I have been cerebrating quite hard on writing the book on Violence and its Legacies. At least, that’s how it feels to me.
Last Wednesday, as part of that work, I posted up here Martha Minow’s list of 8 meta-tasks that societies might think they need to accomplish (and to prioritize) in the aftermath of atrocious violence. I invited readers who had lived in post-atrocity societies to comment on the list. Nobody did, which was a bit depressing. Maybe I cast the invitation too tightly. Does anyone out there have any comments?
Anyway, I’ve been writing about Mozambique. Oh, where on earth to start?? I have so much incredibly rich material from my two (admittedly short) visits to the country and from all my reading!
But then I thought, Helena, you’ve got these three very diverse situations you’re studying. (Mozambique 1992, Rwanda and RSA 1994: for details of the whole project go here.) You need to find a way to explore that diversity in an analytically fruitful way rather than let it just pull the whole enquiry quite apart. (“So just what do apples and oranges have in common, Mr. Darwin?” “Funny you should ask that question, friend…”)
So here’s what I’ve come up with so far– and really, I came to this from a writerly perspective which is one special kind of an analytical/intellectual perspective, namely: how in heck to put words, sentences, chapters etc together in a linear way that actually makes sense and reveals something worth revealing??
Maybe I need to back up. (As you can see, I’m not always good at this “linear” thing.) My big concern here– and the reason that I think that you JWN readers and all your friends should all be totally riveted by my project–is that truly atrocious inter-group conflicts never come from nowhere. They always come from somewhere. (Duh!) Therefore, a goodly part of the project to prevent future atrocious conflict should focus on situations that have been deeply conflicted and have shown atrocious conflict in the past, and to try to minimize the chances that that earlier conflict and violence don’t get iterated in one way or another.
So I’m looking at those three case studies, all of which concern conflict-termination efforts that took place around a decade ago; and I’m trying to figure out the effectiveness from today’s perspective of the mechanisms those societies used as they tried to defuse all the potentially explosive legacies (political, cultural, social, psychological, etc) that the earlier violence might have left them with.
Okay, so the apples and oranges issue: how to deal with it?
Here’s what I’m proposing doing. I have one chapter that “describes” the relevant aspects of each of the three situations. (Hey, or possiby more than one chapter for each, but I do need to keep this project under some discipline… So let’s say one chapter each for now?) What I have figured that I need to do, if the project is to have much intellectual unity/utility is to look at the same sets of questions in each of these chapters. That will, I hope, provide a sturdier base for the kinds of analytical questions I’ll be looking at in later chapters.
Okay, I know this isn’t methodological rocket-science. But I have been pursuing this project sort of intuitively, and mainly on my own, all along. And I was quite pleased today when I was doing some forward mapping work for the Mozambique chapter and I suddenly realized, as a writer, what I needed to be doing here.
So here are the five sets of issues I’ll be looking at for each case:
- 1. The nature of the atrocities committed during the earlier round of violence. (What kinds of atrocities? Committed in a frenzy of bloodlust or in other circumstances? The role of harsh systemic violence during that period? The kind of time-period we’re talking about? etc.)
2. The nature of the conflict during which the atrocities were committed. (Was it primarily a contest between easily identifiable, pre-existing kinds of human groups, or was it more clearly “just” political? Was it dyadic or multi-sided? Were the tensions primarily internal to the society in question or was there a large external role in stoking/perpetuating them?)
3. The state of the society at the time of conflict termination. (What internal cultural resources did it retain for peacebuilding and reconciliation? What level of infrastructural and financial resources did it have? …)
4. The circumstances of conflict termination. (Was the end of the conflict negotiated, or imposed by one side by force? [If negotiated: Was it negotiated before the UN’s establishment of its first ad-hoc tribunal in February 1993? Was it negotiated under extrenal auspices, if so whose?] What roles other than sponsoring negotiations did any outside actors play during conflict termination? Was conflict termination explicitly linked to any democratization plan? … )
5. And then finally, we come up to my “main” variable here, which is What approach did the post-conflict government or other actors adopt in order to try to handle the painful legacies of the earlier conflict; and how successful was it?
In a sense, most of the second half of the book will be about #5. The whole project is focused on #5! But I think we probably can’t get at anything terrifically useful about #5 unless I’ve cleared some useful historical and conceptual brush” regarding ## 1-4, first. Whack, whack, whack!
Well, who knows? Maybe this approach will work out well and result in a useful and readable book. Maybe it won’t; and I’ll end up composting (in an intellectual sense as well as, perhaps, a literal sense) much of what I’ve done so far. If so, so be it… But I do feel for now that I’ve hit on a bit of a Eureka moment regarding how to get this darn’ book organized and written.
The list is sensible, but offers no practical and concrete ways for implementation. Also, can communal violence be addressed while leaving aside undisturbed violence in the home, within families, not to mention the acceptance of ideologies of violence including religion?
As’ad– hi! I hope you’re well!
It’s great to have your voice in this discussion. You’re right that Martha’s list doesn’t itself propose concrete ideas for implementation. But how I think it’s useful is that if members of a society approaching the end of an atrocious conflict really focus on their own kind of analogous list of meta-tasks– and on ranking the items within it–then they can move on to choosing policies that will achieve the mix of tasks they seek; and the discussion really should be as open and frank as possible.
The first big policy question that needs to be decided is prosecutions vs. amnesties (and if amnesties, what kind?) Having a ranked list of meta-tasks helps to clarify what’s at stake in such a decision.
Another policy question is whether an assertive truth-establishment exercize is desirable… Again, it depends what your priorities at the level of the meta-tasks are. When I discussed Martha’s list with people in Mozambique last year, they said that ## 1,2, and 7 seemed really irrelevant to them. They are still very happy with the blanket amnesties and the effective and intentional “burying” of the record of civil-war-era violence that was adopted in 1992. But they’re also adamant in saying, “one form of behavior was expectable during wartime– but now we are at peace, so different rules apply.” Indeed, in their folk-culture they have many rituals that symbolize this passage of individuals and communities from being at war to being at peace.
I like your stress on something like “building a culture ofpeace” as a significant meta-task…
If you have time, tell me what you think of the idea of a truth commission exercize for Lebanon…
Helena,
I am working on a film that you would take an interest in. Can you please contact me?
Najwa
I am totally in favor in establishing a truth commission for Lebanon, and has called for one in articles in Arabic in Lebanon, and in talks I have given there. But the culture of post-war Lebanon is unfortunately one of denial; total denial. There is little of an attempt to discuss the communal violence of the war, or to discuss ways of prevention. Worse, the state operates on the assumption that we can still restore many elements from pre-war Lebanon (especially in economic affairs). But the truth commission requires the rise of an elite that is above (or away from) those with dirty hands. In Lebanon as you know the militias (or some of them) ruled supreme after the war, and they became the judges. Depressing. But I am thinking about South Africa: where truth commission was successful in some ways, and yet violence against women is rampant there. That is why I favor linkage (not the Kissingerian linkage of course).