Ethnic hostilities account for a very high percentage of distress and instability in the world today. To examine this problem in four volatile countries particularly vital to the war on terrorism -- India, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Iraq -- the Center sponsored a January 15, 2003, symposium called "Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Partition, and U.S. Foreign Policy," held at the St. Regis Hotel. Center fellow Timothy Samuel Shah, serving as moderator, noted that in the 1990s, a decade of "pervasive" ethnic conflict, "serious policy thinking" about the problem was conspicuously absent. We must remedy this unfortunate lack, he said, because "the challenges that ethnic conflict poses to U.S. interests" are greater than ever in the aftermath of September 11. All strategies that might foster ethnic peace should be considered, said Shah, including the unpopular one of partition.

In the first panel, devoted to troubles in northern India, Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution immediately expressed reservations about partition. Most contemporary examples "have left the parties worse off than before," he said, with the costs outweighing the benefits. The bitter experience of South Asia is especially telling, and "partitioning either Kashmir or the Northeast would be catastrophically unimaginable under present circumstances." Cohen argued that the solution to both problems, as with other separatist movements, is the development "of different degrees of autonomy" and "of true democracy." This should be the goal of U.S. policy. Because partition "whets the appetite for further partition" while weakening the capacity of the successor states to protect minority rights, tribalism should be discouraged.

Ejaz Haider, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Pakistani journalist, also rejected the option of partition for Kashmir. Made to seem "intractable by the two states involved," the dispute over Kashmir gives India and Pakistan an excuse for not talking to each other at all. It is in the interest of both governments, however, to move away from their standard positions and "create spaces for greater interaction." They should deal with the nuclear issue separately, Haider said, and foster cooperation in other areas by capitalizing on the many unofficial contacts already existing between Indians and Pakistanis scientists, business people, jurists, journalists, educators, and students. The United States should help by "trying to bring the two actors together." Better overall relations would facilitate settlement of the Kashmir problem.

In the second panel, Harold Crouch of the Australian National University was equally dismissive of partition as an option for Indonesia. Serious separatist movements exist in only two of the country's thirty provinces (Papua and Aceh), affect only 3 per cent of the population, and are unlikely to succeed. Elsewhere, Indonesians of all ethnic and religious groups tend to accept the idea of their common nationality, even as the current government tries to respond to local resentments by implementing a radical regional-autonomy program. Conflict between ethnic and religious communities is "quite different" from the matter of separatism, Crouch insisted. Though communal violence is a serious problem in a few areas, it is "not typical of the whole country." Likewise, Islamic terrorism does not threaten the whole state. Most organizations that favor an Islamic state eschew violence, "are quite happy to work within the constitutional process," and have the support of only about 15 per cent of the population in any case.

Focusing on Indonesia's separatist movements in Papua and Aceh, Muthiah Alagappa of the East-West Center in Washington agreed that "the state is not about to fall apart" but could benefit from a "more flexible reinterpretation of sovereignty." All options short of a separate nation-state -- including local armed forces, economic autonomy, and "limited international personality" for particular regions -- "should be on the table." Alagappa noted that Indonesia's government faces huge economic, political, and administrative challenges in addition to the peripheral separatist challenges, and is hampered by inefficiency, corruption, and a lack of expertise. The international community should play a "limited but not unimportant" role in helping to address these problems, he said, and the United States should be wary of undermining the country's democratic and economic development by placing "undue emphasis on the war on terror."

Of even more pressing concern is Afghanistan. Both speakers on the third panel took issue with the suggestion that ethnic federalism might provide Afghans with their best recipe for peace and stability. Elie Krakowski of EDK Consulting pointed out that most states are, in fact, multi-ethnic and accommodate different groups quite well. Because it would "institutionalize separation based on ethnicity," "ethnic federalism in Afghanistan" would simply exacerbate whatever tensions exist" -- tensions that have been "largely induced from the outside." American foreign policy should elevate the importance of individual rights over the importance of elections, he said. "If you protect individuals, you protect the group." A strong central government combined with "a fair degree of autonomy and self-rule in provinces and localities" is also critical, but this "pragmatic solution" is quite different from ethnic federalism.

