Afghanistan National Reconciliation and Peace Process

Summary:

After decades of war in Afghanistan in late 2001, first attempts have already been made by Afghans and international organizations to consult the Afghan people on how to build capacities in pace-building which was an encouraging sign. However, the people in general are still too reluctant to speak about their suffering during the war. Instead, their current priority is to struggle for economic survival in the highly competitive post-conflict reconstruction business with its emerging social injustice. This pragmatic attitude causes a basic problem. If the past is not addressed, efforts to build a lasting peace are endangered. As lessons from other post-conflict societies have shown, national reconciliation contributes to overcoming the past and reuniting a war-divided society (Schirch, Rafiee, & Sakhi, 2013). There are several ways to bring about peace, stability and harmony in Afghanistan. This paper reviews some issues crucial for discussing and designing a strategy of national reconciliation. Moreover, for narrowing the gap between the rival perceptions there is also a need for an Afghan peace process to prepare the ground for peace-building and a future reconciliation process and implementation of an Afghan mechanism of national reconciliation including the ‘’lessons learned’’ from the post-conflict societies.

Conflict history & Structure:

There are other protracted conflicts which have also gone through different stages and seen several regimes changes. However, hardly any conflict has such a complicated history as the Afghan one. Beginning of this conflict traced back to the late 1970s when Kabul witnessed a fierce power struggle between four ideological schools such as conservative members of the royalist elite...

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...who have specialist knowledge, experiences, and skills in working on comprehensive peace processes can advise and leverage the support from other sectors of government on behalf of developing a sustainable outcome.

Works Cited

Council, H. P. (2012). Afghanistan's vision by 2015 . Kabul: High Peace Council law committee .

David, L. (2012). Afghanistan: Pathways to peace, New Directions for an Inclusive Peace in Afghanistan. Peace Build , 5-12.

Jarvenpaa, M. (2013). Making Peace in Afghanistan: The Missing Political Strategy. United States Institute for Peace, Peace brief, 3-9.

Maass, C. D. (2012). National reconciliation in Afghanistan: Conflict history and search for an Afghan approach. Internationales Aisenforum , 7-29.

Schirch, L., Rafiee, A., & Sakhi, N. (2013). Designing a comprehensive peace process for afghanistan. United States Institute for Peace, 5-30.