Kai Brand-Jacobsen - April 2006 in Portcullis House
Kai Brand-Jacobsen
Co-director of Transcend, and Director of the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR)
Transcript of a talk given to ministry for peace meeting held in April 2006 in Portcullis House
Co-director of Transcend, and Director of the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR)
Transcript of a talk given to ministry for peace meeting held in April 2006 in Portcullis House
It is as always an honour and a pleasure to be here with many good friends and discussing a very important topic. I actually have the easiest job here tonight because I’ve been asked simply to answer the question: “Can conflict transformation tools avert a military intervention in Iran?” So the answer from my perspective, with twelve years engagement working in about 90 plus countries around the world and over 20 war zones would be a very simple yes. I could end there but that probably wouldn’t be satisfying for everybody.
One of the things to say straight from the beginning: Fortunately, the situation we are facing is not a choice between acting and not acting. The question is how we act. This has been a challenge with the way we have been framing issues of military interventions from Western countries over the past 20 years, because it’s always presented by political leaderships as a choice of intervening or doing nothing. Very fortunately, that’s not the entire realm of options available to us.
Rather than doing a normal style of presentation, going over many of the different issues, when I got onto the plane earlier this morning, I just started typing down 42 different possible ideas for what could be done. This took less than 10 minutes. It is not said to be a solution. There are many different ideas and initiatives which, combined together, independently or as a package, could help to provide means and tools for dealing with the situation.
One of the biggest challenges facing us today is that many countries in Western Europe, North America, the Middle East and elsewhere, do not have sufficiently developed tools and mechanisms for dealing with conflict effectively. We have very well developed war infrastructures There are few countries in the world that have standing, professionally trained, human resources for dealing with conflicts effectively. And while that is one of the roles of diplomacy, the scope and the range of diplomatic training and responsibilities is not enough to cover the entire field.
Many of you may know about these Spanish-Turkish-UN supported Dialogue of Civilisations. In response to the Madrid bombing, Spain did not go to war against other countries. They developed what is a very interesting, different approach: an international police support operation to apprehend and arrest those people that were involved in the Madrid attacks.
Notably they have arrested and prosecuted more people involved with the Madrid attacks, and had more police engagements preventing further civilian military actions against Spain than the United States has following September 11. Because they used effective policing tools and mechanisms.
But they also went further. They recognised that there are actual reasons why these things are happening and that they need a wide range of policies measures to address them. So they have developed the UN-supported Dialogue of Civilisations, which is taking place in Spain, and just a few weeks ago they had the second Annual Conference of Rabbis and Imams in Spain.
1) So the first proposal is to have the Spanish-Turkish-UN-supported Dialogue of Civilisations invite Iranian, US, UK (and together with some other), government, academic and media actors to have a dialogue on the current situation, and to look at the range of policy alternatives and ways of dealing with the situation that could be available.
2) Increase the number of trips by UK and US politicians and local authorities to Iran and vice versa, so that people actually have first hand knowledge and understanding of what they’re speaking about. Very many of the people involved have never been to the areas in question, whether its Iranian political leaders travelling to the UK and US or vice versa, and a lot of the discussion around it is based more on fear, scare-mongering and a wide range of populist political tactics on all sides than on actual rational politics and reasoned engagement with the conflict issues at hand.
3) Trips by religious leaders from the US, UK and Iran to each other, promoting dialogue not just at the state level.
4) A series of programmes bringing journalists from Iran, US, UK, and other countries together for dialogue and trainings on peace journalism, including dialogues amongst journalists as professional peers looking at how the media is reporting in their countries, how they’re framing the issue and how that’s affecting how the conflict is being perceived.
All three countries have particular challenges with media which often takes very populist, hardline or war-mongering approaches to framing of issues. British journalists have been among the foremost in the world at monitoring and analysing the built-in war reporting structure of the majority of reporting in Britain about international affairs and conflicts. The same could be said as well of the US and and Iraq as well.
5) A joint BBC and Iranian TV or Aljazeera series of programmes on peace strategies for addressing the conflict. So jointly bringing major media actors together, where they could have for example a seven-part series, since this is a major international issue which is of interest to a wide number of people around the world involving the potential development or use of nuclear weapons in an area where there are already a number of conflicts – I think the media could see the importance of it and if you have the right packaging, would be interested.
Have two of the largest stations in the world to do it, where they would have one episode for one hour with political leaders on all sides, going back and forth between statements, perspectives incluing not only diagnosis and analysis of what are the issues, and showing them from all sides which is something that the British, US and Iranian populations have not been privy to. They’ve not had the opportunity to have proper hearing of the perspectives from all sides. But also focusing on therapies, and inviting the political leaders to come forward with what are their practical proposals of how to deal with the situation. Something which takes more than the dogmatic statement of responsibility or blame being attributed to one actor, which is very much coming out from all sides involved at the moment.
A programme with religious leaders from all sides, one with citizens, one with media on their coverage of the conflict, one with professional peace workers from around the world, including from Islamic countries and from Iran, which has many highly qualified and capable people working in Islamic peace-building, and peace building and conflict transformation.
And then the final two episodes: one where you bring together around a big table cross-sector of participants from business, unions, social actors, media, academics, religious leaders to discuss the issues at hand. And a final “bringing together” in a final episode of peace workers from around the world looking at what came up and what could be practical proposals for it. The same way as if you’re discussing avian bird flu syndrome or others, they bring together medical health professionals and the World Health Organisation organises an international conference not only with politicians making election speeches or hardline dogmatic programmes, but with also medical health professionals, civil servants and a wide range of people involved, to look at bringing a cross-sector of responses for how to address the issue.
6) Trips by members of the European Parliament to Iran, the US and the UK to discuss the issues and bring forward alternatives.
