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Khouri,
Karim Makdisi, and Martin Wählisch
Interventions
in Conflict
International Peacemaking
in the Middle East
INTERVENTIONS IN CONFLICT
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Interventions in Conflict
International Peacemaking in
the Middle East
Edited by
Rami G. Khouri, Karim Makdisi, and
Martin Wählisch
Palgrave
macmillan
INTERVENTIONS IN CONFLICT
Selection and editorial content © Rami G. Khouri, Karim Makdisi, and
Martin Wählisch 2016
Individual chapters © their respective contributors 2016
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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First published 2016 by
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this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One
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ISBN 978-1-137-56467-2
E-PDF ISBN: 978–1–137–53082–0
DOI: 10.1057/9781137530820
Introduction
Rami G. Khouri, Karim Makdisi, and Martin Wählisch 1
Chapter 6
Thirty Years after Camp David: A Memo to the
Arab World, Israel, and the Quartet 99
Jimmy Carter
Chapter 7
The Situation in the Middle East: A Vision for the Future 109
Amr Moussa
Chapter 8
Talking with Islamists: The Need for Mutual Dignity and
Respect 119
Alastair Crooke
Chapter 9
Supervising a Temporary Truce, Working for a Permanent
Peace: UNTSO’s Mission in the Middle East 135
Robert Mood
its consequences are as yet unclear. All these conflicts have been keep-
ing the region in the international spotlight. The region is blessed and
cursed by oil and gas resources. It is also increasingly vulnerable to
the impact of climate change, conflict over the unequal distribution
of water, and cross-border migration, all of which hurt the poorer seg-
ments of the population, while the rich get richer.
Despite all this, international peacemaking efforts on both the
micro and macro levels remain a visible feature in the region. The
Good Offices of the United Nations and Arab League have been
used, special envoys have been repeatedly deployed, and committed
humanitarian and development agencies and individuals serve the
region. The very institutions of UN mediation, traditional observer
missions and peacekeeping forces, were created in the Middle East.
The fact that the first UN mediator in Palestine, Folke Bernadotte,
was assassinated on a peace mission in 1947 and also that the first
Security Council-authorized military observers force remains active
since 1948 in Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Southern Lebanon, and
the Sinai reveals how protracted peacemaking and peacekeeping are in
the Mashriq (Levant) region alone.
Overall, UN and non-UN peacemaking efforts have faced huge
challenges but also some opportunities. Shuttle diplomacy between
rival factions, multilateral negotiations, and quiet back-door media-
tion efforts often failed to achieve sustainable solutions, though they
sometimes created momentum toward some form of reprieve, par-
ticularly through what has been termed “humanitarian diplomacy.”
International attention on the Middle East is high, and stability
should now, more than ever, be a primary objective of peacemaking
efforts in countries like Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The prominent con-
tributors to this book, we suggest, point to some ways in which such
peacemaking efforts may be deployed more positively.
Interventions in Conflict
Interventions in conflict areas are often, as the term suggests, a
double-edged sword, liberating for some and oppressive or violent for
6 R A M I G . K H O U R I , K A R I M M A K D I S I , A N D M A R T I N WÄ H L I S C H
Over the last decade, the United Nations has attempted to advance
its approach to peacemaking by trying to professionalize mediation
support services to special envoys and strengthen the institutional
knowledge about best practices and lessons learned. While the UN
Charter has been untouched since the end of the Cold War, the UN
has altered its general approach to peacemaking, most prominently
through the Agenda for Peace in 1992 and the Brahimi Report in
2000. There have also been, in the new array of tools and techniques,
nuances in how peace processes are designed and implemented.
A technique tested out in the Middle East has utilized synergies of
hybrid peace mediation efforts together with the Arab League or the
Gulf Cooperation Council, and through national dialogues, which
builds on the awareness that peace needs to be grown locally and
supported on the regional level. Social media have also created a
new paradigm that, on the one hand, is exploited by parties engaged
in conflicts to exaggerate fears or attract followers. On the other
hand, peace mediators now use such media to break the authority
of monopolized information and encourage participatory processes.
While the twentieth century witnessed two world wars and the revi-
sion of peace architecture based on the UN Charter as a result, the
twenty-first century needs to prove whether international organiza-
tions, states, communities, and individuals are actually advancing in
terms of equipping themselves with better methods to tackle conflicts
peacefully and settle them more effectively. The jury, certainly in the
Middle East, is still very much out.
The annual Global Peace Index regularly rates numerous countries
of the Middle East among the world’s least peaceful states. There
is not much hope in sight that the long-standing conflict factors in
the region will change any time soon. The region will most likely
remain a conflict-ridden place. Indeed, this will likely get worse with
the increasing gap between rich and poor, between those plugged
into global networks and those excluded from them, and those living
happily within gated communities and those living in misery outside
these fences and walls. The question is what peacemakers can do about
this, and whether or not powerful states and non-state actors support
their efforts. In the meantime, as Lakhdar Brahimi points out in his
contribution to this book, the key problem for peacemakers is not
so much to avoid repeating mistakes but to avoid repeating the same
mistakes. In the spirit of this book, these questions make studying
the personal experiences of peacemakers all the more essential.
Part I
Karim Makdisi
the West has limited the UN’s potential to solve conflict by talk-
ing to all parties, after it produced a “stigma” associated with cer-
tain groups or organizations in the Middle East, such as Hamas,
after it won the internationally certified 2006 national elections in
Palestine. Filippo Grandi demonstrates how UNRWA, the agency
responsible for Palestine refugees, supported them through educa-
tion and health programs but also as “being part of the glue” that
allowed the refugees to develop their human capital and build for
a “positive and peaceful future.” Jan Eliasson, for his part, feels an
unofficial responsibility, or at least moral inclination, to support the
weaker side that lacks resources or expertise during negotiations or
peace talks, for example, by training rebels in Sudan on wealth and
power-sharing.
However, viewed from the peripheries of the global South, the
idea of the UN was a product of a larger, collapsing Western colonial
project aimed at preserving Western “civilizational” primacy in the
emerging world order. From this perspective, the Security Council
represents less a stabilizing East-West partnership required to achieve
international peace and security than a Northern great power col-
lusion, evidenced by the fundamentally undemocratic veto powers
that ensure their continued economic and geopolitical domination
of the Third World. At the same time, the UN was, crucially, also a
site for the anti-colonial struggles that dominated the agenda of the
peoples of the global South. Reflecting this, the Charter’s preamble
thus calls for “justice,” the “promotion of the economic and social
advancement of all peoples,” and the “equal rights” of “nations large
and small.” The Charter is also unequivocal in calling for the “self-
determination of peoples,” and stating that the UN is based on the
principle of the “sovereign equality of all its Members,” in part to pre-
empt the temptation of the big powers to continue meddling within
their old colonial stomping grounds.
The contributors in this section acknowledge the latter understand-
ing of the UN, in some cases implicitly and in others more explic-
itly. Richard Falk, for example, argues forcefully that the geopolitical
order dominated by the north limits UN possibilities while simulta-
neously keeping challenges to this order alive through a battle over
legitimacy. Jan Eliasson astutely observes that Africa and Asia dis-
missed the Western notion of humanitarian intervention as a “Trojan
horse” to be used by bigger powers to erode their hard earned sover-
eignty. Lakhdar Brahimi shows how Western-based UN agendas are
imposed on states like Afghanistan, which are trying to rebuild them-
selves in the aftermath of devastating wars. Filippo Grandi asserts
P E A C E M A K I N G A N D T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S 15
Notes
1. For more historically oriented works, see, for example, Dan Plesch
and Thomas G. Weiss’ edited volume Wartime Origins and the
Future United Nations (Routledge Press, 2015); Mark Mazower’s No
Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the
United Nations (Princeton University Press, 2009); and the forthcom-
ing edited volume by Makdisi and Prashad Blue Helmets: The United
Nations in the Arab World (University of California Press, 2016).
2. The lecture upon which this chapter is based was delivered before
Brahimi’s appointment as joint UN-Arab League special envoy to
Syria from 2012 to 2014.
Chapter 1
Lakhdar Brahimi1
day, that you do not know enough and that you need to keep finding
out more.
You need also to understand, and accept, that the political and
on-the-ground conditions are always evolving, and that conflict and
postconflict situations are very dynamic and change all the time. The
military, as a matter of fact, teach us that “the best battle plan does
not survive the first bullet.” This makes perfect sense. You prepare a
very good battle plan safely inside the equivalent of the US Pentagon.
But when you actually land in a war zone, as soon as you start fight-
ing, the situation will have already changed. It will keep changing
every hour, every day, every week, and you have to adapt to that ever-
changing situation.
When I was helping to mediate what came to be the “Taif Accords,”
which ended the civil war in Lebanon in 1990, I used for the first,
but certainly not the last, time another useful metaphor to explain the
need for adaptation: You need to do a lot of navigation by sight. As
the captain of your ship, in other words, of course you equip yourself
with the best available instruments and the best maps, but again you
must keep reminding yourself that something may go wrong. Maybe
there is a rock somewhere in the sea that does not appear on your
map, and you will hit it unless your eyes are constantly wide open.
The weather, too, may change, and so the forecasts given to you ear-
lier may no longer be accurate enough. In both cases, you need to
navigate your path by sight and without the aid of other equipment.
This is part of the peacemaker’s job.
No matter how hard a mediator tries, he or she simply does not
know enough. One must, in particular, be careful with what is
assumed to be “common knowledge” about a particular country or
conflict. For example, when I was appointed as UN Special Envoy
to Afghanistan for the first time in 1997, I read everything I could
find and talked to my UN colleagues who had worked in Afghanistan
before me. I also arranged to meet with four notable, but very differ-
ent, Afghanistan experts: one Afghan, one Pakistani, one Australian,
and one American. A fifth expert, a Frenchman, could not join us in
New York, but I talked to him later in Paris. I asked these experts an
obvious question: “Is Afghanistan really the tribal society everyone
says it is?” Its recent political history was so rich; there were so many
internal and external players on the scene, so could the conflict—and
thus the solution—be reduced, as many had assumed, to only the
issue of the relationship between the tribes? This is, after all, a country
that had lived under a modern constitution introduced in 1964 by its
monarch, Zahir Shah. Then, in 1973, Prime Minister Sardar Daoud
MAK ING AND K EEPING T HE PE AC E 25
Khan staged a coup d’état against the king, his cousin. Five years
later, the communists staged a coup d’état against Daoud Khan, and
this was followed by several other coups d’état by communist rivals
against one another. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979
but was pushed out ten years later after a relentless struggle waged
against them by the US-backed Mujahideen. In 1994, the Taliban
appeared on the scene, capturing the capital Kabul two years later. By
around the year 2000, the Taliban controlled more than 90 percent
of Afghanistan.
By the time I arrived in 1997, could it be assumed, as “common
knowledge” would have it, that Afghanistan was still the tribal soci-
ety that we read about in nineteenth-century travel books, in spite
of all these momentous developments? Of course not! But how had
it changed? Who were the actors a peacemaker should deal with?
These five experts, and many other people I consulted, all agreed
that Afghan society had changed, but they did not fully agree with
one another on how that society actually looked today. How was I, as
a mediator, supposed to assess this?
Other examples illustrate the pitfalls of inaccurate information—
or even worse, misinformation—on the conduct of a particular medi-
ation effort. When I eventually went to Afghanistan, I realized just
how complicated the situation was. During my first tenure there, from
1997 to 1999, Afghanistan was engulfed in a complicated and debili-
tating civil war: the very factions that were fighting against Soviet
occupation had turned against one another almost as soon as Soviet
troops had left the country. I had to ask myself a very simple ques-
tion: how many fighters were actually involved in this war? I asked
around and, on the basis of what I was told, made several statements
in 1997/98 saying that the people of Afghanistan, all 25 million of
them, were hostage to a maximum of 50,000 fighters. But, in 2001,
when the Taliban were routed following US military intervention,
we discovered that during the fighting season, the Taliban alone
could count on well over 120,000 fighters, and some, in fact, claimed
200,000. A mediation effort cannot but suffer from being so far off
the mark in its estimate!
