Peace Work
After a bit of last minute editing and scripting yesterday, the programme on conflict resolution I've been making was broadcast on Radio 4 this morning. I think it should be available via this listen again page fairly soon, and it will be repeated over the Easter weekend on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Ulster.
The programme tracked the history of the initiative which saw Martin McGuinness flying out to Baghdad last year, in the company of the former Stormont Speaker Lord Alderdice and the political consultant Quintin Oliver.
The Baghdad trip didn't come out of nowhere - there had been two previous conferences in a forest in Finland. Going back further the prime mover behind the initiative, Irish American professor had organised a trip to Capetown for unionists and nationalists to hear Nelson Mandela's wisdom on overcoming violence.
I well remember that trip as I covered it. Although reporters weren't allowed anywhere near the talks venue, I managed to grab a word with Nelson Mandela who was cutting the ribbon at a new Capetown hotel. After dodging his over enthusiastic bodyguards I got three or four questions into President Mandela, and found him surprisingly well briefed on the Northern Ireland politicians' visit.
In the programme I take the story back to Capetown, then trace it through to Finland, Baghdad and more recently Washington D.C. on St Patrick's Day. Martin McGuinness prepared for his trip there keen to portray Northern Ireland as a peace process success story with relevance to other trouble spots around the world. Would President Obama's administration be interested in drawing on Stormont expertise in other areas, like the Middle East.
But as we are all too well aware here, before Messrs McGuinness and Robinson boarded their transatlantic flight the script changed suddenly and dramatically, with the murders of the two soldiers and a police officer. As I recorded the last section of the programme I was interested in the impact of the latest violence on the efforts to export local expertise on conflict resolution. Should our politicians be concentrating on matters closer to home?
The sense I got in Washington was that the Obama administration was still interested in Northern Ireland as a model. After a meeting with Stormont politicians inside the US Congress, the Democratic Congresswoman seemed unfazed by the latest violence and told me about programmes for women in conflict pioneered in Northern Ireland which were now being applied in the Middle East.
Of course, not everyone, is a fan of exporting the peace process. I talked to Jim Allister, who objects on political and moral grounds, and the London University Iraq expert Dr. Toby Dodge who remains sceptical about what impact, if any, the Northern Ireland intervention has had on the ground in Baghdad.
I'll let you listen to the programme and make up your own minds, including what you make of Padraig O'Malley's contention that those who have killed or ordered others to kill make the best negotiators for peace.
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