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Community/People
March 10, 2005
From Violence to Voting: Armed Groups and Peace Processes (Part 2)
(Continued from: From Violence to Voting: Armed Groups and Peace Processes, part 1)
Celia McKeon
In light of the discussion on civil society and also democracy, I’d maybe just quickly return to the point I made about importance of the process. Who participates matters and I think peace processes have traditionally been characterized as processes where the representatives of the government and the armed groups divide up the portfolios of the new dispensation between them, and I think there are a lot of lessons to be drawn from processes which have, yes, managed to involve the armed groups, the parties to the conflict but have also created mechanisms for the participation of civil society. Northern Ireland, South Africa, Mali, provide a number of very instructive examples that can be learnt from in the future. Thank you.
Andrés Pastrana
Un poco complementar algo que yo creo que es importante. Yo creo que en todo proceso de paz uno y nunca se debe confundir la voluntad en la búsqueda de la paz con debilidad, porque a veces se confunde. Yo creo que nada demanda más esfuerzo, decisión política, perseverancia, que precisamente la búsqueda de la paz. Y por eso, como decía Joaquín, solamente un estado legitimo tiene ese poder para avanzar en la paz. Y por eso yo aquí quiero hacer dos comentarios que son importantes.
Uno, el compromiso del que hablaban de la sociedad en los procesos de paz es fundamental. En el caso colombiano yo fui elegido para hacer la paz y se usó para hacer la guerra. Porque eso es lo que el país cree y piensa en este momento, y ese es el respaldo que se está dando. Pero hay un elemento yo creo también que, aquí Joaquín Villalobos lo planteó, y es las garantías, el marco jurídico para la desmovilización y la reinserción y las garantías políticas que se le puedan atar a los grupos al margen de la ley.
Desafortunadamente, en el caso colombiano tenemos una experiencia con un movimiento político que se denomino la Unión Patriótica, buena parte era respaldado por el partido comunista y por las guerrillas especialmente por la FARC, mas de 1400 de sus miembros fueron asesinados especialmente por los paramilitares y por los narcotraficantes. Entonces yo creo que esto es un elemento también fundamental. Cómo y de qué forma vamos a garantizar que quienes entran a un proceso de paz, puedan reinsertarse y desarrollar con seguridad también la actividad dentro de la política.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Muchas gracias.
Now I have many hands here. I think you were the first, sir, perhaps some time ago and I apologise but please, could you all, I’ve got so many hands, so I’d like to ask people to be as brief and quick as the panellists have been. Could you just say who you are, we’d like to know from what standpoint you are.
Delegate from the floor
My name is Juan Manuel Santos. I was a minister under president Pastrana’s government.
It’s a question to Mr. Hattrem. You very rightly say that very seldom there is a military solution. You say the Norwegian government does not engage in peace processes where there have been crimes against humanity. In the Colombian case, all the armed groups have committed crimes against humanity. There is the presence, increasing presence, of the drug-trafficking financing these groups. We are, at this very moment, in a peace negotiations with one of those groups, paramilitary groups, who have not been defeated. They have under their own will gone to the negotiating table and said, “we are ready to lay down our arms.”
Where do you draw the line in terms of justice against peace, impunity, against the international pressure for punishing the crimes against humanity because the reality is that these people will not give up their arms if they’re going to be extradited to the United States or going to end their lives in prison. So there is a very big problem of where do you draw the line and to what extent is the international community becoming too drastic, too firm, on demanding punishment where a more practical or pragmatic solution could be found.
Margaret Anstee
Thank you. I’m not going to give the floor to the panellists yet, I want to just go round and have maybe two or three questions or comments. Would the two gentlemen there who had asked before?
Delegate from the floor
[...] Palestinian from Jerusalem. I know about Alastair Crooke’s work in my country but this is another story, we can speak about it later. Now I have two questions for the panel. The first, how in the experiences that you have dealt with, how the disarmament process went on, disarming the military groups, how it went on.
The second question is how in the experiences that you work and how you dealt with the spoilers after the peace process. Spoilers: people who you know you’ve developed some kind of integration or engagement of the peace process, then there are spoilers. How you dealt with the spoilers? These are two important questions for Palestine.