7) Trips by national-level political leaders to all three countries, looking at promoting dialogue and practical solutions, in particular looking at what are the legitimate needs of all parties. This is something that is not heard. How is it seen by all of the actors involved, and what are perhaps all around the legimate concerns?
8) This is quite an interesting one which would not be appreciated too much in Washington or in London but: Involvement of Venezuela as a possible mediator with Iran. (laughter) The reason being that Hugo Chavez has already made a very high-profile trip to the region and that one of the ways of transcending polarised political dynamics is to introduce additional actors that can bring forward the reality. We are not speaking of the international community in Iran. Yes, there were the number of countries that voted in the IAEA. There is also a very large number of countries, through the G77, through many others, that have voiced their disapproval of the policies being used at the moment. And just as it was not an accurate or intelligent reflection to use the words “international community” in the case of Yugoslavia or Iraq, so is it not today. So to actually help to bring forward a diversity of different voices that actually has the maturity to bring the relevant politics to hand by engaging a wider number of actors in dealing with the situation.
9) Series of combined dialogues and peace workshops with middle-level diplomats on all sides. And the FCO I would actually commend very much here in the UK because they’ve held a number of very quiet meetings with middle and senior level people in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the last several months, looking generally at introducing skills and techniques for conflict transformation, and also in particular dealing with conflicts of civilizations, and looking and US-West-Christianity in relation to Arab-Islam-Middle East, and how to deal with that. So increasing this but bringing together middle-level diplomats on all sides in groups of 15, 20 or 30 to undergo combined training in peace building and conflict transformation, and dialogues on the core issues.
10) Preparation of large-scale, non-violent civilian war prevention. That’s a long phrase. Basically, preparing ourselves on a massive scale for civilian war prevention. This is something which in countries like Britain, the United States and Iran, groups have often shown themselves willing to take measures that are not necessarily in accordance with international law, or sane and rational policy, and which often contribute to the dramatic escalation of violence and war, and the intensification of the very things that they’re meant to address. There is a responsibility of citizens to ensure that action is not taken by governments which threaten the escalation of war and violence, or crimes of war or crimes against humanity. So beginning to prepare ourselves on a large scale for civilian war prevention. There are many lessons and examples from around the world that can be drawn upon from that.
11) Learning the lessons from the build-up to Iraq, where every single argument brought in criticism of the war was proved correct. Every single argument brought for the war was proved false. And the impact of what has happened on Iraq and the region after has probably been – as is very common to say, and it’s common to say because there’s substance to it – the greatest recruitment for increased international terrorism, both by states and civilians, has dramatically increased the number of human rights violations. The number of people being killed in Iraq daily. This is not to take away in any way from the horrible massacres of civilians which happened under the previous regime at very specific and different periods, and an abominable human rights record, but it is to recognise that Britain and the United States and other occupation forces wihtin Iraq also have an abominable human rights record and have contributed to the dramatic destabilisation of the region.
12) Spanish NOVA, an organisation in Barcelona, promotes this European wide. They have managed to get cities and municipalities all across Spain to create what they call peace funds. So all across Spain, in many many communities, cities and municipalities, local authorities give 0.7% of their budget to promoting a culture and a practice of peace. If federal and national level governments have not shown themselves responsible enough – and I would encourage to be, and we should actually play on the positive aspects, because there are many initiatives including by the British government to promote supporting and development of peace-building capacities – also there can be a positive role played by local authorities. And at the local county and council level in Spain they are directly funding peace building initiatives, both within the country and internationally. That’s something we can all promote in our countries and European-wide.
13) Creation of a civil peace service in the UK and promotion of an EU-wide civil peace service and EU peace-building office, including a Commissioner for Peace Building in the European Union Commission. These are actually very close to happening. It will take a lot of work over the next five years. There is the first ever standing civil peace service in Germany. It’s funded with 14 million euros every single year by the German government. A long way to go, they don’t have that much training on conflict transformation and peace-building but they do a wide range of activities. And there’s a European network of civil peace services to have this promoted and institutionalised at every level. Imagine trying to put out fires without a fire department. Imagine trying to have a national education system without a national education service or teachers. There is an incredibly broad range of methods and a wealth of experience for how to deal with conflicts effectively. There’s been a tremendous amount of work to practically gather that together over the last decades, and especially the last several years.
A next step is to constructively engage with our governments, with national and local authorities, and with a broad-based public awareness campaign to raise the level of understanding across the spectrum of the population, to see that these tools exist and to begin putting them into practice and institutionalising them.
14) Nobel peace prize for Former President Mohammed Khatami. Few countries have had two in such close succession, but I would suggest this for the very simple fact that, year in year out, every single year while he was president, he proposed a Dialogue of Civilizations. Every single year he was refused by the British, American and other governments which didn’t take up the initiatives. They didn’t positively respond at least.
[Interruption: The idea of the Dialogue of Civilizations was formally supported by the United Nations in 2000 or 2001. We (the British government) formally supported it, I was in Tehran at the time.]
It was formally supported in the UN, that’s true. There were proposals by the government of Iran for holding it, there were responses to those. There was direct non-support of it from Washington. The UN definitely did support it, but European governments did not take practical steps forward for initiating it. At least, that is the perspective presented by Khatami on this issue. I’m sure it’s very complex and there are many different perspectives involved. That’s a positive thing we could build upon. Spain has taken this step. The UK could also help contribute to that by taking those steps further.
15) Joint European Union-Arab League development of peace building capacities and infrastructure. The European Union is looking at how to build up its peace-building capacities. In the Arab League definitely this could be strengthened. There are very limited mechanisms at this point within the Arab League for peace building capacities. The African Union has developed peace-keeping capacities which, as we can see from Sudan and elsewhere, are severely challenged but are developing. The European Union provided a 250 million euro grant to the African Union to develop its peace building capacities. There has not been the same commitment of resources to develop conflict transformation, peace-building and war prevention capacities. That would be a next step. Very positively, the African Union not only has a Security Council; it’s a Security and Peace Council. Also the Organisation of American States has identified this as one of its priority areas. So work with different regional bodies to improve and develop their conflict resolution mechanisms and capacities.
