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- Peace News June 1995 - A short history of grassroots initiatives in unarmed peacekeeping

A short history of grassroots initiatives in unarmed peacekeeping

by YESHUA MOSER-PUANGSUWAN

The whole world is watching. Governments try to intervene in armed conflicts by sending armed personnel, sometimes under United Nations auspices, to "help". Frequently soldiers in these new roles have complained that they feel humiliated to be prohibited from responding with their traditional training.

This has been a contributing factor in the recent peacekeeping efforts which have turned to "peace enforcement", a euphemism for war. As soldiers and global strategic thinkers show themselves to be poorly equipped to transform their role in conflict intervention, there are calls for the development of a nonviolent alternative.

There is a long and rich history of non-governmental efforts at sending peace missions--known as Peace Brigades, Peace Teams or Peace Armies. Their history runs from the era of the League of Nations to the present day.

In total there have been more such citizens' missions than UN peacekeeping missions. These people's actions, however, are not as well known. They are under-funded and can send few volunteers to the field, which leaves them invisible to global media. Peace Teams have been, for the most part, ad hoc efforts instead of issuing from a central authority. We have no easy single word for describing the concept.

This brief overview includes citizen based, voluntary and unarmed programmes of intervention in international or civil war conflicts.

1932-1939 The Peace Army

The Peace Army had its origins in a proposal to intervene in the fighting between Japan and Chinese in Shanghai. It was mobilised by Anglican minister Maude Royden in Britain, who had in turn been inspired by Gandhi's description of a "Living Wall" of unarmed national defenders standing against external aggression. The force was offered to the League of Nations, which did not give it any substantial support. The Peace Army failed to raise enough recruits and finances to intervene before the crisis in Shanghai passed.

The organisation did follow up with a few less ambitious proposals, eventually fielding a team of volunteers in Palestine for a couple years. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Peace Army was shelved as most of its proponents began working on the Pacifist Service Corps, an alternative to armed service in the British Forces during the Second World War.

1948- VID/Peaceworkers

VID was begun by students and veterans who built a file of a few hundred volunteers to serve on a "UN Peaceforce". Unable to find institutional backing, they sent a team of four volunteers to Egypt shortly after the Suez crisis under the name Volunteers for International Development. In 1979 the organisation changed its name to Peaceworkers, and has co-sponsored training for peace action teams in Europe, Africa, Central and North America.

1959-1960 Sahara Protest Action

The Sahara Protest Action attempted to interrupt the first French nuclear weapons test scheduled to be held in Africa. A multi-national group of Africans, Europeans and Americans gathered in Ghana, from where it sent three teams across the desert to enter French West Africa to interrupt the test. All were apprehended by French military forces. This action had the support of several neighbouring African nations and peace action organisations in Britain and the US. Supporters in France were publicising the actions of these teams, and organising public pressure in Paris. An all-Africa conference to coordinate nonviolent action to stop the tests was called Accra, which established a centre for "positive action" against French nuclear tests, and led to the freezing of French assets in Ghana by the government there.

1960-1961 San Francisco to Moscow Walk

This multi-national group, which walked across both North America, West and East Europe to Russia, taking the people's voice to end nuclear testing to three nuclear capitals, managed to organise the first "uncontrolled" demonstration in Red Square. As an act of intervention in the Cold War, it was bold and international in perspective.

The San Francisco-Moscow Walk was organised by the Committee for Non-Violent Action, which organised several boats to the US South Pacific nuclear test sites and an international protest within Vietnam. Several of its members became active in the World Peace Brigade.

1961-1964 The World Peace Brigade

The World Peace Brigade (WPB) was proposed at the War Resisters' International triennial in India in 1960 to "internationalise the Shanti Sena idea". Many western attenders of this meeting were inspired by the work of the Shanti Sena ("Peace Army") manifested by Gandhi's followers in India. The Shanti Sena's work in riot prevention and disarming of the bandits was particularly spectacular. The Brigade was founded at a meeting in Lebanon in 1961, and had three sections, Asian (India), European (Britain) and American (US). Each section was to coordinate the formation of small brigades to be sent jointly to intervene in an international conflict. The organisation then became focused on a few immediate projects.