Delegate from the floor
My name is Julio LaGuardia. I’d like to ask Mr. Crooke about your opinion on the so-called target killings. Is that the right policy to combat terrorism or isn’t it according to your experience? To what extent it influenced the ceasefire that you were negotiating, for example, the killing of [...] in June 2002, or later on, the ceasefire of Abu Mazen when he was appointed prime minister in 2003 when [...] was killed. Thank you.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
I’m going to just stop for the moment and have some answers and come back to you, so be patient. Don’t let me forget your hand is up. Yours is up too. All male hands, I note. I would like a few female hands, please!
Delegate from the floor
Buenos días. Soy José Ángel Ruiz, miembro de la Universidad de Granada, en España.
Mi Universidad tiene un Instituto de Estudio de Paz y Conflicto. Y el caso de Colombia es uno de los que más hemos estado trabajando. Por supuesto, no estamos solos cosa que complica todo, porque el caso colombiano ha tenido tantas opiniones, tan divergentes que es bastante complejo. En su caso, creo que el proceso de paz que se abrió a partir del 99 era especialmente esperanzador y me da la impresión de que el Plan Gubernamental tiene un diseño impecable.
Y parecía haberse llegado a acuerdos bastante sólidos con la guerrilla. Incluso el hecho de que representantes muy importantes de la Bolsa de Nueva York tuvieran contactos permanentes con la guerrilla parecía indicar que el Gobierno tenían no ya sólo un proceso de paz, sino incluso un nuevo modelo de Estado. Para que Colombia diese un salto adelante como país y se integrase como estado desarrollado dentro de la Comunidad Internacional, dentro de lo que es el sistema liberal, etc.
Si la guerrilla se integraba, si el gobierno apostaba por ese modelo liberal, de integración en las finanzas internacionales, etc. parecía un modelo válido. Sí que hubo dos puntos en los que pudo llevarse a cabo ese plan del gobierno, pero no le dejaron. Por una parte, no sé qué de fantástica puede tener esta teoría. Se habló de gente que dentro de su propio partido – los más conservadores dentro del conservadurismo, no estaban de acuerdo con esa orientación, orientada hacia las finanzas, etc. sino que sus fuentes de riqueza venían de otros lugares, tenían otra idea de como debía regirse la economía colombiana. Y por otra parte, el partido liberal pudo hacer pinza con él.
Por otro lado, la guerrilla tampoco supo aprovechar la oportunidad –eso sí lo ha señalado–, porque nunca han dejado de combatir en la guerra, me da la impresión que así creían que obtenían más fuerza en la mesa de negociación y tampoco en San Vicente de Cahuán dieron precisamente una lección de sentido común. Se trató de instrumentalizar ese paso que dio el gobierno. Por tanto la importancia de ese gesto que no supo aprovechar las FARC, muy muy brevemente para Silvia...
Moderadora. Margaret Anstee
Perdón, perdón, gracias.
I think the first question was to you, Tore, if you’d like to deal with that.
Tore Hattrem
Thank you. That was a very pertinent and important question. I’ll try to elaborate a little bit on it but I cannot promise you a clear-cut answer.
You raised the question about where do you draw the line and I think that is to the point. I don’t exclude. I said that most conflicts must be dealt with politically, I think that in some occasions there are military solutions –I can mention a few. I don’t think you could deal with, for instance, Sierra Leone, the problem you had in western Africa, and Liberia without very clear international pressure, supported by military means because these were basically greed-based conflicts; they were not necessarily objective grievances!! That […] based the conflict. I think those kind of conflicts which we also partly saw in Angola, you can see it in the Congo today, those are the conflicts that perhaps a military solution, a pressure solution, is the right thing.
