HispanicVista Columnists

The tsunami tragedy revealed something about our world that geopolitical analysts and most media have largely overlooked: defense of religion, ethnicity and language drive today’s conflicts. Sadly, a fact I pointed out years ago, after having taught translation of international relations at NYU, has now become palpable. Sadly, because it took a catastrophe to propel it to the headlines and get the attention it deserves.

Reports suddenly explain that aid to Indonesia’s Aceh province and much of Sri Lanka must take into consideration separatist movements and government attitudes toward them in both countries. Aceh, like most of Indonesia’s 230 million people, is Muslim. So the struggle for independence or autonomy is rooted not in religion but in ethnicity. Aceh was an independent land for centuries before it came under Dutch control and then became part of Indonesia.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil, predominantly Hindu, have been locked for decades in a struggle with the largely Buddhist-led government in Colombo. Victims of discrimination and human rights abuses, the Tamils intensified their offensive 15 years ago when the Colombo affirmed its Buddhist adherence. The tsunami produced some cooperation between government and rebels in helping victims; but fighting will continue soon.

Religion, ethnicity and language increasingly have driven conflicts since the de-colonization era of the fifties and sixties. Since World War II, war has been driven less by competition for territory and more by defense of these three powerful forces. At war’s end, Western powers cobbled together new states whose borders often disregarded ethnic, linguistic and religious realities. Coupled with a lack of experience in statecraft among new leaders, abuses of power and competition for rule, these realities produced new modes of warfare.

In the sixties, then UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskold led an international effort to quell a civil war in the Congo (later Zaire) that was abetted by defenders of tribal interests. He died in mysterious circumstances while seeking peace. Today, a half century later, the country confronts a half dozen internal conflicts some of which are fueled by its neighbors and sometimes spill over its borders. Respect for ethnic differences lies at the heart of most of the conflicts.

Two decades ago, geopolitical analysts began studying what was called “low-intensity conflict,” the new mode of warfare. But that was in the Cold War era, and more often than not referred to ideologically motivated guerrilla wars directed toward governments. When low-intensity becomes high-intensity, however, the world takes notice.

In the mid-nineties by the massacre of nearly a million people in Rwanda, the result of rivalry between Tutsis and Hutus, stunned the world. It embarrassed Western powers because of their slowness to intervene in a distant cauldron of intense ethnic tension. Now, a decade later, a powerful film, Rwanda, has revived the tragedy and seared it in our memories. The West did intervene in the Balkans, albeit belatedly, when ethnic and religious differences produced a hot war that we watched every evening on television.

Turkey, with NATO’s second largest military (after the U.S.), waged a 15-year war against minority Kurds. Ankara is concerned about the prospect of an autonomous Kurdish government in neighboring Iraq. More than 13 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia may someday comprise a new ethnic-based state. Balancing those concerns is a challenge for diplomatic and military analysis and planning.

During the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), Spain outlawed Catalan and Basque. Both have since flourished as both regions have acquired greater autonomy. Confronted by Basque separatist violence for decades, Madrid is now engaged in discussions over greater autonomy with the established regional government. Less known are the aspirations of western China’s Uigur people. Muslim and with their own language and traditions, they are more related linguistically and ethnically to their neighbors in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan than to their Chinese rulers. Peking maintains an iron grip on them, aware that any grant of autonomy, however, small, could embolden the oppressed in other regions.

Russia bears its own cross with its southern republic of Chechnya. A Muslim land with its own language and a distinct culture and history, Chechnya has been fighting Russian domination for more than 300 years. Only recently has the violence bred of aspirations for autonomy become widely known. The same applies to Darfur. This region in western Sudan is plagued by what Secretary of State Colin Powell has labeled genocide. It is the latest manifestation, however, of a long-standing religious, ethnic and linguistic conflict between the Arab and Arabic-speaking Muslim north and the black African animist and Christian south. Sudan’s neighbor on the Red Sea, Eritrea, secured its independence from Ethiopia out of a fierce pride in its distinct culture and language.

Perhaps one of the best known conflicts (in the West) is that of Kashmir. A beautiful land of mountains, lakes and forests, it is home to 10 million mostly Muslims but is disputed by India and Pakistan. Both nations maintain sizeable military forces in Kashmir, and their disputes have led to armed conflict on numerous occasions. A democratic India could negotiate a settlement with a more democratic and less militaristic government in Pakistan.

More than any other recent conflict, Iraq has taught us much about ethnicity. When Saddam Hussein ruled, reports appeared about his dominant Sunni government and the suppressed Shiites. The struggle was largely internal, however, until the “coalition” victory and efforts to pacify and unite the country. Today ethnic and religious differences have been internationalized, with arms and insurgents coming from abroad, exploiting a complex situation. Zealots aligned with Al Qaeda are fueling the conflict.

My first reaction after the reality of 9/11 settled in was that the United States would face a new kind of diplomatic challenges. We would have to reaffirm and strengthen traditional alliances and forge new ones. For we would be dealing more intensively with a part of the world whose history, traditions, faiths, politics, rivalries and languages we did not understand well.

More than three decades ago, when our hostages were taken in Teheran, we had only one Farsi speaker in our embassy. An expert in public diplomacy said recently that at any moment, if we wished to put an American diplomat before Al Jazeera’s 40 million viewers in the Arab world, we could find only five qualified Arabic speakers. There are more Arabic speakers, of course; but the moment called for their immediate availability, a comfort level with the media, and expertise in the region and in U.S. positions.

Clearly, we need to do better. As 2005 begins, we must realize that religion, ethnicity and language are powerful forces at work in many countries around the world. They are producing the conflicts that increasingly will affect our vital interests. The ability to deal with them, as we have sadly and belatedly learned in Iraq, will require new expertise, bilingual ability in “exotic” tongues, understanding of religion and religious zeal, profound knowledge of traditions and aspirations, and other skills. We have a way to go.

Frank Gómez, a contributing columnist to HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com), is a retired Foreign Service Officer and corporate executive, is a partner in LatinInsights, a research and strategic communications firm, and teaches international relations at New York University. He can be reached at fgomez@latininsights.com.