The Peace Walls Must Eventually Come Down

by Hiram Helfman | Dec 23, 2015 | Global Cooperation, Peace & Disarmament

In Northern Ireland, there are barriers known as peace walls separating Irish Catholic and British Protestant neighborhoods from each other. Most of these walls can be found in Belfast, but some were also built in the cities of Londonderry, Lurgan, and Portadown.

They were originally set up during the era known as the Troubles* from the late 1960s to the 1990s, when riots and violent paramilitary activity between Irish Catholics (who wish to join the Republic of Ireland) and British Protestants (who want to stay with the United Kingdom) were rampant.

As peaceful relations between the two national/religious groups continue to evolve and the threat for violence diminishes, the peace walls should come down. They keep Northern Ireland in negative international spotlight, hinder the region’s economic development, and signify one of the world’s longest-lasting conflicts.

The conflict in Northern Ireland that led to these walls being erected has been managed well ever since the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998.** Relations between Irish Catholics and British Protestants are still testy at times, but peace groups have helped young people across the divide establish friendships and engage in peaceful activities together.

There are many views about peace walls inside Northern Ireland. Many residents envision a future without them, but some are concerned that if they’re taken down too fast, wide-scale violence could re-erupt. People living near the walls often consider them important landmarks for remembering loved ones lost during the violence of the Troubles. And some people have lived all their lives around the peace walls and can’t imagine them being brought down, as they fear the violence of the Troubles reoccurring.

Although these walls have managed to reduce the speed at which militants and rioters could cross and cause mayhem in the other group’s neighborhoods, the fact that these walls impede movement has caused extraordinary economic hardship for the areas in which they stand.

Even before peace walls are taken down, economic and social opportunities need to increase for impoverished communities near and around the walls, another issue which several peace groups are addressing. For example, the International Fund for Ireland has sponsored programs to establish small businesses in rundown districts and to remove downtrodden buildings. The Fund has also developed shared park space and has set up peace monuments in places where intercommunity contact happens regularly, such as around certain peace wall sites.

Peace groups and observers from inside and outside of Northern Ireland will also need to continue conducting polls to see over time how peaceful intermingling within young adult populations between Irish Nationalists and British Unionists is taking place. According to this article from the Belfast Telegraph, as of April 2014 about half of the young adult population has been doing so.

And peace groups are still working on turning young people in impoverished areas away from crime and from paramilitary groups, which, although not quite as active as they used to be, are still looking for desperate young people to recruit.

Even if not all the walls are taken down by 2023 as British Officials desire, peace groups in Northern Ireland need to continue working on bringing people from both communities together to engage in peaceful dialogue and activity.

Northern Ireland has to envision a future of peace between all people who call it home, a future where all residents are respected regardless of national or religious identity, and where violence for political objectives is nearly unheard of and condemned. With help from the peace groups, this vision can come true, and with it the removal of the peace walls, economic prosperity for Northern Ireland, and a true end to the conflict.

*For a fuller understanding of the events that led to the current situation in Northern Ireland, please see the following:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/northireland1.html

http://www.history.co.uk/shows/soldiers-stories/articles/northern-ireland-conflict

**To read the Good Friday Agreement in full, see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4079267.stm

Local Engagement with Armed Groups in the Midst of Violence

by Rene Wadlow | Dec 21, 2015 | Global Cooperation, Peace & Disarmament

The armed conflict in Iraq and Syria becomes more complex each day, and good faith negotiations seem ever further away. Those of us on the outside who would like to see compromises so that the killing may stop find it difficult, if not impossible, to find those who represent the armed groups. There are, no doubt, people from different intelligence services who have contacts, but good faith negotiations may not be their central aim.

Wisam Elhamoui and Sinan al-Hawat point out in their study “Civilian interaction with armed groups in the Syrian conflict”:

As the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year, it is important not to lose sight of the significant roles played by unarmed, non-state actors to develop structures for promoting local security and peace and to adapt to the constantly changing demands of the conflict. Huge efforts have been invested in maintaining a civilian voice by activists and locals. They have shown courage and resilience and an incredible capacity to sustain their efforts and aspirations despite huge challenges and lack of support.

At the local level, conflict reduction efforts depend on channels of kinship and earlier social relations.

Personal links, such as those deriving from kinship, tribal affiliation, and solidarity between friends and neighbors, play a key role in how communities reach out to armed groups. Whether armed groups and civilians are from the same locality is of particular–often paramount–importance in relation to their interaction, building on existing social capital and encouraging the development of networks for civilians and armed groups to trust each other and work together.

However, as the armed conflict has intensified, many civilian structures have been dismantled. There have been large-scale population displacement and refugee flows. Persons in local leadership positions have been deliberately put in jail, killed and targeted by government or opposition factions.

Personal and competitive agendas can also emerge in conflict contexts, which can undermine social and cultural structures that support community cohesion…The strategic conflict priorities of armed groups can also reduce the influence of personal relations. Where militants possess the upper hand militarily, personal links are superseded in favor of military necessity.

New fighters from different countries have joined government or opposition factions. They have no local or kinship ties and have little or no individual decision-making ability. While at the start of the conflict there were locally negotiated ceasefires, such local initiatives based on local needs and conditions have largely disappeared.

Inevitably, armed groups that have adopted an Islamist ideology are less accountable to the community. An activist from Yarmouk quoted a response he was offered from a local armed group: ‘Our role is to raise the word of God. This is more important than human life.’ Activists that do not conform to the views of Islamist armed groups, such as those who are openly secularist, pro-freedom or pro-democracy, have also been forced to flee.

