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https://doi.org/10.33063/diva-505736

Knowledge about violent conflict and international intervention is political. It involves power struggles over the objects of knowing (problematization/silencing), how they are known (epistemic practices), and what interpretations are taken into account in policymaking and implementation. This book unearths the politics, power and performances involved in the social construction of seemingly neutral concepts such as facts, truth and authenticity in knowing about violent conflict and international intervention. Contributors foreground problems of physical and social access to information, explore practices generating knowledge actors' authority and legitimacy, and analyse struggles over competing policy narratives. A first set of chapters focuses on the social construction of facts, truth and authenticity through studies of militia research in the DR Congo, politicians' on-site visits in intervention theatres in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the epistemic practices of Human Rights Watch and comics journalism. A second set of contributions analyses the strategic side of knowledge through case studies of diplomatic counterinsurgency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, African governments' active role in the `bunkerization' of international aid workers, and authoritarian peacebuilding as a challenge to the liberal power/knowledge regime in world politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

This article has a twofold aim. First, it discusses the contributions to the scholarly field of conflict knowledge and expertise in this special issue on Knowledge production in/about conflict and intervention: finding 'facts', telling 'truth'. Second, it suggests an alternative reading of the issue's contributions. Starting from the assumption that prevalent ways of knowing are always influenced by wider material and ideological structures at specific times, the article traces the influence of contemporary neoliberalism on general knowledge production structures in Western societies, and more specifically in Western academia, before re-reading the special issue's contributions through this prism. The main argument is that neoliberalism leaves limited space for independent critical knowledge, thereby negatively affecting what can be known about conflict and intervention. The article concludes with some tasks for reflexive scholarship in neoliberal times.

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.

This paper shows that transitional justice initiatives such as the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Commission for Srebrenica and the establishment of accurate statistics on deaths during the csonflict have had only a limited impact on inter-group reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Popular attitudes towards these initiatives are captured in surveys conducted in 2005 and 2010. The results are not surprising given that the absence, due to the level of external regulation and control, of a politics of post-Dayton state-building means that domestic politics takes place in an arena of dealing with the past. The international community legitimised the three prevalent conflict narratives as a way of achieving a peace settlement in Dayton. These communal narratives were used in the peace-building phase by the local elites to defend concessions gained during negotiations and to oppose changes imposed by external supervisors of the Dayton Peace Accords. This has transformed the debate over the recent conflict from a transitional process of coming to terms with the past to a permanent state of affairs. This process precludes reconciliation in terms of mutual acknowledgment of suffering and a nuanced understanding of the causes and dynamics of the violent conflict.