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How Enemies
Are Made
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SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY,
FOR
is an analyst of armed conflict. In most cases,
resources are the cause of war. In the ensuing struggle for water, oil or grazing
land, members of one’s own ethnic or religious grouping become obvious allies.
tween identity-based conflicts and resource-based conflicts. I consider this distinction to be nonsensical.
MPR: Why?
SCHLEE: In the broadest sense, every conflict is a battle
for resources. But that does not answer the question of
who the opposing parties are, and where the front lines
are drawn. The fact that some conflicts are fought over
oil or water does not itself determine who is allied with
whom and who is opposed to whom. One way or another, the weaker side will have to seek allies with whom it
might later have to share the spoils of success. That is as
far as you can go with an explanation that deals exclusively with the value of resources and with the cost of
the effort made to acquire or defend them. In this way,
you might be able to explain why any given party needs
a certain number of allies. But who these will be is not
subject exclusively to such economic logic. The choice
of allies is also determined by a shared sense of identity.
We tend to pick allies with whom we share a common
language, culture or religion.
MPR: The Balkan wars have often been attributed to
historical differences between ethnic groups and religions. However, back in the 1970s, the communities
lived together peacefully in what was then Yugoslavia,
sharing a common identity and language, as you show
in your book. How do you explain the bloody conflicts
of the nineties?
SCHLEE: It is helpful to consider the beginning of these
conflicts topographically. The breakup of Yugoslavia
started in the northwest and progressed toward the
southeast. The first republic to break away was Slovenia.
The area that was most advanced economically had every reason to keep its resources for itself and to stop
sharing them with others. Of course, there had been nationalisms and even micro-nationalisms in the Balkans
since the 19th century, but the mere existence of such
tendencies did not necessarily mean that they were
bound to prevail politically. First, the relevant groups of
actors had to be confronted with particular circumstances and corresponding incentives, and only then could all
sorts of nationalist feelings be instrumentalized in order
I LLUSTRATION : G ROSSE V ISION
MPR: And yet the media is full of reports about
ethnic and religious factors that cause states to collapse
and civil wars to erupt ...
SCHLEE: If you consider such conflicts empirically, you
will discover that ethnicity is something that develops and
changes in the course of a conflict – for example, in response to the imposition of boundaries, to exclusion, or to
the need to form alliances. This is how concepts of enmity
arise. In times of conflict, one delimits one’s own group
much more strictly than would otherwise be the case. Unfortunately, the social scientific insight that ethnic groups
are not naturally distinct does not appear to have made
much headway either in popular understanding or in some
scientific theories of conflict. Recently, it has become
fashionable among conflict analysts to distinguish be-
differences. GÜNTHER SCHLEE, Director at the MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE
P HOTO : B ERND S CHULLER / R EUTERS
MAXPLANCKRESEARCH: Professor Schlee,
your book Wie Feindbilder entstehen (How Enemies
Are Made) is intended to refute a variety of clichés.
You are particularly opposed to the theory that ethnic
and religious differences have been the main cause of
wars and crises since the 1990s. How did you reach
this conclusion?
SCHLEE: I am not the first to maintain that ethnic groups
are not naturally occurring entities. Ethnic groups are social constructs – that
has been the prevailing opinion among
social scientists for
years. It is also generally recognized that
religious boundaries
can be drawn more
narrowly or more
broadly, and that religion, while not itself
a cause of conflict,
is often instrumental“Ethnicity is something that changized in varying ways
es over the course of a conflict.”
in political rhetoric.
Very few historians would maintain that religious wars
are fought primarily over issues of theology. Similarly,
ethnicity is not the cause of ethnic conflicts.
There is a mistaken perception that many conflicts are caused by ethnic
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polarizing effect. Just shooting into a crowd can be
enough to prompt extreme reactions.
to promote the polarization and radicalization of conflicts. As radical forces gain momentum, it becomes appreciably more difficult for politically moderate Muslims
to live in peace. In my book, I explained the process of
“purification” in this context. An increasingly strict and
narrow definition of who is a true Muslim or a true Christian is used to determine which social groups should be
excluded from power, simply by insinuating that they do
not exhibit doctrinal purity. This process of purification
is not just about authoritative theological interpretations
– that is, matters of belief. Often, tangible worldly interests are involved – for example, the struggle for political
power and the elimination of possible opponents.
MPR: Scholars speak of the asymmetry of contempo-
rary wars and conflicts.
