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What have I learned from my volunteering?
A friend expressed a desire to create a peace organisation and the first things that sprang to mind were:
“Accept repentant Boko Haram fighters or they go back to terrorism, presidency urges Nigerians”
This is a news story about young men who had been members of a terrorist organisation being allowed to repent, and the national leader asking people to allow them back into their communities.
19/09/2019 “the establishment of ‘Operation Safe Corridor’ in Gombe State has been described as a global model in combating insurgency in the world” link.
11/06/2020 “No repentant Boko Haram Terrorists combatant who has been reintegrated into the society will evade arrest if he reneged on the pledge” link.
Anyone who thinks one cannot negotiate with terrorists and one must fight fire with fire could do worse than look at Operation Safe Corridor. The deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration (DRR) process of ex- Boko Haram members seems to have been a remarkably impressive demonstration of best practice in tackling extremist violence.
General Olonisakin: “the Armed Forces of Nigeria is not only trying to win the war but to also win the peace”.
It must be incredibly tough on those still displaced or still in areas affected by Boko Haram. Forgiveness does not come easily.
It’s quite an example though of how violent groups recruit and kidnap young people to do their fighting for them, and how such fighters themselves can also be the victims.
I’ve written before about trading justice for peace. Punishing these young men would have been injustice on injustice and not resulted in any peace.
Violence is complicated. Peace is really hard.
I do hope all this gets researched and documented. An observation:
“The operation Safe Corridor is good, but how much have been invested in communities to bolster their resilience capacities, heal their grievances and give them back their lives to enable them embrace these formers? What is the post deradicalisation programme that can effectively monitor these formers to track their progress in reintegration or further resurgence in their old tracks? What has been the role of formers in the process deracalisation or PVE? These and many more should be reassessed and appraised.”
Absolutely – data is needed and needs to be published about conflict interventions and resolution as a bigger picture. This was a major conclusion from my Master’s in Peace Studies – a lack of off-the-shelf case studies fro those new to or outside the field.
Essentially we have the Oxford Research Group’s ‘War Prevention Works : 50 Stories of People Resolving Conflict’ from 2001 and High Miall’s ‘The Peacemakers: Peaceful Settlement of Disputes Since 1945′ from 1992.
I think there is a desperate need for Practitioners’ Manual for Peace based on evidence from past interventions, which requires that consolidation of data to underpin and inform it.
I do find it interesting it appears to be being led by the Armed Forces of Nigeria. How’s that for defence diversification?
In the foreword of Hugh Miall’s 1992 book The Peacemakers, reference is made to “the first conference of British professionals concerned with [peace and conflict resolution] was held in 1963 and the International Peace Research Association was founded later the same year“.
The International Peace Research Association (home page) (Wikipedia entry) (Facebook page) says “International Peace Research Association is the largest and most established global professional organisation in the field of peace research, addressed from a wide range of interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives“. So it is for researchers rather than practitioners. Their ‘brief history’ tab goes to a 40 page document – not a good sign.
The membership link asks for sponsorship. The ‘becoming a member’ link asks for conference sponsorship. Click on Membership Form to actually get details; it is €100 per year for students, ouch! Their web site is a mess with links going to an index of pages and no content or ‘PAGE COMING SOON’ with a 2014 copyright message.
The Facebook page is very sparse, with nothing since 2016.
According to JSTOR, they were responsible for the International Journal of Peace Studies from 1996 to 2013.
Conclusion: not interested. Was intended for researchers, not practitioners. Probably moribund.
There is also the IPRA Foundation (home page) (Facebook page) which says “The mission of the IPRA Foundation is to advance the field of peace research through rigorous investigation into the causes of conflict and examination of alternatives to violence. Peace researchers inform peace activities that inspire visions of a peaceful world.” and “Founded in 1990 the IPRA Foundation, a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, furthers the purposes and activities of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) which, since 1965, has sought to enhance the processes of peace.”
Other things to look up:
A recurring theme when studying international relations and diplomacy is the need for secret talks between parties in conflict. This allows concessions to be discussed without the leaders on either side losing face. So we do not hear about moves made toward peace-making, what the methods are, how many are involved, how much work gets done and how successful it may or may not be. This gives us the impression that there is no peace-making going on, merely a cessation of hostilities.
It also came up when I was researching The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The ‘politics of research’ means information on security matters is not researched, not talked about, not documented and not publicised. So we do not hear about the successes and achievements toward peace making.
I am now going through a list of case studies called ‘War Prevention Works’ published by the Oxford Research Group. They say in their book that finding out about interventions in conflict is hard because they are kept quiet.
It is no wonder the general public think peace is an impossibility, war is inevitable and that peace-making does now work. It receives no publicity for multiple reasons, whereas war is newsworthy every day. And if you don’t talk about something, it does not exist. There needs to be evidence for people to learn from and believe in. If you don’t study your history, you can’t learn from it. Keeping peace-making secret may be a short-term requirement, but it is a medium and long term hindrance.
