A stone in their shoe

Abbie Fielding-Smith

Peace Brigades International (PBI)'s work in conflicts around the world involves intensive interaction with the local police and military. On one notorious route in Colombia there are 60 military checkpoints. How can a small organisation committed to nonviolence affect the outcome of their encounters with government forces?
PBI's objective is to create the politicalspace for local human rights defenders to do their work in countries where disap-pearances are commonplace. PBI does this by trying to capitalise on the effect thattheir presence has on those who would harm and intimidate human rightsdefenders. Though government forces are not always the main threat to these peo-ple, they can obstruct their work and increase their vulnerability.

Military encounters

PBI often encounters the military when providing "protective accompaniment" toa human rights defender who needs to travel through contested territory.
    Wherever a PBI volunteer encounters a representative of government forces, thatperson should ideally already know who PBI is, what they are there to do, and thattheir superiors will reprimand them if they do anything to antagonise PBI. We canonly achieve this in countries whose governments have committed themselves tohuman rights treaties, and who have publicly recognised PBI's work as legitimate.
    In projects involving a lot of accompaniment, such as the Colombia project,volunteers carry around signed letters from the Vice President at all times stat-ing the government's support for the organisation.
    This method works because military commanders know that they cannot act ina way that will have repercussions for their political masters. In an interview in1994, the former Guatemalan Defence Minister General Gramajo Morales bluntlyexplained the constraints which this rationale put upon his troops: "If the Organisa-tion of American States, informed by Amnesty International, puts out a reportagainst us then we're fucked".

Going higher

Gaining high-level diplomatic support on its own is not enough however. Comman-ders at field level must know that PBI has that support and they must know thatany violations of that support will be noted at higher levels. The teams musttherefore regularly liaise with local police and military commanders to make surethat their subordinates know who PBI is.
If they are travelling somewhere on anaccompaniment, the teams write letters in advance to the commanders of govern-ment forces in the area they will be travelling through. If necessary, they alsonotify the UN representative and their own embassies of their travel plans, andmake sure that local commanders know they have done this.
According to the theory of protective accompaniment, with these local, nation-al and international networks in place a PBI volunteer should have to do no morethan blithely gesture at their logo to pass through military checkpoints unimpeded.Of course it rarely works like this in practice. Communications are imperfect, andmisunderstandings can occur.

Showing empathy

On the Sri Lanka project, for example, two volunteers using public transport(something which few other internationals did) were stopped at a military road-block and suspected of trying to get around a law obliging foreigners travel-ling on that route to carry Ministry of Defence authorisation. Fortunately thesituation did not escalate and they were able to show their authorisation.
For all that the organisation can do to reduce the risk of misunderstandings,much of it comes down to the volunteers' diplomatic skills. This sometimes meanstrying to empathise with the officials you are dealing with. This isn't always a diffi-cult task: a volunteer on the Indonesia project last year started asking the gov-ernment soldiers stationed in Aceh why they were there, and the commonestanswer he received was that there were simply no other jobs.

De-escalation

When dealing with the military in inflamed situations, understanding oftheir concerns is essential to negotiating access. In March 2003, two members ofthe Indonesia Project were accompanying a legal aid lawyer investigating the disap-pearance of a human rights activist, Koes Sofian from Blang Pidie, South Aceh. Theauthorities had previously denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but localsources indicated that he had been taken by Indonesian special military forces(Kopassus) and was being detained in a make-shift detention facility behind thelocal police station.
    Fifteen minutes before PBI arrived inthe town there had been an extended shootout between rebels and soldiers.Tension was running high, particularly at the police station. Upon arrival, PBIintroduced the legal aid lawyer, and stated their purpose. The fact that the leadingpolice officer had good memories of an earlier networking visit with PBI helpedease the tension slightly. The police officer led them to the back of the building. Theywere greeted at first with confusion, and then open hostility by angry Kopassussoldiers. The policeman had apparently overstepped his office by intruding insuch a manner and he quickly ushered them back out.
    A long monologue was delivered by a now very uneasy policeman explainingthat this investigation should go no further. When he asked the delegation toleave, PBI replied that if they did, it would be to immediately telephone hissuperiors and state that the cooperation that had been guaranteed was not forth-coming. The officer hesitantly returned to the special forces camp.
    Twenty minutes later, the Kopassus vice-commander for the area emerged in acloud of rage. A more forceful version of the same monologue was delivered.Attempting to de-escalate the situation, the PBI volunteer sympathised with thesoldier's predicament--a difficult and dangerous job made worse by ungratefullocals, unquestioned bravery rewarded only by resentment, etc. Vigorous nod-ding ensured. The volunteer explained that PBI would be obliged to do a reportanyway, and that it would make both their lives easier if PBI could say thatlocal commanders had cooperated.
    The vice-commander promptly retreatedto the compound once again. Then, to the absolute astonishment of everyoneinvolved, Koes Sofian--presumed to be dead--was lead from the camp, dazed butalive.
    Though the volunteers' ad hoc diplo-macy was impressive, this story also shows the importance of networking withauthorities prior to a visit so as to empower the volunteers in their dealingswith police and military officials.

Changeable weather

Nonetheless, as one former volunteer with the Sri Lanka project ruefully recalls, "allthe local networking in the world will do you no good if the political climatechanges". If the central government decides upon a change of strategy that willmake it less worth their while to cooperate with PBI, then they will not put pressureon local actors. For this reason, volunteers are continually analysing the political sit-uation and trends in the conflict.
    Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez suggested such a shift in policy inMay 2004 when he alleged that guerrillas had infiltrated San Jose de Apartado, apeace community in the North-Western region of Uraba in which PBI provides aprotective presence (see PN2450, http://www.peacenews.info/issues/2449/index.php). Uribe claimed that PBI was "obstructing justice" in the peace com-munity. He continued: "I reiterate to the police: if these (foreign human rightsobservers) continue to obstruct justice, put them in prison. If they have to bedeported, deport them."
    PBI responded by announcing anemergency activation of the international support network. Ordinary supporters,parliamentarians and diplomats across the world expressed their support for PBI'swork in San Jose, which resulted in high level meetings between Vice PresidentSantos, PBI, and representatives from the UN, the EU and various national govern-ments. The US State Department, as well as a number of embassies, organised a del-egation to visit the peace community. Though the situation remains one of con-cern, the international attention seems to have constrained the actions of the localmilitary, at least in the short term.
    Ultimately there are many factors thatdetermine the relationship between PBI's volunteers and the local governmentforces at any given point in time. Often a simple, calmly-articulated explanation ofwho PBI is will suffice to defuse tension. But for this to be the case depends on theassiduous telephoning, letter-writing and faxing that goes on tens, hundreds andthousands of miles away.

Abbie Fielding-Smith is a press officer for PBI (UK).
PBI International Office, Unit 5, 89-93 Fonthill Rd, London N4 3HT, Britain (+44 20 7561 9141; fax 7281 3181; email info@peacebrigades.org; http://www.peacebrigades.org ).