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What's Good for the 'RA Should Be Good for IraqAuthor(s): Corrina HauswedellSource: Fortnight, No. 415 (Jun., 2003), pp. 12-13Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25560889 .

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Fortnight JUNE 2003

Corrina Hauswedell

WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE 'R

Tony Blair forgot important lessons about

decommissioning when he

invaded Iraq.

In many respects, contrasting disarmament in Northern Ireland to that in Iraq may look inappropriate as the differences in nature and size of the two conflicts may

defy comparison: Gerry not being Saddam, thank God, Semtex not being Anthrax or

VX, thank God, and Northern Ireland being a much smaller spot (of colonial history) than Iraq in today's world of global interests, thank God!

But if you focus on British governmental policy and methods of disarmament that were applied towards the two cases it becomes obvious that Tony

Blair, in his highly controversial support for George Bush's war on Iraq, which among many other irritations created a crisis of confidence within his own party, chose a road that deviated considerably from the strategic choices taken up in the North in the nineties.

The issue of decommissioning has long plagued the peace process in the North -

too long one may say. At the time this article was written, the prospects of sorting it out finally looked more optimistic, but peace in the North has been "postponed" yet again due to Tony Blair's response to Gerry Adams on the 1 May: a serious setback.

The debate on decommissioning has dragged on long enough to draw more than one lesson for other international disarmament and peace endeavours.

When the British government invented the word decommissioning in the early nineties, which then became the "D" word of the Northern Irish peace process. They did this, among other reasons, because they wanted to make it sound different from "disarmament" - and with the shift in

power from Major to Blair in 1997, more attention was paid to the concerns of the Republican movement that it not be seen as "surrendering".

APPROACH Consequently, this approach gave a level of political acknowledgement to those who had taken up arms in a "troubled" war against the state.

Decommissioning did not become a

precondition to signing up for peace, but

"the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations" became a commitment for all parties who had signed the Good Friday

Agreement in its implementation phase. Installing a "twin-track" strategy, which

separated the implementation of the

political and security aspects of the settlement - within all its "constructive

ambiguities" - further paid recognition to the following fact: the sensitive issue of

arms, which held significance far beyond their military potential and the political symbolism of a long history of violent conflict would take time to solve.

The "decommissioning of mindsets"

became a familiar quotation in the North for what was needed in terms of "soft-ware" endeavours to make the "hard-ware" finally go away.

INDEPENDENT The establishment of an Independent International Commission of

Decommissioning (IICD) to monitor, review and verify progress on decommissioning of illegal arms was, within all limitations in terms of its mandate, considered the type of neutral third party institute to make the process easier for those who held the guns.

Even more creative thinking with respect to confidence-building was applied in summer 2000 when a duo of internationally respected inspectors visited selected IRA arms dumps for the first time, sealing them with a dual-key system, and confirming repeatedly to the IICD that the

weapons they had seen were safe and under control.

Deadlocks however continued to occur in the peace process before and after the first and second disarmament moves of the IRA in October 2001 and April 2002, which

were perceived, at the time, to be "historical".

As unilateral methods of sanctioning Sinn Fein - while keeping eyes widely shut on other needs for disarmament - failed, the introduction of a "package" deal, spelled out first in Weston Park inJuly 2001, became the amended strategy of the British and Irish governments.

This linked issues of decommissioning, demilitarisation and downsizing of state forces and police reform in a manner that suggested reciprocation in procedures and reflected a carefully growing respect for

mutually identified security concerns and a gradual dissociation from the enemy perceptions of the past.

YEARS Throughout those years, in most public statements of the government, the term "terrorists" was rarely used to describe the IRA.

Notwithstanding the difficulties this

approach created for those in the Unionist

spectrum, whose reluctance to share power was deeper rooted than the recognition of change, the new road taken in Northern Ireland in the nineties - after twenty years of failure to make peace by military coercion - was the one to achieve a final cessation of violence, by political means of inclusion, not by force.

Mo Mowlam, the most involved figure of the New Labour cabinet at the time, in her book Momentum, has convincingly elaborated on some general lessons for making peace with those radically opposed to a questionable state concept of law and

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politics

SHOULD BE GOO FO IAQ

order.

CREATIVE There were also "creative ambiguities" involved in dealing with the Iraq conflict,

prominently spelled out in the UN resolution 1441 of 8 November 2002, which established an enhanced inspection regime for Iraq's disarmament to be carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Strengthening the inspection regime was, in the words of the resolution, giving

Baghdad "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations".

