Documents / FOIA release

(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Central Intelligence Agency · 1995-10-01 · 205 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.

  • p. 50 …For example, Muslim Serbs and Muslim Croats never defined them- selves as a people. They never…
  • p. 51 …I think that’s very crucial to under- standing why the Albanians never claimed Kosovo. Of…
  • p. 62 …be taught as a second foreign language, never as the first, and d_) less information and…
  • p. 78 …It never was. It might be useful, instead, to view the Soviet Union as a colonial…
  • p. 91 …As such, the ability of states to get from their people what they want has never…
  • p. 92 …The peoples of Africa never chose what their bound- aries should be—they were imposed by…
  • p. 93 …I never would have sent them in the first place. I thought our job was to…
  • p. 109 …Most of the provisions of this agreement were never imple- mented, and Kurdish autononiy became a…
  • p. 110 …those remaining in Lebanon, that prospect was never accepted by Muslims. The absence of believable data…
  • p. 112 …the vast majority of them—who have never known democracy. Other hopes can be enter- tained…
  • p. 114 …But in this region we can never say never, as evi- denced by the recent gasp…
  • p. 116 …Although Sovietologists could never have predicted the rapid events that dismantled the USSR at the beginning…
  • p. 119 …The Chinese, in my opinion,‘ never take China for granted, culturally, politically, or otherwise. This is…
  • p. 120 …What is going on here? National identities, although imagined, are never arbi- trary but arise in…
  • p. 121 …be one reason why these categories have never been challenged. The very Confucian practice of the…
  • p. 123 …These ethnic identities are “imagined” in Ben Ander- son’s (1983) terms, but they are never…
  • p. 133 …Inter- vention in the cause of the exacerbation of ethnic conflict should never be justified. Intervention…
  • p. 141 …Sociocultural identities in South Asia have never been fixed. The corporate mobility of particular groups, some…
  • p. 147 …Although never posing a serious challenge to Congress, the Mahasabha was particularly influential in the period…
  • p. 157 …were always moderate and that the extremists never represented the Sikh rank and file. One fundamental…
  • p. 166 …These are the people who have never had any form of internationally recognized status and who…
  • p. 169 …ways to enter as illegal immigrants and never get counted. 1 I Another important point to…
  • p. 177 …The -French nation never managed to incorpo- rate the adjacent French-speaking Belgian Walloons or the…
  • p. 186 …The reason Armenians still hate Turks is that there has never been reconciliation. Similarly there will…
  • p. 204 …You are never going to have total agreement on mov- ing boundaries. In fact, hundreds of…
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
land suitable for cereal farming and horticulture, a rich
petroleum field, several cities, and a population of
15-30 million. None of these observations distracts
attention from a reality that precludes any prospect for
the creation of an independent Kurdistan because a
Kurdish state could come into being only if Iraq, Tur-
key, and Iran were to display unprecedented coopera-
tion and generosity.
These speculative remarks reinforce a comment made
at the beginning of this review: the Middle East is and
will continue to be an area of contention and danger.
As the only superpower and, indeed, the only external
power capable of influencing events in the region, the
United States has an unavoidable responsibility. At the
least, we might hope that our experience since 1776
could be a source of illumination for those Middle
Easterners—-the vast majority of them—who have
never known democracy. Other hopes can be enter-
tained. By encouraging govemment reforms, discour-
aging excessive military expenditures, exposing
human rights abuses, seeking by diplomatic means to
promote peaceful settlement of border disputes, and
organizing boycotts when such are required to prevent
or punish reckless national behavior, the United States
could expect to play a constructive role in the Middle
East. We also need to recognize that the United States
has been, and will continue to be, viewed with suspi-
cion and even contempt as a new colonial power, well
aware of the natural resources and strategic position of
the region but incapable of understanding the aspira-
tions and frustrations of its “difficult people.”
104
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.