Stefan Wolff: The path to ending ethnic conflicts

Today I want to talk to you

about ethnic conflict

and civil war.

These are not normally the most cheerful of topics,

nor do they generally generate

the kind of good news

that this conference is about.

Yet, not only is there at least some good news

to be told about fewer such conflicts now

than two decades ago,

but what is perhaps more important

is that we also have come

to a much better understanding of what can be done

to further reduce the number

of ethnic conflicts and civil wars

and the suffering that they inflict.

Three things stand out:

leadership, diplomacy

and institutional design.

What I will focus on in my talk

is why they matter, how they matter,

and what we can all do

to make sure that they continue to matter

in the right ways,

that is, how all of us can contribute

to developing and honing the skills

of local and global leaders

to make peace

and to make it last.

But let's start at the beginning.

Civil wars have made news headlines

for many decades now,

and ethnic conflicts in particular

have been a near constant presence

as a major international security threat.

For nearly two decades now,

the news has been bad

and the images have been haunting.

In Georgia, after years of stalemate,

we saw a full-scale resurgence of violence

in August, 2008.

This quickly escalated into a five-day war

between Russia and Georgia,

leaving Georgia ever more divided.

In Kenya, contested presidential elections in 2007 --

we just heard about them --

quickly led to high levels

of inter-ethnic violence

and the killing and displacement

of thousands of people.

In Sri Lanka,

a decades-long civil war

between the Tamil minority

and the Sinhala majority

led to a bloody climax in 2009,

after perhaps as many as 100,000

people had been killed

since 1983.

In Kyrgyzstan, just over the last few weeks,

unprecedented levels of violence occurred

between ethnic Kyrgyz

and ethnic Uzbeks.

Hundreds have been killed,

and more than 100,000 displaced,

including many ethnic Uzbeks

who fled to neighboring Uzbekistan.

In the Middle East,

conflict between Israelis and Palestinians

continues unabated,

and it becomes ever more difficult

to see how, just how

a possible, sustainable solution

can be achieved.

Darfur may have slipped from the news headlines,

but the killing and displacement there

continues as well,

and the sheer human misery that it creates

is very hard to fathom.

And in Iraq, finally,

violence is on the rise again,

and the country has yet to form a government

four months after

its last parliamentary elections.

But hang on, this talk is to be about the good news.

So are these now the images of the past?

Well, notwithstanding the gloomy pictures

from the Middle East, Darfur,

Iraq, elsewhere,

there is a longer-term trend

that does represent some good news.

Over the past two decades, since the end of the Cold War,

there has been an overall decline

in the number of civil wars.

Since the high in the early 1990s,

with about 50 such civil wars ongoing,

we now have 30 percent fewer

such conflicts today.

The number of people killed in civil wars

also is much lower today

than it was a decade ago or two.

But this trend is less unambiguous.

The highest level of deaths on the battlefield

was recorded between 1998 and 2001,

with about 80,000 soldiers, policemen and rebels

killed every year.

The lowest number of combatant casualties

occurred in 2003,

with just 20,000 killed.

Despite the up and down since then,

the overall trend --

and this is the important bit --

clearly points downward

for the past two decades.

The news about civilian casualties

is also less bad than it used to be.

From over 12,000 civilians

deliberately killed in civil wars

in 1997 and 1998,

a decade later,

this figure stands at 4,000.

This is a decrease by two-thirds.

This decline would be even more obvious

if we factored in the genocide in Rwanda

in 1994.

But then 800,000 civilians were slaughtered

in a matter of just a few months.

This certainly is an accomplishment

that must never be surpassed.

What is also important is to note

that these figures only tell part of the story.

They exclude people

that died as a consequence of civil war,

from hunger or disease, for example.

And they also do not properly account

for civilian suffering more generally.

Torture, rape and ethnic cleansing

have become highly effective,

if often non-lethal, weapons in civil war.

To put it differently,

for the civilians that suffer the consequences

of ethnic conflict and civil war,

there is no good war

and there is no bad peace.

Thus, even though every civilian killed,

maimed, raped, or tortured is one too many,

the fact that the number

of civilian casualties

is clearly lower today

than it was a decade ago,

is good news.

So, we have fewer conflicts today

in which fewer people get killed.

And the big question, of course,

is why?

In some cases,

there is a military victory of one side.

This is a solution of sorts,

but rarely is it one

that comes without human costs

or humanitarian consequences.

The defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka

is perhaps the most recent example of this,

but we have seen similar

so-called military solutions

in the Balkans, in the South Caucasus

and across most of Africa.

At times, they are complimented

by negotiated settlements,

or at least cease-fire agreements,

and peacekeepers are deployed.

But hardly ever do they represent

a resounding success --

Bosnia and Herzegovina

perhaps more so than Georgia.

But for many parts of Africa,

a colleague of mine once put it this way,

"The cease-fire on Tuesday night

was reached just in time

for the genocide to start on Wednesday morning."

But let's look at the good news again.

If there's no solution on the battlefield,

three factors can account

for the prevention of ethnic conflict and civil war,

or for sustainable peace afterwards:

leadership, diplomacy

and institutional design.

Take the example of Northern Ireland.

Despite centuries of animosity,

decades of violence

and thousands of people killed,

1998 saw the conclusion

of an historic agreement.

Its initial version was skillfully mediated

by Senator George Mitchell.

Crucially, for the long-term success

of the peace process in Northern Ireland,

he imposed very clear conditions

for the participation and negotiations.

