CCTS
Newsletter 12

The volunteer project Pakrac, grassroots peacebuilding in Croatia, 1993 - 1997

In 1997, colleagues in the Centre for Peace Studies, Zagreb, suggested that as Nick Wilson had been active in the newly ended Volunteer Project Pakrac (VPP) he might usefully draw out the learning from it as a participant-observer. To do this, he collated a 'conglomerate view' drawing together the views of sixty of the project's participants and Pakracani. What follows is a much-simplified version of some of his findings. [Note: 'Pakrac' is pronounced 'PAKrrats'. Both As are flat, as in 'jack'. 'Pakracani', the collective noun for the inhabitants, is pronounced 'PAKRRAchaanee'.]

Pakrac, a town of 10,000 in rural West Slavonia, was one of the first flashpoints of the war in Croatia. In spring 1991, radical Serbs among the relative Serb majority in the municipality staged an unsuccessful coup, declaring Pakrac the regional capital of a Serb autonomous enclave. Violence accelerated slowly to a peak in late 1991 when, as part of the wider Croatian war, Pakrac was heavily damaged. The defence put up by outgunned local 'Croatian' forces (actually made up of the wide range of ethnicities found in the area, including Serbs) against 'Serb' irregulars and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) radicalised the remainder of the population.

By January 1992, JNA resources were draining away to Bosnia. This altered the local balance of power, leaving West Slavonia divided between Croatian control and the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) along a ceasefire line enforced by the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR). West Slavonia was the only area in Croatia where both zones were under the jurisdiction of the UN. Pakrac was itself divided between these zones, with no local movements between its urban, 'Croatian' part and the smaller semi-rural suburb of 'RSK Pakrac'.

Top-down peacebuilding

During 1992, the charismatic head of UN Civil Affairs in West Slavonia was able to exploit the ambiguities of his mandate and the flexibility of his UN military counterpart to push along a mid-level localised peace process. Tough weapons control and robust chairing of face to face meetings between local officials created some flexibility in what was still a fresh situation. This encouraged a UN diplomat to form an ad hoc project to attract non-UN resources into this peacebuilding 'push' under the auspices of the UN's regional office in Vienna (UNOV). This 'UNOV-Pakrac' (UNOV-P) initiative was far ahead of most UN practice at the time, taking literally Boutros Boutros Ghali's emphasis in Agenda For Peace on creative approaches to moving from peacekeeping to peacebuilding.

UNOV-Pakrac in turn invited the Anti-war Campaign Croatia (ARK), a network of twenty-plus indigenous NGOs, to co-operate in the area. To ARK, the security and political umbrella which the project offered, and the chance to complement ambitious mid-level talk of re-settlement with work at the grassroots, seemed attractive. After six months exploration with Pakracani, ARK agreed to a short term experiment, offering small, self-funded groups of local activists and local and international volunteers to 'Croatian Pakrac' to do basic physical reconstruction and social assistance, ideally spreading to 'RSK Pakrac' later.

Grassroots peacebuilding

The Volunteer Project's initial aim was little more than to not be expelled from Pakrac. It consequently had a volatile internal power structure and grew in an organic way which was responsive, but also largely unplanned. Almost instantly, the fact that participants lived and worked among Pakracani in similar conditions, unlike International Government Organisation (IGO) and International Non Governmental Organisation (INGO) staff, provided a base of trust and respect among 'Croatian' Pakracani. Basic reconstruction by short term participants formed the core of the project throughout its life. Here, and in initial spontaneous social assistance, participants actively sought to compensate for their lack of 'expertise' by emphasising unstructured informal listening as a way of understanding local specificities.

The informal listening, in conjunction with the limitations of what VPP could offer, led the project to combine physical reconstruction and social assistance (and later community development / empowerment) in an 'integrated' peacebuilding approach. Operating on a small scale in a defined area, VPP was able to reintegrate these two strands of the peacebuilding process, which are often artificially separated by specialized intervening agencies.