16) One thing which would be very simple: Have a one hour session all across the country here in the UK (and I’d also suggest this in the US and Iran, because we believe in symmetry – I’ll get back to that more later) in schools, in offices, in classrooms, in every setting, to invite people’s constructive ideas for how to deal with the situation. So have as broad as possible dialogues, coming up with proposals, where instead of going to war we take one hour of our time as citizens, as members of parliament, as students, as journalists, to come up with ideas for what can be done.
17) Encourage Quaker engagement in back-track quiet diplomacy. Not only Quakers, many others as well, but Quakers actually have an extensive experience throughout the region, and there are many reasons why a number of Quakers actually have appropriate contacts that could be quite positive in this case.
18) Have independent film-makers travel to Iran, the UK and US, to create a documentary bringing forward people’s voices and people’s ideas on what can be done for peace. And make that widely available to be seen by people on all sides.
19) Have the current Pope build upon the incredibly impressive record of the last Pope. (There are many not as positive aspects as well, but some of the last Pope’s initiatives for building peace and religious dialogue were historical and were quite impressive.) Have the current Pope build upon that positive experience by making a trip to Tehran for a peace dialogue, and inviting the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the Vatican as a reciprocal visit. So to have a high-level interreligious dialogue for peace. Openings have been taken following the 1998 apology of the Catholic Church for the crusades, where there were also representatives of the supreme leader in those quiet meetings that took place in 1995 in Geneva.
20) Engagement by the Organisation of Islamic States on a series of dialogues in the region on peaceful futures. So also looking at the responsibility of the OIS and the Arab League on promoting dialogues on peaceful futures in the region.
21) Creation of a zone free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty does not only call for not developing nuclear weapons capacities; it also calls for disarmament of states involved. Britain, the United States and others are in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have been for many decades, and are not in any way taking meaningful steps towards nuclear disarmament or towards reducing their engagement and investment in weapons of mass destruction. I had the unfortunate experience of being in London in October when the front pages of the newspapers were saying 90 billion pounds for developing a new generation of trident missiles. If that had been suggested in the UK ten years ago, whoever suggested it probably would have lost their job. It shows the climate that it is now possible for a militarised regime to come forward with those proposals which are not appropriate when it comes to meeting contemporary security challenges or increasing security and dealing with state and non-state terrorist acts and the needs to address them.
22) Establishment of a permanent conference on peace, security and co-operation in the Middle East. A standing permanent conference of all governments in the region including Israel, practically discussing the many inter-related conflicts and areas and points of co-operation. This was created as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe at a time when almost every foreign minister in Europe said it was impossible during the Cold War. It was created originally out of an interview done by a very young peace researcher with seventeen foreign ministers across the European continent, where he asked them, what do you feel are the main security challenges and what do you feel is necessary. And individually they all said, we need a framework to discuss these issues, even though it was not being said publicly. The CSCE, which is today the OSCE, has had many challenges but it has also at times played a vital and important role for providing a regional framework for addressing conflicts among a wide range of countries.
23) Withdrawal of all US and occupation authorities from Iraq. Establishment of Iraq as a neutral zone.
24) Creation of an international police support mission for Iraq. So not a military force, not an occupation force, but an accepted international police support mission under the aegis of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic States, the European Union and the United Nations. And one of the challenges today if you’re looking at Iraq is that a lot of people have simply accepted that there is an ongoing occupation and have become quieted. Some people are maintaining criticism of that occupation. What we’re missing is also practical proposals for how to deal with the situation. To remove British, US, Romanian and other occupation authorities and forces, and to actually develop a practical engagement which offers some hope of transition in the region.
25) EU-wide dialogue of civilisations at the community level, including broad-based public awareness programmes because in many countries in the EU, the same as you need a converence on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, for many countries in the EU there are many conflicts related to this, as we’ve seen over the last year, so broad-based dialogue of civilisations.
26) Invitation of prominent Iranian musicians and artists on peace tours and also vice versa. Including museums and galleries, promoting culture and playing an educational role, so people actually understand the civilisations and the countries involved.
27) Twinning of schools in the UK, Iran, the US, Middle East, Palestine, Israel.
28) An EU Commission and Ministerial level Peace-Building Summit. If we’ve had summits for monetary systems, and for many others, there can be an EU-wide peace-building summit to look at how to deal with these issues. And I would suggest preceding it by training and preparation of educational materials for the government officials involved, coupled with an EU-wide Civil Society Peace-Building Summit, building upon the Dublin Summit three years ago and the New York summit at the United Nations in July of last year, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.
29) And also an EU-wide Summit on Peace Education so that we’re beginning to produce populations and political leaders with more knowledge, capacity and tools to deal with conflict constructively.
30) Implementation on country-levels of national platforms for the global partnership for the prevention of armed conflict action agenda. In July in New York last year, there was the largest ever gathering of civil society organisations, about 3,000 from all over the world, looking at “from reaction to prevention”: how to prevent armed conflict. They came up with action agendas. The Netherlands and many other countries are beginning to develop national platforms for working, within their countries, to implement the policies and proposals of the action agenda. So that could be an initiative in the UK by citizens, local authorities, the national government, to look at how to implement this.
31) Begin a series of dialogues in the Middle East amongst veterans and current soldiers of all sides. How many of you know that three weeks ago for the first time ever, veterans and former combatants of the Israeli defence force and Al Fatah, created a new organisation to struggle against war? Former elite combat fighter pilots, former bomb-makers, former trainers of suicide bombers, former Israeli occupation soldiers have come together for the first time ever and created a joint force for waging peace. There’s also the example of Pugwash from the Cold War and the Retired Generals Associations and there are many military all across the Middle East, as well as in the United States and in Britain who have more level heads and who do not support some of the policies being promoted. Creating quiet and appropriate spaces for them to come together to be able to discuss policy alternatives.
