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 ongoing Inkatha-ANC violence has ethnic overtones, The April 1994 elections that brought the ANC to but given the circumstances id the country, interethnic power also produced a delicate regional balance. As violence has been limited. This is undoubtedly due to early as February 1995, the Inkatha members of par- the multiethnic, indeed multiracial, character of the liament grew restive under the new system and ANC leadership. Just as Inkatha does not represent all walked out of the assembly, underscoring the potential (or even most) Zulu, so the ANC is not an all-Xhosa weaknesses of the system. The growing risk is that not organization. Still, in the popular'image, the Inkatha- only Inkatha but also other components of South ANC political struggle often is seen, in the final analy- Africa's polity will feel that the new order disadvan- sis, as a Zulu-Xhosa clash, a continuation of historic tages them. rivalries, and the preamble to another round between ancient adversaries. Should the South African transition collapse into vio- lence, that conflict will resonate in the United States This is not to suggest that interethnic conflict is not as perhaps no other could. The notion that economic latent and potentially explosive. The assassination of sanctions would hasten the end of apartheid led to Communist Party leader Chris Hani was done by a some voluntary and much involuntary adherence in white killer, but what might have happened had the this country; those who argued that they would lead to assassin been an African? So much now depends on economic disaster that would doom a postapartheid the lives of Mandela and Buthelezi. transition were branded as racists. In the streets and on campuses, the prosanction movement generated The ultimate question, of course, is whether ANC marches and demonstrations. One must therefore con- dominance of government will be followed by a strug- template the impact in this country of ethnic and/or gle among the victors in whiclh, for example, those racial conflict in South Africa: such conflict would supporting Winnie Mandela might play a crucial role, resonate in the United States, possibly with the feroc- In Kenya, the'ouster of the colonialists was followed ity of Northern Ireland's conflict in Britain. Interracial by an interethnic struggle that relegated the Luo to conflict in Zimbabwe could be ignored; interethnic lesser standing in the Kikuyu-dominated state. But strife in Bosnia, complete with hundreds of thousands that conflict claimed comparatively few lives, cer- of casualties and concentration camp horrors, barely tainly as compared to what happened in Zimbabwe roils American society. But South Africa has the after its independence. There, the Mashona-dominated ingredients to force the issue: a growing link between Mugabe regime ruthlessly suppressed the Nkomo-led the US black community and ANC leadership; a latent Matabele in regional/ethnic conflict of enormous cost sympathy for the white plight in a revolution-torn in lives and property. Since then, Bulawayo and South Africa on the part of political conservatives in Matabeleland have been the disadvantaged corners on this country; and the recent history of involvement, Zimbabwe's map. first by businesses adhering to the Sullivan principles, then by sanctions advocates in driving them out. For Observers argue that South Africa's considerable eth- the United States, there is more at stake, perhaps, in nic integration would be likely to mitigate such South Africa's difficult transition than there is in the events; there is so much ethnic mixture, the argument ethnic conflicts of all other African countries com- goes, that regional conflict is unlikely. But in other bined. countries, such mixture also has led to chronic strife (for example among Muslims and numerous Christian minorities in Nigeria's North). Much will depend on the political campaign now in progress and on the ANC's ability to avoid factionalization along ethnic lines. 81
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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.