Peace mostly comes with a handle with care label on it. Could the sense of loss currently being experienced then be a result of there being too many peace accords to begin with, which entailed some wear and tear here and there? It could be so. But the fact is that in the media blitz that accompanies even the slightest of agreements, a deal signed in Mogadishu or an accord reached in Sri Lanka inspires greater hope than ever before in the history of mankind. A fall generates proportionally that big a thud. A barrage of questions strikes the mind. Had the accord been reached in haste? Was it in fact an illusion, an island of peace in the long, never-ending desert of war and feud?

All peace accords seem to follow a set pattern where the signing ceremony gives way to attempts by the formal incumbents, say the governments, seek to create rifts in the informal outfits, often labelled as (former) rebels. Or it could be that one of the many rebels fighting the legal, illegal establishment is separated from the others for some kind of official patronage, as in the case of Palestine. Palestinian Liberation Organisation was a guerrilla outfit alright, but it was tempered and tempered until it became acceptable as opposed to Hamas which was downright outrageous. In the next phase some time later, the onus shifted from finding the moderates in an already toothless PLO to finding the pragmatists within a Hamas that had done well in the polls.

TNS special report this week -- which takes a look at some of the recently made and broken accords -- confirms that, with minor differences as commanded by the local realities, the same strategy was applied by the government in Colombo. The Sri Lankan government called a truce with Tamil Tigers some four years ago, only to renew the old dispute right now. In the interim it tried as anyone else to proceed through a policy of isolating the opposite side in small groups.

Even more closer to home, the same line is being so diligently pursued by New Delhi in its relations with the Kashmiri (ex)militants. The emphasis is most clearly on dissection which begins with making exceptions among rebels, breaking them down in smaller groups that are easier to deal with and easier to be disposed off. In the final analysis, the rule then would be that accords do tend to favour the governments even if initially they give the impression of legitimising an illegal organisation.

In the anarchic international system, as the realists' like to call it, where it is not possible to prevent states from going to war with each other or within themselves, to expect the peace agreements to last longer than they usually do is a difficult proposition. It is difficult, for instance, to predict with finality that this type of agreement would last and the other type won't. There isn't one successful formula that can be replicated to produce similar results -- especially when the material at hand is states and people inhabiting these states.

It may be a misconception too that earlier peace agreements were less fickle than the ones concluded in the last decade or so. There indeed are more players engaged in peace now. The multilateral organisations and thinktanks who specialise in peace-making, peace-keeping and conflict resolution perhaps outnumber the disputes themselves. Yet we hear there is a lack of institutions to lend a binding force to these agreements. Going by the numbers of actors engaged in peace, one wonders if they are doing what they are supposed to or just the opposite.

Before discussing peace agreements, perhaps it is more important to understand what we mean by peace -- whether peace is only the absence of war or there is more to it? If it's only the absence of war, then, for all practical purposes, North and Korea have been at peace for about fifty years now. Or is that just a truce?

Theoretically, peace agreements begin with ceasefires to pre-negotiation agreements to interim or preliminary agreements to comprehensive and framework agreements to implementation agreements. Practically they do not follow the logical order. In the Palestinian-Israeli case, Oslo was followed by ceasefire agreements, made, broken and made again. This despite the fact that ceasefire agreements by definition are military in nature and are to be followed up by political agreements 'if the ceasefire is to be maintained'.

Thus it may be useful to pinpoint some common factors that are known to have caused the failure of agreements, both in the case of civil war and interstate conflicts. Let's for the moment ignore the argument that civil wars, there have been more of which since the end of World War II, are "less likely to be ended by a negotiated agreement than war between countries" ('Why Peace Often Fails to End Civil Wars?' Nov 1997 By Kathleen O'Tool). Let's ignore the counter-argument, too, that it was decolonisation soon after the second world war that sowed the seeds of these civil wars by the manner the geographical boundaries were drawn or redrawn.

