From within the ruins of the World War II a spark of hope inthe form of the global urge for peace was born. It resulted in the creation ofthe United Nations with an objective of maintaining global peace and security.Its achievement has been the commitment to decolonisation, creating an expandedregime of rights of people and communities, initiating and coordinating globalefforts to meet the common challenges and the good work in redressing humansufferings and problems that mankind is confronted with. It does so within theconstraints of the problematic global order. Its operations have been hampered by the structural factors inbuilt inthe unequal international order, legacy of unresolved issues, discrepancies inthe social, cultural and economic positioning of countries because of thedistortions inflicted by the colonial interventions. Decolonisation process created a fresh hopeand opened up new possibilities for the newly independent countries. However,along with the process of liberation the global community was taken over by anew phenomenon called cold war between the two super powers born out from theruins of the war and dividing the world into their respective spheres ofinfluence. It hampered the working of the UN and created its own issues andconcerns for the world community to deal with.
However, as said earlier the destruction in the war hadresulted in an urge for peace mostly in Europe because it had suffered themost. It emerged first as an intellectual idea that gradually began to unfoldin the institutional initiatives in the desired direction reaching today’slevel of the European Union as a model of peace and cooperation and an examplefor the rest of the world to follow. But, the rest of World, in spite of the commitment to peace and creationof the UN as an institutional arrangement for maintaining global security,continued to suffer the aggressive posturing for war and violent conflicts.Mostly because of the colonial legacy conflicts continued at two levels i.e.state verses state and within state aggrieved groups engaged in violentresistance on their own or with the support of external agencies or states whoused some of these as proxies to achieve their own political objectives. Butduring the recent decades there have been a number of developments that havecaused or call for a very serious re-thinking on the feasibility of violence asmechanism of redressing conflicts both at the inter and intra state levels. Thelessons of the Second World War were enough to make people realize that warwith the kind of weaponry that mankind has been developing particularly sincethe early 20th century is making its cost unbearable for anyone involved. SinceEuropeans and Japan suffered the most, their commitment to peace has been moresignificant compared to the rest. But as said earlier the rest of the worldcontinues to be afflicted with violence even though comparatively at a smallerscale.
However, in the recent decades war technology has developedfurther and any war, particularly involving major powers, is going to besuicidal for those involved and even disastrous for the rest. Each one of thesuper/major powers be it the United States or Russia (even growingly China) hasnuclear and thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems (ICBMs) that can destroythe whole world several times over. Even India and Pakistan at their presentlevels of arsenal can not only destroy the whole region of South Asia and itsperiphery but will also have serious implications for the global habitat interms of health, vegetation, economy and more. The traditional norms of war(specified in the International Humanitarian Law, or as prescribed in IslamicJurisprudence on the conduct of war) have become redundant in practice. Evenmoderate level weaponry does not differentiate between combatants and noncombatants. For example, the kind of cluster bombs that the Americans usedduring the Gulf Wars and in Afghanistan killed more civilian (includingchildren, women and elderly) than army. In our own context, even in the minorskirmishes on the LoC it is more of the civilians than army personal thatbecome victims of cross LoC shelling.
The second kind of conflict is where an aggrieved communitywithin a state has taken recourse to violent uprising to get redressel of realor perceived injustice and secure recognition of their identity/nationalcharacter. We have referred to the success of the American War of Independence.Similarly Mau Zedong used the guerrilla warfare with success in bringing in asocialist revolution in China by destroying a decaying feudal order within aweak state structure. In the post war years compared to traditional type stateto state wars employing major and mass destruction weapons more conflictshappen within states using small and medium level weapons causing much largerdeath and destruction. Cross-border war if any has become a primarily”small or medium-power activity.” Particularly since the beginning of the decolonization, the securitythreats to the state apparatus in the Third World are far more frequentlyinternal than external, especially given that many decolonized nations wereformed containing substantial linguistic, cultural, or ethnic plurality withminorities having little ties to the state. Such warfare seemed to degenerate”into universal, anarchic, and self-perpetuating violence.” SriLankan-Tamil conflict looked as if there were two states contending within.These conflicts in the process create a large number of subsidiary issues withserious implications for the general society. The changing nature of state inrecent decades is making the chances of such violent struggle lesser and lesserfeasible to succeed mainly for the following reasons.
