2008.07.09 - Peace Research...2008/07/09 · Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious understanding, 150 edited by David little. Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict

Peace Research

The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies

Economic Assistance and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland Sean Byrne, Chuck Thiessen, and Eyob Fissuh

Peace Education in India: Academics, Politics, and Peace Barbara S. Tint and G. Koteswara Prasad

The “Ghost of Peace”: Pierre Trudeau’s Search for Peace, 1982-84 Greg Donaghy

‘Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves’: The Price of Ignoring Gender in Modern Peace Education Sharon Anne Cook

Rethinking Restorative Justice: When the Geographies of Crime and of Healing Justice Matter Jarem Sawatsky

Canada’s Role in Afghanistan: Submissions to the Manley Panel Richard McCutcheon and John Derksen

Volume 39, Numbers 1–2 (2007)

Peace Research

Menno SiMonS College210-520 Portage Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 0G2

CO-EDITORSRichard McCutcheonMenno Simons College

John DerksenMenno Simons College

BuSInESS ManagERTamara RoehrWinnipeg, MB

BOOk REvIEw EDITORLois EdmundMenno Simons College

EDITOR EMERITuSM.V. NaiduWinnipeg, MB

Mary B. AndersonCollaborative for Development Action

Johan GaltungOslo, Norway

Hanna NewcombePeace Research Institute Dundas, ON

aDvISORy COunCIlRichard A. FalkPrinceton University

Louis KriesbergSyracuse University

John SiglerCarleton University

Larry FiskMount Saint Vincent University

Graeme MacQueenMcMaster University

David SingerUniversity of Michigan

A College ofCanadian Mennonite Universitywww.cmu.ca

Affiliated with the University of Winnipegwww.uwinnipeg.ca

Peace ResearchThe Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies

Volume 39, Numbers 1–2 (2007)

Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies (ISSN 0008-4697) is published biannually (two issues per year) by Menno Simons College, a college of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with the University of Winnipeg. Its ad-dress is 210-520 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA, R3C 0G2. Tel: 1-204-953-3855; Fax: 1-204-783-3699; E-mail: [email protected]; Web: www.peaceresearch.ca.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Subscription rates for Volume 40, 2008.

Individuals Institutions Canada $45 CAD $75 CAD Developed Countries $55 USD $85 USD Developing Countries $35 USD $65 USD

All rates include postage by surface mail. Some back issues are available at $15 each. Authors receive one gratis copy of the issue that contains their work. The subscription year is the calendar year. Payments and renewals are due March 31. Cheques should be made payable to “Peace Research/CMU” and sent to the journal at the above address.

SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION For new orders, renewals, sample copy requests, outstanding claims, changes of address, and all other subscription questions, please direct all correspondence to the Business Manager. Postal: 210-520 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R3C 0G2. E-mail: [email protected]. Fax: 1-204-783-3699.

ADVERTISING The journal welcomes advertisements for conferences in the coming year, and for books of interest to scholars in the area of peace and conflict studies. Please contact the Editors for further information: Tel: 1-204-953-3855; Fax: 1-204-783-3699; E-mail: [email protected].

COPyRIGHT ©2007 Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, published by Menno Simons College, 210-520 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA, R3C 0G2.

The Editors and Menno Simons College disclaim any responsibility for statements of fact or opinion made by contributors to Peace Research.

INDExING Peace Research is indexed in Canadian Periodicals Indexes, Micromedia ProQuest, Violence and Abuse Abstracts, and Peace Research Abstracts.

Design and layout by Kevin Schachter, [email protected], Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Main body typeset in 11.5 Garamond Premier Pro using Adobe InDesign.

This publication uses recycled paper.

CONTENTS

Note from the Editors 5

Articles:

Economic assistance and Peacebuilding in northern Ireland 7 Sean Byrne, Chuck Thiessen, and Eyob Fissuh

Peace Education in India: academics, Politics, and Peace 23 Barbara S. Tint and G. Koteswara Prasad

The “ghost of Peace”: 38 Pierre Trudeau’s Search for Peace, 1982-84 Greg Donaghy

‘Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves’: 59 The Price of Ignoring gender in Modern Peace Education Sharon Anne Cook

Rethinking Restorative Justice: when the geographies of 75 Crime and of Healing Justice Matter Jarem Sawatsky

Canada’s Role in afghanistan: 94 Submissions to the Manley Panel Richard McCutcheon and John Derksen

Submissions by: Paul Maillet 98 Patricia Hartnagel 106 Seddiq Weera 111 Richard J. Preston 119 Canadian Council for International Cooperation 121 The Group of 78 135

Peace ResearchVolume 39, Numbers 1–2

The CRC Committee for Contact with the Government 143 Canadian Friends Service Committee 147

Book Reviews:

Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious understanding, 150 edited by David little. Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution. (Korey Dyck)

Stefan wolff. Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective. 152 (Neil Funk-Unrau)

John C. Torpey. Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: 153 On Reparations Politics. (Elena Pokalova)

Philip Zimbardo. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how 155 good people turn evil. (Lois Edmund)

Notes on Authors 158

5

The past twelve months have seen a lot of changes to Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies. The journal has now moved to its new home at Menno Simons College (MSC), a college of Canad-ian Mennonite University affiliated with the University of Winnipeg, in Manitoba, Canada. MSC offers BA programs in Conflict Resolution Studies and International Development Studies. Since taking over the journal in September, 2007 we have been hard at work putting in place the administrative system to support it, contacting potential peer-reviewers, developing advertising, establishing the design and production elements, and getting this issue of the journal ready for you to read. We have added several people to our Advisory Council—we appreci-ate their willingness to support the journal through this time of change. We look forward to reinvigorating an Editorial Board to help us set the direction of the journal and select content. Currently the journal appears only in hard copy. In the future we hope to take the journal “on-line” so that you can access it easily on the web. We will keep you informed as ideas take shape. We are committed to maintaining the tradition established since 1969 of publishing solid and engaging articles in the area of peace and conflict studies. Although the core elements of the journal remain the same, in this issue you will see several changes to its appearance. We have developed a fresh cover design, which we hope you will find both informative and pleasing to the eye. Inside we have redesigned the text from top to bot-tom for ease of reading and economy of space. And throughout we have strengthened the commitment to high quality standards of copy-editing and production. In the end, of course, our goal is to engage you, the readers, with fresh and often challenging ideas about issues related to peace and conflict. If you are a first time reader, then we hope you will consider subscribing to the journal. If you are at a university, and believe that your library should subscribe to the journal, we will be pleased to forward a complimentary

Note from the Editors

6 PEACE RESEARCH | Vol. 39, Nos. 1-2 (2007)

copy for you to review. We especially want to welcome authors to the jour-nal. your research is what makes the journal exciting to read. We hope you will consider submitting your work to Peace Research in the near future. Already we are looking forward to the next issue of Peace Research. Thank you again for your patience during this time of re-construction. We are excited to take on this venture and invite you to continue exploring the vital area of peace and conflict studies with us. Please feel free to contact us if you require more information or if you have ideas for us to consider as we work at improving the journal.

Sincerely,

Richard McCutcheon, Co-Editor John Derksen, Co-Editor

PEACE RESEARCHThe Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict StudiesVolume 39, Numbers 1–2 (2007): 7-22©2007 Peace Research

This article examines the role of the European Union Peace II Fund and the International Fund for Ireland in building the peace dividend in Northern Ireland through the perspectives of the members of community groups, local strategic partnerships and funding agencies, civil servants, and development officers. It examines the views of ninety-eight study participants regarding the sources of community development funding and the accessibility of these funds. It analyzes their experiences with the European Union Peace II Fund and the International Fund for Ireland in the greater context of community development, peacebuilding, and reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border communities.

When any ethnic conflict comes to an end, be it in Northern Ireland or in Bosnia, the post-violence peacebuilding process can begin.1 International agencies have an understanding of how to use foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to address structural inequality and economic deprivation, and thus assist in building the peace process in post-violent societies.2 There is awareness among donor agencies that “the inequalities that cast a shadow over the prospects for peace include not only the vertical disparities of class, but also horizontal divisions of race, ethnicity, religions and regions.”3 The economic policies that exacerbated these political cleavages need to be addressed to remedy past grievances.4 However, economic aid is not a panacea and may escalate rather than de-escalate group tensions.5 It is very important that we know what works and what does not work to improve the effectiveness of community groups doing the hard work of achieving equity and peace in troubled communities. In this study we explore whether the recipients of economic assistance in Northern Ireland perceive the aid allocation process as allowing crucial peacebuilding work to move forward. In the summer of 2006, over a period of fifteen weeks, Sean Byrne carried out extensive interviews with ninety-eight persons, including recipients of the aid, fund-ing agency development officers, and senior civil servants managing the International

Economic Assistance and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland

Sean Byrne, Chuck Thiessen, and Eyob Fissuh


Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the European Union (EU) Peace II fund in Belfast, Derry, Dublin, and the Border counties. He accessed all of the EU Peace II- and/or IFI-funded community projects in Belfast, Derry, and the Border counties. He then emailed or called all of the recent recipients of aid. He went down the list until he had secured eighty-six community-group leaders, six development officers, and six civil servants to interview between May and September 2006. The sample includes a random selection of funded community development and peace projects repre-sentative of intra- and cross-community work, and people closely involved with the operations of both funding agencies. Byrne interviewed sixty-six people from small, volunteer-staffed groups, and twelve people from large groups. The respondents’ quotes are presented in their own words. We begin by providing a review of the role of economic assistance in the peacebuilding process. Next, we explore respondents’ perceptions of the process of applying for funds, the suitability of project criteria, and the levels of bureaucratic control over the funding process. To conclude, we examine the findings as they relate to the role of economic aid in the peacebuilding process after violence.

ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE AND PEACEBUILDINGAs in Bosnia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Kosovo, Nicaragua, and Palestine, economic aid is an integral part of the transformational peacebuilding initiatives in Northern Ireland.6 New economic policies are addressing poverty, community marginaliza-tion, and sustainable post-violent development.7 However, as a result of cultural and structural violence, economic development on its own may have little impact on relationships between ethnic groups.8 A comprehensive multi-track peacebuild-ing process should also build trusting, cooperative, and beneficial interdependent relationships to transform politics and forge a new peace culture.9 In Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972, populist Unionist policies encour-aged sectarianism in employment that led to Nationalist alienation and grievances.10 The violence and counter-violence surrounding protests by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) led to a revamped Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) taking on the British army.11 British government economic policy managed rather than addressed the underlying economic roots of the conflict; this left a despondent and distrustful working class that turned to rival Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries.12 In 1985, the British and Irish governments created the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) to promote socioeconomic development and reconciliation in areas suffering from the highest levels of unemployment and economic deprivation in

9Economic Assistance and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland.13 This international treaty was fully endorsed and supported by the U.S. Congress. Shortly after the Loyalist and Republican reciprocal ceasefires, the European Union (EU) voted on April 6, 1995 to create the Special Support Program for Peace and Reconciliation, or Peace I fund. Peace I (1995–1997) sought to promote reconciliation by increasing economic development and social inclusion, and also to shore up the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).14 The subsequent Peace II fund (1997–2006) had a greater focus on reconciliation and cross-community contact. We turn now to the respondents’ reflective stories with regard to the impacts of both funding agencies on the peace process.

PERCEPTIONS OF THE FUNDING APPLICATION PROCESSES Northern Ireland’s community groups that need funding for their peacebuilding work are often required to go through gruelling application processes. Community-group leaders’ perceptions of this pressure-filled make-it-or-break-it process are reflected poignantly in the interview narratives. The following discussion reveals widespread frustration with the process, stemming from struggles with the funding application forms, inappropriate funding criteria, and excessive bureaucratic controls. However, many of the study participants reflected positively on the supports available for those enduring the application process and suggested further improvements to support structures.

APPLICATION PROCESSA majority of community-group leaders described the funding application process as an intimidating and discouraging hurdle in their organizations’ efforts to build peace. A statement by a community-group leader from County Cavan is representative of many of the study’s participants:

It was crazy. There was an awful lot of hassle with that application now and I would caution any group that goes to look at a Peace application.

Two salient themes emerged in this widely expressed sentiment: overly “academic” application forms and time-consuming processes. First, because the application forms were seen to be overly “academic” in nature, groups not versed in governmental aid and development jargon were perceived to be handicapped in the application process. A Border-area community-group leader described her thoughts in the following way:

The problem I would have with those forms as well is that you could be an excellent group and you could have an excellent proposal, but you


don't have the academic language. I sometimes think they skim through these application forms and they go, “Oh ‘capacity building’—five points, ‘empowerment’—five points,” and they look for the buzzwords in it . . . .

Several community-group leaders lamented not having qualified staff able to navigate the application’s jargon requirements. Perhaps most worrisome was the perception that the community groups working in areas most affected by the Troubles might have a staff with lower-than-average educational attainment. A community-group leader from the city of Derry wondered

. . . how you can square the fact that the very people the funding should be trying hardest to help may be with the people who are the least able to complete the funding applications.

Indeed, several participants noted that significant pockets of disadvantaged Protestant Unionist communities were struggling with, or outright avoiding, the application process. Second, because of the length of the application forms and the extensive infor-mation-gathering requirements, many organizations struggled over the amount of time required by both the IFI and EU Peace II funding applications. A community-group leader from County Cavan shared his insight on the topic:

you wonder at times, is it worth getting it, if you compare the amount of time and work that goes into it, and the amount of reporting afterwards. When you weigh it all up, it might not always be the most suitable form of funding.

Over half of the respondents noted that smaller groups and groups staffed with volunteers were most affected by the daunting amount of time required to pre-pare a funding application form. A leader from a Border-area community group explained:

One of the problems I see in it is that, for a small organization looking for a small amount of support, it is a daunting task, and in particular where they have only voluntary people in a voluntary organization and they have nobody with time to do it, it is fairly daunting, the whole application process.

Thus, larger, well-resourced groups were seen as privileged in the funding applica-tion competition. In order to address time concerns, one participant proposed a two-tiered application process: groups vying for larger amounts of funding would enter a more complex application process while groups requesting smaller amounts would face simpler application requirements.


Not all respondents, however, perceived the application process as difficult and frustrating. One-third of those interviewed found the process straightforward and even pointed out benefits for their organizations. One successful applicant from Derry described the applications’ role in ensuring that abstract project ideas are cemented in reality and are in fact implementable:

I think that the applications are good in that they make you examine exactly what your project is about—so if you have just got a concept or an idea, it actually makes you work through a lot in your head, which is excellent.

Another Derry community-group leader noted how the application process forced those within his organization to grapple with their work’s role in the peace and reconciliation process:

But what I will say though is that some of the Peace and Reconciliation questions would be things that we wouldn't tend to discuss in our day-to-day working—things like “Horizontal Principles” and the notion of using your work for peacemaking ends or towards reconciliation is a bit new to most organizations.

A difficult introspective process such as completing funding applications may allow new possibilities for peacebuilding to take root in the ethos of an organization.

SUPPORT FOR THE APPLICATION PROCESSIn response to these challenges, over three-quarters of the community-group leaders and funding agency staff highlighted the crucial need for appropriate support struc-tures and processes. A civil servant from Derry warned potential applicants against being dissuaded from applying for funding as long as support networks are in place:

So while there is a perception out there that the forms are a barrier, they are only a barrier if the right support mechanisms haven't been put in place for it.

Central to funding support mechanisms is the provision of field development officers by funding bodies. In the interview narratives, the majority of community-group leaders identified several key support services provided by the development officers. Prior to applying, development officers were perceived as key to linking com-munity groups with potential funding bodies—especially in communities some dis-tance from administrative centres such as Belfast. Development officers also provided preliminary investigation into project feasibility in order to prevent wasted time on applications. Training workshops in application-writing skills provided confidence


for some groups to venture into the painful application process—especially groups in harder-to-reach communities and less-organized Protestant Unionist communities. Further, development officers assisted some community groups in establishing an organizational structure, constitution, and action plan. Some respondents, however, were quite critical of support structures—especially within the EU Peace II funding body. Development officers were perceived by two-thirds of the community-group leaders as being bogged down with too many appli-cations, unreasonable levels of bureaucracy, and expansive areas of coverage. A leader of a religious community group in Belfast revealed his perceptions of bureaucratic impediments in available support structures:

My limited experience of the development officers from the European situation is that they too, it felt to me, were being heavily monitored, that there was a sense in which, which may be related to us, they were always looking over their shoulders.

When asked to compare support processes within the IFI and EU Peace II fund-ing structures, a couple of participants noted superior support when applying for IFI monies. An administrator from a County Leitrim community group commented in the following way:

So I think that if you ask me to pick from one of the two funders and their application processes, I would pick the IFI straight away.

A community-group leader from Belfast explained the perceived superior support for IFI funding as rooted in a focus on relationship building:

They do come along and their key people on the ground, they build relationships with them. There's a definite spending time with you, to get to know the character of the organization, not just its successes on paper, but its stories on the ground. . . . There's a definite relational networking and tone to their assessment.

Recommendations to improve support mechanisms for funding applicants were consistent with these perceptions. Community-group leaders thought it crucial for development officers to understand the local context and peacebuilding needs, and to maintain a relationship with the community organizations.

FUNDING CRITERIABy establishing appropriate criteria for peacebuilding funding in Northern Ireland, funding organizations are hoping to further reconciliation in the conflict-affected re-gion. However, badly chosen criteria may in fact hinder much-needed peacebuilding


in that funds will be directed away from constructive project work and into projects having little or no lasting effect on the conflict zone. Many of the participants in this study believed that the funding criteria were deficient, and they voiced several sharp criticisms of the criteria used to assess their funding applications. Over half of the participants perceived the funding criteria as not relevant to the reality on the ground. For example, a Belfast community-group leader expressed concern that those working at the policy level within the EU Peace II funding administration were setting abstract criteria that were disjointed from the complex peacebuilding requirements on the streets of Belfast:

. . . the criteria that they often set, that seemed to be a bit abstract at times. The criteria was often unrelated to the realities on the ground . . . but the feeling apparent from it was a very bureaucratic, a very rational approach to complex issues. And very often people filling in application forms, I think, find the criteria abstract, convoluting, sometimes even contradictory.

Further, the majority of interview narratives revealed a perceived tension be-tween grassroots practitioners and upper-level policy makers. As is often the case in administrative hierarchies, grassroots practitioners believe that since they are closest to the action, they are best able to determine which activities are essential. A Belfast community-group leader provided a relevant example of this issue:

But there very definitely was an issue about the fit between those who compiled the criteria and those of us who are actually working on the ground. A very good example of this would be, for instance, they seem to be concerned about what we call the “bums on seats”—that numbers seemed to be a criteria—how many people are you reaching, influencing, when in fact change may not necessarily come back numerically; indeed it may be more important sometimes to reach a few key people than it is to reach the masses.

The majority of interviews revealed that a fear of not receiving funding some-times leads applicants to align their planned project work with funding criteria as opposed to the actual peacebuilding needs of the local community. A Border-region participant described the difficulties experienced when funding criteria interfered with the most important work:

Sometimes it’s hard because sometimes you can put in a proposal or an application and it has to match the criteria rather that the piece of work that needs to be done. And where we would be truthful about the work


that needs to be done rather than match the criteria, we would try and aim to focus on the work.

Another community-group leader from Derry perceived the funding criteria as dictating what type of project work was being conducted in Derry:

At times it almost feels like people chase the funding, shape it into what that funding application is, as opposed to seek money to do the project they want to do . . .

As a consequence, work not relevant to the peacebuilding needs of a particular context may in fact consume valuable funding. Other participants expressed a concern that organizations were meeting the criteria on paper, but were unable to fulfill the funding criteria when implementing the project. A Belfast community-group leader gave details as follows:

Sometimes that resulted in people often affirming the criteria or offering to deliver a program that was way beyond their capacity—otherwise they would not have been touched—and then consequently not being able to deliver it and that sort of led to funding being withdrawn, and on some occasions it led to a lack of credibility.

Further, a majority of the applicants perceived that they simply had to use the “lan-guage of the funder” in order to secure funding, and, as a consequence, those good at filling out application forms were receiving funding regardless of the quality of their actual project work. However, one-third of the participants identified constructive aspects of the extensive funding criteria. According to one community-group leader from County Monaghan, the complex criteria requirements of the application process high-lighted peacebuilding needs within her community that would otherwise have been overlooked:

Actually the fact that we did put our community development needs through the Peace process funds probably highlighted an area of need that we weren't aware of—being the needs of the Protestant community in Monaghan. In that regard the Peace program would have helped us identify something that was a problem in Monaghan that we didn't feel existed.

Further, a Belfast civil servant perceived that the stringent application criteria guard against, and are an actual response to, the presence of corruption and apathy in the funded community groups. She believed that maintaining high expectations for work done with fund money would result in high-quality outcomes.


Funding criteria also determine the types of projects undertaken in Northern Ireland. Over half of the participants perceived funding criteria as fixating on “bricks-and-mortar” projects. An administrator from a community group in Derry echoed the belief that IFI funding in particular was more interested in building projects than reconciliation projects:

We have tried to, in a sense, get some sort of feel for the type of project that we would be capable of delivering which might meet IFI criteria. The kind of feedback we get is that unless it is a fairly major bricks-and-mortar-type project, the IFI money is not really there.

However, an IFI civil servant from Belfast stated that his organization was now in the process of implementing new strategies focused on reconciliation-directed criteria:

It basically attempts to reorient the funds work with a stronger focus on reconciliation and on tackling real economic disadvantage . . . . It would be stronger on reconciliation things.

Twenty participants representing minority groups and women’s groups expressed concern that funding criteria restricted their access to needed resources. A director of a Derry women’s community group expressed concern over the apparent decrease in money available for women’s groups—particularly noticeable in the discontinuation of funding for child care and the increased need to lobby for funding:

The other problem with Peace II extension is that they got rid of the women's strand—and it's been very difficult. Well, more or less, there was a lot of lobbying to put it in, the child care element got cut. It has been made very difficult for women.

She perceived the decrease in funding as a backlash against the extensive funding already received by women’s groups because of their highly organized and profes-sional status. Another community-group leader from Belfast expressed concern that funding criteria focused solely on the Protestant and Catholic communities while ignoring other minority groups that had also suffered through the Troubles:

When my boss applied for the funding, she had to put up a struggle and a fight to get recognition of the fact that there are more than two communities here in Northern Ireland. Ethnic minorities have lived through the Troubles, have been affected by the Troubles, and should be part of any sort of new peace building initiatives.

Grassroots community peacebuilding and sustainable development projects are bound to both funders’ stringent and abstract criteria and buzz words rather than the


pragmatic needs of both communities. As a result, community-group leaders follow the gravy train, resulting in escalating tensions between the funding agencies and the grassroots.

BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSESEfficient bureaucratic structures facilitate the timely flow of resources from funding organizations such as the EU Peace II fund to community groups on the ground in Northern Ireland. However, evidence from the majority of participant interviews in-dicates that the current bureaucratic structures of the funding agencies need stream-lining to better serve peacebuilding requirements in conflict-affected communities. The following discussion highlights some concerns voiced in the interviews. Several participants argued that the current bureaucratic structures are making funding inaccessible for small groups—particularly ones staffed by volunteers and part-time administration staff. One community-group leader from Belfast believed that operating within an excessively bureaucratic environment puts undue strain on a small organization’s capacity. He explained in the following way:

I think it was bureaucratic—top heavy. The criteria definitely, at times, did not fit the reality of the ground. I think sometimes they withdrew from the very important organizations who did not have the administrative strength to sustain that kind of bureaucratic level . . . . So I have no idea how smaller organizations with staff on a volunteer basis—part-time administrative—I have no idea how they did it.

Some specific areas of concern for small organizations were the overly ambitious auditing and project evaluation processes. A number of participants expressed frus-tration with the number of project reports required and the exceedingly stringent accounting procedures, which sometimes engender a vicious cycle of funding depen-dency. A community-group leader from County Fermanagh clarified this point in the following way:

When that money generates an employee, the paid employee is so tied up in actually dealing with the bureaucracy that the immediate thing for them is to secure more money to employ another employee to do what they were supposed to do. That is cascaded down the line.

The criteria-setting process affects smaller community organizations further. One participant from County Cavan postulated that the funding bureau-cracy produces overly academic criteria inaccessible to many smaller community organizations:


I think it is very academic. I think you have a group of politicians and academics that sit in a room . . . . It is filtering down through all these bureaucratic departments and it is all academics and bureaucratic and it's all very academic language.

Numerous participants argued that increased bureaucratic control over the funding process needs to be placed in the hands of local communities. Current levels of centralized control from administrative centres in Europe and Belfast were per-ceived to cause serious problems. A member of a community partnership in Belfast suggested that bureaucrats are not able to understand the complex situation that community groups face in their work:

If you look at a lot of the people administrating money, they don't have that background. They are not aware of the subtle nuances, they are not aware of the complexities, they are not aware of the risks.

This lack of understanding and knowledge lessens the authenticity and value of project evaluation. For example, a community-group worker from County Cavan viewed project evaluators as trying to “squeeze a square peg into a round hole” since actual project objectives often cannot neatly fit into pre-determined project criteria. Further, community groups have to engage in the growing practice of hiring evalua-tive consultants to complete project reports. For example, according to a participant from Derry, many consultants described project work in a manner that pleased the ears of the funding bureaucracy but did nothing to describe the achievements and struggles of the project work. Over half of the respondents declared that inefficient bureaucratic structures decrease the expediency of the funding process. Applications for funding that are not processed in a timely manner can severely strain small community organizations. A community-group leader from County Monaghan described the financial burden endured during the application process:

Once they started to drag their heels in releasing funding—that means a voluntary community group will collapse. People will drop out of it and then the liability on directors of the community group is awesome . . . .

A second participant from County Cavan explained the situation further:

you end up in debt before you can draw down the money because you have to spend a certain amount . . . . A lot of groups end up getting in debt, taking out bank loans or overdrafts.


Similarly, according to a community-group leader from County Fermanagh, the huge bureaucratic hierarchy consumes sizable amounts of valuable money to cover administrative costs:

If you really look at it, it is sort of an inverted iceberg where there are huge rafts of accountants and project evaluators that don't appear on the upfront. But somebody is paying for all that behind the scenes—and that is lost money as far as I am concerned. So I am deeply concerned about the huge administrative costs behind Peace funding . . . .

Some study participants, however, viewed the bureaucracy in a more positive light. A community-group leader from County Monaghan maintained that bureau-cracy is key in ensuring financial accountability among small community groups:

There has to be monitoring, there has to be good practice in the spending of public and European money.

While recognizing the importance of establishing accountability and transparency in the effort to avoid corruption, a Belfast community-group leader called for greater efficiency:

So I absolutely understand the ethical necessity for accountability. I think somebody looking at it objectively could probably offer a more transparent model but less cumbersome at the same.

One way to increase funding efficiency is to increase accessibility to funds for local community groups via intermediary funding bodies:

Previously, European funding had been administered and led by government departments and were by nature, then, inaccessible to local community groups on the ground. The idea of continuing to use some government departments but also using the idea of an intermediary funding body can bridge between local communities and the European pot. That made the European fund, in particular, very, very accessible to local communities.

By alleviating bureaucratic hindrances and increasing accessibility to much needed funding at the community level, intermediary funding bodies can help the funding bureaucracy serve a crucial role in the peacebuilding process.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONSA dominant trend since the early 1990s has been the growth in the number of com-munity group-initiated projects attempting to bring down conflict-induced barriers


to dialogue and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.15 Funding from the IFI and the EU Peace II programme is seen to facilitate the ability of local community groups to address ongoing community-level tensions.16 However, in order to access funding for their peacebuilding work, local community groups are required to navigate a daunting maze of bureaucratic requirements. This study considers the perceptions of community-group leaders regarding the funding application process. Four main conclusions flow from analysis of the participants’ responses. First, the competitive nature of the application process was seen to exclude viable commu-nity groups from needed funding. Smaller community groups staffed by volunteers were perceived as default losers in the zero-sum funding competition. According to the study’s community-group leaders, the disqualification of smaller groups stems from the applications’ governmental aid and development jargon requirements. Inaccessible bureaucratic jargon will naturally bias application success in favour of groups with relatively well-educated staffs. As the rural “brain-drain” carries well-educated staff toward bigger, well-resourced groups in larger urban administrative centres, remote conflict-affected communities may have difficulty recruiting appro-priate staff. Further hindering groups staffed by volunteers are the burdensome and incompatible time requirements of the application procedures. Sadly, a majority of community-group leaders saw staff gifted with “on-the-street” peacebuilding skills being consumed by the desk-work requirements of the application process. A participant from County Cavan hinted at a possible solution by suggest-ing an interdependent, as opposed to competitive, model in accessing funding. An interdependent, organic model would provide incentives for community groups to cooperate in joint funding applications and project implementation. Joint applica-tion by a partnership of smaller groups would increase the capacity to hire skilled administrative staff while freeing volunteers to pursue their envisioned peacebuild-ing work. Second, and perhaps addressing the first conclusion, applicants require accessible and attentive application support services. Provision of ample field development officers to smaller community organizations may greatly assist in cutting through the bureaucratic jungle and deciphering bureaucratic terminology on application forms. Further, field development officers may address perceived deficiencies in project criteria by helping community groups sift practical project requirements from the overly abstract criteria. Perhaps stemming from superior community-support structures refined in times of oppression, many Catholic Na-tionalist communities were generally seen by most interviewees to outpace their Protestant Unionist counterparts in the funding competition. Making certain that


Protestant Unionist communities receive appropriate support services may ensure the equitable disbursal of funding. Third, a majority of community-group leaders felt that project criteria should be less rigid and more flexible. Community projects effective in peacebuilding work will recognize the complexity of conflict in Northern Ireland.17 Because conflict dynam-ics may differ from community to community, flexible project criteria will avoid the perceived need to coerce desired project outcomes into unfitting criteria. Further, increased project-criteria flexibility may ease the perceived tension between grass-roots practitioners and upper-level policy makers by creating an atmosphere where applicants do not feel forced into dishonesty and are free to describe their projects with authenticity. However, it is understandable that funding bodies set strict criteria to ensure that peacebuilding goals are achieved. Having a set of stringent project criteria may reduce the temptation to dive from messy relational peacebuilding work into the safety of “bricks-and-mortar”-type projects. Fourth, many community-group leaders described an urgent need for bureau-cratic streamlining. Again, smaller organizations, especially those with volunteer staff, appear to be withering under the overly zealous reporting, auditing, and evalu-ation requirements of the funding bureaucracy. Further, several participants called for a decentralization of bureaucratic control and increased conferment of funding control to local communities. In contrast, however, for some community-group lead-ers, a “middle-tier” bureaucratic mechanism, made up of field development officers and intermediary funding bodies, could streamline the bureaucracy by improving accessibility for grassroots organizations to funding support.18

In conclusion, the Northern Ireland case study shows that accessible applica-tion procedures, appropriate criteria, and streamlined bureaucratic processes must be established if the most necessary and fruitful community-group peacebuilding work is to access much needed economic aid.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe would like to thank Jessica Senehi, Hamdesa Tuso, Tom Boudreau, and the anonymous reviewers from Peace Research for reading various drafts of this paper. This research project is supported by a three-year research grant from the Social Sci-ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ENDNOTES1. John Darby and Roger MacGinty, eds., The Management of Peace Processes

(London: Palgrave, 2003).


2. Sean Byrne and Michael Ayulo, “External Economic Aid in Ethno-Political Conflict: A View from Northern Ireland,” Security Dialogue 29, no. 11 (1998): 219–33.

3. J. K. Boyce, “Beyond Good Intentions, External Assistance and Peace Building,” in Good Intentions: Pledges of Aid for Post Conflict Recovery, ed. Shepard Forman and Stewart Patrick (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 374.

4. Jeong HoWon, Peacebuilding in Postconflict Societies: Strategy and Process (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005).

5. Stephen Ryan, “Peacebuilding Strategies and Intercommunal Conflict: Approaches to the Transformation of Divided Societies,” Nationalism and Ethnic Conflicts 2, no. 2 (1996): 216–31.

6. Rex Brynen, A Very Political Economy: Peace Building and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000).

7. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997).

8. Sean Byrne, “Consociational and Civic Society Approaches To Peace Building in Northern Ireland,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 3 (2001): 327–352.

9. Sean Byrne and Loraleigh Keashly, “Working with Ethno-Political Conflict: A Multi-Modal and Multi-Level Approach to Conflict Intervention,” International Peacekeeping 7, no. 1 (2000): 97–120.

10. Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921–94: Political Forces and Social Classes (London: Serif, 1995).

11. Paul Arthur, Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 2000).

12. Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, The British State and the Ulster Crisis: From Wilson to Thatcher (London: Verso, 1985).

13. Cynthia Irvin and Sean Byrne, “The Perception of Economic Aid in Northern Ireland and Its Role in the Peace Process,” in Peace At Last? The Impact of the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland, ed. Jorg Neuheiser and Steffan Wolff (Oxford: Berghahn, 2002), 132–52.


14. Sean Byrne and Cynthia Irvin, “A Shared Common Sense: Perceptions of the Material Effects and Impacts of Economic Growth in Northern Ireland,” Civil Wars 5, no. 1 (2002): 55–86; Sean Byrne and Cynthia Irvin, “Economic Aid and Policymaking: Building the Peace Dividend in Northern Ireland,” Policy and Politics 29, no. 1 (2001): 413–29.

15. Mari Fitzduff, Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Process in Northern Ireland (New york: United Nations University Press, 2002).

16. Byrne and Irvin, “Economic Aid and Policymaking.”

17. Sean Byrne and Neal Carter, “Social Cubism: Six Social Forces of Ethnoterritorial Politics in Northern Ireland and Quebec,” Peace and Conflict Studies 3, no. 2 (1996): 52–72.

18. Lederach, Building Peace.


In April of 2003, several academics from the University of Madras joined together to form a new interdisciplinary centre, the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies. Through the generous support of the International Council for Educational Exchange (ICEE) and the United States Educational Foundation in India (USEFI), a visiting Fulbright scholar went to Chennai in 2003/2004 to assist in the develop-ment of the Centre, to collaborate with its faculty members, and to offer various programs under its jurisdiction. During this time, the co-authors of this article, Dr. G. K. Prasad, the director of the Centre, and Dr. Barbara Tint, the Fulbright scholar, had numerous conversations regarding the evolution, goals, mission, and responsibilities of a centre such as this. Through these conversations, a variety of issues and insights emerged that are relevant to our roles as peace researchers and educators. The purpose of this article is to share some of these insights, to explore some of the theoretical issues underlying the development of a Peace Education Centre, to consider the development of this Centre as a microcosm of larger issues affecting peace educators in India, and to examine the role of academics in the work of peace within the Indian context. This exploration ends with some recommenda-tions for advancing the work of peace education in this region.

This article examines the evolution of peace education and peace studies in India. Factors that influence the viability of this development include the philosophical underpinnings of peace education, ideological issues concerning the relationship between academia and politics, and the structural and economic conditions in India. An examination of Gandhi’s legacy provides an additional lens by which to understand the ways in which peace education has and has not been developed in India. The article then analyzes the launch of a Peace and Conflict Resolution Centre at the University of Madras as a microcosm of these larger issues affecting peace education in a global context. It concludes with recommendations to enhance the success and visibility of this work and to support peace education in India.

