers
            Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question
            in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
            p. 20.

            26 This is not to say that cross-ethnic appeals are impossible. As
            other scholars have pointed out, even during ethnic wars it is
            possible to find individuals from the rebellious ethnic group working
            for the government. Kaufmann argues this may occur when there is an
            "extreme power imbalance," which would be consistent with Stathis
            N. Kalyvas's argument that civilians will provide support to whichever
            actor has military dominance locally, although most of his cases come
            from colonial wars. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this last
            observation. See Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails," p. 140; and Kalyvas,
            The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University
            Press, 2006). This may explain how the Russian government was able to
            co-opt local rebel leaders and their followers (e.g., Akhmad Kadyrov
            and the so-called Kadyrovtsy) only after taking territorial control of
            most of Chechnya's urban centers.

            27 Kaufmann is the most vociferous about the impossibility of
            reintegration. See Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to
            Ethnic Wars." Ideological conflicts may sometimes display fixed or
            inflexible identities. For example, during the Russian civil war of
            1917-21, members of certain classes (e.g., "kulaks") were targeted for
            deportation or death. For evidence of the extreme class-based nature
            of the early Soviet state, see Nicolas Werth, Istoria Sovetskogo
            Gosudarstva [History of the Soviet state] (Moskva: Izdatelstvo Ves
            Mir, 2003), pp. 145-146. In the Colombian civil war of 1948-62, some
            people believed that being a liberal or a conservative was genetic:
            "They [Conservatives] cut the genitals off other men so that they
            wouldn't procreate any more Liberals." Former priest Walter
            j. Broderick, quoted in Bert Ruiz, The Colombian Civil War (Jefferson,
            N.C.: McFarland, 2001), p. 59. I thank an anonymous reviewer for
            sharing this quotation.

            28 Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars,"
            p. 139.

            29 Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World
            Politics, Vol. 30, No. 1 (January 1978), pp. 167-214.

            30 Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,"
            Survival, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 27-47.

            31 Some scholars have applied a similar logic to all states with
            ethnic minorities, maintaining that the greatest potential threat to
            any group is its own state, given the state's capacity to kill. As
            Stephen M. Saideman and his colleagues state, "The search for security
            motivates groups in divided societies to seek to control the state or
            secede if the state's neutrality cannot be assured." Indeed, as the
            advocates of partition argue, in an ethnic civil war the biased nature
            of the state has already been demonstrated, and all threatened groups
            must mobilize for self-defense. Saideman, David J. Lanoue, Michael
            Campenni, and Samuel Stanton, "Democratization, Political
            Institutions, and Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled Time Series Analysis,
            1985-1998," Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (February
            2002), pp. 103-129, at pp. 106-107 and p. 122. While the security
            dilemma has received broad support as an explanation within the ethnic
            war literature, its
            advocates do not claim that it explains all ethnic violence. For
            other explanations of ethnic violence, see Rogers Brubaker and David
            D. Laitin, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of
            Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 423-452.

            32 Hurst Hannum, "Territorial Autonomy: Permanent Solution or Step
            toward Secession?" in Andreas Wimmer, Richard J. Goldstone, Donald
            L. Horowitz, Ulrike Joras, and Conrad Schetter, eds., Facing Ethnic
            Conflicts: Toward a New Realism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield,
            2004), p. 280.

            33 Tir, "Keeping the Peace after Secession."

            34 Tir uses the territorial dispute data set developed by Paul K. Huth
            and Todd L. Allee, which includes a variable for whether territory is
            ethnically valued, that is, when a minority group shares ethnic traits
            similar to those of the largest ethnic group within the challenging
            state (including speaking the same language). See Huth and Allee, The
            Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century
            (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

            35 Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails," p. 122.

            36 Kaufmann states, "The critical causal factor is separation of
            people into defensible enclaves, not partition of sovereignty."
            Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars," p. 162.

            37 Downes, "The Holy Land Divided"; and Alexander B. Downes, "More
            Borders, Less Conflict? Partition as a Solution to Ethnic Civil Wars,"
            SAIS Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 2006), pp. 49-61.

