You know, it's it's really after such wonderful presentations and, you know, in front of like John Paul and John, I feel quite humble actually.
And but I what I try, I'm trying to say today is my own experience.
And again, this is not on behalf of the organisation I work for,
but my own personal experience as as a peace builder and and in and my experience with community peace builders.
You know, this is a wall that in from in the citadel of Babylon,
where the hand that's said in the book of Daniel a divine hand is supposed to have, you know, come and a prophecy on a wall.
And this is supposed to be the legend, has it. This is that wall. So and that's where we get the phrase.
The writing on the wall. So I wonder, sometimes you know, if conflict in some communities, you know, is it really inevitable?
Is it the writing on the wall? Now we tend to believe that peace is the natural state and conflict is the aberration.
But what if it's the other way around? What if? Conflict is a natural state and peace is the anomaly.
And all that we're experiencing now when we talk of peace are peace bells.
Sometimes they're wrong. In fact, the era since World War Two in Europe definitely has been called the peace bell.
The long peace, actually. And we often wonder if, therefore, you know, peace is not necessarily a guaranteed finish line,
but it's actually a much needed pitstop for us so that we recover as a society.
I say this because of the way we imagine the levels of peacebuilding, local, regional, national.
We sometimes, you know, it's easy to think of it the way we look at governance, right?
Local government, regional government. So like a like a matsusaka. But what if it's actually more of an ambiguous?
Where each of them has a place, has a place value.
Local, regional and they don't always coincide.
You can have peace at the national level, but not so at the grassroots.
You could have a piece of the grassroots, but you could have, you know, mobs going at each other's throats in parliament.
So you could. And this is the forum.
It's it's moving, but each of them has a place where you and you will never get the complete picture,
especially when you look at peace as a process of multiplication of, you know, benefits for the parties involved.
And you definitely each place value.
And and we often talk about peace and stability, but I believe that again, the two of them don't always have to go together.
And then justice is something that's very critical. And so we should probably be looking at peace, stability and justice at all levels.
With that, I want to talk about Afghanistan and Iraq before I spent almost six years in these countries.
And I have found that the two of them are very different, extremely heterogeneous.
I've had a turbulent history over more or less for at least 40 years plus and on the whereas in Afghanistan,
perhaps the dividing line of in terms of identity is ethnicity.
In Iraq, it is partly partly ethnicity out of good and partly sectarian.
Now what we. What I found, though, was that.
No matter how everyone you speak to tell you a story of what they have gone through and I will not bore you with the history of these countries.
But when you go through these stories, you come to realise that every community in the country has been a victim at some point or another.
And that, I think is a very important thing to say whenever possible as we approach someone that you know and and it's important to listen to them,
but also say that actually, yes, the other side may be the perpetrator, but they've also been the victims and perhaps victim.
The victim would in fact perhaps present a very strong meeting ground.
I wanted to share in a first the case and the lessons that I learnt from it.
But before that, what in Afghanistan and Iraq,
the way we approached peacebuilding was that we wanted to do community level peacebuilding was to ensure that,
you know, we had liaison officers or at least a. Provincial offices in almost every province at one point.
The mission in Afghanistan, we had 23 offices and then we went down to eight.
But in all these cases, looking at, I just go back to this,
looking at the diversity of the country and the fact that there are certain cultural regions in the country.
Lawyer, Kandahar, lawyer, the Kunduz, Jalalabad.
This is how people in the country talk about that. Forget the provinces and the boundaries that are drawn up, which are frankly, political acts.
So. Based on this, we had regions, regional offices, in fact, isof also, as you know, had regional commands.
And then inside these, we had offices in each province who were drawn from the local community, you know, reporting in.
Now what we found was we hired local staff. They were most of them were knowledgeable in a former civil servants and.
They, you know, worked with us at the international staff who were mostly sitting in regional offices,
but the local staff were influential people, but they were and they were connected.
So they were good people, but not necessarily influential people. That was actually.
And then they reported on the conflicts to us at the regional level. And what I tried at some point was to get them involved as peace builders.
This was in Afghanistan, and I found that it was very difficult.
Most of them did not want to take the risk of becoming facilitators because every facility faced a certain type of risk,
you know, whether it was physical or reputational.
So in the end, it was one of the things I also tried was to get them to learn from each other, to talk to each other.
And I found it at best it would work inside of Egypt, but it could not work across regions.