Peace Education in India: Academics, Politics, and PeaceBarbara S. Tint and G. Koteswara Prasad


PEACE EDUCATION

As an academic discipline, peace education begs some clear definition; the evolv-ing concept means different things in different contexts. Ian Harris suggests that peace education includes any attempt to teach about violence and alternatives to violence.1 While this might present a useful starting point, we need a more focused idea of what comprises this expanding discourse. Betty Reardon, one of the USA’s groundbreaking peace educators, suggests that peace education is

. . . [the] transmission of knowledge about the requirements of, the obstacles to and possibilities for achieving and maintaining peace, training in skills for interpreting the knowledge, and the development of reflective and participatory capacities for applying the knowledge to overcoming problems and achieving possibilities.2

Peace education—education on peace-related content—is often distinguished from education for peace, which is a holistic approach to education that seeks to shape individuals and societies.3 These two processes, however, are not mutually exclusive. As peace educators, we typically see our role as twofold: to educate students about issues related to peace, conflict, and violence, and to transmit ideas and values that can infuse our students with ways of engaging in the world that add to its potential for peace. Some suggest that the main goal of peace education is to influence people to behave more peacefully,4 or to develop caring and non-aggressive people who relate peacefully to others in their own lives, facilitate the well-being of others, and work to promote peace and prevent violence in society and the world at large.5 The goal is not regarded as simply to educate students but to transform societies: “For peace education to be effective, it must transform ways of thinking that have been developed over the millennia of human history.”6 An emerging question for peace educators is the degree to which our work should be focused on content, compared to the degree to which it should be focused on process, practice, and values that im-pact, both directly and indirectly, the students and contexts we encounter. A further question is to what degree academics take on the role of transforming societies as suggested above. Various dimensions of this field—conflict management, conflict resolution, conflict transformation, nonviolence studies, peace studies, peace research, and peace science—have all been carved out as particular pieces of this pie, perhaps unnecessarily creating arbitrary divisions. In some contexts, what might be consid-ered peace education is also known as education for democracy, civic education, tolerance education, or human rights education.7 Within its scope, peace education

25Peace Education in India: Academics, Politics, and Peace

has included a focus on interpersonal, intra-group, inter-group, and international conflict. Within certain realms, inner peace, or a spiritual dimension, has been related to the ability to impact larger global issues. Some contexts focus largely on international issues, while others prioritize the domestic domain. Harris has delineated five types of peace education, and attempts to provide some framework for these differing pieces of the pie: 1) Global Peace Education, which includes international studies, holocaust studies, and nuclear and disarma-ment studies; 2) Conflict Resolution Programs, which teach about mediation, negotiation, and various communication skills; 3) Violence Prevention Programs, which emphasize domestic violence, drug abuse, anger management, and the teaching of tolerance; 4) Development Education, which includes human rights education, environmental studies, and an emphasis on power, resource inequities, and structural violence; and 5) Nonviolence Education, which finds roots in the teachings and philosophies of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and other great peacemakers.8

While most programs of peace education likely combine various components of the above categorizations, these constructs are useful to consider as we begin to analyze the contexts in which they are offered. While some elements of peace education could be universal in relevance and applicability, Gavriel Salomon sug-gests that the ways we consider peace education should depend on the context in which it originates.9 The goals, methods, and opportunities of this discipline are largely informed by the political climate of the region involved. Societies embedded in deep violent conflict, those struggling with subtle ethnic tensions, and others enjoying a climate of relative tranquility will each require a different integration of this discipline in academic and political arenas. In considering these goals along with the components of peace education suggested by Harris, we can see the myriad ways that peace education will vary according to context. However it is defined, peace education is a discipline that has gained much momentum in the last several decades. As a form of diplomatic intervention, it has come to be accepted as essential to the social change necessary for peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts worldwide. Education has long been considered an important dimension of multi-track diplomacy in an ever-conflicted world.10 There has been a tremendous increase in the number and types of certificate and degree programs of-fered in response to conflict and violence. The Global Directory of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Programs profiles over 450 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs and concentrations in over forty countries and thirty-eight American states.11 The reasons why educational institutions develop peace education programs


during these troubled times may seem obvious. However, how and why such courses and curricula have been developed in some parts of the world and not in others may be less obvious. Issues related to ideology, socioeconomic and structural conditions, and traditions of learning all play a part.

PEACE EDUCATION IN INDIAWhile the development of peace studies curricula is becoming a global phenomenon, some regions of the world, including India, have only recently joined this academic discourse. Only in the last few years has higher education in India turned deliber-ate attention to peace studies. At a Conference on Conflict Resolution at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Jane Schukoske and Manjrika Sewak, citing information provided in 2003 by researcher Veena Bhalla at the Association of Indian Universities, reported that there were no institutions in India offering con-flict resolution courses, and only a few courses in negotiation or alternative dispute resolution.12 The Global Directory of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Programs lists only three offerings in all of India: a postgraduate diploma in Human Rights at the University of Hyderabad, “coursework” in peace studies at the University of Calcutta, and a focus on Gandhian philosophy and theories of nonviolence at the Centre for Gandhian Studies.13 Although peace education as a distinct academic discipline has been slow to emerge, Indian institutions of higher education have, in certain ways, addressed the types of peace education that Harris delineates. These areas of focus are often scattered among various academic departments and suffer from a lack of coherent curricula focused on issues of peace and conflict. Departments of political science, international studies, and defence and strategic studies exist in many departments and research centres within Indian universities and colleges. The defence colleges study issues around both nuclear and conventional weapons. Many of the think-tanks that discuss security issues in India are staffed with former military officers who sometimes also deliberate non-traditional security. The topics of peace, nuclear disarmament, and international conflict tend to be studied with strong emphasis on political, military, and strategic dimensions, and less on the intersection between interpersonal, inter-group, and international phenomena. The students in these arenas typically come from a relatively homogenous academic framework rather than from an inter-disciplinary focus typical of other peace studies and conflict resolution programs. Since the Supreme Court of India’s 1991 directive around environmental issues,14 environmental education has been taken more seriously, and since 2003 has


become part of the compulsory education curriculum at all levels. Gender studies, social work, and psychology have addressed issues such as domestic violence and drug abuse, and the Domestic Violence Act of 2005 has attracted attention at the national level. Of course, Mohandas Gandhi is widely studied in multiple political and philosophical arenas, and there are several programs in Gandhian thought and peace studies, which inform the studies on nonviolence. In all of these arenas, while important dimensions of this field are addressed, the focus is not on peace educa-tion per se, but more on specific discipline-bound pieces of the pie. Furthermore, in most of these programs, the focus is mainly on content rather than on “education for peace,” whose curriculum is intended gradually to transform society. Slowly, other dimensions of peace education are emerging. The Nelson Man-dela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution was launched in 2004 by Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi; it claimed to be one of the first centres for peace and conflict studies in an Indian University. The University Grants Commission, the highest body administering higher education, has contemplated introducing peace and conflict resolution studies in a concerted way in its 2007–2012 Plan. The Commission has encouraged the study of human rights and funded universities and colleges to initiate courses in these areas. Human rights education has therefore developed out of vari-ous departments including History, Political Science, and Legal Studies. Compared to many other countries, however, there are surprisingly few programs of this kind. Further, the number of courses in these areas and the number of students who take these courses are few. Regional factors, employment issues, and delays in filling up faculty vacancies in the universities and colleges have affected the quality of, and demand for, these areas of study. Many, both in India and beyond, have wondered why Indian academic institutions do not have larger numbers of departments and centres studying and researching peace-related areas. This seems a particular paradox, given Gandhi’s legacy of peacemaking, and traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism, which represent nonviolence principles at their core. Scholars have often turned to peace issues when wars wreaked widespread destruction or involved nuclear weapons (Europe, USA, Japan). Similarly, one would expect that events like the partition of India, migration and consequent huge refugee problems, communal conflict and riots in select Indian cities, and Gandhi’s practice of nonviolent protest under the most provocative circumstances would make this population think of exploring the theme of peace and nonviolence more pervasively. yet, while many individuals and groups around the world, including Nobel Peace Prize winners, have been inspired by Gandhi, less of that inspiration is


evident in Indian academic society. In India, where issues of peace, nonviolence, and social change were the cornerstones of independence and development, why have academics only recently pursued these issues? On an ideological level, it is important to understand the connection between Gandhi’s work and the limited development of peace education in India. While Gandhi’s life and thought attracted the attention of many in India and beyond, his eclectic thinking and activities drew diverse responses. Followers picked up on select dimensions of Gandhian thought and championed these causes in a selective manner. Gandhi wrote and spoke on matters both trivial and profound, and many in India celebrate certain facets of his personality while ignoring others. On the one hand, uncritical approaches have dominated the study of the “Father of the Nation”; on the other, some blame Gandhi and his views for stagnant India’s sociopolitical ills. Though scholars in history, political science, philosophy, economics, and literature engaged Gandhi’s ideas during the post-independence period, they could take only as much as their respective disciplines would allow. To a large degree, institutional forces dictated the academic development of this thought. While certificate, diploma, and even master’s courses were initiated by Gandhian Studies departments and centres, in order to meet university standards, academic courses had to be structured in an acceptable form. Collective choice and administrative interests dominated the ways in which this curriculum was framed. In many situations, what might be defined as “Peace Studies” or “Peace Education” as outlined by Harris got subsumed into other arenas or departments and was not given a central place in the curriculum. In many cases, Gandhi’s life and thought became the central point within this curriculum, but analysis of the implications of this thought and its efficacy in a comparative perspective within a global context was lacking. While the events of Gandhi’s period were chronicled in detail, the connections of his thought to global problems attracted less attention. Gandhi’s relation to peace evoked different reac-tions. Gandhi’s views evolved over time and his “pacifism” is markedly different from that of western anti-war pacifists. The study of peace, as it related to Gandhi’s work, focused mostly on satyagraha (holding on to truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence), which are only a portion of his work.15 Because there has often been a divide between nonviolent action and conflict resolution in peace studies curricula, the seemingly natural link between Gandhi’s ideas and peace studies as an academic curriculum has been surprisingly blurred.16 Gandhi did discuss education in his writings and, in many ways, espoused a philosophy parallel to those who see educating for peace as a way to imbue values and transform societies. He had an integral and holistic perspective of


human living, and his ideas on education primarily addressed national regeneration and progress. Gandhi’s ideas spelled out in “Basic Education,”17 combined with his other views, have strong relevance to peace studies curricula. This relevance is evi-denced by the number of scholars and activists in several fields—education, religion, environment, politics, economics, and others—who follow and incorporate Gandhi in wide-ranging cultural contexts and situations. It is ironic, therefore, that academia has so tepidly implemented his ideas. Besides ideological issues, structural and institutional factors influence higher education and the development of peace studies in India. On a structural level, it is unclear how much influence academic thought carries in the political arena. There is much cynicism about the role of academics in third-world societies; researchers and scholars are often considered to be armchair theorists. While the academy has much to offer in the understanding and prevention of violent conflict, this wisdom has yet to be fully utilized. Offering curricula in this context can only be a viable proposi-tion if academics have a significant and substantial voice. While academia may have a limited influence on a day-to-day basis, India has allowed an academic such as Dr. Manmohan Singh to become the prime minister of the country, and, consequently, several policy channels have been opened to academics and intellectuals. On an institutional level, higher education in India inherited certain features from the British system, which was extremely traditional in the content and form of its educational practices. Both pedagogy and curriculum are informed by this traditional approach. This includes the policies and administrative structures of the universities, the perseverance of rules and procedures that may lose relevance in a changing context, systems of rote assignments and examinations, and manners of bureaucratic administration. The basic educational patterns have remained the same for a long time and have failed to adapt to the changed conditions of post-independence India. Methods of learning remain largely traditional, and alternative pedagogy has yet to infiltrate the college and university system in a significant way. These overarching institutional forces and rigid disciplinary boundaries make it very difficult to develop alternative pedagogical methods and innovative programs. While the number of colleges and universities has increased, they have imitated existing institutions rather than developing areas of special interest based on region, intellec-tual resources, or other capacities. It has become common in recent years to establish separate universities for agriculture, veterinary science, technology, women’s studies, medicine, law, sports, and allied fields. Most universities introduce the same disci-plines and teach the courses in a more-or-less uniform way. Typically, administrations have not allowed deviation or innovation to suit the new necessities and changes in


society. Reforms percolate slowly, sometimes imitating western institutions without adequate preparation and consensus. Within the Indian university system, the potential for new departments to innovate around interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary areas is diminishing. Fac-ulty strength is not increasing, and university administrations are suggesting that departments raise their own funds to continue or start fresh academic activities. As education in the humanities and social sciences is undervalued in certain Indian states, fresh initiatives are slow to emerge. Relative emphasis on science and technical education has also limited the resources available to promote new courses and ideas in new branches of learning. As is the case in many other countries, Indian univer-sities seem to be operating with less state funding for their programs than before. Furthermore, the percentage of the Indian population pursuing higher education is still a small fraction of the overall population; currently, only ten per cent of young people are seeking a college education and still fewer are enrolled in universities.18 These institutional issues make it difficult to introduce topics such as peace studies, when their relationship to the university system and their potential for contributing to employment remain unclear. On a resource level, peace education has yet to develop its potential in India due to a paucity of funding. Universities in India struggle with many of the same resource issues that face much of the country. Things that many take for granted in better-funded institutions overseas are precious resources in India. The socio-economic situation in higher education has been changing, and the emphasis on consulting and fundraising to earn more resources for the institution is challenging the role of the traditional teacher. The employment situation has changed, and people are no longer getting jobs as a result of merely completing a bachelor’s or postgraduate degree. Academia has been forced to educate for professional success, sometimes at the expense of intellectual and socially driven pursuits. It is impossible to ignore the acute levels of economic disparity that exist between Indian institutions and their counterparts in the West. Is peace education a luxury item that only countries with ample resources can afford to integrate into their curricula? Is peace education only possible in countries without serious economic and development issues? These questions present another paradox: countries with the greatest need for peace education programs are least able to implement them. If we consider Johan Galtung’s concept of structural violence as a great inhibitor of peace,19 then we see that India is, in fact, a victim of many of the conditions discussed in peace studies. Structural violence is those systems of economic, ecological, racial, and gendered injustice that pervade societies and inhibit their members from reaching their full


potential.20 Both chronic and acute forces of structural violence plague Indian so-ciety every day. A major goal and responsibility of academics should be to address these dimensions of structural violence in India. Some institutions have analyzed issues pertaining to structural violence in specific contexts, have offered solutions in neighbouring villages, and have contributed to the working of civil-society organiza-tions in certain localities. However, India’s larger economic, structural, and ideologi-cal challenges make it difficult for peace studies and peace education to meet their potential for impact. The structural violence that peace education seeks to eradicate is the very thing that inhibits its development.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CENTREIn an attempt to address some of these issues, five faculty members at the University of Madras with a long history of shared interests in the area of peace and conflict founded the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (CPCRS) in 2003. They came from the departments of Politics and Public Administration, International Law, Christian Studies, Islamic Studies, and Anthropology. The CPCRS was started through the initiative of these individuals rather than through any institutional body or agenda. It received verbal support from the University administration but no formal financial or institutional support. At different times, several of these faculty members were heads of their respective departments, with extremely limited time, energy, and resources to carry out CPCRS activities, but they persevered. The experiences and interests that motivated these faculty members toward the development of the CPCRS varied. Motivations included a lifelong interest in Gandhi and his thinking on peace, awareness of the economic issues related to both military spending and development, increased dissatisfaction with an overly litigious and combative legal system, increased concern over the role of religion in violent communal conflicts, and extensive involvement in human rights issues, particularly those related to caste-related oppression and women’s rights. The interdisciplinary nature of the faculty and their interests created a wide-ranging agenda. Initial goals and objectives were as follows: 1) to explore the theoretical under-pinnings of peace and conflict; 2) to provide educational programs and activities for students and community members; 3) to provide support for, and engage in, various peacebuilding activities; 4) to increase the role of scholars in India in peace-related issues and conflict resolution activities; and 5) to develop a network of scholars in the field. When Tint first arrived in Chennai, the CPCRS had just been formalized. While much energy had been put into visioning its development, no programs had


yet been offered. One of the goals of the collaboration between the CPCRS and USEFI was to produce programs for students and community members in order to raise the profile of the CPCRS. Some of the programs conducted included a two-day mediation training for lawyers and law students; a two-day seminar on gender, power, and conflict; and lectures for a wide range of student and faculty audiences on topics such as intercultural conflict resolution, peace studies and education, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and collective memory and conflict resolution. Further, various meetings were held with community groups to explore local and national issues of peace and conflict resolution. Ongoing efforts subsequent to the Fulbright collaboration have continued. The CPCRS organized a major conference with Fulbright scholars from Sri Lanka, Ne-pal, and India, and has received visiting lecturers from numerous countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Furthermore, the faculty mem-bers have signed memoranda of understanding with International Conflict Research (INCORE) at the University of Ulster and with the United Nations University in Tokyo. In collaboration with USEFI, staff conducted additional programs and a workshop for schoolteachers, and Prasad went to the USA as a Fulbright Scholar in Residence. The ongoing networking with other similar institutions in India and abroad has gone well, and the CPCRS seems to be becoming part of a larger phe-nomenon called peace education.

THE ROLE OF PEACE EDUCATORS WITHIN INDIAGiven the challenges presented above, the role of the peace educator in India war-rants deep exploration. The Centre’s faculty members have given much thought to this question, and the following thoughts emerged in discussion:21

The role of academics is to serve people in a variety of ways, for academia •is answerable to the people, to society. When academics engage themselves with the issue of peace, they are doing what every academic should be doing. This flows from the social responsibility that all forms of knowledge should have. It is important to awaken a sense of responsibility among scholars and students to contribute to peace and communal harmony. The role of academ-ics is one of animation and, wherever feasible, guidance.Education should be used as a means to transform institutions and societies. •Scholars need to initiate peace through academic discourse within and outside campuses and institutions. They need to teach peace, order, and conciliatory attitudes as value-laden life processes in civic education. They need to change the mindset inherited from past generations by re-implanting a culture of


tolerance and conciliatory notions both at early-learning and mature levels of education.Academics can play a major role in peacemaking and peacebuilding activi-•ties, and the academy can play a leading role in making society more peaceful. Through their work in their respective institutions, through their writings, and through appearances in the media, academics can play a vital role.Academic institutions are becoming aware of the efficacy of training pro-•grams. They are prepared to learn from common people and be influenced by their needs and desires. A peace centre can address a variety of issues and make more and more people see why peace is needed and what peace can bring.Wherever possible, teachers should teach these courses even when formal •and financial support are lacking. Commitment to peace should enable teachers to start in a small way and try to convince the more influential of the need for, and scope of, peace studies. Scholars need to set examples and make students and administrators believe in the efficacy of peace education.The role of peace educators is rooted in the ability to provide hope and •confidence. Despite skepticism regarding the role of scholars, people still have faith in them; their works and words carry respect and regard among common people. Their involvement in peacemaking and peacebuilding will generate confidence. Their impartial, supposedly unbiased, and forthright views will first of all enhance hope among the needy, those who are most in need of peace. And their involvement will be welcomed without suspicion. The academics’ role is one of hope.

RECOMMENDATIONSIn light of the challenges outlined above, we offer several recommendations to assist in the nurture of peace education in India. 1. Awareness about peace education has not percolated adequately in India. It is imperative to increase this awareness. Through all levels of education, community groups, and private and public organizations, communicating the potential for this discipline is important for its success and viability. By teaching peace-related issues in primary-school levels, educators may introduce peace education as a core, rather than peripheral, force in education. 2. Scholars must involve the media whenever possible in peacemaking and peace education in order to cultivate these ideas in the public mind. Peace educators


need to spark the interest of the media and the general population, and finding connections to this interest is crucial. 3. The world, and particularly the academic world, needs to be aware of the paucity of resources in Indian academic institutions. The ability of third-world countries to contribute their most vital scholarship to this discourse depends on their ability to reach their audience. Greater understanding of the limitations within third-world institutions in the development of peace education programs is vital. 4. One way to address these resource issues is to develop partnerships for In-dian institutions. Linkage grants and reciprocal arrangements between institutions in India and institutions overseas can have multiple benefits: they can distribute global financial resources more equitably, increase the opportunities for cultural and intellectual exchange, and expand the network of international peacemakers. 5. An additional way to help develop peace studies in India is to cultivate the support of corporate sponsors and foundations. Academics need to find ways for potential funding bodies to see peace education as a discipline that is in line with their own goals and missions. Peace is everyone’s business. Supporting the develop-ment of peace education as an academic discipline is not just an act of philanthropy; it is an investment in the future of the country. 6. Academics need to bridge the divide between theorists and practitioners. Partnerships between universities and other peacebuilding institutions such as nongovernmental organizations, development organizations, religious organiza-tions, and dialogue, training, and reconciliation groups will all increase the role and visibility of academics. These bridges are essential to develop successful partnerships for peace. 7. Political decision and policy makers need to know about the need for peace studies and peace education programs. Their acceptance and support will greatly enhance the respectability and validity of peace education in academia. Academ-ics, in turn, need to be not just theorists, but also viable policy informants. It is important to utilize and nurture the bridges that do exist between the academic and political worlds. 8. Scholars need to develop curricula that have both domestic and international relevance. Peace studies will only become a viable and successful venture in India if students show an interest in its offerings. Connections to current crisis situations of which people are aware go far to popularize peace education courses. It will help to broaden the definition of “peace” as a concept that goes beyond the cessation of war, and make links to issues crucial to society. Issues such as women’s and Dalit22 rights, democracy, resource distribution, environmental issues, communal conflicts,


and development are all vital to the teaching of peace. Joining forces with other departments teaching in these areas and connecting with them under the rubric of peace studies can give peace education greater visibility and a stronger base in Indian colleges and universities. 9. Issues of pedagogy in India demand attention. One way to help integrate the issues and skills essential to the work of peacemakers is to challenge traditional learning methods. Paolo Freire has written on the use of education both as process and content to address issues of hierarchy and oppression.23 Experiential learning, engaged pedagogy, interactive teaching methods, and dialogue are all necessary tools for the peacemaker’s classroom. Through these methods, students do not only gain information about peace issues; the methods themselves engender change in individuals and groups that can have a ripple effect in other contexts. Thus, peace education joins together with education for peace to influence society in a holistic way. While pedagogical change is important, it can only be done successfully within the bounds of Indian culture and society. What might be appropriate pedagogically in other contexts may not be so in India, so shifts in philosophy and pedagogy must coincide with cultural values and approaches. 10. Indian academics need deeper discussion on what they most hope to achieve to further peace education in India. Issues of development, human rights, communal conflict, and conflict with Pakistan have been the foci of peace studies curricula. Given these foci and India’s own history of embedded conflict, using education to address the conflicting histories, narratives, and inequities among its population24 could go far to break through some of the intractability around these conflicts. Education is a highly underutilized tool to address India’s multiple issues. While some of these recommendations may seem self-evident, it is important to think clearly and directly about them. Peace is a choice, not an accidental state of being. So also is the conscious development of ways to enhance the work of peace. Peace education and research make up a large part of this work. India has the intellec-tual, historical, and philosophical potential to be a leader in this field, and the world has much to learn from her. yet in the current state of vast global and structural inequities, India cannot do this alone. As stated earlier, peace is everyone’s business; so is the development of peace education in India and other third-world regions.

ENDNOTES1. Ian M. Harris, “Conceptual Underpinnings of Peace Education,” in Peace Education:

The Concept, Principles, and Practices Around the World, ed., Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002), 15–25.


2. Betty A. Reardon, “Peace Education: A Review and Projection,” in International Companion to Education, ed. Bob Moon, Sally Brown, and Miriam Ben-Peretz (New york: Routledge, 2000), 4.

3. Naresh Dadhich, “Peace Education in India: Status and Implementation” (paper presented to the Peace Education Commission, International Peace Research Association, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June-July 2006).

4. Linden L. Nelson and Daniel J. Christie, “Peace in the Psychology Curriculum: Moving From Assimilation to Accommodation,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 1, no. 2 (1995): 161–78.

5. Ervin E. Staub, “From Healing Past Wounds to the Development of Inclusive Caring: Contents and Processes of Peace Education,” in Peace Education: The Concept, Principles, and Practices Around the World, ed. Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002), 73–86.

6. Ian M. Harris and Mary L. Morrison, Peace Education, 2nd ed. ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2003), 28.

7. Leonisa Ardizzone, “Towards Global Understanding: The Transformative Role of Peace Education,” Current Issues in Comparative Education 4, no. 2 (2002): 16–25.

8. Ian M. Harris, “Types of Peace Education,” in Children Understand War and Peace: A Call for International Peace Education, ed. Artur Raviv, Louis Oppenheimer, and Daniel Bar-Tal (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1999), 299–317.

9. Gavriel Salomon, “The Nature of Peace Education: Not All Programs Are Created Equal,” in Peace Education: The Concept, Principles, and Practices Around the World, ed. Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002), 3–13.

10. Louise Diamond and John McDonald, Multi-Track Diplomacy: A Systems Approach to Peace (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian, 1996).

11. Ian M. Harris and Amy Shuster, eds., Global Directory of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Programs, 7th ed. (San Francisco: Peace and Justice Studies Association, 2006), 24.

12. Jane Schukoske and Manjrika Sewak, “Track Five Diplomacy: Roles for Higher Education Institutions in Conflict Transformation” (paper presented at “Conference on Conflict Resolution,” Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, 2003). This research was later published as “Track Five Diplomacy: The Role of Higher Education in Conflict Transformation,” in South Asia: Dynamics of Politics, Economy and Security, ed. Kulwant Kaur and Baljit S. Mann (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2006).


13. Harris and Shuster, Global Directory.

14. Prabha Desikan, “Waste Management: Flexible Rules will Improve Compliance,” The National Medical Journal of India 17, no 2 (2004): 118.

15. Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988); Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination (London: Palgrave, 1991); Gene Sharp, Gandhi as Political Strategist (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1979).

16. Mark Juergensmeyer, Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2003).

17. Mahatma Gandhi, “Basic Education,” in Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Shriman Narayan, vol. 6 (Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan, 1968).

18. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Convocation Address (Benares Hindu University, Varanasi, India, 15 March 2008).

19. Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91; Johan Galtung, “Violence and Peace,” in A Reader in Peace Studies, ed. Paul Smoker, Ruth Davies, and Barbara Munske (New york, Pergamon, 1990), 9–14; Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (London: Sage, 1996).

20. See especially Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.”

21. These thoughts were excerpted from notes taken during various conversations with Centre faculty members and are used with their permission. The discussions were held to explore the explicit goals of the Centre in an attempt to further its mission. All five of the interdisciplinary faculty members from the Centre shared their thoughts about these issues. Centre faculty members continue conversations along these lines to deepen the connection between the university and issues of peace in India.

22. Dalit is a term used to refer to “lower caste” group members who typically suffer from issues of prejudice, discrimination, and human rights violations (Dalits are actually outside the caste system, part of the fifth varna). Formerly, Dalits were called “the untouchables” or Harijans. The term Dalit literally means, “broken,” “ground down,” “the oppressed,” or “stepped on.”

23. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New york: Seabury, 1970); Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New york: Seabury, 1973); Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope (New york: Continuum, 2006).

24. Gavriel Salomon, “The Nature of Peace Education.”


By the spring of 1983, Canada’s fifteenth prime minister, the dramatic and quixotic Pierre Trudeau, was on the verge of retiring, his reputation as an opponent of nuclear weapons in tatters. His recent decision to test the new American cruise missile in northern Canada—an alliance commitment—had galvanised the country’s nascent peace movement. In Vancouver alone, 65,000 people took to the streets in the largest peace demonstration Canadians had ever seen.1 The marches continued throughout the summer, with Trudeau’s effigy, perched atop a cardboard cruise missile, often hoisted before jeering protesters. Canada, their leaders complained, “has chosen the wrong crowd. We’ve chosen to hang around the street corners of the world with nuclear terrorists.”2

The peace movement’s denunciations upset the Canadian prime minister, who was daily becoming more frustrated by NATO’s failure to engage the Soviet Union in meaningful arms control talks. After a summer of quiet reflection, Trudeau decided to act alone in August 1983, launching a high-profile peace mission to mobilize world opinion and force political leaders to the negotiating table. This was no easy task and Trudeau soon found himself stuck in a struggle to keep his initiative moving on two

This article explores the efforts of Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to mount a ‘peace mission’ to defuse the sharply rising East-West tensions in late 1983. It explores the role of the peace movement in convincing him to act and examines his initial meetings with his foreign and defence advisors as he tried to enlist the support of Canada’s foreign policy establishment. The paper goes on to trace the prime minister’s struggle to garner support for his effort from the leaders of the major nuclear powers. Despite some marginal successes, Trudeau was prevented by the expectations of his Western allies from delivering key elements of his message, leaving him frustrated and increasingly isolated among Western leaders.

The “Ghost of Peace”: Pierre Trudeau’s Search for Peace, 1982-84

Greg Donaghy*

39The “Ghost of Peace”: Pierre Trudeau’s Search for Peace, 1982-84

fronts. At home, the foreign and defence policy establishment reacted with caution, trying to meet the prime minister’s demands for innovative policy while ensuring that his efforts did not impair Canada’s relations with its western allies. Abroad, Trudeau found plenty of rhetorical support for his peaceful intentions but little real interest in his specific ideas, most of which were dismissed as ill-conceived and poorly timed. The prime minister’s effort accomplished little, but it delighted most Canadians, reinforcing their skepticism about American claims to exclusive leadership of the western alliance. In their view, the importance and urgency of Trudeau’s prophetic plea for nuclear sanity amply justified the strains he placed on the fading concept of a North Atlantic community. Trudeau had entered federal politics as a back-bench member of parliament in 1965 and sought the leadership of the Liberal Party (and the prime ministership) three years later primarily in order to secure the place of French-speaking Canad-ians within Confederation.3 Preoccupied with constitutional questions, he showed only a sporadic interest in most foreign policy issues. In general, he was skeptical of Canadian foreign policy since 1945, which too often seemed defined by a network of US-led military alliances. Always prepared to strike out on his own, he sought policies more closely attuned to Canadian values and interests. This was especially true when he considered the range of problems associated with nuclear weapons, which consistently engaged his attention. Indeed, in 1963, he had delayed his entry into politics to protest the Liberal Party’s decision to accept US nuclear arms for the Canadian military. Five years later, on his election as prime minister in April 1968, he moved to eliminate these weapons from Canada’s limited arsenal. When India detonated a nuclear device built with Canadian technology in May 1974, Trudeau helped launch a global campaign to strengthen the non-proliferation regime. He championed another arms control project at the UN Special Session on Disarma-ment in 1978 designed to “suffocate” the emerging East-West arms race. These several initiatives established Trudeau as a leading anti-nuclear activist, a role his memoirs suggest he cherished deeply.4

Within a few years, it had become impossible for Trudeau to maintain his stead-fast opposition to nuclear weapons. The easing of East-West tensions, or détente, that followed the Cuban missile crisis and culminated in the Helsinki Accords on human rights in 1976, collapsed in the late 1970s. Fidel Castro’s decision to send troops to help liberation forces in Africa in 1976, Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the Soviet Union’s decision to upgrade its aging intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe destroyed détente and demanded a firm Western response. In December 1982, NATO adopted a “two-track strategy” for dealing with the


Soviet challenge. First, the alliance would replace its own aging missiles with more advanced ones and begin to test another generation of cruise missiles. At the same time, NATO would redouble its efforts to seek a negotiated settlement to the crisis created by the modernization of nuclear weapons in Europe. Trudeau’s support for NATO’s “two-track” approach was tested almost im-mediately when Washington asked to use northern Canada to evaluate its new cruise missile. The response by Ottawa’s security establishment was enthusiastic. The department of national defence, whose importance in US defence plans had declined during the 1970s, welcomed the opportunity to participate in the development of an important weapons system and to re-establish its fading ties with the Pentagon. Economic departments also greeted the scheme warmly, anxious to encourage the country’s small defence industry. Though Trudeau hesitated, he was eventually won over by his cabinet colleagues, and convinced by his close friend, the West German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, that the tests were the price of NATO membership.5 In early 1983, Ottawa formally agreed to test the cruise, igniting the wrath of Canada’s small peace movement. Like its American and European counterparts, with whom it had much in common, Canada’s small and marginalised peace movement had started to mobilize during the late 1970s as détente collapsed and the cold war intensified. At its core were a number of long-established but dormant peace groups as well as several of the larger Canadian churches. In 1978, in an early reaction to the changing temper of in-ternational politics, one of the country’s most moderate and respected peace groups, the World Federalists of Canada, began to fund Operation Dismantle, launching a national campaign to include anti-nuclear questions on local and municipal bal-lots.6 At roughly the same time, Canadian Protestant and Catholic churches became increasingly active in supporting Project Ploughshares, a group founded by the country’s pacifist Mennonite and Quaker communities. Growth was initially slow, but the election of Ronald Reagan as US president in November 1980 gave the movement momentum. A strident anti-communist, Reagan delighted conservatives by lashing out at the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and sharply increasing tensions with Moscow. “Reagan has been good for the militarists and the peaceniks,” joked Project Ploughshares research director, Ernie Regehr, in April 1981.7

Over the next two years, the peace movement grew rapidly. Between 1981 and 1983, Project Ploughshares saw its annual income soar from $11,000 to $273,000. The campaign resonated especially well with women, giving the waning women’s movement a new focus. The Voice of Women sent bus loads of demonstrators to the Second UN Special Session on Disarmament in June 1982 along with a petition


signed by 80,000 Canadian women.8 When word leaked a few months later that Ottawa was weighing a US request to test the cruise, Canadian peace activists were primed and ready. Protests were quickly mounted in major centres across the country, with 15,000 people descending on Ottawa for a “Refuse the Cruise” rally in October.9 By January 1983, the cruise tests had brought the elements of the movement together in a new coalition, “Against Cruise Testing.” The group put 100,000 protesters into the streets in April 1983 and attracted the support of the million member Canadian Labour Congress.10

Trudeau’s discomfort at the peace movement’s assault on his reputation as a nuclear opponent was evident.11 His distress reinforced his growing irritation that NATO had not yet delivered on the negotiations promised in its two-track strategy and fuelled his fears about the prospect, accidental or otherwise, of a nuclear Ar-mageddon. Once deeply attracted to summit diplomacy, Trudeau was increasingly inclined to dismiss heads of government meetings “for rubber stamping a communi-qué which has been cooked . . . [so that] there is no exchange.”12 Nevertheless, in the spring of 1983, he decided to bring his worries to the attention of Western leaders at the G-7 summit in Williamsburg, Virginia. He rejected the Anglo-American draft communiqué and insisted that a more moderate tone might produce greater dividends in Moscow, sparking a lengthy and acrimonious confrontation with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain. “I thought at one point,” Reagan confided to his diary, “Margaret Thatcher was going to order Pierre to go stand in a corner.” The bruising encounter shook Trudeau, who wondered if he should make his concerns public, and if so, how.13

Trudeau was encouraged to act by Tom Axworthy, his principal political advi-sor, and Robert Fowler, the assistant secretary to the cabinet for foreign policy and defence and the prime minister’s main source of advice on international affairs. The two men arranged for Trudeau to view the controversial National Film Board docu-mentary on the horrors of nuclear war, If You Love This Planet, and to lunch with its compelling Australian star, Dr. Helen Caldicott. Axworthy and Fowler also organized a meeting between Trudeau and Robert McNamara, a US secretary of defence under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. An early supporter of NATO’s strategy of flexible response, which set forth the notion that Soviet aggression could be contained by a mix of conventional arms and tactical nuclear weapons without necessarily escalat-ing to all-out nuclear war, McNamara had recently reversed his position and urged NATO to pledge not to use nuclear weapons first. More than anything else, Trudeau later recalled, McNamara convinced him to act while he was still in power, lest he become—like Schmidt or McNamara himself—a “ghost of peace,” saying what he


really thought only after he had left office. By late July, Trudeau had begun to consult his closest advisors on the various elements that might make up a Canadian initiative, and by the end of August, he had decided to act.14

Trudeau’s decision to speak out seemed prescient when the Soviet Union mis-takenly shot down a Korean airliner that had drifted over its airspace on September 1. He was horrified as wild and patently false charges and counter-charges flew between Moscow and Washington, threatening to send the crisis spinning out of control.15 A few weeks later, Ivan Head, who had served as Trudeau’s foreign policy advisor during the late 1960s and into the 1970s, proposed a high-profile initiative directed largely at the two super-powers and international public opinion. Head’s package featured a USSR-USA declaration on the dangers of destabilization and a proposal to raise the nuclear threshold by seeking a NATO pledge of “no early first use.” Head insisted that this ambitious undertaking, which would require the prime minister’s personal involvement, was ideally suited to Canada, with its strong internationalist traditions.16

Neither Trudeau nor Fowler underestimated the difficulties involved in mount-ing a diplomatic effort along these lines. Not least, they worried about the reaction of Canada’s NATO allies and of the two super-powers, whose attitude to nuclear weapons was described by Head “as nasty, brutish and insular.”17 They fretted too about the capacity of the Canadian foreign affairs and defence bureaucracy to handle the assignment. The initiative involved a sharp and public shift in Canadian security and disarmament policy, fields where Canada had tended to work quietly in close concert with its allies. Fowler warned the prime minister that his effort would “run against and across a number of bureaucratic currents.”18 He also doubted whether senior diplomats in external affairs were imaginative or quick enough to mount the kind of multi-faceted project that the prime minister had in mind. Moreover, Fowler knew that much of Canada’s arms control expertise had withered away during the 1970s. “Our ability to play in the field,” he warned, “is now rather abysmal.”19

To overcome these difficulties, the initiative was tightly scripted from the start, with control firmly residing with Fowler and the prime minister. On September 21, Trudeau met with Alan MacEachen, the secretary of state for external affairs, and Jean-Jacques Blais, the minister of defence, as well as their senior advisors. Sitting at the centre of the table, with his head in his hands, Trudeau rocked slowly back and forth, agonizing over the state of the world and what Canada could do about it. He sketched out his fears about the growing cold war, expressed his disappointment with the deadlocked arms control discussions, and raised his doubts about NATO’s strat-egy and the alliance’s capacity for renewal. He seemed to toss out ideas and questions


almost at random: could Canada breathe new life into the talks on Mutual Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR)? Could it contribute to the Conference on Disarmament in Europe (CDE)? What could Canada do to advance a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTB)? How should he go about raising the nuclear threshold? Following Fowler’s recommended script, he asked ministers to set up a working level task force, giving it just over a week to flesh out these and any other ideas it might unearth.20

Some officials greeted the prime minister’s proposals with skepticism, though few dared confront him directly. As Fowler had predicted, most proved “co-optable” and were swayed by the prime minister’s “enthusiasm and sense of mission.”21 Within days, an inter-agency task force was set up under Louis Delvoie, director general of the foreign ministry’s international security and arms control bureau. Reporting to the prime minister’s office, the task force met almost constantly over the next ten days in a succession of eighteen hour days, periodically interrupted by “soggy pizza and warm coke.”22 It came up with twenty-six possible initiatives, a speech to launch the peace mission, and a critical path outlining every stage from its projected start in late October to its intended finish in mid-December. Of the twenty-six possible measures, the task force selected six that it thought addressed genuine problems, enjoyed some prospect of securing East-West agreement, were likely to command public support in Canada and abroad, and lent themselves to action at the prime ministerial rather than the diplomatic level. The package included plans to restore East-West dialogue through NATO-Warsaw Pact Organization contacts; to call for a five-power nuclear conference; to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); to re-animate the stalled MBFR talks; to introduce new proposals to suffocate the arms race, most notably by calling for a ban on high-altitude anti-satellite weapons; and finally, to have NATO review its nuclear strategy.23

The task force’s proposals were broadly what Fowler and Trudeau had in mind, though senior members of the departments of external affairs and defence remained doubtful and thought the prime minister should limit himself to a few speeches and a trip to Moscow. Several muttered unhappily that the whole exercise would be better handled within “established departmental machinery.”24 Neither Fowler nor Trudeau, however, was about to let that happen. When the prime minister, with MacEachen and Blais at his side, met with his senior officials on the morning of October 7, he continued to follow closely the script developed earlier by Fowler. He immediately took complete charge, insisting that the task force remain in place and making it clear that the meeting would not question the idea of an initiative but would examine specific proposals to see if they were feasible. The prime minister would make the final decisions.25


During the afternoon, the group made its way through the task force’s recom-mendations, selecting some, rejecting others, and returning a few to Delvoie for more work. Most of the six measures favoured by the task force were accepted. The idea for increased NATO-WPO contact was abandoned since it was thought NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns would likely sabotage any initiative along these lines. Trudeau, who had already dealt unsuccessfully with Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi on nuclear matters in the mid-1970s, wanted to drop the proposal to strengthen the non-proliferation treaty as a non-starter but was persuaded to retain this element as the one most likely to secure immediate support from the five nuclear powers. The meeting’s most sustained discussion focused on the proposal, featured in the speech launching the peace mission, for a review of NATO strategy. Virtually the en-tire group objected to the measure. MacEachen, Blais, and Gordon Osbaldeston, clerk of the privy council, were especially worried that “it might be seen as a lack of faith or a breaking away from NATO.” De Montigny Marchand, the deputy under-secretary of state for external affairs, shared their concern. He suggested that Trudeau limit himself to “serving notice” through a restricted message to allied leaders that Canada would raise this question privately at an opportune moment. Trudeau insisted that he intended to explore this fundamental question, although he agreed to pursue it “in private and at a later date.”26 For the time being, then, the task force was to focus on developing the remaining four proposals and on the prime minister’s speech, which was now slated for a low-key University of Guelph conference on peace and security. On October 27, only two days after US forces invaded the small Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow its new Marxist-Leninist government, heightening the sense of international crisis, Trudeau launched his peace initiative. The setting was ideal. The audience of students and peace activists was generally sympathetic and the prime minister’s appearance at this low-profile event generated a buzz of excite-ment that gave the initiative some early momentum in Canada.27 Trudeau himself had put the finishing touches on the speech and he delivered a heartfelt and effective performance. “I am deeply troubled,” he confided to his audience, “by an intellectual climate of acrimony and uncertainty; by the parlous state of East-West relations; by a superpower relationship which is dangerously confrontational; and by a widening gap between military strategy and political purpose.” He blamed both Moscow and Washington and worried that they lacked “a political vision of a world wherein their nations can live in peace.”28

The prime minister again endorsed NATO’s two-track strategy, but insisted on the need to add a “‘third’ rail of high-level political energy to speed the course of agreement—a third rail through which might run the current of our broader political


purposes.” Announcing that he had already started to consult with Reagan and would soon leave for Europe and talks with his NATO allies, Trudeau explained that he would use these discussions to explore ways to draw the two superpowers away from confrontation and into dialogue, to get all five nuclear powers talking at one table, to halt nuclear proliferation, and to improve European security by raising the nuclear threshold.29

Between November 8 and 11, Trudeau skipped across Europe—Paris, The Hague, Brussels, Rome, the Vatican, Bonn, and London—conducting a series of in-depth conversations with the queen, the pope, and six heads of government. The absence of any substantial prior consultations meant that little real progress was made on any of Trudeau’s specific initiatives, except for a proposal to open the CDE in Stockholm at the foreign minister’s level, a late addition to the package. Nevertheless, the prime minister found general support for his view that something must be done to re-establish a political dialogue with the USSR. Each of his three main encounters was encouraging enough. French President François Mitterrand welcomed the prime minister’s initiative and indicated a sur-prising willingness to consider a five-power nuclear conference, an appreciable shift in policy.30 In Bonn, whose backing had long been considered essential, West Ger-man Chancellor Helmut Kohl also offered “substantial support” for the Canadian démarche, endorsing “the need to improve the environment of East-West dialogue.”31 Even Trudeau’s encounter in London, where he had been summoned at the last min-ute by a skeptical Thatcher, seemed to justify the peace mission. Thatcher’s interest, Trudeau later recalled, was a sign that he was mobilizing support; her astounding claim during lunch that “one had to remember that things were growing again one year after Hiroshima” was proof that the mission was needed.32

If Trudeau was disappointed that Mitterrand and Kohl cautioned him against moving too quickly, he did not let it show or slow him down. Indeed, encouraged by his European trip, the prime minister returned to Canada to deliver a second speech on the peace initiative, this time discussing in some detail his specific proposals for a five-power nuclear conference and a stronger non-proliferation regime. For the first time, he revealed his plans for a ban on high-altitude anti-satellite weapons and two other arms control proposals designed to add an element of stability and transpar-ency to the nuclear balance. Unwisely, and despite objections from Delvoie and the Canadian embassy in Washington, Trudeau delivered the speech to a Liberal Party fundraiser in Montreal. This lent the initiative a partisan flavour just as he was writing NATO leaders a letter reviewing his European trip and asking for their support in giving a lift to the stalled MBFR and CDE talks. Almost immediately afterward, the


prime minister left Canada for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Delhi. Though Trudeau normally enjoyed Commonwealth gatherings, where his long support for North-South dialogue had earned him many friends, he was ambivalent about pressing non-proliferation in this forum. It showed in his weak performance. He found it difficult to decide how to approach his opening speech, eventually re-jecting two draft speeches by the task force in favour of an impromptu talk that left observers puzzled and confused.33 Trudeau did much better in the restricted session on international affairs with a well-received speech that he wrote himself while en route to India. The speech abandoned Canada’s established policy of treating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on its own merits and proposed strengthening the non-proliferation regime by rewarding states that eschewed nuclear weapons with additional development assistance.34

The effect of the speech was greatly diminished when Trudeau unexpectedly circulated a resolution that coupled a plea for the five nuclear states to reduce their strategic arsenals with a call for the world’s non-nuclear powers to renounce nuclear weapons.35 Gandhi, whom Trudeau had not consulted (he reportedly cancelled a meeting with the Indian prime minister the night before so that he could sleep) was outraged. She denounced the NPT as a “humiliation” forced on the weak by the strong and declared that India, though it had no plans to build nuclear weapons, would never sign the treaty.36 Trudeau quickly retreated. While Commonwealth delegations sought common ground on non-prolifer-ation, word arrived that China’s leaders were ready to meet Trudeau, who had been one of the first Western leaders to visit that isolated country in 1973. Despite growing excitement among the prime minister’s entourage at the prospect of a breakthrough, Trudeau’s expectations for the visit remained muted. He hoped only to avoid out-right opposition to his proposed five-power summit and elicit a few words of general support. He exceeded these expectations in his opening interview with the Chinese foreign minister, who hinted that China might endorse a meeting of the five nuclear powers. But the next day, at his key meeting with the Chinese premier, Deng xi-aoping, Trudeau’s performance was terrible. After introducing his mission, Trudeau was unable to direct the conversation into useful channels as the 79-year old Deng, chain-smoking and spitting into a nearby spittoon, launched into an hour-long tirade about the state of the world. “A nuclear war would be awful, terrible,” Deng told the stunned Canadian. ”Two billion people would be killed. But China would survive.”37 Depressed, even repulsed, the fastidious prime minister thanked Deng and abruptly cut short the meeting. Nothing was coming from this quarter.


Delhi and Beijing left Trudeau tired and discouraged. Moscow’s decision to withdraw from the Geneva talks on intermediate range nuclear missiles on November 23 was also disheartening. Trudeau and Fowler reassessed the situation on the flight home from Asia. Rebuffed by China and unable to nail down a meeting with the ailing Soviet premier, yuri Andropov, the whole scenario was coming apart and threatened to leave Trudeau with nothing substantial to offer the American president, whom he wished to visit at the end of his mission. Urged on by Fowler, the prime minister decided not to retreat but to step up his efforts. He instructed MacEachen to use the NATO meeting slated for early December to promote high-level participation at the CDE meeting in January. The foreign minister was also asked to gauge allied willing-ness to support Canada “in applying pressure on both superpowers” and to launch “a fundamental review of NATO strategy.” “[F]rom now on,” Fowler told the prime minister, “‘pressure’ is the name of the game (let’s go for that Washington meeting before they realize what we are about.).” Trudeau agreed and over lunch, on the plane from Kuwait to London, he accepted an American offer of a mid-December meeting with US President Ronald Reagan.38

The prime minister’s NATO instructions, however, met strong opposition within the department of external affairs. Delvoie warned MacEachen that the Americans and many of the Europeans were opposed to any discussion of NATO strategy in the aftermath of the unsettling debates over the deployment of the INF.39 The embassy in Washington was concerned as well and suggested that any attempt to discuss NATO strategy needed to be carefully framed in as low-key a manner as possible. Perhaps, if Trudeau persisted, Canada might suggest that NATO’s new secretary general, Lord Carrington, take a general look at the problem of “whither NATO in the next ten years or so.”40 A hastily convened meeting of the task force acknowledged the danger of discussing NATO strategy and urged the prime minister not to push for a formal review of NATO strategy. Instead, MacEachen would tell the American secretary of state, George Schultz, that Trudeau wanted Carrington to examine the future of the alliance, a question the prime minister might raise eventually with Reagan.41

The NATO ministerial gathering at last gave Trudeau something to cheer about. MacEachen persuaded ministers to agree to attend the opening of the CDE in Stock-holm in January 1984 and convinced them to review NATO’s negotiating position in the MBFR talks. Moreover, the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, with strong Canadian support, managed to forge a consensus in the face of American and British opposition for a declaration that was meant to assure Moscow of NATO’s continued interest in a “genuine détente” respectful of each side’s “le-gitimate security interests.” Canadian officials were also encouraged by the alliance’s


decision to endorse a Belgian suggestion that NATO embark on a study of East-West relations in order to develop a more constructive dialogue with the Soviet Union. Some officials thought that this study, whose terms of reference echoed the 1967 Harmel Report on NATO strategy, might even meet the prime minister’s desire for a serious examination of NATO strategy. For the moment, at least, it would have to do. Schultz had made it clear to MacEachen that the US was not remotely interested in discussing NATO’s doctrine of flexible response.42 “[I]t was important to bear in mind that this strategy cost less than conventional deterrence,” the secretary of state observed, snidely suggesting that MacEachen ask “the prime minister whether he was willing to sharply increase the Canadian defence budget in order to reduce the excessive reliance on the nuclear deterrent.”43

With the NATO ministerial successfully behind them, the prime minister and the task force turned their attention to the all important meeting with Reagan. From the start, although the Republican administration had assured Canadian officials that it would be as helpful as possible in public, it made little effort to hide its skepticism. The administration rejected Trudeau’s view that the US shared any responsibility for renewed global tensions. It also opposed the idea of a five-power nuclear confer-ence as likely to give Moscow a platform to continue its campaign against the INF, and worried that Trudeau’s initiative might shatter NATO unity.44 The initial gulf between Ottawa and Washington grew wider when Trudeau returned from Europe and revealed the full details of his initiative in his mid-November speech in Montreal. Complaining bitterly about the lack of consultation, Washington continued its op-position to a five-power meeting and rejected all of Trudeau’s suffocation proposals. Canadian officials in Washington were clearly troubled by the growing diver-gence in views. They warned Ottawa that the “prime minister’s initiative runs the risk of being seen in Washington as little more than thoughtful speeches unless we make a hard consultative effort to bring the administration onside. . . . [U]nless the USA is cooperative on substance, the initiative is stalled.”45 Senior Canadian policy-makers, including Alan Gotlieb, ambassador to Washington, Marchand, and MacEachen, mounted a sustained effort with their US counterparts to place Trudeau’s initiative within the context of Canada’s continued support for NATO policy, but they failed to shift American views. In a private remark that was subsequently leaked to the press, Lawrence Eagleburger, the state department’s crusty under-secretary of state for political affairs, described Trudeau’s efforts as “akin to pot-induced behaviour by an erratic leftist.”46 The president would need very careful handling. Preparations for the meeting with Reagan relied heavily on Gotlieb’s assessment of White House atmospherics. A long-time Trudeau confidant and a former deputy


minister of foreign affairs, Gotlieb had adopted a high-profile diplomatic style and carved a niche for himself in Washington society that gave him ready access to the highest levels of American government.47 The ambassador recommended that Trudeau’s message to Reagan should be as simple as possible, avoiding specific pro-posals since the president tended to turn meetings over to his advisors when he felt politically pressured or intellectually challenged. Trudeau should focus on Reagan’s declared interest in avoiding nuclear war through miscalculation or accident, touch-ing lightly on the need to reduce the international tensions that might provoke a crisis. Most important, the prime minister must persuade Reagan to moderate his of-ten intemperate language when discussing the Soviet Union. Referring to the reports available to him, Trudeau should explain that Moscow understood the president’s unshakeable determination to maintain a strong Western alliance but that the Soviet Union failed to see that Reagan was also “genuinely anxious for and truly committed to peace.” To combat these Soviet misapprehensions, the president had to make a “special new effort to reach out and address the Soviet leadership to demonstrate the depth of his commitment to a dialogue that would advance the security of both East and West.”48

Gotlieb’s soft line ran counter to the prime minister’s own instincts. As Trudeau had told Thatcher only a few weeks earlier, Reagan was a shrewd politician, and when pressed, as he had been by Trudeau over North-South issues at the Cancun Summit in 1981, he was capable of bending and compromising.49 Now, however, carefully coached by Gotlieb, who persuaded him to watch videos of Reagan’s press confer-ences and State of the Union addresses, Trudeau was impressed by the president’s skill as a political communicator and accepted the ambassador’s reasoning.50 When he met with Reagan on the morning of December 15, he opened with Gotlieb’s script. Trudeau observed that the president had sent the Soviet Union strong signals of his strength and resolve by restoring Atlantic unity and reviving the Western economy. But Reagan was also a man of peace, who had recently told the Japanese Diet that nuclear war could not be won and that all nuclear weapons should be banished. NATO’s latest communiqué was a message of peace too, affirming the legitimate security interests of both East and West and reiterating the alliance’s belief in genuine détente. Unfortunately, no one was picking up on these peaceful Western signals—not Moscow, not the Commonwealth heads of government, not the international public. “Was there not more,” asked Trudeau, “the president could say?”51

Reagan was charmed, and to the astonishment of his entourage, the president and the prime minister chatted easily and comfortably about the media’s failure to get things right, the public’s fear of nuclear war, and Moscow’s failure to grasp the


president’s message.52 While Trudeau did not follow Gotlieb’s script completely—he insisted on raising the thorny question of NATO strategy despite the task force’s continued strong opposition—the Canadian prime minister was restrained and non-confrontational. After the meeting, he was rewarded for his good behaviour when Reagan appeared beside him on the White House East Lawn, calling their dis-cussions “very useful” and wishing the prime minister “Godspeed in your efforts to build a durable peace.” Trudeau responded, calling the meeting a “great step forward” and explained that “the president agrees that we should not seek military superiority in NATO . . . [and] that we do not think a nuclear war can be won.”53 The president smiled but said nothing. Gotlieb was delighted. At an embassy lunch after the meeting, US Vice-President George Bush told the ambassador “how impressed he was with what the PM said and how glad he was that the PM said it.”54 The press was more skeptical, especially when the prime minister admitted that he and Reagan had not discussed any specific elements of the initiative. Trudeau himself shared their doubts and was upset when the respected syndicated columnist, Joseph Kraft, asked how a bright guy like Trudeau could be conned by the crowd at the White House.55 “Is it too sycophantic?” the prime minister wondered aloud. “Does it look as though I’ve been taken in?”56 Simply securing Reagan’s dismissive blessing certainly did not meet the objective the prime minister had set himself. “My tactic,” he noted a week after his meeting with Reagan, “was essentially to nail Reagan down publicly to the newer and more positive aspects of his Diet statement, and—even more important—to commit him publicly & personally to the progressive statement made by NATO in Brussels. If he should flinch in pursuit of this new course, he can be held to account.”57

Fowler assured Trudeau that his approach to Reagan had been the right one and warned him against lashing out at Washington. “[T]he exercise of real power and influence (as opposed, perhaps by implication, to commenting upon them) must be a delicate and subtle thing; particularly when one—and particularly when one is a Canadian—is dealing with the most powerful nation on earth (and perhaps too, when one is dealing with Ronald Reagan).” Despite his growing frustration, Trudeau held his fire, turning his attention to the Soviet Union, the only nuclear power he had not yet visited. The prime minister was under few illusions about the probable impact of his visit. He had been warned by Peter Roberts, Canada’s ambassador to the USSR, and Robert Ford, a former ambassador and one of the government’s leading Soviet experts, that Moscow was unlikely to be very receptive to his peace mission so soon after the INF deployment in Europe. Nevertheless, he insisted on a visit to Moscow, hoping “to exorcize however slightly their paranoia & sense of inferiority.”58


Securing an invitation to Andropov’s Moscow was impossible. In late November, the prime minister’s emissary to Moscow, Geoffrey Pearson, had met Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko but was told that the timing was awkward. Unaware of exactly how ill the dying Andropov really was, Trudeau patiently waited for the Soviet leader to recover, eventually extending the deadline for a visit until the end of January. The delay prompted the task force to canvass the options available to the prime minister. There were four: wait for a meeting with Soviet leaders; end the initiative immediately with a speech emphasizing that much had been done; visit Geneva to speak on his three suffocation proposals; or visit Eastern Europe, keeping the initiative alive and generating more dialogue with the East.59

From Stockholm, where he was attending the opening session of the CDE, MacEachen wired his opposition to visiting East Europe and encouraged the prime minister to wrap things up quickly on his own terms rather than have the peace initiative peter out inconclusively.60 The prime minister rejected his minister’s advice and decided to visit Eastern Europe, a visit that did nothing to advance his peace initiative and brought into the open the rumoured differences between Trudeau and his senior foreign policy officials over the peace mission. Angry that his recommen-dation to end the peace initiative had been ignored, MacEachen reportedly leaked news of the disagreement to the press, fuelling Privy Council Office concerns that the department had abandoned the prime minister. For his part, frustrated by his failure to spark a fundamental debate about NATO strategy, the prime minister seemed increasingly determined to speak his mind. He insisted that the task force include a critical examination of NATO’s strategy in the speech it was in the midst of drafting to signal the end of the peace mission.61 Meanwhile, in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the annual symposium of world political and corporate leaders, Trudeau confronted the former French prime minister, Raymond Barre, in a public debate over NATO strategy, asking twice if the French politician really believed that the US would risk nuclear war to defend Europe from a conventional Soviet attack.62

The prime minister’s remarks attracted critical headlines in Canada, the United States, and Europe. In Washington, the Canadian ambassador was summoned to the state department and scolded for his prime minister’s presumption in questioning Washington’s commitment to defend Europe.63 John Rouse, the American chargé d’affaires, called on Marchand the next day to explain that the US was “disturbed,” “surprised,” and “dismayed” by Trudeau’s remarks and his failure to raise them first in NATO or Washington.64 Rouse was preaching to the converted. Marchand was al-ready trying to persuade the prime minister to abandon his plan to question NATO’s


strategy in his final speech. In a lengthy and tightly argued memorandum, he warned that any authoritative government statement that questioned NATO strategy was sure to alienate most of Canada’s allies. He added that “while clarifying certain ambiguities in NATO doctrine may be intellectually attractive, it is under present circumstances regarded by most as strategically unsound. The strategy of deterrence . . . gains strength and credibility from the fact that no options are foreclosed.”65

Trudeau again retreated, and when he rose in the House of Commons on 8 February to bring his peace mission to an uncertain end, he made no substantial reference to this vexing problem that he so badly wanted to address. Instead, resur- recting an idea that had intrigued him since Ivan Head had first advanced it in October, he suggested that the two superpowers might agree on “ten principles of a common bond between East and West,” a catechistic decalogue that began with the premise that “both sides agree that nuclear war cannot be won.”66

Observers found the speech anti-climactic, which was perhaps fitting since the peace mission was soon to enjoy a short, unexpected afterlife. Andropov’s sudden death four days later finally made a visit to Moscow possible. On February 15, after Andropov’s funeral, Trudeau at last spent thirty-five minutes with the new Soviet secretary-general, Konstantin Chernenko. The meeting yielded little and what little it did produce was also available to Bush, Kohl, and Thatcher, who were among the many Western mourners lining up to see the secretary-general. Once alone in press-ing the Western alliance to reach out to its Soviet adversary, Trudeau was just one more voice in a growing chorus anxious to defuse the crisis enveloping the globe since the fall of 1983. But Trudeau had been the first, for which he had paid a price. Hastily conceived and poorly-timed, his initiative had strained Canada’s relations with the US and some of its European allies. However, for taking that risk, he perhaps deserves some of the credit for the moderation in rhetoric and the easing of international tensions that occurred in the winter of 1984. He could justifiably point to the more judicious language of Reagan’s January 1984 State of the Union address, the extensive Schultz-Gromyko encounter in Stockholm, and the improved atmosphere in the MBFR talks as evidence of some limited success. This was important to Trudeau and Canadians, who rewarded their prime minister with heartfelt cheers for his efforts. In acting for peace against long odds, Trudeau both reflected and reinforced the highest aspira-tions of Canadians for their foreign policy, an idea he expressed to the House of Commons when he concluded his mission in February 1984:

And let it be said of Canada, and Canadians: that we saw the crisis; that we did act; that we took risks; that we were loyal to our friends and open


with our adversaries; that we lived up to our ideals; and that we have done what we could to lift the shadow of war.67

DISCLAIMER* The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade or the Govern-ment of Canada.

ENDNOTES1. Kevin Cox, “80,000 rally across nation against cruise,” The Globe and Mail, April

25, 1983. See also Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 197-99.

2. Lorne Slotnick, “Anti-missile marchers defy city bylaw,” The Globe and Mail, July 25, 1983.

3. Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 202.

4. Trudeau, Memoirs, 332-34.

5. Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson, Trudeau and Our Times, Volume 2: The Heroic Delusion (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 352; Trudeau, Memoirs, 334.

6. “Ryerson minds in 60s Ban the bomb, students say,” The Globe and Mail, January 25, 1979, P2.

7. Eleanor Barrington, “Peaceniks cool on love, hot on war,” The Globe and Mail, April 11, 1981, F3.

8. Dorothy Lipovenko, “80,000 signatures collected; Disarmament issue galvanises women,” The Globe and Mail, June 6, 1982, P16.

9. Canadian Press, “Opponents on march against Cruise testing,” The Globe and Mail, November 1, 1982, S18.

10. “Coalition protests cruise missile tests,” The Globe and Mail, January 31, 1983, P4; on developments in the spring see Cox, “80,000 rally,” and “CLC supports coalition for peace,” The Globe and Mail, May 28, 1983.

11. Jeff Sallot, “Aim at Soviet arms, PM urges protesters,” The Globe and Mail, April 23, 1983, P9. See also, McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 355.


12. Cited in Canadian Annual Review for 1982 (Toronto, 1983), 188.

13. Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography (Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 353. McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 358-59; J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 365; Trudeau, Memoirs, 222-23. See also, Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New york: HarperCollins, 1993), 321.

14. Richard and Sandra Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” Saturday Night, May 1984, 23-24.

15. Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 364.

16. Ivan Head, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 6 September 1983, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade [DFAIT] File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Records [DFAIT Records]; see also, Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau, The Canadian Way: Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968-1984 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995), 301-02.

17. Head, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 6 September 1983.

18. Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 20 September 1983, Privy Council Office [PCO] File U-4-5, PCO Archives. On the bureaucracy, see also Trudeau, Memoirs, 336.

19. Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 28 June 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

20. International Security Initiative by Prime Minister, 21 September 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

21. Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 20 September 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

22. Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 366.

23. Briefing Book: Proposals on East-West relations and International Security, 1 October 1983, RG 25, Volume 9753, Library and Archives of Canada [LAC].

24. “Recap,” October 1983 and Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 6 October 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

25. Fowler sketched out the strategy for the meeting in his Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 20 September 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives. On the meeting itself, see “Proposals on East-West Relations and International Security:


Afternoon Session with Prime Minister Trudeau,” 7 October 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1, DFAIT Records. Accounts of the meeting are in Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 367-68; McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 367-68; and Head and Trudeau, The Canadian Way, 305.

26. “Proposals on East-West Relations and International Security: Afternoon Session with Prime Minister Trudeau,” 7 October 1983; Ottawa to Bonn, Tel IDDZ-004, 17 October 83, DFAIT File 28-6-1, DFAIT Records.

27. Confidential interview with the author, 17 July 2003 (interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement); Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 26; and Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 368-69.

28. Trudeau, “Reflections on Peace and Security,” Notes for Remarks by the Rt. Hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau to the Conference on Strategies for Peace and Security, 27 October 1984, DFAIT, Statements and Speeches, SS83/18.

29. Trudeau, “Reflections on Peace and Security,” Statements and Speeches, SS 83/18, Guelph, 27 October 1983.

30. Paris to Ottawa, Tel 5272, 8 November 1983 and Paris to Ottawa, Tel 5273, 8 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records and L.A. Delvoie, Memorandum for the Deputy Prime Minister and SSEA, 14 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1, DFAIT Records.

31. Bonn to Ottawa, Tel 1033, 11 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

32. Tokyo to Ottawa, Tel 2548, 23 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records. See also Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 369-70 and Trudeau, Memoirs, 338.

33. Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 27.

34. Ottawa to PM Delegation/Delhi, Tel IDDZ 218, 25 November 1983 and PM Delegation/Delhi to Ottawa, Tel PMDL 95, 27 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records. See also Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 27.

35. Tokyo to Ottawa, Tel PMDL 4, 18 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.


37. Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 28; Confidential interview with the author, 15 July 2003.


38. Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 1 December 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

39. Delvoie, Memorandum for Mr. Fowler, 5 December 1983 and Nato to Ottawa, Tel 8680, 7 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

40. Washington to Ottawa, Tel 2497, 6 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Initiative, DFAIT Records.

41. Ottawa to NATO, Tel IDDZ 264, 8 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Initiative, DFAIT Records and Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 7 December 1984, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

42. NATO to Ottawa, Tel 7189, 9 December 1983; Delvoie, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, IDDZ-0271, 12 December 1983; and Delvoie, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, IDDZ-0279, 12 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Initiative, DFAIT Records.

43. Brussels to Ottawa, Tel 580, 9 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Initiative, DFAIT Records.

44. US General Relations Division to Task Force, 15 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

45. Washington to Ottawa, Tel 2428, 14 November 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Initiative, DFAIT Records.


47. Gotlieb is profiled favourably in McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 372-73.

48. Washington to Ottawa, Tel 3003, 7 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

49. Fowler, “Record of a Conversation between Prime Minister Trudeau and Prime Minister Thatcher on November 11, 1983,” DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records. A year earlier, at the Williamsburg Summit, Trudeau told Mitterrand “that it was interesting to note how Reagan, the quintessential political animal, had learned, had picked up messages and lessons, from previous meetings.” Fowler, “Meeting between Prime Minister Trudeau and President François Mitterrand on May 30 [1983) at 5:45 pm,” RG 25, File 26-4-Sommet, LAC.


50. McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 376-7. On the preparations for the meeting, see also Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 372; Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 28.

51. McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 376-77.

52. For the atmospherics of the meeting, see Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 29-30; McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 377-78.

53. Cited in McCall and Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, 378.

54. Washington to Ottawa, Tel 3036, 16 December 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

55. Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 22 December 1984, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

56. Cited in Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 30.

57. Trudeau’s marginalia on Fowler, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 22 December 1984, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

58. Trudeau’s marginalia on Delvoie, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, 5 December 1983, PCO File U-4-5, PCO Archives.

59. Gary Smith, Memorandum for the Prime Minister, IDDZ-33, 16 January 1983, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

60. Stockholm to Ottawa, Tel SCDEL-0009, 17 January 1984, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

61. Ottawa to PM Delegation/Bucharest, Tel 103, 1 February 1984, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

62. Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” 30-31.

63. Washington to Ottawa, Tel 2006, 2 February 1984, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

64. “Notes on a call by the USA Chargé d’affaires on de Montigny Marchand, 3 February 1984,” DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

65. Ottawa to PM Delegation Bucharest, Tel IDDZ-0115, 1 February 1984, DFAIT File 28-6-1-Trudeau Peace Mission, DFAIT Records.

66. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 9 February 1984, 1213.

67. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 9 February 1984, 1216.

Canadian Culture of Peace Programme Symposium 2008 partnered with the Gandhi Peace Festival & King Dinner

October 2 – 5, 2008 – Hamilton, Ontario, CanadaThe United Nation’s Manifesto 2000 called for this decade to be a “Culture of Peace for the Children of the World”. It asked us to: Respect all Life, Reject Violence, Share with Others, Listen to Understand, Preserve the Planet, and Rediscover Solidarity. This symposium seeks to foster the creation of Culture of Peace Networks across Canada to help create support structures locally for individuals and organizations working towards a Culture of Peace.The desired outcomes for the Symposium are: to create conditions for strengthening current community chapters or groups that support peace initiatives across Canada; to share best practices; to develop concrete plans for forming new Culture of Peace Networks; to develop between 5 and 10 new Culture of Peace chapters by the end of 2009; to develop on-line or phone networks to sustain new chapters.The symposium will feature keynote speaker Dr. David Adams (retired Director of the Unit for the International year for the Culture of Peace) and Gandhi-King guest speaker Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles.

web: http://www.peace-education.ca/ email: [email protected]

phone: (905) 523-0111

Seventh Annual Conference on Peace Education in CanadaNovember 21 – 23, 2008 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace and the McMaster Centre for Peace Studies are hosting the Seventh Annual Conference on Peace Education in Canada, November 21– 23, 2008 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The conference theme is “What Can I Do for Peace? Engaged Citizenship for the Sustainable Future.” It will include multidisciplinary workshops, presentations, and public speakers demonstrating best practices and encouraging critical engagement as global citizens, with an emphasis on peace leadership and education. For more information, registration, or to submit a workshop or paper proposal, please contact us at the following coordinates:

web: http://www.peace-education.ca/ email: [email protected]

phone: (905) 523-0111Pre-conference Workshops: November 17 – 20, 2008

Conference: November 21 – 23, 2008


. . . the toll on women and girls is beyond imagining; it presents Africa and the world with a practical and moral challenge which places gender at the centre of the human condition. . . . For the African continent, it means economic and social survival. For the women and girls of Africa, it’s a matter of life and death.1

In this passage from his 2005 Massey Lecture, since published as A Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis contrasts the 2002 HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa with the situation in 2005: “if anything, things are worse,” he observes, “[e]very-where I went it was a scene out of Dante.”2 Lewis offers a furious indictment of the United Nations’ refusal, rooted in the international community’s unwillingness to recognize the gendered nature of this crisis, to deal seriously with this pandemic. He insists that the crisis will not be met until the world is ready to challenge a long history of male entitlement. Lewis asserts that, at its core, this is a story of wilful neglect and violence against an entire continent and, most particularly, against that

This article argues that the scholarly literature underpinning global and peace education largely ignores gender with troubling results. This omission makes incomprehensible a number of world crises, all of which could benefit from global and peace education. To chart the implications of this omission, this article first surveys peace education and pedagogy, demonstrating some of the intersections with the broader field of global education. Secondly, the article surveys the history of peace education, demonstrating the close interplay between women’s activism and peace education. Finally, the article considers some of the effects of a gender-blind analysis of peace education for students, for teachers, and for our collective future. In conclusion, the article calls us to reconsider and include gender issues within peace and global education, and to broaden what we define as peace education.

‘Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves’: The Price of Ignoring Gender in Modern Peace Education

Sharon Anne Cook


continent’s women and children. HIV/AIDS in Africa is more than a health crisis. It is also a famine—now termed the “New Variant Famine”—arising from produc-ers’ deaths; an orphan-maker, with women struggling to raise their grandchildren without education or financial support; a situation of ongoing sexual violence and rape to which the remaining women are subjected; and a clear demonstration of the United Nations’ inability and unwillingness to deal effectively with any or all of these factors. Ultimately, all of these failings can be traced back to women’s disem-powerment. Lewis deplores the exclusion of women—despite their status as primary agricultural producers and sole family heads, daily faced with violence—from the quest for peace. There can be little doubt that gender is crucially important in understanding the requirements for peace or peacemaking, in this situation or any other. yet Stephen Lewis is one of the few international activists to have noted this feature. In fact, a gendered analysis of peace education is hard to find. With very few exceptions, the scholarly literature underpinning global and peace education ignores gender with troubling results. The obvious effect of omitting gender is to make a number of world crises, all of which are appropriate content for global and peace education, impos-sible to understand. This includes, but is not limited to, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Removing gender makes a holistic, integrated, and respectful analysis impossible. It obfuscates the naming of alternative approaches that are at the very root of peace education. The possibilities for peaceful solutions to any problem are also embed-ded in a clear understanding of the problem’s sources, some of which are oppressive behaviours that must be condemned, not celebrated. It has been observed that where peace education has been introduced into teacher-education curricula, more women than men tend to select these courses.3 Despite a lack of formal research, anecdotal evidence from youth workers and advo-cates for peace and global education seems to confirm the same pattern in community organizations. The history of peace education in particular confirms the alignment of peace, education, and gender. This paper explores the dominant definitions and theoretical frameworks for peace education, and examines some of the implications of the absence of gender analysis for the scholarly field and for those teachers who wish to engage these materials with their students, our future teachers. Where peace education is offered at the school level, it is often under the broad rubric of “global education.”4 But long before the emergence of global education in the 1970s, peace education had been developed in the late nineteenth century by groups such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.5 Histori-cally, promoting peace was seen as the role of women, while men were thought to

61‘Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves’

be drawn to war and violence.6 The nineteenth-century notion of “maternal femin-ism” depicted women as holding the moral high ground, and therefore as especially important in providing, through education, a blueprint for a morally upright and peaceful society.7 As well, the nineteenth-century peace movement understood the potential of education, through the use of national and international networks, to be a powerful means of creating peace-loving citizens. Emily Hermon observes that peace educators assumed that education was a “long-range strategy, challenging the acceptance of war and building attitudes for peace.”8 Much of this was accomplished by women, and yet, as Deborah Gorham observes, the record of women’s contribu-tions represents “a tradition that has been all too often overlooked.”9

To chart the implications of this omission, this paper is organized into three sec-tions. First, a survey of peace education and pedagogy will demonstrate some of the intersections with the broader field of global education; second, a brief survey of the history of peace education will show the close interplay between women’s activism and peace education; finally, we will consider how a gender-blind analysis of peace education may affect the students we hope to attract to this field, the teachers who undertake this educational task, and our collective future.

PEACE EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGy DEFINEDLike the broader global education movement of which it has become a part, peace education encompasses a wide variety of aims and approaches, depending on the audience and the socio-political and ideological contexts. Also, like global educa-tion, peace education overlaps and shares theoretical and practical ground with other types of “progressive educations,”10 including development education, environmental education, human rights education, and multicultural education. David Hicks and Andy Bord note that peace education shares with global education its concern with contemporary problems as the basis of its content and a belief in participatory and active learning strategies.11 Peace education has also been identified as sharing com-mon ground with citizenship education through beliefs in the interdependency of the world and citizens of the global community,12 and through its faith that tolerance, respect for difference, and appreciation of the rights of others produce peace.13 The connection between peace education, gender equity, and justice is even closer. In her discussion of “negative peace,” one of peace education’s foremost au-thorities, Betty Reardon, agrees with other feminists that

. . . there is a fundamental interrelationship among all forms of violence, and that violence is a major consequence of the imbalance of a male-


dominated society. Forms of various types, from the intimidation of rape to the social imposition of dependency, maintain this balance. In itself, the patriarchy is a form of violence.14

Within these shared frameworks, then, peace education has been defined as including non-violence, human rights, social justice, world-mindedness, ecological balance, meaningful participation, and personal peace.15 Others define peace as all times when a nation is not actively at war, and peace education as everything sup-porting that condition.16 An important source on peace education, Ian Harris and Mary Lee Morrison’s Peace Education, defines the field as comprised of diversity education, violence-prevention, conflict resolution, and civic education.17 Human rights and disarmament education figure prominently in some models of peace edu-cation,18 while others concentrate on anger management, environmental awareness, and responsibility and tolerance.19

Strikingly, however, aside from the work of Betty Reardon neither peace educa-tion nor its current protector, global education, includes gender disparity within its core definition. Despite global education’s strong moral base,20 in which individual or national desires are to be subsumed for the common good,21 different value systems tolerated,22 and the interdependence of all societies encouraged,23 gender is rarely evident as a group or category24 for analysis. In those rare instances where gender is discussed, it is subsumed in broader categories of human rights and social justice, competing with other forms of global inequity. Of the leading proponents and theorists of peace education—Ian Harris, Mary Lee Morrison, Swee-Hin Toh and Virginia Floresca-Cawagas, Graham Pike, or Meri Merryfield—none offers a gendered analysis of peace education. An otherwise useful article on classroom prac-tices of peace education in a collection entitled Women and Peace never mentions women or introduces a gendered analysis, either in its theoretical underpinning or pedagogical expression.25 In their assessment of international models of peace educa-tion, Robert Aspeslagh and Robin Burns conclude that there is greater recognition among peace educators of the need for intercultural dialogue than of issues related to sexism and patriarchy.26 Berenice Carroll notes that women have been shut out of the peace movement itself: “. . . we often find ourselves outsiders: if not excluded, then accepted mainly as exception or as servant.”27 Betty Reardon, the above-mentioned exception to the omission of gender analysis within peace education literature, continues in her stirring 2001 teachers’ unit, Education for a Culture of Peace in a Gender Perspective,28 to put forward the feminist case for the causes and amelioratives in achieving a culture of peace. That her analysis is exceptional in considering gender is both surprising and troubling,


especially when one considers the rise in the 1980s of ecofeminism, with its thesis of the “organic interrelatedness of living systems and the imperative to survival of nurturing relationships.”29 The reflection of this view in the Earth Covenant, in the United Nations Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World, and in UNESCO’s Statement on Women’s Contribution to a Culture of Peace30 all illustrate the relevance and importance of a gender-informed blueprint for peace education. Sadly, this powerful feminist vision of global security, grounded in social equity and policy, ecological balance, and biosphere health, is excluded from the broader global education movement. Stephen Lewis’s 2005 Massey Lectures address the depth of this loss in the United Nations’s efforts to assuage Africa’s distress. He entitles this segment of his Massey Lectures “Half the World, Barely Represented”:

Despite all the lip service paid by the UN member states to the importance of gender equality, only 11 of the 191 ambassadors, or 5.7 percent, are women. Worse still, the make-up of the workforce of the UN agencies … is similarly distorted. The funds, programs, and agencies will tell you, proudly, that up to 33 percent of their professional staff are women, but quite aside from asking why it should be only 33 percent … a closer scrutiny will show that the concentration of women is invariably at the lower professional grades . . . . But that’s just the half of it, and the lesser half. The other aspect of multilateralism, astonishing and offensive in equal measure, is the absence of any single, powerful agency within the UN system to represent women.31

It does seem that in the United Nations’ structures for peace education, as the song says, “Sisters are [Mainly] Doin’ it for Themselves.”32 Part of the explanation for peace education’s failure to address gender in the face of world crises is its conceptual imprecision. Gavriel Solomon points to the panoply of goals and the inadequacy of most peace education models to understand, much less act on, many world conflicts.33 Ken Montgomery finds, in his examination of war and peace in secondary-school textbooks, the production of “narrative mythologies about the [Canadian] nation as a peaceful and tolerant entity to be emulated by the rest of the world,” where peace is presented as something others need, and peace edu-cators are depicted as “moral citizens who somehow transcend histories and legacies of racism, colonialism and other interlocking oppressions.”34 Gada Mahrouse points to a basic essentialist and universal notion implicit in peace education in which human nature is assumed to be good, with non-violence a visible expression of this goodness.35 Postmodern critics especially point to peace educators’ “grand narration”


as unrealizable and essentialist.36 Some researchers find that problematizing peace educators’ moral certainty aligns critics with “repression and violence.”37 Harris and Morrison note assertions that peace education lacks intellectual rigour and that it is excessively value-laden.38

Pedagogy that effectively teaches peace has developed as an adjunct to the global education movement, and draws on many of the same progressive approaches common in global education. Pedagogical practices that support a culture of peace are holistic, reflective, and woven through other disciplines, such as history, and they stress such empathetic strategies as role-playing and simulation, “transforma-tive inquiry,”39 and authentic community partnerships and associations. Many peace educators recommend critical thinking strategies, such as value clarification and multi-perspectivistic discussions.40 Peace education is future-oriented, rather than focusing on the present or the past,41 and relies on textbook accounts of peace as well as war.42 Impassioned teachers, though ones eschewing propaganda in favour of open-minded discussions,43 are also assumed to counteract the culture of violence dominating popular culture. Betty Reardon summarizes the “most urgent task for peace education” as “teaching the skills and capacities necessary to create and pursue alternatives to the present order.”44 To appreciate how peace education has come to mean so many things to so many people while using a wide variety of pedagogies, we now turn to a brief history of peace education.

THE ORIGINS OF PEACE EDUCATIONEducation that promotes peace is credited with an almost 400-year history, begin-ning after the Treaty of Breda between the Netherlands and Britain, when the Czech educator Comenius linked formal education and peace.45 However, the contemporary peace education movement dates from the late-nineteenth century, when peace societies in Europe and North America encouraged “internationalism” through educational programs. The Societé d’Éducation Pacifique, founded in 1901, aimed to create a network of teachers who would encourage peace curricula. Not coincidentally, this era also featured the feminization of the teaching force in North America, providing women with an opportunity to implement peace education with their students.46 At the same time, women developed civic aspirations and a “ma-ternal feminist” identity. They justified a public role, “world-mindedness,”47 because of their presumably greater virtue and natural disposition for peace, whatever their culture, race, or class.48 This moral leadership in both private and (circumscribed) public spheres substituted for a national civic involvement, which was denied them until women gained the right to vote in most Western nations during or immediately after World War I.49


Peace societies often had strong female membership. For example, by 1905, the Swiss Ligue Internationale de la Paix et de la Liberté was about one-third female.50 In this period, peace societies also appeared in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Britain, and Scandinavia. Most had the objective of drawing the attention of “young women to the dangers of the current international system (or anarchy)”51 while urging them to demonstrate alternatives. In North America, peace organizations adopted an analysis that argued that violence was rooted in both individual actions and systemic societal failures, and that both were changeable through education.52 Canadian as-sociations included the young Women’s Christian Association, the National Council of Women, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,53 and many others, with chapters also in the United States and Britain, as well as international organizations to facilitate peace as part of their broad social activist agendas. By the First World War, an international network of both women’s and gender-integrated peace groups had been established, and these, too, ultimately depended on education to further their principles. The International League for Peace and Freedom,54 the Woman’s Peace Party,55 and the 1915 International Conference of Women for Permanent Peace56 all turned to education as a critical force for change.57 In many cases, these international associations also lobbied for peace education through national groups such as the American School Peace League;58 the Canadian League of Nations Society;59 the 1932 Disarmament Conference, which promoted moral disarmament; and the International Peace Committee, which approached peace through an action-oriented method.60 Veronica Strong-Boag notes that

For all their differences, internationally-minded women of many persuasions shared both a conception of their sex’s particular sensitivity to the costs of armed conflict and an essential optimism about the power of education and the limitations of prejudice. By instructing children and adults in the follies of war and the ways of peace, women could prepare the way, as surely as any diplomat, for a better world.61

The Second World War and the succeeding Cold War reignited a debate about the dangers of nuclear armaments. The most active educational agency for peace in this period was the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza-tion (UNESCO), which encouraged a broad program of international education.62 It was supported by a range of organizations, including the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, the World Association of World Federalists, the Friends Service Committees, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. By the mid-1960s, an active International Peace Research Association was in existence, and by 1972, it was joined by the Peace Education Committee.63


At the national level, too, women in this period made a place for themselves in peace activism—in Canada through the Voice of Women,64 in the United States through Sisters Opposed to Nuclear Genocide,65 and in Britain at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.66 As peace proponents, they recognized the power of education as in the past, but increasingly they exploited political channels by attempting to construct a non-partisan peace movement made up of women from around the world. Hence, peace education preceded global education by many years, and it was adopted early on as a women’s issue. Although women often experienced lower status when in partnership with men, peace education was where women directed their energies.67 In all of these organizations, it was accepted that education was an important vehicle for encouraging peace.68

IMPLICATIONS OF A GENDER-BLIND ANALySIS Why has gender been ignored as a category of analysis in peace education? Several reasons suggest themselves. First, with the backlash against global education gener-ally, and in the United States also against peace education, proponents in the field have been understandably worried about incorporating any obviously controversial topic, risking further erosion of support. In the case of feminism, there has been a clear backlash against popular feminism generally since the 1990s; thus, attention to gender seems to have suffered a double jeopardy. In addition, partly arising from the feminist backlash, and partly because of splits in the field of feminist analysis, there has been a reluctance by many feminists to entrench pacifism in feminism. Hence, there is some justice to the charge that feminists themselves are implicated in the failure to insist on a gendered public discourse.69 The result of this type of intellectual retrenchment is to sentence peace education—and global education—to stagnation, further eroding their scholarly integrity. Indeed, as I have already noted, this criticism of weak scholarship has been made of both global and peace education. Holding to the line of least resistance will not bring in new advocates or researchers, nor will it motivate students. A second explanation for the absence of gender analysis in peace (and global) education concerns the field’s elasticity. Eager to incorporate new developments and constituencies—for example, in the areas of diversity education, violence prevention, and civic education—peace education has expanded rather wildly in all directions. As new areas have been added, others, especially those perceived by some to be divisive, have been scaled back or not developed at all. This has not resulted in wholesale and sudden deletion of areas of work but in a gradual loss of support—death by a thousand cuts. Thus, gender has been largely ignored or sometimes discounted as


discriminatory, while the focus of peace studies has narrowed so that the area under examination is more immediate and instrumental to our current needs. In effect, the very definition of peace education has changed from one with a global focus to one concerned primarily with unpleasant personal behaviours in a local context. A third possible explanation is rooted in the progressive, child-centred peda-gogy employed by peace and global educators. As the scope of peace education has expanded, so has the pedagogical range, generally to incorporate yet more interactive strategies. Hence, the field has developed great affection for topics and approaches that can be demonstrated through simulations, role-playing, or case studies. This, in turn, demands a certain conceptual simplicity of the issues and materials discussed, and it militates against pedagogies that will divide the class into warring factions. Difficult discussions such as those concerning structural sources of violence or the effects of gender discrimination might, it could be feared, result in chaotic, acrimoni-ous student interactions. What, then, are the results of ignoring gender in peace education? This paper began with Stephen Lewis’s impassioned analysis of the shortcomings of the world’s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and his explanation for this appallingly weak response: an unwillingness to take gender seriously. If global or peace education will never call anyone in the developing world to account for her/his decisions, despite the death sentence these decisions represent for women and children, this field will remain uncontroversial—and sterile. Bad decisions can kill people, and in this case the vast percentage of those dying are women and children. To write women out of this sad story by refusing to engage the disabling effects of gender discrimination is intellectually dishonest and morally repellent. The result is to hobble any clear-sighted teaching of the viciously interrelated issues at play. A refusal to recognize the effects of privilege in developing societies or our own disempowers students, causing them to misunderstand the magnitude of the crisis, the invidious effect that gender inequities have had on a society, and the still-disastrous results of gendered discrimination. To integrate a gendered perspective that considers the many ways in which privi-lege erodes peace guarantees nothing beyond a more equitable treatment of difficult issues. At the very least, however, by including gender analysis in the discussion we are alerted to the complexity of the task to which global educators must set themselves. In her moving account of the difficulties she faced in her Women and Global Per-spectives course at the undergraduate level, Mytheli Sreenivas points out that “simply providing data about women around the world cannot suffice to develop a global perspective on gender in the classroom.”70 She describes her students as vacillating


between the “shoals of ethnocentrism on the one hand and cultural relativism on the other,”71 unable to find a third perspective from which to ground their critical analysis. Sreenivas’s unflinching critique of her own efforts alerts us to the magnitude of the task of integrating a gendered dimension into the curriculum, but also to the importance of the learning in which her students were fortunate enough to engage. It also reminds us of feminism’s responsibility to educate for peace. As Berenice Carroll argues, “feminists may have a special obligation and a special role to play in creating peace, not because they speak for women, nor because they see any inherent or im-mutable connection between women and peace, but because they speak to women, and seek the development among women of a changed political consciousness.”72

Global education arose in response to the Vietnam War, when in a dramatic denial of critical thinking, education was used as the handmaid of patriotic sup-port.73 Today also, as the United States fights an increasingly unpopular war, peace education as critical thinking and as public act has never been more needed. The interrelatedness and interlocking nature of economic, social, media, and defence systems that global education elucidates also remind us of our collective culpability. As educators, we have a duty to return the peace agenda to global education, and to include gender analysis as part of that reconstituted education. Both are essential to a full understanding of global processes that give rise to and sustain inequity and violence.

ENDNOTES1. Stephen Lewis, Race Against Time (Toronto: Anansi, 2005), 137.

2. Lewis, Race Against Time, 137.

3. Between 2000 and 2005, statistics for the gender split at one typical teacher education program, that of the University of Ottawa, demonstrate that the percentage of female students ranges between 77 and 80.9 percent. In the optional courses associated with peace and global education, the percentage of women is closer to 85 percent. (Statistics generated August 2006 by the Office of Admissions, University of Ottawa. Copy on file with the author.)

4. See, for example, Tara Goldstein and David Selby, Weaving Connections: Educating for Peace, Social and Environmental Justice (Toronto: Sumach, 2000).

5. See, for example, Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–65 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965).


6. Sharon Anne Cook, “Through Sunshine and Shadow”: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995).

7. Berenice A. Carroll, “Feminism and Pacifism: Historical and Theoretical Connections,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 2–28.

8. Elly Hermon, “The International Peace Education Movement, 1919–1939," in Peace Movements and Political Cultures, ed. Charles Chatfield and Peter van den Dungen (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 128.

9. Janice Williamson and Deborah Gorham, Up and Doing: Canadian Women and Peace (Toronto: Canadian Women’s Press, 1989), 32.

10. Toh Swee-Hin and V. Floresca-Cawagas, “Educating Towards a Culture of Peace,” in Weaving Connections: Educating for Peace, Social and Environmental Justice, ed. Tara Goldstein and David Selby (Toronto: Sumach, 2000), 368.

11. David Hicks and Andy Bord, “Learning about Global Issues: Why Most Educators only Make Things Worse,” Environmental Education Research 7, no. 4 (2001): 413–25. See also David Perkins, “Paradoxes of Peace and the Prospects of Peace Education,” in Peace Education: The Concepts, Principles, and Practices around The World, ed. Gavriel Solomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2002), 37–54.

12. Ian Harris, “Challenges to Peace Educators at the Beginning of the 21st Century,” Social Alternatives 21, no. 2 (2002): 28–32. See also Swee-Hin and Floresca-Cawagas, “Educating Towards a Culture of Peace.”

13. Gada Mahrouse, “(Re)Producing a Peaceful Canadian Citizenry: A Lesson on the Free Trade of the Americas Quebec City Summit Protests,” Canadian Journal of Education 29, no. 2 (2006): 436–53.

14. Betty Reardon, Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security (New york: State University of New york Press, 1993), 39.

15. Terrance Carson and Elizabeth A. Lange, “Peace Education in Social Studies,” in Trends & Issues in Canadian Social Studies, ed. Ian Wright and Alan Sears (Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press, 1997), 208–27; David Hicks and M. Steiner, eds. Making Global Connections: A World Studies Workbook (Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham, 1989).


16. Dorothy Thompson, “Women, Peace and History: Notes for an Historical Overview,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 29.

17. Ian Harris and Mary Lee Morrison, Peace Education, 2nd ed. ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2003).

18. Douglas Roche, The Human Right to Peace (Ottawa, ON: Novalis/St. Paul University Press, 2003).

19. Ken Montgomery, “Racialized Hegemony and Nationalist Mythologies: Representations of War and Peace in High School History Textbooks, 1945–2005,” Journal of Peace Education 3, no. 1 (2006): 19–37.

20. Cathie Holden, “Learning for Democracy: From World Studies to Global Citizenship,” Theory into Practice 39, no. 2 (2000): 74–80; Graham Pike, “Global Education and National Identity: In Pursuit of Meaning,” Theory into Practice 39, no. 2 (2000): 64–73.

21. Benjamin R. Barber, “Challenges to the Common Good in the Age of Globalism,” Social Education 65, no. 1 (2000): 8–13; Betty Reardon, Comprehensive Peace Education: Educating for Global Responsibility (New york: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1988).

22. Susan Hargraves, “Peace Education: Politics in the Classroom?,” in The Canadian Anthology of Social Studies: Issues and Strategies for Teachers, ed. Roland Case and Penney Clark (Vancouver: Simon Fraser University Press, 1997), 109–121; Jan L. Tucker and Peter J. Cistone, “Global Perspectives for Teachers: An Urgent Priority,” Journal of Teacher Education 42, no. 1 (1990): 3–10.

23. Johann Le Roux, “Re-Examining Global Education’s Relevance Beyond 2000," Research in Education 65 (2001): 70–80; Betty Reardon, Comprehensive Peace Education.

24. yvette V. Lapayese, “Toward a Critical Global Citizenship Education,” Comparative Education Review 47, no. 4 (2003): 493–501; Margaret Wells, “Bringing a Gender Perspective to Global Education,” Orbit 27, no. 2 (1996): 31–33.

25. Margaret Wells, “Teaching for Peace in the Secondary School,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 215–224.


26. Robert Aspeslagh and Robin J. Burns, eds. Three Decades of Peace Education around the World: An Anthology (New york: Garland, 1996). See especially chapter 1.

27. Carroll, “Feminism and Pacifism,” 2.

28. Betty Reardon, Education for a Culture of Peace in a Gender Perspective (New york: UNESCO, 2001).

29. Reardon, Women and Peace, 160.

30. Reardon, Education for a Culture, 20.

31. Lewis, Race Against Time, 122–23.

32. "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" was recorded by the Eurythmics (from their Be Yourself Tonight album) and American soul/R&B musician Aretha Franklin (from her Who's Zoomin' Who? album), released as a single in 1985. The song is considered to be a modern feminist anthem. “‘Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves,’” Wikipedia, May 9, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_Are_Doin'_It_for_Themselves.

33. Gavriel Salomon, “The Nature of Peace Education: Not all Programs Are Created Equal,” in Peace Education: The Concepts, Principles, and Practices around The World, ed. Gavriel Solomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2002), 3–14.

34. Montgomery, “Racialized Hegemony,” 34.

35. Mahrouse, “(Re)Producing.”

36. Robert Aspeslagh, “Dreamers Appear to be Practical Realists: Peace Education as a ‘Grand Narration,’” in Aspeslagh and Burns, Three Decades of Peace Education, 392–93.

37. Mahrouse “(Re)Producing.”

38. Harris and Morrison, Peace Education, 164–66.


40. Betty Reardon, “Militarism and Sexism: Influences on Education for War,” in Aspeslagh and Burns, Three Decades of Peace Education, 143–60; Wells, “Teaching for Peace.”



42. Hermon, “International Peace Education Movement.”

43. Wells, “Teaching for Peace,” 220–21.


45. Aspeslagh and Burns, Three Decades of Peace Education.

46. Marta Danylewycz, Beth Light, and Alison Prentice, “The Evolution of the Sexual Division of Labour in Teaching: A Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec Case Study,” in Women and Education: A Canadian Perspective, ed. Jane Gaskell and Alison McLaren (Calgary: Detselig, 1987), 33–60.

47. Veronica Strong-Boag, “Peacemaking Women: Canada 1919–1939," in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 147.

48. Deborah Gorham, “Vera Brittain, Flora MacDonald Denison and the Great War: The Failure of Non-Violence,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 137–148.

49. Cook, “Through Sunshine and Shadow”; Frances Early, “The Historic Roots of the Women’s Peace Movement in North America,” Canadian Women’s Studies 7, no. 4 (1986): 43–48; Richard J. Evans, Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism and Pacifism in Europe, 1870–1945 (Sussex: Wheatsheaf, 1987); Barbara Roberts, “Women’s Peace Activism in Canada,” in Beyond the Vote: Canadian Women and Politics, ed. Linda Kealey and Joan Sangster (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 276–308.

50. Sandi E. Cooper, “Women’s Participation in European Peace Movements: The Struggle to Prevent World War I,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 56.

51. Cooper, “Women’s Participation in European Peace Movements,” 60.

52. Beverley Boutilier, “Educating for Peace and Cooperation: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Canada, 1919–1929” (master’s thesis, Carleton University, 1988); Terry Crowley, “Ada Mary Brown Courtice: Pacifist, Feminist and Educational Reformer in Early Twentieth-Century Canada,” Studies in History and Politics (1980): 76–114; Williamson and Gorham, Up and Doing.


53. Cook, “Through Sunshine and Shadow“; Roberts, “Women’s Peace Activism in Canada.”

54. Boutilier, “Educating for Peace and Cooperation”; Cambridge Women’s Peace Collective, My Country is the Whole World. (London: Pandora, 1984); Donald M. Page, “The Development of a Western Canadian Peace Movement,” in The Twenties in Western Canada, ed. Susan Mann Trofimenkoff (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1972), 75–106; Jo Vellacott, “Feminist Consciousness and the First World War,” in Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 114–37.

55. Marie Louise Degen, The History of the Woman’s Peace Party (London: Garland, 1972); Gorham, “Vera Brittain.”

56. Lela Costin, “Feminism, Pacifism, Internationalism and the 1915 International Congress of Women,” Women’s Studies International Forum 5, nos. 3–4 (1982): 301–15; Gorham, “Vera Brittain;” Jo Vellacott, "Women, Peace and Internationalism, 1914–1920: Finding New Words and Creating New Methods,” in Peace Movements and Political Cultures, ed. Charles Chatfield and Peter van den Dungen (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 106–124.

57. Swee-Hin and Floresca-Cawagas, “Educating Towards a Culture of Peace.”

58. Swee-Hin and Floresca-Cawagas, “Educating Towards a Culture of Peace.”

59. Strong-Boag, “Peacemaking Women.”


61. Strong-Boag, “Peacemaking Women,” 171–72.

62. Aspeslagh and Burns, Three Decades of Peace Education, 29.

63. Aspeslagh, “Dreamers.”

64. Candace Loewen, “Making Ourselves Heard: ‘Voice of Women’ and the Peace Movement in the Early Sixties” in Framing our Past: Canadian Women’s History in the Twentieth Century, ed. Sharon Anne Cook, Lorna McLean, and Kate O’Rourke (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001); Ruth Roach Pierson, ed., Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

65. Cambridge Women’s Peace Collective, My Country.


66. Beth V. Junor, Greenham Common: Women’s Peace Camp (London: Working, 1995).

67. Strong-Boag, “Peacemaking Women.”


69. See for example, Jo Vellacott, “A Place for Pacifism and Transnationalism in Feminist Theory; The Early Work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,” Women’s History Review 2, no. 1 (1993): 23–56.

70. Mytheli Sreenivas, “Teaching about ‘Other’ Women: Developing a Global Perspective on Gender in the Classroom,” Transformations 15, no. 1 (2004): 456.

71. Sreenivas, “Teaching about ‘Other’ Women,” 456.

72. Carroll, “Feminism and Pacifism,” 17.

73. Sharon Anne Cook, “Patriotism, Eh? The Canadian Version,” in Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools, ed. Joel Westheimer (New york: Teachers College Press, 2007), 45–152; Sharon Anne Cook, “Introduction,” in Pledging Allegiance, 1–12.


INTRODUCTIONWe begin with a detour called “understanding the nature of geography.” Ellen Semple, an American geographer, said in 1911 that geography was the study of how environ-ment controls human behaviour.1 Of course, taking environmental determinism to an extreme can justify the violence of colonial empire-building by claiming that without foreign “saving,” certain groups of people would simply be controlled by primitive environmental conditions. But Semple was highlighting a central insight of geogra-phy: particular environmental conditions lead to particular human behaviour. To put it differently, particular geographies lead to particular kinds of logic or ways of being in the world. Therefore, if one could understand the environmental conditions—the rise and fall of the land, the climate, the soil typology and vegetation—one might better understand human behaviour. End of Detour. In this paper, I argue that the Western criminal justice system represents a particular kind of geography, complete with its own logic. This “geography of crime” covers a particular territory, has particular “environmental conditions,” and sup-ports the growth of particular kinds of “vegetation” while actively discouraging the growth of others. In other words, it supports a distinct set of actors—lawmakers,

This article identifies the geography and logic of crime. Based on the author’s ongoing international research into healing justice from the perspective of three communities that practice such a justice, the article then contrasts the geography and logic of healing justice with the geography and logic of crime. It then argues that restorative justice falls between these two geographies. Despite the rhetoric that restorative justice is an alternative to the criminal justice system, this article demonstrates that restorative justice does not sufficiently challenge the underlying logic and geography of crime. The field of restorative justice would benefit from listening more closely to the geography and logic of healing justice found in various traditional communities.

Rethinking Restorative Justice: When the Geographies of Crime and of Healing Justice Matter

Jarem Sawatsky*


judges, lawyers, police officers—who act within the limits of certain environmental conditions. Once we learn to see the geography of crime we can better understand how it controls the behaviour of its various actors. The paper demonstrates that the geography of healing justice, based primarily but not exclusively on the approaches to justice of some Indigenous, Buddhist, and Christian communities I have been re-searching, represents a significantly different kind of geography, which in turn leads to significantly different behaviour. One characteristic of that different behaviour is a healing approach to justice rather than a largely punitive one. In between these two different geographies we find restorative justice. I propose that while much of the rhetoric of restorative justice criticizes mainline Western approaches to crime and in some ways resembles healing justice, restorative justice often does not sufficiently challenge the basic geography and logic of crime, and therefore is easily co-opted or incorporated into the geography of crime. If restorative justice wishes to live into the rhetoric of being an alternative to the criminal justice system, one real possibility is to challenge the basic conditions of the geography of crime by learning from the geography of healing justice.

THE GEOGRAPHy OF CRIMEWe will enter the geography of crime from the underside—that is, from the perspec-tive of a victim and critic. Then we will turn to some of the mainline proponents of criminal justice to see how they describe the lay of the land. From these sources we will then draw out the logic of crime, the way that such a geography controls human behaviour. Let us hear from a victim-critic, a woman named Rob Baum, who speaks in a poem entitled “This Body of Crime.” Listen to her experience of the criminal justice system:

I was afraidI was aloneHereafter I will always be afraid & aloneWhen the darknesswhen the silencewhen the human natureof an approaching shadowtears my heart into jagged piecesto cut my teeth

77Rethinking Restorative Justice

In the language of cases & rulesI am neatly transcribedtucked in sweet dreamsamid the files

Fear gives me significancealready I am textbook materialheld down against the sheetsmy flesh curling backagain the winds of anger disbelief & shame

They call me a rapebut I say it was done to meI have a namemy own body apart from this one

I am the body of a crimediscovered by the leagues of menfingers greedily probing the innermostbut despite all thisI still think I am morewoman than statistic

you want bruisesthe smell of flesh on recorda fracture to knit in the folderwounds for releaseyou want hysteriamy bleary face in profile& perhaps missing buttons toomysterious threadsslithering & unravelling in your drawer

& yes I fought& no I did not fightThere was a gun


there was a knifeor there was no weapon but fear & betrayal the damned inequity of my own genetics

your inferences are obvious& insultingyour concern is admirableespecially on paper& those pills which make me sickdevelop human guppiesanother medical victory

you will ask for blood& I will give you moremore blood more answersmore bloody answersuntil everyone is satisfiedI will nourish myself on memorytoo vivideven for cross reference

I am your rapebut I have a namea body apart from this oneplunderedfor its remaining loot

The crime is yours2

This poem describes some of the geography and logic of the criminal justice system from the perspective of a victim of the crime called rape. The poem is the struggle between the body of her true self, “a body apart from this one,” “more / woman than statistic,” and the “body of a crime,” which she sees as plundered and looted, as someone else’s body. The writer experiences the criminal justice system as tearing her “heart to jagged pieces” as she is forced to learn “the language of cases & rules.” The system begins by naming the harm according to its own standards and not accord-ing to the experience of the victim. “They call me a rape.” The criminal justice system names reality according to its own rules. The victim is sidelined: “neatly transcribed


/ tucked in sweet dreams / amid the files . . . already I am textbook material.” Those who work in the system are characterized as leagues of men greedily probing her innermost, seeking after blood and answers and “more bloody answers.” Baum sug-gests that the system seeks after the cold hard “facts” in ways that divorce them from experience, context, story, and emotion. The picture of the criminal justice system that emerges in this poem is clearly negative, and it comes from a single critic. To understand the lay of the land of the criminal justice system we also need to look to its best advocates. A study of ten major texts used in United Kingdom law schools to teach criminal justice reveals several distinguishing patterns that help identify the geography of crime.3 They help map in broad strokes the lay of land, the relevant actors, and the relevant issues and arguments. At the level of broad strokes, these texts are remarkably similar. In fact, one could roughly divide each of them into four parts: 1. Introduction: Each text begins with an introduction that sets the stage for the main actors: the legislature, the laws themselves, the police, the judges, the juries, and the lawyers. Ninety per cent of the books have an introduction to punishment in their opening sections. Not one of them has a section on victims, communities, or families of victims and offenders. Only one has a section on public and private interests. 2. How to Prove Guilt: These chapters address issues of criminal liability including actus renus (the conduct component of crime) and mens rea (the mental component of crime). They also address issues of proof and strict liability. 3. The Rules: These chapters focus on naming and describing the offences. This is the largest section of each of the books, comprising fifty to sixty per cent of each one. 4. Defences: This is a relatively brief section of each book—about ten per cent—and explores possible rationales for defence. There are some variations in the texts. Sometimes the inchoate offences (incite-ment, conspiracy, and attempt) and complicity offences are treated separately from the rest of the offences and are at the end of the book. One book addresses issues concerned with conditions of release, whereas the other nine do not cover the topic. Nevertheless, all ten books follow roughly the same structure. From the overview of the texts it is possible to understand Rob Baum’s poem more deeply. Victims are not included as a central part of the geography of crime, and so they are often treated as non-persons. With a focus on proving guilt, the justice system treats victims as evidence that can convict an offender. Baum’s


experience of the criminal justice system is that it names the conflict according to its own rules and codes. Indeed, this reflects and highlights the largest section of criminal law training, which focuses on naming and describing the offences that may happen. So what can be said about the geography of crime and the logic of crime, or the way the geography of crime controls the behaviour that flows from it? I would like to highlight six components of the logic of crime:

1. The Logic of States and InstitutionsCriminal justice begins with law, the rules, and the states and institutions that formed those rules. It is a state-centered understanding of justice, where the conflict, the process, the enforcement, and the punishment all belong to the state. To understand the criminal justice system, one needs to understand how and why institutions and states function. I will highlight just a few characteristics of this logic. A modern state and institutional logic is one that fragments. Accordingly, criminal justice is seen as a limited realm of activity that is separate from many other realms such as spirituality, health and healing, and social justice, to name a few. A state and institutional logic holds that it is able, and mandated, to create institutional systems that will care for people. The criminal justice system is one example where the state takes over the role of responding to conflicts on behalf of the community.

2. The Logic of Rules and ProcessesWe saw in the analysis of criminal justice texts that much of the content of these texts relates to what the rules are and what the processes are for following the rules. The hope of the logic of rules and processes is that if one applies a process in a just way, one will get an acceptable outcome. It is what John Rawls calls “imperfect procedural justice” or, in the more extreme form, “pure procedural justice”; if you apply the process in a just way, you need not worry about the outcome.4 For the criminal justice system, the process is epitomized by the courts and the legal system, and the just way is to follow rules of procedure, which create safeguards to make the process fair, balanced, and blind. However, any analysis of the outcomes shows that jails hold a disproportionately high number of persons with mental-health issues and persons from racial minorities and lower socio-economic classes. This power-fully demonstrates that in its outcomes the process is neither fair, balanced, nor blind.5 The point, however, is that the logic of processes holds that the right process administered in the right way will lead to an acceptable outcome.


3. The Logic of Problem ResponsivenessThe criminal justice system begins with setting the rules and does not act again until the rules are broken. The incident of breaking the rules is the key focus of criminal justice. This is why Rob Baum says, “they call me a rape.” Someone broke the rule prohibiting rape, and this is what the criminal justice system sets out to prove or disprove. By acting when problems arise, the criminal justice system focuses its en-ergy on the immediate crisis or the presenting problem. It is based on the belief that by responding to injustice it will cultivate justice, and the belief that the disease of crime can be stopped by an emergency-room method of responding to harm.6 There is not a clear or positive sense of justice apart from responding to the wrong.

4. The Logic of NounsThe logic of nouns is perhaps hard to understand, especially for English-speaking people, because it is such a natural part of our use of language. We saw in the poem and in the survey of criminal law texts a significant focus on naming and describing or judging “things” or nouns. Take rape: we have turned a terrible act of harm—a verb—into a noun. “They call me a rape.” The person who was harmed has become a noun, a victim, a rape case. The one who acted in a harmful way has also become a noun: an offender. These labels do not describe the true self. Rather, they are judgmental labels that only describe a moment in time, but may stick with a person for a lifetime. The criminal justice system is based on the belief that if you gather the right nouns—the judge, the jury, the prosecution, the defence—you can have an adversarial fight between these nouns to determine whose noun-label is correct: Guilty or Not Guilty. The logic of nouns is the logic of guilt. Rupert Ross, a Cana-dian prosecutor who studied Aboriginal justice and compared it to the Canadian justice system, devotes a whole chapter to showing how a noun-centred language like English conceives of justice as opposed to the verb-centred languages of most Canadian indigenous peoples.7

5. The Logic of Individual AutonomyThe criminal justice system comes out of a political philosophy that is based in no-tions of the autonomous self. Criminal law scholar Andrew Ashworth writes: “One of the fundamental concepts in the justification of criminal laws is the principle of individual autonomy—that each individual should be treated as responsible for his or her own behaviour.”8 Another legal scholar, William Wilson, agrees, saying that autonomy is “a fundamental, yet challengeable, premise” underlying the whole


operation of criminal law.9 This premise of autonomy means that the individual’s lib-erty must be respected, but a person who is capable of making free decisions must be held to account for deciding to break the law. This holding to account, then, assumes that the problem lies within individual will and liberty, and so holding to account means restricting or violating individuals and their liberty.

6. The Logic of Punishment and Violence Restorative justice pioneer Howard Zehr has said that the focus of the criminal jus-tice system can be summed up with three questions: “What laws have been broken? Who did it? What do they deserve?”10 The presumed answer to the final question is most often that they deserve punishment. This is why ninety per cent of the criminal justice texts have a section on punishment in their opening sections. This is why the media report on whether or not justice has been done by judging if an appropriate punishment has been delivered. But violence is not only the end product of justice. It is also considered an appropriate method of justice, and criminal law allows for the use of limited force and coercion at various stages in the process. Even outside the criminal justice system, in the popular imagination, to “bring someone to justice” often means to bring her/him to violence. So here is my attempt to highlight some of the basic components of the logic of crime that flow from the geography of crime. Of course, the identification of these components of logic requires more debate, but for now it is important to recognize that the criminal justice system is not just the court process: it is also the underlying logic of that process. If restorative justice strives to be an alternative to the criminal justice system, an alternative must be found both to the process and to its underlying logic. Before getting too far into how restorative justice does or does not challenge these basic components of logic, I would like to lay out another option, namely, heal-ing justice.

THE GEOGRAPHy OF HEALING JUSTICEOf course, not everyone believes in the logic of crime. Recently, I conducted the first international comparative research into healing justice. The goal was to find three very different living communities that were said to practise some form of healing justice. By engaging these communities in a participatory comparative study of heal-ing justice, I was able to identify a common phenomenon of healing justice that was present in each community despite differences in faith, language, geography, and ethnicity. While these communities differed in some of the practices and forms of


healing justice, they shared a common logic of healing justice and a common un-derstanding of the kinds of relationships that need to be present to sustain a healing kind of justice. The communities included in this comparative research were Hollow Water, an Aboriginal and Métis community in Manitoba, Canada; Iona Community, a Christian community in Scotland; and Plum Village, a Vietnamese-inspired Bud-dhist community in southern France.11 Here, I would like to highlight some of my analysis of the logic of healing justice as practised by these communities, especially in comparison to the logic of crime. I have identified six components of the logic of healing justice:

1. The Logic of Land and SpiritHealing justice does not begin with states and institutions. Healing justice, as prac-tised by these communities, begins and ends with the Spirit and the land. For each of these communities, healing justice comes from a journey into old-wisdom teachings. They trace this justice to the heart of, and a gift from, the Creator. Each community has a different name and understanding of this Spirit. However, all communities argue that if one wants to create and sustain a healing kind of justice, one needs to be in a particular relationship with Spirit and land. Both Spirit and land push a sense of justice beyond the individual and beyond the state. In fact, this kind of justice is not primarily about social control, but more about cultivating a life that acknowledges and responds to the gift, beauty, and fragility of life. When the land becomes a teacher of justice, the goal is to find wholeness by finding common connection. The goal of healing justice is more to (re)discover a sustainable and good balance in the local community than it is to impose a hierarchical state order on distant lands.12

2. The Logic of Transforming PatternsWhen one begins with a broad view of justice as something sacred, reflected in the logic of the Earth, which involves balance, harmony, and wholeness, the procedures of justice involve transforming relationships and patterns within the whole system. This does not follow the typical logic of rules and procedures. Here, justice is a creative act of staying close to those who suffer as they demonstrate, like canaries in a mine, those aspects of the environment that lead to harm rather than healing. Healing justice seeks to understand the root causes and conditions of harm, and to break the unhealthy patterns that lead to such harm. The logic of transform-ing patterns intimately links the episode of harm to the structures, patterns, and relationships that encourage such harm. This logic expands the horizon of time and


widens the relevant who—the people and networks involved. Rather than dealing with incidents, healing justice sees patterns, generations, and structures. Rather than primarily blaming individuals, it responds to harm as an opportunity to transform the whole community.

3. The Logic of Cultivating the Conditions of Loving-KindnessUnlike justice that is rooted in responding to harm (the logic of problem responsive-ness), healing justice is rooted in the logic of cultivating the conditions of loving-kindness. It does not wait for harm or for troubling episodes, but seeks at all points to cultivate the conditions for loving-kindness. In Johan Galtung’s terminology, this is a justice based not in negative peace (the absence of violence) but in positive peace (the presence of social justice).13 This logic of justice sees healing justice as an exploration of social, economic, and political conditions that lead not to harm but to loving-kindness. This logic explores how to organize a community in such a way as to lead to joy. When harm happens, healing justice does not focus all of its atten-tion on the negative. It believes that demonstrating loving-kindness is the way of awakening those who have forgotten how to act kindly. The logic of cultivating the conditions of loving-kindness, then, has a double goal: to avoid the environments that cause harm and to cultivate environments that lead to the fullness of life.

4. The Logic of Finding True IdentityRather than labelling victims, offenders, and professional helpers, healing justice seeks to help persons discover their true names. For these communities, the inspira-tion of watching land and Spirit leads them to focus on people’s true names as a way of learning about how all are connected to “others.” Those who have forgotten how to act as good relatives need to be reminded of what it is to be a good relation. Those who suffer harm are often seen as those who are out of balance—in danger of forget-ting their essential natures, their true names. The logic of finding true names means that justice must create space to explore identity and rediscover how all things are connected. Healing justice does not try to create good by telling people they are es-sentially bad. Rather, it tries to awaken compassion for the other by teaching about one’s true nature and the nature of mutual interdependence. Healing justice assumes that those who live in forgetfulness of these things need to be surrounded by a car-ing community that will help them remember who they are. These communities do not have a single, universal process, because this kind of logic seeks to understand identity both in its particularity and interconnectedness.


5. The Logic of Interdependent RelationshipsHealing justice is not based on logic that turns on individual autonomy, but on the logic of interdependent relationships. Because all things are seen as essentially inter-connected, responsibility and accountability are understood communally. Rather than blaming individuals, healing justice moves to understand how it is that families, villages, and countries raise people who harm others. At the same time, healing justice focuses on transforming those same sets of relationships. This logic of interdependent relationships is different from the logic of states. This logic gives preference to locally based and locally driven harm responses over state-based and state-driven ones. It seeks to transform the whole collective—its memory, its structures, its relationships, and its patterns of behaviour. This logic of interdependent relationships sees heal-ing justice as creating community—that is, creating social, economic, and political structures that are rooted in a healing perspective.

6. The Logic of Healing for AllThis logic sees healing as the interpretative framework for justice. Rather than pun-ishment, it sees healing as both the means and ends of justice. While healing justice is not always a justice free of punishment, punishment does not become the main inter-pretative framework. Healing justice is rooted in a justice that respects the sacredness of each person and believes that all can heal. It does not rely so heavily on punishment and violence as a last resort. It sees the world as constantly engaged in processes of change, and open both to change toward healing and change toward harm. Healing justice sees harm as an opportunity to work at healing for all involved—the ones harmed and the ones harming. It also works to transform the family, as well as socio-economic and ecological structures. The logic of healing for all returns us to the logic of Spirit and land, in which all find their true identity. We can see that healing justice covers territory different from criminal justice. It has a different geography and a different logic. Based on the common patterns outlined above, we can contrast the logic of crime and the logic of healing justice as seen in Table 1. Such a characterization of healing justice, however, is a bit skewed, because heal-ing justice is not primarily understood in contrast to criminal justice. Healing justice is rooted in traditions that predate criminal law. While there are important ways in which these types of logic contrast, there are also ways in which they overlap and co-exist. In other writing, I explore this overlapping geography,14 but the purpose of this essay is to introduce the notions of “geography of crime” and “geography of


Criminal Justice Healing JusticeLogic of states and institutions Logic of Creator and creationLogic of rules and processes Logic of transforming patternsLogic of problem-responsiveness Logic of cultivating loving-kindnessLogic of nouns Logic of finding true identityLogic of individual autonomy Logic of interdependent relationshipsLogic of punishment and violence Logic of healing for all

Table 1

healing justice,” and to challenge restorative justice more carefully to understand and be informed by the geography of healing justice. The final task of this paper is to try to locate restorative justice between these two geographies.

RETHINKING RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Before engaging restorative justice, I would like to make two distinctions in lan-guage. I am using restorative justice as distinct from both Aboriginal justice and healing justice. In reality these categories are blurred, with no clear agreement on the distinctions between them. For example, a number of Aboriginal authors call for a clearer separation between these terms,15 while others say that Aboriginal justice is restorative justice.16 With respect to healing justice, the language of healing justice is most often used by advocates of restorative justice.17 Many restorative justice authors explain that restorative justice is a healing model of justice.18 I encourage the use of healing in the discourse of restorative justice, just as I encourage careful listening to Aboriginal traditions of justice. However, conflating all these terms hinders our abil-ity to learn more fully from others. For example, the argument I now turn to is that restorative justice does not sufficiently challenge the basic logic of crime. By learning from those who practise healing justice, restorative justice could broaden and deepen its practice of justice. Let us examine restorative justice in light of the logic of crime. The rhetoric of restorative justice positions it as an alternative to criminal justice. For example, How-ard Zehr claims that criminal justice asks, “What laws have been broken, who did it? And what do they deserve?,” while restorative justice asks different questions: “Who has been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are these?”19 The different questions are meant to represent an alternative vision and practice of justice. To some extent, restorative justice is an alternative to mainline criminal justice. In other words,


restorative justice challenges part of the logic of crime. For instance, the logic of states and institutions is challenged by many forms of restorative justice. Nils Christie’s 1977 article “Conflict as Property”20 has influenced many in the restorative justice field. Christie argues that conflict is the property of those involved in harm. Through the justice system, the state has developed a long tradition of stealing that conflict. However, communities need conflict to become strong, and so communities need to find ways of reclaiming the conflict. Restorative justice processes participate to some degree in this return of conflict to its rightful owners. Restorative justice encounters such as Victim-Offender Conferencing, Family Group Conferencing, and Circles all provide ways of creating space for the victim, the offender, and, sometimes, the communities around them to participate directly in responding to the harm. Restorative justice also clearly challenges the logic of punishment and violence. While perhaps not completely devoid of punishment, most forms of restorative justice do not follow the logic of punishment. Punishment and violence are not the goals or the means. Restoring people is the goal and means. Most restorative justice programs do not use coercion or force as means of justice. In fact, many would argue that restorative practices must be voluntary to be restorative. It is worth noting, though, that some healing justice communities, such as Hollow Water, do not agree that voluntary participation is necessary at all stages: they work with sexual abuse victimizers who are still in denial about their abusing role. So there are ways in which we can see restorative justice challenging the logic of crime, but there are also ways in which restorative justice does not challenge the logic of crime. For the following components of the logic of criminal justice, the response of restorative justice is problematic or at best a point of potential growth:

The Logic of Rules and ProcessesWhile restorative justice challenges the notion that a crime is against the state rather than harming a person, restorative justice does not challenge the logic of processes. In fact, the story of restorative justice is often told from the standpoint of processes. That is, restorative justice is Victim-Offender Conferencing, Family Group Con-ferencing, Circle processes, and other similar processes. Restorative justice replaces court processes with conferencing processes, but it does not challenge the underlying logic that if one could just get the right process, everything would be all right.

The Logic of Problem-ResponsivenessWhile restorative justice recasts crime as harm, it still focuses on what is not working. It waits for the bleeding or harm to begin. Because many restorative justice cases are


referred by government, restorative justice is still dependent on the state for deter-mining and naming the nature of the harm. Restorative justice still waits for people to do harm and then tries to find a positive way to respond to the crisis.

The Logic of NounsRestorative justice does try to move away from the stigmatizing effect of the label-ling that characterizes the logic of nouns, but, generally speaking, restorative justice substitutes different nouns without challenging the actual logic of nouns. The idea is that what needs to change is the roles. Instead of a focus on the judge and the lawyers, restorative justice focuses on the victim, the offender, and the facilitator. Depending on the process, more or fewer nouns are added.

The Logic of Individual AutonomyOn this logic, restorative justice seems to be all over the map. Victim-Offender Con-ferencing, which focuses on creating space for victim and offender to engage as iso-lated individuals, seems to follow this logic. Family Group Conferencing and Circle processes tend to expand the circle but often keep the focus tightly on the presenting problem and thus miss opportunities to make changes that address the root causes of the problem. Adherence to this logic is a reason why restorative justice seldom moves from a case-orientation to an orientation of systemic change. To respond to personal harms while at the same time working to transform the wider system requires a logic that is much more expansive than individual autonomy. This logic is not sufficiently challenged by restorative justice. These arguments are not entirely new. Gerry Johnstone challenges restorative justice not to focus too much on criminal justice reform, for such a focus hides broad systemic issues of harm.21 Elmar Weitekamp rebukes scholars in the field for begin-ning their analyses with state systems rather than non-state systems, because such a beginning point “tak[es] for granted the existence of political power and state law.”22 George Pavlich charges restorative justice with supporting the status quo and not providing a deep enough alternative, but rather creating dependency on the existing state system.23 Pavlich is supported by Martin Wright, who argues that restorative processes have done little to surface or engage the factors conducive to crime.24 Ovide Mercredi, former Grand Chief of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations, affirms that systemic change for Aboriginal people will not come from a case-by-case focus.25

The argument I am making is that restorative justice does not sufficiently chal-lenge the underlying logic of crime. This is not surprising, since restorative justice has looked to the criminal justice system for its cases, its funding, and its sense of validity.


The state has been one of the dominant dialogue partners in the development of restorative justice. However, if restorative justice is to deliver on its rhetoric of being an alternative praxis of justice, it must have well-developed roots that stand outside the logic of crime. One option is for restorative justice to learn from those who practise the ge-ography of healing justice. Of course, this has already been happening. Arguably, the main processes of restorative justice have roots in such communities—North American Mennonites (Victim-Offender Conferencing), the Maori in New Zealand (Family Group Conferencing), and Aboriginal peoples of North America (Circle processes). Furthermore, we can point to restorative justice advocates who try to draw on biblical justice,26 on Aboriginal justice,27 and on many other traditions.28 However, following the logic of rules and processes, these dialogues often take place with a goal to extract universal processes from local contexts. But what if it is not primarily at the level of processes that we should be learning from these communi-ties? Perhaps there is more to learn about the nature of the vision of a justice that heals. Perhaps there is more to learn about what is needed in society to sustain a vision of healing justice. Of course, these inquiries move far out of a case-orientation that fits neatly in a criminal or legal discourse. They push us to ask hard questions about how we organize all of life and to ask troubling questions about the justice we claim to believe in. Here are a few of the questions that come out of listening to communities that practise some form of healing justice:

How can restorative justice move from responding to crises to cultivating •restorative practices in every area of living?How can restorative justice nurture the capacity to see and address the •structural-political-spiritual problems and resources in which any particular dispute is embedded?How can restorative justice nurture independent, local justice centres rather •than relying on state systems?Is restorative justice too dependent on the neutral, outside facilitator, thereby •displacing locals?What would restorative justice look like if it were open to the possibility •that the Spirit is the source of healing?If the trauma of harm is losing one’s sense of meaning, how can restorative •justice nurture ways for people to (re)discover a true identity or, in the words of Zehr, to “transcend” the experience of harm?29


How can we develop notions of security that are based on cultivating healthy •interconnectedness rather than cultivating the insecurity of the “other” by promoting punishment systems?What would public policy, city planning, and foreign policy look like if they •were based in a restorative vision that included the restoration of the land?

It is possible for restorative justice to be a true alternative to the criminal justice system. This does not mean that restorative justice must be a completely separate system or that the criminal justice system is irrelevant to a true alternative restor-ative justice. What it does mean is that if restorative justice is to be an alternative voice, it must be an alternative not only in process and rhetoric but also in logic. To date, restorative justice has partially, but not sufficiently, challenged the logic and geography of crime. The discourse on healing justice demonstrates that there are real, functioning alternatives that are not based on the logic and geography of crime. From the insights and worlds of these communities, it is possible to cultivate a logic of restoration that will lead to a broadening of the geography of restorative justice. If this challenge is taken on, restorative justice will leave the geography of crime and enter a different land, and everyone will benefit.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS* Portions of this article were first published in “The Geography of Crime, the Ge-ography of Healing Justice and the Ambivalence of Restorative Justice,” Restorative Directions Journal 2, no. 2b (2006): 129–52. The present essay draws on fresh research and experience to clarify and expand on ideas initially presented in that paper.

ENDNOTES1. Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment of the Basis of

Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (New york: H. Holt and Company, 1911).

2. This poem was first published in Women’s Studies Quarterly 32, nos. 3/4 (2004): 289-91. It is reprinted here with the permission of its author, Dr. Rob Baum, all rights reserved.

3. Richard D. Taylor, Martin Wasik, and Roger Leng, Blackstone's Guide to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Janet Dine and James J. Gobert, Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); J. C. Smith and Brian Hogan, Criminal Law (London: Butterworths, 2002); Sir Rupert Cross, Richard Card, and Philip Asterley


Jones, Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); C. M. V. Clarkson, Understanding Criminal Law, Understanding Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2006); Jonathan Herring, Criminal Law, Palgrave Macmillan Law Masters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Jonathan Herring, Criminal Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Ursula Smartt, Criminal Justice, Sage Course Companions (London: Sage, 2006); Andrew Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); William Wilson, Criminal Law: Doctrine and Theory (London: Longman, 1998).

4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

5. Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style (New york: Routledge, 2001); David Cayley, The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1998).

6. James Gilligan, Preventing Violence, Prospects for Tomorrow (New york: Thames & Hudson, 2001).

7. Rupert Ross, Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice (Toronto: Penguin, 1996).

8. Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law, 27.

9. Wilson, Criminal Law: Doctrine and Theory, 32.

10. Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2002), 38.

11. A forthcoming publication shares the full details of my study. See Jarem Sawatsky, The Ethic of Traditional Communities and the Spirit of Healing Justice: Studies from Hollow Water, Plum Village and the Iona Community (London: Jessica Kingsley, forthcoming).

12. Nils Christie, “Conflict as Property,” British Journal of Criminology 17, no. 1 (1977): 1–5.

13. Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91.

14. Sawatsky, The Ethic of Traditional Communities.

15. Michael Jackson and Jonathon Rubin, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: Bridging the Cultural Divide (Ottawa: Canada


Communication Group, 1996); Patricia Monture-Angus, “The Existing System Can't Be Indigenized” (paper presented at “Restorative Justice: Four Community Models,” Saskatoon, SK, 17–18 March 1995); Michael Jackson, “In Search of Pathways to Justice: Alternative Dispute Resolution in Aboriginal Communities,” University of British Columbia Law Review Special Edition (1992): 147–238; Raymond Austin, “Freedom, Responsibility, and Duty: ADR and the Navajo Peacemaking Court,” Judges' Journal 8 (1993): 11; Kent Roach, “Changing Punishment at the Turn of the Century, Restorative Justice on the Rise,” Canadian Journal of Criminology 42, no. 3 (2000): 249–79.

16. Chief Justice Robert yazzie, “Justice as Healing: The Navajo Response to Crime,” in Justice as Healing: Indigenous Ways, ed. Wanda McCaslin (St. Paul: Living Justice, 2005), 121–33.

17. Howard Zehr, “Restoring Justice: Envisioning a Justice Process Focused on Healing—Not Punishment,” The Other Side 33, no. 5 (1997): 22–27; Howard Zehr, “Restorative Justice: The Concept,” Corrections Today 59, no. 7 (1997): 68–70; Daniel Van Ness, “Legislating for Restorative Justice,” (paper presented at “Drafting Juvenile Justice Legislation” conference, Cape Town, South Africa, 4–6 November 1997); Daniel Van Ness, “Restorative Justice: International Trends,” (paper presented at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, 7 October 1998); Jim Consedine, Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime (Lyttelton, NZ: Ploughshares, 1995); Jim Consedine and Helen Bowen, Restorative Justice: Contemporary Themes and Practice (Lyttelton, NZ: Ploughshares, 1999).

18. Carol Lee O'Hara Pepi, “Children without Childhoods: A Feminist Intervention Strategy Utilizing Systems Theory and Restorative Justice in Treating Female Adolescent Offenders,” Women & Therapy 20, no. 4 (1997): 85–100; Margaret Thorsborne, “Justice as Healing in a Small Australian Town,” Justice as Healing 3, no. 2 (1998); Viviane Saleh-Hanna, “Penal Abolition: An Ideological and Practical Venture Against Criminal (In)Justice and Victimization” (master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2000); Martin Wright, “The Paradigm of Restorative Justice,” VOMA Connections 11 (2002): 1–7; Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft, Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives (Monsey, Ny: Willow Tree, 2001); John Braithwaite, David Dolinko, and Michael Tonry, “The Future of Punishment,” UCLA Law Review 46, no. 6 (1999): 1719–940.

19. Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, 38.

20. Christie, “Conflict as Property.”


21. Gerry Johnstone, “How, and in What Terms, Should Restorative Justice Be Conceived?,” in Critical Issues in Restorative Justice, eds. Howard Zehr and Barb Toews (Mosney: Criminal Justice, 2004), 5–16.

22. Elmar Weitekamp, “The History of Restorative Justice,” in A Restorative Justice Reader, ed. Gerry Johnstone (Cullompton, UK: Willan, 2003), 111–24.

23. George Pavlich, Governing Paradoxes of Restorative Justice (London: GlassHouse, 2005).

24. Martin Wright, “Book Review: Governing Paradoxes of Restorative Justice,” review of Governing Paradoxes of Restorative Justice, by George Pavlich, Restorative Justice Online, November 2005, http://www.restorativejustice.org/editions/2005/nov05/bookreview (accessed 13 January 2006).

25. Ovide Mercredi, “Concluding Remarks” (paper presented at “Conference on Restorative Justice,” Winnipeg, MB, 24–28 September 2001).

26. Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2005); Christopher D. Marshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment, Studies in Peace and Scripture (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001).

27. Wanda D. McCaslin, Justice as Healing: Indigenous Ways (St. Paul: Living Justice, 2005); E. J. Dickson-Gilmore and Carol La Prairie, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).

28. Michael L. Hadley, The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice (Albany: State University of New york Press, 2001).

29. Howard Zehr, Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims: Portraits and Interviews (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2001).


The involvement of Canadian forces in Afghanistan marks the first time since the Korean War that the Canadian military has been engaged in a combat mission. When the first Canadian troops deployed to Afghanistan in October 2001, they were part of the US-led international force fighting the “War on Terror” in response to the 9/11 attacks. The earliest Canadian contribution to the mission involved naval units sent to patrol the north Arabian Sea. Later, in January 2002, 750 Canadian soldiers were sent to Kandahar province for six months to assist US troops in a combat role. In December 2001, following the November 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime, the UN passed resolutions that endorsed the establishment of a transitional authority in Afghanistan and authorized the creation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a multi-national military force charged with securing Ka-bul and surrounding areas in cooperation with the Afghan Transitional Authority.1 NATO took over command of the ISAF in August 2002, making this the first NATO operation outside of Europe.2

From August 2002 onward, Canadian military units served under the ISAF in Kabul and surrounding areas. In May 2005 the Canadian government began sending troops from Kabul back to the more volatile province of Kandahar with a mandate to secure the area to enable civilian reconstruction and development efforts.3 Between February 2002 and May 2008 the Canadian forces in Afghanistan incurred a total of 83 fatalities, most of them since 2006 during the current mission in Kandahar.4

In May 2006, one year after the original decision to redeploy troops to Kan-dahar, the Canadian parliament approved an extension of the military mission to February 2009. As with earlier decisions about Canadian forces in Afghanistan, there was little official public debate about this extension. From the inception of the mission to Afghanistan, Canadian federal opposition parties have questioned the lack of official debate on the issue in parliament. The ongoing controversy prompted Prime Minister Stephen Harper in October 2007 to establish an independent advisory panel to examine options for the Canad-ian mission in Afghanistan at the end of the current mandate, February 2009. The

Canada’s Role in Afghanistan: Submissions to the Manley Panel

Compiled by Richard McCutcheon and John Derksen

95Canada’s Role in Afghanistan: Submissions to the Manley Panel

former Liberal deputy prime minister and former minister of foreign affairs John Manley chaired the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan; the other members were Jake Epp (former Conservative federal cabinet minister), Paul Tellier (former clerk of the privy council), Derek Burney (former Canadian ambas-sador to the US), and Pamela Wallin (former Canadian consul general in New york City). The panel was charged with examining the following four main options for Canada’s military forces in Afghanistan:

Option 1: Train, support and develop the Afghan army and police towards a self-sustaining capacity in Kandahar Province, with a phased with-drawal of Canadian troops starting in February 2009 consistent with progress towards this objective.

Option 2: Focus on development and governance in Kandahar, with sufficient military to provide effective protection for our civilians engaged in development and governance efforts. This would require another country (or countries) to provide a military force sufficient to en-sure the necessary security in which such efforts can take place in Kandahar province.

Option 3: Shift the focus of Canadian military and civilian security, develop-ment and governance efforts to another region of Afghanistan.

Option 4: Withdraw all Canadian military forces from Afghanistan after February 2009, except those required to provide personal security for any remaining civilian employees.5

The Panel consulted with military, government, and non-governmental experts in Canada and Afghanistan, with minimal input from the wider public. The limited opportunities for public engagement caused controversy, as also did three other fac-tors: (1) all the panel members had recently held high level official government posi-tions, and its chair had been part of the original cabinet discussions about sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan; (2) the panel’s time frame was only three months long; (3) the panel’s support staff was mainly drawn from the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs, and the Canadian International Development Agency, both of which are directly involved with the implementation of the Afghanistan mandate.6 A final report from the panel was submitted to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in January 2008. It recommended a continued Canadian presence in Afghanistan, and the development of a new Canadian policy approach. In essence, the Panel pro-posed that Canada’s role in Afghanistan “should give greater emphasis to diplomacy,


reconstruction and governance and that the military mission should shift increas-ingly towards the training of the Afghan National Security Forces.”7 On 13 March 2008 the Canadian parliament approved an extension of the military mission in Kandahar to 2011, contingent upon military commitment from other nations to the province. This decision was supported by the Conservative government and the Liberal opposition, but not the New Democratic and Bloc Québécois opposition parties. Canada’s role in Afghanistan is continually evolving and is far from certain. According to interviews conducted by one policy analyst during recent travel to the country in April-May, 2008, some non-governmental workers and individual Af-ghans have questioned the ability of international forces reliably to provide the kind of local-level security needed to carry out community development, while others believe that the removal of the ISAF forces could lead to civil war. The conduct of the international forces has also been widely criticized in Afghanistan for the disrespect their members have shown towards Afghani languages and culture(s). It is clear that the challenges facing Afghanistan are immense, particularly the growing poverty and risk of famine faced by millions of Afghans.8

To this point, the Canadian public has had little opportunity to weigh in on the important issues related to Canada’s role in Afghanistan. Public input to the Panel’s deliberations was allowed only in the form of written submissions—without opportunity for public hearings and wider debate. The Panel received 219 written submissions from individuals and organizations between 1 November and 3 Decem-ber 2007. There are some indications that Panel members only read summaries of these submissions.9 According to the Panel’s website, which is no longer available to the public, “only some 30% of the submissions directly addressed one or more of the options included within the panel’s terms of reference.” Furthermore, “a major-ity of the briefs indicated that Canada needed to change the current orientation of its efforts, proposing strategies to improve Canada’s effectiveness, whether through an augmentation of investments in development and humanitarian work, greater diplomatic focus, or some kind of scaling down of Canadian forces presence.”10

A member of Peace Research’s Advisory Council first alerted us to the presence of these 219 submissions on the website of the Independent Panel. Noting the significant allocation of resources and energy expended to produce them, and the likelihood that these submissions would not remain online for long, he suggested that Peace Research could provide a service to academic and activist communities by publishing a selection of these submissions as a historical marker of alternative


thinking about Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. This advisor’s words were prescient; in the week before the final copy of this issue was to be sent to the printer, it ap-pears that the Panel’s website, including all of the submissions, was taken off-line. Although some of the submissions can be found by searching the title of the panel and responses, many of these pieces of work are already lost to the public realm. The following eight give some indication of the depth and breadth of thinking that went into the submissions, serving as a reminder of citizen engagement with the issues.11 We trust they might also enrich our thinking for the future of Canada’s involvement with Afghanistan.

ENDNOTES1. United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Afghanistan are found at

http://www.unama-afg.org/docs/_UN-Docs/_sc/resolutions.htm, accessed 24 June 2008. See Resolution number 1383 (6 December 2001) and 1386 (20 December 2001).

2. From December 2001 to July 2002, the ISAF was led by the UK, Turkey, and a shared Dutch-German Corps. See Ken Epps, “Canadian Troops in Afghanistan,” Ploughshares Monitor 24, no. 4 (Winter 2003): np. Electronic document, http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mond03b.htm, accessed 22 June 2008.

3. Final Report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, 10-11. Electronic document, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/013003/f2/013003-1000-e.pdf, accessed 20 June 2008.

4. Simon Fraser University’s Afghanistan Conflict Monitor provides updated statistics. Electronic document, http://www.afghanconflictmonitor.org/CF-Afgh0707.jpg, accessed 23 June 2008.

5. From “Terms of Reference” on the now-defunct Independent Panel website, http://www.independent-panel-independant.ca/terms-eng.html, accessed June 2008.

6. John Siebert, “The Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan,” Ploughshares Monitor 28, no. 4 (Winter 2007): np. Electronic document, http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mond07h.pdf, accessed 22 June 2008.

7. Final Report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, 37. Electronic document, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/013003/f2/013003-1000-e.pdf, accessed 20 June 2008.


8. Ernie Regehr, “Conversations in Kabul on military intervention and political reconciliation,” Ploughshares Monitor 29, no. 2 (Summer 2008): np. Electronic document, http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/monj08c.pdf, ac - c essed 24 June 2008.

9. According to participants, the submissions themselves were never read by the panel’s members, but rather, read by students who provided the panel members with summaries. This may or may not be the case and would bear further investigation.

10. The original link from which our notes were taken—and which is no longer available—is http://www.independent-panel-independant.ca/submissions-eng.html, accessed June 2008.

11. These eight submissions—taken from those that were still available—offer a variety of individual, non-governmental, and religious viewpoints, Afghan perspectives, concrete data, and clarity of expression. All represent an alternative to that adopted by the Canadian Government. With one exception, all of these submissions were produced in 2007. Dr. Seddiq Weera, an Afghani medical doctor, wrote his initial report in 2004, which was subsequently updated for the 2007 submission. All submissions are reproduced here with the express permission of the authors and their organizations. Except for minor corrections of typographical errors, and some changes to the format for consistency, we have left each submission as it was presented to the Panel. For submissions that include endnotes, we have inserted the notes at the end of the submission in their original form. We sincerely thank each of the individuals and organizations for their interest in this project, and Dr. Graeme MacQueen for suggesting the idea.

SUBMISSIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS

Paul Maillet (Retired Canadian Air Force Colonel)

I am pleased to present this submission in response to your request for feedback on a subject that I believe is pivotal to Canadian values, our standing in the global com-munity, and to the cause of global peace. I would like to comment primarily on the


military aspect of this mission and propose an additional option—a “peacemaking” approach. For the record, I would like to make the observation that I am astonished with the fact that there is no professional military expertise or retired military representa-tion on a panel so deeply involved with military affairs. I deeply subscribe to the principal of civil control of the military, but this authority should be better informed in a representative sense on this panel. As a retired Colonel (since 2001) after a thirty-three year career, and as a former Director of Defence Ethics (appointed after the Somalia affair in 1997 in response to the report to the Prime Minister), I would begin with the concern that the military has undertaken a fundamental shift in the way we conduct international military operations in conflict zones, and what it will harbour for our global reputation, our future defence expenditures and future operational mandates. I suggest we have strayed from some very core values and hard won lessons of the past. I would point out that polls of Canadians regarding the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan show a marked shift to growing disapproval. I also point out that there are many “support the troops” stickers on cars these days. I suspect that people do not give this much thought to what this really means beyond some sense of encouragement and concern for the welfare of the individual soldier. We may want to consider this from the soldier’s perspective. In my experience, the support they want is first that we look after their families if they are seriously injured or killed, next they want to know they will be looked after if they are injured, next to have the equipment and leadership they need to achieve the mission. This means to have a mission they feel important enough to risk their lives and consistent with the best of Canadian values. The mission is the direct responsibility of the elected parliamentary authority. I do not believe that Canadians want to abandon Afghanistan at this point. The message is to get the mission right, consistent with our values and traditions, and get the support and the care right.

Exploring the Canadian ContextI suggest that Canadians view international missions as very important to how we define the best of human existence. There is no doubt for Canada, that a stable and prosperous world is the defence of Canada. The question is how we assert our values, our aspirations for prosperity, our independence in foreign policy, and our right to choose in how we wish to contribute to global stability and to our national interests. We have chosen as a nation to be bound by human rights and freedoms, the rule of law, and in this case by international law for armed conflict. In this respect, we must


agree that violence is an absolute last resort, and only employed with a reasonable probability of success, proportional, where political means have been exhausted, and with all possible efforts to avoid collateral damage. To all this, we add the 2005 Defence policy statement (quotes in italics are from the DND website) which states that Canada “. . . . maintain their contributions to international institutions such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that . . . the Government is committed to enhancing Canada's ability to contribute to international peace and security. . . .” We have decades of experience in this regard which demonstrated the utility of neutrality and peace-keeping, to the point of significant recognition involving the nobel peace prize.

An enduring commitment to contribute to international peace and security has been an abiding feature of Canadian foreign and defence policy since 1947. In 1988 Canada shared in the nobel Peace Prize that was presented to all United Nations peacekeepers.

Canadians are internationalist and not isolationist by nature. We uphold a proud heritage of service abroad. We take pride in Lester B. Pearson's Nobel Prize for Peace not simply because it did a great Canadian considerable honour, but because it was a reflection of our evolving international personality. (1994 Defence White Paper)

This is reflected in our 3D (diplomacy, development, defence) policy approach to foreign policy. We should be cognizant that this is translated in the military parlance into: “The ability of our military to carry out three-block war operations will be critical to the success of Canada's efforts to address the problems of these states.” How the subtleties of The Three Block War concept and this policy statement got past Canadian public awareness is beyond me.

Developed in 1997 by U.S. Marine Corps General Charles Krulak, the concept is aimed directly at operations in an urban environment. Operational forces must be prepared to engage in high-intensity combat against a well-trained and well-equipped enemy in one city block, while in another be up against irregular forces fighting guerrilla style and in a third block engaged in humanitarian and peace keeping efforts. The Three Block War has since become a military doctrine adopted by all major countries.

In practice, this means we traumatize, kill or injure both combatants and in many unintentional instances—innocent civilians. We kill, damage or destroy homes and their property one day, and show up to rebuild and provide aid on another day.


Then we expect their goodwill and respect, and wonder why we get hate and violence and Canadian casualties. Canada can do much, much better than this. The hidden catch in the current operational mandate is a military wish list for both funding, equipment and manpower that is bottomless and far beyond the capacity of Canada to support. We can never afford a full spectrum military capabil-ity and nor do we wish to do so. The military will never stop asking as long as the political authority does not firmly prioritize and select where and how Canada wants to contribute. We should specialize in areas that suit our values and capacities. At any given point in time, we are a nation of great possibilities within our value and resource limits. I would suggest that if we are so enamored with a three block concept, that infinitely more constructive would be a three block peacemaking con-cept, where the primacy of dialogue and diplomacy is conducted on all these blocks simultaneously with the disparate interests involved. The creating of safe spaces and conditions for dialogue, ceasefire and carried out from a posture of neutrality. The military role would become one of participating in and facilitating a protected dip-lomacy in very dangerous conflict environments. A very challenging and dangerous task indeed, but one worthy of our values and participation. To achieve this, I suggest we need to explore the development of a more coherent and “values based” (as opposed to power based or violence based) approach to mis-sions in conflict zones. This would entail exploring options for reworking Defence strategic, policy and operational frameworks, followed by developing rationalized employment, resource and support frameworks.