            38 Ibid., p. 61. Downes's explanation moves partition beyond the
            confines of the security dilemma alone.

            39 Kaufmann has implicitly supported this notion of sovereignty by
            examining only case studies of partition that included at least de
            facto sovereignty, and more recently, has explicitly supported this
            notion. See Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails," especially pp. 124-126;
            and Chaim Kaufmann, "'Partition Theory' in the Marketplace of Ideas,
            and in Iraq," in Mia Bloom and Roy Licklider, eds., Living Together
            after Ethnic Killing: Exploring the Chaim Kaufmann Argument (New York:
            Routledge, 2007). The requirement for political sovereignty and
            demographic separation negates some of the recent criticisms leveled
            against partition. David D. Laitin, for example, relies on data from
            the Minorities at Risk (MAR) data set focusing on the conflict-prone
            nature of group concentration within a unified state, which suggests
            that higher demographic separation would likely lead to increased
            rebellion. Laitin does not, however, look at separation with
            sovereignty and does
            not look at full demographic separation--the MAR data force him to
            include only higher and lower levels of group concentration within a
            country. Laitin, "Ethnic Unmixing and Civil War," Security Studies,
            Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer 2004), pp. 350-365.

            40 See Tullberg and Tullberg's roundtable article where they outline a
            "rational model" for solving ethnic conflicts that involves the
            democratic choice by an ethnic group to secede. The authors argue that
            "migration over the border between the newly formed states should be
            part of such a solution." Tullberg and Tullberg, "Separation or
            Unity?" p. 237. For a brief earlier overview of the history of the
            partition debate, see Kumar, "The Troubled History of Partition." See
            also Schaeffer, Warpaths, especially pts. 1 and 2.
            ....
            What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

              7 of 8

              International Security
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              Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

              Carter Johnson.
              ....
              41 Kaufmann wrote, "The international community should endorse
              separation as a remedy for at least some communal conflicts; otherwise
              the process of war will separate the populations anyway, at much
              higher human cost." See Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails,"
              pp. 122-123. Mearsheimer and Van Evera argue, "U.S. policymakers must
              be willing at times to decide that states cannot be sustained and
              should instead be disassembled. Only if we accept this reality
              honestly and promptly will we have a reasonable chance of managing
              their disassembly and keeping it relatively peaceful. Partition should
              remain a last resort, but, regrettably, we still live in a world where
              it is sometimes necessary." Mearsheimer and Van Evera, "When Peace
              Means War," p. 21.

              42 Population transfers are considered a violation of such human
              rights as the freedom of movement (UDHR 13), the right to own property
              (UDHR17), and the right to a family life (UDHR 12). For an examination
              of population transfers in international law, see, for example, Alfred
              M. de Zayas, "International Law and Mass Population Transfers,"
              Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring 1975),
              pp. 207-258; and Christopher M. Goebel, "Population Transfer,
              Humanitarian Law, and the Use of Ground Force in U.N. Peacemaking:
              Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Wake of Iraq," New York University
              Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring
              1993), pp. 627-698.

              43 Stories and images of the millions injured and dead that
              accompanied the population transfers in postpartition Cyprus, India,
              and Palestine are enough for many to condemn this method as
              barbaric. Critics charge that this experience should be enough to
              dismiss the idea that even "organized" population transfers are
              possible. See Kumar, Divide and Fall? especially chaps. 1-3; and
              Schaeffer, Warpaths, especially chap. 9. Advocates of partition
              counter that the cases selected as evidence to refute its
              effectiveness did not deal with the type they are recommending; they
              either did not involve the necessary demographic separation or were
              not implemented as solutions to ethnic civil war. For example, in each
              of the cases highlighted by Kumar, organized population transfers were
              not an integral part of the advanced decisionmaking process for
              partition, arguably leading to a greater degree of bloodshed and
              suffering. In addition, the outcome from the 1923
              population exchange between Greece and Turkey, though far from
              perfect, does suggest that not all transfers must result in the
              catastrophic deaths seen after the partition of British
              India. Kalliopi K. Koufa and Constantinos Svolopoulos present one
              side, but for a critical assessment of the long-term difficulties of
              the integration of refugees in this case, see Renée Hirschon, Heirs of
              the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in
              Piraeus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Koufa and
              Svolopoulos, "The Compulsory Exchange of Populations between Greece
              and Turkey: The Settlement of Minority Questions at the Conference of
              Lausanne and Its Impact on Greek-Turkish Relations," in Paul Smith,
              ed., Ethnic Groups in International Relations (Hanover, N.H.:
              Dartmouth, 1991), pp. 275-308.