Bearing in mind that mechanistic, linear accounts misleadingly simplify the circuitous complexity of grassroots peacebuilding, VPP's work can be summarised as the following. Spontaneous contacts were gradually extended and systematised, building a base in the 'Croatian' community founded on seemingly innocuous activities (playing with children, language lessons...). Long term volunteers then acted as catalysts in the much more difficult coalescing of a few Pakracani around particular issues and needs, in some cases in groups such as a youth club, women's group, or interests such as a school-based email project. Other activities, including a 'Small Repairs' programme, and 'Community Visits' to the vulnerable, were largely carried out by VPP, but had the same reflexive advantages of opening up contacts between different parts of the decimated and internally divided 'Croatian' community and introducing elements of difference, solidarity and friendly listening. Over the next three years these initiatives in turn became springboards for social development and a diverse set of activities and trainings aimed at 'empowering' groups and individuals.

Volunteer turnover meant that some of these activities lacked continuity, but as all depended on the unpaid involvement of Pakracani, only work appropriate to local needs survived. By 1995, mature activities were bearing fruit. Structures such as the Youth Club and Women's Group were almost fully independent, and were interacting with each other and outsiders in proactive ways that were encouraged by VPP's emphasis on developmental, not humanitarian, aid.

Unfortunately, the Bosnian war and UN office politics meant that the UN's mid-level peacebuilding 'push' in West Slavonia stalled at the very moment that VPP began. It also transpired that UNOV-P's $3 million budget was almost entirely earmarked for impossible wholesale physical reconstruction. VPP and UNOV therefore diverged, with VPP relying on a core income which never topped £4000 cash per month, raised from a shifting rainbow alliance of mostly small supporters. Despite this, UNOV-P staff were able to 'play' the UN system to supply essential documents to volunteers crossing the line, and in time, were also able to scrape together modest funds for some of VPP's activity. Yet accepting this help carried its own risks as UNOV-P, with virtually no presence on the ground, was nonetheless apt to take the credit for the project's efforts.

As for VPP's wider aims, 'reconciliation' had long since been relegated to the status of an ultimate motivating ideal, replaced by 'normalisation', 'social reconstruction' and later, 'peacebuilding'. These concepts all had limitations, but were at least easier to break down into achievable aims, and helped to express the complexity of the work. VPP hoped that 'social reconstruction' on each side might lead to pretexts for cross-entity communication and trust-building at the grassroots level. This was, however, tempered by the realities of the unresolved ceasefire situation.

VPP was only able to place a few representatives in the grim promontory of RSK Pakrac. Conditions were also so adverse as to make it impossible to initiate more than a few of the most basic activities there. However, ARK persuaded activists of Grupa MOST, of the Serbian Centre for Antiwar Action, to assist parallel work in RSK Pakrac. This work was hampered by the extreme isolation of the area even from Belgrade, but grew steadily until 1995. In particular, VPP participants undermined the 'otherness' of both 'sides' by passing hundreds of private communications between relatives and friends separated by the line.

On 1 May 1995 the Croatian army overran the West Slavonian sector of the RSK. Most Serbs fled, some being killed en route. Immediately afterwards, VPP offered direct protection to remaining Serbs and provided a way in for responses by Serbian and Croatian NGOs. VPP then sought to use its relationships with both sides to develop direct communication between them, but failed to make a convincing case for the potential of this work to its disillusioned former funders, who were increasingly attracted to Bosnia. The project consequently became more dependent on IGO and INGO funding. Combined with a reduced need for physical assistance, this tended to de-integrate the VPP's activities, risking turning it into a sub-contracted delivery vehicle for atomised social development, or woefully ill-defined 'psycho-social work', without a uniting peacebuilding agenda.

