Contemporary Conflicts Research Articles

RETHINKING THE LIBERIAN PREDICAMENT IN ANTI-BLACK TERMS

Liberia’s protracted civil conflict was sustained for a period of fourteen years (1989–2003), killing approximately 250,000 Liberians and displacing half of the population. Liberia’s war, like other contemporary African conflicts, has been persistently represented as an example of wanton violence, political tribalism, chaos, or an amalgamation of such elements. Founded in 1822, the Colony of Liberia was annexed by the American Colonization Society to expatriate and colonize “free” negros and their descendants on the coast of West Africa. “Re-colonization,” as it was recognized by the ruling US Southern class, was rendered a compromise between the absolute abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and perpetual black servitude. Yet, repatriation was treacherously crafted by abolitionists and their pro-slavery contemporaries, alike, as a fugitive project, an opportunity for “free” blacks to experiment with emancipation and take refuge from the sociopolitical and economic conditions which amounted to what was effectively slavery by another name. The rhetorical propagation of the West African settlement as a pre-racial site – of sorts – in which stolen peoples could escape the violence of American racialism has made articulable contemporary theorizations of the Liberian civil war as a paradigmatic example of the negro’s irresponsible experimentations with freedom. The following paper offers a re-contemplation of Liberian historiographical accounts, one that attends to the racialized global orders against which this national crisis has developed and limns the impossibility of freedom in the afterlife of slavery, where anti-black terror is not only temporally unbounded but transgeographical.

Surface damage from perpendicular and oblique bullet impacts in stone.

Controlled experiments were conducted to investigate the surface damage caused by perpendicular and oblique impacts of bullets into sandstone and limestone targets. Individual bullets fired in conditions simulating modern rifles at typical combat distances excavated craters with diameters from 22 to 74 mm and depths from 3 to 24 mm. Limestone target craters were up to twice as large and deep as those in sandstone. These craters have a complex shape consisting of a central excavation surrounded by a shallow dish, compared to the simple bowl shape of most sandstone impacts. Radial fractures extending to the edge of the target block were common in limestone targets. Impacts at an angle of 45° to the surface in both rock types result in asymmetric craters. Two common types of intermediate cartridge (ammunition) were compared: the steel-tipped 5.56 × 45 mm NATO projectile generally produced larger and deeper craters than the 7.62 × 39 mm projectile that is commonly fired from AK-47 rifles, despite having approximately half the mass of the latter. These results characterize the sort of damage that can be expected at many sites of cultural significance involved in contemporary conflict zones, and have important implications for their conservation: for example building stone with low tensile strength is likely to sustain more damage and be at risk of greater deterioration.

Kashmir and Ontological Security: Re-evaluating the Role of Self-identities in a Multi- layered Conflict

The majority of the literature on causes and sustenance of the Kashmir conflict has disregarded a vital factor—that the conflict is multi-layered, meaning it is both internal and external in nature. Contemporary conflicts are often explained by the dominating theories of international relations or the new wars theories that deal with internal conflicts. The dominating theories of international Relations, that is, realism and liberalism, assign significance to state-centrism and external threats by overshadowing internal and domestic causal factors of the conflict. On the other hand, prominent new wars theories such as the greed and grievance theories focus on domestic and internal factors of the conflict while shelving the external causal factors. On their own, both theories fail to explain multi-layered conflicts. This article intends to provide a synchronous explanation of the external and domestic causes of the multi-layered conflict in Kashmir by using the theory of ontological security, that is, security of self-identity.