              44 Downes, for example, writes, "Implementing partition without
              separating the groups in conflict to reduce or eliminate the number of
              minorities left behind is sure to see them cleansed, or for conflict
              over the intermingled region to continue. Examples of this problem
              include Kashmir in India . . . and Northern Ireland." Downes, "The
              Holy Land Divided," p. 74.

              45 See, for example, Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and
              Force in International Relations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
              Press, 2001), which includes an examination of aerial bombing of
              civilian targets during war. For a review of literature examining
              state compliance with international norms and treaties, including the
              regulation of force during war, see Harold Hongju Koh, "Why Do Nations
              Obey International Law?" Yale Law journal, Vol. 106, No. 8 (January
              1997), pp. 2599-2659. For a dissenting view with empirical evidence
              demonstrating no effect of international treaties on state behavior
              for civilian targeting during war, see Benjamin A. Valentino, Paul
              K. Huth, and Sarah Croco, "Covenants without the Sword: International
              Law and the Protection of Civilians in Times of War," World Politics,
              Vol. 58, No. 3 (April 2006), pp. 339-377.

              46 Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars,"
              pp. 173-174.

              47 Sambanis, "Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War," p. 439.

              48 These variables include gross domestic product per capita, cost of
              the war as measured by deaths and injury, and the war's outcome
              (government victory, rebel victory, etc.). Ibid., p. 469.

              49 Ibid., p. 439.

              50 Ibid., p. 473.

              51 Sambanis states that the outcome of partition depends on the
              following criteria: whether the war ended in a treaty, the war's
              intensity, the number of people displaced by the war, and the number
              and size of ethnic groups. Ibid., p. 478.

              52 For consistency, I follow Sambanis's coding for ethnic war. He
              categorized such wars with reference to as many sources as he could
              consult. See ibid., p. 455 n. 49.

              53 See ibid., p. 444. The definition is relatively uncontroversial
              except for its "1,000 deaths," which does not require an annual death
              threshold, but rather "1,000 [battle] deaths for the duration of the
              war." See Nicholas Sambanis, "Appendix B: Data-Set Notes" (Washington,
              D.C.: World Bank, 2000), p. 2. For a detailed discussion about the use
              of battle deaths in the quantitative, cross-national data set, see
              Nicholas Sambanis, "What Is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical
              Complexities of an Operational Definition," Journal of Conflict
              Resolution, Vol. 48, No. 6 (December 2004), pp. 814-858.

              54 Peter Wallensteen and Margareta Sollenberg, "Armed Conflicts,
              Conflict Termination, and Peace Agreements, 1989-1996," Journal of
              Peace Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 (August 1997), pp. 339-358; and
              Sambanis, "Appendix B."

              55 Sambanis, "Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War," p. 445. These
              partitions deliberately exclude instances of peaceful partition, such
              as Czechoslovakia. For further examination of partition under
              conditions of peace, see Tir, "Keeping the Peace after Secession."

              56 Schaeffer, Warpaths, p. 5.

              57 Debates regarding differences between secession and decolonization
              also exist, but they do not advance the current debate on partition:
              to suggest that the "separation" of Nigeria and the United Kingdom is
              similar to the "separation" of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh
              conflates two very different events and only obfuscates the partition
              process in the current debate on ethnic civil wars. Further, the word
              "colonization" in ethnic civil wars is highly contested. For example,
              Chechen insurgents claim to be waging a war of liberation against the
              "colonizing" center of Moscow, whereas Moscow claims the uprising is a
              secession and sees Chechnya as an integral part of the Russian
              Federation. In the military campaign beginning in 1999, Russia labeled
              the Chechen insurgents no longer as secessionists but as bandits,
              criminals, or Wahhabi radicals. For purposes of analysis, many
              academics put partition, secession, and decolonization in the same
              category.
              McGarry and O'Leary lump "partition and/or secession (self
              determination)" together in their taxonomy, and include decolonization
              within it. McGarry and O'Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Conflict
              Regulation, pp. 11-16.

