Dealing with cost of conflict

Dealing with cost of conflict

Ignas Kleden, Center for East Indonesian Affairs, Jakarta

The relationship between conflict and social integration
appears to be a paradox. On the one hand, social integration
exists when conflicts can be prevented, or if ongoing conflicts
are resolved peacefully. The absence of social conflict can lead
to social integration, whereas the presence of social conflict
jeopardizes it.

However, one can go the other way around, and say that in a
society with solid social integration it is more difficult for
conflicts to emerge in comparison to a society where there is
widespread instability. When the situation is insecure, almost
everything, whether serious or trivial, can bring about violent
outbursts and conflict. This means the absence of social
integration can more easily cause conflicts, whereas solid and
stable social integration becomes the most effective factor to
prevent social conflict from occurring and escalating.

Where does one start? This question is much more challenging
than just a theoretical exercise. Ambon is an exemplary case as
far as the relationship between conflict and social integration
is concerned. After more than three years of violence and
destruction, there is virtually no feeling of security there.

The worst situation occurs when people are no longer confident
of being able to establish reconciliation and restore peace, even
if they are more than willing to do so. To put it in theological
terms, there is a contradiction between hope for peace and faith
in human ability to establish peace. One hopes and yet does not
believe in what one is hoping for. In March last year, we
discovered, through extensive interviews with people of six
groups in Maluku and with six groups of people from Maluku
province in Jakarta, that at least 80 percent of the population
in Maluku at that time wanted to end the conflict. However, this
figure needs to be analyzed carefully. The fact that people want
to end war and conflict does not necessarily have to correspond
with a serious determination for conflict resolution and
reconciliation.

The wish to terminate conflict might be no more than an
expression of being tired of fighting, a hint of the desperate
desire to live in some form of normality, a signal of exhaustion
and a lessening of aggression and ability to defend, or of being
uncomfortable living in unwanted confinement. In other words, it
is a negative option, a need for "freedom from". This is
something different from the wish for reconciliation and peace,
which is a positive option, a realization of "freedom for". In
the case of Ambon and Maluku, we are faced with the bitter fact
that the transition from the negative option to the positive
determination is volatile and beyond predictability. Social
conflict has gone so far as to transpose social insecurity into
psychological instability.

The experience of hardship, destruction, violence and fear has
been so deeply embedded in the collective memory that it is very
difficult to forget. What often happens is that the stubborn
memory makes the past actual again. This "psychological present
tense" of violence should be handled carefully because any
intervention that aims to handle this lag of consciousness too
hastily, will be faced with the suspicion of whether some
outsiders want to help or to traumatize.

This essay ventures to suggest that, for the time being,
psychological treatment is a priority, and that it is no less
important and urgent than legal action or political intervention.
This becomes all the more apparent if we take the situation of
children into consideration. Young boys and girls who have seen
their mothers murdered, their fathers kidnapped and their
brothers and sisters injured and disfigured, cannot easily rid
themselves of bitter feelings and resentment. If this situation
is not tackled swiftly, either by government or by private
initiatives, than these children will grow up and allow revenge
to mature with them.

Of course, religious teachers can tell them that revenge is
wrong. Or teachers of law can try to change the minds of their
pupils by saying that one should never take action that would
transgress one's own rights and life. All these good intentions
will not work if the shaky psychological foundation of those
children is not made more stable through special treatment. It is
an illusion to expect people to be ready for the process of
reconciliation if no serious efforts have been made to bring them
closer to normality. If this is not done with some success, we
will just be causing future conflict when these children come of
age and start thinking why they are condemned to suffer unduly.

So far there has been no organized effort to give serious
attention to special psychological treatment. There might have
been some individual attempts in that direction but this is too
little to be of much consequence. Violence produces violence.
This is true, not only in the synchronic sense, in that a
violence will instigate more violence, but also in the diachronic
sense, that violence against one generation will cause violence
in another. Violence comes from within human beings, and
something should be done to improve the interior condition of
people, before we can embark upon external action.