Don’t cheapen talk – make dialogue work

By Jonas Gahr Støre, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, and Martin Griffiths, the Director of the HD Centre. Together they hosted the “Oslo Forum”, an annual retreat of the world’s leading conflict mediators, Oslo – Norway 26-29 June 2007. 

This article is translated from the Norwegian

 

To talk or not to talk, that is the question. From Sri Lanka to Somalia to Spain, from Iran to Iraq, from the Philippines to the Palestinian Territory, and from Lebanon to Liberia, wherever there is actual or imminent armed conflict, governments and diplomats confront the dilemmas of dialogue.

Can war be avoided through negotiation? Why reward armed insurgencies by offering talks? Won’t ceasefires and endless diplomacy just buy time for armed rebels and rogue regimes? 
 
In civil wars, there is the fear that dialogue with rebel groups will only encourage other, marginal political factions to take up arms. Where there is escalating tension between states, neither side wants to appear weak by offering to negotiate. More often today, official actors – both individual states and the UN – are wary of the risks of legitimising terrorist groups through engagement and negotiation.
 
And not all these worries are unfounded. After more than two years of fitful peace negotiations to solve the crisis in Darfur, an insurrection launched by a single group in 2003 has now mushroomed into numerous armed factions, all of which demand a seat at the table.
 
The war on terror has further challenged the appropriateness of dialogue. Some governments argue that pariah groups and regimes should be isolated, not engaged. Indeed, the idea of negotiating with Al Qaeda appears ludicrous – what could possibly be agreed?

But if one pursues purely military solutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and refuses to permit channels of dialogue with Hamas in the Palestinian Territory and Hezbollah in Lebanon, countries elsewhere – such as Sri Lanka, Somalia, Columbia, and the Philippines – have less reason to engage those who take up arms. If we wish to see the extremists choose the political path, we need to keep the political channels open.
 
And yet, despite such dilemmas, and even in the face of arguments that favour isolating terrorists, surveys of armed conflict over the past decades show a definite trend towards negotiation. In the 1990s, negotiated settlement overtook military victory as the means of stopping wars. Previously military victory stopped wars twice as often as negotiation.

Now, the opposite is true. In the new millennium, this trend continues: we know that mediation efforts are underway in 60% of all current conflicts.
 
War of course is more likely to hit the headlines, so it may surprise us that negotiation and diplomacy is actually the preferred approach. But Iraq and Afghanistan are exceptions, not trend-setters.

Globalisation of the media uncovers conflict earlier, and indignation spreads rapidly, fuelling international consensus for peaceful resolution. Certainly there are increasing efforts by the UN, regional organisations and governments to mediate in conflict, and in so doing make dialogue possible. For in most cases, warring parties need outside help in order to talk.
 
However, although dialogue is more popular, it doesn’t always work. A number of intractable conflicts have, so far, proved impervious to mediation efforts – Israel/the Palestine Territory, Cyprus, Somalia, Sri Lanka – or, as in Iraq and Chechnya, the warring parties have rejected outright the possibility of dialogue. Two years of peace talks over Darfur have not stopped the killing. 

And even where mediation has resulted in peace agreements, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Burundi, South Sudan and Sierra Leone, few observers are celebrating yet. Alarmingly, for these countries, the record shows that military victories result in a more “stable” peace; up until now, negotiated conclusions to armed conflict all too often result in renewed warfare.
 
So although dialogue is more popular, we should be far from complacent. “Talk is cheap,” say the cynics. It is likely that if mediation efforts increase, but intractable conflicts remain unresolved and negotiated deals continue to break down due to renewed fighting, the proponents of dialogue will increasingly face this criticism.

The challenge therefore is obvious – to capitalise on the respect for dialogue by working to ensure that mediators and others involved are as well equipped as possible to deliver effective and long-lasting results.

To this end, conflict mediators meet each June, at the Oslo Forum, to compare notes, and to discuss possible new approaches with leading specialists.  

Negotiated settlements may be unstable, but it is a perverse logic that could lead to one favouring military solutions to civil war; surely we must rather focus on achieving better agreements that really address underlying grievances.

Similarly, the response to the intractability of conflict in the face of mediation efforts ought to be to redouble those efforts. This means getting the support of powerful states behind those efforts, such as China, India, the EU, regional powers, and above all the US, and to increase the legitimacy of broad policies of engagement. The record also shows that where dialogue is genuinely and effectively backed by such powers and neighbouring countries, it stands a better chance of success.