AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

Diachrony versus synchrony 101
Building conflict transformation capacity 103
1. An Overview, and a Summary.
Violence has occurred, in the collective form of a war, with one
or more governments participating, or in the family, or in the
streets. Material and somatic, visible damage is accumulating,
deplored by parties and outsiders. But then the violence is
abating: the parties may have run out of material and nonmaterial
resources; the parties converge in their predictions of the final
outcome and more violence is seen as wanton, wasted; and/or
outside parties intervene to stop the violence, keep the peace,
for whatever reason, like preventing the victory of the party they
disfavor. A truce, cease-fire (armistice, Waffenstillstand, cese
al fuego) is initiated, an agreement is drawn up, signed. There is
a sigh of relief. And bewilderment.
The word "peace" is used both by the naive who confuse
absence of direct violence with peace and do not understand that
the work to make and build peace is now just about to start, and
by the less naive who know this and do not want that work to get
started. Thus the word "peace" becomes a very effective peace-
blocker. Our purpose is to contribute to the worldwide effort to
unblock that process toward a peace beyond cease-fire so that
"after violence" does not so easily become "before violence"./1/
The scene is appalling. The killed, the wounded, the raped,
the traumatized, the bereaved. The refugees, the displaced. The
new populations of widows, orphans, the wounded and war-struck,
the demobilized soldiers. The material damage, ruins; PTT,
electricity and water not working, road, rail, bridges, broken.
2