Using Carrots to Bring Peace?

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author

How to make peace effectively? This book contributes to the discussion on peace incentives by focusing on negotiation processes between contending parties in intrastate armed conflicts, and specifically, on the impacts of third party involvement in such processes. Searching for the correct analytical tools in examining such conflicts, or even identifying a formula for the peaceful termination of intrastate armed conflicts, has been one of the main focuses of the conflict resolution field as well as international relations (IR) at large. The art of ending civil wars effectively has proven to be one of the major challenges of our time as a number of fragile post-conflict states have relapsed or are on the verge of relapsing back into open conflicts. In countries like Iraq and Somalia, intractable poverty, weak state institutions, and failed transitional justice efforts have served as breeding grounds for the emergence of terrorist and criminal networks. While the international community has assumed responsibility for helping countries affected by man-made disasters, the employment of political and economic incentives in post-conflict scenarios has not always brought desired results. This book looks into the preceding step — that is, the employment of incentives in the conflict management phase — and how third parties can exert a degree of influence on how adversaries perceive the conflict, their position in it, and their will to enter into peace negotiations…

This book strives to give a complex answer to a simple question: can carrots be used to facilitate peace effectively and, more specifically, what are the impacts of the employment of third party incentives on peace negotiation, namely on the behavior and strategies of adversaries in internal armed conflicts? Accordingly, existing research on the subject is outlined in this chapter to provide a theoretical overview of the field, which, in turn, forms a solid base for my own theoretical departure…

This chapter outlines the theoretical underpinnings for the issues sketched in the previous chapters. As mentioned in the overview, existing research on the employment of incentives does not effectively explain the impact these tools have on the negotiation process. Responding to the scarcity of research on the usage of positive incentives by external parties in conflict resolution initiatives, this book strives to explain how the employment of incentives impacts the dynamics of peace negotiation facilitated by an external third party…

The armed conflict in Sri Lanka between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was active between 1983 and 2009 with several interluding peace initiatives. The conflict is based on the deeply rooted grievances of self-determination among the Tamil ethnic minority, which the LTTE monopolized and coined as a quest for an independent Tamil Eelam. The last peace process between the adversaries was facilitated by the Royal Government of Norway and was marked by the substantial involvement of other international actors. This chapter outlines the development of the peace process spanning from the pre-negotiation period (1998/1999–2001), direct talks (2002–2003), the period under the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government and President Rajapaksa (2004–2006), to the final collapse of the process (2006–2008). It further reviews the effects of incentives and threats employed between 2000 and 2008, and examines to what extent they impacted the negotiation strategies of the GoSL and the LTTE, as well as how the Third Party strategies evolved during the process…

Negotiations between the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) were consecutively facilitated by two NGOs in two separate processes. The initiative of the Swiss-based Henri Dunant Center (HDC) — Center for Humanitarian Dialogue culminated with the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) in December 2002, but collapsed in May 2003 after the parties returned to pursuing a military solution. The second initiative, led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), informally started in 2004 and peaked in August 2005 with the Memorandum of Understanding between the GoI and GAM, the final agreement which ended the conflict in Aceh. Although the two processes and the two facilitators differed, the issues and the actors remained similar. The main difference was the change in the Indonesian leadership when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) secured victory in the September 2004 Presidential election, replacing President Megawati in October 2004. This greatly impacted the government's policy toward Aceh, but the issues and the opponents remained the same. To fully understand the role of third party tools, Ahtisaari's facilitation, and the success of the Helsinki peace process, it is also important to understand why the previous process failed. For these reasons, both processes are included in this chapter…

This book analyzes three different cases of negotiation processes in the context of internal armed conflicts where grievances concerning self-determination constitute the main source of incompatibility. Notwithstanding a number of similarities between the three cases, each has its own specific attributes and anomalies. The peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) spanned a considerably longer period of time than the two other processes studied. Following a number of localized CFAs at the end of the 1990s and the subsequent partial agreements after the resumption of the peace processes under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA) in 2001, the core issues of the conflict were not sufficiently discussed until 2007. This process was thus characterized by long periods of negotiations without moving forward in discussions on the core issues. Further to this, the GRP–MILF peace negotiations were to a lesser extent dependent on third party assistance — the two parties had a relatively well established internal communication network in addition to the existence of a strong civil society — which enabled them to establish informal contacts even without external assistance. This makes it significantly different to the situation in Sri Lanka and also in Aceh, Indonesia…

The basic inquiry of this book is to determine whether carrots — incentives — can facilitate peace in internal armed conflicts. More specifically, the research conducted examines the impact of the employment of incentives on negotiation strategies in internal armed conflicts. The theoretical purpose as outlined in section 3.5 highlights the issues resulting from the employment of incentives, and addresses whether incentives that are in tune with negotiators' preferences are more likely to have an impact on the negotiation process…

The main task of this book has been to provide a complex answer to a simple question: Whether carrots can bring peace? The main stimulus behind this inquiry has been the increased involvement of donors in peace processes and emerging mechanisms of incentive employment in the past two decades. Chapter 2 (Literature review) identified the dearth of theories which combine findings on incentive employment with negotiation theory as a notable lacuna in the field of conflict resolution…

The following sections are included:

• References
• Index