Routledge Advances in Asia-Pacific Studies, 13. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. xxi, 296 pp. (Figures, tables, maps.) US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-67031-9.
Violent conflict has diminished in the Asia Pacific in the last twenty years, though not everywhere and with differing degrees of permanence.
In some places peace has replaced war or sustained armed conflict. Timor-Leste confronted internal conflict in 2006, when murderous riots swept the capital Dili and displaced more than 100,000 people, yet has since established peace. The Muslim-Christian violence that killed more than 5,000 people in Maluku between 1999 and 2004 ended in interfaith reconciliation and peacemaking. Aceh, for so long Indonesia’s most rebellious region, reached peace soon after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004, a natural disaster that itself played a small part in creating the conditions for an end to the violent ambitions of the Free Aceh Movement. In the 1980s and 1990s the Sikhs’ movement for an independent state of their own in Punjab caused more than 20,000 deaths, including that of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, yet it came to an end as a political force of importance and India remained as it was. The civil war in Sri Lanka, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 of its citizens, ended with the total and merciless military defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) by Sri Lankan military forces in 2009. The separatist conflict on Papua New Guinea’s island of Bougainville, which killed perhaps 5,000 combatants and civilians in the 1990s, ended with a peace settlement that has held ever since. Solomon Islands, wracked by low-level armed conflict between 1998-2003, returned to peace and stability under an Australian-led regional assistance mission. Analysis of these conflicts occupies the first half of the book, addressing the reasons for the subsequent peace in each case.
Diminishing Conflicts in Asia and the Pacific also examines situations where armed conflict is either continuing or dormant before a likely re-emergence. Violence persists against the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, which has practised a policy of internal transmigration of Bengalis in order to outnumber the original inhabitants and drive them from their homes. The wars of eastern Burma between the state and minorities such as the Karen, the Karenni, the Shan and the Kachin have a long history that begins with the independence of Burma itself in 1947 and seem unlikely to diminish even under the newly democratizing national government. The same applies to the long struggle between the Thai state and the mostly Muslim southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, where there are few signs that the insurgency will come to an end, and to the Moro conflict in the southern Philippines, where a separatist movement, despite periodic truces and peace agreements, maintains armed opposition to the national government. The Kashmir insurgency, as Christopher Sneddon reminds us in this volume, might be temporarily at bay but will almost certainly return.
In some places violent conflict is a consequence of the weakness of government authority. As Nicole Haley points out in her chapter on the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea, there are parallels between them and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, the “turbulent frontier of a fragmented state” (204), as it is called here by its chronicler Paul D’Arcy; and they come in the form of “extremely rugged terrain, difficult communications, small communities relatively isolated from each other but sometimes colliding violently, a prevalence of weapons, and a harsh patriarchal culture” (254). Combine those factors with a weak, compromised or absent central government, and the result is “government” conducted locally and by the gun.
Fiji is an outlier in this constellation, as Jon Fraenkel shows. Fiji possesses all the elements that have disposed other states towards violent conflict: a society deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines, an indigenous population claiming political paramountcy, a relatively large military force, and a history of coups. What Bina D’Costa writes in this volume of Sri Lanka, where “different regimes used ethnic outbidding and bi-polar imaginings to mobilize both the Tamil and the Sinhalese communities” (102), applies equally, mutatis mutandis, to Fiji. Yet Fiji has never descended into open armed conflict, and remarkably few people have lost their lives in the course of its unconstitutional transitions. Fraenkel is modestly optimistic that Fiji will remain peaceful, not least because the indigenous Fijians constitute an increasing majority of the population, lessening fears that have haunted Fiji’s politics since before independence.
This book is unusually impressive for a number of reasons. The three editors, Edward Aspinall, Robin Jeffrey and Anthony J. Regan, have imposed a tight template on all contributors, each of whom not only explains the conflict in their particular region but also discusses prospects for peace and the lessons that might be drawn. The book has a purpose beyond analysis, seeking conclusions about success in peacemaking in every chapter and summarizing them in a nuanced and perceptive conclusion. Furthermore, the editors are willing to face facts uncomfortable to the liberal peace consensus. They concede that state coercion, while it might exacerbate some conflicts, has ended others: “In Punjab, Sri Lanka, Aceh, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Maluku – all areas where violent conflict has either disappeared or diminished – suppression has been part of the recipe in each case” (273). What matters, they argue, are the circumstances in which coercion is used and the way it is applied. The heavy hand of the Sri Lanka government in crushing the LTTE, they suggest, will live on in people’s memories for generations. Finally, the book places regional events in a wider, global context, pointing to the key importance—and frequent success—of internationalizing conflict resolution since the end of the Cold War.
In short, this is an excellent collection. The analysis is sharp and the policy implications clearly but carefully drawn.
Stewart Firth
The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
pp. 299-301