Peace Spoilers

What we need at a time like this is courageous leaders and cohesion among the groups in negotiation: courageous leaders to harness the outrage of the public and not let them vent it out in adverse ways and cohesion among the main parties to continue working together to complete the peace process that they started.

- By Dipendra Tamang

Given the resurgence and predominance of violence in the last few months, especially with the ghastly massacre of 28 people at Gaur on 21 March, I turn to theory and general experience to explain it. Nepal has undergone massive changes in the last one year, from a country under dictatorial rule of the King with an ongoing violent conflict to a nascent re-emergent democracy with a comprehensive peace process. But violence always poses fundamental challenges to peace processes.

We all need to know that peace is very fragile during the implementation of agreements. In the recent opinion poll conducted by International IDEA in the Balkan countries, societies in the immediate post-conflict phase are characterised by a high degree of hope, energy and trust in domestic and international institutions. And the failure of working in stabilisation and rehabilitation efforts can - within a few years - turn this hope and trust into skepticism, desperation and disillusionment. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between the Maoists and the Seven Political Parties, the Nepali people expected everything to be resolved and life to return to pre-conflict normality. But the reality is that this is an agreement between two or more former conflicting parties and in order to make it work, it will require cooperation

This means that the Maoists must be able to bring all their followers with them, the government must be able to persuade the army and the disaffected parties and ones who own guns must be persuaded to lay them down. But establishing and consolidating peace is not so easy, it inevitably takes time and duly, frustrations rise. Different actors in violent conflict hardly choose peace at the same time and the ones who seek to end the conflict will often face opposition from parties who are excluded or who exclude themselves from peacemaking. These spoilers - leaders and factions who view peace as opposed to their interest and who are willing to use violence to undermine it - pose a grave threat to those who risk making peace.

In Nepal , we are seeing the emergence of more groups demanding their rights, justifiably so, but through the use of violence and weapons. With the Maoists literally shooting their way to the Talks Table, other groups seems to be copying their strategy. Given the current security vacuum in the country, with the Maoists inside cantonments and the Army confined to their barracks, the situation seems a ripe moment, not for peace but for the resurgence of violence, as demonstrated in Gaur. There is no surefire answer to a dilemma like this, but one of the solutions is for the political parties to behave more responsibly and take more proactive measures to form the interim government as quickly as possible (which have been done) and hold the Constituent Assembly elections at the earliest feasible date. But the process to the formation of the CA should also be well thought out, so that there is equal representation of all groups and classes.

One of the solutions is maintaining participatory approach of working- involving civil society, academicians and the experts in its stabilisation and peace building process. The lack of it undermines basic democratic institutions, democratic reforms and reconciliation and stabilisation efforts.

Another solution, which should go along with the previous one, is the provision of international resources. When there is no economic interdependence between or among warring parties, then there is not much incentive for them to cooperate in the face of spoilers. Research shows that differences vary predictably with the amount of international resources and attention they receive. In Bosnia , over $16 billion was provided to implement peace which translated to $4200/person where as in Rwanda , to implement the Arusha Accord, $35 million was provided translating to about $4/person. Although the international actors may do too much, but where difficulty is high and local capacities are weak, international actors must increase the resources allotted to making and building peace.

Occasionally, certain atrocities provoke universal condemnation and galvanise popular reaction against the perpetrators. So, let the Gaur atrocity be such an example as the1998 Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland or the 1992 massacre at Boipatong in South Africa . In these cases, instead of destabilising negotiations or an agreement, they became a stimulus for negotiation. What we need at a time like this is courageous leaders and cohesion among the groups in negotiation: courageous leaders to harness the outrage of the public and not let them vent it out in adverse ways and cohesion among the main parties to continue working together to complete the peace process that they started.

(Tamang is the Director (Programs) at the Alliance for Peace - Nepal , a non-governmental organisation working to enable and empower Nepali youths and can be reached at dipendra@afpnepal.org)

Source: Nepalnews.com