A four-point guide to the dirty job of nation building
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Saturday, June 16, 2007 - Page F3
LONDON -- They were among the most edible words ever uttered. "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building," the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency declared on Oct. 11, 2000. Exactly 11 months later, his country would fall victim to an attack directly caused by the world's gross failure to intervene and "nation-build." He soon reversed himself.
By now, a lot of us would agree with George W. Bush's original words. Peace and unity seem distant in Afghanistan, and even more so in Iraq. We have dumped countless billions of dollars and years of effort into the Middle East, but both Israel and the Arab territories have reached their lowest ebb in recent weeks. And the resulting ennui seems to have deprived us of the will to take action where it's really needed, notably in Sudan.
So it was a surprise this week to hear veterans of two of the world's most endless and impossible disputes declaring, in some detail, that it's still worth the effort to plunge into conflicts that aren't our own and try to set things right.
Peter Hain is Britain's Northern Ireland secretary. It has been a good year: The two leaders of that province's extremist Catholic and Protestant factions sat down and formed a government together, and their leading militias have agreed to give up violence.
In a long and audacious speech he gave at the Chatham House think tank on Tuesday, Mr. Hain argued that Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine could be just as peaceful if we followed the lessons of Northern Ireland.
On the other side of town, British politician Paddy Ashdown was launching a book and producing a radio series on the same premise, this time from the even more unlikely perspective of the Balkans. Until last year, Mr. Ashdown was the almost king-like international overseer of Bosnia and Herzegovina, empowered by the United Nations to make the place peaceful. Which he did, sort of - though neither he nor Bosnia is very pleased with one another.
Still, he has become an outspoken proponent of international meddling.
"Despite the high-profile failures, we do know how to do this," he says. "We have succeeded in post-conflict reconstruction more often than we have failed, and the world is a safer place because of it."
Both Mr. Hain and Mr. Ashdown offer detailed lessons from their experiences. Their language tends to be polite - here is Mr. Ashdown's summary: "Leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours."
But, between the lines, they offer some more important, more rude lessons. Having observed both of these formerly bloody regions up close, let me offer my own distillation, in language that neither of them would probably use.
1.
It helps if you come in despising everyone. Northern Ireland didn't begin to turn around until 1990, when the British government finally made it known that it didn't want the place and didn't side with the Unionists. Shortly after that, the Irish government made it known that it shared that sentiment and couldn't stand the Republican movement, either. This made peace possible.
In Bosnia, Mr. Ashdown had to develop scorn for Muslims as well as Serbs before things began to tick. Imagine what progress could be made if the U.S. declared a deep dislike of Israel, and the Arab states decided that they didn't think much of Palestinians.
2.
Never mind the moderates - you need the extremists. You don't punish the baddies: You use them. The Good Friday Accord of 10 years ago failed because sensible, compromise-oriented parties were in power on the Catholic and Protestant sides. They were bound to agree, but it didn't count for much. Only when the violent Gerry Adams and the vile Ian Paisley were brought into the circle did peace become possible.
As Mr. Hain says: "Dialogue brings in those elements of the 'extremes' in a conflict or process which are capable of delivering the most obdurate constituencies."
Germany didn't become peaceful until nearly four years after V-E Day, when de-Nazification was abandoned. Afghanistan won't work until we sit down with the Taliban; in Iraq, we'll need the Mahdi Army.
And, vitally, in the Middle East it will be Hamas and Likud that make peace, or nobody will.
3.
Dump money on the problem - and then get ready to take it away. Vast sums were spent on Bosnia every year in the 1990s, including by Canada, far more than we're spending on much larger and more troubled Afghanistan. Northern Ireland is the world's most expensive welfare case, for the same reason: It gives these places a fake economy, jobs upon which to practise affirmative-action policies and, most importantly, something that can be taken away if talks go badly, thus infuriating the people and destroying the popularity of local leaders.
At the end, there might be the seeds of an actual market economy and a taste for its rewards.
4.
Stand back and let them bomb their own supporters. Britain fired a lot of rounds at Republicans before realizing this, Mr. Hain says. If you shoot back and try to eliminate the insurgents, they keep winning support because their cause seems just.
If you back away from a conflict and apply rules 1 and 2, they'll start blowing up their own neighbourhoods and shooting nice kids who stray; their cause will start looking crazy, and they'll be forced to the table.
This method has great but unrealized potential in Iraq and with the Taliban. And when the self-immolation-prone Hamas became the leading Palestinian party, smart world leaders might have forced Ehud Olmert to observe this rule. Instead, he fired back grotesquely. This week, Hamas has indeed bombed its own garden, but there's no avenue to peace.
There's a lot to dislike about these two arrogant Englishmen, but perhaps we ought to pay more attention to their dirty rules.
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