32) An international youth peace conference in Iran by Peace Child International and Travel for Peace, for which there would be a lot of support. Travel for Peace is a Norwegian organisation that brings 12,000 students to holocaust sites in Germany and Poland every single year. Peace Child International (we actually have one of the Founders and the Director right here in the room who could describe it much better) has played a major role in helping to stimulate and engage youth around the world in seeing what they can do themselves for human rights, for peace work. So having a Peace Conference in Iran. I would then say follow it by one in Washington and London where it’s also very necessary.
33) Simple things, like preparation of a 30-pages guide to peace-building for EU citizens and governments, and another 30-pages guide for citizens for intercommunity and intercultural peacebuilding. Most people just have no idea of what is peace-building. You say violence and war, and we have clear images. You say peace and it sounds “theoretical, fancy, fairy, pretty, nice, ideal”. Fortunately, we’ve spoken with doctors and they have just as much difficulty describing health. (laughter) But they have built health systems. And as was argued in the Atlanta City Council in the United States, when they were promoting a resolution to vote for a Department of Peace in the US, when responding to polio at first they did not know what to do or how to deal with it: they marshalled their resources, they brought scientists together, they set up a national response for dealing with the situation. So, providing, as a mass education campaign looking at the problems facing us in the world, a simple 30-pages (with pictures) guide to peace-building for citizens and governments in Europe.
34) Guide to mass non-violent resistance, so in addition to preparing a large force, to prepare a guide to mass non-violent resistance in the possible lead-up to the war. Learning lessons also from the resistance to the invasion of Iraq. So for example, if there had been say 6,000 international citizens in Iraq, politically war would have been unviable. There were a few hundred. But if there had been 1,000 from the UK, there would have been 1,000 from Germany, there would have been at least a few thousand from the Scandinavian countries, two or three thousand from the US would have come. We did not reach the critical mass. Because for every one of those people, there’s also family, there’s the people they went to school with, there’s the people they went to jobs with. That could be one example but having a guide for effective, responsible resistance to war, on all sides, including building upon some of the fantastic work by… I’m sorry I’ll remember his name later but he’s done some amazing work on looking at non-violence in Islam and non-violent resistance in Islam. He’s at an American university, he’s one of the most senior professors on Islam and peace studies.
35) Begin dialogues with local politicians in your own community to promote alternatives including at the level of local authorities and city councils.
36) Learn from CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in the lead-up to the Iraq war with a televised dialogue forum on forging peace, bringing together people including citizen participation and having a national televised dialogue, but focusing on what can be done and alternatives, on all sides.
37) Media forums through print, radio and television discussing the conflict and focusing on therapies and strategies, with examples from what has been done elsewhere.
38) Policy statements by key sectors and begin getting them involved. E.g. chambers of commerce, sports associations, students, unions, veterans, artists, scientists (especially nuclear), nobel prize winners: on steps for peace and refusing military strikes.
39) A meeting of nobel peace prize winners and peace workers for proposals and high-level diplomacy. Meeting of nobel physics and nobel literature prize winners.
40) Beginning of mass education drive directed towards the armed services on the obligation and ways they can disobey or refuse illegal orders and promote peace, including support for resistors. Much of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq violated the Hague conventions. Most of the targets in the war in Yugoslavia for example were civilian targets and there were a number of courageous Spanish and Portuguese and other pilots who refused to fly their bombing runs because of the types of weapons that they were dropping, which they knew were not for taking out military…, they knew the targets they were being given were not military sites. They are still in prison. So for example a captain in the Spanish airforce is still in prison for having refused in 1999 to fly a bombing mission.
41) Use of the World Peace Forum in Canada which will be coming up in June, as a platform for discussing alternatives and mobilising civil society, and for peaceful transformation of the conflict.
42) And organise an International Day of workshops, dialogues, trainings, vigils, celebrations, marches and strategy sessions on September 21st which is International Peace Day, proclaimed by the United Nations.
This is not a wish list. These are practical things that can be done. Some of them may seem more difficult, which means they might take more effort. But one of the major things that is systematically lacking at the level of governments and others in dealing with many of these situations is practical politics, effective peacebuilding measures, and imagination not constrained by dogma.
I do agree that we have a determined and ideological regime pursuing populist policies. I’m not sure that it’s only in Tehran. And in Tehran, as in London, as in Washington, there are many strands within the governments. There are many different sectors. Within each country, you can find some political leaders who’ve made abysmal statements. You can also find many political leaders, business leaders and citizens who are open to alternatives.
The problem with the dumbing down of policy as it’s presented by many actors, whether by Tehran, London or Washington where we create a very extremist, narrow frame of interpreting events, where we leave out other aspects, and where we ignore or neglect key security concerns of all actors, is that it limits our scope for what can be done.
Part of the point of peace work is to engage in practical dialogues, to respect the legitimate needs of all the actors involved, and to work to come up with creative and constructive ideas that can help to transform the conflict effectively. In this situation, there is a huge amount of scope and possibility for that. The question of whether it will happen depends on all of us.
Thank you.
One of the things to say straight from the beginning: Fortunately, the situation we are facing is not a choice between acting and not acting. The question is how we act. This has been a challenge with the way we have been framing issues of military interventions from Western countries over the past 20 years, because it’s always presented by political leaderships as a choice of intervening or doing nothing. Very fortunately, that’s not the entire realm of options available to us.
Rather than doing a normal style of presentation, going over many of the different issues, when I got onto the plane earlier this morning, I just started typing down 42 different possible ideas for what could be done. This took less than 10 minutes. It is not said to be a solution. There are many different ideas and initiatives which, combined together, independently or as a package, could help to provide means and tools for dealing with the situation.
