“Use devastation in a sentence,” an old, silly joke goes. The answer: “I waited for you at the-bus-station.”

The devastation in Lanao, Cotabato and Maguindanao is no joke, however. Go there and find devastation in the 500,000 men, women and children crammed in deplorable evacuation centers.

Most of them belong to poor farming communities.  Six weeks ago, they had their own homes, cooked their own meals, plowed their land, and sent their children to school. Despite the deprivation, they survived on their own. Government did not have to feed them.

Now the war has made them even poorer and entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. Each day, they are being stripped, piece by piece, of the few remaining shards of dignity that they hold dearly.  
 
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The evacuees are the most visible consequence of the botched peace deal between the government and the MILF. Other immediate casualties are the development programs that have been suspended as organizers and staff retreated to safer areas. Old hurts and biases, resentment and distrust have resurfaced, destroying ties built in various peace-building activities in the past.  AFP and MILF soldiers who shared bunkhouses in the local ceasefire monitoring teams must be among these people at a loss how new friends have so easily turned once more into strangers, if not enemies.

Beyond the humanitarian and social impact, the return to war may yet wreak further, irreversible damage.  According to the study of professor Mark E. Pietrzyk, prolonged civil strife also puts at risk democratic ideals and institutions.

Pietrzyk, in his book International Order and Individual Liberty: Effects of War and Peace on the Development of Governments,  was actually writing about inter-state or international wars, not  domestic armed conflicts between the state and armed movements. But his arguments about how war deters democracy may very well apply to countries divided by internal strife or civil wars.

According to the author, frequent, extended periods of warfare  hurt the prospects of liberal democracy in a number of ways.

For one, war situations justify centralizing more powers in the executive. It also gives the military a bloated role in national politics. Consequently, the potential scenario for either civilian authoritarianism or a military take-over is enhanced. 

Secondly, war or the threat of it creates pressure to clamp down on civil liberties as the government wages its war on branded state enemies, and some rights are derogated in the name of national security.  Free speech, access to information, due process, and curtailment of those opposed to war goals become collateral damage. 

According to Pietrzyk, “The suppression of civil liberties also results from the coercive methods governments require to mobilize for war. In time of war, governments need more than support in principle. They require solid, material support in the form of taxes and soldiers willing to die in vast numbers. Such support may be given without coercion, particularly when a country is under extreme threat. However, when it comes to making large personal sacrifices in blood and treasure, even the most enthusiastic hawks tend to waver. Thus the government must resort to close supervision and coercion to get all to do their share.”

Third, war promotes extreme, polarized positions, particularly ultranationalist and militarist ideologies that have little tolerance for pluralism and participatory processes. As animosities rise, more people may disdain democratic controls on abuse of power for impeding war objectives. A situation like this is fertile for right-wing popular movements that will sideline the democratic reformers.

“For these reasons,” wrote Pietrzyk, “the process of social resistance and bargaining which leads to liberal-democracy cannot take place when a state is engaged in war on a frequent basis. This is not to say that any war is invariably destructive to the prospects of democracy. However, there must be periods of peace long enough to allow democracy to take root and grow.” 

This “peace-facilitates-democracy model is based on the long-term observation that states which experience frequent war and extended security crises will find it difficult or impossible to build stable liberal-democracies.”

Pietrzyk’s polemics was actually directed at the “democratic peace” thesis which argued that stable democracies do not go to war against each other and that democracies therefore are the best guarantee to durable peace.  He instead proved through his historical survey that the reverse may be truer: that peace supports or facilitates the strengthening of democracy.

In this light, the peace negotiations with the MILF should be seen as one mechanism and approach to strengthen and stabilize Philippine democracy. By correcting inequities in the political relationship between the government and a segment of the population who self-identify as Bangsamoro, the latter take part in and become part of a more inclusive and expansive democratic set-up. 

It is this fundamental view of peace talks as one important element of our unfinished  democratization process that our leaders and many Filipinos have yet to grasp.  

(E-mail: mcf178@yahoo.com)