 | ||||
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  | | | |
|
| Introduction to Conflict Management - Defining Conflict |
Introduction Inter-communal conflict occurs when actual and perceived incompatibilities result in hostile violent action. What differentiates a conflict from political struggles or peaceful competition is that it involves the potential of destructive violence. The threat of violence is positively correlated with the willingness of the parties to use violent means to reach their unilateral and seemingly incompatible goals. However, as much as all incompatibilities do not necessarily lead to destructive violence, all incidents of violence do not lead to the onset of intractable conflict. Thus, incidents of violence by themselves cannot be seen as sufficient for a serious conflict to break out and take root. The underlying factors that cause a conflict are usually in place long before the outbreak of violence and it is the escalation in particular (and the move from political to violent) that turns a situation of peaceful competition into a destructive, deadly conflict. In the best of all possible worlds, Conflict Prevention would be sufficient for preventing any escalation to take place. However, for conflict prevention to be effective, early warning indicators have to be detected and addressed before violence becomes too destructive. Preventive measures employed at an early stage need to address the causes that lie at the root of the conflict. An escalation of violence is often preceded by a perceived incompatibility of interests between groups, asymmetric inter-group power relationships, as well as triggers that serve to mobilize or rally a group around its grievances. Similarly, de-escalation alone is often not sufficient for a conflict to end. For peace to become sustainable, Peacemaking and post-conflict reconstruction activities (Peacebuilding and Statebuilding) are often essential in order to address the underlying causes of a conflict long after the violence has ended and to prevent a conflict from re-erupting. The toolkit focuses on Inter-communal or group conflict, involving individuals who can be identified as belonging to one of at least two interacting groups, who perceive their goals as incompatible. Collective behavior and group identification, often functions of perceptions, are important characteristics of group conflict that can serve to increase its destructiveness, making resolution more difficult. Due to its focus on inter-communal conflict, the toolkit deliberately excludes official inter-state conflicts but allows for those internal cases that may have important international characteristics. Most inter-communal conflicts are internal and identity-based, involving minority groups fighting against the central authority of the state, or two minority groups competing for the same state resources. Because many ethnic groups transcend national boundaries however, inter-communal conflicts often become international in scope while still being identity-based in character. The Correlates of War project tries to compile accurate data in order to create an inventory of war and conflict. Since the 1960's David Singer and Melvin Small and others have built on previous studies, refining definitions, improving the collection of statistical data, and conducting continuous research on factors associated with war in the Correlates of War project. This and similar studies have sometimes been criticized because they offer no explanation of war, but merely record facts and figures. It defines war in the following terms: "An international war is a military conflict waged between (or among) national entities, at least one of which is a state, which results in at least 1,000 battle deaths of military personnel." However, this category leaves out all those inter-communal conflicts that have 1,000 civilian deaths or more, (but less than 1,000 military deaths). It also excludes those conflicts that are not fought by regular military forces but by more rudimentary means, or conflicts where neither one of the adversaries represent a government. It is useful to look at some other conflict datasets, such as Ted Robert Gurr's compilation of "Minorities at Risk" and ethno-political conflict, allowing for the inclusion of more limited intra-state conflicts. Another such dataset is the Conflict Data Project created at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. The Uppsala project divides conflict and war into three categories: minor armed conflicts, intermediate armed conflicts, and war. A Minor armed conflict has fewer than 1,000 battle-related deaths during its lifetime; an intermediate armed conflict, has more than 1,000 battle-related deaths during its lifetime, but fewer than 1,000 in any particular year. Finally war, has more than 1,000 battle-related deaths during any particular year. Inter-communal conflicts can take many different forms depending on the identity of the actors involved and on their primary goals and motivations. For the purpose of our toolkit we separate inter-communal conflicts into Regional Conflict, Centralist Conflict and Revolutionary Wars. Religious conflicts are sometimes regionally or ethnically based, but are otherwise classified as revolutionary. It is important to note that these are the "ideal" types, and that real conflicts are often harder to categorize, as they often fall in between these categories.
