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by Alfred K. David

South Asia is a unique region where different religions, races, languages, castes and ethnicity are mixed. It is often terms as an ethnic powder keg giving rise to intra-state violence which often assumes an inter-state character with cross border implications, resulting in the trans-border movement of refugees, dissidents and even arms.

The main reason behind such phenomena is that the ethnic, linguistic and religious bondage surpasses national boundaries, creating immediate repercussions in neighbouring countries. Again, in most cases, such problems have had support from across the border with political motives. As a matter of fact, intra-state conflicts and their across-border reverberations have been and still remain one of the important causes of inter-state conflicts in South Asia.

The book Conflict and Violence in South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka edited by Prof. K. M. de Silva, Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), contains eight case studies of conflicts in South Asia. These conflicts have been classified into three categories: namely, those based on religious strife, those based on social conflicts and those based on separatism. The studies on religious strife deal with "Sectarian Conflict in Pakistan" and "Hindu Muslim Conflicts in India: Confrontation and Co-existence".

The section of social conflicts contain chapters on "Caste Conflict in India", "Naxalism and the Militant Peasant Movements in India, and "Vicissitudes of the People's Liberation Front: Insurrection in Sri Lanka". The section on separatist conflicts has chapters on "Bangladesh: Ethnic Turmoil in the Chittergong Hill Tracts", "Separatism, Armed Conflicts in North-East India" and "Separatism and Political Violence in Sri Lanka".

The conflict between the Sri Lanka Government and the Tamil minority, now led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is the most prominent example of intra-state conflict with cross-border reverberations. The demands of the Tamils for greater autonomy was later transformed into a movement for a separate state. The conflict had severe repercussions in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu because 50,000 Sri Lankan Tamils sought refuge there after the 1983 riots, with the number increasing to 150,000 by July 1987.

Tamil militants not only found a safe haven in India but also received training, money and arms from India because of the high degree of sympathy for the Sri Lanka Tamils in Tamil Nadu. India became more involved as the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka intensified. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asserted that "India could not be regarded as just another country as every development in Sri Lanka affects India also."

Her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, took the position that "India has a deep interest in Sri Lanka's unity, integrity and stability". In July 1987, the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord resulted in the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) being deployed to assist the Sri Lanka Government in solving the ethnic conflict. But the IPKF was a veritable failure with India getting embroiled in bloody encounters with its former protege, the LTTE. With the withdrawal of the LTTE in 1989, the Indian Government had to re-think its policy on Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh, in terms of ethnic composition, is the most homogenous among the states of South Asia. Almost 98 per cent of the population is in Bengali. However, since its independence in 1971, Bangladesh has been finding it difficult to integrate its ethnic minorities to the national mainstream. These minorities, mainly the Chakmas, who are less than one percent of the total population and are concentrated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) covering about 10 per cent of the total area of Bangladesh, had been waging a violent insurgency for more than two decades for autonomy. As a result of the Kaptai Dam Project, some 54,000 acres of agricultural land in CHT got inundated, and 100,000 Chakmas became destitute overnight.

To make matters worse, the successive governments of Bangladesh brought in Bengalis from other parts of the country and settled them in the CHT hilly region. On 7th February 1973, the Shanti-Bahini, the armed wing of the Parbattya Chattagron Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) started an armed struggle for emancipation. The Bangladesh Government reacted strongly. What resulted was a bitter conflict between Government troops and the members of the Shanti Bahini in which 8,000 persons died. Fifty thousand tribals were made homeless and cross over to India, or to the interior of the CHT. Thus, lack of mutual understanding, insensitivity to each other's interests and uncompromising attitudes of the two sides, transformed the sense of resentment into an ethnic conflict.

While it is true that the mechanism of conflict management and conflict resolution has not been very much effective, and serious miscalculations and gross mistakes were committed by both parties involved in the conflict, it is equally true that Indian involvement in the problem made it difficult for Bangladesh to reach a solution. Indian involvement in the CHT was largely covert. India gave shelter to the tribals who fled the country in the officially sponsored refugee camps and also provided Shanti Bahini insurgents refuge, training and military assistance, although covertly.

Another area of dispute was the one involving Bangladesh and Pakistan over the repatriation of stranded Pakistanis who were Biharis. Following Bangladesh's Independence, a large section of the Bihari community migrated to Pakistan on their own. According to a survey there are still at least 238,000 stranded Pakistanis (Biharis) living in Bangladesh. Several meetings between the leaders and officials of the two countries have taken place with no solution to the problem, as a result of which the issue is left to uncertainty. Despite their allegiance to Pakistan as citizens of that country, the stranded Pakistanis are living for decades in Bangladesh mostly in the cities, creating a burden on the host country.

