The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution 9780755602957, 9781780768977

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To my younger son, Liam, who dreams about the freedom of wild horses.  —GP To my partner for life, Jonathan Levy.  —GR

Like most young boys, I read Shakespeare, played soccer, went swimming in the river. I dreamt of growing up to be an economist in my own country of Sierra Leone. In my wildest dreams I never imagined I would become a child soldier at the age of 13, learning to embrace violence to survive, mastering the skill of how to kill men, women and children with weapons such as AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, Uzis and M16s. Yet, this is what happened. Ishmael Beah former child soldier in Sierra Leone

In early April 1992, a friend in Sarajevo was walking, in a miniskirt and heels, to her job in a bank when she saw a tank rolling down the street. Shots were fired. My friend crouched, trembling, behind a garbage can, her life forever altered. In a few weeks, she was sending her baby to safety on a bus in the arms of a stranger to another country. She would not see him for years. Janine di Giovanni new york times

Preface Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Rumi

I first met Giandomenico Picco in Tehran in 2006. I was struck by this large, imposing man, six feet, four inches tall, with a benign presence. At the time, we were sitting together at a dinner table, and he was explaining how he had been involved in the hostage releases in Lebanon in the early 1990s. I could have felt dwarfed in the presence of this physically large man, with his experience. He had worked for the United Nations for two decades and had legendary success as a negotiator – the ending of the Iran–Iraq War, the release of 11 hostages in Lebanon in 2001. He was also a member of the team that negotiated the termination of the Afghan–Soviet war over eight years. But it was not to be, and I was not to find myself intimidated, as we found ourselves bound together by a common philosophy and a way of seeing the world. What connected us was that we both shared a similar language, and had a deep commitment to understanding the human mind and what motivates it, and to asking questions as to why people behave in particular ways. Gianni understood that ‘Behind every face there was a human story, indeed more than one, there was a life and there were hopes and aspirations, fears and anger, hatred and pain.’ I became intrigued and wanted to explore what it was about this man that made him agree to being bundled into the back of a car in the streets of

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Beirut and give himself up as a de facto hostage when negotiating with Hezbollah. In his encounter with the hostage-taker, Picco was taken away at night, blindfolded and driven to unknown places, to meet his masked interlocutors. In spite of the unsavoury circumstances and the level of political and personal tension, one of the kidnappers grabbed Gianni’s hand. He remembered his sweaty palm and he was to say, ‘I could see that the kidnappers were frightened, so I took his hand and helped him feel safe, as he was looking at me through the mask he had always worn in my presence. No words were uttered but much was said. It was around 2 a.m. somewhere in Beirut.’ He understood that beneath the aggressive facade, and the mask, there was a human being, ‘misguided if you like, wrong, and unlikely to have made his own choices but nevertheless a human being’. Most people in this situation would either be so overwhelmed with fear themselves that they might have resorted to aggression or be full of moral judgements about the heinous nature of the activity of Hezbollah. He was later to say that the kidnappers actually took no pride in what they did, but they believed this was their only weapon to further their cause. Picco was brought up in the north-eastern Alps, on the Italian side, living on the border of a number of conflict zones. The barbed wire that he saw in his childhood was later to bloom in vineyards on mountain slopes south of his valley along the common border between Italy and Slovenia. This would lead him to ask how a world of conflict where communities were separated by barbed wire could be transformed into communities that could co-exist without being a threat to one another. We share the belief that the environment in which people exist matters but that how we think and act is significantly shaped by the borders of the mind. In the narrative of this book our voices move between our individual experiences, both Gianni’s in his life as a diplomat and mine through the lens of conflict resolution in the Middle East, coming from a psychological background. We share a vision of how to create a safer world which understands the geopolitics of a swiftly changing

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global situation and the need for mankind to increase its emotional maturity if we are not to be on a path of self-destruction. The Fog of Peace is shaped not by theory but by our encounters as prac­titioners. We both have experience of high-level political engagement; Gianni’s mediation involved walking the streets of Kabul, Baghdad, Tehran, Beirut at war, and my experience came from working on both the Palestine–Israel and the Iran conflicts. Similarly, we have both engaged at a psycho-political level where we have been committed to the excavation of the human mind, understanding people’s personal and group narratives and what shapes history. We believe we need to understand our own minds and our own potential for arrogance, vanity or puffed-up pride, and how for all of us our own ego may sit in the way of progress if not properly managed. Writing this book sometimes left me in a fog of ideas because the nature of peacemaking challenges every fundamental idea we believe in. We have to answer questions such as: should we talk to the enemy? What happens if people are nasty, brutish, and we want to retaliate? How do we find the capacity not to hit back, trapping ourselves in endless cycles of violence? How do countries buy into concepts of peacemaking, when they don’t even know that the country will be safer as a result of a peace deal? There are moments when what I read in the newspaper challenges every ounce of my belief in the capacity of humans to strive for a better world. Sometimes the quagmire seems so deep, it is almost impossible to find ways through it. And yet, as much as man is capable of being destructive, he is also capable of being creative. To get out of the quagmire of war demands not only that we find solutions to break the cycles of violence but also that we address the psychological mindset of those involved in the conflict. War is so often perpetuated by the failure to manage the humiliation of defeat, which then causes a seemingly endless lust for retribution. Moving forward often involves uncomfortable compromises that may seem to be unsustainable, but they are sometimes the only options available.

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Perhaps it is the imperfection of any settlement that we have to come to terms with, but we are seldom well prepared for these hard choices that are needed. Being involved in this work requires the kind of craft that recognizes that the pursuit of peace is unpredictable and messy, that people do not always behave in the way we want them to, and that there is often violence on all sides, which is at times unpredictable and uncontrollable. Each generation has its stock of doomsayers who imagine that failure is both imminent and irreversible. But each one of us has choices as to whether we assume the worst or believe in the possibility of creating a better world. Self-reflection does not come easily to any of us, but if we can find a way to make a contribution to the resolution of conflict, whether it is within our immediate family, our community, or at the top-level negotiating table, it not only gives our life more meaning, it also allows us to sit more comfortably in the world. Together we analyse how we can do better in the twentyfirst century. Gabrielle Rifkind, 2013

When I came to know Gabrielle nothing about her seemed to fit the stereotypes I normally encountered when meeting people. Indeed she reinforced for me that ‘identity’ is a very individual concept and goes beyond where we are born and how we are brought up. I had already thought a lot about how we create our identities and how we construct our personal narrative – it had been the essence of much of my work as a negotiator. Gabrielle did not fit into any obvious constructions. I was struck by someone who seemed clearly rooted in one of her own choosing. But to have the freedom to make choices we need to learn to manage our fears, because in a climate of fear we become straitjacketed in our choices and lose the ability to think. It had become clear to me that those living in a state of conflict, whether it be external conflict

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as a result of war or internal conflict of their own minds, look for a security blanket to create safety. Sometimes the security blanket we choose makes us less safe, as we take on identities of tribe, religion or culture without questioning whether we believe in them. There are times when we sell our individuality to other people’s values for a false sense of security. Gabrielle, it seems to me, has never accepted these formulaic assumptions. There are not many British psychotherapists whom I would have had the opportunity to meet in Tehran or Damascus and who spoke the language of the human mind and of politics. What I recognized was an open mind; she had the capacity not to make assumptions about someone’s life without first trying to understand what had shaped their narrative and how. As she says in Chapter 2, ‘It was only later when I had real encounters with people who had suffered as a result of war that I was obliged to think about how we all inhabit a similar emotional world of pain and pleasure, hopes and fears.’ She was ambitious, not for herself, but for change, and there was a persistence and doggedness about her that allowed us to join forces both in some of our work and in writing this book together. Often in our work we experience being thwarted and there are multiple setbacks. There are times when it is frustrating and each new initiative merely takes you down a cul-de-sac. One of the essential qualities is resilience and there are times when one is tired. Working with bureaucracies can induce a terrible frustration, but it still demands that we draw on our own creativity and think outside the box in order to find ways through. This approach combines both of our ways of thinking and it is a road we have navigated together over the last decade. The roots of our book are to be found in our personal human journeys – our experiences with some of the people of the Levant, actual negotiations and face-to-face encounters, and in some cases personal relationships. It is not rooted in theories, let alone those conceived in the comfort of universities or debating societies. It is

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always the human contact that is ultimately inspiring. Gabrielle, like me, has looked into the eyes of individuals involved in conflict and has asked them questions diplomats often do not ask, such as why people resort to violence and what would incentivize people to make different choices. Perhaps for me what was most important was that she understood and was to write, ‘Our perceptions are never neutral and the lens through which we see the world is always our own personal experience and history.’ In our work separately and together we have crossed divides that are so often rooted in dogmas. Dogmas allow for no compromise. It challenged us to be imaginative in examining how to create societies in which communities do not trap themselves in a rigid set of narratives. Gabrielle’s natural open-mindedness, her belief that the human spirit is seldom frozen and has the capacity for change, was always encouraging. Together we recognized that each one of us has a responsibility to assist the march of progress and to find ways to challenge ignorance, prejudices and destructive behaviour towards each other. A shared belief between us was that ‘there is properly no history; only biography’.1 It has been said before that countries and leaders would benefit from frequent visits to psychotherapists so they can better understand the human mind. Of course this will not happen quite in this way, but we both believe that the building of personal relationships quietly behind the scenes over a sustained period of time in areas of conflict can be key to changing the dynamic. This does not mean ignoring the power politics and the political rivalries in the matrix of power both domestically within a country and also in an international context. But it does mean moving beyond the structures of faceless bureaucracies that create circuses of diplomats, and embedding individuals with diplomatic skills empowered to work both on the ground and at the high political level. It will involve understanding the personal and cultural narrative of those with whom one is working both individually and as a state, but most of all it will involve getting into their minds.

Introduction The most important thing a would-be peacemaker can do is get to know the enemies, understand their ambitions, their pains, the resentments that condition their thinking and the traumas that even they do not fully understand themselves. Two and a half millennia ago, the Chinese general Sun Tzu This book is written by two individuals with very different experience of international relations: one, a career diplomat with some results to show at the UN, the other a practising therapist, and both concerned to develop the links between the psychological and the political worlds. The book focuses on the possibility of change in both the structure and process of current international relations in the hope of making ‘a contribution to the resolution of conflict’. The book is about life and not theory, and part of the narrative is about the authors’ own experiences of sitting with the enemy and sometimes solving issues with them. Together, the authors explore what lies behind the hostile facade of the other, what alienates us, and how, in spite of the aggression, there is sometimes the potential for shared mutual interests. Conflict resolution is a vital subject in international relations, both in theory and in practical politics. This book does not claim to be a free-standing study of international relations and its theory and practice but of the underlying factors making up the mindsets of those involved in conflict resolution, and this will be the book’s unique contribution. It is conceived as a collection of studies of conflict

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resolution that examine how the psychological issues are affected by history and culture, and how we construct identity. These are all fundamental elements underlying the basic ‘East–West’ division and mutual miscomprehension which are set out in detail in the accounts of negotiations in the book. Politics and international conflict are usually examined through the lens of realpolitik, which is primarily about power involving ‘the rational evaluation and realistic assessment of the options available to one’s own group and to an opposing one’.1 The chess games of power relationships are dominated by the desire of elite groups to shape the world according to their own best interests, which operate in the world of economic and military calculations, strategic options and political alliances and alignments. But it is the belief of the authors that conflict is most likely to be resolved when you also place the geopolitical complexity in a bed of human relationships. Suffering humiliation and powerlessness are the conditions in which groups are more likely to resort to violence. Respect, treating people with dignity and inclusive politics that give groups and communities access to resources and influence over their lives are more likely to induce behaviour that is not destructive. We are most likely to understand more about the smell of politics and human behaviour if we start at the kitchen table, and, according to Hans Blix, the wise ex-head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, peaceful relations between states ‘can and must be practiced both at the conference table and the kitchen table’.2 He goes on to say that if you are to be effective at diplomacy you need to understand ordinary human behaviour, and for him an obvious example is that ‘young children are incentivized by juicy carrots, and we can transpose such thinking to understanding that states are more likely to be incentivized by carrots than sticks’.3 Diplomats frequently shy away from issues that are not amenable to quick fixes and that speak to the deepest psychological and emotional instincts of those involved in conflict. ‘However, as much as

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policy makers would prefer to ignore these issues, they need to be considered if the goal is a conflict-ending, claims-ending agreement.’4 Whilst this book makes a plea for governments to be more aware of the psychological and historic narratives of particular groups, it also recognizes that the human mind has to be located in the wider system of geopolitical structures of power politics. This will include the vested interests at stake amongst elite groups in positions of power, the proxy wars, and the political rivalries at work, all of which will be played out. Any thorough analysis will include recognizing the multiple influences that shape conflict, as without this we weaken our ability to resolve it. Decision making frequently takes place in a policy bubble, hermetically sealed from the complexity of the multiple influences that determine conflict. Governments lack procedures to engage in thorough systemic thinking before enormous decisions are made to go to war. This kind of critical disciplined thinking will need to include getting into the mind of the enemy, understanding their motivations, what they care about and how intervention would be viewed by people on the ground, all of which has been sadly lacking. Politics is not about therapy and politicians and states cannot be placed on the couch; nevertheless, human motivation and psychology need to be part of the strategic calculations of decision makers. For it is man who both creates and ends wars, and destroys his environment. Institutions do not decide to destroy or kill, or make peace or war; those actions are the responsibility of individuals. So to try and understand the root causes of conflict only in terms of power politics and resources, without also understanding human behaviour and what exacerbates the fight over resources, undermines our effectiveness in preventing war and making peace. In every long-term conflict emotions are usually near to the surface as a result of the horrors of war. Members of the family have been killed, people have sustained terrible wounds and communities are frequently traumatized. Emotions of

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fear, trauma and humiliation prevent any kind of rational judgement, dominate the mood and can affect not only individuals but groups, communities and whole nations. They affect not only what we think but how we think and disturb our capacity to think rationally and act in our best interests. There is a lively and important psychological debate about what motivates human behaviour. Are we inherently violent, or is our potential for violence stimulated by outside events? Are we essentially destructive and thus needing to be constantly restrained, or are we essentially benign and shaped by our environment? Over the last 100 years we have begun to develop the capacity to respond more intelligently and more humanely to acts of anger and destruction. In our domestic lives we try not to meet aggression with aggression, as we know this does not help reduce violence. We have learnt that compassion and containment help to prevent further acts of violence. Whilst this is certainly true at a personal level, generally speaking, it is not applied in international conflict. Machiavelli, the great sixteenth-century political thinker and servant of the state, had a very low opinion of human nature which he characterized as insatiable, arrogant and crafty, whereby man never did good unless necessity drove him to do so. For him, man was essentially evil and self-centred, and his behaviour could ultimately only be repressed by force. There are many who confirm Machiavelli’s view of the world where all men are essentially wicked and given an opportunity will give vent to their malign intent, and where politics needs to be shaped accordingly. Later, Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English polymath, wrote Leviathan, which was originally published in 1651 after the violent eruption of the English Civil War. He believed that man was driven by competition, rivalry and the need for glory, and would always wish to subdue the ‘other’. For him, the life of man in a state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’5 and therefore the task of government is to replace anarchy with hierarchical political structures. This may be up for review in the twenty-first century when

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the empowerment of citizens through social media and technology may not sit so comfortably with historical hierarchical structures of power. This will be discussed later in the book. In contrast to the thinking of Machiavelli and Hobbes, a more idealist view of human nature emerged in international relations in the twentieth century. This view of man is less bleak and in it there is a belief that man can develop and progress. After World War I a belief spread that the world could be transformed into a more peaceful and just order with the awakening of democracy and the growth of the international mind. In this school of thinking, the state should make its internal political philosophy the goal of foreign policy, and how it treats its citizens at home should be the benchmark for how it behaves internationally. Realism and idealism were to become rival political theories. Political realists believe that war will continue despite all efforts to the contrary and that nations therefore have an interest in and a need to be prepared for war. They emphasize a tragic view of human nature, whereas political idealists tend to be more optimistic and are united in the assumption that human nature can develop positively with the right structures in place. Realists tend to see war as a natural state of affairs, in contrast to idealists who see war as driven by historical circumstances, evil leaders, political systems and inadequate understanding and education. Such beliefs about human behaviour shape our politics and our beliefs about whether conflict can be transformed or managed. Those of the idealist school are more likely to subscribe to the view that conflict can be transformed, whereas the realists are more likely to see conflict as intractable by nature, and therefore needing to be managed. The authors of this book do not subscribe to either position, not least because each conflict is different and the multiple forces at work need to be understood. We support the idea that deep in man’s DNA is the potential to fight and be destructive, but we believe that there is also a profound capacity to create harmony, and whether or not

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this prevails is shaped by the conditions that surround the individual. An old adage attributed to Abraham Lincoln articulates the impact of our surroundings on our outlook and values, and goes something like this: ‘If we had been born where they were born, and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.’ When examining conflict, our lack of imagination often prevents us from understanding the conditions in which people live, the pressures they are under, and the painful consequences to them of long-term conflict, which often creates a very different perspective from our own. The majority of people do not spend their lives in a landscape of violence or even cruelty. Most people live in a spirit of co-operation and collaboration; we understand and value the benefits of reciprocity and taking care of each other. These civilized societies are governed by laws, which police the darker aspects of human behaviour. These societies have devised systems of reconciliation, arbitration and coexistence. But living in conditions of endless conflict tends to erode the civilizing effect of co-operative behaviour and stimulates the worst aspects of human behaviour. What gives mankind hope and what separates the behaviour of man from that of animals is our ability to think rationally, but in conditions of heightened tension and fear group behaviour emerges which is not based on rational calculations but instead is driven more by rigid beliefs about identity and survival. In such an environment the individual is more likely to lose the ability for independent thought and to find their distinctiveness subsumed by the power of group thought. It is in these conditions that large groups can frequently become consumed by their histories and identification with earlier traumas, which intensifies their focus on ‘their recitation of past injuries which magnifies the perception of threat and danger’.6 When the group or country cannot reverse this deep sense of powerlessness, there is an increased likelihood that the next generation will be trapped in victimhood and bound together by a traumatic identity.

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Understanding this collective and individual identity becomes essential to unravelling conflict. We need to know what the national narrative is, how both the individual and the group see themselves and what could unlock the sense of victimhood. It becomes important to understand the deeply held values that bind the group together, and this involves getting into the mind of the enemy. In adversarial conditions it is difficult to do this and to understand how and why they think differently. Our natural proclivity is to distance ourselves from those with whom we are in conflict. It is counter-intuitive to want to understand their insecurities and fears when they have caused us pain. Former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara says that one of the first lessons of war is that we must learn to empathize: ‘We must put ourselves inside their skin and look at ourselves through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.’7 Robert McNamara was one of the prime architects of the Vietnamese war in which 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American soldiers died. In his old age, he became reflective and in the iconic documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, he eloquently portrayed how the US failed in Vietnam because it did not understand the culture and the history of the Vietnamese people. Deeply influenced by the film, we decided to call this book The Fog of Peace. The title seeks to demonstrate how complex, foggy and difficult the art of peacemaking is. Without the capacity to empathize and enter into the mind of the enemy, it is easy for one side to fall into the trap of assuming the superiority of our own state of mind. We may fail to understand why groups and communities think differently from ourselves and behave in ways we find so unappealing. This book will explore in detail why empathy matters. Empathy – which is not appeasement – is an essential component of the art of peacemaking because entering into the mind of the enemy increases the possibility of resolving conflict. This does not mean sympathy or that one likes how these people think, act or behave, and it can

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cause huge discomfort for those involved. The important point is that individuals have histories and stories, which are their own. By entering into their minds, we increase our options when resolving conflict. This book is not a manual of conflict resolution but, in writing it, what we are drawing on is our experiences of trying to understand the mind of the enemy, to better understand their narrative: what is in their heads, what has shaped their history, and how they think. We hope the book will be received as an original contribution to the understanding of international conflict. Its concerns throughout are issues of international relations and especially conflict resolution and mediation. It is presented as a collection of vital themes and reflections that reside in a combination of psychological understanding and practical diplomatic experience. Based on long experience, deep thought, study of current and relevant literature, discussion with personal contacts and, above all, the direct experience of facing the ‘enemy’ up close and personal, The Fog of Peace addresses the importance of understanding the mindsets and psychological elements in the resolution of conflict.

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A So-Called Diplomat’s Story by Gianni Picco We see the world the way we do not because that is the way it is, but because we have these ways of seeing. Ludwig Wittgenstein ph i lo s o ph i c a l i n v e s t i g at i o n s

(1953)

A personal story

I love history. Almost all my reading is history books, and yet I profoundly agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson when he writes that ‘there is properly no history; only biography’.1 I did not know this when, at the age of 24, in the early 1970s, I joined the United Nations (UN) Secretariat in New York, as the Cold War was enveloping almost everything and everybody. I claimed I was not a Cold War warrior, but to no avail. I did not know that facts matter very little in the minds of men. What counts in making decisions is the ‘baggage’ you carry in your mind: the narrative, as they call it in American English. I have lived the narrative of the Cold War. The so-called Iron Curtain ran only a few miles from my childhood home, and Hitler and Stalin were not just names in my head; they carried a concrete meaning of real life and death which affected my family directly. History

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was never to me a set of chapters; I read books, of course, but to me it was life, not stories, printed on pages. It was emotions and facts as transmitted through three generations of family members whose lives and deaths were intertwined with these historic enmities and events. Divides of all kinds, emotional, physical, historical, so-called ‘ethnic’ and of course linguistic divides, were running through my life at a very young age. Indeed I was no different from any European of my generation born after the tragedies of two wars and fed on the food of those tragedies by a generation of parents who lived through it all. The 1950s and the 1960s, for those living along the Iron Curtain, clearly expressed the ‘fog of peace’. The ‘story’ of the past came from my mother. Was it ‘impartial’? Of course it was not. Was it an interpretation from the point of view of her sufferings? Of course, yes. Was it right or wrong? It was ‘her life’, she told me over and over again. When I grew up and I felt like contradicting her or at least asking provocative questions, my father would squeeze my arm and whisper, ‘Hold your breath.’ He, by contrast, never spoke to us about his tribulations in both World War I and World War II, which he survived rather miraculously, according to what I learnt much later, from his friends, not from him. His greatest teaching to me was: ‘We [meaning our tribe in the Eastern Alps] are children of a lesser God.’ But he would hasten to add: ‘Considering what children of major Gods have done, you should not be too sad, my son.’ The family lexicon contained expressions and words and figures of speech from different cultures and times that covered the entire twentieth century. A narrative anchored in a clear separation between us and the others, the right and the wrong, as if that line of separation was so clear and unchallengeable. But it did not end with my childhood: when I joined the UN in New York, I was assigned to an office led by a top Soviet diplomat and assisted by two others. I was called the ‘token Westerner’ in the ‘Soviet Department’. That top Soviet/UN personage turned out to be the highest-ranking and

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longest-serving Soviet official to have been a double agent for the West during the Cold War; and, to complete the picture, one of his two assistants was, a short time later, caught red-handed, picking up ‘military documents’ from a milk carton in New Jersey, US. I spent two years at close quarters with them every day. I call this my introduction to the real world. But was it? I did not know much about ‘narratives’ when I was first shipped to Cyprus two years after the 1974 war as a young political officer. I landed on a Sunday and by Monday morning I had not spoken to anybody, let alone written about what was happening. Nevertheless, I was accused by a local press report of being biased. I was distraught, mostly because I still believed in the myth of what some would call ‘impartiality’. I was too young to realize that if you place a glass in the perfect middle of a table and two persons sit across from each other, each of them will see the glass as being closer to the other, no matter how perfectly centred it is. It is called optical illusion; impartiality is an illusion – the parties will never see it: their respective baggage would not permit it. If they do, chances are they will be labelled as traitors. Thus, in reality, both sides in a conflict see someone who is ‘impartial’ as closer to the other side. The only ‘impartiality’ a side at war usually recognizes is partiality on their side. Negotiators should not worry about being impartial, they should worry about being ‘credible’. That is to say their words should count. Furthermore, how can one be impartial in the face of a hostage-taking situation? Can you be in the middle? Not even the hostage-takers expect that. Believe me, they told me so the very first time I was snatched from the streets of Beirut at night and blindfolded; the masked figure who addressed me made it clear to me that he knew taking hostages was not right. The respected mediator Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace Laureate and former president of Finland, was to say: ‘People always say that mediators have to be neutral. That’s utter nonsense. Mediators have to be honest brokers; they have to be able to treat different parties objectively.’2

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I was told by the bureaucracy more often than not that the ‘time was not ripe’ for new ideas and, worse still, that what I suggested ‘had never been done before’. I did not know then that if your target is to reach your pension you have already failed. Professors will never teach you how to negotiate between two sides when one side decides to leave the negotiating table or how to do that when you have been snatched at night, blindfolded and brought to an unknown location to negotiate with masked men. I did not know then that theories cannot envisage all the various possibilities of reality that the future will offer, and that the past does not exactly repeat itself. I was told that institutions are more important than individuals and that, when you are facing an individual representing an institution, it does not matter who he or she is, for they are the voice of a country or something larger than themselves. I did not know in my early years that even the minds of bureaucrats of a fearsome dictatorship carry personal luggage as well as national baggage. The more one knows about the interlocutor in front of you, the better you will understand him or her. There are no machines in the business of life, only human beings. And the individual does matter even in the great issues of state. That is hard to teach. I knew none of these things when I started my journey. Some would say it was short, but I had quite a story to tell to my children: the story of a journey from a small valley in the Eastern Alps to the mountains of Afghanistan and the alleys of Beirut, from the palaces of Saddam Hussein to the minefields of Cyprus and the impassable streets of Tehran, and, throughout, trying never to forget my father’s teaching: ‘we are all important but nobody is indispensable’. In my journey amongst peoples at war, I felt I was crossing lines of separation, and always along the way I felt I had with me an inseparable companion. The shadow of the ‘enemy’ seemed to be omnipresent, as if humankind could not exist without it. I then realized it is not humankind that cannot exist without it but only leaders who cannot

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lead without an enemy. I saw living people dying not because they had been killed but because they had lost their humanity. The fumes of power had blinded them. And I was often asked, ‘Why us?’, but I had no answer. Some good even came out of those experiments with truth. Lives were saved; others were changed for the better. I was one of the luckiest: I felt, rightly or wrongly, that some of those ‘experiments’ had made a difference. My grandfather, whom I never knew, went to school in what today are three different countries, in what became subsequently – after the changes in borders of World War I – Hungary, Austria and Italy. World War I and World War II changed the borders that are only 30 minutes or so from my childhood village. I learnt about footnotes of history long before I read books about history. The footnotes usually take you down to local details, making incomplete references to events that may have changed the lives of entire families. They are given to you as colourful titbits of dinner-table conversation by your parents, but they can carry enormous emotional weight, images that may have come from generations past; they are not fact-checked, but they become embedded in your mind. Names unknown to the wider world become a permanent component of the family lexicon; events left out of national accounts stay with us. They will never go away; they become what we are. They become the earth in which our decisions and choices grow. It is almost impossible for an outsider to know and understand these things, but we can try. Facts, despite what analysts of geopolitics would like, are, in my experience, rather marginal. The life of a fact is short, very short indeed: a fact gets processed within seconds of its happening and then enters the machine of our mind. In no time it becomes something for me and something else for my neighbour, especially if you and your neighbour are opponents in a dispute.

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The Fog of Peace

Life lessons applied: freeing hostages in Lebanon

The Lebanese Civil War started in 1975 and four years later the Iranian Revolution added a new patina to the role of the Shi‘a in Lebanon, by now the largest demographic group in the country. The taking of hostages by a newly formed group to become known as Hezbollah, supported by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, began a sad chapter for Lebanon and for a number of foreigners, some of whom were killed or held captive for up to seven years. When I embarked on freeing those who had been taken as hostages, a key tool in my equipment was that I knew the importance of understanding the narrative of the hostage-takers. The operation was to lead to the freeing of 11 Western hostages from Lebanon and with them 99 Lebanese from Israeli hands, a confirmation of the deaths of two Israelis who were missing in action (MIA) and their identification, and the return of 15 deceased Lebanese and the remains of two Americans. The connection between the Lebanese group holding those unfortunate individuals and Iran had been revealed to the larger public by the Iran–Contra affair in 1986. It was to become evident that the government of Iran could play a key role in the resolution of these issues. Both in the case of the Iran–Contra affair and in that of the liberation of French nationals, money or weapons had been a key tool in the efforts to secure freedom. Clearly money and weapons were something the UN Secretary General did not have, nor did he have the authority to engage in an operation under the radar, which was a real taboo for the UN during the Cold War. By the end of 1988, a sad lull had descended over the hostage episode and no further releases seemed to be in the offing. Furthermore, a UN military officer had been taken as well and, as we later learnt, killed. A few months earlier, in August 1988, I had had the privilege of assisting the UN Secretary General in the negotiations which led to the end of the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War. I obtained his permission to start approaching the Iranian authorities to help us in

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dealing with the hostage issue in Lebanon. It was a frustrating time and my solo appeals to Iran were to no avail. We had been interfacing with Tehran for a number of years because of the Iran–Iraq War but on this matter there seemed to be no response. In 1989, in his inauguration speech, George Bush, sen., the new US president, when referring to the hostages in Lebanon, said: ‘Goodwill begets goodwill.’ This became a mantra in my negotiations. A few months later, the President asked the Secretary General of the UN to transmit a message to his Iranian counterpart on the subject. He could have done so using a number of heads of state but he thought that Pérez de Cuéllar and his office would be able to have a more ‘intimate’ conversation in Tehran. So our efforts moved to a higher level, but not forward. It was important for me, when it came to negotiating, that Beirut should be the last port of call rather than the first and that I should be going there from the East rather than from the West. I could hardly forget that years earlier Terry Waite, the Anglican Church intermediary, had ended up as a hostage and was still being detained. My journey into Beirut, and eventually into unknown locations and the safe houses of the kidnappers themselves, would therefore start in Tehran, move from there to Damascus and only eventually to Beirut. Unquestionably, Tehran and Damascus were contributing to the political, religious and cultural dimensions of the baggage that the hostage holders were carrying with them. Being briefed in Europe or the US about the ‘facts’ was, I thought, no substitute for learning more about some of the component elements of the narrative of those, then, still elusive groups. The civil war in Lebanon lasted 15 years. Alliances shifted inside the country more than once; outside, the world moved from a frozen Cold War to the collapse of one of the two geopolitical poles. Fittingly, one of the slogans of the Iranian Revolution was: ‘Neither East nor West.’ Indeed the beginning of the end of the Cold War had started a few years earlier with the coming to power of Mr Gorbachev and his

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change of attitude on various issues, including the war in Afghanistan and the USSR’s role in the UN Security Council. By the end of the 1980s, the world was to be reinvented, and in Lebanon that reinvention involved also the national project itself. Finding the Iranian national narrative: the need for historical justice

The key to securing the Iranian government’s support in helping to resolve the issue of the Western hostages in Lebanon was eventually found in the national narrative. Was there an issue, a component of the narrative, that would jibe with whatever limited tools were available to me at that time? The war with Iraq had become a key element in the national psyche – eight long years and a large number of casualties had left an indelible mark; it was referred to as ‘the imposed war’. Iranians felt not only that they had been the victims of aggression, but also that, from the very beginning, the world had not recognized that aggression. Their sense of victimization was compounded by the fact that the world at large had not even admitted that a war had started in earnest at the end of September 1980. For days, the major powers did not seem bothered that a number of Iraqi divisions had entered Iranian territory. When they eventually adopted the first resolution of the Security Council, it did call for an end to the fighting but not for an Iraqi withdrawal to its borders. Insult was added to injury in the mind of the Iranians. To some, these may appear to be details, yet they remain at the core of the Iranian narrative to this day. In a similar vein, the taking of the US embassy in 1979 by a student mob in Tehran will shape the way the American people look at Iran for a long time. Yet by 1991, despite the fact that the war had ended in 1988, nothing had been done on that front. True, in 1990 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had changed the way many in the world looked at Saddam

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Hussein’s regime: a war had been fought by the largest coalition ever assembled since World War II and to a large extent Baghdad had lost its geopolitical role. Despite such a profound change, the Iranian narrative continued to hold to the need for historical justice and world recognition of the victimization it had suffered at the hands of the Iraqi regime. Perhaps this issue had nothing to do with the ‘facts’ in Lebanon for the West, but addressing it was what secured the co-operation of Tehran in resolving the hostage issue in Lebanon. I called it ‘the truth for freedom’ deal. As is the case with many national narratives, the Iranians also carry the image of right and wrong. And so the Iranian President undertook to help the efforts of the Secretary General and it was agreed that the Secretary General would in turn find a way to produce a report on the responsibility for the 1980–8 war and make it public for all to see. It did not take long to agree that first the hostages would be released and then the report would see the light of day. The point was that a major component of the Iranian narrative would be addressed by an international body. All that remained was for it to be formalized and executed, both politically and practically. This was, I thought, by far the simplest part of the entire deal: a matter of techniques and common sense. Yet no deal, the implementation of which would stretch over months and which would include others, could be assumed to proceed faultlessly. And indeed this one did not. That westward journey from Iran to Lebanon was to provide me with a glimpse of the relationship between Tehran and Damascus and indeed the groups holding the hostages. This relationship was perceived by some in the West as originating only after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but it is in fact rooted in at least five centuries of contacts between the Shi‘a of south Lebanon and those of Persia, starting with the Safavid monarchy and the expulsion of Shi‘a from Baghdad in 1534, when a Shi‘i group migrated to the shores of the Mediterranean. The core deal I had struck with the Iranians, as I soon found out, did not mean my work was over. There were going to be

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The Fog of Peace

negotiations within the negotiation: the hostage-takers had their own request. Indeed the issue that had clinched my deal in Tehran never came up in my interactions with the Lebanese groups: they were seeking another deal, another quid pro quo for their co-operation on the front line. The narrative of the Hezbollah hostage-takers

I discovered in Beirut that, far from my being able to conduct this operation by remote control, the hostage holders wanted to see me face to face. This was a request that had to be weighed properly since it meant that I had to get face to face with individuals still operating underground. I would have to accept being taken away at night, blindfolded and driven to places I do not know even today, to meet masked interlocutors and eventually – everything being equal – released in places equally unknown to me. They wanted to negotiate their own deal – via me – which involved the liberation of Lebanese prisoners detained by Israel without due process. In turn this would lead me to the Israelis and their part of the bargain. The Syrians also had a demand: every freed hostage must be handed over to them and in turn they would publicly present them in Damascus to the US or the UK embassy, as the case might be, and to the world press. The relationship between Hezbollah and Iran, which underlies that narrative, was not always as clear as I had hoped; when I pushed the argument of religious brotherhood with Iran – with whom of course I had already made my deal – one of my interlocutors said, ‘We are Lebanese, not Iranian.’ I tried a riskier approach by raising a more personal issue, something in which we could both find our human connection: ‘Have you got children?’ For a moment I thought they would be my last words. I never got an answer in words, though I thought I did via his body language and vocal surprise at my question, both of which showed his discomfort. I saw the value of the individual elements of a narrative.

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During several unorthodox encounters of this kind, I also came across some who disagreed with the purpose of my work – which implied some extra physical ‘discomfort’ to me – but their leadership agreed and eventually prevailed. One of my masked interlocutors told me that I was an acceptable negotiator not because I was coming from the UN, much less the Security Council (a body they did not trust), but because I was working for the Secretary General. The difference may have gone unnoticed by many or been considered insignificant, yet it was part of the reason the operation moved forward. Curiously enough, many years later, my Israeli interlocutor, with whom I had had to negotiate the release of Lebanese captives in his government’s hands in exchange for information about Israeli soldiers missing in action (MIAs), explained to me that his authorities had agreed to deal with me in my individual capacity, so to speak, but not in my capacity as an official of the UN, or of the UN Security Council or indeed of the UN Secretary General, as Israel had no trust in any of these. My belief that individuals still matter even in the great game of geopolitics and the major political systems could not but be reinforced. In different ways the narratives of Hezbollah, the Israelis, and the Iran of the Islamic Revolution, have profound roots in the images of victimization and marginalization. The mental construct, whether stemming from the history of a people or from the more personal journey of the immediate family, not only matters but is in my view at the core of our behaviour. And so, when I interfaced with the masked Hezbollah interlocutor, I decided to believe that his brother had been detained for years by the Israelis and, when talking to the Israelis, that the MIA I was asked to locate was indeed a close relative. I refused to accept that we are numbers in a game bigger than ourselves or puppets in the hands of a puppeteer who is unreachable and invisible to the foot soldiers of life. Behind every face – even those I could not see – there was a human story and indeed more than one; there was a life, again more than one, and there were hopes

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and aspirations, fears and anger, hatred and pain. It would have been naive to assume that my negotiating counterparts were operating as if without feelings, so to enter the world of their narrative I did refer to my interlocutor’s children, to a family I assumed he had. I doubt any professor of negotiation would advise you to bring your own family into the discussion, but I knew we were going in the right direction when I was asked why I would risk my life to save someone who was not a member of my family, my tribe, my nation. For the purpose of this book my answer would not matter, though I could not but think that we are each other’s keepers. As I shuttled physically between the unknown locations in Lebanon to meet my masked interlocutors, and in Israel where I encountered the other side of the story, I felt I was a weaver, weaving Western hostages, Lebanese prisoners, Israeli MIAs, remains of the less fortunate to be returned home, and by now, in the background, the three professors we had selected in Europe, who were working on the part of the deal we had made with Iran. Their names were to remain secret forever, lest their lives be put in danger. There were operational aspects to the execution of every piece of the deal. The Syrians would have to be given the hostages when Hezbollah and I had agreed on the specifics of any release. It would involve one or two hostages at a time, the last time three at the same time. But the relationship between Beirut and Damascus was not always easy, and I could be landed with a hostage somewhere, nowhere I knew, in the depth of night in Beirut. Paradoxical as it may seem, in those situations I realized that I could not take the hostage to freedom. I had first to find the Syrians – the ‘right’ Syrians – at 2 a.m. And then I would hand the hostage to them to be released the following day in Damascus. It was a saga within the saga, scoring points at local levels while trying to keep the entire enterprise going without being sunk halfway. And then the Israelis would second-guess my reading of the Iranians and introduce a new element into the picture I was trying to compose, and I would have no choice but to test their suggestion,

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even though I was convinced it would not work – and invariably it would not. And always, time was running out. Yes, at this point my real enemy was time. Everything we could do had to be done by the end of 1991 when the mandate of Pérez de Cuéllar was going to come to a conclusion. The key piece, namely the report promised to President Rafsanjani, was based on the word of the UN Secretary General. The successor Secretary General might well have questioned its validity, and I myself had no way of guessing where I would go next in the bureaucracy. So time was not on our side and as it happened not everything could be achieved. By December 1991, six US and three UK hostages had been freed. The remains of two more US hostages were also handed over and taken home. Two Israeli MIAs (deceased) were identified. Ninety-nine Lebanese ‘detained without due process’ by Israel went home and 15 remains were returned. Others stayed behind: more Israeli MIAs, more Lebanese prisoners and two German hostages. Terry Anderson, the last US hostage, walked out of Lebanon on 4 December 1991. The Secretary General sent a letter enclosing the report he had received from the European professors on 12 December and after that it became a UN – and public – document. A new Secretary General took office in January 1992 and with the change of individuals my own ability to move further was affected and even curtailed. The relationship between the UN leadership and Iran was unavoidably reassessed. And ‘Goodwill begets goodwill’ never materialized, as the US did not follow through with their veiled promise. The decision to play all the chips (and specifically the report on the responsibility for the Iran–Iraq War) by the end of December 1991 was a matter of judgement. Could we have saved or helped more people by holding on to the report? Or would we have lost the chance to save those we did? Would the incoming Secretary General have made a difference in the execution of a plan conceived and already partially executed by others? Human nature being what it is, and politics being what it is, I could not discount this.

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The Fog of Peace

We all live with the weight of our own choices. No other event like this brought home to me so clearly the realization that we may well try to hide inside collective decision making processes and therefore inside the bosom of institutions, but in fact institutions do not decide any more than they destroy or kill, or make peace or war; those actions are, and will be, the responsibility of individuals, no matter what. Negotiating the end of the Iran–Iraq War

The resolution of the hostage issue had its roots in several years of UN negotiating efforts on the issue of the Iran–Iraq War and especially in the peculiar relationship between the UN leadership and Iran leading up to the end of the war. The last few weeks of the war, which led to the ceasefire, were in themselves a chapter of that decade of change. Throughout the war it had become an open secret that Saddam Hussein felt the office of the Secretary General was pro-Iranian and Tehran made no secret of the fact that, for them, the Security Council was pro-Iraqi. Curiously enough, the so-called negotiations that led to the end of the hostilities hinged on the roles played by individuals as much as by institutions. Agreement was achieved when one of the combatants had left not only the room but the city itself where the diplomatic process was under way. Iraq was not at the table in New York when agreement on the ceasefire (which lasts to this day) was reached and announced to the world. Power politics and institutions seemed to be missing the quickly shifting picture that changed in colour within 48 hours: the scenario moved from a new Iraqi offensive to the end of a war. The Security Council could not have ended that war for the simple reason that some of the major powers did not want it to end, and they said so. Indeed they said so, even to me, in a very direct and ‘personal’ way. The Iraqi leadership wanted to continue the war as they felt they were finally winning on the battlefield and they abandoned formally

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the ‘charade’ – as they called it – of a negotiation that they had never accepted. Indeed, the insults used by Tariq Aziz (the foreign minister and deputy of Saddam Hussein), which were expressed in his tone and violence (to say nothing of manners), against Pérez de Cuéllar in their last encounter, will never leave my memory. A continuation of the war could potentially have led to a wider regional conflagration. The fear was that Tehran would have unleashed a wave of terrorism across several countries. An offensive, in other words, would have placed the Iranians in the state of mind that there was nothing more to lose and therefore anything should be done to fight back, especially since now they were so weak militarily. We believed that the war had to end then and there. But we had no longer the two sides in front of us on 6 August 1988. Only the Iranians were there. Pérez de Cuéllar literally asked me if I had any idea in mind! What came into my head was the Renaissance and the key role bankers played in that era ‘with regard to starting and ending wars’; I recalled then a statement the Saudi defence minister – Saddam Hussein’s major banker – had made in February 1988 during a meeting with the editorial board of the New York Times indicating the Kingdom’s fatigue with the war. Thus we invited Saudi Arabia, the major banker of Saddam, to come to New York and take the place of Iraq, so to speak, at the negotiating table. They came. It took less than two days to reach an agreement on a ceasefire. In other words, the war came to an end via a negotiation literally between the UN Secretary General and the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia in telephone contact with His Majesty the King; the UN head was in touch with the Iranian side (in the other room) and the King of Saudi Arabia with Saddam in another part of the world. Of course in practice this meant stopping the flow of both weapons and funding to Iraq. Such a solution in the physical absence of one of the parties could hardly have been pushed through an institution such as the Security Council quickly enough to be useful. Even if agreement had been secured, and it was

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doubtful since some of the five permanent members were against an end to the war, time might have been needed. The opportunity would have been lost and a new Iraqi offensive begun. It was of course probably more than just a matter of money. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may have weighed up the consequences of a new Iraqi offensive and the Iranian reaction in the region, even if Iran was then at its limits, which in itself could have made the Tehran reaction even more unpredictable. The day the ceasefire was announced, the world media had printed news of the departure of the Iraqi foreign minister and the ‘failed negotiations’. By 3 p.m. on Monday, 8 August 1988, Pérez de Cuéllar informed the Security Council, formally called to session, of the end of an eight-year-long conflict, secured two hours earlier. The strength of institutions is that they may empower individuals to achieve more than they could achieve individually, but the individual has to accept personal responsibility for success and defeat. The Afghan–Soviet War

It was again a very small team of a few individuals that, contrary to any expectations, wove the agreements – signed in Geneva in April 1988 – that formalized the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The weaving took more than seven years. It started as an idea ridiculed by many in the international community a year after the mass entry of Soviet troops into Kabul. The four elements of the agreement were devised at the very beginning; they were written in early 1982, at first on airline stationery, with no contribution or participation from the parties involved. This was a war that, in the words of an important player, ‘would never end’, or alternatively a ‘war which will be fought to the last Afghan’! But by the spring of 1988 those elements had become the four components of a rather extensive agreement, which carried the signature of the two superpowers and the regional players.

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The nature of this negotiating effort was unusual, both because of its duration over time and because in those seven years were there were four different general secretaries of the Communist Party in Moscow, and each left a personal imprint on the negotiating process. Under Andropov the Soviet Union appointed a shadow negotiator to interface directly with the UN team. By the late spring of 1983 we felt a resolution to the Afghan war could be within reach. But by early summer of that year, Andropov had fallen ill, never to recover, and his shadow negotiator had died of a heart attack. Individuals proved yet again that they matter more than any institution. Thus we had to await the arrival of Gorbachev to take the negotiations to a successful end. Years later, he told us that the real decision makers who ended the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan had been the ‘Soviet mothers’ who had made clear they could no longer take the stream of body bags returning home from the Hindu Kush. When we at the UN started this gamble in 1981, there was no political support or encouragement from any quarter. Common wisdom was that the USSR never withdrew from any country unless through force of arms. Of course that idea was wrong as Moscow had left a part of Iran in 1947 and all of Austria in 1955. But the traditional geopolitical logic was against our gamble. Indeed we were probably allowed to pursue it in those early years only because we were considered irrelevant – as Pérez de Cuéllar would agree. In this last of the Cold War conflicts, it was almost impossible to believe that a role of some significance could be played by the UN leadership. It required taking advantage of small openings in the geopolitics of the day and imagining ideas that others did not dare to speak of. The historian Arthur Schlesinger said it so well: ‘history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives […] the possibilities of the future are more various than the human intellect is designed to conceive.’3 Here again the institution offered a platform to empower the ideas and actions of a few individuals. They

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would have been powerless without the frame of the institution. But it seems to me the converse is also true. Unfortunately, ideas alone are not always enough to succeed. I thought I had solved the Cyprus problem by the end of 1983. I dealt for weeks, very discreetly, with a special envoy of the Turkish President on a formula I had devised, perhaps with some naivete. When we reached agreement with the leadership in Ankara, I suggested to the Secretary General that he convene a ‘summit meeting’ of the two Cypriot leaders. It took place in January 1984 and it was a disaster. My approach was imaginative in terms of geopolitics of the moment, but I had not factored in the impact of what appeared to both sides on the island an ‘imposed’ solution. I had lived for two years in Cyprus and had been involved in that issue for almost ten years. Within 24 hours I resigned from my role on that dossier. It was my failure, not the failure of the institution. I never dealt with the issue again; indeed my files on Cyprus were physically removed from my office. Institutions empowering individuals

My work would not have been possible without the personal relationship I had with Pérez de Cuéllar. We worked together for some 15 years. He understood that this was not a traditional UN assignment and that it needed flexibility and secrecy that is hard to achieve in a huge bureaucracy, unless you have the cover of the boss and the boss is not afraid of his own shadow. For the entire two years, only two people knew every step I made and very few more were called to help out at different times. Most importantly, that tight-knit small team could count on Pérez de Cuéllar at times not only as a boss but as a colleague. He gave us confidence and responsibility, and we knew, as he told me: ‘If we succeed, it is a success for the organization; if you fail, it is your failure.’ We agreed on that. I had already lived that experience

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with him on other fronts. He never spoke to me from the pulpit; he never gave me lessons; it was more like he was nudging me into trying to see what we had failed to see so far. We did not share the same political views: I knew we would never cast the ballot for the same party in any national election. Every so often he would say, ‘Do not take unnecessary risks.’ The caring words of a father, one might say, but also of a wise man who knew I was probably not playing it by the book. And I never told him till the end all the details of my blindfolded adventures and the rest. One day, I hope, history will fully recognize the role he played in those crucial years at the beginning of the 1980s, in an institution that by then the Cold War had in fact made almost insignificant. Under his watch, the office of the UN Secretary General had a key role in ending at least three major conflicts: the Afghan–Soviet war, the Iran–Iraq War, and the civil war in El Salvador. His contribution to the independence of Namibia and to the resolution of the Lebanese hostage saga was unquestionable. But more important still, he had understood since early on, in the 1980s, that the organization would have petered out into irrelevance if he had accepted the old role of a secretary general, working only at the level of the minimum common denominator between the two superpowers. In those early years he told a few of us that we had nothing to lose in pushing for a more active political role. Few today will remember that it was ‘forbidden’ by the climate of the realpolitik of the Cold War for a secretary general to suggest his own ideas for the solution of conflicts, or to ‘mediate’; instead he could only offer his ‘good offices’. Indeed the very word ‘peacemaking’, which is taken for granted today as a major activity of the UN leader, could not even be uttered. It was supposed to mean that the Secretary General would negotiate in the first person, without a team of countries with him, taking the political initiative and risk, thus being out of bounds legally and politically. ‘Peacemaking’, today considered a core activity of the UN,

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was used in some speeches by Pérez de Cuéllar; but one would have to wait till December 1991 to find it in any document of a legislative body of the organization. Politically, Pérez de Cuéllar understood before anyone else I knew that the Cold War had ended, long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It ended with the arrival of Mr Gorbachev and the staying power of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The other key component of Pérez de Cuéllar was his personality, most notably his lack of interest in the limelight or making the front page of the newspapers. He would have hated to be at the top of the UN body during the internet era. In other words, he was a professional deeply rooted in a culture of a previous century but aware that change is a part of life and that the future is not a repetition of the past. At the end of his mandate, the expectations among governments and the worldwide public of what the UN could achieve had skyrocketed. From Yugoslavia to Rwanda to Somalia, the UN was called upon to perform the impossible, as the international construct had changed. The incoming Secretary General in January 1992 mentioned to me that had he been elected to that position in the 1980s he would have not accepted but that now, after the collapse of the USSR, there was a real chance of making a difference. I took the liberty of saying that perhaps the expectations loaded on the organization were now too high to be met. And I thought, though I did not say it on that occasion, that it is important to be ahead of the curve of history to leave a mark, not to be riding the wave, for after the peak the wave collapses.

