Table of Contents
Introduction
This essay is primarily aimed at discussing the process of restoring peace in Central America and in particular Nicaragua. Of essence, are the stages that the stakeholders went as well as whatever was being discussed in such stages. The discussion will also unearth the result of this process.
Having got its current name from the chief of the place who led the tribe of Indian during the time of the Conquest of the Spanish, Nicaragua first settlers were Spanish in the year 1522(Dirk, p.46).Its independence was won in the year 1838 and for almost the entire of the century that followed, the politics of the Nicaragua were subjugated by fighting for the power and this was involving two groups; conservatives as well as Liberals centered or rather operated in Granada and Leon city respectively.
The US on the other hand, in an effort of endorsing the support of Nicaragua government, which was in this case conservative government, it decided to send a small aloofness of marines for thirteen years from1912 to 1925 to Nicaragua. Bryan-Chomorro treaty is a kind of an agreement that was meant to allow the government of US to construct canal passing through naval bases to Nicaragua. However it ended in 1970. Later on, a conflict emerged in Nicaragua in 1924 and as a result, the US government sent some forces to Nicaragua to mitigate the violence. César Augusto Sandino who was a guerilla boss decided to fight back US marines who were primarily sent to quell the disorder for six years from 1927 to 1933 when they opted to surrender and then withdraw from the fight. The essay now will embark on the peace progress in Nicaragua
Discussion
Initially, there was an attempt of starting the peace process in Nicaragua when an establishment of international body involved in developing policies of installing peace in Nicaragua was set. However, in an attempt to come up with peace initiatives, the initial efforts were faced by three tribulations, first, the international body meant to oversee the peace in Nicaragua was considered lacking ability because it lacked organizational and political traits requisite to successfully do the work. The second tribulation was that the contra army could not hammer a peace deal due to the fact that it was highly cracked (Skidmore, p.159). There was an alliance between contra army and Chamorro government that could have been a key ingredient but was unfortunately found to be short-lived as well as misleading. However, there was a meeting that was held between RN and FSLN held in1988.This stage was very important as far as peace talks were concerned since it brought together some of the military leaders. The agreement that resulted from this meeting saw the establishment of 60 days cease fire. Again, there was a launch of the meeting regarding demobilization process as well as political reform in Nicaragua.
In 1989, there was an establishment of international agencies. This effort was initiated by OAS and United Nations. The established agency was mandated to oversee the disarmament and also demobilization processes. There was also an establishment of ONUCA which was a UN body given the responsibility of eliminating the troops who were mobilized on the boarders. In 1990, a big number of troops had been demobilized CIAV had already been given a duty to carryout disarmament in Nicaragua.
During the period that started in 1992 to 1996, this period is referred to us Peace Redux, and it is during this period that the government of the Chamorro tried to bring back peace again in Nicaragua by use of three plans. The three employed strategies included the campaign for buying weapons, general periodic amnesties and finally specific groups were given new accords (Dirk, p.50).
In as far as disarmament was concerned, the government decided to buy weapon from the people (Spalding, p.47). This would eventually see reduction in the number of weapons that were available or rather in the hands of Nicaraguan countryside. This program of buying arms was to some extent successful due to the attractive premiums which were being offered by the government at the time. A good number of grenades, arms as well as explosives were reported to have been collected by the government between 1992 and 1993 (Skidmore, p.156). This was either done as a formal agreement signed with rearmed forces or through disarmament program. This event was successful in as far as an attempt of restoring peace in Nicaraguan is concerned since by the end of 1993, the arms which had remained in the hands of the citizen was now in the governments hands.
Again, there were treaties regarding the amnesties that were signed and as a result, amnesty was offered three times. This was mainly between 1990 to 1993.This resulted in complaints from the human rights body arguing that the amnesty that was being given to people was a form of impunity (Dirk, p.48). The accords regarding amnesties were identified to be at least 41 new treaties.
Other treaties with specific groups were signed so as to reinforce the second demobilization. These treaties offered a wide range of possessions that would be exchanged with the second demobilization and these possessions included ; title deeds for the settling of the forces , vehicles as well as cash for contra leaders which facilitated the government agreements with the contra bands.
Conclusion
The developments that were realized in the 1990s shows that there was a substantial progress in as far as Nicaraguan peace process is concerned. The fact that foreigners accorded them assistance such as lifting their debts and also providing troops to help in the process of stopping conflicts in Nicaraguan, was a big step toward piece achievement in this nation. Also, the treaties or rather the agreements that were sighed between different groups, most of them were successful since they gained their objectives (Spalding, p.56). For instance, the treaty for disarmament saw the government buying almost all the arms which were in the hands of the people, in spite of the first effort of demobilizing troops being futile.