Similarly, we greatly underestimated the number of so-called Arab-
Afghans who started joining the ranks of the Mujahideen immedi-
ately after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The estimates of
the grand total of those who joined the fight over the ten years of
Soviet occupation went from 10,000 to 20,000. We are now told that
over the ten years of Soviet occupation, the total number was much
closer to 100,000. But how many had stayed on, to form the core of
26 L AKHDAR BR AHIMI
The next day, the same man arrived on the same bicycle, with
another bag of sand. This goes on for perhaps one week or ten days:
the same man presenting himself each day at roughly the same time,
at the Spanish border, with his bicycle and bag of sand. One day,
a young, bright customs officer tells his colleagues that there must be
something wrong with this, especially that the man does not look stu-
pid or eccentric. So, they confiscate the man’s sand bag, assuming it
must be mixed with some precious substance like gold or drugs. The
bag was sent to Madrid for thorough inspection. When the results
came back to the border, it was confirmed that there was nothing
in that bag but ordinary sand. But that young, bright customs offi-
cial was still not satisfied. He finally took the bicycle-rider aside and
begged him: “Please tell me why you are taking this sand across the
border? I promise there will be no consequences if you tell me the
truth!” The man replied, “I am smuggling bicycles.”
This is a favorite story of mine. I tell it to every audience I address,
especially to young diplomats. The lesson here being that if you see a
bicycle and a bag of sand, do not keep looking at the sand alone: Look
at the bicycle too! In other words, whether you are a customs official
or a mediator, when you look at a picture do not stop at the things
you are shown by others but try to look beyond that as well.
aid, they simply do not see the equivalent of $120 million, let alone
$120 billion, worth of development projects.
So, how are these funds being used? A report by Oxfam about aid
to Afghanistan may give us a hint.2 The report says that 40 percent
of bilateral aid given to Afghanistan actually returns to the donor
country in the form of salaries and payment for the so-called consul-
tants and experts. That is simply too much. Moreover, we know that
the remaining 60 percent does not entirely go to the people they are
intended to help, either. As a matter of fact, even the UN is not very
transparent in terms of how they use their funds. Some critics claim
that only 10 percent of aid money given to Afghanistan, whether
managed by the UN or others, actually filters down to the Afghans
themselves. This is probably an exaggeration. The UN, if you push
them, will tell you that as much as 70 percent of this money actually
goes down to the right people, and the remaining 30 percent is over-
head. Other analysts consider that not much more than 50 percent of
aid money reaches its intended beneficiaries. In some cases it is only
40 percent and in the best scenario cases, the figure is 60 percent.
This inefficiency in aid distribution is why we recommended in
the “Brahimi Report”3 that the international community, when they
go somewhere like Afghanistan, should have a “light footprint.”
However, all sorts of people in all sorts of ways immediately misused
our suggestion. For example, when the United States was accused of
not helping Afghanistan as much as they had promised they would,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “Well that’s because of
the Brahimi concept of light footprint.” But, we did not make that
report for the US Department of Defense, and I actually doubt that
Mr. Rumsfeld even read our report. At any rate, the light footprint
concept was our way of saying that the UN should not throw money
at problems, whether political, social, or economic. As the French
would say, we have too many “Budgetivores,” people who eat bud-
gets without doing much or producing much. What we mean by light
footprint, in other words, is that the resources that we have should be
used a little bit more efficiently than we are currently using them.
want to help the country stand on its own two feet. That is also very
good. But, how do we do this? We speak of democracy, human rights,
constitutions, and elections. I suggest to you that these words are very
much used out of context.
You observe this better than anywhere else in the issue of
women. When we were preparing for the Bonn peace conference on
Afghanistan, women’s rights activists from the West were demanding
that we ensure a fair representation of women in each of the three
delegations that were to participate. But how can the UN do that? An
Afghan woman who had participated actively in the struggle against
Soviet occupation came to see me to discuss this very issue. I told
her, “Look, these are Afghan organizations that are coming and they
choose their representatives. We will certainly advise them, plead with
them to have as many women as possible. But, it is their decision at
the end of the day, not ours.”
You know what that woman told me? “I understand that perfectly
well. Just help us make peace so that we can go back home to our
country and fight for our rights.”
We want women to be equal, we want women to have rights, and
we want women to participate in political life. But this cannot be
done by foreigners, be they the UN, foreign NGOs, or Western gov-
ernments. Change is actually happening in a remarkable way. If I am
not mistaken, there are more women in the Afghan Parliament than
there are in the US Congress, in France’s Assemblée Nationale, or
Britain’s Parliament. But let us not kid ourselves: girls are still mar-
ried at the age of 12, and some set themselves on fire to protest such
forced marriages. Foreigners can help if they know how to do it. In
Afghanistan, again in 2002, a high-ranking Afghani official came
to me one day and said: “I desperately need your help.” “What can
I do for you?” I asked. She said, “Each of the foreign delegations
that come here tell me they have brought with them an advisor on
women’s affairs they wanted to leave behind. So, our small ministry
is full of foreign advisers. We do need advisors, but not that many.
Can you please help us so that some of these advisers go back to their
home countries?”
You see, this is again a manner in which we do not use our
resources properly and try to impose an agenda on the people we say
we want to help. The situation of women in Afghanistan is deplorable,
and we should pay attention to that and see how much we can help
change that situation, but we have to realize that that situation will
change thanks to the Afghans themselves, and the Afghan women in
particular.
30 L AKHDAR BR AHIMI
diplomat who was effectively running Iraq at the time, saying, “You
are an American and I am an Iranian. How about the two of us let-
ting the Iraqis write their own constitution?” Ultimately, the Iraqis
did write their constitution, but with a lot of interference, from the
Americans in particular.
Much of what happened in Iraq at that time was based on the
needs of the US electoral agenda; it was not an agenda that primarily
responded to the needs of the people of Iraq. The result is that the
Iraqi constitution is an unworkable document that does not seem to
have contributed much to peace and stability in Iraq. And it is signifi-
cant that before the drafting of the constitution was even completed,
an announcement was made that “It shall be amended soon!” What
kind of constitution is this that you ask people: please ratify it and we
promise we will amend it as soon as you have finished ratifying it?
And, as you will recall, there was at least one American who was
very proud of the role he played in the drafting of the Iraqi constitu-
tion. He is Mr. Peter Galbraith, a retired US diplomat advising the
Kurds. The constitution was supposed to aim at least at maintaining
some sort of unity of Iraq. Yet, when he testified in front of the US
Congress, Mr. Galbraith said something to the effect that the new
constitution (that he helped draft, remember!) was unworkable and
that the solution in Iraq was the partition of the country. So, if this
is the manner in which we help countries solve their problems, I sup-
pose, you will agree, that they will probably be better off if we refrain
from helping them.
As we are speaking about Iraq, there is one point I feel I must make.
In a recent conference in London, somebody said to me, “Look, at
what’s happening now: Iraq is more peaceful now and people seem to
be slowly coming together. If democracy is established in Iraq, would
you then agree that the US invasion of Iraq was a good thing?” I very,
very much hope that Iraq will become a vibrant democracy, and the
earlier the better; we will be very happy to celebrate this with the
people of Iraq. But, this will never change the fact that the US-led
invasion was an aggression that destroyed Iraq and that the invasion
was unjustified. It was illegal and unjust. Frankly, until now I do not
fully understand what the real motives of the Americans were. I very
much hope that Iraq will do much better than it has done in the
recent past, but this does not change the fact that the invasion was
condemnable, and I am glad that the British people at least are try-
ing to ask themselves how their prime minister took them into that
terrible war of aggression.
32 L AKHDAR BR AHIMI
are equal, but of course, some of those members are more equal than
others. The Security Council bears primary responsibility for the
maintenance of peace and security. And, in the Security Council,
the five permanent members bear more responsibility than the other
ten. Some will tell you that even among the five, equality is more
theoretical than real. This, in turn, would bring up the subject of
the much talked about and much delayed reform of the Security
Council. But that would lead us into a discussion that is better left
for another day.
Notes
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on January
21, 2010, and edited in July 2015.
2. Falling Short: Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan, Oxfarm 2008, online:
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/ACBAR _aid
_effectiveness_paper_0803.pdf (accessed on July 1, 2015).
3. Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, UN Doc.
A/55/305, August 21, 2000, online: http://www.un.org/en/events
/pastevents/brahimi_report.shtml (accessed on July 1, 2015).
Chapter 2
Jan Eliasson1
force because they stepped up to the plate: they were there though
they did not have the training and definitely not the finance for it.
Following the waves of atrocities, SC diplomacy started to work
as its members adopted Resolution 1769 in the summer of 2007,
and this represented great progress as it reflected some consensus
among key Council members even if the resolution is not imple-
mented to the degree you would want. Still, the differences among
the permanent members particularly on Darfur were clearly pres-
ent. I can say openly, if you compare the Chinese and US positions,
you can clearly see how difficult it is to get the unity needed. This
resolution authorized a joint, “hybrid” AU-UN peacekeeping force
(UNAMID) to increase from 7,000 to a maximum of 20,000.
Clearly, the degree of unity in the Council will very much decide
the strength of the UN role in resolving a particular conflict.
2. Ensuring cooperation among the neighbors to a conflict. The
Lebanese have experience of living in a rough neighbourhood,
while I come from a region where neighbors are on good terms
and crossing a border is a positive and routine thing. When I was
in the Balkans or in the Horn of Africa, I had sometimes to make
big detours by traveling far up into Europe to cross into an area
that was much closer to the other side. This was also true along
the Chad-Sudan border that was borderlands drawn arbitrarily,
using a ruler straight down, by the colonial powers during the
1885 Berlin conference. The Baggara tribe, which is the more
militant one and plays a key role in the conflict, is strong on both
the Darfur and Chad sides of the border. We disrupted diplomatic
relations between Chad and Sudan during this period, and given
the tribal configurations along the borders, this undermines the
possibility of finding a solution in Darfur.
3. The importance of a unified government. In the case of Sudan, on
the surface they were unified but just below there are high tensions
that go back to the old North-South conflict because the two par-
ties in power today represent both the unified central authority
but also the southern parties in conflict with the North.
4. Unity among the rebel movements themselves. This was difficult
in Sudan. When Salim Salim and I arrived, there were twenty
such groups, but when we had worked for about half a year, they
were eight, and when we left in May last year, they were only five
remaining. Now, to go back to the news report I heard on my way
here, there is an agreement with only one rebel group, the most
militant one, and we will see whether the others will join in.
P E A C E M A K I N G U N D E R T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S 41
1. The muscular mediator, and there I would put the role that the
United States should play—and I underline should—in the Israel-
Palestine problem. Unless the United States is involved, it is dif-
ficult to imagine great momentum in any “peace process” during
which they would use their power and influence on both sides and
also afford to be partial in certain situations.
42 JAN ELIASSON
But NGOs also play a crucial function. One of the important aspects
of bringing in such organizations and personalities is that, first, you
would avoid this problem of giving reasons for the government to
refuse to talk, but second, you would also bring in the public opinion
aspect, which I think in today’s conflicts are much more important
than in the past. You have to really make sure that the parties in
conflict do not monopolize the definitions of the problems’ issues.
P E A C E M A K I N G U N D E R T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S 43
I think the civil society actors could be much stronger in bringing out
what is going on, be more open, and affect public opinion. Sometimes
by that, they can damage themselves. As you know in several cases,
you rightly take side with one of the parties for humanitarian reasons
but very often, however, the information comes out. So I do not see a
contradiction between an international organization’s role or govern-
ment’s role and Track II diplomacy; they can in fact play together in
parallel, and I do not mind sometimes to work in parallel with the
track II side. On Darfur, we went to see the women’s group and the
civil society, and to use that quotation mark as a pressure on the par-
ties to bring about the political talks.
When you have a conflict, you need to ask who the best type of
mediator is: the muscular one, the one that is impartial, or someone
who is completely outside? I think there is not enough analysis on the
three categories of mediators that I have discussed here.
The second question is the “when” in mediation. I will use the
Iran-Iraq case to make my first point, namely the importance of reach-
ing an agreement as soon as possible. During the first two years of the
war (1980–1982), the Iraqis had the upper hand and took over lots
of territory in the Khuzestan province that they called Arabistan. The
Iraqis very much felt that they were on the road to military victory.
The situation changed two years later, and the Iranians pushed back
the Iraqis, and so on. To ask for a political settlement or a ceasefire at a
stage when one side felt superior was very difficult; while they believe
there is still a chance for military victory, the other side will feel that
they are being humiliated, that they will be punished by the people
or suffer even worse consequences. By 1982 the situation was pretty
balanced in military terms, but then the Iranians in my view made
the mistake of advancing into Iraq, and eventually, of course, there
was another change in the end. But when we saw the situation was
relatively balanced, both sides equally strong, we sent out an informal
proposal to the parties, Iran and Iraq, but it was rejected. We, or
rather they, missed that opportunity. When I then saw the ceasefire
resolution adopted six years later, I felt very sad, because it was almost
identical to the ideas that we presented in 1982. The difference over
these six years, however, was 700,000 people killed, three million
refugees, and rising sectarian tensions between the Shiites and the
Sunnis in the Arab and Islamic world. Instead of making a deal when
they were relatively strong, Iraq and Iran made a deal when they were
both exhausted and war weary. This shows the importance of trying
to get an agreement as soon as possible; in the best of cases, before
you go to the war.
