Massacres in Contemporary Conflict

September, 1996

What is more dangerous: A brace of F-18s with laser-guided bombs and AIM-9L air to air missiles, or a group of men with pitchforks and improvised clubs? Think carefully, the correct answer may not be the obvious one.

A new book, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, has firmly placed the reputation of Thomas Hobbes over that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The author, Lawrence H. Keeley, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has reviewed all the available literature in three overlapping disciplines to forever dispel the notion that pre-civilized humanity is inherently peaceful. Some of his findings are quite disturbing, particularly when he points out that participation in primitive warfare, is often far deadlier on a proportional basis than participation in contemporary warfare.

While Keeley loosely defines primitive (and prehistoric) humanity as being either pre-literate and/or pre-civil, primitive-type warfare is still endemic around the globe. Here, perhaps it is best to supplant Keeley with the Israeli scholar, Professor Martin van Crevald. His book, The Transformation of War, makes a distinction between the "trinitarian" warfare of the nation-states with the non-trinitarian warfare of non-state actors. The trinity in reference is the Clauswitzian one of a government waging war through its military with the support of its people against a similar trinity on the other side. Non-trinitarian warfare consists of conflicts where one or more of the elements of the trinity are missing on either side - if not both.

Modern trinitarian warfare might be exemplified by some of the grand campaigns of the Second World War, that of the Normandy Landing and Break-out being typical. The resources and manpower of entire states were harnessed to war. Non-trinitarian warfare has many forms and many expressions. It is exhibited by terrorism, massacre, brigandage, guerrilla uprisings, or endemic rioting. One example arises out of the turmoil between the Hutus and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, in recent years.

The Normandy Invasion (D-Day to the Liberation of Paris) lasted from June 6th until August 24th of 1944. During those 79 days, the German Army sustained enormous casualties to the 62 divisions it committed to the battle. The 35 mauled divisions that kept a degree of organization were often down to less than 25% of their fighting strength. (The 12 SS Panzer Hitlerjugend Division, for example, had barely 5% of its men left). The Germans suffered some 250,000 dead and as many captured. The Allies lost some 40,000 dead and 185,000 wounded or missing. In sum about 3,700 men died every day for 79 days during this campaign.

By contrast, the 1994 massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda began with the murder of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6th. This particular episode in Rwanda's ongoing violence can arguably be said to have ended with the Rwandan Patriotic Front capture of Kigali on July 6th. The toll is still unknown but probably lies somewhere between the estimates of 500,000 and 1,000,000 dead. Somewhere between 5,000 and 11,000 people were murdered every day for 93 days.

The two events do not make an even contrast. The Normandy Campaign was part of the greater violence of the Second World War, in which about 25,700 people died on an average day (and many of these were also victims of massacre). Yet almost the entire world was involved in the 1939-45 conflict, whereas the Tutsi-Hutu imbroglio is centred on two small nations with a combined population of about 14 million people.

A point that confirms Keeling's observations about the deadliness of primitive warfare is that the Normandy Campaign was fought on an enormous scale. It featured clouds of aircraft, artillery lined wheel to wheel and vast herds of tanks. The Rwanda Massacres were undertaken with small arms, machetes and sharp sticks.

Another example of the lethality of non-trinitarian warfare arises out of the rivalry between India and Pakistan. The disputes between the two can be boiled down to the problems of the 1947 partition of the British Raj and the fundamental animosity between Muslims and India's Hindu elites. Both nations have large amounts of modern military equipment, and reasonably professional officer cadres. Both nations now have nuclear weapons, but deny the fact when pressed. India and Pakistan have a long-simmering border rivalry. As recently as August 1996, their troops were exchanging fire in the vicinity of the Siachen Glaciers, well above the tree-line in the Himalayan mountains. India accuses Pakistan of arming Muslim guerrillas in the Kashmir, and the accusations probably have much truth behind them. Many Pakistanis believe India is abetting the political and criminal unrest in the country's major centres, and these suspicions probably have some validity.

Indian and Pakistani troops fought each other in 1947-48 in a relatively modest war over the Kashmir. In 1965, they fought with tanks and aircraft over the frontier lines in the Rann of Kutch, the Punjab and Kashmir. 1971 was a violent year. Pakistani troops may have killed over 100,000 Bengali Muslims in the suppression of unrest in East Pakistan (now the nation of Bangladesh). This is one example of how Trinitarian military establishments often fail to cope with insurgencies. India cheerfully helped arm the Bengali rebels, while quietly preparing to deal with any overt Pakistani responses. When Pakistan attacked India in December 1971, its forces were badly defeated. The three weeks of trinitarian warfare with India resulted in another 6,400 deaths.

The Trinitarian-style conflicts between India and Pakistan pale when compared to the non-Trinitarian violence that attended the partition of the British Raj. Mobs of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh civilians engaged in a series of sectarian riots and massacres from April 1946 to October 1947. While no reliable statistics exist, between 800,000 and 1 million people were murdered and 10-15 million fled their homes. This level of Indo-Pakistani violence might only be reached again if the two countries go beyond Trinitarian warfare in their next encounter by escalating to nuclear weapons use.

There is also the tragedy of Cambodia to consider. After some years of general instability, a civil war developed between the new military government and the Khymer Rouge guerrillas. This period lasted from March 1970 to April 1975. Then the Khymer Rouge established a particularly murderous regime until toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in January 1979. A low level guerrilla conflict has continued since then - despite numerous political changes in the country. Professor R.J. Rummel, the noted researcher on mass murder, estimates that some 3,979,000 war-related deaths have occured during this time, of which 3,186,000 involved the massacre of the unarmed and defenceless.

The most concentrated period of violence in Cambodia involved an estimated 2,000,000 murders during the 1975-79 Kyhmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot's killers were seldom armed with anything more than rifles, and the guerrillas were enjoined to save their cartridges and use bamboo stakes or agricultural tools when engaging in their executions.

There are other examples of the deadliness of hunting arms, knives, and sticks as opposed to aircraft, tanks and artillery. On a proportional basis, the soldier in combat may be safer than the civilian in a massacre, or some other form of non-trinitarian warfare.

The relative low lethality of weapons systems may seem paradoxical, but this is by no means unusual in human affairs. Indeed, those who oppose the sale of high-tech arms to other countries ought to re-consider their stance. Frigates and anti-tank missiles in the hands of a professional military are not nearly as dangerous as knives, rocks and sharp sticks in the hands of a mob of amateurs.