In The Middle: by Adam Curle Evaluation What does it all amount to? People who have tried to mediate must always ask themselves whether they have been wasting their time. By the nature of things, anonymous private mediators are not going to be able to bring off dramatic coups. Even if they have made a great contribution to the changed understanding on which settlement depends, they will no be the ones actually to engineer it. That happens in the public domain such as the UN, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the OAU or a powerful third-party government any of which will have the necessary resources and the technical administrative skill such as were needed, for example, to mount and conduct the Lancaster House Conference that brought the Zimbabwe war to an end. In any case, it would not be appropriate, and might adversely affect their future usefulness, to bring into the open people whose work depends on their invisibility, and it doesn't often happen; in my twenty years' experience, our activities have only on very rare occasions received attention in the media and then it was but slight. I have even wondered if I should write these pages. However, I felt it was legitimate to follow Mike Yarrow's book which I, as a practitioner, found useful, by something which I trust will supplement it. And I have preserved the anonymity of those not mentioned by name in this book, in which the narrative ends in 1970, and have given no details whatsoever of some later mediations. However, a more important question than the degree of visibility of mediators is whether, seen or unseen, they do any good. Do they contribute at all to peace or do they put themselves and everyone else concerned to considerable effort and expense for nothing? I wish I could give a clear-cut answer, but does one ever know the full effect of anything done with or for other people? Is my wife better for having known me, have I helped my children deal competently and happily with life, are my students wiser because of my teaching, did my efforts in any way improve the quality of existence of the Third World people for whose development I worked? I will never know, just as I will never know whether the money my friend and I took to Biafra ultimately did more good than harm. But this uncertainty doesn't worry me. I try to do what I think right to do, and my Quaker colleagues might feel that this was sufficient justification, provided I set about the task seriously and carefully, having taken the best available advice. Moreover, if we have any understanding of how things happen, especially in the complex weave of international affairs, we realise that there is never one person, one group, one event to which the final result can be attributed. What, in fact, is a final result? The peace conference, or the settlement, or the resolution (if they occur), are merely commas in a journal that is still going on and will be written until the end of time. Of one thing, however, we can be certain: mediators do have an effect on the total situation. Admittedly, their effect will be very small if they never progress beyond the preliminary stages. However, the closer they get to the main actors and the longer they remain on the stage, the greater their influence on events. They are therefore under an obligation to make that influence a good one. This is likely to be so if they keep their egos in order, and tackle the external issues with informed common sensitivity. At the same time, they should realise that, with all the goodwill and good sense in the world, they may not be able to help having a negative impact on some person or happening. But this, I think, is an acceptable risk. There would perhaps be a greater risk than that if they were not involved, their absence could have entailed the loss of important opportunities. I can think of some cases where, had we not been present, a chance of peace-making would have been lost; but whether it was taken by those empowered to do so is another matter. Mike Yarrow, referring to the difficulty of assessing Quaker private diplomacy, says: 'Evaluation of the effectiveness of any one element... in a complicated series of historical processes, is difficult if not impossible. It is like asking for the effectiveness of one thread in a mainsail halyard of many filaments' (p. 298). Nevertheless, although there may be no hard evidence, I believe there are a number of hints of usefulness. Again I quote Yarrow: 'In the case of India and Pakistan just after the [1965] war over Kashmir, the heads of each government used the Quakers to communicate with the other opinions and intentions that could not be publicly stated, particularly with a view to testing the strength of moderate forces working to continue the truce. [It was in fact continued.] In the Nigerian war, the Quaker aim for a negotiated peace was not achieved, but peace by military victory resulted in an amazing degree of magnanimity toward the defeated side. The Quakers may have had a small part in this result, because their efforts were welcomed by certain Nigerian leaders. 'The one objective index of effectiveness available was the fact that the persons involved retained continuing access to the top leadership over a considerable period of time rather than being sent away as importunate meddlers. It is perhaps safe to conclude from this that the Quakers were carrying on an operation which other found useful and not just fooling themselves' (p. 299). There is little I would like to add to this evaluation, except that well-informed sources in Lagos confirmed to us what Yarrow suggested as our possible contribution to the paradoxically 'peaceful' conclusion to the war. Once the cease-fire was proclaimed the fighting stopped completely. The defeated Biafrans, who had expected to be massacred, were taken by their conquerors to feeding centres, loaded onto military trucks and conveyed to the hospital if wounded; the soldiers handed over their own rations to the starving people and gave them money. Immediately Biafrans who had been civil servants or diplomats in the federal Government had their jobs restored; if there were no immediate vacancy for, for example, a former ambassador, he was placed on full pay until one became available. Such a change of heart seemed almost miraculous. Our contribution, if indeed we were not deceiving ourselves, was that we had been continually trying to explain to the Nigerians why the Biafrans felt as they did; that they did not resist so desperately because they were intransigent and filled with destructive hatred, but because, with reason, they were frightened but wanted peace as much as anyone. In addition, as I have described, on two occasions we carried and interpreted messages that could easily have brought a settlement many months before the actual end of the war. After the end of the Zimbabwe struggle, where we were involved after period recorded by Yarrow, Walter Martin, who planned and led the execution of the mediation with the greatest possible sensitivity and skill, received appreciative letters from African leaders and others who knew what had been happening. I also met an American diplomat who told me that it was recognised at the UN, where he had been temporarily attached, that the achievement of peace had largely depended on Quaker efforts; as he had no idea that I had been involved, the comment must be considered as completely unbiased. As for me, having had my family life disrupted countless times, and often suffering inconvenience, loneliness and occasional illness and danger, I still go on because I believe, and have indeed been told, that it may help. This seems to me sufficient reason to continue to continue trying, and sufficient cause to hope that the effort will bring a small measure of good results. I am not sure, however, that this form of evaluation can be very fruitful. On the wide screen of conflict, any one happening is the product of innumerable converging forces. It would be rash indeed to attribute greater significance to any one of them. It is wiser, perhaps, to consider what mediation is designed to contribute towards, and how far the process as I have tried to describe it, is suitable for the purpose. Mediation is intended to break down the barriers of suspicion, unreasonable fear, exaggerated hostility, misunderstanding and ignorance that keep protagonists at a great distance than is warranted by the practical or material grounds of their quarrel. Only when this has to some extent occur will there be an adequate chance of satisfactory negotiations. Long term private or non-official mediation focuses on building relationship through which mediation can dispel some of the misconceptions, fixed ideas and irrational dread and hatred that develop all too easily in times of violence. It does so through the quadruple approach of communication, providing information, befriending and active mediation that has been described. This approach, if properly used, should both promote a more genuinely realistic understanding of the situation and diminish the distortions of ego compulsion. It would be absurd to claim that diplomats, UN officials and negotiators representing various governments and international agencies do not, to a considerable extent do most of the same things; if they did not, they would have scant respect. Mediators, however, have no other role that could interfere with their fundamental psychological, or it would be more correct to say human, task. They are tied by no policy, they have not other allegiance, they are entirely devoted to working on the mental obstacles to peace, believing that if these can be diminished so will the material ones. Why then, we may ask, is this form of mediation so insufficiently developed and employed? It is surely because we do not really understand the roots of conflict, seeing it primarily as an objective state of affairs and not as the states of mind that led to, and subsequently sustained and exaggerated that state of affairs. Consequently our approach to conflict resolution is confused and inefficient. We really know very little about it and after hundreds of years of diplomacy which have admittedly produced many brilliant practitioners, have little scientific understanding of it. Our chief fault is failure to recognise that conflict is often largely in the mind and to that extent must be dealt with on that level; and that even when it is less so, as in the case of political oppression or economic exploitation, emotional factors exacerbate what is already serious. Consequently we have not developed good methods for dealing with it. I believe from my own experience that the type of mediation that I have tried to define represents a short, wavering step in the right direction. This would seem to be borne out by the very tentative evaluation that has so far been possible. I think, therefore, that mediation needs to be paid more careful and serious attention and, in the following chapter, present some proposals about how that might be done. These are comparable, in fact, to those made by Yarrow (pp. 266-7).
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