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The Therapist’s Story by Gabrielle Rifkind For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free. Amin Maalouf in the name of identity

(2003)

A personal story

One of my first professional experiences was as a 21-year-old trainee probation officer taking a young woman to visit her husband in prison; he had killed a friend in a fight. What struck me was the ordinariness of this man, and what a fine line he embodied between good and evil. It challenged me to think more deeply about why people behave in certain ways and how easily we can all cross a boundary when experiences and circumstances push us in a particular way. Thinking about this leaves us uncomfortable. It is much simpler to isolate particular groups rather than challenge ourselves to understand why individuals, groups and governments behave in disturbing and violent ways. It also challenges us to examine whether we can help create the conditions in which people are less likely to resort to violence. We seldom manage to extend our humanity

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beyond those we know and with whom we have relationships. Our compassion rarely reaches beyond family and friends. I remember that, as a young child, when seeing the terrible images of suffering in the world, the only way I could deal with this was to tell myself that those who suffered were different from me and did not have the same level of emotions and feelings. By this act of differentiation I freed myself from having to care about them or take any responsibility. It was only later, when I had real encounters with people who had suffered as a result of war, that I was obliged to think about how we all inhabit a similar emotional world of pain and pleasure, hopes and fears. I have always had a passion for politics, and coming from a political family perhaps had stimulated this. I never saw myself working as an insider within the political process, but I became fascinated by the idea that I might apply my understanding of human behaviour to politics. My own training had helped me to understand the human mind and group behaviour, but what increasingly fascinated me was its relevance to the political process, particularly in areas of international conflict. Of course the link between experience and emotion, between pain and violence, between aggression and selfabuse is enormously relevant and it is as crucial to understanding the behaviour of communities, ethnic groups and nations as it is to understanding individuals. Yet this approach seemed to be almost completely ignored in the conventional approach to the analysis of conflicts, their causes and the way to resolve them. I became hungry to draw on my skills as a psychotherapist and group analyst in order to develop the links between the psychological and the political world. Over the last decade, I have worked on applying what I know psychologically to the political process – by this I mean our understanding of what stimulates conflict, what makes people act destructively or creatively. Given the current preoccupation with political violence, I was concerned to deepen my knowledge of what motivates such behaviour, not in order to excuse it, but to develop

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a deeper understanding of its root causes and thereby forge a more considered path of response and possible intervention. So what did my personal experience teach me? I have worked with people who have killed and others whose disturbed relationships have led them into deep depression as a way of managing their own violence. I have learnt that the mind is not always rational and there is a need to excavate if we are to understand better what lies beneath the surface. This is equally true on the international stage, where conflict is often motivated by small hurts and wounded pride and not big ideological beliefs. And if we are to understand what causes conflict and violence on the international stage and why international players cannot come to terms with their neighbours, and indeed themselves, we absolutely need to make use of our insights into the human mind. When I worked in the mental-health field, people often expressed their frustration and thwarted ambitions through depression and the more extreme forms of mental illness. Thus my work often involved helping to transform misunderstood symptoms of behaviour into communication, because if we can find a voice to communicate we are less likely to resort to violence or become mentally ill. When people are frightened or in a heightened state of aggression they are seldom in a state to communicate, so the work involves helping people try to think and communicate. This is equally true of international and inter-ethnic conflict. As a young practitioner I remember often being intolerant of people’s weaknesses, families who were not able to take care of their children and young men who expressed their frustration through violence. Whilst I am not alone in this response, it did not encourage me to imagine what these people’s lives were like and why they often behaved in ways that were socially unacceptable. The reason I make this point is in part to reveal my own human frailty but also to highlight how empathy is not a natural state and is instead something that we need to develop in order to heighten our awareness. It is a long journey to discipline yourself to look not only through your

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own eyes but also through the eyes of the person with whom you are working. Empathy is like a muscle that needs training, but it is an essential one if we are to extend our humanity. My work in the consulting room profoundly affected how I thought, and I learnt that in order to help people to change we need to enter into their mind and understand how they are thinking and how they have constructed their identity. This is equally true of the wider political arena. Those living in circumstances of endless conflict may have created identities that exacerbate conflicts, and endless violence creates hatred for the enemy and de-humanization. When a conflict has been going on for generations, hatred has been fed with mother’s milk and becomes embedded deep in the mind. When people are frightened and under enormous pressure, we see the worst aspects of human behaviour. My psychotherapy training had encouraged me to seek and understand what is happening to all parties in a conflict. It is not useful to blame one side without understanding the interactions between those involved and being aware of how each side impacts on the other. But what applies to individuals and families is equally relevant to nations and other groups at war. History and experience, frustrations, real and imagined slights, injustices and outrages influence how nations behave and react to one another. We take history as facts and assume the facts are true. In order to unlock conflict, it becomes essential to explore the context of how history is told and to understand that each group tells a different story. In the end, the real challenge is to learn how these different narratives can be tolerated, understood, recognized and managed. It is when we don’t manage to do this that we are more likely to end up killing each other. This does not mean that we will start loving our enemy or make a benign transformation in which we have positive thoughts. Ambivalent feelings based on past wounds and negative emotions will still surface, but the disciplining of our minds can help us reflect on whether we act out these darker thoughts and express

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them through violence, or find some form of self-expression which may involve learning to co-exist with the other. In my work as a psychotherapist, when I first meet people I take a social and psychological history. I ask them to give me an account of their lives and how the series of events and relationships have shaped who they are and how they think. As they tell me their histories, I am fully aware how partial their stories are, but I seldom have the desire to check facts. What really matters is how they tell their story and what their perception of the truth is. Over time, I might well prod or challenge their perception in an attempt to open up their minds and encourage other ways of thinking. Now consider our approach to political groups that are in armed conflict with their neighbours or the wider world and do not seem reachable via ordinary politics and negotiation. The stories they tell will be shaped by their histories, their core values and their experience in the world. Their way of thinking may be influenced by the level of trauma in their own family, how many members have been killed and in what circumstances. Their level of openness may be shaped by the degree of exposure to other cultures, whether they have travelled outside their own country and how far they have lived beyond their own social web of relationships. They too would have constructed a narrative about the world and would have justified the way they think. If they have chosen the path of violence, they might justify it as a way to protect their families and believe there are no other options. The professional status of the psychotherapist to some extent certifies you as neutral, someone committed to understanding and helping with individuals’ or groups’ problems. You may not always succeed, you may not even truly be heard, but your bona fides are not usually impugned. Even in vexatious conflict between a couple, your authority is accepted as not unfairly taking sides. Mediating in bitter ongoing international hostilities is different. Our attempts to be neutral are seldom seen as such by the parties involved. I know from my own experience of working behind the scenes on the Palestine–Israel

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conflict that both sides usually see me as being on the side of the other. I know I am doing a good enough job when I am seen in that way. In any conflict, when there is an enormous amount of pain and trauma, there are huge sensitivities about the role of the outsider as negotiator and doubts as to whether they can remain neutral, and of course they can’t, even if they try hard to do so. This can often lead to misreading and misunderstandings, when we try to understand a culture that is profoundly different from our own. I learnt pretty quickly that well-intentioned interventions on my part could easily be misunderstood if I did not try to assess what was going on in the minds of the people with whom I was communicating. I needed to understand the cultural nuances as every group has its own internal logic and language for analysing situations and its own traditions, power relationships and interests. Such narratives are powerful, as they give a sense of meaning and an overarching structure to how life is organized. In order to increase my effectiveness, I needed also to try to understand the narrative of the community with which I was working, from where meaning emerges, and how it was connected to the history and experience that forged their identity. I had to look beyond the political violence and understand the causes, which in some instances may have been marginalization, de-humanization and humiliation. Whilst I have an instinctive abhorrence of violence, I needed to recognize that it may be a type of communication, a non-verbal one that does not address the real issues that offer the possibility of change or resolution of conflict. A practical catalyst

In 2000, I was invited to Israel to help train 40 group analysts. This involved me going there on 20 occasions. I had not been to Israel for many years. It was the time of the Second Intifada; emotions were very heightened, and there was a huge amount of pressure to take sides. My experience there was that conflict was never one-sided. Each side played its part in provoking and stimulating conflict. The

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Palestinians were of course by far the weaker partner and this affected the dynamics of this asymmetrical relationship. I was to immerse myself very deeply in order to improve my understanding. I had to go on a fast track of education and read everything I could. I had to learn a whole new political language; I also needed to establish networks of relationships and build trust over time with both communities. In the early days, I am sure people might have wondered who this woman was and what her credentials were. I was no part of any formal governmental institution, so where did my legitimacy come from? I had already established a strong working relationship with Oxford Research Group (ORG) as a result of an encounter with the founder and director, Dr Scilla Elworthy. She had set up an organization that brought together nuclear decision makers to discuss how to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Chinese and the Russians, or the Pakistanis and the Indians, would sit together, and she believed that creating opportunities for these conflicting parties to be in the same space offered the possibility of humanizing these relationships and thereby reducing the climate of threat. The project was bold and creative, as was its leadership. For me it was the closest thing to the meshing of realpolitik and human behaviour and I was keen to find a way to become involved. Scilla Elworthy was to be a profound catalytic influence in the early days of my developing this work. As a result of the outbreak of the Second Intifada in the West Bank, she could see my restlessness and frustration about not being able to make any kind of contribution to help reduce the escalating violence. This frustration was to become the seeds of my beginning to move the work of Oxford Research Group away from nuclear issues and to bring its principles and philosophy to bear on the conflict in the Middle East. Over time, I created an inspired team and together we were able to establish a series of quiet behind-the-scenes meetings involving Palestinians and Israelis and later addressing the Iran nuclear issue. This was essential if we were to make any useful contribution, as this was a

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regional as well as a local conflict. To make sense of it and to make any real progress I would need to build a series of political relationships in the wider region extending towards Syria, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Oxford Research Group’s reputation lies in creating the intellectual and practical space to think about non-military possibilities to resolve conflict. When doing this we are committed to better understanding the human mind, and the role individuals play in exacerbating conflicts. But understanding is not enough and Oxford Research Group has never seen itself as just a think tank; instead it sees itself as a ‘think and action tank’ as it is the link between thinking and what you do that matters. If we were to be effective we would need to develop close links with governments and over the years we were to build such strong working relationships. Perhaps initially sceptical about our work, ministers and high-level civil servants later become frequent participants in our meetings and, if they did not attend, their doors were open to us to brief them afterwards. We were not in any way connected with any official government organization and there were strengths in this. Governments are nearly always more restricted in what they are allowed to do, and working for an independent organization gave certain freedoms not possible in an official role. This allowed me to sit with Hamas and Hezbollah who were deemed terrorist groups by the European Union (EU). But if anything of value was to come from engaging with these groups we needed to build trust with governments as well. Focusing on the Middle East

Early on, I decided to make contact with radical groups who until then had sat outside peace processes and were an obstacle to any resolution of conflict. I was certainly very aware at the time of the experiences of Northern Ireland and how peace had been brought about not by the moderates sitting together, but by finding a way to get the more hardline voices into the peace process. This became an important blueprint

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for me, and I spent a lot of time in the early days talking to Lord Alderdice about this process, in which he had been actively involved. He was both a politician and a psychoanalyst, a rare combination, and he had a profound understanding of the links between politics and the need to understand why people behaved in particular ways. When the Hamas government was elected to power on the Palestine Legislative Council in 2006, three conditions were imposed immediately by the international community: that Hamas renounce violence, that they respect all previous agreements and that they recognize Israel. On the surface, these seemed eminently reasonable demands by the international community, but in practice they obstructed any contact between Hamas and European and US government officials. Making these demands on Hamas was likely to lead to a paralysis. The experience of Northern Ireland should have taught us that sitting down with these groups over an extended period of time could encourage the kind of political maturity necessary for a transition away from political violence towards a political solution. At the time, with official contacts with Hamas ruled out, we saw our task as getting together with these groups to try to understand where potential opportunities for engagement might lie. Such groups do not transform overnight, but we would find out how they were thinking and then go and talk to governments, with the aim of exploring whether there were any potential openings. The governments in question were Israel, Britain and the US, but there was a chasm between the world of conflict resolution and the world of governments. When we talked to senior advisers close to the Israeli government, they were in no mood to think about engaging with Hamas. There were many reasons for this. First of all, they had fixed in their minds that their partner for peace was Fatah, and to engage with Hamas would have potentially undermined their relationship with Fatah. At the time, the most pragmatic thing for Israel would have been to call for a unity government and for the Palestinian people to find a way to represent themselves in such a government. Instead, the policy of both Israel and the international

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community was to align itself with Fatah, in the hope of weakening Hamas. This policy of divide and rule helped deepen the rift between Fatah and Hamas and was totally inimical to peacemaking. Fatah were seen as comparatively moderate and the Israelis saw them as a better partner for peace. However, there was a deep flaw in this: Hamas had at least a third of the Palestinian people supporting them, so finding ways to engage with them would be essential. Otherwise they would inevitably sabotage any forward movement. Of course there were strategic calculations as well as emotional reasons why it was so difficult for Israelis to engage with Hamas. On one occasion, shortly after their victory in the Palestinian elections, I had been passed information from a senior figure in the Gazan government indicating that the Hamas leadership wanted to start communicating with Israel about the transfer of goods across the Gaza border. The thinking among Hamas officials at the time was that they would start working on these practical issues and it might lead to wider communication. I approached a senior Israeli official but he was in no mood to think about these practical issues; in fact he reacted angrily to this suggestion. That reaction showed just how traumatized the political culture was: when pragmatic opportunities were presented, they could not be thought about. This highlights the importance of intervention by third parties who are not engaged in the conflict in the same way and do not carry the same scars. The history of conflict is littered with the tragedy of missed opportunities, where the parties involved are not in the right state of mind to respond to a potential opening. Israel’s relationship with Gaza might have looked very different at this point if some of the Israeli officials had started engaging with Hamas officials on border-crossing issues. It might not necessarily have created a breakthrough, but it was worth exploring, as it was the deterioration in conditions that led to the continuous firing of rockets by Hamas and other groups inside Gaza and ultimately to the Gaza war in 2009 and the second shorter round of war in 2012.

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Governments’ agendas are predominantly shaped by domestic considerations and those in positions of power wish to be re-elected; so they are more likely to reflect public opinion than to lead it. There are few examples of visionary leadership, particularly in the Middle East. It would have taken a brave politician in Israel to call for engagement with Hamas. However, there is always scope for behind-the-scenes initiatives to explore what opportunities there are for engagement. Of course there are multiple levels on which the Israeli government operates and where it will quietly seek potential openings, but the rhetoric on the public stage seldom prepares people for the transitions necessary to end conflict, especially when it means engaging with groups who have caused great pain and disturbance in their societies over a long period. The purpose of our meetings was to try to communicate how these groups were thinking and also to keep different governments informed. The British government had certainly understood what was necessary for political transformation to take place in Northern Ireland and that there was no military solution, but only an inclusive dialogue had brought an end to conflict there. However, officials in the Foreign Office felt their hands were tied by their relationship with the US and the EU and the three conditions that had been imposed in relation to Hamas. The Foreign Office was willing to listen, but the strategic calculations of realpolitik and the very tight relationship with US policy makers made it almost impossible for them to think about new opportunities. On one occasion, we took a senior official from the US who had very close contacts with the Obama administration to meet with the Hamas leadership. Whilst he was genuinely interested and keen to understand how they were thinking, it was clear that the US government had no appetite to change its political position around engagement and there was little interest in developing a new attitude. I travelled to meet with Hamas and Hezbollah, and later to Damascus to meet with Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas. This was not without its dangers. There had been a history of targeted assassinations of such figures by the Israelis. Just before our first meeting, a bomb

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went off near our meeting place but the cause of this was never known. We travelled to secret destinations and the windows of the car were covered, so nobody could see out or in. Strangely enough, I remember not being nervous at the time, as I felt in safe hands. The meeting had been organized by a trusted interlocutor, and the high level of respect between him and the leadership of Hamas increased my sense of personal security. We met in a sparsely furnished flat, with huge numbers of Hamas security guards. I was the only woman, and also Jewish, which I am sure was well known to them – there was no doubt that they would have done their homework before meeting us. However, I did not feel uncomfortable. Hamas showed respect and some appreciation that we had taken the trouble to try to understand the world from where they stood. I do not want to sound like the foreign minister for Hamas when telling their story, nor do I want to be seen as having gone ‘native’. When telling a human story, it can easily sound as if you have been taken in. One does not need to agree with how a group thinks, but it matters to understand why they think as they do. For the Israeli citizen, the memory of suicide attacks in their country was deeply disturbing and so deeply embedded in the psyche that it ruled out the belief that Hamas could ever be a partner for peace. So when I came to talk to the Israelis about my experiences of meeting with Hamas, it was difficult for them to hear what I had to say. Whilst Israel is seen as a regional economic and military superpower, its people feel an enormous sense of vulnerability. For most Israelis, there are two images of Hamas: the suicide bomber and the young men in the streets of Gaza, wearing balaclavas on their heads and carrying Kalashnikovs. These images and the history of the relationship with Hamas made it impossible for Israelis to listen when Hamas put a political agenda on the table. On the two occasions when I met Khaled Mashal in Damascus, he talked about the acceptance of the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine which would need to be a shared capital with Israel. He was opening the door to some kind of agreement to end

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the violence. For Israelis, this was not possible to hear. The level of mistrust and hatred had created a climate in which such language was treated only with suspicion. For most Israelis, engaging with Hamas was seen as naive, endangering the security of Israel. It was not viewed as a potential opportunity. Endless conflict creates the situation where all sides are gripped by trauma. We know from our own experiences that when our trust has been breached and we have experienced something deeply traumatic, our minds close down. It is a necessary protective device. It becomes impossible to hear when new ideas are presented; the emotion provoked by trauma blocks new thinking. These conditions create cycles of violence and a hunger for retribution. A long-term ceasefire: a period without violence

Over the years I was to have many meetings with Hamas. I was keen to familiarize myself more with their thinking and see what scope there was, if not for a peace treaty, then for some kind of negotiated end of violence. Hamas has for many years called for a hudna, which is not a peace deal but an agreement to end violence for a period of time which can extend from five to 30 years. In 1997, when Sheikh Yassin, the leader of Hamas, was sitting in prison, he offered a 30-year hudna or ceasefire in which Hamas would continue to work for an Islamic state but co-exist with Israel, if Israel agreed to return Arab lands and move forward with Palestinian statehood.1 Whilst in prison, Sheikh Yassin was to develop a surprising relationship with the Jewish rabbi Menachem Froman, who was a founding member of the Israeli settler movement Gush Emunim. Froman tried unsuccessfully to convince the Israeli authorities that Yassin was someone with whom a potential negotiation could begin. This never had much traction with the Israeli government, who felt that they wanted a peace deal that would ultimately end the conflict. However, what interested me about Hamas’ suggestion of a hudna was that though ideologically they would not agree to recognize the state of Israel, this could be

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a first step towards living without violence. More recently, and as argued by Palestinian academic Ahmad Khalidi, based at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford: Hamas is slowly transforming itself from long-term antagonist to potential interlocutor […] as the ready-made alternative peace partner: not on the basis of the traditional comprehensive peace/ end-of-conflict formula; but on the basis of Hamas’s Islamic concept of a long-term hudna that avoids dealing with all the hard existential issues (i.e. refugees) and where Israel is offered what it wants most (i.e. security) for a defined and renewable period of time: in return for mutual coexistence and Hamas’s freedom of action to rule.2 I thought this was something important to explore psychologically because long periods without violence create conditions in which people can have new thoughts and begin to modify their words and their behaviour. To my knowledge, this has never been explored as a serious option by the politicians, but in a conflict where there seem to be so many intractable issues, it might be worth paying some serious attention to what a long-term ceasefire would look like, and to the role a third party could play in it. Generally speaking, especially in the Middle East, ceasefires are established only as a crisis management tool after a round of fighting, and because the international community is dealing with so many conflicts simultaneously its focus is very short-term – if the fighting stops, they turn their attention elsewhere. I met with the leadership of Hamas on several occasions and, whilst there are many voices within Hamas with different degrees of militancy, their leader Khaled Mashal struck me as a man who actually in the long term wished to bring an end to the violence. With some of my colleagues, I was to travel to his headquarters, which was a heavily guarded house in one of the best neighbourhoods in Damascus. The atmosphere was cordial and when we left we were given a large box

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of delicious Damascus pastries, which I remember having difficulty transporting home in my hand luggage as I was challenged not only by the size of the box but also by the sweet and sticky nature of the pastries all over my clothes. In our meetings Mashal always insisted on starting by talking about their philosophy, and the second time I sat with him I asked him whether we could spend more time talking about ways through the conflict. However, I do not think this is where his mind was, and he seemed keener to tell us about their beliefs and what had formed them. This perhaps typifies the cultural differences between us; he was more concerned with the process and my Western mind had been trained to be more goal-oriented. He was talking about his life, his community, his history, and I wanted to talk about results and possible breakthroughs. Mashal seemed a naturally charismatic man and paid a great deal of attention to everybody in the room, listening carefully to what was said. My instincts were that it would not have been in the Israeli government’s interest to make any further attempts on his life, as he had the authority and qualities of leadership that would be important, should the time come when both sides are ready for peacemaking. This is not to be over-sanguine about his role as a peacemaker – I merely wish to describe his potential as a leader. A man would not have reached his position within Hamas without having supervised and agreed to the use of strategic violence and suicide bombing. His ideology is shaped by the belief that the Israeli government will not agree to any kind of peace deal whilst Palestinians are strategically weak. He thinks that only when the asymmetrical power relationship is more equal will any kind of peacemaking be possible, and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region was all part of the Hamas leadership feeling strengthened. He believes that Fatah weakened their position when recognizing the state of Israel in 1988, and this has allowed the Israeli government to push them around. He argued that only by creating more level power relationships will any kind of

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deal be done. In the second meeting with him, he was clear that the Palestinian people would accept the 1967 borders with land swaps, but that recognition of Israel was out of the question without some kind of peace deal. He claimed that if there was a peace agreement, recognition of Israel would be put to the Palestinians in a referendum. These earlier statements were to come under close scrutiny in December 2012, when Khaled Mashal visited the Hamas-led Gaza Strip for the first time, shortly after a further round of fighting between Israel and Gaza. The man who had previously advocated more moderate views, particularly in his meetings with us, was to tell the crowds, ‘Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take.’ Whilst this speech took place after another round of war, Khaled Mashal’s message may have been primarily for internal consumption and his fiery rhetoric fuelled by his political ambitions. But this did little to advance the course of peace and he continued his speech by saying: ‘The Palestinian people are one – in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Haifa, in Jaffa, Muslims and Christians will live together and no one will force their will on the other.’ Henry Siegman, a writer and academic who had consistently called for the US government to engage with Hamas, was to write in the Israeli liberal newspaper, Haaretz: That it was Meshal who engaged in this diatribe is particularly dispiriting, for he has consistently advocated far more moderate views, including Hamas’ acceptance of a two-state peace accord that might be reached between Israel and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, if it were approved in a Palestinian referendum. He also supported the cessation of all violent resistance against Israel if its government were to accept the principle of a Palestinian state based on the pre1967 borders.3

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The speech was a battle cry for the politics of resistance but did little to demonstrate to the Israelis that this was an organization with whom one could do business. Our own personal meetings had taken place before Mashal’s visit to Gaza, so there was no opportunity to discuss with him the difference between his public rhetoric and some of his earlier statements. Clearly, if this was a shift in his strategic calculations, and the earlier offers he had made were no longer relevant, this would need to be established. Was what he said to us only for Western ears and how he behaved with his own people a reflection of duplicity on his part, or had there been a hardening of his attitude because of another round of war? The fog of peace is murky, at times dispiriting, and demands huge resilience. Further rounds of violence harden attitudes and entrench positions. But again one has to remain open to moments that reveal new opportunities as the use of force only deals with the immediate crisis and provides no real solutions. If the idea of a hudna was to become a serious strategic option for Hamas, his rhetoric in Gaza was not incompatible with this and could be seen as being for domestic consumption after a further round of conflict with Israel. In our own meeting we had the opportunity to discuss the Hamas Charter with Mashal and explore with him what scope there was to change this. The Hamas Charter is a pernicious document, deeply anti-Semitic in tone, and says of Israel: Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there […] Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfil their mission amidst societies, with a view to implementing Zionist goals.4 Hamas has always been keen to emphasize that they are not an anti-Semitic organization but that they are anti-Zionist, but there is certainly not much evidence of this in their charter. They would say

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that they do not fight Israel because its citizens are Jews, but because they occupy their land. I explained to them how the Israelis always cited the Hamas Charter as evidence of Hamas not being partners for peacemaking and that the suspension of its charter would be seen to be a serious gesture. Oxford Research Group had already been involved in a consultation process amongst some of Palestinian civil society which showed that many of them did not wish to be identified with the language of the document, and the Palestinians consulted had suggested the suspension of the charter. This is perhaps an example of how civil society is often ahead of the rivalries of political leadership. Mashal’s response to this was that the charter was written at the peak of Israel’s aggression when Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was talking about ‘breaking the bones’ of the Palestinians. He said that the 2006 Mecca Agreement, a document on Palestinian reconciliation, was what Palestinians should really be judged by, but that the Hamas Charter would not be changed as a result of pressure from outside. Whether he was motivated by a strategic calculation not to give away this tool in his armoury at this stage, or whether this reflects a deep commitment rooted in a racist sentiment, is open to interpretation. I think in practice there have been endless behind-the-scenes discussions about the charter but there has never been agreement on further action. More to the point, Hamas was not in the mood to make gestures towards Israel, because for them it would be seen as a sign of weakness. Neither side seemed to have enough appetite for creating the conditions in which the nature of the conflict could change. Both always claimed it was the responsibility of the other side to do something. Long-term peacemaking, however, is not just about power, it is also about people and legitimate grievances. It is ultimately about placing hope over despair and achieving a better life, and this demands a far greater creativity than the approach currently employed by the relevant governments. So what was the point of meeting Hamas? Clearly nothing changes overnight, and often these organizations do

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not say what governments want to hear. But perhaps that is the point. When the conflict is so deep and entrenched and there has been so much suffering, organizations such as Hamas take time to change, if indeed they can change. Their ideological position is crucial to the social coherence of the group and is a means of getting political support. The purpose of regular engagement, which must be sustained over a long period of time, is that it would help the kind of political maturing that will start to countenance compromise and the possibility of peacemaking. Ultimately, these groups – perhaps more than their predecessors in our reading – have a degree of pragmatism about what they want for their people and how to achieve it. It is very important to differentiate Hamas from groups like al-Qaeda, who have a nihilistic philosophy and no clear political agenda beyond the destruction of the West and its values. Some veterans of peacemaking have called for Hamas to be locked into the negotiations and offered a seat at the table, as a means of encouraging their political maturity. Excluding resistant voices or avoiding finding formulae for their representation diminishes the chances of a sustainable outcome. All parties need to show their seriousness and Hamas has a responsibility to start thinking about a political future in preparing for the primacy of politics over military action if it is genuine about improving the lives of its people. Understanding human motivation

Western policy is often decided at a distance, with fine ideals, often theoretical rather than practical and not embedded in people’s experience on the ground. Positions that are taken are often driven by a moral agenda as to who is considered to be behaving well and who badly. On the surface this would appear to be an entirely reasonable position, but perhaps the more moral position is to try to end the violence as, ultimately, the more people are killed, the worse people behave. If we are to be serious about trying to create a less polarized

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world and lessen the potential for a clash of interests and cultures, the challenge for the West will be to find ways of engaging with groups whose ideas may seem alien and unacceptable. Our hope in having meetings with Hamas was that we would be able to explain better to governments how they are thinking and whether there were opportunities behind the more public rhetoric. Governments were interested to hear the outcome of these meetings, but at the time there was neither the political appetite nor the commitment to take the risks necessary to move the process forward. The openings that might have initially been available when Hamas won the elections in 2006 later closed down. Attitudes on all sides were further hardened by more rounds of war. Governments can too easily become trapped in bureaucratic quagmires and understandably they fear that taking some of the risks necessary to shift the dynamics of conflict may expose them to public criticism. But risk is necessary in peacemaking. Of course one cannot be confident as to the outcome, had the Israeli government and the international governments decided to engage with Hamas. But the successful resolution of other conflicts tells us that we need to talk to groups with radical agendas because leaving them out of the system allows them to act as saboteurs to any political compromises. It would have been equally problematic to engage with Hamas at the expense of Fatah, and a pragmatic way forward would have been to call for a unity government. Cycles of violence are very hard to break; they feed on themselves: suffering breeds aggression, and aggression causes suffering. Where the leadership and its followers are locked into this cycle, they find it very difficult to adopt positive attitudes, especially when their own populations are suffering pain and fear. Intervention by more dispassionate third parties whose eyes and minds are open to the trauma on both sides can make a valuable contribution. In politics, as in personal life, the insights of understanding human motivation and why people behave in particular ways can make a difference.

3

No Politics without Psychology Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups that he or she or they are in the sole possession of the truth: especially about how to live, what to be and do, and that those who differ from them are not merely mistaken but wicked or mad, and need restraining or suppressing. It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right: have a magical eye which sees the truth and that others cannot be right if they disagree. Isaiah Berlin notes on prejudice

(1981)

How psychology shapes politics

When President Anwar Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset1 in 1977, he spoke about a psychological war between Arabs and Israelis and said that the psychological barriers constituted 70 per cent of all problems existing between the two sides. What did he mean by this? The ability to resolve conflict is predominantly addressed through the prism of politics and its power relationships, but it seldom deals with why people behave in particular ways, and why reasonable deals to end conflict are not concluded. What Sadat was saying was that

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historical fears, traumas and humiliations prevented any kind of rational judgement, even if they were in the interest of all parties. He understood that only by connecting at an emotional level in which the fears and insecurities of both communities were addressed could bold political decisions be taken. War is as much about psychological influences as about real­ politik and this in practice means recognizing how the past shapes the present, how trauma influences the way we see the world and how marginalization, humiliation and powerlessness negatively affect our ability to resolve conflict. There is much evidence of the links between humiliation and violence, and why marginalized communities ultimately resort to violence. When there is no legitimate means of representation and people are excluded from access to power and resources, in the long term they will be more likely to seek ways to express themselves through the politics of resistance, the politics of revolt or the politics of violence. When the tools of diplomacy fail or are exhausted, there is always the threat of a fight. In the real world of political decision making, it is often assumed that we base our choices on a cost–benefit analysis to maximize our gain. The limitation of this view is that it does not take into account the impulses that lie beneath the surface, of which we are often unaware. David Brooks in The Social Animal (2011) says that there has been a failure to address the complexity of the human mind, and a reliance on over-simplification. Ultimately, these irrational processes influence the politics and decision makers. We limit our understanding of human behaviour and choose to believe that everything is rational, logical and deductive. But lurking near the surface are more irrational or unconscious emotional influences, shaped by our histories, that need to be incorporated into the rational decision making process. Our identities are not solely defined by where we are born. They are created over time and influenced by our multiple experiences in the world – the relationship we have with our parents, our friends, our faith, our history and our culture. The narrative we

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have constructed about ourselves will be shaped by how frightened we are and what incentives there are to change. We need to be careful when we speak of ‘rational’, meaning deliberate, careful calculations and a general sense of reasonableness, nor do we wish to describe the more complex position as one of irrationality: The definition of rationality as coherence is impossibly restrictive; it demands adherence to rules of logic that a finite mind is not able to implement. Reasonable people cannot be rational by that definition, but they should not be branded as irrational for that reason. Irrational is a strong word, which connotes impulsivity, emotionality, and a stubborn resistance to reasonable argument.2 What is important here is to find a way to go beyond our perceived rational calculations that deal insufficiently with the complexity of human motivation and why people make particular decisions. In the search for rationality, it is often assumed that there is a limited number of calculations, which shape how governments ultimately make choices. This limits our ability to get into the mind of the enemy and stops us seeing the world except from our own point of view. Collective memory and how we shape narrative

The collective stories that groups and societies tell about themselves become part of their political narrative and therefore affect how they see themselves. But modern psychology is clear on how misleading memory can be. We often remember events inaccurately, and can easily be steered towards false memory. There is much evidence to suggest that we report inaccurate details about events and then cement them firmly in our minds. Social psychology says that if we make this

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memory public, whether it is true or false, we are inclined to believe that it is true. Furthermore, if the person who recounts the narrative is of high repute, it will add additional weight to the potentially false truth. Robert Wright in his book The Evolution of God states that in the process of natural selection, ‘the mind was built by a process that is strictly indifferent to the truth’.3 He argues that natural selection favours traits that are good at getting their bearer’s genes into the next generation. If saying something false or believing something false furthered that goal during human evolution, then the human mind will encourage some kind of falsity. In Dangerous Games (2009), Margaret MacMillan writes that we call on the past because we no longer trust the authority of today. In this context she explains that memory is not only selective, but is also malleable. We choose our identity from communities into which we are born, then it is shaped by our gender, our sexual orientation, our age, class, nationality, religion, family, clan, geography, occupation and our own personal history. She then argues that history is a way of enforcing these imagined communities. There is a predominance of thought in the Western mind that suggests that understanding the world is essentially ‘objective’ and comes with a post-Enlightenment script which assumes man to be mature. However, in practice there is no such thing as ‘being objective’, and everything we see is through our own particular history and experience of the world. This partial lens can often lead to profound misreading and misunderstandings. As has been said, this is particularly true when trying to understand a culture that is different from our own – a failure that often lies at the roots of conflict and prevents us from finding an accommodation. Well-intentioned interventions can go catastrophically wrong when cultural nuances are not understood and judgements are made whilst looking only through our own lens.

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The cultural mind

Richard Shweder, a cultural psychologist, firmly advocates that we cannot study the human mind without integrating our understanding of culture. Our minds are profoundly shaped by our culture and it provides a framework to how we think. Shweder has developed ideas on how different groups exist in the world, and distinguishes between three dimensions: autonomy, community and divinity. He defines autonomy as the belief system where society is organized around the needs and preferences of the individual. This philosophy, classically set down by utilitarian thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, maintains that people can co-exist peacefully, without interfering too much in each other’s lives. This is the ideology that essentially shapes the Western view of the world. But step outside Western society and the ethics of community shape how people think. The primary allegiance is to the group, not to the individual, and identities are created in the first instance by commitment to family, nation and tribe. These obligations far outweigh their individual needs and desires. In these societies, respect, duty and hierarchy are very important. To them, the individualistic society looks indulgent and self-serving and they see it as threatening the fabric of society and the sense of duty and responsibility to one another. In the ethics of divinity, people are the children of God and carriers of a divine soul. In these societies, concepts such as sin, purity and pollution are dominant. The personal liberty of the Western world looks hedonistic. Clearly, it is important to understand the varying imperatives of different cultures; otherwise we will have no idea what motivates them or how to approach them. It is also illuminating to try to understand why they believe what they believe. Scott Atran and Joe Henrich, who have written a nuanced story about the evolution of religion, argue that the purpose of religion is to create a moral community: ‘religions are sets of cultural innovations that spread to the extent that they make groups more cohesive and cooperative.’4

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Religion can be an arena in which to promote co-operation and trust in the group. It is almost as if God serves as an outside eye, which administers collective punishment, but religion offers love and approval as well. It also has the function of being an outside monitor of individual behaviour – people behave better when they are being observed. A ‘powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues,’ according to Charles Darwin, ‘is afforded by the praise and the blame of our fellow-men.’5 It is our need for approval by others, both in terms of love and recognition, that becomes one of our driving forces to behave well. This is equally true of religious and secular communities. Empathy

When the word ‘empathy’ is used, this does not mean sympathy or agreeing with the other. We might not like the behaviour of those with whom we are engaging and we may feel extremely uncomfortable with the value systems of the group. But the way we make decisions seldom involves getting into the mind of the other, and our strategic calculations are seldom based on a deeper understanding of the human mind. We tend to ignore history, culture and the politics of other societies, and the personalities of their leaders. The challenge is to extend our moral imagination, not only to those with whom we agree, but also to those with a different view of the world. Our world has become too small and too interdependent to be shaped only by competition. Our way of thinking often lacks the capacity to enter into the minds of others. A collaborative model that would ultimately ensure our survival would require that we increase our capacity for empathy, which would enhance our abilities to manage the inevitable conflicts of interests. In order to reach out to others, our imagination is crucial. Hatred, which is often a manifestation of fear, blocks the moral imagination

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and our capacity to understand the experience of the other. In the first place, we have to understand our own experience. ‘The suffering we have experienced in our own life can […] help us to appreciate the depths of other people’s unhappiness.’6 The pain we suffer can become a mirror into entering into the world of the other. This, however, demands a degree of self-awareness in which we are able to detach ourselves and observe our own minds at work. It is as if we need to develop an outside view on our own behaviour that allows us to metabolize our emotions in a way that that lets us connect with other people’s stories. In Errol Morris’ 2003 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, we are reminded that 160 million people were killed in the twentieth century as a result of political violence. The interviewee, Secretary of Defence under US presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, challenges us by asking whether we have learnt any lessons for the twenty-first century. His authority to speak evokes painful sentiments: as mentioned in the Introduction, McNamara was one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War, which saw over 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 US soldiers killed. A reformed man, his most powerful message is that we did not understand empathy. We did not know what was in the minds of the enemy, how they were thinking. We were fighting different wars, he says. We viewed the people and the leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our experience. We saw in them a thirst for – a determination to fight for – freedom and democracy. The West saw the war in Vietnam through the lens of the Cold War, and the Vietnamese saw it through the lens of a civil war. McNamara challenges us as to whether we could have been more effective and not suffered the terrible losses if we had better understood empathy. Not because we liked what they thought, but because in

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our own strategic calculations we would have been more effective in knowing how to end the conflict. The foundation of much conflict, he says, is about misunderstanding, misjudgement and mismanagement. Robert Wright argues that We grant tolerance and understanding to people we see as our friends, and we have a capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of relatives and good friends, and usually lack the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of rivals and enemies.7 Since we have difficulty developing our moral imagination when we see people as our enemies or rivals, we have trouble understanding their experiences. In contrast to this, when we are dealing with our allies, we have a more expansive imagination. The consequence of this is that we have a tendency to be tolerant of religions, peoples and cultures we can do business with and whose agenda we understand. Conversely, we are often intolerant and belligerent with people whose thinking is opposed to ours. Incentivizing people to change

The real challenge here is to understand what incentivizes the human spirit and how we draw on people’s creativity to avoid going to war. If this knowledge is applied to political decision making, new questions could be asked, such as which interventions are more or less likely to stimulate violence, and what would create a more peaceful environment? Knowledge alone seldom changes behaviour. Individuals and communities need good examples of when things work. The imagination has to be stimulated, so it becomes possible to create a narrative that gives hope. For change to happen, there needs to be an emotional connection to the idea of achievable goals that could change lives. For example, if, for the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, returning to their original homes

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and villages (many of which no longer exist) is not a realistic goal in the foreseeable future, holding on to this dream to the exclusion of all alternatives is bound to increase their sense of frustration. Many Palestinians in the refugee camps wear keys to their family homes in Israel around their necks as a symbol of returning to the land from which they were displaced. Whilst this is a very powerful emotional bond for those living stateless and homeless in the camps, it can also inhibit the consideration of any other solution as either an alternative or complement to the demand for their return. Ultimately, any end to the Palestine–Israel conflict will need to involve a solution to the refugee problem that offers the refugees a quality of life with a future. An example for stimulating change could be a consultation process in the refugee camps of Gaza that does not ask the usual questions, leading refugees only to repeat that they wish to return to their homeland within the state of Israel, which in the current political climate is an unrealizable dream. Instead, questions could be asked to stimulate the imagination such as: what changes would offer a better life for their children? Or what would a secure future look like? Documentaries could be made to show examples of refugee communities who have made the transition to a better life, from being a refugee to being integrated into a new community. If such a track was to be pursued it would need to be embedded in an active peace process, in which the outcome of the consultation was taken seriously; otherwise it would just be another shattered dream. A rational analysis of what a better life could look like will often involve a deeper understanding of the connection between traumas, humiliation, frustration and powerlessness and how this can lead to violence. Trauma may be likened to an unhealed wound or a rupturing of the skin and unprocessed trauma increases the subjectivity of our experiences. We are more likely to see ourselves as victims and feel the need to defend ourselves because others cannot be trusted. We may not have an army of psychiatrists to address these experiences but we would do well to pay attention to how trauma affects

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the mind when we attempt to resolve conflict. Unless we address the symptoms of frustration, we will merely keep the lid on conflict and see the endless cycles of violence feed on themselves. We may need to understand that if we meet violence with more violence, we only accelerate a destructive cycle. As this chapter has explored, judgements are not always rational and are shaped by people’s history and experience in the cultural context of their lives. This is the antithesis of realpolitik, an idea we have already talked about in this book, where the interests of those intervening shape the discourse. Frequently, when suffering is very profound, people make choices that work against their best interests. When groups have been immersed in the quagmire of conflict for more than one generation, it is very difficult to imagine how they think and what a way out would be. There are, however, those who benefit from war and the point of war may lie precisely in the legitimacy it confers on these abuses (protection money, pillage) – in other words the legitimacy it confers on actions that in peace time would be punishable as crime. In order to move to more lasting solutions to the problems of mass violence, we may need to understand and acknowledge that for significant groups, this violence represents not a problem but a solution. We need to think about modifying the structures of incentives that are encouraging people to orchestrate, fund or perpetuate acts of violence.8 This challenges us to think more deeply as to why people or groups resort to violence and whether there could be incentives to encourage groups to turn away from violence and engage in a political process. In spite of the pressures of living in the shadow of conflict, most people, unless they are direct beneficiaries of war, wish to live in a world without violence where they can do ordinary things. They want to visit their grandmothers or safely take their children to school. Of

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course there are small groups in any community who benefit from a continued state of hostility, who pursue criminal activities and benefit from the sale of weapons and the drug industry, but the majority of people crave to live outside zones of conflict. In Jeffrey Race’s landmark study, War Comes to Long An, he interviewed a number of revolutionaries who were involved in the Vietnam War and he was interested to explore what motivated them to behave in particular ways. He was to say, when he interviewed former communists, ‘they were not blood thirsty killers or ideological fanatics as ordinarily portrayed’.9 For him, there were no heroes or villains in the competing power struggles. All the political groups were vying for political control. And everybody was behaving badly. Hannah Arendt was to confirm this view when she argued that everybody was capable of behaving badly and wrote about the ‘banality of evil’ in which Nazi and other war criminals, were ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’ but ‘terribly and terrifying normal’.10 According to her perspective, the cataclysmic war and genocides of the twentieth century demonstrate that under the right conditions almost anyone can act with terrible brutality. This suggests that the conditions in any society are likely to determine the degree of conflict, and therefore, if mankind creates the conditions for evil behaviour, he is equally capable of creating the conditions in which man behaves well. Are we changing for the better?

Contrary to public perception, which tends to believe the world is more self-destructive than it has ever been, closer analysis will not bear this out. It is possible to argue that humanity is becoming less violent, less racist and less sexist and that there has been significant moral progress in recent decades. Such a statement is difficult to digest, with the stains of Rwanda, Darfur, 9/11 and the Holocaust. The twentieth century is notorious for being one of the bloodiest centuries on record. Nevertheless, ‘around 3 percent of humans died

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from such man-made catastrophes. In contrast, a study of native American skeletons from hunter-gather societies found that some 13 percent had died of trauma.’11 Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) is clear that we have seen a significant reduction in violence and are moving progressively towards more peaceful behaviour. He sees this as a continuing trend in the twenty-first century. He has carried out a historical and statistical analysis, in which he argues that our inner destructive demons are now giving way to more co-operative and altruistic behaviour. In his statistical analysis, he looks at the rate of violence relative to the size of the population. He describes how the transition from the hunter–gatherer society to more settled agricultural civilizations, with cities and governments, reduced raiding and feuding, leading to a fivefold decrease in violent deaths. This was followed by a period of civilization in which feudal communities organized themselves into nations with an infrastructure of commerce and authority to enforce law and order. As a consequence of this, nations still went to war with each other, but the development of a more centralized government greatly reduced the violence between individuals and small groups. Certainly, there has been a shift in attitude as far as death in war is concerned, at least in Britain. Vast numbers of fatalities are no longer acceptable; this is why the name of every British soldier killed in Afghanistan is being read out in the British parliament. ‘[W]e know exactly how many military from each NATO member country has died, as well as names and personal details of each individual who was killed.’12 Professor John Sloboda, one of the founders of Iraq Body Count, identifies the importance of recognizing the death of every individual killed in conflict. ‘Its power lies in the names, it humanises the dead, removing them from being abstract numbers and reminding us that they were individual, each loved and cherished.’13 There is not, however, as yet an equivalent recognition of the value of life of the enemy killed in conflict. Naming and honouring those killed

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in conflict is a profoundly human and important act, but it is even more important to examine how man can reduce his capacity to kill and become better at peacemaking. Why change is so difficult

Wilfred Bion was an influential British psychoanalyst in the middle of the twentieth century.14 He wrote a great deal about how people change and how they learn from experience. His essential thesis was that we do not learn until we risk falling apart, and it is in this moment of crisis or potential relapse that we are presented with an opportunity for change. This idea needs to be finely calibrated, as there are moments when it is too painful to learn and this evokes a deep sense of hopelessness, and there are moments when change lies outside the realm of possibilities. An analytic perspective without access to emotional content is unlikely to provide the conditions for change. For people to change, they usually need in some way to experience the link between head and heart. A cold analysis of the problem is seldom sufficient, nor is the condition of people when they are stuck in an overwhelming emotional state. The real challenge is to put together thinking and feeling in a context where a coherent narrative can be created. ‘For individuals’ behaviour to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds.’15 There is much discussion as to when and why individuals and countries change their behaviour, or their politics. What are the tipping points? It may have been the symbolism of the young Mohammed Bouazizi, who burnt himself to death, which sparked both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Paradoxically, experts and political commentators of world events were unable to predict the Arab revolutions, or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The cumulative pressure that builds up has so many complex factors that it is impossible to do a comprehensive strategic analysis with an accurate outcome.

