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Out of Balance: A Review of Women’s Rights in Myanmar

by Anna Plunkett

27 May 2019

Women Factory Workers Strike (The Myanmar Times, 2011)

Myanmar is a country that has sprung to global attention in the last few years, its seemingly self-led non-violent transition towards democracy was soon tarnished by the systematic ethnic cleansing of the country’s Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. At the epicentre of these storms has been Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, nicknamed ‘the Lady’. The now State Counsellor had been the global symbol of modern non-violent, pro-democracy struggles from behind the bars of her house arrest. After her release in 2012 she won a landslide election to join the legislature as an MP for the National League of Democracy, a taste of the victory she would achieve three years later in the 2015 election. She soon achieved notice within Myanmar for her preference for traditional dress inspiring a resurgence in this simple but elegant style. However, since taking office she has failed to maintain this saint-like status, losing support both domestically and abroad.  Her fall from moral status symbol to a pariah of the diplomatic circles she was once the darling of provides a stark snapshot into the complexities facing women throughout Myanmar. Women in Myanmar are often portrayed as exotic and beautiful,  with striking images of long-necked tribes and thanaka painted faces used throughout the tourist industry. Yet their access to many leadership positions and even basic rights are fraught with much darker struggles.

Daw Suu was the symbol and leader of the pro-democracy struggle in Myanmar[1] since her arrival in the country in 1987. She gave inspiring speeches from outside the central hospital where she cared for her sick mother, the original reason for her return to the country after settling down with husband Michael Aris in Oxford. Since then, her face has been plastered on street signs, posters, postcards and matchboxes across Myanmar and internationally, despite domestic bans.[2]  In the wake of her rise within the political arena, and in response to the continuing conflicts within Myanmar’s borderlands, a plethora of women’s organisations jumped into existence.[3] Today, almost all ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) have dedicated women’s organisations or arms focused on the promotion of women’s rights, human rights and economic and social welfare. These groups, which have been fighting along almost all of Myanmar’s borderlands for autonomy from the state have been active since before Myanmar achieved independence.  The presence of such wars have isolated the communities in these regions from access to state services and international norms, something these women’s groups and branches focus on attempting to provide to the communities under EAO rule.  The mobilisation of women is not unique to the borderlands, with women’s rights groups forming within the capital and across the central zones. The power of these new women’s groups was seen during the women led factory strikes in 2015 and 2011 over worker protections within Chinese owned garment factories. Women have the capacity and are willing to mobilise around key issues that impact their lifestyles and livelihoods.

Women Fighters in Kachin (Adriene Ohanseian)

However, this organisation and activism is not fully mirrored in the positive progress of women’s rights within this transitioning state. Over the past four years a network of women’s organisations have organised “16 days of activism” to promote basic protections for women within Myanmar and advocate against domestic and other forms of violent abuse against women. An event that struggled to get official state approval in its first year, but has since gained standing with the Pa’O Ethnic Affairs Minister speaking at the event in 2018. The necessity of this activism became clear to one trainer when working within the local communities, by the end of a three-day training programme on domestic abuse almost all participants had identified and spoken about examples of physical or psychological abuse they had personally experienced.[4] Women’s rights continue to sit within a state of almost abject neglect, with the few ongoing state interventions failing to make the changes that are increasingly being demanded from below.

Another noted how domestic abuse was viewed as a “natural” part of relationships between men and women within many rural communities, this normalisation was attributed to the legacy of violence from the conflict within the borderlands and lack of education within many communities.[5]

The continuing war across Myanmar’s borderlands is compounding the struggle for women’s rights and equal opportunity. Multiple reports have identified rape as a weapon of war utilised by both the military and the EAOs.[6] More women are beginning to come forward, to seek justice and support, however services are stretched trying to provide adequate assistance within a justice system biased against victims. The justice system remains tied to the military dominated government, with cases often taking too much time and becoming so expensive that communities seek redress through alternative, often informal means. Many villages continue to rely upon village headmen or financial redress packages to provide justice over those of offered by the official justice mechanisms.

Despite this, the women of Myanmar are far from just victims within this uneven landscape. Women’s organisations continue to report and advocate on crimes and inequalities, even in the face of growing oppression from the state. In many of the conflict zones women act as the primary household earners, with men away at war or seriously injured by it. Where direct conflict has ended the persistent drugs epidemic in the borderlands, many women face being the sole providers for partners and sons with addictions. Women also play a critical and active role within Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations, including roles as fighters within women’s units. Women continue to be active within their communities and fight to be heard and included.