Though it's rather difficult to ignore another of Kathleen's insights when she quotes James Schear, the then US deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs, as saying: "for most of the parties in most of these conflicts, war is a safer bet" because it has "a familiar pattern; it imposes order, stifles dissent, generates profits ... provides employment, provides a pathway to advance... Peace, on the other hand, is a leap into the unknown..." This is where the international patrons of peace carry it too far.

Actually, it may not be such a good idea to ignore the causes of the conflicts or wars both for present purposes as well as for the peacemakers who sit on the negotiating table. Accepting these limitations, there are still quite a few lessons learnt from some of the peace processes that need to be discussed here.

To begin with, the content of the agreement pretty much decides its fate. For instance in Oslo, some of the issues that formed the heart of the conflict like "Palestinian sovereignty or statehood, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, refugees, etc." ('The Oslo Peace Process', Dec 2002 By Gershon Baskin) were left out of the initial agreement to be dealt with later. The article rightly states that "Leaving the end game completely open helped to add to the growing distrust between the sides while also allowing for new facts to be created on the ground that impacted upon or limited the chances of reaching agreed upon final status arrangements."

The article lists a host of lessons from Oslo; another useful lesson being the 'bottom-up' approach that the peace processes must follow. The Oslo peace process adopted a top-down strategy instead, with the expectation that "political agreement between the leaders would significantly change the realities on the ground" and thus people would be forced to change their view and support the peace process. The people-to-people annex that was later added in Oslo II was not seriously taken by the donors or the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority. This is one principle strictly being followed in the Indo-Pak peace process -- that does not follow a full-scale war anyway.

There are of course structural or situational factors that are beyond the control of the warring parties. The examples cited are India-Pakistan and Israel-Syria where the enmity began at or before independence. Then there is the argument that in the anarchical world, "international agreements are fundamentally unenforceable. Without a world government, states are not subject to a higher authority that will guarantee their contracts..." ('Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace'). This inevitably brings forth the need for international institutions that make the agreements easier to follow. Ignoring of course the critics who are bent to prove that such arrangements are "epiphenomenal -- they are created reflecting the interests of major powers, and they fade away when these interests shift..."

Finally there is the military versus economics argument, the latter definitely a subject carrying more possibilities of peace. Those who are engaged in peace-making have only started thinking on these lines. Y.K. Saksena, an Indian general who was the deputy force commander for the UN mission in Angola once understood the issue, at least partially, when he said that foot soldiers in civil wars become a problem very soon if the agreements do not contain provisions for their employment. He also sought a greater role for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in implementation of peace agreements than UN's Blue Helmets or other military units. A lot of sense, coming from a general.

One wonders if the professional peace-makers will ever have the good sense to look for economic interdependencies between the warring parties. The guess is that this would make the most lasting peace agreement.

What makes peace treaties last, firmness of intention on the part of the contracting parties, or continuation of the circumstances in which the treaty was concluded?

That is, of course, a dummy question, designed to draw attention to the twin stools on which peace treaties, if they are not to fall, must plant each foot. And in the case of the Palestine-Israel peace process, think of the stools as themselves standing on quicksand. When the Oslo talks resulted in a breakthrough in 1993, there was just as much a chance that the progressive, phase-by-phase settlement envisioned in the ensuing Declaration of Principles, signed at Washington amid great fanfare, would fall between bad faith and changed circumstances. And, like the proverbial snake that bites its own tail, bad faith altered the circumstances and altered circumstances led to more bad faith.

Edward Said, in a piece in the 'London Review of Books' that marked his falling out with Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Liberation Organisation, called the agreement "an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles". For those familiar with its European context, mention of Versailles is bound to set off a series of historical synapses.

Versailles may not have been the first treaty in which the victors placed the responsibility of assuaging their pride and their coffers squarely on the shoulders of the defeated, but it was the first, in the twentieth century, which expected the vanquished to admit moral responsibility for its action in instigating war. The moral dimension extended even to the onus of the continuation of the treaty. Germany was repeatedly accused of failing to stand by the disarmament clauses of the treaty, while the Allied powers did not honour their half of the bargain. The problem with Versailles was that the victors felt themselves bound to it on terms of power, and expected the losers to serve out their sentence on terms of moral obligation. Then Adolf Hitler came along and told the world roundly that Germany did not feel guilty; in fact, rather the reverse, it was the fatherland of remorseless, Tuetonic war-gods. Appeasement suitably followed.

