Can old foes set aside strife?
October 12, 2005
Graham Fraser, Toronto Star
When a natural disaster like the weekend's earthquake strikes, the hope is that old hostilities, in this case between neighbours India and Pakistan, will take a backseat to humanitarian needs.
Unfortunately, the record suggests otherwise.
"The assumption seems to be that empathy and compassion arising from a natural tragedy will trump politics, long-standing grievances or strategic interests," says Robert Muggah, a Canadian working with the Geneva-based institute, the Small Arms Survey. "Sadly, human behaviour doesn't always conform to these expectations."
Sri Lanka was levelled by the tsunami, Sudan has faced drought and Colombia landslides. But in all these countries, the natural disasters have had no effect on ending long-running conflicts.
"I have a hard time thinking of examples of reconciliation taking place" after a disaster, adds David Welch of the University of Toronto's Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. "People have disputes for tangible reasons. Natural disasters rarely make those tangible reasons go away."
Disasters can even exacerbate the antagonism.
"Any time a natural disaster causes the mass relocation of people, or increased competition for scarce resources, it can make things worse," Welch said.
The head of a group that works with women's groups in the developing world also finds that while there is an immediate impulse to forget hostilities in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the sentiment doesn't last.
Vivian Stromberg, executive director of MADRE, says communities that are routinely neglected continue to be overlooked in disasters.
"What happens is that there is too small a response to the need, and that exacerbates the tensions rather than easing them."
For instance, in Nicaragua, political parties took over the job of delivering aid after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
"It wasn't to their political advantage to deliver to the very poor indigenous communities along the Atlantic coast," she said. "So (those communities) actually were ignored."
Optimism was high after the Dec. 26 tsunami that the devastation would force better relations between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. And it appeared to - at first.
In the early days, there were cases of the Sri Lankan army helping the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and vice-versa, said University of Toronto political scientist David Cameron, who has worked in Sri Lanka with the Forum of Federations.
"But pretty rapidly, they reverted to the status quo," Cameron said, with hostilities re-emerging. The 2002 ceasefire was breached and assassinations resumed as both sides accused the other of bad faith.
The one bright spot on an otherwise grim horizon: Aceh province, where a peace agreement was reached with the Indonesian government in the wake of the tsunami.
Muggah points to the deal between the Free-Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government as the exception to the rule.
"(It) emerged partly because GAM's popular base was severely affected (by the tsunami)," he said. "It also emerged after an arduous period of negotiation."
Despite the gloomy record, Cameron sees some grounds for hope in the wake of the earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir.
India has offered assistance, and Pakistan has accepted it, providing Indian troops do not cross the border.
"India has seen this as an opportunity, and Pakistan has been open to it," he said. "It is a sign that on both sides they are inching towards accommodation."
Copyright 2005 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