Women’s activism within Myanmar’s conflict zones – both within the conflict effort and as primary earners – has materialised due to a belief that women pose less of a threat and are therefore less likely to be arrested. This belief has resulted in women taking on responsibilities traditionally reserved for men, such as village headmen. During the conflict in Karen State, the number of female village heads has surged, as the role became less desirable due to concerns over the violence such leaders face when interacting with the state:

“Village heads … are usually women, because men cannot survive the repeated beatings and punishments by the soldiers [whereas women are beaten and tortured somewhat less often]. Therefore, nobody wants to be a village head throughout the whole region.” Female Village Head

Yet once this danger has passed, women have found themselves removed from these roles in power and leadership. They are blocked from these key leadership positions which increase in desirability as the immediate threat has reduced with the signing of the National Ceasefire Agreement in 2015.

Women Representation in the Peace Process (USAID)

Women have fulfilled a breadth of roles within Myanmar’s war efforts, from fighters to negotiators and mediators to service providers and village heads. Yet as wars within the borderlands begin to reduce so have the roles open to women. Despite the opening of the national dialogues for peace, and the government more broadly under the National League for Democracy, women are failing to achieve representation.  A recent report released by USAID highlighted the underrepresentation of women within the peace process, with many fulfilling technical roles within the peace process but unable to engage with policies under negotiation.  Meanwhile women continue to be victims within Myanmar’s war zones and at home. Despite their organisation and promotion of their plights, reforms to make domestic abuse illegal have stalled in parliament.

Women may be visible within the political arena in Myanmar, and their roles may be varied, but they still lack access to basic rights and this is proving a chokehold not only for them, but for Myanmar’s development overall. Progress is beginning to develop but it is slow and proving to be increasingly ineffective in the wake of increasing demands for women’s rights, participation and activism. Though the state may be slow to respond there is no doubt about the veracity of womens activism in Myanmar, which if the state could harness could prove to be force of will needed to establish change.

Anna is a doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She received her BA in Politics and Economics from the University of York, before receiving a scholarship to continue her studies at York with an MA in Post-War Recovery. She was the recipient of the Guido Galli Award for her MA dissertation. Her primary interests include conflict and democracy at the sub-national level, understanding how minor conflicts impact democratic realisation within quasi-post conflict states. Her main area of focus is Burma’s ethnic borderlands and ongoing conflicts within the region. She has previously worked as a human rights researcher focusing on military impunity in Burma and has conducted work on evaluating Bosnia’s post-war recovery twenty years after the Dayton Peace Accords. You can follow her on Twitter @AnnaBPlunkett.

[1] Then Burma, the military SPDC government changed the name in 1989 though Burma was still widely used until the transfer to a civilian government in 2011

[2] This has been reported by ex-political prisoners who were arrested simply for having images of “The Lady” after the 8888 uprising.

[3] For example, see Women’s League of Burma, GEN and WON – all womens networks with large member organisations based on womens rights.

[4] Insight from field interview with women’s rights trainers, conducted by Author in 2018

[5] Testimonies given as part of research on Myanmar’s democratisation process as part of the author’s PhD research. Testimonies were collected by the author on multiple research trips between 2018-2019.

[6] See reports by Karen Human Rights Group and Kachin Women’s Association Thailand respectively: https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/suffering-silence-sexual-violence-against-women-southeast-myanmar-december-2018 https://kachinwomen.com/reports/

 

Poetry and reconciliation: The poet’s quest for peace

By: Alexandria Reid with Sasha Dugdale

Sasha Dugdale, Poet and Translator. Source: Academica Rossica.
Sasha Dugdale, Poet and Translator. Source: Academica Rossica.

Poetry, especially in traditional oral form, has the power to connect boundaries and disciplines. Literary critic Paul Fussell makes a powerful case that by forcing the reader to confront ‘actual and terrible moral challenges’ the genre earns itself a special reputation for timelessness and emotional reverence. [1] War poetry is often a staple ingredient in history and English curriculums for schools across the world, and many who claim not to enjoy poetry make an exception for war poetry. As a deeply personal experience, poetry captures people across time and space. These exceptional qualities may allow for poetry to become a potent tool in conflict resolution.

Poetry offers an insight into the emotional experience of violence and conflict potentially beyond that found in academia. As Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov notes, academically identifying the drivers of conflict amidst political elites does not necessarily promote a stable or long lasting peace. [3] Missing from the equation is the importance of community reconciliation as a process and an outcome of durable peacemaking. ‘Reconciliation’, Bar-Tal and Bennick note, ‘involves modifying motivations, beliefs, and attitudes of the majority, and such activities promote establishing or renewing relations within a group.’ [2] Poetry offers itself as a way of building confidence and understanding between groups at a grassroots level.

It is possible to envisage that the vocabulary and social discussion poetry stimulates might become an important element of the reconciliation process between communities. This idea is not novel. Long ago, Walt Whitman’s American Civil War poem entitled ‘Reconciliation’ exposed the self-serving myth that the enemy is ‘the evil other’, and not in fact ‘a man divine as myself’:


Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time
be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly
softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
… For my enemy is dead — a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin — I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in
the coffin.

