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George Rumens
Writes…
The essay is
fresh, and a welcome opening-up of the discussion on how we should regard The
Islamic State, and how to prepare a suitable response, and a strategy. The
strategy is NOT to oppose IS but to neutralise it with sustained and
intelligent diplomacy. It can be done, but only in full cognisance of the
principles of ‘Conflict Resolution’ I have some experience of this since I
spent years on the front line of recent wars, writing about it and gathering film
and photos. Here’s how I am remembered from the First Gulf War of 1991…
“In
Amman (Jordan) large Press Conference
had been arranged for us. I was to talk to the US Gulf Peace Team participants,
but I felt at a loss for words. I asked George Rumens, a British Journalist and
a member of our team. “Tell them…” he said, “…that when the war fever and
hysteria subside, we believe that the
lasting and more appropriate responses to this war will be felt throughout the
world; deepest remorse and regret for the suffering we have caused.””
(‘Iraq Under Siege; The Deadly Impact of Sanctions in
War’ –Edited by Anthony Arnove)
I was right
twenty three years ago, and I may be right with IS.
Neurotaylor
makes a powerful point in suggesting that we forgo the anger and the desire for
revenge, and try to understand the IS Group as people. They are new to their
situation, and borne-aloft by a great passion stemming from a massive sense of
injustice, and by the euphoria of seeming to capture, torture and kill supposed
enemies.
All conflict
resolution seems to start with the unlikely premise that we are faced, not with
a cunning and scheming enemy, but with a ‘toddler-tantrum’. They, the group, really do not know what they are doing, or
what they should do next. Look at the weakly thought-out claims; that they will
shortly conquer Rome, and that they will storm America, kill most of the 370
million population, and convert the rest to Islam. And that is the ideal point
to step-in, and to begin to talk. While they are still so very triumphant. Before
a group identity and group ideology has hardened.
Marshall
Rosenburg’s ‘Non-Violent Communication Seminars’ lectured for years upon the
importance of going and listening to your supposed enemy. When you go, not to
argue, but to listen, then something unexpected happens. For the first time you
begin to suspect that there is some strange logic to their behaviour. It doesn’t
make mass-murder acceptable, but it does make it understandable. You hear their
deep anguish, and the violent threats created by that anguish, perhaps for the
first time. And see what happens to them? For the very first time, they begin
to feel that they have been heard, and there are some people they would
normally dismiss as enemies, who are prepared to listen, uncritically, to their
hopes and dreams.
This kind of
diplomacy is hard road. It involves taking
frequent insults and many threats. And so the secret is persistence. It is not
a blind persistence but one aimed towards a goal. The goal of all that persistent
listening is to draw the renegade movement back into the fold. They know,
without us having to spell it out, that what they do by way of ditches full of
corpses, and spectacular beheadings, is wrong. They know that it is against the
Koran, and against the basic decency within their maturing minds. And one thing
they would like to hear above all other, is a reasonable voice.
I once met a
young Arab man in his thirties, in an Islamic Safe-House, in West Africa. He
told me that he had been a killer in the Beirut wars of the eighties, and that
he had killed many enemies. But that now he had come to realise that he was
swept-along with the euphoria of those times, and by the seeming demands of
Islam. But now he realised that he had done wrong, killed many people, and
could never go back. And so we best look to the healing powers of association
and not the dividing power of military aggression.
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