              58 Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails," p. 126. The role of Turkey in
              facilitating the de facto independence of the Turkish Republic of
              Northern Cyprus has been well documented. For the critical role of
              Russia in enabling Abkhazia's de facto independence, see Monica Duffy
              Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the
              Indivisibility of Territory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
              Press, 2003), pp. 87-106.

              59 Some civil war databases, such as those used by Fearon, "Why Do
              Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?" include wars of
              decolonization. Others, such as Licklider, "The Consequences of
              Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars," do not. The Correlates of War
              project separates these into "internal wars" and "extrasystemic wars."
              Fearon and Laitin run their analysis both with and without wars of
              decolonization when testing for causes of civil war onset, recognizing
              conceptual and theoretical problems for both inclusion and
              exclusion. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War."

              60 It was not clear from the Sambanis article or notes in Appendix B
              why Tajikistan was coded as a partition or an ethnic civil war;
              Tajikistan's separation from the Soviet Union occurred before its war
              began. Sambanis recognizes Tajikistan as a coding error in Nicholas
              Sambanis, "Partition and Civil War Recurrence: A Re-Examination of the
              Evidence," Yale University, 2006. For Tajikistan as a regional and
              ideological conflict, see Payam Foroughi, "Tajikistan: Nationalism,
              Ethnicity, Conflict, and Socio-Economic Disparities--Sources and
              Solutions," Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 1 (April
              2002), pp. 39-62; and Dov Lynch, "The Tajik Civil War and Peace
              Process," Civil Wars, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 49-72.

              61 Sambanis states, "Bosnian partition from Yugoslavia in 1992."
              Sambanis, "Appendix B," p. 43. He recognizes some of these issues in
              Sambanis, "Partition and Civil War Recurrence."

              62 The General Framework for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was
              initialed in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1995, and signed in Paris
              on December 14, 1995.

              63 Inclusion of the Republika Srpska partition from Bosnia also means
              that I added the Bosniak-Croat dyad as a case of ethnic war ending
              without the partition of sovereignty. This case does not appear in
              Tables 1 and 2, which include such partitions, but it does appear in
              the later comparison between partitions and other war outcomes.

              64 The two republics are Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia
              and Herzegovina. This is not a case of territorial autonomy because
              there are separate governments with armed forces that cannot enter
              each other's territory. The primary conflict was between Serb forces,
              on the one hand, and Croat and Bosnian forces on the other, although
              the Croat and Bosnian forces also fought each other from mid-1993
              until the signing of the Washington treaty of March 18, 1994, after
              which they fought together against Serb forces. Other possibilities
              therefore include separate Bosniak-Serb and Croat-Serb codings for
              partition, but the figures for separation are virtually the same and
              do not affect the results, except to provide an additional
              "partition." Further, given the conflict between Croat and Bosniak
              forces, one could include this as an ethnic war without partition as
              the outcome. Again, these data do not affect the final results when
              comparing partition to nonpartition.
              .....
              What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

                8 of 8

                International Security
                Spring 2008

                Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars

                Carter Johnson.
                ....
                65 Measheimer and Walt, "When Peace Means War," p. 16.

                66 RSK had a separate government and armed forces.

                67 See, for example, military operations in both the Lika region of
                RSK (Operation Medak Pocket, September 1993) and the Maslenica and
                Zadar regions of RSK (Operation Maslenica, January 1993). By the time
                of the next cease-fire, in 1994, Croatian forces were already
                preparing Operation Flash, which began in May 1995.

                68 The Yugoslav National Army was heavily involved in the wars for the
                RSK, as was Slobodan Milosevic.

                69 This is, in fact, how most Croats understand the war (commonly
                labeled "Domovinski Rat" in Croatian) from 1991 to 1995. In "Partition
                and Civil War Recurrence," Sambanis excludes Croatia altogether, which
                I find surprising given that the definition he uses for partition in
                this paper is "an outcome of a civil war that . . . leads to the
                formation of a new state out of a part of another state." This is what
                occurred in Croatia, where war began in 1991. See Sambanis, "Partition
                and Civil War Recurrence."