The WPB established a training centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (1962), where it attempted to coordinate an international Freedom March into Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to support nonviolent calls for independence from British rule. The march became unnecessary due to changing political events which turned the tide in favour of the pro-independence movement.

A second programme was mobilised in 1963 by the Indian section to address conflict on the Indo-Chinese border. A pilgrimage from Delhi to Peking was organised, which met with hostile reaction from both governments. The WPB's multi-national group walked across India before being prevented to cross the border into China. The last action officially undertaken by the WPB was a 1962 follow-up on anti-nuclear actions by the Committee for Non-Violent Action (see above). It involved sailing a boat--the Everyman III--to Leningrad and the Arctic sea to protest against Soviet nuclear testing (the boat eventually had to be rescued by the Soviet navy, but the voyage was successfully completed).

Several WPB veterans were instrumental in establishing and maintaining a cease-fire between the Indian government and Nagaland independence activists. The WPB drifted into oblivion by the mid-`60s without fulfilling the goal of regionally developed crisis response teams. During its life, the WPB did achieve much through the international exchange in ideas, materials and trainers, and development of the "peace team" concept. The WPB left behind several empowered activists who helped mobilise later initiatives.

1966 Nonviolent Action Vietnam

This British-based initiative to intervene in the US war with Vietnam proposed sending hundreds of nonviolent volunteers to North Vietnam in an attempt to halt the bombing (based on the assumption that continued bombing would put the lives of international non-combatants at risk). The project, although it had not received the support of the North Vietnamese government, sent a token team of about 20 people. They never got further than Cambodia in their mission to place a peace presence in Vietnam; however, some of the team stayed in Asia to stage a protest outside a US airbase in Thailand. This effort ended in a forcible eviction.

1968 Support Czechoslovakia Actions

This was an ad hoc effort coordinated by War Resisters' International to support the "Prague Spring" and to protest against the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia; the "intervention" was at the level of information and authority challenge. They set out to "put into practice precisely those freedoms which the Czechoslovaks were attempting to defend" according to the organisers. Volunteers went to most Eastern Bloc capitals to distribute leaflets, in an act of solidarity with Czechoslovaks which also included local acts of protest within East Berlin, Moscow and Leningrad. In all four teams were sent out, representing seven different nationalities.

1966-1971 A Quaker Action Group

A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) was a group of US nonviolent activists, including some former members of the World Peace Brigades. AQAG mobilised volunteers to complete several small overseas actions. One of these was support of people displaced, harassed, and sometimes wounded by a new US military target range set up on the island of Culebra, Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico Independence Party called for citizens to engage in "pacific militancy" or nonviolent action. They set up encampments on the target range and swam in the lagoon to reclaim the island from target practice.

More than 600 of the island's 730 inhabitants took part in these actions. When the islanders attempted to rebuild a former chapel, AQAG sent a team to help them, and provide a foreign presence for several months. Later AQAG team members carried a model of this chapel around embassies in Washington DC to publicise the islanders' situation. This struggle was ultimately successful (see Peace News March 1995).

AQAG also sailed the Phoenix to Vietnam in 1967 in attempts to deliver medical supplies to non-combatants in both North and South Vietnam; three voyages, each an act of aid as well as intervention, were attempted. AQAG volunteers were arrested by South Vietnamese naval forces when they attempted to breach a blockade of Danang harbour.

In 1971 AQAG sent a team to Panama in protest against US support for counter-insurgency strikes in South America.

1971-1973 Operation Omega

This intervention was an ad hoc effort which pulled in some former World Peace Brigades and Nonviolent Action Vietnam activists and others. The organisers were Indian Gandhians, people around Peace News and WRI in Britain, and Philadelphia Quakers.

