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.
“Nevers”25 pages
C00123268 Geographic Factors in Ethnic pandemic in tropical Africa and the realm's pernicious Conflict in Africa and debilitating plagues and diseases. Such population growth, attended by doubling times as low as 18 years, fills natural ethnic buffer zones, places further Harm J. de Blij stress on already overexploited environments, and cre- Landegger Distinguished Professor ates a growing urbanward flow. of Geography Georgetown University Sub-Saharan Africa's existing boundaries have con- tributed to, rather than mitigated, ethnic conflict in Africa. The framework of the continent's international Introduction political boundaries, as has been said ad infinitum, is a troublesome legacy of the colonial period. This is Over the past decade, no geographic realm has suf- more true in some areas (such as the Horn) than in fered as severely from ethnic conflict as Africa. Entire others (the South), but overall, such boundaries still countries have been devastated by years of ethnic divide people of common origins; elsewhere they strife. Millions of Africans have become displaced throw a girdle around peoples with adversarial histo- persons in their own countries or refugees in others. ries. Many African states have sought to accommo- Hundreds of thousands are imperiled by hunger and date the latter by manipulating their internal borders. starvation, and ruling regimes are in some instances preventing food and medicine from reaching the dislo- Rising religious fundamentalism in Africa mirrors cated. what is happening all over the world today, from Algeria to India to America. A number of African This paper will focus on the geographic realm of countries lie astride religious transition zones, includ- Africa, not the entire African continent. Geographi- ing Nigeria and Sudan, and religious fervor is contrib- cally defined, this realm extends from the zone of uting to ethnic strife in these countries. Islamic contact along the southern margins of the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope. It includes nearly Neocolonialism remains a factor in Sub-Saharan 50 countries, an area of more than 8 million square Africa in various forms, ranging from outright inter- miles, and-as of midyear 1994-a population of ference in national affairs to economic intervention. 572 million. French forces have acted in support of governments in countries plagued by ethnic strife; in effect, the French involved themselves in ethnic conflicts-recently in Factors Aggravating Ethnic Divisiveness Burundi, earlier in Chad. US support for Zaire's Mobutu has contributed to the continued comparative The prevalence of ethnic conflict and dislocation in stability of that vast country; it undoubtedly has Africa must be seen against a background of: (1) rapid staved off-ethnic strife there, and it has played a useful population growth, (2) a problem-ridden international role-from the US viewpoint-in the war in neigh- and internal boundary framework, (3) rising religious boring Angola. Accusations of-collaboration with fundamentalism, (4) persistent neocolonialism, "neocolonial" interests often stoke the fires of ethnic (5) historic animosities, and (6) stagnant or deteriorat- conflict. ing economies-factors that serve to aggravate exist- ing divisions. Sub-Saharan Africa's economies, in aggregate, are alone in showing an overall decline over the past In rural as well as in urban areas, Africa's high growth decade. Declining living standards tend to exacerbate rates contribute to the ethnic tensions and conflicts ethnic rivalries; in comparatively wealthy Europe, the that afflict the realm. As a world geographic realm, Africa presently exhibits the highest rates of natural population growth. This continues despite the AIDS 74
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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.