Conflict Mediation in the Arab World

By Ibrahim Fraihat, Isak Svensson, Peter Wallensteen and 18 more

The Middle East and North Africa region has been plagued with civil wars, international interventions, and increasing militarization, making it one of the most war-affected areas in the world today. Despite numerous mediation processes and initiatives for conflict resolution, most have failed to transform conflicts from war to peace. Seeking to learn from these past efforts and apply new research, Fraihat and Svensson present the first comprehensive approach to mediation in the Arab world, taking on cases from Yemen to Sudan, from Qatar to Palestine, Syria, and beyond.

Conflict Mediation in the Arab World focuses on mediation at three different levels of analysis: between countries, between governments and armed actors inside single countries, and between different communities. In applying this holistic method, the editors identify similarities and differences in the conditions for conflict resolution and management.

Drawing upon the work of experts in the field with a deep understanding of the increasing complexities and changing dynamics of the region, this volume offers a valuable resource for academics, policy makers, and practitioners interested in conflict resolution and management in the Middle East and North Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9780815656951

Book preview

Introduction

Conflict Mediation in the Arab World

Ibrahim Fraihat and Isak Svensson

The Arab world has become the most war-affected region in the world in recent years. It has been plagued with civil wars spread from Syria and Iraq to Yemen to Libya, several international interventions into local conflicts, increasing militarization and military expenditures, a growing sectarianization of religious identities, and heightened regional competition (often through armed proxies) between the regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia. Whereas the problem of armed conflict seems to be decreasing in several other regions of the world, including Latin America, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, in the Arab world we witness the opposite trend.¹

This problem of armed conflicts and the increasing complexity of these conflicts in the Arab world have thus far not been matched by regional institutional responses to manage the conflicts. By contrast, regional organizations designed to manage conflicts are active in many other world regions—such as the European Union (EU) in Europe, the African Union (AU) in Africa, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Asia—but the institutions in the Arab world have shown themselves to be incapable of or unwilling to create functioning conflict resolution mechanisms for the Arab world.

The internationalized civil wars and internal armed conflicts in the Arab world have spurred numerous mediation processes and initiatives for conflict resolution. To name a few, the United Nations (UN) has been mediating in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the Western Sahara; Russia has been active as a (biased) mediator in Syria and Libya; Saudi Arabia has endeavored to mediate in southern Yemen. Several local-level mediation efforts, including tribal-based mechanisms in Yemen and Iraq, are also underway. Arab countries have also sometimes been active as mediators in other international conflicts, as exemplified in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) hosting of peace talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Qatar’s mediation efforts between the United States and the Taliban movement of Afghanistan, and Algeria’s mediation between Iran and Iraq in 1974. Nonetheless, most such reconciliation efforts have been unsuccessful in transforming regional conflicts from war to peace.

Whereas much has been written on the different conflicts in the region and their causes and drivers, relatively little attention has been paid to attempts to resolve them through diplomatic means. In particular, research on the conflicts in the Arab world has thus far remained disconnected from the general debate on mediation in armed conflicts—why mediation occurs, what explains the different trajectories of mediation processes, and what explains when mediation is successful in bringing about more constructive processes toward peace. At the same time, mediation research may not fully have taken into account the increasing complexities that mediators face when intervening to resolve or manage conflicts in the Arab world in particular.

Our book therefore has two interrelated purposes. First, we want to use existing research and scholarly knowledge about international mediation to analyze and better understand mediation processes in the Arab world. The cases in the Arab world have predominately been analyzed thus far through reports and research that do not engage with the theoretical literature and insights. Second, relatedly, we wish to use the insights from the region to push the general mediation research forward. Adding to this scholarship is particularly important given that numerous mediation processes in the Arab world in the past decade have not been successful.

