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Gulf News reporter Abbas Al Lawati is attending a workshop in Geneva entitled Beyond Wars, Building Peace which is organised by the Swiss press agency InfoSud and the Media21 journalist’s network in coordination with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Following a five day workshop, Abbas and eleven other reporters from around the world will go on a five day field trip to Lebanon to witness the reconstruction efforts after the war with Israel last year.
March 31
Today's panel, 'Are Conflicts Manageable' was held at the offices of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), which also houses the World Meteorological Organisation.
Two of the panelists, Dr Pal Sidhu and Thierry Tardy, both of the GCSP, brought up an unpopular theory in conflict management which has less to do with management than one would think: let the conflict continue and see it settle itself, citing both World Wars as examples where there was no serious effort made to enforce peace.
Although none of the panelists supported implementing such a theory in today's conflicts, citing the cost of such a move to be too high to justify, I wondered whether Iraq would be one of those conflicts where we might have to resort to sitting back to watch the factions fight it out.
Many have argued that the Iraq conflict was inevitable, just waiting to boil over. The previous regime had kept the lid tightly shut on sectarian differences, but with the oppression of certain sects and ethnicities, was the conflict simmering below?
The way the conflict is currently progressing, with the emigration of some minorities and the resettlement of sects in concentrated areas, is it preparing Iraq for a more harmonious future that can only be made possible through dividing the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds?
A colleague from a pan-Arab news network who was present thinks it's an interesting theory, but not one that we can afford to consider in Iraq. That, he says, is due to the fact that there are too many competing foreign forces at work in Iraq who will fight their proxy wars through Iraq. I would agree.
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