Subnational Conflict Mitigation: Networks, Innovations, and the Uncertain Place of ASEAN

Abstract

Subnational conflict remains a serious challenge for Southeast Asia. Yet the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is still groping for a meaningful role in this area, and most of the load is shouldered by individual regional states, external players, and various civil society entities. Informed by case-studies of Mindanao and Aceh, this chapter argues that conflict mitigation efforts are characterized both by innovations (particularly in the areas of hybrid mediation support, civilian peacekeeping, and peace education) and by highly complex networks (in which the roles of ‘non-state’ and ‘state’ actors are often very blurred). In light of these innovations and networks, the chapter advances some modest proposals for ASEAN’s future development in this area, aimed at increasing its chances of weathering at least some of the storms of transitional polycentrism.

Notes

• 1. For an overview, see the Conflict Barometer of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (2015).

• 2. See the discussion in Paffenholz and Spurk (2006, pp. 2–12).

• 3. The unarmed AMM supervised the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement. It drew its 200-odd personnel from Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei , Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as from Europe. The AMM has been dubbed ‘the first concrete security EU operation with ASEAN’ (italics added, Vassallo 2014); it left ‘the EU and ASEAN’ in a position to use this experience as a model for future cooperation (italics added, Feith 2007), and the AMM’s ‘ASEAN’ identity has also been suggested as one of the reasons for the oft-criticized brevity of the operation, since ASEAN ‘did not want to get bogged down in a lengthy intervention in the internal affairs of a member state’ (Schiller 2008).

• 4. Interview, Jakarta, 2012.

• 5. Interview, Jakarta, 2012.

• 6. Many accounts usefully chronicle the history of these conflicts and associated peace processes (see, e.g., Aspinall 2009; Cook and Collier 2006; ICG 2016; IPAC 2015b).

• 7. For information on Muhammadiyah, see Bush (2014) and Fuad (2002).

• 8. For broader context on various kinds of civilian peace initiatives, see Jose and Medie (2015) and Furnari et al. (2015).

• 9. Some of the information in the following paragraphs was drawn from webpages current during the period under discussion but no longer extant. These are: Mindanao People’s Caucus (‘Brief Background’, ‘MPC Members’, and ‘What is Bantay Ceasefire?’) and Muslim Christian Agency for Advocacy, Relief, and Development (‘About Us’).