Could nonviolent intervention do better job of bringing democracy to Iraq [View All]

[BigBearJohn]

Not all the news from troubled zones is sad and tragic. The British magazine New Internationalist (August 2005) points to a number of positive developments being carried out as part of citizen initiatives. An increasing number of people are applying to nongovernmental organizations like Nonviolent Peaceforce and Peace Brigades International to join civilian peacekeeping armies. In contrast to United Nations peacekeeping forces, these armies do not answer to any national or political authority, which means they can operate with neutrality. Their primary duty is to foster understanding between the conflicting parties, to help them solve disputes on their own. These civilian “troops” also protect noncombatant citizens and offer peace education to show people the overall consequences of war.

If you think it all sounds hippie-ish, naïve or wimpy, you’re wrong. Most participants in peacekeeping armies are not moral crusaders, but rather pragmatic citizens who have come to view nonviolence as the best strategy for achieving peace. And they’re certainly not wimps. The American magazine Peace Power (summer 2005) reports on nonviolent actions by groups like Chicago’s Voices in the Wilderness. Members of this peace group risked massive fines and even prison sentences to personally deliver humanitarian aid to Iraq during the period of economic sanctions before the war, and took part in the “human shield” actions in which more than five hundred foreigners positioned themselves at strategic sites such as hospitals and water purification installations during the bombing of Iraq.

These various peacekeeping groups share a common vision: to get enough people involved so that peacekeeping armies can be deployed at a moment’s notice to help solve conflicts anywhere in the world. The big question, however, is not whether this would be achievable, but if it would be effective. The organizers believe it is and like to answer that question with another: How effective is violent intervention?

Participants in the Nonviolent Peaceforce say peacekeeping armies are much more effective – and cheaper—than military armies.. They estimate that an army of just a thousand peacekeeping soldiers (one of whom costs thirty thousand dollars a year) would have been enough to stop the violence and genocide that engulfed Yugoslavia in 1981. The peace groups also point to successful historic examples of nonviolent actions: economic boycotts, strikes and mass demonstrations have brought down totalitarian regimes in countries like South Africa, and across Eastern Europe. The Philippine ruler Ferdinand Marcos was deposed in 1986 virtually nonviolently; the same happened to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE