All countries possess innumerable and at times dramatic social, economic, and political fault lines. In Africa, the result of these divisions is all too often catastrophic failure: The Rwandan genocide and Nigerian civil war (which each cost several hundred thousand lives), the Sudanese civil war and Darfur conflict (at least another million), various Congolese conflicts (anywhere between 1 million and 5 million), the imbroglio in Ivory Coast, and so on.
Africa, however, is far from alone. From Yemen to India, Brazil to China, Sri Lanka to Guatemala, Israel and Palestine to Afghanistan and Iraq, fault lines exist. In many they produce conflict; in others, they are better managed. India, for example -- a state with 21 classical languages of many nations, categories, castes, classes, and religions -- has generally managed its fault lines well, as does Canada. With war between states now exceptionally rare, violence within countries is today the chief manner in which people kill each other in large numbers. But we don't very well understand why it happens in one place but not another or why it breaks out at certain times but not others.
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