postconflict, pluriversality, coloniality, peacebuilding, social justice
The temporal term ‘post-conflict’ is used in peace and conflict studies and international development discourses to mark the end of civil wars or the conclusion of peace negotiations. This reference hides sources of persistent violence, and quickly becomes a misnomer in cases of conflict relapse. Postconflict can be reimagined as a qualitative condition that accounts for the lasting impact of war and other conflicts, as a process, and as an aspirational goal; this is possible through decolonial perspectives that underscore social justice as the basis for sustainable, durable peace.
Teresa Jopson is a political anthropologist and researcher. She studies gender, human rights, and social movements in conflict, peacebuilding, migration, and populist projects in Southeast Asia. She is also a gender and human rights adviser for the Western Pacific Regional Validation Advisory Group of the World Health Organization.
Available in English: Dignified Anger
ABSTRACT
The term ‘post-conflict’ is used in mainstream peace and conflict studies and international development discourses to refer to the end of civil wars or the conclusion of internationally recognised peace negotiations. However, this usage hides sources of persistent conflict and violence in the neo/liberal peacebuilding that was promoted from the 1990s by regulatory structures of the international system. This brand of elite-led peacebuilding has not traditionally incorporated diverse local perspectives, creating new tensions and conflict on the ground. Furthermore, the label ‘post-conflict’ quickly becomes a misnomer in cases of conflict relapse, particularly prevalent in the Global South precisely because the sources of conflicts were left unaddressed. As examples from Southeast Asia show, societies that development and funding agencies label as post-conflict are still dealing with various forms of violence and insecurity. In the most basic philosophical and empirical senses, we have yet to find a true post-conflict society. Similar to the distinction between the temporal ‘post-colonial’ label and the qualitative ‘postcolonial’ characteristic, it would be useful to develop the term ‘postconflict’ as a concept that accounts for the lasting impact of war and other conflicts.
This entry reimagines the notion of postconflict through decolonial lenses to contribute to visibilising conflicts that underpin spectacular wars and envisioning forms of peacebuilding that actually address . Reimagining postconflict in light of the means considering the ways in which temporal post-conflict characterisations can be complicit with colonial purposes of extraction and exploitation. Recognising , or the plural ways of knowing and being that connect people to one another and to the world(s) around them, requires that postconflict promotes ways of life that do not actively endanger other beings. This exercise in understanding the entanglements of historical and contemporary conflicts with hierarchies of power creates a more accurate use of the term. It advances multiple levels of social justice that reduce sources of conflict and violence, and thus contributes to a more sustainable, durable peace. Becoming postconflict is then both a sublime goal and a process, which entails eliminating the multiple dimensions of poverty and building social and political consensus in order to promote the best possible quality of lives on Earth.
introduction
Academics and development practitioners use the temporal term ‘post-conflict’ to refer to a time following the cessation of hostilities or the signing of peace agreements between previously warring parties in civil or ethnic wars. This term is therefore a de facto reference to internal conflicts, rather than to international wars between states. The dilemma here is that internal conflicts are described as ‘protracted’ (Azar et al., ), ‘deep rooted’ (Burton, ) and ‘intractable’ (Kriesberg et al., ) for good reason – it takes more than a peace deal to address their intricacies.
Internal conflicts have decidedly different dynamics than wars between states that have their own geopolitical or ideological interests. Thinkers like Mary Kaldor () differentiate internal conflicts as ‘new wars’ in the ways in which they mobilise around identity for access to the state, involving both state and non-state actors such as private security contractors, mercenaries, warlords and paramilitary groups. Kaldor has also underscored that although battles may be rare, territory is captured through political means such as displacement and population control, and financed through globalised, decentralised economy. For Kaldor, rather than being ‘won’, these kinds of conflicts spread, persist and recur.
Thus, while interstate conflicts worldwide have become less frequent (although they are again on the rise; see Mack, ; Rustad, ), internal conflicts persist even after decades of intervention. This is the case in Southeast Asia, where there has been relatively little interstate conflict since the 1970s but the region remains afflicted by lingering conflicts involving ethnic, religious, nationalist and democratic movements within various regimes. The reality is that legacies of the past persist after wars, such as deep-seated colonial social inequalities as well as the infrastructural and financial capacity challenges associated with implementing social programmes in developing states.
This post-war path dependence parallels post-colonial development, where the influence and low investment in infrastructure of both occupying colonisers and rebels have an enduring impact on social conditions long after their rules have ended. These legacies further enable elites to maintain their privileged status during successive tenures, and even during post-conflict periods; for example, a post-war democracy can be an elite strategy to maintain power in the face of demands for change (Huang, , pp. 3–4). In this sense, a post-war democracy offers a façade of change to pacify critics, while maintaining the same structural power dynamics that skew political participation and economic distribution.