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However, what we do know about change and people’s readiness to change is that it has much to do with timing and ripeness. The crucial question is whether issues are close enough to the surface to break through into the public discourse or to have an impact on the political system. Where there is a tight system of repression, people will often feel nervous about discussing how to ferment political change. The price to be paid might be too high, and avoiding thinking about the unpalatable nature of the conflict may be one chosen way to survive. People fail to adapt to the political circumstances because stress and anxiety lead to a state of emotional paralysis. As a self-protective mechanism, people resist the pain of engagement and hold on to past assumptions, often adopting a deluded narrative. They may find that ‘blaming authority, scapegoating, externalizing the enemy, denying the problem, jumping to conclusions, or finding a distracting issue may restore stability and feel less stressful than facing and taking responsibility for a complex challenge’.16 International affairs are predominantly mediated by the analysis of interests and they seldom adequately take account of the emotions of the players and the interested parties. And where emotions feature, it is invariably the emotional content of the protagonist, never an attempt by the protagonist to grasp the emotional content of the other side. As this chapter has argued, in order to resolve conflict, hard, cold strategic analysis is not enough. It needs to be embedded in a deep understanding of why people behave in particular ways, what will bring about change and what is in the mind of the enemy.

4

Israel: From Trauma to Where? And here, again, is the central paradox, the idea of Israel was that we should cease to be victims. Instead we hand our fate over to the security people, we allow the army to run the country, because we lack a political class with a vision beyond the military. Survival becomes our only aim. We are living in order to survive, not in order to live. David Grossman One of history’s darkest moments was when 6 million European Jews were killed in a genocide during World War II, a programme of systematic, state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany. Today, part of Israeli society is still traumatized by the impact of the Holocaust, when the Jewish people were unable to protect themselves and were unprotected by the rest of the world. In certain sections of its population, there is a passionate belief in self-sufficiency, an open defiance towards the rest of the world and the deepest fear of the repetition of their history. For many Israelis, the Holocaust is still a central motif of national life. How far does this tragic history affect its politics today and will this country, founded in the face of a terrible trauma, be able to find a less lonely place in the region? For many, the coming into being of the state of Israel was the end of a terrible tragedy, as it represented control over the destiny of the

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Jewish people. Today, Israel stands as a regional superpower and has all the strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, insecurities and paranoia of its own tragic history. In the minds of many, Israel has always had to fight for its survival. Immediately following its declaration of independence in 1948, it was attacked by the surrounding Arab states. This served to reinforce a much deeper and longer history of persecution. An economic miracle was to ensue and along with it came the creation of the strongest army in the Middle East and a powerful and heavily militarized state. But no Arab country has launched a war against Israel for the past 40 years. So, in these times of huge regional uncertainty in the Middle East, will Israel find a way to co-exist with its neighbours, or will the history of its foundations shape its future path? The vision of many of the early Zionists was very different from today – a Jewish state imbued with strong social, and for some socialist, principles and committed to democracy. Much of the leadership came from the kibbutz movement, secular and left-wing. There were Europeans amongst them, many of whom had left comfortable and prestigious careers to come and work the land. ‘These pioneers were committed to equality, inclusiveness, and tolerance, amongst fellow Jews and some believed it would be possible to co-exist with the Arab population.’1 This stands in contrast to the current mentality as defined by Alex Fishman, a respected defence analyst, who says, ‘We [Israel] have become a nation that imprisons itself behind fences, which huddles terrified behind defensive shields.’ These fences can be seen as physical barriers; they are emotional barriers too. He calls it ‘a national mental illness’. He explains how every fence and wall in Israel at the time it was built seemed to exist for a valid reason. ‘But it’s like pieces of a puzzle – you don’t know what will be the picture at the end, but then when you see the whole picture – it shocks you. We have become a nation that is burying itself behind walls, behind fences.’ He continues: ‘Mine is a very patriotic standpoint – and my disappointment comes from this patriotic standpoint. A fence is a

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kind of weakness. I’m not a psychiatrist but it shows something of the mentality of the nation.’2 In an atmosphere of prolonged conflict, it is often too difficult for people to think about painful issues because they feel they have no power to influence events. Tired and disillusioned, they do not wish to engage in politics. It is easier to turn away from the conflict than actively to seek solutions. It is simply too dangerous to speak amongst colleagues and friends; there are too many uncomfortable differences of opinion. There are huge chasms between the secular and religious communities in Israel, and between those who are attached to the biblical land as part of their identity and those who wish to go back to the 1967 borders. Discussions about settlements, Jerusalem and the Palestinian conflict seldom lead to reasoned debate. More often they ignite useless anger. They are better avoided. Tel Aviv has been described as a sort of ‘café society’, in which it is easier to drink coffee and shop along the streets of Dizengoff than dwell on the consequences of having hostile neighbours and a permanent conflict with the Palestinians. The coffee drinkers live in a hermetically sealed bubble. Compare this to Palestinians, whose lives in every aspect are influenced by the military occupation. Drive into the West Bank and you see two very different worlds. In the Israeli streets of Dizengoff, the enthusiasm and optimism about peace which ran strong between 1993 and Camp David in 2000 has now dissipated to be replaced by general cynicism and disengagement about a constructive accommodation with their Palestinian neighbours. The toxic combination of failed peace initiatives in which Israelis mostly blame the Palestinians and the history of suicide bombs has depressed and silenced the moderates, abandoning the debate to the more extreme voices on both sides. In 2000, I was invited to set up training workshops for Israeli group analysts. The task was to train 40 of them over a period of three years. Membership of the course was open to men and women with backgrounds in psychology, psychotherapy and social work. While

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most of the participants had an enormous amount of experience, they wanted to deepen their understanding of the group process and develop their skills at working with people who had deep histories of trauma. Using the participants’ experience, we explored the usual anxieties that are present in groups: people’s fear of rejection, their capacity to misunderstand and how their past relationships might impact on their current interactions. Members of the group were to hold up mirrors to each other, offering more accurate versions of who they were, and try to shift to a more healthy and balanced view of themselves at both an individual and group level. What quickly became apparent in the group was the lack of any discussion around the Palestinine–Israel conflict. Every time we heard ambulance sirens outside, suggesting a possible suicide bombing – the meetings were taking place at the height of the Second Intifada – the group would quickly resort to humour. Politics was almost never discussed. On occasions when I asked them about their experiences of the conflict, they became frustrated, even angry with me, as they felt I did not understand their reality. They were tired and disillusioned and felt I should understand this and remain silent. Politics was too dangerous to be spoken about because they would have to manage the deep differences that existed within the group. This was a microcosm of the wider Israeli society where huge chasms existed between the secular and religious communities. They felt it was safer to stay away from such painful areas. The real danger, however, was that by avoiding controversial conflict areas, in the long term they were posing an even greater threat to themselves. It was a metaphor for the level of disquiet in Israeli society and how difficult it is to manage differences. We tried in the large group to explore some of these underlying tensions and the price of not addressing these conflicts. In the short term, it was safer to disengage from the political process and put all one’s energy into one’s work and family. In the long term, the absence of an engagement with the conflict posed a more existential threat to Israel.

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Perhaps because I did not live in Israel or Palestine and was not so close to the everyday fears experienced by the participants, it was easier for me. However, I quickly became aware that when I involved myself in discussing the political process, they were questioning whether or not I had the right, as an outsider, to become so immersed in their conflict. I did not live it day and night. I did not live with the anxiety that if my adolescent children went clubbing they might get blown up by a bomb. I did not have to get on buses every day or go to the supermarket in this climate of fear. I merely visited every month whilst living in a protective cocoon in the safety of London. There was a suspicion that I would not be able to empathize and understand their experiences because I did not live them. As part of their learning process, the Israeli students were being trained to run groups, using group analytic methods. The groups were profound, at times sad, and on occasions deeply moving. Several members of the group talked about the fears they had about their children being killed and some of the mothers in the group said that, as a family, they had agreed to have three children, when normally they would have chosen to have two, because they feared one of their children might die in the conflict. It was always difficult to get them to think beyond the pain of their own experiences and get into the minds of the Palestinians. When communities are living in a state of fear and uncertainty, they seldom have the capacity to reach out beyond their own experience; their minds turn inwards to protecting their own families and communities. The anger and pain is difficult to digest, numbing the capacity to think about the other or in this case the enemy as anything more than the source of their own pain. It was easier and safer to focus on domestic issues and in 2011 domestic issues were to spark the Israeli imagination. In Tel Aviv, over 300,000 people joined a protest against the high costs of housing, rearing children, fuel, electricity and food, with the dominant slogan being ‘The people demand social justice.’ Crossing the social and political spectrum, farmers, army reservists, animal rights activists,

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West Bank settlers and Arab citizens of Israel gathered in the streets for Israel’s biggest ever demonstration to demand social justice, a lower cost of living and a clear government response to the concerns of an increasingly squeezed middle class. Time will tell whether the high cost of living in Israel is seen to be linked to the cost of occupation in the West Bank and to the country constantly being at war with its Palestinian neighbours. Does there have to be a crisis to change?

We have already explored some ideas about how and when people change. Continuing on this theme, we see that, in the absence of a dire threat, people keep doing what they have done in the past – hence the importance of a crisis in bringing about change. If we follow this theory, it is necessary to create a crisis in order to convince people that they are facing a catastrophe and have no choice but to move. One could liken this to the situation of a drug addict or an alcoholic who keeps the status quo until they reach rock bottom. However, in order to change, people must not be too fearful or frozen; otherwise a siege mentality takes over, the drawbridges are drawn tighter and the desire to look inwards and not outwards increases. The real challenge is how to create conditions so that individuals and countries experience sufficient pressure to change, but also feel there is a safety net for them. As President Clinton would say at the time of the Camp David peace talks, Israel needs to know that no peace deal would push Israel into the sea. He understood that fear and negative emotions tend to have a narrowing effect and close down the mind, whereas positive emotions open us up and increase our capacity to think imaginatively and constructively. There is a real tension between the pressure to change and the conditions to allow the necessary creativity, flexibility and imagination to find ways through. A counterview is that without pressure and obvious signs of conflict and violence between the communities, Israelis have the luxury

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of forgetting. According to Nathan Thrall, a political analyst at the International Crisis Group, ‘years of peace and quiet in Tel Aviv allowed hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take to the streets […] to protest the high price of cottage cheeses, rent and day care without uttering a word about Palestinians in the West Bank. The issue has ceased to be one of Israel’s primary security concerns.’3 Meanwhile, ‘Palestinians of all political stripes are no longer arguing about whether to make Israel’s occupation more costly, but how.’4 At a practical level, young Israelis’ lives are completely separate from young Palestinians’. It is illegal for Israelis to visit occupied territories except on segregated bypass roads on which Israelis travel to the settlements. The wall built by the Israeli government to block off the West Bank from Israel made most Israelis feel safer, but it is seen by Palestinians as an act of hostility – the boundary fence intruded into the land of their future state. But more than that, it separates the two groups of people, putting a stop to any idea of connecting or working together. As a rule, when this sort of thing happens and there is no contact between enemies, it increases the conflict. All parties incubate their fears and hatred. The ability to see the enemy as human is dramatically reduced. Israel, in this state of preoccupation, paid little attention when the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas took over the leadership from Yasser Arafat in 2005 and made a clear commitment to nonviolence saying, There will be no military solution to this conflict, so we repeat our renunciation of terror against Israelis wherever they might be. Such methods are inconsistent with our religious and moral traditions and are dangerous obstacles to the achievement of an independent sovereign state we seek. The armed intifada must end and we must use and resort to peaceful means in our quest to end the occupation and the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis.5

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Israel’s right-wing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, described Abbas as a diplomatic terrorist. Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator under three presidents, described him very differently. He would be the ideal leader – avuncular, grandfatherly, a modern man free from violence – to head the Palestinian state if one already existed.’ There is a painful paradox here. President Abbas has done more in the past few years to keep Israel safe but there is little evidence that it has increased the possibility of a negotiated settlement. ‘Most violence in the West Bank is now committed by Israeli settlers against their Palestinian neighbours rather than the other way around.6 The US has invested heavily in training the Palestinian security forces in which: ‘The Palestinian authorities coordinate daily with Israel’s domestic intelligence service, stalking militants as they plot attacks on Israel. The resulting security architecture has brought law and order […] to a region controlled not long ago by militias and thugs.’7 This has resulted in a very significant reduction of violence and has led to many senior Israeli officials talking about managing conflict as opposed to resolving it. For Palestinians in the West Bank there is a very fine line between collaboration and co-operation which is potentially combustible. The current peace talks (2013) will see if this dynamic can be shifted so that both sides can find a modus vivendi where the asymmetrical power relationship is adjusted to recognize the security concerns of both sides. This asymmetry creates a brewing tension always ready to erupt. So here is the dilemma: whilst some Palestinians see their president banging his head against a wall and hoping that an extended period of calm will bring the Israelis to the table as serious partners, the real challenge is how to create the conditions in which both Palestinians and Israelis engage in such a way that they are in a state of readiness to make some of the concessions necessary for the end of conflict.

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Both sides are tired and cynical about the possibility of a peace deal and there is little appetite for positive engagement. On the Israeli side, the climate is such that many behave as if the problem does not exist. It becomes difficult to know what would create the conditions for change as violence on both sides creates a level of mistrust that makes a peace deal very difficult. On the other hand, a period of calm allows a degree of amnesia for those who are not immediately exposed to the suffering. If there is to be any traction in the realities of a peace deal, both sides have suggested that they will employ referendums to establish the will of their people. This will need to be carefully calibrated to ensure that the mistrust on both sides does not undermine the potential for forward movement. A military mindset

The possibility of a peace agreement is further complicated by an Israeli political culture that does not talk the language of diplomacy but has a mindset focused on defence and security. There seems to be little Israeli appetite for recognizing that any peace deal that only addresses Israel’s security concerns, and does not address the Palestinians’ right to have a viable contiguous state, will fail. Patrick Tyler, a journalist for 30 years, who was chief correspondent of the New York Times and author of the book Fortress Israel, argues that the mindset of the Israeli establishment and particularly its military elite makes peacemaking very difficult. The pioneering mentality that was part of the establishment of the state of Israel considered that war worked and was more likely to get results than diplomacy. The Sabra – the name for Jews born in Palestine derives from the Hebrew for prickly pear cactus – became a proud identity, distinguishing them from the holocaust survivors streaming into Israel from Europe. The sabras were the new Jews, strong, independent pioneers who had taken their fate into their own hands.8

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Kofi Annan was to say in his book Interventions: A Life in War and Peace that he ‘could easily appreciate the compelling and legitimate narrative of Israelis. Burdened by a uniquely tragic history and alarmed by their perilous geography, Israel felt themselves surrounded by hostility and only one military defeat away from annihilation.’9 The Sabras, the native-born Israelis, did grow up socialized in violence with the local Arab population, and this was to shape their way of relating to this community. There were voices amongst the founders of the state of Israel who had a vision of democratic governance and integration with other Semitic people in the region. The idealistic Zionist dream of a progressive and humanistic state deeply engaged with its Arab and Islamic neighbours perhaps never really took root because of the violence already defining the Israeli experience. Relations with the surrounding people were not engaged, rather they were enraged. The spirit of the Sabra was not to seek accommodation: it was to show the strength and force required to establish Israel and protect it in the face of neighbours who wished it ill. The prospect of Israel maturing into a country confident and desirous of living in comfort with its neighbours seems a distant dream. The current configuration of the Israeli population also influences the climate for peacemaking and the future political direction of the country. There is a growth in the number of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, who have the highest birth rate and tend to be placed on the political right of Israeli politics. And there are modern, militant religious settlers with large families, many of whom are not Zionist at all, who have added heft to the forces of fundamentalism implacably opposed to giving up any of Israel’s territory. The Russian Jews who have arrived since the fall of Communism and are now 15 per cent of the electorate, predictably, given their experiences in the Soviet Union, tend to be on the right of politics. The large and growing community of Jews from North African Arab countries also tend to vote for right-wing political parties. Increasingly, Israel is not a country where engaging in a peace process is the road to electoral popularity.

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Whilst there are voices in Israel who even today would like to see Israel as ‘the light unto nations’ that many of the romantics of the early Zionist movement had hoped it would be, the demographic changes accelerate a hardening of political attitudes. Amongst the Israeli political classes there is a strong belief that military action is more likely than diplomacy to bring results, and decisions are often shaped by the worst-case scenario. The military establishment is the most trusted institution in the country and a weak and young political system does not stand as a counterweight to the military. According to Michael Herzog, a brigadier general from one of Israel’s founding families who served as chief of staff to the defence establishment, said, ‘We are still in the process of developing civilian bodies, but for now the whole culture of decision making revolves around the military.’10 The belief in some quarters is that strong retaliation through the use of force will deliver the message that Israel is here to stay. The essential message is that it is a tough neighborhood and hitting hard gives a clear message about Israel’s overwhelming power. There are obvious examples of this both in the 2006 war in Lebanon and 2008–9 war in Gaza which hit hard at the infrastructure of both the Lebanese state and Gaza, targeting roads, bridges, power plants, schools and ports, incensing the local population. This is the mindset that believes that if you hit your enemy hard and long enough it will surrender. In reality, in the immediate and long term, it only provokes the kind of resentment and hatred that further entrenches the conflict, and does not create the conditions for peacemaking. The origins of this martial impulse seem to have been shaped not only as a response to the Holocaust but also by a construction of Jewish history that prioritizes a bellicose identity, glorifying the fighting spirit of King David, the Maccabees, Masada and Bar Kochba, and is confirmed by the aggression of such Israeli leaders as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. ‘It depicts the identity of the downtrodden, servile, frightened and humiliated Diaspora Jew as one to be

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repressed and forgotten, so as to allow for the revival of the proud Zionist/Israeli Jew who participates in history.’11 Israel has built a regional military hegemony without the counterbalance of diplomatic institutions to act as a check. For a young Israeli, entry to an elite commando unit in the military is like winning a place in an Ivy League university. Once a soldier enters the military system, they remain in the reserve system until the age of 49. Everybody is part of this military enterprise and to challenge it, or in some way not to wish to be part of it, seems to be a betrayal of the very existence of Israel and its survival. The link between trauma and mistrust in politics

This military mindset seems to have been induced by the traumas of the past and it could be argued that for those with the more hardline political views in Israel, there will probably be, somewhere in their story, a very deep trauma which has shaped these views. Many of them will have lost members of their family in the Holocaust. Many of the more right-wing religious groups have experiences of the Holocaust themselves and have grounds for mistrust and disbelief in man’s capacity to behave well. The trauma of the Holocaust is still deeply embedded in Israeli society; it is, for example, an essential element of the school curriculum. Yad Vashem, the memorial to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, is a profoundly moving and powerful national institution that reminds Israelis of the story of the European Jews in the last century. Israeli politicians constantly make reference to the Holocaust and the need never to forget that 6 million Jews died. But there is a danger that any vision of the future is shaped by the horrors of the past. Avraham Burg, who was speaker of the Knesset from 1999 to 2003, has written: ‘Israel’s security policy, the fears and paranoia, feelings of guilt and belonging are products of the Shoah […] Sixty years after his suicide in Berlin, Hitler’s hand still touches

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us.’ In 2007, Burg said: ‘We are still partisan fighters, ghetto rebels, shadows in the camps, no matter the nation state, armed forces, gross domestic product, or international standing.’ 12 The trauma is very deep and Esther Benbassa in her insightful book, Suffering as Identity, says, ‘Israel, in its isolation in the face of the enemy, has an imperative need to be powerful. It was the Jews’ impotence that had made them victims. The essential thing was to prevent that ever happening again.’13 She argues eloquently that in spite of the pain of the past, the task of Israeli leaders is to put themselves on the side of life and the future. She believes the endless cultivation of symbols, ceremonies and lessons of the Holocaust drags Israel into the past and not the future. Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, in a speech he gave in remembrance of the Holocaust, in Spain in 2007, said that the mentality of victimhood and the habit of comparing each leader, whether it was Arafat, Saddam Hussein or Ahmadinejad, to Hitler, debased the experience of the Holocaust. He says, ‘Israel is the prisoner of a form of paranoia […] the memory of the Holocaust.’14 Central to the memory of the experience of the Holocaust is the image of the powerless Jew, seeing the Second World War genocide exclusively from the standpoint of the Jews’ passivity (they went off like lambs to the slaughter). This depiction helped shape the mentality of the new combative, victorious Jew; its influence persists long after the foundation of the state of Israel.15 This culture of victimhood is also a basic component of the Palestinian national identity. It could be argued that Jewish victimhood serves as a paradigm. The Palestinians see themselves as victims of the Naqba (‘Catastrophe’), when, in the 1948 war between Palestine and Israel, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled, and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated and destroyed. This sense of

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displacement has been compounded by the Israeli occupation and settlement of territories taken over in 1967. Whilst this deep sense of injustice is legitimate, the political process can remain paralysed when both sides become more committed to justifying the rightness of their cause than attempting to find solutions and bringing conflict to an end. In the 1990s, the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said demanded that his people acknowledge the Jewish experience and the horrors and fears associated with it. Said invited the Arabs to show their comprehension and compassion. Sadly, these attempts at recognizing the suffering of the other evaporated as tensions escalated again in 2000. The Palestinians’ preoccupation with their own traumatic narrative leaves them with little capacity to understand the roots of Israeli insecurity. Neither do the Palestinians share European feelings of guilt about the Holocaust. All they see is Israel’s belligerent obsession with its own security as a brutal obstacle to peace. In the wider region, the Arabs have their own tragedies and have demonstrated no empathy with Jewish suffering. Whilst we all have pictures on our desks to remind us of our past, Israeli decision makers, whether they be in the military or political arms of government, frequently have photographs of members of their family who died at Auschwitz: a bleak reminder of the agony of this historic event and the terrible fears of repetition. In the office of Meir Dagan, who was head of Mossad (the Israeli national intelligence agency) between 2002 and 2010, there were several clues about his thinking and what had shaped his personality. Mementoes of his military service, to be sure, dotted on the walls, but unique was a photograph dating from the dark days of World War II. On one wall was a black and white photo of a miserable scene: a Jewish man on his knees, wrapped in a striped tallit (prayer shawl), arms raised in surrender or prayer, surrounded by jeering Nazi soldiers. Dagan would

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tell visitors that the Jew was his maternal grandfather […] He would say that his grandpa was shot a few minutes after the photo was taken.16 One can speculate that for him it was a moral lesson about the nature of human behaviour; it showed him how swiftly people can become persecutors and beasts, and that this could happen to anyone. Prime Minister Netanyahu may be seen as an example of how the past and personal experiences shape and mutate Israeli politics. It is often suggested that the powerful relationship between him and his father has profoundly affected his political beliefs. Benzion Netanyahu, a historian by training, carried a profound belief that ‘Jews had been targeted not because of their religion but for their race; he called it “Jew hatred”, maintaining that the persecution could be traced back to ancient Egypt.’17 American journalist David Remnick claimed of Benjamin Netanyahu’s father that ‘his judgment of Israel and history are often so dark, so unforgiving, that he sounds like the harshest of old testament prophets […] His range of disapproval is breathtaking.’18 Born in Warsaw to ardent Zionist Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky, Benzion Netanyahu became a prominent Zionist revisionist and served as secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the militant revisionist right-wing Zionist who dreamt of a Jewish state on both sides of the River Jordan. In 1923 in Latvia Jabotinsky founded the Betar youth movement which later gave rise to the Irgun, the guerrilla force in Palestine whose credo was that every Jew had the right to come there, that only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and that only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state. Likud, the right-wing party Benyamin Netanyahu now leads, has its roots in Betar. Benzion Netanyahu did not have a vision for peace between Jews and Arabs – neither in Israel nor in the wider region. Instead he thought that Arabs were ‘an enemy by essence […] The Arab citizen’s goal is to destroy us.’19 Like his father, Benjamin Netanyahu appears not to believe that peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinians will bring security. He

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seems to have little expectation that a deal between the two peoples will bring an end of conflict for Israel. Whatever temporary moves or postures he is currently adopting throughout his period of negotiations with the Palestinians, the question that will need addressing is: does he fundamentally believe that Fortress Israel is the only solution for his country, or can he challenge his family heritage, and some of the political pressures in his own party, and adopt the bold mantle of peacemaker? His current strategic analysis of the regional threats and insecurities in his neighbourhood is founded on hard realities. These include the threat of a Sunni–Shi‘i war, the civil war in Syria, the instability in Egypt and the increased threat of al-Qaeda, all of which could mushroom into a regional war. In his role as leader, Netanyahu will make his own calculations about whether his country is prepared to pay the necessary price for a peace deal with the Palestinians. A rational calculation could suggest that the end of conflict with his neighbour would be in the interests of the security of Israel. However, his political lens will be influenced not only by rational evaluation but also by his closest colleagues’ histories, their personal narratives and their own fears and insecurities. There is a danger that these assessments will be predominantly framed around threat and any alternative thinking will merely be seen as naive. The price of judging the future always through the lens of the past is the constant danger of repeating the past rather than creating a state of mind for alternative new scenarios. If we fear terribly that certain things will happen, we are more likely to create the conditions in which this will come true. Until both sides prepare for a future with a sense of commitment, and imagine ways to co-exist, they will merely repeat the horrors of the past. It takes an act of courage and true leadership on all sides to carry a vision of the future that does not deny or divorce itself from the past but uses it in such a way that it opens the door to progress.

5

The Taliban Mind It is so damn complex. If you ever think you have a solution to this, you’re wrong, and you’re dangerous. You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and selfcritical. Colonel H.R. McMaster

After the trauma of 9/11, it was the natural instinct of the US government to reflect the pain of the people by expressing a desire to hit back and punish those who had caused a terrible wound. If this was a strategic calculation about increasing the safety of the American people, then there is some legitimacy in such a decision. However, if it was shaped more by the need for retribution as a means of managing the pain, it would lead to compounding the violence and instability in the region. Would a different decision have been made by the US government if it had attempted to get into the mind of the enemy, and might there have been more options before the decision was made to go to war? The Afghan story is a complex one. After 9/11, with some 3,000 people killed, the United States was a country traumatized by the boldness and the heinous acts of Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. The Taliban government had allowed al-Qaeda to base itself in Afghanistan and provided sanctuary to Bin Laden after his expulsion from Sudan

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in 1996. It served to bankroll the Taliban leadership’s military confrontations with the Northern Alliance who were mainly composed of Tajiks and Hazaras. The Shi‘a were predominately supported by Iran and Russia, while the Taliban were mainly Pashtun and thus Sunnis, supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – a relationship which goes back to the late 1970s. Bin Laden’s aim had been to goad the US to retaliate and provoke them to invade Afghanistan. Whilst there were attempts by the US government to get the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden, the Afghan government argued that he and his associates, as guests, were protected by their host country, Afghanistan. Four weeks later, the US led a coalition of several nations, which ousted the Taliban government and displaced the al-Qaeda leadership. Sherard Cowper-Coles, former UK Special Representative to Afghanistan, tells us that in October 2001: The Taliban convened in Kandahar, a great jirga, to decide how to respond to America’s demand that Osama Bin Laden and those responsible for 9/11 be handed over. Some of those present believed that given a bit more patience and pressure, the majority would gradually have swung in favour, expelling those Arabs and foreigners who had abused Pashtun hospitality by orchestrating the 9/11 attack from Afghan territory.1 There had been earlier examples of attempts to engage with the Taliban, especially in the oil sector, on the oil route between Turkmenistan and Pakistan. These efforts, in the late 1990s, were rooted in the belief in a possible deal with the Taliban. General Nick Carter, deputy commander of the NATO-led coalition, said, Back in 2002, the Taliban were on the run […] if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution to what started in 2001, from our perspective, would

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have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future.2 The Bonn agreement (2001) was essentially a victors’ conference led by the G8 countries with the focus on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. It was too soon to think about the reintegration of the Taliban, but a second stage was needed within two years that offered a reconciliation process between domestic enemies. This should have involved the Taliban, who were Pashtuns, the Hazaras and the Tajiks, and the two Shi‘i tribes against whom the Taliban had mostly fought the civil war. Such an active process of reconciliation, led by the international community, could have set the foundations of a more stable Afghanistan. Instead, there was a focus on the use of military intervention and an absence of joined-up strategic thinking as to how to implement a comprehensive peace plan, highlighting the different objectives of the military and the diplomatic routes. The aim of the military over the next decade was to weaken and attempt to wipe out the leadership of the Taliban, whereas it was always clear to those involved in the diplomatic route that it would be necessary to engage with the Taliban and that the longer it took, the greater the suffering and the potential hardening of attitudes. After two unsuccessful wars in the last decade, and over 100,000 civilians having died in the Iraq War alone, the challenge for us is to become smarter in our interventions. It would not be difficult to argue that the wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan have done little to make the world a safer place and have swallowed huge amounts of resources that could have been used more effectively to increase human security and improve the lives of millions of citizens. Frank Ledwidge, a former military intelligence officer, has published two detailed books on the mistakes and costs of the war; he believes that this ‘at the end of next year [2013] could reasonably be estimated at £31.1 billion’.3 Of course, there are never simple answers to conflict, but war, with

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its own vicious momentum, seldom provides the complex solutions that are required. The US military intervention did not address the bigger regional picture and the military agenda aimed to weaken the Taliban by drone strikes. US policies focused on ‘troops, strengths and drones, trying to win over people by improving their lives with Westernstyle aid programs’ and this way continued ‘a long history of foreign involvement and failures’.4 The US general Stanley McChrystal was to say that ‘our conventional warfare culture has alienated the people, and there is a lack of “responsive and accountable government”’.5 At the same time the philosophical changes of US foreign policy during the first decade of the twenty-first century were insensitive to the regional changes, especially the emergence of a new Iraq, no longer Sunni dominated but with a Shi‘i majority, and may have made it impossible to do what General McChrystal was hoping to achieve. The power switch from Sunni to Shi‘a in Baghdad, and the anti-Taliban record of the Shi‘i tribes of Afghanistan, were perhaps misread. But the sign was part of a changing architecture of the Levant from Lebanon to Pakistan. The Western world may have been insensitive to the growing Shi‘i–Sunni divide that had begun to envelop the entire region from the late 1970s. Yet all the conflicts in that region since then have had a sectarian dimension with historic roots but with a modern vision. The Saudi–Iranian ‘competition’ was being played well outside the deeper understanding of the West. The Taliban: who were they?

The Taliban were the last reincarnation of Pakistani President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s great design of the late 1970s and 1980s. They began as the Mujahideen who were part of an anti-Soviet war movement in the 1980s, and were to morph into different factions in the early 1990s, and then into the last version, who were to become the Taliban, by the mid-1990s. They were the product of

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a plan to deal with the Pashtunistan issue. The Pashtun tribe had been divided in the late nineteenth century by a border agreed by the British Empire and Afghanistan (the Durand Line) in 1893, and remained divided after the 1947 partitioning of India and Pakistan. President Zia’s religious and military embrace of the Pashtun in Pakistan during the Soviet war (1979–89) was to set the stage for many of the refugees from Afghanistan to be received and schooled in the madrassas (religious schools) of Deobandi, a Sunni variation of Wahhabism, an arm of Islam. Perhaps President Zia’s plan had been to manage the Pashtuns in Afghanistan – the majority of the country – via tribal means and thereby assert more control over the Kabul government. One route towards understanding the Taliban is in the context of the recent history of Afghanistan. It is a country that has been in a state of civil war or foreign occupation since the Soviet invasion in 1979, which led to nearly ten years of military occupation and war and resulted in the death of over a million Afghans, with as many as a further 6 million fleeing to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. It was the collapse of the communist-supported Najibullah regime in 1992 that led to all-out civil war and to the rise of the Taliban movement, which took control of most of Afghanistan in 1996. Whilst in power between 1996 and 2001, the movement conducted an almost genocidal war against the Tajiks and the Hazaras, two of the largest tribes in northern and central Afghanistan. For those five long years, those two tribes fought alone (with Iranian and Russian assistance) against the Taliban while the world was trying to find an accommodation with Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban. After the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime, they reorganized and have more recently fought an increasingly widespread and bloody war against the Kabul government and its international allies. The domestic wars of the 1990s did little to prepare the Taliban for integration back into Afghan society and, with other tribes of different religions such as the Shi‘i, the Taliban were to push their own

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religious and tribal agenda against the other major tribes. Amidst the chaos and horrendous acts of the civil war, the Taliban were to leave a traumatized footprint. The Taliban’s puppet masters were in Pakistan, and many of the operations were conducted with the presence and assistance of Pakistani military but perpetuated by the Taliban. The Taliban had also been established with an anti-Indian dimension and this was an aspect that Pakistan was not prepared to forgo, not even in 2002 when the shift in US foreign policy in favour of New Delhi had already begun. As Robert McNamara said in The Fog of War, we did not understand the minds of the enemy. We did not know how they thought and how they saw the world, and judgement was through a Western lens. The Taliban were seen to be morally detestable and their treatment of women and other ethnic groups caused grave concern. But they were – allegedly – not corrupt, and they did bring some kind of law and order – authoritarian and oppressive in its nature – out of the chaos of the internal civil war which ensued after the spring of 1989 and continued to 1992. And the Taliban’s views were ‘far less alien to the Pashtun tribes, of Sunni faith, whose children, orphaned and separated from their elders by the war of the 1980s, had become the foot soldiers of the Taliban’s “New Order”’.6 It seems curious that to this day the Taliban have not been asked what their ‘national project’ is supposed to be. Apart from declaring who their enemies are, how do they plan to build a new country? The Kingdom of Afghanistan established in 1747 was not incompatible with a ‘unitary’ nation state of the times – primus inter pares was the formula – but this was, perhaps forever, lost in the fog of 30 and more years of wars and of regional as well as global changes. Today, the question should be raised: can Afghanistan still remain a unitary nation? The consequences of the Afghan wars may have de facto made it impossible to reconstitute a nation state as currently constructed, as every tribal identity appears to have singled out a different existential

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enemy, thus making a unitary nation state only a memory of the past. Both authors of this book have proposed the need for a regional roundtable to create an effective vehicle for communication amongst these potentially warring parties, to work out new structures for the future which will need to take these developments into account. As in all conflicts and attempts at resolution, there are missed opportunities, not least a lack of knowledge, which includes familiarity with the mindset and narratives of local populations. But there are also rejected opportunities, not because of strategic calculations but because of the weight emotions have in shaping conflict. Immediately after the defeat of the Taliban, they offered a deal in which Mullah Omar said that he would return home and that the Taliban wished to find a way to be integrated into Afghan society. There were doubts in the minds of many that Mullah Omar could have delivered what he said he wanted to do. Furthermore, the trauma of 9/11 had impacted the US national narrative to such an extent that only offering Bin Laden on a platter could have been considered an appropriate compensation for the suffering endured. Looking beyond the headlines

When a baby is born, it is the sensitivity of the mother–child relationship that protects the young and vulnerable child in the world. It is parental affection and nurturing that helps the baby physically to survive, first of all, and then to become emotionally oriented in the world. The mother’s relationship with the young child becomes primarily a model for the mother’s capacity to be unselfish in guiding, soothing and protecting. This relationship is a combination of warmth and love, but it will also contain the mother’s frustrations, anxieties, and at times possibly even hatred of the baby. Nevertheless, in a good mother–child attachment, the mother will be able to contain these emotions and primarily express love and warmth. A mother will learn to control her own impatience, exhaustion and frustration. This

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relationship will establish the foundations for the capacity for empathy and altruism. In the absence of this early attachment, the child in later years is more likely to display either disturbed or profound anti-social behaviour. The absence of maternal care can be seen as one of the root causes of the Taliban’s harsh treatment of women. During the Soviet–Afghan War, 1.5 million Afghans were killed. As a consequence of this, many young children were left orphaned, some of whom were later to become members of the Taliban. Few of them grew up among their families. Instead, what many young Taliban fighters were to call their homes were religious schools, or madrassas. These imposing orphanages were often housing up to 250 boys from across Afghanistan. Here they would receive tuition, meals and daily instruction in Deobandi–Wahhabi style Islam, a revisionist movement that holds a divine view of the prophet. Funded by Saudi money, their teaching encouraged a tide of ‘cultural absolutism’. This would be home to the war orphans who knew no other life and who would later, as political leaders, impose harsh dictates against women. This brutal authoritarianism was caused in part by the absence of any maternal care. Many of these young fighters were still in their teens, as young as 14, ‘and had grown up without the company of mothers or sisters. They accepted without question that women should be banished into darkness.’7 Sacred values: do they deepen with insecurity?

In order to get into the minds of different groups, it becomes necessary to understand their value systems and how these values have emerged through experience. Anthropologist Scott Atran in his book Talking to the Enemy (2010) explores the idea of sacred values. By ‘sacred values’, he means values that people hold inside, be it about honour, protecting their family, or not being humiliated, which are so deeply ingrained that they have shaped ideology and belief systems. Outsiders can see this as ideological rigidity. But to the communities, sacred values are

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a core part of their identity. They sit so deep in the human mind and are such an important part of identity that unless they are addressed, groups can easily become ideologically polarized. So, for example, if a Taliban fighter thinks the most important thing to do is to feed his family, or protect the family honour, this will need to be addressed when trying to integrate him back into society. Any deal that feeds the humiliation or the sense of marginalization is likely to fuel further violence. Therefore negotiators must be capable of understanding the sensitivities and wounds that have shaped ideological rigidity. It needs to be remembered that no religion is inherently violent or peaceful. It is people themselves who are violent or peaceful. It becomes a caricature to say that Islam, Judaism or Christianity are religions of war or peace. All religions have the capacity to inspire compassion and destruction. Reza Aslan, in his exploration of How to Win a Cosmic War (2009), states clearly that a cosmic war is a religious war. It is a conflict in which God is believed to be directly engaged on one side or the other’ […] A cosmic war transforms those who should be considered as butchers and thugs into soldiers sanctioned by God.8 He continues by saying that cosmic wars partition the world into black and white, good and evil, and everybody must choose a side. This uncompromising polarization ‘not only de-humanizes the enemy, it demonizes the enemy, so that the battle is waged not against opposing nations or their soldiers or even their citizens but against Satan and his evil minions’.9 These wars are not fought over land, but over identity, and they become part of core sacred values. Dogma is at the very core of such de-humanization. It is in this climate that compromise and negotiation are difficult. The real challenge here is to address the issues of identity and what the conditions are in which this polarization is taking place. Are these values that have been passed on through the generations, or have

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these sacred values been created in response to threat and insecurities? And how would addressing these insecurities allow less extreme, less polarized thinking? What would happen if, in any attempts to resolve conflict, there was more exploration of where people’s values come from, of why they think in this way and what the root causes of rigid thinking are? As described above, the Taliban would be an excellent example of this. If we better understand where the fear of women comes from, and why some of the Taliban’s policies are so hardline, there could be more scope to address some of their fears and simultaneously to encourage acceptance of ‘the other’ and the courage of building rather than destroying: a loosening of their absolutist thinking. Sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer, who was the first to use the term ‘cosmic war’, says that ‘to live in a state of war is to live in a world in which individuals know who they are, why they have suffered, by whose hand they have been humiliated, and at what expense they have persevered’.10 The challenge is to transform humiliation into communication and to understand the traumas that lie behind this rigidity, in the hope of creating less fundamentalist thinking. In order to think strategically about ending the conflict with the Taliban and working to reintegrate them back into society it is important to get into their minds and understand what motivates them. This is difficult when there is such a deep and protracted conflict with huge amounts of suffering on all sides. We may not like their narrative or how they think, but the harsh conditions of the madrassas with their austere Deobandi–Wahhabi philosophy have shaped the thinking of these young men. The absence of the warmth and softness of maternal care has made women frightening and threatening figures to the Taliban leadership. Not being brought up by mothers and sisters, and without the company of a female presence, they have been deprived of the role of women mitigating male violence, and this deprivation exacerbates a climate of sexual repression that is both a result of endless conflict and endemic in the society. The longer

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the war continues, the deeper these problems become. When huge numbers of orphans are created as a result of conflict, the absence of parenting, both male and female, can have a profound effect in exaggerating aggressive propensities and stimulating the conditions for political violence. Is the use of force the most effective tool when trying to limit violence? It would be naive to think that when threatened with force, anyone could opt not to protect themselves. But the use of state force through the military and the use of heavy weaponry often create a level of suffering that stimulates further violence. In this context, has the use of force against the Taliban through drone warfare created the conditions in which negotiations are more likely, or has it created the kind of hatred that stimulates a desire for retribution and reduces the likelihood of ending the conflict? General McChrystal questions whether the present tactic of aggressively culling Taliban field commanders, and announcing a body count, is likely to hinder rather than help the delivery of a sustainable political solution, which is not to say that it might not encourage some frightened individuals to cease fighting.11 Here, he rightly questions whether the policy led by the US government, of believing that the Taliban could be weakened by military intervention, that is, wiping out its senior leadership, would create the conditions for a peace deal. The dangers in this policy were twofold. It hardened the Taliban and so encouraged it not to capitulate but to stand its ground. A mixture of Pashtun pride and resistance would serve to strengthen the identity of the Taliban as a group and potentially served to harden and not weaken their resolve not to compromise. A question that is addressed elsewhere in this book is that it is always controversial but highly relevant to ask whether hardline groups are more likely to come to the table after they have

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been militarily weakened, or whether the use of force against these groups hardens their resolve. It is a question that demands deeper psychological understanding, and that cannot be answered within a framework of fixed political ideologies. And we accept that the answer may not be the same for each group. Getting into the mind of the enemy is tough and exacting for the international community and it may appear that there is no room for real dialogue. What is needed in such cases is the building of relationships that are sustained and nuanced, the kind of communication where real trust can be built over time, in a climate of respect and open dialogue. Violence may reflect a deep history of exclusion and injustices, where the wounds are very raw and the hatred very deep. In this state of mind, people are not likely to participate in any kind of discourse around reconciliation and finding solutions. Highly trained third parties, skilled in dealing with ‘narrative’ and ‘history’, may well help. It is only when we begin to address the root causes of conflict, as perceived by the minds of individuals, that there is a likelihood of moving forward.

6

My God is Right, Yours is Wrong I don’t believe in God, but I miss him. Julian Barnes

Religiously motivated narratives have seen a new revival, in so-called ‘ethnic hatred’, which has led to wars in three continents over the last 20 years. When a narrative is embedded in the idea that my god is right and yours is wrong, then the ‘enemy’ is an essential part of this construction. In a world of heightened anxiety and uncertainty, fear dominates the narrative, with the risk of the past defining the present. Fear of the unknown pushes us to hold on to the evil of the past rather than discover and build a new future. Today we see polarization between religious and secular life, with an increased intolerance of the choices made by others. Those of secular belief attack monotheistic religions for believing they have the monopoly on truth; those of religious faith often believe that secularists have lost their moral compass. Although the twentieth century has taught us that no doctrine has the monopoly on human values, whether we are talking about communism, liberalism, nationalism or religious values, all seem to fail when trying to improve the quality of the majority of people’s lives.

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Religion has served as a moral frame to manage lives that have been painful and unrewarding. It has offered a sense of community and a feeling of belonging and protection in an unsafe world. Throughout history, most religions have had the beneficent effect of encouraging people to reflect on themselves, their behaviour and feelings, and to control their darker impulses to behave destructively. As Alain de Botton says in his wise book Religion for Atheists (2012), ‘the origins of religious ethics lay in the pragmatic need of the earliest communities to control their members’ tendencies towards violence and to foster in them contrary habits of harmony and forgiveness.’1 According to de Botton, man is by nature fragile and capricious: ‘we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.’2 To accept the fragile aspects of our nature and how vulnerable we are is a way to develop greater compassion and increase our capacity for empathy. If we incubate a harsh internal world in which we are intolerant towards the vulnerable aspects of ourselves, we are more likely to project on to the outside world a rigid and intolerant view. Religion has the capacity to demonstrate great love and tolerance but it can also be ideological and there is of course a long history of people fighting wars in the name of religion. But to balance the argument, de Botton also says in his book, ‘the secular age maintains an all but irrational devotion to a narrative of improvement, based on a messianic faith in the three great drivers of change: science, technology and commerce.’3 Thus it fails to explore our inner lives. The Western world, profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment, has invested hugely in the idea that man is essentially rational. In the West, our achievements have been scientific and technological and we have had few spiritual geniuses. Our scientific focus on the external world has been of immense benefit for

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humanity, but we are less adept in the exploration of the interior life.4 Those who are committed to religion will feel some attunement to Jonathan Haidt’s words in The Righteous Mind (2012) where he talks about the rationalist delusion. He is a moral philosopher who believes that intuition comes first and strategic reasoning second. He thinks that we live in a society in which the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion. It’s the idea that reasoning is our most noble attribute, one that makes us like the gods (for Plato) or that brings us beyond the ‘delusion’ of believing in gods (for the New Atheists).5 The rationalist believer, Haidt says, constructs a world in which reasoning is the royal road to moral truth. But these absolutist positions miss the point; any sense of the rightness of one position and the wrongness of those who do not think like us leads down the path of conflict. Political Islam

The success of political Islam in some parts of the Middle East can plausibly be seen in the light of the failure of other political structures, such as those that emerged drawing on nationalism or communism to take care of their people. More recently, the Muslim world has seen a fusion of religion and nationalism. The aim of these religiously inspired political groups or ideologies has often been the establishment of an Islamic state or a state in which Sharia law plays a dominant role; either through grassroots social and political activism, or through violent revolution. The determining factor is an Islamic moral framework. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian

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territories are committed to both civic and democratic participation in society. In contrast to this, the Islamic Jihadi movements are interested in pursuing this through armed revolt. A number of movements have emerged out of this. Two rival movements in particular need to be differentiated: those that are shaped by religiously inspired nationalism such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and transnational religious movements such as al-Qaeda. Here it is important to distinguish between these groups and to consider whether they have a political agenda and therefore something to talk about. Those with a transnational agenda are committed to challenging the foundations of the West as we know it, whereas groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have more local political agendas and are more capable of pragmatism. There is therefore a possibility of engaging in political discussions. Indeed negotiations with both by different actors of the international scene have at times been successful. The Muslim Brotherhood, as described below, can be seen as a third type of movement that is not nationalistic in the same way as Hezbollah and Hamas, as it has a much more internationalist ideology. Egypt is the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it has influence in 120 countries of the world; its project is not a nationalist but a regionalist agenda. Hamas draws its identity from the marginalized and dispossessed of society. Membership and identity of this group is often shaped by social, political and economic suffering, and deep roots of powerlessness. Radical Islamist parties have emerged in response to the social, economic and political inequalities in their societies. They offer themselves as important reform agents. Espousing a resistance culture to both the occupation of their lands and the inequality and injustices of their own societies, radical Islamist parties have become an integral element in ongoing conflicts. Domestically, they have gained legitimacy and votes through their social-welfare as well as political activities. Through their disciplined and extensive organization, they are often deeply embedded in their societies.

