  After WWI and WWII respectively, the West decided to carve up areas of the world they were no longer interested in ruling, such as Central Africa and the Middle East. Not only did they hose the Palestinians out of a homeland, they also split Muslim factions on the Indian subcontinent, split two tribes among three countries in Central Africa, and did the same in many other places around the world. And, as expected, Central Africa is back in the news again as the Hutus have slaughtered Tutsis in Burundi, according to Reuters in urlLink Burundi Says Hutus Kill 159 in Refugee Camp . This area has fascinated me since I learned about it in a Geography class in college. The class was euphemistically referred to as War, but it covered the "geographic causes of international conflict. " One cause we covered was the arbitrary assignment of international borders. While they might seem to make sense, dividing countries by natural structures such as rivers and mountains, the West never considered the social impact of dividing up social groups between or among countries. Thus Central Africa. The Tutsis and Hutu have been divided among Burundi, Congo (or Zaire), and Rwanda for years now. And through the years the tribal control of these three governments ebb and flow like the tides.
It's almost like a bad game of musical chairs, but with one more chair than players instead of one less and under each chair is a different prize, each more valuable than the next. So each of the two players wants to gain all three chairs, if possible. Complicate that with a rather natural affinity of the minority group to government, and you have a real mess on your hands.
This time, it was less than 200 refugees who lost their lives. Over the past 10 or 15 years, about a million have died between these two tribes over this area, with the Tutsis comprising the bulk of the dead. This is an area of the world often overlooked, standing in the shadows of Israel and Kashmir. While I don't think the U.S. need be involved in the struggles there, I do believe that there are valuable lessons to learn. Not the least of those is that we need to better understand the cultures with which we interact. urlLink Read more! 
