Peace; from another Aspect
Whether we consider the root cause of war in human nature or in his life environment, a large part of human life has been spent in violent conflicts and war. The history of war is equal to the history of mankind and according to some estimates, only eight percent of human life is spent in peace and the rest in war. Parallel to this long period, war has been an important element shaping human social life, both in the physical and spiritual dimensions. From this point of view, war has engraved its requirements and effects on the forehead of civilization and culture in the long history. On the one hand, in primitive societies, human culture and civilization focused on sanctifying war, violence and legitimizing them. on the other hand, in terms of the structure and organization of social life, warriors were on the top of social hierarchy.
Also, human culture and civilization, in the new era, has also been identified by focusing on war. The difference is that it has tried to organize and legalize violence and war through applying them in institutionalized ways. On the one hand the culture is structured based on the self/other, on the one hand, demarcations and drawing the map of the world clearly shows that human life is based on the principle of conflict and war, rather than cooperation, acceptance, agreements and peaceful approaches. In the recent past, we can mention the First and Second World Wars, which had an undeniable and somewhat decisive impact on the culture and formation of the new world.
Meanwhile, it cannot be ignored that both the structures and formation of life as well as human culture and values have influenced the way violence is used. Changing the forms of use of force and the emergence of phenomena such as soft war and structural violence show the important impact of human structures and culture on violence and war. This interaction shows the fact that war and violence have different layers and dimensions that have preserved and reproduced their presence in human life in different ways. It should be considered that conflict and competition are the basis of human development and progress throughout history. war should be understood in this context and one of the clear examples of this complex and competitive human condition.
From this point of view, the emergence of the new world has become possible not by the elimination and eradication of violence and war, but by changing the nature and forms of the use of violence. In this sense, the new world is nothing but replacing naked violence and force with law and order, which, of course, carries within themselves the requirements of power and violence. That is to say that institutional frameworks and mechanisms of participation are used to maintain order and discipline. In this sense, human civilization and progress have not been achieved by eliminating war, but by changing its nature and applications. The optimistic ideas of scientists in the 18th century that with the advancement of technology, mankind will eventually be able to eliminate war and violence from their lives remained like unfulfilled dreams. For this reason, instead of paying attention to the elimination of war, the efforts of the following centuries were focused on changing the nature of violence and creating institutional, rational and legitimate mechanisms for its use on the one hand and reducing the consequences of violence and war on the other hand.
If, like Max Weber, we consider the modern world to be the product of a transition from naked and unbridled violence to an organized type based on its defined mechanisms (the modern state), the basic question is: how this historical and lasting transition become possible? Of course, The success and failure of countries in entering the modern world lies in the answer to this question. From any point of view, it seems that the transition of societies from unbridled and naked violence to structural, legal and organized violence was made possible in the first step not through dialogue and agreement, but through a realistic approach of the balance of power. We have seen countless examples of violent conflicts and straggles in history, which only lead to peace and calm when the parties involved have come to the conclusion that the other side cannot be eliminated through war, and therefore, a way must be found for living together. As in many other cases, again the fact (the impossibility of eliminating the other) imposes itself on the human will (the effort to eliminate the other). in cases, where social groups have found the possibility of eliminating, destroying and even marginalizing the others, they have not seen the need for peace and agreement and have set the course for victory through war. It is the logic of history that some groups gained power and resources, and many others were either removed from the circle of power relations or pushed to the margins of these relations.
Theoretically, negative peace, which is the state of absence of war, is obtained when those involved the conflict are convinced of the impossibility of eliminating the others. Since negative peace is achieved through the balance of power, it is also called armed peace in international relations. With negative peace and balance of power societies shift from unbridled violence to order, in which people and social groups inevitably live together. In the second stage, with the expansion of communication and entanglement of interests, they are gradually pushed away from confrontation and conflict in the path of living together and cooperation. Only through this process a positive and stable peace based on mutual acceptance can be achieved. In this situation, securing the interests of people and social groups is achieved not through confrontation and exclusion, but through cooperation and interaction. Negative conflicts and confrontation gives way to positive competition. For this reason, positive peace is not only the absence of war, but it is a situation in which all root cause of naked and unbridled violence is faded and cooperation, constructive compromises and multi-layered communication replace war and violence.
If we look at peace from this angle, in Afghanistan, in the first step, the transition from war to peace and from naked and unrestrained violence to legal and institutionalized violence (modern state) is only possible through negative peace and establishing the balance of power. Thereafter, the ground for sustainable peace based on participation and acceptance is provided. the tragic fate of the peace processes in the conflict-filled history of Afghanistan clearly shows that the lack of power balance mechanisms between the involved forces is the main reason for the failure of these process.
Reflecting on Afghanistan’s peace processes shows that the beginning of peace processes and dialogue only became possible when the challenging forces saw themselves in a superior position and the ruling official forces faced the erosion of power. With this situation, the beginning of the peace processes is considered by people and different groups as the superiority of the will of the outside forces over the state, and this, in turn, has accelerated the process of power erosion in the ruling bloc. With progress of peace process, the balance of power between the ruling power and the challenging force has been disturbed in favor of the latter, and in the end, nothing has come out of the peace process except the collapse of the established political system and the victory of the challenging forces. In this regard, the people of Afghanistan have not only paid the heavy costs of the collapse of the political structure, but on the other hand, the new ruling forces have not been able to rebuild the political system. Of course, the reason for this inability also should be found in the fact that with the collapse of the established political system and the lack of balance of power, the newly ruling forces also acts based on their unbridled thirst for destruction and revenge. This is how the naked violence continues and reproduce the cycle of violence in the country.
The final word of this article can be emphasizing on the fact that peace cannot be achieved in the absence of balance of power in Afghanistan, as it was true in other cases. Peace is desirable; But the world of politics is not the field of desires, but the field of possibilities and requirements of power. The possibility of achieving peace without balance of power will be difficult if not possible. Finally, the political and social forces will never take the formation of the balance of power seriously unless they understand that peace is not separate from war but in connection with it. It is clear that if we look at peace from this aspect, rather than criticizing political and social forces and individuals, we pay more attention to the analysis of a situation in which use of unbridled violence becomes possible and the transition from it to institutionalized and legal violence become impossible. It is clear that this situation is the lack of power balancing mechanisms between the forces involved in the conflict.
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