Before 1919, we are told, international arbitration was modelled on the much healthier example of the boxing match. Nations donned their gloves and tried to knock each other out. Then, having settled scores, they shook hands and moved on. In this bismarkian world, treaties were as the times were. If political reality changed, then so did political treaties.

International politics has lost more than its innocence since then. Already by 1919 it was clear that warfare would involve whole populations and immense resources. No longer could statesmen shake the dust of war off their feet and get on with life. Then, too, there was the global economy to consider, whose health was permanently vulnerable to every belligerent twitch of a nation's muscle.

There is one glaring difference between Palestine and interwar Germany, and that is the most important one. Germany, though humiliated, was still strong. Palestine is weak. Any show of belligerence on its part is greeted, not with appeasement, but with accusations of terrorism, targeted assassinations, bombing, and recently, with a financial boycott. But, like in Versailles, Palestine is invested with the primary moral responsibility of making the treaty work.

What led to the failure of the Oslo process? Despite some gains made by the Palestinians -- notably the creation of an independent Palestinian authority, control over a very constrained area of the Gaza strip and Jericho in the West Bank, and the mandate to set up political institutions, the Palestinians did not secure guarantees on a number of crucially important fronts. These included the fate of Jerusalem, of the right of return of Palestinian refugees abroad (who could potentially alter the demographic balance of the Jewish state in the absence of settled boundaries) and the Palestinians' control of their economic and natural resources. The interim period that the agreement allowed to sort out these problems, was plagued by Hamas suicide bombings and Israeli intransigence about West Bank settlements.

These have remained perhaps the thorniest political problems in the peace process to date. In an initiative undertaken by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as part of the 2003 Bush-sponsored Middle East roadmap, Israel plans to evacuate some 70,000 settlements, but it is estimated that as many as 400, 000 settlers will remain where they are. The issue of the settlers is not merely one of land-and-resource theft, but also an emotional one, many of the settlers regarding their encroachments as legitimated by historical right. The suicide bombings are regarded by others, and not only within Israel, as the expression of another right -- of resistance. These fanatical forms of belligerence have become the greatest stumbling blocks in the peace process.

Demographic pressures again -- the fact that the birth rate in the areas controlled by the Palestinian authority is higher than in Israel -- are forcing Israel to barricade itself behind a wall, literal as well as metaphorical, of security paraphernalia, in a besieged bunker-state where Israelis will nevertheless be in a majority. So the 'realities on the ground' in Palestine are changing once again, or rather, are being made to change by political decisions.

What new form the peace process might take remains to be seen, though the prospects are not very encouraging. As long as the Palestinians negotiate from a position of weakness and the Israelis, form one of strength, it stands to reason that the Palestinians would wish to resist the status quo and the Israelis to maintain it in their own favour. The only way out of this impasse, as has long been foreseen, is for Israel's patrons, especially the US, to let Israel go to the negotiating table in a weaker position.

To say that the planes that slammed into the twin towers of World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, shook the whole world is an understatement. The events of that fateful day have, in fact, turned the entire global system upside down. Otherwise, how can you explain that Islamic extremists, waging a religious war against the Christian West, should force a change in the way Tamil (Hindu) nationalists fight against a Sinhala nationalist (Buddhist) government in a remote and tiny part of the world.

The global scope of 9/11 attackers' pan-Islamist, anti-American ideology should not go very far in explaining how the future of Sri Lanka's ethnic/nationalist conflict is determined. The Tamils fighting for their homeland neither have global pretensions, nor are they motivated by some grand theories of clash between cultures.

Yet, in less than six months after September 2001, warring parties in Sri Lanka struck a ceasefire agreement, mainly because of what happened during that cataclysmic month and immediately afterwards. (Violent) movements for the realisation of the right to self-determination and independence suddenly fell from grace all over the world, turning freedom fighters into terrorists and rebels into mass murderers. With one stroke of the majestic American hand, supporting the cause of the underdog became a misnomer, with those priding themselves on being on the wrong side of the status quo and national and international establishments running for cover -- ideologically as well as physically.

