Issue 32 – July 2020
TOPICS: Gukurahundi, Niger Delta Oil Exploration, North Caucasus, US-Taliban peace talks
Coordinator:
Christian Chereji and Ciprian Sandu
Content – Sommaire:
ARTICLES in Issue 32 – July 2020:
Zimbabwe: Gukurahundi victims’ monologues, state silences and perpetrator denials, 1987-2017
Terence M. MASHINGAIDZE
Abstract:
The Zimbabwean government instigated Gukurahundi massacres resulted in the death of around 20 000 people. The majority of the victims belonged to the Ndebele ethnic group while the Fifth Brigade, a Shona dominated military outfit, were the main perpetrators of the mass killings. The atrocities ended with the signing of the Unity Accord of December 1987 between the ruling ZANU (PF) party, which had masterminded the atrocities, and the opposition (PF) ZAPU, whose supporters had borne the brunt of state highhandedness. After the cessation of hostilities the Zimbabwean government frustrated open conversations and public commemorations of the massacres. What conversations on Gukurahundi that took place were largely victims’ monologues. To interrogate this state instigated silencing of exposure and remembrance the article suggests an exigency for counter-narrating erasures of memories of harm and impunity. In the aftermath of massacres, I argue, harmed communities embolden themselves and coalesce their fractured senses of self by openly memorialising their collective suffering through open conversations about their shared victimhood, commemorations, and the assembling of monuments. The Robert Mugabe led government’s foreclosure of such avenues for public acknowledgements of mass injuries that are supposed to serve as visceral registers of what societies should remember to avoid in the future reveals its disregard for the wounded humanity of the constitutive political other. Thus, Gukurahundi as an historical episode reveals the pathology of mass harm silenced and rendered insignificant by the state.
Keywords:
Zimbabwe, Gukurahundi, Massacres, Denialism, Victimhood, Silenced.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24193/csq.32.1
Nigeria: Delta Oil Exploration Politics and the Portrayal of Brutal Impact in Yerima’s Hard Ground
Uche-Chinemere NWAOZUZU, Ifeanyichukwu ABADA & Emeka ANIAGO
Abstract:
This study presents an interdisciplinary approach towards a critical analysis of some impacts of crude-oil exploration in Niger Delta and polemics of viable conflict resolution framework. This approach involves analysis of Ahmed Yerima’s creative portrayal in Hard Ground which revolves around the variables activating conflicting emotional interests in matters concerning ‘black gold’ in Nigeria, and how these variables resonant in debates and demands for Nigeria’s polity restructuring because of perceived resource mismanagement. More so, our scope includes an analytical attempt at illuminating elaborately our interpretation of the dimensions to the loud and shrewd inclinations subsuming what some see as solution to the lingering conflict, and the suppositions explaining why others see the debates and demands on polity restructuring as dark convoluted ploys aimed at hidden agenda. Hence, through select theories of victimhood, this study attempts to elucidate on the variables propelling conflicting emotional interests about oil exploration in Niger Delta, by looking interpretively hard and deep on the perspectives, views and suppositions defining the ideologies and inclinations propelling them. In the end, this study notes that the disenchantments and troubles with Nigeria’s polity framework and structure as it relates to oil exploration in Niger Delta are subsumed in Hard Ground’s creative contribution as a means of assessing the points to the fault-lines that characterize the subsisting socio-political structure upon which Nigeria stands and wobbles.
Keywords:
crude-oil, emotional interests, politics, polity restructuring, Niger Delta.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24193/csq.32.2
North Caucasus: Promoting conflict resolution strategy in an unstable region
Maxim POPOV
Abstract:
The article is devoted to comparative analysis of contemporary political theories of socio-cultural integration policy as a way of constructive conflict resolution in the North Caucasus. Latent ethno-political conflicts remain the most noticeable of contemporary challenges and threats to civil solidarity and ethnic peace in this unstable region. The fundamental issue that requires a constructive solution in order to ensure political stability in the North Caucasus region is the promotion of multi-level and inclusive sociocultural integration. This study claims that the escalation of protracted, deep-rooted conflicts is the result of large-scale social disintegration as a fundamental threat to the North Caucasus stability. Socio-cultural disintegration is superimposed on ethno-territorial and social polarization: ethno-political particularism, religious traditionalism and large-scale demodernization of the North Caucasus archaize regional identities, hindering
the formation of civil society.
Keywords:
sociocultural integration policy,conflict resolution strategy,peacekeeping, peacebuilding, the North Caucasus.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24193/csq.32.3
Afghanistan: US-Taliban peace talk: CPEC perspective
Hafeez ULLAH, Riaz AHMAD, Muhmammad Musa Khan
Abstract:
The US policy makers attempted the political settlement of the Afghan conflict for the first time in 2011. This study finds the US policy shift in 2017 along with the strain of the conflict on the US economy, rise of ISKP and the war fatigue among the Taliban fighters have enabled the success of US Taliban negotiations. Now that a tentative Peace Agreement has been signed between the two parties, a more complex phase of intra Afghan dialogue has begun. USA, China and Pakistan have extended their support for all Afghan stakeholders to engage in a meaningful dialogue for a political settlement of the conflict. Both China and Pakistan desire the extension of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan. The paper analyzed the Afghan Peace Talks with reference to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. The motivation and incentives for CPEC incase of successful peace negotiations are be discussed in detail .
Keywords:
US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban, Peace Talks, CPEC
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24193/csq.32.4
