April 2000

LONDON – We live in a time of one of the world’s most profoundest paradoxes- whilst warfare for eight consecutive years has been on a steady downward decrease, individual violence is soaring. Of course, one dramatic event, say nuclear war between India and Pakistan, would make nonsense of the paradox in an instance. Still, for the moment it holds and, given the factors at play, is quite likely to sharpen. I was provoked into this observation by reading an essay in the current issue of Foreign Policy by two researchers at the Inter-American Development bank, Mayra Buvinic and Andrew Morrison. They show that homicide rates around the world (the most reliable measure of individual violence) increased by more than 50% between 1980-84 and 1990-94. In the industrialized world the increase was 15%. It was up by 80% in Latin America and 112% in the Arab world. However both Asia and the...

Setting the Stage: Understanding Security Recent events have shown the failure of traditional approaches to security and security guarantees. Conventional conceptions of security, focussing upon the security of the ‘State’ and freedom from the threat or use of force, have proved inadequate to address the diverse range of challenges faced by the world community at the dawn of the 21st Century. From environmental devastation– resulting in wide-spread flooding, deforestation, and depletion of the ozone layer–to limitations upon the human rights and freedoms of individuals and communities and the rising number of intra-state wars, new security issues are constantly arising. Though what is actually considered a ‘security’ issue varies widely depending upon the approach and perspective taken, the fact that the concept of security used during the era of the Cold War is no longer suf ficient for the world of today cannot reasonably be denied. While many of the factors...

The book by Johan Galtung and Carl Gustav Jacobsen, with contributions by Finn Tschudi and Kai Frithjof Brandt-Jacobsen, SEARCHING FOR PEACE: THE ROAD TO TRANSCEND (the most complete account so far of TRANSCEND theory and practice) has now been published by PLUTO, London. Drawing on the TRANSCEND approach to peace-making, Searching for Peace provides a comprehensive guide to conflict resolution. The TRANSCEND method, now used by the UN as a guide to future conflict resolution approaches, applies to all conflict constellations. It has been applied to more than 40 recent and current violent conflict arenas, charting found and yet-to-be-found paths to conflict resolution and transcendence. Searching for Peace provides a wide-ranging survey of past and present approaches to violent conflict prevention. The book’s extensive analysis of the emergent conflict dynamics which, if not resolved, threaten an even more violent twenty-first century, is as important as its comprehensive look at past...

LONDON – Memories are short, too conveniently so. The life and death drama now being played out in Zimbabwe in southern Africa is a tragic illustration of this human weakness that knows no colour line. Thirty five years ago the then named Rhodesia, a British colony, ruled by a white minority, made its unilateral declaration of independence. The break with the mother country had come after an acrimonious period of resisting pressure from London to modestly widen the franchise. For fourteen years Rhodesia was a pariah state, boycotted by order of the UN Security Council, yet finding ways to circumvent the embargo and prosper in a way that, if it had happened today, would make Saddam Hussein green with envy. Even the big British oil companies, Shell and BP, connived in the sanctions busting with, if not a nod, at least a wink from Britain’s Labour government. That was Britain’s mistake...

The Break Away of a Former Non-Aligned and Neutral Country in the Light of the Developing CESDP By Dr. Georg Schöfbänkerschoefbaenker@magnet.atDirector, Austrian Information-Center for Security Policy and Arms Control, Linz. Since end of Feb. 2000 a new Austrian government came to office including an extreme right-wing party, the Freedom Party (FPÖ). Since then, the new Austrian government is isolated within EU and most of the world, as no other national government of an EU-member state has ever been in history. Despite this domestic and home grown isolation caused by the fact that the FPÖ constantly has conducted a racist, exclusionary, and jingoistic policy in a style which is exceptionally repugnant, the security concept of the new Austrian government is in some way completely ad odds with ESDI and ESDP as outlined at the EU-summits from Cologne to Helsinki in 1999. The new governmental agreement between the Peoples Party and the...

“A fifth war in the Balkans can still be prevented. But whereas the isolated leadership in Belgrade has plenty of time, Montenegro does not, and the international community is so bogged down in Bosnia and in Kosovo that it has little capacity to shape an effective violence-prevention strategy for this tiny republic of 635.000 inhabitants. What we just heard during our fact-finding mission to Podgorica,” say Soren Sommelius and Jan Oberg of the TFF conflict-mitigation team, “was frighteningly similar to what people told us in Croatia in 1991 – in spite of all the differences between the two cases.” Photo © TFFThe Presidential Palace in the capital Podgorica, Montenegro Picture series from Montenegro “It was a bit surprising to listen to the level of verbal aggression in Podgorica not only against Milosevic, but also against the Serb people and the opposition and even the federal constitution that the Republic signed...

Boletin # 91  7 de abril del 2000 “Una quinta guerra en los Balcanes puede evitarse todavía. Mientras Belgrado, cada día más aislado, está sobrado de tiempo, ese no es el caso de Montenegro y la comunidad internacional, cuyas acciones en Bosnia y en Kosovo están más que estancadas, tiene poca capacidad de formar una estrategia eficaz para la prevención en esta república minúscula de 635,000 habitantes”. “Lo qué oímos y vimos durante nuestra misión exploratoria en Podgorica”, opinan Soren Sommelius and Jan Oberg del equipo de mitigación de conflictos de TFF, “es aterradoramente similar a lo que nos dijo la gente en Croatia en 1991 – a pesar de todas las diferencias entre ambos casos” Fotografía © TFF El palacio presidencial en la capital de Montenegro, Podgorica.  Serie de fotografías de Montenegro “Fue realmente sorprendente escuchar el nivel de la agresión verbal en Podgorica no sólo contra Milosevic, sino...

LONDON- What an anniversary that was! The first birthday marking Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia brought forth a torrent of articles both pro and against. Yet not one came close to matching for lucidity and perceptiveness, delivered in an icily ironic style, the essay penned at the time of the war by the former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt, in the cerebral British monthly, Prospect. Bildt, who is presently the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Balkans, is a man of political leanings, if elections are anything to go by, too far to the right for most of his countrymen. His instinct is to support Nato, to be close to America, to wind back the welfare state and to argue the case for the use of force and intervention. But something happened to him on the road to Belgrade. “The Baby Bombers”, as the editor headlined the piece, was a wake-up call...

More Aid to People in Yugoslavia “Lift the sanctions and help people in Yugoslavia – or stop talking about humanitarian politics and intervention,” say TFF conflict-mitigation team members Soren Sommelius and Jan Oberg upon returning from a fact-finding mission to Serbia and Montenegro. “If journalists would provide people all over Europé and the rest of the world an opportunity to see what we have seen, only the heartless would continue the present policies. The sanctions contribute to widespread social misery, they hit those who are already poor, and demolish the middle class. In addition, the opposition which the West officially supports also wants the sanctions lifted, knowing that they undermine the socio-economic basis for any democratization process.The international community’s commitment to protect, help and repatriate the Albanian refugees and displaced persons is as noble as it is shameful to not do the same when other – equally innocent – ethnic...

Photo © TFF The Leadership Academy, Pristina Universitywhere some of the training took place,13 C inside in February A huge task – on Women’s Day, in Mitrovica The day after a violent clash with several people wounded, from the UN as well as Albanians and Serbs I arrived in Mitrovica, described in Western media as “the most dangerous European city”. The first people I met were some happy youngsters jumping on the road waving hello. Then I was addressed by a Kosovar with a friendly “Congratulations”. When I looked confused another man explained, “Don’t you know, today is March 8th, the International Women’s Day.” I was in Mitrovica invited as a TFF associate by IOM, the International Organization for Migration, to give lectures as a part of a training program for members of KPC, the Kosovo Protection Corps, most of whom are former KLA soldiers, now transformed to a civil...

April 2000 – A year ago, on March 23, 1999, NATO commenced a massive bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Supporters of the attack described it as “humanitarian intervention,” and defended bypassing the UN as justifiable so as to coerce Belgrade to end its severe abuse of the Albanian majority population in Kosovo. Although it remains too soon to draw definitive lessons, it begins to be possible to suggest some of the major effects of this military undertaking, which is doing more to define the post-1989 world order than has any other event, including the Gulf War. Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait was a stark instance of international aggression, yet it was anomalous. In contrast, the ethnic conflict raging in Kosovo has emerged as the prototypic form of political violence of the current era. Chechnya, East Timor, Kashmir, Sierra Leone are examples of ongoing intrastate conflict that illustrate the...