Since then, the history of relationship between the Sinhala-dominated governments in Colombo and the Tamil-dominated northeastern part of the island has been the history of crests and falls in the global political system.

As the United States went on an ideological and military offensive against any real or imagined threats from radical movements and recalcitrant rulers, elsewhere the governments facing separatist rebellions were finding themselves at an advantage vis-a-vis their challengers. In places like India, the spectre of terrorism was successfully raised to garner the crucial American support in fight against separatists and radicals of all religious, ideological and ethnic stripes. In neighbouring Sri Lanka things could have hardly gone any other way.

"The international opprobrium against terror acts has worked in Sri Lanka's favour," Ranil Wickremesinghe, the then Sri Lankan Prime Minister told reporters in September 2002. "We have to take advantage of the mood after September 11."

Now that the American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan is going nowhere, those who have been on the run for the better part of the last five years or so are again finding space to land their feet on. The stunning intensity of Anti-Americanism in Iraq and its ability to wage an unrelenting war against foreign occupation are inspiring others to pick up arms from where they had left them after 9/11. As for leaders and cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they never left their weapons in the first place.

Precisely for their reluctance to keep away from their arms and ammunition, it will be a grave error of judgment to suggest that the entered the agreement voluntarily. The global circumstances were so strongly set against them, that effectively they had to climb down from their demand for a separate Tamil homeland and agree to autonomy within the existing state of Sri Lanka. Internally, the conflict had reached a stage where no side could think of a thorough victory, though this 'hurting stalemate', in the changed global situation, was bound to hurt LTTE more than it did the government in Colombo. If everything had gone as well as dictated by the terms and conditions of the 2002 ceasefire agreement, the Tigers would have faced a huge debate on their nomenclature -- the deal was made possible only after they withdrew from their demand to have a separate state, a Tamil Eelam, of their own.

The government in Colombo then realised, and rightly so, that the Tigers had become vulnerable. Tacitly but quite actively, it launched a campaign for (internationally) isolating the Tigers and (domestically) weakening them by encouraging splits in their ranks and waging a war of attrition through proxies.

To the surprise of no one but the Tigers, Sri Lanka was quite successful in its endeavours. LTTE remains a banned terrorist organisation in many important and powerful countries, including the United States, Britain and India -- recently joined by the 25-country European Union and Canada.

Meeting in Tokyo on May 30, 2006, the United States, the European Union, Japan and Norway -- co-chairs of the consortium that finances Sri Lanka's peace process and bankrolls post-conflict reconstruction -- warned that LTTE will face a "deeper isolation" if it does not "renounce terrorism and violence". The meeting also insisted that the organisation "must show it is willing to make the political compromises needed for a political solution within a united Sri Lanka".

The organisation has had a huge split, though not exactly down the middle, when its regional commander in the east of the country, Colonel Karuna, broke away in March 2004 and has since then launched a number of successful murderous attacks against his former comrades. Pro-Colombo Eelam People's Democratic Party and other pro-government Tamil militias have also been quite active of late in the Tamil-dominated areas, eliminating prominent pro-LTTE politicians and engaging in activities designed to provoke the Tigers to retaliate.

Sri Lanka's political landscape has also shifted dramatically since February 2002, when the ceasefire agreement came into effect. The current administration in Colombo, headed by President Mahinda Rajapakse, is hinged on the backing of two staunchly nationalistic Sinhala parties, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna(JVP) and Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) which agitate for resuming the war and enforcing the writ of the state in LTTE-dominated areas. The two parties don't even accept the idea of devolving power to the Tamil, let alone granting them regional autonomy. One of them, JVP, has gone to the extent of questioning the neutrality of Norwegian facilitators of Sri Lankan peace process, accusing them of taking sides with LTTE.