Walt Whitman, 1867 [4]

Employing the theme of reconciliation, and seeking a way to incorporate poetry into contemporary discussions about conflict, last weekend, internationally renowned poets gathered in London for an interfaith discussion and series of readings on the theme of ‘The Poet’s Quest for Peace’. The event saw Kurdish poet and refugee Choman Hardi, Israeli poet Agi Mishol, and T.S. Eliot prize-winning poet George Szirtes asking the important question: How might poetry contribute to peace processes?

Strife spoke briefly with Sasha Dugdale, editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, on some of these themes. Sasha was short-listed earlier this month for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of 2016 with her poem Joy:

Alexandria Reid: Who are the audiences for your poetry? Does your poetry about conflict ever reach the victims, or the stakeholders in these conflicts? 

Sasha Dugdale: I write in response to friends’ experiences of conflicts (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) and my own experience of translating their conflict-related work, so my experience of conflict is second-hand. I wouldn’t dream of presuming to show the victims or stakeholders, as I am mostly at one removed and it would feel presumptuous. Also it is usually at an oblique angle to the events it describes.

AR: One of the panels on the day asked the question ‘How might poetry contribute to peace processes?’ Could you tell Strife your thoughts on this:

SD: I can’t honestly see how poetry contributes to peace processes, which are usually careful minute calculations of diplomacy with all emotion carefully stripped out. But poetry can remind us of the pity of war as no other genre can, so perhaps its useful role is played out before the tanks roll in.

AR: What are some of the challenges of writing about violence and conflict through poetry as a medium?

SD: I don’t seek to write about conflict and violence, I write about what is moving and agitating me. But there are distinct risks: when some poets are living through war, genocide and desperate times, to write about their experience from the position of someone who lives in safety and stability can seem presumptuous to the point of immorality. I wouldn’t say I wrote poetry of witness, because I wouldn’t claim to have felt or witnessed their experiences ‘on my pulse’ however I can write what naturally and properly arises from my own meditations on war and conflict and my own experiences of working with the scarred.

 

The Poet’s Quest for Peace was an LJS event, curated by Naomi Jaffa [former Director of The Poetry Trust/Aldeburgh Poetry Festival] and organised by Harriett Goldenberg and Sue Bolsom.

Sasha Dugdale is a Sussex-born poet, playwright and translator specialising in both classic and contemporary Russian drama and poetry. She has worked for the British Council in Russia and set up the Russian New Writing Project with the Royal Court Theatre in London. Since 2012 she has been editor of Modern Poetry in Translation (co-founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort) and to date she has published three poetry collections – most recently Red House (2011). Twitter: @SashaDugdale.

Alexandria Reid is a recent graduate of War Studies at King’s College London and recipient of the Sir Michael Howard Excellence Award and Best Undergraduate Award. Alex currently works for Strife as a Social Media Coordinator, and as a research assistant for Dr. John Bew. In September she will begin her Master’s education as a Conflict, Security and Development student at KCL. Twitter: @AlexHREID.

 

Notes:

[1] Fussell in Featherstone, Simon (1995), ‘War Poetry: An Introductory Reader’ (Routledge), p.1

[2] Bar-Siman-Tov, Yaacov (2004), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (Oxford University Press)

[3] Bar-Tal, Daniel, Bennink, Gemma (2004), ‘The Nature of Reconciliation as an Outcome and as a Process’, in Bar-Siman-Tov, Yaacov, From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (Oxford University Press), pp.11-39

[4] Whitman, Walt (1867), ‘Reconciliation’, Bartleby Bibliographic Record, accessed 24/06/2016, http://www.bartleby.com/142/137.html

Boko Haram in Cameroon: A timely wakeup call?

By Awah Leonide Azah:

Boko Haram and Cameroon

Cameroon, Central Africa’s largest economy, has over the years gained a reputation for being a relatively peaceful and stable country in an increasingly insecure region. Conflicts and violent extremism have plagued Cameroon’s neighbors, especially in light of recent conflicts in Mali, Chad, and Central African Republic, as well as of terrorist attacks in northern Nigeria. Cameroon’s relative peace and stability has meant that it has attracted less attention than its neighbours in international and regional security debates. However, the militant group Boko Haram seems determined to alter this situation as they have recently stepped up cross-border attacks into the northern region of Cameroon, unleashing terror on the local population and turning the area into a combat zone. Cameroon’s response to the crisis seems to follow the narrative that frames it as an external problem with little mention of any other solution to the crises besides military intervention.