The Laboratory of Scientific Racism: India and the Origins of Anthropology

Anthropology, especially biological anthropology, owes its origins to the scientific study of human racial differences. That dark history is well-acknowledged and, when it is taught, usually begins with the racism of early figures, such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach or, more recently, Earnest Hooton, and exonerates itself through a turn toward antiracist scholars such as Frank Livingstone and Franz Boas. Rarely, if ever, is this origin story critically appraised. This article aims to complicate the origin story of biological anthropology by examining how colonial subjects were involved in the development, testing, and refinement of racial theory, and thus of biological anthropology itself. Taking India as an example, I trace how Indians and the caste system were first the subjects and eventually the interlocutors of racial scientific theory and testing. This reorientation, I argue, is important for developing a more expansive and accurate version of the discipline's history and also for shining a light on its relevance to contemporary global racial conflict.

Civil society organisations, conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Northern Ghana

The complexity of contemporary violent conflicts requires a shift from the traditional notion that preventing conflicts and building peace reside within governments to include the role of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Using a qualitative research design with 20 in-depth interviews conducted with representatives of CSOs in northern Ghana, the study reveals three broad categories of CSOs namely Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs), Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs) performing conflict prevention and peacebuilding roles. These CSOs respond constructively to conflict using dialogue and mediation in different ways by using multiple instruments such as early warning systems and peace education for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The study shows that, unlike the state, CSOs worked towards conflict prevention and peacebuilding through local initiatives and partnership with communities. The dominant philosophy guiding CSOs’ work is the integrationist paradigm. One serious limitation identified in the conflict prevention and peacebuilding work of CSOs in northern Ghana is the lack of a common peacebuilding framework that can guide them to reduce the duplication of functions within the same space. The paper recommends that CSOs should forge a working partnership to roll out a comprehensive conflict prevention and peacebuilding activity to build sustainable peace for the development of the regions of northern Ghana.

Hidden Depths: The Wicked Problem of Groundwater Management in a Spanish Aquifer, 1964–1990

International transfers of expertise and technology in the postwar era provided access to previously untapped aquifers around the world. Large-scale groundwater use transformed environments and economies but created new stakeholder conflicts and problems of long-term stability. In one such case, between 1964 and 1990 heavy extraction from the Almonte-Marismas aquifer system in the arid province of Huelva, Spain, created rapid economic growth that threatened valuable groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Citing uncertainty about the volume of the aquifer, its rate of recharge from the surface, and the likelihood of harm to the local environment, conservationists advocated a precautionary approach to groundwater use, while productivist state agents and private investors manipulated and concealed data in order to justify continued exploitation. This case study underscores the essential role of the state in the development of a resource that has been widely described as “democratic” or “self-service” and describes the myriad ways in which state and private actors generate, deploy, and conceal knowledge about groundwater to advance political and economic agendas. Hidden deep underground in strata of sand and gravel, groundwater’s invisibility renders it particularly susceptible to politically motivated claims of scientific uncertainty. Groundwater management is a “wicked problem,” virtually insoluble due to its complexity, the extent of scientific uncertainty in any given aquifer, stakeholders’ incompatible objectives and worldviews, and the serious and irreversible consequences of policies or actions. Historical examples such as that of Almonte-Marismas can play a pivotal role in understanding the origins of and solutions to contemporary conflicts over this increasingly scarce resource.

The Nature of Societal Conflict in Europe; an Archetypal Analysis of the Postmodern Cosmopolitan, Rural Traditionalist and Urban Precariat

AbstractWe analyse the nature of contemporary societal conflict in Europe, conceptualizing conflict in terms of oppositional identities, represented by the archetypal extreme corner positions between which contestation takes place. By analysing key characteristics of 28,565 Europeans from seven countries in four distinct time periods, we find three archetypal corner positions. Each archetype represents an ideal‐typical configuration of values, attitudes and socio‐demographic characteristics which people identify more or less with. The first archetype (which we label Postmodern Cosmopolitan) represents an urban, higher‐educated person with cosmopolitan values and attitudes. The other two archetypes (Rural traditionalist and Urban Precariat) present images of Europe that are more nationalistic and differ in their political‐economic ideological position. Western and Eastern European countries differ markedly in the distribution of these archetypes over time. The novelty of this paper is our conceptualization and operationalization of the changing nature of societal conflict as changes in oppositional identities.

