Living on the Margins: Using literary comics to understand the role of borderland brokers in post-war transitions

This project uses literary comic strips to promote understanding of the role of borderland brokers in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Borderland brokers play an important but little understood role in mediating relations between the centre and periphery and in turn shaping the course of post-war transitions. These brokers include local political or military elites, traders or businessmen and women, or religious figures who mediate between centre and periphery and/or across international borders. The project will conduct life histories of a range of men and women from borderland or frontier regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka, two South Asian countries that have recently seen wars end.

The project builds on the considerable momentum generated by two existing research projects ('Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka and Nepal: War to Peace Transitions viewed from the margins' (funded by ESRC Dec 2015- Nov 2017) and 'State, Frontiers and Conflict in the Asia-Pacific' (2014-18, funded by the University of Melbourne), and several academic and policy networks established through these projects. It explores the life histories of brokers in order to better understand how these figures have shaped and responded to changing post-war dynamics linked to international and domestic peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions. We will collect multiple oral histories of respondents from the two research sites and from those, choose four stories from contrasting regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka (2 from each) to illustrate. The comics will be used in tandem with policy packs and educational resources to communicate key policy messages stemming from the research.

We understand brokerage as a social relation that shapes how power is imposed and negotiated through the capacity of key individuals to mediate across social boundaries and between different scales. Brokers are 'network specialists' whose ability to straddle multiple life-worlds enables them to act as gatekeepers who mediate power and filter access to resources. We focus on brokers who are physically located at the margins of the state.

Our starting assumption is that brokerage is central to post-war transitions. Military, political and economic brokers mediate valued resources and ideas between centre and periphery and across the borderline. In post-war transitions their roles may change; for example military actors become political party leaders or morph into businessmen, or development brokers. These figures may play a critical role in determining the extent to which borderland regions are integrated into the post-war settlement. For example, political leaders in the southern Tarai region of Nepal used their leverage to impose a cross-border blockade in protest at a new constitution. Their stories can therefore help to shed light on the shifting social, political and gender dynamics of conflict and peace, and paint a compelling picture of why conflict persists or how peaceful relationships are built.

The project will produce literary comic strips and books, illustrating first person testimonies recorded with a range of brokers including Muslim politicians in Sri Lanka who struggle to mediate between the interests of their core constituency and the demands of the central state, 'manpower' agents who provide opportunities for marginalised villagers in Nepal to work overseas, and former para-military rebel leaders in Sri Lanka who switched allegiances during the war and went on to take up key positions in the Provincial administration.

We will aim to publish these illustrated stories in the international mainstream media and through a variety of media platforms in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The project will critically examine the potential role of literary comics in research on borderlands and brokers, generating findings that will be of relevance to a wide range of researchers and scholars working on conflict and development.

The project is designed to influence key policy debates that are central to development policy and the ongoing post-war transitions in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Questions of state reform, transitional justice, and post-war development are highly salient in both countries, yet international NGOs, donors and local politicians often fail to engage constructively with the public on these issues.

A focus on borderlands and brokers also provides a radical challenge to the existing international policy consensus on areas such as post-war reconstruction and development, peacebuilding and statebuilding, and good governance. International policymakers have tended to suffer from 'borderland blindness', viewing problems through national frameworks, and neglecting subnational or transnational dimensions of conflict. National and international policy actors often engage with borderland regions through brokers or gatekeepers. This research will help these policy actors to understand more clearly the effects of these engagements, providing insights into which types of brokers are more likely to channel resources or open up spaces for the vulnerable. More specifically the research will have an impact on the following actors and issues:

General public in Nepal, Sri Lanka and the UK
We will ensure the research engages the general public in Sri Lanka and Nepal by aiming to publish the comics on leading news and social affairs websites in the two countries such as recordnepal.com (Nepal) and groundviews.org (Sri Lanka), and via national print media in Sri Lanka (e.g. Daily Mirror) and Nepal (The Himalayan). It is hoped that the comic strips will also be published on leading international news websites such as The Guardian, BBC or Huffington Post.

Civil society organisations
The research will benefit a range of national and international NGOs working in the two countries in the fields of development, human rights, peacebuilding and the arts. Key international NGOs working in both countries include International Alert, Search for Common Ground and Oxfam. NGOs and media organisations include from Sri Lanka the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and the National Peace Council, and from Nepal the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative and Social Science Baha. By providing engaging and in-depth accounts of borderland brokers from peripheral regions, the project will provide important insights to inform these organisations' peacebuilding and development work, as well as providing them with tools to engage participants in workshops designed to initiate debates on topics such as state reform or transitional justice.

Multi-lateral and bi-lateral donors
The research is highly relevant to donor agencies working in Sri Lanka and Nepal, including UNDP, USAID, DFID, GIZ, ADB and the World Bank. Donors face significant challenges in their efforts to influence policy processes relating to the post-war transitions in both countries. The research will be of particular relevance to UNDP's work on transitional justice and the Asia Foundation's work on local governance and security. The research will help to assist these agencies to understand how brokerage affects their work and to engage more effectively with the general public on questions of state reform and transitional justice. The policy briefs will draw out the wider policy implications of the broker life histories and will be of relevance to ongoing work on political settlements, decentralisation and post-war governance, and infrastructure policy.

National and local government
We will seek to engage with national and local government representatives through the members of the policy advisory groups in Nepal and Sri Lanka (particularly Martin Chautari and Centre for Poverty Analysis), many of whom have extensive networks with government at all levels. This engagement will seek to influence government policy in marginal regions relating to areas such as post-war development and transitional justice.