Iran

An elusive stalemate: Israel and Hezbollah along the tri-border

May 22, 2015 by Strife Staff

By Sebastian Maier:

07hezbollah.xlarge1 — Hezbollah soldiers. Photo copyright: Associated Press (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)

When the Israeli Air Force on 12 January 2015 allegedly carried out a sortie against a Hezbollah military convoy in the south western Syrian district of Quneitra, news spread quickly that among the victims was a prominent figure of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force special unit, General Allah Dadi. The purported Israeli air strike on the al-Amal Farms also killed Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late Hezbollah intelligence commander Imad Mughniyeh, who in February 2008 died in a car bomb in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Merely two weeks after, Hezbollah lived up to expectations and retaliated by ambushing Israeli military vehicles, killing two and wounding seven soldiers close to the Israeli-occupied Sheba’a Farms on the Golan Heights.

In the grand scheme of things, the reported airstrike and Hezbollah’s act of reprisal are hardly surprising. Quite the contrary, in order to understand these events, one has to look to the inception and evolvement of what has become a well-entrenched animosity taking place across one of the Middle East’s most precarious theatres: the Syria-Lebanon-Israel tri-border area.

The prelude: Hezbollah’s early years

When Israel in 1978 first staged a military incursion into southern Lebanon, few considered it a harbinger of what was to come. With the outbreak of the 1982 Lebanon War, the Israeli occupation, and Hafez al-Assad’s efforts to establish a Ba’athist Pax Syriana on its neighbouring country’s soil, Lebanon’s sectarian fractures became deeply entrenched.

While the Israelis pushed northbound into the outskirts of Beirut with the support of the South Lebanon Army (its Christian proxy), the emerging Islamic Republic of Iran came to the fore and seized an opportunity to spread Iran’s influence in the region. Iran deployed 1,500 Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon, with the strategically crucial Beqa’a Valley as their final destination. In doing so, Tehran turned this fertile land into a Shia militant hotbed, ultimately paving the way for the birth of its Lebanese surrogate, ‘the Party of God’, or Hezbollah.

With this consolidated supply route over Shia territory, ranging from Tehran through Damascus into Southern Lebanon, the foundation had been laid for Hezbollah. In the coming years it relied on this route to violently resist the Israeli occupation while pursuing its integration into Lebanese politics.[1] As a consequence, after a 15 year-long low-level war of attrition, in 2000 Israel’s prime minister Ehud Barak called for the unilateral withdrawal of troops from what had become a protracted battlefield in Southern Lebanon. It was no longer the cordon sanitaire the Israelis had originally set out to create. Playing into Hezbollah’s hands, this manoeuvre subsequently fuelled the perception that the politicians in Israel were trying to sell an obvious surrender as a strategy.

Lessons of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War

The years after the withdrawal do not represent a period of peaceful coexistence along the Lebanese border. Occasional skirmishes prevailed on the meadows of the Sheba’a Farms. Then on 12 July 2006, Hezbollah mounted a cross-border raid leading to the killing of 8 Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two reservists. This was supposed to represent a stepping stone towards securing the release of Druze Samir al-Quntar, the Lebanese former Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) member, who was imprisoned by Israel for his involvement in the 1979 Nahariya kidnapping attack. The raid by Hezbollah sparked the outbreak of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

Other factors that led to the War were Israel’s determination to change the rules of the strategic deadlock along the border, and Hezbollah’s increasing influence on Hamas, who in June 2006 had abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. What’s more, there were rumours that Hezbollah were on the brink of achieving first-strike capabilities.[2]

With the Israeli military campaign one week old, Ehud Barak admitted that the Israeli occupation in Lebanon may have led to the creation of Hezbollah:

‘When we entered Lebanon, there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.’[3]

Soon it became clear that Israel’s military had lost its deterrent edge against an enemy who could blend irregular warfare with the weaponry and capabilities that were generally the preserve of regular armies.

