Ethnic Conflict Is Topic of Washington Symposium

By Irene Lagan
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 1/23/03)

Ethnic conflict is a major problem around the world. Since Sept. 11, the war on terrorism has necessitated an increase in American involvement in several ethnically divided countries and has heightened American awareness about the dangers of terrorism.

In a recent symposium sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, experts addressed the question of ethnic conflict, ethnic partition and U.S. foreign policy.

Focusing on Afghanistan, Indonesia, India and Iraq — countries of major interest to the United States — most experts agreed that ethnic partition of existing states would lead to further deterioration, ultimately creating the potential for further violence.

The symposium, funded by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation, was the second of a two-part project that began in 2001. Faced with the question of whether partition of the four countries under discussion was advisable, conference presenters came to a remarkable consensus that dividing countries along ethnic lines would exacerbate already existing tensions. Virtually all presenters reaffirmed the need for a model of multi-ethnic democracy, with some form of federal structure that would also allow for regionalized autonomy.

The modern nation state of Iraq, for example, is both multi-ethnic and multi-religious. With three major ethnic groups, the Kurds in the North, Shia in the South and Summis in central Iraq, the social diversity has led to different cultural groupings that have in turn led to some intolerance and instability for the nation as a whole. Perhaps more aggregiously, there have been human rights violations despite being party to seven UN treaties pertaining to civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, elimination of torture, racial discrimination, discrimination against women and the rights of the child.

While Iraq is currently unified under the despotic reign of Saddam Hussein, a post-Saddam Iraq would have to face the challenge of constructing a centralized government with three major ethnic groups or dividing the country along ethnic lines.

Given the looming possibility of military intervention in Iraq, U.S. government officials have discussed the need to spend time and money rebuilding Iraq after the fall of Hussein’s regime.

According to Kanan Makiya, professor of Middle East Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and a leading expert on Iraq, the removal of Hussein’s regime presents the U.S. with "a historic opportunity that is as large as anything that has happened in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the entry of British troops into Iraq in 1917."

Mikaya believes that Iraq is "both developed enough and has the human resources to become as great a force for democracy and economic reconstruction in the Arab and Muslim world as it has been a force for autocracy and destruction."

However, Mikaya warned that the possibility of reconstructing Iraq and building a democratic nation rests largely on a delicate balance of external interests of other nations versus the internal interests of the Iraqi people.

Despite the fact that there is no precedent for a federalist or centralized model of government similar to our own with a bifurcation of power in the modern history of Iraq, Mikaya said that the idea of federalism, despite a lack of consensus as to what that entails, is supported by both the Kurdish Parliament and the Iraqi National Congress.

Amidst the various concepts of federalism in play, Mikaya said that two features shared by all of them are the idea that a federalist government is a form of "devolution of power away from the center, Baghdad, towards the provinces," and that "no future state in Iraq can be democratic if it is not at the same time federal in structure."

Mikaya’s belief that a federalist form of government could not be divided along ethnic or religious lines echoed the sentiments of other participants, including a range of journalists, representatives from the State Department, Department of Defense, the House International Relations Committee, the Defense Intelligence Agency, students and members of various non-profit organizations.

Dr. Timothy Samuel Shah, research fellow at the EPPC, said that the conference was a "striking reaffirmation that some form of the American model of democracy was the best model of government." At the same time, he said, democracy cannot be forced, but should be encouraged.  

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