If you move on to Colombia, the picture is certainly more messy because the FARC has developed from –as far as I understand but I’m not a Colombian expert– from an organization that obviously had legitimate concerns, grievances, but also had developed an internal organization that has lost incomes from drug traffics, so it might be a kind of a mixture and that makes it very difficult question. I cannot give you a clear-cut answer; each conflict is unique and you have to look at what kind of combination of various measures will actually be effective but I still think it is important to remember if you’re boxing groups where they actually don’t see any possibilities where they don’t see any possibilities to move forward on a peace track, that is very dangerous. Exerting pressure certainly can be used but make sure that you keep a door open for the movement to move out peacefully, so to speak.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
I think one word that we haven’t yet heard mentioned here I think, is reconciliation. I know that in Angola if we’d had a government of national unity and reconciliation, things might have gone better because there, there was essentially planned economy. The state was the prize. Whoever didn’t get in there didn’t have any. Going back to your comment, president, about the need for people to have a future, to have jobs. There has to be some flexibility there; we can’t have total impunity but we can’t have everybody being brought to justice because otherwise you won’t go forward. It’s one of those grey areas.
Who would like to talk about disarmament? Please, Alastair, go ahead and while you’re there, could you also do spoilers and target killings?
Alastair Crooke
So I’ll do three in the time of one. I’ll start off with just saying that I think that the issue of disarmament has ruined more peace processes more than any single other issue. I remember only too well, I was involved in southwest Africa and other places where when it came to the moment of the disarmament swap, everything fell to bits. Constructive ambiguity has its limits and when people are giving up their weapons, it is a very difficult process. To put that at the front of the process, I find, has destroyed more processes than ever.
What we should be talking about is end to conflict as much as disarmament. End to conflict is what is important. I think what the disarmament plays into […] Protestants together. When I went back, you find they achieved almost nothing. What really brought the violence down was finally from the paramilitaries, if you like, the extremists from both sides, decided to bring down the level of violence. It was not even, if you like, the political parties like the FDLP in the middle, that were the instruments of it. It was finally when these groups decided to do it.
I think the key thing and the implication for that is, that you have to address the issue of spoilers, you have to move sufficiently along the process of confidence that you can bring in some of these groups into your security policy. In other words, Catholics had to be brought into the issue of how to deal with the security and that is a difficult question. It means groups like Fatah might have to consider that the security policy will have input from groups that hitherto they have been required to dismantle and destroy. If you’re going to deal with those elements and those spoilers, and of course there are spoilers in any society, everywhere, we have had people that use politics as a cover for just criminal action or from plain bigotry. We see that in Iraq now, we’ve seen that in Northern Ireland. It is very common.
The last point was on targeted killings. I think again this is just simply a complete failure to understand the psychology of groups that have been exposed to trauma and conflict. These groups have a deep sense of the justice of what they’re doing. They see themselves as righting a wrong. They have a very intense feeling of that and actually when they get targeted or victimized, what you can do is actually increase the sense of their victimhood and of the sense, therefore, of the rightness of the cause because the attack on them actually feeds this. I don’t think that targeted killing has weakened the leadership of the Palestinian radical groups. On the contrary, I think it strengthens their position on the ground. What it has done, I believe, has eroded the moral position of those western countries that increasingly use these tactics, and I think this has been to the detriment to all of us in the west, that we have found ourselves moving towards such things as extrajudicial murder, and forms of endorsing torture. I really feel that is something that is deeply damaging to our own societies and something that is a great preoccupation that we should have about what impact this will have on our societies. Thank you.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you.
Creo que la última pregunta era para Ud., ¿no?
Andrés Pastrana
Sí, frente al tema de Colombia, dos cosas: como dijimos al inicio de nuestra intervención, el proceso era más que simplemente sentarnos en la mesa del proceso de negociación. Era la lucha contra el narcotráfico, la diplomacia por la paz, el fortalecimiento de las Fuerzas Armadas, el Plan Colombia, un plan eminentemente social. Yo lo que creo que el interés del Gobierno, inclusive pues aquí está el Ministro, ex-Ministro de Hacienda contrario al mío, que era mi Ministro de Hacienda, por el contrario, nuestro propósito era durante todo el gobierno concentrar los esfuerzos, ver de qué forma podíamos nosotros ampliar lo que correspondía a la inversión social, que era uno de los aspectos fundamentales que además también llevaba la mesa de negociación.