Engaging the Afghanistan Conflict ZoneWithin this Canadian context we find ourselves in Afghanistan, and in which trad-itional Canadian peacekeeping approaches were changed for unexplained reasons, other than to seemingly buy into a violent response to this so-called “war on ter-ror”. Words like “offensive combat operations” and “war” are now in our lexicon. Canadians are uneasy with this. Development, humanitarian aid, diplomacy are not commonly perceived as active as the “war”. Either our long and hard won expertise and reputation for peacekeeping is no longer relevant in current and future conflicts, or it is needed more than ever. I believe that the events and tragedies of the past years argue strongly for the latter. The price of peacekeeping for over forty years before the Afghan and Gulf wars was over 100 Canadians killed. The good we did, the lives we saved, the suffering we alleviated was concrete and in many cases lasting and a source of pride for Canadians. Since we changed our approach to a heavy focus on war fighting we have had 74


killed in a few years, not to mention growing numbers of wounded and Post Trau-matic Stress Disorder (PTSD) casualties. you have only to notice the subtle change in military advertising, “join and fight with the Canadian forces. . . .” to feel the hand of the military attempting to shape and influence public and political opinion and options. Is our military about fighting or protecting or peace or aid or all of the above and in which priority? I believe “fighting” is the absolute last resort. Our business is not killing, not looking at any people as “murders and scumbags”, (and other threatening and hostile public comments made by Canadian military commanders), and we are not into labelling operations as “war”, not by counting success in numbers of insurgents killed, and left with expressions of regret for collateral damage when we destroy property and kill innocents whether by accident or not. It would be instructive to ask the military for their estimate of the number of innocent civilians we have killed or injured. Death and suffering as an accident does not make it right, given the military power being thrown around. Using heavy armour and air power against scattered insurgents in urban built up areas makes such accidents inevitable, and to those people we hurt, we incur hate and retaliation. What do we expect, open arms for destroying our village and killing our people. I can see where this would be very confusing and traumatizing to the resident population. This is not a fight where Canada is in the business of killing, but in the business of peace. Peacemaking is what Canadians want absolutely and unequivocally. We must take great care how we equip the military, and what we permit them to take in theatre, because capacity often defines how they look at solutions. When you have tanks in theatre, problems soon take on the aspect of “tank targets”. When overwhelming force is not available, problems take on the dimension of diplomacy and dialogue. We do not give police forces in North American cities access to mil-itary airpower and 2000 lb laser guided bombs to deal with criminals in apartment buildings, or even terrorists located in cities. We owe the Afghan population at least the same level of respect and care. Another concern of note occurs when we go in search of enemies and dehuman-ize them, call them “murderers or scumbags”, to quote our Chief of Defence Staff. The message to soldiers is that insurgents are to be hunted and anyone can do anything to a “murderer or scumbag”. With those fateful words, we diminish ourselves and our country. We put ourselves on a slippery slope to war crimes. you have only to recall what happened in Somalia and how quickly torture and a killing can have strategic and national effects. It does not take a military professional to know that the Afghan war is un-winnable from a military standpoint. This conflict has its roots in the far distant past


with deep-seated mimetic structures for passing on cultures of hate and violence. The Soviet Union with their far less constrained rules of engagement were unable to accomplish this. What makes us think we can do otherwise? There is no doubt that the killing or capture of all insurgents is impossible, that future generations of insurgents are just being born, that their patience is measured in decades or longer, and that they are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. However, to mitigate this environment we must create again and again safe opportunities for dialogue when conciliatory leaders emerge or sufficient pressures or exhaustion arises. In these cases, someone has to have the framework, objectivity, neutrality, credibility and trust to facilitate talks whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. The value that Canada can add to this conflict is to prepare for and facilitate these eventualities when they occur. It is also now clear that we did not plan the Afghan mission strategy and oper-ations in a manner that paid much attention to Canadian values and tradition. We are not, and should not be, bound by the U.S. model of foreign policy and combat operations. As a Canadian, this mission should not be about winning or defeating or killing anyone, but of incremental achievement and direction to stability and peace. At best, we can only hope to help orient Afghanistan towards security, democracy and human rights. We can aspire to help this country find a direction that has a future and hope, instead of a future of more suffering, violence and corruption. This is what justifies the cost, effort and sacrifice involved.

Way ForwardSo what is achievable? I believe what is achievable begins with what we do best, our peacekeeping experience. It becomes a matter of developing a “peacemaking” concept and designing such operational practices suitable to this concept and the conflict zone involved. I believe that we need to evolve and update the practices that served us well in the past. The assertion of a values based approach has to mean something concrete. In this respect Canada can explore the inclusion of such values and principles in mission operations as:

Primacy of diplomacy. The Canadian mission would ascribe to the primary aim of “stopping the violence” by talking to all parties and seeking reconciliation. The Defence role would be the protection of diplomatic activity. We talk to anyone and all parties, be they Taliban, Al Qeada, regular or irregular forces, tribal, religious or civil authorities.


We are a safe space where the hope of a ceasefire resides, where peace and a future resides.

Neutrality. The basic principle is that Canada talks to all parties, no matter how extreme. In this posture, defence roles are to protect the diplomacy and development activity. We are not part of the killing. That is where we bring neutrality, our good will and reputation. We are where the foundations of a cease-fire and peace begin.

Non-violence. Canada should not become a third warring party in what began as a two party conflict. We should not be an offensive combat extension of the Afghan army or their political authorities. We do not use deadly force except in clear instances of self-defence, in defence and protection of Canadian mission components, and prevention of harm mission activity and the ability to stop or prevent harm in progress to anyone “at hand”. We hand off threat intelligence to the proper national authorities to deal with.

Building relationships. In this area, Canada would seek to provide trust building measures and exercise the ethic of care to alleviate suffering. This could be accomplished through fostering dialogue on building governance (prevention of corruption and building integrity), humanitarian aid, human rights, gender equity practices, development and reconstruction projects, security provision and police training. We can assist the Afghan people in areas of building global competitiveness, environmental protection and economic sustainability.

The opportunity we seek to exploit is to weaken the mimetic structures of violence that have passed hate and violence from generation to generation, and begin building mimetic structures of peace. We acknowledge that this is a journey of generations, but must start somewhere. The strategy to attempt to destroy or kill insurgents is rejected in favour with the opportunity to bring them out of the field, out of active hostilities, and into a dialogue that hopefully reaches into their chain of command. Traditional peacekeeping missions involve the monitoring of an agreed ceasefire at the invitation of both parties. Perhaps the greater opportunity is to pioneer an approach of peacemaking in conflict zones with ongoing hostilities, almost a “diplo-macy under fire” mission.


Summary of RecommendationsThe question of Afghanistan is a global issue and Canada is part of the global community. The question is how we should contribute. In summary, I propose the following:

That Canada develops and asserts a true values-based approach to restoring 1. peace, stability and alleviating suffering in Afghanistan. That Canada develop and contribute to peace in Afghanistan through a 2. revised mission mandate emphasizing a “peace making in conflict zones” mission concept. I believe that a reputation and proficiency in “high risk diplomacy” may be useful to the UN in the context of the current and fore-seeable threat environment. Given our peacekeeping experience and former reputation, I believe that Canada can become a role model and world leader in this.That Canada reorient the Canadian military and the overall mission towards 3. neutrality and against offensive combat operations in Afghanistan. That Canadian tanks are withdrawn or given to the Afghan military forces, and the Canadian military force structure in Afghanistan realigned with the new “peacemaking” role.That Canada shift offensive combat operations to the Afghan national 4. authority but agree to assist with Afghan force training and operational support. That the primary function of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is diplomacy 5. (by both foreign affairs and defence) through the creation of safe spaces for belligerents and the facilitation of dialogue with the aim of stopping the violence and beginning the process of reconciliation.That the primary military role would be to contribute to diplomatic activity, 6. through the making of initial contact with belligerents, protection of military and civilian diplomatic staff, and protection of safe space activity.That a secondary military role is the protection of all mission components be 7. they defence forces, diplomatic staff, humanitarian aid agencies, governance development and reconstruction staffs and activity.That in support of peace and security development, Canada conducts train-8. ing for Afghan policing and security authorities.


That in support of human rights, environmental and economic strengthen-9. ing, Canada conducts humanitarian aid, governance development and reconstruction projects.

I believe that the above better reflects Canadian values and expectations regard-ing our presence in Afghanistan than the status quo. I realize that my comments are very brief in what is a very complicated issue, but I do hope my comments are useful. I do offer to visit and discuss any questions you may have, or any other related matters of interest to you on this subject.

Patricia Hartnagel(Peace and social advocate for over thirty years)

A Government’s decision to go to war is perhaps the most important one that it will ever have to make. yet, the decision by the Canadian government to commit 2500 troops to a war fighting role in Afghanistan, was made with very little discussion, virtually no input from the Canadian public and passed by only four votes in the House of Commons. No extensive debate and discussion of the complexities of the situation in Af-ghanistan took place; further, there was no consideration of how Canada, as a middle power, might appropriately respond. Instead, we rushed into war. This has in turn led to an extreme polarization of public opinion—with various polls showing less than one half of the Canadian public supporting our current role, while the remainder oppose our involvement. The government insists that the low level of support for the mission is because they have not adequately explained it to Canadians—if we had a better sense of the mission—then support would rise dramatically. Unfortunately, the government has done little to expand the discussion of our role in Afghanistan beyond the classic labelling—that you are either with us or against us—you either support our troops—or the implication is that you are a friend of the Taliban. This type of false dichotomy only serves to shut down any kind of enlightened discussion of what we are doing, how we are doing it, and what other options or alternatives might be considered. It is imperative that we bridge the “with us or against us” rhetoric and look at some very important options that must be considered as Parliament looks at whether or not to extend the Canadian mission past February of 2009.


Canadians want to do the right thing. However, until the formation of your Committee, the government and the opposition parties have focused on primarily two options—to remain in Afghanistan in a war fighting capacity under NATO command—or to withdraw—either immediately or in February 2009. Canadians feel uncomfortable with both of these options and many are wondering about whether or not there are other alternatives that, for example, concentrate on humani-tarian relief and/or capacity building—rather than our overwhelming emphasis on a military role. The imbalance of our priorities in Afghanistan is starkly contrasted by our spending—with only one of every $10 spent going to development assistance. I feel that the government, the opposition parties, and the media have all been remiss by not providing us with any viable options to consider. I would like to briefly highlight 3 alternative roles that Canada could consider playing—if it is decided that we should remain in Afghanistan in some constructive capacity past February 2009.The three alternative suggestions are:

Adopt the Dutch model of engagement1. Emphasize and facilitate diplomatic solutions, and2. Coordinate the implementation of constructive plans to deal with the opium 3. poppy debacle.

1. We are constantly being told that there has to be security before development can take place—and that is why we are pursuing a war-fighting model. However the Dutch approach belies that statement and provides a useful model of engagement. The Dutch have approximately 1400 troops that took over the Uruzgan province in Southern Afghanistan over a year ago. That area, along with the Khandahar region (where our troops are based) are both considered volatile strongholds of the Taliban insurgency—but the Dutch encountered a completely different response than we did. After hundreds of patrols, establishing forward bases and building roads, bridges, schools and clinics—they have sustained very few deaths and a handful of injuries—a stark contrast to the deaths of 73 of our soldiers, one diplomat and injuries in the hundreds. The Dutch approach is unique—and effective. The “Dutch Philosophy” as it is called, is a strategy focused on supporting the local government; they talk with the Taliban instead of fighting them. The Dutch tread carefully because they realize how little any foreigner knows or understands about the history, culture and traditions of Afghanistan.


Unlike Canadian troops, who send convoys out to the farthest regions and assert their presence, the Dutch move with extreme caution and set up far away from the villages. They send in a delegation to see if the elders are willing to negotiate. The Dutch then spread the word, throughout the region, that they want to come in without fighting. They know that this strategy has worked because they have listened to the radio frequencies used by the insurgents; the Dutch interpreters have heard locals discussing the new type of foreigner that was replacing the U.S. troops. The locals were heard to say that the Dutch weren’t there to fight, rather, they are here to talk. The Dutch talk to the elders and, using Provincial Governors as the intermedi-ary, they also talk to the Taliban. The Dutch commanders have been quoted as saying that, if you are willing to talk, it is surprising what results. But they also caution that it is a time consuming approach; it can take months and months—and at all times—you have to show in everything that you do and say, that you are genuinely trying to understand their conflict. The Canadian and American approach is quite different. They go into unstable areas and establish forward operating bases—often building them into fortresses with giant sandbags and razor wire. These bases are the launching point for their operations. The Dutch, on the other hand, build mud walled compounds that they call multi functional qalas—which is the Pashto name for house—these qalas are designed with a traditional guest room for Afghan visitors. The soldiers, who live in these dwellings, are given designated areas for which they are responsible and they are expected to visit every household in their area (usually 12-30 sq kilometres) and monitor their needs of those residents. An added feature of the Dutch approach is that not only do they help the local residents with the basics of survival, but they also try to serve as honest brokers for villagers whose relatives have been captured by coalition forces. As well, the Dutch forces also try to protect villagers from the actions of corrupt or undisciplined Af-ghan soldiers and police. The Dutch model works on a number of levels to make the area safer—in addi-tion to working at a very personal level with the Afghan civilians. What a respectful model for gaining the confidence of the Afghan people—particularly when compared with our aggressive, more confrontational approach.

2. We need to engage in a new political dialogue. According to a report by the Inter-national Crisis Group—when Afghan citizens were polled, the same reasons were repeated over and over as to why they were increasingly opposing the government


of Hamid Karzai. What are some of these factors? Corruption, abuses by the local and national security forces, the favouring of one group or tribe over another (thus disenfranchising people from decision making and power structures), and resource quarrels—particularly over land and water. What is so striking about these grievances is that they are fairly typical of griev-ances that you would find in any conflict—and most important of all—these grievances are amenable to negotiation. We need to redirect our emphasis to addressing these fac-tors and working to build accommodation between the government and its people. If we do not, as the counterinsurgency war continues, many Afghans will transfer their allegiance from a government that has not lived up to their expectations—and turn instead to the very groups that we (and the other international forces) are fighting. There are models for negotiation and conflict resolution in divided societies that are well suited to resolving these differences. Interestingly one of the most effective is virtually identical to the process that Canada used 10 years ago to bring about the International Ban on Landmines. We have shown leadership in the past in bringing together conflicting parties and forging consensus—we could certainly apply these skills and leadership in Afghanistan—if we so choose.

3. Given that opium production is the key component of Afghanistan’s economy it is crucial that a viable plan for dealing with the poppies be implemented. The eradica-tion of the poppy fields is not feasible given that hundreds of thousands of farmers depend on the poppies for their livelihood. Canada has been pushing the idea of alternative crops—however, for a number of reasons, it is not a realistic option—for example, wheat farmers had to plant three times the amount of land—but received one third less income. We know that poppies fuel the insurgency—obviously something must be done to manage the poppies—particularly since production is doubling virtually every year. What alternatives might there be to provide economic security for the Afghan people? The Senlis Institute, an independent think tank based in the U.K. specializes in security and development issues. It has developed a remarkable blueprint for dealing with the opium production; it would provide a village based economic solution to the poppy crisis. Recognizing that poppy cultivation can be a constructive endeavour, they build their plan on the tradition of strong, local village control systems. They are proposing the controlled cultivation of opium poppies for the village based production of codeine and morphine. Calling it a “village based poppy for medicine model”—they have developed a highly detailed plan to bring the illegal


poppy cultivation under control—and in a sustainable manner. The key feature of their plan is to have the entire production process—from opium seed to the resulting medicinal tablets be controlled in the village—in conjunction with government and international NGOs. Further, all economic profits from the medicinal sales would remain in the village—thus providing needed dollars for economic diversification. They advocate that pilot projects be established for the next planting season, in various regions. This actual trial of the proposal would enable measurement of the economic effectiveness of this imaginative initiative—and an opportunity to refine the programme, if necessary. Coincidentally, the International Narcotics Control Board—whose mandate is to ensure an adequate supply of morphine and codeine for medical and scientific purposes, cites that 80% of the world’s population faces an acute shortage of these medicines. The Senlis Institute’s proposal provides an extraordinary opportunity, not only diffuse the contentious poppy production dilemma, but also to provide a creative way for a post conflict society to diversify its economy. Moreover, it would allow Afghanistan to constructively participate in international trade and, at the same time, meet a global need for medicines. By considering one or more of these alternatives (or combinations thereof )

utilizing the Dutch approach•emphasizing the negotiation process and•implementing the Senlis Institute’s poppies for medicine proposal•

Canada could make a tremendous contribution to the betterment of the Afghan people and stabilization of their economy—and it would be accomplished with far fewer Canadian and Afghani casualties. We have choices in terms of our mission in Afghanistan and I feel very strongly that we must move away from our war-fighting model, and move into more construc-tive and creative presence in Afghanistan. Canada must shift gears. We have entered into the sinkhole of counterinsurgency war and its death and destruction knows no bounds. The Taliban has forever—do we? How many Can-adian and Afghan lives will be lost as a result of rudimentary 200$ roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices? And on a crass—but relevant level—how many millions of dollars of our high tech military equipment will these inexpensive bombs destroy? How We must ask the hard questions—about our role in Afghanistan:

Is it an effective engagement of our human and financial resources?•Does our mission truly reflect Canadian values? •Is our currently configured mission in Afghanistan the best contribution we •can make to the global community?


Our rush to war in Afghanistan has obscured and run roughshod over the com-plexities of the situation and, many would say, our reliance on a military approach has exacerbated those pre existing conditions. We must redirect the discussion to include other options and alternatives that Canada can bring to this conflicted land—if we choose to remain past 2009. To close, a quote from a commentary that appeared in the Globe and Mail in late April of this year succinctly describes potential, unintended consequences of our uninformed military venture into Afghanistan. We have a chance to redress some of the harm that we have caused (should we decide to remain in Afghanistan); con-tinuing down the same path that we have taken would be a grave and unforgivable mistake in judgment.

Killing civilians in Afghanistan not only causes unintended deaths, it creates unintended enemies for U.S. and NATO troops. Pastuns, the most common ethnic group in the country, live by a centuries old tribal code of honour called the pashtunwali— and one of its central tenets is “badal” or revenge. If a member of ones family is killed, the blood of the aggressor or the aggressor’s family must be spilled. An unavenged death is the deepest shame a Pashtun can carry- and neither time, compensation, nor uneven odds can erase the obligation for payback. There is a saying that goes: “a Pashtun waited 100 years, then took his revenge. It was quick work.”

Pashtun lore is filled with tales of family members devoting their entire lives to seeing retribution for a slain relative and accounts of weak individuals settling scores with much stronger opponents. In this way, civilian deaths not only create anger among members of the population, they make Afghans duty bound to take up arms against coalition forces.

Seddiq Weera(Afghani Physician and Senior Policy Advisor)

In this brief paper, I will recount the measures taken thus far to bring security in Afghanistan, identify the gaps or unattended problems, and propose solutions. In light of consultations carried out by McMaster University’s Centre for Peace Studies


and by the international peace organization TRANSCEND in Kabul, Nangarhar, Wardak and Mazar-e-Sharif, I will suggest that, unless measures are taken to address these gaps and unattended problems, the achievement of stability and peace in Af-ghanistan is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. Following the Bonn agreement of December 2001, investments have been focused on government institution-building, creation of a national army and na-tional police, organizing and holding emergency and constitutional Loya Jirgas, and fighting armed enemies of the government. Government institution-building, capac-ity strengthening, infrastructure rehabilitation and public service reform, despite numerous challenges (weak human resources, unqualified leadership in many offices, fraud and corruption), can be considered a relative success, especially in the capital city of Kabul. National army and police development, although curbed by holders of private armies, is gathering momentum, particularly with changes in the leaderships of the ministries of Interior and Defence. But the presence of the 13,500 and 6,500 Coalition and ISAF forces, respectively, has failed so far to bring a level of security necessary for reconstruction, economic growth and stability. Finally, measures to combat severe poverty (compounded by drought) have not brought notable changes to the lives of ordinary Afghans. Failure to achieve durable security, reconstruction, economic growth and stability will persist until the major causes of insecurity are adequately addressed. What are the major threats to security in the country and what measures might be taken to address them?

THE BIG FIRE: ARMED OPPOSITION TO THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENTWho are the opponents of the government and why are they fighting?According to the Afghan and international media, armed opposition to the central government of Hamid Karzai includes non-Afghan and Afghan members of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban Movement and some sections of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami of Afghanistan. Analysis of the discussions facilitated by peace educators from Mc-Master University’s Centre for Peace Studies and TRANSCEND in the spring of 2003 in Mazar-e-Sharif, Samangan, Kabul, Wardak and Nangarhar reveals mixed motivations for the fighting of the above parties. Some seem to be driven by ideol-ogy, which they may adhere to inflexibly. Others might be genuine “spoilers,” trying to retain the status, money and power gained from war and the drug trade. But a third group (in this case almost all Afghans rather than foreigners) appears to feel unfairly treated, discriminated against or “forced to take up arms.” There are also substantial numbers of Afghans who oppose the presence of foreign troops in the


country, threats to Afghan autonomy, dependence on foreign powers, and the influx of Western values and customs. In addition, all of the above groups—as well as the central government—are affected by the “culture of war” (lost empathy and vision, diminished compassion, rigid thinking and habitual conflict) created by more than two decades of warfare and destruction.

What is the global context of the conflicts within Afghanistan?The Cold War was a global binary conflict that brought enormous destruction to Afghanistan. Since the demise of the Cold War a different global binary conflict (the “war on terror” and its adversaries) has moved to the centre of the world stage, and, once again, Afghanistan finds itself caught in the middle. World opinion polls since 2001 have shown a dramatic and disturbing polarization of opinion, the sharpest splits being between the U.S. population and the populations of predominantly Muslim countries. The March 16, 2004 Pew Research Center Poll, for example, found that “in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, anger toward the United States re-mains pervasive;” and “Osama bin Laden…is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%).” In this global context, while an Afghan government seen as a threat by the United States will be unstable, an Afghan government perceived by a substantial portion of Afghans or by a substantial portion of the Muslim world as a “puppet” of the United States will likewise be unstable.

What has been the impact of internal armed conflict on security?The continuing armed civil conflict is the largest impediment to all efforts towards security, democratization, reconstruction and stability. It is also a major impediment to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and basic services.

What has been done to this point?Extensive military operations have been carried out by Coalition forces, and (a) to some extent by the national army.Occasional (but unsystematic and professionally questionable) dialogues by (b) some levels of the Afghan government or Coalition forces have been carried out with supporters of the Taliban and Hekmatyar.

What else could be done?Measures to address these problems should include systematic dialogues, as well as educational consultations, led by professional mediators and peace workers.


Dialogues need not, initially, bring representatives of government and of opposition groups to the same table. They can be undertaken by mediators separately with each party involved in conflict. The purpose of such dialogues and peace education should be (a) to discover, through sincere and active listening, the grievances and areas of flexibility of all parties; (b) to work with all parties to solve areas of disagree-ment and dissension; (c) to help all parties to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate goals; (d) to begin building trust between the parties in conflict; (e) to initiate the creation of permanent institutions for dialogue and reconciliation; (f ) to get a basic agreement from all parties that they will suspend the use of arms against each other and transform armed disagreement into either agreement or unarmed disagreement—whether expressed through political parties entering the formal democratic processes or through other activities of civil society. These dialogues and consultations will not succeed, of course, without con-siderable flexibility from the relevant parties, including the central government and the armed forces operating on its behalf. The effort, if carried out properly and consistently, may allow many Afghans who fight because they feel they are labelled and fear unfair prosecution and unjust treatment to lay down their arms. The work of McMaster University’s Centre for Peace Studies and of TRANSCEND in Afghani-stan has demonstrated changes in views, attitudes and positions of politicians who have taken part in peace and reconciliation dialogues and consultations.1 If there are parties that are completely unwilling or unable to engage in dialogue, this will become clear.

THE SCATTERED FIRE FACTORS: THE PRIVATE ARMIES Who are they and why are they trying to remain independent?Analysts and governmental and non-governmental media constantly talk about the private armies and their supporters within Karzai’s government (Professor Sayaf ’s groups, Jamiat-related groupings such as Marshall Fahim, Ustad Atta, General Dostum’s group, Ismael Khan’s army and Khalili, Kazemi and Mohaqeq’s groups, to mention the main ones). While the spoiler factor (status, power, drug and other money) is undoubtedly a motivation for some, many have important concerns (e.g., fears about unfair treatment of former Mujahideen, concerns about ethnic rights) that have not been heard and properly dealt with.2 No doubt these groups, like others in the country, are also under the influence of a “culture of war,” and maintain various degrees of biased views, ethnic prejudice and hatred, conflictive thinking and habits, as well as the inability to think creatively and open-mindedly and to seek solutions that can be beneficial for all parties.


How do these groups affect security?These groups not only prevent democratization and public service reform but also contribute to periodic infighting (e.g., Herat and Faryab in March and April 2004) as well as fraud and corruption, especially in the government. Measures taken so far include attempts to gain their support for the transitional government and efforts to disarm or dislocate them.

What could be done?As in the cases mentioned earlier, there is room for dialogues and consultations led by professional mediation, conflict resolution and reconciliation specialists to identify the concerns of these groups and to help them distinguish legitimate from illegitimate concerns. Moreover, peace education is needed to assist those with some flexibility to help build a national vision, transform their objectives and views from a culture of war to a culture of peace, invest their efforts in the transition, and par-ticipate in rebuilding the country instead of engaging in destructive activities. The dialogue effort will clearly identify those with such flexibility, as well as those unable to make the transition.

THE FUELLING FACTORS: THE SUPPLIERS AND SUPPORTERSWho are they and what are their motivations?In Afghan circles there is talk of countries such as Iran, Russia, India, governmental or private groups from Arab nations and Pakistan as the financial, military, technical, political and moral supporters of the Big Fire and the Scattered Fires Factors. While there is a paucity of credible proof, there are publications about several kinds of motivation for these countries and groups to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistan:

Economic rivalry (Central Asian resources and markets for Pakistan, Iran, •U.S.)Political rivalry or competition (Iran-U.S., India-Pakistan, Russia-U.S., •Afghanistan-Pakistan over Durand Line, etc.)Military competition (U.S.-Japan-Taiwan-South Korea versus Russia-China-•India-Iran).

What impact do these factors have on security?The impact of the fuelling factors is crucial to the functioning, morale and even existence of the armed opposition and the private armies. Measures taken so far include rather mild pressure from the U.S.A. on Pakistan in the past followed by


renewed joint measures by U.S.-Afghan-Pakistan military operations on both sides of Durand border (e.g., the Mountain Storm operations by the Coalition Forces and the Wazirestan operations by Pakistani army); guarding of borders by Coalition and Afghan forces; establishment of the U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan joint working group on border issues, and eventually the anti-drug trafficking treaty signed by Afghanistan and its six neighbours in Berlin on April 01, 04.

What else could be done?Establishment of a permanent dialogue mechanism between Afghanistan •and Pakistan (with a mandate to address recent and long-standing issues such as Durand Line, as well as future concerns as they exist or arise to find creative and mutually acceptable solutions)Studies of modalities for further economic cooperation among Afghanistan •and its neighbours (learning from the contribution of the steel and coal industries in establishment of the European Union)Establishment of traders, merchants and business persons’ working groups •from countries in the region to find mutually beneficial means of trade and trans-regional economic venturesSetting up of academic taskforces to develop creative means of equitable and •mutually beneficial cooperation and cultural exchanges in the region around AfghanistanCreating an initiative for a regional security mechanism in this part of Asia.•

THE WIND FACTORS: THE RECRUITEES, THE SyMPATHIZERS AND THE DISCONTENTEDWho are they and what are their motivations?The dialogues and consultations facilitated by McMaster University and TRAN-SCEND reveal at least three kinds of seriously unhappy people in Afghan society who, as a result of their discontentment, either do not cooperate with Mr. Karzai’s government or serve as supporters of, or as a pool of recruitees for, armed opposition or private armies. These groups of Afghans can further be broken down into:

Sympathizers and recruitees for the armed opposition or private armies(a) Concerned intellectuals and political and social activists(b) The unemployed, the poor and the under-served or non-served(c)


(a) The Sympathetics and the Apathetics: Afghans say that this group is made up of the supporters (formerly or presently affiliated members) of the parties in the armed opposition and the owners of the private armies as well as those seriously unhappy about injustices and discrimination. They may be motivated by witness-ing major injustices and discrimination on the part of the government, or by feeling sympathy for groups that they take to be unfairly targeted. They may either be ready for recruitment by, or provision of support to, the armed opposition (sympathet-ics); or they may simply do nothing to prevent armed activities against Mr. Karzai’s government (apathetics). They may contribute to disruption of security, prevention of humanitarian assistance and basic services and reconstruction; and they may con-tribute to fraud and corruption. Measures taken to deal with them so far have simply reinforced their perceptions (bombing villages or innocent civilians and depriving them of humanitarian and development projects, to mention two). Measures taken should include: (a) systematic consultations through public forums and townhall-type meetings to identify their legitimate concerns, unresolved issues, conflictive thinking and habits and biased views; (b) peace education combined with mini-Loya Jirgas to find solutions that are in line with the transition towards democracy and human rights in order to gain support of these communities. (b) The Activists: These are individuals who are concerned about ethnic rights, as well as past and present injustices. To some extent, they share in the “culture of war,” with conflictive thinking, lack of empathy, biased and exaggerated views and fixed (ideologically driven) solutions. However, they are also motivated by real and perceived concerns, painful memories and hatred born of experience; and to their credit most of them are anxious to see progress, development and justice in Afghani-stan. As for their impact, in many cases these individuals are behind the scattered fires; on other occasions they disrupt political processes, or they create or exacerbate the friction between urban progressive values and rural traditional and religious values. Measures taken so far include instituting freedom of the press and freedom to form political parties and social groups, which are extremely important but not sufficient. Additional measures needed included consultations, dialogues and peace education, as well as scholarly conferences and intellectual Jirgas to help individuals with oppos-ing ideas develop mutual understanding and jointly find win-win solutions. (c) The poor, unemployed and un-served masses: These are millions of Afghans who have suffered from lack of security, extremes of poverty, lack of basic services and deprivations of human rights by armed groups. They are motivated by their ob-vious life circumstances and their immersion in a culture of war. Their impact on the situation may be expressed through apathy (e.g., not bothering to register to vote or


to report activities of the armed opposition) or through involvement in mercenary activities (selling their skills to the armed opposition or private armies). Measures taken so far include many attractive projects that are in the planning stage but that have to wait until the problem of armed opposition and private armies is solved. Additional measures needed include finding creative ways to implement sizable poverty-reduction and reconstruction initiatives as well as carrying out commun-ity reconciliation, reducing conflictive thinking and habits and promoting social responsibility.

THE SyNERGETIC INTERACTIONSAll of the above factors interact with each other (synergetic effects), so comprehensive measures that address all of these determinants in parallel need to be prescribed.

OPERATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE MEASURE RECOMMENDED IN THIS DOCUMENTA national mechanism, with assistance from international experts, is needed to work on at least two levels—political and societal. Components of the societal level can be supplemental to important initiatives such as the DDR and Public Service Reform (our experience leaves no doubt that this will assist these processes). A combination of political and societal initiatives can be applied to address major conflicts like those of Dostum with Atta, Pashtoons and non-Pashtoons in the north, Ismael Khan and others in Herat. A political and inter-party approach can be used to address the tension in the cabinet between former mujahideen and the technocrats. Another combined approach can be used to assist former and newly established parties to dialogue with one another and to transform their structures and objectives to un-armed and non-violent strategies. Attempts to resolve major conflicts can be com-bined with consultations on reconciliation approaches. While the South African, Peruvian, Guatemalan and Rwandan models provide rich experiences, Afghanistan needs a model of national reconciliation that accomplishes the central goals of any national reconciliation program in a post-war society but is specifically designed for the Afghan situation. This national mechanism can be established in the form of an Independent Na-tional Commission on Peace and Reconciliation or can be created within UNAMA or as an Advisory Ministry to President Karzai. Such an initiative may be needed for three to five years. It could be started as a pilot or feasibility study. Whichever route is taken, the Afghan and international communities cannot afford to ignore the need for reconciliation.


FINAL POINTSExpecting to bring security by means of dollars and bombs without parallel efforts to gain the cooperation of discontented segments of the population is naïve and will fail. While the attempt to address the legitimate concerns of all may appear to take too much time, human resources and money, we should recall that:

Afghanistan is already paying the price of previous failures to carry out the (a) work suggested here.The resources available for Afghanistan may be short-lived: the international (b) community’s attention to Afghanistan, despite its pledges, is not guaran-teed to last, and Afghanistan may well be sacrificed for other, emerging priorities.Peace and security that are imposed and do not emerge from within the (c) society are short-lived.It is possible, if one takes the time and makes it a priority, to gain the coop-(d) eration of the Afghan people.There are national and international experts who have experience in the types (e) of initiative outlined in this document.There is preliminary evidence that there are more people in Afghan society (f ) potentially ready to join a transition to democracy than there are spoilers and inflexibles.

ENDNOTES1. See http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~mpeia/.

2. Personal communications with Mohaqeq, Dostum’s Political Chief, Haji Deen Mohamed and many intellectuals and political activists in the spring and summer of 2003.

Richard J. Preston(On behalf of the Hamilton Chapter of the Department of Peace Initiative)

As it seems to us, a first necessity for the Canadian government is to reas-sure Canadians whose radical distrust of political power requires the clear and convincing explanation of what interests, and whose interests, are being


served by the presence of our forces fighting with NATO in Afghanistan. Is it to protect the western world from terrorists? Is it an attempt to pacify a mil-itaristic region that has long resisted colonial domination? Or is it to provide help for an ally, or a safe corridor for a proposed Trans Afghanistan Pipeline? The idea that Canadian troops are there simply to help the Afghan people build schools and hospitals in order to improve the lot of women and children rings hollow in terms of global, NATO, or U.S. realpolitik. Nor does the line between good and evil put the Taliban on one side and former Northern Alli-ance on the other, especially in light of the huge increase in opium production since the Taliban were ousted. Much Afghan opinion is turning against foreign troops as they see many losses and little gains in an ongoing war which is sup-ported by a government which many believe to be both inept and corrupt. The authors of this submission are fortunate in having access to some of the findings of a small team of researchers from McMaster University Centre for Peace Studies who have been working with several levels of Afghan society since the mid-90’s. According to this view, which corresponds most closely to your second option, Canada should not withdraw its troops immediately, but adopt five elements that would greatly improve its chances of success in a conflict, which appears to have no military solution, and could become un-winnable if events in Pakistan or elsewhere turn against the west. The five steps are:

Shift to peacekeeping operations through a ceasefire. 1. Dialogue with the armed opposition. 2. Stop the killing while strengthening peacekeeping or peace support 3. operations.Continue development and aid. 4. Support and expedite a reconciliation process. 5.

We see some urgency in this change of policy because the war is hurting more peo-ple in multiple ways every day, including child starvation and the continued sup-pression of women. War breeds militarization of the daily life of non-combatants. We believe that Canadians generally would support a move toward peace-keeping operations while protecting development in an expanding zone. We have not seen Federal advocacy for this policy, and strongly urge the formation of a Canadian Minister of Peace and Federal Department of Peace to balance our readiness for strategies of this kind. Like many a casualty of war weakened by loss of blood, Afghanistan has been drained of its material, psychological and spiritual vitality by thirty years


of war. It needs help. Its problems cannot be solved by missions to kill Taliban or Al Qaeda. But it seems the international community has little appreciation that these fighting groups contain diverse factions, many of which are relatively moderate. They are not a few bedraggled remnants of a spent force easily ‘mopped up’; they are legitimate members of the Afghan nation, some of whom formed the country’s government not long ago. As a senior military officer recently said: “each time we kill a man overseas we are creating fifteen who will come after us.” To sum up, we urge the government to adopt a realignment of its Afghan mission by taking into consideration the five points listed above. The objective of the exercise must be changed from killing Taliban to nego-tiating a ceasefire and dialogues with opposing forces. A change to peacekeeping rather than war fighting would enable our forces to protect districts where aid and development is located. If these measures were to be conducted within a UN mandate (possibly including an all-Muslim peacekeeping force to replace foreign troops) real movement towards a more stable Afghanistan may be possible. Fi-nally, if peace in the country is an objective, then it may be necessary to work with political and ethnic groups to assist in a national vision-building exercise to promote a culture of peace, non-violence and national unity through schools and the media.