VPP nevertheless continued to develop its activity on both sides of the line, concentrating on the sustainability of its local 'seed' initiatives. Although the project closed in March 1997, support by ARK has allowed several of these to continue, with other developments now appearing based on links and 'empowerment' traceable to VPP.

Lessons

The political, military and economic conditions in Pakrac were obviously hostile to grassroots peacebuilding. We might conclude that VPP took place 'too early', or even question the premise of building 'peace in a pocket' in the context of an ongoing war. Yet events were by no means bound to unfold in the way they did.

VPP was ultimately too isolated at the grassroots to greatly influence the hardening situation which arose after the hopeful 'push' of 1992. As an experiment in the mobilising of myriad local, semi-local and international civilians and a wide 'international constituency' of supporters, VPP had much success. Yet the project also shows that, unless grassroots peacebuilding is also 'vertically integrated', with co-operation by intervenors and local actors operating at different levels of the conflict, advances at the grassroots will be held back by political, military, economic and institutional blockages.

To create an area-based peacebuilding 'push' at multiple 'levels' after the unravelling of the initial mid-level UN effort would have required more humility from all concerned. IGOs and INGOs in particular needed to move away from seeing local NGOs like VPP as 'filling in' for the big boys, local populations as beneficiaries, and international populations as donors served by 'expert' professionals. As things were, VPP was at constant risk of having a merely palliative role, or inadvertently assisting the forcible 'reintegration' of the RSK by 'pacifying' Serbs.

Nonetheless, by developing communication, openness, and a self-organising capacity, VPP increased the options for the Pacracani despite the intractability of the wider situation. Based on informal listening to the expression of local needs rather than the 'implementation' of alien models, these inputs were generally well conceived. In this sense VPP's efforts tended towards improving in the long term the capacity of West Slavonians to deal with conflict creatively.

Participants, their eyes on another goal, are apt to forget the approximately 1.5 Million Deutschmarks of help-in-kind that VPP attracted. The achievements of volunteers working with commitment, intuition and minimal resources raise the question: who is competent to carry out interdisciplinary, cross-cutting peacebuilding at the grassroots? Key activists also stress the value of the co-operation of the resistance/peace movements of Croatia and Serbia in Pakrac as a foundation for later joint action.

VPP did, however, suffer from problems common in voluntary initiatives. Participants were often acting at the edge of their competence - though at least they did acknowledge this. High aims, (dis-)organisation, unreliable funding and a lack of parallel experiences caused chronic burnout among all long term participants. Moreover VPP was so well attuned to the ceasefire situation that it was unable to adapt when conditions changed, leading it to perpetuate some elements beyond their usefulness. Sensitive guidance from executive structures with parallel experiences might have helped.

VPP was cheap. But it demonstrates that such work needs to be long term to be effective, carries hidden costs, and requires funding cycles attuned to building trust and supporting qualitative change rather than aiming to achieve short term quantifiable 'results'.

Perhaps most difficult for self-critical participants to accept is VPP's value as a peacebuilding 'primary school' for almost 300 indigenous and foreign participants and myriad organizations. The influence of this 'diaspora', imbued with bottom-up peacebuilding skills, in different capacities at many 'levels', both in the region and elsewhere, is uncertain. But several grassroots peacebuilding initiatives in the region are the identifiable descendants of VPP.

The most insightful of my informants constantly qualified their statements: this work does not lend itself to the false certainties peddled by governments and heavyweight INGOs. However, the repetition of some of VPP's mistakes elsewhere indicates the need to penetrate beyond the surface features of such experiences, draw out the complex learning, and express it in ways which truly engage with the messiness of peacebuilding at the grassroots.

This article draws from Between Dreams and Reality: The Volunteer Project Pakrac - Grassroots Peacebuilding in Croatia by Nick Wilson (forthcoming), the research for which was funded by the Department for International Development, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, WA Cadbury Charitable Trust, W F Southall Trust, Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation, Westcroft Trust, Lansbury House Trust Fund and CCTS.

next article