By bringing together local women of different ethnicities in Kyrgyzstan to collaborate on rebuilding their communities, women are addressing the root causes of the violence in their region: years of unaddressed mistrust and separation among ethnic groups, as well as crumbling social infrastructure and welfare systems.
The claim that decentralizing decision-making power to local communities can strengthen national governments may seem like a contradiction. After all, the common assumption is that power concentrated at the national level strengthens a country’s autonomy. Therefore, how could national sovereignty possibly be reinforced if the responsibilities for planning and managing development programs are distributed among local people?
When national governments assist initiatives that help communities determine and implement priority development projects – such as job creation, education, health, and environment – they create in the process diverse administrative partnerships at all levels within their country. Consequently, local organizations and communities seek to maintain these partnerships with the national level because they help satisfy their human needs and better enable people to shape the institutions that govern them. Central governments benefit by creating overall targets and inter-regional balance and competition that can foster performance, affect remote areas far from the national capital, and enhance their legitimacy.
Imagine a reconciliation process in Iraq that fails to include militias or Sunni and Shia hardliners? How about a reconciliation process in Afghanistan that sidelines violent Pashtos in the south? The chances of either process succeeding would be slim. In both cases, the excluded parties comprise a powerful majority and thus must be included for reconciliation to produce a lasting peace. Keep anyone out and they are bound to want in. That type of exclusion is exactly what is being proposed in Somalia. The country remains in turmoil following the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in December that toppled the Islamic Courts Union. Ethiopian troops continue to fight resistance in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere in the country. Yet, amid this violence, Somali leaders in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) refuse to include the former Islamic leadership, along with other sectors of society, in forthcoming talks. This grave mistake is bound to instigate further violence, much like Mogadishu has witnessed in the last months as hundreds have died in clashes in the city. As long as the current Somali government continues to exclude parties that are more popular than the TFG, Ethiopia, and the United States combined, reconciliation will be a mere façade.