Aquí hay dos temas que yo creo que adicionalmente son importantes: dos acuerdos que ya se firmaron hacia el final del proceso –el Acuerdo de los Pozos y el Acuerdo de los Notables. Yo creo que por primera vez en unos acuerdos firmados con la guerrilla, con las FARC, nos pusimos de acuerdo, las FARC, el Gobierno, la Iglesia, los gremios, los sindicatos, los partidos políticos, en cuáles son las prioridades que necesitábamos nosotros, concentrar los esfuerzos en Colombia, especialmente en lo que tenía que ver con reformas y con inversiones por parte del Gobierno.
Entonces yo creo que ahí hay un elemento muy importante, que en cualquier caso, creo yo, si algun día, más pronto que tarde, se vuelve a sentar en Colombia a hablar con las FARC, yo creo que el proceso va a partir del Acuerdo de los Pozos y el Acuerdo de los Notables.
El proceso también nos dejó a nosotros, los colombianos, aspectos positivos. Y yo creo que uno de los aspectos más importantes fue que en el país, en Colombia, en los últimos 44 ó 45 años que hemos tenido un conflicto, en esos 45 años solamente un objetivo, y era derrotar militarmente la guerrilla. Pero nunca nos propusimos derrotarla políticamente. Y yo creo que lo que sufrió la guerrilla colombiana después de 4 años de proceso fue una derrota política, nacional e internacional; nacionalmente porque hoy no tiene más respaldo que el uno por ciento de la población, e internacionalmente porque no solamente se le cerraron las puertas sino que adicionalmente terminaron, por su propia decisión, ellos, en la lista de terroristas de los EE.UU. y de la UE.
Moderadora
Muchas gracias, Dr. García.
Still no ladies.
Delegate from the floor
Thank you very much today, Margaret. My name is Ed Garcia from International Alert.
Last night I was reading the recommendations made by all the working groups that have been presented as the Madrid agenda. I think the excellent ideas from this panel, which I would call 6 stars Michelin –it’s very good, thank you– I think it would be unfortunate if these ideas were not presented to the body. I think we’re fortunate that we have President Andrés Pastrana who is a member of the Club de Madrid. If he could perhaps attempt to formulate, I have listened very carefully, and there are three policy recommendations which could be incorporated into the agenda of Madrid and one which perhaps could be raised.
The first one: forge a commitment to a negotiated political settlement that is multipartisan, multisectoral and made state policy. In situations with a history of unresolved socio-economic political issues. That’s the first one, which I think was in a consensus.
Second, involve sectors of civil society in peace processes in particular, women, youth, religious and business leaders among others, respecting citizens’ initiatives such as sanctuaries of peace established by communities. In this regard, I would like to convey to President Pastrana the sorrow that we feel of the massacre of the Comunidad de Paz in San José de Apartadó in Colombia, which I think is really something that we should pay attention to because it’s a citizen’s initiative to build peace among them in that area and that should be respected. In other words, in brief, we have to build local capacities as well as indigenous methods by empowering people to build a just and endurable peace.
Thirdly, and I think Torre Hattrem champions, engage third-party facilitators combining official and unofficial tracks, employing what we call “outsiders neutral and insiders partial,” supplementing not supplanting efforts of diverse organization but different levels of society imbued with a common sense of purpose.
The fourth one, which was not discussed here but which I would like to propose: to focus on the improvement of people’s lives and the reduction of levels of violence by ensuring first of all humanitarian, human rights and international humanitarian law accords, which I think was the first item on the agenda of Los Pozos, that I think was your first item. But human rights accords that are very fiable, that can be monitored by independent and credible groups. I think the example in the Philippines of Bantai [?] ceasefire, and I know that Tore Hattrem was recently in the Philippines and you spoke to Su-Long Cardil [?], which tries to monitor human rights agreements. Also in this regard, by promoting livelihood and development programs that respect concerns of the most vulnerable sectors of society.
In brief, the global war on terror has actually undermined diplomatic and negotiated approaches to armed conflict which often are the sources of terror. It is also the real efforts to address the most pressing needs of people and grievances that lead to acts of terror and that’s all I’m saying at the very end. By providing peace incentives or peace dividends, not only at the end but during the process itself.
