Peace: The Belfast Model?

Flight for peace

Anirban Bhaumik

As peace returns to Northern Ireland and a fresh deal raises hope for resumption of the political process of devolution too, British Government makes a fresh attempt to hard sell Good Friday Agreement as a global model to resolve conflicts. But can it really be a model for Sri Lanka, Kashmir or North-East India?

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was in Belfast in December 2006. The chairman of the Kashmir’s All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) – an amalgam of secessionist organizations – was invited by the British Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to study the peace-process in Northern Ireland (NI).

Just a month back, the former British Secretary of State for NI Paul Murphy and joint secretary of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Secretariat Christopher MacCabe went all the way to Kilinochchi in northern Sri Lanka to meet the head of the political wing of LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam’s political wing, Mr S. P. Tamilselvan. Mr Murphy later told scribes that he was on a mission to share with the people of the strife-torn island nation the British experience of peacemaking in NI. He even said that the conflicts in Sri Lanka and NI had ‘huge similarities’.

With just three months to go before the March 26, 2007 deadline for a new executive to be ‘up and running’ in Belfast, the British Government has apparently launched a fresh publicity blitzkrieg to tom-tom the peace-process set off by the Good Friday Agreement as a model for resolving conflicts around the world, particularly in South Asia.

London’s desire to help bring peace in Sri Lanka may not be unwarranted, as the seeds of ethnic conflict between Tamils and Singhalese were sown during British colonial rule in Sri Lanka. This also holds good in the case of Kashmir, although New Delhi maintains that it is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan and intervention by any third country or international body is absolutely ‘unwelcome’.

But before analysing if the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) could offer a lesson or two to the peacemakers in Sri Lanka and Kashmir, or in the lesser known, but equally volatile and bloody conflict-zones in north-eastern India; it is important to have a look at the progress made by the British and Irish Governments and the main political parties like the Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in realizing the objectives of the 1998 accord.

GFA – A 'miracle' after three decades of 'troubles'

The GFA once indeed appeared to be little short of a miracle. It set off the process of cementing the peace that had started returning to NI in 1994 following ceasefires by the principal Republican and Loyalist paramilitary organizations. According to the agreement, the Republic of Ireland would drop its territorial claim on NI. The Irish nation was to be defined in terms of people rather than land. Sovereignty was to remain with Britain. The IRA and the loyalist paramilitary organizations were to shun violence.  A power-sharing assembly was to be set up as a key institution for a political process of devolution and all the main parties representing the Catholic Republicans and Protestant Unionists would participate in a permanent coalition government. 

The GFA, according to Prof Adrian Guelke of Queen’s University Belfast, “provided a way of legitimising NI as a political entity for the first time in its history without a change in the border or a transfer of sovereignty.” It was seen as a harbinger of change in a land ravaged by decades of militancy and sectarian clashes, often referred to as the ‘Troubles’.

The euphoria was short-lived, though. A devolved government did come into existence after almost one and a half years of hot debates over interpretation and implementation of the agreement, but it was suspended just three months later. When the Provisional Irish Republican Army agreed to open some of its arsenals for inspection, the devolved government was re-established. But it was weighed down by the contentious issue of decommissioning of weapons, which even resulted in a brief suspension of the devolution process in 2001.

The IRA finally started the decommissioning of weapons shortly after Al Qaeda’s assault on the US on September 11, 2001, apparently prodded by the global wave against terrorism. But the political process in NI was interrupted again in 2002, in the wake of the brouhaha over alleged espionage by the IRA on the Government.

The Assembly was suspended and Ulster again came under the direct rule of London. Though a fresh election was held in November 2003, the assembly remains suspended till today.

A fresh attempt to rejuvenate the political process was made in last October, when the  British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern met in the Scottish town of St. Andrew's and struck another landmark deal, which, if implemented, is expected to turn the relative calm into fully secure peace in NI. Principally, it set a time-frame for the revival of political institutions.

The main political parties like the DUP and Sinn Fein did endorse the St. Andrews Agreement within the November 10 deadline, albeit with some riders. And on November 24 last, when the 108-member-Assembly met for the first time since its suspension in 2002, the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams nominated his chief negotiator Martin McGuinness as the Deputy First Minister as also agreed upon in St. Andrews.

Adams has smartly played the political card by offering to nominate the DUP chief Rev. Ian Paisley as the First Minister. But Rev. Paisley made the DUP's entrance into Government conditional on Sinn Fein’s acceptance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Courts. This was overshadowed by the dramatic, but abortive, attempt by a ‘ loyalist ’ thug Michael Stone to storm into Stormont (the assembly building in Belfast) and trigger explosions.

It is however not easy for the Sinn Fein to pledge an oath of allegiance to the PSNI, although it is required to do so under the St. Andrews Agreement. The party has now emerged as the main political parfty representing NI’s Catholics, for whom the PSNI – formerly known as Royal Ulster Constabulary – is a symbol of British brutality and atrocities on Irish Republicans. After the GFA ended the 25-year-long ‘troubles’ in NI, the Catholics were urged to join the reformed police force, but only a few responded, and so the force continued to be dominated by the majority Protestants.

