SOCIO-CULTURAL OBSTACLES TO PEACE BUILDING IN POST CONFLICT AREAS OF KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, PAKISTAN: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF DISTRICT SWAT

Abstract

Peace building efforts are durable in societies where the conflict is resolved with all its root causes, and the socio-cultural conditions and structures that become the reasons of violence and conflict. Contrary to this, in many of the conflict affected societies peace building initiatives are less effective and face the issues of post conflict fragility and insecurity where to resolve the conflict with a holistic and appropriate way and achieve lasting peace become difficult, and the societies have more chances of relapsing to conflict. Many of these issues are produced by the deep rooted and historical socio-cultural inequalities that are practiced in routine and mostly justified by the social cosmology, structure violence and cultural setup of the society that become the reasons of peace building failure. This research article is a part of PhD study which aims to explore the factors as obstacles to peace building process in post conflict areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province specifically district Swat. Qualitative research methods like grounded theoryand theoretical samplingare utilized for identification of participants, data collection through interviews and analysis. Findings of this study indicate that peace building efforts are mostly affected by the mismanagement of burgeoning young population, attitude and behavioral issues and gender issues.