Predator 1987 Kurdish

[Leroy Turcios]

Nationsgeographic areas inhabited by a common people - however, have not fated so well. We don't know how many there were in the world at the time of World War II, or at any time prior to that. Today there are an estimated 5,000. Prior to the conquest of the Amazon, more than 700 distinct groups inhabited the region. By 1900 in Brazil only 270 remained, and today about 180 are left.

States are systematically attempting to eliminate indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. Programs aimed at minorities are not benign; they are, in fact, rapacious. This is true of right-wing and left-wing states, of religious and sectarian states. According to their reasoning, indigenous peoples belong in the dustbin of history. The must disappear if modern states (e.g., European models) are to flourish. this approach denies the world's realities - that all states are multinational. Nations do not want to melt into someone else's idea of an ideal, homogenous pot.

Elites the world over have been helped in their efforts to erase national identities through many of the United States' development and assistance programs. Foreign assistance, investment, military aid and arms sales, and food for peace all have been used by Third World States to consolidate power. These sources of income, often combined with the states' abilities to control exports and set commodity prices paid to local producers, account for about two-thirds of most Third World states' revenues. This makes government the biggest economic game in town.

Many Third World debts arise from centralizing power in the hands of a few who control the states. Weapons purchase, for example, are equal to about 40 percent of the entire Third world debt (100 percent in sub-Saharan Africa). States use the weapons not against external enemies but against people who are supposed to be citizens. Much of the Third World debt has been used to enrich elites and promote capital flight, which explains why Third World elites have foreign assets equal to the entire Third World debt. These debts are incurred by only a few, they must be repaid by everyone.

The rise of nationalism in the post-World war II period, more visible in the 1990s with the breakup of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union, is a clear indication that the melting-pot model of state formation does not apply to most of the world, and that culture, more than ideology, is the key to peoples' identifies.

Bernard Nietschmann's seminal piece for cultural Survival quarterly on states and nations introduced the first issue in our two-part series, "Militarization and Indigenous Peoples" (vol. 11, no. 3 & 4, 1987). A geographer, Nietschmann mapped the definition of nation, nation-state, Fourth World, and peoples, and presented extensive charts and outlines on the geography of armed conflict. We've chosen much to excerpt here - move than in other sections - but the article in its entirely offers even more.

In almost every newspaper and television news program the terms state, nation. and nation-state are used interchangeably. This is also the case in most popular and academic books on world and regional problem and conflicts. No mere semantic matter, this shell game with words hides opposing sides that shoot at each other.

Nations are geographically bounded territories of a common people. A people who see themselves as "one people" on the basis of common ancestry, history, society, institutions, ideology, language, territory, and (often) religion. Nation peoples distinguish themselves and their countries from other adjacent and distant peoples and countries. The existence of nations is ancient.

States define nation peoples as "ethnic groups" and "minorities" as a tactic to annex their identities in order to incorporate their lands and resources. Whereas 'a people" has internationally recognized rights to self-determination, subsistence, resources, and national territory an "ethnic group" or "minority" does not.

In 1984 television brought the faces of famine in Ethiopia the faces of famine in Ethiopia to living rooms around the world, and an unprecedented flood of aid was sent to help the victims. But, as Cultural Survival researchers reported through the quarterly and several CS publications, the humanitarian aid was being used by Mengistu and the Dergue, his ruling military junta, to finance a massive resettlement, relocation, and "villagization" progress that served to divide certain ethnic groups from the workings of the country. Here is an excerpt from a 1984 editorial.

Agencies and governments giving food or financial assistance to Ethiopia should monitor the impact of their programs to determine if their humanitarian efforts are being used by the Dergue to continue the policies that led to the present situation.

By conducting exhaustive interview with Ethiopian refugee, CS researchers were able to piece together the government's targeting of certain ethnic groups for relocation. Making certain groups dependent on the state exacerbated the famine, and relocation tore apart communities and ate away at their cultural core. This excerpts is from a prepared statements given by CS's Jason Clay before the subcommittees on Africa and Human Rights and International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Representatives.

Since 1980, our interviews with refugees from each of the major ethnic groups in Ethiopia indicate that the present government is attempting to systematically destroy the culturally distinct groups within the country. This systematic destruction appears to be based on the goal of creating a strong central state upon which each community is dependent. by confiscating land, moving dissident peoples from their own area onto the land or even into the villages of others, and imposing, under the guise of state socialism, local organizations which destroy the ability of communities to remain self-sufficient in food production, the government is attempting to achieve its goal. As we have seen in the past year, even though the state has succeeded in making these communities dependent by reducing their productive capacity, it cannot provide food for them. This is the context within which Western humanitarian assistance is being used.

As is shown by the example of Ethiopia - and India and many other Third World states - the fall of Western colonialism only gave rise to a new kind of colonialism based on the old white system. This excerpt is from another article by Bernard Nietschmanu that explores, the examples of Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Third World colonialism has replaced European colonialism as the principal global force that tries to subjugate indigenous peoples and their ancient nations. European colonial empires became powerful through the forced incorporation of distant peoples and territories. Wars of independence and national liberation and post-World War II decolonization created today's Third World countries largely on the artificial outlines outlines of the vanquished colonial empires.

Invasion and occupation of indigenous nations once done by foreign white expansionist powers are now done by foreign brown expansionist powers. The majority of these artificial Third World states can only be maintained by the invasion and physical incorporation of lands and resources of hundreds of indigenous nations. What is called "economic development" is the annexation at gunpoint of other peoples' economies. What is called "nation-building is actually state expansion by nation-destroying. "Territorial consolidation," "national integration," "the imperatives of population growth," and 'economic development" are phrases Third World states use to cover up the killings of indigenous nations and peoples.

Within the state of Bangladesh is the over-population Bengali nation, just as within the state of Indonesia is the over-populated Javanese nation. Each of these two states is a ruled by one dominant nation the forces less powerful and less populated nations to accede to the fiction of an Indonesian and a Bangladesh "nation."

Progressive Africans argue that tribalism is one of the most disruptive influences confronting newly independent sub-Saharan African states. Tribalism, they argue, is the basis for hatred between peoples within a country as well as between countries. If African states are to take their rightful place in the world, progressive African believe, tribalism must be destroyed. There is little evidence, however, that tribal identity is on the wane, even among the most progressive elements within the newly created states. Furthermore, there is on the wane, even among the most progressive elements within the newly created states. Furthermore, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that post-independence efforts to eliminate tribal identities may have contributed significantly to Africa's contributed significantly to Africa's catastrophic problems.

What accounts for the resilience of cultural identity in the face of efforts to eliminate it? The answer to this question is at the heart of our understanding such topics as famines, refugee crises, and the numerous coups and secessionist movements that plague contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The very terms that are used to describe oneself or others in Africa - nations, nationality, tribe, ethnic group - are highly charged and skillfully manipulated by friends and foes alike.

Many legislative efforts have taken place, through the United Nations and other international agencies, to ensure that children will not be targets in wars and will not be recruited as soldiers in wars. The reality, however, it another story. State armies and rebel groups alike frequently use children as recruits - in fact, they are their "best" soldiers when taught at an early age.

The overwhelming majority of victims in today's wars are indeed children. While most of these fatalities results from indiscriminate bombings or attacks on cities and villages, others do not. Rather, adolescents, young boys and girls, and infants are singled out, injured, and killed as part of a calculated strategy. Moreover, thousands of children are currently bearing arms in at least 20 ongoing conflicts. Even children as young as nine years old are used as frontline combatants in unwinnable battles, as decoys to lure opposing forces into ambush, and as human mine detectors to explode bombs in front of advancing adult troops.

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