The recent Boko Haram attacks on Cameroon require further national and international scrutiny as this situation, if not properly tackled, may have profound implications on peace and security in Cameroon and the wider region.

Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that has for year’s sown terror throughout Nigeria’s north-eastern region has in the past weeks stepped up cross-border attacks into northern Cameroon. The group which gained international notoriety after abducting more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria in April 2014, now seeks to gain a foothold in Cameroon’s poor rural north and has stepped up cross-border attacks into the region. The most recent attack took place in the village of Zigague in remote northern Cameroon on 6 August in which eleven people were killed including two soldiers.[1] This attack came on the heels of a 27 July attack on the residence of Cameroon’s vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali during which three people were killed and his wife and sister in law abducted.[2] The level of brutality and the targeted nature of these latest assaults clearly indicate to the Cameroonian authorities the scale of the problem Boko Haram poses to the country and the entire region. This episode has been a wakeup call to the Cameroonian authorities to step up regional co-operation with its neighbours and to become more pro-active in the fight against Boko Haram.

However, Cameroon’s response to the Boko Haram crisis seems to follow the narrative that frames it as an external issue, ie. not Cameroon’s problem. Cameroon’s minister of information Isa Tchiroma stated in an interview on 27 July that Cameroon was a ‘collateral victim’ of aggression that is unfortunately spilling over.[3] Granted, the Boko Haram menace began in Northern Nigeria, but the Islamist group has gained root in the wider Sahel region that spans into Northern Cameroon and Niger. With Cameroon playing the victim and regarding the Boko Haram menace as an external crisis, the authorities miss the valid lesson to be drawn from this episode – that the current level of peace and stability in Cameroon is more or less relative, and not absolute. The Islamist group is only tapping into pre-existing grievances driven by governance failures, corruption and non-accountability already present in the country. These grievances could be seen for example in the 2008 transport strike, which was sparked by the increase in fuel prices but ended up degenerating into urban violence nationwide as a result of Cameroonian’s frustration and exasperation with the regime.[4] Cameroonian’s will largely acknowledge the existence of a range of social conflicts present within the country but the narrative at the macro level still remains that Cameroon is a haven of peace and stability. There seems to be a gross disconnect between state security and human security.

It is absolutely essential for the authorities to ask valid questions and seek long-term solutions to this crisis. The Boko Haram menace may just be a manifestation of more profound threats to peace and security in Cameroon. The vulnerability of Cameroon’s northern region to violent extremism is due to the region’s long history of neglect, marginalization, poverty and social exclusion. It is for this reason that the militant group Boko Haram has been able to penetrate these communities and radicalise, recruit and train young people whom it is now using to perpetrate terror in their own communities. The ease with which the perpetrators of the most recent attacks moved within the town of Kolofata and the precision with which they attacked the homes of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Sultan reinforce the belief amongst eye witnesses that some Cameroonians were in their ranks.[5]

It is worth noting that, Boko Haram’s attacks in Cameroon’s northern region date back as far as 2012 when raids and abductions were recorded in Fotokol, Makary and Kousseri Dabanga, but cited as ‘isolated incidents’. The Cameroonian authorities treated the crises as an external problem which ought to be handled by those directly concerned such as Nigeria; ‘Our main challenge is safeguarding our borders so that we don’t import the Boko Haram problem’, stated an official in charge of economic and socio-cultural affairs at the Far North governor’s office.[6] While Cameroon treated these as an external problem, its Nigerian counterpart’s response to the crises was, and still largely remains, military, while the political will to do more than that appears entirely lacking.[7]

With the recent wave of attacks in Northern Cameroon, the response of the Cameroonian authorities seemingly mirrors that of Nigeria. In reaction to the recent mounting violence, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya fired two high-ranking military officials who were responsible for security in the region and sent his army chief to the north of the country to beef up security. Approximately 3,000 soldiers have been deployed to the north, including troops of the elite Rapid Intervention Battalion.[8] This military response is commendable as the authorities need to ensure that an iron curtain of resistance is put up to counter any further attacks by Boko Haram.

However, as can be reflected from the Nigerian experience, a military solution alone will only provide brief pauses to the crisis. As Issa Tchiroma, the Cameroonian Minister of Communication, noted during his recent interview with Voice of America, the battle against Boko Haram is asymmetrical because no one is quite certain who the members of Boko Haram are, as they have infiltrated the community. Able to move quite freely, these groups are unlikely to ever be completely suppressed militarily, unless, in addition to military efforts, the government wins local hearts and minds by implementing fundamental political reforms to address the many grievances that are at the base of this continued violence.

