Archive 1986 – 2017

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...

LONDON- She came to the world’s attention three years ago with her prize-wining novel, “The God of Small Things”. Now the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy dares to lecture the government of her country on nuclear weapons, a rather lonely voice in a sub-continent consumed with an almost fatal overdose of self-destroying hatred. “It is such supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if used. The fact that they exist at all, their very presence in our lives, will wreck more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behaviour. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep into the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.” We have already seen her forebodings come true. In Pakistan, the...

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...

“What do you think the following, very different, organisations have in common: the Kosovo Protection force, NATO/KFOR in Kosovo, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York, the Ministry of Education in Burundi and the Peace and Development Centre in Geneva? Right! They want TFF to help them with analyses and training in conflict understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness,” says TFF director Jan Oberg.”Everywhere, it is Time For Forgiveness.” “It’s 15 years since we jumped out of the university world, set ourselves up as a new type of multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and globally networking peace research centre. It’s 10 years since we began experimenting with a new concept of conflict-mitigation in all parts of former Yugoslavia, in Georgia and – last year – in Burundi. These missions combine solid conflict analysis, mediation and peace education. It’s...

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,...

LONDON – Three months after the failure of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle the dust is finally settling. The press behaved as if it hadn’t had a good demo to report since the Vietnam war and the diplomats and politicians became uncharacteristically skittish after a march or two and the unerring capacity of the American police to over do it. Look no further than the statements produced by the UN Trade and Development (Unctad) meeting in Bangkok two weeks ago. This body which now exists as a sort of Third World counterweight to the mighty World Trade Organisation (WTO) enables developing countries both to chew the cud and gain a modicum of diplomatic and media attention for their own concerns without being drowned out by the agenda of the industrialised countries. Nevertheless, they used their only-once-in-four years opportunity not to denounce the WTO and all its works but to...

LONDON- The only question to be resolved, following the startling result of the Iranian parliamentary election, is how quickly the U.S. will now move to bury the hatchet. Its Cold War with Iran has gone on for over 20 years. This is unnecessarily prolonged, a prisoner of now distant memories of hostages taken in the U.S. embassy by hot-headed street fighters of the then recently successful revolution that had toppled the Shah and installed in his place the rigid, autocratic, Islamist regime of Ayotallah Khomeini. No observer brought up outside a theoistic regime can summon up much sympathy for the excesses of the Iranian revolution and its aftermath. Like the French Revolution, on which, in some part, it was modeled, once in power it immediately discarded any liberal tenets it held and became so rigid and uncompromising that normal idiosyncracies were regarded as a profound threat to the regime and were...

Ovo je pisana verzija predavanja koje je odrzao na TRANSCEND-u SGI-UK na zajednickom sastanku u Teplou Kortu (Taplow Court), Engleska, 18. decembra 1999. Za sobom ostavljamo vek koji ce pratiti uzasavajuca reputacija. Tokom njega je bilo puno manifestacije zapadnjackih (oksidentalnih) fundamentalistiËkih verovanja u takve istine koje opravdavaju ubistva, represiju, eksploataciju i otudjenje miliona cak i milijardi ljudi: kolonijalizam-imperijalizam kojem na celu stoji i ova zemlja; genocidni hitlerizam i staljinizam; slepe snage sveta, pre svih americki kapitalizam koji se danas predstavlja kao “globalizacija”; islamski (i on vrlo zapadnjaËki) kontra-fundamentalizam; nekoliko njima slicnih postupaka u Japanu i Kini. Dug je spisak ratova i nasilja a neke od njih danas predstavljamo cak i kao “humanitarizam.” No sav ovaj mrak probilo je i nekoliko blistavih zrakova. Dva genija, Frojd i Jung, uspeli su da prodru u kolektivnu i individualnu podsvest ljudi. Treci genije, Gandi, a pratili su ga u stopu jos M.L.King i Mendela,...

 “On 10 February European Commission President Romano Prodi declared before a Latvian audience that “any attack or aggression against an EU member nation would be an attack or aggression against the whole EU, this is the highest guarantee.” This – sensational – statement of high policy has not been commented upon by any government, politician or media in the European Union. This may be interpreted as if Mr Prodi´s statement is agreed EU policy. If implemented as stated this statement marks a quantum shift of EU from an socio-economic union into a military defence alliance. Such a development might risk to promote the development of a renewed cold war in Europe, says TFF director Jan Öberg. Quotation – “European Commission President Romano Prodi surprised his Latvian audience Feb. 10 by declaring that “any attack or aggression against an EU [European Union] member nation would be an attack or aggression against...

LONDON – During the last U.S. presidential election campaign, the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, used to say in almost every speech he made, referring to the controversy over the use of American soldiers in UN operations: “I will be in charge of making that decision not Boooutros Booooutros Ghali” The school boy effort to ridicule the UN Secretary-General always raised a laugh and helped charge President Bill Clinton’s campaign to have the able Egyptian diplomat stand down. Xenophobia was regarded by both contestants as an electoral asset. Set against the campaign of four years ago, the tenor of the current one seems to be on another plane. The cheap shot at the UN is out. In its place, if not enthusiasm, there is at least a passive recognition of its value. It would, perhaps, be going too far to surmise the candidates realize that for all America’s almighty economic strength and...

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