SUBMISSIONS By NON-GOVERNMENTAL AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS

Canadian Council for International Cooperation*

Introduction Canada’s ‘integrated’ 3D, or whole-of-government, approach encompassing de-velopment, diplomacy, defence (and sometime other departments) in Afghanistan has had adverse effects on development assistance and peacebuilding. In effect, this approach has elevated the military component to the neglect of development and diplomatic efforts. Worse still, the integrated whole-of-government approach has served to militarize peacebuilding and humanitarian and development assistance. This is a fundamental flaw in 3D or whole-of-government approaches, and it has serious implications on the ground for the delivery of aid and prospects for peace. The last two years have seen an increasing shift towards putting security first, on the assumption that development will follow.1 Security is indeed important, but


cannot come at the expense of development and diplomatic efforts. Indeed, the way in which we are currently pursuing security efforts is hampering the effective delivery of aid, progress in development assistance and, therefore, prospects for peace. The four options the government presents to the panel for review reveal how the whole-of-government approach fails to give adequate attention to humanitarian, development, and diplomatic considerations. A military effort alone cannot guaran-tee security. This paper will explore some of the practical constraints of the ‘full integration’ whole-of-government approach on development and peacebuilding in Afghanistan.2 It will also make the case for a fundamental re-orientation of Canada’s role that enables CIDA and DFAIT, as the development and diplomatic arms of Canadian international policy, to play stronger roles in Canada’s engagements in Afghanistan. It calls for a co-coordinated approach that clearly differentiates between develop-ment, diplomatic, and military functions in policy and in practice.

PRACTICAL CHALLENGES OF THE INTEGRATED WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT APPROACH

The Provincial Reconstruction Teams Full integration, as evidenced in the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) struc-ture, poses one of the largest practical challenges. The first PRTs in Afghanistan were established in December 2002, based on the former U.S. model of Joint Reconstruction Teams. The goal of PRTs is to provide security, to support the central government and to enable reconstruction. PRTs vary in approach depending on the country leading them. Canada took over the Kandahar PRT in 2005 from the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom. Canada has 330 personnel3 in the K-PRT, the vast majority of whom are military, leaving a handful of development workers and diplomats. Civil-ian police and RCMP, as well as some USAID personnel, have also participated in the K-PRT. Because of Canada’s role in combat operations in Kandahar, this means that the military is simultaneously engaged in combat and a state-building process through PRT activities. The military also engages in Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) through the PRTs. These are generally quick reconstruction or infrastructure repair projects by soldiers intended to provide force-protection benefits to the military. Sometimes, these are referred to as ‘hearts and minds’ initiatives, designed to gain the support of the local population.


From a military perspective, such projects may make good sense. They are able to repair or build infrastructure or deliver provisions that help win the support of local populations, and perhaps the additional pay-off of information and tips. However, this approach actually impedes the ability of civilian humanitarian and development personnel to reach populations. Unarmed civilian aid workers rely on their political and military neutrality to win acceptance by the local community. In this sense, these two approaches are critically at odds with one another. The protracted conflict and insecurity in Kandahar and other areas in the south raises the question of how long military personnel can simultaneously engage on both the military and development fronts. At the same time, the longer they continue, the stronger the association between the international military effort and development efforts. In the context of insurgency and counter-insurgency warfare this is tremen-dously problematic, since the projects built by the military may themselves become targets. Worse, Afghan and international aid workers, and civilians associated with the military, may also become targets. Aid workers who begin operations after the military leaves may also be suspect. For these reasons, Quick Impact Projects are indeed controversial. The military believes they provide force-protection benefits integral to the mission. However, there is little documented evidence to suggest that is the case and the efficiency and effectiveness of these projects is also questionable.4 There are other important questions: How does Canada fund such projects? What are our criteria for such funding? The primary obligation to protect civilians should not be secondary to the mil-itary goal of winning hearts and minds. Soldiers handing out school kits to children is not effective if this association causes harm to them in the end.5 While the list of K-PRT Projects and Activities on the DND website is full, it remains unclear where funding for K-PRT Projects and Activities come from (CIDA and DFAIT are listed separately), how they are approved, and who within the KPRT is ultimately responsible.6

Organizations operating outside Kandahar in the north and north west ques-tion the utility of PRTs in such areas, particularly when PRTs are engaged in QIP and development work. Where they do exist, they argue PRTs should focus on security sector reform and disarmament and leave aid to organizations outside the PRT struc-ture. There is also concern that a lack of expertise in programming creates potential for harmful side effects. Afghan organizations indicate they are not comfortable receiving funding from the PRTs due to targeting and fear of association with the military. They prefer to


receive funding from Embassies, NGOs, the UN or the government.7 When PRT teams settle into an area, Afghan organizations say these locations become insecure since the PRTs are targets for the Taliban.8

Under exceptional circumstances, when there are no civilian organizations and personnel to deliver aid, the military can be called upon. In such cases, they must respect the humanitarian operating environment. This is firmly recognized in UN and Canadian Guidelines that recognize the damage done to humanitarian and de-velopment efforts that are too closely associated with political and military efforts.9 Canada committed itself to these standards in the 2003 Government of Canada Guidelines on Humanitarian Action and Civil-Military Coordination and has a responsibility to ensure they are upheld on the ground as well. The key point is that humanitarian aid must be delivered in accordance with international humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.10 This means that under no circumstances can aid be used as a tool in the pursuit of military objectives. This is true even where the military is engaged in supporting or delivering aid. Aid as a force multiplier is completely inconsistent with these internationally sanctioned norms. This isn’t to pit civilian aid workers against the military presence. It is to empha-size not just what we do, but how we do it. An approach that integrates humanitarian, development and military efforts, jeopardizes success in all areas. Unclear policy direction plays out in unclear roles on the ground, and poorly supported aid efforts that, in turn, hinder vital progress.

Recommendations Canada should support external objective evaluations of PRT performance •and, in particular, their impact on humanitarian and security outcomes and impact on local communities. This will require coordination among donors. Specifically, Canada should support an external evaluation of the K-PRT for •both effectiveness and impact on the humanitarian operating environment, security, and local communities.For the K-PRT, Canada should develop indicators or standards of effective-•ness to determine whether it is fulfilling its stated objectives. To the greatest extent possible, civilian and military functions in the K-PRT •should be separated. Guidelines should be developed and disseminated on the appropriate role of the military within PRTs and for interaction with the local population.


Ensure that CIDA is not funding QIP projects, since these are fundamentally •military projects. If they continue, funds should come from either the DND or DFAIT budget. Any support channelled through the PRT by CIDA must be consistent with •Official Development Assistance rules of the OECD. Canada must make clear its end-strategy for the K-PRT and when roles will •be transferred to the relevant local authorities.

The targeting of aid and aid workersCanada’s (and indeed other donors’) integrated, whole-of-government approach has created a close association between the military presence and aid, linking the international aid effort to the international military effort. This blurring of the lines has led to targeting of aid and aid workers. In Afghanistan, at least forty aid workers have been killed in this year alone. Seven of these were international staff. The other thirty-four were Afghans. On top of that, seventy-six humanitarian workers were abducted (forty-four national, twenty-five international). In addition, fifty-five humanitarian aid convoys and forty-five humanitarian facilities were attacked, ambushed or looted by gunmen.11 Clearly, the majority of victims are Afghans. At the same time, there is an increasing reliance on Afghans to deliver aid because the security situation is so precarious and because internationals are seen as part of the international military effort against the Taliban. Unfortunately, this means an increasing number of Afghans themselves are also targeted for attacks. The situation is even worse for female Afghan aid workers. In turn, this has had adverse effects on access to aid by the female population, undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.12 The current situation is the worst aid agencies have had to cope with. We are talking of organizations who have been active in Afghanistan for decades, through the Soviet era, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, and even the 2001 ousting of the Taliban by U.S. forces.13 In almost thirty years of war, only now has the threat to aid workers reached such levels. Traditionally, the international humanitarian presence has provided two basic services: the first, life saving assistance, the second, witnessing to what is actually hap-pening to vulnerable populations. In Afghanistan, the reduction of international aid staff has meant less witnessing on the ground and increased vulnerability for national staff. This means that the Afghans trying to rebuild their society are the ones being killed and threatened.


Aid workers tend to be targeted for economic and political reasons. This year, 106 criminal and conflict-related incidents against NGOs have been confirmed.14 Attacks on aid workers have occurred in both the north and south. In the north, the attacks are the work of criminal networks after economic gain and, in the south, by the Taliban and anti-government forces.15 According to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), anti-government forces this year have abducted more than sixty NGO workers, compared with twenty by criminal gangs.16 Aid worker insecurity threatens access to civilians in dire need in at least two ways. First, because aid workers who are threatened, abducted and killed are simply unable to deliver and support assistance. Second, because aid agencies must be assured of reasonable levels of safety for their staff . The more insecure the situation, and the more aid staff are targeted, the less likely are organizations to continue programming. In both instances, aid may not reach those in need. This has severe repercussions on the country’s ability to make vital progress in development. Some suggest this dire situation requires the military to take up the role of de-livering humanitarian and even development assistance. CCIC and its members, in-cluding those active on the ground, suggest this will only make a bad situation worse. As argued earlier, integrating military and development efforts in state-building in Afghanistan, turns development organizations into targets.

Recommendations Canada must advocate separation of development and military functions. •It should discourage statements by the military that link aid efforts to the international military effort. A plethora of images on the Government of Canada website associate soldiers with Afghan children and aid. This, too, should be discouraged. Support to the fullest extent the ability of organizations like the ICRC, UN •agencies, and NGOs to negotiate humanitarian access to populations in need. This will include negotiations between these entities, the government of Afghanistan and anti-government groups. Increase training for Canadian forces on codes of conduct and Guidelines in •relation to Civil-Military Cooperation in Humanitarian Assistance, includ-ing the 2003 Oslo Guidelines and the Government of Canada’s Guidelines. Pressure the Afghan government to end impunity for attacks against aid •workers, whether of the result of rampant criminality or insurgency.


Increase security-related training in Canada for aid workers operating in •conflict zones.Support low profile efforts to provide security training to nationally recruited •staff.Canada should support monitoring and reporting mechanisms, perhaps •through the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, on attacks against aid workers and assets, in addition to conflict-related attacks against civilians.

Placing an emphasis on effective aidPoverty in Afghanistan is about inequality of access to assets and social services, poor health and nutrition, limited access to education, displacement, vulnerability to natural disasters such as floods and drought, gender inequities, conflict, and political marginalization. Development is a multi-faceted and complex endeavour which takes time. While short- to medium-term progress can be measured by the number of facilities built and services provided (as just one example), real successes in eradicating poverty in a country like Afghanistan will take decades. And this will only be possible if concerted efforts are maintained well past 2011. yet, initially our development assistance was minimal as compared with our mi-litary efforts. Between January 2002 and July 2003, CIDA contributed $26 million to Afghan Transitional Administration through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, the United Nation's Mine Action Program and civil-military cooperati-on projects.17

The next phase of funding, announced in March 2004, was for $250 million between 2005 and 2009 for a Security Sector Reform Fund, the Microfinance In-vestment and Support Facility (MISFA), and support for the National Solidarity Program.18 CIDA disbursements between March 2004 and March 2007 totalled $285 million.19 That means between 2002 and March 2007, CIDA spent $311 million on Afghanistan programming. In 2007, Canada committed another $200 million with a total pledge of $1.2 billion between 2001 and 2011. The government is now under pressure to remedy its lagging commitments to development, once simply an after thought to the military commitment. Canada must ensure it now delivers on its pledges. But money alone, while important, will not solve the challenge of poverty and inadequate development in Afghanistan. We need to address the reasons why aid is not reaching Afghans as


effectively as it should if we are to make progress. The low priority on development assistance has been one of those reasons. Different approaches by different donors is another major challenge. Some donors fund through the core budget, others through the external budget.20 Peace Dividend Trust estimates that only about thirty-one percent of aid is spent on Afghan goods and services, as opposed to foreign goods and services. This is largely the result of major donors like the U.S. and Germany channelling funding through foreign organizations and contractors.21 This severely limits the beneficial local impact of assistance. In September of 2007, a review of CIDA’s current project browser suggested about fifteen percent of current CIDA projects specifically target Kandahar Provin-ce.22 According to DND, twenty percent target Kandahar Province. The U.S. spends more than half of its budget on the four most insecure provinces.23 The U.K. allocates one fifth of its budget to the south.24 The UN and NGOs on the ground are increasingly concerned that aid is being diverted disproportionately to insecure areas.25 The UN has stated that development actors’ failure to ensure less strategically useful provinces in the north and west receive a peace dividend accen-tuates the north-south fault-line enhancing tensions in the country. Perceptions are rising in the north that the poppy-growing areas in the south are treated preferentially by donors because they receive more assistance for poppy alternatives.26

CIDA is under pressure to demonstrate development results in the south, but we urge, that media and other pressures do not become the basis for allocation of much needed resources in Afghanistan. Humanitarian and development aid should be need-driven, not be used to win over the support of populations in strategic areas. Working with other donors to meet needs across the country should be a priority for Canada. Even the most effective Canadian aid will not have substantial impact if other donors do not also adopt such an approach. The annual donor conference on development is one possible avenue to achieve this. CIDA has invested a large proportion of resources in pooled or multi-donor Trust Funds, such as the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), the Mi-crofinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA), and the National Solidarity Program (NSP). A review of CIDA’s project browser suggests Trust Funds receive a majority of CIDA funding, followed by Multilateral organizations, such as the Asian Development Bank, the UNDP, WFP, and WB. A significantly smaller amount is channelled to NGOs, the ICRC and to the CIDA-PRT. Small amounts are channelled directly through the government, and a small Embassy Fund.27 Precise numbers are hard to determine due to multi-year allocations, but in terms


of direct impact, this suggests CIDA could do more to support community-based work through international and Afghan civil society. CIDA could also ensure the effectiveness of the pooled funding mechanism by supporting regular evaluations. The same information suggests disarmament and mine action receive the most support followed by counter-narcotics (non-eradication approaches), education and literacy, including for girls, livelihoods, including alternative livelihoods, reconstruc-tion of roads and buildings, health, food aid, legal sector, IDP and returning refugees, gender equality support, and human rights treaty reporting.28

Assessing these areas against core poverty reduction needs and conflict-induced complications in Afghanistan, we conclude that much more needs to done in the area of strengthening human rights, and more direct support to IDPs, the health sector, and livelihoods. Interestingly, there is no indication of support for youth-centred programming, particularly in the area of youth employment and vocational training. Given that forty-one percent of Afghanistan’s population is fourteen years of age or under, this area needs more attention. Again, civil society organizations could play a more active role in targeted programming. In general, channelling funding through civil society organizations would have greater impact. While strengthening the government is important, much more needs to be done simultaneously to support Afghan civil society, including women’s groups and networks. Canadian organizations are well positioned to do this.

RecommendationsSupport evaluations for the ARTF, MISFA, and the NSP and other pooled •funds through which CIDA channels funds for their effectiveness and im-pact in providing development benefits.

Press other donors to invest more directly in Afghan resources to increase the •overall local impact of aid.

Develop indicators for aid effectiveness in Afghanistan along with other •donors.

Emphasize support for civil society, including more funding to support •Afghan civil society. This will increase direct benefits to the population.

Increase funding for gap areas: youth, disabled, and agriculture. •

Support rolling needs assessment throughout the country to ensure total •donor resources are allocated according to need.


Increase CIDA’s annual budget progressively to meet the 0.7% of our GNI •within ten years. This would help ensure that support to Afghanistan will not detract from pressing needs in other parts of the world such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

Peacebuilding and support for peace processes As with development and humanitarian assistance, peacebuilding in Afghanistan has become increasingly militarized. Indeed, many conflate the military effort with a peacebuilding effort. Terminology often confounds this confusion. Peacebuilding can generally be described as activities that address the root causes of conflict, as well as the consequences of conflict. Some examples include conflict-sensitive de-velopment, peace education, dialogue and conflict resolution, transitional justice, de-mining, and human rights strengthening. Depending on the activity, this can be supported by CIDA or DFAIT. A review of our aid commitments suggests that there is no CIDA or Government of Canada strategy or framework in place to support peacebuilding in Afghanistan. In other war-affected countries, efforts are made to make sure development avoids exacerbating conflict and tensions in society. For example, as previously mentioned, perceptions that the south receives more assistance feed the north-south conflict divide. CIDA should support conflict assessments for development work in Afghani-stan, including the development of conflict-sensitive frameworks and evaluations. Practically speaking, this means increased support for activities that support dia-logue and inter-tribal or communal peacebuilding. It means support for curriculum in schools, peace education, working with minority communities, and supporting human rights and an end to impunity. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade can also play a much stronger role in supporting peacebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. This could include support for developing parliamentary mechanisms for conflict resolution, support for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and human rights monitoring in Afghanistan, security sector reform, and transitional justice, including supporting renewal of the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice (APPRJ).29

Canada should also investigate all possibilities for supporting formal and/or informal peace processes. Canada should invest along with the Afghan government and other donors in an assessment of what may be possible and most effective in Afghanistan. More wars today are stopped by negotiated settlements than by


military victory.30 In 2006, two conflicts ended, seven were in full peace processes, and twenty-seven were in interrupted or semi-processes.31 However, to date, despite thirty years of war, concerted efforts to support a peace process in Afghanistan have been elusive. Past efforts by the UN in the1990s were overshadowed by the Gulf War. As the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs stated at an Annual Retreat of Mediators in June 2007: “Dialogue is a viable tool”.32 Any such support for a peace process must include a role for Afghan civil society, including a meaningful role for women. Culture and religion are clearly factors in effectively involving women in such processes, but they should not be allowed to be an impediment to such involvement. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Secur-ity obligated states to ensure that women are indeed involved in the design, negotia-tion, and implementation phases of any peace agreement.33 Canada has been a 1325 champion for years, including supporting Afghan-Canadian women’s roundtables in 2002.34 As such, Canada should do more to support the effective participation of women in any peace process in Afghanistan. Negotiations with the Taliban must take into account the perspectives of the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other minority communities, as well as the Pashtun com-munity, and their legitimate concerns—a mediation process must explicitly include mechanisms to account for their views. As with any peace process, the challenge is managing or determining the extent to which former and current belligerents, including those responsible for human rights violations, are treated. This is a process of social negotiations that occurs between those affected by war. Accountability to the people that have suffered the brunt of conflict must be a priority. This is done by ensuring justice mechanisms are sufficiently addressed, discouraging blanket amnesty clauses, having strong weapons control provisions, backed up by a strong international commitment and monitoring of implementation. Peace processes are not a silver bullet, nor are they easy. Follow-up on part of the international community to ensure robust implementation in these areas is necessary if a re-lapse to war is to be avoided.

Recommendations Canada must dramatically boost its diplomatic efforts. A first step is to •become a tireless advocate for a comprehensive peace process to build the political consensus now absent.


Canada should support an assessment in partnership with the UN, other •donors, and the Afghan government and civil society to determine who may be best positioned to support a sustained peace effort. Canada can also provide technical and financial resources to facilitate initia-•tives and to ensure that Afghan women and civil society have the resources to participate effectively. Canadian civil society has a role to play in supporting grass-roots community-•based peacebuilding through community development initiatives. Support the development of national political and social institutions capable •of mediating conflict without resort to violence.Canada must champion the involvement of women in design, negotiation, •and implementation phases.Internally, DFAIT must dramatically increase its mediation and negotiations •support capacity. Non-partisan political support in Canada is required to support such a •process. Lessons from Norway and elsewhere demonstrate that if Canada is to become involved in supporting a peace process, there must be a political consensus and commitment in Canada to support long-term efforts at peace in Afghanistan.

Conclusion The time is now for Canada to dramatically re-orient its role in Afghanistan to place a much greater emphasis on political negotiations, community peacebuilding, effect-ive development assistance and humanitarian aid. To do so, it will have to re-evaluate how the whole-of-government approach has succeeded and failed in Afghanistan. We urge Canada to re-consider the ‘full integration’ approach in light of its negative impact on the ground and, instead, support a coordinated approach that recognizes and maintains the distinctions between development, diplomacy, and defence, in policy and practice. Most importantly, Canada must place diplomacy and develop-ment and humanitarian access at the front of its efforts.

DISCLAIMER* The views presented in this article do not necessarily reflect views of individual Canadian Council for International Cooperation members.


ENDNOTES1. Comparison on 2006 and 2007 Throne Speech statements. 2006: Government

will support a more robust diplomatic role for Canada, a stronger military and a more effective use of Canadian aid dollars. 2007: Canadians understand that development and security go hand in hand. Without security, there can be no humanitarian aid, no reconstruction and no democratic development.

2. For background on the evolution of Canada’s whole of government approach in Afghanistan, Sudan and Haiti, see: "Failed States": Canadian Action in Conflict-Affected States: http://www.ccic.ca/e/002/humanitarian_peace.shtml.

3. Rebuilding Afghanistan website, accessed November 25, 2007: http://www.canada-afghanistan.gc.ca/cip-pic/afghanistan/library/kprt-en.asp.

4. Humanitarian Policy Group, “Resetting the rules of engagement: Trend and issues in military – humanitarian relation,” March 2006. Pp. 42 – 47.

5. As listed under KPRT Projects and Activities, DND website accessed November 25, 2007: http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/kprt-eprk/act_e.asp.

6. Ibid.

7. Phone conversation with a researcher on civil-military relations, report forthcoming.

8. Correspondence from a CCIC member partner organization in Afghanistan.

9. See UN Guidelines On the Use of Military and civil Defense Assets in Disaster Relief (1994) and Complex Emergencies (2003).

10. Humanity: meaning the centrality of saving human lives and alleviating suffering wherever it is found. Impartiality, meaning the implementation of actions solely on the basis of need, without discrimination between or within affected populations. Neutrality, meaning that humanitarian action must not favour any side in an armed conflict or other dispute where such action is carried out. Independence, meaning the autonomy of humanitarian objectives from the political, economic, military or other objectives that any actor may hold with regard to areas where humanitarian action is being implemented. See The Principles and Practice of Good Humanitarian Donorship endorsed by Canada in 2003: http://www.reliefweb.int/ghd/a%2023%20Principles%20EN-GHD19.10.04%20RED.doc.


11. IRIN News, “UN warns of humanitarian crisis in inaccessible areas,” 29 October 2007.

12. Discussion with Farida Nekzad, November 13, 2007.

13. IRN News, “ICRC warns of growing humanitarian emergency,” 21 October 2007.

14. IRIN News, “NGOs vulnerable to criminal violence and insurgency,” 7 November 2007.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Canada's Development Commitment for Afghanistan, CIDA, July 2005, accessed at: http://www.acdicida.gc.ca/cidaweb/acdicida.nsf/En/JOS-426165819-SLH. Cited in Patrick Travers and Taylor Owen, Peacebuilding While Peacemaking: The Merits of a 3D Approach in Afghanistan, The University of Oxford, 2006.

18. Ibid.

19. Government of Canada, Performance and Knowledge Management Branch, Review of the Afghanistan Program, May 2007.

20. 2007 National Human Development Report, p. 31.

21. See “Too few development dollars are actually spent in Afghanistan,” Andrew Mayeda and Mike Blanchfield, Ottawa Citizen, 23 November 2007, and the 2007 National Human Development Report, p. 31.

22. According to CCIC calculations for current projects funded by CIDA, see: http://www.ccic.ca/e/docs/002_humanitarian_2007-10_briefing_note_aid_commitments.pdf.

23. “Afghanistan aid must be spread,” Financial Times, 19 March 2007.

24. Ibid.

25. See the 2007 National Human Development Report, Oxfam International Overview of Priorities for Canada in Afghanistan, November 2007 and Afghanistan Reference Group Statement of Development and Humanitarian Assistance, November 2007.

26. United Nations, Report of the Secretary General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” 21 September 2007, par. 24.


27. See CCIC backgrounder on aid in Afghanistan.

28. Ibid.

29. For more on Transitional Justice, see IRIN News: “Revitalise transitional justice system - UN human rights commissioner,” 21 November 2007.

30. “Charting the roads to peace: facts, figures and trends in conflict resolution,” Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, October 2007.

31. Ibid.

32. Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre, “Beyond the boiling point: Is dialogue a viable tool in Afghanistan?” Oslo Forum, June 2007.

33. For more on Resolution 1325 see the Gender and Peacebuilding Working Group: http://www.peacebuild.ca/upload/fact_sheet_new.pdf.

34. See “A STONE IN THE WATER, Report of the Roundtables with Afghan-Canadian Women On the Question of the Application UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in Afghanistan,” July 2002.

The Group of 78

It is time to step back from debate over the use of force in Afghanistan and to draw on the wealth of experience that has been accumulated in the area of peace keeping, peace support and crisis stabilization since the end of the Cold War. There have been sixty-three UN-led peacekeeping operations and a handful of UN-authorized, but not UN-led missions from which we may gather lessons to guide our discourse and, more significantly, the actions Canada must take to help bring Afghanistan forward into a lasting peace.

Peacekeeping: Traditional or ComprehensivePeacekeeping was never meant to supplant the peaceful resolution of disputes. It was never meant to replace the central tool of conflict resolution and negotiated settle-ments. The “traditional” understanding of peacekeeping, that which is considered to be the Canadian invention of Lester Pearson, was based on a negotiated ceasefire agreement and a separation of military forces, monitored by UN peacekeepers. This ceasefire was meant to provide a window of opportunity for the negotiation of an overall comprehensive peace settlement. Cyprus is the quintessential example of this


approach and was often cited as a military peacekeeping success, whereby the oppos-ing Greek and Turkish Cypriot military forces have, generally, kept on their respect-ive sides of the famous “green line” of separation for over 40 years, even though the political issues were not resolved. Post Cold War “comprehensive” peacekeeping has broadened the scope of what had been largely military “peace” operations. It has come to encompass a wide variety of civilian actors and elements, all necessary to help parties implement a comprehen-sive peace settlement. From what has been learned, it is clear that the starting point in any successful peacekeeping operation is a comprehensive peace agreement that addresses all rel-evant issues underlying the conflict. Ideally the agreement will seek to lay the politi-cal, security and socio-economic foundations for a sustainable peace. They include:

disarmament, demobilization and reintegration into civil society of former •combatantsthe rule of law (police, judges, courts, penal system)•democratic development, including free and fair elections within inclusive •political structures improved respect for human rights•reform of the military•rehabilitated economic infrastructure and•the promotion of sustainable development when the situation is sufficiently •stabilized.

A particularly important aspect of this negotiation process will be the identification of mechanisms and procedures, down to the grass roots level, to allow the post-conflict society to find the right balance between justice and reconciliation processes. Each of the above elements contains many issues to be resolved (type of political structures, constitution, legal framework and so on). For these reasons, and many more, external facilitation will be critical to help the parties negotiate this type of agreement. Here the UN has considerable expertise and should be an integral part of this process. We must strive for the most comprehensive peace agreement possible, one that addresses all relevant issues. In turn, we must understand the importance of impartial third party facilitation and expertise in this area. A comprehensive peace agreement presupposes not only that the full range of issues will be on the table but as well that all necessary parties to the conflict will be involved in the negotiation. This must include all the various factions engaged in


the conflict (government and rebels, all sides of the conflict). There may be some “irreconcilables” but they must be kept to a minimum if there is to be any chance of success. Ultimately the more factions that remain outside the negotiation process, the less chance there is of a lasting peace. It will not be sufficient for the negotiations to involve only political and military leaders. The negotiations must be informed by an inclusive consultative process down to the grass roots level if it is to replace elitist, exclusionary forms of governance with pluralistic, inclusive institutions and mechanisms. We must envision a peace process that, itself, is emblematic of the goals being sought. Beyond the internal factions of a civil war there are external parties that must be part of the overall negotiating framework. Typically there will be a number of such parties actively aiding one side or the other. Here we may look to the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where at one point armies from eight different neighbours were directly engaged in the conflict, either in support of a faction or in pursuit of natural resources. At a minimum, external entities must agree to withdraw their forces and cease other forms of assistance to internal factions of the given conflict. In all likelihood, there will be a host of related issues to resolve, ranging from border and resource disputes and the treatment of ethnic minorities to issues of political influence and trade relations. Ultimately the external actors are involved in the conflict for a variety of reasons relating to their own perceived interests and it is unlikely these intertwined issues can be resolved without a negotiating framework expressly designed to do so. If the peace agreement is to receive the blessing of the UN Security Council, then the veto-wielding “Permanent 5” (China, France, Russia, UK and USA) must see it in their interest, or at least not against their interest, to support the agreement. This in turn means that, where one or more of the “Permanent 5” have specific interests, they must be satisfactorily addressed. It is precisely in these cases that it will be critic-ally important for the negotiation to be facilitated by an impartial, competent third party. At the same time, the more important the vested interest, the more difficult it will be for those powerful actors to step back and allow disinterested mediation.Here we may look to the example of the power held by the U.S. in the negotiation of the Dayton Accords, in relation to the Former Republic of yugoslavia. There is much evidence that this control led to an agreement that proved very difficult to implement. The quartet mechanism in the Middle East peace process is allegedly a mechanism to bring into play both the UN Secretary-General and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the EU, as honest brokers, counter-balancing U.S. and Russian special interests, but the evidence to date suggests that its main effect has been to dilute the


voices of moderation and balance. In short, the most vexing negotiation challenge is how satisfactorily to address concerns of powerful external actors without creating an imbalance that fails to reflect the needs of the main parties in the conflict. The case of Darfur, where the reluctance of China to bring necessary pressure to bear on Khartoum to secure its agreement to a robust implementation force because of its dependence on Sudanese oil, is a significant example of powerful third party interests impeding a robust implementation capacity. Once a comprehensive peace agreement has been achieved it must be imple-mented. This is where the modern, multidisciplinary peace operation comes into play: a UN mission under the overall political and diplomatic direction of the Special Representative of the Secretary General and typically comprised of

military, •police, •judiciary, •corrections and rule of law components, •a humanitarian coordinator, •human rights and development components, •an electoral assistance unit, •a civil affairs unit, •child protection experts and •a gender advisor. •

The type and scope of third party implementation must also be negotiated, ideally as part of the overall peace negotiation. In addition to all of the elements within the UN peacekeeping operation, there will be a diverse array of more or less independent actors operating outside the mission, focusing on humanitarian relief or other aspects of the post-conflict peacebuilding process. These independent entities come from the family of UN funds, programs and agencies, such as UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP and UNDP, from the international financial institutions (notably the Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (CPR) Unit of the World Bank), from the donor community (CIDA, DFID, USAID, etc), the international non-governmental community (CARE, World Vision, Oxfam, etc) and from the utterly unique and utterly independent International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). All will be interacting with a multitude of local, national, governmental and non-state actors from the post-conflict country itself, from the neighbouring countries, from sub-regional groupings and, increasingly, from regional


entities such as the African Union, NATO or the EU. Indeed, regional groupings may be mandated formally by the Security Council to assist in the peace implementation process. Slowly, with much effort, this extraordinarily diverse array of international ‘in-terveners’ is coming to understand that, for such a complex effort at reconstruction and nation building to succeed, an agreed multilateral framework is required. Ideally this framework will reflect a comprehensive approach, will be freely negotiated and agreed upon by parties and will address all aspects of the governance failure that led to the original conflict. Simply put, the mandate for a peacekeeping mission must be based on a comprehensive peace agreement. The UN may or may not be the lead entity in the peace negotiation process. UN-led “blue helmets” may or may not be the military force that provides security assistance during the peace implementation phase. At the same time, however, only the UN Security Council can mandate a multidimensional peace operation under UN civilian leadership to oversee and facilitate implementation by the parties of the peace agreement. Only the UN can mandate a comprehensive multilateral peace implementation framework legitimizing international action, and within which gov-ernments need to identify and agree on their areas of action and on specific programs and projects within those areas of action. This includes the identification of how specific projects and plans can support the overall strategy. Equally important, only the UN can even notionally lead the overall peace implementation process, if only for the reason that no other single entity is acceptable to the international community. Ultimately there are three components in play here:

the consent of the parties, •the comprehensive framework and •the coherence of the international assistance effort.•

A Comprehensive Approach for AfghanistanConsider now the case of Afghanistan and the indescribably sad, frustrating and in-excusable fact that none of these essential factors for success have been put in place. There has been no peace negotiation whatsoever, let alone a comprehensive one. Key parties to the conflict, notably the Southern Pashtuns, the largest single tribal group in Afghanistan, were conflated with the Taliban, who were in turn lumped in with al-Qaida; all were left out of the Agreement. The Bonn Agreement, which created the country’s elected bodies, was almost entirely developed by external par-ties and was never the subject of negotiation by Afghans. The framework developed at the London Conference at the end of January 2006 (the Afghanistan Compact)


was developed by an even narrower group of foreigners and then ‘presented’ at the Conference. The lower house of the National Assembly, which has the power under the new Constitution to ratify treaties and international agreements, was given no role in developing or approving the Compact. Afghanistan has long standing conflicts with Pakistan over relations with India, the border, ethnic issues and the transit trade. Iran is a vital economic partner for landlocked Afghanistan. The issue of Taliban insurgents receiving safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan is inextricably intertwined with fundamental issues of gov-ernance in those areas. These fundamentally political issues cannot be resolved by pushing the Government of Pakistan into sending yet more troops into Baluchistan or North Waziristan, yet no serious attempt has been made to bring these parties to the negotiating table. No provision was made in the Bonn Agreement for an overarching, coherent framework for peace implementation. In the immediate post 9/11 period, United States’ unilateralism confined the UN to a narrow humanitarian coordination role, while key peacebuilding tasks were parceled out to a series of lead nations, utterly unequipped to handle them (UK—drug eradication, Germany—police training, Italy—the judiciary, Japan—DD&R, USA—the new Afghan military). Later, when election planning ran into serious problems, the UN role was expanded to take on this task. The new Afghan government-led coordination mechanism established under the London Compact ( JCMB) is too unwieldy to be effective and key activities, such as the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (each unique to the international military force that created it), take place completely outside its orbit. Just as the international political leadership in Afghanistan is fragmented, so is the military effort. From the beginning there have been two distinct and funda-mentally incompatible military efforts: the U.S.-led Coalition, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led Inter-national Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The Coalition, whose primary mission is defined as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and which enjoys freedom of action under the United States’ right of self-defence, came to Afghanistan to assure, first, the security of Americans from al-Qaeda and, secondly, that of the Afghan government from the insurgency. ISAF’s mission is to help the Afghan authorities provide security according to the Bonn Agreement, relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and a bilateral agreement with the Afghan government. ISAF, a UN-authorized but NATO-led post-conflict stabilization force, was meant to be a robust peace operation, loosely modeled on those deployed in the


former yugoslavia to help implement the Dayton Accords and in Kosovo. It was to have been in place while a comprehensive political settlement was worked out. Unfortunately, during the critical immediate post-conflict phase, when the Taliban government had been routed, ISAF was only mandated to operate in and around Kabul. The U.S.-led Coalition effectively was given freedom of action in the rest of the country to track down Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents, operate on the basis of overwhelming force, make deals with local warlords when it was expedient, and, in the process, to put the security needs of ordinary Afghans constantly at risk. In the end, what occurred was the worst of all possible developments: the expansion in late July 2006 of ISAF into the South when the insurgency there had not been quelled but had steadily grown in strength. This occurred under relentless pressure from the U.S. as it sought to free up American troops for Iraq. The result was that ISAF too was sucked into the counterinsurgency quagmire. The aim of a peace operation, however robust, is not to go to war with the par-ties but to help them build the democratic institution and processes that will enable them to manage societal conflicts in a non-violent way. A robust force can deter violations, effectively address them when they occur and thus build confidence in the peace process. However, this presupposes that all or most of the key players want peace more than war, so individual spoilers can be effectively isolated and dealt with. Without a credible peace process, the international military force, as it seeks to take action to address violations, risks becoming just another party to the conflict, as it has done in Afghanistan. On June 12, 2007 the ICRC, which has had an uninterrupted presence in Afghanistan since 1987, gave a press briefing entitled “Afghanistan: three decades of war and no end in sight”. Their statement emphasized that the conflict between Afghan and international forces on the one hand and armed opposition groups on the other had “significantly intensified” and had spread, during the previous twelve months, beyond the south, to parts of the east, west and north. The September 21, 2007 Report of the UN Secretary General to the Security Council states that 2007 is turning out to be the worst year, in terms of security, for Afghanistan since 2001, with an average of 548 insurgent and terrorist related incidents per month. This represents a twenty percent increase in violence since 2006. The ICRC and UN reports are the latest in a long, grim list dating back to late 2004 with each one documenting a further deterioration in the security situation in Afghanistan. NATO military commanders themselves know that there is no military solu-tion to Afghanistan’s myriad problems. According to respected analyst, Paul Rogers of Bradford University, “There is a widespread and bleak consensus among NATO


commanders: unless there is a significant change in policy, foreign forces will remain in the country for decades, tied down in bitter counter-guerrilla operations.” Fighting the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other disaffected groups loosely aligned with them, involves tactics that rely heavily on air power and aggressive search and destroy missions. These tactics have led to at least as many civilian casualties by international and allied Afghan forces as by opposition groups. This breeds hatred against foreign forces and, in the south, builds support for the insurgents. Equally problematic, the use by the military of humanitarian aid as a tool in the information campaign against the Taliban carries the grave risk of making humanitarian workers themselves a target, as well as the civilians they seek to assist. Fighting the Taliban et al also means that military forces cannot focus on help-ing build and support the institutions that the Afghan people desperately need for long term security, particularly a professional, accountable police service and national army. Similarly neglected are the disbanding of armed groups, the countering of gov-ernment corruption and the ending of impunity for abuses. The Canadian military and other NATO forces in the South are in an impossible situation. They cannot help build a secure environment without ending the war and they cannot end the war by military means. How then can the war be ended? Without a decisive victory, history tells us that the only way to end such internal conflict is through negotiated settlement. The optimum time to negotiate with the Taliban was when they were defeated and routed by the U.S. military in late 2001, a strategy that would have had the added benefit of separating them from al-Qaida, rather than pushing them ever closer. Now they are infinitely stronger despite the short-term tactical gains that have been made by ISAF and the OEF on the battlefield at significant human cost. President Karzai, an array of Afghan Parliamentarians and even former high profile members of the Taliban have realized there is no other way forward but, in-credibly, negotiations are being opposed by Canada. This is surely the most powerful evidence that Canada has become part of the problem, not the solution.What is not needed in Afghanistan is another backroom deal forged by elites to save their political hides. yet this is what will happen and, to a certain extent, what is already underway, if a new direction is not taken by the international community. What is urgently needed is a UN-led broadly-based political dialogue in Afghanistan engaging all sectors of society and communities of interest. Canada has a key role to play, one we have bought with the blood of young Canadians, in securing support within NATO for a comprehensive peace process to build the political consensus that is now absent.


