ABSTRACT
Experience shows that the road from war to peace is seldom straight. More often, the journey is better characterized as a lengthy and winding trip down a crooked path. Improving our understanding of the processes operating in war-to-peace transitions is one of the most fundamental and crucial questions of peace and conflict. This book aims to make a contribution to this important issue by exploring and analysing ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes in intrastate armed conflicts. The scholarly literature often emphasizes ceasefire agreements as central components of peace processes, but it also suggests that ceasefires can influence these processes in fundamentally different ways. They might help facilitate peaceful change, but they can also have negative implications for the dynamics of peace processes. Various scholarly accounts have stressed that there are many unanswered questions about ceasefire agreements in contemporary peace processes. Despite this, ceasefire agreements have seldom been the focus of scholarly research, and there are few empirical studies devoted to the systematic analysis of such agreements. This is particularly true for studies that use a comparative framework to examine protracted intrastate conflicts in the Asian region, which is characterized by modest outside intervention. The ambition of this study has thus been to contribute to filling this research and knowledge gap by developing comparative insights about how ceasefire agreements can be characterized and analysed in relation to peace processes. In contrast to Fortna’s study of ceasefires in interstate conflicts, my focus is on intrastate conflicts, which is motivated by the specific characteristics of these conflicts. They are identity-based conflicts in which competing claims have been made for the same territory, and numerous failed peace attempts clearly demonstrate the difficulty of reaching sustainable solutions to such conflicts. By exploring and analysing ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes in this context, I elaborate on what it means when such initiatives are used in contemporary intrastate conflicts rather than to manage armed conflicts between two states. I have conceptualized peace processes as overarching approaches aimed at finding a negotiated settlement to armed conflicts. Ceasefire agreements have been conceptualized as peace initiatives that, together with other initiatives, constitute peace processes. Rather than merely exploring ceasefires as patterns of action and response, I have considered them in relational terms, as agreements
that need to be contextually understood in relation to the broader peace processes of which they are a part. In Chapters 3 and 4, I focused my attention on analysing ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes in the two conflict settings of Aceh and Sri Lanka. The primary aim of these chapters was to answer the first two research questions posed in Chapter 1. To do so, I focused on two issues: (1) the nature of ceasefire agreements in the conflicts in Aceh and Sri Lanka, in particular in terms of the initiation, form and content, and implementation of the agreements; and (2) how ceasefire agreements can be characterized and analysed in relation to peace processes in the context of these two protracted intrastate armed conflicts. Based on insights from the case studies, in this chapter I address and discuss the third research question posed in Chapter 1, namely: What similarities and differences that can be identified between the empirical cases can increase our understanding of ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes and of war-to-peace transitions in intrastate protracted conflicts? To answer this question, I have divided the chapter into three main sections. The first starts by highlighting some similarities and differences between ceasefire agreements and peace process in Aceh and Sri Lanka. In the second section, to support the argument made throughout this study in favour of the advantage and necessity of recognizing context, I further explore how ceasefire agreements can be contextually understood in relation to peace processes. I do this by discussing the six factors that have been identified as potentially influential for changing the conflicting parties’ attitudes, behaviours and relationships. In the third and final section, I offer eight propositions derived from the empirical analyses. These propositions highlight patterns and characteristics that are important for our understanding of ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes.
