The Transformation of Violent Intercommunal Conflict

Stephen Ryan

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317013501
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Politics & International Relations
• Categoria: Peace & Global Development

In recent years there has been a remarkable growth of interest in the concept of conflict transformation and the closely related strategy of grass-roots peace building. Yet there exists no general critical analysis of the concept of conflict transformation in the context of violent inter-communal conflict and the different approaches that can be included in response to this category of dispute. This study offers a comprehensive survey and critical overview of this emerging area. Examining the reasons for the growing interest in the concept of conflict transformation in situations of ethnic conflict, the book explores the different dimensions of transformation. It draws on examples of strategies from a number of situations of 'ethnic conflict', including Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Spain, Sri Lanka and the former Soviet Union, to identify and assess key issues and problems that have emerged, and ultimately to propose a stronger emphasis on the promotion of inter-subjective understanding.

Chapter 1The Development of the Transformation Approach

DOI: 10.4324/9781315552064-2

Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life – they have never felt its breath, its heart – however much they have seen or done. They look upon it as a lump of raw material which needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be moulded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my theories about it. (Boris Pasternak: Dr Zhivago)

Transformation is all around us. Societies are constantly undergoing radical changes caused by scientific advances, political revolutions and economic pressures. Understanding the causes of intercommunal conflicts cannot escape the idea of transformation. Think, for example, of Gellner's influential argument that the emergence of nationalism is rooted in the transition from agrarian to industrial societies He has argued that ‘the age of transition to industrialism was bound, according to our model, also to be an age of nationalism, a period of turbulent readjustment, in which either political boundaries, or cultural ones, or both, were being modified, so as to satisfy the new nationalist imperative’ (Gellner, 1983, p.40). Think also about the impact of the end of the cold war and the collapse of communist regimes on the re-emergence of ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union or of current debates about the impact of globalization on culture and identity.

So, given the link between transformation and the causes of intercommunal conflict, maybe looking at the idea of transformation in the context of ending such conflict should not strike us as strange or misplaced. However, it is not an idea that is easily accepted by some. For those who think of politics as the art of the possible, the idea of transformation appears too utopian, at odds with the essentially pragmatic nature of the subject area. Politics, for many, remains the art of the possible, though who defines what is impossible is indefinite. However, the study of politics should also alert us to the fact, as we shall see in Chapter 2, that many of the great political ideologies have within them transformative impulses. Anyway, whatever the objections of some critics there is no doubt that Lederach (2003a, p.5) is correct to point out that over ‘the past decade or so, the terminology of transformation has become increasingly common in both practitioner and academic circles’.

In this chapter we shall examine how the emergence of the concept of conflict transformation can be explained by reference to changes in the real world of international politics and new trends within the academic study of world affairs. The transformative elements in normative theories of politics have been there for a long time; what were needed were changes both in world society and in how we study destructive violence to re-direct our gaze at them. This chapter will then describe the development of the literature on conflict transformation by focusing on several key texts that have emerged since the late 1980s. This is followed by an attempt to analysis the meaning of the term ‘conflict transformation’ by searching out elements that many of these key texts have in common. Finally, it will identify some criticisms that can be made of the concept.

The Changing Nature of World Politics

Inevitably, important contributing factors to the increase of interest in the concept of conflict transformation were the changes induced by the end of the Cold War. On the one hand this resulted in the (re)emergence of a number of destructive conflicts, especially in the former communist states of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. This ensured that ‘ethnic conflict’ would remain a major threat to international peace and security and an important item of the agenda of those who study violent conflict in world society. On the other hand, the collapse the Cold War system also unfroze a number of previously protracted and violent conflicts. This opened up new opportunities for extensive international involvement and led to the emergence of the ‘new’ idea of post-conflict peacebuilding, first introduced into a major international document in the 1992 UN Secretary-General's An Agenda for Peace (Boutros-Ghali, 1992).