Insights from Mediation Research

How mediation can manage, resolve, and transform armed conflict is the focus of an expanding field of research.² We define the concept of mediation broadly as intervention by an actor or actors not directly party to a conflict yet attempting to help the parties in conflict settle, manage, or resolve their conflicts.³ Mediation can be linked to but falls beyond force-based approaches (such as military interventions or peacekeeping) and institutional legal mechanisms (such as arbitration or domestic democratic or legal systems). We do not require that a third party be unbiased for it to be considered as a mediator,⁴ but we are interested in examining how a mediator’s partiality and interests influence the dynamics of mediation in positive and negative ways.

In the past few decades, research on mediation in armed conflicts has generated a set of essential and fundamental insights that form the basis of this book. Three main insights emerge from the expanding literature on mediation, relating to the onset, dynamics, and outcomes of mediation.

First, mediators and conflict actors have varying motives in engaging in mediation.⁵ These motives include a sincere interest in reaching negotiated solutions to armed conflicts but are not necessarily restricted to such altruism. Mediation research has demonstrated that mediators have different types of motives and are likely to be driven to engage under different types of conditions, including economic, strategic, and political ones,⁶ which include conditions such as proximity,⁷ historic ties,⁸ as well side motives, or reasons beyond the resolution of the conflict,⁹ including means of pursuing their national self-interest and advancing their own foreign-policy agenda.¹⁰ Mediators may also engage because the process of mediation itself may yield perceived benefits, or process-rewards.¹¹ Likewise, belligerents have various motives for accepting a third party’s offer to mediate. Belligerents may accept to engage in mediation for devious objectives or covert reasons beyond seeking a negotiated solution.¹² But they may, under some conditions, also be truly interested in finding a negotiated settlement to a conflict. Previous research suggests that at certain moments of the conflict dynamics, parties in conflicts will be more open to seek a way out of their impediments and that it is at those moments that the conflict is at its ripest for mediation and conflict resolution.¹³

The second main insight from mediation research is that mediators vary in their strategies and approaches to the conflicts in which they intervene. Some mediators pursue mediation by using their leverage over the parties to push or pull them toward a specific solution, one that is often in the interest of the third-party intervenor. Powerful mediators can also use their ties with the conflict parties and their access to considerable economic, political, and military resources as sources of leverage over the parties. Yet dependence on a powerful mediator can come with a longer-term cost by creating excessive dependency on the mediator.¹⁴ Other mediators pursue a very different approach to mediation: by creating a trustful process of communication between the parties, they work to overcome the differences between the parties. This distinction has often been described as trust mediators versus power mediators: the key concern of trust mediators is to influence the process of communication and interaction between the parties, whereas power mediators target the parties directly.¹⁵ Still, a mediator’s role is constantly changing over time, in part because that role itself is negotiated by the conflicting parties and the outcome of a joint decision-making process by conflict parties and the third parties.¹⁶ Notably, these two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive and may in fact be complementary. For example, a facilitation style increases the chances for reducing tension, while a more leverage-based approach is most effective in securing formal agreements and the abatement of crises.¹⁷

The third main insight from mediation research is that successful outcomes are difficult to achieve and are driven by both structural conditions and agency-based process factors. There is no consensus on how to operationalize success in international mediation,¹⁸ which can be seen as evidence of the fact that mediation can have multiple types of outcomes. Mediation is often conceptualized as a process where parties move from a state of violent interactions, hostile attitudes, and disagreement through a gradual, structured, and carefully designed process toward a termination of violence, increased understanding, and mutually beneficial agreements that address the parties’ underlying interests.¹⁹ A key requirement of this problem-solving approach is that the parties engage in mutual learning, create a safe negotiation environment, and creatively explore new options that increase the (perceived or objective) available resources.²⁰ If mediation is to be successful, conflicting parties must be motivated to seek a solution (motivation), and the mediator must have the opportunity to mediate (opportunity) as well as the procedural and substantial proficiencies (skills).²¹

Why Focus on the Arab World?

