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Islamic radicals carry out the most brutal
and devastating terrorist attacks in human history and
a USA-led alliance of Western and other countries launch
an anti-terrorist crusade against the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan creating a humanitarian crisis.
(Muslims) Palestinians and Jews confront each other in their homeland, as well
as Indians and Muslims clash in Kashmir.
In Sudan a government-backed Arab militia, known as Janjaweed engages in ethnic cleansing of whole communities of African tribal farmers, while the world fails to recognize such organized campaign as "genocide".
In Nigeria, ethnic clashes are common between Christian
Ibos or Yorubas and Muslim Hausas; and in the Philippines,
Muslim Filipinos fight their Catholic brothers in the
Southernmost Island of Mindanao.
Chechens try to build an independent Muslim state inside
the Russian Federation, Kurds struggle to create their
own state in Turkey and Irak, while Muslim Uighurs, and
Buddhist Tibetans claim their independence from China.
In Indonesia, Muslim Ache and Christian-Animist Irian Jaya (West Papua) try to
secede from Jakarta, while in Ambon (Maluku Islands) sectarian violence between
Christians and Muslims is frequent.
Moreover, the United States attack Iraq ignoring the United Nations' resolutions
while in Iraq ethnic divides between Iraqi Sunnis, Southern Shiites and Northern
Kurds reappear and worsen. An anti US insurgency causes more than 20.000 deaths, while indiscriminate terrorist attacks happen in Bali, Madrid, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, Bagdad, etc.
GLOBALIZATION AND TRIBALISM
The world at the end of the Twentieth century and the
beginning of the new millennium is a world of tribal,
ethnic, religious, cultural, and civilizational confrontation.
Ethnic Dayaks persecute Madurese settlers in Borneo Island,
Bodos and Santhals fight each other in the North-Eastern
Indian state of Assam, while Tamils and Sinhalese do the
same in Sri Lanka; Hutus massacre Tutsis in Rwanda, while
Ethnic Karens struggle for secession in Myammar and North-Western
Thailand.
Ethnic strife has also emerged in the South Pacific nations-archipelagos:
in the Fiji Islands between indigenous Fijians and ethnic
Indians and in the Salomon Islands between Guadalcanal
Isabatans and Malaitan migrants.
The world is far from entering an era of peace, as the
ingredients of war remain in place.
Savage wars have been fought for decades in different
places of the earth but still haven't deserved the attention
of the international community. The systematically ignored
carnage in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Congo or Sri
Lanka has caused 100 times more deaths and refugees than
the strife that made NATO intervene in Kosovo without
the approval of the United Nations.
Moreover, very serious processes are occurring in the
world that jeopardize the peaceful coexistence of states
and civilizations: the military expansion of NATO that
is threatening Russian interests, the decline of the role
of the United Nations, the demographic expansion of Islam,
the Chinese economic and cultural affirmation, the atomic
race among the new Asian nuclear powers (India, Pakistan
and probably North Korea and Iran), the arms race among
the emerging South Asian economies...
According to the United Nations there are about 12 million
refuges worldwide and other 10 million people are IDPs
(internally displaced persons).
On the other hand, about 5,000 indigenous cultures worldwide,
marginalized in most societies, are struggling for survival.
They are victims of active deculturalizacion, their land
is systematically confiscated or their rights to their
ancestral lands not recognized, their cultural rights
ignored and very often they are victims of violence by
colonizers, poachers, armies, paramilitaries, drug-dealers
or guerrillas.
In addition to the struggle for national identity in many
countries and the resulting effort to create ethnic states
through war, xenophobia, racism and discrimination are
likely to increase as economic globalization and cultural
internationalization intensify.
Although the world is not fighting fascism or communism
anymore, the Twenty-first century doesn't promise to be
a century of peace.
With the restrained role of the United Nations, in a world
of tribal, ethnic and civilizational realignments, in
an era of increasing internationalization and unavoidable
broad immigration, a bigger role will have to be played
by neutral non government organizations.
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