Author: Jamil Ur Rehman Awan

Publisher:

Published: 2019-07-11

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781079855364

The book is a pragmatic study of peace-building which is different from peace keeping and peacemaking as the last two are "fallible" and offer the transient and short term solution to peace. And dealing with conflict under these approaches is also not logically and practically plausible. Why not? The later parts of the book so minutely and thoroughly delineate their "failures" and being "unsuccessful" in attaining the fruitful and enduring results. The reason being, they offer conventional and unethical courses of bringing negative peace and apply the violent and coercive ways of tackling with a conflict, which cannot bring lasting and enduring peace. On the contrary, conflict transformation is in line with strategies used to build lasting peace (positive peace). It stresses the need of engaging "soft institutions", say, love, respect, putting oneself in other's place, respecting humanity, understanding the viewpoint of others on the rival side, and, finally to convert the long time animosity into lasting peace and compatibility. So, it is unjust not to quote Dorothy Thompson who views conflict in the following words, "Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence." Thus, the book elaborates the importance of conflict transformation that opens doors for lasting and enduring peace and shutting the doors to aggression and violence. It helps get rid of negative peace which means absence of war or use of coercion to keep the peace. Hence, all the aforesaid discourses give vent to a question, "what is the connection between civil society and conflict transformation?" Civil society activists and organizations come at middle level according to Lederach's Pyramid Approaches to Peace-building (Lederach 1997). They have connections with both: below level / grassroots level masses as well as the leaders at the top, viz-a-viz top political leaders both from government and opposition, along with the military leadership. As the aforementioned model is applicable to intra-state level, it is only plausible if there is another pyramid model of peace drawn in the context of the rival country to transform the conflict for good. Though Saeed Ahmed Rid has delineated in his research work as horizontal and vertical integration in inter-state conflict yet, mine is different as, unlike Saeed Ahmed, I believe the role of civil society is more important and effective than just those of common people . According to Saeed, people from both countries, contact with their counterparts, in the other country, at the same level; those at the top with their counterparts; those at middle with those at the middle level. In the like manner, people at the grass-roots level have connections with their counterparts in the other country. Hence, as mentioned earlier, my findings are different. It's the middle level civil society activists and civil society organizations (CSOs) that have the capacity to undertake this hazardous and uphill task in the two rival countries, the reason being their capacity to bear the brunt of top-level 'hawks' on both sides. They connect their counter-parts in the rival country and hold conferences and meetings. One of the salient instances is that of civil society organizations (CSO), media groups viz-a-viz, Jang Media Group, Pakistan and Times of India (TOI), from India. Both the CSOs incepted peace building process between Pakistan and India under the banner of Aman Ki Asha (hope for peace).