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

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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
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environmental/highland-lowland, ethnic, religious,
border area, and ideological‘ concerns have in the past
driven the engine of ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia.
Ethnic divisions and incipient tensions exist every-
where in the world. The management of such conflicts
is part-and-parcel of the business of government and
increasingly the concern of a unipolar international
community. In the recent past agencies representing
world powers have intentionally inflamed and exacer-
bated such tensions in the process of furthering the
short term strategic concerns of their national capitals.
The consequences of such actions are sometimes trag-
edies writ in Homeric proportions. Did such involve-
ment occur in the physical annihilation of the
Indonesian Communist Party? Did the massacres of
Vietnamese civilians living in Cambodia in 1970 at
the birth of the Khmer Republic occur in a political
and strategic vacuum in the context of the Vietnam
war? Some 70,000 tribal Laotians currently reside in
the state of California; whaticonundrum of political
and social policies conspired to transport so remote a
people to so alien and unfamiliar a land?
Governments have often endeavored to build national
consensus on the basis of majority ethnic loyalty and!
or justify foreign adventures on the basis of threats to
ethnic security or purity. The exacerbation of what
anthropologist Clifford Geertz has termed “primordial
sentiments” by agencies skilled at the manipulation of
media and the mobilization of mass organizations has
often unleashed forces difficult to subsequently con-
trol (Geertz, 1973; 259-269)’. The modern history of
Southeast Asia is rife with examples of such manipu-
lation of ethnic passions. In the wake of the Cold War,
somewhat more evenhanded concems for human
rights are already emerging. That differences in ethnic
identity, religious affiliation, ideological persuasion,
or linguistic preference obtain in Southeast Asia is
fundamental to the local social landscape. Southeast
Asians have fonned nation-states of “imagined com-
munities” on the bases of colonial entities erected on
the ruins of ancient civilizations (Anderson; 1991).
The same passions that inflamed modern European
nations 100 years ago (or that are presently at work in
the Balkans) are liable to remain potentially threaten-
ing in the relative young national entities of Southeast
Asia.
Although it would be easy to suggest that the Govern-
ment of the United States follow a strict policy of non-
involvement in overseas ethnic disputes, such is not
my view. If the United States were to be totally unin-
volved, then major rescue operations such as that
in Somalia or refugee efforts such as that on the
Thailand-Cambodia border in 1979 would have been
of no concern to the American public. Given the
uniquely threatening nature of ethnic disputes and
controversies, there is no choice but to actively moni-
tor and to intervene positively where necessary. Inter-
vention in the cause of the exacerbation of ethnic
conflict should never be justified. Intervention, as we
have seen in the recent case of Congressional action
on East Timor, can serve as a wake-up call to govem-
ments that once could cavalierly dismiss overseas
concerns about internal repression as the remonstra-
tions of the political periphery. The nature of such
positive intervention might take the form of channel-
ing foreign aid to rural regions with wide disparities in
household income or constraining trade opportunities
for governments deemed repressive and insensitive to
ethnic minority demands. Support could be provided
for indigenous NGOs equipped to mediate disputes
and negotiate issues that obtain between opposing
groups. The most important contribution developed
countries can make to the amelioration of tension
between ethnic groups is to address issues of social
inequality, which so often are the root cause of con-
flicts and clashes. If a mountain tribal people is
awarded rights to permanent agricultural land, if
schools are built for minority children and clinics are
built to address urgent health needs, and if roadways
are constructed to facilitate commerce, then the root
cause of resentment and rebellion will be effectively
addressed. Resources that once were invested in heavy
armaments might in the present circumstance best be
invested in the tasks of reducing infant mortality,
enhancing family incomes, and facilitating equity in
national development in Southeast Asia. With
resources currently at hand, the tragedies of the past
need not necessarily serve as prologue for the future.
Understanding the past role of intelligence agencies in
directly influencing the ethnic conflicts during the
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268