Diasporas & Conflict
BY TERRENCE LYONS
Globalization has shaped how processes of migration, exile, and the formation of diaspora and other transnational networks operate. Globalization has decreased communication and travel costs, thereby making it easier for migrants to form diaspora networks that link geographically distant populations to social, political, and economic dynamics in the homeland. Those forced across borders by war commonly have a specific set of traumatic memories and hence create specific types of “conflict-generated diasporas” that are often key actors in homeland conflicts. Conflict-generated diasporas — with their origins in conflict and their identities linked to symbolically important territory — often play critical roles with regard to homeland conflicts.
As recent economic research has noted, diaspora remittances often sustain parties engaged in civil war. Beyond resources, such diasporas frequently have a particularly important role in framing conflict issues and defining what is politically acceptable. Diaspora groups created by conflict and sustained by traumatic memories tend to compromise less and therefore reinforce and exacerbate conflicts’ protractedness. In some cases, such as the Ethiopian, Tamil, or Armenian diasporas, this tendency to frame the homeland conflict in specific ways strengthens confrontational homeland leaders and organizations and undermines others seeking compromise. In other cases, diaspora groups have transformed themselves from supporters of militant elements to key partners with peacemakers, as seen in the Irish-American diaspora and the Good Friday agreements. A major challenge to conflict resolution in a globalized world therefore is to limit diasporas’ role in exacerbating violent conflicts and increase their potential to reinforce constructive conflict resolution.
MIGRATION AND CONFLICT-GENERATED DIASPORA
Migrants’ and exiles’ involvement in their homelands’ political affairs is not new and has taken many forms over the centuries. As the pace and scale of globalization has increased in recent years key political, economic, and social developments often take place outside a given state’s sovereign territory. Migration is a complex process, with those who flee conflict and form diasporas actively engaged in the political affairs of their homeland forming only a small segment of a much larger and more diverse population. What defines a diaspora is the participation in networks engaged in hostland activities designed to sustain homeland linkages. Conflict-generated diasporas are a particular category characterized by their displacement’s source (violent, forced separation rather than relatively voluntary economic pursuits) and by the consequent nature of their homeland ties (identities emphasizing links to symbolically valuable territory).
The trauma of violent displacement is vivid in the first generations’ minds and is often kept alive in subsequent generations through commemorations and symbols. In fact, one function of conflict-generated diaspora networks is to ensure that displacement’s original cause is remembered and the grievance passed on to the next generation.In many cases, the initial migration was large, rapid, and included entire extended families and villages. The central importance of conflict therefore shapes identities among certain diaspora groups in their new host country and serves as a focal point for community mobilization. Examples of conflict-generated diasporas include Ethiopians, Eritreans, Kurds, Tamils, and Armenians. Each has a large number of members forcefully displaced by war and currently has a critical mass participating in organizations seeking to build and reinforce links between communities located in host countries to the homeland in conflict.
Globalization, rather than promoting de-territorialized identities, has strengthened these attachments. Rather than seeking to build a transnational virtual community, many diaspora groups retain and amplify attachment to their identity’s territorial aspect even if they are physically distant and even unlikely ever to travel to that territory. Conflict-generated diasporas often are driven by a desire for transformation and liberation as much as by nostalgia and tradition. A sense of solidarity and attachment to a particular locality can generate a common identity without propinquity, where territorially defined community and spatial proximity are decoupled without diminishing the salience of territoriality.
The concept of territorially defined homeland often is inherent in the conflict-generated diaspora’s identity and therefore serves as a focal point of diaspora political action and debate. As day-to-day activities focus on the new place of residence and as a consequence the instrumental value of territory diminishes, the homeland’s symbolic importance often grows. Diaspora websites and publications emphasize the symbols of the nation state — maps, flags, symbolic geographic features, or local plants. Often the language of exile emphasizes the links to homeland as a very much earthly place by speaking of the “original soil” and the need to maintain “roots” in times of dispersal and uprooting. Geographical detachment shifts the territorial concept to a metaphysical realm that is abstract and mythical. Since symbolic attachment is paramount to these communities, many conflict-generated diasporas oppose bargains that trade off some portion of the sacred homeland for some other goal.
Diasporas in general develop social networks both to retain identity and to promote community self-help programs for finding jobs, housing, and managing immigration issues in their new host countries. They often form church groups, schools to maintain native languages and cultural practices among their children, and other social clubs to celebrate religious holidays or to mark other symbolically important dates and ceremonies. These social networks often are used to mobilize the diaspora in support of a party engaged in homeland conflict. Heroes’ Day, for example, is an important day for community mobilization among the Tamil diaspora. Annual events such as the Ethiopian soccer tournament in North America bring thousands together not only to compete and socialize, but also to talk politics. Furthermore, these cultural events are instrumental in socializing the generation born outside of the homeland to the issues of conflict and displacement defining their membership in a diaspora group.