Many of the mediation interventions in Arab armed conflict are relatively recent cases and as a result have not yet received the scholarly attention they deserve. In Arab Approaches to Conflict Resolution (2014), Nahla Yassine-Hamadan and Frederic Pearson make a strong case for why mediation research needs to focus on the Arab world, exploring the potential particularities of the region.²² Our book takes up the argument where Yassine-Hamadan and Pearson left it and explores it in more contemporary cases. While their book focuses on the period up to 2000 and presents important evidence on the trajectories and trends of conflict resolution efforts, including some in Arab countries and communities, recent developments merit closer attention to the intersection between mediation and conflicts in the Arab world. Because the past decade has shifted in some fundamental and structural ways—a decreasing US appetite for interventions, an increasingly assertive Russia in the Middle East, an escalating intraregional competition in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, and the emergence of people power dynamics as an important factor—we cannot necessarily rely on older cases to draw meaningful conclusions about more recent mediation processes. Mediation in the Arab world occurs within a broader troubled world order. Indeed, debate remains about whether we are living in a world order of unipolarity or multipolarity or even, as Richard Haass argues, nonpolarity.²³ The Arab world is a useful area to study how these dynamics have unfolded and how they affect the practices of conflict resolution, management, and transformation because so many global actors have become involved in the region. We also must study recent cases to understand the dynamics of mediation and what achievements they have made.

The Arab world as an analytical focal point provides further advantages. Because of the plethora of armed conflicts and mediation initiatives, studying the region can help to offer lessons learned from experience. Owing to the occurrence of several recent conflicts, with multiparty mediation intervention and multimethod approaches, studying the Arab world can inform theory testing and development. Because the conflicts are interrelated, it is valuable, we posit, to apply a regional perspective.

In this book, we operationalize the Arab world as countries that are members of the Arab League on the logic of cultural ties and national self-definitions, and we are here interested in conflicts happening between league members or between members and nonleague but regionally important countries, such as Iran and Israel.

This book is the first publication that takes a comprehensive approach to mediation in the Arab world, taking in cases from Yemen to Sudan, Qatar to Palestine to Syria, and beyond. This holistic approach to studying mediation in the Arab world adds important nuance to existing literature. In examining a variety of cases, we are interested in mediation at three different levels of analysis: between countries (interstate conflict), between a government and armed actors inside a country (intrastate conflict), and between different communities (communal conflict). It is useful to bring these different analytical levels together because the conditions for and processes of conflict resolution and management have many similarities but also differences depending on those levels, which becomes evident when we bring the study of mediation to the center of our analytical attention.

Road Map Ahead

The contributors to this book vary in their methodological approaches. We see this as a strength of this book, bringing to bear a wide array of analytical methods in the study of mediation in the Arab world. Hence, some authors use interviews (e.g., Massaab al-Aloosy in his examination of mediation in sectarianism in Iraq), and others have firsthand experience in UN intervention (Alma Abdul-Hadi-Jadallah in Yemen and Mohammed Cherkaoui in Libya). Still others use quantitative analysis of the main trends in the region (Peter Wallensteen and Stina Högbladh), quantitative analysis of a single country (Luís Martínez Lorenzo and Desirée Nilsson of Algeria), intracase comparative analysis (Love Calissendorff and Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs of Palestine), and studies of particularly challenging cases (Magnus Lundgren on Syria, Allard Duursma on Libya, and Siniša Vuković on the Persian/Arabian Gulf) to arrive at a better understanding of processes of conflict mediation in the Arab world.

This book is divided into three major parts, covering mediation in the Arab world from different perspectives and analytical prisms. In part one, General Trajectories and Challenges of Mediation in the Arab World, we analyze the regional trends and overarching problems relating to mediation in the region. Chapter 1 includes discussion about why there have been relatively few peace agreements in the Middle East in the past half century. Taking a regional approach, Peter Wallensteen and Stina Högbladh attempt to answer the question by using empirical information gathered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program to compare the Arab world with another region, Africa, where significantly more peace agreements have been reached. In particular, the chapter attempts to discuss why outcomes are different in the two regions, despite the fact that both have gone through similar experiences of emerging from colonialism after the Second World War, continuing ties with some colonial powers, possessing attractive wealth resources, and bolstering state-building efforts with political ideologies.

Continuing with the regional approach, chapter 2 tackles a major challenge to mediation by examining the effects of UN Security Council resolutions in a comparative study of three countries: Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Laurie Nathan breaks new ground by identifying and exploring the phenomenon of exclusionary mandates, emphasizing that these mandates are antithetical to the concept and practice of mediation.

In chapter 3, Mohammed Abu-Nimer considers national dialogue as a framework for negotiation and mediation in situations of political impasse, which is often associated with transitional politics after revolutions, civil wars, and military coups. The interaction of national dialogue and mediation manifests in areas where leaders and panels of national dialogue processes often act as and adopt mediation strategies.

In part two, Mediation in or by Arab Countries, we focus more specifically on some of the central cases of mediation in the Arab world and study them intensively. Chapter 4 reviews mediation and negotiation efforts in the Syrian civil war since 2011. In so doing, I. William Zartman aims to provide an overview of the key initiatives, identify the main obstacles to resolution, and explore the key questions relating to agency, entry, strategy, leverage, and inclusivity.

In chapter 5, Magnus Lundgren zooms in on the mediation processes later in the Syrian civil war, focusing on the two UN mediators active in 2016–19 and exploring the Syrian case in light of broader trends in international peacemaking.

Chapter 6 focuses on the Yemeni case, analyzed through the lens of the UN mediation efforts as undertaken by three envoys to Yemen during the period 2011–19. Specifically, Alma Abdul-Hadi-Jadallah explores the similarities, differences, successes, failures, challenges, and missed opportunities of the three UN envoys in terms of their UN-mandated mediation efforts to end the war.

In chapter 7, the challenges of UN mediation in Libya are analyzed. In particular, Mohammed Cherkaoui focuses on five factors that have exacerbated the UN’s struggle to mediate in Libya: legitimacy of local actors, external interference by several countries, the multiplicity of regional mediation initiatives, the mismatch between national unity and counterterrorism, and Libyan cultural sensitivity to international intervention in domestic affairs.

In chapter 8, Allard Duursma takes up the key question of what constitutes success in mediation with reference to the various mediation efforts following the failed Abuja peace process between 2004 and 2006, which was aimed at resolving the armed conflict in Darfur, Sudan. The chapter examines the following question: To what extent were the mediation efforts following the failure of the Abuja process successful? Success in this context can be seen as salvaging and resurrecting the peace process through a mediation effort aimed at regaining the conflict parties’ commitment to negotiations or a negotiated settlement.

Chapter 9 takes a slightly different perspective by analyzing not mediation per se but rather a potential mediator’s unwillingness to engage itself. Siniša Vuković and Danielle Martin discuss US reluctance to mediate the Gulf diplomatic crisis that emerged in 2017. In particular, the chapter explains how the United States has been reluctant to force parties into a mutually hurting stalemate because of a fear of disrupting the status quo, which could ultimately be detrimental to US strategic (security, economic, military, etc.) interests in the region.

Chapter 10 examines six mediated efforts to resolve the conflict between Fatah and Hamas in Palestine from 2007 to 2019, all of which resulted in signed peace agreements yet with varying implementation outcomes. By comparing these peace agreements, Love Calissendorff and Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs bring to light why some of them were at least partially implemented, but others were not.

Chapter 11 highlights the Omani approach to mediation and peacemaking diplomacy. In particular, the chapter focuses on kitman (concealment), an Islamic value emphasized by the Ibadi sect that influences Omani diplomacy and mediation. Najla El-Mangoush examines in detail several cases where Omani mediation took place.