As a result, in the later stages of the hostilities, Israel tried to alter the perception of Hezbollah at the receiving end by applying an iron fist policy of massive retaliation. On 22 July 2006 the Israeli Air flattened the Shia Dahiya suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold, in Beirut’s southern outskirts. Ever since, the term ‘Dahiya’ has been used to describe a strategic watershed experience for the Israeli military. The draconic air campaign was intended to be a disproportional punishment in order to restore credibility and to induce ‘a calm built on fear, not on political settlement.’[4]

Hezbollah, however, endured the pounding by absorbing the damage, and continued their operational resistance. Indeed, it even managed to drag Israel back into waging a ground incursion into Southern Lebanon, a battlefield with negative connotations hard-wired into Israel’s military history.[5] To that end, Israel’s firepower, and Hezbollah’s ability to exploit Israel’s ‘Lebanese mud-syndrome’[6] cleared the way for a realignment of their animosity.

Both sides managed to seriously damage each other, which explains the relative quietude and restraint along the Israeli-Lebanese border ever since. Israel’s calculus stems from a pragmatic realization that only an escalatory response can achieve the temporary absence of violence along its borders. Hezbollah, for its part, internalized the art of blending into civilian areas and concealing its operating squads in order to hide and disperse. It decreased its own vulnerability but raised the probability of Lebanese civilians coming into the firing line.

Another front opens up: Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria

In April 2013, the Arab Spring now a distant memory, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Nasrallah made a public vow of fidelity to Assad. This came only a few days after visiting Tehran.[7] He made no secret of the fact that his fighters had gone to support the Shia-sect Alawite regime. Nasrallah, in an attempt to rally domestic support across sectarian lines, justified the deployment of his troops over the border by declaring that Hezbollah would only fight Sunni extremists, who would otherwise threaten Lebanese Shia and Christians.

The true reason for helping Assad is different: besides Tehran, Damascus still counts Hezbollah’s amongst its most important allies. If Assad were to fall, Hezbollah’s resilience in its struggle against Israel would be at stake, as would its strategic foothold in the Levant. For Assad, the involvement of Hezbollah’s troops in Syria is vital in containing a variety of anti-regime forces and the surge of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

The consequence of Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria is that the group is very busy. Another escalation with Israel and it may be forced to engage on two fronts simultaneously. This would divert and overstretch its military capabilities, and could even push Lebanon to the brink of collapse. This is exacerbated by the massive influx of Syrian refugees, who have become a huge social burden for the country.

Nasrallah, the former hero of the Arab masses, has thus embarked on a dangerous path. Celebrated for his achievement in forcing Israel’s pullout in 2000 and resisting a military incursion 6 years later, he has now risked further deepening the region’s broader Sunni-Shia divide. In addition, despite possessing an impressive rocket arsenal, it appears unlikely that Hezbollah could survive another round of Israeli escalation as long as it is caught up in the Syrian quagmire.[8]

Israel is attempting to navigate through an increasingly troublesome landscape on its northern front, and so for now it seems to be determined to adhere to a containment policy against Hezbollah. In 2013, when the risk of violence increased in the Shia Crescent, Israel sent a clear message by carrying out air strikes targeting military transport in the outskirts of Damascus, which Israel claimed to be supplying Hezbollah.

Finally, the events in January 2015 can be considered the latest reminder of a strategic stalemate along the border. The law of talion, ‘an eye for a tooth’[9], which represented the Israeli strategy during the hostilities in 2006, set the pattern for the conflict. Israel and Hezbollah now tacitly adhere to an even-tempered rationale. In the foreseeable future it will be tit-for-tat, rather than all-out war, that will characterise the ever volatile tri-border area.

Sebastian Maier graduated in January 2015 from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, with an MA in Intelligence & International Security. He lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOTES

[1] Saad Ghorayeb, A., Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion (Pluto Press London UK, 2001), pp.112,113.

[2]Norton, A.R., Hezbollah- A Shorty History (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2007), pp.133,134.

[3] Ibid. p.33.

[4] Rapoport, M., Flaws in Israel’s ‘punish and deter’ strategy, Middle East Eye, 10 July, 2014.

[5] Even before Hezbollah’s inception hostile actions against Israel had been carried out from Southern Lebanese soil, e.g. by armed terrorists, including 1000 Libyan and 500 Syrian volunteers. In: Gilbert, M., The Arab-Israeli Conflict- Its history in Maps ( London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), p.77.

[6] Lieberman, E., Reconceptualizing Deterrence: Nudging Toward Rationality in Middle Eastern rivalries (Abingdon, Routledge, 2013), p.197.