A number of recent studies have focused on the question of diaspora funding for homeland insurgencies and recent concerns regarding terrorist group financing have raised this issue’s policy importance. Diaspora networks often lobby host countries, promote public education, and organize demonstrations promoting their cause. Beyond financial resource provisionment and host country lobbying, diasporas play critical roles in setting the terms of homeland debate around conflict and identity issues. The emotional attachment to highly symbolic land often leads to a framing of conflict in the homeland in categorical, uncompromising terms. Benedict Anderson once characterized such diaspora groups as “long-distance nationalists” who are inherently unaccountable because they do not have to pay the price for the polarizing policies they support. This point of view and the way it sets the terms of debate and strategy is quite powerful because exiles often have greater media access and the time, resources, and freedom to articulate and circulate a political agenda than actors in the conflicted homeland. The cost of refusing compromise is often low (if the diaspora members are well-established in Europe, North America, or Australia) and the rewards from demonstrating steadfast commitment to the cause is high (in personal/psychological terms but also as a mechanism of social mobilization). In some cases, leading intellectuals have sought exile to engage in political debate and campaigning. Major cultural figures frequently are based abroad and their framing of issues relating to identity, memory, and conflict powerfully resonate back home.
Uncompromising diaspora positions therefore often constrain homeland actors’ ability to propose different ways to understand the struggle or to engage in constructive conflict resolution. Along with serving as an important source of support, diaspora groups can complicate the political struggles within their homelands. Political leaders back home are often ambiguous about the political influence of those who left and emphasize emotional issues, perceiving that they may have lost touch with the everyday struggles in the homeland. The diaspora’s devotion to the cause may make it more difficult for political actors back home to accept compromise solutions that may be condemned as appeasement or treason among the émigrés. In Armenia, for example, the first post-Soviet president Ter-Petrossian sought to base Armenia’s foreign policy on state interests and make conciliatory gestures toward Turkey. The Armenian diaspora in the United States and France, however, regarded this as selling out their core issue of recognition of the Armenian genocide. Ter-Petrossian eventually fell to Robert Kocharian who followed the diaspora’s traditional anti-Turkish attitudes. Conflict-generated diasporas therefore can complicate the processes of conflict resolution in the homeland.
The critical roles played by the Ethiopian diaspora were illustrated in the dramatic political developments of 2005. Early in the year, opposition political parties receiving significant leadership and financial support from the diaspora decided to compete in national elections, making the May 2005 elections the most competitive in Ethiopia’s history. The approval of leading diaspora organizations and their assistance with finances and media access was critical to shift opposition parties from their earlier posture of boycotting elections. While the diaspora was instrumental in encouraging this political opening, polarization became extreme and bitter after the counting process became mired in controversy and violence erupted in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian government arrested many leading opposition politicians within Ethiopia, but also charged the diaspora’s leading members with treason as well, which highlighted how Addis Ababa perceived the sources of the challenge to their rule.
In some cases, diaspora groups have demonstrated their critical capacity to promote resolution of conflicts they had earlier helped sustain. The shift of leading Irish Americans’ support from diaspora organizations such as Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID), dedicated to supporting hard-line military leaders, to those such as Americans for a New Irish Agenda (ANIA), focused on providing support for political forces seeking a peace agreement, is an important part of the Good Friday Agreement story. For many years, NORAID was the most prominent Irish American group aiding Irish Republican Army militants and was implicated in gun smuggling and other clandestine forms of support. In the early 1990s, however, leadership among Irish American organizations interested in Northern Irish issues shifted and leaders in the United States began to publicly speak out against violence and in support of non-violent political movements. ANIA leaders worked with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to reinforce and strengthen the political wing of the republican movement and thereby promote the peace process. This new thinking among key Irish-American leaders pressured President Bill Clinton to appoint a Special Envoy and then grant Adams a visa to visit the United States, therefore reinforcing Adams’ move toward peace. In this way, a shift in the Irish American diaspora facilitated a shift in political power from uncompromising militants to more politically minded moderates.
Understanding how conflict-generated diasporas reinforce dynamics making conflicts more protracted is important for policy makers interested in promoting conflict resolution. Conflict-generated diasporas tend to have definite, categorical perceptions of homeland conflicts. If these perceptions can be reframed and made more complex and multifaceted through a process of dialogue, then the diaspora’s role in the conflict may be changed. In addition, if a diaspora group shifts its support from the most militant leaders and organizations engaged in the homeland conflict towards a position that supports the leaders and movements seeking peace, then an important factor making conflicts more difficult to resolve can be reduced. Diaspora’s have the potential to be sources of ideas and support for peace making as well as forces making conflicts more protracted.
Conflict-generated diasporas are the product of and link together territoriality and war. Globalization has increased transborder migration, but in many cases this movement has not decreased attachment to homeland. Diaspora groups with their origins in conflict often cultivate a specific type of linkage where homeland territory takes on a high symbolic value and becomes a mobilization focal point. As a result, diasporas often financially support militants engaged in homeland conflicts. In addition, conflict-generated diasporas tend to frame conflicts in uncompromising and categorical ways that influence the political strategies of the parties back home. Parties directly engaged in the homeland’s conflict depend on diaspora supporters for resources and access to international media, international organizations, and powerful host governments, thereby giving diaspora groups influential roles in the framing of debates and the adoption of strategies relating to conflict. The particular importance of symbolic territory and a
conception of homeland to diaspora identities and their consequent framing of homeland conflict in categorical, uncompromising terms often prolong and protract conflict. In some cases, as illustrated by the Irish-American case, diaspora groups can cultivate the capacity to promote peace rather than sustain division.
Terrence Lyons (tlyons1@gmu.edu) is associate professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution (http://icar.gmu.edu) and co-director at the Center for Global Studies.
