Fault line wars aim to conquer and ethnically cleanse sacred territory

Evidence

Fault line conflicts sometimes are struggles for control over people. More frequently the issue is control of territory. The goal of at least one of the participants is to conquer territory and free it of other people by expelling them, killing them, or doing both, that is, by “ethnic cleansing.” These conflicts tend to be violent and ugly, with both sides engaging in massacres, terrorism, rape, and torture. The territory at stake often is for one or both sides a highly charged symbol of their history and identity, sacred land to which they have an inviolable right: the West Bank, Kashmir, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Drina Valley, Kosovo. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 699

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘ethnic cleansing’ as the core goal of fault line conflicts — conquering territory and freeing it of other people.
• DEEPTHINKING: The fusion of identity, sacred territory, and cleansing in the same analytical frame is the chapter’s conceptual core — dense enough to sit with.