The role of civil society organisations in peacebuilding in post-conflict society: Kenya and Nigeria

The complex and protracted nature of contemporary violent conflicts in Nigeria and other parts of the world poses increasingly significant challenges to the resolution of armed conflicts. Traditional peace mediation strategies and techniques have proven largely inefficient in responding to emerging security challenges presented by conflicts revolving around religious and ethnopolitical affiliations or other issues related to perceptions of group identity. The objectives of the paper are to review the works of civil society organisations (CSOs) in peacebuilding in post-conflict areas. The paper is limited to Plateau State in Nigeria and the post-election violence of 2008 in Kenya because of the efforts put in place by the CSOs in these countries. Based on the findings, the use of non-military or non-use force to resolve conflict provides lasting solutions because it brings the aggrieved parties to the roundtable to vent their grievances, complaints and perspectives about the issue at hand. The participation of the civil society organisations in volatile situations in Kenya and Nigeria has yielded tremendous success because they utilise the residents affected by the violence to fine-tune measures to address the problems. Keywords: Civil, peace, peacebuilding, organisation

THE ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE IN MAINTAINING COMBAT POWER DURING CONTEMPORARY MILITARY OPERATIONS

The contemporary security environment is undergoing periodical radical changes in which more and more diversified threats are emerging, determining that the age in which we live is marked by crises of a different nature. That is why the use of intelligence has become a concern of military and political decision makers, especially in terms of its integration into combat functions to ensure and maintain a high combat capability and thus the combat power necessary to achieve objectives / mission. The peculiarities and specific features of modern / contemporary military conflicts, as well as the influence of technological evolution or, as specialists call it, the revolution in military affairs has led to changes including in the field of military intelligence, which is essential to keep up with the present and anticipate the future. These changes have led to changes in the place and role of military intelligence in the military phenomenon, changes in doctrines, techniques, tactics and procedures, and the readjustment of requirements to the changes applied. Military intelligence structures must be conceptually integrated and not only with the other collection capabilities of the National Defence System, Public Order and National Security.

Organizations Involved in Humanitarian Action: Introducing a New Dataset

AbstractAlthough the humanitarian sector has gained prominence in the management of contemporary conflicts, data on the diversity of organizations involved in humanitarian aid are scarce and do not rely on well-founded inclusion criteria. This lack of data limits not only our knowledge of humanitarian action but also our understanding of international security and of non-state actors’ role in foreign aid. The Humanitarian Organisations Dataset (HOD) seeks to fill these gaps. Based on clear and reproducible criteria, 2,505 organizations active in the humanitarian sector have been identified while information on their history, nature, activities, and geographical location has been collected. Our analyses depart from prevailing Western-centered accounts of humanitarian, show regional variations in types of organizations, and identify distinct historical patterns by region and by type of organization. They also document a large span of humanitarian activities, going beyond the current exclusive focus on in-kind assistance. We illustrate how the dataset can contribute to further research through its combination with other data and explore the relationship between NGOs and governments in humanitarian aid funding. Beyond its value for scholars, we anticipate that the HOD will also be of interest to policymakers and nonacademic users concerned with humanitarian action and crisis-management issues.

The Logic of Transitional Justice and State Repression: The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Post-Conflict States

Human rights prosecutions addressing wartime crimes are often credited with deterring future rights abuses, but routinely occur alongside state repression. This article develops a theory of how such prosecutions generate uneven effects across domestic human rights practice by making some repression tactics costlier than others—in the public visibility of the abuse or ease of attribution to leadership—or by directly substituting certain tactics. We test the implications with a multivariate probit analysis of novel prosecution data in contemporary conflict and post-conflict settings. Trials significantly reduce reliance on political imprisonment and extrajudicial killings, relatively visible abuses, whereas gains for less visible physical integrity rights are limited. Further, trials themselves are sometimes deployed as a direct substitute for political imprisonment. The findings reveal how human rights prosecutions themselves can be part of a government’s repressive toolkit, with implications for the study of transitional justice and the judicialization of repression.