This classification is based on the aim of the combatants rather than the character of the conflict. Conflict can thus be identity-related but centralist or regionalist in character or they can have strong religious or ideological overtones without having any "revolutionary" aims. The basis for mobilizing a group in such cases is different from the goals of the combatants. In looking at the breakdown of states, K.J. Holsti in The State, War, and the State of War identifies two different kinds of social and political fractures within a state: vertical and horizontal. Whereas vertical fractures refer to the loss of legitimacy of the government and the ruling class, horizontal fractures refer to the fragmentation of the political community into separate groups with different opportunities to political participation and access to resources. The nature of conflict refers not to the goals or causes over which the conflict is fought, but rather to the elements or characteristics that determine group cohesion and mobilization. Examples of such elements are religion, identity, poverty, or ideology. Conflicts can be influenced by many of these elements simultaneously, making classification quite difficult. The importance of a conflict's nature is that it often influences how a conflict is fought, the level of violence tolerated by the parties and the degree of difficulty entailed in managing or resolving it. Most conflicts that began after the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War are identity-based. Ethnicity, religion or ideologies thus provide the glue that brings combatants together enough to make them feel like they have something that they collectively must defend. It is important to note that ethnicity, religion or differing identities do not - in and of themselves - lead to conflict. Such differences can lead to political action given that they have collective consequences for a group in its relation to other groups and with states. Gurr writes that if ethnicity or religion is a major determinant of a group's security, status, material well-being, or access to political power, they are likely to also become a highly salient part of that group's identity. Furthermore, when identity is highly salient, it is likely to be the basis for mobilization and political action. As defined by Gurr, ethnic groups simply share a "distinctive and enduring collective identity based on a belief in common descent and on shared experiences and cultural traits." Nevertheless, cultural traits do not always constitute the cleavages that define the parties to a conflict, and groups with a common identity are not always politically active. However, Gurr's Ethnopolitical groups are identity groups, whose ethnicity has political consequences, resulting either in differential treatment of group members or in political action on behalf of group interests. Many times ethnic or religious groups feel a real or imagined threat to their rights, culture, language and existence. Whereas some groups will respond by fighting for minority rights or for equal representation in a national government, others will fight for autonomy, independence or separation from that government. Ethnicity (sometimes expressed through religion) is often a very strong mobilizing factor because it tends to deny its group members the ability to join other, more cross-cutting alliances, such as women's rights groups or worker's movements. Furthermore, group asymmetry and systematic differential treatment are often based on ancient social divisions and complex histories of mutual control and oppression. Over time, myths grow larger and prejudices are reinforced; the social-psychological baggage in such conflicts is often one of the major obstacles for the termination of endless cycles of revenge and to bringing parties to the negotiating table. The breakdown of Yugoslavia's multi-ethnic society illustrates the strength that identity-based mobilization can have in relation to other seemingly permanent, but more cross-cutting, loyalties. Careful mapping and monitoring of identity groups could therefore prove to be essential for finding more systematic ways by which to detect early warning signals. Whether the strife aims at a unilateral victory, at preserving a culture or identity, or at keeping the exclusive control over a piece of territory, the goals of the parties in a conflict are usually perceived as incompatible. Louis Kriesberg describes how social and inter-personal conflicts always begin with the emergence of contentious goals of two adversaries. The contentious goals vary in the direction of change sought by the aggrieved party, as well as the magnitude. Strategically, one can distinguish between two kinds of goals:
For negotiation or third party initiatives to be fruitful, both parties must be willing to look beyond their unilateral goals and be open for a multilateral compromise. It is common for parties to enter into preliminary negotiations while still pursuing both their first and second track goals; should negotiations fail or prove to be too costly, they can always fall back to their winner-take-all attitude. Thus, to the two types of goals above, a slightly different variety could be added, described here as divergent goals. This refers to a situation where a party not only pursues two different goals at once, but when it deliberately advocates different goals to two different audiences. During the early history of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yassir Arafat was often known to give two different messages, a radical one to his Arabic audience and a more moderate one to his English audience. This behavior gave a strong incentive for Israel to reject any contacts or direct negotiations with the PLO for decades. The greater the difference between the goals of the adversaries (the more radical each side's demands are considered by the other side), the more destructive is the violence that results from an escalation in tensions. Goals are seldom static; as facts on the ground change and as each side experiences more sunk costs, the demand for compensation for damages incurred may be added to the original grievance. In addition, as groups feel an increased threat from their opponents, socio-psychological processes such as cognitive dissonance, entrapment and selective perceptions are easily reinforced. Mirror imaging, where parties develop parallel images of the other, with self-perceptions as positive and perceptions of "the other" as negative is common. While violence and aggressiveness become associated with the other party, virtue and justice are qualities possessed by one's own group. Thus, a party calling for peace or justice is not necessarily pursuing a negotiated alternative, since such concepts are almost always subjective. The role of conflict management is to either change the parties' perception that their goals are incompatible (to compatible or win-win perceptions), or to change the goals themselves by making compromise preferable to continued fighting. The negotiators' challenge is to facilitate the transformation of the parties' goals from incompatible to compatible or even super-ordinate (i.e. when a higher, mutual goal replaces the incompatibility). There are several interrelated dimensions that can be mentioned in connection with outcomes of conflict.
|