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.
“Fuller”4 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Ethnic and Territorial Conflicts in Eastern Europe Ronald Wixman Professor of Geography University of Oregon Introduction Today’s Eastern Europe consists of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bos- nia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Yugoslavia (con- sisting today of Serbia and Montenegro), Albania, Greece, and European (or Thracian) Turkey. One can also add to this list Moldova (Bessarabia) and the western part of Ukraine, as they are culturally, histori- cally, and geographically tied to the rest of this greater region. At this point in time, on the other hand, East- ern Germany and Austria should not be considered part of the East European realm. The reasons for including Greece and Thracian Turkey in Eastern Europe are both historical and cultural and represent a reality important to the current geopolitical situation in the Balkans. These last two regions have always been part of the East European culture realm, but for purely political and military reasons related to the Cold War period they were classified differently. Throughout Eastern Europe, there are serious issues of nationalism that threaten the stability of individual countries as well as the region as a whole. Most seri- ous of these are conflicts stemming from ethnic- and cultural-territorial-—geographical—demands by one or more parties. While some of the issues center pri- marily on ethnic, religious, linguistic, or cultural rights and privileges, others are manifested in extremely serious demands for control of given regions, in open conflict based on ethnic or territorial claims or in international disputes over the recognition or nonrecognition of given countries. Most serious for Europe and the United States, how- ever, are those that deal with territorial conflict based on various ethnic claims that demand changes in national control of these regions and/or population exchanges or attempts at ethnic cleansing. Indeed, many of the justifications for current actions are related to experiences with ethnic cleansing and popu- lation resettlement policies in the near or distant past. We must be careful to distinguish between issues that potentially could lead to serious conflict and those that are merely local cultural demands. In the latter cate- gory are issues related to simple demands for ethnic recognition or the right to one or another cultural insti- tutions (native language in the media and education, native language press, or freedom of religion) that do not threaten to destabilize any given state or nation or that will probably not result in open hostility between groups. Quite serious to a rapidly changing picture of causes for interethnic conflict in Eastem Europe is the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The current war in Bosnia may be the precursor to an even greater war that might involve many other nations, including America’s NATO Allies Turkey and Greece on opposite sides of the conflict. In addition, the applied policies by the Western powers toward this ongoing conflict affect not only the Balkans as a whole but also other parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The response, for example, to Serbian territorial aggression and ethnic genocide (ethnic cleansing) both sets a precedent for other countries with problematic minorities and forces others to assess their own situations relative to foreign nations with exclave populations. Before discussing ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe today and the impact of Western policy in the “Yugo- slav War,” a brief discussion is provided on the dis- tinction between the reasons for and justifications for territorial claims. This distinction is necessary if one wishes to obtain an accurate picture of ethnoterritorial conflict in this diverse region. Claims to territory on ethnic, national, religious, linguistic, and historical grounds are common around the world. Sometimes two groups claim the same territory with differing but equally understandable reasons for doing so. The J ew- ishlPalestinian conflict represents such a situation. Here two peoples are fighting over the same piece of territory, as it is tied to their current ability to exist as distinct nations. On the other hand, many conflicts are tied to far more distant issues in which historical 25 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.