It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[Jedburgh]

Marc,

This paper addresses conflict resolution as influenced by Islam at the local level. I believe you will find the portion on Sulh and Musalaha of interest (beginning on page 11 of the pdf file).

Islamic Mediation Techniques for Middle East Conflicts

Of course, there are significant variations in conflict resolution/mediation rituals and traditions between ethnic groups (i.e. Arabs vs Kurds) as well as regionally (i.e. the Levant vs the Gulf), that go along with the clearer rural-urban divide.

Roger Fisher and his work in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution was mentioned in another thread. I've found his work, and other material from the Harvard Program on Negotiation to be useful in training HUMINT'ers (with some modification for both integration with HUMINT collection methodology and application in the target culture). His book Getting to Yes, has been very influential in the field, and certainly has broad application. Prior to my retirement, I had some success in modifying and integrating aspects of Fisher and Urtel's Getting Ready to Negotiate with conventional interrogation planning and preparation methodology.

As has been stated many times and in several threads on this board, the problem with many in both the civilian and military arenas is lack of understanding when it comes to application. They just don't "get it". In my perspective "getting it" means far more than simply understanding the realities of the current conflict and the effective application of lessons learned - it means having the breadth of understanding necessary to implement valuable insights from multidisciplinary inputs with necessary adaptations for current context. Where the aforementioned lack of understanding enters into the picture is when inputs from fields outside the military - such as conflict resolution and reconciliation methodologies - are simply taken as a blunt whole without any real attempt to integrate and modify application in accordance with local realities and elements of existing methodologies that are proven to work. "Reinventing the wheel" and "throwing out the baby with the bath water" are more than just trite sayings.

...all conflict resolution models serve to justify and reinforce a particular political and social model, and you have to use the approriate one for the culture you are operating in. On the pragmatic side, what are you going to tell the troops (and administrators!) to do in order to try and strat one of them?

What usually happens is that the troops & administrators are given a simple block of instruction on local culture and traditions (often repeatedly), but lacking any real insight or instruction into how to effectively synchronize culture and tradition with their operational methodologies.

I believe its a people issue - we don't have nearly enough people with the appropriate background and experience to leverage that sort of training and the scale required and those that we do have are fully engaged in doing other things.

Well, so much for Saturday morning rambling. Time for pancakes.