SCHLEE: Although it is by no means a modern phe-
nomenon! Even in classical antiquity, the effects of terror and political murder were well known. The fact is
that it takes only a few individuals to put millions in
fear for their lives and cause political crises to escalate.
As we have seen in Yugoslavia, the actions of a few
snipers can make the members of particular populations
turn to ethnic militias for protection, even in situations
in which ethnic or religious divisions had long been forgotten by many and first had to be re-established. Such
processes can easily be triggered by radical minorities.
Today, in Afghanistan and Iraq, they occur frequently. It
takes much less effort and is less costly to commit a specifically targeted political murder or assassination than
it does to prevent such attacks. The advantage always
lies with the aggressors, no matter how horrifying their
methods are. They are not unduly disturbed by the
deaths of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
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MPR: What can conflict research, and indeed
– P ICTURE A LLIANCE (2) / B ERND S CHULLER
MPR: How, then, do concepts of hatred, fear and enmity arise at the level of the state? Are they generally
prompted by members of an elite who see war as a way
to increase profits or expand their power?
SCHLEE: The creation and dissemination of stereotypes
regarding enemies are frequently controlled by elites.
However, the elite controlling such processes need not
be composed of those with economic influence or a
higher level of education. Terrorism, too, has a highly
MPR: To what extent has the character of conflicts
changed since the end of the Cold War? It is noticeable
that the concept of ideology is almost entirely absent
in your book.
SCHLEE: The conflict between East and West ended
some time ago, but now we have new fronts opening up
to replace it. Since 1990, and especially since September
11, 2001, NATO has sought new enemies, with Islam specifically being cast in an unfavorable light. Western politicians have, for their part, contributed to the construction of new enmities. In this way, they are playing into
the hands of ideologues in opposing camps – for example, among militant Islamic fundamentalists – who seek
DPA
to usher in a new political order. Under such conditions,
there is an interplay between calculated economic interests and social processes of inclusion and exclusion.
These factors color every political decision regarding alliance and opposition. Any purely economic explanation
for such a conflict – for example, cost-benefit calculations within the framework of rational choice theory –
must always be supplemented by a theory of social identification. Actually, it is rather improbable that decisions
will be made strictly according to individual interests.
This can be observed on a small scale. For example, most
decisions regarding one’s career are group-dependent –
that is to say, they are made in consideration of one’s
family. Staunch nationalists or adherents of religious
communities take these group demarcations further and
apply them on a larger scale.
Iran, where a caste of religious leaders seeks to monopolize authority, both in religion and in politics.
SCHLEE: I believe so. But the concept is also applicable
to many traditional African societies in which the chief
or ruler is required to adhere to and oversee certain
food-related taboos and rituals. And, incidentally, we
ought not to be concentrating solely on Islam. Western
societies also have taboos and prohibitions that have the
capacity to exclude people from power – consider the
strict interpretation of monogamous sexual morality. In
the United States, politicians – who are still mostly male
– are, to this day, judged according to their success or
failure in living up to the ideal of the good family man.
Even the minor sins of their youth are revisited upon
them at election time. And one can raise the purity bar
progressively in order to discredit one’s rivals and exclude them from power.
P HOTOS :
Islam has been cast in an unfavorable light, which makes
it harder for moderate Muslims to live in peace.
MPR: Your description might well fit present-day
Militant Islamic fundamentalists are attempting to radicalize Muslims. This suicide bomber blew himself up in Algeria in April 2007.
what can western scholars, learn from an encounter
with Africa?
SCHLEE: The basic forms of conflict can be studied in
all human societies – large or small, agricultural or industrial, past or present. In order to gather sufficient
material for our analyses, it is advantageous to draw on
and compare a wide variety of cases. The societies that
are usually studied by ethnographers do not constitute
a separate category: betrayal, exclusion from power,
changes of allegiance, demagogy, and the complex relations between leaders and followers can also be found in
African villages. These societies are closer to ours in
structure than we like to believe. But there is another
reason to take a closer look at African societies. Currently in Africa, the most important actors in many violent conflicts are not necessarily sovereign states or their
representatives. Many of these actors are not linked to
states in any way. The front lines in African conflicts are
generally quite complex. The actors may include the police, the armed forces and local administrators, but even
they do not necessarily represent the state. More often,
they are pursuing private interests.
MPR: Political scientists, for whom the state is still a
very important factor, are likely to have problems with
such diversity.