Chapter 12 explores the US-led mediation efforts to end the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Ghassan Khatib focuses on the problems stemming from biased US mediation, which has too heavily tilted toward the Israeli side, and how this bias has limited US mediators’ ability to be effective peacemakers.

In the third and last part, Local-Level Mediation in the Arab World, we study the intrastate, local-level dynamics of mediation. Chapter 13 focuses on the role of civil society involvement during the peace process in Algeria. Luís Martínez Lorenzo and Desirée Nilsson highlight in particular why some peace processes see more involvement from civil society actors and political parties than others and to what extent variations in the different forms of participation exist.

Chapter 14 studies sectarian mediation between Sunni and Shi‘i Arabs in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Massaab al-Aloosy assesses mediation efforts across sects, the extent to which they proved successful, and the challenges that sectarian mediation has faced across religious groups.

Finally, chapter 15 concentrates on Somalia and the impact the Al Shabaab movement has had on tribal mediation since its rise in the country. Somalia has been a closed country for researchers since Al Shabaab began operating there, and, as a result, the roles of traditional elders and the types of conflict resolution processes that parties to conflicts seek out have been undergoing changes that are generally understudied; Mary Hope Schwoebel examines the tribal-based and Al Shabaab–influenced efforts at mediation in detail.

Bibliography

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Beardsley, Kyle, David M. Quinn, Bidisha Biswas, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes. Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 1 (2006): 58–86.

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Bercovitch, Jacob, and Gerald Schneider. Who Mediates? The Political Economy of International Conflict Management. Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 2 (2000): 145–65.

Druckman, Daniel, and James A. Wall. A Treasure Trove of Insights: Sixty Years of JCR Research on Negotiation and Mediation. Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (2017): 1898–924.

Frazier, Derrick V., Andrew P. Owsiak, and Virginia Sanders. Regional Influences on Mediation Behavior. International Negotiation 19, no. 2 (2014): 285–314.

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Greig, J. Michael, and Patrick M. Regan. When Do They Say Yes? An Analysis of the Willingness to Offer and Accept Mediation in Civil Wars. International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2008): 759–81.

Haass, Richard N. The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance. Foreign Affairs, May–June 2008. At https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2008-05-03/age-nonpolarity.

Hopmann, Terrence P. Two Paradigms of Negotiation: Bargaining and Problem Solving. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 542 (1995): 24–47.

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Kleiboer, Marieke. Understanding Success and Failure of International Mediation. Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 2 (1996): 360–89.

Maundi, Mohammed O., I. William Zartman, Gilbert Khadiagala, and Kwaku Nuamah. Getting In: Mediators’ Entry into the Settlement of African Conflicts. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006.

Melin, Molly M. Supply-Side Incentives for Mediation: Which Actors Mediate International Crises and Why? In Research Handbook on Mediating International Crises, edited by Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, and David Quinn, 94–108. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019.

Mitchell, C. R. The Motives for Mediation. In New Approaches to International Mediation, edited by C. R. Mitchell and K. Webb, 29–51. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Moore, Christopher W. The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict. New York: Wiley, 2014.

Princen, Thomas. Intermediaries in International Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992.

Richmond, Oliver. Devious Objectives and the Disputants’ View of International Mediation: A Theoretical Framework. Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 6 (1998): 707–22.

Rubin, Barry. The Tragedy of the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002.

Rubin, Jeffrey Z. Conclusion: International Mediation in Context. In Mediation in International Relations: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management, edited by Jeffrey Z. Rubin and Jacob Bercovitch, 249–72. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

Rubin, Jeffrey Z., Dean G. Pruitt, and Sung Hee Kim. Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Sørli, Mirjam E., Nils Petter Gleditsch, and Håvard Strand. Why Is There so Much Conflict in the Middle East? Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 1 (2005): 141–65.