In India Shanti Sena met with a number of refugees to organise a 50,000 strong column of refugees to return to the country as "a nonviolent liberation force". International volunteers to join the column were sought, but the beginning of the Indo-Pakistan war brought an end to the march.

Meanwhile, the international and local volunteer groups coordinated from London attempted to take relief supplies directly into East Bengal, while North American activists blocked arms shipments to Pakistan in Montreal, Philadelphia and Baltimore harbours. The relief teams got to the border of East Bengal (later Bangladesh). They had two trucks full of relief supplies, and no visas. One group was arrested by the Pakistani army, but the other got through with its relief supplies well ahead of established aid agencies working through official channels. Some of these Operation Omega volunteers stayed on working within the country until 1973.

1973-74 Cyprus Resettlement Project

The Cyprus Resettlement Project set out to respond to the needs of people displaced by the communal fighting between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. This programme was put together by several World Peace Brigade veterans and others with support from the International Peace Academy, with three trained volunteer teams going to Cyprus during the life of the project. An exceptional amount of preparation was done before the teams were selected and sent.

The project had some success in instigating negotiations between Greek and Turkish community representatives where even the UN had failed. Several communities joined together under the international presence and encouragement of the project to rebuild and resettle their communities before the project was brought to a halt by two major political events: the coup in Greece followed by the Turkish military invasion of the island.

Although the Cyprus Resettlement Project did not achieve its goal, it was particularly inspiring in the care and preparation taken before volunteers were committed to the area of conflict.

1977 Operation Namibia

Operation Namibia was a political challenge effort, meant to test a newly installed government in Namibia, the former UN mandate South-West Africa under illegal South African administration. Operation Namibia proposed taking books that were banned by the South Africa regime. A team with the books left Europe by ship but -- after an initially promising start as it sailed down Europe and across to Africa--ran into difficulties, including running into rocks off the coast of Gambia. The crew also ran afoul of the Nigerian and Togolese authorities; time taken dealing with these difficulties, and a changing situation in Namibia, led to an early end of the voyage. The books themselves did arrive later through an overland route.

1981- Peace Brigades International (PBI)

Peace Brigades International was founded at a meeting in Canada as a second attempt by many former WPB activists and others inspired by the idea of an "International Shanti Sena". PBI has now grown into an international organisation with 15 country sections. Each section produces newsletters, seeks funds and recruits and trains volunteers to serve on one of PBI's current projects. PBI is the most successful effort to date to create and sustain multinational peace teams in conflict situations.

PBI's first action was in August 1981, when it placed an international monitoring contingent in Nicaragua along the border with Honduras. At the time, tension had been high in the region, with the expectation of an imminent invasion by US and Contra forces. After the period of high crisis had passed, PBI's border presence was followed by that of Witness for Peace (see below).

In 1983 a PBI peace team was sent to Guatemala, which has maintained a presence up to today. The team developed what is PBI's most distinctive feature: international protective accompaniment of local human rights activists living under threat of abduction or assassination. Shortly after their arrival in Guatemala, the PBI team had noticed that local human rights activists--members of the directorate of a Guatemalan organisation seeking the whereabouts of disappeared family members--were being systematically assassinated. The team members moved into the apartments and offices of remaining directorate members, and discovered that when this immediate presence was begun, assassination against the directorate stopped.

PBI has since carried on similar projects in El Salvador (1987-1992) and Sri Lanka (1989-). PBI has mobilised short term teams to accompany returning refugees in Honduras and Southern Mexico. PBI also had a short term project in Israel/Palestine (1989) and was cooperating with the government of Nicaragua to develop a programme of nonviolent, civilian based defence up until the change of government in 1990. In 1992 the North American Project opened to provide support for native communities facing violence in North America. In late October 1993, PBI sent a short-term team to Haiti (as part of the Cry for Justice coalition). In October of 1994 a new project opened in Colombia for the accompaniment of grassroots activists throughout the country, and in early 1995 a project was opened in Haiti.

