Error occured during this request! Please try again later.
Last week marked the anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide and the World War II-era Jewish Holocaust. The NGO Genocide Watch also put out a “genocide warning” for Kurds, and particularly the Kurds of Afrin. It is therefore as good a time as any to reflect on the motivations, signals and steps that accompany genocides.
According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide … genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
When recognizing genocide, one should separate intent from motive. Whatever may be the motive for the crime, if one commits acts intended to destroy a group, or even a significant part of a group (such as a group’s educated elite, or members of a group living in a particular region), it is genocide.
Ottoman policies to “cleanse” Armenians and other Christians from Anatolia — via physical elimination or forced transfer or both — also featured the mass arrests and executions of Armenian elites in April 1915 and constitute genocide. Similarly, efforts to “cleanse” the Kurds from Afrin and replace them with Arabs and Turkmen — including Sunni Arab rebels currently being relocated from around Damascus to Afrin — look like attempted genocide. Saddam’s policies of executing all Kurds in large swaths of land near the Iranian border that were declared “no go zones”, along with other elements of the 1987-88 Anfal campaigns, likewise fall into the genocide category.
Academic Helen Fein, relying on her own work and that of others, lays out four basic motivations behind genocides. First, one often sees a logic of eliminating real or potential threats — a kind of “we have to get them before they get us” mentality. So when the Ottomans suspected Armenians of aiding their Christian enemies in World War I, or as Ankara views the Kurds of Afrin as part of the PKK, or as Saddam raged about Kurdish collaboration with the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, this motivation can be based on real threats (which does nothing to excuse states’ targeting of civilians and commitment of genocide, of course). Alternately, the threats can be fictitious: Such as Hitler’s paranoid delusions regarding Jews.
Second, perpetrators of genocide may wish to spread terror among real or potential enemies. For example, in the same breath that they deny the Armenian genocide, many Turkish extreme nationalists warn the Kurds to “behave,” saying to them “remember the Armenians!”
A third motivation for genocide may come from the crude desire to secure economic wealth. If the Kurds’ lands contain precious water and oil resources, for instance, then states become loathe to leave these unmolested. In this sense, oil in particular becomes a curse rather than a blessing.
Finally, the motivation behind genocide may come from the desire to implement a belief or ideology, such as a “pure race” or utopian society. An outside group refusing to accept the ideology or belief in question, or resisting assimilation efforts, becomes the target of elimination.
The existence of motivations for genocide does not necessarily lead to pursuit of the policy. For that to happen, scholars have identified another four factors (preconditions) that increase the likelihood of genocide. Disturbingly, a good many of these preconditions can be found in states which have ample motivation to target the Kurds.
First, the victims become an increasingly excluded “out group”, such as when Turkish officials refer to Kurds as “so-called citizens.” Second, a crisis or opportunity — as a result of war for instance — makes the victims more vulnerable or more likely to be scapegoated for problems. Third, dictatorial states find it easier to pursue genocide, given a lack of checks or balances on their executive authority. Finally, a scenario in which bystanders and outsiders seem likely to do nothing to prevent the genocide increases its likelihood. Given that media typically lack access to Kurdish regions in trouble and that the Kurdish issue inexplicably continues to fly low on the world’s radar this last factor appears as present as ever.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment