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WAR PREVENTION WORKS
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When El Salvador was still awash with weapons after a 12-year civil war, some businessmen whose trucks were being held up by armed gangs decided to try a "goods for guns scheme." They decided to offer $100 vouchers for goods at local shops in return for each weapon turned in. By the end of the second weekend $103,000 of weapons had been collected, although they only had $19,500 in the bank.
They called on the President for help, which he gladly gave, and in a short time 10,000 weapons were collected.
In Belgrade in 1998, a few hundred students were defying Milosevic by ineffectually spraying graffiti. Some of them were then trained in Budapest in Gene Sharp's techniques of non-violent action. The result was that they in turn trained 20,000 election monitors, two for every polling station, so that when the elections eventually took place, it proved impossible for Milosevic to rig the results.
These two examples give a flavor of what is poised to be the fastest-growing method of dealing with war in the 21st century the prevention or resolution of conflict without the use of violence. A few decades ago there were only a handful of analyses of such interventions; now there is an extensive body of knowledge-- in Britain alone there are now 51 institutes researching non-violent conflict resolution, from Sandhurst to Bradford University. In addition to inter-governmental agencies working to prevent and mitigate conflict, there are now several hundred non-governmental organizations competent in the field. The application of theory and development of best practice are producing effective tools and techniques for conflict transformation that anyone can use. These include effective early warning, the protection of human rights and the promotion of democracy, election monitoring, community mediation, confidence-building and security measures, violence containment, reconciliation measures and restorative justice.
Not the stuff of high drama. None of these activities are very glamorous, and few hit the headlines as easily as explosions or assassinations. But all involve heroism ordinary people willing to put their lives on the line to prevent others getting killed. Like the women of Wajir in northeastern Kenya who insisted on their clan elders sitting down to negotiate to stop clan warfare, and whose motto was: "If my clan were to kill your relatives, would you still work with me for peace? If you can't say 'yes' don't join the group now." Or the young man in Burundi who grew tired of Hutu and Tutsi hate radio and founded an independent radio station to broadcast the facts of what was going on, and continued even when his co-founder was murdered.
The classic cycle of violence, which ensures that conflict follows conflict, has roughly seven stages: an atrocity is committed resulting in shock and terror, fear and grief follow, and then anger, hatred hardening into bitterness, followed by revenge and retaliation, resulting in a further atrocity. In recent times this cycle has been evident in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Rwanda and repeatedly in different regions of former Yugoslavia.
It is nevertheless possible for the cycle of violence to be halted. To do this requires a combination of determined powerful leadership, imaginative action, and adhering resolutely to some key principles. In the case of South Africa, Nelson Mandela became convinced while in prison on Robben Island that non-violence, negotiation and reconciliation were the only ways to prevent mass killing on the route to independence and equality. In insisting absolutely on these principles he is widely viewed as having saved millions of lives.
So could conflict resolution work in Afghanistan? It's late in the day to put such a question. But even under the Taliban regime there are tantalizing glimpses of civil resistance, the best known being the underground movement of the The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
Although long from posing a threat to the Taliban, RAWA did undermine one of the regime's principal sources of strength and power, namely the fear that it created amongst the population. Like the Serbian students who learned that "fear is a powerful but vulnerable weapon because it disappears far faster than you can re-create it," RAWA was proof that people were willing to stand up to the regime.
In the eastern town of Khost, the Taliban governor was forced to leave after local tribesmen refused his orders to join defense militias. Along the Pakistani frontier, people in Paktia province have told the Taliban that unless the Arab fighters associated with Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda group are withdrawn from their towns and villages they will refuse to obey any of the government's orders.
In every crisis situation, there are as many people prepared to risk their lives for a peaceful solution, as those who reach for a gun. The problem is that it's easier to buy an AK47 than to get support for non-violent initiatives. These people don't need much: they need mobile phones, radios, photocopiers, and above all the protection of international visibility.
Clearly if we want strong local action against terrorism, we have to put resources and effort into encouraging community support for cracking down on terrorism.
As Gareth Evans, now with International Crisis Group, points out: "All too often the places that generate terrorism are shattered societies where grievance, greed, repression, poverty and prejudice have, in various combinations, fed violence, utter despair and extremism."
In such situations, non-violent interventions work better than force. In northern Ghana a consortium of NGOs, including Oxfam and ActionAid, brought together leaders from opposing sides in a conflict that had only months earlier wrought immense destruction to the region. Over time, the fears and mistrust that had been the cause of the violence began to dissipate, finally leading to a landmark peace agreement. The tools and techniques used here could apply in many places throughout the world where intolerance and racial or religious tension have escalated into violence and threaten to do so again, including Bradford or Oldham.
Following the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Uttar Pradesh in 1993, Hindu-Muslim rioting spread across India. In Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, violence was entirely prevented by the concerted efforts of a local school where the students had been educated in Gandhian techniques. They organized daily meetings of religious leaders and peace marches throughout the city, proclaiming "The name of God is both Hindu and Muslim." In other parts of India the violence claimed 3,000 lives.
Non-violence is also more cost effective, by orders of magnitude, than the use of force. Of 50 successful interventions examined by the Oxford Research Group, none cost more than $4 million, and some as little as £2,700. NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, by contrast, cost approximately $4 billion, in addition to the $20-$30 billion then needed to rebuild what was destroyed.
The budget of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the only inter-governmental organization with conflict prevention as a priority, is a tiny fraction of NATO's budget.
This is beginning to change. Some national governments are beginning to realize that war prevention works, and to provide some funds for it. The UK government recently allocated £110 million to conflict resolution efforts coordinated between three government departments. This is a prescient move.
In the 21st century it will increase as policy-makers realize how much successful work is taking place all over the world in resolving and preventing conflict, done by ordinary people and costing almost nothing.
Dr. Scilla Elworthy is Director of the OXFORD RESEARCH GROUP, which recently published "War Prevention Works: 50 stories of people resolving conflict." Go to www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk. Reprinted with permission from both the author and Resurgence magazine from where it was originally published. www.resurgence.org.