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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Understanding conflict
>> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 4 >> Understanding conflict Jump to Chapter 4 Sections:
>> Conflicts since the Cold War >> Understanding conflict >> Windows of vulnerability and opportunity >> Foreign assistance, conflict management and conflict mitigation >> Guiding principles for encouraging stability >> Notes >> Background paper >> References
Without resources to facilitate the mobilization and expansion of violence, motives for conflict cannot find expression no matter how deeply felt the grievance or strong the desire for economic or political gain. And even if a nation has such resources , the number of places where these conditions are met far outstrips the number where conflict actually occurs.
State institutions can address tensions and be responsive to the needs of citizens or they can fuel discontent through repression, poor governance, corruption, and inefficiency. Civil society groups can bridge lines of division or they can exacerbate them by aligning with either side. Institutions can block access to resources for conflict by controlling the flow of arms or finding economic alternatives for potential recruits or they can contribute to conflict by providing these resources to different factions. Perhaps most important, institutions can constrain the behavior of elites who see violence as a strategy for gaining power and wealth or they can create conditions that foster their emergence, appeal, and room for maneuver.
In many ways it no longer makes sense to talk about internal conflicts using an exclusively statebased framework (box 4.2). National borders are extremely porous in most parts of the world, and many of the networks that sustain conflict economic, ethnic, religious, political, criminal are transnational.
A number of dynamics and trends have played critical and growing roles in recent violence:
- The politics of identity.
- The economics of violence.
- State and social (in)capacity.
- Predatory states and failed states.
- Regional and international causes.
Coffee and conflict-forcing producers to sell at depressed prices. (Box 4.2)
In eastern Congo, long-standing, informal trading routes between Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo have been brought under the control of various rebel factions. These groups have used their local monopoly on violence to intimidate trading rivals, such as the Nande in Eastern Congo, and to force local producers to sell at substantially depressed prices. In some rebel-held zones, coffee producers have been forced to sell only to the leadership of the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo (MLC) and designated Ugandan buyers.
Source: Morris 2002.
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Last Updated on: October 07, 2009 |
