Nationalism from without

Intra-state violent conflicts are no longer fought solely in the actual war territories: in the villages of Ambon, the jungles of Sri Lanka, or the occupied territories of Israel. Increasingly, conflicts seem to become dispersed and delocalized. Stories about American Jewish groups supporting right-wing extremism in Israel, German Croats speeding the violent collapse of Yugoslavia, and the Tamil Tigers in London, Kurds in the Netherlands, Filipinos, Khmer, and Kosovar Albanians in Western Europe and the US are not new to us. Within the field of Conflict Studies, however, the process of the “deterritorialization” of conflict is left surprisingly unexplored. Many questions about the political mobilization of diaspora communities and their role in intra-state conflicts remain unanswered. How and why are diaspora communities involved in intra-state conflicts in their erstwhile homelands? What activities do they undertake? How are they organized? What strategies do they use? And, eventually, how do they affect contemporary conflicts? In this chapter I explore the deterritorialization and delocalization of contemporary conflict. By looking at ideas on locality, long-distance nationalism, and conflict dynamics I aim to identify units of analysis to understand the role of diaspora in contemporary conflict.