UNMIK
ON AIR
From
one post-conflict zone to another
October
16 2003
(By
Zoran Culafic and Sputnik Kilambi)
Hello and welcome to UNMIK ON AIR with
Sputnik Kilambi and Martin Redi
A common complaint about peacekeepers is
that for the most part, the people who are deployed in conflict or
post-conflict zones don’t have personal experience of conflict and the huge
psychological and human cost entailed in the destruction of societies. That the
advice-givers don’t or cannot really empathies with the victims of war; often
they are accused of being patronizing and condescending and unwilling to make
the effort to understand the mindset of the people they say they want to help.
Of course, with all generalizations,
there are many exceptions, and no one would contest the fact that the majority
of peacekeepers are sincere and genuinely wish to make concrete contributions
to the people devastated by conflict.
And there are also those, former victims
of war themselves, who want to contribute to peace building efforts in other
conflict zones. People like Tarik Jasarevic, who hails from Sarajevo and served
with the Bosnian army until 1994. He has traveled a lot since then –
peacekeeping missions with the UN have taken him to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and
East Timor.
Peacekeepers like Tarik know what they
are talking about when they underline the wastefulness of war and the need for
reconciliation. But such missions also have a salutary side, he says, since you
end up putting your own problems in perspective.
CUT 1: Tr 2 –
Suddenly you become a participant of that huge machine and you make contact
with other people. Very soon you realize that our problems here are not
specific to this region only, but that in fact you can find it in many other
regions in the world.
Music up and under
Tr 3 – When you go to say East Timor,
Congo or other crisis regions where the UN is present, then you realize that we
were forced to define ourselves according to criteria, which are far from being
human, since the name of a man is more important than what he is. When you are
abroad you see all that from a distance. The very clear message from that is
that human problems are universal and thanks to political manipulation they can
be transformed into bloody conflicts.
LINK: If human greed and the lust for power are universal,
so is the capacity of forgiveness, moving on and rebuilding. A cursory reading
of any conflict invariably shows a handful of people speaking in the name of
the majority, using religion, ethnic or linguistic identity or any criterion
that lends itself to manipulation, to strive for or cling on to power. But an
equally universal given, says Tarek, is that most people want peace and are
prepared to compromise in order to achieve that goal.
CUT 3: Tr
4 – Essentially, the problem is always a political one. Be it in the
Balkans, here in Kosovo, in East Timor or in Afghanistan, the majority of
people wish for peace. They want peace and safety. But in certain political
circumstances one can manipulate people to such a degree that the personal
interests of some rulers result in wars. When people from this region go
somewhere else, they are faced with that reality and see that what happened to
us was really unnecessary. But how many people here unfortunately were subject
to such a way of thinking and manipulation.
Coming from the
Balkans he says, helped him understand the challenge of building a new East
Timor.
CUT 4: Tr 5 – That’s why we can better
understand the temporary hatred between two people, between two political
streams, like the issue of independence in East Timor. It is the same issue
here. We can understand it a bit better because we lived through it. What we
also understand is the reality of terrible living condition, the lack of basic
necessities and the environment of war. Unfortunately, people from this region
had to live through that and learn how to survive.
An amusing, if not ironic side to the
peacekeeping business is when ex or potential combatants find themselves on the
same side of the fence. Indians and Pakistanis for example, for all the current
tension and the past wars they have fought, work side by side here in Kosovo as
part of the international police. Similarly, in East Timor, says Tarek, there
was a surreal recreation of ex Yugoslavia. What they have in common suddenly
appears much greater than what divided them.
CUT 5: Tr 7 – So being in a small
environment with people who speak the same language, who come from the same
region and who ultimately have the same mentality, they completely forget those
micro differences that exist at home. Take the example of 12 police officers
from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who went to East Timor in 2001. They came from
different region in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from regions, which just a few
years before, were in fierce conflict with each other, there were some guys who
directly fought each against the other and then they found themselves together
patrolling in an isolated village in East Timor. They were simply forced to
live together, work together and establish peace in that part of the world. It
was very interesting to see how the relations changed and became, at the very
least – friendly.
Music up and under
People like Tarek could perhaps be
forgiven if they ended up cynical and hopeless – what can be more depressing after
all, to leave a conflict area and find equally brutal if not worse situations
elsewhere in the world. Yet there are many survivors of conflict, more than one
cares to remember, who come through, stronger and with a greater commitment to
peace and humanity. One has to believe that perhaps, in order to carry on –
Tarek, at any rate, is optimistic, and that even in the Balkans,
with its alleged endemic propensity for bloodshed, a time will come when people
can once again live normal lives.
CUT 6: Tr 9 – Not only do I think it,
I’m convinced it could happen. First of all we have to break the stereotype
that this region has been wracked by war for centuries, that every 50 years we
are in conflict with each other, because it’s simply not true, historically. It
is clear that this whole region is entering a new phase, very close linked to
the EU. (The EU will be a factor of stability, at least in the first period
when on political scene there are still nationalistic forces.) I’m really
convinced people here are smart enough to overcome the past and one day we are
going to realize that we have to live together and that’s the only solution. We
all remember the period when we lived together and it is amoral at least to
call that period an artificial one. People just want peace, they want their
children to grow up in peace and I’m sure it’ll be like that in the future.
Music up and under
Tarek Jasarevic, our guest on UNMIK ON
AIR today. Thanks for listening.