A Thought About Resolving (non-violent) Conflict

Having recently moved to NYC, I've had a lot of interesting blog posts waiting in my Google Reader for me to get settled. A few examples that jumped out at me:

-After my recent brief trip to Ethiopia, I was very interested in this article about the Ethiopian government's abuses and connections to UK development funds
-Keeping the above mindset, and adding beer! Ethiopia and Heineken: an interesting snippet on economic growth. I cannot vouch for either of the beers mentioned, as the only one I recall drinking was St. George Beer (quite tasty too!)

St. George Beer, with the historic sites of Axum as a backdrop

-Now on to my interest in Agriculture: Crop insurance for small farmers in Bolivia. Here's the money quote:

Yet Miguel Solana, a programme officer who runs the Bolivia project at the ILO, says: "Credit is not the only solution." He believes farmers in Latin America have wrongly been given loans for far too long, when they would have derived greater benefit from an insurance policy instead.

 -As a History major in undergrad who is now pursuing a graduate degree in Development, I could not agree more with this article

Most of these articles, and many others, made me nod in agreement (or sometimes shout in disagreement). But one in particular hit me and made me think. The article was a write up about the unresolved conflict in Israel by Stephen Walt of Foreign Policy. While interesting in itself, it was a few lines from the post's opening that caught my eye:

...unresolved conflicts are dangerous precisely because they provide opportunities that extremists can exploit, they harden perceptions and images on both sides, and most importantly, they can always get worse. So when a promising opportunity to settle a conflict arises, wise leaders should pursue them energetically. 

Settling conflicts early seems like a no-brainer. The reason these lines made me stop and think is because this does not seem to be the case in non-violent conflicts. For instance, when unresolved issues drag on and on in American politics, most people seem to become apathetic to the issue and just want it to end (1). A better example is the always-interesting (to me) case of Madagascar. The country's political conflict has gone on for two-and-a-half years now, remaining mostly non-violent during this time (2). As the conflict has dragged on, the competing sides, current President Rajoelina and the 3 Ex-Presidents (3), have not come any closer to agreement. However, many other politicians have grown tired of the debates and disagreements (and the Malagasy people certainly have). Many opposition politicians have left their old parties to either join Rajoelina's government or form new "unity" parties (4). It seems like the longer the conflict has gone on, the less that people have really cared about it. The SADC and AU failed to resolve the conflict early on; now, they have forgotten about Madagascar and the country has moved on. I doubt there will ever be a proper resolution to this conflict (in the same way that there was not a proper resolution in 2002). But Rajoelina will continue to rule as he sees fit, and the rest of the political establishment will continue to fall into line. As for the average Malagasy person, as is always the case whether the politicians are fighting or agreeing, life will go on...and it will be tough.


(1) Note that I said "most people" and not "most politicians"...
(2) By "non-violent" I mean not consisting of open hostilities... there has been sparse clashes, and many human rights abuses
(3) We definitely need a Malagasy version of the X-Presidents
(4) As you might expect, there are dozens (hundreds?) of parties and no one really knows what their platforms are, aside from "reconciliation" and "supporting the homeland"