SCHLEE: Well, in many of these countries, the boundary between governmental and non-governmental
spheres is fluid, not least because, alongside these quasi-governmental agencies, pre-governmental power
structures such as clans, lineages and tribes are still in
place. The experience of the former colonial rulers
shows how difficult it is to define political boundaries
in these regions. The British in Kenya drew district
boundaries and, in the
face of resistance from
many sides, attempted
to sort out the groups
of inhabitants and assign them to specific
territories. Now, however, actors involved
in violent disputes appeal to rights or claims
that date back to the
colonial era as if they
were part of the natural order. Politicians, “Today’s violent perpetrators often justify
their actions with reference to rights
too, contribute to the
or claims stemming from the colonial era.”
creation of arbitrary
boundaries by gathering potential supporters in their
electoral districts, while expelling groups that are less
likely to vote for them. On the one hand, local conflicts
are influenced by the modern administrative system
and competition for political offices; and on the other
hand, the causes can often be found in traditional disputes over pastures and water. Different groups have
different perceptions of the issues at stake. Being on
the same side does not mean sharing the same goals.
MPR: Are these not the sort of conflicts that took
place in Europe centuries ago?
SCHLEE: Of course. A clan chief or the leader of an
armed band fighting in an African civil war is entirely
comparable with the warlord of the early Middle Ages.
In the Europe of those days, there was no state monopoly on violence. However, the organized crime
families of one era eventually became the aristocracy
of the next. It was a long and often violent progression from robber barons to a stable feudal system, and
then to the nation-state. England’s rise to world power status, for example, could scarcely have taken place
without piracy in the name of the crown. Even today,
organs of the state are often closely intertwined with
economic interests and criminal elements – consider
the example of states that live on the export of drugs.
But this is not a new phenomenon. The Europeans
played an inglorious role during the Opium Wars in
®
19th-century China.
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MPR: You yourself have worked in various capacities
in Somalia, among others as a consultant during the
peace talks in 2002. What were the consequences of the
collapse of the Somalian state?
SCHLEE: First, there was a pronounced fragmentation.
None of the remaining political forces managed to establish a national government or to bring the country
under control. Somalia fundamentally consisted of autonomous de-facto states that existed side by side or in
opposition to one another: there was Somaliland in the
northwest and Puntland in the northeast. Both of these
parts of the country
retained a degree of
statehood, confined
mostly to matters of
security. Neither the
legal system nor the
educational
system
functioned with the
aid of state revenues
– in other words,
they weren’t financed
through taxes. In the
south, the fragmenta“Coordinated action within a shared legal system
tion took on an enmust be worthwhile to the people involved.”
tirely different dimension such that, in Mogadishu, wars were being waged
between rival districts of the city.
MPR: Why did the collapse of state institutions take
such an extreme form in Somalia?
SCHLEE: The current power vacuum mirrors the conditions that have almost always prevailed in Somalia.
Without colonial control and the exertion of massive external influence, there would never have been a unified
state. For the colonial powers – the British in the north
and the Italians in the south – the possession of Somalia
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never paid off financially. On the contrary, trying to control it was a costly exercise. Thereafter, the country’s
continuing existence depended on the desire of rival superpowers to maintain a strategic involvement in the
Horn of Africa. There is at least one thing to be learned
from the example of Somalia: ethnic pluralism is not in
and of itself the cause of war. While it is one of the most
fundamentally failed states in Africa, Somalia is also the
most homogeneous in terms of ethnicity and religion,
whereas its neighbor, Kenya, with 29 languages and diverse ethnic groups, has remained relatively stable.
The consequences were quite serious. Those who see no
opportunities for themselves will not bother going to
school. And a civil servant whose salary is only enough
to cover the first few days of each month will tend to
seek alternative sources of cash. So corruption is frequently a concomitant of this hopeless situation. The
state must have something to offer; it must be in a position to reward loyalty. Otherwise, people will either
withdraw from the state or subvert it.
MPR: There have been many publications this year
was nothing left to divide up, apart from UN aid. So, ultimately, development aid became the resource that was
being fought over. The warring factions wanted to take
control of the state so they could channel this aid – into
their own pockets. Somewhere along the line, the international community lost interest in Somalia. As a result,
the state became less important as a prize over which
rival groups competed. Instead, a mosaic of smaller
groups developed, with the warlords maintaining a wary
respect for one another at a relatively low level of violence. Without question, if development aid is poured
indiscriminately into areas where peace has yet to be restored, it can often be counter-productive.