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According to Marwan Muasher, the former foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Jordan, there is a tendency to overblow the Islamic threat. He argues that political Islam has benefitted from closed authoritarian systems throughout the Arab world. Now that some of these systems have been opened up and extremist groups allowed to participate in the political process and potentially be included in government, they tend to moderate their voice.6 Evidence seems to suggest that the Islamists are strategic in their calculations and are keen not to be blamed for the failures of past or current governments. However, events in Egypt were to disprove this theory when in 2012 the Muslim Brotherhood (which was still banned) stood in the national elections, under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party, and won the elections on the second round by 52 per cent. After the uprisings in the Middle East, political Islam was to have a temporary period of ascendency in Egypt but that was to be short lived. At first there was a facade of unity amongst the secular and Islamic groups who would chant together, ‘We are one Egypt.’ But within a year there were deep sectarian divides in the country, exacerbated by an Islamic government that was accused by the opposition of putting the needs of the brotherhood above the needs of the country. The Islamic government proved to be ineffective and unable to tackle the social and economic problems. They had already inherited a shattered economy from the previous military-led interim government, and tourists and investors had been scared away. But the government was not sufficiently inclusive to stabilize the country and it failed to incorporate other factions within the government to give the people confidence. By early June 2013, mass protest started to swell into the streets. Ultimately there was a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected President. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed they had been paralysed throughout in their ability to govern as they believed that many of their problems were a result of the non-compliance of the deep state, that is the entrenched interests of the army, the security

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services, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. Immediately after the deposition of the Morsi government, several hundred members of the Muslim Brotherhood were arrested and put in prison, including the movement’s supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, dealing the movement a serious blow and triggering the most serious crisis since the movement was established 85 years before. There are now critics amongst the younger generation of Islamists who do not wish to be identified with the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood; they call for radical reform and policies to emerge that involve the government in power ruling not only from its own ideological base but also for the whole country. But others may find themselves identified with the more hardline policies of the Salafists whose beliefs are more puritanical and literal in their approach to Islam. The Islamic government failed to persuade millions of Egyptians that their government was sufficiently inclusive to protect their needs. According to Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar, author of Islam and the Arab Awakening (2012) and professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, Islamic groups have been much more successful in opposition than in developing credible policies to improve the lives of their people once in government. The historical resistance to colonization, their debate with the secularists, their rejection of the West (in a repulsion–attraction relationship) and the legitimacy derived from the hostility to Israel all conferred upon the Islamists the legitimacy of a moral counterweight; but those very accomplishments did not allow them to make a hard-eyed critical assessment of their own political programme.7 A model framed on what the group stands against, as opposed to what you stand for, does not feed hungry mouths, create jobs or improve literacy rates. Evoking an enemy allows these resistant groups to converge around a sense of social cohesion and clear identity. Political

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maturation will be necessary if these groups are to develop a clear political programme that represents a vision to improve the lives of not only their supporters but the whole community, if they are to be effective in government. This would involve a need to transform from singular identities based on religion to multiple, inclusive identities that reflect the differences in their political and social culture. Hamas in government

After Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza, the prevailing view in the US was that attempts to destabilize the new regime would bring a more moderate, reformed Fatah government back to power. This did not prove to be an effective strategy and in many ways strengthened Hamas’ resistant credentials and hardline political voices. The call from Washington was that Hamas would need to change its behaviour before receiving any economic or diplomatic benefits. But it was mostly ordinary citizens who suffered: nurses, policemen, social workers, and not government officials. The policy of punishing private citizens who had elected Hamas into power was influenced by the belief that these citizens, as a result of their suffering, would put pressure on Hamas, their elected representatives, to moderate their policies. This proved to be a misinterpretation of the psycho-political dynamics. Such pressure from the West instead seemed to cause the opposite reaction and helped to consolidate the power of the more extreme groups. But the conditions in Gaza fed the conditions in which more extremist politics could flourish. Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish in his book I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey (2010) describes the conditions in which Gazans live as a ‘human time bomb, in the process of imploding’.8 He describes the level of poverty, closed borders, and sub-standard housing, the humiliation of checkpoints and the frustration of endless delays when crossing into Gaza. He talks about how people cannot live a normal life and that extremism is on the rise. He says it is psychologically natural to seek revenge in the face

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of endless suffering. ‘You cannot expect an unhealthy person to think logically. Almost everyone here has psychiatric problems of one sort or another. Everybody here needs rehabilitation.’9 Abuelaish says that acts of violence committed by Palestinians are often expressions of frustration and rage by people who feel impotent and hopeless. In his own life Izzeldin Abuelaish had become a physician and fertility expert in spite of being born and raised in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Life was poor and very hard, and he would rise at 3 o’clock every morning to go to work to bring in some money for his family. This was at the time when the border with Israel was still open and much of his work involved him crossing the border to go and work for local Israeli farmers. Showing extraordinary tenacity and self-discipline, Abuelaish studied very hard and went to Cairo University to study medicine; he went on to research fertility issues for women. Later, he was to work in an Israeli hospital, where he became accustomed to working with Israeli doctors. During Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2009, Dr Abuelaish’s three daughters were killed. Following this loss, he suffered immeasurably but ‘refused to hate’. Instead, Abuelaish continuously argued that ‘we need an immunization program, one that injects people with respect, dignity and equality, and that immunizes them against hatred’. A shift in attitude, not in territories to be swapped, is what he sees as the only path to reconciliation in the Middle East. ‘If I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, then I would accept their loss.’10 This man demonstrates an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness but key to his attitude was the working relationship he had with Jewish Israeli doctors. His collaboration with them went beyond race, religion and geographical boundaries. For him, everyone is human and deserves to live in a climate of respect. A young Gazan man, Wasseem El Sarraj, writing during the crisis between Israel and Gaza in November 2012, which led to one week of precision bombing by the Israeli government in which 162 Palestinians and five Israelis were killed, said:

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I never wanted to see Israel as an evil force. I said to myself that that sort of thinking, that sort of emotion, would not be helpful […] I had wanted to work with Israelis; to reconcile […] After four years of living in Gaza, this has become an untenable position for me. I would have had less of a problem with Israel’s efforts to protect its population centers, including through targeted strikes of those it considers its enemies, if it had also worked convincingly and seriously toward peace, toward an acknowledgment of the humanity of those who suffer the consequences of its continuing siege […] What I have witnessed is a systematic attempt by the Israeli government to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of basic freedoms and prevent them from leading a dignified life; maybe the hatred stirred amongst the Palestinians then is not an unintended consequence. All of this has been done in the name of self-defense, and yet none of this has demonstrably made Israel feel any safer.11 Whilst Israel no longer occupies Gaza, at the time of writing there is a land and sea blockade which controls everything: the air, the land, the water and the sea. These are not the conditions in which people invest in their societies and feel able to influence and change things for the better. As described above, essential for change is the ability to feel empowered, to have a sense of efficacy and some control over one’s life. Without this, there is nothing to lose and this is likely to induce either apathetic or aggressive behaviour. It is worth remembering that in Gaza in 1996, after the outrageous suicide bombing of people in Israel, Gazans were to shout, ‘Yes to peace, no to terrorism.’ Then, after the tightening of the closure, they were shouting, ‘Yes to peace, no to terror, no to closure.’ And now, with the blockade and the deteriorating economic situation, they were crying, ‘No to occupation, no to closure’; before long, these shouts turned into ‘No to peace’.12 In the face of horrendous traumas, there is often little capacity to understand the cycle of violence that has led to these terrible events.

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The public mood often calls for retribution, for its leaders to act and to hit back. Here, the challenge for leadership is not to reflect the public mood but to rise above it and create the conditions to contain violence. In practice, it is more often the case that political leaders mimic the raw emotion on the ground. How often do we hear a politician rise above the emotional zeitgeist and speak a language that recognizes the rage and pain of his country’s citizens but finds a way to convince people to contain, rather than stimulate, further conflict? Most Gazan political leaders and their supporters have suffered the endless violence of war and most families have had members killed by this conflict or imprisoned. It is only through the process of stabilization of the society, improvements in conditions on the ground and the possibility of hope that people become able to change their minds. When a situation of conflict has been, at least to some extent, brought under control and the conditions of people’s lives have improved so they can see grounds for hope of a better life, progress starts to become possible. After the 9/11 attacks, the EU made it illegal for governments to have any contact with Hamas. This pressure came from the US. Hamas was conflated with al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups, without differentiation between their political objectives. What was needed at the time was a much more nuanced, subtle approach to try to understand which ideas each of these groups represented and what they were demanding. This would have called for a new kind of introspection from the West: a new engagement with political Islam in which we listen to what they have to say and try to find a way of having a dialogue. Such ideas of inclusion induce fear in the West, as religious fundamentalism does not fit easily into highly secularized modern European societies. It is easy to forget that in the Middle East the notion of secular society is more commonly linked with authoritarian regimes, while political Islam has shown more of a capacity to incorporate democratic beliefs. In Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (2004), Olivier Roy reminds us that:

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In the West, secularization is seen as a prerequisite for democratization, but in the Middle East it is mostly associated with dictatorship, from the former Shah of Iran to President Ben Ali in Tunisia […] in Muslim countries secularization has run counter to democratization, the best example being the cancellation of the Algerian parliamentary elections of 1992 under the pretense that they would have been won by the Islamists.13 There is a call for engagement with these groups and a dialogue to be held about how political Islam has engaged with the West and what form a transition to modernity would take, without necessarily having to make a choice between religious conservatism and modernity, as the West has so far demanded of Muslim society. It is not too difficult for Muslim societies to interpret what they see as the absence of a moral framework in capitalist societies as a sign that Western secular modernity is destroying social support networks, with, for example, a 40-per cent divorce rate in Great Britain, huge alcohol and drug problems, and many of the elderly abandoned in old people’s homes. Liberal values in the West may need to come to terms with more fundamentalist ideologies. However, liberal thinking can be fundamentalist in its inability to listen. Unbeknownst to the liberal ear, minds are often made up and can be as polarized in their own way as those whose fundamentalist beliefs induce so much criticism. In these conditions, it becomes counter-intuitive to listen to ideas that are often unacceptable in the first place. But, as Karen Armstrong so eloquently says, ‘every single one of the fundamentalist movements that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is rooted in the profound fear of annihilation.’14 So often, beneath the surface of these extreme ideologies are fear, humiliation and profound anxieties that need to be addressed. The ideas of these groups often present such a profound challenge to the belief systems of the Western world on such things as the rights of women that it becomes difficult to hear the underlying agenda that shapes their ideological rigidity. It may be necessary for

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us to find ways to engage with these groups that do not condone their values but address some of the underlying fears. The lack of Western intermediaries’ capacity to do this increases the likelihood of the fear hardening into rage and then being expressed through violence. All of this poses important and interesting questions for both the East and West to think about. In the end, why should we impose our values on others without paying attention to how and why these groups are thinking? To those outside the Middle East, Hamas’ ideas and methods are extreme. But inside the occupied territories, particularly in Gaza, they are pretty close to mainstream. They represent a radical approach to the problem that reflects the concerns of the community and therefore beg us to ask: what are the social, political and psychological conditions that create this kind of response? It is important to differentiate between those we can communicate with and those who are so fixed in their mindsets that they are not open to any kind of substantive conversation. In any group there are more moderate voices, which may or may not hold much power, but there may be an opportunity to engage with those in a psychological state of ‘readiness’ for dialogue. Over time it may be that the more moderate voices will have access to those with a more entrenched mindset, those who are part of a more ideological leadership. Eventually, we will need to see engagement in some form, and it will take time to build working relationships. As is proposed in this book, politicians or conventional political players might need to recognize that many of those who have chosen an identity of political violence will have come from a background of deep trauma and the search for identity may be an attempt to deal with the sense of helplessness and powerlessness. The methods chosen may represent the asymmetry in the power relations where the state has official military power and non-state actors use other methods to equalize their power base. The actions employed are often extremely unpalatable and disturbing, but in the end governments would do well to understand better the context of how these methods emerge

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and what responses would, in the end, create a more stable society for all the groups involved in the conflict. The use of heavy military force to repress these groups is unlikely to make it safer for any of the parties in the long term, as none of the underlying causes of the conflict will have been addressed. In the case of the Israeli army, they have responded to the violence of Hamas with sophisticated heavy weapons, tanks and warplanes. Their opponents then try to equalize their power by creating sufficient disturbance to the society with whom they are in conflict, in order to put their political grievances on the table. These methods, such as suicide bombing, focus the attention of the international community. This response, however, created such high levels of disturbance within Israeli society that it wrecked any kind of belief that the Palestinians could be a partner in peacemaking. Neither side would seem to be doing much for the pursuit of peace. In order to think new thoughts and develop, communities need a certain degree of stability. Safety in the world requires a degree of predictability, in which those living in conflict are able to maintain social relationships and organize their lives. Endless conflict is counter-productive to this and creates uncertainty not only about people’s security, but also about their capacity to take on new ideas. In the Middle East, where the state is unable to protect its citizens, there has been an emergence of political groups whose agenda has been in part to protect the lives of their communities. Obvious examples of this are Hamas and Hezbollah, who have an extensive welfare programme, covering both education and health services, which are not sufficiently provided by the state. When these structures are taken away as a result of war, levels of anxiety increase and the uncertainties of the world become apparent. It is in this climate that the rituals of religion can offer some security. And it is not by chance that Hamas in Gaza and the Shi‘i movement in South Lebanon have embraced the practices of a conservative way of life that involve daily prayer rituals. Such traditions give coherence to an unstructured, chaotic life. They also provide a community with

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a safe space to meet and build emotionally supportive relationships in traumatic times. When public spaces are banned or unsafe for meetings, the mosque is not just a place of religious meaning; it also becomes a base for political exchange. In many Middle Eastern countries, public spaces such as cafés have been put under government surveillance and therefore additional credibility has been given to religious meeting spaces, which has strengthened the function of these institutions in societies so desperately seeking change. The firm structures of orthodox religions or politically ideological groups demand a high level of discipline and create amongst their participants the capacity for inner control and the ability to tolerate uncertainty, frustration and pain. Israel’s policy of a blockade after the victory of Hamas in the elections of 2006 was predicated on the premise that if people suffered sufficiently as a result of the blockade, they would no longer wish to support the Hamas government. It seems that the opposite has proved to be true, as Hamas and its supporters prided themselves on their ability to manage the suffering and survive in the face of hardship. In the same way as the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini lived on a diet of dates, the Hamas leadership and its followers relished and felt proud of living on olives and pita bread. The use of food served both the purpose of enforcing self-discipline and was also seen as part of the politics of resistance. Politically inclusive spaces

There are those who believe that reconciliation lies in the arena of inclusion, drawing these groups back into the political process, and helping to give them a voice. At a more practical level, if the senior leadership of any insurgent group is wiped out, those left in charge are often politically immature and inexperienced, and do not have the skills to succeed when dealing with ‘the other’, including the ability to look at options. It is often the youth of the leadership that is

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hardened, inexperienced and lacks the maturity to negotiate around the table. So, if a military policy is pursued to wipe out the leadership, such a decision should not be considered only at a military level. A much deeper systemic analysis is necessary, in which motivations and incentives for co-operative behaviour are addressed. Vicious cycles of attack and counter-attack, with desire for retribution, to many seem like a justified pattern for the recourse of injustices. In the Jewish religion, the Torah permits limited retaliation, in which it is possible to take ‘an eye for an eye’ or ‘a tooth for a tooth’. But, as Gandhi so famously tells us, ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’. The desire to hit back is often fed by a mentality in which people feel they have nothing to lose and have no investment in their society. This could be equally true for those living in the streets of Gaza and those who participated in the London riots in 2011. There are powerful examples of the kind of statesmanship that has not been motivated by recrimination: Nelson Mandela after a period of 27 years in prison came to power not calling for revenge but for reconciliation. In the Middle East, the situation is looking more and more precarious and the area could be entering an extended period of huge instability. Protection rackets, old patronage and vested interests have dominated and a privileged group has divided most of the wealth amongst themselves. Democracy has had no place. ‘The journey from there to emancipated societies where different religions could co-exist is a long one indeed, but until that happens both within each society and across the region there will be conflict, tension and violence. The steady and often violent political awakening of people who have been exposed for decades to the sharp edges of Western power’15 coincides with the mass longing for political transformation which had been repressed by authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and Cold War despotism. Some of the more extremist voices in the region justify the use of violence by locating their rage in the mendacious meddling of Western governments. Others call for more internal self-reflection in the Arab world. Khaled Hroub, a professor at Cambridge University, argues that:

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frightening aspects of what we see today in the streets of Arab and Islamic cities is the disaster of extremism that is flooding our societies and cultures as well as our behavior […] This [represents] a total atrophy of thought among wide sectors [of society], as a result of the culture of religious zealotry that was imposed on people for over 50 years, and which brought forth what we witness today.16 Within the Arab world, where Muslims are in the majority, there is a need for an intellectual revolution. There is a struggle for political and religious authority taking place in these communities. But according to Ramadan, there are deep divisions amongst Sunni traditionalists, secularists, reformers, Sufi mystics – and also between Sunni and Shi‘a. At the moment, Arab thought is haunted by a barren ideological construct that pits secularist against Islamists, making it impossible for either to indulge in in-depth reflection about intellectual limitations that affect both of them.17 Furthermore, he goes on to say that there will not be any true democracy in the Middle East without a restructuring of economic priorities limiting the power of the military and converting corruption. He believes ‘the emergence of a dynamic civil society is a precondition of success’. Concern for free and critical thought must take the form of educational policy to build schools and universities, revise outdated curricula and enable women to study, work and become financially independent.18 This demands the kind of leadership that does not only play on demagoguery but has a vision of a better society for their people and of how these groups will exist in the region. There are multiple examples of both religious tolerance and extremism in the region. Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, a grand mufti and a Sunni religious scholar in Syria, says, ‘a good human being is a good human being,’ whether he or she is Jewish, Christian or Muslim. The contrast to this was stark when another Sunni preacher, the Egyptian Sheikh Mohammad al-Zughbey, was to say, ‘Allah! Kill that dirty small sect

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[the Alawites]! Destroy them, Allah! They are the Jews’ agents. Kill them all […] It is a holy jihad.’19 The latter quotation is shocking to our ears, but it is only by our human contact with each other that minds will be changed. Isolation feeds intolerance and blinds us to what connects us beyond religious divides. The transformation of citizens’ identities will need to be based not on sectarian identities but multiple identities (as discussed later in this book) and it will not take place overnight. It will require leadership and courage. At the time of writing, the escalation of the war in Syria is threatening a major sectarian war in the region, wrenching it apart. Leadership is urgently required that will call for a climate in which the different religious groups can learn to co-exist, whether they be secular, Muslim, liberal, Salafist, Christian or Jewish, and not a climate that will stimulate the current divisions. A new kind of engagement will be necessary in which a new social contract will need to be established, both within the region and within each individual state, in which such basic ideas as the empowerment of women, religious and political pluralism and tolerance are seen as guiding principles. It will require more than a political commitment to pluralism, but a much deeper process in which a psychological transformation takes place. Governments, communities and individuals will need to address their own fear and hatred of the other and manage the destructive aspects of their behaviour which are stimulated by fear and anxiety about their own survival. In the current climate it may seem like a fine ideal but it is essential if we are not to live in a world in which we kill each other. Authoritarian governments have kept the lid on these tensions which have now been exaggerated by war, but humanity has the capacity to enlarge the less destructive aspects of human behaviour. This will require both leadership and a great deal of self-reflection of the human spirit.

7

Iran: Getting into the Mind of the Enemy A lot of the problems we face [with Iran], fifty percent at least if not more, is psychological. Substance is important, but fifty percent of it is how you approach it, how you reach out to people and how you understand where they are coming from. Mohamed ElBaradei All nations want to achieve a prominent place in the international community and they shape their national policy positions on the basis of their values, their history, their cultural perception and how they wish to be seen in the world. Whilst geopolitics influences their strategic game, governments will also be influenced by a country’s desire for prestige, respect, honour and dignity. As we have observed already, the historical narrative has strongly influenced the current political discourse in Iran, in which most Iranians perceive themselves as a great civilization deprived of its rightful status as a regional superpower by foreign intervention. ‘Two hundred years of foreign meddling has left a deep imprint on the Iranian character and the Persian psyche is cleaved, scarred by past humiliations, while at the same time also bloated with a sense of its own importance.’1 According to Fariborz Mokhtari, chair of Persian Gulf Studies at the

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National Defense University in Washington, ‘For Iranians, geopolitical realities together with national psychology define national security.’ Iran’s political rhetoric reflects its ambivalence and the significance of its own history. ‘It is a struggle between pride in a glorious past and shame at more recent subjugations.’2 This historical legacy of outside intervention has left a deep scar and a particular sensitivity to the potential of meddling from outside. Professor William O. Beeman, an anthropologist and Iran specialist, writes that ‘the waves of external conquest which have buried their land over the centuries […] Alexander and the Greeks, the Arabs, Gengiz Khan and the Moguls – are as alive as if it happened yesterday’.3 The 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, as a result of which Iran lost much of its territory in Central Asia and was forced to accept Russian demands on its sovereignty and independence, is still considered one of the most humiliating events in the long history of the country.4 Most recently, the 1953 coup, through which ‘Mossadegh [prime minister of Iran 1951–3] became yet another Iranian victim of great power machinations and […] was overthrown by the British-inspired and CIA-implemented coup’,5 is also part of the story and continues to live on in Iran’s collective memory. Mossadegh’s agenda was to nationalize Iranian oil, although he was prepared to offer large amounts of compensation to the British government. But ultimately it was to lead to a conflict which has been lodged in Iranians’ sense of history, trauma and political rhetoric, ‘reducing centuries of foreign meddling to a single image that defines the birth of modern Iranian political consciousness’.6 Iranians still see the British, even more so than the Americans, as the puppet masters, pulling the strings behind closed doors with the intention of doing them harm. What further contributed to the shaping of the current political discourse in Iran was how the country developed after the Islamic Revolution and how this shaped the political ideology that was to emerge. Whilst the Iranian Revolution was essentially a political–cultural confrontation and not an armed conflict, the Islamic Republic was born in conflict

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and its very foundations were embedded in the hostage crisis with the West. The opposition movement that was to overthrow the Shah in 1979 was a coalition of the clergy, the urban poor, the intelligentsia, bazaari merchants, of middle and working classes, who confronted a weak and isolated monarch. The masses who would overthrow the Shah spanned different religious and secular groupings that all had a shared agenda of opposition to imperial domination. The Revolution was committed to a fundamental restructuring of Iranian society, with a profound cultural transformation. Embedded in it were ideas such as the deprived masses and martyrdom, as well as new political behaviour such as Friday demonstrations in which the American flag was burned. New codes of ethics, dress, entertainment and sexuality were to be established. The new national enemies were America and Israel. The new political values were shaped by independence, populism, protest against the West and the ideas of the Islamic state. The new regime was to be shaped by the resurging of Islamic values and the rejection of Western influence and dominance. It was also influenced by Third World social discourse, anti-imperialism, and hyper-nationalism. Anti-imperialism was to mean anti-Western ideas. There were three core principles shaping the Iranian Revolution. First was nationalism, which was shaped by an overwhelming preoccupation with independence, an anti-imperialist agenda and opposition to any form of foreign intervention. Second was populism and an ideological belief in civil society being the foundation of social change, and third came social justice and a commitment to addressing the grievances and the economic security of the majority of people who had been dispossessed and disenfranchised by the Shah’s regime. The Islamic political culture which would dominate was to derive its legitimacy from thirteenth-century Shi‘i history and tradition, with its affinity for political protest and resistant politics exemplifying the past shaping the present as if there was no huge historical time lag. This ascendancy of Islamic power in the 1979 Revolution did not take place in an intellectual vacuum. The question of national and

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ethnic identity had been firmly placed on the agenda. Influencing those who were to lead the revolution and later establish a new political culture was the concept of gharbzadegi (Westoxification) ‘which opposed Western domination of Iran and advocated the necessity of putting up resistance against it. It had a profound and far-reaching impact on the youthful intellectual generation of the 1960s and 1970s.’7 The notion of Westoxification was predicated on the idea that previously many Iranian intellectuals had passively and without reflection embraced Western ideas and culture, and there was a move towards resisting the cultural hegemony of the West which had dominated intellectual, social and political discourse. These were seen as the source of the growing rootlessness and fragmentation within Iranian society, the result of taking on a false identity. Shi‘i Islam was deemed to be the most effective vaccine against Western influence and ‘Islamic Republican ideologues articulated their conception and desire to create a new moral Islamic man and the just Islamic society.’8 Many of the religious leadership who had spent time in the West believed that the form of capitalism practised in the West put material wealth before human values, which was shown by the breakdown of family life, the high divorce rate and the social divides between rich and poor. In contrast, they saw themselves being committed to values such as justice, protection of the poor, and a religious way of life guided by Islamic principles. Islam was seen as a total way of life in which it was necessary to act not according to individual values, but according to community values. Whilst a new ideology was emerging, Iran was to be plunged within a year after its revolution into an eight-year war with its neighbour Iraq. Western governments underestimated the significance of this war in terms of how it was to mould the Iranian political psyche. The horrendous effects of weapons of mass destruction on its people, compounded by the international community’s blindness to the use by Iraq of chemical weapons, fed an overarching narrative of Iranian victimhood, a narrative of abandonment and betrayal. The use of

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chemical weapons, which was at first greeted with general indifference by the world community, was condemned by the US only at the time of the Second Battle of Al-Faw in April 1988, when the Iraqi government issued a communiqué saying, ‘For every insect, there is a proper insecticide.’ Many of those now in government in Iran fought in the Iran–Iraq War and their politics are shaped by the belief that Iran was left isolated when Iraq used chemical weapons, and that both Eastern and Western governments supported Iraq. One of the consequences was to create a new Iranian identity reinforced by the notion that self-sufficiency represented the way forward, a notion at the basis of the development of their nuclear policy. Because of the perception of these historical events, there are deep chasms in Iranian politics as to the wisdom of building relationships with the West. A deep suspicion that the motivation of Western governments, particularly the US, is regime change drives most of the leadership. Therefore, whilst during their presidencies, Rafsanjani and Khatami attempted to overcome the wall of mistrust, opportunities for a breakthrough were missed, particularly due to the scepticism that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has with regard to Western intentions, as highlighted by the developments of the ongoing nuclear crisis. The nuclear discourse in the Islamic Republic

‘The nuclear crisis was, as ever, a battleground of competing narratives: on the one hand, the fanatical rogue Iran determined to bring nuclear Armageddon; on the other, the perfidious, imperialist West determined to hold back an Islamic nation and block its just advancement.’9 For Iran, the symbolism of nuclear power was to represent modernization and an escape from lack of progress into technical advancement, an important component of a country’s international prestige. Nuclear technology was to be equated with ideas of glory and the ability to make the country equal, after having been controlled by the power of external dominant nations.

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As Khamenei reminded us in 2006, scientific progress should continue by relentless efforts as a means of being independent of the West and ‘preventing the copying of Western scientific development’.10 The same view is shared by the speaker of the Majlis, Ali Larijani, who sees the production of nuclear fuel as a manifestation of Iran’s national dignity and independence.11 The national nuclear programme is therefore used as a symbol of sovereignty and the ability to take control and master the borders of the state in the face of outside intervention. During difficult periods of negotiations, particularly the Baghdad talks on 18–19 June 2012, Saeed Jalili, the Iranian nuclear negotiator, was to claim that the West was conducting a colonial war against Iran to prevent its scientific advancement. He was to tell the Majlis that the nuclear programme was a symbol of resistance and progress. He was to say that the West’s opposition was motivated from ‘fear that the Islamic Republic could serve as a model for progress and defiance in other countries’.12 The nuclear programme is also justified amongst the Iranian elites as a tool to rectify the asymmetrical relationships between Iran and the Western world; the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ‘is seen by the developing states as asymmetric: a Western tool that has entrenched a system where civilian nuclear energy can (theoretically) be distributed around the world while military technology is restricted to a self-selecting elite’.13 This system ‘divides the world into nations that can be trusted and those that cannot and in doing so further embeds the binary divisions between the nuclear and non-nuclear countries, reinforces their respective prejudices and bolsters the confrontation between the two sides.’14 According to former nuclear chief negotiator, and now president of Iran, Hassan Rohani, ‘There is a general critique of the discriminative nature of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that divides nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”: it allows some actors to have specific rights as far as nuclear technology and nuclear armament are concerned.’15 Iran’s nuclear narrative is therefore characterized by a

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critical approach to the unjust nature of the international society of states and to the use of double standards in practice. As Anatol Lieven (2006) observes, Because of the radical difference between the way in which the US and the West treat Iran on the one hand and India, Pakistan and Israel on the other, Western demands have been successfully portrayed in Iran as pressure for yet another ‘treaty of surrender’ of the kind which Western powers forced on Iran in the past.16 Iran’s political culture therefore allows leaders to frame the nuclear issue in the language of nationalism on the basis of the past historical experiences of the country, which picture Iran as a victim of the West.17 The US and Iran: OVER 30 years of mistrust

Iran’s anti-US sentiment, which characterizes the political identity of the regime, was shaped by past US involvement in Iran, particularly with the CIA-assisted coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953 and restored the Shah to power. On the other hand, from an American perspective, the conflict with Iran was catalysed by the hostage crisis and later by the Iran–Contra affair. The Iranian takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 is still a running sore in the US psyche, with memories of humiliating images of captured embassy staff being paraded blindfolded before angry, jeering crowds shouting ‘Death to America’. Both sides therefore have partial and selective memories: Iran has chosen not to remember, and even more curiously, the West has chosen not to remind the world, that in 1946–7, when a good part of Iranian territory had not yet been evacuated by the Soviet Army, it was the West that made it possible for Tehran to re-establish control over those large portions of Persian land. The 33 years of estrangement between Iran and the US have led to 33 years of suspicion and mistrust. The absence of diplomatic relations,

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with neither country having an embassy on the other’s soil, has exacerbated the inability to find any agreement. This lack of contact becomes a deep part of the problem. Whilst there is often political momentum not to speak to an enemy as particularly political parties on the right can describe it as appeasement, this creates the conditions in which misunderstanding becomes magnified. When we have no contact with the other, all our fear, anxieties and prejudices get projected onto the ‘other’ and our feelings about them become more intensified. It is only when there is human interaction and relationships are built that some of these extreme thoughts can be modified. Profound disagreement on the issues and underlying hostility has further soured what was already estrangement. The possibility of communication is now undermined by misconceptions, stereotypes and demonization. The lack of contact extends to the highest levels in both societies and it has led to distant observation of each other’s behaviour, creating a distorted and dangerous analysis which has been fed by megaphone diplomacy and sabre-rattling. Iran and the US see themselves as engaged in a Manichean struggle, a fight of good versus evil, and are stuck in a mindset where they cannot accept each other. It is in this context that both sides will use tactics to disrupt the other. In Iranian eyes, the US has huge military power and assets which they cannot equal and therefore they see it as legitimate to use whatever assets are available to them, such as engaging in the war in Afghanistan or giving financial and military support to groups hostile to Western interests, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. By Western governments these tactics are seen as provocative and destabilizing. At the same time, US use of cyber war – for example, the use of bugs and worms on Iran’s nuclear technology – high political warmongering and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists has only worsened the climate of Iranian mistrust and suspicion towards the US. US Ambassador John Limbert, who was himself in captivity for a period of 16 months during the Iranian hostage crisis, vividly describes the current relationship between Iran and the US in his book Negotiating with Iran (2009) with five rules:

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1. Never walk through an open door – instead, bang your head against it. 2. Never say yes, or else you look weak. 3. The other side must be seen as infinitely hostile, devious, and domineering. 4. Anything the other side proposes contains a trick, the only purpose for the other side is to cheat. 5. If any progress is made, someone will come along and mess it up.18 Limbert describes how it was necessary to wrestle with the ‘ghosts of history’. He recognized the complexity of this conflict, the need to understand the minds of those involved and how this is shaping the current narrative. The different experiences, and the diverging ways in which memories of historical events are interpreted, weigh heavily on each side and deeply influence their behaviour, attitudes and postures, ultimately intensifying the levels of misunderstanding. During Rafsanjani and Khatami’s attempts to overcome the wall of mistrust with the US, opportunities were missed on both sides because of the years of reciprocal suspicion. The US and Iran worked together with the Northern Alliance in the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the Bonn Conference in 2001 Iran and the US were both present to discuss post-Taliban Afghanistan. These were to be the first bilateral, face-to-face talks in 30 years, but much of this collaboration was undermined by the ‘axis of evil’ speech by George W. Bush in 2002, which was to accentuate the climate of hostility and suspicion between Iran and the US. Although some successes were achieved behind the scenes, as evidenced by Picco’s 13 successful negotiations (discussed in the next chapter), there were not enough bold gestures made to transform the situation. The Bush administration, in an attempt to increase the contact between Iran and the US, appointed ‘Iran watchers’. On one occasion a meeting was organized to try to construct bridges between Iran and

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the West. The meeting took place in Austria, and a senior American who carried responsibilities for the nuclear brief sat at the table for formal engagement in the search for solutions on the nuclear question. However, when the organizers of the meeting tried to arrange more informal contact in attempts to work on building the foundations of trust, the American reacted in a way that showed he was both offended and agitated. It seems he would have been breaching his government policy and that it would be illegal for him to sit with his Iranian counterpart in this way.19 Government policy in the US on this occasion seems to have been driven more by ideology than any serious commitment to how you shift relationships between enemies. When President Barack Obama arrived on the scene in early 2009, he tried to overcome the mistrust among the two parties, promising a new and more constructive approach to US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Only two months after assuming office, President Obama offered a major gesture of reconciliation to the Islamic Republic of Iran by making public a video message to the Iranian people and government, extending his best wishes for Norouz (Iranian New Year). In his message, the President spoke of ‘new beginnings’ and ‘a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce […] a future where the old divisions are overcome’.20 But instead of receiving praise or a reciprocal gesture from Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei attacked the US President two days later on grounds of hypocrisy: ‘They congratulated the Iranian nation on Norouz, but in the same message they accused the Iranian nation of supporting terrorism, seeking nuclear weapons.’ Khamenei also reminded the Iranian nation of the US’ role in supporting the enemy during the Iran–Iraq War: They gave Saddam the green light to attack our country. That was another measure taken by the US to harm our nation. If Saddam had not received the green light from the US, most

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probably he would not have attacked our borders. An eightyear war was imposed on our country, during which about 300,000 Iranian civilians and youth were martyred.21 Later Norouz speeches by President Obama would continue to fall on deaf ears with the Iranian leadership. Obama was to ask, ‘Why is it so hard to get to “yes”?’ The key answer here is mistrust. The Norouz greetings created confusion amongst Iranian elites, who did not know how to read the message from Obama. New behaviour by one side does not necessarily create the equivalent response, especially when there is a climate of suspicion and mistrust. Endless conflict does not necessarily mean both sides are in a state of readiness. The ‘ghost of history’ sits in the room. Obama came with a fresh vision; he had not been involved in the conflict with the same trauma and history as the Supreme Leader, who had been immersed in it since the revolution in 1979. The US faces a huge deficit of trust and deep-seated suspicion which will not be transformed by a wellconstructed speech from President Obama. The history and emotions are deep and it will take a sustained dialogue to build genuine trust. To the ears of the West, Khamenei’s speech was full of toxic rhetoric. This was further compounded by the words of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has replaced the conciliatory tone of his predecessor President Khatami with crude, often provocative, language towards the US and Israel. But all this should be seen for what it is: a political ploy to reinforce the identity of the Islamic Republic, which, among many other aspects, depends on reproach, a deep sense of victimization and the need for an enemy to create social cohesion. Obama’s attempted détente with Iran was to become a political liability as his Republican opponents in the Senate would ridicule his policy and describe him as soft, and then talks would turn to another round of sanctions. This was the stuff of political manipulation and Mitt Romney penned an ‘op-ed’ in the Washington Post in which he compared Washington’s current relations with Iran with

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the Iran hostage crisis, and described Obama as the most feckless US president since Carter.22 The US–Iran relationship has of course a direct impact on the entire nuclear conflict and there will, over time, need to be a reciprocal change of mindset. In Iran, the current regime with its Islamic revolutionary ideology may make a full relationship with the West problematic. Nevertheless, many would argue that the policy of the Iranian government is still driven by pragmatism, which therefore makes an accommodation possible, but any agreement will need to recognize the security concerns of all parties involved. The election of President Rohani, however, offers new opportunities; whilst the underlying principles of the regime will remain the same, he is calling for moderation and speaks the language of an accommodation with the West. Thirty years after the Revolution, the Iranian political system has become entrenched and the question now is what will it take for it to morph from being a revolutionary state and find a modus vivendi like any other fully fledged state? For progress, recognition of equal status and inclusion among the community of nations will be of crucial importance for Iran, but it will need to outgrow its siege mentality, moving from the politics of resistance to the politics of co-operation. Politics allows our allies to do dangerous things and we allow our friends to do things we would never allow our enemies to do. If the Shah of Iran and his family had remained in power, nuclear power plants would already be working in Iran. The real challenge is how we make our enemies our friends, something that is deeply counter-intuitive. This, paradoxically, may require leaps of imagination that go beyond strategic calculations and rational thinking. Ultimately, an understanding of the history, culture and mindset of the people with whom we are engaging increases the likelihood of being effective. Picco’s instinctive commitment to doing this may account for some of his historical successes in negotiations with Iran, as described in the next chapter.

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Thirteen Successful Negotiations with Iran History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. Seamus Heaney

Negotiating with Iran: a personal account

When discussing negotiations we usually hear the names of countries, institutions, organizations, ideologies and religions. But perhaps we should focus more on the individuals involved, not to glorify them, but to better understand the relationships that are built between the negotiator and the multiple stakeholders involved in any conflict. In war it is the individual who dies and who kills. The individual is equally crucial in peacemaking, as it is in war. Many influences shape the conditions for negotiations but there are two key dimensions that will influence their effectiveness: the level of individual autonomy that the negotiators are given by the institution they are representing and the decision to assume personal

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responsibility in case of failure. A strong rapport with the leader of the institution that the negotiator represents will be essential and effective negotiation will demand a relationship in which the authorized negotiator is given freedom to manoeuvre and work quietly behind the scenes. But my negotiation ultimately depended on my ability to understand the narratives of the individuals in front of me, as well as the risk I was prepared to take. This involved immersing myself not only in a national narrative but also in the personal narratives of those individuals with whom I was working. I have written in Chapter 1 a little about my upbringing in the immediate neighbourhood of the Iron Curtain during the time of the Cold War. This was to influence my understanding. The experience proved to be beneficial for my professional role, as it taught me to acknowledge the importance of understanding the mind of the other side when trying to create the conditions for a possible agreement. I understood the necessity of knowing what their values were, what they cared about, what their personal and family histories were and, finally, what kind of world they wanted to live in. It did not mean I agreed with them. A negotiator’s lens

Much of my experience as a negotiator over the last three decades has been with the governments of Iran, the USSR, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. One of the most important ingredients was the fact that I had a personal relationship with those involved on the other side of the table. This was based, I believe, on the credibility that I had built up over time and the key imperative was that everyone would keep their word. For this to happen, it was essential that the relevant bureaucracies did not restrict my creativity as a negotiator, but that was not easy – it isn’t how bureaucracies behave. On the other hand, as a negotiator, I needed to act in an entirely accountable way; anybody involved in this work would need direct lines of

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accountability to the top decision maker in the political hierarchy. The individual negotiator needs the freedom to manoeuvre, but he also has to take personal responsibility in case of failure. Revolutions take pride in the distant past and disavow the recent past, and all seem to have a need for an existential enemy. When does a revolutionary government shed that need? When it becomes establishment. For me this was a key component of the narrative, crucial for the success of negotiations. I needed to understand those components early on in the encounters and to keep them in mind when gauging the possible reactions to events, suggestions and statements made by foreigners. We have all been told the best and most noble episodes of our respective histories and perhaps only a sanitized version of the darker episodes is passed on by each generation. It would be naive and simplistic to look at negotiations with Iran as if the world and Iran had remained the same over the last three decades. In the 1980s, the Iranian national mindset and indeed the individual attitudes of many officials were overwhelmingly influenced not only by the war against Iraq, but by the fact that East and West were both supporting Saddam Hussein. For Iran, the world was not bipolar in the traditional Cold War sense; it was not East against West but everybody against the Iranian Revolution. At the time, the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) who had led the revolution against the Shah in 1979, led Iran. But attitudes changed in the 1990s, after Khomeini died and Khamenei took over as Supreme Leader, accompanied by a strengthened presidency under Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The focus was more on the ‘survival’ of the Revolution against all odds. Under Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president of Iran from 1989 until 1997, Iranian officials appeared to be more pragmatic and ready to take risks in making the first move. His successor, Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005) took the decision to change relations with the outside world and particularly with the West, in response to the Western ‘clash of civilizations’ theory,

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and he put on the table his ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’ initiative, which had been conceived as a tool to rewrite relations with the West, and the US first and foremost. Khatami had lived in Western Europe and was familiar with Western attitudes and culture. His knowledge of European narrative has helped him ‘read’ the children of Locke and Hume on one side – the Anglo Saxon version of the West – and those of Descartes and Hegel on the other. Indeed he understood, as we all know, that the forma mentis of the two halves is quite different, as anybody who has worked, lived and operated across that divide, especially during the Cold War, knows well. The black-and-white narrative of the Anglo Saxons’ culture was not shared, even during the Cold War, by the narratives of Continental Europe. More change was created by the post-1990 enmity of the West towards Saddam Hussein and his eventual overthrow. Could the West have capitalized on the change of regime in Baghdad to introduce new elements into its relations with Iran? Easy to say, but amidst the fog of war it is hard to see the horizon. Perhaps the expectations in Tehran were exaggerated or miscalculation came into the picture. Khatami’s successor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–13), did not seem to have much knowledge of Western aims, techniques and ways of thinking. An understanding of the Western narratives was not a part of his experience. The exchanges and negotiations that had occurred before 2005 came to a halt. The conversations with President Khatami were of a different quality and offered much more possibility of an exchange of ideas for reducing hostilities. When Khatami was invited to speak at a conference in a small town in the Eastern Alps, he actually shook hands with the organizer of the event, who happened to be a woman. That gesture did not go unnoticed at home, where his successor Ahmadinejad capitalized on it through populist speeches and flexing his muscles against the West. Rather than clarifying what his bigger picture for the country was and what he was trying to achieve, Ahmadinejad’s tenure worsened Iran’s relationship with the West.

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The geopolitical landscape

The negotiator’s relationships will also need to be placed within a changing geopolitical landscape and in the case of Iran, regional politics have become even more relevant than they were 30 years ago. The regional tussle between Iran and Saudi Arabia is, as I write, being played out in Mesopotamia and the entire Levant. After the first round which unfolded in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and the second round in Central Asia after the collapse of the USSR, the third and more crucial one is now taking place with intense rivalry and jockeying in Iraq, Syria being an appendix to this. By the middle of the last decade the role and significance of the West in the new world order had diminished in Iran’s eyes and the role of China had correspondingly increased. As one Iranian official told me some ten years ago, ‘The West is much less relevant for us now than twenty years ago.’ As a consequence of this, negotiating with Iran may require a larger role for the regional states and a more peripheral role for the West. The fog between war and ‘not yet peace’ persists. Strategy and tactics will need to be different from what they were only a decade ago and very different from the way we negotiated in the 1980s. The Iranian leadership may wonder about further changes occurring in the region and beyond. More specifically, it may well wonder what will be the short-term future of its neighbourhood, first and foremost Iraq and Afghanistan. Will they still be unitary states by the end of this decade? Will latent civil war affect others as events develop in the region, starting with Syria? Will there be an end to the post-Ottoman and Franco-British arrangements of 1916 and 1920? The region may soon see a reshuffling of cards in terms of nation states’ identities and order, and perhaps also in terms of military power; the last 30 years have already brought about a reshuffling of wealth distribution between the two shores of the Persian Gulf. Could the close relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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and Pakistan over the last 30 years potentially transform into an even closer co-operation? When speaking of the IRI, the word ‘negotiations’ is hardly the first that comes to mind. But the IRI has engaged and has been engaged in negotiations with the West more often than many would care to imagine over the last 30 years, and the large majority of those negotiations have not ended in failure. I shall refer only to the negotiations I was personally involved in and those I came to know about because both sides had made me aware or had asked me for a minor contribution. So we can assume that there are more examples and the following is only a selection of successful negotiations with Iran. 1 The US Embassy seizure (1979–81)

How are decisions made in the Iranian Revolutionary system? How does one get access to decision makers? And how can one be certain that agreements will be kept? These would have been key questions in the negotiations that led to the release by Iran of the US embassy staff detained in Tehran for well over a year from 1979 to January 1981. But as the Iranian governmental system itself was in the process of construction in 1979–80 it was hard to know the answer to any of these questions. The use of an intermediary, in this case Algeria, would remain a feature of the diplomacy with Iran, as they would remain involved. The holding in captivity of US citizens serving at the embassy should have been considered in retrospect a mistake by the IRI, from every perspective except one: perhaps by late 1979 some of the Revolutionary figures were uncertain about their ability to carry on their project without an enemy that would bring together the different forces in the street. A civil war of sorts continued well into 1981. Young revolutions need an existential enemy, whether in the imagination or on the battlefield. My guess is that if Saddam Hussein had gone to war against Iran 15 months earlier, in 1979 instead of late

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September 1980, the US embassy would not have been seized. There would have been no need for it. It is significant that the negotiations made little progress for close to a year and only began to gain traction in Algiers after the Iran–Iraq War had started. Now the revolution had a fighting enemy; it had reached its first base. The seizure of the US embassy was thus no longer a necessity for the young revolution. Another reason why the negotiations in Algiers moved forward was that the US had the good fortune to have at the helm of its team one of their very best: Warren Christopher was a master at listening to others first and talking second, and furthermore there appeared to be not one seed of arrogance in him (arrogance being in my experience the first source of failure in any negotiations – it merely reveals the insecurity of the negotiator). But there were multiple influences to be taken into account in the negotiations. 2 The Iran–Contra affair (1985–7) and three hostage releases in Lebanon

The Iran–Contra affair was a highly controversial and ‘illegal operation’. The Americans sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran under the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, using Israel as a conduit for the weapons sales. The proceeds of the sales went to support the right-wing Nicaraguan Contras. At the time, there was a US arms embargo on the sale of weapons to Iran and a Congress ruling that forbade the US government from providing material support to the Contras. President Reagan and his planning security group were committed to supporting the rebels in order to prevent the spread of communism in South America. As the West was supporting Saddam Hussein’s regime against the Islamic Republic of Iran, this had to be a clandestine deal, in which the Israeli government, upon the request of the White House, transferred hundreds of tons of weapons and equipment to Iran, strengthening a weak Iranian army as it was threatened by the greater military strength

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of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Americans became interested in this operation because of American hostages that had been taken by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. The taking of Western hostages in the streets of Beirut in civil war became a feature of the 1980s and the hostage-takers, namely the new Hezbollah group, had strong Iranian support. This was definitely an ‘out of the box’ approach. The Iran–Contra scheme used Terry Waite, the envoy of the Anglican Church, as the visible negotiator for the release of US hostages in Lebanon, held by the precursor of Hezbollah. The negotiations took place directly between the US and Iran and three US citizens taken hostage in Lebanon were released. But then the Iranian side, contrary to expectations, went public via a Lebanese newspaper and Hezbollah felt free to keep Terry Waite as an additional hostage. He paid with five years of suffering in captivity, to be freed later, together with 11 other Western hostages. There was no search for so-called impartiality or each side making concessions or modifying each other’s position on the issue. Both sides showed themselves ready to pressure their allies or friends to pay the price for the deal and most important was the role of the individuals. The Iran–Contra affair was a clear example, to me, of learning from the street and from reality rather than from the treatises of great university halls. In other words: the individual matters and what he can do quietly behind the scenes makes a difference. 3 Lebanon Western hostage releases in 1991 and 1992

The detailed account of this rather unorthodox operation which included my being snatched from the street in Beirut at night – a few times – is outlined in Chapter 1 and in more detail in my book, Man without a Gun (1999).1 It was a most unusual ‘commando operation’ by an individual who violated many rules of a bureaucracy and exchanged his life for that of the hostages.

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4 End of the war between Iran and Iraq

Again, this rather unorthodox negotiation is reported in Chapter 1. In summary, this was also very unusual, both in substance and in methods (which were unlike any normal bureaucratic procedures) and included a threat, by a major player, to the life of the negotiator (myself ). It was an unorthodox negotiation as it was conducted with only one side of the war present, and indeed with the key help of the ‘banker’ of the other fighting side. Again, a detailed account is contained in Man without a Gun. The eight-year-old war came to an end on 8 August 1988, despite the position of one side (Iraq) being against its termination and, to say the least, a de facto operational absence of the institution, that is the UN Security Council, a number of the members of which were rather cool towards ending that war there and then. 5 Operation Desert Storm

In 1991, before the Kuwaiti war, a working relationship was established between the US and Iran to eliminate potential military misunderstandings and other related issues. Some saw this as offering the potential for a new dawn, others saw those exchanges as merely of an operational and practical nature. While anomalous, these exchanges were indeed seen as successful for both sides. One of the most significant examples was the issue of the Iraqi planes. Saddam Hussein had thought that if some of those planes could be parked in Iran, they would not be subjected to US bombardment and then could later be retrieved. Something different happened in practice: the planes were kept for good by the Iranians. This should be seen as a not-unfriendly gesture by Tehran towards Washington.