With this, I went to, you know, with this context in mind,
I found that I went to Iraq and that was in the two thousand fifteen that was right not long,
long after ISIS took over Mosul, and in fact, 40 percent of the country's territory was under ISIS at that time.
And it was a very, very difficult situation.
And the sectarian tensions were at an all time high.
And what again, I found was first to look at the country as not by the by provinces, but to look at how people in the country describe, you know it.
So you had a region of Basra, so you help us, Ravi, you know, thinking you had, you know, Najaf and Karbala.
That's one way of thinking that Kirkuk and other way of thinking.
And then we deployed, we had this liaison officers deployed in various provinces and who were from the local communities.
You could have someone who had perhaps born and grew up in a neighbouring province, but they had to be within that cultural block.
They needed to, you know, fall within that block. And in this case, we found that.
Unlike not. We are in Afghanistan.
One issue we found was that a lot of the conflict was Kabul centric.
It didn't mean that it only happened in Kabul, but it was done to get attention from Kabul.
In fact, whenever people talk about local, national, you know, peacebuilding, I often wonder,
you know, I do not like this word, but this a word game which you keep hearing all the time.
I used to hear it all the time or this is how the game, you know, that's the game and this is how the game works.
And it's really unfortunate because it's actually, you know, the lives of people at stake.
But these are there are so many political games that are going on.
And therefore, what you see as an act of violence at the local level is just the signalling.
One or perhaps actor to another at a national level. What happens at the national level then translates into, you know,
acts of violence at the local level as an act of, you know, as an exercise of power.
So, so much of our effort at the community level did not bear fruit in Iraq again, context was very different.
It was also because of the governance in Afghanistan was very Kabul centric.
Governors were appointed by the president and, you know, not elected.
So everything was oriented in Iraq. Although again, there was a Baghdad,
there was an elite that worked in the capital and there were efforts at reconciliation between them, a grand bargain of sorts.
But we found that in the provinces in the hinterland, far from the front lines with ISIS, there were a number of other conflicts.
And this meant that instability could spread at any point.
In fact, arms that were captured in the struggle in the front line sometimes made their way into the hinterland.
And then that, in turn, you know, triggered new conflicts.
So this was one case where after have we we had this liaison officers, we I tried something different here and where we.
Basically, there were two provinces and in which our allies and officers were deployed and there was an oil field on the border.
Now the oilfield fell in the inside one province, but the employees there were from another.
So one when the workers were not paid.
At one point, the workers went to their provincial government, who then someone,
the company, but then the one which hosted the oil field said, Hey, wait, what?
Who are you to talk to this company? You know, they're on our soil? They said, No, no, no, we treat this oilfield.
Actually, it runs all the way under, ah, you know? So then it became a major.
It was going to blow.
And so it starts with something there and then, you know, it gets amplified in the media and then people who want to, you know it, it's normal.
People want to make, you know, ambitious people are join politics and then it's part of, you know, you never miss an opportunity in politics.
And then it goes on, you know, on the street.
So these are just illustrative images. But what happens on the street is a symptom of larger political issue.
So then what we did was we used the liaison officers in these two provinces to work as a team and then they went to each other's provinces.
Together, we and we did a series of things as a result of which basically we had an outcome wherein the governor of one province visited the other,
and then they mutually decided that they'll do a redrawing of the border and that they'll, you know,
go to the capital and let the federal government, which basically the recession building.
You know, I take a decision on the exact boundary, but but there'll be no room for violence.
And you know, they will talk to the the company in question jointly.
Fairly successful outcome and all this done by people from the community, these peace builders.
This liaison officers from the community. So what worked for us in this case?
What was different from, you know, their experience in Afghanistan? Well, firstly, getting the context right.
Getting the. And I think defining the community by looking at the various layers of identity, you know,
so that it's not just sectarian, but it's also the provincial identity that's that can be very important.
And you know, whenever we talk about conflict analysis,
I think we need to look at the sources of tension and the different ways in which, you know, it is expressed.
And I feel like sometimes when you look, when you take a local peace builder,
you need to look at how does she relate to what role that you play in your institution, what you know?
How long is this person deployed? And and to be very sure that renown does not translate into impact, the relationship that we,
as external stakeholders have with the local peace builder is very critical to the success of the peacebuilding effort.
We need to. We in this case invested quite a bit in building a skills of facilitation.
But one of the most important things for me was that I was fortunate I got to travel.
I travelled about 15 of the 19 provinces in the country in the country to ensure that in each case that our local peace building,
our an officer, was introduced to the local government as. She's obviously, you know, he's our man, so if you'd like to pass on any message to us,
please, you can do so through them so that from being merely monitors, they got transformed.