[7] The Daily Star, Lebanon, Nasrallah met Khamenei in Iran, to make speech May 9, April 22, 2013.

[8] Levitt, M., Hezbollah’s Syrian Quagmire, PRISM, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, September 2014.

[9] Byman, D. L., An Eye for a Tooth: The Trouble with Israeli Deterrence, ForeignPolicy.com, 23 July, 2014.

"On the real terms of equality"

May 30, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Jill S. Russell:

Surveying the landscape of current news stories on women is grim. There were the raped and lynched Indian girls, the stoned pregnant Pakistani woman, Farzana Parveen, a victim of honour killing and the 270 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls. The list continues with threats to lash Iranian actress Leila Hatami; the pregnant Merium Ibrahim, a Sudanese slated for execution for marrying a Christian; Iraqi child brides, everything in Saudi Arabia, the too many women everywhere who are cut,[1] trafficked across the globe for sex, and the question of whether women should serve across all functions in the armed forces of leading Western liberal democracies. Worse than they appear in detail, they seem to share a common thread regarding the place and state of women in the world, which is the assumption that women’s choices can and should be decided for by others. Whether by family, neighbours, society, culture or governance, any aspect of our behaviour, dress, feelings or actions are at the whim of others.

I cannot speak to much of these problems from personal experience, although I hope others will. But in my small corner of the world, I am deeply concerned with the political issues regarding women and military service and what it represents about our place in society and governance. Some will balk at my inclusion of the matter of service in combat roles in this rogue’s roll call, but it is wholly representative of the principle. The presumption being against them, women must argue FOR inclusion, the decision about which will be made by others. On the basis of zero empirical evidence regarding military effectiveness, women were excluded, and now that bizarre historical anomaly has assumed the status of wisdom. Sorry, it’s not, contort yourself all you want. What passes for evidence now too often boils down to the pull-ups and arguments of cohesion that are based in fluff. The fate of the western world will not be decided by a single exercise – to exclude women for the pull-up is so silly on its face I do not understand how it can be argued seriously. More pointedly, the latter hew and cry over cohesion neglects the absolute raw truth that cohesion is forged in shared experience, so true that it almost invariably breaks down every seeming established structure of distrust.[2] There’s more on women in the military, combat, and war, but these are the worst examples of illogic which man the barriers to integration. Of greatest importance, however, the prohibition is odious for its betrayal of the political beliefs of the system we like to hold out to others. We are not all equal under the law. It is both tragic and a bit frightening – if my rights can be constrained in this matter on the basis of my biology, then what is to stop the state in other areas? And if the liberal west cannot throw off the shackles of this moribund ideology of inequality then there is little hope.

None of this is about being against men. I am a woman in military history and contemporary security affairs, I don’t have a problem with men. Quite the contrary, having grown up playing sports with boys, I find men generally rather easy and pleasant to get on with. Throughout my adulthood I have eschewed the title of feminist – on principle I am earnestly and fervently a humanist, we are all the same. I would prefer to keep to my own work in logistics and public order, and out of this debate. But I am well and truly distressed that this sentiment, this assumed sovereignty of one half of the population over the other, because they were born cloven and not cleft,[3] has such vigour in the world.

If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, imagine what happens when she knows military strategy? You only have to take a real look at international security and war studies to see the ladies are on the rise. I’m not certain at what point I would be driven to become She Guevara, and I won’t speak for the rest, but at some point this becomes intolerable. I’m not certain how many more photos of girls hanging from trees or similar I am willing to abide.

As I said, though, I prefer to get on with my own work.

__________________

Jill S. Russell is a regular contributor to Strife, Kings of War and Small Wars. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on American military logistics and strategic culture, with a side project in the London Riots of 2011. You can follow her on Twitter @jsargentr.

NOTES

[1] This is the term chosen by a woman who was the subject of what we refer to here as FGM. I shall respect her wishes on how she would like the practice to be described.
[2] This may be the better explanation for Stockholm Syndrome, that the experience of shared dramatic events or time creates cohesion notwithstanding the matter of formal antagonism between individuals.
[3] Paraphrasing my mother, who unleashed ‘had been born cleft and not cloven’ upon a school principal when he mentioned that my sister’s language was not appropriate for a young lady, her point being that she was none too pleased to hear that had her child been a young man he would not have been in trouble. She’s a corporate litigator by profession. You don’t ever want to be deposed by her. Ever.

