37.2: Fall of the Soviet Union

37.2.1: The Soviet Union’s Aging Leadership

Learning Objective

Describe the leadership problem facing the
Soviet Union in the 1980s

Key Points

• The transition
  period that separated the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras resembled the former much
  more than the latter, although hints of reform emerged as early as 1983.
• Andropov maneuvered
  his way into power both through his KGB connections and by gaining the support
  of the military by promising not to cut defense spending, despite the heavy toll
  it exacted on the ailing Soviet economy.
• Andropov began a
  thorough house-cleaning throughout the party and state bureaucracy, but his
  ability to reshape the top leadership was constrained by his own advanced age
  and poor health as well as the influence of his rival, Konstantin Chernenko.
• Andropov’s
  domestic policy leaned heavily towards restoring discipline and order to Soviet
  society. He eschewed radical political and economic reforms, promoting instead
  a degree of candor in politics and mild economic experiments.
• In foreign
  affairs, Andropov continued Brezhnev’s policies, causing US-Soviet relations to
  deteriorate rapidly.
• Chernenko
  succeeded Andropov in 1984, bringing about a number of significant policy
  changes, including more investment in consumer goods and services and in
  agriculture. Chernenko also called for a reduction in the Communist Party’s micromanagement
  of the economy. However, KGB repression of Soviet dissidents increased and
  personnel changes and investigations into corruption undertaken under Andropov
  came to an end.
• During this period of Soviet leadership, fighting in the Soviet-Afghan
  War intensified, compounding Soviet economic stagnation and further entangling
  the USSR in a war it didn’t seem they could successfully win.

Key Term

Goulash Communism

The variety of communism as practiced in the
Hungarian People’s Republic from the 1960s until the Central European collapse
of communism in 1989. With elements of free market economics and an
improved human rights record, it represented a quiet deviation from
the Soviet principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade. The name is a
semi-humorous metaphor derived from the popular Hungarian dish. Goulash is made
with an assortment of unlike ingredients, representing how Hungarian communism
was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly adhered to Marxist-Leninist
interpretations as in the past.

By 1982, the stagnation of
the Soviet economy was evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union
had been importing grain from the U.S. throughout the 1970s. However, the conditions
that led to economic stagnation, primarily the huge rate of defense spending
that consumed the budget, were so firmly entrenched within the economic system that
any real turnaround seemed impossible. The transition period that separated the
Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras resembled the former much more than the latter,
although hints of reform emerged as early as 1983.

Andropov Interregnum

Yuri Andropov

Yuri Andropov as depicted in the August 1983 issue of Soviet Life.

Brezhnev died on November 10,
1982. Two days passed between his death and the announcement of the election of
Yuri Andropov as the new General Secretary, suggesting that a power struggle
had occurred in the Kremlin. Andropov maneuvered his way into power both
through his KGB connections and by gaining the support of the military by
promising not to cut defense spending. For comparison, some of his rivals, such as Konstantin Chernenko, were skeptical of continued high military spending. At age 69, he was the oldest person ever appointed as General Secretary and 11
years older than Brezhnev when he acquired that post. In June 1983, he assumed
the post of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, thus becoming the
ceremonial head of state. It had taken Brezhnev 13 years to acquire this post. 

Andropov began a thorough
house-cleaning throughout the party and state bureaucracy, a decision made easy
by the fact that the Central Committee had an average age of 69. He replaced
more than one-fifth of the Soviet ministers and regional party first
secretaries, and more than one-third of the department heads within the Central
Committee apparatus. As a result, he replaced the aging leadership with
younger, more vigorous administrators. But Andropov’s ability to reshape the
top leadership was constrained by his own age and poor health and the influence
of his rival (and longtime ally of Leonid Brezhnev) Konstantin Chernenko, who
previously supervised personnel matters in the Central Committee.

Andropov’s domestic policy
leaned heavily towards restoring discipline and order to Soviet society. He
eschewed radical political and economic reforms, promoting instead a small
degree of candor in politics and mild economic experiments similar to those
associated with the late Premier Alexei Kosygin’s initiatives in
the mid-1960s. In tandem with these economic experiments, Andropov launched an
anti-corruption drive that reached high into the government and party ranks.
Unlike Brezhnev, who possessed several mansions and a fleet of luxury cars, Andropov
lived a modest life. While visiting Budapest in early 1983, he expressed
interest in Hungary’s Goulash Communism and that the sheer size of the Soviet
economy made strict top-down planning impractical. 1982 had witnessed
the country’s worst economic performance since World War II, with real GDP
growth at almost zero percent, necessitating real change, and fast.

In foreign affairs, Andropov
continued Brezhnev’s policies. U.S.-Soviet relations deteriorated rapidly
beginning in March 1983, when President Ronald Reagan dubbed the Soviet
Union an “evil empire”. The official press agency TASS accused Reagan
of “thinking only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic
anti-communism”. Further deterioration occurred as a result of the September
1, 1983, Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island, carrying 269 people including a sitting U.S. congressman, Larry McDonald, as
well as by Reagan’s stationing of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western
Europe. Additionally, in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, the U.S. began undermining Soviet-supported governments by supplying arms to
anti-communist resistance movements.

Andropov’s health declined
rapidly during the tense summer and fall of 1983, and he became the first
Soviet leader to miss the anniversary celebrations of the 1917 revolution. He
died in February 1984 of kidney failure after disappearing from public view for
several months. His most significant legacy to the Soviet Union was his
discovery and promotion of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Chernenko Interregnum 

At 71, Konstantin Chernenko
was in poor health, suffering from emphysema, and unable to play an active role
in policy-making when he was chosen after lengthy discussion to succeed
Andropov. But Chernenko’s short time in office did bring about some significant
policy changes, including more investment in consumer goods and
services and in agriculture. He also called for a reduction in the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU) micromanagement of the economy. However, KGB
repression of Soviet dissidents increased and personnel changes and
investigations into corruption undertaken under Andropov came to an end. In
February 1983, Soviet representatives withdrew from the World Psychiatric
Organization in protest of its continued complaints about the use of
psychiatry to suppress dissent. This policy was underlined in June when
Vladimir Danchev, a broadcaster for Radio Moscow, referred to the Soviet troops
in Afghanistan as “invaders” while conducting English-language
broadcasts. After refusing to retract this statement, he was sent to a mental institution
for several months.

Soviet-Afghan War

Andropov played a
dominant role in the decision to intervene militarily in Afghanistan on
December 24, 1979, insisting on the invasion although he knew that the
international community would find the USSR culpable. The decision to intervene
led to the Soviet-Afghan War, which continued once Andropov became the leader
of the USSR. By this time, Andropov felt the invasion might have been
a mistake and halfheartedly explored options for a negotiated withdrawal. The
Soviets had not foreseen taking such an active role in fighting the
mujahideen rebels and attempted to downplay their involvement in relation to that of
the Afghan army. However, the arrival of Soviet troops had the opposite effect
on the Afghan people, incensing rather than pacifying and causing the mujahideen
to gain in strength and numbers. 

During the Chernenko
interregnum, fighting in Afghanistan intensified. Once it became apparent that
the Soviets could not take a backseat in the conflict, they followed three main
strategies aimed at quelling the uprising. Intimidation was the first strategy,
in which the Soviets would use airborne attacks as well as armored ground
attacks to destroy villages, livestock, and crops in trouble areas. Locals were forced to either flee their homes or die as daily Soviet attacks
made it impossible to live in these areas. By forcing the people of Afghanistan
to flee their homes, the Soviets hoped to deprive the guerrillas of resources
and safe havens. The second strategy consisted of subversion, which entailed
sending spies to join resistance groups and report information as well as
bribing local tribes or guerrilla leaders into ceasing operations. Finally, the
Soviets used military forays into contested territories to root
out the guerrillas and limit their options. Classic search and destroy
operations were implemented and once villages were occupied by Soviet forces,
inhabitants who remained were frequently interrogated and tortured for
information, or killed.

Tanks and Helicopters during the Soviet-Afghan War

Soviet ground forces in action while conducting an offensive operation against the Islamist resistance.

In the mid-1980s, the Afghan resistance movement, assisted by the U.S.,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Egypt, China, and others, contributed to Moscow’s
high military costs and strained international relations. The U.S. viewed the
struggle in Afghanistan as an integral Cold War struggle and the CIA provided
assistance to anti-Soviet forces via Pakistani intelligence services in a
program called Operation Cyclone. The mujahideen favored sabotage operations.
The more common types of sabotage included damaging power lines, knocking out
pipelines and radio stations, and blowing up government office buildings, air
terminals, hotels, cinemas, and so on. They concentrated on both civilian and
military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys,
disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking
police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. They assassinated
government officials and Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
members, and laid siege to small rural outposts.

37.2.2: Gorbachev and Perestroika

Learning Objective

Explain Gorbachev’s reasons for launching perestroika

Key Points

• Gorbachev’s
  primary goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the
  stagnant Brezhnev and interregnum years.
• Gorbachev soon
  came to believe that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible
  without also reforming the political and social structure of the Communist
  nation.
• The purpose of
  reform was to prop up the centrally planned economy—not to transition to market
  socialism.
• Gorbachev
  initiated his new policy of perestroika (literally “restructuring” in
  Russian) and its attendant radical reforms in 1986. Policy reforms included the
  Law on State Enterprise, the Law on Cooperatives, and the opening of the Soviet
  economy to foreign investment.
• Unfortunately, Gorbachev’s
  economic changes did not do much to restart the country’s sluggish economy.
• In 1988,
  Gorbachev introduced glasnost, which gave the Soviet people freedoms that they
  had not previously known, including greater freedom of speech.

• In June 1988, at the CPSU’s Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical
  reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus, proposing a
  new executive in the form of a presidential system as well as a new legislative
  element.

Key Terms

glasnost

Roughly translating to “openness”, reforms to the political and judicial system made in the 1980s
that ensured greater freedoms for the public and the press as well as increased
government transparency.

perestroika

Literally “restructuring” in Russian, a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union during the 1980s, widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev.

Mikhail Sergeyevich
Gorbachev was the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985
until 1991, when the party was dissolved. Gorbachev’s primary goal as general
secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev and
interregnum years. In 1985, he announced that the economy was stalled and that
reorganization was needed, proposing a vague program of reform that was
adopted at the April Plenum of the Central Committee. His reforms called for fast-paced
technological modernization and increased industrial and agricultural
productivity. He also tried to make the Soviet bureaucracy more efficient.

Gorbachev soon came to
believe that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without also
reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. He started
by making personnel changes, most notably replacing Andrei Gromyko with Eduard
Shevardnadze as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Gromyko had served at his post for
28 years and was considered a member of the old Soviet guard. Although
Shevardnadze was comparatively inexperienced in diplomacy, he, like Gorbachev,
had a background in managing an agricultural region of the Soviet Union
(Georgia), which entailed weak links to the military-industrial complex, sharing Gorbachev’s outlook on governance. 

The purpose of reform was to
prop up the centrally planned economy—not to transition to market socialism.
Speaking in late summer 1985 to the secretaries for economic affairs of the
central committees of the East European communist parties, Gorbachev said:
“Many of you see the solution to your problems in resorting to market
mechanisms in place of direct planning. Some of you look at the market as a
lifesaver for your economies. But, comrades, you should not think about
lifesavers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev in 2010.

Perestroika

Gorbachev initiated his new
policy of perestroika (literally “restructuring” in Russian) and its
attendant radical reforms in 1986. They were sketched, but not fully spelled
out, at the XXVIIth Party Congress in February–March 1986. The
“reconstruction” was proposed in an attempt to overcome economic
stagnation by creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating
economic and social progress. In July 1987, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union passed the Law on State Enterprise. The law stipulated that state
enterprises were free to determine output levels based on demand from consumers
and other enterprises. Enterprises had to fulfill state orders, but could
dispose of the remaining output as they saw fit. However, the state still held
control over the means of production for these enterprises, limiting their
ability to enact full-cost accountability. Enterprises bought input from
suppliers at negotiated contract prices. Under the law, enterprises became
self-financing; that is, they had to cover expenses (wages, taxes, supplies,
and debt service) through revenues. No longer was the government to rescue
unprofitable enterprises that faced bankruptcy. Finally, the law shifted
control over the enterprise operations from ministries to elected workers’
collectives. 

The Law on Cooperatives,
enacted in May 1988, was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms
introduced in the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since
Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy was abolished in 1928, the law permitted
private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and
foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and employment
restrictions, but it later revised these to avoid discouraging private-sector
activity. 

The most significant of
Gorbachev’s reforms in the foreign economic sector allowed foreigners to invest
in the Soviet Union in joint ventures with Soviet ministries, state
enterprises, and cooperatives. The original version of the Soviet Joint Venture
Law, which went into effect in June 1987, limited foreign shares of a Soviet
venture to 49 percent and required that Soviet citizens occupy the positions of
chairman and general manager. After potential Western partners complained, the
government revised the regulations to allow majority foreign ownership and
control. Under the terms of the Joint Venture Law, the Soviet partner supplied
labor, infrastructure, and a potentially large domestic market. The foreign
partner supplied capital, technology, entrepreneurial expertise, and high-quality products and services.

Gorbachev’s economic changes
did little to restart the country’s sluggish economy in the late 1980s.
The reforms decentralized economic activity to a certain extent, but price
controls remained, as did the ruble’s inconvertibility and most government
controls over the means of production. By 1990, the government had virtually
lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as
more unprofitable enterprises required state support and
consumer price subsidies continued. Tax revenues declined because local
governments withheld tax revenues from the central government in a climate of growing
regional autonomy. The elimination of central control over production
decisions, especially in the consumer goods sector, led to the breakdown in
traditional supply-demand relationships without contributing to the formation
of new ones. Thus, instead of streamlining the system, Gorbachev’s decentralization
caused new production bottlenecks.

Glasnost

In 1988, Gorbachev introduced
glasnost, which gave the Soviet people freedoms they had not previously
known, including greater freedom of speech. The press became far less
controlled, and thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were
released as part of a wider program of de-Stalinization. Gorbachev’s goal in
glasnost was to pressure conservatives within the CPSU who opposed
his policies of economic restructuring, believing that through varying ranges
of openness, debate, and participation, the Soviet people would support his
reform initiatives. At the same time, he exposed his plans to more public criticism.

In June 1988, at the CPSU’s Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical
reforms to reduce party control of the government apparatus. He proposed
a new executive in the form of a presidential system as well as a new
legislative element, the Congress of People’s Deputies. Elections
to the Congress of People’s Deputies were held throughout the Soviet Union in
March and April 1989. This was the first free election in the Soviet Union
since 1917. Gorbachev became Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (or head of state)
on May 25, 1989.

37.2.3: Unrest in the Soviet Union

Learning Objective

Analyze the reasons for the uprisings that broke
out across the Soviet Union in the late 1980s

Key Points

• By the late
  1980s, people in the Caucasus and Baltic states were demanding more autonomy
  from Moscow, and the Kremlin was losing some of its control over certain regions
  and elements in the Soviet Union.
• The Chernobyl
  disaster in April 1986 had major political and social effects that catalyzed the
  revolutions of 1989.
• Under glasnost,
  the Soviet media began to expose numerous social and economic problems in the
  Soviet Union that the government had long denied and covered up, such as
  poor housing, food shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping
  mortality rates, the second-rate position of women, and the history of
  state crimes against the population.

• Political
  openness continued to produce unintended consequences as nationalists swept the
  board in regional elections.

• Starting in the
  mid-1980s, the Baltic states used the reforms provided by glasnost to assert
  their rights to protect their environment (for example during the Phosphorite
  War) and historic monuments, and later, their claims to sovereignty and
  independence.
• Momentum towards
  full-blown revolution began in Poland where by early April 1989, numerous
  reforms and freedoms for opposition groups had been obtained.

• Revolutionary
  momentum, encouraged by the peaceful transition underway in Poland, continued
  in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

• The Soviet Union was dissolved by the end of 1991, resulting in 14
  countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
  Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and
  Uzbekistan) declaring their independence in the course of the years 1990–1991.

Key Terms

glasnost

Roughly translating to “openness”, this term
refers to the reforms the political and judicial system made in the 1980s
that ensured greater freedoms for the public and the press and increased
government transparency.

sovereignty

The full right and power of a governing body to
govern itself without interference from outside sources or bodies. In
political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme
authority over some polity. It is a basic principle underlying the dominant
Westphalian model of state foundation.

The Revolutions of 1989 were
part of a revolutionary wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s that resulted in
the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.

Leadup to Revolution

By the late 1980s, people in
the Caucasus and Baltic states were demanding more autonomy from Moscow, and
the Kremlin was losing some of its control over certain regions and elements in
the Soviet Union. In November 1988, Estonia issued a declaration of
sovereignty, which eventually led to other states doing the same. 

The Baltic Way, Lithuania, August 23, 1989

The Baltic Way was a human chain of approximately two million people dedicated to liberating the Baltic Republics from the USSR.

The Chernobyl disaster in
April 1986 had major political and social effects that catalyzed the revolutions of 1989. It is difficult to establish the
total economic cost of the disaster. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet
Union spent 18 billion rubles (the equivalent of USD $18 billion at the time) on
containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself. One political
result of the disaster was the greatly increased significance of the Soviet
policy of glasnost. Under glasnost, relaxation of censorship resulted in the
Communist Party losing its grip on the media, and Soviet citizens were able to
learn significantly more about the past and the outside world.

The Soviet media began to
expose numerous social and economic problems in the Soviet Union that the
government had long denied and covered up, such as poor housing, food
shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping mortality rates, the
second-rate position of women, and the history of state crimes against
the population. Although Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s personality cult
as early as the 1950s, information about the true proportions of his atrocities
had still been suppressed. These revelations had a devastating effect on those
who believed in state communism and had never been exposed to this
information, as the driving vision of society was built on a foundation of
falsehood and crimes against humanity. Additionally, information about the
higher quality of life in the United States and Western Europe and about Western pop culture were exposed to
the Soviet public for the first time.

Political openness continued
to produce unintended consequences. In elections to the regional assemblies of
the Soviet Union’s constituent republics, nationalists swept the board. As
Gorbachev weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of
the USSR’s central government to impose its will on the USSR’s constituent
republics was largely undermined. During the 1980s, calls for greater independence
from Moscow’s rule grew louder. This was especially marked in the Baltic
Republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which had been annexed into the
Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940. Nationalist sentiment also took hold in
other Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

Starting in the mid-1980s,
the Baltic states used the reforms provided by glasnost to assert their rights
to protect their environment (for example during the Phosphorite War) and their
historic monuments, and, later, their claims to sovereignty and independence.
When the Balts withstood outside threats, they exposed an irresolute Kremlin.
Bolstering separatism in other Soviet republics, the Balts triggered multiple
challenges to the Soviet Union. The rise of nationalism under glasnost also
reawakened simmering ethnic tensions throughout the union. For example, in
February 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in
Azerbaijan, passed a resolution calling for unification with Armenia, which
sparked the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Collapse (Summer 1989 to
Fall 1991)

Momentum toward full-blown
revolution began in Poland in 1989. During the Polish United Workers’ Party’s
(PZPR) plenary session of January 16-18, 1989, General Wojciech Jaruzelski and
his ruling formation overcame the Central Committee’s resistance by threatening
to resign. As a result, the communist party decided to allow relegalization of
the independent trade union Solidarity and approach its leaders for formal
talks. From February 6 to April 4, 94 sessions of talks between 13 working groups,
known as the Round Table Talks, resulted in political and economic
compromise reforms. The talks resulted in the Round Table Agreement, by which
political power wound be vested in a newly created bicameral legislature and a
president who would be the chief executive.

By April 4, 1989, numerous
reforms and freedoms for the opposition were obtained. Solidarity, now in
existence as the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee, would again be legalized as a
trade union and allowed to participate in semi-free elections. The election had
restrictions imposed designed to keep the communists in power, since only 35%
of the seats in the Sejm, the key lower chamber of parliament, would be open to
Solidarity candidates. The remaining 65% was reserved for candidates
from the PZPR and its allies (the United People’s Party, the Alliance of
Democrats, and the PAX Association). Since the Round Table Agreement mandated
only reform (not replacement) of socialism in Poland, the communist party
thought of the election as a way of neutralizing political conflict and staying
in power while gaining legitimacy to carry out economic reforms. However, the
negotiated social policy determinations by economists and trade
unionists during the Round Table talks were quickly rejected by
both the Party and the opposition.

A systemic transformation
was made possible by the Polish legislative elections of June 4, 1989, which
coincided with the bloody crackdown on the Tienanmen Square protesters in
China. When polling results were released, a political earthquake erupted:
Solidarity’s victory surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured
all seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the newly
established Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats (the other
seat went to an independent, who later switched to Solidarity). At the same
time, many prominent PZPR candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of
votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them. The communists
suffered a catastrophic blow to their legitimacy as a result.

Revolutionary momentum,
encouraged by the peaceful transition underway in Poland, continued in Hungary,
East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. A common feature among
these countries was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating
popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to
the pressure for change. Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country whose people
overthrew its Communist regime violently. The Tienanmen Square protests of 1989
failed to stimulate major political changes in China, but powerful images of
courageous defiance during that protest helped to spark a precipitation of
events in other parts of the globe. Hungary dismantled its section of the
physical Iron Curtain, leading to a mass exodus of East Germans through
Hungary that destabilized East Germany. This led to mass demonstrations in
cities such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which
served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990.

The Soviet Union was
dissolved by the end of 1991, resulting in 14 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) declaring their independence
from the Soviet Union in 1990-91. Lithuania was the
first Union Republic to declare independence from the dissolving Soviet Union
in the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, signed by the
Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania on March 11, 1990. The Act of the
Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania served as a model and inspiration to
other Soviet republics. However, the issue of independence was not immediately
settled and recognition by other countries was uncertain. The rest of the
Soviet Union, which constituted the bulk of the area, became Russia in December
1991.

Act of Restoration of Independence of Lithuania, March 11, 1990

Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania with signatures of the delegates.

Communism was abandoned in
Albania and Yugoslavia between 1990 and 1992. By 1992, Yugoslavia split into
the five successor states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Macedonia,
Slovenia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was later renamed Serbia
and Montenegro and eventually split into two separate states,. Serbia then further split with the breakaway of the partially
recognized state of Kosovo. Czechoslovakia was dissolved three years after the
end of Communist rule, splitting peacefully into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia in 1992. The impact was felt in dozens of Socialist countries.
Communism was abandoned in countries such as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mongolia
(which democratically re-elected a Communist government that ran the country
until 1996), and South Yemen. The collapse of Communism (and of the Soviet
Union) led commentators to declare the end of the Cold War.