Successive governments of Pakistan have so far been reluctant to bring the Biharis stranded in Bangladesh into Pakistan. It may be mentioned here that Pakistan has provided a haven for nearly five million Afghan refugees in the country, one of the largest refugee flows found in a single country in recent times. In the absence of any effective diplomatic measures, they are likely to live in Bangladesh in the foreseeable future. This makes them a potentially destabilising factor. The problem was further complicated with Pakistan's continuous attempts to push Pakistani citizens of Bangladesh origin back to Bangladesh.

An analysis of bilateral disputes in South Asia reveal that virtually all of these disputes are Indo-centric. All the disputes involve India on one side and all other South Asian countries on the other. One of the plausible explanations for Indo-centrism is that all the South Asian states are physically contiguous to India but none of them is contiguous to one another. Of course, there are a few exceptions like the disputes between Bangladesh and Pakistan over the sharing of assets and the repatriation of the stranded Pakistanis, and the dispute between Nepal and Bhutan over the question of the minorities of Nepalese origin living in Bhutan.

Conflict resolution mechanism

Although the end of the cold war did not necessarily mean the end of conflicts in the Third World, it had a positive impact on transforming some of the intractable conflicts into tractable ones. South Asia continues to be a conflict prone region but at the same time there have been conflict resolution attempts too which suggests that the conscious attitude towards war and belligerent violence has changed, and it has changed substantially in the post war era.

In this context, it is most unfortunate that after the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawas Sharif met in February 1999 and signed the Lahore Declaration committing both countries to a wide-ranging agenda of co-operation, this healthy trend was reversed by the Kargil War of 1999. The Lahore Declaration has been repudiated by Islamabad and the situation in Kashmir is worse than at any time in the early 1990s. Heading off a dangerous confrontation in South Asia will depend on India's ability to evolve a more enlightened Kashmir policy and on the international community's ability to restrain Pakistan in the months and years ahead. The Western characterisation of South Asia as a flash point described the reality of the region.

Reference was made to conflicts in the region which were resolved and those that remain unresolved. While most of the disputes remain unresolved or stagnated, there were attempts at coming to an understanding which eventually led to the solution of certain problems. Two problems that were resolved were the sharing of the Ganges water between India and Bangladesh and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) problem. The conflict resolution mechanisms used were intense negotiations and dialogue, both at track one and track two levels, and the confidence building measures taken in the CHT case where the aggrieved party's voice was heard and a substantial compromise was made by all the parties concerned.

Kumar Rupasinghe suggests conflict transformation as a means of conflict resolution in an article in "Strategies for Conflict Resolution: the Case for South Asia" written in 1996. According to Rupasinghe, conflict transformation is an approach which attempts to empower all parties to a conflict, including the often passive victims. There is a recognition that social conflicts need to be transformed in a less violent way, not because violence cannot achieve limited objectives, but because temporary violence and its manifestations maim and injure all sides, including a large number of civilians. He notes the inadequacies of rationally-based approaches to deal with violent conflict and the need to consider some comparative approaches to conflict. He states that each specific culture has enough resources within itself to resolve its own conflicts.

He adds that the task is to identify these meaningfully and stresses the need to use the resources of religious revivalism and religious fundamentalism. He speaks of the role of the Buddha Sangha in the Sri Lankan situation in developing its own approach to reconciliation as well as a vision of its own role in the national peace process. He thinks that this would be a major force for transforming the conflict. He adds, "Such developments must be rooted in the Sangha's own tradition and expressed in their own language. It would be acceptable and legitimate only if it comes from within Buddhism itself, as an internal response to the crisis".

Regional co-operation can be useful mechanism for conflict resolution. The question arises why regional co-operation was so late in coming to South Asia. The colonial legacy has had a negative impact on inter-regional relations in South Asia. Consequently, the relations between the states in the region have been marked more by conflict than by co-operation. During the past four decades, countries in South Asia employed efforts with a view to resolving the issues of mutual discord before going for regional co-operation.

Eventually, it was decided to initiate a process of regional co-operation amidst conflicts and mistrust in the hope that regional co-operation itself would serve as a mechanism for conflict management and resolution. However, SAARC leaders from the outset of the organisation's creation in 1985, remained quite aware of the prevailing situation and were highly cautious when setting the objectives of SAARC with regard to the management and resolution of regional conflicts. Formally, contentious and bilateral issues were kept out of the SAARC agenda.

The central objective of the South Asian leaders was to initiate the process of regional co-operation amidst mistrust and conflicts in the hope that regional co-operation would generate a dynamism of its own, in the process of which mutual confidence can be built so that conflicts and disputes could be resolved, or at least properly managed so as to minimise their damaging effects. Thus, the objectives were set rather conservatively. Nonetheless, the emergence of SAARC provided the region with the hope that South Asia, so long torn by strife, may finally be moving towards a more orderly structure of inter-state relations. But this hope has not yet been fulfilled and, unlike ASEAN, SAARC has not made a decisive shift away from conflict to a course of co-operation in the region.

