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(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. 9 …He also dis- cusses how various groups have reacted to rising terri- torial nationalism. Approved for…
  • p. 18 …The issue of sense of territory is thus closely linked to the second core terri- torial…
  • p. 19 …The latter encompasses laws that set aside some terri- tory for a given ethnic group. The…
  • p. 28 …The link between territory, identity, and terri- toriality becomes especially dynamic when discord exists between two…
  • p. 32 …Murphy made about ethnic mobili- zation and socioeconomic status as they relate to terri- toriality. Dr…
  • p. 33 …suggest giving the old provinces more political-terri- torial significance within the state. Then their citizens…
  • p. 50 …The Serbs want Krajina as a piece of geographical terri- tory, and the Serbs who live…
  • p. 52 …Sovereignty over European terri- tory was initially determined by church and dynastic settlements following periodic warfare…
  • p. 66 …That may mean some of the kinds of terri- torial policies that I suggested. It also…
  • p. 76 …National identity and terri- torial identity have been intimately interrelated, and a rising sense of national…
  • p. 79 …The big- gest threat to Russia today in terms of its intemal terri- torial integrity is…
  • p. 153 …The real crux of the terri- torial problem is one of scale because the homoge- neity…
  • p. 184 …Nevertheless, many geographers will agree that one of the most important characteristics of‘terri- tory is…
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Table 2 Percent
Ethnodemographic Trends, 1959-89
Titular Nation in the Homeland Titular Nation in the 'Ibtal Population
Republic 1959 p
19s9
Percentage
Point Change 1959 1989
Percentage
Point Change
Russia 85.8 A
sza -3.2 83.3 81.5 -1.8
Ukraine 86.3 _
841 '1:6, W 76.8 72.7 -4.1
Belarus 82.5 p
181 -3.7 81.1 77.9 -3.2
Moldova #51 _
8&4 -1.8 65.4 64.5 -0.9
Uzbekistan 83.8 _
843 0.9 62.1 71.4 9.3
l(azakhstan'fl” 77.2 p
soa 3.1 30.0 39.7 9.7
Kyrgyzstan_ 7_ 86.4 _
ssa 1.8 40.5 52.4 11.9
Tajikistan 75.2 _
vsz 0.1 53.1 62.3 9.2
Turkmenistan Q12 g
930 0.8 60.9 72.0 11.1
Georgia 965 '
95.1 -1.5 64.3 70.1 5.8
Azerbaijan 343 I
ssn 0.9 67.5 82.7 15.2
Armenia §§7 p
sen 11.0 88.0 sis 5.3
Lithuania 915 p
953 2.8 79.3 79.6 0.3
Landa
A
92.7 _
954 2.4 62.0 52.0 -10.0
Estonia 90.3 . 93.8 3.5 74.6 61.5 -13.1
Source: Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, in press), tables
4.1 and 4.3.
In Georgia a slightly different interethnic dynamic
regarding social mobility and relative deprivation
developed. The Georgians in Abkhazia, who view this
tenitory as part of their homeland, were angered by
the preferential treatment accorded Abkhazians as part
of the indigenization program. Abkhazians were only
17 percent of the population but, as the titular group in
Abkhazia, had a much higher percent of slots in
higher education, high status jobs, and political repre-
sentation reserved for them. In Nagomo-Karabakh the
demographic shift toward Azeris was coupled with
Azeri challenges to Armenian privileges in the region.
In both cases the Georgian and Azeri attempts to
remove or reduce Abkhazian and Armenian privileges
resulted in civil warfare, as Abkhazians and Arme-
nians in Nagorna-Karabakh sought to secede.
It is also true, however, that the most socially mobi-
lized titular nations, that is, the Estonians, Latvians,
Georgians, and Armenians—are also among the most
nationalistic. The Soviet case provides convincing
evidence that socioeconomic development or modern-
ization, and even the provision of indigenous privi-
leges, did not solve the national problem.
Nearly all non-Russians have used the rhetoric of
intemal colonialism. The least developed, such as the
Tajiks, charge that the USSR did not live up to its
promise of interethnic and interregional equalization.
The most developed, such as the Estonians, charge
that they would be even more developed if they had
their independence. This feeling of relative depriva-
tion was a potent catalyst for rising territorial national-
ism that ironically was perhaps most influential in the
most developed republics because the message of
external exploitation and domination interacted with
the trend toward demographic dilution among nations
with a highly developed national consciousness and a
sense of homeland.
65
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 above. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.