1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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Patterns, Trends, and Regional Comparisons where they are not needed for any functional reason.
Now, if you tell an Estonian, "For Heaven's sake, get
on a boat and go to Helsinki and learn something," he
Summary of Discussion would say, "Well, it's a totally different situation.
These Russians are occupiers. They're colonists."
Discussant: Marvin W. Mikesell We also have examples of states than denounce mis-
treatment of minorities in neighboring states while
In discussing nations and states, there are various seeming to be surprisingly indifferent to parallel cir-
terms that we can use: cumstances within their own borders. Until quite
recently, for example, the Turkish press bitterly
. Nation-state. An example is Iceland. denounced the treatment of the Turkish minority in
Bulgaria. They were denied recognition and forced to
e Multinational state. There are many examples; India change their names. If a Bulgarian Turk tried to regis-
would fit very well. ter a child or get a driver's license, he would immedi-
ately be told he must have a Bulgarian name. This
- Multistatenation."Germania," "Francophonia," and effectively was nonrecognition of a minority that
many others fit that category. composed about 10 percent of Bulgaria's population,
and the Turks were furious about this. At the same
e Nonstate nations.In this group we have Khalistan, time, the Turks were treating their country's minority
Kurdistan, Palestine, and others. Kurds exactly the same way: not recognizing their
language, refusing to register names, not even allow-
e Nonnation states. Two unhappy examples would be ing music with Kurdish lyrics on the radio.
Lebanon and Afghanistan; a happy example is the
Vatican. That is the problem: we do not have transfer of wis-
dom. We do not have people going into Finland from
It struck me that in all the presentations thus far we Bulgaria, Turkey, Sri Lanka, etc. to study what hap-
have been dealing with pathology rather than any kind pened there since 1918. They could learn from it.
of medicine or cure. In fact, in some cases, death cer-
tificates have even been written, but we have had very
little in the way of looking for good examples of Discussant: Mildred Berman
where accommodation has occurred rather than con-
flict. Part of the problem is that countries just do not One of the references to which I immediately turned
learn from other countries on issues of minority rights, when I was invited to come to this conference was
human rights, and questions of culture and nationality. Isaiah Bowman's The New World. That book has a
This is surprising because legal codes are borrowed; very fine analysis of what led up to the ethnic prob-
entire constitutions are virtually plagiarized from one lems that resulted in World War I, plus a lot of good
country to another. Yet it is rare to find one country maps. Bowman says, "But the world's people are fun-
saying to another country, "You seem to have a nice damentally unlike, and the road to success passes
situation here; maybe we can learn from you." through a wilderness of experiment." I think that is
what we have been hearing these two days.
An interesting case would be Estonia. The Estonians
are making terrible blunders in dealing with their Rus- I would like to address population, particularly fertil-
sian population. All they have to do is go to Helsinki ity. Indonesia recently has been successful in cutting
and examine what Finland has done with its Swedish its fertility rate down to a little more than two children
minority; it has anticipated their needs and, in a sense, per woman. The Indonesians could get it down to
treated a 10-percent minority as though it were a
49-percent one. Finland has bilingual signs even
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