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6 The Conoco/Elf Aquitaine deal

After the Revolution in Iran, US oil companies were expelled from that country. Later, when the war against Iraq had ended, the Western hostages had been released from Lebanon and the war for the liberation of Kuwait was over, Tehran’s leadership needed an economic renaissance, and it then began to open its doors a little to Western oil companies. In 1992 and 1994, Iran entered into a different kind of negotiation with the US. Anomalous if you like, yet again, but as much based on political considerations as economic ones. The intermediary this time was Conoco on one side and the IRI on the other. After two years of negotiations, the US team was losing. Outmanoeuvred by the French company Total, it was ready to surrender, but it was rescued by the President of Iran. He offered Conoco a deal matching the one struck with Total; this was a gesture offered to the US. It was not to be as Washington declined, and with that Conoco bowed out. 7 Recovering Israeli soldiers’ remains in Lebanon

Both in the mid-1990s and from 2001 onwards, Germany was involved in the recovery of Israeli soldiers missing in action (MIAs) in Lebanon, including some identified during our operation to free the Western hostages. I cannot speak for the contacts German officials may have had with Iran on those two negotiations, but I can say that I was initially involved in the second negotiation, from October 2000 to April 2001. At the time I was asked to help by the Barak government, and I was later ‘fired’ by the Sharon government, to be replaced by German intelligence.2 I passed on to them the work that I had done with Iranian officials and in face-to-face meetings with Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon who, at the time of writing, is still the leader of Hezbollah. Over so many years I was perhaps one of the few Westerners to meet one to one with the leadership of Hezbollah.

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Tehran had made it possible for me to meet with the Hezbollah leader in autumn 2000 and into 2001. The negotiations with the leadership of the Lebanese group had made progress by the end of January. In one of those encounters my host even mentioned their interest in having relations with the US government, and added that some contacts had already been made. It was clear that Tehran facilitated the contacts with Hezbollah on the matter and indeed the direct discussions I had with its leader. While in both cases it took years of negotiations, they were eventually concluded. The remains were returned to Israel, thanks to the work of German intelligence and the parties involved. 8 Freeing 13 Iranian Jews from Shiraz

An equally long time, from 1998 to 2001, was needed for the negotiations I was asked to undertake for the freeing of 13 detained Iranian Jews from Shiraz. By the time I was approached by the leadership of the US Jewish Community I had left my role at the United Nations more than six years before. So President Khatami, who was elected in 1997, had come to power after my time. But contact with him was established fairly quickly with the help of Iranian officials I had known and worked with in years past and because President Khatami was striving for a ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’, with the aim of improving relations with the West. I was called to be part of that effort in some way. There was little I could offer as a quid pro quo at that time; nevertheless, with the co-operation of the government of Israel and Jewish organizations in the US, we could offer to tone down the publicity given to the case across the world. It was then a matter of stewarding the case through Iranian domestic politics. President Khatami, using a ‘Kissingerian expression’ (these were his own words), asked me to secure for him ‘decent intervals’. The new president of Iran was fully engaged in the matter and indeed his hope was to go much further on the way to a real rapprochement with the West. Indeed, the initiative of ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’,

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and the case of the 13 Jews from Shiraz, showed a number of cards which could have formed the future basis of a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington. But though the Iranian Jews were freed and eventually left Iran, and though the Clinton administration exchanged signals with Khatami’s presidency, that basis for talks did not survive the election of George W. Bush as the new US president. By early 2001, months before the attack on the World Trade Center, Bush had shown himself unwilling to continue his predecessor’s overtures. 9 Not quite a negotiation: in the United Nations Assembly

While what follows is not strictly a negotiation, it was nevertheless a symbolic opportunity which required the tacit approval of both the leaders of the US and Iran. In September 2000 in New York, a series of reciprocal gestures were exchanged between the Clinton administration and the Iranian government, involving the US Secretary of State and the Iranian President himself. For the first and last time both presidents accepted a symbolic deal: to be present in the General Assembly Hall at the UN to listen to one another’s speeches. It was indeed more significant for the Clinton administration, as US protocol had never allowed any US resident to remain in the Hall after delivery of his own speech. I first had to convince both sides to ‘play the game’ and second I had to think how to implement it. Neither side knew in advance how this would work. They just gave me their parameters and it was my responsibility to execute the deal. I have to admit that I had to use some subterfuge. The order in which heads of state take the floor in the UN Assembly is discussed – to use a euphemism – months in advance; the US was number two as always and Iran number 14. On that basis, there was no chance President Clinton would stay or return to the hall after such a long wait but he agreed to sit in for ten minutes more. So within a 20-minute window, I obtained the assent of both sides that President Khatami

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would be sitting at his chair when the US leader delivered his message; and I had to find a way to make sure that President Khatami would speak as number four in the list and not number 14. The President of Guatemala was number three in the list. So it was a question of how to make number 14 become number four. Thus, I prepared a simple note with two lines for the presiding officer, who customarily has a script even for the most mundane words he has to utter, including the introduction of each speaker. The Guatemalan President was having his turn at the podium when I approached the Secretary General (Kofi Annan), who sits to the right of the presiding officer, and, without saying anything, passed him the note with two lines which read: ‘Due to unforeseen circumstances I give the floor to the President of Iran.’ When Kofi Annan had read that, before passing it on he very quietly asked me if it was ‘a security issue’. ‘Possibly,’ I whispered; thus I did not actually lie. And so it happened that, to the surprise of many, the order of speakers, so carefully negotiated in July by various diplomats, was subverted for the purpose of sending a reciprocal signal to the presidents of these two adversaries. President Clinton had, by agreement and against any precedent, remained in the hall to reciprocate the presence of President Khatami during his speech some 20 minutes earlier. President Khatami had bigger ideas for the future of Iran–US relations, but it was not to be. It seems he may have been ahead of many of his contemporaries in that respect. Many other gestures had been exchanged between Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Iran during those weeks but to no avail. 10

9/11 and the Bonn Conference (2001)

The most significant negotiating success to take place between Tehran and Washington came about as a result of the events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war against the Taliban. The Bonn Conference in December 2001 found Iran and the US sharing common ground

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over assuring stability in Afghanistan. The alignments of the previous decades on Afghanistan had disappeared; indeed, by 2000, Russia and Iran were on the same side. After years of attempts to negotiate with the Taliban over the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, by the mid-1990s Iran had switched its support to the anti-Taliban forces. The opposition to the Taliban – the legendary Northern Alliance – had received money and weapons from Iran and Russia for years. The Bonn Conference was indeed the most significant development in relations between Washington and Tehran in 22 years, with Pakistan, the father of the Taliban, sitting on the other side of the fence. The participants at Bonn were the group of six (a UN group of countries involved in the Afghan quagmire), but when it came to the real inventing of the post-Taliban government in Kabul, the US and the Iranian delegation moved aside into a different room. Indeed US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iran’s ambassador, Javad Zarif, in a bilateral conversation, carried the success of the dialogue in Bonn. They were the heroes who were able to counteract the mediocrity of the institutions – at least for a while. Unfortunately, within a few weeks some of the potential benefits of that bilateral agreement were dissipated by George W. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech, once more destroying the seeds of peace that individuals had tried to nurture. The Iranian leadership was not the only one needing an enemy and a few weeks later President Khatami visited Kabul and had no political concerns about being photographed with President Karzai surrounded by US security personnel. 11 The US–Iraq War of 2003

Yet again, in 2003, with Khatami still president and with the same cast of characters from Bonn, ‘understandings of a logistical and military value’ were reached between Washington and Tehran as the war against Iraq began. While my knowledge is too limited to elaborate further,

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I was asked to pass messages on the eve of the hostilities; it appeared evident at that time that the potential for a more imaginative set of relations between the two countries (US and IRI) could have been pursued further. At the time it did not work as President Khatami reached the end of his term and other opportunities promoted by like-minded individuals came to an end. The fear that the Revolution could not survive without an enemy prevailed again and the ‘axis of evil’ syndrome, clearly an echo of the Cold War, became predominant in both the US and Iran in the post-Khatami era. 12 Freeing 15 Royal Navy officers

On 27 March 2007, 15 British Royal Navy personnel from HMS Cornwall were apprehended by the Navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, off the Iran–Iraq coast. A dispute then ensued between the two nations as to whether the British Royal Navy had illegally trespassed into Iranian waters or were wrongfully apprehended in Iraqi waters. For more than a week, exchanges via the Iranian President led nowhere and it was then that the office of the UK prime minister and the US approached me. I in turn approached the Iranian side, but once the road was open my operative role was not needed and, paradoxically, here the key was to bypass the President of Iran and communicate directly with Ayatollah Khamenei. Diverging claims as to whether the British Royal Navy personnel were in Iraqi or Iranian waters continued in both the press and Parliament, but eventually it was conceded that the waters in which the British personnel were taken into custody were not subject to any agreement between Iran and Iraq, and the initial claims that the navy personnel had been in Iraqi waters had been inaccurate. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) inquiry into the incident later determined that they were in disputed waters and that the US-led coalition had drawn a boundary line between Iran and Iraq without informing the Iranian government.

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Damascus was contacted for help, and British diplomats negotiated directly with Iran’s highest-ranking diplomat at the time, the then head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani. Larijani’s direct access to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was deemed indispensable for the soldiers’ quick release. The Syrian foreign minister at the time, Walid al-Moallem, also acknowledged his country’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ in abetting the British–Iranian negotiations. The key was that in the early days the contacts with the office of the Iranian President ultimately did not heed any result and, for an effective outcome, a channel to the Supreme Leader had to be established. On 31 March, President Ahmadinejad demanded an apology from the UK for encroaching upon Iranian territorial waters. President Ahmadinejad held a press conference in which he stated that the release of the British sailors would be presented as an Easter ‘gift’ to Britain, and rebuked the British government for sending a mother, Faye Turney, on a military expedition. The 15 personnel were eventually released on 4 April. At the press conference held outside the Presidential Palace, the British personnel met Ahmadinejad and were presented with Persian sweets and other gifts, prior to being put on a British Airways flight to London. 13 American hikers in Iran

On 31 July 2009, three American citizens were apprehended for allegedly crossing into Iranian territory while hiking along the Iranian– Iraqi Kurdistan border. The young hikers had decided to visit the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan for a holiday, since it is free of the sectarian conflict raging across much of the rest of Iraq. Upon their arrest, the Iranian authorities were quick to claim they were spies working on behalf of American intelligence services. The intermediary in this case was again not a superpower but Oman, whose role was critical.

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It was speculated that the difficulties over securing the hikers’ release revolved around the tussle between Iran’s President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian judiciary, the head of which was Sadeq Larijani, a member of the powerful Larijani family and rival of Ahmadinejad. Despite Ahmadinejad promising the hikers’ release, prior to a visit to the UN General Assembly, the judiciary bluntly repudiated the suggestion. It appears that the delay and doubts over the hikers’ timely release emanated, at least in part, from an attempt by the judiciary to embarrass the President. Ahmadinejad’s promise was thought to be the outcome of the establishment’s desire to portray a positive and benevolent image of the Islamic Republic to the world, ahead of the Iranian President’s visit to the UN, while at the same time there was a drive to undermine him at home and demonstrate that he was not the real decision maker. • The above examples illustrate how, when institutions empower individuals to build sustained relationships that cut across faceless bureaucracies, more can be achieved. But they also illustrate that the very concept of so-called ‘impartiality’ has finally proven to be illusory. After the Cold War, there was a proliferation of multilateral institutions which were to participate in the process of peacemaking, which was a response to the interconnectedness of globalization and the flattening of political hierarchies. The cost of this increased democratic involvement of multiple players has meant the ever-increasing bureaucratic machinery of governments. Whilst some of this may be inevitable, this chapter highlights the importance of protecting personal relationships in peacemaking to offer agility and opportunities to take some of the necessary risks quietly behind the scenes. Creativity is now required to intertwine the formalities of government and its complexity with an architecture that takes into account the creativity of the human spirit. Without this the art of peacemaking is lost.

9

The Changing Nature of Warfare Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953)

The written history of the world is largely the history of warfare, and, when we think of history, these are the images we frequently have in our minds. States came into existence largely through conquest, the use of force, violence and methods of warfare. Historically, groups in conflict would fight and the victor would impose his rule on the other by either wiping them out or dominating them. If you lost a war, you could expect to give up money, treasures, territory, weapons and anything the victor demanded. This universal phenomenon of warfare has dominated for the last 5,000 years, but more recent technological and material changes have made war so utterly devastating that we are now facing the probability that the twenty-first century could prove to be even more lethal than the twentieth, the most lethal century in history. Meanwhile, war ‘spreads and perpetuates itself through a dynamic that often seems independent of human will […] It has

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a life of its own’.1 It has no boundaries and will permeate peaceful societies, as warriors return home or cross continents. The motivation to go to war is complex, with multiple influences at work. Recently, the narrative for intervention has been to contain brutal tyrants who have inflicted terrible violence and imposed tyrannical rule on their people. But there are other driving forces, including the geopolitical fights over resources, and the considerable influence applied by the economic interests of a powerful and assertive defence industry. It can be argued that the development of military armament increases the likelihood of its use; at a time when a nation decides to go to war, it seems all the more tempting when the relevant industries are pushing for it and all the military hardware is in place. When you have at your disposal multiple planes, smart bombs and cruise missiles, the whole world can look like a target. In his farewell speech in 1961, President Eisenhower famously used his address to warn future US governments to ‘guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex’. What he foresaw was a ‘potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power’. But who is making the decisions to go to war, and are the ‘bigger picture’ questions being asked about the power and influence of the military–industrial complex? Those liberals who challenge expenditure on the military–industrial complex and therefore speak out against arms production are often seen as naive in their view of human nature. Even today when there is a constant debate between soft and hard power, amongst military decision makers, there is an underlying narrative that those who are prepared to wage war are the tough guys who really understand how men think and act, who are not deluding themselves, and that those who talk about peace do not understand the destructive nature of human behaviour. Some of them argue that in order to defeat the enemy military power is needed and that victory would come if only the politicians spent more money on the military. So the quagmire of conflict deepens and the demand to spend more money increases.

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Today, civil political leaders in many countries are barely equipped to deal with these major decisions. Politicians in the majority of countries now live in an age where there is no national service and are therefore unlikely to have any military knowledge or experience. This means that their attitudes towards the military tend to be more deferential, as they seldom have a full grasp of the complexity of military operations. Simultaneously, those in the military often tend to be ‘hugely optimistic, unquenchably enthusiastic, fiercely loyal to their institution, capable of group think, and ideally not too imaginative. All those qualities make for an effective war-fighting machine abroad and a powerful institutional lobby at home.’2 Constant emphasis on the need for superior technology and the aim of winning a decisive victory, and gaining unconditional surrender by the enemy, has driven the military mind. The steady spread of Western military might was powered by technology, discipline and aggressive military tradition. As von Clausewitz states in his On War, The direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration’ because ‘destruction of the enemy forces becomes the over-riding principle of war […] the overall aim of the western strategy, whether by battle, siege or attrition, has always remained the total defeat and destruction of the enemy.3 This stood in contrast to the position of the Chinese, who were the first to devise the philosophy and rules of war, long before Western societies had even thought about it. The Confucians emphasized notions of rationality and the importance of subordinating the warrior impulse to the constraints of law. The Christian dilemma over the morality of making war was resolved in the Middle Ages by constructing the notion of a ‘holy war’. According to historian John Keegan, this allowed the West to invest ‘Western military culture with an ideological and intellectual dimension it had thitherto lacked’.4

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Western technology underpinned its devastating effects with this ideology and a fight-to-kill policy. Asian culture adopted concepts of military restraint. The West forsook arms control and embarked on an approach that, according to Clausewitz, treated war as a continuation of politics and justified whatever means were necessary, including a huge loss of soldiers’ lives. The rise of nationalism was a modern development in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exported to the Third World, in part as a result of European imperialism. Hegel was to say that nationalism needed war and was a remedy for ailing nations. During the nineteenth century, most of the world came under European domination and World War I, which was fought between European states and the Ottoman Empire, was to continue the process of determining who would dominate the world’s resources and be able to exploit the resources of colonized countries. During the twentieth century, the world was to see two major world wars. World War I saw combatants of all nations trapped for a period of three years in an insoluble deadlock in the trenches. It marked ‘five years of slow, methodical battlefield encounters danced to the music of butchery’.5 Twenty-one million men were mobilized in 1914, but by 1918 the number of men fighting in the war had risen to 68 million. Later analysts and social commentators were to describe this Great War as a period of senseless slaughter with ‘frontline tales, the squalor and suicidal bravery, the culling of the youngest and best that has stuck in people’s minds’.6 During this blighted period, millions of young men lost their lives. In one day alone, at the start of the four-month Battle of the Somme in 1916, 20,000 British soldiers died and another 40,000 were wounded. Methods were devastating, with the Germans using chlorine gas at Ypres in 1915. This pernicious, poisonous green vapour immediately emptied the French trenches. Later that year the British were to use chlorine gas at Loos. By the end of this war, both sides were using even viler toxic gases, which included phosgene and mustard gas.

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Much of the riches of the industrialization of Europe went into militarizing the population, which is partly why wars were so devastating in the twentieth century. ‘The appalling human cost of this mass militarization suffered by the industrialized states in the second of the two world wars led to the development of nuclear weapons, designed to end wars without the commitment of manpower to the battlefield.’7 The new wars

In the strategic environment of the twentieth century, where the enemies were primarily nation states, total victory was possible. In World War II, there was unconditional surrender by Germany and Japan. Today, international conflict and its insecurities are not dictated only by the nation state. The new wars of the twenty-first century are witnessing a shift from ‘symmetrical’, inter-state wars towards ‘vertical’ or ‘asymmetrical’ confrontations between rulers and the ruled, between the more and less powerful, between state and non-state actors. Nonstate actors who do not have access to powerful weaponry use methods such as kidnapping, hostage-taking, suicide bombing and support of other terrorist groups. These methods may seem barbaric; however, these are the weapons used when the relationship between the parties is one of total inequality in terms of access to military power. Where one side has sophisticated weaponry that includes tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles and air defence systems, the other side will find other methods to counteract their power. Some have named suicide bombing as the human nuclear bomb. Today there is the emergence of a new kind of enemy, the non-state actor. Wars are no longer fought army to army or state to state; instead there are insurgency groups, loose groupings of transnational networks of fighters. Threats now present themselves without borders and can result in ‘the form of a cyber-attack, a financial meltdown, a pandemic, or a theft of nuclear material’.8 ‘In the face of these new enemies, typified by al-Qaida, the mass armies of the nation-state are highly ineffective.’9

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Cyberwars

Man has now created new weapons to fight wars, which in their hightech capacity have the ability to paralyse the functioning of states rather than destroy and kill. Whilst it could be argued that this is a much less harmful method, the consequences can ultimately threaten the very structures of government. On the surface, it would appear that such methods reduce the level of suffering, as the traumatic effect of violence is limited. However, their potential to do harm to the enemy could threaten the very infrastructure of societies and the ability of those societies to function. Meanwhile, these new emerging techniques are far from understood, both in terms of their psychological impact and their consequences for the infrastructure of nations. In the contemporary world, so much power now lies with computergenerated systems, and states or institutions can be attacked in an act of cyberwar. It is possible to argue that these bloodless cyberwars are essentially less violent and destructive than early methods of warfare. Whilst cyberwars are clearly killing fewer people at this point and may have a deterrent function, could they also act as a catalyst for full-blown war in the Middle East? In 2010, Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz were attacked by computer worm Stuxnet, allegedly developed by Israel, supported by the US. As a result of these attacks, the Iranian government escalated its attempts to create a closed system. The Stuxnet attack added urgency to Iran’s efforts to protect its nuclear facilities. It has been suggested that the virus was introduced via a USB flash drive. It remains unclear how exactly the Israelis were able to get the virus into Natanz, particularly as it is impossible to write a code like Stuxnet without intimate knowledge of the Siemens system which the Iranians were using. The speculation is that the Americans helped, and the basic research for Stuxnet may have taken place in the US. The use of this virus has now fundamentally changed the nature of potential cyber-attacks as part of conventional active war. New

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questions must now be asked as to what the word ‘cyberwar’ means in terms of military strategy. Is it legitimate to carry out a pre-emptive cyber-attack on another nation, and ‘are there types of targets we will not attack, such as banks and hospitals?’10 The US government recently issued a new cyberwar doctrine that defines a cyber-attack as a conventional act of war. The regime in Iran may now be less concerned by physical attack from the West, and more concerned by the potential of a cyberwar and infiltration by the West through the internet. The Revolutionary Guard has taken a lead in this virtual fight, and has acquired a majority stake in the state telecom monopoly. The Guard ‘has created a cyber army, as part of an effort to train more than 250,000 computer hackers’.11 Iran took the initiative by setting up its own national internet system, with the aim of disconnecting Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world. This act of soft war, supported by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, was an attempt to resist the intrusion of Western ideas and cultural influences, and this national network could eventually replace the global network in Iran. There would then be a dual-internet structure, in which banks, government ministries and large companies would still have access to the worldwide internet, so that they do not become economically isolated and can still do business with countries such as Russia, China and other trading partners. This dual-internet system has been used by other authoritarian regimes. Myanmar has established a system in which public internet connections are run separately through government-controlled and monitored systems. In North Korea, they are now taking their first steps into cyberspace, and are also establishing a dual-network system. Iran had early connectivity in the 1990s, making it the first Muslim nation in the Middle East to go online, second (in the Middle East) behind Israel. Access was for the educated young, and largely centred in cities. At first, the authorities encouraged internet use, as they saw it as a way of spreading Islamic ideology and a means of supporting science and technology. However, there was a backlash against this in

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the late 1990s under Khatami’s rule, with a response from the more conservative arms of government which shut down many of the reformists’ newspapers. One of the unintended consequences of this was that it triggered an explosion of the Iranian blogosphere. Journalists who lost their jobs with liberal newspapers started to blog online. The conservative authorities hit back in 2003, announcing that they had blocked 15,000 websites, according to a report by the OpenNet Initiative. Simultaneously, the authorities started to arrest bloggers. The idea of an Iran-only internet emerged in 2005 under the presidency of Ahmadinejad and was described as an attempt to empower Iranians and protect them from cultural invasion and threats. After the presidential elections in June 2009, which provoked wide protests and exposed some of the deep divisions within Iranian society, the limitations of Iran’s internet control were exposed – thereby heightening the regime’s desire to replace the worldwide internet system with a closed one. The Obama administration is working on a shadow internet and mobile-phone system that could be made available to oppositional groups and could be used to undermine repressive governments. The US State Department is in the process of setting up stealth wireless networks which will offer entirely separate pathways for communication. This would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries such as Iran, Syria and Libya. The need for it became even clearer when President Mubarak shut down the internet in the final days of his rule and, when faced with mass protest, the Syrian government did the same. There will be further discussion of the positive and negative impacts of the technological revolution in Part IV, ‘New Structures/Old Structures’. Killing at a distance: drone warfare

One of the major changes in the last 100 years has been the growing political cost of losing large numbers of men in armed conflict and the resulting reduction in deaths. This reduction is primarily on the

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side of those with expensive military technology. Sophisticated weapons that involve killing at a distance remove the disturbing aspect of physically seeing the enemy and the reality of the violence inflicted. Much of modern military tactics is geared towards manoeuvring the enemy into a position where they can essentially be massacred from safety.12 The emergence of a new kind of technology is overcoming the need for soldiers to be in a war zone. The US armed forces place heavy reliance on superior technology to compensate for their inferior numbers. One example of this technology is what the US intelligence agency officials call ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’, familiarly known as drones, which are directed from a position thousands of miles away from their target. The global market for military robotics and military hardware is growing fast, doing business with Russia, the UK and South Korea. These US pilotless armed drones are deployed under CIA command – ‘a procedure chosen because the CIA’s rules of engagement are less restrictive than those of the military’.13 The Pentagon now has 7,000 aerial drones, compared with 50 a decade ago, and more recently Congress was asked for nearly $5 billion to spend on drones in 2012. The reduction in US casualties reduces the American public’s opposition to the country’s involvement in war. The images of body bags in the Vietnam War provoked anger from the American people at being involved in a long-distance war. Whilst drones thus serve the interest of America’s domestic audience, in the countries where they are deployed they alienate people on the ground, who will ultimately need to be part of any resolution of conflict. This asymmetry creates an unequal playing field of war and those who do not have the equivalent military sophistication are likely to resort to methods that are deeply disturbing, such as the use of suicide bombing, in an attempt to make the situation more equal. So the technology reduces the body bags in the country that is using that technology, making its use more acceptable, but potentially enrages the populations of those countries against whom such methods are used.

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The use of drone warfare, with its technical excellence, has the capacity to focus on the enemy in such a way that it can seem like a war game, whereby the cost and consequences of killing have become distant and disconnected. Those concerned with military ethics point to how drone warfare is turning more and more into a video game, using remote pilots, joysticks and computer screens to direct these operations without any human contact. There is no blood to be seen, and the deadly consequences of war and its suffering are anaesthetized. Critics therefore ask whether, when not being exposed to the pain of war, governments are more easily drawn into conflict and are led to ignore civilian casualties. It has been claimed that, since 2006, not only have more than 1,900 insurgents been killed by American drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas,14 but also thousands of civilians. The military–industrial complex

Western culture generally chooses not to reflect on the significant power and influence elite groups carry in the military–industrial complex and its ability to influence issues of war and peace and to shape government policy. The power of this industry, and the way government decisions are made, means it can avoid the bigger question as to what our over-riding values are and what kind of society we want to live in. Most arms projects today are influenced by the need to enhance industrial structure, develop science and technology, create jobs and improve trade balances. According to Andrew Feinstein, the author of an important book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (2011), much of the ‘arms industry and its powerful political friends have forged a parallel political universe that largely insulates itself against the influence or judgment of others by evoking national security. This is the shadow world’.15 The vast growth of the arms industry in the US was largely stimulated by the Vietnam War. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and President Johnson, and one of the prime

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architects of that war, says it ‘was central to launching both the nuclear arms race and the commercialization of the arms business’.16 In his later years, he had time to reflect and to take responsibility for being an architect of so much destruction (as mentioned in the Introduction). At the time of the Vietnam War, he believed the best way to finance the indigenous weapons programmes at home was to sell as many arms abroad as possible. Modern weaponry was too expensive to be economically viable when produced only for the nation – therefore export was essential. It was President Kennedy who presented this commercial package as a set of ideological values by talking about the need to defend democracy by drastically modernizing America’s allies’ military capabilities. Kennedy introduced a strategy ‘requiring rearmament at the same time that he introduced a policy of selling weapons’.17 Interwoven with and supporting this position is the military–industrial complex with its disproportionate influence on governments. Here we see the powerful combined force of the defence establishment backed by large corporate interests. As President Eisenhower said, This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.18 Indeed, Eisenhower’s warning was a wise one. Despite living in a safer world, we continue to wage war – at ever-increasing cost. The global military–industrial complex today boasts more than 20 million people in uniforms, not including roughly 54 million reservists. Combined global military expenditure reached $1.6 trillion in 2010 – more than the annual cost of running a country like Germany or France – which breaks down to $235 for every person on the planet.19 Adjusted for inflation, this sum lies well above the highest defence expenditure levels of the Cold War era.

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The realities of contemporary capitalism have led to ‘a marriage between the state and the means of production, an integration of the elites into an interchangeable technocracy’.20 Hence we find a deep contradiction: at home Western society values freedom, dignity and the right of the individual to control his life. However, when it comes to international politics and intervention, many critics would say that Western foreign policy is seldom driven by the same moral and ethical considerations. John Ralston Saul in Voltaire’s Bastards makes a cogent argument that the most important capital good produced in the West today is weaponry. The enormous growth in armaments, he argues, provides a perfect demonstration of the rationality of politics, but with the absence of ethics. Here we see the prolonged collaboration ‘between most of the key modern elites – politicians, bureaucrats, corporate managers, staff officers, scientists and economists’.21 According to Saul, an economic–political–military truism emerged in which domestic arms production was financed by exporting the arms produced, and these sales were ‘to become a religion to the Western world’.22 Those involved in the creation of this weaponry were not thinking about the nature of the material or its impact, but more about the creation of wealth. Scientists working on nuclear weapons developments and those sitting in factories, making the components of small arms, seldom see their role as asking moral questions about the consequences of being part of this weapons production. The non-governmental world, with such organizations as Amnesty International and Saferworld, have led a campaign to pursue an armstrade treaty (ATT) with the aim of holding governments accountable. The world is awash with conventional weapons such as tanks, firearms and aircraft with a market value of between $60 billion and $240 billion a year. Many of these arms sales are fuelling conflicts in such places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Syria. In 2009, the UN committed to pursuing an ATT; in order for that ATT to be effective, it would need strong enforcement and anti-corruption measures. The opening of negotiations in 2010 also marked a high point in the

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revelation of arms-trade corruption.23 In 2012, the UN voted in favour of the ATT, with the aim of holding governments accountable. The aim of the treaty is to stem the flow of weapons, with the hope that it will help curb violence in the world’s most troubled regions. The intention is to bring some order to a market where export controls have left a gap for rogue dealers to exploit, and by raising international standards to make it more difficult for weapons to reach illicit markets. The most critical provision is that it will forbid governments to authorize the sale of weapons if they are being used for one or more of the following five purposes: to provoke or aggravate regional instability; to commit serious violations of humanitarian or human rights law; to hamper efforts to reduce poverty; to commit transnational organized crime; and to support or perpetrate terrorist acts. Whilst the treaty has no compulsory enforcement mechanisms, it exposes the arms-trade process to new levels of transparency with more rigorous licensing and reporting. The Iran–Iraq War provided a clear example of the contradictions in foreign-policy standards in a time when the economics of armament sales often supersede moral beliefs. Here we see how countries’ perceptions of their self-interest shaped political decision making without any evaluation of the longer-term consequences and how decisions would affect the relationship of the different parties. At the time, almost every country condemned the war. But 50 nations sold arms to one or other side. In Chapter 1, Picco has highlighted how it was only stopping the flow of money from Saudi Arabia to Iraq to purchase weapons that forced Saddam Hussein to accept the end of hostilities. The events of 9/11 have given fresh impetus to a Cold War-style discourse of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, and so has made it easy for the military industry and political leaders to push for ‘action’. Since 2001, the US, in co-operation with its allies, has regarded itself as being on a mission to save not only their nation but also the world from those forces which violently oppose Western liberalism and democracy, and do so in the name of Islam. Following the destruction of the

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World Trade Center and the killing of 3,000 American citizens, the US declared a ‘war on terror’, and has been determined to pursue it at substantial costs: the US defence budget has risen by 119 per cent in the last ten years. This is the largest increase in military spending since World War II. US defence expenditure, when also taking into account $122 billion for veterans, mounts up to $861 billion in 2011. The operations in Afghanistan alone will cost $110.3 billion. Another $43.4 billion has financed operations in Iraq.24 People not only in the US or Britain but worldwide could benefit from shrinking war machinery. But another argument is often presented: that if the UK were to take a more ethical position on the sales of arms, other countries would immediately step in to pick up the business. In tough economic times, the connection between the arms industry and jobs has become a most appealing argument. Foreign aid currently accounts for less than 1 per cent of the US budget. Where war has been fought, the capacity for reconstruction needs to be enlarged, and funds should be administered for the benefit of those who lost houses, infrastructure and jobs. Instead, as recently as June 2011, the US Congress was told that $6.6 billion dollars of foreign aid money is likely to have been stolen in Iraq in what has been described as the largest theft of funds in US national history. Here we see the marriage of interests between the militaries and the industries – which in turn have strong influence on governments. Andrew Feinstein notes that, within a year of taking office, President George W. Bush had given more than 30 arms-industry executives and lobbyists senior positions in his administration.25 One arrangement that helps to maintain the convergence of industrial with government interests is the high percentage of retiring military officials taking on senior executive positions in corporations doing mega business with the Pentagon. Many of them also serve as paid consultants to the Pentagon. A major investigation by The Boston Globe explains this ‘revolving-door culture’, pointing out that ‘from 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as

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consultants or executives’.26 The global military industry is sustained by capital budgets of at least $400 billion annually. It is concentrated in a few hands. Out of the ten largest arms-producing companies, eight are American (including Lockheed Martin), one is British (BAE), and one is Italian. Together, they sold arms worth $228 billion in 2009. Non-violent action

There is, however, room for optimism in our fast-changing world. At times the well-oiled tools of warfare are not being used; we have seen the emergence of the organization of non-violent action as a serious tool for overthrowing repressive regimes. The empowerment of the citizen at a grassroots level and their use of non-violence is happening on a global scale. Since 1980, in several malign regimes, dictatorships have been collapsing under the weight of the concerted political, economic and social defiance of mobilized citizens. Much inspiration for this movement stems from the work of an American intellectual, Gene Sharp, a man of 83, with stooped shoulders and white hair, who has a penchant for growing orchids. He is the author of From Dictatorship to Democracy, a 93-page guide on how to overthrow autocrats, and has spent 40 years researching and writing on non-violent struggle. In his handbook, he explores how dictatorships have collapsed when confronted by defiant mobilized groups. Available in 24 languages, Sharp’s guide has inspired dissidents around the world from Zimbabwe to Bosnia and Myanmar, and now to Tunisia and Egypt. It is based on studies of revolutionaries such as Gandhi, and the essential message from Gene Sharp is that non-violent protest demands very careful strategy and meticulous planning. Peaceful protest is more effective, he argues, not for moral reasons but because using violence feeds into the nasty methods of autocrats and legitimizes them. ‘If you fight with violence […], you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.’27 Physical weapons

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are used to intimidate, injure and kill, whereas a non-violent struggle is fought ‘by psychological, social, economic and political weapons applied by the population and the institutions of the society’.28 He examines how people who have been exposed to oppressive regimes often experience themselves as weak and lack the selfconfidence to resist. Self-discipline and training are therefore essential. This involves in-depth strategic planning and very meticulous organization and preparation. Methods include non-violent uprising, civil-rights protests and economic boycotts. Key to the use of nonviolence is choosing your targets and assessing where the power points lie in the regime as well as the areas of potential weakness. ‘In nonviolence you are risking your life (if necessary) so that no one will be killed, whereas in combat you are risking your life to kill others.’29 The recent revolutions in the Middle East, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt (2011), drew on the principles of non-violence. In these two countries, there were political transitions from an autocratic government to democratic elections, contrasting with non-violent protests in the early days of the Syrian revolution which were to morph into terrible sectarian violence. The salvation of the Egyptian uprising was the refusal of the military to use force as there was a close alignment between civil society and the military, although two years later, non-violent principles were being eroded with the threat of escalating violence under an interim military government. In fostering potential effectiveness, it would be important for those using nonviolent principles to engage with a military not by threatening them, but by connecting with them, through the humanity of their cause. The Egyptian revolt accumulated momentum over a long period of time. In 2005, the youth movement was organizing but they were unable to get real momentum as arrests decimated their leadership ranks. By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their keyboards and turned into bloggers. These methods were copied by the progressive youth in Tunisia and both groups exchanged accounts of their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians had to deal with a more

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pervasive police state than the Egyptians, where there was less potential for blogging and less press freedom, but they had a tradition of stronger trade unions which were more independent than their Egyptian counterparts. These groups were to alight on the Serbian youth movement Otpor, which had played a key role in toppling the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević and had drawn on Sharp’s political ideas. The Egyptian movement continued to grow. Initially, most of the young organizers came from affluent backgrounds, but they wanted to tap into the widespread frustration against the autocratic regime and the grinding poverty of Egypt’s society. They used slogans such as ‘They are eating pigeon and chicken, but we eat beans every day.’30 Drawing on the experience of the non-violent protest movement, the next step was to organize a day of rage. They brought lemons, onions and vinegar to sniff as protection against inhaling tear gas, and soda and milk to pour into their eyes. They brought spray paint to spray on the windshields of police cars and they were prepared to stuff the police cars’ exhaust pipes and smash their wheels. One afternoon, a few thousand protesters stood their ground against 1,000 heavily armed riot police officers, which some say was the pivotal battle of the revolution. What was significant was the level of organizational discipline, with people who were injured being replaced in a rotation system.31 Those who were in the vanguard of the revolution were not, however, the ones to take political power in the elections, as they had devised the collective skills to overthrow their governments but had not as yet established the political infrastructure to win elections. The exchanges that took place on Facebook played an important preparatory role in creating the conditions that gave birth to the wave of protests that took place in the Middle East. Facebook interactions provided the practical advice about how to manage the impact of tear gas. ‘Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on how to use technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.’32

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In this climate, ‘innovations that happen from the bottom up tend to be chaotic but smart; innovations that happen from the top down tend to be orderly but dumb […] The Tahriri revolutionaries [named after Tahrir Square where protesters gathered] were smart but chaotic, and without leadership.’33 These revolutions grew out of a deep desire for people to run their own lives, and be treated with dignity and respect. ‘Dignity before bread’ was the slogan of the Tunisian revolution. And we can see how the interconnection of all the emerging technologies has created a political momentum with common features that cross countries and continents. Social-media networking is an effective way of gathering people together and mobilizing them, but in the end the organizers have to have a clear agenda and know what they are trying to do. The Egyptian youth uprising in April 2008 was a failure because they were not organized and did not know what to do. Later, they were trained by the Serbian Srda Popović’s group CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) and taught the disciplines of non-violent resistance, learning how to treat the police not as their enemies but as their allies and to adhere to unity within the group. Otpor, which evolved into CANVAS, did a series of six consultations with Egyptian youths in Belgrade in 2009. Their training emphasized that it was essential to identify the pillars of power in an autocratic regime, such as the police, army and media. Popović emphasizes that these pillars of power are not to be attacked, as this would lead to violence, but that these institutions are to be drawn in to support the protest. He believes that Egypt was a perfect example of this, as the protesters engaged with the army, which was one of the reasons why there was no violent crackdown. Popović argues that there are two key principles that shape the methodology. The first is that violence must never be used, and the second is that foreigners must never be involved in leading the uprising. He argues that the uprisings in Egypt bore the hallmarks of the Belgrade protests in 2000, but he also emphasizes that each revolution is different and

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that it is essential to adapt universal tools that apply to the culture of each country.34 Key to the ultimate effectiveness is the breakdown of fear. ‘If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble’ is one of Gene Sharp’s guiding principles.35 For some, war is like a grand chess game, where the generals are experimenting with their tactics and strategy. But according to John Ralston Saul in Voltaire’s Bastards, the US has not won a war since 1945 (though the 1991 war against Iraq in Kuwait could be seen as a victory). ‘This failure of the largest, most extensively trained and best-armed military forces in the history of the world should cause the citizenry to pause to reconsider its assumptions about organized violence.’36 As we have seen, Gene Sharp is very clear that the use of violence to overthrow a regime can lead to more violence, as the new government may be even more oppressive than the old one. He writes: ‘the new clique may turn out to be more ruthless and more ambitious than the old one.’37 There is currently public revulsion against the use of force to resolve conflict and yet governments are still wedded to investing in powerful military apparatus to address issues of security. Governments and politicians, when making decisions to go to war, seem to have short memories about its devastating effects and often little idea of how to proceed, how to resolve the conflict or find an exit strategy. Given that the wars of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have taken such extreme, ruthless forms, it becomes facile to assume that this is the only alternative for mankind. According to the military historian John Keegan, war ‘may well be ceasing to commend itself to human beings as a desirable or productive, let alone rational means of reconciling discontents’.38 He then insists that this is not mere idealism. Perhaps the game has changed, but politicians, egged on and even controlled by the arms industry, show no signs of accepting this. The one area for hope now is the growth of non-violent action, with the empowerment of citizens challenging elite groups as to how decisions are made and resources allocated. It is hoped that this will be a mushrooming force for the future.

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Alternatives to War: Do We Need to Get Smarter? It is better to save a life by feeding a hungry stomach than to take a life by producing another deadly weapon. Andrew Feinstein

One of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century is the question of whether in international conflict the use of armed force to remove an ‘unjust’ social order makes a safer world. We seem to be trapped in a crude, bipolar choice, in which we either use military force to remove an oppressor or we do nothing. Perhaps there are alternative choices available. Non-military options are insufficiently considered and there is little place in the relevant systems for serious, well-resourced early intervention and mediation to attempt to prevent the outbreak of violence. In the weary debate on intervention that has run through the last years, the more nuanced and subtle voices questioning the consequences of using force as a means of intervention have often been called naive left-wingery and have been shouted down. People of all shades of opinion get caught up in debate about ‘doing the right thing’, but insufficient thought is given to how we do this and whether we can get serious about well-resourced non-military intervention.  The United Nations, on its 50th anniversary in 2005, declared that

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if states did not protect their people from atrocities, the wider international community should act to do so, if necessary using military power. This is the essence of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ agenda.1 Objectives in the pursuit of such intervention can include both military invasion and humanitarian aid. It could, however, be argued that the only necessary criterion, when judging intervention and ‘the right thing to do’, is that it improves the lives of those we intend to help. According to former British foreign secretary David Owen, ‘it is the politician’s duty to intervene only when intervention is likely to improve the status quo and to resist the clamour for action for its own sake.’2 James Dobbins, a veteran diplomat, argues that there are three tests to be passed when considering military intervention: ‘first, that such intervention is morally and legally justified; second, it is militarily and politically feasible; and third, it would significantly advance an acceptable resolution to the conflict’.3 The decision to apply military force is amongst the most important a government can make. Too often, decisions to go to war do not fully analyse the long-term process and its consequences. The focus of the international community is alerted once the violence has broken out. There are too few early warning systems in place to attempt to mediate before an outbreak of violence, and a lack of serious commitment to creating the relevant structures for peacemaking. History tells us that it is easier to get into conflict than to get out, and war and its consequences have their dangerous algorithms, feeding on themselves with a devastating momentum of their own. The road to war may look like a careful strategic assessment; more likely it is mired in a deep fog of misunderstanding and misreading which can unleash an unpredictable chain of events, with governments going to war with little understanding of the consequences. Decision makers get deeper into the morass, attempting to justify the earlier decisions and thereby compounding the fog of war.  Because the consequences are so devastating, there is a need for a complex analysis that considers the multiple influences that shape decisions to go to war. This should be complemented by a clear

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assessment of the endgame and what it is hoped that intervention will achieve; then, in a wider geopolitical context, the consequences of different kinds of intervention should be weighed up. David Miliband, when he edited the 16 July 2012 issue of the New Statesman, eloquently wrote: ‘Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds with analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.’ Given the complexity and gravitas of decisions to go to war, it is essential to have structures for decision making that involve a rigorous and disciplined debate, including consideration of non-military options. Questions will need to be asked as to who the parties really are, what intervention will look like to the people on the ground, whether this will create a long or short-term end to violence and whether there are realistic alternatives that have been properly examined. Today, more than ever in the past, it is important to ask: are we sure the existing geopolitical architecture already with us is still appropriate for this fast-changing world? Traditional institutions tend to see the world as it has been, have difficulty finding a vision for the future and are, by their very nature, resistant to inventing new structures. They are more prone to repetitive cycles of justifying actions that do not reflect a fast-changing world and how we might best resolve conflict. A wider lens: through other people’s eyes

In the early days of assessing the course of intervention, it is helpful to address the analysis through multiple lenses and to be aware of the limitations of seeing the picture only through a Western ‘narrative’. In an attempt to extend our understanding, it is valuable to involve those who understand and have practical experience of the local populations involved. Such an assessment could use anthropologists and psychologists, all of whom have specialist knowledge as to how communities are thinking at a grassroots level and how they will experience intervention. When families experience conflict, be it

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parents who are divorcing, or an adolescent son who has continuous fights with his father, both sides claim the rightness of their position and each party wants the third parties to align themselves with their point of view. However, deciding that one is ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’ is not always possible. There is a history and context to every conflict, and it is rare that one side has continuously behaved well. Usually all parties played a part in the deteriorating relationship and all sides in conflict tend to behave badly.  This is just as true at the macro level of politics, where history and experience accumulate and grow over time, deeply influencing how nations behave and react to one another. We could fruitfully examine what has happened between groups in conflict and how their behaviour has impacted on the other. A lack of understanding will obfuscate how such fighting erupts and thereby leave us in the dark about how we can intervene to contain the violence. Early intervention may be hugely important because once blood has been spilt and lives lost, the climate is such that people are baying for blood and less likely to be in a mood to end the conflict. When the conflict becomes entrenched, our natural instinct, when we have suffered, is to want to make the other side suffer. Our impulse is to hit back, and the desire to destroy the other is usually motivated by the belief that it will protect our own survival. In fact it may, at times, plant the seeds for our own destruction. The cost of insufficient strategic planning

Over the last decade the UK has been involved in two major military engagements, both characterized as ‘strategic failures’. The mechanisms and reasoning behind both decisions to go to war have been demonstrated, by a series of ex post facto enquiries, published memoirs of political and military figures, and the security situation ‘on the ground’ in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and have been assessed to have been inadequate at best, and, at worst, dangerous for UK and global security. These wars have also shown the current system of presenting

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the information to those at the heart of the decision-making process to be inadequate, not giving full consideration to the consequences, and to many looking like a rubber-stamping exercise. The case of Iraq has highlighted the ways in which limited access to classified intelligence, combined with little engagement with relevant experts in Iraq’s history and culture, both in terms of individual and collective narratives, prevented those in positions of power from making the most effective decisions. Time pressures will be heightened in the event of unanticipated, immediate threats to national security, but in the cases of both the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, the government did not need to take hurried action. There was time for wide-ranging discussion and rigorous consideration. How far were non-military options seriously explored with a proper analysis of the after-effects of longterm intervention? The consequences of the decision to go to war are huge, and those in positions of power are often unaware of the narrow lens through which they look when they make their decisions. In the 2003 war with Iraq, the US believed that American troops would be welcomed by the Iraqi people and that the consequences of intervention would change the geopolitical landscape, making it more favourable to the West and Israel. This was not the case. What actually happened served to strengthen Iran’s regional role as a result of its increased influence in Iraq. Of course, there are always unintended consequences of going to war, but in the assessment of going to war there was a lack of understanding of the regional history, both recent and further in the past. The US had not factored in that the legacy of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, exacerbated by years of Western sanctions, made it inevitable that, even after the fall of the authoritarian dictator, there would be huge needs for retaliation and the avenging of wrongs that had been suppressed. Without the input of historians, the significance of the Iraqi mindset could not be understood. Even today, the impact on individual and group narratives of a date in the eleventh century and another in 1534 is great. For the Sunnis of the Arab world, 1100 was the time

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of the last Shi‘i caliphate, which covered a territory from Mecca to Morocco, and 1534 was the date of the conquest of Baghdad by the Ottoman Suleiman I from the Shi‘a, and the beginning of Sunni domination of the Tigris and Euphrates regions. This religious dimension has now been reawakened, not least as a result of the Western invasion of Iraq which has served to deepen the divisions between Muslim Sunnis and Shi‘a. Emma Sky, who was a political adviser to General Odierno, commander of the US forces in Iraq, and part of the team that implemented the counter-insurgency strategy that helped to control the civil war that erupted in the country, understood the more recent historical context. She was interviewed in depth by the Guardian newspaper in July 2012. She was very clear that there was a misconception among the US brigade who at the time saw themselves as liberators and were angry that the Iraqis were not more grateful […] I told them that people who invaded other people’s countries, and killed people who were not a threat to them, would never be loved. I said that after the first Gulf war which killed 100,000 Iraqis, a decade of sanctions with the devastating effects on health, education and the economy, and the humiliating defeat of the second Gulf war, I could well understand why Iraqis were shooting at us.4 The decision to go to war is of enormous consequence and, unless we find ways to understand the historical significance and get into the mind of the enemy when we are making these enormous strategic calculations, we will continue to repeat the cycles of destruction that we enacted in the Iraq war.  The postwar reconstruction plan was to precipitate Iraq’s decline into chaos and reflected how out of touch the US decision-making process was with the real experience of the Iraqi people. Again Emma Sky is clear that ‘some Americans believed Iraq could become a