I think those recommendations, Mr. President, I think could be brought to the attention of the Club de Madrid, because when I was reading through it last night there is an immense gap. I would really be very grateful.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you. Those are very important points. I did have some discussion with one of the organizers. It’s not clear whether the conclusions or recommendations of this panel can be included in the Agenda of Madrid but they can certainly be taken up with the Club de Madrid and I’m quite certain that President Pastrana [...]. They’re very important points. I just want to move on but could everybody be very brief because I think I have to finish this within about five minutes.
Delegate from the floor
[...] from the U.K. My question’s on democracy and the elections. Democracy is inclusive for everybody but elections tend to result in a simple win-lose outcome. Is there any way that we can make coming second in elections attractive for groups like UNITA in Angola and indeed the Sunnis in Iraq and perhaps avoid some of the problems that elections can sometimes cause?
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
I’ll answer that immediately because we don’t have much time. If we don't have a winner takes all election, then it could work if we had a government of unity and reconciliation but when I went to Namibia afterwards and I suggested this, I was accused by the president of Namibia and his cabinet of wanting a second-class democracy for Africa. So you see, you sometimes can’t win but I think that’s the answer to that.
Delegate from the floor
My name is Marta Jenema. I work for the European Center for Conflict Prevention. I was just going to further one of the points Mr. Garcia made.
There’s been a lot of talk about involving civil society and listening to marginalized groups, and I think one of the very important groups that’s been marginalized and a great source of huge violence is youth, which I think is a group that is really disappointedly often ignored. I was wondering if the panel members could maybe elaborate on ways of trying to get address that. Thank you.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
One more; then I think I’ll ask Celia to answer that one in a moment. I think only one more person.
Delegate from the floor
I have a quick sort of point to make. I’m Harriet Martin from the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. I’ve spent the last year researching six mediations and I wanted to ask the question about involving civil society from the other point of view. None of the mediations I’m covering, all of which are quite high-profile mediations, none of the mediators actually have shown any real interest in the way they’ve structured their peace processes or their mediations in involving civil society, or attracting mediations in a meaningful way. I just wonder their reasons for this, power structures of civil society and government and rebels, they don’t meet and whether the expectation is actually misplaced and whether or not actually civil society should be looking at trying to connect more either with their government or their rebel group or wherever they feel represented and accepting that’s it’s not natural place for them to be at the actual negotiation table.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you. One of the problems sometimes is that civil society doesn’t exist. That was the problem in Angola. One of the encouraging things there is that since the elections, civil society is now growing there. I’d like to ask Celia to answer those questions.
Celia McKeon
I think it’s probably quite hard to underestimate how difficult it is to get the parties involved in an armed conflict to the negotiating table and I think that often provides the reason why other sectors of society who have not taken up arms are ignored. Because the mediator’s job is, their hands are full already.
However, in terms of opportunities to bring in other sectors of society, it’s worth looking at processes like Guatemala, for example, where the civil society assembly brought together various different sectors of Guatemalan society to make recommendations that were then included in each of the different peace agreements. That gave each sector of society, including youth, an opportunity to have their voice heard and their issues addressed at the negotiating table.
I think it’s also unfortunate that civil society is often overlooked if it doesn’t constitute itself in ways that are easily recognizable to outsiders. Often the charge is made that civil society is weak or unprepared. In that case, there needs to be extra effort on the part of the international community in particular, as guarantors of processes that they find ways of supporting civil society however fragile, however invisible. I believe it exists everywhere and the question is, how can people, how can the public be given the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the process.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you. Joaquín wanted to say something.
