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Culture and Conflict
No. 1, Winter 1990
The Prolongation of Conflicts
Conflicts are too important to be left to soldiers or specialists of " conflict management " and Cultures in the hands of " culturalists ". This new journal strives to enrich the sociology of conflicts with strategic analysis of cultures. It breaks with the traditional distinctions between international relations as a discipline on the one hand and political sociology on the other. Its columns are open to political scientists, as well as to sociologists, anthropologists, historians, geographers specializing in particular zones, all cross-fertilising their outlook with the preoccupations of strategists and international relations specialists. It allows for light to be focused on the questions of socialisation, forms of mobilisation and of dynamics of passage to violence, whether it be inside or outside the framework of the state.
The Afghan conflict goes on in spite of the Soviet retreat. Some people see in this conflict an aftermath of the Cold War, or a consequence of Soviet networks of armament in Kabul. But, essentially, if the conflict continues, it is because a " society of war " has been created, the local leaders of which have no interest in it ending, since this would question their power-and their opportunities of getting rich. The war has become a factor of balance between rival groups ; it " retraditionalizes " and even the government participates in these war games.
The electoral defeat of the Sandinistas during the February 1990 elections in Nicaragua marked the end of the central American regional crisis. This regional crisis had mainly subjective causes given the fact that the other four central American governments, under the influence of the Reagan administration, had decided that the Sandinista revolution was responsible for all the political and economic troubles of the region. However, the end of this regional crisis does not preclude the prolongation of local conflicts - in El Salvador or Guatemala - insofar as their objective causes have not been eliminated.
The continuing Cambodian civil war has no world or regional strategic consequences. The fights are nonetheless still going on, and the Khmers are about to triumph thanks to the weapons furnished by China. Like other resisting groups, they control refugees living in camps and displace them according to their strategy. They play with humanitarian aid and cannot be ignored in case of a political solution since they are the main opposition group to the pro-Vietnamese government. Apart from their military strategy, the red Khmers also have an economic one which enables them to buy arms and food through a gems traffic. Thus, they depend less and less on the international community, and can make the war last for as long as they want.
Although one could forecast an end to the conflicts in Southern Africa and a normalisation of the situation in South Africa where the different parties have started talks, the trend toward peace seems to have lost intensity. Instability remains high in the sub-continent and one must admit the appearance of a new kind of war, especially in South Africa. Thus, the concept of a South African battlefield has to be reappraised.
The Horn of Africa has been the scene of conflicts already started before the end of the colonial period. They are perpetuating while the USSR, its former allies and the Western Powers are shunning any direct involvement in any of the belligerent sides. Since 1988, internal tension has abated : Somalia and Ethiopia have come to a peace agreement, Mangestu has restored the Ethiopian peasantry to its rights over the land, given up the one party system and revived relations with Israel while Siyaad has made a bid for the share in the exercise of power. Nevertheless, Somalia, thought to be the only homogeneous state in the Horn, is devastated by war and on the eve of partition. In Ethiopia, the present government has to face the Tegrean rebels who, through their alliance with the Eritreans, are threatening the capital city. It has so far managed to survive, although at the expense of countless concessions. Is it endowed with a certain amount of legitimacy ? The weight of 3, 000 years of Biblical history is heavier than 15 years of a Revolution, be it a Marxist one !
Instead of studying the origins of the conflict or thinking of a liability to develop a war of the Lebanese communities and the regional powers, it is preferable to study the dynamic of the conflict process itself. This process has brought the possibility for the emergence of a " war system " with its own actors and is built as a counter-society It is extended because of the control of a black economy made of traffics (illegal customs, taxation, drugs...) and creates amongst military actors some objective interests for the perpetuation of the conflict. This perpetuation proved detrimental to the Lebanese civil society and the latest events do not permit foreseeing a dismantling of this type of " war system ".
The actual crisis of the underdeveloped countries shows the failure of orthodox perspectives and analyses. They have no possibilities of examining a type of changing, moving, contradictory reality. In the Nigerian case, the dominating national polarisation (a federal one) is competed by counter-polarisations (regional, ethnic, confessional...) and by the anti-polarisation of anomic violence. The politicians manipulate these polarisations, mobilisations, and the violence to serve their interests. To understand this type of reality, new paradigms are necessary.
How can we explain, after a large period of political violence, the political calm in Bolivia ? It seems necessary to study the strategy and resources of the mobilised groups struggling for State power. Then, in spite of the spectacular return to constitutional structures, one may be pessimistic about the emergence of democracy in Bolivia.