During the adoption of
varying forms of market economies, there was initially a general decline in living
standards. Political reforms were varied, but in only five countries were
Communist parties able to keep for themselves a monopoly on power: China, Cuba,
North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. Many Communist and Socialist organisations in
the West turned their guiding principles over to social democracy. Communist
parties in Italy and San Marino suffered, and the renewal of the Italian
political class took place in the early 1990s. The European political landscape
was drastically changed, with numerous Eastern Bloc countries joining NATO and
the European Union, resulting in stronger economic and social integration.

37.2.4: Fall of the Berlin Wall

Learning Objective

Detail the events leading up
to the fall of the Berlin Wall

Key Points

• The Berlin Wall
  was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. When Hungary disabled its
  physical border defenses with Austria on August 19, 1989, it initiated a chain
  of events that would eventually precipitate the fall of the Berlin Wall.
• A slew of border
  crossings and protests ensued in the
  Peaceful Revolution of late 1989.

• To ease the
  difficulties posed by these large masses of people, the Politburo led by East
  Germany’s leader Egon Krenz decided on November 9, 1989, to allow refugees to
  exit directly via crossing points between East and West Germany, including
  between East and West Berlin.

• Günter
  Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED
  Politburo, announced the new regulations, but mistakenly
  said they were effectively immediately rather than the next day.
• East Germans
  began gathering at the Wall, demanding that border guards open the
  gates. Finally, at 10:45 pm, Harald
  Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing, yielded,
  allowing the guards to open the checkpoints and people to pass through with
  little to no identity checking.

• Television
  coverage of citizens demolishing sections of the Wall on November 9 was soon
  followed by the East German regime announcing ten new border crossings,
  including the historically significant locations of Potsdamer Platz, Glienicker
  Brücke, and Bernauer Straße.

• On June 13, 1990,
  the East German military officially began dismantling the Wall, beginning in
  Bernauer Straße and around the Mitte district.

• On July 1, 1990, the day East Germany adopted West German currency, all
  de jure border controls ceased, although the inter-German border was meaningless for some time before that.

Key Terms

fakir beds

Essentially, a bed of nails used as
a deterrent to vehicle or foot crossing of an expanse.

defection

In politics, a person who gives up allegiance to
one state in exchange for allegiance to another in a way that is considered
illegitimate by the first state.

The Berlin Wall was a
barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German
Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) beginning August 13, 1961, the Wall
completely cut off West Berlin by land from East Germany and East Berlin. The
barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which
circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, fakir beds, and
other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed the Wall was erected to protect
its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent grassroots socialist
state-building in East Germany. But in practice, the Wall served to prevent
massive emigration and defection that plagued East Germany and the communist
Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.

Berlin Wall Map

Map of the location of the Berlin Wall, showing checkpoints.

The Fall of the Wall

When Hungary disabled its
physical border defenses with Austria on August 19, 1989, it initiated a chain
of events that would eventually precipitate the fall of the Berlin Wall. In
September 1989, more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary
to Austria. The Hungarians prevented many more East Germans from crossing the
border and returned them to Budapest. Those East Germans then flooded the West
German embassy and refused to return to East Germany. The East German
government responded to this by disallowing any further travel to Hungary, but
allowed those already there to return to East Germany.

Soon, a similar pattern
began to emerge out of Czechoslovakia. This time, however, the East German
authorities allowed people to leave, provided that they did so by train through
East Germany. This was followed by mass demonstrations within East Germany
itself. Initially, protesters were mostly people wanting to leave to the West,
chanting “Wir wollen raus!” (“We want out!”). Then
protesters began to chant “Wir bleiben hier!” (“We are staying
here!”). This was the start of what East Germans call the
Peaceful Revolution of late 1989. Protest demonstrations grew considerably by
early November, and the movement neared its height on November 4, when half a
million people gathered to demand political change at the Alexanderplatz
demonstration, East Berlin’s large public square and transportation hub.

The longtime leader of East
Germany, Erich Honecker, resigned on October 18, 1989, and was replaced by
Egon Krenz the same day. Honecker predicted in January of that year that
the Wall would stand for 50 or 100 more years if the conditions that caused its construction did not
change. The wave of refugees
leaving East Germany for the West kept increasing. By early November, refugees
were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia or the West German
Embassy in Prague. This was tolerated by the new Krenz government due to
long-standing agreements with the communist Czechoslovak government allowing
free travel across their common border. However, this movement grew so
large it caused difficulties for both countries. The Politburo
led by Krenz thus decided on November 9 to allow refugees to exit directly via
crossing points between East and West Germany, including between East and West
Berlin. Later the same day, the ministerial administration modified the
proposal to include private, round-trip travel. The new regulations were to
take effect the next day.

Günter Schabowski, the party
boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of
announcing the new regulations but had not been involved in the
discussions about the new regulations and was been fully updated. Shortly
before a press conference on November 9, he was handed a note announcing the
changes but given no further instructions on how to handle the information.
These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take
effect the following day to allow time to inform the border guards. But
this starting time delay was not communicated to Schabowski. At the end of the
press conference, Schabowski read out loud the note he had been given. One of
the reporters, ANSA’s Riccardo Ehrman, asked when the regulations would take effect. After a few seconds’
hesitation, Schabowski stated based on assumption that it would be immediate. After further questions from
journalists, he confirmed that the regulations included border crossings
through the Wall into West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then.

Excerpts from Schabowski’s
press conference were the lead story on West Germany’s two main news programs
that night, meaning that the news was also broadcast to nearly all of East
Germany. East Germans
began gathering at the Wall at the six checkpoints between East and West
Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The
surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their
superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the more
aggressive people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a
special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect,
revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands
demanding to be let through.

It soon became clear that no
one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for
issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no
way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Finally, at 10:45 pm,
Harald Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing, yielded,
allowing the guards to open the checkpoints and people to pass through with
little to no identity checking. As the Ossis (“Easterners”) swarmed through,
they were greeted by Wessis (“Westerners”) waiting with flowers and champagne
amid wild rejoicing. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of
the Wall and were joined by East German youngsters. They danced together
to celebrate their new freedom.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

This photo shows part of the Wall at Brandenburg Gate, with Germans standing on top of the Wall days before it was torn down.

Demolition

Television coverage of
citizens demolishing sections of the Wall on November 9 was soon followed by
the East German regime announcing ten new border crossings, including the
historically significant locations of Potsdamer Platz, Glienicker Brücke, and
Bernauer Straße. Crowds gathered on both sides of the historic crossings
waiting for hours to cheer the bulldozers that tore down portions of the Wall
to reinstate ancient roads. While the Wall officially remained guarded at a
decreasing intensity, new border crossings continued for some time, including
the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989. Initially the East German military
attempted to repair damage done by “Wall peckers,” but gradually
these attempts ceased and guards became more lax, tolerating the demolitions and unauthorized border crossings through holes in the Wall.

West Germans and West
Berliners were allowed visa-free travel starting December 23. Until that point,
they were only able to visit East Germany and East Berlin under restrictive
conditions that involved applying for a visa several days or weeks in advance
and the obligatory exchange of at least 25 Deutsche Marks per day of their
planned stay, which hindered spontaneous visits. Thus, in the weeks
between November 9 and December 23, East Germans could actually travel more
freely than Westerners.

On June 13, 1990, the East
German military officially began dismantling the Wall, beginning in Bernauer
Straße and around the Mitte district. From there, demolition continued through
Prenzlauer Berg/Gesundbrunnen, Helligensee, and throughout the city of Berlin
until that December. Various military units dismantled the Berlin/Brandenberg
border wall, completing the job in November 1991. Virtually every road that was
severed by the Berlin Wall was reconstructed and reopened by August 1, 1990.

On July 1, the day East Germany adopted West German currency, all de
jure border controls ceased, although the inter-German border was meaningless for some time before that. The fall of the Wall marked the first
critical step towards German reunification, which formally concluded a mere 339
days later on October 3, 1990, with the dissolution of East Germany and the
official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the
West German government.

37.2.5: Dissolution of the USSR

Learning Objective

Summarize the chain of
events that resulted in the dissolution of the USSR

Key Points

• Since 1985, General Secretary Gorbachev instituted
  liberalizing policies broadly referred to as glasnost and perestroika. As a
  result of his push towards liberalization, dissidents were welcomed back in the
  USSR and pro-independence movements became more vocal in the regional
  republics.
• Gorbachev continued to radically expand the
  scope of glasnost during the late 1980s, stating that no subject was off limits
  for open discussion in the media.
• On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum,
  76.4% of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union.
• On June 12, 1991, Boris Yeltsin won 57% of the
  popular vote in democratic elections for the newly created post of President of
  the Russian SFSR, defeating Gorbachev’s preferred candidate. In his election campaign,
  Yeltsin criticized the “dictatorship of the center”.
• Faced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought
  to restructure the Soviet Union into a less-centralized state. On August 20,
  1991, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would have
  converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a
  common president, foreign policy, and military. But more radical reformists
  were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was
  required.
• On August 19, 1991, Gorbachev’s vice president,
  Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov,
  KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other senior officials acted to prevent the
  union treaty from being signed by forming the “General Committee on the State
  Emergency”, which put Gorbachev under house arrest and cut off his
  communications.
• After three days, the coup collapsed. The
  organizers were detained and Gorbachev returned as president, albeit with his
  power depleted.
• On August 24, 1991, Gorbachev dissolved the
  Central Committee of the CPSU, resigned as the party’s general secretary, and
  dissolved all party units in the government. Five days later, the Supreme
  Soviet indefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory,
  effectively ending Communist rule in the Soviet Union and dissolving the only
  remaining unifying force in the country. The Soviet Union collapsed with
  dramatic speed in the last quarter of 1991.

• Following the collapse of the Soviet Union,
  Russia underwent a radical transformation, moving from a centrally planned
  economy to a globally integrated market economy. Corrupt and haphazard
  privatization processes turned major state-owned firms over to politically
  connected “oligarchs,” which left equity ownership highly concentrated.

Key Terms

perestroika

Literally
“restructuring” in Russian, a political movement for reform
within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s, widely
associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

glasnost

Roughly
translating to “openness,” the reforms to the political and
judicial system in the 1980s that ensured greater freedoms for the public
and the press as well as increased government transparency.

The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991, as a
result of declaration no. 142-Н of the Supreme Soviet. The declaration
acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), although five of the signatories
ratified it much later or not at all. On the previous day, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, resigned,
declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers – including control of
the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes – to Russian President Boris
Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for
the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. From August to December of 1991, all individual republics, including Russia
itself, seceded from the union. The week before the union’s formal
dissolution, 11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing
the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The
Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR signaled the end of the
Cold War and left the United States as the world’s only superpower.

Moscow’s Crisis

Since 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the
USSR, instituted liberalizing policies broadly referred to as glasnost and
perestroika. As a result of his push towards liberalization, dissidents were
welcomed back in the USSR following prolonged exile and pro-independence
movements were becoming more vocal in the regional republics. At the January
28–30, 1987, Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev suggested a new policy of
“Demokratizatsiya” throughout Soviet society. He proposed that future
Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates,
elected by secret ballot. However, the CPSU delegates at the Plenum watered
down Gorbachev’s proposal, and democratic choice within the Communist Party was
never significantly implemented.

Gorbachev continued to radically expand the scope of glasnost
during the late 1980s, stating that no subject was off limits for open
discussion in the media. Even so, the cautious Soviet intelligentsia took
almost a year to begin pushing the boundaries to see if he meant what he said.
For the first time, the Communist Party leader appealed over the heads of
Central Committee members for the people’s support in exchange for expansion of
liberties. The tactic proved successful – within two years political reform
could no longer be sidetracked by Party conservatives. An unintended
consequence was that expanding the scope of reform would ultimately destroy the
very system it was designed to save. 

On January 14, 1991, Nikolai Ryzhkov resigned from his post
as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier of the Soviet Union, and
was succeeded by Valentin Pavlov in the newly-established post of Prime
Minister of the Soviet Union. On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum,
76.4% of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic
republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova, boycotted the referendum, as did Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong
desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of
the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a
reformed Soviet Union. On June 12, 1991, Boris Yeltsin won 57% of the popular
vote in democratic elections for the newly-created post of President of the
Russian SFSR, defeating Gorbachev’s preferred candidate, Ryzhkov, who won 16%
of the vote. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the “dictatorship of
the center,” but did not yet suggest that he would introduce a market economy.

August Coup

Faced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought to
restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. On August 20, 1991,
the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would have
converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a
common president, foreign policy, and military. It was strongly supported by
the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic advantages of a common
market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continued
Communist Party control over economic and social life.

More radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a
rapid transition to a market economy was required, even if the eventual outcome
meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states.
Independence also accorded with Yeltsin’s desires as president of the Russian
Federation, as well as those of regional and local authorities to get rid of
Moscow’s pervasive control. In contrast to the reformers’ lukewarm response to
the treaty, the conservatives and Russian nationalists of the USSR – still
strong within the CPSU and the military – were opposed to weakening the Soviet
state and its centralized power structure. 

On August 19, 1991, Gorbachev’s vice president, Gennady
Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, KGB
chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other senior officials acted to prevent the union
treaty from being signed by forming the “General Committee on the State
Emergency”, which put Gorbachev – on holiday in Foros, Crimea – under house
arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency
decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers. Coup
organizers expected some popular support but found that public sympathy in
large cities and in the republics was largely against them, manifested by
public demonstrations, especially in Moscow. Russian SFSR President Yeltsin
condemned the coup and garnered popular support.

1991 Coup Attempt

T-80UD tanks near Red Square during the 1991 Soviet coup d’etat attempt.

Thousands of Muscovites came out to defend the White House
(the Russian Federation’s parliament and Yeltsin’s office), the symbolic seat
of Russian sovereignty at the time. The organizers tried but ultimately failed
to arrest Yeltsin, who rallied opposition to the coup with speech-making atop a
tank. The special forces dispatched by the coup leaders took up positions near
the White House, but members refused to storm the barricaded building. The coup
leaders also neglected to jam foreign news broadcasts, so many Muscovites
watched it unfold live on CNN. Even the isolated Gorbachev was able to stay
abreast of developments by tuning into BBC World Service on a small transistor
radio.

After three days, on August 21, 1991, the coup collapsed.
The organizers were detained and Gorbachev returned as president, albeit with
his power much depleted.

The Fall: August – December 1991

On August 24, 1991, Gorbachev dissolved the Central
Committee of the CPSU, resigned as the party’s general secretary, and dissolved
all party units in the government. Five days later, the Supreme Soviet
indefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory, effectively
ending Communist rule in the Soviet Union and dissolving the only remaining
unifying force in the country. The Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed
in the last quarter of 1991. Between August and December, ten republics
declared their independence, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of
September, Gorbachev no longer had the authority to influence events outside of
Moscow. He was challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what
remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin.

On September 17, 1991, General Assembly resolution numbers
46/4, 46/5, and 46/6 admitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the United
Nations, conforming to Security Council resolution numbers 709, 710, and 711,
passed on September 12 without a vote. The final round of the Soviet Union’s
collapse began with a Ukrainian popular referendum on December 1, 1991, in
which 90 percent of voters opted for independence. The secession of Ukraine,
the second-most powerful republic, ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev
keeping the Soviet Union together even on a limited scale. The leaders of the
three principal Slavic republics, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (formerly
Byelorussia), agreed to discuss possible alternatives to the union.

On December 8, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
secretly met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the
Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and
announced formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a looser
association to take its place. They also invited other republics to join the
CIS. Gorbachev called it an unconstitutional coup. However, by this time there
was no longer any reasonable doubt that, as the preamble of the Accords put it,
“the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality,
is ceasing its existence.” On December 12, the Supreme Soviet of the
Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords and renounced the 1922
Union Treaty. It also recalled the Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of
the USSR. In effect, the largest and most powerful republic had seceded from
the Union. Later that day, Gorbachev hinted for the first time that he was
considering stepping down.

Doubts remained over whether the Belavezha Accords had legally
dissolved the Soviet Union since they were signed by only three republics.
However, on December 21, 1991, representatives of 11 of the 12 remaining
republics – all except Georgia – signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed
the dissolution of the Union and formally established the CIS. They also recognized
and accepted Gorbachev’s resignation. While Gorbachev hadn’t made any formal
plans to leave his position yet, he did tell CBS News that he would resign as
soon as he saw that the CIS was indeed a reality.

In a nationally televised speech early in the morning of
December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR – or, as he put
it, “I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” He declared the office extinct, and
all of its powers, including control of the nuclear arsenal, were ceded to
Yeltsin. A week earlier, Gorbachev met with Yeltsin and accepted the fait
accompli of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet
of the Russian SFSR adopted a statute to change Russia’s legal name from “Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” to “Russian Federation,” showing that it
was now a sovereign state. On the night of December 25, at 7:32 p.m. Moscow
time, after Gorbachev left the Kremlin the Soviet flag was lowered for the
last time and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place, symbolically
marking the end of the Soviet Union. On that same day, the President of the
United States George H.W. Bush held a brief televised speech officially
recognizing the independence of the 11 remaining republics.

On December 26, the upper chamber of the Union’s Supreme
Soviet voted both itself and the Soviet Union out of existence. The lower
chamber, the Council of the Union, had been out of commission since December
12, when the recall of Russian deputies left it without a quorum. The following
day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev’s former office, though Russian authorities
had taken over the suite two days earlier. By the end of 1991, the few
remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased
operation, and individual republics assumed the central government’s role.

The Alma-Ata Protocol addressed issues such as UN membership
following dissolution. Notably, Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet
Union’s UN membership, including its permanent seat on the Security Council.
The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian President
Yeltsin to the UN Secretary General dated December 24, 1991, informing him that
by virtue of the Alma-Ata Protocol, Russia was the successor state to the USSR.
After being circulated among the other UN member states and with no objections
being raised, the statement was accepted on
December 31, 1991.

The Transition to a Market Economy, 1991-1998

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia radically transformed from a centrally planned economy to a globally
integrated market economy. Corrupt and haphazard privatization processes turned
major state-owned firms over to politically connected “oligarchs”,
which left equity ownership highly concentrated. Yeltsin’s program of radical,
market-oriented reform came to be known as a “shock therapy.” It was
based on the recommendations of the IMF and a group of top American economists,
including Larry Summers. The result was disastrous, with real GDP falling by
more than 40% by 1999, the occurrence of hyperinflation, which wiped out
personal savings, and crime and destitution spreading rapidly. Difficulties in
collecting government revenues amid the collapsing economy and a dependence on
short-term borrowing to finance budget deficits led to the 1998 Russian
financial crisis.

Also during this time, Russia became the largest
borrower from the International Monetary Fund with loans totaling $20 billion.
The IMF was the subject of criticism for lending so much as Russia introduced
little of the reforms promised in exchange for money, especially as critics
suspected a large part of these funds could have been diverted or even used to
fund illegal enterprises.

37.3: Apartheid Repealed

37.3.1: Institutional Racism in South Africa

Due to increasing Afrikaner
resentment of perceived black and white English-speaking labor advantages and
the concurrent electoral success of the National Party in 1948, institutional
racism became state policy under apartheid.

Learning Objective

Examine how racism was institutionalized in
South Africa during apartheid

Key Points

• In South Africa
  during apartheid, institutional racism was a powerful means of excluding
  from resources and power any person not categorized r marked as white.
• The Union of
  South Africa allowed social custom and law to govern multiracial affairs and the racial allocation, of access to economic,
  social, and political status. Nevertheless, by 1948 gaps in the social structure concerning the rights and
  opportunities of nonwhites were apparent..
• Many Afrikaners,
  whites chiefly of Dutch descent, resented what they perceived as disempowerment
  by an underpaid black workforce and the superior economic power and prosperity
  of white English speakers.
• The National
  Party’s election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for
  white employment in which nonwhites could not compete, and because the voting
  system was disproportionately weighted in favor of rural constituencies and the
  Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the National Party from a
  small minority to a commanding position with an eight-vote parliamentary lead.
• The first grand
  apartheid law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalized
  racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the
  age of 18, specifying their racial group.
• The second
  pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950, which put an end to
  diverse settlement areas and determined where one lived according to race.
• The Prohibition
  of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between those of different
  races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a
  different race a criminal offense.
• Under the
  Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be
  reserved for a particular race, creating separate beaches,
  buses, hospitals, schools, universities, and other facilities.
• Further laws were designed to suppress resistance, especially armed
  resistance, to apartheid.

Key Terms

Atlantic Charter

A pivotal policy statement issued on August 14,
1941, that defined the Allied goals for the post-war world: no territorial
aggrandizement, no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people,
restoration of self-government to those deprived of it, reduction of trade
restrictions, global cooperation to secure better economic and social
conditions for all, freedom from fear and want, freedom of the seas,
abandonment of the use of force, and disarmament of aggressor nations.

Bantustans

Also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland,
black state, or simply homeland, a territory set aside for
black inhabitants of South Africa and South-West Africa (now Namibia) as part
of apartheid. Ten were established in South Africa and
ten in neighboring South-West Africa (then under South African administration)
for members of designated ethnic groups. This made each territory ethnically homogeneous to create autonomous nation-states for South Africa’s black ethnic groups.

In South Africa during apartheid, institutional racism was a powerful means of excluding from
resources and power any person not categorized as white. Those considered black were further discriminated against based upon their backgrounds, with Africans
facing more extreme forms of exclusion and exploitation than those marked as
colored or Indian. 

Election of 1948

The Union of South Africa
allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial
affairs and the allocation in racial terms of access to economic, social, and
political status. Most white South Africans, regardless of their differences, accepted the prevailing pattern. Nevertheless, by 1948 it
remained apparent that there were occasional gaps in the social structure,
whether legislated or otherwise, concerning the rights and opportunities of
nonwhites. The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black
migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centers where they
compensated for the wartime shortage of white labor. However, this escalated
rate of black urbanization went unrecognized by the South African government,
which failed to accommodate the influx with parallel expansion in housing or
social services.