Could protracted conflict in Syria be in the national interest of the United States?

April 1, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Eugenio Lilli:

In a recent talk I chaired at King’s College London, a prominent American expert on US foreign policy described the crisis in Syria as a ‘no good option crisis’ for the United States.

Similarly, in a February piece on the web magazine War On The Rocks, the authors argued that,

‘With chemical weapons off the table, Assad’s external opposition in disarray, Islamists dominating the insurgency, and an American public unhappy with foreign wars, the Obama administration feels it has few options other than taking steps to prevent the civil war from destabilizing Syria’s neighbours and harming U.S. security.’

There seems to be general agreement in western foreign policy circles about the fact that the complex nature of the Syrian crisis has left the United States with limited leverage to bring the violence to an end. In other words, the United States does want to stop the fighting but international and domestic factors have prevented it from doing so.

What if, instead, Washington was actually benefiting from the protracted confrontation in Syria?

The mainstream debate has not seriously contemplated the possibility that, in fact, the Obama administration has come to the conclusion that the US best option in Syria is to let the confrontation continue. This is not to say that Washington’s concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country is not sincere. The United States has indeed repeatedly tried, especially through diplomatic means, to stop the ongoing violence. However, both the failure of successive diplomatic initiatives and developments on the ground might have changed the perception of the Syrian crisis in the minds of US officials. Over time, humanitarian concerns might have been superseded by security ones. While blunt, it is a fact that the history of international relations is filled with examples where states’ concerns about the protection of lofty principles were sacrificed on the altar of the pursuit of strategic interests. In this regard, the post-WWII foreign policy of the United States toward the Middle East is a case in point: i.e. the 1953 US/British coup to oust the democratically-elected Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadeq and replace him with the dictatorial regime of the shah, or the US/Western blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds while Saddam was fighting the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s).

Could the Syrian crisis be yet another example of this trend? And if it is, what US strategic interest would be best served by the continued conflict in the country?

The answer to these questions lies in understanding the contentious relationship between the United States and the actors involved in Syria. Russia, Iran, the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and a variety of Sunni extremist groups (some of them admittedly linked to al Qaeda) represent active parties to the conflict. Prior to the 2011 uprising, these actors were competing in different ways with the United States for influence in the region of the Greater Middle East. President Putin wanted to reassert Russia’s regional power status and have a say in Middle Eastern affairs. Leaders in Tehran clashed with the United States and its local allies to increase Iran’s sway across the region. President Assad and the Shiite party-cum-militia Hezbollah were a continued threat to the security of Israel, ostensibly Washington’s principal Middle Eastern ally. Finally, the profound anti-Americanism of some Sunni extremist groups, especially of those local franchises of al Qaeda such as Jabhat al-Nusra, was not a secret.

The outbreak of the Syrian uprising markedly changed these regional dynamics. While none of the aforementioned actors has ceased to represent a challenge to US influence in the Greater Middle East, the relations among such actors have been significantly affected. Before 2011, Russia, Iran, the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and Sunni extremist groups were by no means allies and were not part of a united anti-US front, however, they were not at war with one another. Today, after three years of bloody confrontations in Syria, a clear divide exists among those fighting on the side of the Assad government and those fighting against it.

On the one side, Russian and Iranian open support for the Syrian regime against a mostly Sunni uprising has tarnished the two countries’ image in the eyes of Sunni Arab communities. The Assad government and Hezbollah’s violent repression of the Syrian uprising has come at the expense of their reputation as regional defenders of all Arabs against US and Israeli oppression. On the other side, Sunni extremist groups are now avowed enemies of the pro-Assad camp that they now perceive as being an anti-Sunni camp. Sunni Hamas, for example, broke its ties with the regime in Damascus in February 2012, while the Sunni, al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades has claimed responsibility for a number of recent attacks against Iranian targets in Lebanon. Significantly, for the purpose of this article, it is important to notice that the Syrian civil war has also resulted in profound fissures among different Sunni groups within the anti-Assad opposition, especially between the more extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the relatively more moderate Islamic Front (IF).

