Some mass killings, such as those of Jews and gypsies by Nazis, were unprovoked; the slaughter was not in retaliation for previous murders committed by the slaughtered. In many other cases, however, a mass killing culminates a series of murders and countermurders. When a provocation is followed by massive retaliation out of all proportion to the provocation, how do we decide when ‘mere’ retaliation becomes genocide? At the Algerian town of Sétif in May 1945, celebrations of the end of the Second World War developed into a race riot in which Algerians killed 103 French. The savage French response consisted of planes destroying forty-four villages, a cruiser bombarding coastal towns, civilian commandos organizing reprisal massacres, and troops killing indiscriminately. The Algerian dead numbered 1,500 according to the French, 50,000 according to the Algerians. The interpretations of this event differ as do the estimates of the dead: to the French, it was suppression of a revolt; to the Algerians, it was a genocidal massacre.
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Instances of genocide prove as hard to pigeonhole in their motivation as in their definition. While several motives may operate simultaneously, it is convenient to divide them into four types. In the first two types there is a real conflict of interest over land or power, whether or not the conflict is also disguised in ideology. In the other two types such conflict is minimal, and the motivation is more purely ideological or psychological.
Perhaps the commonest motive for genocide arises when a militarily stronger people attempt to occupy the land of a weaker people, who resist. Among the innumerable straightforward cases of this sort are not only the killing of Tasmanians and Australian Aborigines by white Australians, but also the killings of American Indians by white Americans, of Araucanian Indians by Argentinians, and of Bushmen and Hottentots by the Boer settlers of South Africa.
Another common motive involves a lengthy power struggle within a pluralistic society, leading to one group seeking a final solution by killing the other. Cases involving two different ethnic groups are the killing of Tutsi in Rwanda by Hutu in 1962–63, of Hutu in Burundi by Tutsi in 1972–73, of Serbs by Croats in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, of Croats by Serbs at the end of that war, and of Arabs in Zanzibar by blacks in 1964. However, the killer and killed may belong to the same ethnic group and may differ only in political views. Such was the case in history’s largest known genocide, claiming an estimated twenty million victims in the decade 1929–39 and sixty-six million between 1917 and 1959 – that committed by the Russian government against its political opponents, many of whom were ethnic Russians. Political killings lagging far behind this record are the Khmer Rouge purge of several million fellow Cambodians during the 1970s, and Indonesia’s killing of hundreds of thousands of communists in 1965–67.
In these two motives for genocide, the victims could be viewed as a significant obstacle to the killers’ control of land or power. At the opposite extreme are scapegoat killings of a helpless minority blamed for frustrations of their killers. Jews were killed by fourteenth-century Christians as scapegoats for the bubonic plague, by early twentieth-century Russians as scapegoats for Russia’s political problems, by Ukrainians after the First World War as scapegoats for the Bolshevist threat, and by the Nazis during the Second World War as scapegoats for Germany’s defeat in the First World War. When the US Seventh Cavalry machine-gunned several hundred Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in 1890, the soldiers were taking belated revenge for the Sioux’s annihilating counterattack on Custer’s Seventh Cavalry force at the Battle of the Little Big Horn fourteen years previously. In 1943–44, at the height of Russia’s suffering from the Nazi invasion, Stalin ordered the killing or deportation of six ethnic minorities who served as scapegoats: the Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachai.
Racial and religious persecutions have served as the remaining class of motives. While I do not claim to understand the Nazi mentality, the Nazis’ extermination of Gypsies may have stemmed from relatively ‘pure’ racial motivation, while scapegoating joined religious and racial motives in the extermination of Jews. The list of religious massacres is almost infinitely long. It includes the First Crusaders’ massacre of all Moslems and Jews in Jerusalem when that city was finally captured in 1099, and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants by Catholics in 1572. Of course, racial and religious motives have contributed heavily to genocide provoked by land struggles, power struggles, and scapegoating.
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Even if one allows for these disagreements over definitions and motives, plenty of cases of genocide remain. Let us now see how far back in and before our history as a species the record of genocide extends.
