• Friday, 29 March 2024
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Joakim Kreutz: In order to get to a point of "peace" between individuals, there is a need to establish trust both between individuals and towards the state and political institutions

Joakim Kreutz: In order to get to a point of
Q- Experts consider conflict management phenomenon for providing peace, actually political aspects can reach a compromise, but the conflict among individuals will continue. According to your view; how is it possible to make transformation of conflict to overall peace?
Q- Experts consider conflict management phenomenon for providing peace, actually political aspects can reach a compromise, but the conflict among individuals will continue. According to your view; how is it possible to make transformation of conflict to overall peace?

ANSWER: The first important aspect is to have a realistic view about the difficulties of transforming from a war society to a peace society. That does not mean that it isn't good to have high aims, but rather an understanding that this is an extremely difficult challenge (arguably much more difficult than moving from peace to war) and it should not be surprising that there will be provocations, problems, and the risk of termporary set-backs. What is needed when these "problems" occur is patience and a willingness to explore the reasons for the set-back as a new situations rather than assuming that they are caused by or at least linked to the preceding conflict. Some may be, but often the causes of post-conflict tension are a different than those that led to previous violence.

In order to get to a point of "peace" between individuals, there is a need to establish trust both between individuals and towards the state and political institutions. This is a slow process, and will be harder after long conflicts or for those individuals that have many bad experiences from the conflict, but such trust-building is possible. To faciliate this process, it is however important that state and political institutions does not act in line with the "conflict logic" as this increases the chances of interpersonal trust developing as well.


Q- In the conflict management process, usually third aspect is present, and it does resolve the conflict by taking the power balance into consideration on the real ground. But conflict transformation requires establishing institutions for changing the hatred into peace. According to your opinion; to what extent establishing these institutions are necessary for transforming a conflict?

ANSWER: Unfortunately there is no "guarantee" regarding what types of institutions esure a successful conflict transformation, but most existing studies show that the creation of power-sharing or in other ways inclusive decision-making institutions increases the likelihood of peace. I think, however, that the most important factor is not the design of the institutions but rather how they function. That means for example that the police is non-discrimatory and impartial and that all citizens rights are provided and respected equally. This is important both for reducing the possible "reasons" for provocations and discontent, but also as an indicator that there has been a change from the pre-conflict and conflict periods to the post-conflict period. It may mean some unpopular consequences. For example, a criminal act in a post-conflict society needs to be investigated with the same seriousness regardless of whether the perpetrator was a "hero" or a "bad guy" during the preceding conflict.

Q- In the societies where different ethnic and religious groups cannot be separated despite their bloody history, to what extent conflict transformation and its relation with conflict management is for providing peace and it doesn’t resolve the problem?


ANSWER: Conflict management - in my view - is the process or reducing or stopping violence, and finding an acceptable way to end the organized violence between the warring sides. It has neither the ambition or ability to provide an immediate solution to intergroup mistrust and fear. When such tensions remains widespread, then there is always a risk that new violence will occur. However, it is not possible to reduce intergroup mistrust to 100% and it this is strictly speaking not necessary. The aim must be - at least initially - to stop the majorities in both ethnic groups to be mobilized into violence whenever provocateurs seek to incite them. This could be because they have a positive view of the other group, but also if they are indifferent to them, or are actively suspicious of those seeking to incite violence. As time passes without large-scale violence, it is likely that the relations will become increasingly friendly (or dependent) but in the early stages it may be easier on focusing on undermining provocateurs.

Q- Sometimes UN groups especially peace maker group has got involved in the conflict, for example; Israel-Palestinian conflict, or Indian-Pakistan Kashmir territorial conflict, afterwards the conflict has re-started much bloodier than it was before. According to your opinion; what are the reasons that have prevented consolidation of peace in these conflicts?


ANSWER Without being a case expert on Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan, it seems to me that the resumption of violence often has been influenced by political considerations within the warring parties rather than their interaction. That is, the domestic politics in Israel, Palestine, India, and Pakistan has at different times provided actors with motivations to exploit the conlflict to get access to, or remain in, power.

If I may contrast these cases with the history of France-Germany that you mention in the next question, such domestic-political considerations were present in many of the wars fought over the centuries between these states. Since 1945, neither any French of German politicians have seen any gains in promoting conflictual behaviour but rather the opposite. In addition, the economic and social interactions across the border involving many French and Germans (as students, tourists, etc) means that it is becoming increasingly difficult and less successful for anyone to even portray citizens in the two countries as different.



Q- How do you see the danger of collapse and secession of society if conflict among different ethnic and religious groups is not transformed to peace? Don’t you agree that collapse of former Yugoslavia was as a result of failure to resolve and transform the conflict among the different nations?


ANSWER: I am not an expert specficially on the Yugoslav case either, but that is part of the answer. It should not be forgotten that many "yugoslavs" did have the kind of family, travel, friendship relations across the different ethnicities and also rejected the conflict behaviour. Many fled the country, or tried to avoid involvement in the conflict which may also contribute to why the post-conflict situation in the subsequent countries have been relatively stable (despite the high level of violence and atrocities in the war).

To the extent that the Yugoslave state under Tito failed to transform the inter-group conflicts, I think that's definitely true. In particular because it tried to force a solution from above by repressing the groups rather than giving them equal rights. However, from what I understand, the political structures and state bureaucracy did not remove the structures of inter-group competition which meant that those competing for power were representing the different "regions" of the country. The lessons to learn from Yugoslavia is that even when inter-group societal relations have at least partially been successfully transformed, political inter-group competition in a dictatorship may still lead to war.
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