Due to the resolution, the right to decide on compliance or failure rested with the UN Security Council who would assess and judge compliance on the basis of the inspectors' reports.

Instead of following this procedure and giving the inspectors the time they demanded, it was decided in February 2003, with the help of dubious evidence and some fabricated documents that the US administration declared the time of diplomacy to be over.

COMMONS When Blair told the Commons on 3 February, "we are entering the final phase of a 12-year history of the disarmament of Iraq", Washington had already decided to go to war. The legitimacy that the Labour government had sought in a second UN resolution was not going to happen; the right of justifying the use of armed forces shifted to the US super power and along

with it the publicly stated goals of disarmament shifted to regime change and to the establishment of a democratic order of a kind in the Middle East.

BREACH This striking breach of international law - a crucial concern of many opposing states and people protesting around the world, (as in London and Belfast), against the imminent war - had also been a matter of deeply controversial debates in the Commons on several occasions until 17 March, shortly before the actual military action was taken.

To justify military action, the alleged or perceived threat posed by the Iraqi dictator may have been exaggerated, and issues other than disarmament became predominant objectives. After a 12 year period of an ambiguous regime of sanctions and inspections in Iraq, to say nothing of the earlier times when Saddam was still a welcome ally well supplied with arms, too many double standards have been in place for an honestly legitimised military intervention supported by the international community.

Assuming the moral high ground when military force and therefore violence is

involved has always been a sensitive matter and a doubtful endeavour. And the British government, in the Northern Ireland case, has been given another lesson on that by the recent revelations that emerged from the Stevens inquiry. Illegal military and intelligence practises perpetrated during the Troubles have put justice and the legitimate use of the state monopoly of force seriously at risk.

Among the lessons learnt from Northern Ireland would be: * Ambiguities are a natural factor of

disarmament and peace processes; to make use of their constructive elements, patience, creativity and time is required to build the respect among the conflicting parties that is needed to finally make peace.

* Neither disarmament nor democracy is likely to be enhanced through the breach

of law and the use of military force. * Making up an enemy image will rather

lead to increased violence instead of the political de-escalation of threats and their perceptions.

* Never neglect approved methods and instruments of confidence-building, and the crucial role of neutral third party involvement for building trust and to establish the integrity of the process.

* Disarmament, in many cases, is not a one way road; demilitarisation of long gtanding violent conflicts needs a certain

f1actor of mutuality. Efforts must be taken to create a jointly agreed upon approach to achieve a non-partisan concept of security. (The UN resolution 687 of 1991 suggested such a comprehensive regime for all WMD in the Middle East).

GLOBAL With the new global asymmetries and

imbalances of power, which grew out of the end of the Cold War and made drastically visible only after 9/11, with the onset of the U.S. "war against terrorism", in place, the lessons learned during a number of intra state conflicts of the nineties may now become even more relevant for the international - and interstate - agenda of conflict resolution.

Asymmetrical warfare, "war economies" and other types of militarisation have been painfully imposed on thousands of civilians in many areas of the world throughout the

past years. But increased concern for human rights violations should not become an excuse for universal interventionism, and, on no account, for pre-emptive war.

Disarmament by arms is not only questionable for semantic reasons. Fighting terrorism by military means has not yet proved very successful - neither in recent history nor against the new transnational networks like Al Qaida. And if the most powerful states remove the fragile taboos of

war in the name of democracy they may create a dangerous momentum and will risk the loss of credibility. In order to ban the proliferation and possession of WMD, not "counter-proliferation" but new efforts for a human security agenda, including a turn to effective regimes of arms control and disarmament, have to be initiated by the international community.

With respect to Northern Ireland, the cunning question may be allowed whether Tony Blair has abandoned the New Labour times of "constructive ambiguities" for a doubtful alliance with neo-conservatism on the other side of the Atlantic? Even if he found strong support for the Iraq war among Ulster Unionists, the lessons in the

North may remain valid, and will hopefully provide a political way out of the new impasse.

... .... .*

Corrina H-auswedell. Dr Corinna Hauswedell is a historian and works

as a project leader for post-conflict peace building at Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC). In 2002, she published (together with Kris Brown) the study Burying

The Hatchet, The Decommissioning of

Paramilitary Arms in Northern Ireland

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