One of the biggest challenges facing us today is that many countries in Western Europe, North America, the Middle East and elsewhere, do not have sufficiently developed tools and mechanisms for dealing with conflict effectively. We have very well developed war infrastructures There are few countries in the world that have standing, professionally trained, human resources for dealing with conflicts effectively. And while that is one of the roles of diplomacy, the scope and the range of diplomatic training and responsibilities is not enough to cover the entire field.
Many of you may know about these Spanish-Turkish-UN supported Dialogue of Civilisations. In response to the Madrid bombing, Spain did not go to war against other countries. They developed what is a very interesting, different approach: an international police support operation to apprehend and arrest those people that were involved in the Madrid attacks.
Notably they have arrested and prosecuted more people involved with the Madrid attacks, and had more police engagements preventing further civilian military actions against Spain than the United States has following September 11. Because they used effective policing tools and mechanisms.
But they also went further. They recognised that there are actual reasons why these things are happening and that they need a wide range of policies measures to address them. So they have developed the UN-supported Dialogue of Civilisations, which is taking place in Spain, and just a few weeks ago they had the second Annual Conference of Rabbis and Imams in Spain.
1) So the first proposal is to have the Spanish-Turkish-UN-supported Dialogue of Civilisations invite Iranian, US, UK (and together with some other), government, academic and media actors to have a dialogue on the current situation, and to look at the range of policy alternatives and ways of dealing with the situation that could be available.
2) Increase the number of trips by UK and US politicians and local authorities to Iran and vice versa, so that people actually have first hand knowledge and understanding of what they’re speaking about. Very many of the people involved have never been to the areas in question, whether its Iranian political leaders travelling to the UK and US or vice versa, and a lot of the discussion around it is based more on fear, scare-mongering and a wide range of populist political tactics on all sides than on actual rational politics and reasoned engagement with the conflict issues at hand.
3) Trips by religious leaders from the US, UK and Iran to each other, promoting dialogue not just at the state level.
4) A series of programmes bringing journalists from Iran, US, UK, and other countries together for dialogue and trainings on peace journalism, including dialogues amongst journalists as professional peers looking at how the media is reporting in their countries, how they’re framing the issue and how that’s affecting how the conflict is being perceived.
All three countries have particular challenges with media which often takes very populist, hardline or war-mongering approaches to framing of issues. British journalists have been among the foremost in the world at monitoring and analysing the built-in war reporting structure of the majority of reporting in Britain about international affairs and conflicts. The same could be said as well of the US and and Iraq as well.
5) A joint BBC and Iranian TV or Aljazeera series of programmes on peace strategies for addressing the conflict. So jointly bringing major media actors together, where they could have for example a seven-part series, since this is a major international issue which is of interest to a wide number of people around the world involving the potential development or use of nuclear weapons in an area where there are already a number of conflicts – I think the media could see the importance of it and if you have the right packaging, would be interested.
Have two of the largest stations in the world to do it, where they would have one episode for one hour with political leaders on all sides, going back and forth between statements, perspectives incluing not only diagnosis and analysis of what are the issues, and showing them from all sides which is something that the British, US and Iranian populations have not been privy to. They’ve not had the opportunity to have proper hearing of the perspectives from all sides. But also focusing on therapies, and inviting the political leaders to come forward with what are their practical proposals of how to deal with the situation. Something which takes more than the dogmatic statement of responsibility or blame being attributed to one actor, which is very much coming out from all sides involved at the moment.
A programme with religious leaders from all sides, one with citizens, one with media on their coverage of the conflict, one with professional peace workers from around the world, including from Islamic countries and from Iran, which has many highly qualified and capable people working in Islamic peace-building, and peace building and conflict transformation.
And then the final two episodes: one where you bring together around a big table cross-sector of participants from business, unions, social actors, media, academics, religious leaders to discuss the issues at hand. And a final “bringing together” in a final episode of peace workers from around the world looking at what came up and what could be practical proposals for it. The same way as if you’re discussing avian bird flu syndrome or others, they bring together medical health professionals and the World Health Organisation organises an international conference not only with politicians making election speeches or hardline dogmatic programmes, but with also medical health professionals, civil servants and a wide range of people involved, to look at bringing a cross-sector of responses for how to address the issue.
6) Trips by members of the European Parliament to Iran, the US and the UK to discuss the issues and bring forward alternatives.
7) Trips by national-level political leaders to all three countries, looking at promoting dialogue and practical solutions, in particular looking at what are the legitimate needs of all parties. This is something that is not heard. How is it seen by all of the actors involved, and what are perhaps all around the legimate concerns?
8) This is quite an interesting one which would not be appreciated too much in Washington or in London but: Involvement of Venezuela as a possible mediator with Iran. (laughter) The reason being that Hugo Chavez has already made a very high-profile trip to the region and that one of the ways of transcending polarised political dynamics is to introduce additional actors that can bring forward the reality. We are not speaking of the international community in Iran. Yes, there were the number of countries that voted in the IAEA. There is also a very large number of countries, through the G77, through many others, that have voiced their disapproval of the policies being used at the moment. And just as it was not an accurate or intelligent reflection to use the words “international community” in the case of Yugoslavia or Iraq, so is it not today. So to actually help to bring forward a diversity of different voices that actually has the maturity to bring the relevant politics to hand by engaging a wider number of actors in dealing with the situation.
9) Series of combined dialogues and peace workshops with middle-level diplomats on all sides. And the FCO I would actually commend very much here in the UK because they’ve held a number of very quiet meetings with middle and senior level people in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the last several months, looking generally at introducing skills and techniques for conflict transformation, and also in particular dealing with conflicts of civilizations, and looking and US-West-Christianity in relation to Arab-Islam-Middle East, and how to deal with that. So increasing this but bringing together middle-level diplomats on all sides in groups of 15, 20 or 30 to undergo combined training in peace building and conflict transformation, and dialogues on the core issues.
