Peace in the Face of War

the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had said that shari’a law
should be introduced to England and he wanted me to tell Lambeth Palace
how much he approved.) If anyone who is responsible for violence is willing
to deal with us, we have to engage with them if we are to have any hope
of bringing peace to Iraq. It is often difficult to get these people to meet
representatives of the Coalition, because Western governments do not want
to be seen to be talking to ‘the bad guys’ – though in private they are glad we
are doing it, and the Pentagon especially is now happy to finance this aspect
of our work.
I am involved with both religious and political leaders and I find they often
fail to understand each other. Western politicians do not appreciate that
religious extremists need to be addressed in religious language. On the other
hand, most religious leaders have little insight into the nature of Western
politics and are unaware that most of our politicians find violence in the name
of God incomprehensible. Often, a further obstacle to mutual understanding
is the belief shared by both kinds of leader that the only way to deal with the
other kind is by force. Both of them tend to assume that if you hurt someone
enough they will submit to your will. The problem with this assumption is
that usually it results only in an escalation of violence.
There is no simple formula, no secret, to getting these people to engage with
us or with each other, or to change their tactics; and there is little rhyme or
reason in how we have achieved it. It can take months merely to get to know
some people – and yet often it is when we get to know them, and even make
friends with them, that solutions begin to emerge. Fortunately, Christianity
encourages us in this approach, because Jesus taught us to love our enemies
and forgive them. (Most of those I deal with in the Middle East, however, are
Jews or Muslims, and this concept of loving and forgiving your enemies is
foreign to their religion. It can be difficult to explain it to them.)
As a third party, I and my colleagues play a vital role not only by mediating
negotiations but also by facilitating the forming of relationships across the
divides. Often, our starting-point is enabling each side to hear the other’s
story. As the American poet Longfellow once wrote: ‘If we could read the
secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and
suffering enough to disarm all hostility.’ Or, as someone else has said, ‘Who
is my enemy? It is the person whose story I have not heard.’ Merely to get to
this point of listening to each other can take many months or even years, but
once we have reached it we find that people are often astonished to learn of
the pain the other side is experiencing in the conflict.
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