Joaquín Villalobos
Creo que esto es algo importante señalarlo acá. Normalmente se tiende a plantear como que la opción de negociación y la opción de la guerra son excluyentes, son dos caminos divergentes, la realidad es que negociación y guerra no son excluyentes, son parte de un todo y depende de las circunstancias, la negociación puede ser un instrumento de la guerra o puede la guerra ser un instrumento de la negociación, y de ello la importancia de cómo se usa la fuerza y del discurso que se tiene del uso de la fuerza. Esa es, en realidad, la experiencia de Colombia en sentidos invertidos de parte de la insurgencia fue esa la estrategia –demostrar la legitimidad del tipo de Estado que se tenía, basado en usar la negociación, primero como un instrumento táctico para deslegitimar al contrario y luego como un instrumento que la realidad demostró que se convirtió en una salida estratégica. Esto es importante que el discurso de venganza en el lenguaje de una confrontación, ese discurso no puede acompañar a una fuerza que está planteando que es la fuerza legítima y que tiene la legalidad, eso es hablar al mismo tono que el otro. Gracias.
Alastair Crooke
I can’t really reinforce your point sufficiently about the importance of civil society. It came as a surprise, but we found when we were trying to bring about the escalation of ceasefires from the ground, the most important thing we did was actually get out from the ground and talk to people. I’m not sure if that’s quite what you meant by civil society, but it was effectively holding town hall meetings in which everyone came to hear. Inevitably, there is deep suspicions amongst ordinary people when negotiations begin. They are sceptical, they are elitist, they don’t know really what’s happening. The ability actually to get out and present yourself for people to ask questions is a vital element in bringing civil society or society as a whole with you in this process.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you.
Tore Hattrem
I’ll be very, very brief, just one comment to Harriet Martin’s questions about the facilitators or mediators seem to be somewhat unstructured with regard to mobilising support of the civil society. I think you’re actually right in that observation, and the reason might be that it’s really not that easy to be structured and planned simply because often you have a bipolar situation where the civil society are sort of aligned circles around the two parties and have different loyalties and it’s really, at least seen from my perspective and experience, is almost better to move along the flow, and see and mobilise the civil society’s support as you go along, as you see them fitting into the process. To have preplanned overview of what’s going on is not that easy.
On the other hand, with regard to the support of the international community, it’s much easier to be planned and structured because then you are dealing with states and they are predictable. You know exactly where they fit in and you can see the structure actually more or less before you start the process. Thank you.
Moderator. Margaret Anstee
Thank you very much. I know there are more hands and I’m just sorry but I have been asked, although we started late, not to go over the allotted length of time as it were and there are other things coming up. I won’t even attempt to summarise what has been a very rich debate, just perhaps to single out some of the points that have come up and I don’t even pretend that this is by any means an exhaustive list.
I think we are all agreed that, of course, you do have to engage with these groups and that you should try to seek a political settlement. It may not be possible always. There’s also the important point that engagement is not necessarily the same as negotiations. The important thing, of course, is to end the conflict. In the U.N. in the peacekeeping process, we place a lot of attention on what we call D.D.R., which is disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration. Mr. Crooke made the point that disarmament can be a very divisive thing on its own which is why it’s important to see this as a whole process of inclusion or reinclusion of these groups in the country as a whole.
That, of course, underlines the very important relationship with democracy and elections but quite often those are things that have to be looked forward to, not in all cases, an important thing that perhaps we didn’t underline is that all these situations are different so there’s no kind of model or blueprint. In many cases, democracy and elections have to be a goal rather than an actuality.
The importance of non-state actors was underlined, of civil society, of women, and youth. Also if you’re going to make any progress, you have to understand where these people are coming from, what are their legitimate concerns, how can those concerns be addressed. Human rights was mentioned a little bit at the end, of course, it’s a very important part of all of that.
If you place this in the international context in our increasingly globalised world, we see that there are so many outside factors that come to bear. The drug trafficking in Colombia and the impact on that conflict and also the international crime and terrorism come under that general heading, and of course financing. But also I think has come out very clearly the importance of third-party actors and also of the international community. We all know that conflicts can’t be resolved from outside they depend on the political will within the country concerned. Unless we can reach that consensus, then we can’t do very much but the support of the outside world can be extremely important, of the United Nations and the international community.
I think that’s a very inadequate relation of some of the points we have tried to bring over. I just want to thank you again for your enthusiasm and for your participation. I think we could have gone on all morning and probably very productively, but there we are. Thank you very much.
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