Like most Jamaicans, we broadly appreciate the efforts of people such as Horace Levy and other members of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) to bridge the divide between antagonistic communities in inner-city Jamaica.

We, however, must declare our unease and warn of the clear danger of some of the initiatives, apparently being pursued by the PMI, that seem to sit quite easily with Mr Levy and, apparently, other members of the organisation.

This week, Mr Levy was a participant at a forum, sponsored by this newspaper, looking at ways to bring peace and restore harmony to many of the island's troubled communities.

Mr Levy homed in on one such effort in the community of August Town, where, for months various factions have been fighting each other. They are now apparently close to a truce, except that there are some snags.

Maintaining weapons

According to Mr Levy, while the groups have broadly agreed to a ceasefire, they insist on maintaining their weapons, because, in Mr Levy's words, "it's a matter of their own protection, their own self-defence. They feel the police are inefficient and ineffective".

Oh, there is a concession: the warlords promise not to sling their weapons - six-shooters, automatic pistols, M16s, Bush Masters, SLRs and so on - but instead to carry them concealed. And they are willing to desist from giving gun salutes at entertainment events and funerals.

And we, the Jamaican society, are willing to go along with this version of peace. Of course, such initiatives are not new. They have been tried in Jamaica, but are better known and more widely associated with places like Darfur, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kosovo and other states of the former Yugoslavia that were in outright civil war.

In Jamaica, such concessions to what are essentially criminal warlords have, in the long run, not worked. It is usually only a matter of time before a new round of violence erupts.

But there is a fundamental issue that is at stake here, which, unfortunately, does not receive much attention in the discussions about such deals - the viability of the Jamaican state. These concessions to community warlords, have more than a whiff of power-sharing and have the potential for leading to the balkanisation of Jamaica.

Demand a secession

It perhaps will not be too long before the warlords in August Town, Central Kingston, May Pen and Flankers, in exchange for concealing their weapons rather than slinging them, for shooting the occasional victim rather than engaging in large-scale carnage, demand a secession from Jamaica.

Or, maybe, they may propose a confederation between the territories of August Town, and South Side and Black Ants Lane and so on.

Alternatively, the approach, probably, might be to suggest, as in the case of Lebanon, a power-sharing constitution, though based not on ethnicity but factional strength. We might have a governor general from Jacques Road and a House speaker from Flankers and we might bargain over who gets to occupy Jamaica House.

The preceding might seem a bit whimsy, a cynical farce, maybe. Yet, we would advise against its total dismissal as such.

For enough such concessions, as being contemplated in August Town, and wherever else they are on the agenda, not only weaken the state but acknowledge weakness. Which, usually, is the beginning of the end.