10) Preparation of large-scale, non-violent civilian war prevention. That’s a long phrase. Basically, preparing ourselves on a massive scale for civilian war prevention. This is something which in countries like Britain, the United States and Iran, groups have often shown themselves willing to take measures that are not necessarily in accordance with international law, or sane and rational policy, and which often contribute to the dramatic escalation of violence and war, and the intensification of the very things that they’re meant to address. There is a responsibility of citizens to ensure that action is not taken by governments which threaten the escalation of war and violence, or crimes of war or crimes against humanity. So beginning to prepare ourselves on a large scale for civilian war prevention. There are many lessons and examples from around the world that can be drawn upon from that.
11) Learning the lessons from the build-up to Iraq, where every single argument brought in criticism of the war was proved correct. Every single argument brought for the war was proved false. And the impact of what has happened on Iraq and the region after has probably been – as is very common to say, and it’s common to say because there’s substance to it – the greatest recruitment for increased international terrorism, both by states and civilians, has dramatically increased the number of human rights violations. The number of people being killed in Iraq daily. This is not to take away in any way from the horrible massacres of civilians which happened under the previous regime at very specific and different periods, and an abominable human rights record, but it is to recognise that Britain and the United States and other occupation forces wihtin Iraq also have an abominable human rights record and have contributed to the dramatic destabilisation of the region.
12) Spanish NOVA, an organisation in Barcelona, promotes this European wide. They have managed to get cities and municipalities all across Spain to create what they call peace funds. So all across Spain, in many many communities, cities and municipalities, local authorities give 0.7% of their budget to promoting a culture and a practice of peace. If federal and national level governments have not shown themselves responsible enough – and I would encourage to be, and we should actually play on the positive aspects, because there are many initiatives including by the British government to promote supporting and development of peace-building capacities – also there can be a positive role played by local authorities. And at the local county and council level in Spain they are directly funding peace building initiatives, both within the country and internationally. That’s something we can all promote in our countries and European-wide.
13) Creation of a civil peace service in the UK and promotion of an EU-wide civil peace service and EU peace-building office, including a Commissioner for Peace Building in the European Union Commission. These are actually very close to happening. It will take a lot of work over the next five years. There is the first ever standing civil peace service in Germany. It’s funded with 14 million euros every single year by the German government. A long way to go, they don’t have that much training on conflict transformation and peace-building but they do a wide range of activities. And there’s a European network of civil peace services to have this promoted and institutionalised at every level. Imagine trying to put out fires without a fire department. Imagine trying to have a national education system without a national education service or teachers. There is an incredibly broad range of methods and a wealth of experience for how to deal with conflicts effectively. There’s been a tremendous amount of work to practically gather that together over the last decades, and especially the last several years.
A next step is to constructively engage with our governments, with national and local authorities, and with a broad-based public awareness campaign to raise the level of understanding across the spectrum of the population, to see that these tools exist and to begin putting them into practice and institutionalising them.
14) Nobel peace prize for Former President Mohammed Khatami. Few countries have had two in such close succession, but I would suggest this for the very simple fact that, year in year out, every single year while he was president, he proposed a Dialogue of Civilizations. Every single year he was refused by the British, American and other governments which didn’t take up the initiatives. They didn’t positively respond at least.
[Interruption: The idea of the Dialogue of Civilizations was formally supported by the United Nations in 2000 or 2001. We (the British government) formally supported it, I was in Tehran at the time.]
It was formally supported in the UN, that’s true. There were proposals by the government of Iran for holding it, there were responses to those. There was direct non-support of it from Washington. The UN definitely did support it, but European governments did not take practical steps forward for initiating it. At least, that is the perspective presented by Khatami on this issue. I’m sure it’s very complex and there are many different perspectives involved. That’s a positive thing we could build upon. Spain has taken this step. The UK could also help contribute to that by taking those steps further.
15) Joint European Union-Arab League development of peace building capacities and infrastructure. The European Union is looking at how to build up its peace-building capacities. In the Arab League definitely this could be strengthened. There are very limited mechanisms at this point within the Arab League for peace building capacities. The African Union has developed peace-keeping capacities which, as we can see from Sudan and elsewhere, are severely challenged but are developing. The European Union provided a 250 million euro grant to the African Union to develop its peace building capacities. There has not been the same commitment of resources to develop conflict transformation, peace-building and war prevention capacities. That would be a next step. Very positively, the African Union not only has a Security Council; it’s a Security and Peace Council. Also the Organisation of American States has identified this as one of its priority areas. So work with different regional bodies to improve and develop their conflict resolution mechanisms and capacities.
16) One thing which would be very simple: Have a one hour session all across the country here in the UK (and I’d also suggest this in the US and Iran, because we believe in symmetry – I’ll get back to that more later) in schools, in offices, in classrooms, in every setting, to invite people’s constructive ideas for how to deal with the situation. So have as broad as possible dialogues, coming up with proposals, where instead of going to war we take one hour of our time as citizens, as members of parliament, as students, as journalists, to come up with ideas for what can be done.
17) Encourage Quaker engagement in back-track quiet diplomacy. Not only Quakers, many others as well, but Quakers actually have an extensive experience throughout the region, and there are many reasons why a number of Quakers actually have appropriate contacts that could be quite positive in this case.
18) Have independent film-makers travel to Iran, the UK and US, to create a documentary bringing forward people’s voices and people’s ideas on what can be done for peace. And make that widely available to be seen by people on all sides.