44 JAN ELIASSON
know the culture, have lunch, talk to people and warm up.” I think
we Arctics need to do more of that.
Also I can give you a pretty funny example. In 1988, I was negoti-
ating the implementation of Resolution 598, which finally ended the
Iraq-Iran fighting after eight years and was supposed to have started
a peace agreement between the countries. I was shuttling between
Tehran and Baghdad for the whole of 1989 and 1990 to get the dif-
ferent elements of that resolution through and stabilize the peace
between Iran and Iraq. Both sides were very tenacious, very persis-
tent, but I think the Iranians take the prize: they are extremely skilled
negotiators. I spent a lot of time on one particular point in the resolu-
tion, which I thought was an interesting and positive point, namely,
paragraph eight, which dealt with regional stability and an arrange-
ment for regional security. But they remained very suspicious and did
not accept my views.
For me, it was a pretty innocent thing, something that could bring
the negotiation forward. For once, I began to lose my patience and
felt very tired after the third day of hearing the same thing, so I used
a word that I shouldn’t have used. I was negotiating in English,
and I said “let us break up,” meaning “let us have a break for me to
go to the hotel, drink coffee, or sleep for a while” and come back
at 7:00 p.m. But evidently that translated into Farsi as, “It is over.
I don’t want to see you. I will go to the airport. It is over and no more
negotiation.” This caused a very strange atmosphere, and the head of
the Iranian negotiation delegation looked at me and said, correctly,
“Listen, this is a very important issue; it is a matter of national secu-
rity for us.” I felt very guilty and thought this is the end of my diplo-
matic career. Then he really twisted the knife in me, saying, “And, by
the way, what do you want to do instead of negotiating?” He really
put me on the spot.
But since I felt that my diplomatic career was over, I leaned back
and said to myself: “What is it that I really want to do?,” and then
I thought for about 20 seconds and said to him, “Well, I will tell
you what I really want to do. I have now been to Tehran 25 times if
I include the times I have been here with Prime Minister Palmer in
the early 1980s. I have never left these rooms except for one trip we
made to the Esfahan, which is a great place by the way. Apart from
that I have been sitting with you here, and you are very good nego-
tiators, but you take a lot of time to convince. What I really want to
do is something I have heard about for so long but I’ve never been
able to do, and that is I would like to go to see your carpet museum.”
So they looked at me and said this guy is crazy; that is what my
P E A C E M A K I N G U N D E R T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S 47
interpreter said. But then, luckily one of the guys on the Iranian
side who was from Tabriz said, “If he wants to go to the museum,
I can show him the Tabriz room.” Then there was another one from
Esfahan, I think, and he said, “Listen, we have an Esfahan room,
I will go along too.”
In the end, I went to the museum with three different guides
from the Iranian delegation and spent three wonderful hours at this
fantastic museum, a beauty, which you should visit if you go to Iran.
They explained the patterns and colors and how long they have had
this tradition. They talked about their grandmothers and grandfa-
thers who worked there as child laborers, at nine or ten years old,
but they were very proud of this carpet tradition. I am a curious
person and asked many questions. In the end, they almost inun-
dated me with explanations, and, in the car going back, they were
like children talking to me in a wonderful, warm way. When I came
back to the Foreign Ministry, the head of delegation and others sit-
ting there said, “Here is our friend.” It was a completely different
atmosphere, and I didn’t realize what had happened: I had simply
pushed the cultural understanding button. They thought what this
UN guy from the Arctic Circle really wants to do, is to see what our
grandparents did. And I didn’t know it; there was no manipulation
or intention on my part, but I just give you the example of how
important it is that you really try to get into that cultural under-
standing. That evening, we had fun, and we made progress on the
discussions. They had very great ambitions to play a role for regional
security; and they really wanted to come out of the isolation that
I saw during the Iran-Iraq War. Ultimately, it failed because the
whole process was ended by the Iraqi invasion into Kuwait, and it
took some time to open up again.
I saw a recent report in the Herald Tribune that claimed that the
US Armed Forces employ more people in military bands and orches-
tras than there are American diplomats. In that case, it says a lot
about chapter six of the UN Charter, about the way to convince, the
need to communicate and even talk to Iranians. I would say that there
must be a diplomatic solution to the nuclear situation in Iran because
the scenario with the military is to me a disastrous way, and I do
not think we can even comprehend the effects of a so-called military
solution on that issue. I think there is a tremendous burden both on
the Iranians, and the European powers, together with the United
States. I hope there is a good cooperation. I would also bring in the
Russians, I think Russia could be a very important actor also. This
I think should be the number one diplomatic priority now to get that
dialogue going. I think there is a solution.
The written word and the spoken word will be your most powerful
ways of influencing others, and I think you should consider words
like tools, like craftsmen having a good toolbox. The words are your
tool, and correct words enable you to end a negotiation quickly in
English, French, Arabic, or whatever language you may know, also
quickly reword, come up with a couple of synonyms, change the sen-
tence or order of things of the way you describe the issue, and then
find a solution. These words are also your tools to break up a difficult
mediation situation. I gave an example of this earlier when I discussed
humanitarian diplomacy: how changing the words from local “cease-
fire” to “humanitarian corridors” in fact saved lives. As a mediator, if
you do not have those correct words you are stuck.
Concluding Thoughts
In general, in mediation, you need both carrots and sticks, and you
need to distribute them fairly. Sometimes even if I feel that I could
close a deal and find a solution, but it is done on the conditions of the
stronger party, I say to myself: this is not a healthy deal; I wish I could
help that weaker party because otherwise this will explode again in a
year or two or three, or four, five years. In Sudan, I recall, we offered
training courses for the rebel movements on wealth sharing, power
sharing, and security so that they would be better prepared when
they sat down with the government. It was a way of very gently trying
to make sure that they had at least the same database and the same
language so that they could help in achieving a better result. But that
is a very touchy thing for negotiators to get involved in, the desire to
want to help the weaker party.
My life as a mediator is very much carrots on the surface. But I do
not mind saying to the parties in Darfur or Iran-Iraq, for example,
that when they are making impossible demands and making life mis-
erable for me, I will report this to the UN Secretary-General and
the SC, or sometimes even worse for them, I will expose this in my
next press conference. It probably depends on where they feel the fear
factor is strongest. The Aesop fables are great about the competition
between the wind and the sun on how to get a man to take his coat
off. The wind blows and the man just keeps the coat closer to the
body, and then comes the sun, which shines so much that the person
takes the coat off entirely without directly influencing him. I am a
friend of the sun message, but I must admit that it did not quite work
50 JAN ELIASSON
drink. There are those who blame mediators for not having a polit-
ical solution, but it is the parties to the conflict that mainly have
that responsibility, and one should not let them get away when they
escape, blame, and return to the mediator. It is they who have in the
end to make the crucial moves. Very often you go into a negotiation
and find that, in fact, there is little to no political will to move on, and
that is a very frustrating part of a mediator’s work.
There is also a very legitimate concern about the absurd division
of resources to war making and peacemaking. I was making the case
earlier of budgets for military bands versus diplomats in the United
States. But I think it can also be said that generally the US defense
budget is $420 billion, while the Afghanistan and Iraq budgetscol-
lectively, come up to $580 billion. It is an incredible and absurd sum
if you understand what is needed in this world in fighting poverty,
ensuring clean water, and getting diseases under control. Also, what
is scary about the arms trade is that so much of it is illegal. Sweden has
an arms industry going back to our policy on neutrality and defending
our country, but there are very strict restrictions about where weap-
ons go. But the illegal arms traders certainly do not have those inhi-
bitions and restrictions, and I would think that somewhere between
$150–200 billion of arms are sold around the world, which in turn
feeds the criminal syndicates that certainly are not with black shirts
and yellow ties and shaded glasses. If you add to that the $200–300
billion in the turnover in narcotics and $100 billion on prostitution,
with 1.2 million children and women sold as merchandise around the
world, and see where that money is in the international system and its
relationship to undermining public sectors in societies, then you see
how scary the developments are.
My very last point is that for the future, I think that mediation
should not be seen in the limited sense that I have described in this
chapter. You should also make sure that you have a number of factors
that contribute to lasting solutions and deal with the long-term effects.
This means, in my view, that you have to try to integrate the efforts
of peace and security with those of development, achieving human
rights, and I would add good governance. When I was president of UN
General Assembly, I worked very closely with then Secretary-General
Kofi Annan to advance these goals. During the 2005 World Summit
meeting held to discuss the SG’s seminal “In Larger Freedom” report,
I recall a key sentence in the beginning of this document that I think
summarizes what I mean on this point: we will not enjoy develop-
ment without security or peace, but there is no security or peace with-
out development, and none of this unless you have respect of human
52 JAN ELIASSON
rights. This is, in fact, the core agenda for the United Nations, but it
should also be the framework in which you must see the possibility of
having a lasting settlement, lasting solutions.
All these core issues—development, peace, and human rights—are
interconnected, and the absence of any of them—such as in Darfur—
makes the conflict so difficult to solve. If the continued conflict
undermines development and poverty seems almost to be structural,
then you have the reasons for conflicts to some degree. And of course
if you have a lack of human rights, you don’t have a really sound soci-
ety where you can have good debate and have dialogue without any
inhibitions and create the best possible solutions. To this I would add
good governance, where you need to have governments that accept
responsibility for the welfare of their people. There are so many risks
now, particularly with the financial economic crisis and the resulting
boom in unemployment, that governments will not be able to deliver
for good reasons. But if there are also failures of management, cor-
ruption, or even criminal syndicates influencing governments, then
you may have many more explosions around the world, and therefore
good governance is also an important factor in making sure that you
have lasting solutions.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on February
17, 2009, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 3
Álvaro de Soto1
got people to actually confess publicly to what they had done. Will
it work in other cases? I am not sure; each case has to be tailored to
its particular needs.
A third problem that arises, particularly for envoys, is the ques-
tion of peace versus human rights violations during a conflict, and
also the violations of the laws of war. This is very difficult one. The
inclination of most people who are involved in such “trade-offs”
which I have been involved in for a few decades now is to say that
peace is an overriding goal that supersedes any other. The only thing
that is important, and should have the highest priority, is to stop the
fighting which itself is seen as the main cause of human rights viola-
tions. But for the UN Secretary-General, this is more complicated,
because he is the personification of the UN and has a responsibility to
uphold all international principles. Strictly speaking, the same is true
for any government that is involved in negotiations, because they are
all bound by the UN Charter, the framework of human rights and
humanitarian law. In the case of the SG, however, obligations are
even higher.
Therefore, we deliberated internally on this matter for some time
during the mid-1990s, and the SG issued guidelines to all UN envoys
under which the UN cannot be associated with deals, either open or
backroom, that provide a shield to war crimes, crimes against human-
ity, or genocide. In these cases, in effect, we have to walk away. The
moment of issuing the threat of walking away is left to the discre-
tion of the particular envoy to deal with at the time of his or her
choosing.
The credibility of the SG is among his comparative advantages, as
is the convening power he enjoys within the United Nations system:
he can actually convene in order to influence the kind of assistance
that is required not only for implementation of agreements but also to
ensure the aim that the implementation is adhered to.
The peace did not solve every problem that the people of El
Salvador faced, such as grinding poverty, persistent injustice, and
the unequal distribution of wealth. Certainly not, but the United
Nations helped them agree on a framework within which those goals
could be brought about, without having to resort to death squads
or bombs. How you measure success is a very difficult question to
answer. I believe in most cases you can reconcile between having
peace and justice. But if you do not have at least a framework, if not
specific provisions, to ensure justice as part of a peace agreement,
then the chances of renewability and sustainability of that peace
agreement may diminish.
A Q UA R T E R C E N T U R Y O F P E A C E M A K I N G 59
the Oslo Accords and effectively blockaded the Gaza Strip by land,
sea, and air. One of the first casualties were the salaries of Palestinian
doctors, nurses, and teachers.