Overcrowding, spiking crime
rates, and disillusionment resulted. Urban blacks came to support a new
generation of leaders influenced by the principles of self-determination and
popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as the Atlantic Charter. Whites
reacted negatively to these developments. Many Afrikaners, whites chiefly of
Dutch descent but with early infusions of Germans and French Huguenots who were
soon assimilated, also resented what they perceived as disempowerment by an
underpaid black workforce and the superior economic power and prosperity of
white English speakers. In addition, Jan Smuts, as a strong advocate of the
United Nations, lost domestic support when South Africa was criticized for its
color bar and continued mandate of South-West Africa by other UN member states.

Afrikaner nationalists
proclaimed they would offer voters a new policy to ensure continued
white domination. The policy was initially expounded from a theory by
Hendrik Verwoerd presented to the National Party by the Sauer
Commission. It called for a systematic effort to organize relations, rights,
and privileges of the races as officially defined through a series of
parliamentary acts and administrative decrees. Segregation was previously pursued only in major matters, such as separate schools, and enforcement
depended on local authorities and societal complicity. Now it would be a matter of national legislation. The party gave this policy a
name: apartheid, meaning “apartness”. Apartheid would be the basic
ideological and practical foundation of Afrikaner politics for the next quarter-century.

The National Party’s
election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for white
employment in which nonwhites could not compete. On the issues of black urbanization,
the regulation of nonwhite labor, influx control, social security, farm
tariffs, and nonwhite taxation, the United Party’s policy remained
contradictory and confused. Its traditional bases of support not only took
mutually exclusive positions, but found themselves increasingly at odds with
each other. Smuts’ reluctance to consider South African foreign policy against
the mounting tensions of the Cold War also stirred up discontent, while the
nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist
sympathizers. First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who
wished to see a change in influx control due to problems with squatters, as
well as higher prices for their maize and other produce in the face of mine owners’
demand for cheap food policies. 

The party also failed to appeal to its working-class constituents given its long-term affiliation with affluent and
capitalist sectors. Populist rhetoric allowed the National Party to
sweep eight constituencies in the mining and industrial centers of the
Witwatersrand and five more in Pretoria. Barring the predominantly
English-speaking landowner electorate of the Natal, the United Party was
defeated in almost every rural district. Its urban losses in the nation’s most
populous province, the Transvaal, proved equally devastating. Because the voting
system was disproportionately weighted in favor of rural constituencies and the
Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the National Party from a
small minority to a commanding position with an eight-vote parliamentary lead. Daniel
François Malan became the first nationalist prime minister, with the aim of
implementing apartheid and silencing liberal opposition.

D.F. Malan

Daniel François Malan, the first apartheid-era prime minister (1948–1954).

Legislation

NP leaders argued that South
Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial
groups: white, black, colored, and Indian. Such groups were split into 13
nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and
Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.
The state passed laws that paved the way for “grand apartheid,” large-scale segregation by compelling people to live
in separate places defined by race, leading to the creation of black-only
townships where blacks were relocated en masse. This strategy was influenced
in party by British rule after they took control of the Boer republics in the
Anglo-Boer war. 

The first grand apartheid
law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalized racial
classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of
18 specifying their racial group. Official boards were established to
decide on a classification when a person’s race was unclear. This
caused difficulties for many people, especially colored people, when families were placed in different racial classes.

The second pillar of grand
apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most settlements had
people of different races living side-by-side. This Act put an end to diverse
areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted
its own area, used in later years as a basis of forced removal. The
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish
black shanty town slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction
of housing for black workers who were permitted to reside in cities
otherwise reserved for whites. 

The Prohibition of Mixed
Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races,
and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a
different race a criminal offense.

Under the Reservation of
Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a
particular race, creating separate beaches, buses,
hospitals, schools, universities, and other facilities. Signboards such as “whites
only” applied to public areas, including park benches. Blacks were
provided with services greatly inferior to those given to whites, and to a lesser
extent, to those for Indian and colored people.

Apartheid-Era Sign

Further laws suppressed resistance, especially armed resistance, to apartheid. The
Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned any party subscribing to Communism.
The act defined Communism and its aims so broadly that anyone who opposed
government policy risked being labeled as a Communist. Since the law
specifically stated that Communism aimed to disrupt racial harmony, it was
frequently used to gag opposition to apartheid. Disorderly gatherings were
banned, as were certain organizations deemed threatening to the
government.

Education was segregated by
the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system of education for
black South African students and was designed to prepare black people for lives
as a laboring class. In 1959, separate universities were created for black,
colored, and Indian people. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll
new black students. The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of
Afrikaans and English equally in high schools outside the homelands. 

The Bantu Authorities Act of
1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the
first legislation to support the government’s plan of separate
development in the Bantustans. The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of
1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent “homelands”
for blacks. So-called “self–governing Bantu units” were proposed,
which would have devolved administrative powers with the promise later of
autonomy and self-government. It also abolished the seats of white representatives
of black South Africans and disenfranchised the few blacks still qualified to
vote. The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to
transfer capital to the homelands to create employment there. Legislation in
1967 allowed the government to halt industrial development in white cities and
redirect such development to the black homelands. The Black Homeland
Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in Bantustan strategy. It changed
the citizenship of blacks to apply only within one of the ten autonomous
territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic majority of white people
within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans achieve full independence.

The government tightened pass
laws compelling blacks to carry identity documents in order to prevent the
immigration of blacks from other countries. To reside in a city, blacks had to be
employed there. Until 1956, women were for the most part excluded from these
pass requirements, as attempts to introduce pass laws for women were met with
fierce resistance.

Disenfranchisement of
Colored Voters

In 1950, D.F. Malan
announcement the NP’s intention to create a Colored Affairs Department. J.G.
Strijdom, Malan’s successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip voting rights
from black and colored residents of the Cape Province. The previous government
introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill into Parliament in
1951; however, four voters, G. Harris, W.D. Franklin, W.D. Collins, and Edgar
Deane, challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The
Cape Supreme Court upheld the act, but it was reversed by the Appeal Court, which
found it invalid because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both
Houses of Parliament was needed to change the entrenched clauses of the
Constitution. The government then introduced the High Court of Parliament Bill
(1952), which gave Parliament the power to overrule decisions of the court. The
Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid as well.

In 1955, the Strijdom
government increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from five to
11 and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill the new seats. In the same
year, the Strijdom government introduced the Senate Act, which increased the
Senate from 49 seats to 89. Adjustments were made to the effect that the NP
controlled 77 of these seats. Parliament met in a joint sitting and passed the
Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956, which transferred colored voters
from the common voters’ roll in the Cape to a new colored voters’ roll.
Immediately after the vote, Senate was restored to its original size. 

The Senate Act was contested
in the Supreme Court, but the recently enlarged Appeal Court, packed with
government-supporting judges, upheld both the Senate and Separate
Representation of Voters Acts. The Separate Representation of Voters Act
allowed colored people to elect four people to Parliament, but a 1969 law
abolished those seats and stripped colored people of their right to vote. Since
Asians had never been allowed to vote, this resulted in whites being the sole
enfranchised group.

Division Among Whites

Before South Africa became a
republic, politics among white South Africans was typified by the division
between mainly Afrikaner pro-republic conservatives and largely English
anti-republican liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the Boer War still
affecting viewpoints among many people. Once South Africa became a republic,
Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater
accord between people of British descent and the Afrikaners. He claimed that
the only difference among these groups was between those in favor of apartheid
and those against it. The ethnic division would no longer be between Afrikaans
and English speakers, but between blacks and whites. Most Afrikaners supported
the notion of unanimity among white people as a means to ensure their safety.
White voters of British descent were divided. Many opposed a republic,
leading to a majority “no” vote in Natal. Later, some recognized the
perceived need for white unity, convinced by the growing trend of decolonization
elsewhere in Africa, which concerned them. British Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech left the British faction feeling
that Britain had abandoned them.

More conservative English speakers
supported Verwoerd. Yet others were troubled by the implications of severing
ties with Britain and wished to remain loyal to the Crown. They were displeased
with their perceived choice between British and South African nationalities.
Although Verwoerd tried to bind these different blocs along racial lines, subsequent
voting patterns illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that many
English speakers remained apathetic and Verwoerd had not truly succeeded in
uniting the white population.

37.3.2: The African National Congress

The African National Congress (ANC) resisted the apartheid system in South Africa using both peaceful and violent
means.

Learning Objective

Describe the
origins and evolution of the African National Congress

Key Points

• The
  African National Congress (ANC) was formed on January 8, 1912, as a way to
  bring Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms.
• The
  successful increase of awareness brought to the plight of Indians in South
  Africa under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi inspired blacks in South Africa
  to resist the racism and inequality that they and other non-whites were
  experiencing under apartheid.
• In
  1949, the ANC saw a jump in membership, which had previously lingered
  around 5,000, and began to establish a firm presence in South African national
  society.
• In
  June 1955, the Congress of the People, organized by the ANC and Indian,
  Colored, and White organizations, adopted the Freedom Charter, the fundamental
  document of the anti-apartheid struggle that demanded equal rights for
  all regardless of race.
• In
  1959, a number of members broke from the ANC due to objections over the
  ANC’s reorientation away from African nationalist policies. They formed the
  rival Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).
• The
  ANC planned a campaign against the Pass Laws to begin on March 31, 1960. The
  PAC preempted the ANC by holding unarmed protests 10 days earlier, during
  which 69 protesters were killed and 180 injured by police fire in what became
  known as the Sharpeville massacre. In the aftermath of the tragedy, both organizations
  were banned from political activity.

• Following
  the Sharpeville massacre, the ANC leadership concluded that methods of
  non-violence were not suitable against the apartheid system. A military wing
  was formed in 1961 called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), with Nelson Mandela as its
  first leader.

• The
  ANC was classified as a terrorist organization by the South African government
  and some Western countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.

Key Term

apartheid

A system of
institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination that existed in South
Africa between 1948 and 1991.

Origins

The African
National Congress (ANC) was formed on January 8, 1912, by Saul Msane, Josiah
Gumede, John Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, and Sol Plaatje. It grew from a number
of chiefs, people’s representatives, and church organizations as a way to bring
Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms. From its
inception, the ANC represented both traditional and modern elements of South
African black society, from tribal chiefs to church bodies and educated black
professionals. Women, however, were only admitted as affiliate members from
1931, and as full members in 1943. The formation of the ANC Youth League in
1944 by Anton Lembede heralded a new generation committed to building
non-violent mass action against the legal underpinnings of the white minority’s
supremacy.

Native National Congress delegation to England, June 1914

Left to right: Thomas Mapike, Rev. Walter Rubusana, Rev. John Dube, Saul Msane, and Sol Plaatjie. The delegation tried to get the British government to intervene against the Land Act, but the outbreak of the First World War thwarted their hopes for intervention.

In 1946, the
ANC allied with the South African Communist Party to assist in the formation of
the South African Mine Workers’ Union. After the miners strike became a general
labor strike, the ANC’s President General Alfred Bitini Xuma, along with
delegates of the South African Indian Congress, attended the 1946 session of
the United Nations General Assembly, where the treatment of Indians in South
Africa was raised by the government of India. Together, they put
the issue of police brutality and the wider struggle for equality in South
Africa on the radar of the international community.

Opposition to
Apartheid

The return
of an Afrikaner-led National Party government by the overwhelmingly white
electorate in 1948 signaled the advent of the policy of apartheid. During the
1950s, non-whites were removed from electoral rolls, residence and mobility
laws were tightened, and political activities restricted. The successful
increase of awareness to the plight of Indians in South Africa under
the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi inspired blacks in South Africa to resist the
racism and inequality that they and other non-whites were experiencing. The
ANC also realized it needed a fervent leader like Gandhi was for the
Indians, who was, in the words of Nelson Mandela, “willing to violate the
law and if necessary go to prison for their beliefs as Gandhi had”. The
two groups began working together, forcing themselves to accept one another and
abandon their personal prejudices, even jointly
campaigning for their struggle to be managed by the United Nations. 

In 1949, the
ANC saw a jump in membership, which had previously lingered around 5,000,
and began to establish a firm presence in South African national society. In
June 1952, the ANC joined with other anti-apartheid organizations in a Defiance
Campaign against the restriction of political, labor, and residential rights,
during which protesters deliberately violated oppressive laws, following the
example of Gandhi’s passive resistance in KwaZulu-Natal and in India. The
campaign was called off in April 1953 after new laws prohibiting protest
meetings were passed. In June 1955, the Congress of the People, organized by
the ANC and Indian, Colored, and White organizations at Kliptown near
Johannesburg, adopted the Freedom Charter, henceforth the fundamental document
of the anti-apartheid struggle, demanding equal rights for all
regardless of race. As opposition to the regime’s policies continued, 156
leading members of the ANC and allied organizations were arrested in 1956. The
resulting “treason trial” ended with mass acquittals five years
later.

The ANC
first called for an academic boycott of South Africa in protest of its
apartheid policies in 1958 in Ghana. The call was repeated the following year
in London.

In 1959, a
number of members broke from the ANC because they objected to the ANC’s
reorientation away from African nationalist policies. They formed the rival Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe.

Protest and Banning

The ANC
planned a campaign against the Pass Laws, which required blacks to carry an identity
card at all times to justify their presence in white areas, to begin on March
31, 1960. The PAC preempted the ANC by holding unarmed protests 10 days
earlier, during which 69 protesters were killed and 180 injured by police fire
in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. In the aftermath of the
tragedy, both organizations were banned from political activity. International
opposition to the regime increased throughout the 1950s and 1960s, fueled by
the growing number of newly independent African nations, the Anti-Apartheid
Movement in Britain, and the civil rights movement in the United States. In
1960, the leader of the ANC, Albert Luthuli, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Murder at Sharpeville, March 21, 1960

Painting of the Sharpeville massacre, which took place March 21, 1960 in Gauteng province, South Africa. The painting, by Godfrey Rubens, is currently located in the South African Consulate in London.

Violent Political Resistance

Following
the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the ANC leadership concluded that methods of
non-violence, such as those utilized by Gandhi against the British Empire, were
not suitable against the apartheid system. A military wing was formed in 1961,
called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), meaning “Spear of the Nation”, with
Mandela as its first leader. MK operations during the 1960s primarily involved
targeting and sabotaging government facilities. Mandela was arrested in 1962,
convicted of sabotage in 1964, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island,
along with Sisulu and other ANC leaders after the Rivonia Trial. During the
1970s and 1980s, the ANC leadership in exile under Oliver Tambo targeted apartheid government leadership, command and control, secret
police, and military-industrial complex assets and personnel in decapitation
strikes, targeted killings, and guerrilla actions such as bomb explosions in
facilities frequented by military and government personnel. A number of
civilians were also killed in these attacks. Examples include the
Amanzimtoti bombing, the Sterland bomb in Pretoria, the Wimpy bomb in Pretoria,
the Juicy Lucy bomb in Pretoria, and the Magoo’s bar bombing in Durban. ANC
acts of sabotage aimed at government institutions included the bombing of the
Johannesburg Magistrates Court, the attack on the Koeberg nuclear power
station, the rocket attack on Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria, and the 1983
Church Street bombing in Pretoria, which killed 16 and wounded 130.

The ANC was
classified as a terrorist organization by the South African government and some
Western countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.
Nevertheless, the ANC had a London office from 1978 to 1994 at 28 Penton Street
in Islington, now marked with a plaque. During this period, the South African
military engaged in a number of raids and bombings on ANC bases in Botswana,
Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Dulcie September, a member of the ANC investigating the arms trade between France and South Africa, was
assassinated in Paris in 1988. In the ANC’s training camps, the ANC faced
allegations that dissident members faced torture, detention without trial, and
even execution.

Violence
also occurred between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, a political party
that grew out of a 1920s cultural organization established for Zulus. Between
1985 and 1989, 5,000 civilians were killed during in-fighting between the two
parties. Massacres of each other’s supporters include the Shell House massacre
and the Boipatong massacre.

As the years
progressed, ANC attacks, coupled with international pressure and internal
dissent, increased in South Africa. The ANC received financial and tactical
support from the USSR, which orchestrated military involvement with surrogate
Cuban forces via Angola. However, the fall of the USSR after 1991 brought an
end to funding and changed the attitude of some Western governments that previously supported the apartheid regime as an ally against communism. The
South African government found itself under increasing internal and external
pressure, and this, together with a more conciliatory tone from the ANC,
resulted in a change in the political landscape. State President F.W. de Klerk
unbanned the ANC and other banned organizations on February 2, 1990, and began
peace talks for a negotiated settlement to end apartheid.

37.3.3: Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress

Nelson Mandela was a central figure in the negotiation process that led to South Africa’s transition from apartheid minority rule to a multicultural democracy.

Learning Objective

Describe the role played by Mandela in repealing apartheid

Key Points

• Apartheid was a system of racial discrimination and segregation in the South African government, ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993.
• When de Klerk became President in 1989, he built on previous secret negotiations with the imprisoned Mandela. The first significant steps toward formal negotiations took place in February 1990 when de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC and other organizations and the release of ANC leader Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison.
• In May 1990, Mandela led a multiracial ANC delegation into preliminary negotiations with a government delegation of 11 Afrikaner men, which led to the Groot Schuur Minute in which the government lifted the state of emergency. 
• In August 1990, Mandela—recognizing the ANC’s severe military disadvantage—offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticized by MK activists.
• The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began in December 1991. Mandela remained a key figure, taking the stage to denounce de Klerk as the “head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime.”
• CODESA 2 was held in May 1992, at which de Klerk insisted that post-apartheid South Africa must use a federal system with a rotating presidency to ensure the protection of ethnic minorities. Mandela opposed this, demanding a unitary system governed by majority rule.
• In September 1992, Mandela and de Klerk resumed negotiations and agreed to a multiracial general election, which would result in a five-year coalition government and a constitutional assembly. The ANC conceded to safeguarding the jobs of white civil servants. The duo also agreed on an interim constitution based on a liberal democratic model, dividing the country into nine provinces each with its own premier and civil service, a compromise between federalism and Mandela’s desire for a unitary government.
• The National Assembly elected during the 1994 general election in turn elected Mandela as South Africa’s first black chief executive.
• Presiding over the transition from apartheid minority rule to a multicultural democracy, Mandela saw national reconciliation as the primary task of his presidency.

Key Term

apartheid

A system of
institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South
Africa between 1948 and 1991.

The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993 and through unilateral steps by the de Klerk government. These negotiations took place between the governing National Party, the African National Congress (ANC), and a wide variety of other political organizations. Negotiations were offset by political violence, including allegations of a state-sponsored third force destabilizing the country. The negotiations resulted in South Africa’s first non-racial election, which was won by the ANC.

Background

Apartheid was a system of racial discrimination and segregation in the South African government. It was formalized in 1948, forming a framework for political and economic dominance by the white population and severely restricting the political rights of the black majority. Between 1960 and 1990, the ANC and other mainly black opposition political organizations were banned. As the National Party cracked down on black opposition to apartheid, most leaders of the ANC and other opposition organizations were either imprisoned or went into exile, including Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned from 1962 until 1990. However, increasing local and international pressure on the government and the realization that apartheid could neither be maintained by force forever nor overthrown by the opposition without considerable suffering, eventually led both sides to the negotiating table.

Early Contact

The first meetings between the South African government and Nelson Mandela were driven by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) under the leadership of Niel Barnard and his Deputy Director General, Mike Louw. These secret meetings were designed to understand if there was sufficient common ground for future peace talks. As these meetings evolved, a level of trust developed between the key actors (Barnard, Louw, and Mandela). To facilitate future talks while preserving secrecy needed to protect the process, Barnard arranged for Mandela to be moved off Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison in 1982. This provided him with more comfortable lodgings, but also gave easier access in a way that could not be compromised. Barnard therefore brokered an initial agreement in principle about what became known as “talks about talks”. It was at this stage that the process was elevated from a secret engagement to a more public engagement.

Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island

The inside of Mandela’s prison cell as it was when he was imprisoned in 1964.
Mandela’s cell later contained more furniture, including a bed from around 1973.

As the secret talks bore fruit and the political engagement began, NIS withdrew from center stage in the process and moved to a new phase of operational support work. This was designed to test public opinion about a negotiated solution. A key initiative was known in Security Force circles as the Dakar Safari, which saw a number of prominent Afrikaner opinion-makers engage with the African National Congress in Dakar, Senegal, and Leverkusen, Germany at events organized by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa. The operational objective of this meeting was not to understand the opinions of the actors themselves—that was well-known at this stage within strategic management circles—but rather to gauge public opinion about a movement away from the previous security posture of confrontation and repression to one based on engagement and accommodation.

Unbanning and Mandela’s Release, 1990-91

When F.W. de Klerk became President in 1989, he built on the previous secret negotiations with the imprisoned Mandela. The first significant steps towards formal negotiations took place in February 1990 when in his speech at the opening of Parliament, de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC and other banned organizations and the release of ANC leader Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison. Mandela proceeded on an African tour, meeting supporters and politicians in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Libya, and Algeria. Then he continued to Sweden, where he was reunited with exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo, and London, where he appeared at the Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa concert at Wembley Stadium in Wembley Park. In France, Mandela was welcomed by President François Mitterrand; in Vatican City by Pope John Paul II; and in the United Kingdom by Thatcher. In the United States, he met President George H.W. Bush, addressed both Houses of Congress, and visited eight cities, with particular popularity among the African-American community. In Cuba, he became friends with President Fidel Castro, whom he had long admired. He met President R. Venkataraman in India, President Suharto in Indonesia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Australia. He visited Japan, but not the USSR, a longtime ANC supporter. All the while, Mandela encouraged foreign countries to support sanctions against the apartheid government.

In May 1990, Mandela led a multiracial ANC delegation into preliminary negotiations with a government delegation of 11 Afrikaner men. Mandela impressed them with his discussions of Afrikaner history, and the negotiations led to the Groot Schuur Minute, in which the government lifted the state of emergency. In August, Mandela—recognizing the ANC’s severe military disadvantage—offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticized by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) activists. He spent much time trying to unify and build the ANC, appearing at a Johannesburg conference in December attended by 1,600 delegates, many of whom found him more moderate than expected. At the ANC’s July 1991 national conference in Durban, Mandela admitted the party’s faults and announced his aim to build a “strong and well-oiled task force” for securing majority rule. At the conference, he was elected ANC President, replacing the ailing Tambo, and a 50-strong multiracial, mixed-gendered national executive was elected.

