Documents / FOIA release

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

Central Intelligence Agency · 205 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 9 …how various groups have reacted to rising terri- tion as well as numerous territorial processes that…
  • p. 18 …thus closely linked to the second core terri- territorial status quo for granted. torial issue: the…
  • p. 19 …ment initially focused on individual language rights The latter encompasses laws that set aside some terri…
  • p. 28 …have valid links between their identity and their terri- tory and have the expectation of rights…
  • p. 32 …and socioeconomic status as they relate to terri- toriality. Dr. Murphy referred to the ability of…
  • p. 33 …Although a statistical correla- suggest giving the old provinces more political-terri- tion existed between region…
  • p. 50 …want Krajina as a piece of geographical terri- assigning identities to local populations who often did…
  • p. 52 …Sovereignty over European terri- taposition of two ethnic groups, a common feature of tory was initially…
  • p. 66 …That may mean some of the kinds of terri- quasiautonomous nature. Despite this devolution, a torial…
  • p. 76 …National identity and terri- perceived as their homeland, and this has frequently torial identity have been…
  • p. 79 …Russia today in terms of its internal terri- nomically seceding. Is the center giving power to…
  • p. 153 …The real crux of the terri- The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is primarily between torial…
C00123268
Table 2 Percent
Ethnodemographic Trends, 1959-89
Titular Nation in the Homeland Titular Nation in the Total Population
Percentage Percentage
Republic 1959 1989 Point Change 1959 1989 Point Change
Russia 85.8 82.6 -3.2 83.3 81.5 -1.8
Ukraine 86.3 84.7 -1.6 76.8 72.7 -4.1
Belarus 82.5 78.8 -3.7 81.1 77.9 -3.2
Moldova 85.2 83.4 -1.8 65.4 64.5 -0.9
Uzbekistan 83.8 84.7 0.9 62.1 71.4 9.3
Kazakhstan 77.2 80.3 3.1 30.0 39.7 9.7
Kyrgyzstan 86.4 88.2 1.8 40.5 52.4 11.9
Tajikistan 75.2 75.3 0.1 53.1 62.3 9.2
Turkmenistan 92.2 93.0 0.8 60.9 72.0 11.1
Georgia 96.6 95.1 -1.5 64.3 70.1 5.8
Azerbaijan 84.8 85.7 0.9 67.5 82.7 15.2
Armenia 55.7 66.7 11.0 88.0 93.3 5.3
Lithuania 92.5 95.3 2.8 79.3 79.6 0.3
Latvia 92.7 95.1 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 ofNationalism 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 evidence that socioeconomic development or modern-
regarding social mobility and relative deprivation ization, and even the provision of indigenous privi-
developed. The Georgians in Abkhazia, who view this leges, did not solve the national problem.
territory as part of their homeland, were angered by
the preferential treatment accorded Abkhazians as part Nearly all non-Russians have used the rhetoric of
of the indigenization program. Abkhazians were only internal colonialism. The least developed, such as the
17 percent of the population but, as the titular group in Tajiks, charge that the USSR did not live up to its
Abkhazia, had a much higher percent of slots in promise of interethnic and interregional equalization.
higher education, high status jobs, and political repre- The most developed; such as the Estonians, charge
sentation reserved for them. In Nagorno-Karabakh the that they would be even more developed if they had
demographic shift toward Azeris was coupled with their independence. This feeling of relative depriva-
Azeri challenges to Armenian privileges in the region. tion was a potent catalyst for rising territorial national-
In both cases the Georgian and Azeri attempts to ism that ironically was perhaps most influential in the
remove or reduce Abkhazian and Armenian privileges most developed republics because the message of
resulted in civil warfare, as Abkhazians and Arme- external exploitation and domination interacted with
nians in Nagoma-Karabakh sought to secede. the trend toward demographic dilution among nations
with a highly developed national consciousness and a
It is also true, however, that the most socially mobi- sense of homeland.
lized titular nations, that is, the Estonians, Latvians,
Georgians, and Armenians-are also among the most
nationalistic. The Soviet case provides convincing
65

Not linked to a story yet.

About this file

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.