To stop ‘Child-Soldiering’
— Resolve conflicts and raise socio-economic profile —
By H. Dwijasekhar Sharma
Contd from previous issue
By mission creep, we mean a widespread, ruthless use of Counterinsurgency Operations (CIOps) and associated expansion of objectives and the resources deployed towards a strategic aim.
The locus and role in conflict resolution – denied to women – here seems to hit back at her now, in so far as she is rendered helpless when her children are leaving her, not so much because of greater love for militancy, but apparently because she can not afford proper food, education etc. They already get ‘the rough end of life’ in poor households, bearing as such unavoidable burden of child-rearing and time-old disproportionate share of running the household. Above all, they rarely imagine, far from, enjoy real equality and status before the law.
Individually, woman may falter, err; or be messed with. But on every issue, collectively husbanded during the known history of Manipur, their causes are always advanced. With a characteristic unrelenting stand, whoever be against them – British colonialists, security forces, royalty, anti-social elements, they remain unanswerved from their ‘mission impossible’. They remain not only apolitical but also above board through a State-wide network which is the envy of modern marketing experts. One may now conjecture even that: clearly Manipur history would have been different had feminists not organised Nupi Lal at least twice during the same 20th century. For there are social analysts who perhaps rightly saw a third feminist movement in Nisha-Bandhi (Meira Paibi) against addiction, excesses during CIOps.
Now, on introspection, who is responsible for luring children into militancy? Government leaders (for allowing law and order to deteriorate), school teachers (for negligent teaching), fathers (for not earning enough to afford better children’s education); or mothers (for not monitoring children’s progress). At the end of this one-event story the cooked (ripe) state of the rice is irreversible, even if the conflict is, somehow, resolved. Putting differently, children and their parents bear the brunt of the conflict. They are thus the virtual stake-holders in the conflict but, are there incognito, as is now increasingly felt.
5. Truth be told!
The old truth about counterinsurgency is that the army can win every battle, yet lose the will to fight an intractable war. This remains true of both North-West and North-East India; then (colonial days), as well as now (postcolonial days). In such a fight against a weaker but elusive enemy, the odds are on the cheaper man (read child-soldier). As of then, each security (British) personnel cost “two thousand pounds” against “ten-rupee jezaid” in NW Frontier Province: “A scrimmage in a Border Station/A canter down some dark defile/Two thousand pounds of education drops to a ten-rupee jezaid.” (Rudyard Kipling)
Two centuries down the line, North East India, or Manipur is no better: but worse off for the drifting children are only half-educated, if at all. The main culprit is neither the parents, nor the children. Perhaps not even so much the local Government leaders, because, on second thought, after scrutiny of present-day NE India, there are some “deeper traumas” or “deeper history”, still unresolved by the Central Government.
Even if the NE-polity delineation is complete (?), some fault lines (lack of “ease” in accessibility: as over Kolkata-Delhi) appear on the market-access radar, flowing from “geography and history” or geo-terrains and Partition (1947). Imagine the cut-throat competition generated by accessibility-based market-driven forces in mainstream nation, at whose backwater lie the NE/Manipur ‘scum’. Because of these fault lines NE price line is 30% jacked-up, against the national logistics cost by 13 per cent of the GDP (or 9% in the US).
Manipur (read NE India) has been “kept without any option” much like the colonial “captive market” whose “necessitous man” – worse than economic man as in post colonial days – are now approaching the status of second-class citizen, without any human right profile or retarded growth aspirations. Wherever the people are contented as in most progressive States, dare the militants withstand the wrath of the people – upon own children being otherwise misled?
6. Logistics revolution:
Only through a logistics-revolution covering: infrastructure (multimodal; air, rail and road) and service providers, can NE overcome its connectivity-hazards, and discourage hardened resource-bargainers as also militants. In addition, Centre need be solicitous to the prodigal son. Like Australia, even Canada is offering much higher bounties for extracting, say, platinum from Ontario province, so that the aborigines can “raise their profile”.
It’s ‘now or never!’ Peace need be given a chance, even if belatedly. Time was people used to toe the official line and hope – against hope – that insurgency may be over sooner than later. For instance, its latest is to ask people to bear for yet another ‘two years’, just hinted while announcing use of hovercrafts in CIOps for “attacking high-valued targets in Loktak Lake.” But ain’t politicians known to give more tall promises, but hardly ever to wisen their opponents?
Most violent conflicts the world over today are not international, but intrastate in character. They involve insurgents, secessionists, or even ‘resource-warriors’ (a la Manipur’s Hundung/Tipaimukh/Loktak environmentalists; or Meghalaya’s uranium conservationists asking for more concessions to ‘raise the socioeconomic profile’ of Meghalayis). But negative peace or its variant, armed conflict, being of recent origin, there is no mechanism, as such, for intrastate dispute. This is one main reason, why the Middle East crisis took all these six decades, unresolved, although the crisis in Nepal got solved because of its uni-ethnism. Precisely so, because military victories have resolved only few conflicts since WWII. But all others remain either unresolved, or resolved through peace talks.