An exploratory team was sent to Chad in 1994 in response to requests from indigenous activist organisations. PBI also participates in the Balkan Peace Team (see below).

1981- Witness For Peace

Witness for Peace (WfP) organised a permanent border and conflict monitoring programme on Nicaragua's borders, bringing teams of previously trained US citizens for short term tours of duty. Each group was coordinated so that as it left, another group took its place, providing a continuous foreign presence. This was a US based initiative, and only accepted a few volunteers of other nationalities. The programme was administered by several US offices, and a permanent office in Managua. WfP had the dual focus of both providing a foreign observer presence and creating a growing body of US citizens with direct experience of the results of their country's foreign policy in Nicaragua. The later were expected to organise domestic resistance to, and demand change of, US policy.

In 1989 WfP succumbed to pressures to expand their focus beyond Nicaragua. WfP has begun accompaniment of Guatemalan refugees from Southern Mexico. In 1990, with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, WfP sent a team to the Middle East. This helped develop what later became an independent organisation, Mid-East Witness (see below).

WfP has developed a powerful model of organised grassroots response to international conflict by its development of a standardised training programme, evaluation and improvement procedures, overall organisation and the numbers of volunteers it has placed in the field (thousands over the last nine years). In the past year, Witness delegations and teams have been in Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Haiti.

1989-1991 Refugee escort services

This is not the name of a single organisation, but several independently mobilised community based initiatives, all aimed at providing international monitors for the safe return of refugees from Honduras to El Salvador.

The largest group to send volunteers was an umbrella organisation in the USA called Going Home, which coordinated volunteers recruited through Central American solidarity networks throughout North America. Some local communities organised their own complete teams, such as the Rocky Mountain Peace Centre, a local organisation in Denver, which sent several teams to take material aid and stay in the resettled community of Segundo Montes. Solidarity networks in Europe also sent several repatriation monitors.

1989- Project Accompaniment

This Canadian based initiative responded to a request by Guatemalan refugees living in Mexico to organise an international presence during and after their return to Guatemala. Returns and accompaniment still continue.

1990-1992 Mid-East Witness

Mid-East Witness, which received its initial support and expertise from Witness for Peace (above) placed teams--based on the WfP model--to live with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. A US-based programme, Mid-East Witness folded in 1992 due to lack of both money and volunteers.

1990- Christian Peacemaker Teams

First chartered in 1984 at the US General Conference of the Mennonite and Brethren Churches, the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) did not mobilise until late 1987 when their activities focused on training and disarmament issues. CPT began their activities abroad by seeking hostage release in Iraq in 1990. They have since sent teams to the Gaza Strip on a frequent basis, and to Haiti as part of the Cry for Justice coalition (see below). In October 1993 a ready reserve of people--the Christian Peacemaker Corp--was set up, with the idea that trained people could be on standby to enter situations of conflict quickly.

Several CPT team members maintained a presence in Haiti after the UN (and later, Cry for Justice) withdrew. In early 1995 the CPT responded to a request from Palestinians to accompany them to blockade projects by settlers from Israel.

1991-1992 Peace Mission to East Timor (the Lusitania Express)

This Portuguese-based effort was mobilised in response to the Santa Cruz funeral massacre in Dili, East Timor. Organisers sent a ship with students from 21 nations in an attempt to land without Indonesian visas to challenge Indonesian sovereignty claims to East Timor. The ship did consciousness-raising during its voyage to Indonesian territorial waters, and made it to within sight of Timor island before being forced to turn back by Indonesian navy warships. Although questions of Portuguese political motives and corporate sponsorship marred the initiative, it still succeeded in publicly challenging Indonesian authority.

1991- Memorial Human Rights Observer Missions

Memorial has trained and sent observers to several areas of conflict in the former Soviet Union to provide an outside, nonpartisan observer presence. Set up by the human rights section of the organisation Memorial, it is primarily a Russian initiative, but with members in several other, now independent, republics.

