Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Nevers”25 pages
;Appr0ved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Ethnic Conflict and Population _ Displacement Martin Kenzer Associate Professor of Geography Florida Atlantic University Historical Review of Postwar Refugee Populations In large measure, today’s so-called ethnically driven refugee populations are the eirtension of territorial conflicts that were waged immediately before or just after World War I. To one degree or another, that war partially resulted from particular territorial tensions released by the collapse of former empires. The same ethnic or territorial zones were then, again, suspended by the onset of World War Ilj which was another eth- nic contest that eventually foirnd most of the world’s peoples fighting either for or against what often became known as ethnic virtue. During the war, how- ever, the battle focused not on the individual ethnic groups that had been fighting one another for genera- tions but on larger, national, territorial campaigns. When World War H ended, the focus quickly switched to the emerging superpowersi—two foes who were able to stifie domestic ethnic conflicts by squaring off powerful armies against one another. Intemal ethnic conflicts were squelched in order to amplify national unity and the projecting of a front. r Also following World War H, it was believed that the world’s refugee problem would soon disappear. Moti- vated at the time by both geopolitical and humanitar- ian concerns, the predominant powers—principally the victorious West—-sought to accommodate the needs of the many and diverse dislocated groups. Sev- eral local, regional, national, and intemational refugee relief and repatriation/resettlement agencies—many associated with the United Nations—were established to deal with the day-to-day needs of the then-homeless peoples and political refugees. These also promoted the eventual settlement of those peoples to either his- torical or new homelands. The postwar New World Order architects, who were also the founders of the United Nations, generally perceived that these dis- placed peoples and the refugees were a problem but i I did not see them as a symptom of the intemational geopolitical restructuring that they had themselves engineered. The common view of the various organizations that came into being after World War H was that they would provide for the security and welfare of the uprooted only until the needs of the displaced were accommodated. It was fully believed after the war that agencies such as the UN High Commissioner for Ref- ugees (UNHCR) would only exist for a short period because they would soon get everyone resettled and all problems would go away. Obviously, this proved to be erroneous. The Current Picture Recently, another empire, the former Soviet Union, has collapsed, and, once again, the world is experienc- ing a wave of territorial/ethnic tensions. To one degree or another, almost all these tensions are expressions of dormant territorial hatreds that in some locales date back centuries. They have been inactive for decades because the two major superpowers have muffled them and/or used them to their own respective needs. Today, there are far more displaced peoples than there were at the end of World War H, and they are found on more continents. Forced migrations have increasingly come to dominate the pattems and processes involved in international population movements. Ironically and tragically, however, a majority of these people, despite their refugeelike experience, do not find themselves protected or cared for by national or international ref- ugee relief agencies because they still do not fall under the legalistic, post-World War Il definition of “refugee.” As officially defined, refirgees are persons who have crossed a recognized political border and who have then registered with an official group, which most often is the UNHCR. If a person does not do that, the intemational community does not recognize him or her as a refugee. Today, many, even in the United Nations, argue that this definition has become increas- ingly blurred. Indeed, the distinction between who is 155 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.