Written by James Walsh
Forgiveness must be embraced by both sides in a conflict for a country to move on from the conflict and achieve lasting peace and stability.
Differences between people, or groups of people, can be the fuel of conflict. These differences are manifold and inherent to the human condition and can be over almost anything; wealth, power, land, ideology, religion, and ethnicity are just a few of the difference that may spark into conflict. Yet, these differences do not ignite into open, violent conflict without the emotions of fear, hatred, anger, or jealousy. Once violence starts it is often difficult to stop. Furthermore, violence often begets further injury, negative emotion, and ultimately, violence. Even when some countries do experience a period of peace, far too often, they return to violence again because the causes of the conflict remain unresolved. This is the cycle of conflict that occurs in many countries; it makes the country unstable and blocks recovery or development efforts.
However, studies have shown that protracted conflict can be resolved through forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation and forgiveness allows for differences to exist without escalating to violence. This way, post conflict states can overcome the trauma by attempting to understand all points of view and narratives about the conflict, and attempt to govern in an impartial manner. Governing in a post conflict country, even in an impartial manner, can inflame the cause of the conflict, and if broad forgiveness has not been embraced, the conflict may reignite. Thus forgiveness, and some basic level of understanding, must be embraced by both sides in a conflict for a country to move on from the conflict and achieve lasting peace and stability.
There are, however, at least two major obstacles to embracing forgiveness. One of them is related to governance. The weakness of many victorious post conflict governments is that they often promote their own point of view about the conflict, govern the country according to their own principles or in some way favors one side of the conflict over the other. While this is not always the case, impartiality in post conflict governments is rare to come by as can be seen in the case of Mozambique. The Frelimo government continued to rule the country and in a less than partial manner. They continued the dominance of the southern region of the country over the nation as a whole and pushed their narrative about the conflict rather than adopting a unified, impartial, national narrative. At the same time, Renamo, the oppositional faction pushed their narrative, essentially continuing the struggle even after open conflict had ceased. In this way government that acts partially and does not try to rise above the differences, but rather claim victory in the conflict only perpetuates it.
The other, more challenging, obstacle is the way the mind operates emotionally after a major trauma such as violence. A mind that has experienced trauma often lives in the past as a means of trying to understand and cope with it. This only retards a traumatized person’s ability to get past the conflict and release the emotions they hold on to. These emotions need to be released as they are the emotions which could resurface at a later time and cause a reigniting of the conflict. For this reason, post conflict countries must focus on the mental and psychological care of the traumatized segment of society to ensure that on the whole, forgiveness can be achieved.
Without forgiveness, post conflict countries are doomed to relive their past conflicts. The type and impartiality of governance can further inflame already tender tensions and fault lines in a country. Further, those fault lines and tensions can remain tender if the trauma both sides experienced are not broadly accepted and looked after by both health professionals and the nation’s populace in general and leadership in particular.
Recent Comments