The Imperative To Cooperate: A call for peace

Lakhdar Brahimi, Veteran UN Envoy and advisor, and former foreign minister to Algeria, speaks at the Skoll World Forum 2010 opening plenary. His talk, called “The Imperative to Cooperate: a Call for Peace,” focuses on his life in conflict and his work in South Africa, Haiti, Sudan, Iraq and Lebanon. “What I have learned in these 20 years in trying to make peace is …that you come across a lot of courage and forgiveness…” He also talks about clinching a ceasefire in 1989 in the Lebanese civil war, and the symbolism of having an airplane land at the airport when it had been closed for more than three years.

With: Lakhdar Brahimi
How am I going to follow all that, I don't know. So I just recognize that I can't, and I try and do my best. As a matter of fact, had I seen the list of participants and in particular those who were awarded the Skoll awards over the years I would have told Sally and Jeff, I'll be very happy to come and sit, uncomfortably, back there and listen to the others. Because I don't think I have really much to say that will be of importance or relevance to you, or to this wonderful group of people. So Thank You very very much Jeff, Thank you Sally for having invited me to this event this year. And even before seeing all this and listening to the music and to these two speeches that we have heard, I knew that I must be a little bit modest and remember a story of a man who came home late at night, went to bed, and got up all of a sudden in the middle of night and had a kind of flash that he had understood the meaning of life. That it was very very simple really, just like a very simple mathematical formula. So he said, "I had better write it down, because I fear I'll forget it, it is so simple, it has come all of the sudden like this." So he went up to his desk and wrote this formula down. He went back to bed, the morning he got up. After a while he remembered that he had this flash, discovered the meaning of life, and was wondering whether it was just a dream. He'd remembered that he had thought that maybe he had written it down. So he went to his desk and yes he found he had written it down. And what he had written was, "I am dead drunk."

I can assure you I didn't drink anything.
But, you know, I have to be, I have to be very, very careful. Jeff told you that I have been in conflict, I have been living in conflict all my life. As a man growing up in a colony, seeing and read about violence that had been inflected on us. And then we started to fight for our freedom. And in so doing we have inflected also, a lot of violence on others. Then I drifted, really, into diplomacy, after our independence. And I continue to live in conflict. Then I started working on trying to solve conflict of where others were involved and I have gone to these places that Jeff has mentioned: South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and all, a lot of other places in Africa and elsewhere.

And what I have learned and in this, in this twenty years that I have been in, in trying to make peace of number of things that I am going to tell you. One is that when you deal with conflicts, obviously you see a lot of wickedness, a lot of cruelty, a lot of injustice that you also come across a lot of kindness, a lot of courage, and a lot of forgiveness. And that makes up for that. You also... George Mitchell put it much better than I ever can when he accepted this new mission in the middle east. He was most certainly already, though didn't say so, referring to his experience in Ireland. He said that you live 800 days of frustration for 1 day of satisfaction You have got to accept to live those eight hundred years, of frustration in the hope that you get to that one day of the satisfaction. But when you get there, you know that satisfaction is really worth experiencing.

When we were in Lebanon, the end of the civil war there.
We tried and failed, tried and failed we tried and failed and then on the 24th of September, 89 we clinched a cease fire that looked like holding. And the manner in which to tell the people of Lebanon that now they have a cease fire that maybe can hold, was to bring a plane to land in Beirut, because the Airport had been closed for maybe 2 or 3 years. So we brought a plane from Cyprus, and the noise that was made by that plane, you know - those of you who know Beirut, those of you who know the city know that plains fly directly over the city before they land. That was a music almost as good as one you have heard tonight, to the ears of the Lebanese. If you go to Beirut now everybody will tell you it's horrible, these planes that fly over the city, and so on.

But on that day, that was the best music that they could have heard. So these kind of satisfactions are the things that one works for. The other thing that I have learnt is that Yes you know when people decide to kill their neighbours. That's not an easy decision to make, to take. Its not easy at all. So the problems that take you to these situations to these conflicts are very very real and as a matter of fact.

Conflicts are the cause of the problem you are trying to solve, or the consequence of the problems that you are going to solve. So conflicts are terrible, are difficult and not easy to solve. I still believe very very very strongly that there is no problem that can not be solved, there is no conflict that can not be solved. We people make these problems. We create these problems to one another. And we should be able to solve them, and we can solve them. Take the Middle East. This is the insoluble problem by excellence.