Sinn Fein’s constitution requires its leadership to call an Ard Fheis (or special general conference) to discuss the issue before formally accepting the PSNI. And the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, recently said that the Government expected Sinn Fein to hold the Ard Fheis sometime next month, ahead of the elections in March 2007. Meanwhile, the Government in London is hurriedly making new laws to effect the change in the administration as required by the St. Andrews Agreement.

Though not much progress has been made on the ground in implementing St. Andrews, its architects believe that the new deal can work and complete the now-suspended political process of devolution.

And Mr Blair seems to be ready to walk the extra mile to see the peace-process succeed before he leaves 10 Downing Street next year, so that history remembers him not only for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also for achieving what William E Gladstone, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and his other predecessors couldn't – permanent peace in NI.

Can Kashmir go the Belfast way?

Ever since the GFA was signed in Belfast in 1998, peace-researchers in India and Sri Lanka have been keenly watching the political process it kicked off in the NI. Former US President Bill Clinton in 2003 suggested that the NI peace-process could be a model for Kashmir and Sri Lanka too. It has since been an issue of academic debate both in India and its neighbouring island nation.

Those who reject the GFA as a model for Kashmir first point out that the Governments of UK and the Republic of Ireland were able to pursue the peace-process in NI because they shared a cordial relationship. More importantly, the IRA hardly got any support from Dublin for its terrorist activities or violent campaign seeking union with the Republic of Ireland. The situation is different in Kashmir, as India blames Pakistan for backing the militants.

Secondly, the population in NI is polarised on the basis of religious affinities – unionist Protestants and republican Catholics. But the Pandits of Kashmir have a closer historic cultural and ethnic bond with the Muslims than with the Hindus of Dogra. The Muslim Gujjars have a strong bond with other people of the same religion in J&K, but they also have an equally close ethnic relation with the Hindu Gujjars of the neighbouring States. In Ladakh, both Buddhists and Muslims relate themselves to a common heritage. Thus unlike the NI, the conflict in Kashmir cannot be simplified as one between two religious groups.

Thirdly, while the GFA emphatically acknowledges British sovereignty over the NI, it also recognizes the Catholics’ cultural affinities to the Republic of Ireland. But given the current situation, one can hardly expect the political leaderships in Pakistan and India to be so accommodating. It may not be easy for Islamabad to accept New Delhi’s sovereignty over Kashmir. Similarly, India may also find it difficult to recognize the religious allegiance of Kashmir’s majority population to Pakistan.

Sumantra Bose, a professor of London School of Economics, says that it is naive to expect that any ‘model’ of conflict resolution can be exported around the world, as every conflict has its specific history, context and characteristics. “But,” he adds, “some useful lessons can be drawn from the NI experience for the peace process in Kashmir, particularly those related to both the process of making peace and the substance of settlements like devolution and autonomy or self-rule, power-sharing and cross-border links.”

In his 2003 book Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Prof. Bose recommended a permanent inter-governmental India-Pakistan council on Kashmir somewhat on the lines of the North-South Ministerial Council of Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland.  A section of the intelligentsia in India and Pakistan agrees with him. Some advocates for a cross-border institution comprising Chief Ministers and other ministers of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and what is referred to as ‘ Pak-occupied-Kashmir ’. It may not have any executive power and will work as an institution facilitating coordination and consultation across what is now known as Line of Control (LoC).

N-E India: Need for broadbased dialogue

Peacemakers in South Asia can also learn another lesson from the NI: that a process of dialogue must be as inclusive and broadly based as possible. This may make a peace-process complex and prone to the risk of collapse, but it also raises the chance of achieving the objective of the exercise, i.e. to restore permanent peace.

This is particularly relevant in connection with India’s turbulent North-East, where the Government of India is currently engaged in separate peace-processes with a number of insurgent outfits. North-East India is home to myriad ethnic groups and many of them have their own militias pursuing armed rebellions against New Delhi with mutually conflicting homeland demands. And New Delhi’s policy of engaging militant outfits in separate peace-processes seems flawed, as it gives birth to fresh conflicts and rebellions. New Delhi has been pursuing a peace-process with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) since 1997.  But many doubt whether a deal with the group could really bring an end to the more-than-50-year-old rebellion by the Nagas, as other groups are left out of the peace-process. 

Sri Lanka: Sincerity Deficit

In Sri Lanka, the chief of the LTTE’s political wing Mr Tamilselvan seemed impressed after Mr Murphy briefed him about the peace-process in NI. He later alleged that President Mahinda Rajapakse’s Government had never been as sincere and dedicated in pursuing the peace-process as the British and Irish Governments had been since mid-1990s.

But an editorial in Sri Lanka’s national daily The Island perhaps best reflected how Colombo took Mr Murphy’s sermons on peace-process. “ The IRA and the LTTE are as different as chalk and cheese and it will be a big mistake to treat them as being similar. … The situation in NI would have been totally different today, if the IRA had received foreign assistance and foreign powers had been involved in that peace process with a hidden agenda. The IRA finally had to mend its ways as the British Government could stand its ground without being pressured to give in. But, in Sri Lanka, it is the other way round.”