Archive 1986 – 2017

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...

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...

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...

LONDON- Nuclear proliferation could be a lot worse than it is. That is part of the pitch the American delegation will make at the forthcoming review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), opening on April 24th. No doubt somebody will quote John Kennedy who foresaw 20-30 nuclear powers by the end of the last century, and make the point that in fact the number is a mere 8. Countries which were about to enter this exclusive deadly club- South Africa, Brazil and Argentina stepped back at the last moment. AND, as President Bill Clinton boasted recently to the Indian parliament, the U.S. and Russia have cut their nuclear arsenals by 13,000 bombs. Nevertheless, as almost every expert will admit, Western, and in particular American, non-proliferation policy is in disarray. This conference is meant to mark 30 years of what the U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright recently called “the landmark”...

PRESS RELEASE 2000-03-23 One year after the bombing of Yugoslavia started, an appeal calling for an end to the sanctions against Yugoslavia was published in Sweden, signed by 70 prominent people, among them sportsmen, ex-ministers, bishops including the archbishop of Sweden, trade union presidents, members of parliament, scholars, representatives of the business community and from the cultural sector. In their appeal they point out the fact that those who suffer the most in Yugoslavia are old people and children but because reconstruction after the devastation is hampered, everybody in the population is suffering. They request the Swedish government to work for an end to the sanctions against Yugoslavia.. The appeal and the names follow. Opinions and information: <erikgoethe@post.utfors.se> “END SANCTIONS AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA! The sanctions against Yugoslavia have been going on for nearly ten years, inflicting tremendous supply problems and suffering upon the Yugoslav people, particularily after last year’s bombing raids....

LONDON- How straightforward it used to be. For twenty two years the U.S. did not recognize communist China. Taiwan occupied the Chinese seat at the United Nations and that was that. Then from the right, quite unexpectedly, came Richard Nixon and turned everything on its head. China was not only recognized and Taiwan ejected from its seat, the American business and journalistic communities were encouraged to fall in love with all things Chinese. As the Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner bitingly wrote at the time, “The Americans found that the Chinese were courteous, industrious, family-orientated, modest to the point of being shy. They had the most wonderful and ancient cultural tradition; they were wizards at ping pong; they loved giant pandas. In less than a year public opinion completely turned around. Everyone loved the so-recently hated and feared China.” Thus it continued, more or less, until Tiananmen Square when America’s great strategic...