It is certain that insider mediators can play a key role in informal peace processes if they have “space” for action. Local populations are not just passive actors coerced by armed actors. Yet the violent tactics of armed groups can overwhelm and silence voices for peace. The capacity of conflict to disrupt the social fabric can also allow for new or previously muted social, cultural and political voices to come to the forefront.

It is up to us on the outside to be sensitive to new voices and innovations. For the moment, military options seem to be “the order of the day.” Therefore we must work for formal negotiations among governments with interests in the conflict and with the major armed factions.

However, we must also be sensitive to new voices, some of which call for nonviolence and reason. These new voices may yet be soft, but they will be potentially important currents for the future.

Syria: Global Solutions Urgently Needed

by Jack Pearce | Dec 11, 2015 | Global Cooperation, Peace & Disarmament

Citizens for Global Solutions addresses a diverse set of global needs. Each deserves attention. But two difficult problems signal possibly severe ruptures to international trade, security, and economic well-being. Both are in the Middle East.

One is the possibility that nation-state jockeying for position in the resolution of the Syria crisis will get out of control and lead to broad physical and economic confrontations.

The other is that the combination of despotic, repressive family rule and archaic, backward-looking Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia may lead to continuous civil unrest in Europe and beyond, as well as a severe disruption of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf region with massive economic consequences worldwide.

Solutions to these challenges are hard to find. This post is not intended to spur rash or emotional action among concerned citizens. But awareness and some attempt at constructive orientation are needed.

This post will deal with the Syrian situation. A follow-up post will address Saudi Arabia.

By recent count, over 230 warplanes from five nations are assigned to Syria. The United States accounts for about 150 of them. Russia has aircraft in the area and has launched cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea. A melange of armed forces backed by various sources divide and devastate Syria.

Syria’s economy has deteriorated badly, as Chatham House has well documented . The nation has lost control of rich agricultural areas and a large portion of its petroleum production facilities. Thus, the energy bases for economic and social performance have been greatly diminished. A recent World Bank report suggests that Syria’s gross domestic economic production has plummeted in recent years, and the government has meager international reserves.

The same report states,

As of September, 2015, 4 million Syrians have registered as refugees with the UNHCR, and are mostly hosted in Syria’s neighboring countries, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, but also in Egypt and, increasingly, in European countries. More than 12.2 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian aid, including 5.6 million children (UNOCHA, Syrian Center for Policy Research-SCPR).

It’s plausible that rivalries among other countries, including the United States, have wittingly or unwittingly contributed to the current breakdown in Syria. The authors of a 2014 Foreign Affairs article suggest that “Syria has become a dividing line among rival powers—a twenty-first-century iron curtain of sorts.” This perspective is subject to the interpretation that the “Western” steadfast rejection of Assad has to do not only with that Assad’s bloodthirsty reaction to political challenge, but also with his economic and military alignment with Russia, Iran and China.

Overall, it seems fair to say that the combination of drought, local citizen disenfranchisement and abuse, civil war, ISIL, and Western economic sanctions is what has pushed Syria nearly to the brink of state disintegration. At this time, Syria is economically valuable to just about no other nation. At the same time, ISIL is a menace to all.

The net economic and humanitarian result of this history seems to underlie the current degree of coordination between external State actors, including both Russia and the United States. This suggests the possibility of setting up a political reorganization of Syria through international concord, leading to workable domestic concord over several months or years. The United Nations appears to be playing a constructive role in this process.

But at this time, negotiations are poorly coordinated and the parties at the tables continue to vigorously pursue separate and often opposing objectives, with abundant weapons of regional destruction active in the theatre. This obviously is a classic tinderbox situation. A regional tragedy for over 20 million humans could become a broader confrontation, harmful to economic systems and human welfare on a broader and perhaps global scale.

How do we reconcile these competing objectives? First let us look at our own orientations.

Some counsel support of a “Sunni bloc” against the Shia Muslims, Iran, and Russia. Many seem to imply that in a Russian/Western shoving match, we should further isolate and marginalize Russia.

However, from a global standpoint, it is more important for there to be normal and productive economic and social activity in and near Syria than for any of these State actors to gain advantage over the others. A functional Syria without a hostile agenda toward any of its neighbors should not threaten any of them. Such a functional Syria with adequate agricultural production, petroleum production, banks, utilities, and medical and educational systems could engage in productive economic and social interaction with nearby and global entities—Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Europe, the United States, etc.

We know we can expect Russia to continue to seek its own advantage, sometimes aggressively. That is a constant, and Russia’s geopolitical position cannot be ignored. It is highly unlikely that any reintegration of Syria is possible without Russia maintaining its base on the Mediterranean. Given the history of the area, it would probably not be feasible to reconstruct Syria without Iran and Russia having the opportunity to engage in mutually beneficial (though not exclusive) economic arrangements with the population of the reconstructed Syrian State. But these things are not inconsistent with a free standing and a functional Syria. Indeed, they would be implicit in its circumstances.

CGS Senior Fellow Don Kraus’ suggestion that an international trusteeship for Syria during the rebuilding period under United Nations auspices deserves, this author suggests, widespread and receptive attention. Such an arrangement would be a rare and substantial departure from current international practice. It would require a massive organizational effort. Perhaps only a region-threatening breakdown of current international efforts could force action in this direction. But if it could be managed, this could provide structure for a necessary long-term program to restore Syria to stability. Even if a formal trusteeship were not managed, the objectives on which such an arrangement would be focused are the objectives to be addressed in any reconstruction program for Syria. I have articulated such objectives in a recent post.

Citizens of the United States should be advising our government to defuse the tense military standoffs among “partners” in the area and to work toward reconstructing a Syria that is unaligned to sectarian identities or to political blocs in the area or in the world as a whole. In other words, Syrians should own Syria.