Local agreements - an introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT This article introduces a Peacebuilding special issue on local agreements in intractable conflicts. By ‘local’, we refer to any type of agreement that covers a geographical area less than the entire national territory although the issues and actors may be national, regional, international as well as local. Our main finding is that local agreements are a pervasive feature of contemporary conflict, owing to the fragmented decentred character of conflicts. . Local agreements are not necessarily about peace ; they may be a form of surrender, or about tactical alliances and deployment of armed groups. The overall conclusion is that local talks can contribute to what the paper defines as a peace logic, if they involve local civilians and multilateral actors, and are based on a detailed knowledge of context. Expanding this type of process on a large-scale may be the best opportunity for addressing the social condition that characterises contemporary intractable conflicts.

Introduction: Civicness in conflict

ABSTRACT This article is the introduction to a special issue on ‘Civicness in Conflict’. Civicness is defined in three ways: (i) as a logic of public authority, that speaks to ideas of rights-based, inclusive rather than exclusive political orders; (ii) as a form of behaviour, acting ‘as if’ such a logic existed; and (iii) as a political position, articulated against uncivic politics, in particular the combination of endemic corruption, ethnic or religious sectarianism and economic and social injustice. The introduction traces some conceptual, historical and vernacular entry points, before summarizing empirical research that points to the prevalence of civicness in all three senses in contemporary conflicts. It emerges even without free and secure spaces, and it often represents a strategy of survival. We also suggest that whether or not civicness is merely a way of surviving in conflict contexts or whether it represents an opening for challenging the dominant war logics depends to a degree on the character of international involvement.

Humanitarianism as civic practice? Humanity, politics and humanitarian activism

ABSTRACT This article explores the intersection between civic activism and humanitarian action, two sets of practices which, in conflict settings, nvolve protecting life, supporting people’s ability to survive, and upholding dignity. Yet the logics that govern professionalized humanitarianism sometimes limit or work against the kinds of civic activism and political agency that enable resistance to powerful conflict dynamics. This article elaborates a concept of humanitarian activism that recasts the humanitarian encounter as a problem of political estrangement, to be overcome through a recognition of the political agency of humanitarians’ interlocutors. The starting point of humanitarian action in all its guises should be to see the human in the other, but it should also accept that humanity is political in both its construction and realization. The humanity of the other must be honoured, among other things, through the support of the other’s political voice through civic engagements in the fora relevant to those goals of protecting life and dignity. As contemporary conflict fuels itself by dehumanizing and depoliticizing, so must humanitarian activists situate themselves against both these dynamics, materially and discursively, from the level of local activism to global humanitarian funding flows, to open up genuine humanitarian space for change.

Концепт демократии во внешней политике США в условиях постбиполярной системы

Introduction. Democracy nowadays means not only specific parameters of domestic political, social and economic development, but has also become a tool for identifying “friends” and “strangers” for the USA and a number of other states of the so-called Western world. In addition, international law, calling the problem of human rights the most important one for the democratization of the world, denotes the possibility of interference of the states concerned in the internal affairs of other countries. Methods and materials. The study was conducted in accordance with the epistemological orientations of social constructivism using the case-study method. Analysis. The logic of analysis assumes considering a concept of democracy from the position of the theory of the democratic world with its verification on USA political practice including their participation in contemporary local and regional conflicts. Results. Thus, democracy becomes a complex tool that allows the USA to solve several problems at once: to divide between states, to influence the domestic politics of other states, to change its position in the international arena, to spread its values, to conceal its foreign policy goals by dressing them up in “democratic” clothes. The U.S., considering itself a model democratic state, identifying other countries as its allies or enemies, at the same time gives them the status of “democratic” or “non-democratic”, or, if necessary, avoiding such a designation (in the case of Saudi Arabia).