But the “trick in all peace-making is to find new commonalities”, according to Sharon Rosen, an adviser to Search for Common Ground, a Non-Government body dedicated to conflict resolution and prevention. This Jerusalem-based unit had its core activity in building up mutual respect “in a way that will assist more conventional peacemaking” by neutral bodies, cognoscentes.
7. Skillful negotiators:
Between non-violent conflict and violent conflict there is a very thin wedge of difference. In the former we attack the problem, while in the latter the identified ‘enemy’. For people in school, it would be a main score to master the skill of peaceful problem solving; how to attack the problem and not the person. But traditionalists like us do not enjoy arguing, being stubborn about our attitudes. But we have to forsake it. And we must be proud as well for knowing how to fight. What we are not skilled at – and there is a skill for that – is peaceful problem-solving.
In a way, conflict is an essential creative element. Within limits, it is to be entertained as the means to change – the means by which ‘our social values of welfare, security, justice and opportunities for personal development can be achieved.’ Such non-violent conflict is ‘the only guarantee that the aspirations of society will be attained.’ For lacking such awareness – this crucial catalyst for social change – Andaman & Nicobar aborigines remain unchanged all these millennia. On the other hand, conflict (of the violent and destructive sort) is rocking Manipur, as many other parts in NE India, Central India, or farther still, Middle East and East Africa. Time was when peace could be imposed. But the nature of world’s conflicts has changed so much recently that there is demand for a new type of peace negotiators. The Kenyan instance shows how the age-old conflict resolution mechanism has changed. NGOs provided tactical advice on the mediation process, such as when the negotiators need have a “retreat” and how to involve the media. They also drafted agreements as the two sides spoke during negotiations, so that at the end of each day an agreed statement could be issued. That delineated the vital progress of the peace talk.
NGOs provided the first conduit between rebel Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian Government, as the Indonesians became angered with its role in East Timor. In Nepal, it again established the first links (2000) between the Government and the Maoists. The basic role of trust (via the mediator) in peace talk is underpinned in such talks. No less important is another: “plausible deniability.” So much so that in Nepal “neither side wanted their own people and cadres to know they were talking to the other side,” according to Andrew Marshall who sought out the first Maoist interlocutors. Once denied, it becomes a negative landmark in the peace process.
8. Peaceable citizens:
Yet, a few basic qualities are generally found in elderly persons, conspicuously absent in adolescents. These are: discretion, modesty, empathy, non-judgemental mind-cast, ability to overcome cultural barriers – in fact consensually recognised as peace-clinching qualities. For peaceable atmosphere particularly between two sworn ethnic groups we have to find commonality from scratches. Well-poised with all these secular qualities, anybody can know more about the grassroot reality of a situation in terms of lack of trust for the other. Better still, if the spiritual leadership could contact their counterparts.
In such long-drawn reconciliation processes, often in ‘stop-go-stop’ modus operandi, only those with a Himalayan patience can sustain. In some cases the religious ones would tend to be better reconcilers than irreligious persons. Above all, faith in one’s own religion or faith is the lynch pin in the almost un-ending peace talks. All the more so where faiths differ. The pastors can very well co-work on a platform with counterpart imams, priests and missionaries. With church involved, Christian ethnogenes unwaveringly stick to agreed roadmaps, despite regrets. Inter-ethnic (-faith) dialogue accordingly stand to gain.
At times peace-making by Christian evangelists in south Sudan did look mired by an unhappy mix of missionary work and mediation, since admitted by the Congressionally-funded United States Institute of Peace. Another dimension is added by the Netherlands Institute of International Relations who used 27 Christian, Muslim and multi-faith peace-groups for a study in 2005. Their strength, it is reported, lay in “long-term commitment, long-term presence on the ground, moral and spiritual authority, and a niche to mobilise others for peace, the intriguing peace-effort by virtual strengths.
Jean Paul Lederach further identifies truth, mercy, justice, and peace as enabling reconciliation but acknowledges the tensions and paradoxes existing between them. Truth, he says, is the acknowledgment of wrong and the validation of painful loss and experiences; but is paradoxically linked to mercy, or the need for acceptance, letting individual and group rig, and a new beginning.” Similarly justice, which requires restitution, social restructuring and respect for individual and group rights, is tied to peace which stressed interdependence, security and well-being.
9. Show that ‘you mean it’:
Another difference now manifest is that the mainstream view has shifted to development particularly under the much-vaunted 2020 NE Vision (2nd July 2008). While unveiling it, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh admitted: “History and geography cannot be changed, but the constraints they impose can be broken.” But the underlying conditionality is NE’s “independentist zeal” which can perhaps be combated by a greater development tempo enthusing greater participatory zeal among the misled youth in the development exercise. But there is no cast-iron link leading from Centre’s policy-change to a persistent rise in development momentum.
At Rs 18,027 (2004-05) the per capita income (GDP) of NE region was less by 31 per cent than the all-State average of Rs 25,969, haunting DONER Ministry and growth-enthusiasts alike.— to be contd