'Holy' wars are grabbing our attention again. Whether it is ISIS in Iraq/Syria, kidnapping of teens in Palestine or Pakistan's military action against Taliban, religious issues loom large and more often than not are the major point of contention between the warring parties. There is also a danger of a future Shia-Sunni conflict that can engulf more than a dozen countries from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.
Conventional wisdom (and there is some research to back this up) claims that religious conflicts are more intractable because of the non-negotiability of religious beliefs. It is argued that combatants, because of their other-worldly ends, continue to fight even after all reasonable analysis would demonstrate the impossibility of victory. Eyeing defeat or a long and costly stalemate, a pragmatic strategy would be to cut the losses and grab what is (maximally) achievable through negotiations. However, in case of religious conflicts, due to the indivisibility and sacredness of the core beliefs, negotiations for peace have no chance and fighting continues.
Source: Does Religion Cause War?
Conventional wisdom (and there is some research to back this up) claims that religious conflicts are more intractable because of the non-negotiability of religious beliefs. It is argued that combatants, because of their other-worldly ends, continue to fight even after all reasonable analysis would demonstrate the impossibility of victory. Eyeing defeat or a long and costly stalemate, a pragmatic strategy would be to cut the losses and grab what is (maximally) achievable through negotiations. However, in case of religious conflicts, due to the indivisibility and sacredness of the core beliefs, negotiations for peace have no chance and fighting continues.
Isak Svensson & Emily Harding contend that peace is achievable in religious conflicts as combatants do not have to necessarily compromise on their core beliefs (How Holy Wars End: Exploring the Termination Patterns of Conflicts With Religious Dimensions in Asia, Terrorism and Political Violence). Their main argument is as follows:
We argue that there is a possibility for conflict resolution that does not require concessions on core beliefs and aspirations. Religious aspirations, we contend, are primarily associated with conflicting parties’ ultimate goals, and less concerned with the particular means of achieving such goals. They are also not the sole aspirations of parties: conflicting actors can have territorial, structural, economic or other ambitions as well. This opens up space for two conflict resolution mechanisms that can be applied in religious armed conflicts. First, drawing on the distinction between means and ends in regard to religious demands, there is a theoretical possibility for enabling political procedures to replace the fighting. Second, by disentangling religious demands from other non-religious demands, horse-trading procedures can be utilized in order to reach agreement without requiring concessions on the religious dimensions.
As evidence of their contention, authors chose six different conflicts in Asia that have ended and argue that most of these conflicts have been resolved through negotiations based on means-end differentiation, in case of core beliefs, or horse-trading on non-religious issues. The following table (from Svensson & Harding) presents the basic outline of the conflicts.
Selection of cases of terminated religious armed conflicts
Philippines Territory: Mindanao MNLF Islamic State in Mindanao
Indonesia Territory: Aceh GAM Islamic State in Aceh
Uzbekistan Government IMU; JIG Islamic State
India Territory: Punjab Sikh Insurgents Sikh State in Punjab
Nepal Government CPN-M Secular State
Tajikistan Government UTO Islamic State
Svensson & Harding analysis demonstrates that peace was achieved mostly through negotiations.
Outcomes of conflicts with religious dimensions
patterns goals achieved? trading process Rebel victory
Indonesia, GAM X X
Philippines, MNLF( 2) X X X
India, Sikhs X
Nepal, CPN-M X X
Tajikistan, UTO X
Uzbekistan, IMU X
Uzbekistan, JIG X
The article is very thought-provoking but there are few issues that need more elaboration. First, while conventional wisdom argues that religious conflicts are more difficult to resolve and authors have tried to prove it wrong empirically, this idea that religious conflicts are different than other conflicts has increasingly been contested. Scholars have argued that it is very difficult to declare a conflict as a religious conflict. Svensson & Harding define religious conflict in the following way:
A conflict has a religious incompatibility when one of the conflict parties makes in their stated goals a specifically religious demand that involves the nature of the state. Such demands can have to do with concern, for example, about the religious characteristics of the state. The demands could have to do with concern that the state, or part of the state, should give certain preferences to one particular religion...
While the definition seems reasonable, it is difficult to define the above conflicts as purely religious conflicts. In each of these conflicts, religious demands were intertwined with demands for democratic, political or civil rights. Authors have to clarify why they consider these conflicts as religious conflicts and other conflicts (such as East Timor) as non-religious conflict.
Second, if Svensson & Harding's aim is to show that peace can be achieved through negotiations in religious conflicts (as is the case of other conflicts) than outright victories of government/opposition should not be presented as evidence. In case of victories, winning party imposes whatever it likes. The indivisibility or sacredness of losing party's beliefs matter little. Some concession may be made but they are wholly at the discretion of the winning side.
Finally, authors have to explain why Nepal is not considered a 'rebel victory' in their analysis. The government, led by King Gyanendra, bowed out after Maoists controlled almost eighty percent of Nepalese territory and blockaded Kathmandu, the capital. It was not other opposition parties' pressure that forced monarchy out, it was the Maoists.
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