Warfare, vulnerability and survival: a case from southwestern ethiopia

Interrupting the balance: reconsidering the complexities of conflict in South Sudan

By the start of 2014, violent conflict had erupted across much of South Sudan following initial violence in Juba on 15 December 2013. The speed with which the fighting has spread raises questions regarding the impact of national-level politics on violence at the local level. This article develops a framework in which violent conflict can be comprehended as a response to the interruption of the negotiation of the balance of power between groups; the negotiation is interrupted when that balance tips in favour of one group, such as through changes in the national political market or government reforms. The article provides two cases studies of attempts to strengthen the state that inadvertently interrupted local power relations between groups. In response, the groups engaged in violent conflict to reinstate a balance of power. Both examples involve conflict among Dinka groups from 2005 to 2008.

The social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary war

There have been more than 160 wars and armed conflicts since 1945, almost all in the Third World, and more than 50 currently. More than 90% of these are internal rather than between sovereign states. There has been a sixfold increase in the number of war refugees worldwide since 1970, who now number 1% of the global population. Ninety per cent of all casualties are civilians. A key element of modern political violence is the creation of states of terror to penetrate the entire fabric of grassroots social relations as a means of control. The valued institutions and ways of life of whole populations are routinely targeted for destruction. In the 1980s many such wars were played out on a terrain of subsistence economies. The back-drop is of environmental degradation, poverty, embedded social injustice, pressure on the nation-state, a global rise in food insecurity and a widening gulf between the wealthiest 20% and the poorest 20% in the world. The World Health Organization is warning of a health catastrophe, with life expectancy in the world's poorest countries falling by the year 2000 and one-third of the world's children undernourished. Understanding a complex and evolving set of causes and effects surrounding war is a considerable challenge to the international humanitarian field, not least the health professions. In recent years there has been a burgeoning interest in the psychological impact of the atrocities of war, and in trauma programmes based on Western psychological concepts and techniques. This individualistic focus risks neglecting the core issue: the role of a social world, invariably targeted in war and yet still embodying the capacity of survivor populations to manage their suffering, adapt and recover on a collective basis. Using the example of Mozambique, Guatemala and others, this paper will discuss the way in which contemporary war damages social and cultural forms, and the range of traditions, values and understandings which these carry. However, society and culture also engage actively with war, with changes in the social order that may come to outlast the violence itself. This paper will also pinpoint the quest for justice as an issue that may distinguish the subjective experience of war from those that arise after peacetime or natural disasters. The work of anthropologists, sociologists, historians and poets in both West and Third World, allied to the voices of survivors themselves, can help the humanitarian field to acquire a more richly textured understanding of the range of responses to war and atrocity, and outcomes over time.