ZEF Bonn

1.1.3 Constitutional draft for Burma/Myanmar
The constitutional constraints between minority claims, decentralist structures and
the central government were analysed in Burma/Myanmar on behalf of the Friedrich
Ebert Foundation and the exile government of Burma. The constitutional draft
wrote down the entitlements of ethnic groups and tried to find a balance of power
between the centre and the federal states. Critical points emphasised by ZEF include
the definition of ethnic identities in the Burmese context and the question of how
to deal with various minorities and their claims in the future.
1.1.4 Afghanistan - The ethnicisation of a conflict
The project on ethnic conflicts in Afghanistan was strongly influenced by the terrorist
attacks of September 11 and the American intervention in Afghanistan. The
political landscape of Afghanistan with its clans, villages, valleys and brotherhoods is
much more deeply divided than the usual maps showing ethnic groups suggest.
Therefore, ethnicity explains only one dimension of the conflict and was mainly
instrumentalised by political leaders. In order to underline this argument, ZEF accentuated
its research on other aspects of the conflict such as the erosion of state
structures and on the dominance of warlordism and patronage systems in the past
decades. The findings of the project have flown into a discussion paper on reconstruction
and peace-building in Afghanistan. ZEF emphasises that the first aim
should be to strengthen state structures and to foster the role of the state in reconstruction
programs. The paper has been well received within the international
development community and stimulated discussions on the future of Afghanistan
and other 'failed' states. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has organised a workshop
with representatives of all the major German development institutions in order to
discuss the paper and its recommendations.
1.1.5 Beyond nationalism. Fostering peace and reconciliation between
Yugoslavia's successor states
This project looks at the historical memories of the dissolution of Yugoslavia presented
by academics in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. A series of workshops will be
held in the region in order to stimulate a new, non-nationalistic view of the dissolution
and to encourage teams of academics of different national backgrounds to
write essays together. The output of the workshops will consists of a edited volume
containing these essays which will be used in university curricula in the
region, thus offering a contrasting interpretation to the dominant nationalistic
vision of recent history. The project thus also hopes to contribute to
conflict prevention in the region. It will be supported by the German
Foreign Ministry and the American Social Science Research Council.
1.1.6 Pluralism in Southeast Asian Islam
Since September 11, Islam has been the focus of a renewed public discussion
in the Western world. Whether Islam has an inherent tendency to produce
political radicalism has been just one of the many lines of debate. In
this project, ZEF takes a different perspective by showing that in Southeast
Asian Islam, the tradition of accommodating religious and ethnic pluralisms
has led to the rise of a much more differentiated and diversified political
doctrine of Islam compared to the one in the Arab Peninsula. It would
thus be mistaken to relate certain forms of Islamism to the characteristics of
Islamic religious thinking as such. The project is financed by a fellowship for
professorial candidates of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Research
In the framework of a project
looking at the historical
memories of the dissolution of
Yugoslavia produced by academics
in Bosnia, Croatia and
Serbia, a series of workshops
will be held in the region in
order to stimulate a new, nonnationalistic
view of the dissolution.
Pluralism in
South-East:
Asian Islam
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