David Isby of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan discussed the many political, religious, economic, regional, and tribal fissures within Afghan society that cut across "the ethno-linguistic divisions" so often emphasized. "No group in Afghanistan is unified," he said. While efforts to include all groups in the political process are commendable, none should entail definitions or quotas that would only "create more trouble." Americans should encourage the "rebirth of Afghan nationalism" now underway, strengthen the economic clout of the central government through aid, and respect Afghans' not-unfounded anxieties that a federal system, for all its advantages, might again open the country to the kind of foreign influences that have scarred its past.

The fourth panel turned to the equally complicated and urgent issue of how to shape Iraq's post-Saddam government. Kanan Makiya of Brandeis University concluded that, despite its many perils, a federal system offered the best chance for keeping "the Kurdish people inside Iraq" and for preserving the society's "variegated, mosaic-like texture." Federalism would protect this mosaic because minority rights -- "the rights of the part, including ultimately individual human rights" -- rather than majority rule are "the essence of a federal democracy." Territorial divisions should not be based on ethnicity, however, and must have completely open borders. "Love of Iraq as a whole entity needs to be elevated somehow politically over all forms of identity politics," Makiya stressed. Tribal nationalism, "the great scourge" of the Arab Middle East, must not be allowed to undermine "the integrity of Iraq as an idea and as a country."

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy focused on how proposals for federalism in Iraq are viewed by Iraq's neighbors, who fear that "the map of the Middle East is going to be redrawn" and that "others will gain influence in the new Iraq at their expense." Noting the dangers that a special Kurdish region would pose, Clawson argued for "a provincial-level federalism" in which each of Iraq's different regions, well represented by its eighteen existing provinces, would have the same degree of autonomy. This structure would help alleviate problems related to minorities in the Kurdish region, Kurdish minorities in other regions, and Sunni minorities in Shia regions. It would also help "combat the natural trend" in an oil-rich country "of everybody wanting to control the central government in order to have the oil resources, thus stifling civil society."

The symposium concluded with a roundtable discussion among Donald Horowitz of Duke University, Chaim Kaufmann of Lehigh University, and Ashutosh Varshney of the University of Michigan. Joining those speakers opposed to the partition option, Horowitz elaborated on why it is "almost always a bad idea." Partition does not create homogeneous successor states, because minorities are inevitably "stranded on the wrong side of the boundary," aggravating conflict and converting "domestic ethnic disputes into more dangerous international disputes." It also "opens the possibility that foreign states will pick at or absorb partitioned regions," which may "destabilize the absorbing countries." In complex multi-ethnic states, there is little chance that a single group can dominate all the others, Horowitz said. "What you really want is not the simplification that comes from partition" but the complexity that comes from integration. Such complexity encourages internal accommodation and reduces stark confrontations.

Voicing a rare endorsement of partition, Kaufmann asserted that it is sometimes "the only way out" for a country in the throes, or on the edge, of ethnic civil war. Where partition can "save the lives of people who would otherwise be killed in ethnic violence," it can be justified -- not on the grounds of self-determination but on humanitarian grounds. He emphasized that "the standard for evaluating a particular partition" should be strictly humanitarian and place "human lives above all other values." Such values as sovereignty, cultural integration, and economic integration are not worth dying for. Kaufmann discussed specific criteria that could be used to estimate the comparative costs of partition and non-partition and thus help to determine whether a proposed partition would leave those affected better or worse off.

Varshney returned to anti-partition arguments. Except for the rare instances where "geography and ethnicity beautifully coincide" and where intense ethnic hatred would not "simply be transferred to an international level," he agreed that partition creates as many problems as it solves -- in both the new smaller state and the larger state from which it was carved. The "conflicting nationalisms" involved also work "to undermine democracy." Varshney concluded with comments on alternatives to partition. Federalism can succeed only if it is preceded by "a national idea," he said. Majority democracy needs strong minority guarantees and perhaps an electoral system requiring the central leadership to win a proportion of the vote in all parts of the country. Varshney stressed the importance of building "an integrated civil society" that, in the long term, would make "disputes over formal political institutions less deadly.