The Quartet position put the UN in an awkward spot as coordina-
tor of assistance to the Palestinians. The humanitarian agencies, the
main one by far being UNRWA, found themselves having to shift
from institutional support in preparation of statehood and develop-
ment assistance to humanitarian assistance and found themselves
striving to alleviate the damage wrought to the Palestinians as a result
of policies with which the UNSG was associated by virtue of his asso-
ciation with the Quartet.
The question of whether and how to deal with organizations that
find themselves on “terrorist” lists has become particularly fraught
in light of the reaction to the events of 9/11. The United Nations
has traditionally talked to everybody as a practical matter. We need
to be inclusive and gather around the same table all those who need
to agree to the solution of a particular conflict if we wish to solve
it. But since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States,
particularly, dealing with such groups has risked putting those
who do so in a difficult situation. This boycott may seem to con-
stitute a punishment but is in fact self-defeating and misguided. It
has complicated the UN’s task in trying to be a helpful part of the
Quartet, and because of its inherited responsibility in the question of
Palestine, it brings about some sort of a solution. However, how can
you bring about such a solution if you are not dealing with all par-
ties or meeting personally with them? Despite my title at the time—
Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestinian
Authority—I was prevented from meeting with important members
of the new government because the Quartet allegedly did not allow
it. This lack of independence in such a situation is a problem, and a
serious drawback for peacemakers.
You can argue that if you exclude a group that represents a large
bulk of the population that is involved in a conflict, any agreement
that is reached would be short lived. In the case of Hamas, I believe
that an opportunity was missed. I do not know really what Hamas is
pursuing, and I take no comfort from looking at their covenant. But
I note that in Hamas’ campaign leading up to the 2006 elections,
nobody mentioned the covenant except their domestic opponents,
and they had a different campaign platform. I note also that shortly
after his election to the Palestinian Authority presidency, the rival
leader from the Fatah political party, Mahmoud Abbas, reached an
agreement with the main political factions, including Hamas, which
62 Á LVA R O D E S O T O
Concluding Thoughts
The United Nations is a creation of people, and therefore surely per-
fectible. Many people criticize the UN—such as certain built-in fea-
tures and biased members of the Security Council—but ultimately
it is still better than not having the UN at all. As former Secretary-
General Kofi Annan once said, there are simply certain fields in
which it is very difficult for the UN to play a constructive role if
there is no consensus among the member states. The theory from the
start was that beyond the actual signing and entry into force of the
UN Charter, the founding members of the Security Council, both
permanent and nonpermanent, would all cooperate to make sure that
things do not get out of hand so as to maintain international peace
and security.
Collegiality among the P5 soon collapsed. If you look closely at the
Charter it says that the membership assumes that the Security Council
is acting on behalf of all the member states and the organization as
a whole. This strikes me as the neglected article of the Charter: that
members of the Security Council, whether permanent or nonperma-
nent, should not be acting solely to promote their national interests.
They should be able to rise above national interests. Is that Utopia?
Possibly, but we have to try to recover that spirit and see the members
A Q UA R T E R C E N T U R Y O F P E A C E M A K I N G 63
of the Security Council try to rise above narrow national aims and
discharges its responsibility, making it a more flexible body in order
to bring about the desired international consensus called for by the
UN Charter as it began.
Having said that, in my view, it is the UN Secretary-General in
particular who has the responsibility to uphold certain standards,
such as impartiality and independence, that must be met by all media-
tors and peacemakers. There are some specific standards and duties
that individual mediators, governments (the “Norways” and the
“Switzerlands” of this world), and even, for me, some NGOs involved
in mediation (such as this Community of Sant’Egidio that helped
broker the Mozambique peace accords, and Humanitarian Dialogue)
must have. But the SG shoulders most of the main burden.
I also believe that it is particularly important for the SG to follow,
and to stand by, what has been achieved by his predecessors. If you
look carefully at the UN Charter or its bylaws, you will find that it
does not state anywhere that the SG in fact has a default role as the
world’s chief diplomat. In fact, while the SG does not actually have
such a specified role, it is a very valuable activity because the SG
has an obvious comparative advantage that does not last indefinitely.
I do not think it is desirable that the international community should
be deprived of a potentially very important tool in the peacemaking
toolbox.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on October
22, 2007, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 4
Filippo Grandi1
in conflict not for 25 years like Somalia, but 3. The Syrian Center for
Policy Research, commissioned by UNRWA and UNDP to do peri-
odic economic analysis, found that by the first half of 2013, Syria’s
economy had lost an equivalent of 174% of its 2010 GDP. Already
over half the population now lives in poverty. The result is the emer-
gence of an economy essentially based on violence that exploits an
already vulnerable citizenry.
It was inevitable that the combined factors of violence and eco-
nomic collapse would not be contained to Syria, but would have
profound consequences for the countries in the region. The effects
are most acutely felt here in Lebanon, and because of this country’s
political fragility, they pose a great source of stress and concern.
Within this catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, another cri-
sis, growing from the larger ones, but with features and consequences
of its own, has been unfolding. It is on this crisis that I will focus
tonight. The situation of the 570,000 Palestinians who have been
resident in Syria is a humanitarian disaster but also a political chal-
lenge that will have reverberations after the conflict has stopped.
In Syria, Palestinians found secure, sympathetic refuge in 1948.
For over six decades they nurtured families and communities, inte-
grated economically, and formed a subset of the cultural and intel-
lectual fabric of a vibrant and proud Syrian society. The Palestinian
camps, and UNRWA services in them, formed the locus of their com-
munity. They were places where UNRWA was at its best in support-
ing Palestine refugees. Lifetime bonds were nurtured in our schools.
Women shared problems while waiting in the clinics. Community
centers helped families cope with stress and provided space to orga-
nize events. Youth clubs provided teenagers with safe creative space
where they developed skills.
UNRWA could carry out in an optimal way its role of visible com-
mitment of the international community to support Palestine refu-
gees, by providing them with assistance, but also by being part of the
glue—a glue holding them together and contributing to the resilience
that has allowed them to develop human capital, sustain communi-
ties, and build for a positive and peaceful future. This was made pos-
sible by the hospitality extended to Palestine refugees.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on February
25, 2014, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 5
Richard Falk1
S ince the end of World War II, no region on this planet has been
the scene of such intense encounters between rival visions of world
order than the Middle East. It is a part of the world where geography,
ideology, and energy resources interact in lethal ways that threaten to
make the entire region a war zone. This chapter addresses the role the
UN has played in the Middle East during the recent Arab uprisings
and contextualizes this within a much larger historical context that
reveals the clear primacy of geopolitics in explaining this role.
because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council at the
time due to its refusal to designate the Beijing government as the
representative of China. Correctly supposing that the USSR would
not repeat this tactical mistake, the United States briefly flirted with
the idea of endowing the General Assembly with predominant influ-
ence even if it meant giving up its own veto power. It was in this
atmosphere that the UN General Assembly was persuaded to adopt
the Uniting for Peace Resolution confirming the residual responsibil-
ity of the GA in the event that the Security Council failed to act in a
peace and security crisis. Such a purported shift suggested the desire
of the American-led West to be able to use the legitimating impact of
UN authorization for its controversial undertakings, and more cyni-
cally, that it could reinforce American foreign policy with assured UN
backing in most situations.
Before this new approach was ever tested it was rejected. The
United States quickly realized that the UN membership in the after-
math of colonialism would no longer be easy to bring into line with
American foreign policy. In effect, the US government preferred to
live with a gridlocked UN rather than lend greater influence to a UN
majority intent on pushing a militant Third World agenda of global
reform, especially in the context of trade and investment. This turn
away from the General Assembly gained intense and urgent support
in the West when in the 1970s, the countries of the South banded
together, issuing their call for a New International Economic Order
based on demands for North/South equality and mutuality, along
an expectation of respect for permanent sovereignty over natural
resources and foreign investment.
What these UN developments meant for the Middle East is rather
clear.
First of all, it meant that with the retreat of the European powers
from the region after 1956, the United States and to a lesser extent
the Soviet Union, filled this geopolitical vacuum, basically sidelining
the UN except when the superpowers found it convenient to make
use of the organization, for example, in providing peacekeepers to
police the southern border of Lebanon with Israel. This meant the
complete takeover of the region by the two rival superpower alliance
relations, with a special added dimension relating to an American
commitment to protect Israel in the event that it needed assistance
to uphold its security. This alignment with Israel, accompanied by
a series of wars between Israel and its neighbors, most recently with
Lebanon in 2006 and with Gaza in 2008–2009 and 2012, exhibited
a dramatic disregard of the Charter conception of legitimate force on
THE UN IN THE MIDDLE EAST 87
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on April 29,
2013, and edited in July 2015.
Part II
Rami G. Khouri
the Arab world in its Arab Peace Plan has clearly expressed its willing-
ness to live in peace with Israel, and has made all the concessions that
Israel and the world have asked from it, and it is high time that Israel
responds positively to this initiative that remains on the table.
The broad range of issues he mentions that shape Arab and wider
Middle Eastern societies remind us that citizens who live in countries
that are politically pluralistic, democratic and stable, and economi-
cally dynamic are more likely to live in peace with each other and
their neighbors than citizens who suffer autocracy, foreign occupa-
tion and colonization, poverty, and poor education and health stan-
dards. Resolving political conflicts also requires paying attention to
issues such as environmental conditions, cultural norms, the role of
the UN, Arab-Israeli-Iranian-Turkish relations, social and economic
conditions, political governance, the quality or lack thereof of foreign
mediation, and inter-Arab cooperation through the Arab League.
Few people in the Middle East can match Amr Moussa’s breadth
of experience and personal interactions with the issues and actors that
shape the Middle East and its interactions with the world. His career
as an Egyptian diplomat included serving as foreign minister, before
being appointed as Secretary-General of the League of Arab States
(2001–2011). He was also a member of the United Nations High
Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change for International
Peace and Security.
President Jimmy Carter analyzes his significant experiences in the
United States’ efforts at mediating Arab-Israeli peace agreements,
with very mixed results. He casts important light on both the qual-
ity and actions of the mediator, as well as the behavior of the war-
ring parties themselves. His reflections provide insightful hints about
some of the critical attributes of successful mediators and also of the
antagonists themselves who seek to end their wars.
Jimmy Carter served as the thirty-ninth president of the United
States from 1977 to 1981 and was recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace
Prize. During his presidency he concluded the Camp David Accords
and the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which were as historic
as they were controversial across the Arab region.
Lieutenant General Robert Mood delivered his lecture in his capac-
ity then as chief of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO),
the very first UN and oldest peacekeeping mission, established follow-
ing the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948 (to monitor the cessation of
hostilities and the subsequent 1949 armistice lines) and with offices in
Jerusalem, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, and Amman. His text also reflects
his 30 years experience in the Norwegian army that exposed him to
94 RAMI G. KHOURI
both the military and civilian sides of peacemaking; this included vari-
ous international appointments such as in Southern Lebanon, Sudan,
Afghanistan, and Kosovo, before his UNTSO appointment.
Mood first reflects on the particular case of UNTSO, suggest-
ing that to survive, such peacekeeping operations must be flexible
enough to withstand changes in context, scope, and time. Part of this
flexibility involved accommodating and adapting to two other inde-
pendent peacekeeping missions operating in its area of operations,
UNDOF in the Golan Heights and UNIFIL in Southern Lebanon,
occupied respectively by Israel in 1973 and 1978. Moreover, when
Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994,
respectively, they both insisted UNTSO not end its mission, given
its political connection to the resolution of the larger Arab-Israeli
conflict. From this, Mood draws the most important lesson from
UNTSO: it has been bearing witness since 1949 and representing
the UN’s determination to respect the armistice lines, regardless of
Israeli annexation claims in, for instance, the occupied Golan.
In general terms, as a military man involved in peacemaking, Mood
leaves us with no doubt about his core lesson from his experiences:
“[D]ialog is always a better option” than militaristic interventions
that rarely produce the desired political outcome. Military means,
sometimes unavoidable, can “easily cause more harm than good” by
stimulating more violence, unpredictability, and extremism. As with
Brahimi and Eliasson in the first part of this book, Mood shows that
cultural and contextual knowledge of the conflict and its parties, as
well as building trust between them and the peacemakers, is another
key lesson. Impartiality and human relations, he concludes, are what
peacemaking is all about.