The recent attacks on Cameroon are not only a tragedy in themselves, but a timely reminder of the need to access the security situation of the country. Fighting Boko Haram is a long-term endeavour that requires not only military force but a robust effort to nurture the resilience of communities through measures that promote economic development and social cohesion. Also, given the porous nature of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria, and the level of cross border interaction which takes place between the borderland communities, there is need to step up regional cooperation through harmonized security laws. All stakeholders in Cameroon, including the government, civil society and local authorities should use this as a wakeup call to focus on a human security approach which focuses on an integrated framework appropriate to address this conflict.
____________________

Awah Leonide is a legal scholar and a research assistant at the African Leadership Center in Nairobi, Kenya. Her research interests amongst others include the France-Africa relationship and its impact on security and development in francophone Africa. You can follow her on Twitter @ AwahLeonide

 

NOTES

[1] Cameroon Radio and Television News, ‘Situation dans l’Extrême-Nord: Paul Biya rassure’ Source PRC 2 August 2014. http://www.crtv.cm/cont/nouvelles/nouvelles_sola_fr.php?idField=13580&table=nouvelles&sub=national
[2] Cameroon Radio and Television News, ‘Des assaillants lourdement armés attaquent la localité de Kolofata.’ 27 July 2014. http://www.crtv.cm/cont/nouvelles/nouvelles_sola_fr.php?idField=13580&table=nouvelles&sub=national
[3] Peter Clottery, ‘Cameroon Reviewing Military Strategy after Boko Haram Attacks’. Voice of America, 27 July 2014. http://www.voafanti.com/gate/big5/www.voanews.com/articleprintview/1966165.html
[4] International Crisis Group, ‘Cameroon: The dangers of a fracturing regime’. Africa Report,161, Brussels, 24 June 2010. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/africa/west-africa/cameroon/161%20CAMEROON%20dangers%20of%20a%20fracturing%20regime%20ENGLISH.pdf
[5] BBC News, ‘Boko Haram’ abducts Cameroon Politician’s wife’. 27 July 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28509530
[6] IRIN, ‘Cameroon takes steps against Boko Haram’. 27 December 2013. http://www.irinnews.org/report/99396/cameroon-takes-steps-against-boko-haram
[7] International Crises Group, ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram insurgency’. African Report, 216, Brussels, 3 April 2014. http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/west-africa/nigeria/216-curbing-violence-in-nigeria-ii-the-boko-haram-insurgency.aspx
[8] Reuters, ‘Cameroon fires two army officers after Boko Haram raids’. 29 July 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/29/us-nigeria-violence-cameroon-idUSKBN0FY26E20140729

May 14, A Strife-RCIR event: "The Fog of Peace: The New Face of Conflict Resolution." A conversation with Giandomenico Picco and Gabrielle Rifkind

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Gabrielle Rifkind and Giandomenico Picco: ‘The Fog of Peace: The New Face of Conflict Resolution’. Event chaired by Dr. Jack Spence OBE

Wednesday, 14 May 5:00 – 6:30, Pyramid Room (K4U.04), King’s Building, Strand Campus, King’s College London. WC2R 2LS. Wine reception and book signing to follow.

Event by Strife Blog and RCIR

Institutions do not decide whom to destroy or to kill, whether to make peace or war; those decisions are the responsibility of individuals. In their new book, “The Fog of Peace” the authors argue that the most important aspect of conflict resolution is for antagonists to understand their opponents as individuals, their ambitions, their pains, the resentments that condition their thinking and the traumas they do not fully themselves grasp. In this presentation, they ask should we talk to the enemy? What happens if the protagonists are nasty and brutish, tempting policy-makers to retaliate? How do nations find the capacity not to hit back, trapping themselves in endless cycles of violence? We will discuss their new book and their approach to ’empathy’ in conflict resolution in the presentation.

Giandomenico Picco served as Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and was personal representative of the Secretary General for the United Nation year of dialogue amongst civilisations. He led the task force negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq war and the freedom of Western hostages from Lebanon. Over decades he helped securing the freedom of 127 individuals unjustly detained from 4 different countries.


Gabrielle Rifkind is the director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Rifkind combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and discreet dialogues with groups behind the scenes.

 

Interview with Giandomenico Picco and Gabrielle Rifkind, authors of "The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution”

By Joana Cook, Managing Editor, Strife

Rifkind-&-Picco

Giandomenico Picco served for over two decades as a UN official. Among other work, he led the UN efforts which brought about the release of many of the Western hostages from Lebanon and the agreement which ended the Iran-Iraq war. He has been a consultant in the private sector as Chairman of GDP Associates, a USA based company. He has published articles and co-authored books on matters related to the larger Middle East, among other subjects.

Gabrielle Rifkind is the Director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and a specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Rifkind combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and discreet dialogues with groups behind the scenes.

*

Joana Cook: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Let’s begin with the title itself, why have you chosen ‘The Fog of Peace’?