Mandela was given an office in the newly purchased ANC headquarters at Shell House, Johannesburg, and moved into his wife Winnie Madikizela’s house in Soweto. Their marriage was increasingly strained as he learned of her affair with Dali Mpofu, but he supported her during her trial for kidnapping and assault. He gained funding for her defense from the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa and from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. However, in June 1991, she was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison, reduced to two on appeal. On April 13, 1992, Mandela publicly announced his separation from Winnie. The ANC forced her to step down from the national executive for misappropriating ANC funds and Mandela moved into the mostly white Johannesburg suburb of Houghton.

Mandela’s prospects for a peaceful transition were further damaged by an increase in “black-on-black” violence, particularly between ANC and Inkatha supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, which resulted in thousands of deaths. Mandela met with Inkatha leader Buthelezi, but the ANC prevented further negotiations on the issue. Mandela argued that there was a “third force” within the state intelligence services, fueling the violence. Mandela openly blamed de Klerk – whom he increasingly distrusted – for the Sebokeng massacre. In September 1991, a national peace conference was held in Johannesburg at which Mandela, Buthelezi, and de Klerk signed a peace accord, though the violence continued.

CODESA Talks: 1991-92

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began in December 1991 at the Johannesburg World Trade Center, attended by 228 delegates from 19 political parties. Although Cyril Ramaphosa led the ANC’s delegation, Mandela remained a key figure, and after de Klerk used the closing speech to condemn the ANC’s violence, Mandela denounced de Klerk as the “head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime.” Dominated by the National Party and ANC, little negotiation was achieved. 

At CODESA 2 in May 1992, de Klerk insisted that post-apartheid South Africa must use a federal system with a rotating presidency to ensure the protection of ethnic minorities. Mandela opposed this, demanding a unitary system governed by majority rule. Following the Boipatong massacre of ANC activists by government-aided Inkatha militants, Mandela called off the negotiations before attending a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity in Senegal, at which he called for a special session of the UN Security Council and proposed that a UN peacekeeping force be stationed in South Africa to prevent state terrorism. Calling for domestic mass action, in August the ANC organized the largest-ever strike in South African history, and supporters marched on Pretoria.

Following the Bisho massacre, in which 28 ANC supporters and one soldier were shot dead by the Ciskei Defence Force during a protest march, Mandela realized that mass action was leading to further violence and resumed negotiations in September. He agreed to do so on the conditions that all political prisoners be released, Zulu traditional weapons be banned, and Zulu hostels fenced off. The latter two measures were intended to prevent further Inkatha attacks. de Klerk reluctantly agreed to these terms. The negotiations agreed that a multiracial general election would be held, resulting in a five-year coalition government of national unity and a constitutional assembly that gave the National Party continuing influence. The ANC also conceded to safeguarding the jobs of white civil servants. Such concessions brought fierce internal criticism. The duo also agreed on an interim constitution based on a liberal democratic model, guaranteeing separation of powers, creating a constitutional court, and including a U.S.-style bill of rights. The constitution also divided the country into nine provinces, each with its own premier and civil service, a compromise between de Klerk’s desire for federalism and Mandela’s desire for a unitary South African government.

The democratic process was threatened by the Concerned South Africans Group (COSAG), an alliance of far-right Afrikaner parties and black ethnic-secessionist groups like the Inkatha. In June 1993, the white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) attacked the Kempton Park World Trade Center. Following the murder of ANC activist Chris Hani, Mandela gave a speech to calm rioting soon after appearing at a mass funeral in Soweto for Tambo, who had died of a stroke. In July 1993, both Mandela and de Klerk visited the U.S., independently meeting with President Bill Clinton and each receiving the Liberty Medal. Soon after, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Influenced by Thabo Mbeki, Mandela began meeting with big business figures and played down his support for nationalization, fearing that he would scare away much needed foreign investment. Although criticized by socialist ANC members, he had been encouraged to embrace private enterprise by members of the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist parties at the January 1992 World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Frederik de Klerk with Nelson Mandela

Frederik de Klerk and Nelson Mandela shake hands at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 1992.

General Election: 1994

With the election set for April 27, 1994, the ANC began campaigning, opening 100 election offices and orchestrating People’s Forums across the country at which Mandela could appear. The ANC campaigned on a Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) to build a million houses in five years, introduce universal free education, and extend access to water and electricity. The party’s slogan was “a better life for all,” although it was not explained how this development would be funded. With the exception of the Weekly Mail and the New Nation, South Africa’s press opposed Mandela’s election, fearing continued ethnic strife. Mandela devoted much time to fundraising for the ANC, touring North America, Europe, and Asia to meet wealthy donors, including former supporters of the apartheid regime. He also urged a reduction in the voting age from 18 to 14, which was ultimately rejected by the ANC.

Concerned that COSAG would undermine the election, particularly in the wake of the conflict in Bophuthatswana and the Shell House Massacre—incidents of violence involving the AWB and Inkatha, respectively—Mandela met with Afrikaner politicians and generals, including P.W. Botha, Pik Botha, and Constand Viljoen, persuading many to work within the democratic system. With de Klerk, he also convinced Inkatha’s Buthelezi to enter the elections rather than launch a war of secession. As leaders of the two major parties, de Klerk and Mandela appeared on a televised debate. Although de Klerk was widely considered the better speaker at the event, Mandela’s offer to shake his hand surprised him, leading some commentators to deem it a victory for Mandela. The election went ahead with little violence, although an AWB cell killed 20 with car bombs. As widely expected, the ANC won a sweeping victory, taking 63% of the vote, just short of the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally change the constitution. The ANC was also victorious in seven provinces, with Inkatha and the National Party each taking another.

Presidency of Nelson Mandela

The newly elected National Assembly’s first act was to formally elect Mandela as South Africa’s first black chief executive. His inauguration took place in Pretoria on May 10, 1994, televised to a billion viewers globally. The event was attended by 4,000 guests, including world leaders from a wide range of geographic and ideological backgrounds. Mandela headed a Government of National Unity dominated by the ANC—which had no experience of governing by itself—but containing representatives from the National Party and Inkatha. Under the interim constitution, Inkatha and the National Party were entitled to seats in the government by virtue of winning at least 20 seats in the election. In keeping with earlier agreements, both de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki were given the position of Deputy President. Although Mbeki had not been his first choice for the job, Mandela grew to rely heavily on him throughout his presidency, allowing him to shape policy details. Although he dismantled press censorship and spoke out in favor of freedom of the press, Mandela was critical of much of the country’s media, noting that it was overwhelmingly owned and run by middle-class whites and believing that it focused too heavily on scaremongering about crime.

National Reconciliation

Presiding over the transition from apartheid minority rule to a multicultural democracy, Mandela saw national reconciliation as the primary task of his presidency. Having seen other post-colonial African economies damaged by the departure of white elites, Mandela worked to reassure South Africa’s white population that they were protected and represented in “the Rainbow Nation”. Although his National Unity government would be dominated by the ANC, he attempted to create a broad coalition by appointing de Klerk as Deputy President and other National Party officials as ministers for Agriculture, Energy, Environment, and Minerals and Energy, as well as naming Buthelezi as Minister for Home Affairs. The other cabinet positions were taken by ANC members, many of whom—like Joe Modise, Alfred Nzo, Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj, and Dullah Omar—had long been comrades. Mandela’s relationship with de Klerk was strained because he believed de Klerk was intentionally provocative. Likewise, de Klerk felt that he was being intentionally humiliated by the president. In January 1995, Mandela heavily chastised him for awarding amnesty to 3,500 police officers just before the election, and later criticized him for defending former Minister of Defence Magnus Malan when the latter was charged with murder.

Mandela personally met with senior figures of the apartheid regime, including Hendrik Verwoerd’s widow, Betsie Schoombie, and lawyer Percy Yutar. He also laid a wreath by the statue of Afrikaner hero Daniel Theron. Emphasizing personal forgiveness and reconciliation, Mandela announced that “courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace”. He encouraged black South Africans to get behind the previously hated national rugby team, the Springboks, as South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela wore a Springbok shirt at the final against New Zealand, and after the Springboks won the match, Mandela presented the trophy to captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner. This was widely seen as a major step in the reconciliation of white and black South Africans. Mandela’s efforts at reconciliation assuaged the fears of whites, but also drew criticism from more militant blacks. Among the latter was his estranged wife, Winnie, who accused the ANC of being more interested in appeasing the white community than in helping the black majority.

Mandela oversaw the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate crimes committed under apartheid by both the government and the ANC, appointing Desmond Tutu as its chair. To prevent the creation of martyrs, the Commission granted individual amnesties in exchange for testimony of crimes committed during the apartheid era. Dedicated in February 1996, it held two years of hearings detailing rapes, torture, bombings, and assassinations before issuing its final report in October 1998. Both de Klerk and Mbeki appealed to have parts of the report suppressed, though only de Klerk’s appeal was successful. Mandela praised the Commission’s work, stating that it “had helped us move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future.”

37.4: The Rwandan Genocide

37.4.1: Composition of the Rwandan Population

The Rwandan population is comprised of three
main ethnic groups: the Hutus, Tutsis, and Twa.

Learning Objective

Describe the ethnic subgroups that make up the
Rwandan population

Key Points

• The largest
  ethnic groups in Rwanda are the Hutus, the Tutsis, and the Twa.
• When Europeans
  first explored the region around the Great Lakes of Chad that has since become
  Rwanda, they described the people in the region as having descended from
  three racially distinct tribes and coexisting in a complex social order.
• A contrasting
  picture of human cultural diversity was recorded in the early Rwandan oral
  histories, ritual texts, and biographies, in which the terms Tutsi, Hutu, and
  Twa were rarely used and the boundary between Tutsi and Hutu was somewhat open
  to social mobility.
• Elites in
  pre-colonial Rwanda propagated an origin myth of the three groups to justify
  the hierarchical relationship of sociopolitical inequality between them in
  sacred, religious terms.
• Despite sociopolitical
  stratification, Rwanda was a unified society. Inhabitants all considered
  themselves part of the same nation, spoke the same language, practiced the same
  cultural traditions, and worshiped the same God. 
• European
  colonizers would later exploit group divisions as a means of securing control.

Key Terms

serfs

The status of many peasants within feudal systems,
an individual who occupies a plot of land
and is required to work for the owner of that land in return for protection and
the right to exploit certain fields on the property to maintain their own
subsistence.

pygmies

A member of an ethnic group whose
average height is unusually short. Anthropologists define this as any group where adult men are on average less than 4 feet 11 inches tall.

The largest ethnic groups in
Rwanda are the Hutus, the Tutsis, and the Twa. Starting with the Tutsi feudal
monarchy rule of the 10th century, the Hutus were a subjugated social group.
It was not until Belgian colonization that the tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis
became focused on race, with the Belgians propagating the myth that Tutsis were
the superior ethnicity. The resulting tensions would eventually foster the
slaughtering of Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. Since then, government policy
has changed to recognize one main ethnicity: “Rwandan.”

Rwanda

Location of Rwanda (dark blue) in the African Union (light blue)

The map shows the location of Rwanda. Located in central and east Africa, Rwanda is one of the smallest countries on the African mainland. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Pre-Colonial Rwanda

When Europeans first
explored the region around the Great Lakes of Chad that has since become
Rwanda, they described the people found in the region as descending from
three racially distinct tribes and coexisting in a complex social order: the
Tutsis, Hutus, and Twa. The Tutsis, an elite minority of about 24% of the
population, were tall, slim pastoralists. The Hutu majority, about 75% of the
population, were stocky, strong farmers. The Twa were a marginalized minority
of 1% of the population: a tribe of pygmies, dwelling in the forests as hunters
and gatherers. Although these groups were distinct and stratified in relation
to one another, the boundary between Tutsi and Hutu was somewhat open to social
mobility. The Tutsi elite were defined by their exclusive ownership of land and
cattle. Hutus, though disenfranchised socially and politically, could shed
Hutuness, or kwihutura, by accumulating wealth and thereby rising through the
social hierarchy to the status of Tutsi.

A contrasting picture of
human cultural diversity was recorded in the early Rwandan oral histories,
ritual texts, and biographies, in which the terms Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa were
rarely used and had meanings different from those conceived by the Europeans. In
these oral histories, the term Tutsi was equivalent to the phrase “wealthy
noble”; Hutu meant “farmer”; and Twa was used to refer to people
skilled in hunting, use of fire, pottery-making, guarding, and other disciplines. In contrast to
the European conception, rural farmers are often described as wealthy and well-connected.
Kings sometimes looked down on them but still married individuals from this group and frequently conferred them with titles, land, herds, armies, servitors, and ritual
functions.

Origin Myths

Elites in pre-colonial
Rwanda propagated an origin myth of the three groups to justify the
hierarchical relationship of sociopolitical inequality in sacred,
religious terms. According to this myth, Kigwa, a deity who fell from heaven,
had three sons: Gatwa, Gahutu, and Gatutsi. He chose an heir by giving each son
the responsibility of watching over a pot of milk during the night. Gatwa drank
the milk, Gahutu fell asleep and carelessly spilled his pot, and Gatutsi
kept watch, keeping his milk safe. Therefore, Kigwa appointed Gatutsi to be his
successor and Gahutu to be his brother’s servant, while Gatwa was to be
resigned to the status of an outsider. Gatutsi would possess cattle and power,
and Gahutu would only be allowed to acquire cattle through service to Gatutsi,
whereas Gatwa was condemned to the fringe of society. This myth was the basis
of the hierarchical relationship that placed the Tutsi at the apex of the
social pyramid. The prevalence of this myth became the basis for the social and
political stratification of Rwanda.

From the 15th century
when the Tutsi arrived in what is now Rwanda as migrant pastoralists to the
onset of colonization, Rwanda was a feudal monarchy. A Tutsi monarch ruled,
distributing land and political authority through hereditary chiefs whose power
was manifest in their land and cattle ownership. Most of these chiefs were
Tutsis. The land was farmed under an imposed system of patronage in which Tutsi
chiefs demanded manual labor in return for the rights of Hutus to occupy their
land. This system left Hutus with the status of serfs. Additionally, when
Rwanda conquered the peoples on its borders, their ethnic identities were cast
aside and they were simply labeled “Hutu.” Therefore, “Hutu” became an identity
that was not necessarily ethnic, but rather associated with subjugation.

Stratified Social Hierarchy

This social system was based
on five fundamental assumptions, as reinforced through group interactions and
influenced by cultural myths:

1. Fundamental natural
   differences existed between the groups.

2. The origin of the Tutsis was
   celestial.

3. The civilization that Tutsis
   brought to Rwanda was superior.

4. The kingship of the Tutsi
   Mwami was divinely ordained.

5. Divine sanctions would occur
   if the monarchy was usurped by any other group.

Despite the stratification promulgated by these ideas, Rwanda was still
very much a unified society. Notwithstanding association with different groups
in the sociopolitical hierarchy, the inhabitants all considered themselves part
of the same nation, the Banyarwanda, which means “people of Rwanda.” They spoke
the same language, practiced the same cultural traditions, and worshiped the
same God. However, the arrival of European colonizers would later exploit group
divisions as a means of securing control. The modern conception of Tutsi and
Hutu as distinct ethnic groups in no way reflects the pre-colonial relationship
between them. Tutsi and Hutu were simply groups occupying different places in
the Rwandan social hierarchy, the division between which was exacerbated by
slight differences in appearance propagated by occupation and pedigree.

37.4.2: Imperialism and Racial Divisions

European imperialists used
power disparities and pseudo-science to perpetuate the myth of divergent Tutsi
and Hutu racial identities.

Learning Objective

Explain how European imperialists encouraged
categorizing Rwandans on the basis of ethnicity

Key Points

• The construction
  of divergent ethnic “Tutsi” and “Hutu” identities occurred during the era of
  European colonization from the late 1880s to the 1950s.
• The Germans were
  not interested in disrupting social affairs – their sole concern was the
  efficient extraction of natural resources and trade of profitable cash crops.
  Therefore, their strategy was to reaffirm Tutsi chiefdoms over Hutus to maintain administrative order.
• The German
  presence had mixed effects on the authority of Rwandan governing powers, not
  only helping the Mwami increase control over Rwandan affairs, but also
  weakening Tutsi power due to the introduction of capitalist forces and
  increased integration with outside markets.
• Germany’s defeat
  in World War I allowed Belgian forces to conquer Rwanda, and Belgian
  involvement was far more intrusive than German administration.
• Influenced by
  racialized attitudes, Belgian social scientists declared that Tutsis must be
  descendants of the Hamites, who shared a purported closer bloodline to
  Europeans, and that the Tutsis and Hutus composed two fundamentally different
  ethno-racial groups.

• The Belgians’ pseudo-scientific perspective justified Tutsi racial
  superiority and Hutu oppression for decades to come.

Key Term

Mwami

A chiefly title usually translated as “king.”

Unlike much of the rest of Africa,
Rwanda and the Great Lakes region was not divided up during the 1884 Berlin
Conference. Instead, the region was divided in an 1890 conference in Brussels. Rwanda and Burundi were given to the German Empire as colonial
spheres of interest in exchange for Germany renouncing all claims on Uganda.
The poor-quality maps referenced in these agreements left Belgium with a claim
on the western half of the country, and after several border skirmishes, the
final borders of the colony were not established until 1900. These borders
contained the kingdom of Rwanda as well as a group of smaller kingdoms on the
shore of Lake Victoria.

German and Belgian
Colonization

Germany

The construction of
divergent ethnic “Tutsi” and “Hutu” identities occurred during the era of
European colonization from the late 1880s to the 1950s. German colonialism did
little to alter the existing stratified social system. The Germans were not
interested in disrupting social affairs – their sole concern was the efficient
extraction of natural resources and trade of profitable cash crops. Colonial
bureaucrats relied heavily on native Tutsi chiefs to maintain order over the
Hutu lower classes and collect taxes. Thus, the German affirmation of the
stratified social structure was utilized by the Tutsi aristocracy as
justification for minority rule over the lower-class Hutu masses. 

The German presence had
mixed effects on the authority of Rwandan governing powers. The Germans helped
the Mwami increase their control over Rwandan affairs, but Tutsi power weakened
with the introduction of capitalist forces and via increased integration with
outside markets and economies. Money came to be seen by many Hutus as a replacement
for cattle, in terms of both economic prosperity and for purposes of social standing. Tutsi power was also weakened by Germany through the introduction of the head-tax on all Rwandans. As some Tutsis feared, the tax made the Hutus feel less bonded to their Tutsi patrons and
more dependent on European foreigners. The head-tax also implied equality among
those counted. Thus, despite Germany’s attempt to uphold traditional
Tutsi domination of the Hutus, the Hutu began to shift their ideas surrounding
this concept.

Mwami Palace

A reconstruction of the traditional Mwami’s palace at Nyanza, Rwanda.

Belgium

Germany’s defeat in World
War I allowed Belgian forces to conquer Rwanda. Belgian involvement in the
region was far more intrusive than German administration. In an era of Social
Darwinism, European anthropologists claimed to identify a distinct “Hamitic
race” that was superior to native “Negroid” populations. Influenced by
racialized attitudes, Belgian social scientists declared that the Tutsis, who
wielded political control in Rwanda, must be descendants of the Hamites, who shared
a purported closer bloodline to Europeans. The Belgians concluded that the
Tutsis and Hutus composed two fundamentally different ethno-racial groups.
Thus, the Belgians viewed the Tutsis as more civilized, superior, and most
importantly, more European than the Hutus. 

This perspective justified placement of societal control in the hands of the Tutsis at the expense of the
Hutus, establishing a comprehensive race theory that would dictate Rwandan
society until independence: Tutsi racial superiority and Hutu oppression. The
institutionalization of Tutsi and Hutu ethnic divergence was accomplished
through administrative, political, economic, and educational means. Initially,
Belgian administrators used an expedient method of classification based on the
number of cattle a person owned – anyone with ten or more cattle was considered
a member of the aristocratic Tutsi class. However, the presence of wealthy Hutu
was problematic. Then in 1933, the colonial administration institutionalized a
more rigid ethnic classification by issuing ethnic identification cards,
officially branding every Rwandan as Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa.

Tutsis began to believe the
myth of their superior racial status and exploited their power over the Hutu
majority. A history of Rwanda that justified the existence of these racial
distinctions was written. No historical, archaeological, or
linguistic traces have been found to date that confirm this official history.
The observed differences between the Tutsis and the Hutus are about the same as
those evident between the different French social classes in the 1950s. The way
people nourished themselves explains a large part of the differences observed; for
instance, the Tutsis, who raised cattle, traditionally drank more milk
than the Hutu, who were farmers.

Post-Colonial Framework

As Belgium’s era of colonial
dominance over Rwanda drew to a close during the 1950s, Hutu and Tutsi
racial identities had become firmly institutionalized. Manipulative racial
engineering by the Belgians and the despotic practices of the Tutsi chieftains
they empowered helped to drive together the disparate Rwandan sub-classes under
the “Hutu” moniker. When the Belgians finally left Rwanda in the early
1960s, the politics of racial and ethnic division remained. In the decades that
followed, regimes under both Hutu ultra-nationalists and moderate conciliators
would demonstrate how the labels of Hutu and Tutsi could be molded to fit political expediency.

37.4.3: 100 Days of Violence

The Rwandan genocide was a
mass slaughter of Tutsi people in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority
government.

Learning Objective

Recall the key events of the
100 Days of Violence

Key Points

• The army began
  training Hutu youth in combat and arming civilians in 1990 as part of an official
  program of civil defense against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
• In March 1993,
  Hutu Power groups began compiling lists of “traitors” who they planned to kill,
  possibly including President Juvenal Habyarimana.
• In October 1993,
  the President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, who had been elected in June as the
  country’s first ever Hutu president, was assassinated by extremist Tutsi army
  officers.

• On January 11,
  1994, General Romeo Dallaire, commander of United Nations Assistance Mission
  for Rwanda (UNAMIR) sent the infamous “Genocide Fax” to UN Headquarters,
  stating that an informant told him of plans to distribute weapons to Hutu
  militias to kill Belgian members of UNAMIR and guarantee Belgian
  withdrawal from the country.