Alastair Crooke touches on two important dynamics that have
hovered over many aspects of modern Middle East history and poli-
tics: the growth and substantive arguments of mainstream and legiti-
mate Islamist mass movements in Arab countries, Iran, and other
Muslim-majority lands and the often confrontational and distrustful
relationships between Islamists and Western parties. As Islamist ideas
and sentiments continue to spread across the region in many differ-
ent forms—Muslim Brotherhood parties, Hamas, Hizbollah, ISIS,
Al-Qaeda, and dozens of other groups—understanding the issues and
mindsets at play in this world becomes absolutely critical to any hopes
of reducing or resolving conflicts across the Middle East. Not surpris-
ingly, he often discusses Hamas and Hizbollah in tackling the tense
or forbidden relationships between Western governments and Islamist
movements in the Middle East. Hamas in Palestine and Hizbollah in
T HE A R AB - ISR A ELI CONFLIC T 95
Lebanon both came into being in the early 1980s largely as a con-
sequence of Israeli military occupations of Palestinian and Lebanese
territory. They grew stronger and eventually fought several wars with
Israel—which usually ended with a United Nations-brokered cease-
fire—because of the popular support they garnered in their and other
countries. This in turn reflected the powerful commitments among
Arab public opinion to resisting the Israeli occupation of Arab lands
and subjugation and exile of the Palestinian people. Secular move-
ments carried this torch in the 1960s and 70s in many Arab lands,
and by the 1980s, Islamist movements had emerged as the strongest
manifestations of the determination in the Arab world to continue to
struggle against the ravages of repeated Israeli attacks, occupations,
and colonization of Arab lands.
Crooke is one of the world’s leading experts and practitioners in
interactions among Islamists and Western organizations, states, and
individuals. He is founder and co-director of Conflicts Forum, which
works on ending the isolation of mainstream Islamists (Hamas,
Hizbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, but not groups like Al-Qaeda or
ISIS) by promoting dialogue and challenging entrenched views in
both the Western and Arab media. His 30 years of experience in
conflict resolution include working with the European Union and
the British government in the Middle East, Ireland, South Africa,
Namibia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Colombia, advising the
European Union High Representative to the Arab-Israeli negotia-
tions and the Quartet, and mediating several inter-Palestinian and
Palestinian-Israeli cease-fires.
Running through the four authors’ accounts of their experiences
with various conflicts across the Middle East are the strains of the
three overarching and underlying factors that explain much about
this war-scarred region. The three are: anti-imperial struggles against
foreign powers, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and domestic strife in a
context of weak and erratic state-building. If these factors are better
appreciated and politically addressed, the prospects for our region
would improve dramatically and quickly. If they are ignored—as has
been the case predominantly to date—the Middle East will continue
to stumble through modern history with the structural handicaps of
its own wounds and fractures. Some of these are self-inflicted, but
many are caused or exacerbated by foreign elements.
1. The historical struggle between indigenous polities and actors,
and foreign—mostly Western—powers has included over a century
and a half of colonial rule over much of the Arab world, and con-
tinued postindependence tensions in many cases. The continuing
96 RAMI G. KHOURI
Jimmy Carter 1
W hen I was elected President in 1976, there had been four major
wars in the Middle East in the previous 25 years. The US had faced
the challenge of an Arab oil embargo in 1973 and 1974, and contin-
ued to face a secondary boycott against any corporation in my nation
that did business with Israel. I had resolved even before I was elected
president that I would do what I could to bring peace to Israel and
its Arab neighbors with a comprehensive agreement that also would
secure the rights of the Palestinian people. I began my efforts by
meeting with the leaders of this region as quickly as I could after
I was inaugurated.
I had a wide range of meetings and discussed the various aspects
of the peace process, primarily the obstacles to be overcome, with the
leaders who were involved. I was very distressed when a May 1977
Israeli election brought a change in government and Menachem Begin
as prime minister, because it seemed to me from his statements before
the election that he would not be amenable to a peace negotiation.
However, when I met with him I changed my mind. I found that the
American president has great influence with the leaders of Israel. In
my opinion this still holds great potential for progress in the future.
I took the initiative and invited Sadat and Begin to Camp David in
September 1978. We spent 13 days in isolation. I was determined to
resolve the differences on Israeli security, land, and Palestinian rights.
In the first three days, I met in a small room with only Begin and
Sadat. They were so completely incompatible and never could get
beyond arguing about the past, that for the last ten days at Camp
David I never let them see each other. Begin stayed in his cabin and
Sadat stayed in his cabin, and I went back and forth between the two
to negotiate. We got to the final day, and we thought we had failed,
because there was an insuperable difference between them. President
Sadat insisted that all Israeli settlers had to be removed from Egyptian
territory. On the other hand, Prime Minister Begin had taken an oath
before God that he would never dismantle an Israeli settlement, so
that seemed impossible to resolve.
On the last day, Begin, Sadat, and I were packing to go back home
in defeat, and Begin asked me if I would sign some photographs
of me with him and Sadat, for his grandchildren. By calling Israel,
my secretary discovered the names of his grandchildren. Instead of
signing just “best wishes,” I signed “best wishes to . . .” and I wrote
the name of each of his grandchildren, and took them over to his
cabin. He was quite angry with me at that time. He said, “Thank
you, Mr. President.” He was very proper. Then he turned around
and began to read the names of his grandchildren, one by one, and
tears ran down his cheeks, and mine. He had realized that if we did
not succeed, his grandchildren would face sustained conflict. I went
back to my cabin and in a few minutes his attorney general, Aharon
Barak, who later was chief justice of the Supreme Court, came and
said, “Let us try one more time,” and we did. So the way we resolved
it was that Begin withdrew himself from the decision concerning the
settlements and let the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, decide; they
voted 85 percent affirmatively to dismantle the settlements. They also
voted overwhelmingly for the commitments that Begin had made
concerning the Palestinians—that they would have full autonomy and
that all Israeli military and political forces would be withdrawn from
the West Bank and Gaza. That was the agreement. Six months later a
treaty of peace between Israel and Egypt was signed.
then went to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad and with
Hamas leaders in Damascus. While we were in Jerusalem, we met
with the leaders of a hundred peace organizations and also with their
counterpart Palestinian leaders, on a smaller scale, in the West Bank.
That was a good learning experience for me, and it has contributed
to my forthcoming book, We Can Bring Peace to the Holy Land. My
hope is that we will see a new movement toward a comprehensive
peace in this entire region, including Lebanon and Syria, along with
Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinians and the Israelis. Such a comprehen-
sive approach is the only way that the people in this region ultimately
can live in peace, security, progress, and harmony.
that they stated that any peace agreement negotiated between Abu
Mazen and the Israelis would be accepted by them if it was later
submitted to the Palestinian population in a referendum, even if
the Hamas leaders did not like parts of the agreement. I announced
this to the public in Jerusalem, and at the same time the leaders
of Hamas in Damascus made a public statement to that effect. So
that was a new and very encouraging development. The alternative
to holding a referendum would be to have a democratic election in
Palestine, once again as happened in January 2006, with Hamas
candidates allowed to participate. If a Palestinian unity govern-
ment that included several factions of Palestinians approved a peace
agreement, then it would be acceptable to Hamas. Public opinion
polls of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have shown an
overwhelming desire to implement the two-state solution, with the
Palestinians living in peace in an independent, contiguous, viable
nation alongside Israel.
who worship in other ways as well. I believe that people of all faiths,
or even no faith, would be called the children of God for promoting
peace. I hope that all of us will join together with a degree of love,
care, compassion, and forgiveness, and look into the future for a time
of peace in God’s Holy Land, which you occupy along with others.
Notes
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on December
12, 2008, and edited in July 2015.
2. Matthew 5:9.
Chapter 7
Amr Moussa1
Some in our world opposed, others went along blindly, and many
others yet were not aware of the depth and implications of these
new trends. There was no adequate coordination, no consultation or
in-depth consideration of the repercussions of the changes underway.
We had no clear appreciation of the development and evolution of
many of those concepts, despite the fact that it was in our region and
countries that many of these new concepts were being formulated,
tested, and implemented.
In short, we were caught unprepared for the post-Cold War new
world. When the moment was ripe, we were also unable to field a
generation of politicians, economists, environmentalists, and intel-
lectuals who could participate as stakeholders in the world’s new sub-
stance and style. We did not put the necessary emphasis on education
as the critical tool to achieve that goal. Also, while the world was
bracing itself for the new era to come, we were shocked by Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, which confronted the Arab system with a real
and serious existential threat that kept us busy with the crisis and
its lingering implications, some of which persist today. We were also
consistently passive, only reacting to new theories about our own
region, ranging from the New Middle East and the Broader Middle
East, to initiatives about reconfiguring the Middle East—with few
of our own contributions from within the Arab world about our own
vision, for our own future.
call to both Iran and to my fellow Arabs as well, all of whom need to
think twice before pursuing a path that would usher in an era of chaos
and turbulence in our neighborhood.
We acknowledge the right of Iran—as a signatory of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty—to enjoy all the benefits allowed by the
treaty in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including in the
field of nuclear research. We strongly object to the development of
any and all military programs in the nuclear arena, but we also rec-
ognize that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not
confirmed the existence of such programs in Iran.
If the international community wants effectively to address the
matter of nuclear activities in the Middle East, it should treat Israel in
the same manner that it treats Iran. The most cogent approach would
be to declare the Middle East a region free from nuclear weapons
under international supervision. This should include Iran, Israel, and
all the countries of the region. The world should not focus on Iran
and tolerate Israel’s nuclear program. There is no such thing as a good
nuclear program and a bad nuclear program. We should also oppose
any military adventure against Iran, and express our concern with
sanctions that endanger the interests and the well-being of the Iranian
people. An intelligent and credible process of negotiations should
continue until fruition. This is achievable since Iran has accepted the
authority of the IAEA and the existing inspection system.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on February
18, 2010, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 8
Alastair Crooke1
“ S
o, you spoke to the leaders of Hizbullah?” “Yes.” “And you also
speak with the leaders of Hamas?” “Yes.” “And they told you that
they support democracy?” “Yes.” “And you believe them?” With this,
the representative of a Washington think tank smiled, satisfied, to
her audience around her and sat down. The biting skepticism of her
question, “And you believe them?” was fairly clear. It implies a con-
viction that Islamists2 have nothing to say, or if they do speak, and
when they do have something to say, it is just babble of no mean-
ing and without any real sense to it. It also conveys the sense in the
West that when Islamists speak, their language is somehow shadowy,
unreachable, and coded, whereas our language—the language of the
West—is transparent, accessible, and honest. When we say we support
democracy, of course we are being serious, but when Hizbullah or
Hamas suggest that they support democracy, they are lying. This is
the implication of the way that the question above was framed.
The idea that non-Western cultures and non-Western language are
somehow ephemeral, irrational, and parochial is very deeply rooted in
colonialism and colonial thinking. In fact, it was the Greeks who orig-
inally coined the words “barbarians” and “barbarism”—meaning the
people that lived outside the bounds of civilization were barbarians.
It was from that word literally that came the concept that is implied
frequently about Islamist language today—people who stammer and
speak a language that has no meaning. That is what we call them—
barbarians—when we talk about Islamists only speaking in babble
today. In their time the Greeks used the term in particular with refer-
ence to the Persians, whom they accused of rejecting the ideas of the
120 A L A S TA I R C R O O K E
Greek classical city-state. These people, the Persians, had other ideas;
they were somehow uncivilized, slaves to tyranny.
The implied sense that they are lying—the deceit that was implied
in this question about Islamist discourse, democracy, or their policy—
is also another classical inheritance that we have. This essentially came
from Plato, who argued very strongly that you simply could not trust
other city-states. Other city-states lied and used subterfuge and deceit
in order to try to deceive the Greeks of their true intentions and plans.
So nothing these people said could be taken at face value, because
they must be just lying and deceitful.
change the rules of the game, not simply accept your rules of the
game,” will it be possible to see a dialogue that has any real mean-
ing. The Islamists do have ideas, they do have an ideology, and they
do have a potential to sever stale relationships within societies, and
stale ideas between people and between societies. They introduce a
category of rationality that people, especially young people, find both
energizing and mobilizing, as is evident in places like Gaza, South
Lebanon, or Iran.
It is very clear that among all mainstream Islamist movements,
both armed and not armed, we have witnessed in recent years a great
stirring at the grassroots and a debate that has begun. People are
looking at what happened to Hamas, to the Muslim Brothers in
Egypt, to elections in Jordan, and to Pakistan, and they come to
the conclusion that the path of the electoral process to bringing real
change in society simply has failed everywhere. There is not a case
where it has succeeded, because it has always been blocked in one
way or another.