It isn't. It isn't at all. Palestinians and Israelis will tell you that... most Israelis, I'm told perhaps 70%, want peace with the Palestinians, but they are absolutely certain that no Palestinian wants peace with them. And that is why that they think that it is a waist of time to work with them.You go to the Palestinians, and you will find probably 80 or 90 percent of the Palestinians want peace. But they are just as certain that the Israelis don't want peace. Somebody must make these people find out that the other side also wants peace. And nobody is doing that. Nobody is doing that. Quartet, the Americans. Nobody is really helping the Palestinians and their anxieties to make peace. And the Palestinians and Israelis are defiantly the most intelligent people, the most sophisticated people in our region. But as sometimes happen. They are incapable of solving their problems alone. They need help. And that help is not available. The day that help is really available, then you will see that this so called untractable problem Will be solved.

This is one of the
other lesson that I have now. The third lesson I have now is that, when we do try and provide help and support to people who are in conflict to see if you can push them towards the end of that conflict. We are often guilty of the same lack of humility, not to say arrogance. We think that these people are stupid, they do not know what they are doing, they have destroyed their country, they are killing one another. We know what is good for them, they dont. I think that is wrong. What you do is really when you go to problems like this, is to see. The first effort you have to make is to understand, what has been happening? what are the problems ?

The second thing you can do is try to find common ground between the parties . There always is a little bit of common ground, even it is few inches. And what you do is see if you can help them find larger grounds for themselves, and that is possible. And sometimes you know help comes from sources you simply cannot suspect.

One of the things I did in Afghanistan was, may I remember that in in 1998 the Taliban invaded all of Afghanistan. And when they arrived in the Northern city of Mazari Sharif they killed Iranians, 9 of them, and they arrested all the Iranians who were in Afghanistan. So I went to see the Taliban and see the if we could get these people out. Of course, those who were killed, they they sent the bodies back to Iran. But those who were in jail we were trying to to get them out because Iran had massed two hundred thousand soldiers on the boarder the Afghanistan and were ready to invade the country.

So I went to see Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban. After several hours of discussion he agreed to release all the people and took them back to Iran. The Iranians pulled back there solders. Years later I was very proud, I think I avoided War between Iran and Afghanistan. Years later I found out it that wasn't me. There was a young, brilliant interpreter with <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Mohammed Omar. He sent me a message, he said, "you know, I would like to apologize to you. I did not translate correctly what you said. Because what you said may have made Mohammed Omar very unhappy, angry, he would have walked out. So I have arraigned it a little bit. And I didn't translate everything Mohammed Omar told you. So it is this young man who did this.</span>
I think he was less than half my age, had never been out of Afghanistan. He had learned English in Peshawar actually, he was in Peshawar, a refugee.

And he saw this problem between Iran and Aafganistan. So one has to be, you know, to feel a little bit of humiliy, and as I said to listen much more than lecture. As a matter of fact you shouldn't lecture at all. You listen a great deal and perhaps out of that listening, you can come out with one or two ideas that can help the parties you are supposed to be, to be helping.

In South Africa, the cleric, and Mandela have done a miracle. I have been following the struggle of our brothers in South Africa forever, and we did everything we were quick to help them. But if you had come to see me, and I think I knew a great deal about South Africa and the struggle of the people of South Africa.

If you had come and told me, as late as 1985, that 5 years from now Mandela would be out, I would have told you it's not possible, it's impossible, that Mandela was freed and he and De Klerk has done this incredible duo, this incredible work. they have and they have ended apartheid they they have created the basis for the new South Africa let us remember for also you see that, you know, you cannot be just study and think.

And this wickedness that exist in the world, has got to be fought relentlessly. Speaking of Mandela, I mean just think, now everybody knows what kind of man he is. But just think, that, you know, the white South Africans have deprived their country and the world of 27 years of leadership that could have been provided to them and to all of us. Wickedness is there, goodness is there.

Lets work all of us together to enforce goodness and fight relentlessly, wickedness. Next year I am going to teach one of two seminars in London and in Paris. I am going to tell of course, the only thing I know is confidence, I will teach you about confidence, but I am going to tell them to seek out these people who work with a man called Jeff Skoll and see if you can work with them in resolving conflicts as well.

Thank you very much indeed.
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