• On April 6,
  1994, the airplane carrying President Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the
  Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali,
  killing everyone on board.
• Following Habyarimana’s
  death, a crisis committee was formed, which would remain the de facto source of
  power in the country as well as one of the driving sources of the genocide.
• Within hours of
  Habyarimana’s death, the genocide began. For the remainder of April and early
  May, the Presidential Guard, gendarmerie,
  and youth militias, aided by local populations, continued killing at very high
  rates.
• The RPF made
  slow but steady gains in the north and east of the country, ending killings in
  each area they occupied. 

• At the end of July, Kagame’s RPF forces held the whole of Rwanda, except
  for the zone in the southwest that was occupied by Operation Turquoise,
  effectively ending the genocide.

Key Terms

interahamwe

A Hutu paramilitary organization that enjoyed
the backing of the Hutu-led government leading up to and during the Rwandan
genocide. Since the genocide, they have been driven out of Rwanda, mainly to
Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).

UN Charter article 2(4)

“All members shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Although some
commentators interpret Article 2(4) as banning only the use of force directed
at the territorial integrity or political independence of a state, the more
widely held opinion is that these are merely intensifiers, and that the article
constitutes a general prohibition subject only to the exceptions stated in the
Charter (i.e., self-defense and Chapter VII action by the Security Council).

The Rwandan genocide, also
known as the genocide against the Tutsi, was a mass slaughter of Tutsi people
in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 500,000 to
one million Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to
mid-July 1994, constituting as many as 70% of the Tutsi population and 20% of
Rwanda’s overall population. 

Nyamata Memorial Site

Human skulls at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial.

Prelude

Preparation for Genocide

Historians do not agree on a
precise date on which the idea of a “final solution” to kill
every Tutsi in Rwanda was introduced. The army began training Hutu youth in
combat and arming civilians with weapons such as machetes in 1990, as part of
an official program of civil defense against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF),
which largely consisted of Tutsi refugees whose families had fled to Uganda
after the 1959 Hutu revolt against colonial rule. Rwanda also purchased large
numbers of grenades and munitions starting in late 1990. In one deal, future UN
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his role as Egyptian foreign
minister, facilitated a large sale of arms from Egypt. The Rwandan Armed Forces
(FAR) also expanded rapidly during this time, growing from fewer than 10,000
troops to almost 30,000 in one year. New recruits were often poorly
disciplined, however, and a divide grew between them and the more elite,
experienced units.

In March 1993, the Hutu
Power group began compiling lists of “traitors” who they planned to kill, and
it is possible that President Juvenal Habyarimana’s name was on these lists.
The far-right Hutu Power political party Coalition for the Defense of the
Republic (CDR) was actively and openly accusing the president of treason, and
many Power groups believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition. In turn, they founded a new
radio station, Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), which
broadcast racist propaganda, obscene jokes, and music, and quickly became
popular throughout the country. Throughout 1993, hardliners imported machetes
on a scale far larger than required for agriculture, as well as other
tools that could be used as weapons, such as razor blades, saws, and scissors.
These tools were distributed around the country, ostensibly as part of the
civil defense network.

In October 1993, the
President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, who had been elected in June as the
country’s first ever Hutu president, was assassinated by extremist Tutsi army
officers. The assassination caused shock waves throughout the country,
reinforcing the notion among Hutus that the Tutsi were their enemy and could
not be trusted. The CDR and Power wings of other parties quickly realized they
could use the situation to their advantage. The idea of a Tutsi “final
solution”, which had been floating around as a fringe political viewpoint, now
occupied the top of Hutu party agendas and was actively planned. The Hutu Power
groups were confident of persuading the Hutu population to carry out killings
given the public anger at Ndadaye’s murder, the persuasiveness of RTLM
propaganda, and the traditional obedience of Rwandans to authority. Power
leaders began arming the interahamwe
and other militia groups with AK-47s and other weapons, whereas previously they
possessed only machetes and traditional hand weapons.

On January 11, 1994, General
Romeo Dallaire, commander of United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
(UNAMIR) sent the infamous “Genocide Fax” to UN Headquarters. The fax stated
that Dallaire was in contact with a high-level informant who told him of plans
to distribute weapons to Hutu militias to kill Belgian members of
UNAMIR and guarantee Belgian withdrawal from the country. The informant, a local
politician, had been ordered to register all Tutsis in Kigali. Dallaire
requested permission for the protection of his informant and the informant’s
family, but Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the UN, repeatedly forbade
any operations despite having authority for approval until guidance was
received from headquarters, citing UN Charter article 2(4). 

Assassination of Habyarimana

On April 6, 1994, the airplane
carrying President Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of
Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, killing everyone on
board. Responsibility for the attack was disputed, with both the RPF and Hutu
extremists blamed. A later investigation by the Rwandan government blamed
Hutu extremists in the Rwandan army. Despite disagreements about the
perpetrators, the attack and deaths of the two Hutu presidents served as the
catalyst for the genocide.

Following Habyarimana’s
death, on the evening of April 6, a crisis committee was formed of
Major General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, and a number
of other senior army staff officers. The committee was headed by Bagosora,
despite the presence of the more senior Ndindiliyimana. Prime Minister Agathe
Uwilingiyimana was legally next in the line of political succession, but the
committee refused to recognize her authority. Dallaire met with the committee
that night and insisted that Uwilingiyimana be placed in charge, but Bagosora
refused, saying Uwilingiyimana did not “enjoy the confidence of the Rwandan
people” and was “incapable of governing the nation”. Bagosora sought to
convince UNAMIR and the RPF that the committee was acting to contain the
Presidential Guard, which he described as “out of control,” and that it would
abide by the Arusha agreement, which had ended the three-year Rwandan civil
war.

Killings of Moderate Leaders

UNAMIR sent an escort of ten
Belgian soldiers to bring Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana her to the Radio Rwanda offices to address the nation. The plan
was cancelled, however, because the Presidential Guard took over the radio
station shortly afterwards and would not permit Uwilingiyimana to speak on air.
Later that morning, a number of soldiers and a crowd of civilians overwhelmed
the Belgians guarding Uwilingiyimana, forcing them to surrender their weapons.
Uwilingiyimana and her husband were killed, but their children survived by
hiding behind furniture and were rescued by Senegalese UNAMIR officer Mbaye
Diagne. The ten Belgians guards were taken to the Camp Kigali military base
where they were tortured and killed.

In addition to assassinating
Uwilingiyimana, the extremists spent the night of April 6 in Kigali with lists of prominent moderate politicians and journalists
on a mission to kill them. Fatalities that evening included President of the
Constitutional Court Joseph Kavaruganda, Minister of Agriculture Frederic
Nzamurambaho, Parti Liberal leader Landwald Ndasingwa and his Canadian wife,
and chief Arusha negotiator Boniface Ngulinzira. A few moderates survived,
including prime minister-delegate Faustin Twagiramungu, but the plot was
successful enough that by the morning of April 7, all moderate politicians and
leaders were either dead or in hiding.

Genocide

The genocide itself began
within a few hours of Habyariamana’s death. Military leaders in Gisenyi
province were initially the most organized, convening a large number of interahamwe and civilian Hutu. The
commanders announced the president’s death, blamed the RPF, and then ordered
the crowd to begin killing. The genocide spread to Ruhengeri, Kibuye, Kigali,
Kibungo, Gikongoro, and Cyangugu provinces on April 7. In each case, local
officials, responding to orders from Kigali, spread rumors that the RPF had
killed the president and commanded the population to kill Tutsi in retribution.
The Hutu population, which had been prepared and armed during the preceding
months, carried out the orders without question. There were few killings in
Gitarama and Butare provinces during the early phases of the genocide, due to
the moderation of their governors. Killings began in earnest in
Gitarama on April 9 and in Butare on April 19, following the arrest and murder
of Tutsi governor Jean Baptiste Habyarimana. The genocide did not affect areas
already under RPF control, including parts of Byumba province and eastern
Ruhengeri.

For the remainder of April
and early May, the Presidential Guard, gendarmerie,
and youth militias, aided by local populations, continued killing at very high
rates. Historian Gerard Prunier estimates in his book The Rwanda Crisis that up to 800,000 Rwandans were murdered during
the first six weeks of the genocide, which represents a rate of killing five
times higher than during the German Holocaust. The goal of the
genocide was to kill every Tutsi living in Rwanda, and with the exception of
the advancing RPF army, there was no opposition force to prevent or slow the
killings. Domestic opposition had already been eliminated and UNAMIR was expressly forbidden to use force except in self-defense. In rural areas, where
Tutsi and Hutu lived side-by-side and families knew each other, it was easy for
Hutu to identify and target their Tutsi neighbors. In urban areas were
residents were more anonymous, identification was facilitated using road blocks
manned by the military and interahamwe.
Each person who encountered a road block was required to show their national
identity card, which included ethnicity, and anyone carrying a Tutsi card was
slaughtered immediately. Many Hutu were also killed for a variety of reasons,
including demonstrating sympathy for moderate opposition parties, being a
journalist, or simply appearing Tutsi.

The RPF made slow and steady
gains in the north and east of the country, ending killings in each area they
occupied. The genocide was effectively ended in April in areas of Ruhengeri,
Byumba, Kibungo, and Kigali provinces. The killings also ceased during f April in western Ruhengeri and Gisenyi because almost every Tutsi had
been eliminated. Large numbers of Hutu in RPF-conquered areas fled, fearing
retribution killings. Half a million Kibungo residents fled over the bridge at
Rusumo Falls into Tanzania at the end of April and were accommodated in UN
camps effectively controlled by ousted leaders of the Hutu regime.

In the remaining provinces,
killings continued throughout May and June, although they became increasingly
sporadic. Most Tutsi were already eliminated and the interim government hoped
to rein in the growing anarchy and engage the population in fighting the
encroaching RPF. On June 23, approximately 2,500 soldiers entered southwestern
Rwanda as part of the French-led UN Operation Turquoise, intended as
a humanitarian mission, although the soldiers were unable to save significant
lives. The genocidal authorities were overtly welcoming of the
French, displaying the French flag on their own vehicles, but slaughtering
Tutsi who came out of hiding seeking protection. 

Planning and Organization

The crisis committee, headed
by Bagosora, took power following Habyarimana’s death and was the principal
authority coordinating the genocide. Bagosora immediately began issuing orders
to kill Tutsi, addressing groups of interahamwe
in person in Kigali and making telephone calls to leaders in the provinces.
Other leading national organizers included defense minister Augustin
Bizimana; commander of the paratroopers, Aloys Ntabakuze; and head of the
Presidential Guard, Protais Mpiranya. Businessman Felicien Kabuga funded the
RTLM and the interahamwe, while
Pascal Musabe and Joseph Nzirorera were responsible for coordinating militia
activities nationally. In Kigali, the genocide was led by the Presidential
Guard. They were assisted by militias, who in turn set up road blocks
throughout the capital. Militias also initiated house searches within the city,
slaughtering Tutsi and looting their property. Kigali governor Tharcisse
Renzaho played a leading role, touring road blocks to ensure their effectiveness
and using his position at the top of the Kigali provincial government to
disseminate orders and dismiss officials who were not sufficiently active in
perpetuating murder.

In rural areas, the local
government hierarchy was also in most cases the chain of command for execution
of the genocide. The governor of each province, acting on orders from Kigali,
disseminated instructions to the district leaders who in turn issued directions
to the leaders of the sector, cells, and villages of their districts. The majority
of actual killings in the countryside were carried out by ordinary civilians
under orders from their leaders. A combination of historical Hutu repression by
the Tutsi minority, a culture of obedience to authority, and duress due to the
belief that lack of participation would lead to violent retribution, all
contributed to the willingness of ordinary citizens to commit violent acts
against their neighbors.

The crisis committee
appointed an interim government on April 8. Using the terms of the 1991
constitution instead of the Arusha Accords, the committee designated Theodore
Sindikubwabo as interim president and Jean Kambanda was the new prime minister.
All political parties were represented in the government, but most members were
from the Hutu Power wings of their respective parties. The interim government
was sworn in on April 9, and immediately relocated their headquarters from
Kigali to Gitarama in order to avoid fighting between the RPF and Rwandan army
in the capital. The crisis committee was officially dissolved, but Bagosora and
some senior officers remained de facto rulers of the country. The government
played some part in mobilizing the population, providing the regime an air of
legitimacy, but it was in reality a puppet regime with no ability to halt the
army or interahamwe’s activities.

Impact

Given the chaotic nature of
the situation, there is no consensus on the number of people killed during the
genocide. Unlike the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge
in Cambodia, authorities made no attempts to document or systematize deaths.
The succeeding RPF government has stated that 1,071,000 were killed in 100 days,
10% of whom were Hutu. Based on those statistics, it could be derived that 10,000
people were murdered every day, which equals 400 people per hour, or seven
people every minute. The journalist Philip Gourevitch agrees with an estimate
of one million, while the UN estimates the death toll to be 800,000. It is
estimated that approximately 300,000 Tutsi survived the genocide. Thousands of
widows, many of whom were subjected to rape, are now HIV-positive. The genocide
also created about 400,000 orphans, and nearly 85,000 of them were forced to
become heads of households.

Rwandan Patriotic Front
Military Campaign and Victory

On April 7, as the genocide
began, RPF commander Paul Kagame warned the crisis committee and UNAMIR that he
would resume the civil war if the killing did not stop. The next day, Rwandan
government forces attacked the national parliament building from several
directions, but RPF troops stationed there successfully fought back. The RPF
then began an attack from the north on three fronts, seeking to link up quickly
with the isolated troops in Kigali. Kagame refused to talk to the interim
government, believing that it was just a cover for Bagosora’s rule and not truly
committed to ending the genocide. Over the next few days, the RPF advanced
steadily south, capturing Gabiro and large areas of the countryside to the
north and east of Kigali. They avoided attacking Kigali or Byumba, but
conducted maneuvers designed to encircle the cities and cut off supply routes.
The RPF also allowed Tutsi refugees from Uganda to settle behind the front line
in RPF-controlled areas.

Paul Kagame (2014)

Paul Kagame was commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front for most of the Civil War.

Throughout April, there were
numerous attempts by UNAMIR to establish a ceasefire, but Kagame insisted each
time that the RPF would not stop fighting unless the killings stopped. In late
April, the RPF secured the whole of the Tanzanian border area and began to move
west from Kibungo to the south of Kigali. They encountered little resistance,
except around Kigali and Ruhengeri. By May 16, they cut the road between
Kigali and Gitarama, the temporary home of the interim government, and by June
13, they had taken Gitarama itself following an unsuccessful attempt by the
Rwandan government forces to reopen the road. Subsequently, the interim
government was forced to relocate to Gisenyi in the far northwest. As well as
fighting the war, Kagame was recruiting heavily to expand the RPF. The new
recruits included Tutsi survivors of the genocide and refugees from Burundi,
but they were less well -trained and disciplined than earlier recruits.

Having completed the encirclement of Kigali, the RPF spent the latter of
half of June fighting for the city itself. The government forces had superior
manpower and weapons, but the RPF steadily gained in territory while conducting
raids to rescue civilians behind enemy lines. Kagame was able to exploit the
government forces’ focus on the genocide and translate that into RPF wins in
the battle for Kigali. The RPF also benefited from the government’s waning
morale as it lost territory. The RPF finally defeated Rwandan government forces
in Kigali on July 4, and on July 18, they took Gisenyi and the rest of the
northwest, forcing the interim government into Zaire, ending the genocide. At
the end of July 1994, Kagame’s forces held the whole of Rwanda, except for the
zone in the southwest occupied by the French-led UN force, Operation
Turquoise.

37.4.4: Aftermath and Reconciliation in Rwanda

Rwandans had recourse to international and
community justice in the aftermath of the genocide.

Learning Objective

Evaluate the methods used to encourage
reconciliation after the genocide

Key Points

• The systematic
  destruction of the judicial system during the genocide and civil war was a
  major problem for the prospects of reconciliation in Rwanda. 
• It was not
  until 1996 that Rwandan courts finally began trials for genocide cases with the
  enactment of Organic Law N° 08/96 of 30 on August 30.
• In response to
  the overwhelming number of potentially culpable individuals and the slow pace
  of the traditional judicial system, the government of Rwanda passed Organic Law
  N° 40/2000 in 2001, establishing Gacaca Courts at all administrative levels.
• The Gacaca
  court system traditionally dealt with conflicts within communities, but it was
  adapted to deal with genocide crimes.
• The International
  Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had jurisdiction over high-level members of
  the government and armed forces, while the government of Rwanda was responsible
  for prosecuting lower-level leaders and local people.
• Following the
  RPF victory, approximately two million Hutu fled to refugee camps in neighboring
  countries, particularly Zaire, fearing RPF reprisals for the Rwandan Genocide.
• Refugee camps
  were set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but
  were effectively controlled by the army and government of the former Hutu
  regime, who began rearming in a bid to return to power in Rwanda.
• In addition to
  dismantling the refugee camps, Kagame began planning a war to remove the long
  time dictator of Zaire, who had supported the genocidaires based in the camps and was accused of allowing
  attacks on Tutsi people within Zaire.

Key Term

Gacaca

Loosely translated to “justice among the grass,”
a system of community justice inspired by Rwandan tradition. It was adapted in 2001 to fit the needs of Rwanda in
the wake of the 1994 genocide.

Domestic Situation

The infrastructure and
economy of Rwanda suffered greatly during the genocide. Many buildings were
uninhabitable, and the former regime had taken all currency and
movable assets when they fled the country. Human resources were also
severely depleted, with over 40% of the population having been killed or fled.
Many of the remainder were traumatized: most had lost relatives, witnessed
killings, or participated in the genocide. The long-term effects of war rape in
Rwanda for the victims include social isolation, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies and babies, with some women resorting to self-induced
abortions. The army, led by Paul Kagame, maintained law and order while the
government began the work of rebuilding the country’s structures.

Rwanda’s demography over time

Rwanda’s population (1961-2003). Y-axis : Number of inhabitants in thousands.

Non-governmental organizations
began to move back into the country, but the international community did not
provide significant assistance to the new regime, and most international aid
was routed to the refugee camps formed in Zaire following the exodus
of Hutu from Rwanda. Kagame strove
to portray the government as inclusive and not Tutsi-dominated. He directed the
removal of ethnicity from citizens’ national identity cards, and the government
began a policy of downplaying the distinctions among Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.

During the genocide and in
the months following the RPF victory, RPF soldiers killed many people they
accused of participating in or supporting the genocide. Many of these soldiers
were recent Tutsi recruits from within Rwanda who had lost family or friends
and sought revenge. The scale, scope, and source of ultimate responsibility of
these reprisal killings is disputed, although some non-governmental
organizations such as Human Rights Watch alleged that Kagame and the RPF elite
either tolerated or organized the killings. In an interview with journalist
Stephen Kinzer, Kagame acknowledged that killings had occurred, but stated that
they were carried out by rogue soldiers and had been impossible to control.

July 4, 1994, is marked as Liberation
Day in Rwanda and commemorated as a public holiday. The RPF has been the
dominant political party in the country since 1994 and maintained control
of the presidency and the Parliament in national elections, with the party’s
vote share consistently exceeding 70%. The RPF is seen as a Tutsi-dominated
party but receives support from across ethnic sub-groups. It is credited with
ensuring continued peace, stability, and economic growth; however, some human
rights organizations, such as Freedom House and Amnesty International, claim
that the government suppresses the freedoms of opposition groups.

Justice System

The systematic destruction
of the judicial system during the genocide and civil war was a major problem
for the prospects of reconciliation in Rwanda. After the genocide, over one
million people were potentially culpable for their roles in the genocide, amounting
to nearly one-fifth of the population remaining after the summer of 1994. The
RPF pursued a policy of mass arrests for the genocide, jailing over 100,000 in
the two years after the genocide. The pace of arrests overwhelmed the physical
capacity of the Rwandan prison system, leading to what Amnesty International
deemed “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”. The country’s 19 prisons were
designed to hold about 18,000 inmates, but at their peak in 1998, there were
100,000 people in detention facilities across the country.

Government institutions,
including judicial courts, were destroyed, and many judges, prosecutors, and
employees were murdered. By 1997, Rwanda only had 50 lawyers in its judicial
system. These barriers caused trials of those arrested for
genocide-related crimes to proceed very slowly. Of the 130,000 suspects held in
Rwandan prisons after the genocide, 3,343 cases were handled between
1996 and the end of 2000. Of those defendants, 20% received death sentences,
32% received sentencing of life in prison, and 20% were acquitted. It was
calculated that it would take over 200 years to conduct the trials of the
suspects in prison—not including individuals who remained at large.

It was not until 1996 that
Rwandan courts finally began trials for genocide cases with the enactment of
Organic Law N° 08/96 of 30 on August 30, 1996. This law established the
regular domestic courts as the core mechanism for responding to genocide until
it was amended in 2001 to include the Gacaca Courts. The Organic Law
established four categories for those involved in the genocide, specifying the
limits of punishment for members of each category. The first category was
reserved for those who were “planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and
leaders” of the genocide or who used positions of state authority
to promote the genocide. This category also applied to murderers who
distinguished themselves on the basis of their zeal or cruelty or who engaged
in sexual torture. Members of this first category were eligible for the death
sentence.

While Rwanda had the death
penalty prior to the 1996 Organic Law, no executions had taken
place since 1982. However, following the enactment of the 1996 Organic Law, 22
individuals were executed by firing squad in public executions in April 1997.
After this, Rwanda conducted no further executions, though it did continue to
issue death sentences until 2003. On July 25, 2007, the Organic Law Relating to
the Abolition of the Death Penalty came into law, abolishing the death penalty
and converting all existing death penalty sentences to life in prison under
solitary confinement.

Gacaca Courts

In response to the
overwhelming number of potentially culpable individuals and the slow pace of
the traditional judicial system, the government of Rwanda passed Organic Law N°
40/2000 in 2001. The new law established Gacaca Courts at all
administrative levels of Rwanda and in Kigali. It was mainly created to lessen
the burden on normal courts and escalate the administration of justice for
those already in prison. The least severe cases, according to the terms
of Organic Law N° 08/96 of 30, would be handled by the Gacaca Courts.
With this law, the government began implementing a participatory justice
system, known as Gacaca, to address the enormous backlog of cases.

The Gacaca court system
traditionally dealt with conflicts within communities, but was adapted to
deal with genocide crimes. The following are the objectives of the Gacaca Courts:

• Identifying the truth about
  what happened during the genocide

• Speeding up genocide
  trials,

• Fighting against a culture
  of impunity

• Contributing to the national
  unity and reconciliation process

• Demonstrating the capacity
  of the Rwandan people to resolve their own problems.