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democracy that would serve as a model for the region. Most Iraqis had not consented to this experiment, or to being occupied by foreign forces.’5 The plan that was implemented was a de-Ba’athification process in which thousands of professional people would lose their jobs at a stroke, including doctors and schoolteachers. In practice, it became more like a witch hunt and fragmented the very core of the country’s infrastructure with the disbanding of the security forces and the sacking of its civil servants. This reckless act of dismissing all those who had been employed by the previous regime was to plant the seeds of the insurgency, and many of those who were now unemployed and had been Saddam Hussein’s army would take their weapons with them. The consequences of the ensuing violence and the fragmentation of Iraqi society into sectarian conflict was to make liberal intervention a dirty word and demonstrated the lack of proper, disciplined, strategic thinking about the consequences of the intervention. In any planning process, it can make a difference if those involved in decision making are trained in strategic thinking and can imagine what conditions could look like one year on if, for example, there were to be a failure in the implementation of the original plan. They would need to create situations in which they imagined what the worst-case scenario would look like and what preparations could be made to deal with such an outcome. This highlights, as in other cases we have been exploring in this book, how important it is to have a deep understanding of the region, its culture and how the people are thinking. Professor Oliver Ramsbotham, who is an expert in conflict resolution and directs the Palestinian Strategy Group for Oxford Research Group, has developed ideas of how to engage when there is a radical disagreement. His particular concern is how you respond to what appears to be the intractable nature of modern conflict. He believes that where groups have become stuck in rehearsed arguments and old, cynical rhetoric, these patterns can be challenged by using strategic complexity thinking. He says, ‘At times of intense political conflict one of the first victims is strategic communication. Parties

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in conflict are internally divided and become incapable of inclusive strategic thinking that takes proper account of systemic complexity.’6 The reason why strategic complexity thinking is valuable in these scenarios is that it allows those who are fixed in ideological positions to think about the multiple influences that are shaping a conflict. In doing this kind of thinking, the intention is to go beyond ideological rigidity, open minds to multiple influences that are shaping the conflict, and make rational calculations as to what is in the best interest of the parties to bring about the conditions to end the conflict. As has been said, too often decisions to go to war do not fully analyse the long-term consequences of conflict. Whatever actions are taken, there are bound to be unforeseen consequences and this should caution the would-be decision maker in their choice of strategy. Military superiority is the easy first step, but creating and sustaining the peace is the real work. The fog of peacemaking is often extremely hazy, erratic and unpredictable. UK Member of Parliament Rory Stewart, when talking about Afghanistan, a country in which he has spent a lot of time, said that this war is unwinnable and Western governments are pursuing illusory goals. ‘After seven years of refinement, the policy seems so buoyed by illusions, caulked in ambiguous language and encrusted with moral claims, analogies and political theories that it can seem futile to present an alternative.’7 The consequences of this unsuccessful use of force should now create caution amongst decision makers about intervention. This challenges us to explore seriously whether the international community can become smarter in alternative interventions and thereby make the use of force the last resort. Behind the scenes: Syria, early intervention of the third kind

By late 2000, long after he had left his full-time UN job, Picco was asked by the Israeli government to make contact with the leader of Hezbollah to explore the circumstances of two Israeli soldiers who

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had been taken in October 2000 along the Lebanese–Israeli border. It was via the government of Iran that he was able to arrange to meet with the Hezbollah leader, Nasrallah. He met face to face with him on several occasions in an intimate setting, with only one additional person present. During those encounters it emerged that Nasrallah had friendly working relations with the young Bashar Assad, a friendship of sorts, a relationship that was deeper than with Assad the father. Picco had experienced the tense relationship between Hezbollah and Assad the father in 1991, when he had been involved in the liberation of the Western hostages from Lebanon. He had been very aware of the uncomfortable relationship that existed between the Party of God (Hezbollah) and the government of Syria. But some ten years later, with a new Assad in power, the leader of Hezbollah did not hide his friendship with the young Assad; whether this had to do with their similar ages or a shared view of the world, it is hard to say. This relationship was to be of great significance during the Syrian civil war. During those encounters the fate of the Israelis missing in action was never clarified with any certainty, but a package of sorts was put together which would also involve the freedom of Lebanese detained by Israel. But it was not the only purpose of the mission. Picco had also been asked to test out whether Hezbollah might be prepared to hand over Imad Mughniyah to the US. He was a very senior security member of Hezbollah who had been associated with the US embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983, which had killed over 350 American soldiers, and with the seizure of the TWA airliner in 1985 which had involved the killing of US citizens. He was also thought to be the mastermind behind the Western hostage saga in the 1980s. During Nasrallah’s conversations with Picco, he indicated that he was not against communicating with the US and hinted at a possible channel. Whilst the US was to ask quietly for this channel to be explored, when it came to the decision, those who had initiated this possible opening were not to succeed. Was a chance missed to change the dynamics of the region, which could have involved saving many

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lives of all religious denominations, by taking the risk of engaging with the leader of Hezbollah? This might, as a consequence, have created a shift in the relationship with Syria itself. But it was not to be. Whilst boldness was demonstrated in the first instance in opening up these channels of communication, ultimately the kind of institutional agility that was needed was not to succeed. Institutions and those in positions of power rarely demonstrate the kind of boldness and risk-taking that is needed to transform conflict. It would have taken visionary leadership in the US to shift these regional dynamics, bring Hezbollah in from the cold and transform its enemy status with the kind of political pragmatism that would allow business to be done. This might have helped reduce some of the political faultlines, which were to precipitate the civil war in Syria. At the time it was a bridge too far for the political leadership in the US. Multilateral institutions, and ideologically driven governments, have an innate resistance to showing the kind of risk-taking that is sometimes needed to change the dynamics of conflict. Hence, as Picco has graphically shown in Chapter 1, the need for individuals to be given legitimacy by these institutions and empowered to open up channels to explore opportunities to shift the regional dynamics. The guiding principle in government is frequently to manage risk in such a way that those governing are not exposed to failure. This cautious approach reduces the likelihood of success and thereby highlights why the role of the mediator needs to take place quietly, off the record, without the knowledge of the media. It could make a difference if governments supported such mediation processes, and were trained in the kind of risk-taking that is necessary both to prevent and to resolve conflict. War in Syria

Syria, as it exists today, was invented by the colonial powers and is the fruit of the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, and of World War I. A century later, things are looking different. Not only has the

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architecture of the Cold War been removed, but also the Levant of 1990, where major outside powers such as the USSR and the US had more influence, has changed, as regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia now have more influence there. Part of the shift in the regional dynamic has been precipitated by the strengthening of Iran’s influence in Iraq, as a result of Western removal of the secular government in Iraq in 2003. There are now much closer links between the two countries, which has opened the door to the return of Shi‘i power in Iraq. The context of the Syrian civil war now needs to be understood in the context of the history of the region and its changing architecture over the last 100 years. The lack of historical interpretation and potential misreading of the narratives in the region has reduced the opportunity to intervene in such a way that could shift the regional dynamics to prevent further confrontations. The war in Syria could be seen both in a wider historic context and as a result of more recent events of the 2003 Iraq War and the recalibration of Sunni–Shi‘i power. After this war Shi‘i power was to dominate Iraq, and the civil war that was to erupt later in Syria was to mirror this struggle for power between these two versions of Islam. The Syrian crisis did not begin in 2011 and it did not begin in Syria. It is perhaps tragically a precursor of a much wider regional war, in which a full-frontal conflict between the two continental Islamic shelves of Shi‘ism and Sunnism could clash in a third chess game. The major conflict is that in Mesopotamia, which has not yet been played out fully, though it is well in the making since the US army left Iraq. Both sides would like to avoid a frontal chess game here as it is too big for both of them, and therefore it is perhaps over Mesopotamia that Saudi Arabia and Iran may actually reach a negotiated understanding, as President Rohani seems to have implied. As discussed above, these regional tensions between the Shi‘a and the Sunnis are rooted in narratives of long ago, the historic warnings from the eleventh century at the time of the last Shi‘i caliphate from Mecca to the western shore of the Mediterranean, and from

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the conquest in 1534 of Baghdad by the Sunni Ottomans – and thus the loss of Shi‘i power over Mesopotamia. Following the 2003 war in Iraq it has become clear to many that the nascent new architecture of the region was linked first and foremost to the Saudi–Iranian divide and the demise of Sunni Iraq. The war in Iraq returned the Shi‘a to power in Baghdad as a majority. This was to disrupt the continuation of Alawite Shi‘i power in Damascus, which was to become unsustainable as part of a regional balance of power. The relationship between Tehran and the new Baghdad is destined to be different from that between the two capitals under Saddam Hussein, and there is the possibility of more changes in the future. The change in the regional power balance, as a result of the rise of Shi‘i power in Iraq, will not be acceptable to the Saudis. But war does not have to be the only solution, and the current position in Syria, and de facto in Iraq, due to a Shi‘i majority in Baghdad, cannot remain unchanged if Tehran wishes to avoid a more direct confrontation in Mesopotamia. Recognizing the regional power play between Saudi Arabia and Iran is more likely to put an end to a Syrian civil war than any military option. It may also involve rewriting the political geography of the Levant, which would now be written not by the early colonialists but by the inhabitants of the region. The majority of Shi‘a has re-emerged in Iraq and the majority of Sunnis is now re-emerging in Syria. Any future agreement will involve the redistribution of power so that minority groups can no longer monopolize the lives of the majority. One of the features of colonialism and the drawing of the regional map in 1916 was the colonial power support for the leadership of minorities. This is no longer acceptable. A rebalancing may now involve the redrawing of the political architecture of the Levant by the inhabitants of the region to address these power imbalances.8

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The leading Shi‘i and Sunni countries are unavoidably players in a new architecture. The challenge is whether a non-conflictual solution can be found where majority rule no longer means the oppression of minorities. Tragically, Syria is not an independent issue even in war, and the new architecture of the Levant may require imagination and forward thinking in which the boundaries are re-examined. This examination needs to consider whether they express the faultlines of the groups, their identities and how they exist today. This will require serious consideration. An alternative view is that the Sykes–Picot borders have acquired a reality of their own over the passing decades. According to James Harkin, a journalist who has spent time with the Syrian rebels, ‘Those in think tanks like to float the break-up of the Syrian state as a potential solution, but I have yet to meet a Syrian who is enthusiastic about it, or thinks it will happen.’9 Was violence inevitable in Syria? Would early intervention have made a difference?

When Bashar Assad took over from his father in 2000, he was thought to be have a more liberalizing intent than his ruthless, authoritarian father. At the time, he was seen as a reluctant reformer and attempts were made by Western governments to encourage this. Kofi Annan in Interventions: A Life in War and Peace was to describe Bashar Assad as ‘the son of his father and a modern man’, but also ‘a man beholden to a small group of Alawite security officers and willing to employ any means to retain power’.10 It should be remembered that in the early days of the protests against an autocratic regime, they were peaceful and non-violent; it was the regime that responded with a heavy hand claiming there was an al-Qaeda presence in Syria. Turkey, at the time a close ally of Syria, tried to play an influential role, encouraging Assad to speed up the reforms and to respond to the protesters without using violence. But it has been well reported that Bashar Assad’s hot-headed brother, Maher Assad, a Syrian general and commander

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of the Republican Guard, played a key role in violently suppressing protests, which led to a rapid escalation of the conflict. President Bashar Assad had seen the brutality of his own father and he was ultimately to take the same path, but the real question is: was this inevitable? The lesson from his own father had been that uprisings were legitimately crushed by a huge brutality. In 1982, President Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, crushed a Sunni rebellion. During that bloody month nearly 30 years ago, Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members rose up in the city, killing hundreds of troops loyal to the Alawite – the Shi‘a-led regime of President Hafez al-Assad. In response, Assad conducted one of the most chilling acts of retribution in the modern Middle East.  Bashar Assad’s father’s narrative was rooted in the Cold War and in a regional construct that was basically rigid and immoveable. Assad the father could only copy from this bipolar world architecture and a way to terrorize the population was already in place with ‘a sealed closed society, amplifying the feeling of isolation and fear among the regime’s enemies, aiming always to give the impression that the power of the army and the intelligence services was absolute and all-seeing, that any transgression will be punished with spectacular brutality’.11 But a new generation had emerged that bore the scars of the earlier massacre in Hama in 1982. In the later Syrian civil war, Hama youth were defiant and emboldened, as they had shattered the barriers of fear created by the earlier carnage. Their hidden long-term grievances were to lead to a desire for retribution for the earlier massacres, with these unsavoury foundations ready to act later as a tinderbox. In the fog of the civil war, the mainly Sunni rebels, as well as Assad’s Alawites, were driven by the fear that defeat would mean death, which left no alternative to fighting on. Sunni rebel fighters were mainly poor boys from the provinces or from the concrete jungle of suburbs around Damascus.12 As the Syrian war developed, the Assad regime was to claim it was a conspiracy fuelled by the ambitions of Sunni jihadists. But young men on both sides of the divide became

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ferociously attached to their identities as fighters and saviours of their communities, and positions were to become hardened and entrenched. In the early days of the conflict, there was a struggle between pro-democracy forces who were mostly Sunni, and largely urban and secular, against an ossified autocratic Sunni regime. By 2012, the crisis had evolved and changed into a full-scale civil war which was to be fought along mostly ethnic lines. These were no longer only between Sunnis and Allawites, but also between Druze, Christians, Kurds and global jihadist elements. The following year, after the decisive battle of Kusseir, a third dimension was emerging. The weakened Syrian army was strengthened by the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah who were trained, supplied and financed by Tehran. The war in Syria had morphed into a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The war was becoming even more chaotic and dangerous as the most effective fighting force within the opposition in Syria had become Jabat-al-Nusra, which is the local al-Qaeda affiliated organization. As the crisis degenerated, several thousand operatives, many of whom were volunteers from Afghanistan, Lebanon and even Europe, poured into Syria, pursuing a ‘classic’ pan-Islamic agenda which has very little to do with the specific Syrian civil war. All this highlights the complexity of how conflict evolves in such a way that attempts at intervention to contain the crisis become more and more difficult, as the conflict became more complex with multiple actors, many of whom were out of control and seeking retribution. Solutions become more difficult as no single action, compromise, bombing, invasion, agreement or international conference could sort out the conflict, thereby highlighting how essential it is that the international community become smarter in early intervention. Once the horrendous violence of war has been unleashed it may become impossible to contain it without the use of more violence. What started as a popular uprising against the Assad family was quickly stimulated by regional proxy actors and descended to the

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depths of the worst use of chemical weapons in two decades. There seems to be a certain insensitivity in asking the question, ‘Did it have to be like this?’, when horrendous sectarian violence has taken over in what was traditionally tolerant Syrian soil. But once war has begun, there is a terrible regression in human behaviour and it is too late to talk about mediated solutions as there are only winners and losers. We need then to ask the question: would it have made a difference if the international community had intervened right at the beginning when perhaps as few as 50 people had been killed, before so much blood had been spilt? Of course they might not have succeeded and as yet we do not have the mechanisms to do this, nor do we currently have the skills or political will to engage seriously with addressing conflict from a more preventive, long-term perspective. Intervention usually takes place in a climate of conflict management as opposed to conflict prevention. At that point there would have been no call for Assad to go, which would have been of key importance, and right at the beginning mechanisms could have been put in place to stop the flow of weapons and to set up negotiations for Assad and the opposition to agree a truce. Indeed, the authors of this book called for an early ‘bilateral understanding’ to be pursued by Moscow and Washington, and for this to be followed by ‘communications and understanding between Iran and Saudi Arabia’. The above two sets of understandings might, perhaps, have opened the door to an internal Syrian dialogue. It would have been of crucial importance that very early on the people of Syria themselves decided whether Assad stayed or went; this could have been achieved by a referendum supervised by outside mediators. Negotiations were poorly constructed from the start and a different framing from the beginning might have allowed Russians and the US to have worked more closely together, which might have prevented a significant loss of life. The White House’s actions and rhetoric have deprived diplomacy of its most basic prerequisites. Once it called for Mr

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Assad to step down in August 2011, the US fully abdicated the role of a credible arbiter – the core ingredient for eventually moving civil wars towards power-sharing arrangements. Then Washington insisted that Mr Assad’s departure was required for a political transition to begin. (Its position only recently evolved; now America believes negotiations must end with Mr Assad’s departure.)13 This call for Assad to go was a search for moral clarity, a binary view of the world in which one side has behaved well and the other side has behaved badly. In reality, one of the horrendous consequences of war is that all sides behave badly. ‘Mr Assad still has strong support from many Syrians, including members of the Sunni urban class.’14 According to Reverend Nadim Nassar, an Anglican priest, ‘community relations, friendships and even marriages have been destroyed […] I don’t think there is one home united in their opinions, because it is a very complex issue. Some supporters of the Assad regime had vested interests in the continuation, whilst others feared what was likely to be unleashed against the authoritarian regime.’15 The regime was held together ‘because those who have supported the state have nowhere to go and therefore might as well fight until the end. The silent majority in Syria trust neither side to protect their interests, and the Syrian National Council has not fleshed out a secure vision for the future.’16 This demonstrates the foggy nature of conflict, which has little moral clarity as to who is behaving well, and the need for the international community not to take sides but to create a frame for the end of violence. Once chemical weapons are unleashed by a government against its own people it has crossed a red line which may make mediation impossible, but it needs to be remembered that such a stage might never have been reached with other forms of early intervention. Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland (1994–2000), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and UN diplomat noted for his international peace work, was interviewed about Syria. At the time he

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was working for the Elders,17 who are a non-governmental group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights. When interviewed, he gave an account of when he went to New York to work with the Security Council on the Syrian question. Lots of talking took place, but the process stalled. ‘I am disappointed that the Security Council has not been able to deal with the Syrian crisis. I went to New York in February 2012 to talk to representatives from all permanent members.’18 There was a real opportunity for a solution, but it never materialized. The Elders were ready to go into Syria as mediators, and Ahtisaari believes that there was an opening for early negotiations that was ultimately squandered by the Security Council’s inaction. Later, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi were to be appointed as mediators in their roles as special envoys for UN, but significantly the patterns of violence were by then well established and people were seeking blood and retribution. At the time of Kofi Annan’s appointment, 6,000 people had been killed and 30,000 when Lakhdar Brahimi was later employed in this role. By then, the faultlines were deep, the mood had shifted and, amidst the brutalities of war, people were baying for blood and calling for retribution. Perhaps of greater significance was that in attempting to be an honest broker, Lakhdar Brahimi, as the UN mediator, had no power really to influence events. All sides in the Syrian war were aware of his impotence, and they ignored his mission, knowing that their backers were not behind him. ‘Those with power over Syria’s fate – the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Qatar […] the most prominent cooks brewing the bloody Syrian stew are so partisan that they disdain compromise in favour of an immediate if elusive victory for their respective Syrian factions.’19 The use of Martti Ahtisaari as a member of the Elders is an example of using independent mediators, and in this instance the early mediation offered was composed of respected diplomats who had previously held positions of authority. Early intervention might have reduced the likelihood of the proxy countries meddling, provoking the sectarian divides within Syria, and this might have been contained

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by a very early intervention team led by the Ahtisaari team. It would have been essential to engage the external parties who were key players and could influence the outcome of the conflict right at the beginning and address the regional power balance between the Shi‘a and Sunnis which was to descend into a regional conflict. Without the involvement of regional and international parties who were later to stoke the conflict, a process of mediation between the local groups within Syria would have been redundant. But it would have required those powers involved being committed to ending the violence instead of developing proxy wars where the motivation of external powers was to place strategic interests above any desire to end the violence. Early intervention would have operated at two levels: first, between Russia and the US, and second, between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Once progress was being made at those two levels, the third level of negotiations among Syrians would have had a better chance of succeeding, not least because the flow of money and weapons to both the government and the opposition right at the early stages could have been addressed. ‘Whether President Assad stays or remains need not be a precondition but a rather a result of the negotiations, and an outcome of an agreement by the parties.’20 Negotiation between the two sides within Syrian conflict could only be effectively addressed after regional power brokers’ interests were engaged. The early protests in Syria were demands by the people to speed up reform which had been slow in coming from the autocratic regime. A disproportionate amount of power had been distributed amongst the Alawite community who were only 12 per cent of the population. But sectarian violence was not inevitable in Syria and their multisectarian identity had deep historical roots in a culture of pluralism. The violence of the civil war has stimulated people’s sectarian identities whereby there are now deep faultlines in the community, with great fear of revenge and retribution. Once groups in power are fighting for their own survival, the likelihood that they will regress to nasty brutish behaviour is increased.

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Communities that previously lived together, accepting their religious and cultural differences, become defined by these sectarian identities and they become a point of unacceptable conflict and difference. Early intervention might have prevented a regression into more violent identities, and, in order to prevent such a descent, early intervention by local mediators on the ground (as described later in this chapter) might have made a difference. Key to the effectiveness of such mediation would be the local knowledge of the different groupings emerging in the conflict. That local knowledge would allow mediators to draw on local digital systems which would allow monitoring of the conflict and identify areas of brewing violence. Antakya, a town a few miles from the Syrian–Turkish border, had ‘more than 20 different churches and even a synagogue operating’.21 This mediation would recognize cultural and religious differences, and could play a role in establishing communication between the different communities, exploring how these groups could prevent the escalation of violence and continue to live respectfully together, and in helping to prevent the kind of degeneration that exaggerates the potential for intolerance and sectarian divides. A commando team of mediators

War has its own devastating momentum and exacerbates the worst aspects of human behaviour. In Syria, what started as a protest against a dictator descended into a deep sectarian conflict, wrenching the region apart and reigniting sectarian conflicts of the past. In the quagmire of conflict, the situation quickly becomes dangerous and out of control, and such concepts as early intervention can seem irrelevant. However, what would have been essential if early intervention in Syria was to have any traction was for there to have been no calls for Assad to go from the international community, as this needed to be decided by the citizens of Syria. This inevitably led Assad and his elites to cling to power more firmly as they had no intention of handing over their power base. But

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it was not impossible that, with combined pressure from the US and Russia, a power-sharing agreement could have been established that did not ask Assad to step down from power but instead to speed up some of the reforms demanded. This would have to have happened right at the beginning. There is a tipping point in conflict where the fight for survival stimulates the kind of aggression that magnifies hatred and perpetuates the most destructive aspects of mankind. The real challenge in the twenty-first century is to get smarter in intervening early enough, in a way that can prevent this kind of breakdown and human degeneration. Mediation is well established in domestic politics. It is used in the law courts and civil society and is a well-respected practice for families and divorcing couples. It is recognized that it can prevent deterioration in conflict both between individuals and between institutions. Sophisticated systems have now been established to address this, but as yet there are not the equivalent institutions on the international stage. Mediation in international conflict is less developed and is usually only put in place after the conflict has erupted. By then, the violence has escalated and people are primarily motivated by a desire to win and not reconciliation. Such mediation would therefore need to be early and, as appropriate, embedded in the system. Governments work quietly behind the scenes in their role as mediators but inevitably they have their own interests. Private mediators also have substantial advantages over their state equivalents. They lack the political baggage that diplomats carry, which sometimes means warring parties are more willing to talk to them. They are not bogged down by official caution and bureaucracy, so they can move fast and be creative. Above all, they can take bigger risks over whom they will talk to and in what circumstances.22 Key to their effectiveness would be that such mediators would take personal responsibility, and the primary aim would be to prevent

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the further eruption of violence and create a frame for the potential warring parties to begin to communicate. One of the important questions to answer is: how would the mediators get legitimacy and get people to ‘buy in’? One possibility is that such institutions would garner respect as a result of earlier successes and that a country in conflict would welcome the mediators. There might be scope to think of an international institution like the International Criminal Court (ICC), where an equivalent structure would be created, like, for example, the International Institute for Mediation (IIM). Countries would sign up as part of a treaty and they would see such mediation as preventive; therefore, it would be welcomed. As with the ICC, countries would choose to participate in such a system, but buy-in could be based on the usefulness of the institution, as opposed to something being imposed from outside. The skill would be to mediate quietly behind the scenes, outside the glare of publicity, with the aim of trying to address some of the early underlying causes of the violence. When Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan went to Syria as peace envoys it was publicly announced in the press. This fanfare detracted from the quiet and careful work that needed to be done. Meetings in Syria were often at two-monthly intervals and there was no team of mediators already embedded in the country, in part because it had become too dangerous. The aim of this early mediation would be for the small team to become involved in local narratives before any violence broke out. They would have strong working relationships with some of the potential mediators on the ground who are part of the communities and are able to bring together different local groups. As mentioned above, part of their effectiveness would come from drawing on the local social technologies to gather information about the potential emerging violence on the ground. This information could then enable local mediators, who would have a deep knowledge of the complexion of the conflict and the different characters involved, to bring the different parties together. Once again, it would be critical

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to have early intervention, before the violence was entrenched. PAX23 is an independent organization that is currently preparing to launch a global digital system to give early warning of wars and genocide. This PAX digital platform would collect, analyse and publish information about emerging conflicts from mobile phones, the internet and satellites.24 It would be important that such initiatives used local knowledge and that mediation did not get caught in a bureaucratic quagmire. Resources would need to be carefully allocated, but for a small team of mediators to be effective they would need to have been delegated personal responsibility and been granted the authority to take the initiative, without having to go through heavy official structures. This role of a small group of mediators can only have real impact if governments are better prepared and more ready to understand the importance of bringing the enemy in from the cold. This requires a shift in mindset in which the mediators would have the responsibility to be familiar with the local narratives. Such mediators would therefore need to be highly trained and culturally sensitive and there would need to be members of the team who spoke the local language. It would be important to have a balance of men and women in such teams. They would need to be trained in the skills of immersing themselves in local knowledge and the skills of listening, and in understanding the complexity of the human mind. Such quiet mediation behind the scenes by trusted interlocutors could make a difference. Institutions of governments could empower commando teams of mediators who have agility and flexibility and who understand the local, national and regional context. So creating small teams of mediators who could take a high level of individual responsibility, but were given the legitimacy to act by international institutions or a small group of countries, could be increasingly relevant in this fast-changing world. Failure would be their personal failure, and success would be attributed to the parties involved in the conflict. The Pérez de Cuéllar formula is instructive: ‘If you succeed, the international community wins, if you fail, your personal name will carry the fault.’

11

Beyond the Nation State: Do We Still Need an Enemy? If race is a fraud […] then nationality is a cruel pretense. Jan Morris Nationality is an accomplishment with varying degrees of excellence. Joseph Conrad

Power shifts: a technological revolution

Historically, those with the greatest amount of power have been able to get away with imposing their will on others. The dynamics of conflict between unequal forces have been predicated on the notion that power, money and military force will always outlast the righteous indignation and violent protest of the disempowered. In the bipolar world of the last century, it was clear who was in control and who set the agenda. Now it is a great deal less clear where power actually lies and which actors have the authority to impose the rules. The impact of globalization has potentially changed the rules forever. Earlier in the book (see Chapter 9), we have discussed the possible ‘empowerment’ of the individual, which has been developing

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at a scale and speed never experienced before in human history. This empowerment is, first and foremost, due to ease of access to technology and knowledge at a more and more reduced cost. We no longer need any intermediary to communicate with other individuals thousands of miles away; we do not need a special membership card, or permission from institutions, to access information. The single individual’s capacity to reach out, to good or bad effect, is unprecedented. Meanwhile, television images of what is happening on the ground, be it in a Palestinian refugee camp or in Fallujah, make those in power vulnerable to external scrutiny. The world’s gaze acts as a harsh critic and those who identify with the victim gain recruits and thereby strengthen their position. Today we no longer trust those in positions of power to protect us and we are reluctant to give them legitimacy to govern. Whilst during the Cold War, world powers such as the US and the Soviet Union were able to impose their will by creating an international framework, government institutions now seem to be paralysed, partly as a result of our quest for greater accountability. Faced with a complex, constantly changing world, we demand certainty from our leaders. David Miliband, British foreign minister from 2007 to 2010, reflects on the weakness of the international system over the past decade, ‘where the trusted metrics of power and influence had been inverted. A non-state actor, al-Qaeda, sent the world’s most powerful state into convulsions […] Power has shifted from strong states to connected citizens, using mobile phones to witness and count.’1 Current international institutions now seem steeped in a quagmire of over-bureaucratization, with a loss of personal initiative. Governments are faced with hard decisions and will need to show leadership in the face of these. There is a reluctance among those in positions of power to engage in the necessary self-reflection. Short-term political thinking, driven by crisis management, over-rides any commitment to creating institutions that respond to the needs of the twenty-first century. ‘Western

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intelligentsia seems […] afraid to attack their own sacred cows,’ writes Kishore Mahbubani in the New York Times. He asks whether democracies have become dysfunctional. ‘Have special interest groups distorted the agenda?’2 ‘Interest groups of every stripe have the cash and the access to co-opt broad segments of both US political parties. This allows them to block any reform efforts that might erode their wealth and influence.’3 Intellectual leadership always precedes political change. In Mahbubani’s view, ‘the parameters of the intellectual discourse in the West have become narrower and narrower. Short-term policy fights take precedence over long term strategic decisions.’4 Knowledge is now available not just to those in positions of power but also to the individual through his access to new technology. In the words of Hillary Clinton, ‘there is now a new nervous system for our planet.’ The empowerment of civil society presents opportunities and risks. Governments cannot control the agenda in the same way or manipulate information. The power of the state is now in decline, with citizens demanding to know the truth. This is reducing the space for governments to manoeuvre, as public demands require very swift responses. These meteoric developments in technology and science have begun to undermine the nation states and their spheres of influence as we know them. The cyber revolution has already changed the way we live and the way we go to war, the way we produce and the way we communicate, the way we relate with others and the way the ruled see the rulers. For centuries the ruled have delegated power and representation to the rulers, more or less willingly. But no matter what the political systems are, there always comes a point where established institutions are challenged. As ordinary people’s technological empowerment increases, confidence in traditional bastions of power will shrink. This new dynamic, where small powers, or non-traditional actors, have the ability to disrupt the system, creates both problems and

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opportunities for the resolution of conflict, and demands new creativity. There is currently a crisis of confidence in the ability of governments to solve problems, both at a national and at an international level. From the world economic crisis to Fukushima to the war in Afghanistan, there is a challenge to governments to adapt to the speed of change and to feel they are in control. In an era of mass travel, open borders and instant communication, the demands on governments to deliver with great speed, and too much haste, make poor decision making even more likely. New economic actors Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS countries) are not only rewriting the economic map of our world, they are also introducing a different mode of interaction, at the state-to-state level as well as in the areas of financial and economic co-operation. These five countries currently have about 40 per cent of the world’s population and around 20 per cent of the global gross domestic product. The US and Europe are no longer the centres of gravity. However, so far China’s global economic influence has not brought an equivalent geopolitical role. Indeed, China, India, Brazil and other rising powers have not yet developed a strategic culture to support truly global foreign policies. ‘Currently the global governance of these countries lags behind their burgeoning economic power and the old powers of the Western world will not give up their privileges without a fight.’ 5 As the West suffers from a form of ‘strategic arthritis’6 and exhaustion, the BRICS states are signalling their discontent about the chasm between their economic power and its impact on the world, which is very great, and their ability to influence decision making in the world’s existing financial structures, which is extremely limited. In October 2011, the world population reached the 7 billion mark. ‘Much less attention was paid to the fact that 60% of these 7 billion live in Asia and 37% in China and India alone.’7 ‘In the eighteenth century, the British handover of power to the United States had the seamless quality of a transaction between cousins.’8 In contrast, Charles Kupchan,

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Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, says that today ‘we are heading towards a world of multiple modernities, interdependent and globalized without a dominant political center or model’.9 Kupchan believes that we are facing a crisis of governability in the Western world. He believes that the interdependence born out of globalization ‘dilutes the impact of many of the traditional policy tools used by liberal democracies’.10 Beyond the nation state

Developments in interpersonal communications and world media have lifted people’s horizons above the boundaries of the nation state and the recent surge of mass migration has, according to Reza Aslan, had an impact on their cultural homogeneity. ‘The more the world becomes deterritorialized, the more nationalism loses its place as the primary marker of collective identity.’11 The very notion of geography determining the boundary of the nation is in question. According to the wise former US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, ‘The forces of globalization – economic interdependence and the rise of social media […] – are eroding the borders of the nation state […] And that “uneasy coexistence” is an element in foreign policy issues around the globe.’12 Technology and communication, as well as interdependence in all sectors of life, have created a world where a person who can profoundly affect our daily life may well live thousands of miles away. The neighbour no longer needs to live next door to impact on our lives. The speed of change and the increased number of variables will require a faster resolution of conflict, a pace that is not achieved by the slow and unyielding ‘multilateral’ machinery of institutions such as the UN. Institutions have a tremendous weight and power, but they move painfully slowly and they are shackled by methods, procedures and ideas ingrained by custom and practice that do not meet the requirements of today, that is, of an asymmetric world. The

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world is moving at a speed that the founding fathers of today’s United Nations in 1945 were not able to imagine. Empowerment of the individual

For the individual, technology and the new availability of knowledge, along with unimpeded communication across divides, has provided access to levels of mastery never before seen in human history. This is increasing his sense of empowerment and the opportunity to reach out and make connections beyond the nation state. Traditional leadership has declined in part because individuals live now in a different dimension of time and space, which has changed the very meaning of ‘proximity’, of relationships and of divides. The boundaries between rulers and ruled are being challenged and power is more fluid in society. As a consequence of this, we are likely to see the push for forms of direct democracy increase. Networks of citizens can now challenge and contradict the voice of governments at a speed and with an impact rarely witnessed in previous eras. This has created a deficit in the legitimacy of political leadership, with a chasm between what governments say and the kind of information that citizens can pick up through the internet. Today, over 5.6 billion people use mobile phones, with huge potential to organize and create networks equipped with the information to challenge the official versions of reality provided by governments. ‘Power will flow to those who can cope with surprise and shocks and will be drained from those who resist change rather than shape it.’13 According to the Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, who has co-authored with Jared Cohen the recent book The New Digital Age (2013), in the first decade of the twenty-first century, mobile phone use went from 750 million to a current figure of almost 6 billion users. He claims that: By 2025 the world’s populations will go from virtually no access to unfiltered information, to accessing information through a

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device that fits in the palm of the hand. If the current pace of technological innovation is maintained, most of the projected 8 billion people on earth will be on-line.14 This is compared with only 2 billion people currently connected through the internet. The increased accessibility will be a result of the cheap technology available. These radical changes will lead to increased access to a free flow of ideas, people, information, trade and investment. Personal computers and the internet have connected the world from Gaza to Beijing to São Paolo, and these connections will continue to increase. Via email, Facebook or Twitter, the individual can connect with like-minded people, be the bond political struggle, sexual identity, or a passion for Balkan music. ‘For citizens, coming online means coming into possession of multiple identities in the physical and virtual worlds. In many ways their virtual identities will supersede all others.’15 We now have a heightened consciousness of how other people live, and the breaking down of borders has led to a growing convergence of values, hopes and aspirations. With ever-increasing speed, this social technology has meant that never have so many people had so much in common, whether connected through images or words. But it can also be a force for abuse. According to Schmidt, human societies cannot change this fast without both good and negative implications, and whilst social technology will revolutionize medicine, education and agriculture, he is also aware that it is a tool that can be used by repressive states and terrorists groups. This world of online connectivity can be a threat to traditional politics. The emergence of the internet, Wikileaks, Facebook and Twitter has exposed the working style of governments and has challenged old hierarchical structures. For some, this was liberating and represented the empowerment of the citizen and a glimpse beneath the surface of how modern power functions. For those in positions of government, these public disclosures have made governments

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more careful about how private conversations take place. For them, the response to these exposures is to become more careful about how anything is recorded. Meanwhile, ‘public distrust has grown in the very years in which transparency and accountability have been so avidly pursued. The information revolution may be anti-authoritarian but it can be anti-democratic.’16 Confidentiality is essential to the kind of careful discussions that need to take place quietly behind the scenes and ‘documents must be able to stay private prior to policy being concluded; otherwise what is public will be banal and what is private will be left to backstairs lobbying, partiality and corruption or private exchange.’17 Whilst on one level this increases the empowerment of the individual, it also threatens our notion of who is actually in charge. The twentyfirst century could present an opportunity for much greater citizen participation, but it could also be a period of huge insecurity, with a lack of clarity about which forces will be in control, and whether they are of benign or malign intent. There are those who argue that social media is not increasing social cohesion and that, far from encouraging debate, it has become an echo chamber to confirm our own views. Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, says that the internet ‘was supposed to be democratizing and empowering, giving a voice to those marginalized by the elites of opinion-formers dominating the media and politics’.18 Whilst this is what was supposed to happen, it seems that there is instead a move away from ‘democratic legitimization’ and the internet could be seen as ‘just another implementation layer for special interest groups’.19 The danger is that whilst it brings together virtual communities and encourages participation, it also at the same time isolates them from competing points of view and becomes a breeding ground for polarization, which becomes a challenge to democracy. What seems to be key here is that communication through social technology does not allow for the kinds of social relationships in which people modify their behaviour and compromise; it is at risk of creating a polarized

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debate in which people can switch off their computers rather than listen to opposing views. Thus, this meteoric explosion in social technology is both increasing the possibilities for connection and simultaneously increasing the potential for fragmentation and lack of engagement with those who do not think like ourselves. The real challenge is how this can be mediated as a powerful force for change and the empowerment of citizenship. It may offer a profound challenge as to how we construct our identity, in that the way we define ourselves no longer sits within the boundary of the nation state and no longer has the need for an external enemy which nation states have given us. Instead, social technology allows us to construct multiple identities with multiple clicks of the mouse. A different kind of identity

Amartya Sen, an Indian philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning economist, believes that identities are robust and plural and that one identity does not need to obliterate the choices of another. For him, a person is capable of making many choices and having multiple loyal identities. ‘The illusion of singular identity […] serves the violent purpose of those orchestrating confrontations.’20 Being born in a particular social background ‘is not in itself an exercise of cultural liberty, since it is not an act of choice.’21 The way we define ourselves now has the capability of going beyond history or background, religion or nation. We have the capacity to describe ourselves with multiple identities which extend beyond the nation state, where we live geographically, our social class, the work we do, our language and our politics. We have multiple ways of linking and identifying with others, and this is how we cross the boundary from conflict to humanizing our relationships. Such identities increase the likelihood of creating tolerant and open societies. This point is further reinforced by Lebanese-born French author Amin Maalouf, who has written with great insight into the notion

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of identity: ‘habits of thought and expression deeply rooted in us all […] a narrow, exclusive, bigoted, simplistic attitude that reduces identity in all its many aspects to one single affiliation and one that is proclaimed in anger.’ He is clear that the notion of identity cannot be compartmentalized, but is often predicated on the idea that there is one primary identity that reflects ‘a kind of fundamental truth about each individual and essence determined once and for all at birth never to change thereafter’.22 When we need to assert our identity, we often do so in the name of religion or nationality. Maalouf believes that identity is not given to us at the beginnings of our lives, it is built up and changes over time. A few physical characteristics remain the same, our sex, our colour, but where we are born shapes how we think and who we are. So a young woman who is born in Kabul does not think about herself in the same way as a young woman born in Paris. One of the main influences on how we construct our identity is the influence of those about us, whether it is members of our family, of our religion, of the country to which we belong. We have the capacity to construct our own identities, but it is also deeply influenced by others’ definitions of us. We are capable also of creating rigid and fixed identities or ones that are more fluid and responsive. But this will depend on the influences to which we are exposed. We are capable of deluding ourselves and justifying the choices that we make. Those who take on more violent identities and are involved in killing may justify this in terms of protecting their own communities. In their minds, they may see themselves protecting their mothers, brothers or sisters. According to Vamık Volkan, the eminent psychiatrist and group analyst, who writes a great deal about trauma: ‘When a whole society has undergone a massive trauma, victimized adults may endure another kind of guilt and shame for not having been able to protect their children.’23 In many societies, ones that are perhaps insecure or unable to define themselves without the ‘other’, the enemy on the outside serves to provide a sense of security and create internal social cohesion. This

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is particularly true for countries that have strong internal differences, be they social, economic, political or ethnic. The alternative can be a threat of civil war, or at least high levels of political tension within the state. In such conditions, the identity of groups can feel so threatened that the use of violence seems justified. ‘Violence is idealized to enhance self-esteem and as a defensive response to an individual’s or group’s sense of entitlement to revenge.’24 When locked in this pathology, seeking retribution may be the instinctive route. The real challenge here is to learn how to co-exist with multiple differences within societies and to respect diversity. This will involve addressing not only some of the social inequalities and the way resources are allocated, but also some of the psychological aspects of identity and how it is created. A political and psychological narrative that is also evolutionary would not deny the destructive aspect of human behaviour, but would encourage and stimulate a vision of the future that attempts to do without enemies. This would require the kind of leadership that is not merely a repository for people’s anger but has the capacity to inspire communities that have been traumatized, so they can imagine a future that is not about violence and retribution but is about multiple identities and co-existence.

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A look into the Future The comfort of the past may be no guide as to what lies ahead in a world that is rapidly losing faith in the very possibility of its own governability. Mark Mazower

The foundations of the post-World War order are now breaking down and no longer seem to be relevant for the needs of the twentyfirst century. The pillar of the 1945 construct, where major powers were major powers and minor powers were minor powers, and the ‘win–win’ of later decades, appear to have exhausted their ability to resolve conflict. The distribution of power is now less fixed and hierarchical and may require the creation of institutions less formal, and more ad hoc and designed to be responsive to each conflict. It may demand new actors and institutions to take over, as established international organizations such as the UN may not have the agility to take initiatives, or, if it does, it will need to be more responsive and less bureaucratic. The boundaries of separation are no longer clear-cut; geography has changed its meaning and the new reality is one in which security can be undermined by non-state entities, and by weapons that can move via non-traditional carriers. Paradoxically, whilst governments may need to take more control in order to govern, there will be a shift towards larger accountability

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to civil society. Governments no longer have all the answers in a complex world and they will therefore become more dependent on special interest groups who have knowledge and access at a grassroots level. There are today non-state actors whose influence and knowledge is by far greater than that of some nation states. These include multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals who may have the capacity to demonstrate political wisdom and credibility on the international stage, but sit outside the formalities of official structures. This world in which we live has made governments weaker and civil society stronger. Special interest groups such as NGOs and civil society groups will need to be more involved in consultation processes in the shaping of government policy. The international scene has now become more democratic; anybody can contribute to the solution of a crisis, as in the following case of Qatar. Speed versus heft: Qatar

Qatar has emerged as a player on the international stage. A generation ago, Qatar hardly registered on the global radar. With a population of fewer than 2 million, its people are amongst the world’s wealthiest, as the result of its oil and gas reserves. Up until now, Qatar’s strategy has been the use of soft power by its news channel Al Jazeera, now the most important TV network in the Arab world, and it has created a role for itself as a crisis mediator. A combined motivation of international prestige and survival strategies, the country has sought to position itself as peacemaker in Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen. More recently, there has been evidence of the use of hard power when the emirate dispatched six Mirage jets to Libya as part of the overthrow of the Gaddafi government. In this fast-moving world, it is power to the most agile. It is speed, rather than heft, that can determine diplomatic and even military victories, confer financial advantage and even

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decide the fates of political regimes. No surprise, then, that some smaller powers – archetypically today’s Qatar – can run circles around the more established players.1 Playing a role in international conflict resolution may, however, be out of reach for many countries as it requires human and other resources of significant proportions. But Qatar now acts as host to the Taliban and Hamas, where they have regional offices. And up until 2009, it hosted an Israeli trade delegation which it closed down after the incursion into Gaza. Contrast Qatar’s nimbleness with the lumbering multilateral ‘road map’ approach on the Israeli–Palestinian issue, which clearly involves too many actors and has been struggling to make progress for over a decade. Institutions, as we have built them over the last two centuries, are often inveterately hostile to ‘out of the box’ ideas and can remain trapped in a quagmire of revolving bureaucracy. From multilateralism to minilateralism

In this complex world, the trend appears to be a growth of ‘minilateralism’, which is a move towards a different form of alignment, no longer based on the historical schisms of the Cold War, but more influenced by temporary areas of co-operation. The very meaning of alliances seems to have been affected by the freedom of movement that every actor on the international scene has acquired over the last two decades: no longer restrained by the traditional superpowers system, alliances have loosened up and relationships need to be checked day by day. In other words, we are moving from alliances to alignments – that is, alliances that we create à la carte. These multilateral institutions were originally established with the intention of promoting the common good, as was the whole world system. Currently they seem to be weakening. ‘The G20 has become a talkshop; the Doha round of trade liberalization is moribund; the UN climate change talks have achieved very little,’ says Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for

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European Reform.2 And in conflict resolution, multilateralism has shown its weakness over the last 20 years. According to Grant, the weakening of multilateral institutions has in part to do with the economic crisis in which the US has become less collaborative in spirit and more prone to using ‘unilateralist’ strategies. Russia and China tend to be more cynical about international institutions, as they see them as a creation of the West and there to promote Western interest. Grant describes how institutional involvement is now no longer on a multilateral basis, but happens more through minilateral gatherings ‘created ad hoc’, case by case, allowing them to choose their involvement. So in this à la carte agenda, Russia takes security issues seriously, has ratified the comprehensive test-ban treaty and also joined the Proliferation Security Initiative. China has never signed up to any of these arms controls that limit conventional nuclear weapons but is more interested and fully engaged in the forums of financial regulation and in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There is evidence of changes within the international system, with states forming ‘working groups’ to tackle individual conflicts – examples being the E3+3 on Iran, a coalition of countries that includes France, Britain and Germany, the original E3, and China, Russia and the US, who joined later. Other examples are the Doha Group on Sudan and the working group on Libya. Regional diplomacy is seeing the emergence of new players, such as Turkey and Qatar. This is not the same international system that was created after World War II and that celebrated the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. In other central African states and in Sudan, Georgia and Iraq, the multilateral structures did not succeed. Where wars were ended it was again by ‘minilateralism’. This does not mean that the multilateral structures of 1945 are no longer useful; they will still be useful mainly in areas other than conflict resolution, positive examples being humanitarian and economic co-operation. The signals so far seem to indicate that the rapidity of change is outstripping analysts’ and decision makers’ ability to understand their

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effects and consequences, which are yet to occur. The inclusion of observer countries such as Iran in the Shanghai Co-operation Group, and similar attempts by the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), may usher in new forms of regional alignment. Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Caucasus and Syria may well develop (post-conflict) interlocking sub-groupings dealing with selected issues and crises. China’s push for Indian Ocean economic access as well as its closer economic ties with Afghanistan will also affect diplomacy in South Asia. The genie of more local identity

In Europe, before the development of modern nationalism in the late eighteenth century and before that, of the Westphalian nation state in 1648, people were generally loyal to a city or to a local leader rather than to their nation. In the last two centuries, nationalism has become the driving force shaping our identity, fostered by collections of memories and myths that flesh out and support the idea of the ‘nation’.3 For many centuries, most Europeans did not think of themselves as Italian, French or German (indeed, Italy and Germany did not exist until the late nineteenth century), but as members of particular groupings or religions. Rapid communication and the growth of literacy and urbanization stimulated notions of nationalism, which spread through Europe in the nineteenth century and the wider world in the twentieth century. When, after World War I, commissioners from the League of Nations tried to determine borders in Central Europe, they repeatedly came across locals who had no idea what their identity was. According to Eric Hobsbawm, nationalism ‘invents for itself history and tradition’.4 The genie of more local identities is perhaps now out of the bottle and will not be stopped by buffer zones or dogmas. Where borders have been imposed by political treaties after conflict and do not reflect the natural constituency of some local populations, it may be timely to question how the notion of the nation state applies. For

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some communities, their identity may lie locally, but not within the boundary of the nation state. The interconnected global identity may be part of how they define themselves, but simultaneously there may be a need for an increased sense of local belonging. The concept of multiple identities which goes beyond pre-defined notions of nation and religion offers new opportunities for the defining of the self. If the individual is breaking through the traditional limited access to information of the past, the very relationship between citizens and institutions changes. The structure of the traditional nation states is being weakened with, in some areas, an increasing trend towards localization. Simultaneously, we see frustrations caused by the consequences of centralized power which historically was accepted because the citizen was weak and had very few means to protest. Today this is shifting as a result of the new social technologies and this in all likelihood will increase the citizen’s access to information and, as a consequence, power. The previous vertical structures of government are now being challenged and this opens the potential for more flat structures of power and more citizen engagement. In the Middle East, this centralized power was held in place by authoritarian government; minority groups held control by ruling with an iron fist. The recent surge in power of civil society in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia all prompt a similar question: ‘Can the people in these countries who have for long been governed vertically – from the top down – now govern themselves horizontally by writing their own contracts for how to live together as equal citizens?’5 Those authoritarian oppressive regimes held together by minority groups holding power are no longer being tolerated, as groups are no longer prepared to accept their disempowerment. There is a surge towards self-determination and control over local resources. Those communities who were historically weak now have better ways of organizing and potentially increasing their influence. The Kurdish community is an example of a group that wishes to have more control over its local resources, and this may ultimately morph into independence, which could eventually mean the entire

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postwar map of the Middle East being redrawn. The Kurdish community in Iraq has a system of self-government in the north of the country, which includes their own army. As a result of the no-fly zone that was imposed by the international community in the late 1990s in Iraq, the Kurds moved towards a more federal system of selfgovernment and self-organization. Currently there are no significant groups within this community calling for a Kurdish state that would include the Turkish, Iranian and Syrian Kurdish regions, but it flies its own flag and it has its autonomous energy deals with Exxon and Turkish oil markets. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, demanding greater autonomy for Turkey’s Kurds who comprise up to 20 per cent of the population. In 2013, the Kurdish leadership declared a historic ceasefire to end the 30-year Kurdish war and as a result of this withdrew their demand for a separate state for the Kurds. They agreed significant constitutional and judicial changes with the Turkish government that would guarantee cultural and linguistic rights for Turkey’s Kurdish population and give more power to the local community. In some cases, this localism increases the relevance of identities at a micro level and allows the creation of boundaries that ignore traditional confines, thereby transcending the nation both at a local and global level. The twentieth century may be seen as the bureaucratic age, in which information was centralized. The information revolution presents an opportunity for constructing the post-bureaucratic age, in which the information available makes it possible to create more local networks for decision making. The new media offers the possibility of going beyond the boundary of the nation state and connecting both globally and locally. This will require a combination of self-management of small social units, together with a network of communication and action on issues of global proportions. An example of a way forward is the Schengen Agreement, signed in 1985 and, after later agreements, still in force today among 25

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countries. The agreement was signed originally between France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany and was to create a borderless entity between these countries. It did not emerge out of the European Union, in part due to the lack of consensus over whether the EU wished to abolish border control. Later, in 1995, all European member states, with the exception of the UK and Ireland, signed the Schengen Agreement and thereby integrated it into the main body of European Law with opt-outs for both Ireland and the UK. The Schengen Area operates very much like a single state for international travel with external border controls for people travelling in and out of the area. The physical dismantling of any sign of borders has impacted the narratives of the so-called old border regions. Previously some of these borders were called ‘the Iron Curtain’, not a symbolic border for decades but a ‘hard border’ for those who were brought up in its shadow. The vanguard role that was played by the former border regions has perhaps now to be looked at more closely. It is here that languages and history intertwine, thus making the Schengen arrangement more than just a treaty for governments. It is a treaty for people, albeit lived by the ‘old frontier populations’ as a daily reality, not by those living far away in the capital cities. These nation states’ border populations, as well as the peoples of smaller nation states, have always been bilingual, if not polyglots. It often goes unnoticed that many of these areas along the borders have, for a long time, had more autonomy within the nation states than other regions and have even established their own ‘embassies’, of course with a different name, in Brussels itself. There is no reason to think that this trend will stop and in some areas we may well see the evolution of a ‘Europe of the peoples’. After all, the narratives of the populations along the old borders and inside geographically small states are radically different. Some national narratives have been built without any knowledge of these marginal narratives. It is worth remembering that before 1940, it was possible to travel from Paris to

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St Petersburg without a passport. (After World War I, passport control was implemented at national frontiers and was to remain the norm in Europe until the Schengen Agreement in 1985.) Britain would seem an unlikely candidate for a change in boundaries as described above, as it is an island, and one that has a deep historical sense of self as a country and as a nation state. However, this is now under pressure and issues of localism are being revived with a serious bid from Scottish nationalists for independence. If this should happen, will Scotland see itself more connected to wider global institutions such as the European Union or the family of nations? Could it see itself forming a confederation of like-minded countries who have a shared philosophy and vision of how to organize their societies? The current Scottish parliament is a fierce proponent of a nuclear-free Scotland. Will they find themselves forming alignments with other nations with similar commitments? Could Scotland be one of the first examples of forming partnerships not based on geographical boundaries but connected globally, beyond the immediate vicinity of its neighbours? Whilst there may not be an immediate appetite for this degree of separation amongst the electorate, there is already a call for greater devolution of powers to the local region. The connection between identity and birthplace has its roots in the nation state, but we are today, in some places, witnessing a more local interpretation and reading of what ‘birthplace’ now means, where localism is establishing more powerful roots than nationalism. The emotional attachment to the birthplace now has a different meaning for those whose politics were constructed through the lens of the Cold War, when in this bipolar construct it was required for survival to equate identity with the nation state. Paradoxically, globalization and the resulting interdependence of countries has potentially weakened the role of the nation state whilst enhancing the global dimension but simultaneously enhancing the sense of local identity.

