Northern Ireland provides a model for making peace

A number of governments around the world are looking to the Northern Ireland experience in trying to resolve conflicts and build peace in their countries.

The Iraqi government is looking at both the arms decommissioning and police reform process in Northern Ireland, according to a Dec. 18 2006 report in the Sunday Times entitled “Iraq reveals a Northern Irish model for peace” written by Liam Clarke.

Hadi al-Amiri, chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s defence and security committee and a former head of the Sadr militia which fought British forces in southern Iraq, visited Northern Ireland in November 2006 as part of a delegation of Sunni and Shi’ite leaders. They were interested in how Northern Ireland established, designed and ran the decommissioning body for arms that helped bring an end to decades of fighting, as well as in the Patten policing reforms that transformed the Royal Ulster Constabulary into the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and increased Catholic representation on the force. Details of these reforms are being translated into Arabic so the Iraqis can study them.

Al-Amiri; national security advisor Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie; minister of state for foreign affairs Rafaa al-Esawi; and the prime minister’s advisor on national reconciliation initiatives Mohammed al-Saadi, are promoting a reform package for Iraq based on the Northern Ireland model. A symposium attended by key Iraqi security figures and led by senior PSNI officers is planned for Jordan next year, the Sunday Times reports.

People involved in the long-running Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan also have been looking at the Irish peace process as a possible model. In December 2006, the chairman of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, visited Northern Ireland as part of an extensive study of peace agreements around the world, including Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement, and Norway, to meet diplomats involved in talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers and learn how they managed to bring two warring sides to the table (KMS report from Srinagar Dec. 11, 2006).

As of May 2007, Northern Ireland itself is now celebrating a new government led by two old rivals, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. Viewing this once improbable cooperation, a Lebanese newspaper observed that “if Northern Ireland can have peace, so can the Middle East”. In an editorial dated May 9, 2007, the Daily Star of Beirut, Lebanon, suggested that the Northern Ireland experience “holds a number of important lessons about resolving seemingly intractable conflicts, particularly here in the Middle East.”

A key lesson is the value of engagement, it suggested. “Recognizing the futility of countering violence with brute force alone, US officials emphasized the need to draw the Irish Republic Army and its political wing, Sinn Fein, into negotiations and to develop a political strategy for addressing legitimate grievances, instead of relying solely on military operations to confront terrorism. The Americans remained publicly engaged with both sides, playing a key mediating role in a fair and impartial manner.”

“The lessons of Northern Ireland and the benefits of engaging "the enemy" are applicable to several conflicts and struggles across the region, including Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon,” the newspaper suggests. “As Michael Ancram, a former minister of state for Northern Ireland, has said: ‘It is time to start dancing with the wolves.’ …Opening channels of dialogue will not lead to the immediate disarmament of militants or instant peace, just as the process in Northern Ireland did not reach fruition overnight. But nor will any of the region's conflicts be resolved until an evenhanded process that includes all of the region's political forces is introduced.”

Sources: The Sunday Times story is reproduced here; the story on Kashmir is here; the editorial from Lebanon is here.

 

UPDATE: The Telegraph reported April 30, 2008, that Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander who now is the deputy leader of the Northern Ireland Assembly, will lead an international peace mission to Iraq this summer that hopes to forge an agreement between Iraq's feuding factions. The request for help in establishing negotiations outside the US-backed political system, the newspaper reports, came from a summit of Sunni and Shia leaders held in Finland during the weekend. The Iraqi group asked the Irish mediators, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, as well as South African leaders, to help the first step to peace inside Iraq, the newspaper said. For the full story, see Martin McGuinness will lead Iraq peace mission.

 

 

The Mid-Ulster News reported July 8, 2008 that Stormont Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness is flying to Baghdad along with former Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice, to share the lessons of the Irish peace process. Politicians from South Africa also will take part in the negotiations with Shia and Sunni factions, to be held in the parliament buildings in Baghdad. 

 

 


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