Word: regionally
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Belgium assumed control of the region in 1916, it was called Ruanda-Urundi, two kingdoms of similar ethnic makeup--some 85% Hutu, 14% Tutsi and 1% Twa. Under the rule of a godlike Tutsi King, unquestioned by all ethnic groups, each nation had achieved a measure of cohesion rare in Africa at the time. While Tutsi dominated society, intermarriage was common, Hutu and Tutsi spoke the same language, and each fought side by side in wars against neighboring kingdoms...
...their proxy. By independence, they had not only installed the Tutsi as an administrative overclass but also, thanks to the pseudoscientific theories favored at the time in the West, led them to believe they were biologically superior as well. This engendered a level of resentment previously unseen in the region. "Tutsi and Hutu have killed each other more to upbraid a vision they have of themselves and the others than for material interests," historian Gerard Prunier wrote in his account of the 1994 Rwandan holocaust. "That is what makes the killing so relentless...
...incite peasants into murdering their neighbors, Hutu leaders played on historical fears of a return to Tutsi hegemony and capitalized on a uniquely hierarchical social structure, in which peasants obey their chiefs however chilling the command. Competition for land in what has traditionally been Africa's most densely populated region further egged on the would-be killers. In three months of 1994, nearly a million civilians were butchered...
...lesson learned throughout the region from the staggering death tolls, sums up one senior U.S. diplomat, is "if you don't strike first, you risk annihilation." That belief led to last week's military coup in Burundi. When the coalition government designed to protect the interests of both sides invited foreign military intervention last month to impose security as a prelude to all party talks, government figures were denounced as traitors at home by Hutu and Tutsi extremists alike. Both groups feared that the outside forces would help their enemies to victory and endanger their very existence...
What the researchers found was striking. Levels of a powerful brain chemical called dopamine dramatically increased in the outermost shell of the nucleus accumbens, a region that is richly endowed with connections to one of the brain's most important emotional centers, an ancient structure known as the amygdala...