Throughout the years, the
Gacaca court system went through a series of modifications. It is estimated
that it has tried over one million cases to date. Meanwhile,
the UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based
in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Tribunal had jurisdiction over high-level members
of the government and armed forces, while the government of Rwanda was
responsible for prosecuting lower-level leaders and local people.

Closing of the Courts

On June 18, 2012, the Gacaca
court system was officially closed after facing criticism over favoring members
and associated parties to the RPF-dominated government. Concern persisted that
the judges who presided over the genocide trials were not trained adequately
for serious legal questions or complex proceedings. Further, many judges
resigned after facing accusations of personal participation in the genocide. There was a lack of defense counsel and protections for the
accused, who were denied the right to appeal to ordinary courts. Most trials
were open to the public, but there were issues relating to witness
intimidation. 

Since the ICTR was
established as an ad hoc international jurisdiction, the tribunal was
officially closed on December 31, 2015. Initially, the UN Security Council
established the ICTR in 1994 with a mandate of four years without a fixed
deadline. As the years passed, however, it became apparent that the ICTR would
exist long past its original mandate. 

Refugees, Insurgency, and
the Congo Wars

Following the RPF victory,
approximately two million Hutu fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries,
particularly Zaire, fearing RPF reprisals for the Rwandan Genocide. Refugee
camps were crowded and squalid, and thousands of refugees died in disease
epidemics, including cholera and dysentery. The camps were set up by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but were effectively controlled
by the army and government of the former Hutu regime, including many leaders of
the genocide, who began rearming in a bid to return to power in Rwanda. By late
1996, Hutu militants from the camps were launching regular cross-border
incursions, and the RPF-led Rwandan government launched a counteroffensive.
Rwanda provided troops and military training to the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group
in the Zairian South Kivu province, helping them to defeat Zairian security
forces. Rwandan forces, the Banyamulenge, and other Zairian Tutsi then
attacked the refugee camps, targeting Hutu militia. These attacks caused
hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee, many returning to Rwanda
despite the presence of the RPF, while others ventured further west into Zaire.

Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire

Refugee camp for Rwandans in Kimbumba, eastern Zaire (current Democratic Republic of the Congo), following the Rwandan genocide.

The defeated forces of the
former regime continued a cross-border insurgency campaign, supported initially
by the predominantly Hutu population of Rwanda’s northwestern provinces. By
1999, however, a program of propaganda and Hutu integration into the Rwandan national
army succeeded in bringing the Hutu to the side of the government, and the
insurgency was defeated.

In addition to dismantling
the refugee camps, Kagame began planning a war to remove long-time dictator of
Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko, from power. Mobutu supported the genocidaires based in the camps and was
accused of allowing attacks on Tutsi people within Zaire. The rebels
quickly took control of North and South Kivu provinces and then advanced west,
gaining territory from the poorly organized and demotivated Zairian army with
little fighting, and controlling the whole country by May 1997. Mobutu
fled into exile and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC). Rwanda fell out with the new Congolese regime in 1998 and Kagame
supported a fresh rebellion, leading to the Second Congo War. This war lasted
until 2003 and caused millions of deaths and massive damage. A 2010 UN report
accused the Rwandan army of committing widespread human rights violations and
crimes against humanity in the DRC during the two Congo wars, but the charges
were denied by the Rwandan government.

37.4.5: The Lack of International Response

Most international actors during the Rwandan
genocide stood on the sidelines, hoping to avoid their own nationals’ loss of
life and political entanglements.

Learning Objective

Account for the lack of international
intervention during the Rwandan genocide

Key Points

• The United
  Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) had been in Rwanda since October
  1993, but their mandate was hampered by the UN’s inability to intervene
  militarily, President Habyarimana and other Hutu Power hardliners, and the loss
  of troops.

• During the first
  few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis, a military operation
  assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate expatriates from Rwanda,
  but the French and Belgians refused to allow any Tutsi to accompany the
  evacuations.

• In late June
  1994, France launched Opération Turquoise, a UN-mandated mission to create safe
  humanitarian areas for displaced persons, refugees, and civilians in danger, but
  as the genocide came to an end and the RPF ascended to a leadership role within
  the country, many Rwandans interpreted Turquoise as a mission to protect Hutu
  from the RPF.

• U.S. president
  Bill Clinton and his cabinet were aware of a “final solution” for Tutsi people
  within Rwanda before the massacre began, but fear of a repeat of the events in
  Somalia shaped U.S. failure to intervene.

• Many Catholic and other clergy within Rwanda sacrificed their lives to
  save others from slaughter; however, there is evidence that others did
  little to prevent the spread of the genocide, with some even actively
  participating in crimes.

Key Terms

Chapter VI mandate

The chapter of the United Nations Charter that deals
with peaceful settlement of disputes. It requires countries with disputes that
could lead to war to first seek solutions via peaceful methods. If these
methods of alternative dispute resolution fail, the issue must be referred to
the UN Security Council.

Françafrique

A portmanteau of France and Afrique used to
denote France’s relationship with its former African colonies and sometimes
extended to cover former Belgian colonies as well.

Most of the world stood on
the sidelines during the Rwandan genocide, hoping to avoid the loss of life and
political entanglement that the American debacle in Somalia had created. As
reports of the genocide spread through the media, the Security Council agreed
to supply more than 5,000 troops to Rwanda to combat the genocide. But the
delay and denial of recommendations prevented the force from getting there in a
timely fashion, and ultimately they arrived months after the genocide was over.
After the genocide, many government officials in the international community
mourned the loss of thousands of civilians within Rwanda, though they took no action to prevent the slaughter as it was happening. 

UNAMIR

The United Nations
Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) had been in Rwanda since October 1993
with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the Arusha Accords following
the Rwandan civil war. UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire learned of the Hutu
Power movement during the mission’s deployment, as well as plans for the mass
extermination of Tutsi. Dallaire also learned of growing secret weapons caches,
but his request to raid them was turned down by the UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). UNAMIR’s effectiveness in peacekeeping was also
hampered by President Habyarimana and Hutu hardliners, and by April 1994, the
Security Council threatened to terminate UNAMIR’s mandate if it did not make
progress with its mission.

Kigali school chalkboard

A school chalkboard in Kigali. Note the names “Dallaire,” UNAMIR Force Commander, and “Marchal,” UNAMIR Kigali sector commander.

Following the death of
Habyarimana and the start of the genocide, Dallaire liaised repeatedly with
both the Crisis Committee and the RPF, attempting to re-establish peace and
prevent the resumption of the civil war. Neither side was interested in a
ceasefire: the government was controlled by backers of the genocide, and the
RPF considered continued fighting necessary to stop the killings. UNAMIR’s
Chapter VI mandate rendered it powerless to intervene militarily, and most of
its Rwandan staff were killed in the early days of the genocide, severely
limiting its ability to operate. On April 12, the Belgian government, one of the largest troop contributors to UNAMIR, lost ten soldiers who were
protecting Prime Minister Uwilingillyimana, and subsequently announced its
withdrawal from the force, reducing UNAMIR’s effectiveness further. 

UNAMIR was therefore largely
reduced to a bystander role, and Dallaire later labeled it a failure. Its most
significant contribution was to provide refuge for thousands of Tutsi and
moderate Hutu at its headquarters in Amahoro Stadium as well as other secure
UN sites, and in assisting with the evacuation of foreign nationals. In
mid-May, the UN finally conceded that “acts of genocide may have been
committed” and agreed to reinforcement, which would be referred to as UNAMIR
2. New soldiers did not start arriving until June, however, and following the
end of the genocide in July, the role of UNAMIR 2 was largely confined to
maintaining security and stability until its termination in 1996.

France and Operation
Turquoise

During President
Habyarimana’s years in power, France maintained very close relations with him
as part of its Françafrique policy and assisted Rwanda militarily against the
RPF during the Civil War. France considered the RPF, along with Uganda, to be a
part of a plot to increased Anglophone influence at the expense of that of the
French. During the first few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis,
a military operation assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate
expatriates from Rwanda. The French and Belgians refused to allow any Tutsi to
accompany them, and those who boarded the evacuation trucks were forced off at
Rwandan government checkpoints, where they were killed. The French also
separated several expatriates and children from their Tutsi spouses, rescuing
the foreigners but leaving the Rwandans to a likely death. The French did,
however, rescue several high profile members of Habyarimana’s government, as
well as his wife, Agathe.

In late June 1994, France
launched Opération Turquoise, a UN-mandated mission to create safe humanitarian
areas for displaced persons, refugees, and civilians in danger. The French
entered southwestern Rwanda from bases in the Zairian cities of Goma and Bukavu
and established the zone Turquoise within the Cyangugu-Kibuye-Gikongoro
triangle, an area occupying approximately one-fifth of Rwanda. Radio France
International Estimated that Turquoise saved around 15,000 lives, but as the
genocide came to an end and the RPF ascended to a leadership role within the
country, many Rwandans interpreted Turquoise as a mission to protect Hutu from
the RPF, including some Hutu who had participated in the genocide. The French
remained hostile to the RPF and their presence did temporarily stall the RPF’s
advance. A number of inquiries have been made into French involvement in
Rwanda, including the 1998 French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda, which
accused France of errors of judgement but stopped short of accusing it of
direct responsibility for the genocide itself. A 2008 report by the Rwandan
government and sponsored by the Mucyo Commission, however, did accuse the
French government of knowing about the genocide and helping to train
Hutu militia members.

Other International Actors

Southern European Task Force (SETAF) Transporting Water

The water was made by eight chlorinators and two reverse osmosis machines in Goma for Rwandan refugees located at Camp Kimbumba, Zaire.

Intelligence reports
indicated that U.S. president Bill Clinton and his cabinet were aware of a “final
solution” for Tutsi people within Rwanda before the height of the massacre. However, fear of a repeat of the events in Somalia shaped U.S. policy at
the time, with many commentators identifying the graphic consequences of the
Battle of Mogadishu as the key reason for the U.S. failure to intervene in
later conflicts such as the Rwandan Genocide. After the Battle of Mogadishu,
the bodies of several U.S. casualties were dragged through the streets by crowds
of local civilians and members of Aidid’s Somali National Alliance. As a
result, 80% of the discussion in Washington in the lead up to the 100 days of
violence in Rwanda concerned the evacuation of American citizens. Later, Bill
Clinton would refer to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the
genocide as one of his greatest foreign policy failings while in office.

The Roman Catholic Church affirms that a genocide took place in Rwanda,
but states that those who took part did so without the permission of the
Church. Many Catholic and other clergy sacrificed their lives to save others
from slaughter. However, there is evidence that others contributed to the
mayhem, with some even actively participating in crimes. Though religious
factors were not prominent, Human Rights Watch faulted a number of religious
authorities in Rwanda in a 1999 report on the genocide, including Roman
Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants, for failing to condemn the genocide.
Some religious authorities were even tried and convicted for their
participation in the genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR). Father Athanase Seromba was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment
(increased on appeal to life imprisonment) by the ICTR for his role in the massacre
of 2,000 Tutsis. The court heard that Seromba lured the Tutsis to a church
where they believed they would find refuge. When they arrived, he ordered
bulldozers to crush the refugees within and Hutu militias to kill any
survivors. Similarly, Bishop Misago was accused of corruption and complicity in
the genocide, but was cleared of all charges in 2000.

37.5: The Yugoslav War

37.5.1: Populations of the Former Yugoslavia

Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks were the three
largest South Slavic groups that inhabited the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.

Learning Objective

Describe the similarities and differences
between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks

Key Points

• Until the 19th
  century, the term Bosniak (Bošnjak) referred
  to all inhabitants of Bosnia regardless of religious affiliation; over
  time, a growing sense of Bosnian nationhood was cherished mainly by Muslim
  Bosnians, associating the Bosniak identity with one faith.
• After World War
  I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called the Kingdom of
  Yugoslavia, or the First Yugoslavia) was formed, recognizing only those three
  nationalities in its constitution as Serbian and Croatian nationalists

  attempted to absorb Bosniak ethnicities into their
  populations.

• Following the liberation
  of Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia reorganized the country into
  federal republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia,
  and Montenegro.
• Official state
  policy prescribed that Yugoslavia’s peoples were equal groups that would
  coexist peacefully within the federation.
• Josip Broz Tito,
  the first president of Yugoslavia, expressed his desire for an undivided
  Yugoslav ethnicity; however, distinctions among ethnic groups persisted,
  reinforced by disparate histories of foreign occupation.

• In 1964, the Fourth Congress of the Bosnian Party assured Bosniaks the right
  to self-determination, prompting the recognition of Bosnian Muslims as a
  distinct nation at a meeting of the Bosnian Central Committee in 1968, though
  not under the Bosniak or Bosnian name.

Key Term

South Slavs

A subgroup of Slavic peoples
who speak South Slavic languages. They inhabit a contiguous region in the
Balkan Peninsula, southern Pannonian Plain, and eastern Alps, and are
geographically separated from the body of West Slavic and East Slavic people by
the Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians. The South Slavs include the Bosniaks,
Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes.

Following the liberation of Yugoslavia, the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia reorganized the country into federal republics: Serbia,
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.
Further, two autonomous provinces were created within the Serbian republic
based on the presence of minorities in the region: Vojvodina (inhabited by a
Hungarian minority) and Kosovo and Metohija (inhabited by an Albanian minority).
The term “nationality” (narodnost) was used to describe the status of Albanians,
Hungarians, and other non-constitutive peoples, distinguishing them from the
nations. This combination of historical and ethnic criteria only applied to
Serbia and not Italian-inhabited Istria or Serb-inhabited Krajina, for example.
The word “nation” (nacija, narod) was used to denote the country’s
constitutive peoples (konstitutivne
nacije), or residents of the federal republics. 

Official state policy
prescribed that Yugoslavia’s peoples were equal groups that would coexist
peacefully within the federation. This policy was distilled into a slogan:
“brotherhood and unity” and provided for in the 1974 Yugoslav
constitution.

South Slavs

The concept of Yugoslavia as
a single state for all South Slavic peoples emerged in the late 17th century
and gained prominence through the Illyrian movement of the 19th century. The
name Yugoslavia (sometimes spelled Jugoslavia) is a combination of the Slavic
words jug (south) and sloveni (Slavs). When the term Yugoslav
was first introduced, it was meant to unite a common people of South Slavs.
Josip Broz Tito, the first president of Yugoslavia, expressed his desire for an
undivided Yugoslav ethnicity; however, distinctions among ethnic groups
persisted, reinforced by disparate histories of foreign occupation. As of 1981,
Serbs were the largest ethnic population within Yugoslavia, representing 36.3%
of the population. Croats comprised the second largest ethnic majority,
representing 19.7% of the population, and Muslims, or Bosniaks, comprised 8.9%
of the population.

South Slavic Europe

The green area shows countries
where a South Slavic language is the national language. The dark gray areas of the map show other Slavic-speaking countries.

Bosniaks

Until the 19th century, the term
Bosniak (Bošnjak) came to refer to
all inhabitants of Bosnia regardless of religious affiliation. Terms such as
“Boşnak milleti”, “Boşnak kavmi”, and “Boşnak
taifesi” (all meaning, roughly, “the Bosnian people”) were used
in the Ottoman Empire to describe Bosnians in an ethnic or tribal sense. After
the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the Austrian
administration officially endorsed Bošnjaštvo
(“Bosniakhood”) as the basis of a multi-confessional Bosnian nation. The policy
aspired to isolate Bosnia and Herzegovina from its irredentist neighbors
(Orthodox Serbia, Catholic Croatia, and the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire) and
to negate the concept of Croatian and Serbian nationhood, which had already
begun to take ground among Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Catholic and Orthodox
communities, respectively. Nevertheless, a sense of Bosnian nationhood was
cherished mainly by Muslim Bosnians, but fiercely opposed by nationalists from
Serbia and Croatia who were instead opting to claim the Bosnian Muslim
population as their own. After World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes (later called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was formed and recognized
only those three nationalities in its constitution.

After World War II, in the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslims continued to be
treated as a religious group instead of an ethnic one. In the 1948 census,
Bosnia and Herzegovian’s Muslims had three options for self-identification:
Serb-Muslim, Croat-Muslim, or ethnically undeclared Muslim. In the 1953 census,
the category “Yugoslav, ethnically undeclared” was introduced, and the
overwhelming majority of those who declared themselves as such were Muslim.
Bosniaks were recognized as an ethnic group in 1961, but not as a nationality. Nevertheless,
many Bosniak communist intellectuals argued that the Muslims of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were in fact a distinct native Slavic people that should be
recognized as a nation.

In 1964, the Fourth Congress of the Bosnian Party assured Bosniaks the right
to self-determination, prompting the recognition of Bosnian Muslims as a
distinct nation at a meeting of the Bosnian Central Committee in 1968, though
not under the Bosniak or the Bosnian name. As a compromise, the Constitution of
Yugoslavia was amended to list “Muslims” in a national sense, recognizing
a constitutive nation but not the Bosniak name. The use of “Muslim” as an
ethnic denomination was criticized early on, however. Sometimes other terms,
such as Muslim with a capital “M” were used (that is, “musliman” was
a practicing Muslim, while “Musliman” was a member of the Muslim
nation; Serbo-Croatian uses capital letters for names of peoples, but small for
names of adherents).

37.5.2: NATO and UN Intervention

Although NATO and UN intervention into the Bosnian conflict was
significant, its outcomes were often controversial.

Learning Objective

Assess the successes and limitations of NATO and UN interventions in the
Bosnian War

Key Points

• The UN
  repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to stop the Bosnian War, and the
  much-touted Vance-Owen Peace Plan in the first half of 1993 made little impact.
• The
  International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was formally
  established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council on May 25,
  1993.
• The
  establishment of UN Safe Areas is considered one of the most controversial
  decisions of the United Nations, due to uncertainty about how UN
  member states could protect what had become a war-torn, unstable region.
• By 1995, the
  situation in the UN Safe Areas had deteriorated to the point of diplomatic
  crisis, culminating in the Srebrenica massacre, one of the worst atrocities to
  occur in Europe since World War II.
• NATO became
  militarily involved in the conflict when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft
  in violation of the UN-mandated no-fly zone over central Bosnia on February 28,
  1994.
• UNPROFOR made
  its first request for NATO air support in March 1994, and by April, NATO began
  participating in air strikes to support safe areas on the ground, marking the
  first time NATO participated in this type of military maneuver.

• Operation Deliberate Force was a sustained air campaign conducted by NATO
  in concert with UNPROFOR ground operations to undermine the military capability
  of the VRS. The air campaign was key in pressuring the Federal Republic of
  Yugoslavia to take part in negotiations that resulted in the Dayton Agreement
  in November 1995.

Key Term

Vance-Owen Peace Plan

A peace
proposal negotiated with the leaders of Bosnia’s warring factions by UN Special
Envoy Cyrus Vance and EC representative Lord Owen. This plan involved the
division of Bosnia into ten semi-autonomous regions.

The United Nations and Bosnia

The UN repeatedly, but
unsuccessfully, attempted to stop the Bosnian War, and the much-touted
Vance-Owen Peace Plan in the first half of 1993 made little impact. On February
22, 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 808, which
decided “that an international tribunal shall be established for the
prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international
humanitarian law.” On May 15-16, 96% of Serbs voted to reject the
Vance-Owen peace plan. After the failure of the plan, an armed conflict sprang
up between Bosniaks and Croats over the 30% of Bosnia the latter held. The
peace plan was one of the factors leading to the escalation of the conflict as
Lord Owen avoided moderate Croat authorities (pro-unified Bosnia) and
negotiated directly with more extreme elements who were in favor of
separation.

Sniper Alley

Norwegian UN troops on their way up Sniper Alley in Sarajevo, November 1995.

On May 25, 1993, the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was formally
established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council. In April
1993, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 816, calling on
member states to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. On April 12,
1993, NATO commenced Operation Deny Flight to enforce this no-fly zone. In an
attempt to protect civilians, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR),
which had been established during the Croatian War of Independence, saw its
role further extended in May 1993 to protect areas declared as “safe
havens” around Sarajevo, Goražde, Srebrenica, Tuzla, Žepa, and Bihać by
Resolution 824. On June 4, 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed
Resolution 836, authorizing the use of force by UNPROFOR for the purpose of
protecting the above-named safe zones.

United Nations Safe Zones

The establishment of the UN
Safe Areas is considered one of the most controversial decisions of the United
Nations. The resolutions establishing the safe areas were unclear about the
procedure by which these areas were to be protected in the war zone that Bosnia
and Herzegovina had become. The resolutions also created a difficult diplomatic
situation for member states that voted in favor of it due to their
unwillingness to take necessary steps to ensure the security of the safe areas.
In 1995, the situation in the UN Safe Areas had deteriorated to the point of diplomatic
crisis, culminating in the Srebrenica massacre, one of the worst atrocities in
Europe since World War II. By the end of the war, every one of the Safe Areas
had been attacked by the Serbs, and Srebrenica and Žepa were overrun.

Srebrenica

From the outset, violations
of the safe area agreement in Srebrenica were abundant. Between 1,000 and 2,000
soldiers from three of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) Drina Corps Brigades
were deployed around the enclave, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles,
artillery, and mortars. The 28th Mountain Division of the Army of the Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) that remained in the enclave was neither well-organized nor well-equipped. A firm command structure and communications system
was lacking and some soldiers carried old hunting rifles or no weapons at all.
Few had proper uniforms. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans (the Dutchbat
Commander with UNPROFOR) testified to the ICTY that his personnel were
prevented from returning to the enclave by Serb forces and that equipment and
ammunition were also barred. Bosniaks in Srebrenica
complained of attacks by Serb soldiers, while to the Serbs it appeared that
Bosnian government forces in Srebrenica were using the safe area as a
convenient base from which to launch counter-offensives against the VRS, with UNPROFOR
failing to take any preventive action. General Sefer Halilović admitted that
ARBiH helicopters had flown in violation of the no-fly zone and that he had
personally dispatched eight helicopters with ammunition for the 28th Division
within the enclave.