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The European experiment

The new models we may create to organize ourselves could involve the separation of identity and governance from territory. An example is the EU which provides an overarching structure of governance for 27 nation states. The very survival of the EU depends on closer political union and yet our loyalties, identity and emotional allegiances are to individual nation states. The challenge here is how we combine our need for more international institutions with their interconnected economic systems, international trade agreements and political institutions of government, with our need for local engagement. Currently, our global identity is weaker and we might now need to establish identities that enhance our sense of being European and part of the international community. How we connect and yet differentiate ourselves is one of the challenges we face in today’s fast-changing world. This will require us to enlarge our multiple identities and stimulate our imagination as to how we define ourselves. We do have a deep sense of needing to know who we are and how we connect to ‘home’. So a person born in England has the potential for multiple identities, as an English person, part of the UK, as a European and as a citizen of the world. European evolution may, however, find a way to embrace these different identities and take a leadership role here. As yet, such identities are under-developed and do not reflect the current mood amongst some groups in the UK where there is a strong surge towards nationalism and a separation from Europe. Europe is now a functioning although fragile model of how countries, who for centuries fought against each other, have managed to establish a co-operative model of working together. When the European leadership received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, perhaps a reflection of the mood at the time, those presenting the prize failed to mention why such a prize was deserved. It is perhaps the first political project in human history that is not rooted in the need for an existential enemy.

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So this European project remains a pioneering experiment and has the potential to play a leading role in the repositioning of national identity, with the embracing of more local identities and more European ones. However, the economic crisis in Europe has weakened the attachment to such an idea and in some European countries there is a surge in nationalism. So if Europe is to represent a model of coexistence that does not need to define itself by the need for an enemy it will require the kind of leadership that inspires a vision going beyond identity that is located primarily in nationalism. In comparison with other parts of the world, Europe may well be better positioned and ahead in making a cultural and societal breakthrough. Change and the future direction of this institution may now marry the need for future integration with the need for more localism, self-government and direct democracy. Today, more than 60 years after the terrible conflict of two world wars in Europe, where there was barbed wire creating divisions, there are now vineyards that follow the gentle ups and downs of the hills, and farmers of different tongues have the chance to use a bit more land for more vines. Their lives are lived on both sides of that imaginary, and of course illusory, separation of identities. Vines are better than barbed wire and more land for grapes is better than more uncultivated land for security posts. But for this to develop on a healthy path it will demand that we constitute our identities in ways that go beyond the rigid definitions of nationalism and religion and embrace multiple ways of defining ourselves.

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The Art of Negotiation Both peoples need a long and deep process of recovery, and this recovery will not start until they have identities that are separate and not interwoven, identities that allow each other just to be and to start to build up their own nation without occupation, terror, or hatred. David Grossman on the Palestine–Israel conflict

States of mind antithetical to peacemaking

Every conflict has its own pathology and particular characteristics, but there are many common aspects. We can assume that parties involved in conflict deeply mistrust each other and feel deep animosity and hatred towards one another. They believe that the differences between them are irreconcilable. They believe their own positions are non-negotiable. They fear peace talks because agreements require unacceptable compromises. They fear a loss of life (assassination), persecution for war crimes, or human rights abuse, loss of power, loss of status and prestige, loss of political support, loss of security, loss of resources (land, water) and loss of identity.1

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Those in positions of power often feel impotent to influence and shape events. The language of blame is frequently spoken by those in positions of leadership. A tired rhetoric emerges, full of platitudes, which becomes a climate antithetical to new ideas or creative thinking to help resolve conflict. How often in the Palestine–Israel conflict have we heard both sides parroting the language of blame? In their reciprocal accusations, they frequently express what they stand against, as opposed to what they stand for, squandering the possibility of new and creative thinking. At a precarious moment of change in the region, the Arab–Israeli conflict remains stuck in ‘their sterile and competitive narrative of victimhood, determined it seems to ensure past rancor defeats promise’.2 According to Lord Alderdice, the seasoned negotiator who was very involved in Northern Ireland, it is important to understand, when attempting to resolve conflict, that politics is not merely about power but is about a complex web of relationships between individuals, groups and communities. He argues that in Northern Ireland the conflict is often spoken about in terms of historic injustices, war and past struggles, and well-meaning outsiders would always talk about solutions to the conflict. He, however, believes that we need to talk a lot less about content and outcomes and more about process, that is, how we reach these solutions. He says, ‘even the best solutions solve nothing on their own, and sometimes rather poor suggestions can actually contribute to bringing peace if they arise in the context of a process of building relationships.’3 Every conflict is different and each has to be read in the context of the country’s own particular history and its political complexity. So solutions are not immediately transferable. There is though much to be learnt about what went on in Northern Ireland and it is certainly worth asking the questions: why were the negotiations in Northern Ireland ultimately successful, and how much did this have to do with recognizing that, when there is a climate of enormous mistrust, even a reasonable deal will be treated with suspicion? As painstaking as it

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might have been, building a sustainable framework that addressed the mistrust but kept the dialogue going seems to have been a central part of why a peace deal was ultimately concluded. The Northern Ireland peace process 4

The Northern Ireland peace process started in the 1980s and had many false starts and moments when it looked like it was at a complete impasse with no way through. There was a poverty of ideas as to how to make progress in what looked at the time like an intractable conflict. Perhaps this was a result of the conviction of both sides that they could win in the streets. There are different analyses about what ultimately caused the breakthrough. The Unionist Party would argue that the IRA only seriously engaged in a peace process when it looked like it was losing to the British army. In practice, this meant that the damage inflicted on the IRA was greater than the damage it inflicted on the British state. A more personal analysis was that Martin McGuinness started the negotiations when his son was the same age he had been when he first picked up a gun and joined the IRA. McGuinness may have been tired and weary of the use of violence, but it seems the strongest influence was his wish that his child should not repeat his own experience. Some analysts now say that, for many years, those involved in trying to end the conflict were committed to talking to the moderate groups and excluding the men of violence. Governments not wishing to give support or approval to so-called terrorist groups influenced this. They did not wish to give the message that the use of violence could bring about political change. Now, looking back, it seems there was a turning point when it was recognized that the groups who were at the more extreme ends of the political spectrum should be brought into the peace process. The Northern Ireland peace table was first set up in 1995 to look at possibilities for economic co-operation. At the time, US Senator George Mitchell was appointed to oversee economic initiatives that were based on collaborations between the Protestant and Catholic

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communities. These economic discussions were later transformed into a conference table for all those parties who were prepared to be involved, and later for those groups who had historically sat outside the peace process. Key to its success was the sustainability of the model and its inclusive nature. There is always a temptation when making peace to sit with the moderate groups, or the men in suits, where the areas of agreement and co-operation are clear. However, in order to establish a sustainable, successful process, it becomes essential to talk to groups where there are profound and radical disagreements. George Mitchell was appointed first to lead a commission that established the principles on non-violence by which the different parties in the Northern Ireland conflict would sit down and talk. Well before this, John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) had persevered outside the limelight, sowing the seeds of change psychologically and practically by encouraging economic investment from outside. John Hume had insisted that US money to fund economic projects would be used by both the Catholic and Protestant communities. He also demanded that the money to the IRA from the US Irish business community be stopped. This framework, prepared and agreed quietly behind the scenes, was key for setting the foundation for future changes. It preceded any formal government involvement. His method of work did not involve endless committees in Washington and London and he was to remain at the core of the process, which was recognized when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. At the beginning, there was a lot of concern about who should sit at the table, as the more moderate voices did not wish to sit with the men of violence. It was later recognized that though you could have a political process, you could not have a peace process unless inclusive mechanisms were established. This demanded creativity and subtlety as to how to include the men of violence. It was important to be able to deny that negotiations were going on with armed groups though key figures such as Sinn Féin and the Ulster paramilitary groups were to be represented around the table.

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Senator George Mitchell was seen to be an inspired choice as facilitator and he will be remembered for his capacity to listen. He recognized the importance of setting up a structure that not only dealt with the rational process of what a political endgame would look like, but also recognized the importance of addressing some of the emotional content that lay beneath the surface. Lord Alderdice believes that, to be an effective negotiator, ‘One element is the constant submission of one’s thoughts and responses to internal scrutiny; trying to understand what is going on in one’s own self and one’s relationships.’5 Mitchell seems to have had a natural capacity to work in this way. He understood the importance of creating an environment that allowed some of the mistrust and hatred to be contained and managed around the table. Often, when these emotions are not given sufficient consideration, the parties later undermine the process because of the depth of feeling. He created a culture of listening. This was probably counter-intuitive at the time as both sides were more interested in reinforcing the rightness of their own cause than understanding each other. By the example of his own behaviour, and no doubt some subtle training of the group, he created the conditions in which the narratives of the different groups were tolerated and understood, and at times a human connection was established. Of course, the ultimate resolution was about the management of power and the possibilities of power sharing, but to reach this point some of the emotional turbulence resulting from the conflict needed managing. For a long time, the atmosphere was very hostile and the only safe place was around the negotiation table. On one occasion, Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists were to travel to South Africa to learn more about how they could be successful in their negotiations. The hatred was so deeply entrenched between the groups that they needed to travel in different buses and stay in different hotels. Going in the same lift was not even possible. All this was very expensive, but both the British and Irish governments were prepared to fund the endeavour. The logistics were complex and costly, but there was a commitment to

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support the process over a four-year period, which included separate dining rooms and bars for the separate parties. There was no trust, but a degree of tolerance. The structures that were established would become a crucial part of later confidence-building measures and highlighted a model for negotiating with the enemy. Subtlety was demonstrated which allowed for creative ambiguity in the first instance. It was recognized that the conflicting narratives of the two groups were so profound that they were never going to agree on either a united Ireland or the unionists’ vision of a continued alliance with the UK. The IRA would ultimately have to redefine their identity by signing up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This was an agreement between the British and Irish governments and addressed such issues as paramilitary decommissioning, police reform and normalization – its implementation was to take a few years. Whilst the agreement did not offer the IRA the possibility of a united Ireland, they were to find a way around by holding on to their long-term dream of a united Ireland, even if they were legally in the first instance to accept a political arrangement with the British government. Here we can see similarities with Hamas, where Khaled Mashal made a historic statement in December 2011, declaring that his movement was switching from the armed struggle to a popular struggle and that its agreement with Fatah included establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, without renouncing the right of return.6 The similarity between the Northern Ireland experience and the Palestine–Israel conflict lies in the fact that Hamas may carry a vision of an Islamic caliphate, but they currently accept the 1967 borders of the state of Israel. Creative ambiguity is often essential when there are profound disagreements. There may be a trap in trying to find a shared vision between conflicting groups. In the first instance, it may be necessary to construct something that warring parties can live with. In such an environment, it becomes necessary to think outside the box and find ways around that may accommodate very different understandings

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as to what the endgame will look like. At this stage, it may be very important not to over-define the situation. Later in the process, it will become very important to have a definitive agreement that will involve moving to absolute clarity of understanding, but the ‘fudging’, as part of the process, may be a key part of getting there. What we learn from Northern Ireland is that the parties were not in a state of mind to negotiate, yet the Northern Ireland peace process fully understood the human face of peacemaking. It understood that, in spite of the power relationships and questions around how resources are distributed, it is still essential to create a climate in which the mistrust can ultimately grow into a cautious trust. In Northern Ireland, this process took many years and it was understood there was a need to set up a sustainable process. Contrast this with the Palestine–Israel conflict where the mistrust between the parties is enormous and there is little faith in negotiations. But there are lessons to be learnt about the role of a third party in addressing the imbalance in the negotiations, and the need to establish a framework that has a clear endgame in which the goalposts cannot be constantly shifted. The Palestine–Israel conflict

The Palestine–Israel story has consumed a huge amount of the world’s attention and media coverage and, at the time of writing this book, fragile embryonic peace talks are taking place between Palestine and Israel. The current frame of the peace talks is a gestation period of nine months, but they are conducted in a climate of cynicism and mistrust on both sides, with third-party mediation by US Secretary of State, John Kerry. This conflict is characterized by missed opportunities, broken promises and optimistic moments shattered by violence and a hardening of attitudes. So wary and wounded are the parties and such is the mistrust that rational solutions get discarded. Many would say that the parameters of the political endgame of the Palestine–Israel conflict are well known: detailed work has

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been done on each of the core issues – borders, security, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and water. The continuous expansion of Israeli settlements on the West Bank serves to feed the climate of mistrust and may be a serious obstacle to a negotiated solution. Historically, the international community has never been able to establish a sustainable modus operandi that provides a safe frame for the vicissitudes of this conflict, with its successive episodes of violence and calm. This troubled region has been marred by peace initiatives that have been piecemeal and fragmented, with no safety nets when the peace process breaks down. This chapter focuses on the human face of peacemaking and therefore does not go into detail about what the mechanics of a deal would look like. It is more concerned with the state of mind that makes a deal possible. The Oslo process in the early 1990s was the first direct, face-to-face contact between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The intention was to establish a framework for future negotiations and relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians, within which all outstanding ‘final status issues’ between the two sides would be addressed. For many still immersed in the Palestine–Israel conflict with little sign of resolution, this process is now discredited because some of the more thorny issues such as refugees, Jerusalem and the border were not dealt with in the talks or later in the process. The actual process that went on between the parties is an important example of the kind of in-depth communication and the building of trust that can prepare the ground, but what happens next as part of a sustained process matters, and much of the failure lies with many of the events that ensued, which are explained later in the chapter. During the Oslo Accords, relationships improved between Palestinians and Israelis because of the genuine belief that there could be an end of conflict. One of the authors’ Palestinian colleagues described how they would throw olive branches at Israelis as evidence of a desire to co-exist. More recently, with the breakdown of

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negotiations at the Camp David Summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the two communities yet again became separated and hostility and suspicion are now endemic in both societies. But it may be instructive to consider what the Oslo Accords achieved at the time, how and why, and if there is anything to be learnt. At the time, the building of relationships quietly behind the scenes was a critical component of its success. In 1992, with only the vaguest commitment from the then Israeli government under the aegis of their newly elected deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin, talks began with Arafat’s director of finance, Abu Alaand, their Israeli counterparts and Israeli academics Yair Hirshfield and Ron Pundik. At the time, a meeting at a higher level sanctioned by government would have been political suicide. The secret talks were to take place under the umbrella of the Norwegian government at the initiative of Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Jan Egeland. A friend of his, Terje Rød Larsen, head of the Norwegian Institute of Applied Science, and his wife Mona Juul, a senior Norwegian diplomat, were to host these talks. Interestingly enough, one of the Norwegian participants was considered to be ‘completely partisan’, yet, as already mentioned in this book, ‘impartiality’ is not a necessary condition for successful negotiations, since it is an illusion. But let us begin by telling the story and later explore what can be learnt from it. When the news of the Oslo peace process broke out in the media, it told how a group of people, after decades of mistrust and suspicion, on both sides of the Palestinian–Israeli divide, had committed themselves to an extended process of engagement that allowed them to find sufficient common territory to move forward in the conflict. Through the mechanism of prolonged and often difficult dialogue, the parties were to find sufficient areas of agreement that were to set the foundations of the Camp David peace talks in 2000. Two characters – Yair Hirschfield, an eccentric, bearded 49-year-old lecturer in Middle Eastern history at a minor Israeli university, and his former student, Ron Pundik, who, having just acquired his doctorate,

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was looking for a permanent position – were the early Israelis who were to play a catalytic role in establishing the meeting. Both were passionately committed to a Palestinian–Israeli compromise. They had a certain freedom because they were outsiders to the political process, and were old hands at illicit Palestinian–Israeli contacts. With the support of the Norwegian government, a setting was found that was secluded, tranquil and secretive, a quiet and cosy home in the Norwegian countryside with large fireplaces and simple furnishings. The participants slept under the same roof and took their meals together. Seating arrangements at dinner were carefully planned. The bar was to be well stocked. A special bond was established from the outset between the Palestinian negotiator Abu Ala, a white-haired, whimsical man in his mid-fifties, and Hirschfield, whom he liked for his informality and sense of humour. Later it was said that ‘the proceedings in Norway now seem more sophisticated and more shrewdly thought out than they really were – an impression that does not do justice to the true nature of the talks, which were propelled by impulse, contingency, improvisation and coincidence’.7 The participants agreed never to regale each other with their respective pasts. This was an interesting precondition – posing us with the question of whether it is better to come to terms with thinking about the past as we have advocated, or whether an embargo on the past is a more appropriate safety net at a given stage in the process. There is probably no hard rule here and each setting has to be judged with fresh eyes. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was often intense and there was even one occasion when a member of the group rushed to the bathroom to throw up. At times it was like a war zone with shouting, bluffing and passionate love–hate relationships. Both sides issued ultimatums, threatening to go home. But there were also more intimate moments when the men talked about their families and their individual levels of suffering. Terje Rød Larsen’s four-year-old child was to play an important role. The spontaneity and innocence of this small child

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at times eased an often very tense atmosphere. Various methods were used, including brainstorming, role-play and active listening techniques. On one occasion, the Israelis represented the Palestinian position and vice versa. Part of the deal that was discussed was that the Palestinian Authority would have responsibility for the administration of the territory under its control. The Accords also called for the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This would take place in phases. It was anticipated that this arrangement would last for a five-year interim period during which a permanent agreement would be negotiated (beginning no later than May 1996). Permanent issues such as the question of Jerusalem, of refugees, settlements and borders, were deliberately left to be decided at a later stage. No proper structures for peacemaking

But it was not to be, and the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by right-wing Israeli radical Yigal Amir, who was opposed to Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords. It was not until 2000 that a serious attempt was made to establish a peace agreement at Camp David, but the summit ended in failure. It would indeed have been an extraordinary moment if it had succeeded. Had the leadership possessed the courage to call for more time and not to declare the talks a failure, conditions could have been created to address some of the thornier issues, such as sovereignty issues over the religious sites in Jerusalem, or some of the land exchange issues. The violence might not have escalated had the leadership lowered the temperature and created a frame in which there was still hope. Talks did continue at Taba and the outcome was such that the two sides were much closer together, but by then the mood had massively deteriorated. The problem here was that the peacemaking mechanisms no longer had legitimacy, as Ehud Barak did not win the next election and President Clinton’s term in office was

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coming to an end. This makes a powerful argument for establishing a sustainable mechanism that over-rides the vagaries of democracy. There were all sorts of reasons for the failure of the Camp David Summit, but the theme of this book is to explore the human factors and how the appropriate structures have not been created to deal with human motivation, and how this can block or enhance a peace process. Palestinian negotiators with one eye on the Summit and the other back home went to Camp David determined to demonstrate that they were not being duped. In opposing American proposals, they were unable to present cogent counter-proposals of their own. The talks were locked into a culture of cynicism and time pressure, with insufficient attention to relationships. The Palestinians argued they needed a few more months of secret negotiations to close the gap between the sides on the major issues – Jerusalem, refugees – but Clinton and Barak felt they were out of time, so the Camp David Summit descended into ill will.8 The summit was to prove a disaster of poor preparation and poor timing. If, at this point, a ‘win–win’ culture could have been established in which, as Yossi Beilin puts it, ‘the definition of self interest would have included the satisfaction of the other side’,9 could it have made a difference? Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Barak’s foreign minister at the time, was later to say that Barak’s personality was such that he lacked the capacity of empathy and expected his ‘interlocutors to fall in with his wishes […] He tended to lose his composure, to entrench himself deeply in his position, thus, in effect helping to block the dynamic of negotiations.’10 This was a negotiation where the strong dictated to the weak according to the principles of all or nothing. The conditions were further compounded by the Americans being seen by the Arab world as partial to Israel. America’s political and cultural affinity with the Israelis translated into acute sensitivity to Israel’s domestic concern, wondering what sort of agreement would be acceptable to the Israeli population. This question was rarely, if ever, asked of Arafat. What emerges is a picture of mistrust and tactical clumsiness on both

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sides. Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, two veteran analysts of the conflict, were to suggest that ‘an opportunity was missed by all, less by design than by mistake, more through miscalculation than through mischief ’.11 Others less confident about the desire of either side to make a deal would argue that both sides hid a deep hope that time was on their side and therefore were not prepared to make some of the hard choices that a peace deal would involve. Moreover, the talks took place in the glare of the media where every move was scrutinized. This is antithetical to the confidential environment needed for peacemaking. The one successful negotiation, Camp David I in 1978, which brought about a peace treaty with Egypt, involved a quiet milieu and was out of the glare of publicity. At the time, Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat were isolated for two weeks at Camp David and were able to establish a framework for a peace agreement. It is fair to say that such an agreement could only be established in a confidential venue and ‘cooked to the full ripeness far from the public eye; there were a lot of crises within the fences of Camp David, but they were far from the public eye’.12 This highlighted the need for a discreet channel outside any kind of public arena, where both sides can genuinely and sincerely probe each other’s intentions. One of the terrible tragedies of Oslo is that if the then prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, had not been assassinated, things might have looked different. The assassination created a huge vacuum in terms of trusted leadership and was to shake up Israeli society deeply. But what was important at Oslo was the quality of contact between those who previously treated each other with hostility and suspicion, and how the creating of a safe space allowed the beginnings of personal relationships to develop. It is important not to discredit the quality of the interaction, but to pay attention to the need for a sustainable human relationship ultimately to be built. It was a cruel twist of fate when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, as he was an example of a leader who had the political maturity to lead without an enemy and to provide a vision for his people. Such

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maturity will need to be seen again if there is to be a change in the current status quo in this conflict. The history of negotiations over the past 30 years has been a tragedy of errors and missed opportunities by all sides, often plagued by human frailties. More recently Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was driven from office for charges of corruption (for which he was later found not guilty), might have changed the political landscape for peacemaking had he remained in office. When the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appeared on Channel 2 television in Israel in 2010, he was to say that he ‘wanted to negotiate a permanent and final state peace agreement, from the point reached with Ehud Olmert, finalizing an agreement could be completed in one week’.13 At the time there seemed to be little public interest in his statement. The failure can be located in the human choices made by both sides and ‘if two states now appears to be a vanishing prospect, that is because of bad decisions that could have been otherwise’.14 A state of mind that makes peacemaking possible

We have shown throughout this book how easy it is, when weary of endless conflict, to lose faith in people’s ability to make peace. In societies in conflict, there is often a young generation who has only known violence, has been exposed endlessly to the experience of checkpoints, guns pointed at their heads and the psychotic state of fearfulness. This collective state of violence creates a particular mindset in which it becomes difficult to discern and find a way forward, to get beyond blaming the other. Those generations who would never sleep at night are seldom in a state of mind for peacemaking. The stories they tell one another frequently have little sense of a future, and are more often about the violence done to them or done by them to others. Traumatized communities have little empathy for the experience of ‘the other’, as there is often a deep existential anxiety about their own survival, and in these conditions it is difficult to

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think about the future. There is seldom a shared emotional truth as to what an end of conflict could look like, and the parties will have different realities and narratives as to how events happened and who is to blame. In these conditions, skills are needed that address often profound and radical disagreements, and conditions need to be created that address common interests and not points of disagreement. In such a climate, the motivation can be to damage one’s enemy rather than to protect one’s own best interest. But the road to recovery is unsustainable without a change of narrative, otherwise there will be continued violence and retraumatization. It is in this climate that bargaining based on rational calculations often fails as mistrust is fuelling the conflict – a level of mistrust that treats offers made by the other side only with suspicion. Those who are deeply immersed often lack the capacity to look beyond the state of endless conflict and have a vision in which they can co-exist with the enemy. Changing the narrative is not easy, as having an enemy can be a way for both the individual and the community to define itself. In such conditions the enemy becomes de-humanized. In contrast, a deal that is sustainable will mean coming to terms with the enemy and recognizing that they too have human needs. Part of any peace process is the need to create structures that address issues of identity and visions of the future, in order to increase the state of readiness of the groups. The role played by the leadership will also be very important in inspiring a vision as to how people can learn to co-exist. When there has been a long history of conflict, it may be unrealistic to talk about trust, as trust is the outcome of a successful process […] It is not reasonable for people who have been at war to feel respectful for each other. It is however possible to persuade the participants to behave with respect to the process and agreed procedures. In gradually building a culture of respectful behaviour, many problems can be explained and contained and sustainable

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working relationships can be developed between longstanding political enemies.15 This is an important point, as it is often believed that it is necessary to build a culture of trust before successful negotiations can be achieved. It is more realistic to assume that there will be enormous mistrust and suspicion and it is only after a long process in which confidencebuilding measures are put in place that the climate between the parties will shift. What matters in terms of working on the creation of a state of mind conducive to peacemaking is establishing a safe frame in which the parties can meet, and over time mistrust can turn into respect and communication. Addressing the history and trauma that has created the climate of mistrust can be an essential part of a negotiation and serve to enhance the conditions for peacemaking. Recognizing the trauma and the historic injustices felt by each party may allow forward movement. This will need to be sensitively addressed as to the appropriate timing and how far it is allowed to dominate the proceedings. There is a danger that the process becomes stuck in a culture of blame and a victim psychology in which one lists the history of wrongs that have been done. This sense of victimhood is very common in negotiations and it requires great skills by the facilitators to allow recognition of the sense of injustices of the past, but also to create a culture in which it is recognized that the aim of the negotiations is to look to the future. Feuding parties not only carry their own traumas and historic wounds but also the painful histories of their communities. Those participating in negotiations may fear that by ‘reaching an agreement with one’s historic enemies one is betraying past generations who have sacrificed so much in the struggle’.16 But they must also contend with the recognition that without peace they will be condemning future generations to continued violence and destruction. Some of those involved in the conflict will have a vested interest in its continuation. There are those individuals who benefit from

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conflict and who have a particular position of status and authority in a leadership role as a result of the violent struggle. They may have gained prestige and significant financial gains as a result of pursuing violence. A more peaceful future may condemn them to a more mundane role in the community with lesser status. The challenge here is to find out what might incentivize them to be involved in a peaceful society in which there is scope to make a more positive contribution. Violence and the engagement in it to some can offer excitement, high status, positions and influence. Such groups may not be in a state of mind to end of conflict, but incentivizing them and helping them construct a future in which they can find a place in a non-violent society is a worthwhile activity. Conflict is exacerbated when there is no contact between the parties and there is more tendency to demonize the enemy. Stereotypes and caricatures replace real relationships. In such a context, contact through dialogue may accentuate the polarization. Dialogue is one of the most over-used words of our time. It is often carelessly said that if only people would enter into dialogue, then peace would break out. But the questions that should always be asked are: what kind of dialogue, and what are the intentions of the participants? So frequently, those in dialogue are motivated by the desire to defeat the opponent and impose their agenda on the other side. It is in these conditions that one is more likely to create an oppositional force which will either lead to paralysis in the talks or direct conflict. One of the reasons peace talks break down is because they are not conducted in a spirit that allows both sides to feel they are the beneficiaries, or in the spirit of win–win. So often they are conducted in a climate of win–lose, with one side imposing its will on the other. Relationships around the table are often unequal and those with the most power often attempt to bully the other side and pressurize them into an agreement. This creates resentment on the other side and can lead to paralysis and blocking in the negotiations. Sometimes the weaker party appears to go along with the pressures of the other

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side, but later breaks the agreement or undermines it. An agreement that is sustainable needs to be shaped around a deal in which all the parties see the benefits and, whilst there may be compromises, there is a sense of fairness in such negotiations. The media can at times play an important part in helping to prepare domestic audiences to be in a state of readiness to hear the necessary compromises that need to be made by their leaders in the search for peace. Too often it plays a counter role and is more interested in creating polarized arguments than in helping communities prepare for some of the concessions that need to be made. Careful judgements need to be made as to when the talks should be transparent. This will serve to create the right kind of atmosphere and establish when there needs to be confidentiality. The 24-hour news programmes and the scrutiny of the press can serve to intrude on negotiations. It is potentially harmful to negotiate with a public running commentary for journalists, and briefers using the media to generate pressure on the other side to concede things, or for the parties to manipulate the media to show off their toughness to their constituencies. Negotiators need space to develop relationships and for opening positions to evolve without premature external pressures.17 Peacemaking is tough and exacting and there will be moments when failure looks imminent, but, in the art of negotiation, understanding human motivation and why people behave in particular ways will be critical in trying to prevent a collapse of negotiations. The challenge now is to raise negotiation to an art form, which will involve developing the appropriate skills to respond to the complexity of the task. Whilst a clear frame for the negotiations will be necessary, at the same time this will call for openness, creativity, flexibility and thinking outside the box.

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The Politics of Self-Awareness Knowledge of the unconscious could contribute to making a better, more democratic world. Sigmund Freud

If we are to create a safer world, changing political structures alone will not suffice. We will need to become smarter about how we manage our understanding of conflict. This will involve enlarging our creative potential and learning to contain the more destructive aspects of our behaviour. Socrates stressed the need for us to know ourselves, and self-knowledge requires more than intellectual self-examination. It demands that we know more about our feelings and what is going on in our inner lives which, as already argued in this book, profoundly shape the so-called rational activity of politics and how decisions are made. It will require that we increase our insight into our potential for both destructive and creative behaviour. The theologian Karen Armstrong, in her book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2011), observes that, even if the capacity for empathy and compassion is limited in our personal development, people can train themselves in the art of compassion, manifest new capacities in the human heart and mind; they discover that

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when they reach out consistently towards others, they are able to live with the suffering that inevitably comes their way with serenity, kindness and creativity.1 She compares this to a gymnast, who after years of dedicated practice acquires the gracious movements and physical agility that are usually impossible for the untrained body. If we have muscles within us, emotional and physical, they can be trained to develop a much greater capacity than they already have. She goes on to say that we can retrain the mind to be ‘kinder, gentler, and less fearful’.2 But we do not have only benign thoughts; we are equally capable of being hateful, jealous, envious and destructive. According to the psychoanalyst Fakhry Davis, ‘Fostering awareness, in-depth awareness of the dark side of human nature’ is man’s task if he is to embrace a deeper understanding of a culture of conflict. Freud himself, living in a time of fascist darkness, wrote cogently about man’s potential for human destructiveness, and was to say that ‘knowledge of the unconscious could contribute to making a better, more democratic world after 1945’.3 The dark aspects of our inner lives profoundly shape how we think and act and, without a deeper understanding of our potential for destructiveness, we are unlikely to know how to create a better world. The disciplines of psychology and those in the fields of selfawareness seem to impinge too little or not at all on thinking and conduct when it comes to politics or conflict resolution. There is an unwillingness or incapacity to understand what others are doing and why they are doing it, what effect our actions will have on others and why. The encounter between nations or entities accustomed to wealth, power and triumphant conquest and those who have experienced the other side of conquest, impoverishment and humiliation is filled with incomprehension and difficulty. Being human involves managing the destructive aspects of our behaviour, including impulses such as retribution and the desire to

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make another person suffer. Only if we become more aware of our tendency to feel hatred, jealousy, fear and anger can we learn to manage these emotions and become capable of more mature social and political behaviour. Conflict is a source of enormous pain and unhappiness. Our emotions are magnified and become more destructive. On the other hand, the management of conflict can be a creative activity that allows new thoughts to emerge, creates a greater intimacy and becomes part of our healthy development. What is true of our personal lives is equally true of conflict on the international stage. We must always ask ourselves whether our behaviour will stimulate further conflict or lead to its resolution. It will never be possible to do away with conflict; but we can get smarter about preventing conflict from turning to violence. If we are to evolve to a new level of maturity, we have to train ourselves in controlling our behaviour and increase our self-awareness. We will first need to acknowledge our destructive behaviour and take responsibility for how we behave. Revolution of the spirit

Self-reflection is not highly valued in Western culture, but according to Aung San Suu Kyi it is the capacity for self-reflection, and through it self-improvement, that distinguishes man from the mere brute. For her, this is equally true in personal life and in politics. Freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi is ultimately not just a set of institutions, laws and political processes, it is also a quest of the individual spirit and a quest for the development of self-awareness that turns us from victims of our emotions into their masters. Self-awareness, she believes, allows us to control emotions such as greed, fear and hatred; if we increase our mastery of these feelings, it will lead to a ‘revolution of the spirit’, which will inform and transform the conduct of politics. Governing in the best interest of the people demands enormous self-awareness and insight into individual motivation.

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The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development […] Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order will continue to be operative.4 Aung San Suu Kyi’s sensibilities are as much spiritual as they are political and, as she argues, political freedom is built on an inner spiritual freedom which involves keeping the body fit and the mind mindful. But key to her strength is her courage, ‘pure and simple, simple and pure. That courage, without which there is no freedom, is a virtue rare, precious and hard.’5 Her capacity to blend East and West has great relevance for us today, as does her ability to respect the best of all human civilization wherever it is found. For Aung San, the meditation practices that she has cultivated have been vital to her political courage. Her great aim is purity of the mind. Whilst this may be beyond ordinary Western practice, it points to our need, both as individuals and politicians, to have a deeper understanding of our motivations and what drives our behaviour. It is this awareness that allowed Aung San to understand that behind the violence of the Burmese junta lay their own fears, and this is why she insisted on offering them dialogue. She calls it the practice of metta, ‘loving kindness’, and sees it not as a passive act but as a means of engagement. In order to have the capacity to reach out to those who most would see as their enemies, Aung San is passionately committed to the need to free ourselves and to learn to live without hatred. For her it is not enough to live without violence, because hatred is another kind of violence. Her ‘revolution of the spirit’ involves not just changing external structure but changing our attitudes and our state of mind. She is clear that until we can free our own minds and have independent thought, in which we take responsibility as to how we behave, we will not manage to live without dictators. This will

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involve increasing our self-consciousness about freeing ourselves from our own fears and hatred. For her, it is not enough to pass laws to deal with human rights abuses; we will also need to do the necessary inner work to understand our abilities to abuse one another, and therefore have a deeper understanding of why others behave in such a way, which can help stop people hurting one another. She believes nobody is irredeemable, and if the ordinary soldier becomes cruel and inhumane then we have to look at both ourselves individually and at our society to see the ways in which we help create these conditions. Ultimately everybody is responsible for how they behave. It is easy for the Western political system to dismiss such an approach as naive and refuse to learn anything from it. It is a radical message for Western politics which is steeped, as she says, ‘in a technocratic managerialism and obsession with presentation, but the personal spiritual struggle cannot be stripped out of politics’.6 In order to construct a humanitarian identity that goes beyond external presentation, self-reflection will be a necessary prerequisite, and a part of this will be examining how our identity is created. How we create our identity

During periods of conflict, the way people define themselves becomes restricted and less open. Communities that have happily co-existed take on narrower definitions of themselves. Clearly this has happened during the authoritarian rule in Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi’s period of house arrest, and any authentic moves towards democracy will involve reconstructing identity and how people define themselves. The Balkans too is an example of how identity shifted during a period of intense conflict. Before the civil war of the 1990s, Sarajevo was a multicultural city with a multi-ethnic society where different religious and ethnic groups happily co-existed and intermarriage was possible. People’s identities before the conflict had been multiple, with strong

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attachments to a province, a village or a neighbourhood. They had unique and rich ways of describing themselves. A citizen might have said, according to Maalouf: ‘I am a Yugoslav.’ Questioned more closely, he could have said he was a citizen of the Federal Republic Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, incidentally that he came from a traditional Muslim family […] If you had met the same man twelve years later when the war was at its height, he might have answered automatically and emphatically ‘I am a Muslim’. He might have even grown his statutory beard.7 But in the war, people were to kill each other based on their ethnic differences. Previously, a young woman might have described herself as a mother, a doctor, a musician, and these parts of her identity would have crossed beyond ethnic and religious boundaries. Later the definition of herself might have been as a Serb or a Bosniak, a Christian or a Muslim. The conditions of war created climates of fear and mistrust in which those groups, who previously lived together, became a threat to each other. It became important to be loyal to one’s own ethnic group as a means of survival. This can be transposed to most situations where communities are living in conflict and feel threatened by each other, and where they fear for their own survival. The capacity to humanize their connection with the other is diminished. This happens at both the individual and the group level and it is often seen as an active betrayal to regard the enemy as human. After or during periods of conflict, these ideas also become fixed into the culture. Such positions do not emerge overnight but are stimulated by leadership where the enemy is used as a means of creating social cohesion in the group. There are those who are seen as a threat, or serve a purpose by being created in the image of a threat, and are denigrated by the leadership. Such beliefs can become deeply embedded within the culture and get passed on from generation to

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generation. Small babies, even with their mother’s milk, are taught hatred of those who are seen to be not like them. In conflict, identities become contested with questions such as: who is loyal to the state, and how can different groups live together? In order to transform the political process and create a climate in which common ground can be found between these contested groups, it is necessary to look at identity which has hardened and become fixed and defensive. The challenge may be to construct safe spaces to examine identity, to look at the origins and find ways to explore what an identity that is not constructed around hatred or the need for an enemy could look like. This work is profound and many would think that it is not the duty of the political process to address these issues. It may, however, be essential, in order to get political movement, for people’s deeply held values and ideas to be de-constructed in a way that opens up the possibility of co-existence. This might mean exploring questions such as: what would allow the community to feel safe? How can we construct a world without an enemy? And what would it take to create structures of co-existence? These shifts in position will not take place overnight, but the peace process in Northern Ireland that was described in Chapter 13 demonstrated how hard and rigid attitudes can mellow over a period of time in which the different parties learn to tolerate each other. This rigid and sometimes fundamentalist thinking is often motivated by a deep fear that the enemy wants ultimately to wipe them out. At the heart of most conflicts is the belief that the intention of the enemy is the extinction of the other. This paradigm becomes deeply engrained in the psychic structure of those immersed in conflict where the belief is that one’s own survival ultimately depends on the subjugation of the other, and ultimately the extinction of the other. These feelings are very deep inside all of us at times when we consider our own survival to be threatened. For communities to co-exist where there has been a history of profound conflict, it may

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be necessary to address some of these fears in order to move beyond these existential anxieties and find the meaning of our humanity as it relates to our enemy. But we should not assume that our ability for compassion will be without ambivalence; we may well need to deal with our very negative emotions. The history of trauma will make it more difficult to transcend negative emotions; wounds take time to heal and there are those who say it takes three generations to work through the trauma. But the challenge is to learn to live with conflicting emotions and not allow them to turn to violence. Judith Butler, an academic and a philosopher, believes that living with the other is often fraught and difficult but we have obligations to try to manage this.8 Finding the national narrative

The seeds of war and peace lie at the very core of identity and shape how we see ourselves and how we behave. Identity may be read as both the ‘national narrative’ and ‘individual narrative’. If war lies at the inner core of identity, negotiating means learning about these narratives. This becomes imperative, for it is here that the roots of decisions to kill the other or to make peace may really lie. How we construct our identity and the values embedded in our narrative will shape whether identity is constructed to build rather than destroy. We often assume that an identity that has been constructed is fixed, but it is ultimately fluid and shaped by our experiences. Our narrative right from the beginning is shaped by our relationship with our family members, influences from the community and the wider socio-political structure in which we live. The mental construct, whether stemming from the history of a people or from the more personal journey of the immediate family, not only matters, it is at the core of our behaviour. Conflict resolution relies on the ability to read national and individual narratives, and it is more likely to be successful if it explores people’s deeply held values, what they care about and where their

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limits lie. We give a detailed example of this in Chapter 5, in which we look at the motivation of the Taliban to keep fighting and some of the sacred values behind it. It will require getting into the mind of the other and understanding how and why they think differently from us. It will involve a deeper understanding of the links between traumas of the past and the current conflict and why humiliation, frustration and powerlessness often lead to violence. History as narrative

If we regard war not primarily as a moral response, but as a combination of instinctive and learnt responses to conflict, then it can only be ended through education. This education will involve engendering a spirit of learning that helps us manage human difference, and recognizing that what connects us is equally as powerful as what separates us. In practice, differences are often visually imperceptible, and without knowing, how can we tell on first impression the ‘ethnic’ difference between Serbs and Croats, for example? Indeed, the parties fighting in the Balkan wars could not claim to be ‘ethnically pure’ after a millennium of European migrations that resulted in a mixing of blood and customs. How we tell history and our personal narrative will influence our ability to live in a less warring world. As already suggested in this book, we need to adjust our attitude to history, to see it more as a set of stories we tell ourselves rather than an account of absolute facts. We also need to take account of the truth that our origins lie much more in intermarriages, mixings of tribes and migration of all sorts than our official ‘history’ may have led us to believe. We should face a reality that we are all nations of bastards. The very word ‘bastards’ has taken on a pejorative meaning and yet it may have strengthened human beings by increasing the gene pool. Perhaps an obscure but interesting example is the Mongols who advanced as far west as the eastern Alps, though they chose not to settle there. The Mongols’ ruling

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families educated every brother of the Khan in a different religion so as to understand better the people they encountered. The illusion of certainty about where we come from and who we are may become less and less important compared with what we do and how we behave. Perhaps as we look into the future there will be resistance to this kind of thinking and reconstruction of an identity that goes beyond nationalism and religion – a more open identity that crosses the boundary of the nation state. As the prolific and polymorphic nature of modern communications exposes us to multiple truths, history itself will be exposed as stories that are being passed down in time, often mythological and frequently self-constructed. People will have to come to terms with the mythological nature of their histories and the fact that their ethnicity and culture, far from being one-track and discrete, is multi-tracked and intertwined with other peoples and cultures. Living without an enemy

Nelson Mandela, in spite of his 27 years of incarceration, or possibly because of this imposed long period of self-reflection, learnt enormous self-restraint and tolerance. What differentiates him from many other revolutionaries is that he never sought retribution. He understood something very profound: that in order to create a more just society you have to win the trust not only of your natural supporters but also of your enemy. The political genius of Mandela, as with all great leaders, is that he was ‘a professional seducer’,9 a seducer of both friend and foe. He understood the need to create a society based not on retribution and replacing white power with black power but instead on shared power. This was not just idealism, it was pragmatism – to exclude the talent and experience of an important part of the community would not only lack humanity, it would also be stupid. As has been discussed, groups that have been involved in endless conflict frequently make having an enemy part of their identity, a source of social cohesion and even their raison d’être – the pain, suffering

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and trauma caused by the enemy becomes a badge of honour. In such circumstances, displaying loyalty to one’s own group is important and hating the enemy is the respected thing to do. When there has been a long history of conflict, groups often persuade themselves that the enemy is of lesser value and thus de-humanize them. Such a process does not happen overnight, but it does become deeply embedded in the value system of the culture. Philip Gourevitch in his seminal book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998)10 documents how gangs in Rwanda had been primed by the radio with the notion that their victims were cockroaches: ‘It is a mistake however,’ he writes, ‘to believe that people can be persuaded to commit crimes against humanity by a short-term exposure to the rhetoric of hate. In massacres with a sectarian component the process of de-humanization is likely to have been the work of a lifetime.’11 This is supported by research conducted in Northern Ireland, which found that by the age of three, Catholic children had already ‘imbibed hatred with their mothers’ milk’ and were more likely to be hostile to the police force than the equivalent Protestant children growing up in the same environment. In conditions of peace, group emotions are manageable, but in conditions of conflict, deep, polarized emotions emerge, producing ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’. War magnifies the more negative, destructive aspects of ourselves. It is only in societies that have had the opportunity to live in more benign conditions, and have avoided war for more than one generation, that the conditions emerge for people to co-exist peacefully. But leadership is also required that goes beyond sectarian interests and that can reach out to a broader humanity – not the kind of leadership that that manipulates factional political power and is unable to inspire a bigger vision as to how to live in a safer world. We need to educate the human mind to move beyond rigid concepts of nationalism, racism and the need for an enemy, so that we can learn to co-exist and have a deeper understanding of those who are ‘different’ from ourselves.

