Conflict Analysis and Resolution - Overview

Training

I have selected a few chapters of the following textbook for which I am providing a summary with my personal interpretation.

Note: I use italic highlighting to insert an example.

1          The Role of Identity in Conflict

An individual has a personal identity and shares a collective/social identity with the various groups he belongs to. Identity is fluid and changing.

One can be a Canadian atheist neo-conservative with a French culture.

One identity will be salient in specific circumstances.

Collective identity in a situation of conflict has the following impacts on the conflict:

  §  ethnocentrism and selective perception.

This land has been the land of my people for generations. The presence of another people on the land may be denied in a revisionist attitude.

  §  discrimination and enmity: the values of our people are right, whether religious or political.  The other ones can only be wrong.

  §  a genocide happens when the following perception dominates: getting rid of the problem (caused by the enemy) can only be resolved by the elimination of the enemy.

The expression of collective identity is defined by the basic human needs of the group. Essential needs are not negotiable; conflict settlement will fail if they are not met. In the case of a civil war, an ethnic or communal conflict, the State actions may be contrary to the group needs. The group questions the institutions (police, shariah law), and may be threatened by another's more dominant identity. A weak identity may be a motive for ethnic cleansing (a minority in the country).

A peace agreement must be careful not to neglect the identity needs of a sub group (women).

Identity is not sufficient to explain all conflicts.

2          Nationalism

A socio-cultural phenomenon that unifies peoples by defining collective values, loyalty to the Nation, patriotism. Nationalism may also be a source of intolerance, divide nations by creating a race for power and resources, imperialism, colonialism and an escalation of conflicts. 

The Nation provides a moral justification for violence sometimes higher than international laws, with sacred attributes, ceremonies, war heroes, glorious battles. 

Ethno-nationalist conflicts are complex and driven by well configured assumed worldviews that conflict resolution will have to deconstruct.

Iran is part of the Axis of Evil while the USA is the Great Satan.

A clear distinction must be made between position and interests of the adversaries.

§  The position is the list of demands, finality, a unilateral approach.

§  The interests are the legitimate human needs that the position serves to protect, enhance, and secure.

Iran sees the possession of a nuclear program as a matter of national pride, national security on top of the need for energy autonomy, but also as a moral imperative for the Islamic Republic.The USA want to protect the stability of the Middle-East and its own national security. Its perceived moral superiority comes from its democratic character and Judeo-Christian heritage.

Negotiations based on nationalist positions rarely succeed.

By differentiating position from interests, we find that the US wants its security, stabililty needs addressed and Iran wants security as well, the end of economic isolation and boycott, and a cultural acceptance.

With diplomacy and dialogue, assumptions are suspended, perspectives fuse into a common objective, new truth, facts, common engagement emerge.

Legitimate human needs are better identified.

By bringing forward the shared suffering and tragedy, by changing the narrative, the nationalist and moral justification for violence are deconstructed in a conflict transforming process.

The truth and reconciliation Commissions in South Africa.

The conflict deconstruction process consists in reorienting policies, security and identity concerns, actions and strategies away from adversarial values and towards a constructive outcome, by:

§  restoring the value of human life and human rights

§  redefining national interests in terms of socio-political and economical development

§  broadening the definition of democracy and justice outside the boundaries of the nation

§  expanding the community by forging interstate relationship (European Union) to further address the security and identity of one community

§  Revisiting history by discerning positive and negative history on both sides (rather than clinging to victim-hood)

3          Gender relations - Women as refugees

In modern warfare where civilians are targeted, women account for 90% of all casualties and 80% of refugees. In addition to the military combats, they are victims of unorganized violence such as rape, abuse from men and sex trafficking. Women are targeted as the biological and social producers of the enemy.

In the absence of men (fighting or killed or prisoners), women are empowered as head of the house and income generator. Women refugees in a foreign country or internally displaced make decisions and provide for the entire family.

In some cases, they lose village freedom and face instead complete dependence on foreign aid.

In others, they take increased economic responsibilities and higher income in an urban environment.

They may learn from NGOs about human rights protection skills, receive education and training, and establish organizations.

