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The Intervention of 'Neighbor' Countries in Civil War Peace Negotiations
Abstract
This paper examines the intervention behavior of small or middle-sized neighbor countries in civil war peace negotiations by examining Thailand in the Cambodian peace process and Chad in the peace negotiations over Darfur, Sudan. Firstly, it presents that the primary motivations for the interventions were two types of fear: fear of the potentially critical domestic impact of the external conflicts, and fear of their limited leverage over the conflicts. Secondly, these states pursued proactive but biased strategies for early intervention, which included providing physical/substantial support to one side in the conflicts, submitting unilateral peace proposals, and attempting to strengthen their diplomatic alliances. Thirdly, while both countries changed their intervention strategies in an effort to assume a more constructive role in the respective peace processes, the consequences of their changed strategies differed fundamentally, a difference chiefly due to how their new diplomatic strategies were utilized and supported by external actors.
Various international actors have attempted to establish peace in Afghanistan in the last two decades. This article addresses the mediator role of Uzbekistan, one of these actors, which had become visible especially in the last stages of the Afghan peace process. The foreign policy adopted by Uzbekistan until the peace treaty signed in Doha is compatible with the cases where mediation is used in international politics. In particular, the mediation motivations of states to solve crises in their neighbors have significant similarities with the main reasons behind the mediation efforts of Uzbekistan, as a neighboring country to Afghanistan. This article categorizes these motives under three headings as economic, security, and international prestige. The difficulties and opportunities that Tashkent faced in the Afghan peace process also resemble the limitations and advantages of small states in international mediation. Although the small state status did not always provide Uzbekistan a chance to achieve the desired results, it allowed gaining the trust of the parties because of its peaceful and non-threatening position. Tashkent has contributed to the process by establishing a dialogue with the conflicting sides individually, proposing the use of its territory for the negotiations, maintaining close cooperation with other third parties, and hosting international meetings.
The areas south of Libya have experienced more than their fair share of conflict and rapid social change. In earlier times, the main routes of trade, commerce and pilgrimage between West African and the Arab Peninsula passed through this region, also once inhabited by mighty warrior empires (see for example Bawuro 1972). However, as the empires along these routes faded away, and international ocean shipping opened up this part of Africa to the forces of global trade and capitalism, the centres of authority that once controlled this region also vanished. What remained was an almost open territory: unwelcoming and hard, but also a place of possibilities and the freedom to roam for those who had mastered the art of survival under such difficult conditions. This was the land of the Tuareg and other semi-nomadic groups who controlled cities and important trading posts such as Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal in contemporary Mali. This is the world of the Sahel and the parts of Western Africa that straddles Libya, and a region that currently includes Southern Algeria, Northern Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania and parts of Northern Nigeria. These are therefore also the countries and areas that have come to experience the full effect of what we define as post-Gaddafi repercussions.
A new understanding of the nature of advanced industrial economies is derived from this extensive investigation of the ways in which the boundaries of the political have changed in Europe since the 1960s.
This article quantifies the impact of civil wars on economic growth at home and in nearby countries. Three alternative measures of nearness-contiguity, length of contiguous borders, and distance of closest approach-are used to capture the spatial dispersion of civil war consequences. We present short-run panel estimates (at five-year intervals) and long-run (1961-95) panel estimates for the world. Generally, the distance measures, novel to this study, and not contiguity provides the most accurate measure of the diffusion of the negative economic consequences of civil wars on other countries. Unlike earlier studies, we also investigate the temporal influence of civil wars on growth at home and in nearby countries. Both the duration and the timing of civil wars have an economic impact.
This Darfurian song is usually sung when people see a ground hornbill—a huge and colorful bird whose weight seems to make both walking and flying awkward, which is perhaps why the song depicts the bird as a fallen king. It is said that the song dates from the turbulent period between the 1874 defeat of Darfur sultan Ibrahim Garad by the slave trader Al-Zubeir Pasha (backed by the Turco-Egyptian invaders of Sudan) and the restoration of the sultanate by Ali Dinar in 1898. This period of disorder and violence was nicknamed “Um Kuwakiya,” from a local word (kuwak) meaning gunfire, and it has often been compared with the present situation in Darfur.
Violence poses fundamental challenges to peace settlements. Peace processes are often rife with strategic and tactical deception, and even those who sign peace agreements may cultivate violence in order to undermine their new ‘partners’ in peace. Multiple actors in civil wars rarely simultaneously choose peace; those who seek to end a violent conflict will often face opposition from parties who are excluded or who exclude themselves from peacemaking. Such spoilers — leaders and factions who view a particular peace as opposed to their interests and who are willing to use violence to undermine it — pose a grave threat to those who risk making peace.1 Beyond strategic and tactical uses of violence, there is the obvious need to convince those with the guns to lay them down and reconstruct their lives in a peaceful manner. War may end, but if former combatants lack jobs and skills and if weapons are easily available, then violent crime may increase and rob citizens of their security and their hopes for a robust peace dividend. Finally, there are the effects of past violence: addressing the needs of victims and examining issues of accountability and culpability for atrocity and murder.
Smaller nations have a special place in the international system, with a capacity to defy the expectations of most observers and many prominent theories of international relations. This text addresses an imbalance in the international relations literature by focusing attention on the role of small states. Copyright