Recently, LTTE, too, has started questioning the role of some other foreigners involved in bringing peace to the island nation. After the organisation was banned by the European Union late last month, it has insisted on the removal of some members of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the body that oversees the implementation of ceasefire agreement and records its violation. Apparently, there is some reason to this demand because the monitors that LTTE wants removed come from the European Union's member countries Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Certainly, these countries can't claim that they can still maintain their neutrality even when dealing with an organisation they think as a breaker of international law and a spoiler of global law and order.

The problem with this demand is that SLMM has an exclusively Nordic composition and 37 of its 57 monitors come from the three countries mentioned above. Even if Norway -- the initiator, promoter and prompter in-chief of Sri Lanka's peace process -- agrees to this demand, it will find it very difficult to recruit from countries not considered biased by one or the other party to the conflict in Sri Lanka.

Though apparently both sides are still committed to the piece of paper called ceasefire agreement, their disagreement on its finer print -- like the composition of SLMM -- is driving them visibly apart. After the Sri Lankan government and LTTE reaffirmed their commitment to the agreement in February 2006 in a meeting in Geneva, there has been a renewed surge in violence, resulting in the killing of 600-700 people in a matter of less than six months.

The situation has not just deteriorated physically. There has been a visible hardening of the attitudes on both sides of the divide. Sri Lanka's Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera, addressing the Norwegian Parliament on June 14, ruled out "parity of status" between his government and LTTE. "I want to make it crystal clear that there can never be any 'parity of status' between a legitimate, democratically elected government and a group practising terror that has yet to renounce violence or show any willingness to enter the democratic process," he is reported to have told Norwegian legislators. If one party to a conflict believes that the other side is not worthy of an equal status, those advocating a peace process must be forgiven for their naivete. Apparently, the government in Colombo is becoming convinced again that it can defeat LTTE militarily. The 'hurting stalemate' that forced the ceasefire agreement is no longer hurting Colombo, or so it seems.

LTTE, on the other hand, is desperate to ensure that it does hurt. Apart from renewing their deadly suicide attacks against Sri Lankan military and targeted killing of their opponents, the Tigers have reached where they were before the ceasefire agreement took effect. After a scheduled meeting between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE did not materialise in Oslo early this month, the Tigers issues a formal 'Oslo Communiqué' signed in the name of the "de facto State of Tamil Eelam" that exercises "jurisdiction over 70 percent of the Tamil Homeland" and has its own laws, independent judiciary, police force and full administrative apparatus. The statement reaffirms LTTE's "policy of finding a solution to the Tamil national question based on the realisation of its right to self-determination".

LTTE may be gambling on the global scene, yet again showing signs of change because of the reverses the Americans and their allies have suffered in their global war against terrorism. The organisation may also successfully compete for a 'parity status' with Colombo when it comes to a monopoly of violence. But the ceasefire agreement is certainly buried deep in the trash can of recent history. This bodes particularly ill for Sri Lanka not just because the willingness of the peace process's facilitators to carry it forward is wearing very thin. Norway's Minister of International Development Erik Solheim declared after the aborted meeting in Oslo: "The parties must take responsibility for the worsening situation. They have been acting contrary to our advice. There is at present time no room for a Norwegian initiative."

The dusty streets in Mogadishu are shaken by loud unceasing noise of gunfire. The 123 elite US soldiers are pitched in a battle against the rebel militias loyal to Muhammad Fara Aidid, a local warlord in the war-torn Somali capital. A US black hawk purrs above the street as it lowers the soldiers to the ground while on its guard against rocket-propelled grenades. The Humvees comb the area to sniff out the Kalashnikov-brandishing anti-US locals. Minutes into the fighting and the soldiers realise that it is as much a game of numbers as it is a game of resolve. The soldiers finally manage to leave the place wounded and broken. Uncertainty overtakes the streets again.

This is how the Oscar-winning flick 'Black Hawk Down' by the Hollywood director Ridley Scott provides a glimpse into the Somalia of 1993 -- when the civil war was at its peak. Though the film ends on a standard 'positive' note where the peace-loving ordinary Somalis are shown hailing the US forces, it certainly throws some light on the actual situation as well. More than a decade down the road, the situation has changed little. The regional and international players, according to the critics, have invariably played both the trouble-makers as well as the trouble-shooters.

