Sleeves Rolled Up on Peacemaking: Lessons from International Mediators

Mediators can succeed even when they fail, and fail even when they succeed. Few international peace mediations lead to a final resolution of conflict without surrounding and continuing reinforcement. More likely, the mediated agreement offers a temporary victory in a continuum of hostility and recovery. Often the situation relapses into violence even though the agreement may have moved the parties in the direction of a more lasting peace. At the very least, a skilled mediator can help create what Gabriella Blum (2006) has called “islands of agreement” in a sea of conflict. Even if a mediation creates only a temporary space for political processes, it can be considered a success. However, if the international community makes no efforts to reinforce the process, or if the process is undermined internally, the situation lapses back to conflict.

Detailed mediation narratives offer us many lessons. For students of conflict resolution, the value may lie in an enhanced understanding of the way particular skills have been applied to a richly detailed context of conflict. For theorists, narratives may serve to confirm, elaborate upon, or even contradict received wisdom. Even a superficial narrative may enhance understanding of the complexity of the conflict and the limits of what even long-term mediative intervention can accomplish.

In Kings of Peace, Pawns of War, experienced journalist Harriet Martin serves up a rich narrative brew, describing six important current or recent conflict mediations conducted by five mediators. Each vignette offers a vivid glimpse into the context and immediate outcome of mediation attempts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Indonesia’s Aceh province, Sri Lanka, and southern Sudan.

Considerable learning can be mined from such narratives, athough this collection is limited by a somewhat narrow interview process that focused primarily on the mediators themselves. As Martin states in her preface, “Each attempt to end a conflict covered in this book . . . exposes how the mediator in each case is taunted by the parties’ provocative ambivalence towards peace.” The mediator has “only his neutrality and integrity to trade on as he pushes the process through many months, and probably years, of games of bluff and cunning” (p. xii). Thus, while mediators may enter the fray hoping to be “kings of peace,” they may find themselves only “pawns of war.”

The descriptions in these case studies of the trials to which the mediators are subjected and their responses to complex situations with long, painful histories supplement the literature examining the skills and techniques of international mediators that has been so well developed by a host of scholars. (See, e.g., Babbitt 1994; Curran, Sebenius, and Watkins 2004; Burg 2007.) Martin illuminates valuable contrasts in mediator style. For example, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, “the seasoned power broker” who managed to exercise some influence on American policy in Afghanistan, is examined in several contexts: in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2001, and in Iraq in 2004. In each case, Brahimi worked closely with factions to develop a complex plan for governance. However, he holds strong views as to what will work and what will not. For example, he took a strong stand on election timing in Iraq. But later he told Martin, “We had a kind of naïve belief that elections were the elixir which solves all ills. . . . I think we know better now. Holding elections are an indispensable part of the political process but on condition that they come at the right time and in the right sequence” (p. 24).

Norwegian diplomatic “straight talkers” Vidar Helgesen and Erik Solheim attempted to facilitate a settlement in Sri Lanka. “The Norwegians avoid using the word ‘mediation’ where they can. They prefer the word facilitation,” Martin explains (p. 112). The descriptions the book provides of the frustrating meetings among more and less cooperative representatives of both the Tamil rebel groups and the fluctuating governmental factions bear this out. Helgesen and Solheim would not use a heavy hand even if they had the ability to do so. Martin describes well their ability to handle an interfering press and to know when to withdraw temporarily to restore an atmosphere where facilitation might work.

The chapter devoted to the work of nondiplomatic second-track mediator Martin Griffiths in Aceh provides one of the book’s richest descriptions of mediator style. Griffith’s Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue operates with no power other than that of persuasion and patience. Thus, as a “weak mediator,” Griffiths had access to all elements of the insurgent movement, working with forthrightness but considerable subtlety. Aceh is the only settlement that seems, at present, still in effect. Martin quotes Griffiths as saying about the Aceh rebel group known as the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, “They said they had a policy never to sit down with the Indonesian government. We had to overcome that — we did it speciously by saying they were not going to formally ‘sit down’ with them, they were just going to talk about humanitarian issues” (p. 76).

Harriet Martin’s interviews add considerable texture to existing theories of how mediators operate with and without clout, in both first-track and second-track interventions. Students and teachers of mediation will find many of the contrasts in the case studies illuminating and useful.

Three important points about conflict mediation emerge from this book. They are not new, but they are vividly portrayed by Martin’s vignettes. They may be more thoroughly explored in the specialized literature of conflict mediation but beg for attention in the broader field of conflict resolution and management.

First, these case studies illustrate yet again the crucial importance of a deep understanding of the context in which the mediation takes place. An understanding of the context must encompass not only cultural and historical factors surrounding the conflict, but also the immediate conflict history, and the political manipulation of historical, political and cultural grievances.

Second, the settings where most enduring conflicts occur remain fluid and unstable. A brokered agreement is an opportunity for settlement, but it should not be considered an endpoint. Whatever fragile settlement a mediator may accomplish needs to be reinforced. But far too often such settlements are undermined, either by the parties themselves, by regional powers, or by members of the international community.

Third, for these reasons, mediation should be considered part of an ongoing, long-term process rather than as a series of discrete interventions. Mediator persistence is necessary, but longer-term international persistence and reinforcement on many fronts — economic, military, and political — are usually required to secure more lasting settlements. In some cases, such as in the Balkans, the presence of military troops may serve that purpose for a time. Just as massive engineering projects often benefit from “life-of-the-project” mediators, it may be necessary to plan for an ongoing mediative effort without interruption over a period of years. That effort can take many forms, including tripartite peacekeeping activities, but must involve the parties themselves.

How many skilled mediators have sought to unite the “warlike isle” of Cyprus? Despite more than thirty years of peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts by the international community, the island remains divided. The violence has substantially ceased, but international hopes for reunification remain unfulfilled. Martin sketches the history of the division of Cyprus and describes Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktaş, whose intransigence threatened to derail even the ever-patient U.N. mediator Alvaro de Soto of Peru. He learned the entire conflict history from the viewpoint of the antagonists, as every incident from the end of colonialism to the recent past was recited, polished, and recited once more.

During the mediation process, the context changed. Accession to the European Union (EU), which is often a “carrot” for inducing reform, held no attraction for Denktaş, whose sole goal was sovereignty for Turkish Cyprus. However, his successor in negotiations, the new Prime Minister Mehmet ali Talat, was willing to entertain the concept of reunification, partly under pressure from Turkey whose EU accession has been linked to the Cyprus process.

De Soto mastered the entire history, dealing with the specific details of such issues as property rights and the nature of whatever power-sharing government might reemerge in a united Cyprus. As hopes for a detailed U.N. plan grew, Cyprus’s President Glafkos Clerides, a leader of the Greek Cypriots and an opponent of Denktaş, became more forthcoming; and once the intransigent Denktaş was replaced as negotiator, hope for reunification was rekindled once more.

Why then did the process fail? The book offers only a sketch, but it underscores the significance of external political events that can intervene and change the context of the mediation process. The EU admitted Cyprus on May 1, 2004, independent of any resolution of the reunification issue, which effectively removed the prime incentive for Greek Cypriots to negotiate and altered the mediation context completely in the process. Moreover, the new Greek Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, who was elected in 2003, was far less supportive of the U.N. plan for a referendum on reunification than was his predecessor. Even so, a set of technical committees prepared annexes to the plan totaling 9,000 pages so that implementation could proceed smoothly. Although the Turkish Northern Cypriots voted to support the U.N. plan, the negative campaign won out in the Greek South. De Soto’s mastery of the situation combined with strong U.N. backing brought the process a long way forward, but could not overcome the negative impact of the EU accession and the election of an unsupportive president.

Mediators’ mastery of context is an all but unstated but nonetheless vivid theme throughout Martin’s book. The case study of the Norwegians in Sri Lanka again underscores the power of an obstructive president to undermine the mediation process and frustrate the process conducted by two experienced, skilled, and patient facilitators. But while it is a necessary condition for a mediator’s success, understanding a conflict in all its rich contextual detail is insufficient by itself to steer the process to a successful conclusion.

Studies of mediator practices in international conflict situations underscore that there is no precise formula for how much is enough or for which types of cues will be important for the mediator to understand in every situation. Descriptive studies such as these show how sensitive a good mediator must be to the importance and nuance of particular events, to particular words and phrases. But how critical is it to speak the local language? (And what is the impact of using often unreliable translators?) How important is it to understand not only “ancient” history, but the immediate conflict history, and the roles of all the factional leaders and their followers? How confident can the mediator be that he or she has included all the parties necessary to a settlement, without giving each party so much weight (or so little) that he or she is able to undermine any structure put into place? What ability does the mediator have to adjust strategy and tactics to even subtle changes in context? These are all important questions unexplored in Martin’s book.

These narratives serve to underscore the fluidity and volatility of current, mostly internal conflicts. The situation that the conflict mediator enters is unlikely to be the situation that continues even over the life of a mediation, much less into the future. The failed efforts of Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi to resolve the factional dispute in Afghanistan in 1999 at Tashkent stand in stark contrast to his success during and after the signing of the Bonn Accords of 2001, which followed the U.S. air attacks on the Taliban.

The Taliban was not a party to the accords — they had been “defeated” along with al Qaeda’s cells in Afghanistan. However, their defeat did not remove them permanently from the picture. Martin’s description of Brahimi’s successive efforts hints at Pakistan’s role in fomenting chaos in Afghanistan. She describes his attempts to persuade Pakistan to withdraw its support for the Taliban in 1999; he told the Pakistanis, “You are playing with fire, its just going to blow in your face” (p. 17). But by 2006, the Taliban was back in force in the south of Afghanistan, terrorizing the provinces around Kandahar, with Pakistan acting simultaneously as both enabler and trainer of Taliban forces and as alleged enforcer of American anti-terrorism policy. (See Chayes 2006.)

Any long-term success in Afghanistan required a more powerful lever on Pakistani policy than Lakdar Brahimi was able to muster, especially in the face of American commitment to its ally. How deeply Brahimi understood this factor is not wholly clear from the narrative, but it is apparent from other accounts that most American diplomats and military leaders did not.

Brahimi’s efforts in Iraq are examined only briefly in Kings of Peace, Pawns of War. To fully understand how every move on the part of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq — from the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime onward — has fomented new instability there requires attention to the large and burgeoning list of books and articles examining the U.S. invasion, its lead-up, and its aftermath. In the case of the Middle East, as Brahimi has noted to the displeasure of many, such externalities as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict further affect and may even exacerbate Iraqi instability.

Each of the book’s mediation vignettes underscores that mediators must understand how unstable and potentially violent post-conflict situations remain even after a peace agreement is reached. Prevention of recurrence is as important as prevention of conflict in the first place — and, unfortunately, as little attended. Just as it has become clear in recent years that holding elections after conflict will not automatically provide a satisfactory end to that conflict, it should now also be evident that a brokered peace often leaves a war-torn nation too unstable to build on that settlement unassisted.

Martin comes closest to recognizing how important post-conflict persistence is in her description of the efforts of General Lazaro Sumbeiywo of Kenya to broker a peace in Southern Sudan. She writes, “‘Forcing’ parties to sign agreements has been the downfall of many a peace deal when it comes to their actual implementation. Agreements signed under pressure need constant nurturing by those who did the ‘forcing.’ This essential intensive care is expensive and probably unsustainable in terms of the years of diplomatic energy and will required” (pp. 156–157). This statement is obviously true of Sudan, but might well apply to every conflict situation that is described in the book as well as myriad post-Cold War conflicts that have been experienced elsewhere in the world, whether or not the conflict mediation featured a high degree of coercion.

The residue of instability left after a brokered pause in violence, or even after a well-developed peace agreement has been reached, requires reinforcement. Determining the nature of the appropriate reinforcement requires understanding the total conflict context, including the nature of previous interveners, whether military or humanitarian. A conflict’s broader context includes factors such as crime and corruption, which create “donor fatigue” and diminish ongoing international support. Readers should not necessarily expect Martin to deal with post-mediation efforts in this book — and she does not. But the vignettes do serve to highlight the efforts needed to address remaining instability.

One might ask: What is now required in Afghanistan? The original determination of the Americans to keep ISAF, the U.N. peacekeeping force, in the vicinity of Kabul has only served to limit the reach of President Hamid Karzai’s central government. As noted earlier, and as Brahimi himself has recognized, American–Pakistani policy has not curbed Pakistan’s encouragement of Taliban resurgence.

Martin also does not attempt to deal with the importance of an ongoing military presence in any form. Whither the peacekeeping efforts in Cyprus now? The kind of armed or unarmed military presence that might be effective there is, of course, contextual.

Nor does the author discuss the forms of economic development that might be productive or counterproductive, issues that have been recently explored by Susan Woodward (2004) and Astri Suhrke (2006). (That might have been part of the focus of an “afterword” such as the chapter provided by Antonia Potter, a project manager at the Centre for Humanitarian dialogue in Geneva, which I discuss further later.) The reader, of course, can examine other sources to determine what steps have been taken in each of these conflicts and to explore what mistakes have been made in failing to reinforce the accomplishments of these mediations.

These narratives do suggest that the international community should support an ongoing mediative effort in most of the violent conflicts that have occurred since the end of the Cold War. One might ask: Should there be a follow-up to efforts in Aceh to make sure that the federation-type solution remains workable once the shock of the 2004 Asian Tsunami fully recedes? Should that mediator be a track-two mediator, such as Martin Griffiths, or a more powerful official, such as former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who has mediated the Kosovo conflict? Should Afghanistan be left to the untutored but occasionally effective mediative and diplomatic efforts of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? Or should there be ongoing mediation that will help assure that international attention does not die in the poppy fields?

Many interesting models for ongoing mediation can be found outside of the conflict resolution field. I earlier mentioned the life-of-the-project mediator in large engineering and architectural projects, such as the Hong Kong airport. The World Bank has created the Office of Compliance Advisor Ombudsman to provide ongoing mediation to assure that social and environmental guidelines are followed and that communities are not unduly disrupted or displaced by large-scale World Bank-supported projects. These examples from areas of mediation other than violent conflict provide some ideas that warrant further study into what might cement a conflict mediation that did reach some sort of peace agreement or what might help revive a frustrated mediation effort.

The final commentary by Antonia Potter does not provide a blueprint for a “textbook mediator,” nor does it raise any of these more speculative issues about the way a post-conflict situation might be reinforced to assure a more lasting peace. Potter does offer a few valuable insights into a mediator’s success. Interestingly, she also raises briefly some concerns about the “800 pound gorilla” of U.S. foreign policy that so dominates the outcome of most world conflicts, and most of the time, unhelpfully.