ÇATIŞMA ÇÖZÜMÜ

Conflit analysis

intra-state or civil

Uppsala Conflict Data Program

size

preparation

legitimation

religion

poverty

Physical violence

brainwashing

There are many definitions of war, but it would be possible to identify three main characteristics that are used to define it:

One of the most typical contemporary civil wars is coined as resource wars, and they result from the power dynamics over the control, use and exploitation of natural resources such as oil, timber, minerals, and water. Such resource wars have shown an increasing trend so far and this trajectory will likely be the case in the future since the demand for natural resources have been getting greater than before in considerable proportions. There are many communities across the world that are affected by the scarcity of critical natural resources. For example, the lack of water is likely to be one of the most common civil war causes in the future. However, it is not only the lack of resources that cause conflicts, but also their abundance, which is known as ‘resource curse’. There are many countries in the world that have been torn apart by armed conflict because they have plenty of natural resources such as mines, oil, gas, and timber. This may seem to be paradoxical but the legal and illegal resource exploitation help trigger civil wars and exacerbate them because they provide easily accessible financial resources for the continuation of civil wars (Renner, 2002; Le Billion, 2008; Zambonis, 2004). In relation to the close correlation between natural resources and armed conflict, the following main trends have been observed: Civil wars depend on natural resource export and/or exploitation rather than the abundance of natural resources itself as a factor that is connected to civil war.

The ‘greed’ dimension locates individual and group motivations in the realm of desire for material gain, profit-making and inter-group competition over natural resources. Grievance based motivations emphasise deprivation with respect to material resources, socio-economic status, and political participation (Gurr, 2000). The South African land ownership dispute and resulting abolition of Apartheid stems from the grievance of locals being deprived ownership of the land they lived on.

Although many cultural identities are inherited, they are sometimes created, modified, or reconstructed. A representative example of this is the influence of colonialism on the development of cultural identities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. For instance, the arbitrary boundaries drawn by Europeans in their quest to establish states in Africa and Asia divided once cohesive communities, and in some cases brought together groups who had long been in competition or conflict. Moreover, colonial administrations in many countries utilised the policy of ‘divide and rule’, which led to fierce intertribal rivalries. As the colonial masters withdrew after independence, the struggle for power that ensued transformed these inter-tribal rivalries into bitter and protracted armed conflicts in some regions. This was particularly the case in Africa, where a number of groups are still engaged in armed conflicts over political and economic resources (Rupesinghe, 1998).

There has been extensive research on the causality or correlation between a number of social and economic issues and military conflicts. If cultural factors draw clear distinctions between social groups, socio-economic factors serve to promote the tensions and competition between them. More specifically, such research focuses on the political and economic interests of the actors who engage in conflict. The type of political system in a country can strongly affect both the possibility of war breaking out and its progress. Thus, the political system is a socioeconomic factor influencing violent conflict.

Physical violence refers to violence that harms the human body or physical objects. By contrast, psychological violence includes the types of action that might affect human psychology, including “lies, brainwashing, indoctrination of various kinds, threats, etc” (Galtung, 1969: 19), and the impact of psychological violence is not always easily identifiable. However, an increasing number of studies apply systematic analysis on psychological violence (Krippner and McIntyre, 2003; Martz, 2010). In this case, the oppression and suppression of critical views in the media by the state is a form of psychological violence.

Structural violence concerns the manipulation of the structures and institutions that exist in society by people/groups in order to suppress others. Although these structures and institutions generally support the functioning of society for the benefit of all, they can be exploited to engender structural violence. Suppression of human rights, gender/age discrimination, institutional violence (as within the police or military), and exclusion of some religious groups are examples of structural violence.

Cultural violence has strong links with the day-to-day activities and perceptions of a social group. Various aspects of culture (e.g. religion, ideology, language, etc.) can be used to justify violence against certain sectors of society, thus preventing people from meeting their basic needs and reaching their full potentials. For instance, while the common language shared by a particular social group serves to promote effective communication and social cohesion within that group, it can become a focal point for cleavage between that group and others.

In its widest sense, the conflict analysis is undertaken to have an understanding of:

Conflict mapping is probably one of the most widely used conflict analysis tools and it aims to show the relationships between parties in the conflict. To start with, the size of circles for each party would indicate their power with regard to the conflict. Second, there are different ways of visualising relationship types such as straight lines for close relationships, while dotted lines are used for informal or intermittent links.