Central among them,

a commitment

to exclusively peaceful means.

Subsequent revisions of the agreement

were facilitated by the British and Irish governments,

who never wavered in their determination

to bring peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

The core institutions

that were put in place in 1998

and their modifications

in 2006 and 2008

were highly innovative

and allowed all conflict parties

to see their core concerns and demands addressed.

The agreement combines a power-sharing arrangement

in Northern Ireland

with cross-border institutions

that link Belfast and Dublin

and thus recognizes

the so-called Irish dimension of the conflict.

And significantly,

there's also a clear focus

on both the rights of individuals

and the rights of communities.

The provisions in the agreement may be complex,

but so is the underlying conflict.

Perhaps most importantly,

local leaders repeatedly rose to the challenge of compromise,

not always fast

and not always enthusiastically,

but rise in the end they did.

Who ever could have imagined

Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness

jointly governing Northern Ireland

as First and Deputy First Minister?

But then, is Northern Ireland a unique example,

or does this kind of explanation

only hold more generally

in democratic and developed countries?

By no means.

The ending of Liberia's long-lasting civil war

in 2003

illustrates the importance

of leadership, diplomacy

and institutional design

as much as the successful prevention

of a full-scale civil war

in Macedonia in 2001,

or the successful ending

of the conflict in Aceh in Indonesia in 2005.

In all three cases,

local leaders were willing and able

to make peace,

the international community stood ready

to help them negotiate and implement an agreement,

and the institutions have lived up

to the promise that they held

on the day they were agreed.

Focusing on leadership, diplomacy

and institutional design

also helps explain failures to achieve peace,

or to make it last.

The hopes that were vested in the Oslo Accords

did not lead to an end

of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Not all the issues that needed to be resolved

were actually covered in the agreements.

Rather, local leaders committed

to revisiting them later on.

Yet instead of grasping this opportunity,

local and international leaders

soon disengaged

and became distracted

by the second Intifada, the events of 9/11

and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The comprehensive peace agreement for Sudan

signed in 2005

turned out to be less comprehensive than envisaged,

and its provisions may yet bear the seeds

of a full-scale return to war

between north and south.

Changes and shortcomings in leadership,

more off than on international diplomacy

and institutional failures

account for this

in almost equal measure.

Unresolved boundary issues, squabbles over oil revenues,

the ongoing conflict in Darfur,

escalating tribal violence in the south

and generally weak state capacity

across all of Sudan

complete a very depressing picture

of the state of affairs

in Africa's largest country.

A final example: Kosovo.

The failure to achieve

a negotiated solution for Kosovo

and the violence, tension

and de facto partition that resulted from it

have their reasons

in many, many different factors.

Central among them are three.

First, the intransigence of local leaders

to settle for nothing less

than their maximum demands.

Second, an international diplomatic effort

that was hampered from the beginning

by Western support for Kosovo's independence.

And third, a lack of imagination

when it came to designing institutions

that could have addressed the concerns

of Serbs and Albanians alike.

By the same token --

and here we have some good news again --

the very fact that there is a high-level,

well-resourced international presence

in Kosovo

and the Balkans region more generally

and the fact that local leaders on both sides

have showed relative restraint,

explains why things have not been worse

over the past two years since 2008.

So even in situations

where outcomes are less than optimal,

local leaders

and international leaders have a choice,

and they can make a difference for the better.

A cold war

is not as good

as a cold peace,

but a cold peace

is still better than a hot war.

Good news is also about learning the right lesson.

So what then distinguishes

the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

from that in Northern Ireland,

or the civil war in Sudan

from that in Liberia?

Both successes and failures

teach us several critically important things

that we need to bear in mind

if we want the good news to continue.

First, leadership.

In the same way in which ethnic conflict and civil war

are not natural

but man-made disasters,

their prevention and settlement

does not happen automatically either.

Leadership needs to be capable,

determined and visionary

in its commitment to peace.

Leaders need to connect to each other

and to their followers,

and they need to bring them along

on what is an often arduous journey

into a peaceful future.

Second, diplomacy.

Diplomacy needs to be well resourced,

sustained,

and apply the right mix of incentives and pressures

on leaders and followers.

It needs to help them reach an equitable compromise,

and it needs to ensure

that a broad coalition

of local, regional

and international supporters

help them implement their agreement.

Third, institutional design.

Institutional design requires

a keen focus on issues,

innovative thinking

and flexible and well-funded implementation.

Conflict parties need to move away

from maximum demands

and towards a compromise

that recognizes each other's needs.

And they need to think

about the substance of their agreement

much more than about

the labels they want to attach to them.

Conflict parties also need to be prepared

to return to the negotiation table

if the agreement implementation stalls.

For me personally,

the most critical lesson of all is this:

Local commitment to peace

is all-important,

but it is often not enough

to prevent or end violence.

Yet, no amount of diplomacy

or institutional design

can make up for local failures

and the consequences that they have.

Therefore, we must invest

in developing leaders,

leaders that have the skills,

vision and determination

to make peace.

Leaders, in other words,

that people will trust

and that they will want to follow

even if that means

making hard choices.

A final thought:

Ending civil wars

is a process that is fraught with dangers,

frustrations and setbacks.

It often takes a generation to accomplish,

but it also requires us, today's generation,

to take responsibility

and to learn the right lessons

about leadership, diplomacy

and institutional design,

so that the child soldiers of today

can become the children of tomorrow.

Thank you.

(Applause)