We need to publicise methods and successes somehow, somewhere. Which takes me back to where I started in 2012: where is the manual on how to do peace as a practitioner? What are the methodologies? What is the learned journal for peace? What is the code of conduct? What is the professional body?
Within our society there are four powerful bodies with an interest in increased militarisation:
The bureaucracy supports the military’s expansion, funds academic military research and provides trade to the arms industry.
The military funds academic military research and encourages the arms industry to develop more powerful weapons and new types of weapon and pressures the bureaucracy to allow greater novelty in weaponry. It campaigns for greater acceptance of militarisation within society, especially children.
Academia develops more destructive weapons, greater killing efficiency from weapons and devises new ways to be destructive benefiting the military’s aims for faster and greater destruction and opportunities for the arms industry to make profits.
The arms industry campaigns for less controls on weapon use, funds research into novel types of weaponry, promotes the threat and use of violent conflict as a diplomatic approach by the bureaucracy.
Between them they have the power, desire, intellect and money to promote war-making.
It’s amazing the peace sector makes any progress against them at all.
So I am preparing for my Master’s in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies at Lancaster University and reviewing my plan. My intention was to get a Peace Studies MA then a job in conflict prevention somehow such that I could do my bit to stop the UK starting any new wars by providing evidence-based arguments that there are better alternatives.
A few people have – in jest? – asked if I am intending to do a PhD or suggested I do one. Having looked again at the university I have chosen – a “triple top ten university” with a joint top best research library and one of the top 3 research universities in the UK – and it seems I have chosen well. One that prides itself on the quality of its research. I wonder if that applies to the social sciences too, specifically the politics and international relations? If so, I would be in the right place.
I had an idea the other day regarding modelling of the kind done in IT, physics and maths: are there models for conflict resolution? If not, fame and fortune awaits if I invent the first. If so, there is the opportunity to learn about them and apply them in the workplace. But an academic view might be to review them, compare them, evaluate them – that could be what I do with this MA.
But there is a further opportunity. I am a practitioner by nature, not an academic. I have been seeking ‘the learned journal for peace’, the professional body for peacemakers, the text books, the methodologies, the best practice for the people working in the field. Do these things exist? If not, they need creating and there is the scope for a PhD.
If I could create or document a framework for peacemongery such that practitioners could take it off the shelf and use it, that would be a heck of a legacy. If I could form a ‘professional body’ or a methodology, that would also be a great contribution. Even creating something so that when someone says “There is no alternative to war”, I can say “Yes there is, I wrote the book!” would be an immense move forward.
I shall keep pondering on this idea…
I need to read more information from War Resisters’ International. They have so much useful information on nonviolent campaigns in opposition of war, that it is overwhelming, so I have not looked at it at all. It is hard to know where to start.
Web sites:
Loads of articles:
Potential employers for me:
tl;dr: Do independent study with a purpose.
Last year, doing my history research module, I used to get distracted when doing independent study and wander off spending hours reading irrelevant stuff. But I did get into the habit of thinking about the module themes as I did so, and I did use the primary and secondary document analysis techniques.
On the afternoon before the exam—when I should have been revising—I came across the Commissar Order: the instruction to German soldiers to not take Russian political Commissars prisoner. I remembered that from reading gory Sven Hassel war stories and proceeded to waste the entire evening reading about it. But I did so using my newly-learned research and historiography skills; that way I could pretend it was ‘revision’.
It turned out this document was genuine and was later hugely significant in the Nuremberg war trials and, as a consequence, has been key in influencing international war crimes legislation prosecution since then. It also gives exquisite insight into the war on the Eastern Front.
Courtesy of module A327 Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity, I was able to appreciate the significance of this document, evaluate its authenticity and put it into a political context. I actually got pleasure from using those skills to gain a much broader and deeper understanding of this tiny, trivial, scrap of history than I otherwise would have done. That scrap is still influencing international relations in the world but for the better now.
Anyway, so blinking what?
The next morning when I saw the exam paper, one of the documents to evaluate in the first question was… The Commissar Order! Either the gods smiled on me, or it is true that the more you practise, the luckier you get.
I have often heard it suggested or assumed that the next wars will be over water. The International Water Management Institute is not so pessimistic. Their article ‘Promoting cooperation through management of transboundary water resources‘ says:
Research is challenging the conventional wisdom that conflict over water leads to war. The water wars hypothesis has its roots in earlier research carried out on a small number of transboundary rivers such as the Indus, Jordan and the Nile…because they had experienced water-related disputes. Specific events cited as evidence include Israel’s bombing of Syria’s attempts to divert the Jordan’s headwater and military threats by Egypt against any country building dams in the upstream water of the Nile. However, while some links made between conflict and water were valid, they did not necessarily represent the norm.
and
while it is true that there has been conflict related to water in a handful of international basins, in the rest of the world’s approximately 300 shared basins the record has been largely positive.
War is not inevitable.
This paper is an example of research into alternatives to international conflict over a specific resource resulting in evidence-based cases of violent conflict not being required to resole international problems regarding resource issues. So if someone says to you “The next wars will be about water” you can now say “No, they won’t. Water may be involved but we now know it is more likely to result in international co-operation.“