Even worse is that those movements that have actually had people
in parliament or have had a small representation in government have
been discredited. We see this in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, among
other places. So a serious and ongoing debate takes place regularly
these days among Islamists about what to do now and in which direc-
tion to move. Where do we go, they ask? Do we go back to something
from our past? Perhaps people in the West immediately assume that
means that Islamists will return to the armed resistance of the 1960s
and 70s, which means more violence. I do not think that is the case
at all. I think many Islamists are leaning more toward popular mobi-
lization, which is one of the legacies of the Iranian Revolution. It is
too early to see the outcome, because the debates have just started.
What is clear is that all these movements are on the verge of moving
very much in a more radical direction. This is not surprising, because
the realities of the successes of globalization that are trumpeted on
global television have been very different when viewed from the per-
spective of ordinary people at the grassroots level—people who see
the rich getting very, very much richer, while real wages sink further
and further.
So in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East, where poverty
has increased in recent years, and asset values rise steadily around the
world so that the wealthy become more wealthy, we see the middle
class and most people in the region being decimated economically
and socially. Those that can, jump to the super rich. Those that can-
not, struggle not to sink down into the great morass. The very big
126 A L A S TA I R C R O O K E
social changes that are taking place in this region are forcing Islamist
groups and others to reflect deeply on their responses, which I antici-
pate will include much more radical politics in terms of economic,
social, and political changes.
As Islamist discourse develops and responds to events, it still
appears to the West as discontinuity in the Western narrative that
does not fit neatly within our description and understanding of his-
tory. A sudden development like the Iranian Revolution seems to
the West as an aberration, with little real meaning for us, and some-
thing that we can ignore, because it does not fit into our histori-
cal narrative. The West sees nothing more important for itself than
the supremacy of the rights of the individual, around whom social
processes, desires, fears, passion, reason, and propensities for good
and evil all circulate. Islamists, to the contrary, say that such Western
thinking is flawed, because these wants and needs of man that get
catered to so well in the West actually diminish man himself, and
diminish others as well. Other individuals become simply a means
to an end, be it the economic satisfaction of our individual needs,
or social, sexual or other needs. This objectifies the human being by
trying to put the individual before others in our contacts and rela-
tions with others in the world. Islamists also argue about the need to
reestablish multi-dimensional values that go beyond personal desires
and wants. Such values do not define the human being narrowly as a
rational economic actor seeking simply to maximize his or her mate-
rial welfare over time; rather, they see him or her in a multi-faceted,
multi-dimensional way that puts the human being back at the center
of society again.
These are some of the things that Islamists are saying, and all of
them are rooted in the common human experience. None of these
concepts can be described as particularly theological issues. In short,
Islamists are offering a fundamental disagreement with us in the West
on our narrative of history and our meaning of modernity. They do
not accept the idea that the whole of history should be portrayed as a
continuum of a spectrum from backwardness to modern Western sec-
ular life. They do not accept that the West is at the extreme end of this
spectrum and is an advanced model for others, who unfortunately—
either for cultural or other reasons—are unable to cope or are resis-
tant to accept modernity. They do not accept the power relationships
of the West that exist within our societies or between our societies.
They do not accept that the success and advancement of the indi-
vidual is the litmus test of progress in life, versus their view that in
fact the cohesiveness of society and community should be the test of
progress. The worthy progress should be community progress, not
the progress of an individual.
They also question our understanding of individualism and what
it means in terms of freedom. Does individualism really mean free-
dom in the West? Questions also are being asked about the univer-
sality of Western rationality based on its foundations in empiricism,
scientific methodology, and facts. The idea that Western thinking
and ideas somehow have an objective rationality that other cultures’
thinking cannot aspire to is not accepted. Islamists reject confining
ourselves to a narrow form of thinking that excludes metaphysical
thinking, deductive thinking, and syllogistic thinking, and they see
the Western claim to universality as wrong and false.
The point of talking, negotiating, and engaging with each other is
not based on the sense that we all have to follow the recipe, which I
believe essentially goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia as a Christian
concept—that over time, as technology improves, and science and
knowledge increase, we will all share the same values and become the
same. I argue the opposite, that what we are talking about is a fight
about the emerging global order—that there are some people who
are saying that, “No, we do not think that there is just one template
for our future, or just one vision.”
There are many different ways of living, and perhaps we ought
to accept that rather than to try and impose on the global order a
particular vision. We will only start moving in this direction if people
in the West understand and accept that our Western vision for the
future, our institutions, and our way of dealing with politics are not
necessarily the most advanced, and they are not the only path that
128 A L A S TA I R C R O O K E
He said, “You know? I considered this and what they were saying
to us, and I thought, ‘what if I do all that? What is there left to talk
about? What are we going to discuss?’”
Notes
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on January
17, 2008, and edited in July 2015.
2. In using the term “Islamists,” I am referring to groups such as the
Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas, and Hizbullah, but not radi-
cal jihadist groups such as Al-Qaida.
3. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pref. Jean-Paul Sartre, trans.
Constance Farrington (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1967).
Chapter 9
Robert Mood1
consent of the parties in order to assist them. I will submit that every
day we contribute to the stability in South Lebanon, the Golan, and
the wider region, and every single day we contribute to deescalate
conflicts or tension is a huge success. The responsibility for keeping
the political process going, the diplomatic process going, for matur-
ing political solutions that only the involved people themselves can
define and develop is theirs. We will keep on doing our job based on
consent to assist and contribute to stability whether it takes one more
week, one more month, or 62 more years. It is up to the member-
states and the Security Council if they want to change it.
integrated approach, military means can easily cause more harm than
good. Here are some main reasons for this:
and dancing after dinner made the difference. Two months later, this
group left as heroes because the tribes in the area did not fight any
more and they had a much better developed understanding of each
other and their common challenges.
My third story is from 1999 when I deployed to Kosovo, where
I commanded a battle group. After the NATO intervention, the
situation had turned upside down, and the few remaining Serbs in
Kosovo had become the victims. It was a very challenging situation;
a revenge attitude was part of reality. Then, the job was to create a
functional municipality in Kosovo Polje, that by the way was the vil-
lage in which Milosevic stated that “[n]o one will ever again beat the
Serbs.” What we eventually managed to launch was that the Serb part
of the municipality met on the first floor, while the Kosovo Albanian
part of the municipality met on the fourth floor. On the second floor,
we had some secretaries and administration, and on the third floor,
we had the UN. We did that for a few months, and the only thing
that happened with substance in the municipality was that they saw
each other when they went in and out of the front door. After a while,
people started saying, “Isn’t it about time for the sake of our people
to decide to meet maybe on the same floor?” Then, we moved to the
same floor but with separate rooms. A few months later we were in
the same room. Two years later, the municipality was working. The
key point here is that where there is a will and where there is a good
process, reconciliation and trust can be built.
When you decide to use the military means in that context, and
use it in the traditional way to destroy the enemy, you need to have a
well-developed plan for how to move forward the minute that tradi-
tional military campaign is over. Plans must be developed for winning
the peace in parallel with plans for the destruction of the enemy. That
was lacking in Kosovo. What you bomb, how you bomb, when you
bomb, how you shape your enemy? When you plan that, you need to
have a plan for how to rebuild the society with institutions afterward.
If you do not put that planning into your decision-making before you
send your bombers out to do the job or you send your tanks or what-
ever, you create a dangerous vacuum. That vacuum will be exploited.
That happened in Kosovo. I left in May 2000 and came back again in
2002. What we saw between June 12, 1999, and one year later was
that the comprehensive effort of the international community was
not there; it was a period of vacuum. During that vacuum period, the
spoilers exploited the situation and laid the foundations for future
activities. That is part of the reasons for some of the challenges we
still have in Kosovo today.
144 ROBERT MOOD
spectrum: the USAID is working very closely with the soldiers on the
ground. On the other side, you have some European countries, espe-
cially Scandinavian countries, which simply refuse to allow a com-
promising of the humanitarian space. You are not allowed to build a
school in a particular area to keep your soldiers safe in a compound
nearby, and three years down the road you find out that there was no
money or plans for the teachers or a long-term plan for sustainable
development.
It is not necessarily a black-and-white issue. I have been in situa-
tions in Kosovo and I saw situations in Afghanistan where I would
argue that whatever we are doing as soldiers, we cannot do anything
that compromises the NGOs: that is a red line. But I also strongly
believe that there has to be extensive dialogue between the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) level and the politi-
cal leadership on the ground. Let me put it his way; if the military in a
specific area of, say, Congo, Somalia, or Afghanistan, are developing
a major military action plan, there needs to be a mechanism whereby
Doctors without Borders, the ICRC, and other agencies can achieve
enough insight to have an opinion. To assess, and if necessary, warn
the civilian leadership that “if you allow this military campaign to
happen you are going to set the development that we have been work-
ing on in this area back 10 years.” This mechanism is lacking. This
logic also has to work the other way around. Sometimes the conclu-
sion by the civilian leadership is that we have to go again and clean
these two villages or capture these two people. When they approve
and decide they also need to think about what comes next, since
those who want to break the cohesion of the international commu-
nity would stand ready to move in with criticism. Hence, there needs
to be some kind of follow-up also from the NGOs in such a situation.
That mechanism, that sort of dialogue with trust, should be created
since it is lacking today.
Conclusion
To conclude, let me go back to UNTSO. In 1949, it was a tough
job to negotiate the armistices between Israel and its four neighbors.
A gentleman whose name was Ralph Bunche, who won a Nobel Peace
prize for his mediation efforts with the armistice deals, took a very
different approach. He decided that we cannot sit around the table
with papers exchanging thoughts, arguing with each other that this
is wrong and this is right; this is not a fact, and this is a different
fact. Bunche did not want to negotiate facts in that way in a hall, so
146 ROBERT MOOD
he brought in a pool table and spent the first days creating an atmo-
sphere of trust among the players, the representatives of the govern-
ments. This is an oversimplification, but the fact of the matter is that
the way he worked relationships and dialogue resulted in trust and
contact that the truces possible. Before they went down to talking
business they managed to see each other as human beings with things
in common. Formalities did not start the process but rather concluded
the process. The beginning of the process was human relations, trust,
and confidence.
It is a political dance, and my own credibility as a peacekeeper
is absolutely dependent on my impartiality, which is why I say the
same thing to the people I meet in all of the five countries that host
UNTSO.
I would argue, based on what the countries in which we as
UNTSO serve today tell us, we enjoy trust and confidence in Beirut,
Damascus, Amman, and Cairo. As you by now have well understood,
we are working in the regional context and not specifically on the
Palestinian-Israeli issue or other such local situations elsewhere.
Whether the host nations will ask us to employ or adjust a part of
the implementation for a comprehensive solution in the future, this is
entirely up to them. I do believe that we are ready.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on January
18, 2011, and edited in July 2015.
Part III
Martin Wählisch
Hannes Siebert 1
In the last century, peace was the product of victory on the battlefield
instead of a negotiated settlement. From 1940 until 2002, the world
witnessed more than 370 state-based conflicts. Some of them were
terminated by cease-fires and peace agreements, others by military
interventions. Only 43 percent of all conflict were resolved through
a negotiated political settlement, while nearly one-third reoccurred
within five years of their initial termination. Significantly, most of
the conflicts that reoccurred were mediated by third-party or external
mediators.
The number of civil wars increased almost four times over the past
60 years since World War II, with more than 40 civil wars in the first
decade of the new millennium. One can claim that this increase in civil
wars resulted from a change in colonial practices whereby powerful
states no longer saw the need to occupy or colonize resource-rich
states to extract natural resources. These new strategies, however,
resulted in igniting internal strife as external powers used political
influence and often exploited internal divisions to achieve their eco-
nomic and strategic objectives. At any point in time over the last
decade, the world hosted nearly 30 armed conflicts simultaneously—
many of them were “check book wars,” with external powers funding
and supplying arms to different internal factions in order to enhance
their access to the beleaguered state’s resources.
In this “post-post-colonial” era, we are witnessing the postcolo-
nial government incarnations of the colonial “strong man” being
replaced by new democratic forces. These new movements are rede-
fining democracy; they are innovating new forms of representative
154 HANNES SIEBERT
South Africa
The “peace journey” started in my own country, South Africa in
1989. Numerous sincere international mediators, but also as many
“trophy hunters,” came to bring “peace” and resolve the “apartheid
tyranny.” The problem with most foreign initiatives was that instead
of addressing the fundamental issues of injustice, discrimination, and
gross human rights violations, their mediation frameworks of “objec-
tivity and neutrality” often relegitimized discredited apartheid lead-
ers, or gave those leaders a way out—prolonging the suffering of more
than 80 percent of the population. This became a constant trend and
sometimes a predictable, tragicomedy. They reenforced the power
disparity by equalizing the pain and suffering of the oppressed, with
the rights and fears of the oppressor.