With no central government in Somalia since 1991, the outside forces became influential overtime by supporting various groups in Somalia, particularly Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, all of which have supported various Somali factions and transitional governments. Ethiopia, for instance, which is hated by many Somalis for its pro-US stance, was the venue of several Somali peace conferences in the mid-1990s. Talks at the Ethiopian city of Sodere during the period led to some degree of agreement between rival clans.

As before, after fifteen years of civil war, the hope is the last straw the Somalis are clutching at. Recently the Islamist Alliance of Somalia also known as Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which now controls large parts of the country, agreed to hold peace talks with the transitional government in the fourth week of June, in Khartoum. The alliance, which defeated the US-backed warlords militarily last month, is taking part in the talks made possible by Yemen and Ethiopia. The peace talks, many believe, are aimed at finding a settlement between the transitional government and the alliance. Some experts are optimistic saying that this is the first real effort to try and bring normality to Somalia since the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991.

The efforts of people like Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, and the Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, chairman of the Arab League, seem to be promising little success if seen in the historical context. Since 1991 some 14 attempts, some unsuccessful and some partly successful, have been made by the local and international peace-seekers to end violence in the country and form a stable government. Is bringing the Somali transitional government and the Islamic militia to the negotiating table a useless exercise? Will the two abide by the rules expected to be laid down in the agreement? Will an agreement be signed in the first place? The county has seen many peace accords in recent years that have been broken and flouted sooner or later. The governments of Egypt, Yemen, Kenya and Italy also have attempted to bring the Somali factions at the negotiating table but with no positive results.

But consecutive failures have not dented the resolve. The regional peace-makers like the Organisation of the African Unity and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) did bring their weight to bear on Somalia. In 1997 the AU and the IGAD gave Ethiopia the mandate to play its role to bring about Somali reconciliation.

In 2000, Djibouti hosted a reconciliation conference. The effort didn't go down the drain and in August resulted in creation of the Transitional National Government (TNG) whose three-year mandate expired in August 2003. In early 2002, Kenya organised another reconciliation effort under IGAD auspices known as the Somalia National Reconciliation Conference, which concluded in October 2004. In August 2004, the Somali Transitional Federal Assembly (TFA) was established as part of the IGAD-led process, with Shariff Hassan Sheik Adan as its speaker. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected transitional federal president of Somalia on October 10, 2004 and Ali Mohamed Gedi was approved by the Transitional Federal Assembly as prime minister on December 24, 2004 as part of the continued formation of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG). A cabinet was formed in January 2005.

If the past is any guide, the poor population of Somalia, with a growth rate of 2.4 per cent, is unlikely to pin hopes on the coming talks in Sudan. The peace conferences in Somalia have failed to make headway not just because the US or the regional powers preferred safeguarding their interests over quick resolution of the dispute. There have been much more solid reasons to scuttle the process. Muslim delegates at the Somalia peace talks in Nairobi in 2003, for instance, threatened to leave because of the presence of wild pigs at the venue. At other times it has been difficult for the organisers to hold a peace conference at a hotel because of non-payment of dues of previously held conferences at the same place.

To understand the roots of Somalia's recent woes one will have to go back to the year 1970 when Siad Barre proclaimed Somalia as a socialist state, forming close relations with the USSR. After the disintegration of the USSR in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1991, Somalia's equation with the USSR changed. 9/11 gave another dimension to the issue. The US accuses Somalia, the Islamist rebels to be precise, of harbouring members of al-Qaeda -- a charge that the Islamists have denied.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) has underlined the urgent need for deployment of a regional peacekeeping force in Somalia. Amr Musa, the Arab League chief, was expected to attend the talks in Khartoum (scheduled to commence on the day these lines were being written on Thursday, June 22) . But there was trouble from the very beginning. The talks were being sponsored by Yemen and Ethiopia, which the Islamists have accused of supporting the transitional government. The transitional government in Baioda, west of Mogadishu, claims the Islamists are plotting to overrun the whole country. The international observers are keeping their fingers crossed. After all these years it is as much a game of resolve as it is a game of numbers.