In other words, developments in Syria have significantly diverted these actors’ attention from challenging the United States to fighting among themselves. The Obama administration might have reasoned that the old Roman strategy of the divide et impera could well apply to the current Syrian crisis and eventually benefit the United States. In fact, whatever the future outcome of the crisis, the sharp polarization of the actors involved in the Syrian conflict has weakened their regional influence. This is not only due to the high human, economic, and political costs of sustaining the war but perhaps primarily to the effects that the protracted crisis has on their image and legitimacy across the Arab world.

______________________

Eugenio Lilli is a PhD Candidate at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. His research focuses on US foreign policy toward the Greater Middle East, in particular on the Obama administration’s response to the Arab Awakening. Eugenio is also the founding chairperson of the King’s College London US Foreign Policy Research Group.

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

March 25, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Joana Cook, Managing Editor, Strife

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.

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.

___________________________

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.

Canada: The retirement of a global peacekeeper?

November 29, 2013 by Strife Staff

by Joana Cook

“We cannot close the door on diplomacy. We cannot rule out peaceful solutions to the world’s problems. We cannot commit ourselves to an endless cycle of violence, and tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it’s not the right thing for our security.” At least our American neighbours to the south think so, as Obama said this week while discussing the recent breakthrough nuclear deal with Iran.

Following tense, and earlier secret negotiations, the P5+1 consisting of the US, Russia, UK, China, Germany and France struck a deal with Iran. This deal, in exchange for the lifting of a number of strict sanctions imposed by the UN, EU, and US (valued at $7 billion USD), will see Iran take a number of clear actions to curb its nuclear program. These include Iran ceasing enrichment above 5%, neutralizing its stockpile which currently exceeds this, and granting greater, regular access to inspectors to its two key nuclear sites, Natanz and Fordo, amongst other clauses.

While this deal has received some criticism in the US, and the expected opposition of Israel, even Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, offered cautious optimism. So why has Canada opted for a position that can be viewed as cynical at best?

Canada, once viewed as an international peacekeeper, and often still thought as such by its population, has now assumed a stance that can be viewed, in frank terms, as negative and uninspired. Canada justifiably shuttered her embassy in Tehran in 2012 and has ceased any type of relationship with the Iranian government since due to its nuclear ambitions and human rights abuses. While certain P5 members, such as the US and UK, had previously done the same, seeking broader security goals took precedence and high-level contact was carried out between these parties over an extended period of six months to reach this breakthrough deal. This is not the case in Canada, whose Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, stated he was “deeply sceptical of the deal and Iran’s intentions” and had no intention of engaging in the foreseeable future. While stating that Canada wants to be part of a diplomatic solution, and will continue to work through organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), little was offered in the way of innovative or inspired approaches that Canada could take to support the constructive actions of the past weekend. It also appeared that higher goals of lasting security, or what positive implications improving relations could play in other areas (such as its influence in Syria), were simply sidelined.

What is now appearing to be an aged, though historic, highpoint for Canada in international diplomacy was its 1957 Nobel Peace Prize won by Canadian Liberal politician Lester B. Pearson for negotiating a peaceful end to the Suez Crisis. As introduced in the presentation speech, Pearson was applauded for his qualities, demonstrated during the crisis – “the powerful initiative, strength, and perseverance he has displayed in attempting to prevent or limit war operations and to restore peace in situations where quick, tactful, and wise action has been necessary to prevent unrest from spreading and developing into a worldwide conflagration”. It is a sentiment which could be easily applicable to modern day Iran, but what is lacking is this same will and spirit.

Canada’s current narrow, even, arguably, non-existent, vision for what is achievable through diplomatic channels risks side-lining itself not only from future negotiations with Iran, but also from other potential opportunities that may rise for it to again utilize its past strengths as negotiator, mediator, and peacekeeper. It will take a strong stance from Canada to do this, but there is no reason it can not engage with Iran while continuing to hold her position and stress the importance of human rights, particularly at this pivotal stage in Iran’s new leadership. With peace talks for Syria now planned in Geneva in January 2014, and instability currently threatening the Central African Republic, there is certainly no lack of opportunity to re-establish a positive global role for Canada in the world.

Simply put, Canada must reflect inwards. It must reassess not only how it views its current position, but also, more broadly, what role it wants to perform on the world stage or whether sitting in the audience will be enough.

Iran

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