At the heart of the problems was a state that still did not control its territory and a society divided on who belonged and who did not. Both were colonial legacies. In 1948, the British had left behind a weak state that collapsed within months into civil war. The peace process had started off well, but there was no real strategy for how a state could be knitted together. The old-fashioned way was for the central power simply to defeat its enemies on the battlefield. But that road to state-building—a military solution—was neither desired nor probably even possible.