Is it true, as often claimed, that man is unique among animals in killing members of his own species? For example, the distinguished biologist Konrad Lorenz, in his book On Aggression, argued that animals’ aggressive instincts are held in check by instinctive inhibitions against murder. But in human history this equilibrium supposedly became upset by the invention of weapons, and our inherited inhibitions were no longer strong enough to restrain our newly acquired powers of killing. This view of man as the unique killer and evolutionary misfit has been accepted by Arthur Koestler and many other popular writers.
Actually, studies in recent decades have documented murder in many, though certainly not all, animal species. Massacre of a neighbouring individual or troop may be beneficial to an animal, if it can thereby take over the neighbour’s territory, food, or females. But attacks also involve some risk to the attacker. Many animal species lack the means to kill their fellows, and of those species with the means, some refrain from using them. It may sound utterly repugnant to do a cost and benefit analysis of murder, but such analyses nevertheless help one understand why murder appears to characterize only some animal species.
In non-social species, murders are necessarily just of one individual by another. However, in social carnivorous species, like lions, wolves, hyenas, and ants, murder may take the form of coordinated attacks by members of one troop on members of a neighbouring troop – that is, mass killings or ‘wars’. The form of war varies among species. Males may spare and mate with neighbouring females, kill the infants, and drive off (langur monkeys) or even kill (lions) neighbouring males; or both males and females may be killed (wolves). As one example, here is Hans Kruuk’s account of a battle between two hyena clans in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater:
About a dozen of the Scratching Rock hyenas, though, grabbed one of the Mungi males and bit him wherever they could – especially in the belly, the feet, and the ears. The victim was completely covered by his attackers, who proceeded to maul him for about ten minutes … . The Mungi male was literally pulled apart, and when I later studied the injuries more closely, it appeared that his ears were bitten off and so were his feet and testicles, he was paralyzed by a spinal injury, had large gashes in the hind legs and belly, and subcutaneous haemorrhages all over.
Of particular interest in understanding our genocidal origins is the behaviour of two of our three closest relatives, gorillas and common chimpanzees. Two decades ago, any biologist would have assumed that our ability to wield tools and to lay concerted group plans made us far more murderous than apes – if indeed apes were murderous at all. Recent discoveries about apes suggest, however, that a gorilla or common chimp stands at least as good a chance of being murdered as the average human. Among gorillas, for instance, males fight each other for ownership of harems of females, and the victor may kill the loser’s infants as well as the loser himself. Such fighting is a major cause of death for infant and adult male gorillas. The typical gorilla mother loses at least one infant to infanticidal males in the course of her life. Conversely, thirty-eight per cent of infant gorilla deaths are due to infanticide.
Especially instructive, because it could be documented in detail, was the extermination of one of the common chimpanzee bands that Jane Goodall studied, carried out between 1974 and 1977 by another band. At the end of 1973 the two bands were fairly even
ly matched: the Kasakela band to the north, with eight mature males and occupying fifteen square kilometers; and the Kahama band to the south, with six mature males and occupying ten square kilometers. The first fatal incident occurred in January 1974, when six of the Kasakela adult males, one adolescent male, and one adult female left behind the young Kasakela chimps, travelled south, then moved silently and more quickly south when they heard chimp calls from that direction, until they surprised a Kahama male referred to as Godi. One Kasakela male pulled the fleeing Godi to the ground, sat on his head, and pinned out his legs while the others spent ten minutes hitting and biting him. Finally, one attacker threw a large rock at Godi, and the attackers then left. Although able to stand up, Godi was badly wounded, bleeding, and had puncture marks. He was never seen again and presumably died of his injuries.
The next month, three Kasakela males and one female again travelled south and attacked the Kahama male Dé, who was already weak from a previous attack or illness. The attackers pulled Dé out of a tree, stamped on him, bit and hit him, and tore off pieces of his skin. A Kahama oestrus female with Dé was forced to return northwards with the attackers. Two months later Dé was seen still alive but emaciated, with his spine and pelvis protruding, some fingernails and part of a toe torn off, and his scrotum shrunk to one-fifth of normal size. He was not seen thereafter.
