Peace in the Face of War

who should run it. In fact, the most stable governments in the region are
those of Morocco and Jordan, which are essentially benevolent hereditary
dictatorships.
Attempts by the West to foster peace in the Middle East by encouraging
democracy show that our politicians have not considered the core values
of these societies, and in particular their religious identity, their culture
of honour and shame, the influence of the family and the pervasive role of
tradition. Many of our Western ideals simply do not work in this part of the
world. It sounds very fine, for example, to try to bring about change from the
bottom up, and in the West it may work; but here it does not. Here, the only
way you can really effect change is to work from the top down. In particular,
it is the religious leaders who determine which way a society will go – and in
order to influence them we have to make friends with them. This, I believe,
has been our most crucial mistake in the West: we have failed to understand
that at the heart of Middle Eastern society is the idea of relationship, which
means that establishing and nurturing relationships have to be absolutely
central to our work.
What is important is not only how strong our relationships are but also who
they are with. We can make progress in peacemaking only when we are
engaging with the key people on both – or all – sides of the conflict. In Israel/
Palestine, that is comparatively easy; but in Iraq it is much more complex. The
parties to the violence include the Sunna, the Shia, the Kurds, the Americans
and their partners in the Coalition, and the Iraqi government and its security
forces. Moreover, there is fighting not only between communities but also
within them, as different factions struggle for control. Everyone needs to be
involved in the quest for peace. Peacemaking of the old woolly-liberal kind
no longer works, if it ever did. We cannot succeed if we do not engage with
the military. By the same token, we have to engage too with the people who
choose to kidnap women and children and blow up buses. We cannot confine
ourselves to sitting down and drinking tea with nice people.
Not everyone is approachable, of course – some groups, such as al-Qa’ida,
are impossible to engage with at any level. How great it would be to meet
with them and talk sense, to restore to them what they feel they have lost
and seek peace and reconciliation! But that is simply not possible, because
it is of no interest to them. They are set only on killing and maiming in the
name of God. I have, however, got very close to the most senior people in the
Mehdi Army and other such radical groups, and I continue to be so. (This can
be quite disconcerting. One day, I was sitting in my study in leafy Hampshire
when I had a phone call from Muqtada al-Sadr. He had heard it reported that
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