Giandomenico Picco (GP): This is the other side of the coin of the famous book The Fog of War that former US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara wrote about the war in Vietnam. This is to say that war is a very complex business, and we are suggesting that unfortunately for all of us, peace is also a very complex business.

Gabrielle Rifkind (GR): McNamara had said: ‘We didn’t understand empathy, we didn’t understand the mind of the enemy. We were fighting different wars: they were fighting a war of independence, we were fighting the Cold War.’ For both Picco and me this is how we wanted to frame the book and show, how to be more effective at solving conflict you have to get into the mind of the enemy. What are their red lines? How do they think differently to you?

What is original about your approach to conflict resolution and the book itself?

GP: The approach that I contribute is derived from my history as a conflict resolution individual negotiator over a few decades. I look at my human journey as a conflict resolution individual, from two specific levels. First, the very personal individual role I played and second, trying to walk through time, and therefore being aware that history moves on, and tomorrow is never like yesterday. Basically it is elements taken from my human journey as somebody who has gone through negotiations in a very unorthodox way; I was kidnapped, I was the object of attacks by dictators and all the rest. It was not a history of a simple kind of journey, it was a history of somebody who went through what is usually considered inappropriate. You may not have noticed, there is one word in that book which has been avoided by myself and by my co-author as well, and that word is ‘impartiality’. Impartiality is the illusion of those who never understand that conflict resolution is known and never valued let alone successfully. Impartiality is just a myth which was used as a very useful route after World War Two for a specific purpose, in a specific region, in a specific culture; in practical terms it has never served any purpose.

GR: I come from a psychological background, and have worked in conflict resolution in the Middle East for the last 15 years. I believe that often when you are trying to resolve conflict, you can not just do it with guys in grey suits, or those who just think like us. It’s comfortable for us to engage with those who see the world in the same way as us, who share our values, but this is one of the reasons we aren’t successful, because the nature of conflict is changing and most wars are not between states, but asymmetrical. Often this means, the side with the power is not often directly involved on the ground fighting the group. The groups which are weaker – Hamas or the Taliban would be examples of this – have often experienced members of their family, or those close to them being killed, and will have suffered eight levels of trauma. Its all the more important to get into their heads and understand how their experiences have shaped who they are and how they think.

You mentioned the phrase ‘unorthodox methods’ in your approach to conflict resolution. What do you mean by this? How do you teach these kinds of methods to the next generation of negotiators when many of them will be able to access such work through international institutions, such as the UN?

GP: My only advice would be walk in the streets. Learn as much as one can about the official history of a country and a place, but not to forget to speak to the people you meet in the streets, and you will learn more. You mentioned earlier what have been my guiding pillars, in doing what I did in wars and beyond, the individual narrative and the national narrative; that to me is a fairly practical, not just a theoretical, thing. The first time I was taken hostage in Beirut [negotiating hostage release with Hezbollah], I was blind-folded and locked up in a car only to be taken out and asked if I was prepared to enter negotiation. I realised very quickly that it was not the great treaties or the great books of Professors in Harvard or King’s College who write about how to negotiate that could teach this; how to negotiate when someone has blindfolded you, practically naked amongst masked individuals. What kind of theory would teach you how to deal with that? Theories will not teach you that; your knowledge of their history, your attempt to understand their narrative and your own narrative will provide some answers. If you’re lucky you survive, and if you’re luckier yet, you find a solution to the negotiation you’re involved in.

Empathy is a key theme of your book and there is this growing awareness of the importance of empathy in international relations in negotiations. But when engaging in negotiations means putting yourself in situations like the one you described in Beirut, how can you be empathetic and how do you think greater empathy can be cultivated amongst foreign policy professionals more broadly?

GP: Empathy should not be confused with a sympathy, or understanding, or agreement, or even impartiality. Empathy means that you have a person in front of you, an individual who comes from a particular human journey. For example, the first of four times I was taken in Beirut, this masked man asked me: ‘Why do you risk your life to save the lives of people who are not members of your tribe?’ And I will never forget that, for me it has been such an incredible point of reference in my life. His condition, his culture, his history, his human journey is so different from mine, and it was difficult to answer. This is empathy in the sense of trying to enter the mind of the person in front of you; empathy to me is not only to understand the present mind but to see where it comes from. There is also a fundamental difference in the way we deal with the world now than, say, during the Cold War. The number of variables today is so high that negotiations are becoming more difficult.

GR: How do we go about ensuring that empathy doesn’t come off seeming idealistic or naïve? The last thing you want to do in war is empathize. It’s unrealistic to ask enemies to have empathy. However, we call for the role of credible third party mediators. You don’t come from your own values and what you think is right, but understanding why the sides are thinking as they are. What happens at the kitchen table is not so different from what happens at the mediating table. Understanding what happens when you humiliate people, or make them feel powerless, or marginalized, and the link with violence; this is what we all understand in our own self-knowledge and this is very powerful to understand how conflict begins and how it may end.