Memorial was formerly a dissident organisation in the Soviet Union, dedicated to the social reinstatement of former political prisoners and the victims of Stalin. The new Human Rights Section monitors the current situation of human rights in the CIS; peacemaking work has included an effort to bring together social reformers from Armenia and Azerbaijan to promote "reconciliation from below". The section openly publishes its observations of the conflicts in the CIS--and their causes--in Russian and foreign journals.

A joint exploration from PBI (see above) and Memorial received permission to put an international monitoring group in the disputed Nagorno-Karabagh region, but the initiative was washed away (before the Armenian side could formally agree) by the shooting down of a helicopter with 40 civilians aboard.

Memorial continues to send missions, especially to the volatile trans- Caucasus region.

1990-91 The Gulf Peace Team

An ad hoc initiative mobilised out of Britain by a former Nonviolent Action Vietnam veteran and others to respond to a feared war against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait. Like Royden's Peace Army and Nonviolent Action Vietnam, the Gulf Peace Team hoped to place a massive number of noncombatants between the forces in the desert to stop a battle. A team of a little over 70 people, from a wide variety of countries, was assembled on short notice; this was the most multi-national team of any effort to date. The GPT suffered immensely from lack of preparation, but a peace camp was established at a small caravanserai on the Saudi/Iraq border. The GPT maintained a international presence there until it was evacuated by the Iraqi military to Jordan 10 days after the air strikes began. Several of the GPT members stayed on in Jordan providing an international presence on local aid convoys entering Iraq for the remainder of the war.

1993 Mir Sada

A joint effort of an Italian faith based group, We Share One Peace, and a French aid delivery initiative, EquiLibre, to set up an international peace encampment in Sarajevo. Like the GPT and several of its predecessors, Mir Sada hoped to place as many non-combatants as possible (EquiLibre publicly called for 50-100,000) in an attempt to stop aggression through third party interposition. Mir Sada did manage to get an international team of several hundred Italian, French, other Europeans and volunteers of a few other nationalities to the town of Prozor in southern Bosnia before the project collapsed due to unforeseen political changes, disagreements within the group, and stress.

Some Mir Sada volunteers organised a smaller initiative, named Sjeme Mira ("seeds of peace") which attempted to go to Mostar later in 1993.

1993 - Cry for Justice

Cry for Justice sent its first team to maintain a nonviolent presence in Haiti in late September of 1993, the anniversary of the 1991 coup. A coalition of groups pooling resources and volunteers to put together a presence during the political crisis, it originally hoped to ease internal fear and have an impact on the increase in repression prior to the scheduled return of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Cry for Justice provided a foreign presence near rural grassroots organisations who suffered increased attacks upon their members while the UN programme was abandoned. Conceived of as a short-term effort more than 20 US-based groups including Christian Peacemaker Teams and Peace Brigades International managed to keep the project afloat long after their initial pullout date, but lack of long term commitment ended the programme in December 1993.

1993- Balkan Peace Team

The Balkan Peace Team (BPT) is an international initiative with organisational support from WRI, PBI, IFoR, the Bund fuer Soziale Verteidigung (Federation for Social Defence), and seven other groups or national coordinations. Almost a year in development, the BPT sent its first peace team to Zagreb in early 1994. Within six months a second team in was set up in Split, while by early 1995 a two-person team was functioning in Prishtine, the capital of Kosovo.

Volunteers have been from Europe and North America. BPT teams have been involved in preventing evictions by paramilitaries, and personifying international concern by being a presence with local human rights and social change activists, at refugee camps, and in meetings with officials in the conflict region.

1995- Sipaz

This recently-formed group is a coalition of groups mainly based in California, who launched a project in response to an invitation by peasants living in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Exploratory missions have been sent, and they are now recruiting and training volunteers for a longer presence in Chiapas.

Amnesty International and Greenpeace International

Both these international organisations intervene directly in international affairs. Amnesty sends not its members, but rather their "paper proxies", in an extremely effective letter-writing programme to secure the release of jailed political prisoners and curtail the use of torture, judicial and extrajudicial execution, and other human rights crimes.