This entry invites us to critique the conventional use of the term ‘post-conflict’ as a temporal marker, and reimagine postconflict as a qualitative condition that accounts for the lasting impact of war and other conflicts, a process, and an aspirational goal. The entry is organised as follows. First, surveying cases labelled as ‘post-conflict’ in Southeast Asia, it describes how the end of hostilities or peace deals in some places have left the causes of conflict intact and actually hidden them, thereby perpetuating violence and making these locations vulnerable to relapse into violence. Second, it proposes that being postconflict should be a process, not an event, aiming toward the goal of sustainable peace based on social justice. Drawing from decolonial perspectives on the and , the entry reimagines postconflict as the goal of addressing the material, that underpins conflicts affecting civilians across borders.
The lasting impact of war and other conflicts in Southeast Asia
While the Southeast Asian region is described as ‘peaceful’ (Caballero-Anthony & Emmers, ; Tønnesson et al., ) and the eleven countries in the region are considered ‘no-war communities’ (Raymond, ), in fact their domestic contexts are highly conflictive and prone to escalation. Three iconic examples of ‘post-conflict’ areas in archipelagic Southeast Asia are Timor-Leste, Aceh in Indonesia, and the Bangsamoro in the Philippines. Although it is deeply unsatisfying to reduce each case to a very short description, I briefly introduce each one, underscoring the elements that are most relevant to this entry. Then I show how conflicts have reemerged in ‘post-conflict’ periods or after peace processes (in Aceh and the Bangsamoro) or after a vote for independence (in East Timor).
Timor-Leste is the smallest country in the region in terms of both land area (approximately 15,000 km2) and population (under 1.5 million). It is also the youngest country, and its experience of formal colonisation was the longest of all three examples included here. This island home of diverse Papuan and Austronesian peoples was colonised by the Portuguese from the sixteenth century until 1975. Shortly after the Portuguese left, Indonesia invaded under the military rule of President Suharto and annexed the country. Its residents advocated and voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, with UN support, and Timor-Leste was formally declared a new sovereign state in 2002. In this sense, Timor-Leste successfully seceded from its latest coloniser, Indonesia.
In Aceh in Western Indonesia a long-standing insurgent group, the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM or the Free Aceh Movement) founded in 1976, sought independence for Aceh Province. Following almost three decades of heavy military and counterinsurgency operations on the one hand, and a huge tsunami that devastated Aceh in 2004 on the other, an EU-brokered peace process reached a conclusion in the Helsinki Agreement (also the Helsinki Accords, Memorandum of Understanding) in 2005. In this case, GAM has conceded its secessionist goal and settled for special autonomy.
Mindanao in the Southern Philippines has the most recent peace deal among these cases, signed in 2014 and leading to the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao in 2018. In studying the conflict in Mindanao one can begin from the 1970s, a decade that witnessed mass killings, displacement and destruction, and the emergence of the Moro National Liberation Front (1970) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (1978/1984). However, one may also start over four centuries earlier with the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines and the subsequent marginalisation of Muslims in Mindanao in a Catholic-majority country. Taking this longer view of history provides crucial context for the later emergence of armed movements in the Southern Philippines.
In this long durée view, the Portuguese in Timor-Leste, the Dutch in Indonesia and the Spanish in the Philippines all used tools such as Christianity, the spatial racialisation of Indigenous peoples, the feminisation of tradition as passivity and the suppression of local knowledges, norms and customs (Boatcă, ) in the commission of local . Moreover, the Timorese in Timor-Leste, the Acehnese in Aceh and the Muslim Moros in the Southern Philippines were seen as enemies resisting the occupation of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Spanish and Americans respectively, as well as following the ‘wrong’ religion. Former sultanates in Mindanao then suffered economic, political, and cultural attacks at the hands of Spanish troops, and later by superior military and biological weapons belonging to the US (Majul, ).
Driven by Western imperial powers’ imagination of lands as virgin territories to be discovered, conquered, saved and trained, the scramble for islands in Southeast Asia, as in other parts of the Global South, became a map-drawing project that objectified peoples and transformed configurations of power on the ground (Anderson, ). For example, in the twentieth century the Dutch occupied various territories associated with different kingdoms, including that of the Acehnese, and created a political entity now called Indonesia. Meanwhile the Spanish sold the Philippines to the US for $20 million, including the Mindanao group of islands that was home to Muslim sultanates and Indigenous peoples and which it had barely occupied, much less controlled. I argue that these colonial projects directly relate to and underpin ongoing tensions about and demands for secessionism and autonomy, and the persistence of conflicts in these areas today.
While Timor-Leste has had elections from 2002, internal conflicts re-emerged in 2006 in the form of clashes between the military, police and gangs, which displaced 150,000 people. These tensions are directly related to failures to define land and property regimes to settle competing claims between Easterners and Westerners within the military, and they triggered communal violence (Asia Foundation, ). We see the same in Aceh, where peace should not be taken for granted and where major social and political tensions remain (Jones, , p. 75). A major violent incident occurred in Atu Lintang, Central Aceh in March 2008, where a factional dispute over a bus terminal mobilised 200 people and resulted in the deaths of five people and the burning down of an office (Jones, ; World Bank, ). Violence and intimidation during election campaigns are also part of ‘new conflicts’ (Sari et al., ; Yunandar, ) as political rivalries intersect with resource-based interests (World Bank, ).