You know that they were empowered in the eyes of the local power structures and then getting the crisis right now.
Again, we talk about peace building, but often it's just about swinging from one crisis to another to another.
And I feel that if we get the crisis right, the crisis right over a period of time,
then we'll get will actually be able to build peace in understanding the cost of doing nothing.
And as compared to the cost of action, the cost of action often the biggest concern for external peace builders reputational risk.
What if we fail this time? Well, if you fail this time, that's fine.
The most important thing is that what if you don't act at all?
And then if you try to go into, you know, years down and by the way, it may be another minor crisis, but you know,
a crisis of like, you know, layers of conflicts are like layers of a pastry, you know, so you have the stack up over the same day.
So it's whenever you try to cut through one, you realise that you're actually cutting through layers that have, you know, from decades ago, actually.
So when we say we prepare the theory of change, but you prepare an intervention strategy but identify all potential satisfactory outcomes,
which means that a satisfactory outcome could be that there is no violence, but no one is exactly the winner.
Perhaps one side is a decisive winner, and the other side, for now, you know, accepts the solution.
So there could be any number of permutations on this. Identify all of them and be prepared for all of them and then getting the intervention right.
I think it was very important consent, of course, and we all understand the very fact that we were deploying these officers.
We had the consent, but then identify who can back or block your intervention and then engage the spoilers very early on.
Potential spoilers. To be honest, what I found was that there were a number of actors would spoilers because
they were not getting attention or they were not going to get attention or so.
And you need to understand, why are you somebody being a spoiler? Is it because you said for the sake of attention?
Is it because of for the sake of ambition? Or is it because they are insecure about losing, you know, whatever they have within their camp?
And then use your peace builders to, you know, use them in tandem.
Make them work in tandem. Have them pass. Meet either side separately and then either side together in a pass backchannel messages.
You know, whenever there was a time when one of our allies and officers in the course of a crisis
resolution brought his colleague in from the other province and neighbouring province and said,
This is my cousin, by the way, you know, so we're. He's just visiting.
So we'd like to hear whether what do you think of this crisis?
So it was a it was a great opening because it was it's it's normal, you know, to sometimes bring cousins to meetings,
but it kind of helped, you know, for the cousin to, you know, do the work cousin to understand the narratives and the thinking here.
In this case, we found and it was important for us to identify champions,
which meant that in the deputy governor in one province and the provincial council chairman in another province,
we found them to be the most inclined to a peaceful settlement. We then empowered them as champions again.
We did not come out in the open and say that they were. We were.
But we suggested potential interventions rather to the champions.
And then let them do the trick. And the most important step, I believe, is to step back.
Because if you wanted to be, you know, the solution to be locally owned and then you need them to.
You need to step back. I'll just say that it's very important that the safety of local peacebuilding is the single biggest priority.
And if this is compromised, you never go back. So it's it's it's.
And building the relationship is, you know, what's most important, even if you don't think you're a satisfactory outcome,
the relationship you build in the process, you know, always works. In the long term.
You need to appeal to different things in from a sense of leadership to the Costa community to a sense of reason, but also to emotion.
And and to never lose sight of why we need, you know, peace whenever we say,
you know what exactly peace means, and I feel like it's full of suffering.
And but there are different types of suffering. Maybe somebody didn't get the promotion.
Maybe somebody didn't pass an exam. Maybe you know someone you loved broke your heart.
Someone in your family has aimless. This is acceptable suffering.
This is the only type of suffering that the human condition should have.
If we aspire that you do not have to worry for the safety of your your family.
You do not have to worry whether you will return home when you go out.
You do not have to worry that if you speak out, you know you will never be able to speak up again, then that is unacceptable.
So our goal is peace builders. My humble opinion is to limit suffering to what is not natural to the human condition.
This is this. I would like to leave you with this. This is a picture I took in.
This was in Herat, in Afghanistan. And what I found was remarkable about this, you know, three generations from one family.
And it was, you know, my grandmother used to say that when we are born, our destinies are written on our foreheads.
And somehow, you know, the furrowed brow, the furrows on their broth, all three and very, very different ages.
You know it. It said something. The resignation of age, the the anxiety of youth, the confusion of a childhood, the fact that in all these cases,
you know, is something I don't know about writing, about writing on the wall for it.
But I feel that as peace builders, if we get a kiss, I don't know this crisis, then we have really been successful.
Thank you.