Greenpeace International began as a people's initiative which sent a boat by the same name to stop nuclear testing in the Aleutian islands. Today many of Greenpeace's international activists, such as the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, are salaried staff rather than volunteers.

For each of the above efforts mentioned, there were many proposed that never managed to get volunteers to the field, and died in some stage of growth: Women's Peace Army (1917 Australia); Active Nonviolent Resistance Army (1959 UK); Peace Guards (1960 JP Narayan, India); Nonviolent Peace Keeping Corps (1965 US); Northern Ireland Peace Force (1971 British FoR); International Peace Contingents (1971 US); World Peace Army (1981 US); and World Peace Guard (1981 Walker, US) to name a few.

The future

The desire for an alternative to military based intervention has never been greater than now. New initiatives are being proposed on an almost weekly basis by both governmental and non-governmental groups. Regional efforts--such as Michigan Faith and Resistance, sending volunteers to Haiti--have emerged, while religious groups such as the Quakers Friends Peace Team Project have sent their members into existing peace teams. World Peace and Relief Teams, mobilised out of Austria by a former member of the Gulf Peace Team, seeks international volunteers to do civil reconstruction in Iraq.

The Swedish Council of Churches brought together a diverse group of individuals involved in humanitarian, UN, governmental, military and peace team work to discuss the possibility of a Global Peace Service.

Governments are also becoming interested in unarmed intervention alternatives. United Nations Volunteers (UNV) has agreed to start a new programme, based on the examples of NGO efforts like that of Peace Brigades International. UNV is now seeking volunteers for new programmes in Burundi, Bosnia, and in the Trans-Caucasus region of the CIS to encourage a peaceful resolution of the civil conflicts there. Every political party in Germany now backs some form of Civilian Peace Service. Other European governments are also interested in some form of unarmed intervention. This interest from the UN and governmental sector in unarmed intervention is generally welcomed by the peace movement, but questions raised by governmental involvement include: Would these governmentally supported teams serve alongside, or under the direction of armed units? Who controls them? Would they be voluntary or a new form of conscription?

As you sit reading this, PBI, Balkan Peace Team, and Witness for Peace volunteers continue to carry out their daily work in regions of conflict. Current efforts are plagued by a chronic lack of resources, both financial and personnel. Inadequate infrastructure, poor communications, and limited training opportunities are major impediments to manifesting a large scale effort. Minimum public exposure in the mass media combined with little popular understanding of the dynamics and history of this manifestation of nonviolent action has also hindered growth.

The movement has, however, gained from the experience of past efforts. Better organisation, more public exposure and more thorough volunteer and project preparation will eventually move past these obstacles and put forward a people's peace action plan to replace the current military-based intervention scenarios.

Organisations currently seeking volunteers and placing teams:

Peace Brigades International (national sections in North America, most of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) International Secretariat, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX Britain (tel +44 171 713 0392; fax 837 2290; email pbiio@gn.apc.org)
Balkan Peace Team, Marienwall 9, D-32378 Minden, Germany (tel +49 571 29456; fax 23019; email balkan-peace-team@bionic.zer.de)
Witness for Peace, 2201 P St NW, Rm 109, Washington DC 20037 USA (tel +1 202 797 1160; fax 797 1164)
Christian Peacemaker Teams, PO Box 6508, Chicago IL 60680-6580 USA (tel/fax +1 312 455 1199; e-mail cpt@igc.apc.org)
SIPAZ, 515 Broadway, Santa Cruz CA 95060 USA (tel +1 408 423 1626; fax 423 8716; email fornatl@igc.apc.org)
Multi-national governmental peace teams:
United Nations Volunteers, Humanitarian Relief Unit, Palais des
Nations, CH-1211, Geneve 10, Switzerland
Interested Groups:
Peaceworkers, 721 Shrader St, San Francisco CA 94117 USA (tel +1 415 751 0302; fax 751 5708; email peaceworkers@igc.apc.org)

  
     
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