Similarly in the Bangsamoro in Southern Philippines, signing peace agreements does not mean the end of conflict. In the wake of the government’s watered-down peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front in 1977 the Moro Islamic Liberation Front became the main insurgent group in the area, clashing further with government troops and fighting for the same Moro homeland. Another peace deal was signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014. Just three years after this celebrated peace landmark Islamist groups occupied Marawi City, an important city in the region, for five months. Official figures declared that over 1,000 people (Islamists, soldiers and civilians) were killed, and 360,000 people were displaced (Amnesty International, ). As of 2024 only 65% of the 40,000 individuals who were to be decommissioned had undergone the process (Inok, ). The elections that were supposed to take place in 2024 are still pending today.
Through the examples of Timor-Leste, Aceh and the Bangsamoro, we can see that the use of ‘post-conflict’ terminology in Southeast Asia is not only misleading; it also hides persistent sources of conflict that have not been addressed. Land distribution and gender inequality are key aspects in all three conflicts, but these were left out in the formal peace processes in all cases, and they are still ongoing sore points (Beeck, ; Jopson, ). At the least, the term ‘post-conflict’ signals fragile arrangements that needs close attention precisely because of the histories of conflict behind them. For example, in the tenuous situation in the Bangsamoro, failures in the peace process are likely to lead to disillusionment with the signed negotiations, sparking communal violence and radicalisation when left unchecked.
Reimagining postconflict as a process and a goal of sustainable peace
If we take conflict as a hostile social interaction between parties (Levine, ) and accept that hostility can be violent if it harms either immediately or latently (Galtung, , ; Krug et al., ), then violence indicates conflict in many forms. For the anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philipp Bourgois () violence is a continuum of harms with socio-cultural dimensions, which exposes how violence can be simultaneously both structural and symbolic. That is, many conflicts based on historical and material claims also have links to .
To address the multiple forms of violence and conflict at a profound level, we need to acknowledge the poverty of the standard peace mechanisms promoted internationally from the 1990s (Pureza & Cravo, ). These mechanisms initially focused on establishing liberal-market democracies and evolved to focus on state-building in the 2000s, and then into hybrid engagement with local actors since the mid-2000s (Mac Ginty, ; Wolff, ), but nevertheless they have remained limited in their attempts to dismantle the causes of conflicts.
In light of conflict relapse and progressive peacebuilding, then, postconflict is best understood as a process, not an event. As critical voices within the liberal paradigm have asserted, signing a peace deal is a step, not the end (Richmond, ). Negotiations and community dialogues must continue beyond the talking platforms promoted by the state or international actors (Paffenholz, ; Tanabe, ). The goal must be nothing less than a durable, sustainable peace, possible only when severe inequalities and injustices are dismantled and the quality of life of all beings is supported and promoted. This broadens the peace agenda to include land reforms and substantial gender equality. Practically, postconflict entails eliminating the multiple dimensions of poverty, and actively promoting social security, consensus-building and participatory governance.
Reimagining postconflict in light of the means considering the ways in which ‘post-conflict’ agreements can be an imposition of the normalised, ‘business as usual’ inequalities hidden in the erasure or silencing of bodies and voices, especially dissenting ones. This may also involve understanding ‘post-conflict’ as merely the absence of active fighting, complicit with colonial purposes of extraction and exploitation. For example, this includes the ways in which natural resources may be unwittingly protected in areas affected by conflict, but become vulnerable to exploitation by businesses both local and international through peace accords.
Recognising , or the plural ways of knowing and being that connect people to one another and to the world(s) around them, requires that postconflict promotes ways of life that do not actively endanger other beings. It should instead be ecocentric, a decolonial approach informed by Indigenous epistemologies, positioning the non-hierarchical entanglement of human and more-than-human worlds as essential to sustainable peacebuilding (Castillo, ). This recognises that the lands, rivers and seas in contested areas are integral to the lives of the people and biodiversity in the locality and beyond. Conversely, the degradation of the environment and biodiversity before and during conflicts are directly related to the peace and security situation post-conflict, with far-reaching effects globally. All forms of life in postconflict must also benefit from peace through their protection and care.
Instead of using the terms ‘post-conflict’ and ‘postconflict’ as temporal markers indicating the conclusion of state-led peace processes, this entry proposes the use of postconflict as a qualitative condition, referring to the enduring legacies of colonial and postcolonial conflicts, a sublime goal, and a process. This exercise in reimagining postconflict entails understanding the entanglements of historical and contemporary conflicts with hierarchies of power, which enables a more accurate use of the term. It advances multiple levels of social justice that will reduce sources of conflict and violence, and thus a more sustainable, durable peace. Postconflict as both a goal and a process entails eliminating the multiple dimensions of poverty and building social and political consensus, in order to promote the best possible quality of lives on Earth.
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How to cite this entry:
Quintana, L. (2025, December 16). Digna Rabia – Dignified Anger. Virtual Encyclopaedia – Rewriting Peace and Conflict. BMFTR – Network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18672427. https://rewritingpeaceandconflict.net/digna-rabia/
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