All peace processes are fraught with unique challenges and opportunities. They require statesmanship, imagination, humility, a long-term commitment and tenacity to build bridges towards a justpeace. Tragically, human experience has often demonstrated just how few and how far apart these moments in history have been. The fact that many situations of armed and political conflict, especially sovereignty-based conflicts, have had more than one peace process highlights the uphill task of peacebuilding. While one optimistically believes that lessons are gleaned from experiences of past peace processes, history has profoundly demonstrated how we have not integrated these lessons in meaningful ways.
Any peace process comprises of many complementary moving parts which need to interact in a harmonizing and synchronized manner. Johan Galtung, the Norwegian sociologist widely considered as the founder of ‘peace studies,’ emphasizes Resolution, Reconciliation and Reconstruction as central aspects to any peacebuilding effort. Unfortunately, the practice of most peace processes has been to focus only on the Resolution, with the assumption that negotiating an agreement will lead to a sustainable peace. This has proven erroneous and actually only succeeds in undoing what progress may be made at the negotiating table. In fact, these three aspects are inseparably linked, interconnected with each other and need to be pursued jointly both in theory and practice within a broader peace process. This means that the praxis of Resolution, Reconciliation and Reconstruction is dynamic, multifaceted, and synchronized. It is not linear or one dimensional.
Among the three aspects of peacebuilding, Resolution gains the maximum public attention, usually because of the high-level political players involved in the process. Negotiations often depend on the lead negotiators’ leadership qualities, temperament, negotiating abilities, diplomatic skills, in addition to their personal and political will to explore all possible avenues to arrive at a just agreement. This means that the interpersonal relationship between negotiators of the parties is crucial to the process. When the lead negotiators cultivate a relationship of shared understanding, mutual trust and respect, then the likelihood of negotiating a successful agreement is more likely.
Traditionally Resolutions have been arrived at through negotiations. However, in the Post Cold War era, the democratic and expressed will of the people has been used as a decisive intervention to break deadlocks. The nonviolent Earned Sovereignty is a negotiated approach which involves a number of steps implemented over an agreed period of time, and includes a phase called shared sovereignty. The entire process explores new ways of resolving protracted sovereignty-based conflicts. Based on an agreed timeframe between the two parties the final political status is determined either by a referendum or negotiation. East Timor, South Sudan, and Scotland are some examples that used the referendum to decide their status. While East Timor and South Sudan voted for independence, Scotland decided to remain within the United Kingdom.
However, even though East Timor and South Sudan resolved their political conflict they experienced internal violence in the post-resolution era. On reflection it appears that the Resolution process was not adequately complemented and reinforced by Reconciliation and Reconstruction. Basically, Reconciliation and Reconstruction directly address ending root causes of violence and rebuilding conflict societies. In conflicts there are victims and perpetrators, the marginalized and the deprived, the bereaved, and the ones who profited from the conflict, the traumatized and a system that survived through impunity and corruption. A Resolution cannot address these human needs. It is the task of Reconciliation and Reconstruction to engage in nation building by finding unique and creative means for healing of trauma, rehabilitation, rebuilding relations and communities, imagining and developing infrastructures, economic systems and democratic institutions, and weaving culturally relevant structures. They support creating liberative peace cultures.
The Indian State and the Nagas have had two ceasefire agreements during which they have engaged in political processes regarding the Naga historical and political question. The first was from 1964 to 1972, and the second from 1997 onwards to this present time. Yet peace continues be elusive. While the easy route is to blame one party or the other for the failure, it is more prudent to reflect and demonstrate humility by admitting where it went wrong. Perhaps only when the Indo-Naga peace process truly embraces an imaginative approach of genuinely seeking Resolution, Reconciliation and Reconstruction, the Indian State and the Nagas will emerge true partners of a justpeace.