For Afrikaners like myself, whose people were responsible for some
of the most brutal human rights violations and systematic oppression
in recent history, it was a great challenge to counter this and focus
the discourse on the values of equality, justice, truth, and fairness.
158 HANNES SIEBERT
Nepal
I was invited to Nepal to help negotiate a cease-fire deal between
Maoist parties and the King and support the parties in setting-up the
national peace and negotiations process. But the challenge we faced
was that the King kept undermining the democratic and negotiations
process with covert military operations and self-serving, clientalistic,
B E YO N D M E D I AT I O N 159
evening at the end of the third week, Padma Ratna called from prison
and asked that I return. That night the people stormed the palace;
rainstorms broke out and prevented an almost certain massacre. What
surprised and shocked people on the streets was that despite the
King’s orders to the army to open fire, the Chief or Army—the King’s
stepbrother—refused to act against his own people. Days of intense
negotiations flowed with many of the democratic leaders and activ-
ists refusing to leave prison until the King stood down. The parties
released a list of demands to the King and on the Monday morning,
the Peace Secretary and I met with the King’s head of government
to deliver a message from the imprisoned facilitators. That night the
King finally stepped down, his government resigned, and he handed
over power to the people.
If one considers the examples of fundamental change processes in
South Africa, Nepal, and more recently in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt,
none of them were the result of foreign mediation. Each one started in
a people’s movement and transformed into a political hurricane that
eventually achieved fundamental structural change through inclu-
sive National Dialogues, conferences, or joint constitution drafting
processes. These movements were triggered by long-standing govern-
ment oppression and the lack of political, socioeconomic, and human
rights of the population. As the leaderless movements in Tunisia,
Yemen, and Egypt have illustrated over the past few years, common
themes of social justice, economic welfare, and political freedom have
the potential to unite people for change. Peaceful revolutions in the
Middle East led to the resignation of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali
and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, and Yemen’s President Ali
Abdullah Saleh. As in Nepal, the military’s actions played a key role
in Egypt and Tunisia, as their decisions to support popular protests
increased the pressure on their governments and prevented more
bloodshed.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on May 23,
2011, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 11
Gareth Evans 1
L ooking out at the world around us, it is difficult for anyone fol-
lowing current events to believe at first glance that we have really
learned much at all about conflict prevention and resolution. Seeing
the high number of conflicts worldwide, it is hard to believe that any
of us in this business—whether governments, or intergovernmental
organizations, or NGOs or research institutes and think tanks—are
making any kind of difference. But let me try nonetheless to offer
you some thoughts about why we do still have some reason to look
on the bright side.
For everything that is still going wrong, we have been learning,
slowly and painfully, how to do things better. I have certainly learned
a lot from my own experience over the last 20 years, first as a Foreign
Minister actively engaged in a series of conflict resolution issues,
particularly in Cambodia, through my work as president and CEO
of the International Crisis Group, and as a participant in a number of
global panels and commissions addressing conflict issues.
So let me try to distill the lessons that I have learned, and which
I think the international community as a whole should have learned,
from the experience of the post-Cold War years. I will try to paint the
canvas both broadly, so as to keep the major issues in perspective but
also in a way that focuses on the role of third-party mediators and
facilitators in conflict prevention and resolution, both governmental
and nongovernmental, and those who assist them. Among others,
I will focus on the role of the International Crisis Group, which has
been playing an active role in supporting peacemakers with analysis,
recommendations, and often behind-the-scenes input.
164 G A R E T H E VA N S
and do things to prevent and resolve conflict and violence they really
did not want to do.
From very small beginnings—two people in a London office and
a tiny field staff in the Balkans—the International Crisis Group has
grown to having over 130 full time staff working across 5 conti-
nents in over 60 different areas of actual or potential conflict, with
an advocacy or liaison presence in Brussels (the Headquarters), in
Washington, next to the UN in New York, and in London, Moscow,
and Beijing. We produce around 90 freely available reports and brief-
ing papers a year, promote them directly and intensely with senior
policymakers and those who influence them, and are widely regarded
now as perhaps the world’s leading nongovernment source of early
warning, analysis, and advice to governments and intergovernmen-
tal organizations in relation to the prevention of deadly conflict and
mass violence (although some uncharitable souls might suggest that
we can claim to be the best at what we do only because we are the
only organization doing precisely what we do!).
The International Crisis Group’s particular value-added, when it
comes to both analysis and policy recommendations, is that all our
reporting is field-based. At last count we had people on the ground
from 49 different nationalities, speaking between them 52 different
languages. They are steeped in local language and culture, getting
dust on their boots, engaged in endless interaction with locals and
internationals on the scene, and operating from nearly 30 regional or
local field offices across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America,
and the still volatile parts of Europe.
While the International Crisis Group’s basic methodology has three
dimensions—field-based analysis, policy prescription, and high-level
advocacy (with the latter two depending on inputs from a wider range
of sources)—everything starts with the first: an accurate take on what
is happening on the ground, focusing particularly on both the issues
that are resonating and the personalities that are driving them. For a
variety of reasons, mainly security and budgetary, traditional diplo-
mats are not performing this function in as much breadth and depth
as they traditionally have—it’s hard to get out and about when you
are locked up in a fortress or have minimal staff resources—and both
early warning and effective conflict prevention capacity have become
more at risk as a result. This is a gap that the International Crisis
Group has been widely seen as very successful in filling.
We have produced many reports over the years on the ebb and flow
of events, issues, and problems in the Middle East in particular with
most attention, inevitably, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, and
P R E V E N T I N G A N D R E S O LV I N G D E A D LY C O N F L I C T 167
Iran, but also a series on Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and other countries
and situations in the region. The aim has been always to explain the
local dynamics, trying to strip away the myths and misunderstand-
ings that so often afflict reporting of these issues in the West, and
constantly suggesting new ways forward.
Occasionally we produce thematic reports distilling what we have
learned from our work on the ground and linking it into more general
research. One of the best, and probably the most influential, of our
reports of this kind was Understanding Islamism in 2005, which tack-
led head-on the indefensible Western tendency, especially after 9/11,
to lump all forms of Islamism together, whether missionary, political
or jihadist, brand them all as radical and treat them all as hostile. But
a great many think tanks and research institutes do general thematic
research. The International Crisis Group’s real strength comes from
our detailed local knowledge of particular local situations, and our
capacity to force policymakers to sit up and take notice of the implica-
tions of that analysis. One of the many areas in which that approach
has won favorable reviews has been our reporting on one particular
stream of genuinely violent Islamism in South East Asia, the Jemaah
Islamiyah movement, which has regularly been described by senior
Western intelligence officials as “gold standard.” But then, knowing
what we now know about the performance of major Western intel-
ligence agencies, that is perhaps not these days quite the compliment
it might once have been.
The ultimate utility of field-based analysis, as distinct from the
kind that is routinely produced behind research institute and think-
tank computers, is that there is a much better chance of getting right
the policy decisions that flow from it. The current situation in the
Eastern Congo, for example, with Nkunda’s militia claiming to be
protecting the local Tutsi population from murderously inclined
Rwandan Hutus supported by the Kabila government, has been rou-
tinely portrayed as a replay of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, requiring
more and more external military intervention of a kind that was so
lamentably lacking then. But the situation in fact is far more complex
and nuanced than that—with Nkunda’s own troops being among
the worst human-right abusers in the since 2004, with many other
internal and actors at fault—and it cries out for an effectively applied
political solution at least as much, if not more, than a military one.
I was taught a lesson in my first months with the International
Crisis Group that has colored my thinking ever since about the abso-
lute need to base policy recommendations on reliable and completely
up-to-date field information. We issued a report a shortly before
168 G A R E T H E VA N S
breaking out across Central and Eastern Europe, from the Baltics
to Romania—using essentially the political, legal, and constitutional
subcompartments of the conflict prevention toolbox to find solutions
acceptable to both majorities and minorities. Since the Russia-Georgia
conflict this year, new anxieties have arisen about the capacity for
these minority issues to again generate confrontation and violence in
the former Soviet space, and the International Crisis Group, for one,
has been advocating close and careful attention to these issues. To
take one small example, with Russian nationalist sentiment resurgent
in the Ukraine’s Crimea, in particular, it does not make much sense,
and we have been saying so, to have the signs at the Sevastopol airport
in two language only, Ukrainian and English!
The fifth rule is to be prepared to commit the necessary resources,
governmental and intergovernmental, when and where they are
needed, and particularly at the early prevention stage, where any
investment now is likely to be infinitely cheaper than paying later
for military action, humanitarian relief assistance, and postconflict
reconstruction—something the international community is still
much better at talking about than doing.
There are many examples one could give of money being able to
be better spent than it has been, but one of the most succinct and
graphic I have seen is a table published in the New York Times in
mid-2004, just over a year after the invasion of Iraq, which showed
that the $144 billion already by then spent in Iraq—and costs, of
course, have multiplied almost exponentially since—could have paid
for, among other things, the more or less complete safeguarding of
US ports, airports, and airliners ($34 billion); the security from theft
of the world’s stock of weapons-grade nuclear materials, and the deac-
tivation of warheads (another $34 billion); the complete rebuilding
of Afghanistan, including drug crop conversion ($20 billion); the
addition of another 65,000 US troops, if anyone thought this neces-
sary ($40 billion); and another $10 billion in development assistance
(which would have filled, for one year anyway, nearly 20 percent of
the gap then identified if the Millennium Development goals relating
to poverty, disease, and the like were to be met).
What does all this mean for negotiators trying to put together
international peacebuilding missions that will not fall apart, and for
those then charged with holding them together? I think, on the basis
of my own and the International Crisis Group’s experience, it means
five very basic things, which can be stated very succinctly.
First, sort out who should do what and when—immediately, over
a medium transition period and in the longer term: allocate the
roles and coordinate them effectively both at headquarters and on
the ground. Of all the things that have gone wrong in Afghanistan,
among the most serious have been weaknesses on this front—poor
coordination among all the international players (between military
and military, civilian and civilian, and military and civilian) and as
between them and the Afghan government.
Second, commit the necessary resources and sustain that commit-
ment for as long as it takes: this has been envisaged as a critical role for
the new UN Peacebuilding Commission, which is slowly finding its
feet with cases like Burundi and Sierra Leone, and certainly needs to,
given the long and lamentable history of ad hoc donors’ conferences,
and rapidly waning attention, and generosity, once the immediate
crisis is over. Afghanistan and Haiti have in the past been classic cases
of international players bringing conflicts to an end but then drop-
ping the ball, and Bosnia may be a case now where this phenomenon
is again in play.
Third, understand the local political dynamics—and the cultural
and other limits within outsiders must operate. Iraq and Afghanistan
are both unhappy major examples of how much can go wrong when
that understanding is lacking, and there are many others about which
the International Crisis Group has written.
Fourth, recognize that multiple objectives have to be pursued
simultaneously: physical security may always be the first priority, but
it cannot be the only one, and rule of law and justice issues, and
economic governance and anti-corruption measures, deserve much
higher priority than they have usually been given. Afghanistan is
perhaps again the best and clearest recent example where the inter-
national efforts to help create an effective police and court system
in particular have been, at least until very recently, hopelessly and
lamentably inadequate.
Fifth, all intrusive peace operations need an exit strategy, if not an
exit timetable, and one that is not just devoted to holding elections as
soon as possible, as important as it obviously is to vest real authority
and responsibility in the people of the country being rebuilt. Every
peacebuilding situation has its own dynamic, but many of the worst
P R E V E N T I N G A N D R E S O LV I N G D E A D LY C O N F L I C T 177
peacebuilding mistakes of the last decade and a half have had more
to do with leaving too soon or doing too little than staying too long
or doing too much. That reality now seems to have been recognized
on all sides in the case of Iraq, where the wrongheadedness and irre-
sponsibility of the original invasion would be matched only by the
wrongheadedness and irresponsibility of a premature withdrawal.
The United States and its allies do need to leave as soon as possible
but only in the context of national institutions being strong enough
to avoid the country plunging back into a genocidal ethnic and sec-
tarian bloodbath.
killed in 1950, only one was killed in 2005. Of course violent battle
deaths are only a small part of the whole story of the misery of war:
90 percent or more of war-related deaths are due to disease and mal-
nutrition rather than direct violence, as we have seen, for example,
in the Congo and Darfur. But the trend decline in battle deaths is
significant and hugely encouraging.
