ABSTRACT
The widespread belief in a resurgence of something called ‘ethnic conflict’ in the 1990s was in large part a function of timing and geography. Conflicts that had long been labelled ‘ideological’ during the cold war contained clear ‘ethnic’ components, but they had taken place in far-away lands, not on Europe’s doorstep. The end of superpower competition and the rise of social violence in Europe gave a new hue to what had been a familiar form of warfare in other parts of the world. That was the essential message of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s famous promise in 1993, during a speech in Sarajevo, to give besieged Bosnians a list of places in the world where people had it far worse than they. The remark was ill-considered, but the facts spoke for themselves.