Conflicts of sovereignty in contemporary Europe: a framework of analysis

Contemporary conflicts of sovereignty in Europe have gone beyond the clash between national and supranational sovereignty. Sovereignty conflicts are increasingly occurring within member states. This paper develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes between foundational, institutional and territorial conflicts of sovereignty, elaborating on this taxonomy with reference to the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty in Europe. It provides an account of why we have seen a proliferation in conflicts of sovereignty within European states. This is due in part to the notion of “shared” sovereignty. Central to European integration, this notion has introduced considerable institutional indeterminacy into the political systems of member states, leading to many of the institutional conflicts of sovereignty we see in Europe today. The struggle of national party systems to institutionalize societal conflict via partisan competition is another contributory factor. This has displaced conflict onto the terrain of how popular rule is institutionalized within the national state. In developing this framework, the paper provides a method for distinguishing between political conflicts tout court and those touching specifically upon sovereignty. Moreover, the framework helps us distinguish between those conflicts of sovereignty most destabilizing for a polity and those which are less so.

Persuasion or Co-creation? Social Identity Threat and the Mechanisms of Deliberative Transformation

Deliberation’s effectiveness as a method of problem solving and democratic decision making is often seen as stemming from the persuasive power of the “forceless force” of argument to transform beliefs. However, because conflicts related to partisan polarization, conspiracy theories, and the COVID-19 pandemic often have deep connections to social identity, they may be difficult to resolve through a deliberative approach based on persuasion. Research shows that when the conclusions of an argument threaten participants’ social identities they are likely to engage in motivated reasoning, which inhibits the ability of any argument to induce belief change. In conflicts closely related to social identity a deliberative approach based around co-creation — such as Mary Parker Follett’s conception of integration — may be more productive than persuasion-based approaches. The contrast between these two approaches is illustrated in reference to contemporary conflicts between vaccine advocates and members of the “vaccine hesitancy and refusal” (VHR) community.

The impact of tunnels on conflicts in the Middle East

Abstract The battlefields in the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East are multi-level conflicts. They take place in the air and on the ground, but an important and often overlooked dimension of these conflicts is found under the surface. This article recognizes the usefulness of political geography's ‘volumetric turn’ as it examines the use of tunnels in conflict, particularly in the post-2001 conflicts in the Middle East. It asks questions about who uses tunnels, for which purposes and about the impact of tunnels on conflicts. It proceeds to show how tunnels are used by a range of actors (including states, insurgents, civilians and organized crime groups) for various, often overlapping purposes (including offensive, defensive and smuggling/economic purposes). The article argues that tunnels impact on conflicts by benefiting the weaker side in asymmetrical warfare, by directly affecting states’ military strategy, by either generating or challenging political legitimacy and lastly, by becoming central to the economic survival of civilians in conflict. A greater recognition of the subterranean dimension of contemporary Middle Eastern conflicts will provide a more nuanced understanding of the duration, intensity and consequences of these wars.

