Boundaries

By the 1700’s, the borders in Europe was pretty well settled along ethnic, linguistic and religious lines.  It had taken hundreds of years of fighting and strife to achieve this state of affairs.  Now imagine if some outside powers had come along and artificially created new boundaries that caused ethnic, linguistic and religious groups to be mixed within those boundaries.  Can you imagine the chaos and carnage that could cause?  After all, Europe was still able to find other grounds for wars well into the 20^th century.

But this is the state of affairs that Africa finds itself today.  If you look at a map of Africa from 1897, you will find that there are only four, relatively small independent countries.  There is Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Morocco which were ruled by their own people. Both of those countries would later come under colonial rule. There is also Transvaal and the Orange Free State, both of which are white enclaves that would soon succumb to British domination after the Boer War.  The vast majority of the continent was controlled by European countries who had divided the continent along nice, straight geographic lines or river boundaries. 

We may wonder why there is so much violence in Africa today, but we only have to look at that map to answer that question.  The colonialists may have left, but they left a mess behind them, a mess that the Africans must now deal with.  One can imagine that, at some time in the past, these wars were already fought by primitive tribes to delineate their old tribal areas. 

To some degree, this situation also affects the Middle East.  Many of the states there that are now seeing ethnic violence, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, are the product of artificial “spheres of influence” and “mandates” dictated by western leaders during the Paris peace talks of 1919 - 1921.  No consideration was given to the religious animosity between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, or to the small group of Christian communities.  After all, there was oil to be found and trade routes to be protected.

The latest case in Africa now is the Central African Republic.  Again, it is case of religious and ethnic strife with each side wanting power so that they can, in one case, protect themselves against a majority; and in the other case, prevent a minority from taking control.  We have seen too many of these type of conflicts in recent years; Rwanda, Lebanon, Nigeria to name but a few.

But we must not put too much emphasis on religion or ethnicity as the cause of these conflicts.  Conflicts are caused by the desire for power and the resulting riches that accrue.  Religious and ethnic differences are a way of exciting the masses who must carry out or support the conflict.  Old men in power cause wars.  Young men (and women) die in them.  In most cases, it is one group who want to take power that starts a conflict, be it war or civil war.  So we have these cases of conflict and their companion, genocide, such as the Central African Republic.  With the legacy that was left by their colonial masters of yore, it tragically seems almost inevitable.

Thus endeth the history lesson for today.