19) Have the current Pope build upon the incredibly impressive record of the last Pope. (There are many not as positive aspects as well, but some of the last Pope’s initiatives for building peace and religious dialogue were historical and were quite impressive.) Have the current Pope build upon that positive experience by making a trip to Tehran for a peace dialogue, and inviting the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the Vatican as a reciprocal visit. So to have a high-level interreligious dialogue for peace. Openings have been taken following the 1998 apology of the Catholic Church for the crusades, where there were also representatives of the supreme leader in those quiet meetings that took place in 1995 in Geneva.
20) Engagement by the Organisation of Islamic States on a series of dialogues in the region on peaceful futures. So also looking at the responsibility of the OIS and the Arab League on promoting dialogues on peaceful futures in the region.
21) Creation of a zone free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty does not only call for not developing nuclear weapons capacities; it also calls for disarmament of states involved. Britain, the United States and others are in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have been for many decades, and are not in any way taking meaningful steps towards nuclear disarmament or towards reducing their engagement and investment in weapons of mass destruction. I had the unfortunate experience of being in London in October when the front pages of the newspapers were saying 90 billion pounds for developing a new generation of trident missiles. If that had been suggested in the UK ten years ago, whoever suggested it probably would have lost their job. It shows the climate that it is now possible for a militarised regime to come forward with those proposals which are not appropriate when it comes to meeting contemporary security challenges or increasing security and dealing with state and non-state terrorist acts and the needs to address them.
22) Establishment of a permanent conference on peace, security and co-operation in the Middle East. A standing permanent conference of all governments in the region including Israel, practically discussing the many inter-related conflicts and areas and points of co-operation. This was created as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe at a time when almost every foreign minister in Europe said it was impossible during the Cold War. It was created originally out of an interview done by a very young peace researcher with seventeen foreign ministers across the European continent, where he asked them, what do you feel are the main security challenges and what do you feel is necessary. And individually they all said, we need a framework to discuss these issues, even though it was not being said publicly. The CSCE, which is today the OSCE, has had many challenges but it has also at times played a vital and important role for providing a regional framework for addressing conflicts among a wide range of countries.
23) Withdrawal of all US and occupation authorities from Iraq. Establishment of Iraq as a neutral zone.
24) Creation of an international police support mission for Iraq. So not a military force, not an occupation force, but an accepted international police support mission under the aegis of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic States, the European Union and the United Nations. And one of the challenges today if you’re looking at Iraq is that a lot of people have simply accepted that there is an ongoing occupation and have become quieted. Some people are maintaining criticism of that occupation. What we’re missing is also practical proposals for how to deal with the situation. To remove British, US, Romanian and other occupation authorities and forces, and to actually develop a practical engagement which offers some hope of transition in the region.
Now, just as a quick side-note. If you’re looking from Iran’s perspective, in the course of the last few years it’s gone from having the Taleban in Kabul – which was at least a relatively non-threatening, if not always friendly, regime to Tehran – to having a US-backed regime in Kabul. There was, just a few months ago, a gathering of major Afghan warlords opposed to the current government. I’ve worked in Afghanistan since the mid-nineties when everybody knew who was supporting the Taleban (and it wasn’t in their fight against the Soviet Union, because it didn’t exist at the time, just to correct the British media portrayal before we get up to the war). So a change of regime in the neighbouring Afghanistan; a change of regime in the neighbouring Iraq, from a crippled and sanction-restricted Saddam Hussein to US forces on both borders.
Israel (which I haven’t heard anybody calling to get rid of their nuclear weapons recently; that is, from a western parliament or government – because there are calls around much of the rest of the world where there is still greater consistency of policy) is in consistent possession and has, over the existence of the NPT, developed nuclear weapons capacity in violation of it. And that, in a sense, also creates an arms race context. If you want to have a reduction, or a prevention of countries with nuclear weapons, there has to be some level of symmetry, some level of respect not laden with racism or other reasons (religious, political or whatever) why for one it is chosen and accepted and for another it is not.
Also India and Pakistan recently having developed nuclear weapons, at least Britain is slightly more consistent in addressing that than Washington, which is saying that India should be allowed to have an acception made. It is making all of the arguments with regards to India, that it is saying are not allowed with regards to Iraq. The difference being that India has an overt nuclear military programme which was developed in secret, including nuclear testing, with support from Western governments. So there you actually have overt nuclear development and nuclear testing and yet the policy formulation brought by Washington towards that is very different. If there’s the perception in any conflict – whether it’s in a family between children, in a local community between different members, or between states – of clear bias or application of different standards, it makes the context for addressing the conflict more difficult.
25) EU-wide dialogue of civilisations at the community level, including broad-based public awareness programmes because in many countries in the EU, the same as you need a converence on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, for many countries in the EU there are many conflicts related to this, as we’ve seen over the last year, so broad-based dialogue of civilisations.
26) Invitation of prominent Iranian musicians and artists on peace tours and also vice versa. Including museums and galleries, promoting culture and playing an educational role, so people actually understand the civilisations and the countries involved.
27) Twinning of schools in the UK, Iran, the US, Middle East, Palestine, Israel.
28) An EU Commission and Ministerial level Peace-Building Summit. If we’ve had summits for monetary systems, and for many others, there can be an EU-wide peace-building summit to look at how to deal with these issues. And I would suggest preceding it by training and preparation of educational materials for the government officials involved, coupled with an EU-wide Civil Society Peace-Building Summit, building upon the Dublin Summit three years ago and the New York summit at the United Nations in July of last year, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.
29) And also an EU-wide Summit on Peace Education so that we’re beginning to produce populations and political leaders with more knowledge, capacity and tools to deal with conflict constructively.
30) Implementation on country-levels of national platforms for the global partnership for the prevention of armed conflict action agenda. In July in New York last year, there was the largest ever gathering of civil society organisations, about 3,000 from all over the world, looking at “from reaction to prevention”: how to prevent armed conflict. They came up with action agendas. The Netherlands and many other countries are beginning to develop national platforms for working, within their countries, to implement the policies and proposals of the action agenda. So that could be an initiative in the UK by citizens, local authorities, the national government, to look at how to implement this.
