The Thorny Road to Sustainable Peace:

This paper seeks to understand the dynamics of post-conflict/post-major political transition violence in cities. It examines the transformation of violence in these cities from violence associated with protracted warfare and prolonged civil strife into new forms. The paper argues that post-conflict societies in general and cities in particular do not move from conflict and war into peace and normality in a linear path but rather in a traversal manner. Political and communal conflict and violence mutate into new forms such renewed communal or xenophobic violence; synchronized acts of terrorism or to socio-economic criminal violence. The paper explores the reasons behind this mutation and proposes a typology for post-conflict violence. ∗ American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Email: [email protected]