Afterword

Peacemaking is Foggy ‘Si vis pacem para bellum’ – ‘if you want peace prepare for war’… to a thought made possible by ending the Cold War, ‘if you want peace prepare for peace’. Hans Blix

What would it look like in the twenty-first century if we were to get smarter in the activity of peacemaking and if governments were as serious about allocating resources to making peace as they are about investments in the machinery of war? We might see levels of conflict in the world significantly subside. Throughout this book we have never denied the importance of ‘the smell of politics’, or the existence of conflicting sources of power. They exist and will always continue to do so. The constraints of government operate in a political landscape influenced by special interests, a powerful media, and geopolitics. But could we imagine a world in which we shifted our priorities and in which the majority of governments prided themselves more on their role as peacemakers than on the size of their armies? Currently, Western governments find it easier to buy expensive new drones, Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter aircraft than to do the serious work of analysing and implementing sustained structures for peacemaking. The money shelled out for one such plane would pay for several serious, long-term negotiating tables and a commando team of mediators.

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Governments up to now have often calculated that the benefits of war outweigh its costs. But the cost of weapon procurement and its devastating effects now challenges us to pause and consider seriously the alternatives to these horrendous conflicts. We see the continued wasteful spending on weapons, which devour resources needed for our human development. ‘During the course of the 20th century, the trade in arms made viable and fueled conflicts and cost the lives of 231 million people.’1 The current system seems to be consumed by crisis management with little long-term, visionary thinking about the kind of society in which we wish to live and how we can reduce the cost and consequences of war. A new kind of thinking will be required in which international relations prioritize the legitimate security concerns of other states that are not necessarily allies. This could present opportunities to reduce the size of the military budget and the burgeoning security institutions. Traditional attempts at peacemaking have created complex bureaucracies, circuses of diplomats, frequent flyers around the global terrain with insufficient evidence of success in the resolution of conflict. Picco, 11 years ago, refused a main role in the diplomatic efforts of the EU, within the Quartet on the Middle East (which consists of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia), working on the ‘road map for peace’ because, in his own words, ‘you will still be talking about it in ten years’. Indeed the structures have proved to be cumbersome and ill attuned to the skills of peacemaking. The challenge now is for both national and multinational institutions to understand the limits and weaknesses of their organization in the role of peacemaking. ln this complex world of multilateral institutions what is now needed is to empower systems that are more nimble and agile and have flexibility to act with both heft and speed. Individuals or small teams experienced in conflict resolution could be empowered by small ad hoc groups or countries who have the leverage to influence the conflict. Those empowered in this role would be accountable to those who had delegated power. They would have the ability to build personal

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relationships, read national and individual narratives, and have the courage to take personal responsibility for success and failure. Such teams could leverage the weight of those who have asked them to intervene, but have the necessary agility to act because of the delegated authority of that institution. This book is not a manual for negotiations, and we recognize that each conflict is different and that negotiations will need to be finely tuned accordingly. Moreover, we do not claim to teach anybody how to negotiate the next potential clash, either between two different nation states or within states, but we have a few final comments to make. The current climate of realpolitik is where interests shape political alignments, and the priorities of the national state are currently determined around vested interests. There is no collective vision on the international stage as to how to intervene early to help stabilize the country in conflict and help contain the violence. The pragmatic game of politics seems to have little to do with conflict resolution and more to do with the domestic agendas of the major powers. A change in attitude is now required so that countries do not meddle externally to further their own interests and do not intervene to support one side against the other, but the primary aim in any intervention should be to contain the violence and provide a framework for negotiations. When violence is brewing or about to break out, early intervention could make a huge difference. So often the violence is allowed to escalate to the point at which none of the parties wish to abide by a ceasefire and are primarily motivated by retribution. The parties involved in the conflict are more concerned about asserting their position of power and winning than finding any kind of compromise. Violence creates more violence and the desire for revenge. We therefore recommend that when violence is erupting in a particular state or between states, the international community intervenes not by taking sides, but to assist in creating a framework for dialogue amongst the warring parties. In these circumstances, it would not be the job of the

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external governments to decide whether a leader should go or stay. This decision would be for the internal politics of the country in conflict, and it would be for those involved in the conflict, whose lives are affected, to decide how any transition of power is managed. After a ceasefire had been negotiated, a transitional technocratic government could be established. A referendum in the country could then take place, monitored by the international community, with the aim of determining the future distribution of power and therefore which, if any, individuals or groups should relinquish power. A commando team of mediators (not chosen from the old multilateral structures with vested interests) would already be embedded. They would have established relationships with the political and local leadership for the specific purpose of dealing with the conflict. When there was the threat of or an outbreak of violence, the mediators would intervene immediately and shuttle between the different parties. This could be supported by early warning systems using digital technologies to alert the international community to possible violence brewing on the ground. This information could then be used to create a mechanism for the potentially warring parties to engage in dialogue before escalating to full-blown conflict. Such mediators would work internally within the country, addressing the internal erupting conflict, but they would also address the role of regional players stoking the conflict and, as appropriate, mediate between the different groups. Regional and domestic tables could be established that ensure communication between the different countries and within the country in conflict. The aim would be to establish dialogue amongst the countries early enough to contain the escalating violence. Furthermore, inhibiting the flow of weapons to the different parties in the conflict would be critical, even though this may appear antithetical to the current climate, in which states actively supply weapons to the parties with whom they side. Authoritarian states have armies and weapons at their disposal which may be used against their own people. In such cases the role of the international community

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would actively seek to prevent both the supply and the financing of these weapons. There are powerful interests at stake here, so this would involve a profound shift in the objectives of stakeholders not to take sides but to be motivated by a commitment to end the violence. Western governments have been a force for both remarkable progress and remarkable destruction. Extraordinary imagination has been shown in the creation of a number of ideas that have changed the world such as capitalism, communism, fascism, psychoanalysis, the atomic bomb, computers, aeroplanes, human rights and gas chambers. The West has made an extraordinary contribution to mankind, but it has also been the cause of much destruction and war. It has been convinced of its own superiority and the belief that conquering the world would spread ‘the benefits of medicines and new techniques as well as liberty. But at the same time it looted, massacred and brought people into subjection, arousing as much resentment as fascination everywhere.’2 The question now is whether it is possible for western governments to move away from their comfortable certainties in which there is a belief that they stand for universal good. Political maturation will be required in global politics, where emotional and political intelligence is exercised and shaped by sober calculations of how to end violence, as opposed to the belief in the superiority of our thinking. Seasoned politicians would prioritize burying personal differences and finding room for agreement where interests dictated. There would be a commitment to placing opportunities to find common ground above wounded pride and the humiliation of past failures. War as a solution, with its pathology, creates a madness of irrationality and paranoia, in which the worst aspects of human behaviour are stimulated. Such fights for survival stimulate the kind of aggression that magnifies hatred and perpetuates the most destructive aspects of mankind. What is now needed is a profound change in mankind’s attitude to war. There is much evidence to suggest that the increased visibility of what happens in warfare and the more intense media

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scrutiny have created a public revulsion about what war does, and the feeling that man needs to aspire to a better future. With the exception of those who benefit, most people are sick and tired of war. The real challenge now is for mankind to take responsibility for its destructive behaviour and, instead of acting it out through war, channel its aggression into more constructive behaviour to work to support peace. The most powerful tools we have in our hands are not our weapons but our minds. We need to use the passions that we bring to war to struggle for peace. We can do better, and governments can be bold and show leadership in the activity of peacemaking. If we wish to live in a safer world, we need fundamentally to review our approach to conflict resolution. For real progress, leadership with a coherent vision will be required that is not shaped around the need for an enemy and the politics of resistance, in which legitimacy resides more in what countries stand against as opposed to what they stand for. It will require a period of hard-edged critical self-reflections in which political programmes are shaped around this vision that examines what connects us instead of what sets us apart. Humanity has the tools to build something new; the question is, where are those individuals, indeed leaders, with the courage to fill the white pages of the future creatively, instead of repainting the past? Peacemaking is not the product of a technique, it is the triumph of those who have the courage to implement the vision of a safer world – a vision that understands both geopolitical power struggles and the complexity of the human mind.

Acknowledgements

Over the past decade many people have shaped my thoughts and helped me clarify my thinking. This book, however, would not have come about without Iradj Bagherzade’s proposal of the idea and his commitment to it. Gianni Picco, my co-author, friend and colleague, allowed me to see the world through a wider lens, and for this I will always be grateful. Scilla Elworthy was a powerful catalyst in helping me to gain the courage to foray into this world, and a loyal friend. David Robson played an important role as an early, kind and supportive editor. Lisa Hashemi, a loyal and intelligent spirit, was immensely helpful in the first year of writing this book, as was Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi later for her research on Iran. Thanks also to Sara Hassan for her helpful comments on political Islam, and to Zarlasht Halaimzai, who was a generous reader. I benefited hugely from having such an experienced editor, Philippa Brewster, and a dedicated team at I.B.Tauris, which included Azmina Siddique, Naomi French and Antonia Leslie. So many people inspired me. For this, I am indebted to Dan Kurtzer for his intellectual balance and his ability to communicate the US government perspective, Tom Pickering for his continued support and his political pragmatism, John Limbert for his wonderful insights into the Iranian mind, Scott Kemp for his academic excellence in the Iranian nuclear field, Sir Richard Dalton for his persistence and creativity on the Iranian nuclear question, Sir Malcolm Rifkind for sharing his political experience, his sense of humour and his cousinly advice, Lord Alderdice for his early support and wise counsel, and

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Hans Blix for his kindness to me, his creative spirit and his intellectual honesty. Ashraf Ghani offered wisdom and insight on Afghanistan, and Clare Lockhart helped me deepen my understanding of the country. Thanks are also due to David Loyn for sharing his deep knowledge on Afghanistan, to David Hearst for his friendship and for challenging me when my dreams were too idealistic, to Martin Woollacott for being an early and encouraging reader, and to Brian Lapping for his continuous interest in the book and his commitment to exploring whether the ideas could reach a wider audience. This journey has taken me to many places, with meetings in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. I would like to thank Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, for crossing boundaries in the name of peacemaking and welcoming us in Riyadh, and Prince Hassan, for hosting a meeting on human security in Amman. Ahmad Khalidi was one of the founding influences of our Middle East programme and I thank him for his intelligent analysis, senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath for his sincerity as a peacemaker, Khaled Hroub for his wise insights on Hamas, Husam Zumlot for his silver tongue and intellectual agility, and Refqa Abu-Remaileh for her patience and clarity of mind. My thanks also go to Amira Dotan for her humanity, warmth and emotional intelligence, to Akiva Eldar for his friendship and years of political analysis, to Ofer Salzberg for his integrity and generous spirit, to Professor Oliver Ramsbotham for his friendship and ideas on radical disagreement, to Professor Paul Rogers as a role model for trying to make the world a safer place, and to Professor John Slobodo for the sincerity of his work. Chris Langdon helped me gain the confidence to write, and Paul Ingrim has always been steadfast and generous of spirit. As for my friends, they have had to cope with my love affair with the Middle East. Susie Orbach has helped me navigate my way through the publishing world and been an inspiration for my early thoughts on emotional intelligence. I have enjoyed the walks with Linda Kelsey and our conversations about the evolution of the book.

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I am grateful to Anne Webber for the quality of our conversations about the Middle East and to Debra Hauer for her continuous interest and emotional support. My appreciation goes out to Guy Hibbert and Lia Williams for their passion for the ideas, to Melanie Clews for showing interest in and therapeutic insights into the book, and to Maja O’Brien who was a generous friend and editor. More recently, my appreciation goes to Nicola Glucksman, for our conversations on putting the psychological and the political worlds together, and to the artist Nicola Green, for the warm and stimulating conversation on the links between creativity and political change, all of which has been another source of inspiration to me. But most of all my appreciation goes to my dear family, who have shown interest and patience whilst I wrote this book, often when I have been preoccupied and thinking more about the Iranian nuclear issue than the state of our fridge. My lovely husband and life partner, Jonathan Levy, combined irony, interest and love often when I was in my state of preoccupation (I think he preferred me in this state), and my dearest boys Zander Levy and Jake Levy never allow me to show hubris by challenging me with their wonderful intellectual curiosity. Thanks also to the lovely Cicely Goulder, who recently joined our family. Finally, I would also like to include Leo Rifkind for showing interest in the book and my dear sister Marion Rifkind, who wanted to understand why I thought as I did. Gabrielle Rifkind My first acknowledgement goes to my co-author, Gabrielle Rifkind. This book would not exist without her hard work, friendship, steward­ ship and patience, and this involved a lot of patience with me. I was inspired and sustained in my endeavours by those who have been my teachers in different moments of my human and professional journey. General Brent Scowcroft was to me more than just one of the few people who brought the Cold War to an end; to me, he was a teacher. Thanks are also due to Pérez de Cuéllar, the unknown, misunderstood

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and little-appreciated Secretary General of the UN in the decade up to 1991. Many of our views were politically diverse and yet I could not have done my acrobatics in Lebanon and elsewhere without his guidance, his respect and his permission to fly solo at times. And thanks to those unnamed persons who believed in me early on, who were children of Locke and Hume, and to the ‘poetry’ of the Irish, be it John Hume, a political poet, or Seamus Heaney. And then thanks to Kate, the mother of my younger son, Liam, whose light, courage and feelings will continue to be my beacon to the end of my days. Giandomenico Picco

Notes Preface 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘History’, in Essays: First Series (1841).

Introduction 1 Vamık Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), p. 17. 2 Hans Blix, unpublished lecture at the Hay Festival in memory of Joseph Rotblat, 26 May 2013. 3 In conversation with Hans Blix, Stockholm, 26 June 2013. 4 Dan Kurtzer, ‘Toward a new American policy’, Cairo Review of Global Affairs, 10 February 2013. 5 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1651), p. 123. 6 Volkan, Bloodlines, p. 32. 7 James J. Blight and Janet M. Lang, The Fog of War: Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005).

1. A So-Called Diplomat’s Story by Gianni Picco 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘History’, in Essays: First Series (1841). 2 Martin Eiermann, interview with Martti Ahtisaari, The European, 29 April 2013. Available at www.theeuropean-magazine.com/martti-ahtisaari--2/6560-europeand-the-world (accessed 26 August 2013). 3 Arthur Schlesinger, speech given on 14 December 2006 at the Century Association, New York.

2. The Therapist’s Story by Gabrielle Rifkind 1 Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel (London: Portobello Books, 2012), p. 482. 2 Ahmad Khalidi, unpublished paper presented at London School of Economics and Political Science, May 2013. 3 Henry Siegman, ‘Meshal’s folly’, Haaretz, 14 December 2012. (His name is variously transliterated as ‘Mashal’ and ‘Meshal’.) 4 The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), translated and annotated by Raphael Israeli, Harry Truman Research Institute, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Available at www.fas.org/irp/world/ para/docs/880818.htm (accessed 26 August 2013).

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3. No Politics without Psychology 1 The Knesset is the legislative branch of the Israeli government. 2 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. 411. 3 Robert Wright, The Evolution of God: The Origins of Our Beliefs (London: Little, Brown, 2009), p. 478. 4 Atran, S. and J. Henrich, ‘The evolution of religion: how cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions’, Biological Theory 5, 18–30. 5 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1871), p. 135. 6 Karen Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (London: The Bodley Head, 2011), p. 89. 7 Wright, The Evolution of God, p. 478. 8 Whit Mason, ‘The human factor: understanding the subjective incentives which determine the course of conflicts’, 13 June 2012, unpublished paper prepared for DFID, p. 11. 9 Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. xxiv. 10 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), p. 276. 11 Nicholas D. Kistof, ‘Are we getting nicer?’ International Herald Tribune, 25 November 2011, p. 7. 12 John Sloboda, ‘Presentation to the Afghanistan Withdrawal Group: Afghanistan: recording all the dead is in everyone’s interests’, 1 January 2011. Available at www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/reports/presentation_afghanistan_ withdrawal_group_afghanistan_recording_all_dead_everyo (accessed 26 August 2013). 13 Ibid. 14 Works by Wilfred Bion (1897–1979) include Learning from Experience (1962) and A Memoir of the Future (1975). 15 Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (London: Random House Business Books, 2010), p. 5. 16 Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 37.

4. Israel: FROM TRAUMA TO WHERE? 1 Harriet Sherwood, ‘Israel election: country prepares for next act in the great moving right show’, Observer, 13 January 2013. 2 Harriet Sherwood, ‘Doubts grow as Israel’s ring of steel, wire and concrete nears completion’, Guardian, 27 March 2012. 3 Nathan Thrall, ‘The Third Intifada is inevitable’, International Herald Tribune, 23 June 2012. 4 Ibid. 5 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Final Statement at Conclusion of the Middle East Peace Summit at Aqaba, 4 June 2003. 6 Time Magazine, 23 September 2011, p. 27. 7 Ibid., p. 28. 8 Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel (London: Portobello Books, 2012), p. 12. 9 Kofi Annan, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (London: Allen Lane, 2012), p. 296.

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10 Tyler, Fortress Israel, p. 9. 11 Carlo Stringer, ‘Jewish anti-Zionist academic insists Israeli occupation is unJewish’, Haaretz, 10 December 2012. 12 Quoted in Kai Bird, Divided City (London: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 339. 13 Esther Benbassa, Suffering as Identity: The Jewish Paradigm (London: Verso, 2010), p. 131. 14 Yediot Aharonot, 30 January 2007. 15 Benbassa, Suffering as Identity, p. 76. 16 Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars (New York: Levant Books, 2012), p. 1. 17 David McKittrick, ‘Benzion Netanyahu: Zionist whose views had a profound influence on his son Benjamin’, Independent, 4 May 2012. 18 David Remnick, Letter from Jerusalem, ‘The Outsider’, New Yorker, 25 May 1998. 19 Quoted in McKittrick, ‘Benzion Netanyahu’.

5. The Taliban Mind 1 Sherard Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign (London: Harper Press, 2011). 2 ‘“We should have talked to Taliban” says top British officer in Afghanistan’, Guardian, 29 June 2013. 3 Bronwen Maddox, ‘The case for an Afghanistan enquiry’, Prospect, September 2013, p. 30. 4 Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values and What It Means to Be Human (London: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 262. 5 ‘Commander’s initial assessment’, COMISAF, NATO, 30 August 2009. Available at http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_ Redacted_092109.pdf (accessed 26 August 2013). 6 Atran, Talking to the Enemy, pp. 264–5. 7 David Loyn, Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (London: Hutchinson, 2008), p. 244. 8 Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (London: Random House, 2009), p. 5. 9 Ibid., p. 6. 10 Ibid., p. 282. 11 Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul, p. 278.

6. My God is Right, Yours is Wrong 1 2 3 4

Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012), p. 79. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 182. Karen Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (London: The Bodley Head, 2011). 5 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (London: Allen Lane, 2012), p. 88. 6 Marwan al-Muasher, ‘The overblown Islamic threat’, New York Times, 2 November 2011. 7 Tariq Ramadan, Islam and the Arab Awakening (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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8 Izzeldin Abuelaish, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), p. 4. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. viii. 11 Wasseem El Sarraj, ‘The sounds in Gaza city’, New Yorker, 19 November 2012. Available at www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/sounds-ofthe-bombing-in-gaza-city.html (accessed 26 August 2013). 12 Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days That Changed the Middle East (New York: Vintage, 1999), p. 293. 13 Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (London: Hurst & Co., 2004), p. 3. 14 Armstrong, Twelve Steps, p. 126. 15 Pankaj Mishra, ‘America’s inevitable retreat’, International Herald Tribune, 24 September 2012. 16 Al Doustour, 17 September 2012. 17 Tariq Ramadan, ‘Waiting for an Arab spring of ideas’, International Herald Tribune, 30 September 2012. 18 Ibid. 19 Quoted in Charles Glass, ‘The country that is the world: Syria’s clashing communities’, World Affairs, July–August 2012. Available at www. worldaffairsjournal.org/article/country-world-syria’s-clashing-communities (accessed 26 August 2013).

7. Iran: GETTing into the mind of the enemy 1 David Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State (London: I.B.Tauris, 2012), p. 288. 2 Ibid. 3 William O. Beeman, The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 27. 4 Bahman Baktiari, ‘Seeking international legitimacy: understanding the dynamics of nuclear nationalism in Iran’, INSS Middle East Security Perspective, p. 24. 5 Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran, p. 12. 6 For a fuller discussion, see Homa Katouzian, Mussaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I.B.Tauris, 1999). 7 Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (eds), Political Culture in the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 9. 8 Ibid., p. 13. 9 Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran, p. 237. 10 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speech to academics, 6 October 2006. 11 Arabic News, 16 August 2006. 12 ‘Tehran hardens nuclear stance’, Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2012. 13 For a fuller discussion on the treaty, see Edwin Brown Firmage, ‘The treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,’ American Journal of International Law 63/4, October 1969, pp. 711–46. 14 Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran, p. 30. 15 Hassan Rohani, ‘Observing non-proliferation regimes is based on our beliefs’, Rahbord 36, pp. 7–15. 16 Anatol Lieven, ‘How to get out of the Iran trap’, Washington Post, 12 April 2006.

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17 Bahman Baktiari, ‘Seeking international legitimacy: understanding the dynamics of nuclear nationalism in Iran’, INSS Middle East Security Perspective, p. 28. 18 John W. Limbert, Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009). 19 This was a confidential meeting attended by authors of the book to try to improve relationships between Iranian and US policy makers. 20 The White House, ‘Videotaped remarks by the President in celebration of Nowruz’, 20 March 2009. Available at www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ videotaped-remarks-president-celebration-nowruz (accessed 26 August 2013). 21 Supreme Leader’s Speech in Mashhad, 21 March 2009, The Center for Preserving and Publishing the Works of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei. Available at http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =1076&Itemid=4 (accessed 26 August 2013). 22 ‘How I would check Iran’s nuclear ambition’, Washington Post, 5 March 2012.

8. Thirteen Successful Negotiations with Iran 1 Giandomenico Picco, Man without a Gun (New York: Times Books, 1999). 2 Ehud Barak served as prime minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001 and Ariel Sharon from 2001 to 2006.

9. The Changing Nature of Warfare 1 Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (London: Granta Books, 2011). 2 ‘The UK’s foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan’, House of Commons, oral evidence, taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tuesday, 9 November 2010, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles KCMG LVO, Gilles Dorronsoro and Gerard Russell MBE. Available at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/ cmselect/cmfaff/c514-iii/c51401.htm (accessed 26 August 2013). 3 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 228, 258. 4 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London: Pimlico, 2004), p. 390. 5 John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York: First Vintage Books, 1992), p. 198. 6 Andrew Marr, The Making of Modern Britain (London: Macmillan, 2009), p. 118. 7 Keegan, A History of Warfare, p. 57. 8 Mohamed ElBaradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011), p. 315. 9 Ehrenreich, Blood Rites, p. 244. 10 Richard Clarke, ‘The growing threat from cyberspace’, International Herald Tribune, 4 August 2011. 11 Christopher Rhoads and Farnaz Fassihi, ‘Iran vows to unplug internet’, Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2011. Available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100 01424052748704889404576277391449002016.html#articleTabs%3Darticle (accessed 26 August 2013). 12 Sebastian Junger, War (London: Fourth Estate, 2010), p. 140. 13 Paul Rogers, ‘Drone warfare: cost and challenge’, openDemocracy, 23 June 2011. Available at www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/drone-warfare-cost-andchallenge (accessed 26 August 2013). 14 Anonymous, ‘Predator drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)’, New York

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Times, 21 October 2011. Available at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/ timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html (accessed 26 August 2013). 15 Andrew Feinstein, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (London: Penguin Books, 2011), p. xxvii. 16 Ibid., p. xxvii. 17 Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, p. 150. 18 Eisenhower’s farewell address, 17 January 1961. 19 Feinstein, The Shadow World, p. xxii. 20 Ibid., p. 28. 21 Ibid., p. 141. 22 Ibid. 23 P. Holden and B. Pace, ‘Corruption and the arms trade: sins of commission’, in SIPRI Yearbook 2011 (Oxford: Oxford, 2011). 24 Ibid. 25 Speech by Andrew Feinstein, 2012 Oslo Freedom Forum, 7–9 May 2012. 26 Bryan Bender, ‘From the Pentagon to the private sector’, Boston Globe, 26 December 2010. 27 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012), p. 8. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, ‘A Tunisian–Egyptian link that shook Arab history’, New York Times, 13 February 2011. Available at www. nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests. html?pagewanted=all (accessed 26 August 2013). 31 Anonymous, ‘How bloggers led the way in Arab protests’, Canvasopedia, 14 February 2011, www.canvasopedia.org/how-bloggers-led-the-way-in-arabprotests.php (accessed 26 August 2013). 32 Kirkpatrick and Sanger, ‘A Tunisian–Egyptian link’. 33 Thomas L. Friedman, ‘Advice for China’, International Herald Tribune, 4 June 2011. Available at www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05friedman.html (accessed 26 August 2013). 34 Jelena, ‘Serbian ousters of Milosevic make mark in Egypt’, Canvasopedia, 23 February 2011, Available at http://92.42.252.18/serbian-ousters-of-milosevicmake-mark-in-egypt.php (accessed 26 August 2013). 35 Quoted in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, ‘From Boston, freedom’s ferment bubbles worldwide’, International Herald Tribune, 18 February 2011. 36 Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, p. 186. 37 Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy, p. 8. 38 Keegan, A History of Warfare, p. 59.

10. Alternatives to War: do we need to get smarter? 1 Richard Dalton, ‘Libya, and the limits of liberal intervention’, Independent, 23 November 2011. 2 David Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illness of Heads of Government during the Last 100 Years (London: Methuen, 2008), p. xv. 3 James Dobbins, ‘The West must intervene to finish the Assad regime’, Financial Times, 8–9 December 2012. 4 Nick Hopkins, ‘The British volunteer, the US army and Iraq’s descent into civil war’, Guardian, 16 July 2012.

Notes

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5 Ibid. 6 Oliver Ramsbotham, ‘Strategic thinking’, Oxford Research Group, 2012. 7 Rory Stewart, ‘The irresistible intervention: why are we in Afghanistan?’, London Review of Books 31/13, 9 July 2009. 8 Giandomenico Picco and Gabrielle Rifkind, ‘To help Syria, talk first to Iran and Saudi Arabia’, Guardian, 12 February 2013. 9 James Harkin, ‘The Syrian trap’, Prospect, July 2013, p. 22. 10 Kofi Annan, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (London: Penguin, 2012). 11 Jeremy Bowen, The Arab Uprisings: The People Want the Fall of the Regime (London: Simon and Schuster, 2012) p. 215. 12 Ibid., p. 303. 13 Ramzy Mardini, ‘Bad idea, Mr. President’, New York Times, 16 June 2013. 14 Ibid. 15 Homa Khaleeli, ‘Syria and the British connection’, Guardian, 18 June 2013. 16 Giandomenico Picco and Gabrielle Rifkind, ‘Out of the Syrian quagmire’, Oxford Research Group, 13 February 2013. 17 For more information on the Elders, see www.theelders.org. 18 Martin Eiermann, ‘We must have the courage to defend our values’, The European, 29 April 2013. Available at www.theeuropean-magazine.com/martti-ahtisaari-2/6560-europe-and-the-world (accessed 26 August 2013). 19 Charles Glass, ‘The last thing Syrians need is more arms going to either side’, Guardian, 4 March 2013. 20 Giandomenico Picco and Gabrielle Rifkind, ‘To help Syria, talk first to Iran and Saudi Arabia’, Guardian, 12 February 2013.  21 Thomas L. Friedman, Letter from Syria, International Herald Tribune, 3 December 2012. 22 ‘Privatising peace’, The Economist, 30 June 2011. 23 Annan, Interventions. 24 For more information on PAX, see www.paxreports.org/index.php.

11. Beyond the Nation State: do we still need an enemy? 1 David Miliband, ‘Decade of disorder’, Prospect Magazine, August 2011, p. 16. 2 Kishore Mahbubani, ‘A rudderless world’, New York Times, 18 August 2011. 3 Ian Bremmer, ‘Searching the world for good governance’, International Herald Tribune, 27 November 2011. 4 Mahbubani, ‘A rudderless world’. 5 John Chipman, ‘Who holds the power?’, Prospect Magazine, January 2012, p. 29. 6 Ibid. 7 Pierre Buhler, ‘Whose century, the 21st?’, International Herald Tribune, 24 November 2011. 8 Roger Cohen, ‘How bad are things, really?’, International Herald Tribune, 2 December 2011, p. 17. 9 Quoted ibid. 10 Charles A. Kupchan, ‘Refounding good governance’, International Herald Tribune, 20 December 2011. 11 Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (London: Arrow Books, 2009), page no to add. 12 Speech given by Brent Scowcroft in Grand Rapids, US, in July 2012. 13 Chipman, ‘Who holds the power?’, p. 29. 14 Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age (John Murray, 2013), p.4.

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15 Ibid., p. 7. 16 John Thornhill, ‘How can we defeat terrorism if all the trust has gone?’, Financial Times, 24 August 2013. 17 Simon Jenkins, ‘For the digital revolution, it’s the Robespierre moment’, Guardian, 11 July 2012. 18 Peter Beaumont, ‘How do we escape the hysteria that threatens to erode public debate?’, Observer, 26 August 2012. 19 Ibid. 20 Amartya Sen, Identity & Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 175. 21 Ibid., p. 157. 22 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 2. 23 Vamık Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), p. 42. 24 Ibid., p. 162.

12. A look into the Future 1 John Chipman, ‘Who holds the power?’, Prospect Magazine, January 2012, p. 29. 2 Charles Grant, ‘Multilateralism à la carte’, International Herald Tribune, 17 April 2012. 3 Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 81. 4 Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 14. 5 Thomas Freidman, ‘Syria scorecard’, New York Times, 22 June 2013.

13. The Art of Negotiation 1 Douglas E. Noll, ‘Time for a different conversation’, Bitterlemons International, 7 July 2011. Available at www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside.php?id=1405 (accessed 26 August 2013). 2 Blackshaw, ‘My enemy, my brother’. 3 John, Lord Alderdice, ‘Off the couch and round the conference table’, in Alessandra Lemma and Matthew Patrick (eds), Off the Couch: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Applications (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 5. 4 The section on Northern Ireland is mostly a result of conversations with Nial Johnston and Lord Alderdice. Niall Johnston was the key adviser to the Northern Ireland Assembly, following the 1988 Belfast Agreement. John, Lord Alderdice is a Northern Irish politician, was Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 to 2004, and now sits in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat. 5 Alderdice, ‘Off the couch and round the conference table’. 6 ‘Israel needs to listen to Hamas, and take notice’, Haaretz, 29 December 2011. Available at www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-needs-to-listen-tohamas-and-take-notice-1.404256 (accessed 26 August 2013). 7 Amos Elon, A Blood-Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East (London: Penguin History, 2001), pp. 244–5. 8 Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel (London: Portobello Books, 2012), p. 426. 9 Elon, A Blood-Dimmed Tide, pp. 244–5. 10 Shlomo Ben-Ami, A Front Without a Rearguard: A Voyage to the Boundaries of the Peace Process (Tel Aviv: Miskal Yedioth Ahronoth Books, 2004), p. 473.

Notes

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11 Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, ‘Camp David: the tragedy of errors’, New York Review of Books, 9 August 2001. 12 Brian Michael Till, Conversations with Power: What Great Presidents and Prime Ministers Can Teach Us about Leadership (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 146. 13 Gershon Baskin, ‘Abbas, man of peace’, Jerusalem Post, 21 March 2010. 14 Jonathan Freedland, ‘Yearning for the same land’, New Statesman, 23 July 2012, p. 24. 15 Alderdice, ‘Off the couch and round the conference table’, p. 14. 16 Alessandra Lemma and Matthew Patrick (eds), Off the Couch: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Applications (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 14. 17 Conversation with Richard Dalton, June 2012.

14. The Politics of Self-Awareness 1 Karen Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (London: The Bodley Head, 2011). 2 Ibid. 3 Daniel Pick, The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 2. 4 Quoted in Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma (London: Rider, 2011), p. 254. 5 Timothy Garten Ash, ‘The fourth life of Aung San Suu Kyi has just begun’, Guardian, 21 June 2012. 6 Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘The Reith lectures, lecture 1: liberty’, BBC, 29 June 2012. 7 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 22. 8 Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 9 John Carlin, Playing the Enemy (London: Atlantic Books, 2008), p. 6. 10 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 11 Peter Beaumont, ‘When killing is normal’, Guardian, 30 May 2012.

Afterword: Peacemaking is Foggy 1 Andrew Feinstein, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (London: Penguin Books, 2011), p. 531. 2 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 79.

Select Bibliography Abuelaish, Izzeldin, I Shall Not Hate (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). Argyris, Chris, Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993). Armstrong, Karen, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (London: The Bodley Head, 2011). Aslan, Reza, How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (London: Random House, 2009). Atran, Scott, Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values and What It Means to Be Human (London: Allen Lane, 2010). Baron-Cohen, Simon, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty (London: Allen Lane, 2011). Beebee, Shannon D., and Mary Kaldor, The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War (New York: Public Affairs, 2010). Beeman, William O., The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008). Ben-Ami, Jeremy, A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Ben-Ami, Shlomo, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli–Arab Tragedy (London: Weidenfels & Nicolson, 2005). Betz, David J., and Tim Stevens, Cyberspace and the State: Toward a Strategy for CyberPower (Oxon: Routledge, 2011). Blight, James J., and Janet M. Lang, The Fog of War: Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005). Bloom, Sandra L. (ed.) Violence: A Public Health Menace and a Public Health Approach (London: Karnac Books, 2001). Botton, Alain de, Religion for Atheists (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012). Brooks, David, The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens (London: Short Books, 2011). Cooper, Robert, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2003). Covington, Coline, Paul Williams, Jean Arundale and Jean Knox, Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence (London: Karnac, 2002). Cowper-Coles, Sherard, Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign (London: Harper Press, 2011). Davids, Fakhry M., Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Dupree, Louis, Afghanistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites: The Origins and History of the Passions of War (London: Granta, 2011).

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261

ElBaradei, Mohamed, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). Elworthy, Scilla, and Gabrielle Rifkind, Making Terrorism History (London: Rider, 2006). Feinstein, Andrew, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (London: Penguin Books, 2011). Fisk, Robert, Pity the Nation (London: Oxford University Press, 1990). Freeman, Charles, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (London: Pimlico, 2003). Friedman, Thomas L., and Michael Mandelbaum ‘That Used to Be Us’: What Went Wrong with America – and How It Can Come Back (New York: Little, Brown, 2011). Haidt, Jonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (London: Allen Lane, 2012). Heath, Chip and Dan, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (London: Random House Business Books, 2010). Heifetz, Ronald A., Leadership without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994). Hopkirk, Peter, The Great Game (New York: Kodansha America, 1994). Howell, Georgina, Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2012 (London: Routledge, 2012). Johnson, Chalmers, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). Junger, Sebastian, War (London: Fourth Estate, 2011). Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Allen Lane, 2011). Kapuściński, Ryszard, The Other (London: Verso, 2008). Keenan, Brian Thurlough (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000). King, Mary Elizabeth, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007). Limbert, John W., Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009). Lodhi, Maleeha (ed.), Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State (London: Hurst & Company, 2011). MacMillan, Margaret, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (New York: Modern Library, 2009). Mitchell, George, Making Peace: The Inside Story of the Making of the Good Friday Agreement (London: William Heinemann, 1999). Nye, Joseph S., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). Ophir, Adi, Michael Givoni and Sari Hanafi (eds), The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New York: Zone Books, 2009). Osofsky, Joy D. (ed.), Children in a Violent Society (New York: The Guilford Press, 1997). Owen, David, In Sickness and in Power: Illness of Heads of Government during the Last 100 Years (London: Methuen, 2008). Parsi, Trita, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the US (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). ——— A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

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Perry, Mark, How to Lose the War on Terror (London: Hurst & Company, 2010). Picco, Giandomenico, Man without a Gun: One Diplomat’s Secret Struggle to Free the Hostages, Fight Terrorism, and End a War (New York: Times Books, 1999). Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes (London: Allen Lane, 2011). Ralston Saul, John, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York: Vintage Books, 1992). Ramsbotham, Oliver, Hugh Miall and Tom Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). Rees, Martin, From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons (London: Profile Books, 2011). Ross, Carne, The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011). Schell, Jonathan, The Unconquerable World: Power, Violence and the Will of the People (London: Allen Lane, 2003). Sen, Amartya, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Penguin Books, 2007). Sun Tzu, The Art of War, with a foreword by James Clavell (London: Hodder Mobius, 2005). Suu Kyi, Aung San, Freedom from Fear (London: Penguin Books, 1995). Till, Brian Michael, Conversations with Power: What Great Presidents and Prime Ministers Can Teach Us about Leadership (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Varvin, Sverre, and Vamık D. Volkan Violence or Dialogue? Psychoanalytic Insights on Terror and Terrorism (London: International Psychoanalysis Library, 2003). Volkan, Vamık, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998). ——— Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror (Charlottesville: Pitchstone Publishing, 2004). Wright, Robert, The Evolution of God: The Origins of Our Beliefs (London: Little, Brown, 2009).

Index Abbas, Mahmoud: 46, 73–74, 224 Abuelaish, Izzeldin: 101–2 Afghanistan: 14, 18, 26–27, 64, 83–88, 90, 119–20, 125, 128, 137, 156, 165–66, 169, 176, 190, 202, 248 Agha, Hussain: 223 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud: 127 Ahtisaari, Martti: 13, 178–80 Al Jazeera: 199 al-Qaeda: 49, 82–84, 98, 104, 174, 176, 188 Alawite: 173–75, 180 Albright, Madeleine: 136 Alderdice, John: 39, 212, 215 Anderson, Terry: 23 Andropov, Yuri: 27 Annan, Kofi: 76, 136, 174, 179, 183 Arafat, Yasser: 73, 79, 219, 222 Arendt, Hannah: 63 Arms-trade treaty (ATT): 154–55 Armstrong, Karen: 105, 229 Atran, Scott: 57, 90 Auschwitz: 80 Ba’athification: 168 Barak, Ehud: 133, 221–22 Beeman, William O.: 113 Beilin, Yossi: 219, 222 Ben-Ami, Shlomo: 79, 222 Benbassa, Esther: 79 Berlin, Isaiah: 53, 65, 78 Berlin Wall: 65 Bin Laden, Osama: 83–84, 89 Bion, Wilfred: 65 Blix, Hans: 2, 240, 247 Botton, Alain de: 96

Brahimi, Lakhdar: 179, 183 BRICS: 190 Brooks, David: 54 Burg, Avraham: 78–79 Bush, George sen.: 17 Bush, George W.: 120, 135, 137, 156 Camp David: 69, 72, 219, 221–23 CANVAS: 160 Clausewitz, Carl von: 145–46 Clinton, Bill: 72, 135–36, 221–22 Clinton, Hillary: 189 Cohen, Jared: 192 Cold War: 11, 13, 16–17, 27, 29–30, 59, 109, 125–27, 138, 140, 153, 155, 172, 175, 188, 200, 206, 240, 249 Confucians: 145 Conoco: 133 Cowper-Coles, Sherard: 84 Dagan, Meir: 80 Darwin, Charles: 58 Davis, Fakhry: 230 Democratic Republic of Congo: 154 Deobandi: 87, 90, 92 Dobbins, James: 163 Druze: 176 Durand Line: 87 Egeland, Jan: 219 Egypt: 38, 81–82, 97–99, 157–60, 203, 223 Eisenhower, Dwight D.: 143–44, 153 El Sarraj, Waseem: 102

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ElBaradei, Mohamed: 112 Elders: 47, 179 Elworthy, Scilla: 37, 247 Emerson, Ralph Waldo: 11 Facebook: 158–59, 193 Fallujah: 188 Fatah: 39–40, 45, 50, 101, 216 Feinstein, Andrew: 152, 156, 162 Fishman, Alex: 68 Fukushima: 190 Gaddafi, Muammar: 199 Gandhi, Mahatma: 109, 157 Gaza: 40, 42, 46–47, 60–61, 77, 101–3, 106–7, 109, 193, 200, 221 Good Friday Agreement: 216 Gorbachev, Mikhail: 17, 27, 30 Gourevitch, Philip: 239 Grossman, David: 67, 211 Gulf War: 167 Haaretz: 46 Haidt, Jonathan: 97 Hamas: viii, 38–50, 97–98, 101, 104, 106–8, 119, 200, 216 Heaney, Seamus: 124 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: 127, 146 Herzog, Michael: 77 Hezbollah: xiv, 16, 20–22, 38, 41, 98, 107, 119, 131, 133–34, 169–71, 176 Hirschfield, Yair: 219–20 Hobbes, Thomas: 4–5 Hobsbawm, Eric: 202 Holocaust: 63, 67, 77–80 Hroub, Khaled: 109 Hussein, Saddam: 14, 19, 24–25, 79, 126–27, 129–32, 155, 166, 168, 173, 223 Idealism: 5 International Criminal Court: 183 International Institute for Mediation: 183 Iran–Contra affair: 16, 118, 130–31 Iraq: xiii, 16–18, 23–25, 29, 64, 85–86, 115–16, 121, 125–26,

128, 130, 132–33, 137–39, 155–56, 161, 165–67, 172–73, 179, 201–2, 204 Islamic Republic of Iran: 121, 126, 130 Islamists: 98–100, 110 Israel: xv, 20–23, 36, 39–48, 54, 61, 67–82, 100, 102–3, 108, 114, 118, 122, 125, 130, 134, 148–49, 166, 170, 211–12, 216–18, 221–24 Jerusalem: 42, 69, 216, 218, 221–22 Jewish people: 42–43, 48, 67–68, 75–81, 102, 109–11, 134–35 Jihadism: 175–76 Johnson, Lyndon B.: 59, 152 Jordan: 81, 99 Juul, Mona: 219 Karzai, Hamid: 137 Keegan, John: 145, 161 Kennedy, John F.: 59, 152–53 Khalidi, Ahmed: 44 Khamenei, Ayatollah: 116–17, 121–22, 126, 138–39, 149 Khatami, Mohammad: 116, 120, 122, 126–27, 134–38, 150 Knesset (Israeli legislature): 54, 78 Larijani, Ali: 117, 139–40 Larsen, Terje Rød: 219–20 League of Nations: 202 Lebanese Civil War: 16 Ledwidge, Frank: 85 Lieberman, Avigdor: 74 Likud: 81 Limbert, John: 119–20, 247 Lincoln, Abraham: 6 Maalouf, Amin: 31, 195–96, 234 Machiavelli, Niccolò: 4–5 MacMillan, Margaret: 56 Majlis: 117 Malley, Robert: 223 Mandela, Nelson: 109, 238 Masada: 77 Mashal, Khaled: 41–42, 44–48, 216 Mazower, Mark: 198 McChrystal, Stanley: 86, 93

Index McGuinness, Martin: 213 McMaster, H. R.: 83 McNamara, Robert: 7, 59, 88, 152 Mesopotamia: 128, 172–73 Miliband, David: 164, 188 Miller, David: 74 Milošević, Slobodan: 159 Mitchell, George: 213–15 Morris, Errol: 59, 187 Morsi, Mohamed: 100 Mossad: 80 Mossadegh, Mohammad: 113, 118 Moughnieh, Imad: 170 Muasher, Marwan: 99 Mubarak, Hosni: 150 Mujahideen: 86 Naqba: 79 Nasrallah, Hassan: 133, 170 Natanz: 148 NATO: 64, 84 Nazi Germany: 67 Netanyahu, Benjamin: 77, 81–82 New Delhi: 88 Norouz: 121–22 North Korea: 149 Northern Alliance: 84, 120, 137 Northern Ireland: 38–39, 41, 212–14, 216–17, 235, 239 Obama, Barack: 41, 121–23, 150 Olmert, Ehud: 224 Ottoman Empire: 128, 146, 167, 173 Oslo Accords: 218–19, 221 Owen, David: 163 Pakistan: 84, 86–88, 118, 125, 129, 137, 152 Palestine: xv, 36, 39, 42, 46, 71, 75, 79, 81, 211–12, 216–18 Pashtuns: 84–85, 87–88, 93 PAX: 184 Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier: 17, 23, 25–28, 30, 249 Pinker, Stephen: 64 Popović, Srda: 160 Pundik, Ron: 219 Qatar: 176, 179, 199–201

265 Rabin, Yitzhak: 48, 221, 223 Race, Jeffrey: 63 Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi: 23, 116, 120, 126 Ramadan, Tariq: 100, 110 Ramsbotham, Oliver: 168, 248 Realism: 5 Remnick, David: 81 Renaissance: 25 Revolutionary Guards: 16, 138, 176 Rohani, Hassan: 117, 123, 172 Roy, Olivier: 104 Rumi: xiii Rwanda: 30, 63, 239 Sadat, Anwar: 53, 223 Safavid monarchy: 19 Said, Edward: 80 Salafists: 100, 111 Sarajevo: xi, 233 Saudi Arabia: 25–26, 38, 84, 128, 155, 172–73, 176–77, 179–80 Schengen Agreement: 204–6 Schmidt, Eric: 192–93 Scowcroft, Brent: 191, 249 Sen, Amartya: 195 Sharia: 97 Sharon, Ariel: 77, 133 Sharp, Gene: 157, 159, 161 Shweder, Richard: 57 Siegman, Henry: 46 Sinn Féin: 214–15 Sky, Emma: 167 Sloboda, John: 64 Somalia: 30 Soviet Union: 27, 30, 76, 188, 201 St Petersburg: 206 Stewart, Rory: 169 Stuxnet: 148 Sudan: 83, 154, 199, 201 Sharon, Ariel: 77, 133 Suu Kyi, Aung San: 231–33 Sykes–Picot Agreement: 171 Syria: 38, 82, 110–11, 128, 150, 154, 169–74, 176–81, 183, 202–3 Tajiks: 84–85, 87 Taliban: 83–93, 120, 136–37, 200, 237

266

The Fog of Peace

Tel Aviv: 69, 71, 73 Torah: 109 Treaty of Turkmenchay: 113 Tyler, Patrick: 75 United Nations: xiii, 11, 134–35, 162, 192 US Embassy: 129

Westoxification: 115 Westphalia: 202 Wikileaks: 193 World War I: 5, 12, 15, 146, 171, 202, 206 World War II: 12, 15, 19, 67, 80, 147, 156, 201 Wright, Robert: 56, 60

Vietnam War: 59, 63, 151–53 Volkan, Vamik: 196

Yad Vashem: 78 Yugoslavia: 30

Wahhabism: 87, 90, 92 West Bank: 37, 46, 69, 72–74, 218, 221 Western hostages: xiii–xiv, 13, 16–20, 22–24, 29, 114, 118, 119, 123, 130–31, 132, 170

Zarif, Javad: 137 Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad: 86–87