Description
This paper explores the extent to which military personnel involved in peacekeeping and/or peacebuilding activities engage in hybrid peace, and the potential that these activities can be reinforced through a greater awareness of inclusive peace. As military interveners gain a better understanding of the important roles that locals can play in ending violence and establishing and maintaining peace, the more hybrid peace approaches are utilised. Often, military interveners focus their hybrid peace approach entirely on engagements with key local leaders. While this does constitute hybrid peace, it is problematic as it is not inclusive, potentially excluding significant parts of the population (e.g., youth, women, minorities), which could contribute to perpetuating current conflicts or fostering new conflict (e.g., between those excluded and political elites). This raises the question of how inclusive these hybrid peace approaches are, and if hybrid peace can be more inclusive. To explore this, the paper starts by examining where hybrid peace and inclusive peace overlap in conceptual work on peacekeeping and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies, before engaging in policy guidance from actors such as NATO and the UN. The paper then turns to identifying ways in which an inclusive-hybrid peace dynamic can be explored in the context of researching the activities of international military interveners in Kosovo (NATO’s Kosovo Force, KFOR).