Hauntology in Practice: Commemorating Partition in the Age of Brexit

Hauntology in Practice:Commemorating Partition in the Age of Brexit Jonathan Evershed (bio) and Rebecca Graff-McRae (bio) "Full Derrida. I'm hauntology in practice, an aporia upon which meaning depends, the emptiness at the logocentre, as it were."1 Brexit is haunted by the ghost(s) of partition. Since June 2016 the vexatious specter of the Irish border has returned to haunt Irish, British, and wider European politics in a way not seen since the height of the Troubles.2 In rolling news coverage and opinion columns, on social media, and even in the pages of a book that it had purportedly authored (I Am the Border, So I Am, 2019), the border has found new ways to interrupt present political settlements and to disrupt and reshape the relationships and meanings that define contemporary politics on and across "these islands."3 Crucially, the disruptive return of the border and its divisive politics has given the lie to an assumption that had underpinned the Decade of Centenaries and its prevailing narratives on "reconciliation,"4 namely, that the vexatious question of the border had been all but successfully exorcised from political life in Ireland, North and South. Claims by the British [End Page 312] and Irish governments, political figures, and cultural commentators that the Decade of Centenaries has marked and aided in Ireland's "overcoming" of past conflicts—between "Unionist" and "Nationalist," "British" and "Irish"—have been revealed as profoundly problematic. A divided and unstable present continues to frame how the ghosts of a violent past are received and represented. Building on previous work undertaken by the authors on the hauntology of commemoration in Ireland and drawing on a series of ethnographic interviews with key stakeholders in the centenary of partition, this article will situate the centenary and its multiple narratives within a political context determined by the fallout of Brexit on the island of Ireland, thus mapping this anniversary within the fluid and shifting political dynamics that it both mirrors and serves to shape.5 Highlighting the ambivalent and transfigurative nature of commemorative politics, we propose hauntology as a useful lens through which to read commemoration during the Decade of Centenaries, with the term itself a form of political intervention that creates and sustains conflict even as it lays claim to having overcome it. Applying a hauntological lens offers a vocabulary—a lexicon—to describe the temporal and ontological (dis)juncture of history, memory, and politics at the centenary of partition. Hauntology both permits and forces us to ask "how does commemoration reproduce and reconfigure the power-discursive relations between the dead of the past and the politics of the present?"6 Crucially, hauntology is also a method of disrupting claims to foundational narratives and asking "in what ways are the foundations of the state and the nation both (contentiously) laid upon the graveyard of history?"7 To name the ghost is to acknowledge the multiple paradoxes of social and political memory—notably absence/presence, past/present, continuity/rupture. As Evershed suggests: [End Page 313] [Ghosts] exist somewhere between the real and the imagined, structure and agency, signifier and signified. They carry messages from the past that can act to compel particular forms of individual or collective action, but they also require forms of action in order that these messages might be received.8 Commemoration is quite literally "a prayer to be haunted,"9 conjuring into the political present the restless ghosts of a troubled past in an attempt to fix or control the meaning of the message they carry. Such an attempt is necessarily and contentiously political, as these meanings are always multiple and conflicted.10 To explore the centenary of partition hauntologically is to follow those involved in commemorating (or indeed not commemorating) it as they convene with its ghosts; it is to ask "how they interpret [these] 'ghosts' and how they use them as a source of knowledge."11 It is to examine how this contributes to contemporary political conflict about borders and bordering on the island of Ireland. Whereas commemoration navigates geographical and politico-spatial borders, the ghosts of time cross paths with ghosts of space and place. The confluence of Brexit and the centenary...

Weaponizing Media and the Dangers of Subjective Truth: Reflections on the “Arab Media Between Conflict and Peace” panel

In contemporary conflicts, knowing the enemy—the first lesson in any war—has become elusive. With fewer boots on the ground, less interstate conflict, and more fractured and violent terrorist factions, knowing exactly who one is fighting has become increasingly difficult. Accordingly, information warfare, the control of the narrative, has arguably become the most pressing and challenging issue of our times. It has become imperative for anyone involved in a given conflict to take control of the narrative and communicate their story, ensuring they have the court of public opinion on their side. In other words, in conflict: “The one with the better army may win the battle, but the one with the better story wins the war” (Ebner 2017, 107). Today, history is being written online, narratives and information are communicated through the media, social media platforms, and through all modes of communication on cyberspace, setting the stage for conflict or peace. With the advent of the internet, information has transcended borders and states, and has by and large become controlled by capitalism’s leaders, each with their own agenda. In a recent panel organized by Arab Media & Society Journal on “Arab Media Between Conflict and Peace” the panelists discussed whether the media promotes or hinders peace and conflict in the region. This article goes over the different ways in which the media has been used to promote conflict, as explored during the panel.