However, it was not just the consequences of the end of the Cold War that might have stimulated interest in transformation. The very processes of change and the momentous events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which saw political revolutions in many societies in Central and Eastern Europe, stimulated an interest in the idea of transformation. During this time the term transformation was applied to a number of peace processes, including South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. Indeed, the dominant realist paradigm, wedded as it was to ideas of power, states and the impossibility of progress, seemed to struggle in response to the momentous events of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Suddenly the idealist approach did not seem so utopian after all, as dramatic examples of ‘people power’ swept away old and repressive regimes. This encouraged a more progressive view that positive, revolutionary change was feasible. From the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia to the most recent large scale non-violent movements in Georgia and the Ukraine, nonviolent transformations were tried and appear to have succeeded.

After 1989 the times they were a’ changing, but at bewildering speed and not always in the directions that mirrored the hopes and aspirations of those caught up in them. In Mogadishu, Srebrenica, Kigali and Grozny terrible events on the ground undermined the easy optimism of the first half of the 1990s, but this just increased the need for new signposts and strategies. The return of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda and major political/humanitarian/complex emergencies elsewhere, eroded the idea of state sovereignty and encouraged support for humanitarian intervention and post-violence peacebuilding by the ‘international community’ (see, for instance: Hoffmann, 1996; Ramsbotham and Woodhouse, 1996; Wheeler, 2000). Before 1989, peace in international politics was usually viewed as a return to the status quo ante. In inter-state conflicts respect for territorial integrity was paramount and the ‘international community’ was reluctant to engage in matters that were within the domestic jurisdiction of states. After 1989, however, conceptualizations of peace had to change, in part because enemies in intercommunal conflicts were usually condemned to live together after the violence stopped. Much more emphasis had to be placed on rebuilding failed states, on post-conflict peacebuilding, on human rights and democratization.

In terms of international practice, the first major example of this was the UN peacekeeping force sent to Namibia in 1988–1989. This was the debut of so-called ‘second generation peacekeeping’ that expanded the tasks undertaken by international interventions in conflicts. This was followed by missions inter alia to Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique and East Timor. It also led to two major on-going interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Diehl (2006, p.107) notes that such peacebuilding is not ‘entirely new’, but ‘represents a significant break from past collective security and peacekeeping practices’. The move to include peacebuilding duties as a part of UN deployments increased the tasks performed by UN personnel. Mission tasks could now include the administration of elections and referendums, human rights education and monitoring, police training, the temporary administration of failed states, the demilitarization of armed groups, monitoring the repatriation of refugees and the provision of humanitarian assistance on a large scale (Ryan, 2000).

It has already been pointed out that the first major policy statement by the UN that expressed an interest in peacebuilding came in 1992 in An Agenda for Peace (UN Doc. A/47/277). Bearing the name of UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, this report set out the key roles for the UN in the area of peace and security following the end of the Cold War and the positive role played by the UN in of the first Gulf War in 1991. Chapter VI of the report identifies ‘post-conflict peacebuilding’ as an important area for the UN because ‘peacemaking and peace-keeping operations, to be truly successful, must come to include comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people’ (Boutros-Ghali, 1992, p.32). The chapter on peacebuilding only includes five paragraphs in total, and is therefore weak on detailed analysis of what peacebuilding means. Nonetheless, it was a significant addition to the work of the UN, and is one area where the UN has developed an important role in the post-cold war world.

There are some weaknesses with the UN's approach as set out in this document. To talk of ‘post-conflict’ peacebuilding seems inaccurate, because conflicts do not disappear after a peace agreement, even if the violence ends. There is no mention in the document of the positive work that could be undertaken by NGOs, and in general the tone of An Agenda for Peace is very state-centric. Although there are some bold ideas (educational reform, improving political participation, dealing with underlying social and cultural problems) many of the examples of what constitutes peacebuilding also appear to be rather limited and specialized (de-mining, restoring infrastructure, repatriating refugees), and so has little to add to the idea of transformation.

