Armed non-state actors and the politics of recognition

Emmanuel Pierre Guittet, Peter Lawler, Anna Geis, Maéva Clément, Hanna Pfeifer

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526152749
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

Recognition is often considered a means to de-escalate conflicts and promote peaceful social interactions. This volume explores the forms that social recognition and its withholding may take in asymmetric armed conflicts, examining the risks and opportunities that arise when local, state, and transnational actors recognise, misrecognise, or deny recognition of armed non-state actors.By studying key asymmetric conflicts through the prism of recognition, it offers an innovative perspective on the interactions between armed non-state actors and state actors. In what contexts does granting recognition to armed non-state actors foster conflict transformation? What happens when governments withhold recognition or label armed non-state actors in ways they perceive as misrecognition? The authors examine the ambivalence of recognition processes in violent conflicts and their sometimes-unintended consequences. The volume shows that, while non-recognition prevents conflict transformation, the recognition of armed non-state actors may produce counterproductive precedents and new modes of exclusion in intra-state and transnational politics.

IV
Recognition in mediation and peace processes

9
Ripe through recognition? The case of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Carolin Görzig*

Introduction

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) began fighting for the reunification of Ireland in 1969.¹ It reached a turning point nearly three decades later when it called a final ceasefire in 1997, supported the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and disarmed in 2005. Since then, the PIRA has become a role model for other groups around the world (Dixon 2006), a development that has contributed to the group's ‘self-esteem’ (Interview 8), as an interviewee describes it:

So, if the president of Colombia says I want to ask my friend Martin McGuinness for advice on how to deal with the FARC. That's kind of cool. Right? If he says I wanna fly you over first class. Or if you know, if someone says can you come and give a speech at the UN, we fly you over when you do it. You can say well, no we're giving that up and I'm going back to being on the run and living in like slightly shady circumstances, but it's kind of quite nice to be treated seriously. You become a world statesman. (Interview 1)

Ringmar has stated that ‘few things matter more than the identities we put together for ourselves since, without an identity, we have no idea of who we are’ (Ringmar 2011: 3). The PIRA developed a new idea of who they were as an organisation when they contributed to peace, saw their leaders turn into ‘world's statesmen’ and became a global role model. Being recognised as a role model is only half of the story, however; the other half consists of recognising others, a step undertaken by the PIRA as well. Thus, they realised that ‘the most important lesson of all, is to realise exactly that … this Northern Ireland is not Irish, it is not British, it is both’ (Interview 4). To some observers this was the real turning point: ‘The fundamental change, I would argue, … is the idea that the British and Irish governments have a shared problem here’ (Interview 5).

According to William Zartman's ripeness theory (see below), which is much cited in conflict transformation literature, a conflict becomes ripe for resolution when the conflict parties perceive a mutually hurting stalemate and a way out. The PIRA perceived a hurting stalemate as well as a way out of the conflict when it was recognised by others and when it recognised others, two dynamics that went hand in hand. Commonly, ‘putting together an identity is quite a struggle’ (Ringmar 2011: 3). This struggle – the complex combination of seeking and granting recognition – is the topic of this chapter, that answers the question of how one party to the Northern Ireland conflict, the PIRA, became ripe through recognition. While ripeness relates to the conflict and includes both sides in a conflict, this chapter looks at one party in the Northern Ireland conflict in particular in order to discern how it arrived at the ripe moment. The chapter contributes to ripeness theory by investigating a case study in which a hurting stalemate and a way out were perceived by PIRA leaders when they acknowledged friends and enemies and in which PIRA leaders negotiated ‘ripeness’ internally by winning the recognition of their followers.

The chapter will proceed by spelling out the argument, followed by operationalising the different levels of recognition-granters and -seekers, detailing the case study and concluding with final observations.

The conceptual framework: ripeness theory and identity transformation

According to ripeness theory, a conflict becomes ripe for resolution when a mutually hurting stalemate coincides with a way out. William Zartman explained that conflict actors aim at conflict resolution when they are in a costly predicament, a ‘ripe’ moment, and therefore seek a way out: ‘The mutually hurting stalemate is grounded in cost–benefit analysis. It is fully consistent with public-choice notions of rationality’ (Zartman 2001: 8). William Zartman further explains that ripeness is a matter of subjective perception: ‘If the parties do not recognize “clear evidence”… that they are at an impasse, a mutually hurting stalemate has not yet occurred, and if they do perceive themselves to be in such a situation, no matter how flimsy the “evidence”, the mutually hurting stalemate is present’ (Zartman 2001: 9).

The mutually hurting stalemate must moreover be accompanied by a way out. Without such a way out, ‘the mutually hurting stalemate would leave the parties with nowhere to go’ (Zartman 2001: 9). However, as this chapter argues, the perception of a mutually hurting stalemate and a way out might be based on cost–benefit analysis on the one hand, but both are also related to identity transformation on the part of the actors involved, on the other. As Zartman has put it, both parties to a conflict need to perceive the ‘ripeness’ of a conflict situation. In fact, acknowledgement of the other is crucial to the perception of ripeness. Acknowledgement and recognition can be gradual and can take different forms. ‘“Recognition” is a fuzzy term that is used quite differently by authors and speakers … [Among other things] the term can be used as a synonym for … “acknowledgement”; this implies recognition having “evaluative or normative entities or facts as its objects, so that we can acknowledge something as valuable, as valid, as giving reasons, and so forth”’ (Clement et al. in this volume, p. 5). While the perception of ripeness is connected with the acknowledgement, for example, of the facts ‘on the ground’ or of the enemy as having a valid impact, perceiving a ripe moment not only comes along with acknowledging and recognising others but also with being recognised by others. Our understanding of the situation we are in and the options we have in this situation is connected to our self-perception and our perception of and by others. This implies that we can ask ourselves whether we start by telling stories about ourselves and then test these stories on others, or whether we acquire a story through others in the first place.² As Mead (1934) suggested, people cannot see themselves without relating to how others see them. Alexander Wendt explained accordingly that ‘one cannot be a teacher without recognition by students, a husband without recognition by a wife, a citizen without recognition by other citizens’ (Wendt 2003: 559).

However, when does this interactive process lead to identity transformation and when to identity confirmation? In the empirical case of peaceful transformation in this chapter, the non-state armed actor first changed its identity and then had its new identity confirmed by significant others. Accordingly, the chapter deals with a non-state armed group that became ripe for identity change: the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Based on field research in Northern Ireland this study of the PIRA helps to paint a differentiated picture of ripeness theory. PIRA leaders acknowledged friends and enemies and therewith became themselves ‘ripe’ to question their identity. Thus, acknowledging enemies such as the UK and the Unionists – who favour the political union between Ireland and Great Britain and are mostly from Protestant backgrounds – contributed to the PIRA's perception of a hurting stalemate. Recognising friends like South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) in turn helped PIRA leaders to recognise a way out.

Furthermore, both the hurting stalemate and the way out had to be ‘sold’ by the leaders to their follower base. The rational cost–benefit approach that underlies ripeness theory comes along with a tendency to neglect those actors. Breaking up this ‘black box’ and looking inside organisations helps us to understand how ‘ripeness’ is negotiated internally. If leaders of a group perceive a hurting stalemate and a way out, they have to ‘sell’ that perception to their followers. The internal negotiations of the PIRA are a case in point. The recognition of PIRA leaders as role models around the world thereby contributed to their ca...