To be an effective peacemaker, Canada must devote its efforts at resolving con-flict and helping build a sustainable peace within a whole of government peacebuild-ing policy that is itself embedded in a UN-led, international strategic framework. This is where Canada should focus. This means, in turn, giving priority in our foreign policy, together with the eradication of poverty and the promotion of fair trade, to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the prevention of conflict through “deep prevention” efforts focused on systematic change, the promotion of human security and a sustained commitment to post-conflict peacebuilding. Embedding Canadian peacebuilding activity in a UN-led international strategic framework also means a rededication by Canada to the principles of the UN Charter; to one set of rules for all, fairly applied to all; and to the principle that security of each state is equally important and can be truly safeguarded and enhanced only by means of the twin objectives of human and common security. This ultimately lends itself to the para-mount need for Canada to work actively to support and strengthen UN institutions and capacities for peacebuilding.

The CRC Committee for Contact with the Government (On behalf of the Christian Reformed Churches in Canada)

IntroductionPublic debate on the scope of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan has been narrow. It has focused on the end date of the military mission, and a simplistic polariza-tion between military defeat of the Taliban and development. Peace with Justice in Afghanistan is a complex matter that demands greater nuance in public debate and policy-making. The Government of Canada has argued that security is a pre-requisite for development. Security, development and diplomacy are all critical to a sustainable peace. Sustainable security and development depend on addressing the roots of the conflict in partnership with the peoples of Afghanistan. Wise support and empowerment for made in Afghanistan approaches to reconciliation/transi-tional justice and accountable-and-just governance ought to be a key orientation of Canada’s engagement now and beyond February 2009. In 2006 the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) concluded a landmark bi-national study on peace and war. The key finding of that study is a call for governments and the Christian community to dedicate more


attention to building peace with justice. Building on this finding, the Committee for Contact with the Government (CCG) of the CRC believes that peacebuild-ing requires the integration of reconciliation, just governance, development and security. These principles have characterized CCG’s perspectives on Canada’s mis-sion to Afghanistan and also motivate CRC participation in ecumenical dialogue concerning it. The CCG is well aware of the complexity of Afghanistan and our limited un-derstanding of its peoples and their struggles. We offer the following comments from a point of conviction—that in spite of the enormous challenges there is hope for peace, and that the path to peace is through genuine reconciliation. This hope must be realistic and persistent, and be built on the contributions of Afghan peoples.

The Orientation of the Mission Behind the simplified public debate are legitimate questions about the orientation and balance of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Public communication on the mis-sion often centers on military security objectives of defeating the Taliban. Security is indeed a legitimate goal but it is more complex than military victory—a victory which an array of policy makers and shapers agree is elusive. We believe that human security elements of the mission (including civilian protection, development and reconciliation) need a more explicit and leading profile in public debate and policy making. We say this for pragmatic and principled reasons.

On the pragmatic side: Canada’s counter-insurgency efforts in Kandahar •have intensified since 2005 in terms of cost to the national treasury and in significant loss of troops. In the same period security has deteriorated as evidenced by increases in insurgency incidents and in diminished capacity to safely deliver humanitarian and development aid. Reports from the UN, the Red Cross, the International Crisis group and others detail these disturbing trends. The question then: is the investment of Canadian blood and treasure having the intended effect? And if not, what changes are necessary to make tangible progress for genuine security?On the level of principle: In light of the CRC’s reflections on peace with •justice, the CCG has been urging the government to give greater priority and visibility to efforts to build peace in Afghanistan. Security in the fullest sense of the term will come from deliberate actions for reconciliation and restoration of just governance.

These principled and pragmatic ideas suggest that a different orientation is needed for Canada’s strategy in Afghanistan. A clear peacebuilding orientation


could shape efforts to address the root causes of the conflict in reconciliation and transitional justice initiatives.

Peacebuilding for and with the Peoples of AfghanistanIn recent history most ethnic groups in Afghanistan have tasted the bitterness of op-pression. Testimony of this brokenness, as detailed by the Afghan Independent Hu-man Rights Commission (AIHRC) in A Call for Justice, is echoed by representatives of Afghan civil society that we have met here in Canada in ecumenical consultations on Afghanistan. Breaking the painful cycle of violence, oppression, and exclusion is the root of sustainable peace. Deliberate and persistent efforts for reconciliation need to have priority in Canada’s efforts to build peace in Afghanistan. In this light CCG has called for the following in recent interaction with policy makers:

tangible support for the Afghanistan Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation •and Justice. further support for non-governmental and civil society initiatives dedicated •to genuine reconciliation between the peoples of Afghanistan;direct interaction with the peoples of Afghanistan specifically focused on the •connections between reconciliation, just governance, human development and sustainable security.

The Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice is a formal element of the Afghanistan Compact. This plan, developed in consultation with Afghan civil society, is a thoughtful and culturally appropriate approach to accountability, forgiveness and reconciliation as a basis for lasting peace. The CCG has been told that Government of Canada supports the Action Plan and other transitional justice initiatives (correspondence with Minister MacKay, March 30, 2007). In subsequent discussion with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT) we have been informed that Canada is supporting three elements of the Action Plan: acknowledgment of suffering; civil service reform and the promotion of reconciliation and national unity. We have, as yet, been unable to get information on the extent of this support. What is clear is that the completion target of 2008 for this plan is unlikely to be achieved (according to available official reports). Ongoing issues of impunity and corruption in state institutions may well indicate a lack of authority and political will in Afghanistan to implement this rigorous Action Plan. Canadian support for reconciliation and transitional justice most certainly rests on partnerships with peoples in Afghanistan. Their perspectives need to shape any initiatives in order to be reality based, culturally appropriate, and achievable in this


deeply challenging context. In this light it is heartening to know that DFAIT is part-nering with the International Center for Transitional Justice, an organization with an exemplary track-record of facilitating civil society approaches to reconciliation. Genuine reconciliation will be a long-term process of trust-building that will ultimately enhance security and human development in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Afghanistan Compact affirms this principle by the very inclusion of the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice within it. The Secretary General has noted an

urgent need for an integrated political and military strategy that compliments the Afghan national development strategy, but also encompasses wider issues and provides sharper focus on the achievement of national reconciliation and regional stability.1

Canada’s continuing pursuit of the Afghanistan Compact and peacebuild-ing ought, therefore, to include new public profile and well-resourced support for Afghan civil-society led reconciliation. Canada will exercise profound international leadership by building peace for and with the peoples of Afghanistan in this way.

Conclusion As mentioned at the outset of this brief, the CCG has noted oversimplifications in public debate on Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The weight of public debate and avail-able information suggest that Canada has given priority to the counter-insurgency effort. However the polarization of public discussion does not give us confidence of a fulsome understanding of the nature and balance of the mission. This indicates need for a transparent and non-partisan public and parliamentary debate. Peace with justice in Afghanistan demands a nuanced approach to the mission that includes dip-lomatic, developmental, transitional justice and security/civilian protection goals. Sustainable peace will be rooted in a balanced approach that addresses the root causes of the conflict in partnership with the peoples of Afghanistan. We hope that such a partnership for peace with justice—shaped by the energetic and realistic pursuit of reconciliation—will characterize Canada’s role in Afghanistan henceforth.

ENDNOTE1. See, http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N07/502/15/PDF/

N0750215.pdf ?OpenElement September 21, 2007, Item #4.


Canadian Friends Service Committee(On behalf of the Religious Society of Friends in Canada)

We, the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers), wish to express to the Government of Canada our concern that the very premise on which the four sug-gested options on which the Panel is focused precludes consideration of non-military peacebuilding. With due respect, policy with regard to Canada’s role in Afghanistan is not only, or even primarily, a question of what to do with our military resources. If the goal of Canada’s foreign policy is to build peace, then deep consideration of non-military, peacebuilding action is needed. Within the terms of reference of this panel, the only option which offers an opening for this sort of discussion is number four, that is, “To withdraw all Canadian military personnel except a minimal force to protect aid workers and diplomats.” Peacebuilding action goes far beyond humani-tarian relief and diplomatic presence in the country. When the criminal atrocities of September 11th, 2001 were committed, inter-national and national legal structures already existed to pursue the perpetrators and hold them accountable for their actions. To pursue this course, and to strengthen such structures, would have been peacebuilding action. Instead, military retaliation was chosen. The violent and overwhelming assault on an already impoverished and war-damaged country, the inevitable killing of innocent bystanders, and the bypass-ing of tenets of international law were, we believe, immoral and counterproductive choices. The outcome of these choices is that Canada’s traditional and cherished role as a peacemaker is now extremely compromised. Reliance on war and militarism will not achieve lasting and genuine peace. It fails to address the root causes of conflict and pre-empts constructive approaches to just solutions. Each episode of violence sows the seeds for further violence. Individually and collectively, we can create a lasting peace only by recognizing each other's God-given humanity, whatever our national or ethnic origin, and then acting with the loving justice that follows such recognition. We in the Canadian Friends Service Committee, invest our effort in developing such responses, and shall continue our work toward that end, to (in the words of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania) “see what love will do” in situations of conflict. The Gov-ernment of Canada, with its different position and resources, could follow the same path. Concretely, at this juncture, this type of approach could involve actions such as:

Mediation by a low-profile mediator facilitating dialogue among all the 1) actors, armed and otherwise. This person and his or her team would be


independent of any individual state’s direction or identity, and would be respected for having demonstrated understanding of the political and social history of Afghanistan and Islam. The first goal of the dialogue would be a cease-fire agreement linked to the second step listed below. The cease-fire agreement would include a structure for the delivery of aid and reconstruc-tion to meet the basic needs of the people, with clear expectations of how Afghan (and international) human and material resources will be equitably used and built through the process. This would include a plan of action for transforming the opium industry into a legal and more diverse alternative. We note that a large part of the Afghanistan Compact is dedicated to solving this economic root cause of the conflict, but this aspect is ignored in the terms of reference of the Panel. A very inclusive process, including all the Afghan actors involved in step 2) one, to frame a constitution for Afghanistan which provides a high level of autonomy to all major parts of the country. Firm support in the multilateral diplomatic world for the decisions and 3) directions arising from the processes of (1) and (2). Here, Canada could have a very important role, although minimally present on the ground in Afghanistan.Use of the international legal structures that were ignored in 2001 to pursue 4) the small number of criminal organizers of terrorist action.Assistance with funding for the international support workers and observers 5) who would be needed for the political and material reconstruction activi-ties defined in items (1) and (2). Recognition that the Organization of the Islamic Conference might be a more appropriate organizing framework than NATO. The OIC, established in 1969, is a high-level intergovernmental or-ganization with 57 member states. It condemns terrorism in all its forms and undertakes actions to address its root causes. The OIC engages in high-level multilateral diplomacy, including brokering peace agreements and organiz-ing cooperative contributions to humanitarian relief.A similar and linked low-profile consultative process in each of the neigh-6) bouring countries.Adherence and promotion by Canada to key international disarmament, 7) human rights and environmental agreements, in order to overturn the conflict-feeding perception that NATO countries want restrictions on other countries but resist accepting restrictions themselves. Such agreements


would include the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the Program of Action on Limitation of Small Arms and Light Weapons, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Kyoto Accord. A special concern is that Canada must stop all complicity in torture, and roll back the untenable restrictions on domestic civil liberties that are found in “anti terrorism” legislation here at home.Direct assistance by Canada in de-mining and cleaning up depleted uranium 8) munitions used during and since the invasion of 2001, thus recognizing our responsibility as participants in the use of these weapons.

We ask that the Canadian Government withdraw its present support of a vio-lent, and ultimately dangerous, strategy, and turn its resources instead to the creation of a more just world, in which the incentives to terrorism would be steadily reduced. This course does not promise a mythical and unattainable absolute security for the Developed World, but it would vastly increase the genuine safety of all the world's inhabitants. While we realize that Friends’ pacifist tradition is the path taken less frequently, we are disturbed by our government's lack of interest in and failure to consider alternative non-violent means to resolve conflict. There are many NGOs and peace organizations offering an array of alternatives. How can we break out of the spiral of violence in which we are now caught without exploring these other options? We ask that our government forsake its overwhelming focus on military action and explore more independent, creative and non-violent approaches to foreign and defence policy in general, and to Canada’s role in Afghanistan specifically. We hold you in the Light as you struggle with these difficult issues which affect the well-being of those now on earth and of future generations.


Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, edited by David Little. Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution. New york: Cambridge University, 2007. ISBN: 978-0521853583 (Hbk). Pp. 524.

For stitching together a wonderful collection of peacemaker profiles, David Little deserves our thanks. Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolu-tion collects the stories of sixteen practitioners of religion-based peacemaking. The stories illuminate what one well-received person can do to help knit together opposing sides. The fourteen chapters of the book are framed by Little’s introduc-tion to the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and the book’s conclusion. However, the heart of the book is in the storytelling. Little highlights each practitioner, sometimes two in one chapter. Personal background, religious motivation, and involvement within the particular conflict are detailed. Each story includes a short historical background to the conflict, country statistics, and a small map. This reviewer was familiar with only five of the individuals profiled prior to reading. This, however, is the reason for the book—to introduce to a wide audience the stories of religious peacemakers who often work behind the scenes. Other authors, such as Johnston and Sampson, Appleby, Gopin, Smock, and Abu-Nimer, had to argue for the essential inclusion of religion within peacemaking processes. Here in Peacemakers in Action, the stories themselves make the point. They demonstrate that overtly recognizable people of faith become peacemakers, some by choice, others by circumstance. In contrast to earlier religious peacemaking books which focus more on the historical/theoretical or communal/organizational levels, Little’s focus is squarely on the individual. Technique and analysis, theory and evaluation are not at the fore-front. Rather, the common threads Little highlights are the practitioners’ personal qualities and the strength of their relationships. Moral authority and community standing play a significant part in the acceptance of religiously identified peacework-ers. The use of religious books, passages, and speeches, together with a foundational recognition of the value of religious rituals, also enhance connection to people on a heart level.

Book Reviews

151Book Reviews

Little addresses popular misconceptions about religion and violence in the conclusion, challenging negative ideas by pointing to the evidence provided in the narratives. A common oversimplification is that “religion and violence are insepar-able” (429). Admittedly religion may often be a tool used to manipulate groups to a political end, or to intensify existing division. However, religion can also bring enemies together. The stories of Father Chacour and yehezkel Landau (both from Palestine/Israel) reveal that violent war is not inherently religious in nature. The second oversimplification is that “good religion always brings peace” (433). It would be improper to conclude that religion that supports violence is textually corrupt. Within the Abrahamic faiths (surprisingly, all the profiles in the book derive from these three faiths), both “terror texts” and Scriptural interpretation can and do support force at times. Little affirms that violence stemming from theology does not always grow out of perverted or impure religion. Finally, Little asks, “What difference does religion make” (438)? He draws three conclusions or themes from the profiles. First, people look to religion for guidance. There is a “hermeneutic of peace” coming from each figure. That is, the practictioners’ religions provide an “interpretive framework that begins with the conviction that the pursuit of justice and peace by peaceful means is a sacred prior-ity in each of the traditions presented” (438). Fully understood, religion prefers to create peace through peaceful means. A second theme extracted is that “empathic detachment,” or perceived impar-tiality to warring parties, helps establish a peacemaker’s credentials. Detachment “opens the door” for the involvement of religious peaceworkers. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the African National Congress (ANC) is a good example of an impar-tial mediator. Thirdly, Little emphasizes that solutions that address only economic or mil-itary issues will not last. Rather, understanding the religious dimensions of conflict will become paramount for the resolution of conflict. yehezkel Landau states that there are often ongoing religious concerns in conflict. In these cases, as with the rise of religious extremism, faith groups should be helping more. Peacemakers in Action fills an important gap within the study of religion and conflict resolution at an individual level. For those who work with sectarian vio-lence, Little has compiled an essential read.

Korey Dyck Trinity College, Dublin


Stefan Wolff. Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University, 2006. ISBN: 0-190280587-8 (Hbk); ISBN: 978-0-19-280587-4 (Pbk). Pp. 220.

Stefan Wolff has taken on the monumental task of attempting to explain and analyze ethnic conflict from root causes to potential solutions. Despite some inevitable gaps, he has succeeded in bringing together an insightful analytical framework and extensive factual data to demonstrate the wide breadth and deep complexity of this type of conflict. Wolff begins the book by presenting the human dimension, the stories and statistics behind the eruptions of violence in places such as the Balkans and Rwanda. The next chapter provides the general contours of a social scientific understanding of ethnic identity, as well as the interaction of such identities with a more nationalistic perspective. Subsequent chapters explore the causes of ethnic conflict, the strategies used by those engaged in such conflicts, and potential means of managing or settling such conflicts. In his final chapters, Wolff steps back from his intensive analysis to re-flect on the long-term prospects for ending ethnic conflicts and on the post-conflict reconstruction challenges that must be addressed if social stability is to be restored. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the depth of its analysis of ethnicity and nationalism as demonstrated in Chapter 2. Wolff provides a clear theoretical base for understanding the salience of ethnic identity and the development of intense hos-tility based on ethnic group identification. Examples from Bosnia-Herzogovina and Rwanda reinforce the power of ethnicity to divide and destroy. Wolff also provides important insights into nationalism as a concept both broader and narrower than ethnicity, and as a force that interacts and responds to ethnicity in complex ways. Throughout the book, Wolff brings this thorough and incisive analysis to bear on the specific case studies he explores. While the analysis is thorough, Wolff ’s case studies already appear slightly dated. The original hardcover edition of the book was completed in August 2005 and his case study material dates from earlier. Some of the conclusions drawn from specific situations are no longer applicable, as the situation changed in ways that Wolff did not predict. This is particularly noticeable in his discussion of settlement of ethnic conflict where he presents a gloomy assessment of the Northern Ireland peace agreement based on the 2005 breakdown of relations between the opposing sides. Consideration of the subsequent moves toward cooperation and social stabil-ity since 2005 would have enabled a more hopeful perspective. Wolff demonstrates effectively that a peace agreement is only the beginning, not the end, of an ethnic conflict settlement process. That said, it would be useful to show that much more was begun with the Northern Ireland agreement than Wolff acknowledges.

153Book Reviews

A more problematic aspect of Wolff ’s treatment of ethnic conflict is his discus-sion of the role of “terrorists” and “terrorism” in this context. In his chapter on ethnic conflict strategies, Wolff goes into great detail about the impact of terrorist criminal activity. However, he does not clearly define what he means with these terms or how such activities relate to the more legitimate strategies of ethnic combatants. He therefore leaves an unfortunate impression of the terrorist as the stereotypical Islamic fundamentalist somehow disconnected from other identity-based fighters. A short section in the final chapter attempts to resolve the confusion by decrying the use of the “terrorism” label for suppressing ethnic groups and delegitimizing their aspirations, but this brief discussion does not balance the way the same label may be misperceived in the previous chapter. The chapter on post-conflict reconstruction is the weakest part of the book. Wolff provides useful insights into the huge obstacles confronting long-term recon-struction work but ultimately presents too narrow a focus. Nothing is said about spe-cific processes for identity group reconciliation (such as problem-solving workshops or Rothman’s ARIA process) or specific models for sustainable peacebuilding on a larger scale. All of these could be included as potential options for anyone interested in this post-conflict field. In conclusion, Wolff ’s study of ethnicity and ethnic conflict provides a good analysis and useful reference points for the serious researcher. While some gaps re-main, the depth of analysis and the breadth of material presented provide an excellent framework for a deeper understanding of some of the most intense and disturbing social conflicts of our time.

Neil Funk-Unrau Menno Simons College

Canadian Mennonite University

John C. Torpey. Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN: 0674019431 (Hbk). Pp. 214.

John C. Torpey sets out to explore the contentious field of reparations politics. The main focus of his book is whether we can “make whole what has been smashed.” Deriving this dilemma from Walter Benjamin’s description of Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus, Torpey structures his book to portray reparations as a form of politics where people construct histories in order to achieve their goals.


Torpey notes that our era is facing increasing reparation demands, and this, he argues, makes the past predominate over the future. Torpey surveys the history of reparations politics and examines the structure of reparations. He expands his argument with three substantial case studies: reparations for Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian internments, reparations for black Americans, and post-colonial reparations politics in post-apartheid Namibia and South Africa. Torpey’s starting point is his concern over increased demands for reparations, which he ascribes to our current preoccupation with the past as opposed to looking ahead for a brighter future. He defines our current historical context in terms of “post-ness,” indicating a decline in future-oriented thinking. This trend, according to Torpey, leads to our desire to supplant the future with efforts to right past wrongs. Accordingly, our road to the future runs through the past. He declares that this is a pessimistic post-modern view that came in place of the images of a brighter future that had been the outstanding features of socialism and the nation-state. For Torpey, sequelae to the Holocaust represent a prototype for reparations politics, marking an important shift in the meaning ascribed to reparations. Thus, he distinguishes between the pre- and post-Holocaust meanings of reparations: the former refers to indemnities imposed by the winners on the losers as a result of warfare, and the latter stand for a broader reference to material, often monetary, compensation for some past wrong. It is the latter term that accompanied the grow-ing prominence of victims or, in Torpey’s parlance, the “upgrading of victimhood.” Torpey is largely pessimistic about reparations. Accordingly, he describes “entre-preneurs of memory,” those who adapt a specific historical discourse to suit their purposes by weaving a range of different pasts into a particular historical account. This discourse can then be instrumental in commemorative and compensatory claims advanced by the victimized groups. Thus, the entrepreneurs of memory are the ones largely responsible for turning the matter of reparations into a form of politics, as well as maintaining our fixation on the past. yet, Torpey himself admits that the important thing is the prism through which the past is viewed. This suggests that reparations politics can be forward-looking while helping to draw inspiration from the past. In this respect, Torpey advocates specific modes of repair—transitional justice, compensation, apologies, and efforts to arrive at a consensual past. These, he says, offer potential to create a balanced approach toward addressing the past. His concentric model of these modes offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of reparations politics. In fact, the desirable goal is to construct or reconstruct a consensual history that would be acceptable to everyone and would open a way toward a common future. Another essential insight

155Book Reviews

into reparations politics is Torpey’s delineation of dimensions of reparations: cultural versus legal and symbolic versus economic. These are valuable distinctions that allow us better to comprehend which claims are likely to arise and possibly even to predict which reparations have the potential to be effective. Torpey’s book is an excellent, although arguably controversial, work on repara-tions politics. Well written and thoroughly researched, the piece highlights the many quarrels surrounding the issue of reparations. It is therefore a must read for students of transitional justice and reconciliation processes. The book provides us with a valuable analysis of the history and anatomy of reparations politics, and illustrates the dynamics behind reparations through the three case studies. While Torpey comes to a rather gloomy conclusion that we cannot repair the past, the question remains open whether reparations can amend it on the way toward a brighter future.

Elena Pokalova Kent State University

Philip Zimbardo. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New york: Random House, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-8129-7444-7 (Pbk). Pp. 488.

This book is a must-read for peace and conflict scholars. Few thinker-writers would attempt his task: to examine evil and good, monstrous behaviour, and heroes who resist evil. A social psychologist, Zimbardo proposes an “...investigation into human transformations of good, ordinary people into perpetrators of evil, in response to the corrosive influence of powerful situational forces” (Foreword). The three forces of personal choice, situation and social context, and systemic forces contribute to horrifying transformations. First, while acknowledging individ-ual responsibility, Zimbardo affirms that individual behaviour is embedded within genetic, biological, and psychological makeup. Second, the situation of a particular place and time influences behaviour. Phenomena such as conformity, deindividua-tion, and bystander inaction—acquiescence to group influence—are explored in sobering depth and applied to peace and conflict studies. Third, systemic forces can create and maintain behaviour. Zimbardo attends particularly to issues of belief, au-thority, control and power, and ways these can be misused to initiate evil behaviour. Zimbardo begins with a thorough introductory summary. In Chapter 1, he reviews the psychology of evil, setting up his examination of “the dark side of human behaviour.” He asks the reader to engage personally with this exploration.


Chapters 2 through 9 (170 pages, dense both visually and mentally), present a sharp new analysis of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. He offers an exhaustive account of the experiment with details of individual behaviour and outcomes. Chap-ters 10 and 11 explore the experiment’s broader implications and interpretation. In Chapter 12 Zimbardo broadens his view to include numerous other sources such as research, Scripture and theology, mythology and history, and current news reports. He touches on all the classic writers (C.S. Lewis, Muzafer Sherif, Stanley Milgrim, Hannah Arendt, and many others) and uses innumerable examples. Chapter 13 narrows our focus to deindividuation, dehumanization, and in-action. In Chapters 14 and 15 he mounts case analyses of actions and subsequent prosecutions of inhumane prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Surprisingly, Zimbardo was an expert witness for the defence in these trials. The solutions to evil parallel his earlier analysis. Individuals should be self-aware; situations should be discerned; systems should be questioned and challenged. In Chapter 16 Zimbardo insists that monstrous behaviour is not inevitable; evil can be resisted. He presents a ten-point plan to resist undesirable social influences, each point taking the form of a vow. He then analyzes heroic action. Heroes are ordi-nary individuals who can imagine, in exactly the situation that spawns monstrous behaviour, the possibilities for “virtuous behaviour”. “We are all heroes in waiting. It is a choice that we may all be called upon to make...” (488). He helpfully uses a century-old definition of heroism to discuss its subtleties. His taxonomy of heroism is of limited interest, but incorporates further historical examples. This work follows Zimbardo’s trail of excellent scholarship. The book is monu-mental in its sourcing, referencing, and analysis. It is complete, thorough, and wide-ranging, as if Zimbardo leaves no idea overlooked. His exquisite articulation of ideas and incisive analysis cut away layers of protective denial. His thought-provoking exploration stimulates reexamination of memory, current habits, and hopes for the future. Frequent use of hyperbole, common metaphor, and cliché make the prose sound familiar but unfortunately does become irritating. He uses rhythmic, repeti-tive, almost musical phraseology, causing an oddly hypnotic sensation. At times, ir-relevant details display Zimbardo’s acumen but do not add to his points. This book is as much about Zimbardo himself as about his ideas. Throughout his career, his creative intellect has supported peace and truly sustainable solutions to conflict. He is fundamentally hopeful that we can actually “uncover, oppose, defy and triumph over” evil, monstrous behaviour. His challenge to the reader is to cultivate self-awareness, situational sensitivity, and systemic acuity.

157Book Reviews

He begins and ends the book with M.C. Escher’s “Circle Limit IV,” a mandala that tricks the viewer to see both angels and demons at once, illustrating the sym-biosis between good and evil in everyone. Zimbardo is both bravely transparent and profoundly inspiring. He could be considered one of the heroes of our time. His colloquial tone evokes the sharing of a teacher who masterfully assists his intimate students to make sense of senseless evil. It makes the reader want to identify with him, and want him to be right.

Lois Edmund Menno Simons College

Canadian Mennonite University


Sean Byrne is a native of Ireland. He is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Peace and Conflict Studies, and Director of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba. He is author of Growing Up in a Divided Society: The Influence of Conflict on Belfast Schoolchildren (1997). E-mail: [email protected].

The Canadian Council for International Cooperation is a coalition of Canadian voluntary sector organizations working globally to achieve sustainable human development. For information about this submission contact Surendrini Wijeyaratne, Program Officer (Peace and Conflict), CCIC. E-mail: [email protected].

Canadian Friends Service Committee, founded in 1931, acts on the peace and social justice concerns of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada. E-mail: [email protected].

The Committee for Contact with the Government (CCG) is a ministry of the Christian Reformed Churches in Canada. For information about this submis-sion contact Mike Hogeterp, Research and Communications Manager, Committee for Contact with the Government. E-mail: [email protected].

Sharon Anne Cook, Professor at the University of Ottawa, has a joint appointment to the Faculty of Education and Department of History. She is Principal Researcher and Co-ordinator for the long-standing Developing a Global Perspective for Educa-tors, a CIDA-funded project to encourage the inclusion of peace and development resources in pre-service teachers’ curriculum design. Email: [email protected].

John Derksen is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, a College of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with the University of Winnipeg. He is also Co-Editor of Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies. E-mail: [email protected].

Greg Donaghy is Head of the Historical Section and Deputy Director, Policy Research Division, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. He is currently

Notes on Authors

159Notes on Authors

one of the co-authors of the third volume of the official history of the Department of External Affairs, covering the period 1968 to 1984. E-mail: [email protected].

Korey Dyck is a Canadian mediator and trainer, currently engaged in M.Litt and Doctoral studies at Trinity College Dublin. His primary research area is the practi-cal aspects of interfaith dialogue in deeply divided societies. E-mail: [email protected].

Lois Edmund is a clinical psychologist and conflict resolution facilitator. Her cur-rent position is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, a College of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with the University of Winnipeg, where she specializes in group process and conflict. She is also Book Review Editor of Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies. E-mail: [email protected].

Eyob Fissuh is a native of Eritrea. He is a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba specializing in Econometrics. He has coauthored articles in journals including Peace and Conflict Studies, Journal of Con-flict Studies, the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies, and has presented papers at a number of international Economics conferences. E-mail: [email protected].

Neil Funk-Unrau is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, a College of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with the University of Winnipeg. E-mail: [email protected].

The Group of 78 is an informal association of Canadians seeking to promote global priorities for peace and disarmament, equitable and sustainable development, and a strong and revitalized United Nations system. E-mail: [email protected].

Patricia Hartnagel, a peace and social advocate for over thirty years, has served on many local and national committees and boards, including Project Ploughshares and Edmonton’s Women in Black. An accomplished potter, she is a senior artist with the Alberta craft council. E-mail: [email protected].

Paul Maillet is a former Colonel in the Canadian Air Force in the aerospace engineering classification, and served as Director of Defence Ethics in the Canadian Department of National Defence. He is President of the Paul Maillet CENTER FOR ETHICS. E-mail: [email protected].

Richard McCutcheon is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, a College of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with


the University of Winnipeg. He is also Co-Editor of Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies. E-mail: [email protected].

Elena Pokalova is a Doctoral student at Kent State University, Ohio, USA. Her research is in the area of national and international security, democracy and terror-ism. E-mail: [email protected].

G. Koteswara Prasad is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, University of Madras, an affiliated UNU Institution. In 2006 he was a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Shenandoah University, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

Richard J. Preston is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McMaster Univer-sity. He has published widely on topics relating to James Bay Cree culture history, culture change, education; general and theoretical, historical ethnology; and the psychology of culture, with a focus on Edward Sapir’s anthropology. He is active with efforts to establish a federal Department of Peace in Canada. E-mail: [email protected].

Jarem Sawatsky is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Stud-ies at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His articles on peace, conflict and restorative justice have been published or presented in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, India, Fiji, and Australia. E-mail: [email protected].

Chuck Thiessen holds an M.Ed degree from the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. He spent two years with Mennonite Central Committee doing peace and development work in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. E-mail: [email protected].

Barbara S. Tint is the Director of International and Intercultural Conflict Reso-lution for the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program at Portland State University, Oregon, USA. She also works as a consultant, facilitator, mediator, and trainer in domestic and international arenas including Australia, Israel/Palestine, India and Costa Rica. E-mail: [email protected].

Seediq Weera holds an MD from Kabul University and has practiced as a physi-cian. A Senior Associate at the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada, he is also senior adviser to the Minister of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and senior policy adviser to the Independent National Commission of Strengthening Peace. E-mail: [email protected].

Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies is a multi-disciplinary professional journal committed to publishing scholarly articles on the causes of war and conditions of peace. We interpret this broadly and encourage submissions that explore, for example, militarism, conflict resolution, peace movements, economic development, peace education, environmental protection, cultural advancement, so-cial movements, religion and peace, humanism, human rights, and feminism, all of which have an impact on the field of peace and conflict studies. We invite scholars, both Canadian and global, to publish cutting edge research and analysis on peace and conflict issues from both disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS Submit by email to [email protected] an electronic copy of the manuscript. The electronic copy can be submitted as either a Word DOC file or an RTF file from any other word processing program. It is useful to include a PDF version of the electronic document if possible. To aid our electronic filing system, please include your last name and date in the electronic file name (e.g., Derksen and McCutcheon - OCT 07 - PR Submission.rtf ). The preferred length is 20–30 pages (approximately 6000–9000 words) typed, double-spaced (including all block quotes and endnotes), on 8.5 x 11 inch paper with 1 inch margins on each side using ragged right margin and 11 or 12 point font. We will consider articles that are shorter or longer than these guidelines if the subject of the article warrants it. your article submission should have four parts: 1) an unnumbered cover page that includes the author’s name as it would appear in print, institutional affiliation, and contact information; 2) a separate unnumbered page with an abstract of the article not more than 150 words in length; 3) a separate unnumbered page with a 50 word biographical statement; 4) the manuscript itself with the title of the article on the top of the first page (not the author’s name) and consecutive pagination beginning with page 1. Tables, graphs, charts, artwork, and photographs must be professionally readied for reproduction. Preferred formats for line art, artwork, and photographs are Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Portable Document Format (PDF), and Tagged Image Format (TIFF), with a resolution of 600 dpi at final size.

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STyLE Peace Research uses the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., as the final arbiter of all matters related to proper citation of sources and style. Turabian: A Manual for Writers, 7th ed., is based on the Chicago Manual of Style and can be usefully consulted when CMS is not available. Where there are discrepancies between the two, CMS will be used. Use the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., endnote style. Endnotes should be double-spaced and begin on a new page. We prefer the use of shortened author and title for second and following citations of the same work. Authors are responsible for securing copyright agreements for any long quotations found in their articles.

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CORRESPONDENCEAll correspondence about manuscript submissions, pending decisions,

and related questions should be directed to the editors.Peace Research

Menno Simons College 210-520 Portage Avenue

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From: Peace Research Menno Simons College 210-520 Portage Ave. Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3C 0G2

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Documents

2008.07.09 - Peace Research...2008/07/09 · Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious understanding, 150 edited by David little. Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict