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TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations Peacemaking in Karabakh by Craig Barnes There is an evolution in human affairs spreading gradually over the planet, one might say since the time of Homer, which reaches now into the struggles in the Caucasus. In our time it is seen as the challenge of the post-Soviet period and is framed by talk about creation of a civil society. Civil society is no small objective. Indeed, if one thinks of a civil society in broad terms, namely as society based upon equal dignity for those without political or military power, peacemakers today participate in one of the major paradigm shifts of human history. Nothing in ancient history or under the empires of the Khanates or the Turks, or the Czars, or in the Soviet experience, prepared the Caucasus for politics in which openness or truthtelling is the norm. And yet these are characteristics we increasingly identify as the “civil” in “civilization.” They are part of a web that holds a peaceful society together, or keeps it peaceful. Nothing, either, in these regions riven by ethnic conflict lays the groundwork for sharing power with such politically weaker members of society as women, Jews, or ethnic minorities. And that, if perhaps too simply stated, is also near the heart of what we mean by civil society. Political opportunity allows weaker parties to conceive of a time when they, too, will share in power, and they can therefore opt for nonviolent responses to their difficulties. Civil society is more than parliaments and laws which, unfortunately, may only confirm the power of elites. It also, and more importantly, includes dignity for the powerless, and this change from the past is monumental. The war in Nagorno Karabakh, a mountainous region located entirely within the territory of Azerbaijan, is ostensibly a conflict over ethnic rights and political status. In 1988, when the war began, the population of the area was about 65 percent Armenian, 35 percent Azeri. In addition, there were large ethnic populations of Armenians elsewhere in Azerbaijan, and of Azeris scattered throughout Armenia. As a result of the war, there are today very few Armenians anywhere in Azerbaijan, except in Karabakh, and few Azeris anywhere in Armenia. There has been widespread ethnic cleansing. Karabakh is now 100 percent Armenian. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians who used to live and prosper in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, are gone, as are hundreds of thousands of Azeris who used to live in Armenia. This is a human tragedy of great proportion. Preoccupation, further, with warmaking has crippled efforts throughout the region to build healthy politics and economies. It is progress that all sides in the dispute over Karabakh refer to the Helsinki Accords of 1975 as a basis for claim of right. Both, that is, adduce legal standards rather than the results of raw military power as the dependable arbiter. But in this case the Helsinki Accords cut both ways. They contain standards for self-determination, which the Karabakh Armenians invoke, and to the right to territorial integrity, to which the Azeris lay claim. The Karabakh Armenians wish to be independent; the Azeris argue that there is no right to carve up an existing state, or to redraw boundaries by force. Both consider international law confirmation of their position, and both consider the Accords of 1975 a sufficient justification to continue killing. In this case, the law leads, not forward toward resolution, but backwards as an excuse to violence. Nations are sometimes limited in the range of steps they can take toward peace, as the negotiators in the governmental talks over Karabakh have discovered. They cannot ignore the Helsinki Accords. And yet the Accords create a kind of legalistic trap. On one occasion the office of the president in Azerbaijan explained to our project negotiators, who were working in a second-track, citizens effort, that official negotiations—including concessions, if need be—could not proceed successfully without popular support. The question was then put to our team, can you help create a climate for popular acceptance of a different approach? The Foundation for Global Community, (FGC), supported by the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, was invited in 1993 by officials in Yerevan, Armenia; Stepanakert, Karabakh; and Baku, Azerbaijan to begin this second-track, non-official effort aimed at the popular will, attempting to create a climate conducive to resolution in each of the three regions. The FGC effort did not focus on the status of Karabakh or political goals framed by the Helsinki Accords so much as the cultural, security, and economic goals which are often at the root of such disputes. The plan was to draw together into a long-term dialogue opinion leaders from different constituencies of Armenian, Azeri, and Karabakhi society. Underpinning research was provided by Dr. Everett Rogers, currently of the University of New Mexico, who has shown that an idea spreads through society as a transfer from innovators—the peacemakers—to prominent leaders in local government, the intelligentsia and business communities. When an idea—in this case the idea of reconciliation and a shared nonviolent future—takes hold among opinion leaders popular support for it increases sharply. The implication is that activists for peace need not first overcome their stiffest opposition, the generals and nationalists, but can launch a movement if they begin with city councilors, bankers, playwrights, journalists, professors, and others of independent influence. Two meetings based on this idea convened hand-picked leaders from Yerevan, Stepanakert, and Baku in 1993 and 1994. These dialogues were held in a retreat center near Ben Lomond, in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, and the resulting talks have come to be known as the Ben Lomond Process. Participants included intellectuals, journalists, playwrights, a parliamentarian, a party leader, a former minister of health, two women who were well-known peace activists from each side, a war widow, a professor of philosophy, two filmmakers, two novelists and a leader of the Armenian Encyclopedia, among others. The meetings were riven with political strife and the strong unwillingness of either side to acknowledge the history and experience of the other. They came seeking peace, but each side according to its own terms, as it understood them from the Helsinki Accords. Or they urged superior moral claims based on years of suffering caused by the empires with which each associated the other—Azeris at the hands of the Russians, Armenians at the hands of the Turks. The concept of standing in the shoes of the enemy, or addressing the underlying security interests of the other, or addressing the moral or legal flaws in one’s own position, was difficult to accept, especially since all participants were at some risk of condemnation when they returned to the nationalistic climates at home. When these talks began, in 1993, the lights were dim in Yerevan; there was cold and suffering in the streets, and hundreds of thousands of refugees were streaming into Baku and Yerevan, fleeing the ravages of the war. The Turkic Azeris had imposed an oil embargo on Armenia, setting off among the Armenians psychological resonances with the 1915 genocide that took the lives of millions of Armenians. The Azeris, for their part, complained that the Armenians had started the military aggression; that in claiming Karabakh they had occupied, with Russian military help, over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, pointing a dagger at the heart of the new Azerbaijani state. The Azeris suggested that the Armenians could end the blockade and their own pain if they ceded their claims to Karabakh. The Azeris were also trying to accommodate approximately 750,000 refugees who had flooded into the country as a result of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh and Armenia, and who were putting a considerable strain on Azerbaijan’s economy and social fabric. There was thus no lack of suffering on both sides. While the Armenians saw their identity as a people threatened, the Azeris saw their hard-won political independence threatened. Peoplehood and statehood cannot be bargained away, and the Helsinki Accords seemed to offer only the impossible choice of one or the other. The participants from Karabakh, both Armenian and Azeri, being most traumatized by the actual war, were also the most difficult to wean from nationalistic rhetoric and passionate calls to arms. In this situation, the beginning of the Ben Lomond Process, during 1993 and 1994, involved heated, passionate claims of legal and moral right, often based on competition over whose suffering had been greater. The talks seemed to be going nowhere. Neither side offered compromise, and both seemed primarily intent on justifying their positions to the Americans present. Each seemed much less interested in negotiating with its opponents than in courting heavy-hitting third parties to weigh in on its side and helping ensure eventual victory. It gradually became clear, however, that the American government had no plans to intervene in the Karabakh issue. And progress was occurring at another level. Relationships were forming; people returned from the joint meetings saying publicly that they had made useful personal connections. There was some hope in this. Moreover, in March 1995, the FGC team, meeting in Yerevan, Baku, and Stepanakert, was asked the question, “What about starting with a cease-fire, and postponing the political questions?” The parties, importantly, on another front, appeared to be registering personal gains simply from participation in the Ben Lomond Process. They seemed to be experiencing a humanization of the opposition. In March 1996, the Foundation for Global Community sent representatives to Baku and Yerevan for three months, to develop conflict resolution skills among participants, and add to the foundation for negotiations. Azeris, who by then felt that they had lost the war, seemed more willing to engage in the mechanics of resolution training, even attempting to practice role reversal. This was a shift from earlier sessions in which all sides had been reluctant to engage in exercises which required articulation of the other side’s positions. Armenians, on the other hand, during the summer sessions of 1996, urged a “return to normalcy” between the two countries, that is, a return to pre-war pacific relations. Though it was apparently benignly intended, the offer was seen by Azeris as a claim to victory and an attempt to ignore the injustices of the war. Armenians, however, were not willing to negotiate questions of political status, or to jeopardize their war gains. Besides, as mere citizens, they accurately claimed a lack of authority. The Armenians authored a new suggestion. It may be too soon, they argued, for any attempt to resolve the status question or to decide such major political questions as buffer zones, peacekeeping troops, or return of refugees. There is insufficient history of trust to build upon for there to be a return of refugees, for example. FGC had suggested the return of small numbers of refugees to carefully selected villages in pilot projects. The Armenians resisted this suggestion since they thought refugee return would primarily benefit Azeris who wished to return to Karabakh. They seemed less interested themselves in returning to Baku. Security could not be guaranteed for returnees either in Karabakh or in Baku, they argued. “We need to create a new story,” they suggested, “one of cooperation on projects or goals not so loaded with political peril.” The Armenians then suggested a number of projects which they believed could be the subject of cooperation and could be pursued with their Ben Lomond colleagues. The process itself had begun to relieve some of the sense of betrayal that had been a first result of the war on both sides. The Armenian proposals became the starting point for a week-long joint meeting in Tbilisi in September 1996. The meeting, facilitated by FGC, was now framed to address the possibilities of cooperation rather than historical questions of genocide and aggression. The Helsinki Accords were therefore not an issue, nor was the question of the ultimate status of Karabakh. During these sessions, for the first time, partly as a result of the conflict resolution training, and partly as a result of the changed agenda, the parties traded views with consideration, thoughtfulness, and a high degree of professionalism. The Tbilisi meetings produced concrete agreement on six joint projects ranging from studies of sources of enemy demonization, to children’s stories, ecological studies, measures to rehabilitate the psyches of children damaged by war, and the institutionalization of a Peace Service. FGC maintained tight control of the agenda, helping keep it focused on the practicalities of future cooperation. Matters such as costing of computers for use in e-mail communication; future visits by Armenians or Azeris to each other’s cities; joint fundraising strategies; or exchanges of information concerning political pressures from the respective governments all became important. These matters were discussed while the long-term status of Karabakh was not, and resolution of these simple practical matters gradually created an overall sense of progress, building on the momentum generated by small successes and encouraging participants to look toward the future rather than the past. Partisans who had been near the emotional breaking point during earlier meetings were cool and constructive during the Tbilisi sessions. Follow-up on these projects continues with the establishment of direct e-mail connection between participants, for the first time overcoming a communications barrier that has blocked progress since 1993. There is also, unfortunately, growing nationalist sentiment in both Armenia and Azerbaijan. In this climate, one of the leading Ben Lomond participants has been attacked publicly in the Baku press for traitorously “befriending or supporting” Armenians. These attacks have assuredly daunted other would-be project participants. The attacks underscore the need for continuing international interest in the region, without which only the truly heroic peace crusaders remain in the public eye and others, unsupported and worried, remain quiet. Ben Lomond participants see themselves engaged in a sort of race with the nationalists who increasingly favor military solutions. Supporters of nonviolent solutions must build a new network of public opinion and a new series of experiences—that is, new conversations within multiple constituencies of opinion leaders, a new history to replace the old one—must get it into the press, and must do so before the nationalists’ frustration boils over into renewed conflict. As these participants experiment with direct cooperation and daily communication by e-mail, the pace of their successes will accelerate. The new projects provide an excuse and rationale to amplify and expand the civil discourse and keep the peacekeepers in the race. TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors
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