The first decade since the emergence of SAARC has shown how swiftly politics in South Asia can oscillate between conflict and co-operation, between combativeness and constructive diplomacy. Despite enormous difficulties suffered by South Asian countries in their mutual relationship, SAARC has made considerable efforts to move towards substantive areas of co-operation. The most substantive achievement has been the Agreement on South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) signed during the Seventh SAARC Summit on 11th April 1993. Meanwhile, SAARC has also decided to transform SAPTA into a SAARC Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by year 2005. This appears very unlikely due to the current state of strained relations between India and Pakistan. Any future program depends on the improvement of Indo-Pakistan relations.

While conflict management within SAARC still remains a bilateral undertaking, SAARC leaders also made some efforts to initiate behind-the-scene consultations and negotiations during the SAARC forums with a view to resolving some of the contentious issues. These efforts have also brought some success, however insignificant they may be.

These are:

(a) An understanding on a three year MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) over the sharing of the Ganges water between Bangladesh and India reached during the First SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 1985; and

(b) An agreement between India and Pakistan reached during the Fourth SAARC Summit in Islamabad in 1988 to ease tension in their common borders along with an understanding to refrain from attacking the nuclear facilities of each other.

These remain indicative of the fact that such gatherings may encourage meaningful dialogues on more crucial issues of bilateral discord.

Search for a new paradigm

There is the need to search for a new paradigm for conflict resolution in the Indian Ocean Region. Before that we must find out if there are new challenges facing the region. Undoubtedly the region faces new challenges. This involves halting the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan as well as combating economic under-development. The halt to the nuclear competition and economic development can be brought about only by the establishment of peace, which in turn requires better means of mutual co-operation and understanding among the South Asian countries. Interests, values and experiences while provoking states to wage war, can also make them seek accommodation.

The fact cannot be denied that in all the South Asian countries, momentous changes have occurred with the rise of a new generation in each of those countries. This is a generation of young people which did not live through the partition of the sub-continent and did not experience the pangs and traumas accompanying it. Although they may share the feelings of their older generation, they are not prejudiced. This new generation wants to bury the past and look beyond. It is the generation, which believes in economic reforms and liberalisation and wants to avoid tensions and hostilities.

The reality in contemporary South Asia is that ethnicity, culture and language, emanating from colonial times and working separately or in combination, continue to be the sources of conflicts threatening the stability of the region. Standing at the threshold of the 21st Century, a conscious effort can be made to use these very sources of conflicts as sources of peace. The cultural, religious and ethnic diversities of the region may be put to good use if there is an honest effort to enrich each others' culture and thinking by their mutual transfusion. Side by side, old paradigms have to be refined to suit the new context.

To make a qualitative departure from the past, serious and sincere efforts on the part of the regional countries are indispensable. As we have seen, conflicts in South Asia are too stubborn to be resolved easily or within a short period. It would be prudent if the countries of the region learn to co-exist with the conflicts rather than blocking other areas of co-operation for conflicts that have failed to reach any solutions. The unresolved issues could be put on the back burner to be negotiated slowly. In the meantime, more emphasis should be given to how the conflicts could be managed and confronted constructively.

Therefore, in order to vitalize the process of co-operation within the framework of SAARC, it is necessary to concentrate on the collective efforts of regional countries aimed at resolving the existing conflicts and disputes, improving bilateral relations as well as the overall political climate in inter-state relations. Concurrently, the behaviour of the dominant state in South Asia as well as the neighbouring states has to be modified. The dominant country should forego all kinds of "Doctrine syndromes", and all the other countries of the region should try to get rid of their "phobias" concerning the dominant state.

This is very important because conflict resolution in South Asia demands regional harmonization of differences through peaceful interaction. The countries of the region should look at the conflict as a problem to be solved and not as a contest to be won. It has also to be remembered that sometimes parties change opinions, while sometimes the context can change. The most pressing task of the time in South Asia is the elimination of the existing hot-beds of tension in the region, and the prevention of the emergence of new ones.

The countries of the region in conflict should work to facilitate a setting in which they could meet and approach the problems in a way that would enable them eventually to resolve the conflicts peacefully. In cases where the solution is out of reach, the countries of the region must learn to "live" with the conflicts through effective measures of conflict management. The countries of the region in conflict should work to facilitate a setting in which they could meet and approach the problems in a way that would enable them eventually to resolve the conflicts peacefully. It is absolutely necessary for the region, as conflicts in South Asia not only threaten peace and the stability of the region but burn up resources which could be put to better use to alleviate poverty and other development activities.

In situations where conflict resolution is not possible, the aim should be to ensure conflict management to control the violent eruption of conflict, and thereafter to bring about conflict settlement that would involve the formulation of a short-term solution to a problem even at the risk of its recurrence in the future. This type of step by step approach, i.e. conflict management followed by conflict settlement, thereafter can eventually lead to conflict resolution of even the most intractable and complex problems. It is hoped that conflicts, like the Kashmir issue, and the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict can be eventually resolved in this manner.

It is my fervent hope that our ethnic conflict can be initially managed and eventually resolved by this kind of step by step approach.

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