Committee for Conflict Transformation Support

CCTS
Newsletter 13

The Interplay of Domestic, Regional and International Forces in Peacebuilding

I. Peacebuilding is in danger of doctrinal paralysis

There is abundant literature offering conceptual frameworks and even blueprints for the building of peace after violent conflict (Ball, 1997, CIDA (2000), EPCP 2001, Kumar 1997). On close examination, much of this general approach would seem curiously familiar to anyone living in Germany or Japan after the Second World War. They experienced enforced post-war reconstruction and peacebuilding. This entailed meeting basic needs of food and shelter, providing physical reconstruction, economic regeneration, development of independent media, reorganisation of police and military, the holding and monitoring of elections, and building of democratic institutions.

This seemed to work after the Second World War. In this case, victor nations imposed terms on surrendered nations. Given that this implicit modelling seems to shape current policy, it is worth considering actual investment differentials (as opposed to value-led conditionality) then and today. Apparently during the first year of the Marshall Plan (1948-1952) the USA redistributed 13% of its total budget to 16 war affected European states with additional spending on Japan. (Von Hippel, 1999) It is interesting to note that Duffield transposes this expenditure to the present and concludes that it would today mean the US spending $208 billion in 1997 compared to the actual aid expenditure of $18.25 billion - 208 billion compared to 18. So not only was the stance of victor nation(s) (able to dictate and impose terms) a feature after the Second World War - so was concrete funding and investment (Duffield 2000).

In practice peacebuilding missions tend to share most of the following characteristics (Bertram, 1995, p.388):

  • they deal with conflicts within rather than between states,
  • the host government is one of the parties to the conflict,
  • their aim is to develop and/or implement a political transition following or accompanying an end to military hostilities,
  • a central component is the reform or establishment of basic state institutions.

Nicole Ball cites key components of peacebuilding2 to be demilitarisation, control of small arms, improved police and judicial systems, monitoring of human rights, electoral reform and economic development (Ball, 1996, p.621) She acknowledges that current two-three year planning cycles are probably insufficient.

There is thus a fixed agenda or blueprint for what will constitute a "peaceful" society and its constituent parts. Consider four totally different war situations:

  • disintegration in Bosnia where three parties were brought to a U.S. sponsored negotiating table and a tripartite but U.N. protected "statelet" invented and occupied by transition authorities;
  • a war of "human rights" solidarity fought with/for Kosova by NATO against the "sovereign" oppressor state FRY, then occupation with UN administration and no clear transition plan;
  • East Timorese independence struggle, sponsored referendum process (resisted, with brutal fighting and dislocation) and independence status for East Timor under UN sovereignty;
  • disintegration of first South, then North Maluku, influx of jihad and Christian militants, unclear role of Indonesian military sent to quell disturbances, minimal authority acceptance for Government of Indonesia, minimal or no authority acceptance for the UN.

In all these situations, with their vastly differing casualty numbers, migration patterns, languages, religions, cultures, histories, economies and socio-political problems (or strengths) the blueprint is the same. It is evident in UN consolidated appeals - we may ask if it is evident in a new globalised "mind set". If so, what does this mean for the interplay between international and local levels (this being most frequently in evidence as the media presents the "international community"- including INGOs - in war zones, or presents war zones to the international community).3 It is not our task to challenge here the blueprint itself, but to examine interactions during its implementation in such varying contexts.

In Michael Pugh's (2000) words, the "conceptual baggage of peacebuilding has included the assumption that external actors wield the power and moral authority to bring about the peaceful change that communities have so signally failed to do":

    "Indeed, for local actors, the resort to violence was certainly regarded as an essential process to secure a change in their destiny. If international diplomacy had failed to prevent the onset of conflict, then, so the presumption follows, external actors should at least make concerted efforts to pick up the pieces and regenerate societies in ways that will inhibit relapses into violence. These hubristic assumptions are not sufficient, however, to endow external actors with superior techniques for dealing with peaceful change. Nor does the evident destruction and dislocation they confront represent a tabula rasa on which external scribes can write a peaceful future..." (p.3)

Far from being a "tabula rasa", the society in question will hold not only scars but also enormous shaping influences and growth points of its own. Ian Baruma (1995) studied in depth the recovery from and memories of war, post 1945, or what he might call the ruthless imposition of liberal values. Unlike most contemporary areas where "peacebuilding" operations are currently underway, Germany and Japan (as mentioned above) were defeated nations in 1945, with victor nations imposing terms and conditions. Some of his findings are nonetheless possibly very relevant to today's former Yugoslavia or indeed Indonesia:

    "Continuity is always a problem after a disastrous regime. An absolutely clean break is impossible. Zero Hour is an illusion. Cultural habits and prejudices, resulting from political propaganda, religion, or whatnot, are never easy to change, particularly when the agents of change are foreign occupiers who might not always know what they are doing. It is easier to change political institutions and hope that habits and prejudices will follow. This, however, was more easily done in Germany than in Japan. For exactly twelve years Germany was in the hands of a criminal regime, a bunch of political gangsters who had started a movement. Removing this regime was half the battle." (p.62)