They experience a backlash from men resisting women empowerment in post-conflict situations.

Women are usually excluded from the peace settlement process. Yet their peace building capacity comes from their terrain experience in civilian impact of conflict. Without gender consideration, the peace building effort will fail removing discrimination in institutions and maintain a patriarchal system.

4         Conflict transformation

The end of the Cold War provided opportunities for international involvement in a number of protracted violent conflicts as in Namibia, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and South Africa.

During the first 50 years of the United Nations, peacekeeping was its most significant contribution. In the next 50 years, peace building may be its most significant role.

The Cold War terminated with non-violent revolutions against illegitimate regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. Other non-violent revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon may also have stimulated an interest in conflict transformation.

The conflicts that proliferated in the 1990s were not traditional interstate wars. Ethno-nationalism was behind the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia and a number of bitter ethnic struggles in parts of the former Soviet Union. Faced with such intrastate violence, peace thinking had to be amended because the parties to a conflict were often condemned to live together after the violence ceased.

Conflict transformation addresses the root causes of conflict, looking at the broader environment that lead to violence.  

Post-war Iraq is not the same as post-war Germany. Imposed solutions will not work.

The concept includes a desire to strengthen Civil Society in the settlement.

The 1994 Assembly of Civil Society in Guatemala and the Civic Forum, created as part of the Belfast Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland.

Policymakers cannot think beyond the next election term. Transformation takes time.

The shortcomings of the Dayton peace process in Yugoslavia could be explained by the imminence of US presidential elections.

Conflict transformation suffers from the poorly defined nature of the concept, a lack of normative consensus about what needs to be transformed. The objectives of conflict transformation may be interpreted differently:

§  Christian tradition will emphasize the healing power of forgiveness and reconciliation.

§  Marxists will focus on class revolution as liberation.

§  Liberals believe in the peaceful nature of democracies.

§  Feminists aim for post-patriarchal societies.

In Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka, where different groups want to belong to different sovereign jurisdictions, building a democratic state may not attract general support. The exercise of self-determination can result in problems such as stranded minorities and disputed frontiers.

Speed of change can provoke destructive conflict. The proposed “institutionalization before liberalization” is based on six principles:

§  wait for conditions to be ripe for elections

§  create an electoral system that rewards moderation

§  promote good civil society

§  control hate speech

§  implement conflict reducing economic policies

§  rebuild effective state institutions

Economic reconstruction is a political act that is often a continuation of war by other means (The Marshall plan, the Iraq coalition). Promoting democracy through conventional free-market ideas does not always work.

In Azerbaijan bribes were paid by people wanting to sit on the country’s anti-corruption commission.

Change may occur in the political and economic domain or the spiritual one.

Four key areas have been identified:

§  actor transformation : interpersonal reconciliation

§  issue transformation : resolving legitimate needs

§  rules/norms transformation : the law

§  structural transformation : economic and politics

Resistance to transformation may come from those who fear significant changes.

During the Arusha peace process, the Hutu community of Rwanda felt that its interests were threatened and a backlash resulted in the1994 genocide.

Individuals who have experienced trauma and alienation and hold to a strong sense of victimhood may crave for stability and security rather than changes. “Transformation management” addresses what needs to be done with these two groups of people, the victims and the opponents of deep change. The disastrous consequences of a failure to do this were all too clear in Rwanda.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot were all social transformers, incapable of learning from their mistakes, since political opponents were thrown into gulags, concentration camps, etc...

Gandhi was committed to fundamental social change, incremental change that does not propose redesigning society as a whole and but allows us to learn from mistakes.

In a territorial conflict, like a divorce (never a happy experience), issues can be resolved through compromise without any fundamental change of heart on both sides.

Another difficulty resides in the need for combining external intervention with respect for local culture.

Local cultures and identities are sometimes forged out of fear and opposition to outgroups and show a stubborn support for narrow and conflict-provoking ideas such as ethno-nationalism. The appropriate choice of local partners for transformation is both a vital and difficult issue.

In Afghanistan the United States decided to work with the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban. It was a decision that did very little to enhance the chances of a democratic, peaceful, and just society, empowering women and respectful of human rights.