                70 Tatu Vanhanen, "Domestic Ethnic Conflict and Ethnic Nepotism: A
                Comparative Analysis," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 36, No. 1
                (January 1999), pp. 55-73.

                71 Daniel N. Posner, "Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in Africa,"
                American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 4 (October 2004),
                pp. 849-863.

                72 The Minorities at Risk Project follows a similar guideline when
                aggregating groups vis-A-vis the government. In Darfur today, for
                example, MAR codes the "Black Muslims of Darfur" as a group, even
                though it comprises three different groups: Fur, Masalit, and
                Zaghawa. The same formula is used for the "Southerners" group in
                Sudan, which comprises Anuaks, Azande, Dinkas, Equatorians, Latukas,
                Madi, Moru, Nuers, Shilluks, Taposas, and Turkans. See Minorities at
                Risk Project, "Assessment for Southerners in Sudan" and "Assessment
                for Darfur Black Muslims in Sudan" (College Park: Center for
                International Development and Conflict Management, University of
                Maryland, 2005), http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/.

                73 There are different ways to calculate the PEHI. One alternative is
                to look at the separation from both sides by including an indicator of
                the percentage of the original majority found in the minority region
                prior to the war (e.g., ethnic Russians in Chechnya before 1994),
                which I label MiM (majority in minority region), and then to calculate
                the index as:
                [(MiM+OSM) - (RSM+NSM)]/(MiM+OSM).

                I conducted a sensitivity test using this formula, and others, and
                found no substantive differences in the results: those cases with high
                degrees of unmixing scored highly using all formulas.

                74 The staple set consisted of Encyclopedia Columbia, 2001;
                Encyclopedia Britannica, 2003; Patrick Brogan, The Fighting Never
                Stopped: A Comprehensive Guide to World Strife since 1945 (New York:
                Vintage, 1990); Guy Arnold, Wars in the Third World since 1945
                (London: Cassell, 1995); Economist and the Economist Intelligence
                Unit, http://www.economist.com; CIA World Factbooks; Lexis-Nexis
                Academic; and International Crisis Group reports.

                75 For some conflicts, I needed to use refugee flows to calculate
                minority percentages, in which case prewar minority percentages were
                used to obtain absolute numbers of the minority, and refugee numbers
                were subtracted from the total to arrive at an approximation of the
                minority remaining in the territory. Where large refugee movements
                occurred--many of these conflicts forced hundreds of thousands, of
                people from their homes--exact numbers were impossible to obtain, so
                approximations were required.

                76 This accepts the inevitability of small, residual minorities that
                do not alter the value of the results. The average size of the largest
                residual minorities found after complete partitions amounted to a mere
                0.33 percent. Kaufmann argues, "While peace requires separation of
                groups into distinct regions, it does not require total ethnic
                purity. Rather, remaining minorities must be small enough that the
                host group does not fear them as either a potential military threat or
                a possible target for irredentist rescue operations." Kaufmann,
                "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Wars," p. 163.

                77 Sambanis uses postwar democratization as a third criterion and
                finds postpartition states associated with higher levels of
                democracy. This article does not address these results because they do
                not form the core of the partition theory argument. Sambanis,
                "Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War," pp. 459-464.

                78 Collier, Hoeffler, and Soderbom, "On the Duration of Civil War."

                79 On the civilian expulsions, Minority Rights Group reported that by
                early 2000 more than 54,000 Ethiopians of Eritrean origin had been
                deported. Kjetil Tronvoll, "Ethiopia: A New Start?" (London: Minority
                Rights Group, 2000). Amnesty International reported in 1999 that "the
                expulsion of people of Eritrean origin was often carried out in an
                inhumane manner that amounts to cruel, inhumane, and degrading
                treatment." Amnesty International, "Ethiopia and Eritrea: Human Rights
                Issues in a Year of Armed Conflict" (New York: Amnesty International,
                1999), p. 27.

                80 The Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000 resulted in more than
                100,000 battle deaths.

