The current paper is one expression of a broader research project that arose
over the past decade from my increasing interest in `war termination'—that is, how
wars (especially contemporary intra-state or civil wars) end, what happens when they
do, and whether sustainable peace emerges in their place. This is the other end of
the analytical spectrum from the older, traditional international relations concern
with war as a general phenomenon in international affairs, and why specific wars
arise where, when and how they do. It is also a logical progression from, and in
some ways an outgrowth of, research concerns about conflict management and
conflict resolution. In that sense, it feels as if three decades of reading, researching
and thinking about conflict analysis now serves as a `deep base' from which to
explore peace building, despite the oft-cited change in the nature of conflict from
primarily inter-state to intra-state.
At the `macro' level, the broader research project examines how and
where considerations of truth, justice and reconciliation fit into processes of
war-to-peace transition, and post conflict reconstruction and peace building. At the `micro'
level, the focus is upon whether and how truth, justice and reconciliation fit together
as goals, values and program activities in specific cases of states and societies that
are emerging from conflict and dealing with these dimensions of their past. And
in particular, I am interested in how these processes and activities are perceived
and received by the various actors within the societies most affected by the conflict,
rather than how they are seen by indirectly affected international organizations or
other external parties.
An initial presumption of all of the analysis advanced here is that, as
Feargal Cochrane suggests, "violent conflicts are acts of human agency combined with a
set of structural circumstances that trigger, cause or even encourage such acts";
with the associated observation that the majority of these "wars can be controlled
and eventually terminated by human agency, given conducive structural
conditions." Conflicts are frequent, and frequently brutal; they may have one single initial
cause, or many causes that arise over time; and the contemporary trend towards
internal (un)civil wars includes a larger and more disparate number of actors engaged
in, as well as more civilian victims of, conflict so that a negotiated ceasefire or
peace agreement becomes still harder to achieve. Nonetheless, it is important to be
able to work from the basic premise that these conflicts can, under some
circumstances, be ended. If that were not the case, there would be no point in further
analysis; all that would be needed is a fatalistic shrug of the shoulders and a
single-sentence, single cause deterministic answer. With no pun intended, that would do
absolutely no justice to the complex problems that exist in these locations, or to the people
who inhabit them. |
