The Evolving Face of Genocide

A state has a right to protect itself against threats to its existence, from insurgents, terrorists, international belligerents, and so on. A state does not have the right, however, to exact punishment on civilian populations as a strategy to counter such threats.

War is supposed to be waged between armed belligerents -- armies can destroy each other, if they must, but are supposed to keep civilian "innocents" out of harms way. But in recent years, perhaps even more than in the past, the most egregious cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other crimes against humanity are perpetrated against civilian populations perceived to be affiliated -- typically by some identifier such as ethnicity of religion -- with armed insurgents challenging a central government's misrule. Such is the case in Darfur, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Burma, Congo ... and the list goes on.

Genocide has thus become a counterinsurgency strategy -- it's not enough to defeat a rebel movement on the battlefield, but all possible kinfolk must be destroyed as well. Government propaganda often lumps armed movements and civilians together as one and the same; a threat that must be dealt with accordingly. The resulting violence often has a creative flair, with excessive cruelty intended to send a clear and punishing message to the state's supposed enemies. A new report by the Karen Women's Organization, for example, documents violence against women in Burma at the hands of government forces, ostensibly as part of a strategy against ethnic Karen separatists. This violence includes beheadings, torture, and crucifixion.

Some critics have argued that cases like Darfur cannot be considered genocide precisely because they occur in the context of a domestic counterinsurgency. But as ICG's Andrew Stroehlein wrote last year, in one of the best articles on genocide in recent years, we cannot confine our idea of genocide to what we saw at Auschwitz -- or Armenia, Cambodia, or Rwanda, for that matter. Blinding ourselves to the evolving use of mass atrocity crimes straight-jackets international response systems, imperfect though they may be, and abrogates our responsibility to protect those caught in the snares of undiscerning genocidal governments.

Photo credit: Sarouj, Armenian Genocide memorial in Lebanon.