Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, dated October 1995, contains the proceedings of a conference on ethnic conflict held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored it. Academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials presented papers on ethnic and territorial conflict in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. They also discussed what these conflicts mean for US policy. The document contains no UFO material.
“The Advance”17 pages
C00123268 Ethnic Conflict and Population did not see them as a symptom of the international Displacement geopolitical restructuring that they had themselves engineered. Martin Kenzer The common view of the various organizations that Associate Professor of Geography came into being after World War II was that they Florida Atlantic University 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 Historical Review of Postwar Refugee Populations agencies such as the UN High Commissioner for Ref- ugees (UNHCR) would only exist for a short period In large measure, today's so-called ethnically driven because they would soon get everyone resettled and refugee populations are the ektension of territorial all problems would go away. Obviously, this proved to conflicts that were waged immediately before or just be erroneous. 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 The Current Picture ethnic or territorial zones were then, again, suspended by the onset of World War II, which was another eth- Recently, another empire, the former Soviet Union, nic contest that eventually foynd most of the world's has collapsed, and, once again, the world is experienc- peoples fighting either for or against what often ing a wave of territorial/ethnic tensions. To one degree became known as ethnic virtue. During the war, how- or another, almost all these tensions are expressions of ever, the battle focused not on the individual ethnic dormant territorial hatreds that in some locales date groups that had been fighting one another for genera- back centuries. They have been inactive for decades tions but on larger, national, territorial campaigns, because the two major superpowers have muffled them and/or used them to their own respective needs. When World War II ended, the focus quickly switched to the emerging superpowers-two foes who were Today, there are far more displaced peoples than there able to stifle domestic ethnic conflicts by squaring off were at the end of World War II, and they are found on powerful armies against one another. Internal ethnic more continents. Forced migrations have increasingly conflicts were squelched in order to amplify national come to dominate the patterns and processes involved unity and the projecting of a front. in international population movements. Ironically and tragically, however, a majority of these people, despite Also following World War II, it was believed that the their refugeelike experience, do not find themselves world's refugee problem would soon disappear. Moti- protected or cared for by national or international ref- vated at the time by both geopolitical and humanitar- ugee relief agencies because they still do not fall ian concerns, the predominant powers-principally under the legalistic, post-World War II definition of the victorious West-sought to accommodate the "refugee." needs of the many and diverse dislocated groups. Sev- eral local, regional, national, and international refugee As officially defined, refugees are persons who have relief and repatriation/resettlement agencies-many crossed a recognized political border and who have associated with the United Nations-were established then registered with an official group, which most to deal with the day-to-day needs of the then-homeless often is the UNHCR. If a person does not do that, the peoples and political refugees. These also promoted international community does not recognize him or the eventual settlement of those peoples to either his- her as a refugee. Today, many, even in the United torical or new homelands. The postwar New World Nations, argue that this definition has become increas- Order architects, who were also the founders of the ingly blurred. Indeed, the distinction between who is United Nations, generally perceived that these dis- placed peoples and the refugees were a problem but 155
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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.