How do you get into the mind of the enemy?

GR: Often the enemy is not going to say the things we want to hear. Partly, because of the consequences of endless trauma and conflict they are not in the state of readiness to resolve conflict. What’s important is that you need to build this trust, quietly, behind the doors and off the record, often unknown to the public. When there has been violence from Hamas against Israel, Israelis were not in the state of mind to resolve conflict, but it’s still important to engage in this dialogue so you understand if there is, over time, a readiness to end violence, and building real relationships.

Another argument you make in the book is how we lack the ability to understand others due to our ‘lack of imagination’. Can you elaborate on this?

GR: Imagination can help take us into the future and that’s where we can have hope. Often where there has been conflict and trauma for generations, people get attached to traumas from the past. One of the roles of trying to support peace processes, and these groups, is to try and stimulate hope and a way through. For example, in Gaza, many people walk around wearing the keys from the homes they were expelled from in 1948 around their neck. At one level, you can understand this and the idea that they will return, but if this seems very unlikely in the peace process and you are working with these groups on the ground you have to start asking them about their vision for them and their children for the future, spark their imagination.

Earlier you mentioned there are variables changing the nature of negotiations; which would you specifically point out as distinctly changing the nature of negotiations?

GP: The number of variables is much larger and the relationships between individuals and institutions, otherwise said as between individuals and the nation state to which they belong, are quickly changing. In the last two decades, the power of the individual has grown tremendously vis-à-vis the power of institutions, and the institution is also the nation state. Never in human history has the individual been so powerful vis- à-vis the institution, as he or she is today. The very nature of the nation state is not only changing, but morphing into something different, and we don’t yet know what.

Speaking more broadly, I immediately know when someone has never done negotiations, let alone successfully, when they say, ‘how do you negotiate with Iraq, how do you negotiate with Norway?’ You don’t negotiate with a country you always negotiate with people. If I had negotiated with President Rafsanjani of Iraq that same way I had negotiated with President Khatami of Iraq I would have failed. They were Presidents of the same country, living in the same culture and yet there were two different individuals. There is a difference between a theory of negotiation and the practice of negotiations.

Is there a difference between how an individual, and an individual representing an institution, would approach negotiations?

GP: There is a clear difference between an institutional approach and my individualistic approach. If you expect that in an institution you will solve the conflicts, think again, particularly now as institutions are getting weaker and weaker in respect to individuals. In a seminal book which I quote, by John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, Ralston writes something which has always been with me. When leaders came together to discuss the changes required for nation-states established in Westphalia in 1648, Ralston noted, ‘the institutions would no longer be allowed to marry to genius but only to mediocrity’. That was two centuries ago, and that is why conflict resolution is not done by the institutions, but by the individuals who have the good fortune, the luck to enter the mind of the person in front of them. This is what it is; it’s really the individual meeting with another mind. How could you agree with someone who takes hostages? One of my masked kidnappers from Hezbollah told me: ‘Do you think I do not know that taking hostage civilian innocent persons is wrong? Of course I do, my point is I do not have another weapon.’

I want to discuss Syria, another example from your book. Applying your ‘Fog of Peace’ lens to the number of international actors currently involved in Syria, as you mentioned Iran and Saudi Arabia for example, how did we get it wrong? What role could informed/informal negotiation have in finding an end to this conflict?

GP: Two years ago it took Gabrielle and myself a long time to get a newspaper which would publish an article where we wrote that the time has come to stop using the expression ‘civil war’ for Syria. This is not a civil war, this is the third chess game in 30 years between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Syria is a manifestation of what I’ve being saying for some time, which is the entire region is morphing into something else. The nation state per se, not just there but all over, is weakening, the individual identities are getting more and more localised, the borders are less and less significant. The two chess players, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are now communicating for the purpose of going beyond what is happening today in Syria. We need an understanding that is not a treaty or a formal agreement. Syria can be dealt with, in my view, by having at the very basis an understanding of sorts between Saudi Arabia and Iran to be further strengthened, if possible, by an understanding between Washington and Moscow. Under the cover of these two understandings, the first one being much more important, the Syrians of all denominations can probably sit with more profit together.

GR: Syria is a good example [of where we got the psychology wrong and the conflict has been prolonged]. There are now over 130,000 dead, over 6.5 million displaced, and 2 million refugees. Western governments always demanded Assad to go, and from a human rights perspective this may have seemed correct; but what’s morally right doesn’t necessarily save lives. What would have been perhaps more sagacious is for governments not to take sides at the beginning, but instead to put all their efforts into creating a ceasefire and stopping the flow of weapons. If we would have managed this more constructive ambiguity, it is possible that we, Western governments, could have worked with the Russians more closely, much earlier on, as this has been one of the core reasons we haven’t been able to get back to Geneva II. Calling for Assad to go doesn’t solve the problem; he has always had a group of supporters in Syria who remain so, not least because they feared for their own lives. This is also not often how wars end. One of our primary objectives with this book was to question how you end this violence.

