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Intercultural communication in ethnopolitical conflicts

National borders do not correspond with cultural boundaries. This sometimes comes as a bitter reality in many regions worldwide where religious, cultural and ethnic conflicts or wars are an everyday reality. But even European countries, who did not have to face ethnic tensions for a long period in history, are nowadays challenged by migration (see f.ex. Sweden, Germany, Switzerland). These situations ask for new approaches and Intercultural communication has to face this challenge. Globalisation did and does not only lead to the development of a transnational culture, but although to pejorative tendencies and separatist movements between different cultural, ethnic and religious groups. This is the fact in Belgium, in the Basque region and many other European countries, but of even more destructive power in Iraque, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Kenia or Sudan. As the acting groups in such conflict usually define themselves along ethnic lines resulting from existing or perceived cultural and religious differences, ethnicity is one of the driving factors of such conflict. Small differences are overrated and cleavages emphasized.
This raises new challenges to the theories of Intercultural Communication. In ethnic, religious or cultural conflicts, Intercultural Communication does no longer have to only enable punctual, mostly voluntary communication between people from different cultural backgrounds, but to (re-)enable communication in a context and between people that refuse contact und who do not only perceive the other culture as strange or foreign, but as menacing their existence. Here Intercultural communication can do more than to enable Cooperation and better interaction, it can make a big step in achieving Peace, preserve living environment, livelihood and existence.