Contemporary state is increasingly becoming all-pervadingand omnipresent through the length and breadth of its territory leaving nothingoutside of its scope, jurisdiction and active monitoring. Recent development insatellite and information technology has allowed the states much greatercapacity to penetrate everything and everyone leaving little secrecy for anyoperation to succeed. As understood, all non state violent movements pitchedagainst the superior authority of the state have traditionally used guerillatactics operating with an element of surprise in their campaigns. That is nolonger possible thereby considerably undermining their chances for success.Therefore, in desperation such groups are increasingly using terrorist tacticsof attacking civilian targets instead of military ones. The 9/11 attack in NewYork and 26/11 in Mumbai, attacks on civilians in Churches, Mosques, shrinesand schools across countries are reflections of such a frustration.
The dominant powers globally, particularly since 9/11(2001), have succeeded in catergorising all non state violent action, withwhatever justifying cause it might be pursuing and irrespective of selection ofits targets, as terrorist. That has taken away whatever legitimacy suchmovements may have enjoyed historically thereby further undermining the chancesof its success.
The combination of the two factors have made Fenon’s proposition about violence being liberating inanti-colonial context (1961) in effect completely redundant in the face of an increasinglyomnipresent and strangulating contemporary state facing no serious moralchallenge from the global community. First major thinker in the twentiethcentury to realize the dangers implicit in non-state political violence andcontest the position of Fenon through her essay “On Violence” (1970) was HannahArendt (1906-1975). It is in this context we see the LTTE in Sri Lanka asprobably the most powerful militant movement operating against a relativelysmaller state in recent times getting decimated completely leaving the Tamilpopulation completely high and dry. At one time in late eighties and 1990s,Sri-Lankan state was willing to negotiate and give substantial degree ofautonomy to them. Only few years back the ISIS emerged with tremendous euphoriaattracting large number of educated Muslim youth to join their cause. Afterspectacular initial successes it has been decapitated and destroyed (in itsorganized strength) in the face of a global resolve against it. All non-stateprivate violence in the contemporary times is universally dubbed as terrorismand there is increasing global consensus on multi faceted decisive measuresagainst this.
In the light of these and other examples there is a strong case for rethinking of violence as a strategy for attaining political objectives. The discourse of violence complicates issues, brings in death and destruction and creates more problems than it resolves. It generates more hatred, hardens attitudes, blocks communication, hinders understanding, precludes the possibility of continuing dialogue and, as our present day experience indicates, it badly afflicts those involved socially, economically, culturally, physically and psychologically. In contemporary context it marginalizes the weak further and exposes the weaknesses of the strong also. In the vicious cycle of violence there are no winners. The telling example of irreparable death and destruction that violence brings in recent times are that of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Even the US (the sole super power) whose intervention created some of these problems has failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. The limits of its capacity to shape up global reality on its own, with its tremendous coercive capacity (and economic might), stands exposed. Because of these its arrogance of power has got considerably dented and it is being constrained to withdraw in places without having achieved its professed goals. Violence also begets more violence and afflicts even those that want to use it against other. Therefore, in today’s world any movement for changing the status-quo (particularly for weak) needs to be led with tremendous care and high levels of intellectual sophistication and by means that are morally superior and need to be combined with right kind of strategy. Adversities do not hold negatives only. In fact, every adversity may be pregnant with a potential opportunity. Emerging global challenges are pushing states to collaborative action. Above all the recent proliferation of conceptual references to emancipation and values of human security, rights (in their expanded form), dignity and democratic empowerment whereby deprived, weak and subaltern are seeking reworking of politics to make it more responsive, fair and just are important instruments for seeking Justice and change for better.
(Prof. Baba teachesPolitical Science in Kashmir University and at the Central University ofKashmir)