                81 Operation Storm led 200,000 Croatian Serbs to flee into neighboring
                Serbia and Bosnia. See Amnesty International, "Croatia: Operation
                'Storm'--Still No Justice Ten Years On" (New York: Amnesty
                International, August 4, 2005), pp. 1-3.

                82 The case of Bangladesh is deceiving due to the large Bengali
                population that was largely separate from the rest of West
                Pakistan. Nevertheless, Urdu-speaking Biharis were the targets of
                violence, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. A Pakistani white
                paper on the topic estimated that more than 60,000 Urdu-speaking
                Biharis were killed during the brief conflict. Government of Pakistan,
                White Paper on the Crisis in East Pakistan, August 5, 1971,
                http://www.statelesspeoplein bangladesh.net/doc/gop-whitepaper.pdf.

                83 Because the objective is to minimize human suffering, population
                transfers should be kept to a minimum, which would suggest redrawing
                borders around the concentrated Serb populations in the north of
                Kosovo. The other Serb enclaves could be given the option to move, but
                their small size would not significantly influence the PEHI, leaving
                Kosovo as a complete partition.

                84 The events of March 2004 led to widespread violence, death, and the
                "ethnic cleansing of entire minority villages and neighbourhoods." See
                International Crisis Group, "Collapse in Kosovo," Europe Report,
                No. 155 (Brussels: International Crisis Group, April 22, 2004).

                85 Proposals for such a further partition were floated in the summer
                and autumn of 2007 among European states. See Radio Free Europe/Radio
                Liberty, "Dutch Minister Says Partition of Kosova Acceptable"; and
                Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Russia Rules Out Crossing 'Red Line'
                on Kosova, but Would Accept Partition."

                86 Bilefsky, "In a Divided Kosovo City, a Resounding Vow to Remain
                Part of Serbia."

                87 Kaufmann, "Separating Iraqis, Saving Iraq"; Patrick xxxxburn, "Iraq
                Is Disintegrating as Ethnic Cleansing Takes Hold," Independent, May
                20, 2006; Kathleen Ridolfo, "Iraq: Displacement Crisis Worsened by
                Violence," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 21, 2006; and the
                special issue of Forced Migration Review, "Iraq's Displacement Crisis:
                The Search for Solutions," June 2007.

                88 Most analysts agree that at least three different civil wars were
                ongoing in Iraq in 2007; partition relates only to the intercommunal
                war.

                89 Peter W. Galbraith states, "The case for the partition of Iraq is
                straightforward: It has already happened." Galbraith, "The Case for
                Dividing Iraq," Time, November 5, 2006,
                http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...555130,00.html. More
                generally, there is a lack of solid information about the degree of
                homogenization that has occurred. On the trouble reporting even body
                counts in the war, see Clark Hoyt, "The Reality in Iraq? Depends on
                Who's Counting," New York Times, October 7, 2007.

                90 The Iraqi Red Crescent and the International Organization on
                Migration show a complicated picture. As journalists James Glanz and
                Alissa J. Rubin stated in September 2007 after reading those
                organizations' reports, "Displacement in the most populous and mixed
                areas is surprisingly complex, suggesting that partitioning the
                country into semiautonomous Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish enclaves would
                not be easy." Glanz and Rubin, "Future Look of Iraq Complicated by
                Internal Migration," New York Times, September 19, 2007. On Kirkuk,
                see, for example, International Crisis Group, "Iraq and the Kurds:
                Resolving the Kirkuk Crisis," Middle East Report, No. 64 (Brussels:
                International Crisis Group, April 19, 2007).

                91 Kaufmann advocates voluntary transfers for Iraq. See Kaufmann,
                "Separating Iraqis, Saving Iraq."

                92 Kaufmann has suggested that some militias may support the
                transfers, thus reducing the burden on Iraqi and U.S. forces, but this
                is far from certain given the large number of actors involved. He has
                also pointed out that some militias might oppose the transfers. Ibid.,
                p. 159.

                93 See, for example, Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic
                Conflict"; Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence; and Gurr,
                Minorities at Risk.

                What if I find someone else when looking for you? My soul shivers as the idea invades my mind.

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