March 2000

Report of an IOM/TFF Mission to Kosovo, March 7 to 10, 2000  More pictures from Pristina Kerstin Schultz’ report Purpose I was invited with Kerstin Schultz to contribute to training in conflict management skills of middle level leaders of the Kosovo Protection Corps, KPC. This followed the earlier involvement of Jan Oberg of TFF with a similar training exercise with the top leadership of the KPC. The three of us are members of TFF’s Balkans mitigation team based in Lund, Sweden, which has made many missions since 1991 to Kosovo and other regions of the Balkans. Background IOM are responsible for a comprehensive training programme for the KPC leadership that includes briefings for example from KFOR, the ICRC, UNMIK, and NGO’s working in the region concerned with rehabilitation and safety. TFF was invited to contribute some training seminars on conflict management skills. Kerstin Schultz and I were invited to give...

A demilitarized zone, DMZ, usually a buffer zone between two entities that have been at war, is an important conventional measure to protect a ceasefire by keeping the belligerents apart, at least geographically. As such it is a symbol of war rather than of peace, or at best of a cold peace, a peace in the narrow sense of abstaining from violence; negative peace in other words. The two borders of this presumable no man’s land would be heavily guarded, ideally by some third party, a condition not really satisfied in the Korean DMZ case. A zone of peace, ZoP, is something quite different since it is supposed to be an enactment of positive peace. The idea is not to keep parties apart and have them abstain from something, but to bring them together and have them cooperate on something. The smallest ZoP is a person who has come to...

A report of a 10 day visit in early March 2000 by Roswitha Jarman working on behalf of the Agency of Rehabilitation and Development, ARD, an NGO and charity of Dutch Interchurch Aid, DIA, that started to work in Chechnya in 1996. ARD has now a staff of over 30 local people, most of whom are now in Ingushetia but some still in Chechnya. The general situation in Ingushetia I travelled to Ingushetia without problems. I was on my own this time but I did not feel in any danger. On arrival in Ingushetia and before even leaving the secure part of the airport a security officer came up to me and asked me to accompany him to his office. He asked for my details and asked for what reason I had come to Ingushetia. He was very friendly and offered me a security guard for my time in Ingushetia,...