A Security Council mission
led by Diego Arria arrived in Srebrenica on April 25, 1993, and in their
subsequent report to the UN, condemned the Serbs for perpetrating “a slow-motion
process of genocide.” The mission then stated that: 

“Serb forces must
withdraw to points from which they cannot attack, harass or terrorise the town.
UNPROFOR should be in a position to determine the related parameters. The
mission believes, as does UNPROFOR, that the actual 4.5 km by 0.5 km decided as
a safe area should be greatly expanded.” 

Specific instructions from UN
Headquarters in New York stated that UNPROFOR should not be too zealous in
searching for Bosniak weapons and later, that the Serbs should withdraw their
heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs never did
withdraw their heavy weapons.

By early 1995, fewer and
fewer supply convoys were making it through to the enclave. The situation in
Srebrenica and in other enclaves had deteriorated into lawless violence as
prostitution among young Muslim girls, theft, and black marketeering
proliferated. The already meager resources of the civilian population dwindled
further and even the UN forces started running dangerously low on food,
medicine, ammunition, and fuel, eventually forced to patrol the
enclave on foot. Dutchbat soldiers who went out of the area on leave were not
allowed to return, and their numbers dropped from 600 to 400 men. In March and
April, the Dutch soldiers noticed a build-up of Serb forces near two of their
observation posts.

In March 1995, Radovan
Karadžić, President of the Republika Srpska (RS), despite pressure from the
international community to end the war and ongoing efforts to negotiate a peace
agreement, issued a directive to the VRS concerning the long-term strategy of
the VRS forces in the enclave. The directive, known as “Directive 7”,
specified that the VRS was to completely separate Srebrenica from Žepa and make
the situation within Srebrenica enclave unbearable by combat means, with the
aim of ending the life of all Srebrenica’s inhabitants. By mid-1995, the
humanitarian situation of the Bosniak civilians and military personnel in the
enclave was catastrophic. In May, following orders, ARBiH Commander Naser Orić
and his staff left the enclave by helicopter to Tuzla, leaving senior officers
in command of the 28th Division. In late June and early July, the 28th Division
issued a series of reports, including urgent pleas for the humanitarian
corridor to the enclave to be reopened. When this failed, Bosniak civilians
began dying from starvation. On July 7, the mayor of Srebrenica reported that
eight residents had died of starvation.

The Serb offensive against
Srebrenica began in earnest the day before, on July 6, 1995. In the following
days, the five UNPROFOR observation posts in the southern part of the enclave
fell one by one in the face of the Bosnian-Serb advance. Some of the Dutch
soldiers retreated into the enclave after their posts were attacked, but the
crews of the other observation posts surrendered into Serb custody.
Simultaneously, the defending Bosnian forces came under heavy fire and were
pushed back towards the town. Once the southern perimeter began to collapse,
about 4,000 Bosniak residents who had been living in a Swedish housing complex
for refugees nearby fled north into the town of Srebrenica. Dutch soldiers
reported that the advancing Serbs were “cleansing” the houses in the
southern part of the enclave.

Late on July 9, 1995,
emboldened by early successes and little resistance from the largely demilitarized
Bosniaks and the absence of any significant reaction from the
international community, Karadžić issued a new order authorizing the
1,500-strong VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica. The following
morning (July 10), Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans made urgent requests for air
support from NATO to defend Srebrenica as crowds filled the streets, some carrying
weapons. VRS tanks were approaching the town, and NATO airstrikes on these
began on the afternoon of July 11, 1995. NATO bombers attempted to attack VRS
artillery locations outside the town, but poor visibility forced NATO to cancel
this operation. Further NATO air attacks were cancelled after the VRS threatened
to bomb the UN’s Potočari compound, kill Dutch and French military hostages,
and attack surrounding locations where 20,000 to 30,000 civilian refugees were
situated. In the days that followed, more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks, mainly
men and boys, would be killed by units of the VRS under the command of General
Ratko Mladić.

Srebrenica Massacre Victim

Skull of a victim of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in an exhumed mass grave outside the village of Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 2007.

NATO Military Involvement

NATO became militarily
involved in the conflict when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft in violation of
the UN no-fly zone over central Bosnia on February 28, 1994. On March 12, 1994,
the UNPROFOR made its first request for NATO air support, but close air support
was not deployed as the approval
process was delayed. On April 10-11, 1994, UNPROFOR called in NATO air strikes to protect
the Goražde safe area, resulting in the bombing of a Serbian military command
outpost near Goražde by 2 US F-16 jets. This was the first time in NATO’s
history that it had participated in this type of military maneuver. As a
result, 150 UN personnel were taken hostage on April 14, and on April 16, a
British Sea Harrier was shot down over Goražde by Serb forces. 

On August 5, at the request
of UNPROFOR, NATO aircraft attacked a target within the Sarajevo Exclusion Zone
after weapons were seized by Bosnian Serbs from a collection site near
Sarajevo. On September 22, 1994, NATO aircraft carried out an air strike
against a Bosnian Serb tank at the request of UNPROFOR.

Operation Deliberate Force

Operation Deliberate Force was a sustained air campaign conducted by NATO
in concert with UNPROFOR ground operations to undermine the military capability
of the VRS, which had threatened and attacked UN-designated safe areas in
Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. Events such as the Srebrenica
and Markale massacres precipitated intervention. The operation was carried out
between August 30 and September 20, 1995, involving 400 aircraft and
5,000 personnel from 15 nations. Commanded by Admiral Leighton W. Smith, the
campaign struck 338 Bosnian Serb targets, many of which were destroyed.
Overall, 1,026 bombs were dropped during the operation, 708 of which were
precision-guided. The air campaign was key in pressuring the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia to take part in negotiations that resulted in the Dayton
Agreement reached in November 1995.

37.5.3: The Bosnian War

The Bosnian War was an
international armed conflict that took place between the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Herzeg-Bosnia.

Learning Objective

Explain the events of the Bosnian War

Key Points

• Following Slovenian
  and Croatian secession from the Socialist Federal Republic in 1991, the
  multi-ethnic Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina passed a referendum for
  independence on February 29, 1992.
• On March 18,
  1992, representatives from the three major ethnic majorities signed the Lisbon
  Agreement, agreeing to an ethnic division of Bosnia: Alija Izetbegović for the
  Bosniaks, Radovan Karadžić for the Serbs, and Mate Boban for the Croats.
  However, on March 28, 1992, Izetbegović withdrew his signature and declared his
  opposition to any such division of the country.
• Serb forces
  attacked Bosnian Muslim civilian populations, following the same pattern once
  areas were under their control: houses and apartments were systematically
  ransacked or burnt down, civilians were rounded up or captured, and many were
  beaten or killed in the process.
• A number of
  genocidal massacres perpetrated against the Bosniak population were reported
  during the war, including Srebrenica, Bijeljina, Tuzla, and two incidents at Markale.

• The Siege of
  Sarajevo started in early April 1992 and lasted 44 months, with suffering inflicted on the largely Bosniak civilian population to force Bosnian
  authorities to accept Serb demands.

• The Graz
  agreement was signed between Bosnian-Serb and Bosnian-Croat leaders in early
  May 1992, causing deep divisions within the Croat community and strengthening Croat
  separatist factions, which led to their conflict with the Bosniaks.

• Numerous
  ceasefire agreements were signed and breached as advantages were gained and
  lost across sides. The UN repeatedly attempted to stop the war, but the
  much-touted Vance-Owen Peace Plan made little impact.

• On May 25, 1993,
  the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was
  formally established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council.
• The
  Croat-Bosniak war officially ended on February 23, 1994, when the commander of the
  Croat Defense Council (HVO), General Ante Roso, and commander of the Bosnian
  Army, General Rasim Delić, signed a ceasefire agreement in Zagreb, leading to
  the Washington Agreement being finalized shortly thereafter.

• On September 26, 1995, an agreement of further basic principles for a
  peace accord was reached in New York City between the foreign ministers of
  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. A
  60-day ceasefire came into effect on October 12, and on November 1, peace talks
  began in Dayton, Ohio.

Key Terms

Vance-Owen peace plan

A peace proposal negotiated between the leaders
of Bosnia’s warring factions in early January 1993, facilitated by UN Special
Envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community representative Lord Owen. The proposal
involved the division of Bosnia into ten semi-autonomous regions and received
the backing of the UN.

Split Agreement

The Split Agreement was a mutual defense
agreement between Croatia, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, signed in Split, Croatia, on July 22,
1995. It called on the Croatian Army to intervene militarily in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.

The Bosnian War was an
international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between
1992 and 1995. Following a number of violent incidents in early 1992, the war
started in earnest on April 6, 1992, and ended on December
14, 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat
entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Herzeg-Bosnia,
who were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively. The war was part
of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 

Following the Slovenian and
Croatian secession from the Socialist Federal Republic in 1991, the
multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – which was inhabited
by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44%), as well as Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic
Croats (17%) – passed a referendum for independence on February 29, 1992. The
turnout to the referendum was reported as 63.7%, with 92.7% in
favor of independence (implying that Bosnian Serbs, who made up approximately
34% of the population, largely boycotted the referendum). Independence was
formally declared by the Bosnian parliament on March 3, 1992. On March 18,
1992, representatives from the three major ethnic majorities signed the Lisbon
Agreement: Alija Izetbegović for the Bosniaks, Radovan Karadžić for the Serbs,
and Mate Boban for the Croats. However, on March 28, 1992, Izetbegović, after
meeting with the then-U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann, in
Sarajevo, withdrew his signature and declared his opposition to any type of
ethnic division of Bosnia.

In late March 1992, fighting between Serbs and combined Croat and Bosniak forces in and near
Bosanski Brod resulted in the killing of Serb villagers in Sijekovac. Serb
paramilitaries committed the Bijeljina massacre, most victims of which were
Bosniak, on April 1-2, 1992.

Course of the War

At the outset of the Bosnian
war, Serb forces attacked the Bosnian Muslim civilian population in eastern
Bosnia. Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, the Serb forces,
including military, police, paramilitaries, and sometimes even Serb villagers,
followed the same pattern: houses and apartments were systematically ransacked
or burnt down, civilians were rounded up or captured, and many were beaten or
killed in the process. Men and women were separated when captured, with many
men massacred or detained in camps. Women and children were kept in
detention centers that were intolerably unhygienic. Many were
mistreated and raped repeatedly. The Serbs had the upper hand due to their
possession of heavier weaponry (although they claimed less manpower than the
Bosnians). They were supplied by the Yugoslav People’s Army and usually
established control over areas where Serbs were already in the majority. 

The Siege of Sarajevo
started in early April 1992. The capital Sarajevo was mostly held by Bosniaks. In
the 44 months of the siege, terror against Sarajevo residents varied in
intensity, but the purpose remained the same: inflict suffering on civilians to
force the Bosnian authorities to accept Serb demands. The Army of Republika
Srpska (VRS) surrounded the city for nearly four years, deploying troops and
artillery in the surrounding hills in what would become the longest siege in
the history of modern warfare.

Funeral in Sarajevo, 1992

A family mourns during a funeral at the Lion’s cemetery during the Siege of Sarajevo.

The Graz agreement was
signed between the Bosnian-Serb and Bosnian-Croat leaders in early May 1992,
causing deep divisions within the Croat community and strengthening separatist
factions, which led to conflict with the Bosniaks. One of the primary pro-union
Croat leaders was Blaž Kraljević, leader of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS),
which had a Croatian nationalist agenda but unlike the Croat Defense Council
(HVO), fully supported cooperation with the Bosniaks. In June 1992, focus
switched to the towns of Novi Travnik and Gornji Vakuf, where HVO efforts to
gain control were resisted. On June 18, 1992, the Bosnian Territorial Defence
in Novi Travnik received an ultimatum from HVO that included demands to abolish
existing Bosnia and Herzegovina institutions within the town and submit to the
authority of HVO and the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, as well as expel all
Muslim refugees. These demands were to be met within 24 hours. The next day,
as demands were not met, an attack was launched. The town’s elementary
school and post office were attacked and damaged.

Vastly under-equipped Bosnian
forces fighting on two fronts were able to repel Croats and gain territory. Bosnia was surrounded by Croat and Serb forces from all sides with no way
to import weapons or food. What saved Bosnia at this time was its vast heavy industrial
complex, which was able to switch to military hardware production. Numerous
ceasefire agreements were signed and breached as advantages were gained and
lost across sides. The UN repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to stop the
war, and the much-touted Vance-Owen Peace Plan in the first half of 1993 made
little impact. 

On February 22, 1993, the
United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 808, which decided “that
an international tribunal shall be established for the prosecution of persons
responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law.” On
May 15-16, 96% of Serbs voted to reject the Vance-Owen peace plan. After the
failure of the plan, an armed conflict sprang up between Bosniaks and Croats
over the 30 percent of Bosnia the latter held. The peace plan was one of the
factors leading to the escalation of the conflict as Lord Owen avoided moderate
Croat authorities (pro-unified Bosnia) and negotiated directly with more extreme
elements who were in favor of separation.

On May 25, 1993, the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was formally
established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council. In April
1993, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 816, calling on
member states to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. On April 12,
1993, NATO commenced Operation Deny Flight to enforce this no-fly zone. In an
attempt to protect civilians, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR),
established during the Croatian War of Independence, saw its
role further extended in May 1993 to protect areas declared as “safe
havens” around Sarajevo, Goražde, Srebrenica, Tuzla, Žepa, and Bihać by
Resolution 824. On June 4, 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed
Resolution 836, authorizing the use of force by UNPROFOR to protect the above-named safe zones.

Sniper Alley in Sarajevo

Norwegian UN troops on their way up Sniper Alley in Sarajevo, November 1995.

The Croat-Bosniak war
officially ended on February 23, 1994, when the commander of HVO, General Ante
Roso, and commander of the Bosnian Army, General Rasim Delić, signed a
ceasefire agreement in Zagreb. On March 18, 1994, a peace agreement — the
Washington Agreement — was mediated by the U.S. between the warring Croats
(represented by the Republic of Croatia) and the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. It was signed in both Washington D.C. and Vienna. The Washington
Agreement ended the war between Croats and Bosniaks and divided the combined
territory held by Croat and Bosnian government forces into ten autonomous
cantons, establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This reduced
the warring parties to the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, militarily
composed of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and the HVO, and Republika Srpska, composed militarily of the VRS.

The war continued until
November 1995. In July 1995, VRS forces under General Ratko Mladić occupied the
UN safe area of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The resulting Srebrenica
massacre led to the murder of more than
8,000 Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of
Srebrenica. UNPROFOR, represented on the ground at Srebrenica by a 400-strong
contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, failed to prevent the town’s capture and the
subsequent massacre. The ICTY ruled this event a genocide in the Krstić case. 

In line with the
Croat-Bosniak Split Agreement, Croatian forces operated in western Bosnia under
Operation Summer ’95 and in early August launched Operation Storm, aimed at taking
over the Republic of Serb Krajina in Croatia. With this, the Bosniak-Croat
alliance gained winning momentum in the war, taking much of western Bosnia from
the VRS in several operations, including Operation Mistral 2 and Operation
Sana. VRS forces committed several major massacres during 1995: the Tuzla
massacre on May 25, the Srebrenica massacre, and the second Markale massacre on
August 28 (the first Markale massacre occurred on February 5, 1994, when a 120-millimeter mortar shell landed in the center of a marketplace in Sarajevo). On
August 30, the Secretary General of NATO announced the start of Operation Deliberate
Force, which consisted of widespread airstrikes against Bosnian Serb positions
supported by UNPROFOR rapid reaction force artillery attacks. On September 14, 1995,
NATO air strikes were suspended to allow the implementation of an agreement
with Bosnian Serbs for the withdrawal of heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.

Twelve days later, on September 26, an agreement of further basic
principles for a peace accord was reached in New York City between the foreign
ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Former Republic of Yugoslavia.
A 60-day ceasefire came into effect on October 12, and on November 1, peace
talks began in Dayton, Ohio. The war ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement
signed on November 21, 1995; the final version of the peace agreement was
signed December 14, 1995, in Paris.

37.5.4: Prosecution in the International Criminal Court

A number of Serbs,
Croats, and Bosniaks were prosecuted following the Bosnian
War, and some trials are still ongoing.

Learning Objective

Detail the cases brought before the ICC for crimes perpetrated during the
Bosnian War

Key Points

• The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
  (ICTY) was established in 1993 as a body within the UN tasked with prosecuting
  war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
• The former president of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, was
  found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and
  sentenced to 40 years imprisonment on March 24, 2016.
• Ratko Mladić, the top military general with command
  responsibility in the Army of Republika Srpska, is currently on trial by the
  ICTY, charged with crimes in connection with the siege of Sarajevo and the
  Srebrenica massacre, following a long period in hiding as he attempted to
  evade arrest.
• Serbian President Slobodan Milošević was charged with war
  crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia, including grave breaches of the
  Geneva Conventions, crimes against humanity, and genocide; however, he died in
  2006 before his trial ended.
• Paramilitary leader Vojislav Šešelj was acquitted in a
  first-instance verdict on all counts of an alleged joint criminal enterprise to
  ethnically cleanse large areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina of non-Serbs by the ICTY on
  March 31, 2016. He went on to lead the Serbian Radical Party to legislative
  victories in early 2016.
• The Hague revealed that Alija Izetbegović, President
  of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War, had also been
  under investigation for war crimes, although the prosecutor did not find
  sufficient evidence over the course of Izetbegović’s lifetime to issue an
  indictment.

• Many Serbs have accused
  Sarajevo authorities of practicing selective justice in the active prosecution
  of Serbs for war crimes, while similar acts carried out by Bosniaks have been
  ignored or downplayed.

Key Term

joint criminal enterprise

A legal doctrine used
by the ICTY to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes,
including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav Wars.

The
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was
established in 1993 as a body within the UN tasked with prosecuting war crimes
committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The tribunal is an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands.
Both Serbs and Croats were indicted and convicted of systematic war crimes
under the principle of joint criminal enterprise, while Bosniaks were indicted
and convicted of individual ones. Most of the Bosnian-Serb wartime leadership,
such as Biljana Plavšić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Radoslav Brđanin, and Duško Tadić,
were indicted and judged guilty for war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

Major
ICTY Cases

Radovan Karadžić

Radovan Karadžić was found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment on March 24, 2016.

The
former president of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić was found guilty of
genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 40 years
imprisonment on March 24, 2016. He was found guilty of genocide for the
Srebrenica massacre, which aimed to kill “every able-bodied male” and systematically exterminate the Bosnian Muslim community. He was
also convicted of persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer
(ethnic cleansing), and murder in connection with his campaign to drive Bosnian
Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces. Ratko Mladić, the
top military general with command responsibility in the Army of Republika
Srpska, is currently on trial in the ICTY, charged with crimes in connection
with the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, following a long period
in hiding as he attempted to evade arrest. The closing arguments for his
case were conducted in December 2016 and a verdict is forthcoming. Prosecutors
have argued for nothing less than a life sentence, citing the dissatisfaction
of Bosnians when Karadžić was only given a 40-year sentence.

Ratko Mladić

General Ratko Mladić during UN-mediated talks at Sarajevo Airport in 1993.

The
Serbian President Slobodan Milošević was charged with war crimes in connection
with the war in Bosnia, including grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,
crimes against humanity, and genocide; however, he died in 2006 before his
trial could finish. Milošević was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on March
31, 2001, on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement
following his resignation of the Yugoslav presidency and a disputed presidential
election. The initial investigation into Milošević faltered for lack of
evidence, prompting the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić to extradite him to
the ICTY to stand trial for charges of war crimes instead. At the outset of the
trial, Milošević denounced the Tribunal as illegal because it had not been
established with the consent of the UN General Assembly. As a result, he
refused to appoint counsel for his defense and chose to defend himself in the
five years that the trial progressed prior to his death. 

Paramilitary
leader Vojislav Šešelj was acquitted in a first-instance verdict on all counts of
an alleged joint criminal enterprise to ethnically cleanse large areas of
Bosnia-Herzegovina of non-Serbs by the ICTY on March 31, 2016. The acquittal
was appealed by prosecutors from the Mechanism for International Criminal
Tribunals (MICT), a United Nations Security Council agency that functions as an
overseer and successor to the ICTY. Subsequently, Šešelj led the Serbian
Radical Party in the 2016 elections, and his party won 23 seats in the
parliament. 

The Hague revealed that Alija Izetbegović, President of the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War, was also under
investigation for war crimes, although the prosecutor did not find sufficient
evidence over the course of Izetbegović’s lifetime to issue an indictment. Other
Bosniaks convicted of or on trial for war crimes include Rasim
Delić, chief of staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, sentenced
to three years’ imprisonment on September 15, 2008, for his failure to prevent the
Bosnian mujahideen members of the Bosnian army from committing crimes,
including murder, rape, and torture, against captured civilians and enemy combatants.
Enver Hadžihasanović, a general of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, was sentenced to 3.5 years for authority over acts of murder and
wanton destruction in Central Bosnia. Hazim Delić was the Bosniak Deputy
Commander of the Čelebići prison camp, which detained Serb civilians. He was
sentenced to 18 years by the ICTY Appeals Chamber on April 8, 2003, for murder
and torture of the prisoners and the rape of two Serbian women. 

Many Serbs have accused
Sarajevo authorities of practicing selective justice in the active prosecution
of Serbs for war crimes, while similar acts carried out by Bosniaks have been
ignored or downplayed. Genocide at Srebrenica is the most serious war crime
that any Serbs have been convicted of at the ICTY. Crimes against humanity
(i.e., ethnic cleansing), a charge second in gravity only to genocide, is the
most serious war crime that any Croat has been convicted of. The most serious
war crime a Bosniak has been charged with at the Tribunal is breach of
the Geneva Conventions.

37.6: Globalization

37.6.1: The Development of the Internet

The Internet has evolved
from a government tool used for research to a pervasive social medium.

Learning Objective

Describe the
changes brought on by the advent of the Internet

Key Points

• The Digital Revolution is the change from mechanical and analog
  electronic technology to digital electronics with the adoption and
  proliferation of digital computers and information.
• The system
  that would evolve into the Internet was designed primarily for government use. However, interest in commercial use of the Internet grew quickly.
• The World
  Wide Web is an information space where documents and other web resources are
  identified by URIs, interlinked by hypertext links, and accessed via the
  Internet using a web browser and web-based applications.
• From 1997 to 2001, the first speculative investment bubble related to the
  Internet took place. “Dot-com” companies were propelled to
  exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked stock values.
• The term
  “Web 2.0” describes websites that emphasize user-generated content
  (including user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability.