Even more encouraging is the analysis that lies behind these
figures. First, the dramatic decline in wars and battle deaths can
partly be explained by the end of the era of colonialism, which gen-
erated two-thirds or more of all wars from the 1950s to the 1980s;
second, it can be explained with the end of the Cold War, which
meant no more proxy wars fueled by Washington or Moscow; and
third also by the demise of a number of authoritarian governments,
generating internal resentment and resistance, which each side had
been propping up.
But the best explanation is the one that stares us in the face, even
if a great many do not want to acknowledge it: the huge upsurge in
activity in conflict prevention, conflict management, and postcon-
flict peacebuilding activity that has occurred over the last decade and
a half, with most of this being spearheaded by the UN itself. UN
diplomatic peacemaking missions rose from four in 1990 to fifteen
in 2002; peacekeeping operations rose from ten in 1990 to seven-
teen in 2005, and generally with much broader protective mandates.
And beyond the UN, a number of regional organizations, individual
states, and literally thousands of NGOs have played significant roles
of their own.
So to those of us who have been devoting large chunks of our
professional and personal lives to preventing and resolving deadly
conflict—and those of you readers who I hope will be tempted to
in your future careers—my final message is clear, simple, and I hope
encouraging: We are not all wasting our time.
Note
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on November
10, 2008, and edited in July 2015.
Chapter 12
Colin Irwin1
P ublic opinion surveys have been used for conflict analysis since
World War II and were developed as an aid for conflict resolution in
support of negotiations and as an instrument of public diplomacy in
Northern Ireland in the 1990s.2 What are now referred to as “peace
polls” have subsequently been employed to bring the views of criti-
cal populations into peace processes in a number of conflicts around
the world including the Balkans, Middle East, and Asia. Initially, the
application of polling was only done on an ad hoc basis with no effort
made to do this approach as an essential instrument of learning in
all peace processes. However, throughout the last decade, this issue
was well understood by peacemaking authorities such as the United
Nations, which subsequently led to an in-depth review of best prac-
tice for the inclusion of local voices in all UN peacekeeping opera-
tions and a growing inclusion of “peace polls” as an important tool
for effective negotiations.
In my lecture, I will concentrate on how polling in divided societ-
ies can promote negotiated agreement and use the “public as peace-
maker.” I will explain what qualitative and quantitative methods are
used and finally how the lessons from this work might now be applied
to the resolution of conflicts elsewhere. Public opinion is a critical
force in shaping and transforming society. Properly conducted and
disseminated, survey research simultaneously provides the public with
information about what others are thinking while allowing their
voices to be heard. In this way knowledge of public attitudes and their
wide dissemination to the public can be useful in resolving conflicts
by making public views widely known.
180 COLIN IRWIN
created under the terms of the Belfast Agreement would render such
work superfluous to political requirements. After the first poll, for
instance, the political parties elected to participate in the negotia-
tions on the future of Northern Ireland were invited and agreed to
participate in the drafting of a new poll designed to address all the
issues presently holding up progress in the negotiations. They agreed
providing individuals were not cited as being actively involved in the
exercise. A degree of discretion was essential especially when “old
enemies” were cooperating in this common endeavor.
In the case of Northern Ireland, it was crucial that funding was
secured from an independent sponsor, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable
Trust, that all parties accepted as neutral and agreement was reached
with the Belfast Telegraph that their paper would publish the reports
of the surveys without insisting on editorial control of their content.
The political consultations, interviews, analysis, writing, and publica-
tion were genuinely independent, from beginning to end, across all
three tracks of the process. Consequently the parties had confidence
in the process and took the results of the research seriously.
Conclusion
All too often political parties find they have to align themselves with
different sections of society and communities to get elected. In deeply
divided societies this reality can lead to the increased polarization
of party policies and their associated electorate groups when most
people, most of the time, would prefer accommodation, peace, and
the prosperity that flows from political stability. And all too often
politicians and political parties (Track I) find it difficult, if not impos-
sible, to establish a positive dialogue with all the people (Track III)
through the media and institutions of civil society (Track II) in an
effort to define a set of common goals with a view to achieving some
common ends. Peace polls can help to connect those different tracks
in peace negotiations and provide a common understanding of the
issues at stake and the feasibility of available options.
Although the public opinion polls must deal with all the problems
and possible solutions that lie at the heart of a conflict questions of
confidence and continued progress should also be addressed by asking
people if they want a political agreement, an end to violence, negotia-
tions to be started, timely decisions to be made, democratic institu-
tions to be reestablished, the maintenance of human rights standards
and the rule of law, effective policing acceptable to the whole com-
munity, and economic development in the context of peace and so
on. Of course nearly everyone wants all these things and asking such
questions, arguably, is a trivial use of the polls. But providing such
questions are only included in the context of the more serious issues
that must be addressed then giving “a boost” to the self-confidence
of both the politicians and their electorate, from time to time, can be
a very worthwhile thing to do in an effort to provide some encourage-
ment to the war weary population.
188 COLIN IRWIN
Notes
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on December
10, 2009, and edited in July 2015.
2. For details see http://www.peacepolls.org/.
Chapter 13
Bob Rae1
T here was once a contest in the New York Times for the most bor-
ing headline that one could imagine. The winner of the contest was
the phrase “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”2 Canada is not the
particular focus of concern for a great many people because we are
widely seen as relative to many other parts of the world, what one
writer has called a “peaceable kingdom.” War and conflict always give
rise to intense debate, but peaceful places are often seen as not very
interesting.
My aim is not to proselytize about Canada, but I do want to put
some of the evolution of the Canadian experience in the context of
my own international experience in the field of conflict prevention
and resolution. When I left politics for the first time in 1996, the
Prime Minister asked me to help set up a Canadian NGO called the
Forum of Federations, which was based on the idea that we would set
up a small research institution that would engage with other federal
countries and discuss how federal systems work. When we started this
endeavor we were contacted by a great number of countries that were
not federal, countries that had conflicts, or that had constitutional
structures that were not working. Working together with Switzerland,
in particular, and then India and a number of other federal states, our
particular expertise and experiences began to take on a different tone
in the new post-Cold War world in which difficult political questions
are being addressed.
190 BOB RAE
“Islam and the West” issue, I look at them and say that I have five
mosques in my constituency. This is not an issue of Islam being
somewhere far away and distant from our country, this is part of
who we are as a country. So all the issues that the world has and
that the world is dealing with, we are dealing with at home, and we
are dealing with as a country that has enacted a deliberate policy to
encourage its people to be themselves. The shorthand version of it is
as we say: America is a melting pot, and Canada is a mosaic. We are
a country that allows people to be themselves, and so the makeup of
our country is much more of a mosaic than it is of a melting pot. We
encourage the instruction in people’s own languages, we encourage
the maintenance of culture, and this has its challenges, especially
regarding a common citizenship.
The second point is Canada’s emergence as an international coun-
try. We took a long time to grow up as a country, and we are gradual-
ists in our makeup. We were reluctant when we became a country in
1867. It was not as a result of a revolution or the result of a declara-
tion of independence; we were created as a result of a British Act of
Parliament, and for a long time our constitution was known as the
British North America Act. We did not really have a foreign service
until after the First World War. We fought in the First World War,
and many people believed that our citizenship began to take form
as a result of those sacrifices, as a result of people realizing that we
were part of an emerging global sensibility. We were members of the
League of Nations and became an active country in that regard, and
we began to send our ministers and ambassadors abroad in that post-
First World War era. But it was only after the Second World War
when Canada found itself as one of the few countries that had not
been directly attacked and had not been demolished as a result of the
Second World War in the northern part of the world.
So we were suddenly present in San Francisco in 1945, present in
New York, a Canadian helped to write the International Declaration
on Human Rights. We became a key multilateral country. We became
a country that believed intensely in the United Nations, and in the
extension of the rule of law. We were one of the founders of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); we were one of
the formulators of the international trade law for the simple rea-
son that we were one of the greatest trading countries in the world.
Today more than 50 percent of our GDP depends on trade, which
is a lot. We have one massive trade partner, which means that we
require multilateral institutions to deal with the impact of our neigh-
bor, the United States, to make sure that law, and not power, provide
194 BOB RAE
the rules. So the second aspect of our internationalism is not just our
makeup, it is also who we are in the world, and this is what I think
has created the powerful ethos for Canadian diplomacy in a variety
of ways.
Notes
1. The lecture was held at the American University of Beirut on May 19,
2009, edits were included in July 2015.
2. Flora Lewis, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” New York Times, April
10, 1986, online: http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/10/opinion
/foreign-affairs-worthwhile-canadian-initiative.html (accessed on July 1,
2015).
Contributors
structural change, 151, 155, 156, third-party mediation, 53, 54, 59,
160 150, 153, 161, 163
Sudan third-party peacemakers, 59
diplomatic relations, Chad, 40 totalitarianism, 121
humanitarian diplomacy, 38 Track II diplomacy, 42, 43, 92
North-South negotiations, 171 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 123, 127
rebel movements, 40, 49 trust building, 30, 45, 48–9, 73,
see also Darfur crisis 80–2, 92, 94, 120, 143–6
Sudan People’s Liberation Tsvangirai, Morgan, 173
Movement (SPLM), 38, 41 Tuladhar, Padma Ratna, 159, 160
Suez War (1956), 85, 86, 194 Tunisia
France, role of, 85 change processes, 78, 154, 160
US attitude, 85 Turkey
Sweden, 16, 34, 42, 50, 51 diplomacy, 111–13
Switzerland, 63, 189 foreign policy, 82
Syria Turkish-Israeli tensions, 96
chemical weapons program, 6, 20
Israeli troop disengagement, 91 UN
occupied territories, 115, 136, 137 agreements, implementation of, 58
peacemaking efforts, 2, 5, 8 authorization, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86
Syrian Center for Policy Research, 67 budget, 33–4
Syrian civil war, 1, 8, 18, 69, 71, 72, credibility, 15, 20, 33–4, 85
77, 78, 80–2, 87, 96 envoys, 2, 5, 55, 58, 171
civilians suffering of, 67, 69, 73, 74 interim missions, 137–9
economy, effects on, 18, 66, 67 interventions, 6, 20, 81–3, 84, 87
Palestinian camps, 67, 68, 73 makers, 54–6
(see also Yarmouk mediation process, 60
Camp (Syria)) peace operations, 15, 27, 30, 32,
political solution, 71, 73, 74 33, 94, 178, 179
regime atrocity, 81 peacekeeping missions, 35, 80,
UN role, 87 93, 94, 135, 136
violence, 18, 66, 67 peacemaking, financial
Syrian refugees, 1, 69 contributions, 27, 34
role, 8, 13, 19, 20, 40, 55, 56, 59,
Taif Accord (1989), 24 60, 62, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83,
see also Lebanese civil war 87, 88, 93, 116, 172, 176
Taliban, 25, 26, 35 US influence, 35, 85, 86
Pakistani volunteers, 26 UN Charter, 9, 13, 17, 19, 20, 58,
Taylor, Charles, 174 62–3, 81, 83, 85, 88
terrorism, 39, 78, 82, 113, 161, 187 Article
terrorist lists, 61, 132, 154, 161 (99), 59
third world (100), 59
international intervention, 27 Chapter
third-party actors, 164 (6-Article 33), 47, 48
third-party diplomacy, 60, 169 (7), 6
third-party interventions, 4, 17, 53, 60 (7-Artcle 2), 6, 84
INDEX 213
Van der Stoel, Max, 164, 169 Yarmouk Camp (Syria), 3, 18, 19,
violence, 19, 20, 53, 56, 60, 73, 67–75
94, 101, 120, 125, 131, 132, crisis in peacemaking, 74
140, 141, 151, 155, 165, Palestinian groups, militarization
166, 169, 170, 173, 175, of, 68, 74
178, 180, 187, 188 Palestinian refugees, 18, 65–75
violent conflicts, 156, 175, 180 UNERWA services, 65–73
Yemen, 20, 78, 97, 110, 154, 160,
war crimes, 50, 58, 87 199
wartime negotiations, 17, 53 Yugoslavia, 33
West Bank, 18, 71, 100, 104, 107, break up, 55
136, 138
apartheid wall, 77, 106 Zahir Shah, 24
Fatah, control of, 102 Zimbabwe, 172
Israeli settlements, 87 Zionist movement, birth of, 96