Ethnicity and Its Effect in the Hostilities in the Mano River Basin, from 1958 to Today

Can the actions taken by military and governmental forces in the Mano River basin (Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Guinea) be described by ethnic conflict literature, or are those individuals merely calling forth ethnicity as a way to further their own self interests? An Amnesty International report detailing atrocities in Liberia at the turn of the century described the military force, the ATU (anti-terrorist unit) as disproportionately arresting, whipping, and injuring members from the Mandingo ethnic group, while freeing members of the Kpelle, Lorma and the Gbandi ethnic groups (Amnesty International 2001). Furthermore, can the ethnic conflict literature describe actions in all states of the Mano River basin, or do different explanations for ethnic conflict better explain what happened on the ground during that period? It is the contention of this paper that while ethnicity does play an important role in determining the actions of individuals in the Mano River basin, it is by no means the only or even the major explanation for the cross-border war waged by Charles Taylor from 1989 until 1997, and the actions taken by members of all three states in the period leading up to and following the war.

Events like the anti-terrorist unit of Liberia disproportionately imprisoning and torturing members of the Mandingo ethnicity from 1999 until 2001 can be better explained by the class-based approaches to ethnicity provided by Edna Bonacich. Bonacich's framework explains more of the variation in these events over competing conceptions of ethnicity, such as the primordialist literature of scholars like Francisco Gil-White and Marc Howard Ross. Bonacich works within an instrumentalist framework; in her own words, "despite the fact that nationalism calls upon 'primordial' bonds of affiliation, it both grows out of the class relations generated by the development of capitalism and imperialism (Bonacich 1999; 188)."