Ethnic cleansing and return as geopolitics -- Yugoslavia's violent dissolution -- A distinctive geopolitical space -- Polarization and poison -- Ethnic cleansing -- Persistence ambivalence -- Early battles over returns -- Building capacity -- Rule of law -- Localized geopolitical struggles -- Did ethnic cleaning succeed? -- List of interviews
This review article outlines the progress that the literature on the causes of ethnic cleansing has made in the last 10–15 years. The article specifically focuses on two lines of research that have expanded our understanding of ethnic cleansing: (a) the studies that focus on the role of wars (this literature can in turn be divided into those works that treat "wars as strategic environments" and those that treat "wars as transformational forces"); (b) the studies that focus on the pre-war domestic or international conditions that hinder or promote ethnic cleansing. The last section of the article suggests several future avenues of research that could further refine the study of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to other types of mass violence.
This paper analyses the concept of majimboism in Kenya, which essentially calls for the division of the country into semi-independent tribal states. The concept was first presented at the second Lancaster House Constitutional Conference in England in the prelude to independence, and later as a way to stem the demands for pluralism in Kenya since 1991. The author pays particular attention to latter-day majimboism and its consequences on the political and economic set-up for Kenya. This version of majimboism is especially critical since the calls for its restoration were followed by violence, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 1,500 people and the displacement of more than 300,000 others from their homes in the Rift Valley, and has taken a form of ethnic cleansing. The paper critically discusses this ethnic cleansing, attempting to link the violence to the calls for majimboism. Finally, the paper discusses the manner in which the KANU regime has previously amended the Constitution as this is the proposed and most likely way through which it will attempt to impose majimboism in Kenya. (DÜI-Hff)
In: in Hilmi M. Zawati, the Triumph of Ethnic Hatred and the Failure of International Political Will: Gendered Violence and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010) Pp. 91-137.