One of the other terms you come up with in this book and promote is the idea of ‘minilateralism’ rather than multilateralism. Could you explain the concept further and how it is influencing world politics?

GP: If you look at the history of the last twenty-two years – 1992 to 2014 – every single conflict which has been some way partially or totally resolved has not been resolved by multilateral approach, but only by a ‘minilateral’ approach or bilateral approach, namely a few countries. That was the case from Yugoslavia to Eastern Africa and further. Multilateralism has failed for one simple reason: the multilateral worked during the Cold War because it was a fake multilateralism, hidden by the great bipolar world. Institutions of a multilateral nature cannot solve conflicts in the way that they are these days, and the last twenty years demonstrate what I have just said. Then there is, of course, also the other issue, a question of individuals. Traditional institutions will not accept the role of the individual and that’s what we’re talking about in conflict resolution – multilateralism has proven to be over. Let’s be honest, how many leaders have today led without enemies? Leaders do not lead without enemies. The leaders who can lead without enemies are the real leaders of history; the others are mediocre they won’t want an enemy to lead. Let’s get rid of leaders who can’t lead without enemies, then we will have a better world.

Fog-of-Peace

You make a recommendation in the book to create an international institution for mediation. What would this look like? Who should lead this?

GR: This is one of the strongest recommendations from our book, the idea that we should get much smarter around early intervention. It is the idea of embedded mediators on the ground working on three levels: locally to try and prevent an outbreak of sectarian violence; at the government level where you already have very experienced mediators with strong working relationships with governments, but quietly, off-the-record, behind the scenes; and at regional/international level. In Syria we saw clearly early on, that it was a proxy war between Syria and Iran for Sunni-Shi’a regional dominance. If we had systems of mediators who were experienced, who had pre-existing relationships with Saudi Arabia and Iran, early on, there could have been processes to bring them together and find a way to stop the violence, and find out what is between them, what some kind of accommodation might look like. We don’t have a blueprint for this institution yet, but I would like to work further with a group with the expertise to work out how we can locate something like this. It must be serious. You must have mediators in different regions of the world, working at all the different levels. This would cost a fraction of what it could cost militarily, but we have to change minds about making this kind of long-term investment. Why doesn’t the UN do this? They would perhaps be well-placed there, but they must be agile and nimble and never get caught in a bureaucratic quagmire which is sometimes the case with the UN. One could consider it as something similar to the ICC, where people would buy into because they see the advantage of early warning.

How can we train our minds to relate to others in ways that go beyond the barriers you mention, such as racism, nationalism and the need for an enemy?

GR: It’s a very natural thing to do, to look for an enemy. It creates social cohesion and you can bind yourself together through this, if there is someone you hate on the outside. A lot of this is the politics of self-awareness and though this may sound antithetical, the idea that politics is even constructed in this way, but so often countries in conflict, particularly in the Middle East, know who they stand against, but not what they stand for. And in the end, conflict is about learning how to collaborate, and how you don’t split the world into enemies. One of the ways through, I believe, is to have more women trained in these roles and, without sounding like I’m caricaturing too much, I think that because women are so used to multitasking, they are less prone to a bipolar view of the world, where people are only good or bad. I do believe though, that it would be positive to include more women in these roles. While it has to do with the individuals in negotiations themselves, and not necessarily gender, it has to do with the ability to listen and to tune into cultural differences, and not come in with decisions already made. You must have a willingness to get into the mind of the enemy, why they are thinking as they are.

How do you see this happening with groups which may have a very hard-line view, like the Taliban, who may have very specific views on gender?

GR: We explore this in the book. If you look into the background of the Taliban you see many of them were orphaned during the civil war, and lost both parents, then were put in madrasas which were very austere institutions and only had contact with men, which may have made them afraid of women. Where fear may be unacceptable, they may have turned this into hatred, which may lay the seeds of their policies. This means you may not have female negotiators, but you have to be sensitive to being able to think of why they think in ways we may view as unpalatable.

Do you have any final words on what the new human face of conflict resolution looks like?

GP: Conflict resolution is not a theory, conflict resolution is life and if we don’t enter that life then there is no point in inventing stories. We have to enter the narrative of the individual and the narrative of the nations [we are working with].

Thank you very much.

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The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution was released in March 2014 by I.B. Tauris. You can find more information on the book at http://www.fogofpeace.com.