• The Web 2.0 movement was itself greatly accelerated and transformed by the rapid growth in mobile devices.

Key Terms

World Wide Web

An information
space where documents and other web resources are identified by URIs,
interlinked by hypertext links, and accessed via the Internet using a
web browser and web-based applications.

Digital Revolution

The
change from mechanical and analog electronic technology to digital
electronics with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and
information.

The change from mechanical and
analog electronic technology to digital electronics with the adoption and
proliferation of digital computers and information is known as the Digital Revolution. Implicitly, the term refers to the sweeping changes brought about by digital computing and communication
technology during and after the latter half of the 20th century. Analogous to
the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution
marked the beginning of the Information Age.

Rise of the Global Internet and
the World Wide Web

Internet Map

Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005, data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes each representing an IP address. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. This graph represents less than 30% of the Class C networks reachable by the data collection program in early 2005.

Initially, as with its
predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was
primarily for government use. However, interest in
commercial use of the Internet quickly grew.
Although commercial use was initially forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use
was unclear and subjective. As a result, during the late 1980s, the first
Internet service provider (ISP) companies were formed. The first commercial
dial-up ISP in the United States was The World, which opened in 1989.

The World Wide Web (sometimes
abbreviated “www” or “W3”) is an information space where
documents and other web resources are identified by URIs, interlinked by
hypertext links, and accessed via the Internet using a web browser and, more
recently, web-based applications. It has become known simply as “the
Web.” As of the 2010s, the World Wide Web is the primary tool billions use
to interact on the Internet, and it has changed people’s lives immeasurably. Tim
Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989 and
developing in 1990 both the first web server and the first web browser, called
WorldWideWeb (no spaces) and later renamed Nexus. Many others were soon
developed, with Marc Andreessen’s 1993 Mosaic (later Netscape) often credited with sparking the internet boom of the 1990s. 

A boost in web users was
triggered in September 1993 by NCSA Mosaic, a graphic browser that eventually
ran on several popular office and home computers. It was the first web browser
aimed at bringing multimedia content to non-technical users, and included
images and text on the same page, unlike previous browser designs. Andreessen was head of the company that released Netscape Navigator in
1994, resulted in one of the early browser wars
with Microsoft Windows’ Internet Explorer (a competition Netscape Navigator
eventually lost). When commercial use restrictions were lifted in 1995, online
service America Online (AOL) offered users connection to the Internet via
their own internal browser.

Web 1.0: 1990s to Early 2000s

In terms of providing context for
this period, mobile cellular devices, which today provide near-universal access, were used for
business but were not a routine household item. Modern social media did not exist, laptops were bulky, and most households
did not have computers. Data rates were slow and most people lacked means to
video or digitize video, so websites such as YouTube did not yet exist. Media
storage was transitioning slowly from analog tape to digital optical discs (DVD)
and from floppy disc to CD. Technologies that would enable and simplify web development, such as PHP,
modern Javascript and Java, AJAX, HTML 4 (and its emphasis
on CSS), and various software frameworks, awaited invention and widespread adoption.

From 1997 to 2001,
the first speculative investment bubble related to the Internet took place, in
which “dot-com” companies (referring to the “.com” top
level domain used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations
as investors rapidly stoked stock values. This dot-com bubble was followed by a
market crash; however, this only temporarily slowed growth.

The changes that would propel the
Internet into its place as a social system took place during a relatively short
period of about five years, starting from around 2004. They included:

• Accelerating adoption of and familiarity with the necessary hardware (such as
  computers).

• Accelerating storage technology
  and data access speeds. Hard drives emerged, eclipsed smaller,
  slower floppy discs, and grew from megabytes to gigabytes (and by around 2010,
  terabytes). Typical system RAM grew from hundreds of kilobytes to gigabytes. Ethernet, the enabling technology for TCP/IP, moved from common
  speeds of kilobits to tens of megabits per second to gigabits per second.

• High speed Internet and wider
  coverage of data connections at lower prices allowed for larger traffic
  rates, more reliable traffic, and traffic from more locations.

• The gradually accelerating
  perception of the ability of computers to create new means and approaches to
  communication, the emergence of social media and websites such as Twitter and
  Facebook, and global collaborations such as Wikipedia (which existed before but
  gained prominence as a result).

Web 2.0

The term “Web 2.0”
describes websites that emphasize user-generated content (including
user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability. It first appeared
in a January 1999 article called “Fragmented Future” written by Darcy
DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design. The term resurfaced
around 2002 to 2004 and gained prominence following the first Web 2.0
Conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly outlined
their definition of the “Web as Platform”, where software
applications are built upon the Web as opposed to the desktop. The unique
aspect of this migration, they argued, is that “customers are building
your business for you.” They argued that the activities of users
generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be
harnessed to create value.

Web 2.0 does not refer to an
update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the
way webpages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach in which sites
focus substantially on user interaction and collaboration in a social media
dialogue. Customers create content in a virtual community, in
contrast to websites where people are limited to the passive viewing of
content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis,
folksonomies, video sharing sites, hosted services, Web applications, and
mashups. This era saw several household names gain prominence through their
community-oriented operation, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and
Wikipedia.

The Mobile Revolution

The process of change generally described as
“Web 2.0” was itself greatly accelerated and transformed by the increasing growth in mobile devices. This mobile revolution
meant that computers in the form of smartphones became ubiquitous. People now bring devices everywhere and use them to communicate, shop, seek information, and take and instantly share photos and video. Location-based services and crowd-sourcing became common, with posts tagged by location and websites and services
becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted websites (such as
“m.website.com”) are increasingly designed especially for these new
devices. Netbooks, ultrabooks, widespread 4G and Wi-Fi, and mobile chips
capable or running at nearly the power of desktops on far less power enabled this stage of Internet development.
The term “App” emerged (short for “Application program” or
“Program”) as did the “App store”.

37.6.2: Ease of Movement

One benefit of globalization and the accompanying improvements in transportation technology is the
ease of travel.

Learning Objective

Explain how travel has become easier and more
universal in the modern age

Key Points

• As
  transportation technology improved, travel time and costs decreased
  dramatically between the 18th and early 20th centuries.

• The developments
  in technology and transport infrastructure, such as jumbo jets, low-cost
  airlines, and more accessible airports, have made many types of tourism more
  affordable.

• As of 2014,
  there were an estimated 232 million international migrants in the world, and
  approximately half were estimated to be economically active. International
  movement of labor is often considered important to economic development.
• More
  students are seeking higher education in foreign countries and many
  international students now consider overseas study a stepping stone to
  permanent residency within a country.
• As more people have ties to networks of people and places across the globe
  rather than to a current geographic location, people are increasingly marrying
  across national boundaries.

• Because globalization has brought people into greater contact with
  foreign cultures, some have come to view one or more globalizing
  processes as detrimental to social well-being on a global or local scale, with
  xenophobia an issue in many modern societies.

Key Terms

immigration

The international movement of people into a destination country where they do not possess citizenship to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. People also immigrate to take up employment as migrant workers or temporarily as foreign workers.

tourism

The act of traveling for pleasure, or the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours.

xenophobia

The fear of that perceived as foreign or strange.

An essential aspect of
globalization is increased ease of travel. As transportation technology
improved, travel time and costs decreased dramatically between the 18th and
early 20th centuries. For example, travel across the Atlantic Ocean took up to five weeks in the 18th century, but around the time of the 20th century
it took a mere eight days. Today, modern aviation has made long-distance
transportation quick and affordable.

Tourism

Tourism is travel for
pleasure. Developments in technology and transport infrastructure, such as
jumbo jets, low-cost airlines, and more accessible airports, have made many
types of tourism more affordable. International tourist arrivals surpassed the
milestone of 1 billion for the first time in 2012. 

A visa is
a conditional authorization granted by a country to a foreigner allowing them
to enter and temporarily remain within or leave that country. Some countries –
such as those in the Schengen Area – have agreements with other countries
allowing citizens to travel between them without visas. The World
Tourism Organization announced that the number of tourists who required a visa
before traveling was at its lowest level ever in 2015.

Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world, circa June 2009. 

The map shows 54317 routes.

Immigration

Immigration is the
international movement of people into a destination country of which they are
not natives or where they do not possess citizenship to settle or
reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or to
take up employment as a migrant worker or temporary foreign worker. According
to the International Labor Organization, as of 2014, there were an estimated
232 million international migrants in the world (defined as persons outside
their country of origin for 12 months or more), and approximately half were estimated to be employed or seeking
employment. International movement of labor is often seen as important to
economic development. For example, freedom of movement for workers in the
European Union means that people can move freely between member states to live,
work, study, or retire in another country.

Globalization

Globalization is associated
with a dramatic rise in international education. More nd more students are
seeking higher education in foreign countries and many international students
now consider overseas study a stepping stone to permanent residency within a
country. The contributions that foreign students make to host nation economies,
both culturally and financially, has encouraged the implementation of further
initiatives to facilitate the arrival and integration of overseas students, including
substantial amendments to immigration and visa policies and procedures.

Transnational Marriage

Transnational marriage is a
marriage between two people from different countries and a by-product of the
movement and migration of people. A variety of special issues arise in
marriages between people from different countries, including those related to
citizenship and culture, which add complexity and challenges to these kinds of
relationships. In an age of increasing globalization, where a growing number of
people have ties to networks of people and places across the globe rather than
to a current geographic location, people are increasingly marrying across
national boundaries. 

Reactions

Because globalization has brought people into greater contact with
foreign peoples and cultures, some have come to view one or more globalizing
processes as detrimental to social well-being on a global or local scale.
Xenophobia is the fear of that perceived as foreign or strange.
Xenophobia can manifest itself in the relations and
perceptions of an in-group towards an out-group, including the fear of losing one’s
identity, suspicion of another group’s activities, aggression, and a desire to
eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity.

37.6.3: International Trade

International trade has become more entrenched
in the domestic policy of states and everyday life of citizens as globalization
increases.

Learning Objective

Identify how trade has changed since the 1990s

Key Points

• While
  international trade has existed throughout history, its economic, social, and
  political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries.
• Industrialization,
  advanced technology, globalization, multinational corporations, and outsourcing
  are all having a major impact on the international trade system.
• The global
  supply chain consists of complex interconnected networks that allow companies
  to produce, handle, and distribute goods and services to the public
  worldwide.
• E-commerce is the
  act of buying or selling online and draws on technologies such as mobile
  commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet
  marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI),
  inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

• Offshore outsourcing is the practice of hiring an external organization
  to perform business functions in a country other than the one where the
  products or services are actually developed or manufactured.

Key Term

International trade

The exchange of capital, goods, and services
across international borders or territories.

International trade is the
exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or
territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of
gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has existed throughout
history (for example, Uttarapatha, Silk Road, Amber Road, and salt roads), its
economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent
centuries. Trading globally gives consumers and countries the opportunity to be
exposed to new markets and products. Almost every kind of product can be found
on the international market: food, clothes, spare parts, oil, jewelry, wine,
stocks, currencies, and water. Services are also traded: tourism, banking,
consulting, and transportation. A product sold to the global market is
an export, and a product bought from the global market is an import.
Imports and exports are accounted for in a country’s current account in the
balance of payments.

Industrialization, advanced
technology, globalization, multinational corporations, and outsourcing are all
having a major impact on the international trade system. Increasing
international trade is crucial to the continuance of globalization. Without
international trade, nations would be limited to the goods and services
produced within their own borders. International trade is in principle not
different from domestic trade, as the motivation and behavior of parties
involved in a trade do not change fundamentally regardless of whether trade is
across a border. The main difference is that international trade is
typically more costly than domestic trade, since a border
imposes tariffs, time costs due to border
delays, and costs associated with country differences such as language, the
legal system, or culture.

Another difference between
domestic and international trade is that factors of production such as capital
and labor are typically more mobile within a country than across countries.
Thus, international trade is mostly restricted to goods and services,
and only to a lesser extent to capital, labor, or other factors of
production. Trade in goods and services can serve as a substitute for trade in
factors of production. Instead of importing a factor of production, a country
can import goods that make intensive use of that factor of production and thus
embody it. An example is the import of labor-intensive goods by the United
States from China. Instead of importing Chinese labor, the United States
imports goods produced with Chinese labor. 

Volume of world merchandise exports

Monthly data sourced from Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, January 2000 to March 2012.

Supply Chains

The global supply chain
consists of complex interconnected networks that allow companies to produce,
handle, and distribute goods and services to the public worldwide. A
supply chain is a system of organizations, people, activities, information, and
resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer.
Supply chain activities involve the transformation of natural resources, raw
materials, and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end
customer. Corporations manage supply chains to take advantage of cheaper
costs of production. As the world has become more interconnected, resources,
labor, and processes along the chain may occur in various locations,
reaching an end point separate from all of these.

E-commerce is the act of
buying or selling online. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as
mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet
marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI),
inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern
electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of
the transaction’s life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such
as email. E-commerce has become an important tool for businesses of all sizes
worldwide, not only to sell to customers, but also to engage with them.

Offshore Outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing is the
practice of hiring an external organization to perform some business functions
(“outsourcing”) in a country other than the one where the products or
services are actually developed or manufactured (“offshore”). It can
be contrasted with offshoring, in which a company moves itself entirely to
another country or functions are performed in a foreign country by a
foreign subsidiary. The widespread use and availability of the Internet has
enabled individuals and small businesses to contract freelancers from all over
the world to get projects done at a lower cost. Crowd-sourcing systems such as
Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower have added the element of scalability, allowing
businesses to outsource information tasks across the Internet to thousands of
workers. Opponents point out that the practice of sending work overseas by countries
with higher wages reduces their own domestic employment and domestic
investment. Many customer service jobs as well as jobs in the information
technology sectors (data processing, computer programming, and technical
support) in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have
been or will potentially be affected. 

There are different views on the impact of offshore outsourcing, encapsulated
in the debates over protectionism versus free trade. Some see offshore
outsourcing as a potential threat to the domestic job market in the developed
world and ask for their home governments to enact protective measures or at
least to scrutinize existing trade practices. Others, particularly the
countries who receive work due to offshore outsourcing, see it as an
opportunity. Free-trade advocates suggest economies as a whole will obtain a
net benefit from labor offshoring, but it is unclear if those whose jobs are
displaced receive a net benefit.

37.6.4: Globalization and Democracy

At the turn of the 21st century,
globalization is seemingly hand-in-hand with political liberalization.

Learning Objective

Give examples of how democratic ideas can be
spread thanks to globalization

Key Points

• Cultural
  globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around
  the world to extend and intensify social relations.
• One way in which
  shared norms have reshaped the global landscape around the turn of the 21st
  century is the liberalization of global society via the spread
  of democratic norms.
• With the
  ascendancy of the United States as sole global superpower in the aftermath of
  the Cold War, liberal democratic norms were spread throughout the world
  via U.S. ability to attract and co-opt other countries using soft power.
• Democratic peace
  theory posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with
  other identified democracies, thus making the liberalization of global society
  in the aftermath of the Cold War a positive trend towards worldwide pacifism.
• Capitalist peace
  theory posits that once states reach certain criterion for capitalist economic
  development, they are less likely to engage in war with each other and rarely
  enter into even low-level disputes.

• In Thomas L. Friedman’s 1999 book The
  Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman observed that no two countries with
  established McDonald’s franchises had fought a war against each other since
  those franchises were established in both countries. In a later interview, he
  admitted his theory was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Key Term

soft power

A concept developed by Joseph Nye of Harvard
University to describe the ability to attract and co-opt using means of
persuasion other than forceful coercion. The currency of soft power is culture,
political values, and foreign policies.

Cultural globalization
refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around the world to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked
by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet,
popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of
commodity exchange and colonization, which have a longer history of carrying
cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables
individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and
regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not
merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the
formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their
individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnection
among different populations and cultures.

Historical Background

One way in which shared
norms have reshaped the global landscape around the turn of the 21st
century is the liberalization of global society via the spread
of democratic norms. This trend began in the 1980s as economic malaise and
resentment of Soviet oppression contributed to the collapse of the Soviet
Union, paving the way for democratization across the Iron Curtain. The most
successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally
closest to western Europe, many of which are now members or candidate members
of the European Union. The liberal trend spread to some nations in Africa in the
1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples of attempts at
liberalization include the Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the Bulldozer
Revolution in Yugoslavia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution
in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Tulip Revolution in
Kyrgyzstan, and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.

Number of nations scoring 8+ on Polity IV scale (1800-2003)

Data source: The Polity IV project. (http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm) The y axis is the number of nations scoring 8 or higher on the combined Polity score.
Note that the Polity IV project only scores nations with greater than 500,000 total population.

The graph shows that 0 nations scored an 8 or higher in 1800, about 10 scored an 8 or higher in 1900, about 20 scored an 8 or higher in 1930, about 10 scored an 8 or higher in 1945, about 35 scored an 8 or higher in 1980, and about 60 scored an 8 or higher in 2003.

Additionally, with the
ascendancy of the United States of America as sole global superpower in the
aftermath of the Cold War, liberal democratic norms were spread further
throughout the world via U.S. ability to attract and co-opt other countries
using soft power. Both Europe and the U.S. have promoted human rights and
international law throughout the world based on the strength of their
international reputations, influence, and culture. For example, the U.S. is one
of the most popular destinations for international students, who in turn
transmit ideas about and enthusiasm about liberal democracy back to their home
countries. Additionally, American films, among other pieces of easily
transmittable culture, have contributed to the Americanization of other cultures
around the world. The information age has also led to the rise of soft power
resources for non-state actors and advocacy groups. Through the use of global
media, and to a greater extent the Internet, non-state actors have been able to
increase their soft power and put pressure on governments that can ultimately
affect policy outcomes.

Democratic and Capitalist
Peace Theories

Democratic peace theory
posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other
identified democracies, thus making the liberalization of global society in the
aftermath of the Cold War a positive trend towards worldwide pacifism. The state
of peace is not considered to be singularly associated with democratic states,
although there is recognition that it is more easily sustained between
democratic nations. Among proponents of the democratic peace theory, several
factors are held as motivating peace between democratic states:

• Democratic leaders are
  forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;

• Publicly accountable
  states are inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving
  international tensions;

• Democracies are not inclined
  to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;

• Democracies tend to possess
  greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve
  infrastructure and resources.

Those who dispute this theory
often do so on grounds that it conflates correlation with causation, and that
the academic definitions of democracy and war can be manipulated so as to
manufacture an artificial trend. 

Capitalist peace theory was
developed in response to criticisms of democratic peace theory. The capitalist
peace theory posits that once states reach certain criterion for capitalist
economic development, they are less likely to engage in war with each other
and rarely enter into even low-level disputes. There are five primary theories
that have attempted to explain the capitalist peace. 

• Trade interdependence:
  Capitalist countries that have deeply interconnected trade networks with one
  another are hesitant to engage in hostilities that might threaten the health of
  the existing trade relationship and thereby threaten benefits derived from that
  relationship.

• Economic norms theory: In
  contract-intensive societies, individuals have a loyalty towards the state that
  enforces the contracts between strangers. As a consequence, individuals in
  these societies expect that their states enforce contracts reliably and
  impartially, protect individual rights, and make efforts to enhance the general
  welfare. Moreover, with the assumption of bounded rationality, individuals
  routinely dependent on trusting strangers in contracts will develop the habits
  of trusting strangers and preferring universal rights, impartial law, and
  liberal democratic government. In contrast, individuals in contract-poor
  societies will develop the habits of abiding by the commands of group leaders
  and distrusting those from out-groups. As a result, theorists link causation of
  peace with liberal economies rather than liberal political systems, with the proliferation
  of democratic norms occurring only secondarily to the establishment of
  contract-intensive economies.

• Free capital markets/capital
  openness: This theory, originally introduced by Eric Gartzke, Quan Li, and
  Charles Boehmer, argues that nations with a high level of capital openness are
  able to avoid conflict with each other and maintain lasting peace. In
  particular, nations with freer capital markets are more dependent on
  international investors because those investors are likely to withdraw if the
  country is engaged in a war or interstate conflict. As a result, leaders of
  states give greater credibility to threats made by countries with higher levels
  of capital openness, causing the aforementioned countries to be more peaceful
  than others by avoiding the possibility of misrepresentation of information.

• Size of government: This explanation of capitalist peace relies
  on a definition of capitalism that assumes capitalist states will also have
  limited governments, and in turn, large private sectors. Given this definition,
  the idea is that smaller governments are more dependent than larger or
  socialist governments on raising taxes for fighting wars. This makes the
  commitments of nations with smaller governments more credible than those with
  larger ones, allowing for nations with smaller governments, and thus “capitalist”
  economies, to be better positioned for avoiding conflicts.

• Ruling others by force: This
  theory adduces that if men want to oppose war, they must
  oppose statism. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial
  fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by
  force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it, there can be
  no peace within a nation and no peace among nations. Most definitions of
  capitalism are opposed to the strictures of statism and therefore, capitalist
  societies must tend towards peace.

Golden Arches Theory

In Thomas L. Friedman’s 1999
book The Lexus and the Olive Tree,
Friedman observed that no two countries with established McDonald’s franchises
had fought a war against each other since those franchises were established in
both countries. He supported that observation as a theory by stating that when
a country has reached an economic development where it has a middle class
strong enough to support a McDonald’s network, it would become a “McDonald’s
country” and will not be interested in fighting wars anymore. Shortly after the
book was published, NATO bombed Yugoslavia. On the first day of the bombing,
McDonald’s restaurants in Belgrade were demolished by angry protesters and were
rebuilt only after the bombing ended. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman
argued that this exception proved the rule because the war ended quickly as a
result of the Serbian peoples’ desire to not lose their place in a global system
“symbolized by McDonald’s” (Friedman 2000: 252–253).

Critics have pointed to two
other conflicts fought before 2000 as counterexamples, depending on what one
considers a war:

1. The 1989 United States
   invasion of Panama; and

2. The 1999 Indian-Pakistani
   war over Kashmir, known as the Kargil War. Both countries had (and continue to
   have) McDonald’s restaurants. Although the war was not fought in all possible
   theaters (such as Rajasthan and Punjab borders), both countries mobilized their
   military along common borders and both countries made threats involving their
   nuclear capabilities.

In a 2005 interview with The
Guardian, Friedman said that he framed his theory “with tongue slightly in cheek.”