MPR: As in Somalia.
SCHLEE: That’s right. In Somalia, in the 1990s, there
recalling the mood of optimism half a century ago as
the process of decolonization gained momentum. In
some African states, commentators have taken up this
same theme. To this day, many conflicts are blamed on
the former colonial powers and the historical legacy
they left behind.
SCHLEE: This attitude is based on a somewhat idealized
conception of the pre-colonial past. Even before the intervention of the European powers, there were violent
forces at work in Africa, and bloody wars. At that time,
however, access to resources was less problematic, simply because there were far fewer people. Some colonial
regimes operated with great efficiency, for example in
developing the infrastructure and health services. The
British in Kenya succeeded in maintaining law and order
with a minimal number of administrative officials. The
level of violence was comparatively low there during the
colonial era, and the health system was good enough to
bring about a dramatic rise in population. The educational sector was limited, in so far as it reached only a
portion of the country’s young people, but the quality
was often quite high. Many African states barely manage this standard even today, despite their bloated administrative apparatus. This is because administrators
compete in enriching themselves at the expense of the
public rather than in implementing state policies.
MPR: In your book, you yourself are critical of the So-
mali peace conference. Instead, you advocate decentralized development aid for specifically defined projects.
SCHLEE: If individual groups can “qualify” for participation in a peace conference through the conspicuous
display of violent behavior, then the system of incentives is entirely wrong. At the conference in Eldoret,
Kenya in 2002, a conscious attempt was made to bring
the actual “firepower” – that is, all of the warlords – to
the negotiating table. The result was that, prior to the
conference, the warlords set about trying to eliminate
one another. These ringleaders wanted to demonstrate
MPR: Why do African states have so much difficulty
with democracy and the rule of law?
SCHLEE: That’s a complex question. Coordinated action
within a shared legal system must be worthwhile to the
people involved, otherwise there is no incentive for them
to cede authority to the state and to participate in it as
in a joint undertaking. For a few years in the middle of
the last century, it looked as if such a commitment would
be worthwhile. When the colonial powers disappeared
from the scene, it was suddenly necessary to reappoint
officials to the civil and public services. At that time,
there was a generation of well-educated African high
school and university graduates who had their chance.
But sooner or later, all the posts were filled and the next
generation went away empty handed, not least because
the anticipated economic growth did not materialize.
In the 1990s, warring factions in Somalia attempted to seize control of development
aid by force – now the UN distributes aid only in the presence of security forces.
their capabilities, both to their own clientele and to their
competitors. Even during the conference in Kenya, they
were still directing skirmishes by mobile phone.
MPR: As a researcher working in Africa, you have
direct contact with people there. How should an anthropologist proceed in this region?
SCHLEE: The most important research tool is open conversation. You won’t get far by handing out standardized questionnaires to groups that have never even seen
such a thing. More particularly, you never know precisely which questions are most pertinent in the local
situation: anthropologists must be able to respond to the
realities on the ground. It is thus most important to possess language skills and to observe existing social conditions with care. Diaries and detailed records of conversations are part of the daily routine of a field researcher.
MPR: How many languages do you speak?
SCHLEE: Ten, of which I’m fluent in seven or eight. But
P HOTOS : B ERND S CHULLER / R EUTERS (2)
MPR: As is evident in your book, you do not share the
optimistic view that social progress is inexorable.
SCHLEE: No. History is not a one-way street. We see
states being dismantled in many parts of Africa. Even in
western democracies, exemption from government regulation is becoming more widespread. For example, global corporations often succeed in shielding themselves
against interference from the state. In many cases, they
already have a larger budget than many small countries.
So we can no longer assume that the world will be organized purely on the basis of states and governments.
Many processes have ceased to be international – they
are controlled transnationally by parties below the state
level. In many cases, this results in the reversal of earlier
developments and the dismantling of rights and entitlements. Whether or not we call this “progress” depends
on how we perceive the destination toward which we are
supposedly moving.
In 1992, Serbs killed 79 Muslims and Croats in Brcko – although
ethnic tensions had been all but forgotten in Yugoslavia.
there are regions in which I have no language knowledge, such as central Asia, which is another important
focus of research in my department. I can speak a little
Arabic with the Imam in a mosque and make a good
impression. But I speak neither Russian nor any of the
Turkic languages, and when I visit our research projects
there, I am soon lost without my colleagues.
INTERVIEW: CHRISTIAN MAYER
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