In February 1975 five adult and one adolescent Kasakela males tracked down and attacked Goliath, an old Kahama male. For eighteen minutes they hit, bit, and kicked him, stamped on him, lifted and dropped him, dragged him over the ground, and twisted his leg. At the end of the attack Goliath was unable to sit up and was not seen again.
While the above attacks were aimed at Kahama males, in September 1975 the Kahama female Madam Bee was fatally injured after at least four non-fatal attacks over the course of the preceding year. The attack was carried out by four Kasakela adult males, while one adolescent male and four Kasakela females (including Madam Bee’s kidnapped daughter) watched. The attackers hit, slapped, and dragged Madam Bee, stamped and pounded on her, threw her to the ground, picked her up and slammed her down, and rolled her downhill. She died five days later.
In May 1977 five Kasakela males killed the Kahama male Charlie, but details of the fight were not observed. In November 1977 six Kasakela males caught the Kahama male Sniff and hit, bit, and pulled him, dragged him by the legs, and broke his left leg. He was still alive the next day but was not seen again.
Of the remaining Kahama chimps, two adult males and two adult females disappeared from unknown causes, while two young females transferred to the Kasakela band, which proceeded to occupy the former Kahama territory. However, in 1979 the next band to the south, the larger Kalande band with at least nine adult males, began to encroach on Kasakela territory and may have accounted for several vanished or wounded Kasakela chimps. Similar intergroup assaults have been observed in the sole other long-term field study of common chimps, but not in long-term studies of pygmy chimps.
If one judges these murderous common chimps by the standards of human killers, it is hard not to be struck by their inefficiency. Even though groups of three to six attackers assaulted a single victim, quickly rendered him or her defenceless, and continued the assault for ten to twenty minutes or more, the victim was always still alive at the end of that time. However, the attackers did succeed in immobilizing the victim and often causing eventual death. The pattern was that the victim initially crouched and may have tried to protect his head but then gave up any attempt at defence, and the attack continued beyond the point where the victim ceased moving. In this respect the inter-band attacks differ from the milder fights that often occur within a band. Chimps’ inefficiency as killers reflects their lack of weapons, but it remains surprising that they have not learned to kill by strangling, although that would be within their capabilities.
Not only is each individual killing inefficient by our standards, but so is the whole course of chimp genocide. It took three years and ten months from the first killing of a Kahama chimp to the band’s end, and all killings were of individuals, never of several Kahama chimps at once. In contrast, Australia’s settlers often succeeded in eliminating a band of Aborigines in a single dawn attack. Partly, this inefficiency again reflects chimps’ lack of weapons. Since all chimps are equally unarmed, killings can succeed only by several attackers overpowering a single victim, whereas Australia’s settlers had the advantage of guns over unarmed Aborigines and could shoot many at once. Partly, too, genocidal chimps are much inferior to humans in brainpower and hence in strategic planning. Chimps apparently cannot plan a night attack or a coordinated ambush by a split assault team.
However genocidal chimps do seem to evince intent and unsophisticated planning. The Kahama killings resulted from Kasakela groups proceeding directly, quickly, silently, and nervously towards or into Kahama territory, sitting in trees and listening for nearly an hour, and finally running to Kahama chimps that they detected. Chimps also share xenophobia with us; they clearly recognize members of other bands as different from, and treat them very differently from, members of their own band.
In short, of all our human hallmarks – art, spoken language, drugs, and the others – the one that has been derived most straightforwardly from animal precursors is genocide. Common chimps already carried out planned killings, extermination of neighbouring bands, wars of territorial conquest, and abduction of young nubile females. If chimps were given spears and some instruction in their use, their killings would undoubtedly begin to approach ours in efficiency. Chimpanzee behaviour suggests that a major reason for our human hallmark of group living was defence against other human groups, especially once we acquired weapons and a large enough brain to plan ambushes. If this reasoning is correct, then anthropologists’ traditional emphasis on ‘man the hunter’ as a driving force of human evolution might be valid after all – with the difference that we ourselves, not mammoths, were our own prey and the predator that forced us into group living.