Problem solvers, facilitators, or resolvers are also transformers. When to stop transformations? Here there is a danger of long-termism.

Conflict transformation is a balancing act between

§  external involvement and the need to respect indigenous cultures

§  deal with the past whilst at the same time trying to build a new future

§  developing long-term strategic thinking whilst accommodating the short-term perspectives of the political elite

§  promote positive change without causing strong opposition from those who value the status quo

Developing an honest and open dialogue between all points of view seems to be an important starting point.

5         Law and the legal processes in resolving international conflicts

The influence and relevance of international law is often challenged by pointing failure to prevent wars from happening or to prosecute criminal heads of states. The dictates of powerful international players seem to rule above the law. But law regulates international conflicts in several ways.

§  Law prevents the eruption of international conflicts by offering a medium for harmonious ordering of economic, political, and social interactions between sovereign states in the field of international travels, telecommunications, trades and taxes, laws at sea.

§  Militarism would prevail without law. Conformity with law confers legitimacy. Law delineated the conditions under which military intervention is proved acceptable. Law permits to identify departure from known rules.

§  The United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council, international courts, and other, more regional, procedural arenas constitute forums where disputes are debated. Conflict processing exposes state actions, evidence is examined and disputed, and states are called to formally defend or refute contradictory claims. It is an organized multiparty dialogue. It provides ground for legitimate global intervention as a collective response.

For many years, the structure of the United Nations Security Council has been strongly condemned as unrepresentative of the geo-political context of modern international affairs, favouring the World War II victors having veto power.

Coercive compliance (the use of force) is seldom used. Despite this weakness, “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time”, over disputes related to war, rights to natural resources or showing respect for human rights norms. States participate in the formation of, and consent to be bound by, international norms, consciously choosing to surrender an element of their sovereignty in favor of submission to a global norm.

No legal process can eliminate warfare but the existence of international law may accomplish the followings:

§  Regulate the use of force

§  Regulate the conditions of warfare

§  Impose criminal liability on those who trigger an unlawful war and who commit crimes during hostilities.

The usage of force is prohibited by international law with a few exceptions: in a situation of self-defence (in response to an attack) or when force is sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, and in some cases for humanitarian intervention.

International law constitutes a framework, a standard against which to assess whether recent interventions into Iraq (after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990), Afghanistan (after 9-11), and Kosovo (under Serbian threat in 1999) were legal or illegal.

Contention existed regarding the coalition’s invasion of Afghanistan; the invasion was justified as an act of self-defence even though Afghanistan never attacked the USA. A non-state actor out of Afghanistan committed a terrorist act with the complicity of Afghanistan Taliban regime.

The 2003 military intervention into Iraq by George W. Bush, justified by the presence of weapons of mass destruction, was harshly debated at the UN Security Council.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Kosovo was justified as a humanitarian intervention. A UN resolution authorized the presence of peacekeepers but not the prior bombing campaign. Yugoslavia resorted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to question the legality of the NATO intervention.

International norms are primarily concerned with the regulation of actions between states, not actions within the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. The Kosovo ethnic cleansing in 1999 and Rwanda’s 800000 deaths in 3 months in 1994 show the necessity to intervene in domestic conflicts  leading to the creation of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

The law also plays a role in the development of a conflict, establishing the minimum parameters in which the hostilities must occur. Civilians, for example, are not a lawful military target. Prisoners of war receive a minimum level of justice, cannot be abused. Adherence to these standards has been debated during the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, the 2006 Israel Lebanon war or the legitimacy of taking prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq to Guantanamo Bay prison.

The permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks to address war through the imposition of criminal liability (Rome Statute of 1998) for genocide, war crimes, the crime of aggression, and crimes against humanity.

States are free to implement legal requirements for effective domestic ordering within their own territories but are not free, however, to derogate from the minimal content of international criminal norms. The decision to unlawfully engage in a war – the crime of aggression – or the decision to orchestrate gross violations of rights – genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity – attract individual criminal liability by holding political figures responsible for criminal acts committed under their leadership, regardless of the conflict outcome.

5.1 Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peace Enforcement
The example below illustrates how the United Nations has intervened in the western african conflict of Sierra Leone in collaboration with a regional institution the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS). International peace operations like peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace enforcement are sometimes used sequentially or simultaneously.

5.1.1 Peacekeeping
The United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) was established in July 1998 until October 1999 to monitor the military and security situation in Sierra Leone, maintain the cease-fire as well as the disarmament and demobilization of former combatants. It was later replaced by a larger peacekeeping operation the United Nation Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
For peacekeeping to be successful, rebel groups and fighters have to be willing to stop fighting and accept the peacekeeping force. Most likely, the operation will be under attack from one faction and will slide into peace enforcement or become one of the parties of the conflict. Instead of interposition of a small force along the border, as with traditional peacekeeping (the UNIFIL in South Lebanon), in an inter-state conflict peacekeeping requires to deploy forces throughout the country. Constantly, the UN forces requested permission from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels to deploy its forces and were denied access.

5.1.2 Peacemaking
The UN and ECOWAS were able to implement the Abuja Accords and bring the parties to negotiations. Successful mediation is contingent on 4 factors:

1. the issues of contention in the conflict
2. the identity of the parties
3. the status, resources and skills of the mediator
4. the strategy used in the conflict resolution process

In Sierra Leone, the process was doomed to failure.
1. This conflict was inherently more difficult to solve due to basic issues of struggle over power and resources (the diamond industry).
2. Even conflicts over very scarce resources may be resolved if the parties share with each other common interests and have a history of cooperation rather than conflict. In Sierra Leone, the participants had a long history of animosity.
3. A mediator performs 3 essential roles in the mediation process: communication (keep the channels open), formulation (make creative proposals for a solution) and manipulation (convince them into accepting the proposal). The UN and ECOWAS merely repeated the litany of requiring a cease-fire, encampment, disarmament, demobilization and elections. They failed to grasp the true nature of the conflict.
4. The UN and ECOWAS failed to sell the solution to the parties. The conflict is "ripe" when the parties realize they cannot impose a unilateral solution on the dispute that would result in stalemate or decline in their position. The UN and ECOWAS failed in creating the conditions under which all the warring factions would be motivated to negotiate in good faith, for lack of trust from from the factions.

5.1.3 Peace Enforcement
The conditions associated with success in peace enforcement are

1. the existence of a leader willing and able to take responsibility for the action
2. the quick and clear identification of the target of the proposed enforcement action
3. the ability to attack the target with superior force

1. Leadership role within ECOWAS was clearly taken by Nigeria providing for troops, financing and diplomatic activity. Some ECOWAS members like Cote d'Ivoire disagreed with the Nigerian decisions.
Nigeria also offered troops to join the UN forces at the condition that UNAMSIL would be put under the command of a Nigerian field commander which was against the UN mandate.
2. In internal conflicts, the factions will try to use the enforcement mechanism to further their own objectives and bring them on their side. therefore the target may evolve. The RUF was the main target of enforcement action.
3. Frequently, decisions regarding force-levels are inadequate due to poor knowledge of the extend of the area to patrol, the strength of the fighting forces and their movements, and the availability of forces.
The UN was constrained by limited armament and rules of engagement.

5.1.4 Incompatible strategies
Each of the peace operations listed above requires a set of conditions to succeed.

1. For peacekeeping, a prerequisite is the establishment of an armistice or truce and the use of a force, neutral in composition to maintain peace.
2. For peacemaking, the mediator must be able to convince the parties that they cannot win by force and negotiation is the only alternative.
3. Enforcement requires a large enough force to mount a campaign and impose and agreement.

There is a danger to use one of these techniques at a time when the conditions for success don't exist.
In a situation when a peace agreement has already been established through mediation, the chances of  success for peacekeeping are high but the resulting situation of stalemate encourages the partisans to regroup so that a mediated compromise would not be necessary.
Peacekeeping requires that the force be neutral while enforcement requires that the force be antagonist to one side.  ECOWAS was constantly caught between the two roles.

Hanuman