Peacebuilding is nothing less than the reallocation of political power; it is not a neutral act (Bertram, 2000, p.394). The claim that there are objective standards of human rights and of democracy to which all parties may be held may be ethically compelling. But in the highly politicised context of creating or re-creating a state's institutions, it is politics and power that dictate who will interpret or impose such standards and how. If external actors come in with genuine good intentions and "concerted efforts", some of the forces which accompany "blueprints" can include:

  • the wielding of political and economic preference, or even authoritarianism;
  • distortions due to the pull and influx of external funds;
  • mass replication of the NGO model in order to attract income influence.

These "play in" to societies which have known total desperation, a legacy of violence and severe personal and material loss.

I.a) Many critics now argue that instead of creating a peaceful pluralistic democracy in Bosnia we have instead a firmly partitioned protectorate (Chandler 1999). Far from international peacebuilding restoring links between communities, the division between the two entities increased through differential international treatment. For example, the US re-trained and re-equipped a separate Federation army, and turned down Republika Srpska calls for military integration. There was an early trend for economic aid and reconstruction projects to be concentrated narrowly within the Federation, with the weaker Republika Srpska economy receiving less than two per cent of the reconstruction aid in 1996 and less than five per cent in 1997. (p.116)

In East Timor the "defensive brand of bureaucratic 'force protection' employed by UNTAET" (Chopra 2000, p.33) was not an effective approach to establishing a credible new government or preparing the Timorese for full independence. Chopra says that comparisons with colonial administrations are unavoidable, and affirmed by various forms of segregation between expatriates and the Timorese. Two economies emerged, just as they did in Cambodia and other peacekeeping locales with Timorese turned into the servants of foreigners in their own land, since they could apply only for menial jobs. Physically, the UN's internal world was increasingly disconnected from life on the streets. Chopra points to floating container hotels in Dili which restricted access of Timorese, except to serve drinks and food. Salary differentials between international and local staff meant that local wages were fixed at between £3 and £4 per day. (At one point Timorese were swimming alongside the ex-pat ship hotels to collect food leftovers (garbage) thrown overboard, in order to eat this.)

I.b) The dominant "global" funding culture is to prefer concrete schemes with tight project outlines and clear time cycles. Thus groups in Bosnia contend that qualitative anti-nationalist projects were ignored by the OSCE and other funders for two years (Pugh 2000, p.115).4 An Indonesian team of mediators accepted by the major warring communities on Ambon Island in Maluku applied for funds to enable regular cross-community visits and upkeep for a small office which would offer information, support, transmission of messages and a safe place for reconciliation and recovery meetings. They received a letter from a high profile donor which offered application details for computers but said "We do not fund Process".

Aid commitments generate tremendous expectations in war-torn societies, but pledged monies often arrive only after considerable delay, as experienced acutely in East Timor during the past year. Often they go for useful and appropriate expenditure on valid "targets". Sometimes they sit in bank accounts. In January of this year a Dutch NGO successfully queried the whereabouts of US$2 million donated through UNDP for economic recovery in South Maluku.5 When news of their concern went sufficiently public to reach UN headquarters in New York, internal mechanisms went in to action to remedy the problem.

I.c) Ian Smilie documented as early as 1996 the astronomical rise of local NGOs in Bosnia in his classic paper, "Service Delivery or Civil Society?". In Maluku on Ambon Island alone in the space of one year 112 new NGOs were established, prompting questions from the local relief committee about "the fear that many of them are only trying to make a profit from their activity".6 This trend had particular nuances on Ambon, where until recently the "NGO" was considered a western and therefore Christian form of organisation. In fact social organisation in the Mosque tradition supplied relief, youth activities, oversight and care for the elderly. These took on many functions which were simply not recognised by western dominated fact finding missions - do we see only what we already know?? Thus donor attention to new NGOs is potentially divisive and was initially perceived to be on religious grounds.

Genuine socially based NGOs do not spring into being fully formed, but evolve and develop, discovering and creating mandate, rationale and means as they go along. Many are short-lived; some lose momentum and direction; some fail. "Mere applause for the multiplication of groups committed to the causes of human rights, indigenous self-determination or sustainable development fails to register the problems they face. For the proliferation of 'new social movements' is just one side of the story." (Morris-Suzuki, 2000, p.81) The other side lies in the nature of their connection with old political institutions, national or local governments - as in Bosnia - or (somewhat newer) to transnational bureaucracies. Or it may be in their very "dis-connection" with previously viable collective social forms, as in the Adat or clan based structures on Ambon which had been inclusive of both Muslim and Christian faiths.

Part II.

 

 

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