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Of the two patterns of genocide commonest among humans, both have animal precedents: killing both men and women fits the common chimpanzee and wolf pattern, while killing men and sparing women fits the gorilla and lion pattern. Unprecedented even among animals, however, is a procedure adopted from 1976 to 1983 by the Argentine military, in the course of killing over 10,000 political opponents and their families, the desaparecidos. Victims included the usual men, non-pregnant women, and children down to the age of three or four years, who were often tortured before being killed. But Argentina’s soldiers made a unique contribution to animal behaviour by specializing in killing pregnant women, who were arrested, kept alive until they delivered, and then shot in the head, so that the newborn infant could be adopted by childless military parents.
If we are not unique among animals in our own propensity for murder, might our propensities nevertheless be a pathological fruit of modern civilization? Modern writers, disgusted by destruction of ‘primitive’ societies by ‘advanced’ societies, tend to idealize the former as noble savages who supposedly are peace-loving, or who commit only isolated murders rather than massacres. Erich Fromm believed the warfare of hunter-gatherer societies to be ‘characteristically unbloody’. Certainly some pre-literate peoples (Pygmies, Eskimos) seem less warlike than some others (New Guineans, Great Plains and Amazonian Indians). Even the warlike peoples – so it is claimed – practise war in a ritualized fashion and stop when only a few adversaries have been killed. But this idealization does not match my experience of the New Guinea highlanders, who are often cited as practising limited or ritualized war. While most fighting in New Guinea consisted of skirmishes leaving no or few dead, groups sometimes did succeed in massacring their neighbours. Like other peoples, New Guineans tried to drive off or kill their neighbours on occasions when they found it advantageous, safe, or a matter of survival to do so.
When we consider early literate civilizations, written records testify to the frequency of g
enocide. The wars of the Greeks and Trojans, of Rome and Carthage, and of the Assyrians and Babylonians and Persians proceeded to a common end: the slaughter of the defeated irrespective of sex, or else the killing of the men and enslavement of the women. We all know the biblical account of how the walls of Jericho came tumbling down at the sound of Joshua’s trumpets. Less often quoted is the sequel. Joshua obeyed the Lord’s command to slaughter the inhabitants of Jericho as well as of Ai, Makkedeh, Libnah, Hebron, Debir, and many other cities. This was considered so ordinary that the Book of Joshua devotes only a phrase to each slaughter, as if to say, of course he killed all the inhabitants, what else would you expect? The sole account requiring elaboration is of the slaughter at Jericho itself, where Joshua did something really unusual; he spared the lives of one family (because they had helped his messengers).
We find similar episodes in accounts of the wars of the Crusaders, Pacific islanders, and many other groups. Obviously, I am not saying that slaughter of the defeated irrespective of sex has always followed crushing defeat in war. Yet either that outcome, or else milder versions like the killing of men and enslavement of women, happened often enough that they must be considered more than a rare aberration in our view of human nature. Since 1950 there have been nearly twenty episodes of genocide, including two claiming over a million victims each (Bangladesh in 1971, Cambodia in the late 1970s) and four more with over a hundred thousand victims each (the Sudan and Indonesia in the 1960s, Burundi and Uganda in the 1970s) (see map).
Thus, genocide has been part of our human and prehuman heritage for millions of years. In light of this long history, what about our impression that twentieth-century genocide is unique? There is little doubt that Stalin and Hitler set new records for number of victims, because they enjoyed three advantages over killers of earlier centuries – denser populations of victims, improved communications for rounding up victims, and improved technology for mass killing. As another example of how technology can expedite genocide, the Solomon Islanders of Roviana Lagoon in the Southwest Pacific were famous for their headhunting raids that depopulated neighbouring islands. However, as my Roviana friends explained to me, these raids did not blossom until steel axes reached the Solomon Islands in the Nineteenth Century. Beheading a man with a stone axe is difficult, and the axe blade quickly loses its sharp edge and is tedious to resharpen.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee Page 34