Reconstructing and reconciling a war-torn world.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Warburg, James Paul
• Date: 01 January 2003

Around the world today, numerous communities face an immediate future of intense violence and social upheaval. (1) Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, the Solomon Islands and the Congo are just some of the most obvious examples. In other places, after years of war, there are signs of reconciliation: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka.

In Bosnia in September 2003, for example, a memorial service was held for the 7000 Muslim men and boys who were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995. At the service there were two remarkable signs of change. Security was provided in part by Bosnian Serb police, and the Bosnian Serb prime minister talked about 'respect for the dead' and called for reconciliation. Such a scenario would have been inconceivable in past years. (2) In Rwanda, across 2003, communities experimented with Gacaca tribunals--grass-roots courts conducted to attempt to alleviate the pressure on criminal courts in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide when 800,000 people were killed. In November last year, 673 such tribunals were begun. By comparison, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is grinding on slowly and ineffectively, and although the ex-Information Minister Eliezer Niyiteyeka was sentenced to life-imprisonment in May, we have only seen a total of eleven judgements since the Tribunal began in January 1997. (3) The signs of hope come from the elsewhere, with examples such as the 'Remembering Rwanda' Tenth Anniversary Memorial Project organized for 2004. The hope comes from dealing directly with the problems rather than trying to ignore the past or paint a liberal-capitalist coat of paint over the ruins inherited from times of crisis.

In East Timor in June 2003, a three-day healing workshop was held for the first time by the country's Truth Commission (CAVR) (4) for the survivors of serious human rights abuses suffered during Indonesia's twenty-five year occupation. The workshop was run in CAVR's national office in Dili, the ex-prison Comarca Dalide, once used by the Indonesians to hold and interrogate political detainees. Since its inception in early 2002, the CAVR has taken nearly 5000 statements from victims and witnesses. It is an example of a relatively successful operation that has learned from the strengths and limitations of other commissions, such as in South Africa and Peru.

Does this mean that reconciliation and reconstruction is proceeding productively in such places as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and East Timor? Any answer has to be tempered; any commentator circumspect. Some things are improving in these places. However, if the most optimistic prognoses are for those postwar countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, hopes for reconstructing those devastated by the global War on Terror--Iraq, Afghanistan--are, in the short to immediate term, deeply black. Despite the gains in some regions where their wars ceased years ago, the processes of reconciliation and reconstruction are hindered by numerous problems: attempts by governments to paint over the seriousness of the problems that remain; the lack of systematic connection between the various government bureaucracies, non-government agencies and international interventions; attempts at quick fixes; not to mention the disjointed, self-serving and limited support given by the rest of the world. How much worse will the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq be? In this brief commentary I cannot...