However, An Agenda for Peace was a start, and over the next decade the organization has attempted to develop and articulate its peacebuilding role. In 1995, the 50th anniversary of the creation of the UN, the Secretary-General issued another report titled Supplement to an Agenda for Peace (UN Doc. A/50/60). This emerged following several major failures of the UN in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia (see, for example, Polman, 2004). It noted that the concept of peacebuilding had received wide recognition and identified the main strategies as demilitarization, improving police and judicial systems, institutional reform, human rights monitoring, electoral reform and social and economic development. This time the positive work of NGOs was recognized (paragraph 98). The Supplement also noted that the multifunctional nature of peacebuilding requires increased coordination within the UN Secretariat and it identified a need to coordinate with international financial institutions at an early stage to ensure that proper funding for this sort of work would be forthcoming.

The Brahimi Report (UN Doc. A/55/305) was the next significant attempt to develop the idea of peacebuilding and it was a direct response to the failures of complex UN peacekeeping in the mid-1990s. It is a wide-ranging analysis, but one aspect is the attention given to UN peacebuilding. This is identified as having a key role in UN work, but the Report views it as being fundamentally deficient in the way it has been conceived and implemented. To remedy some of these deficiencies the Report recommended: the creation of quick impact projects to establish the credibility of new UN missions; a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police (CIVPOL) and human rights experts to emphasize the strengthening of rule of law institutions; improved funding for demobilization and reintegration programmes by bringing them into the assessed budgets of missions; and work by the Secretary-General to improve the permanent capacity of the UN to develop and implement peacebuilding strategies.

The next significant document issued by the UN was the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. This was a response to the deep divisions in the Security Council in early 2003 over the Iraq question. The aim was for the Panel to present practical measures for UN reform to improve the way it could fulfil its purposes as set out in its Charter. It reported to Kofi Annan in December 2004, and based on this report the Secretary-General then submitted his proposals for reforms to a UN ‘World Summit’ in New York in September 2005. The response of key states to the proposals was less than enthusiastic, but one positive outcome was the agreement to establish a Peacebuilding Commission, to be composed of 31 states. The main aims of this new UN advisory body will be to: propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery; help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities and sustained financial investment over the medium – to longer-term; extend the period of attention by the international community to post-conflict recovery; and develop best practices on issues that require extensive collaboration among political, military, humanitarian and development actors. Ironically, given its intention to ensure predictable financing, the Commission has already run into problems with its own funding. There have also been conflicts about who should be the seven ECOSOC representatives, and there are concerns that a body made up of a large group of states will lack an urgency and purpose required to make the work of the UN in this area more effective.

There have also been some initiatives to develop peacebuilding capacity at the regional level. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), for example, has devised an African Post-Conflict Reconstruction Policy Framework which aims to promote a broad approach to policy in this area by emphasizing security, development, good governance and reconciliation (Murithi, 2006). The strategy was formally endorsed by the Organization of African Unity in 2001 and it is answerable to what is now called the Assembly of the African Union. In recent years, we have also witnessed the growth of peacebuilding missions that are not formally attached to peacekeeping deployments. These would include operations in the Central African Republic (BONUCA), Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) and Tajikistan (UNTOP). In Tajikistan UNTOP has organized a political discussion club and has offered training in conflict prevention for government employees. It has also trained school teachers in an effort to build a culture of respect for human rights, tolerance and skills in conflict prevention. The small mission in the Central African Republic, created in 2000, was meant to consolidate national reconciliation, promote and monitor respect for human rights and help train the local police force. The mandate of UNGOBIS includes the development of initiatives to: help create an enabling environment for the consolidation of peace, democracy and the rule of law and for the organization of free and transparent elections; support national efforts, including those of civil society, towards national reconciliation; and encourage initiatives aimed at building confidence and maintaining f...