October/December 2002
Vol. VIII, No.6/Vol. IX, No.1
Building Regional Cooperation in the Balkans
    A Partnerships for Peace participant places himself in the hands of other participants in a trust-building exercise. |
The Institute brought 30 young leaders from Serbia and Kosovo together last September in Washington, D.C., for a week of team-building exercises, skills training, and dialogue on regional cooperation as well as appointments with government and non-governmental leaders. The group included leaders of the high- profile Kosovo nongovernmental organization The Forum and the Serbian organization Otpor ("Resistance"), which played a key role in bringing down Slobodan Milosevic.
The young leaders have met privately since July 2001 as part of a continuing program called Partnerships for Peace (PFP), sponsored by the Department of State and the Institute and overseen by its founder, Institute consultant Albert Cevallos. PFP aims include building regional cooperation by strengthening communication and dialogue, encouraging identification of common interests, and facilitating the development of habits of collaboration and compromise.
Participants first devoted a day in the northern Virginia countryside for team-building exercises in which mutual trust and collaborative effort were essential to overcome a variety of physical obstacles. These activities built on previous interaction among the participants under the auspices of the PFP program, and served to strengthen ties within this diverse group.
These intense outdoor activities were followed by a day-long problem-solving and negotiation skills workshop led by George Ward and Curtis Morris of the Institute's Training Program. This workshop set the stage and prepared participants for a complex three-day, computer-based exercise simulating the resource allocation challenges confronting national and international decision-makers in a post-conflict situation. This innovative role-play, "The Strategic Economic Needs and Security Simulation Exercise" (SENSE), was created by Richard White of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), in collaboration with the Institute, and was made possible by the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). SENSE models the conditions in an imaginary (but eerily familiar) post-conflict country. Players representing government officials, private firms, and international donors are challenged to identify and coordinate economic, social, and political policies aimed at bringing about recovery and reconstruction.
For the simulation, the young Serbs and Kosovars were joined by an additional 19 participants from USAID. Some participants played international roles and the rest were divided into three competing and mutually suspicious ethnic groups. The conflict-seasoned Balkan participants and experienced USAID officials applied their real world experiences to the simulation with enthusiasm, sophistication, and creativity, noted one of the facilitators, Training program officer Ray Caldwell. They showed great skill in overcoming differences and finding collaborative solutions to problems, even as they played particular roles and wrestled with ethnic histories and identities.
Members of the group rounded out the week in an open meeting of the Institute's Balkans Working Group. The young leaders detailed plans for a regional anti-corruption campaign and a get-out-the-vote drive specifically targeting Serbs in Kosovo and Albanians in southern Serbia. They pledged to help facilitate inter-ethnic dialogue. Their long-term goals include strengthening government institutions, improving human rights, and assisting the return of displaced persons. The participants completed their stay in Washington by meeting with members of the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, and other governmental and international organizations to discuss the challenges they all face in the Balkans.
PFP's work continues and will remain a peace-building resource in the region. PFP participants now constitute a growing network of activists contributing to the effort to find non-violent and just solutions to the many problems confronting the people of Serbia and Kosovo.
Partnerships for Peace and USAID participants in the SENSE training. |
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