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Analysing Conflicts
Africa facesthe monumental challenge of attempting to hold in check the forces that
are wreaking havoc on the continent. Effective conflict analysis is one small step towards an Africa which can live up to its full potential of peace and prosperity.
Future
historians will certainly view the twentieth century as one of the bloodiestin the record of humanity’s struggle against its more
primordial instincts. From the bloody plains of Armenia to the trench warfare of World War I, the gas chambers of
Auschwitz and Dachau, the killing-fields of East Timor, Cambodia and Sudan and now Angola and Yugoslavia,
the twentieth century has seen mans’ inhumanity to man descend to new depths of depravity. In total some 160 million
people lost their lives as a result of war, genocide and state killings. In 1996 alone, Rupesinghe and Anderlini note that
nineteen major internal conflicts were being fought world-wide, with a further 42 lower-intensity and 74 lethal
violent political conflicts.
Africa contributed more than its fair share to this century’s warfare. Of the 48 genocide’s
and ‘politicizes’ registered throughout the world between 1945 and 1995,twenty took place in Africa. In the same period,
an estimated eight million people were killed in Africa as a direct result of war.
These horrendous statistics reveal the challenge we all face: to effectively
analyze violent conflicts or potential violent conflicts with a view to channeling them along more non-violent trajectories.
To borrow a phrase from Kumar Rupesinghe, the goal of such conflict analysis is not conflict termination but conflict
transformation. The reason for this is that conflict is an integral part of human relations and cannot be entirely eliminated.
Indeed, under certain circumstances conflict can be a positive force. The purpose of such conflict analysis, then, is to aid in
the ending of the violent expression of conflict and to have it re-chandelled through such institutional arrangements
as regular elections or procedures at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.The purpose of this chapter is to provide
a brief overview of steps towards effective conflict analysis. I will explain some aspects of the methodology employed
by Accord’s Early Warning System in its analysis of conflicts and potential conflicts.
Caveat
Our discussion of conflict analysis needs to be preceded with a caveat. There is a tendency to reduce complex social and political analysis into CNN-style ‘sound-bites’ - into easily consumable stereotypical phrases. Two such examples illustrate the point.First, amongst academics and policy-makers there is a growing tendency to view inter-state conflicts as being replaced by intra-state conflicts. On closer inspection, however one finds that such a dichotomy is false;that historically there has been a strong interaction between these two forms of conflict and that this interaction continues today. Surveying the current state of Africa it is clear that several rebel movements -be they Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola or Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda - would cease to exist in the absence of external support.
Second, there is a tendency in certain circles in Washington and in certain other Western capitals to equate ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ with terrorism. When African governments internalize these positions the consequences are disastrous. This sort of ‘pseudo-analysis’ does not deepen our understanding of why ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ Sudan would support the efforts of the ‘Christian fundamentalist’ Lord’s Resistance Army to topple the secular government of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. Equating ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ with terrorism effectively problematises over one billion of the world’s Muslims and could in the long-term result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Commenting on this, Rupesinghe and Anderlini6 note that ‘Islamic fundamentalism’:
‘… is a popular reaction to western cultural domination and the West’s support of often corrupt regimes. It is also
a reaction to the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor in these areas. In Bosnia, the emergence of extremist
Islamic groups is, in part, a consequence of the Muslim population’s anger at what they perceived as western indifference
to their plight. For the Chechens, on the other hand, the promotion of Islam as part of a new national identity is a means
of distancing themselves from their former Russian rulers … Care must be taken, however, not to oversimplify the issues
through injudicious stereotyping….The Islamic world is made up of a patchwork of nations, cultures, languages and histories.
The danger is that by focussing on Islam itself, rather than on its politicization by governments (and groups) this perceived threat
could become a self-fulfilling prophecy’.
Many other cases can be used to illustrate
what’s at issue here, but I believe that the point has been made: over-simplistic
analysis and injudicious stereotyping needs to be avoided in any conflict
analysis.
The art of conflict analyses
A concomitant of the above point is the fact
that we need to accept that the emergence of violent conflict is often
the result of complex processes, often with deep historical roots. Following
Barry Buzan’s typology, Accord’s Early Warning System views conflict as
the result of five sources of insecurity: political, economic, military,
environmental and socio-cultural variables.
Often in our analysis we are prone to emphasize
the political and military dimensions of a conflict at the expense of other
variables which are often more deep-seated and drive violent conflicts
more directly. According to Stanley Samarasinghe a functional correlation
exists between poverty and conflict. Consider in this regard the following
statistics:
• In the past fifteen years, about fifteen
of the world’s twenty poorest countries have experienced violent conflict.
• about half of the world’s low income countries
are either engaged in conflict or are in the process of transition from
conflict.
• Almost every low-income country shares at
least one border with a country in conflict if it is not embroiled in its
own conflict.
• In the 1990s about seventy million of the
world’s poor have been displaced from their homes as a result of conflict.
In Africa, alone, about one-third of the countries have produced refugees.
Supporting this view and relating
poverty to the occurrence of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Rupesinghe and
Anderlini8 note that the poor Central African country was faced with a
rapidly increasing population and decreasing agricultural productivity.
A drop in tea and coffee prices in the late 1980s and structural adjustment
policies in 1990 leading to even harsher living conditions exacerbated
the situation. These developments eroded the government’s legitimacy in
the eyes of the People. Although these factors in themselves
did not create sufficient conditions for the outbreak of civil war or the
genocide of 1994, the authors point out that they were instrumental within
the wider context. They contributed to the build-up of tensions in a country
with a history of social and ethnic divisions and violence.
In addition to identifying a set of
causes for violent conflict, good conflict analysis is boosted by applying
a time frame to the course of the conflict. According to Stanley Samarasinghe,
any violent conflict has five basic phases. He distinguishes the Pre-Conflict
Phase; the Conflict Emergence Phase; the Conflict and Crisis Phase, which
is characterized by chaos and complex emergencies; the Conflict Settlement
Phase; and the Post-Conflict Phase.
A question that might be asked
at this point is what factors need to be taken into account when demarcating
a particular conflict into phases or plotting the crisis life-cycle on
a graph. In the search for an answer to the question as to how one can
distinguish between different conflict phases, we can again resort to Rupesinghe
and Anderlini10, who identified the following determining factors in making
a gradation of conflicts:
| •The intensity of
grievances
• Parties’ awareness of differences and separate identities • Parties’ perception and attitude towards each other • Level of political mobilisation and organisation behind parties • Extent of polarisation • Amount of hostile behaviour • Extent that parties use or threaten the use of arms • Number of issues in dispute • Number of parties supportive of each side • Intensity of emotion and level of psychological investment in parties’ positions and views of the world • Amount of direct interaction and communication the parties have with one another • Cohesion between leaders of respective parties and their constituencies |
To this categorisation, I would like to add:
• The ability of existing institutions in
the society to effectively redress the grievances of the parties and effectively
resolve the conflict.
Two Relevant Phases
For the purposes of conflict analysis, the first two phases as listed by Samarasinghe are most relevant. The pre-conflict phase, according to Samarasinghe11, represents conditions that are normal to the society concerned. At this stage, he says, disputes between groups do not result in violence. Samarasinghe: ‘If the country has democratic institutions such as a freely elected legislature with minority representation and a free media, protest will be channelled peacefully through such institutional channels.’
In the conflict-emergence phase disputes become more evident and protesting groups more vocal and militant. Protest can take many forms, including boycotts, strikes, and mass demonstrations. The degree of violence that such protest entails, according to Samarasinghe’s scheme, would depend on the specific conditions that prevail in the country. If the country has a democratic tradition less violence can be anticipated. If the political conditions are more authoritarian a higher level of violence can be anticipated. This phase distinguishes itself from the conflict and crisis
Phase in that violence, should it occur in this phase, is sporadic and random rather than organised and regular.
From Analysis to Action
It is during this second phase too that an effective Early Warning System should start monitoring the situation. Early warning, in my view, is concerned with forecasting the potential for violent conflict and framing an appropriate response that seeks not only to resolve the current conflict but also to create conditions that would result in sustainable peace. I think that preventive diplomacy has focused on short-term cessation of hostilities between parties for too long. As a result, the international community is often surprised when hostilities flare up again. The various attempts at peace in Angola are possibly the archetypal example of this phenomenon on the African continent. Addressing the root causes of a conflict is necessarily a longer-term project but its contribution towards sustainable peace can be more significant.
For an Early Warning System to be effective, it needs to be practicable. Despite alluding to the fact that Buzan’s five sources of insecurity seen in a historical context are essential in understanding the origins and nature of violent conflicts, this is too broad to measure in an Early Warning System. Thus this categorisation needs to be subdivided and criteria to be measured need to be established. Once again Rupesinghe and Anderlini12 provide us with some of the indicators which can be practically measured. Their indicators, which are captured in Table 2, vary from a regime’s capacity to effectively run a country and its economy, the specific characteristics of the ruling elite, to the level of economic openness and international aid.
Whilst such a list is not exhaustive, it does provide us with some idea of the kind of criteria which need to be measured in a given conflict situation. It is important to recognise that the criteria used will determine the kind of interpretation or analysis that results from the process. This, in turn, would determine the kind of conflict resolution tools one will employ in a given situation, be it informal consultation, civilian fact-finding missions, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions, or military confidence-building measures. Conflict analysis and early warning, it should be noted, are tools for action aimed at the immediate cessation of hostilities between parties as well as creating conditions of a sustainable peace.
| Political and Leadership Issues; | ;Criteria to be Measured |
| Regime capacity; | Duration, democracy/autocracy, revenue as share of gross domestic product |
| Characteristics of the elite | Ethnic and religious base, revolutionary leadership, exclusionary ideology |
| Political and economic cleavages | Extent and degree of group discrimination, group separation,income inequality |
| Conflictual political cultures | Revolution or ethnic war/ genocide/ politicide, low level conflict in past 15 years |
| International influence | Military intervention,
shifts in interstate conflict/
instability / conflict in neighbouring countries |
| Economic and Environmental Issues | Level of pollution, impact on indigenous livelihood
Demographic and Societal Issues |
| Population pressure | Density, total change in five years, youth bulge, cropland and labour force in agriculture |
| Ethno-linguistic diversity | Diversity, history of suppression |
| Militarisation of society | Military expenditure, five-year change in arms import, military vs medical |
| Economic strength | Level and change in per capita income and consumption |
| Quality of life | Access to safe drinking water, food supplies, infant mortality |
| Constraints on resource base | Water depletion, soil degradation, famine |
| Government’s economic management | Change in revenue and public sector debt, level of inflation, capital . |
| Economic openness and trade | Import & export/GDP,
direct foreign investment
International economic aid Existence of IMF stand-by loan, other external aid |
* Hussein Solomon is currently Research Manager
at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).
In this capacity his primary responsibility is to manage ACCORD’s Early
Warning System and generate Early Warning Reports. Previously he was Senior
Researher at the Institute for Security Studies and Research Fellow at
the Centre for Southern African Studies.
Home | Interpersonel Conflicts | How The Conflicts Starts | Peer Pressure | Anaylsis Of The Conflicts | |How To Solve The Conflicts (1) | How To Solve The Conflicts (2) | How To Deal With The Conflicts.
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