31) Begin a series of dialogues in the Middle East amongst veterans and current soldiers of all sides. How many of you know that three weeks ago for the first time ever, veterans and former combatants of the Israeli defence force and Al Fatah, created a new organisation to struggle against war? Former elite combat fighter pilots, former bomb-makers, former trainers of suicide bombers, former Israeli occupation soldiers have come together for the first time ever and created a joint force for waging peace. There’s also the example of Pugwash from the Cold War and the Retired Generals Associations and there are many military all across the Middle East, as well as in the United States and in Britain who have more level heads and who do not support some of the policies being promoted. Creating quiet and appropriate spaces for them to come together to be able to discuss policy alternatives.
32) An international youth peace conference in Iran by Peace Child International and Travel for Peace, for which there would be a lot of support. Travel for Peace is a Norwegian organisation that brings 12,000 students to holocaust sites in Germany and Poland every single year. Peace Child International (we actually have one of the Founders and the Director right here in the room who could describe it much better) has played a major role in helping to stimulate and engage youth around the world in seeing what they can do themselves for human rights, for peace work. So having a Peace Conference in Iran. I would then say follow it by one in Washington and London where it’s also very necessary.
33) Simple things, like preparation of a 30-pages guide to peace-building for EU citizens and governments, and another 30-pages guide for citizens for intercommunity and intercultural peacebuilding. Most people just have no idea of what is peace-building. You say violence and war, and we have clear images. You say peace and it sounds “theoretical, fancy, fairy, pretty, nice, ideal”. Fortunately, we’ve spoken with doctors and they have just as much difficulty describing health. (laughter) But they have built health systems. And as was argued in the Atlanta City Council in the United States, when they were promoting a resolution to vote for a Department of Peace in the US, when responding to polio at first they did not know what to do or how to deal with it: they marshalled their resources, they brought scientists together, they set up a national response for dealing with the situation. So, providing, as a mass education campaign looking at the problems facing us in the world, a simple 30-pages (with pictures) guide to peace-building for citizens and governments in Europe.
34) Guide to mass non-violent resistance, so in addition to preparing a large force, to prepare a guide to mass non-violent resistance in the possible lead-up to the war. Learning lessons also from the resistance to the invasion of Iraq. So for example, if there had been say 6,000 international citizens in Iraq, politically war would have been unviable. There were a few hundred. But if there had been 1,000 from the UK, there would have been 1,000 from Germany, there would have been at least a few thousand from the Scandinavian countries, two or three thousand from the US would have come. We did not reach the critical mass. Because for every one of those people, there’s also family, there’s the people they went to school with, there’s the people they went to jobs with. That could be one example but having a guide for effective, responsible resistance to war, on all sides, including building upon some of the fantastic work by… I’m sorry I’ll remember his name later but he’s done some amazing work on looking at non-violence in Islam and non-violent resistance in Islam. He’s at an American university, he’s one of the most senior professors on Islam and peace studies.
35) Begin dialogues with local politicians in your own community to promote alternatives including at the level of local authorities and city councils.
36) Learn from CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in the lead-up to the Iraq war with a televised dialogue forum on forging peace, bringing together people including citizen participation and having a national televised dialogue, but focusing on what can be done and alternatives, on all sides.
37) Media forums through print, radio and television discussing the conflict and focusing on therapies and strategies, with examples from what has been done elsewhere.
38) Policy statements by key sectors and begin getting them involved. E.g. chambers of commerce, sports associations, students, unions, veterans, artists, scientists (especially nuclear), nobel prize winners: on steps for peace and refusing military strikes.
39) A meeting of nobel peace prize winners and peace workers for proposals and high-level diplomacy. Meeting of nobel physics and nobel literature prize winners.
40) Beginning of mass education drive directed towards the armed services on the obligation and ways they can disobey or refuse illegal orders and promote peace, including support for resistors. Much of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq violated the Hague conventions. Most of the targets in the war in Yugoslavia for example were civilian targets and there were a number of courageous Spanish and Portuguese and other pilots who refused to fly their bombing runs because of the types of weapons that they were dropping, which they knew were not for taking out military…, they knew the targets they were being given were not military sites. They are still in prison. So for example a captain in the Spanish airforce is still in prison for having refused in 1999 to fly a bombing mission.
41) Use of the World Peace Forum in Canada which will be coming up in June, as a platform for discussing alternatives and mobilising civil society, and for peaceful transformation of the conflict.
42) And organise an International Day of workshops, dialogues, trainings, vigils, celebrations, marches and strategy sessions on September 21st which is International Peace Day, proclaimed by the United Nations.
This is not a wish list. These are practical things that can be done. Some of them may seem more difficult, which means they might take more effort. But one of the major things that is systematically lacking at the level of governments and others in dealing with many of these situations is practical politics, effective peacebuilding measures, and imagination not constrained by dogma.
I do agree that we have a determined and ideological regime pursuing populist policies. I’m not sure that it’s only in Tehran. And in Tehran, as in London, as in Washington, there are many strands within the governments. There are many different sectors. Within each country, you can find some political leaders who’ve made abysmal statements. You can also find many political leaders, business leaders and citizens who are open to alternatives.
The problem with the dumbing down of policy as it’s presented by many actors, whether by Tehran, London or Washington where we create a very extremist, narrow frame of interpreting events, where we leave out other aspects, and where we ignore or neglect key security concerns of all actors, is that it limits our scope for what can be done.
Part of the point of peace work is to engage in practical dialogues, to respect the legitimate needs of all the actors involved, and to work to come up with creative and constructive ideas that can help to transform the conflict effectively. In this situation, there is a huge amount of scope and possibility for that. The question of whether it will happen depends on all of us.
Thank you.
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