Svensson, Isak. Biased Mediation. In Research Handbook on Mediating International Crises, edited by Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, and David Quinn, 325–36. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019.

Touval, Saadia. Mediation and Foreign Policy. International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003): 91–95.

Wall, James A., Jr., John B. Stark, and Rhetta L. Standifer. Mediation: A Current Review and Theory Development. Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (2001): 370–91.

Wallensteen, Peter, and Isak Svensson. Talking Peace: International Mediation in Armed Conflicts. Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 315–27.

Yassine-Hamdan, Nahla, and Frederic Pearson. Arab Approaches to Conflict Resolution: Mediation, Negotiation and Settlement of Political Disputes. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Zartman, I. William. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985.

———. The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments. Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 1 (2001): 8–18.

Zartman, I. William, and Saadia Touval. International Mediation. In Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, 437–54. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007.

1. Mirjam E. Sørli, Nils Petter Gleditsch, and Håvard Strand, Why Is There so Much Conflict in the Middle East?, Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 1 (2005): 141–65; Barry Rubin, The Tragedy of the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002).

2. James A. Wall, John B. Stark, and Rhetta L. Standifer, Mediation: A Current Review and Theory Development, Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (2001): 370–91; Peter Wallensteen and Isak Svensson, Talking Peace: International Mediation in Armed Conflicts, Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 315–27; J. Michael Greig and Paul F. Diehl, International Mediation (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Daniel Druckman and James A. Wall, A Treasure Trove of Insights: Sixty Years of JCR Research on Negotiation and Mediation, Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (2017): 1898–924.

3. Jacob Bercovitch, Theodore J. Anagnoson, and Donnette L. Wille, Some Conceptual Issues and Empirical Trends in the Study of Successful Mediation in International Relations, Journal of Peace Research 28, no. 1 (1991): 8.

4. Isak Svensson, Biased Mediation, in Research Handbook on Mediating International Crisis, ed. Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, and David Quinn (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019), 325–36.

5. C. R. Mitchell, The Motives for Mediation, in New Approaches to International Mediation, ed. C. R. Mitchell and K. Webb (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 29–51; Michael Greig and Patrick M. Regan, When Do They Say Yes? An Analysis of the Willingness to Offer and Accept Mediation in Civil Wars, International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2008): 759–81; Mohammed O. Maundi et al., Getting In: Mediators’ Entry into the Settlement of African Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006).

6. I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval, International Mediation, in Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World, ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), 437–54; Jacob Bercovitch and Gerald Schneider, Who Mediates? The Political Economy of International Conflict Management, Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 2 (2000): 145–65.

7. Derrick V. Frazier, Andrew P. Owsiak, and Virginia Sanders, Regional Influences on Mediation Behavior, International Negotiation 19, no. 2 (2014): 285–314; Kyle Beardsley and Nigel Lo, Democratic Communities and Third-Party Conflict Management, Conflict Management and Peace Science 30, no. 1 (2013): 76–93.

8. Greig and Regan, When Do They Say Yes?; Molly M. Melin, Supply-Side Incentives for Mediation: Which Actors Mediate International Crises and Why?, in Research Handbook for Mediating International Crises, ed. Wilkenfeld, Beardsley, and Quinn, 94–108.

9. Fred Charles Iklé, How Nations Negotiate (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).

10. Saadia Touval, Mediation and Foreign Policy, International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003): 91–95.

11. Mitchell, The Motives for Mediation.

12. Oliver Richmond, Devious Objectives and the Disputants’ View of International Mediation: A Theoretical Framework, Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 6 (1998): 707–22.

13. I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985); I. William Zartman, The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments, Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 1 (2001): 8–18.

14. Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Dean G. Pruitt, and Sung Hee Kim, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 207.

15. Thomas Princen, Intermediaries in International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992).

16. Princen, Intermediaries in International Conflict, 219–20.

17. Kyle Beardsley et al., Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 1 (2006): 58–86.

18. Marieke Kleiboer, Understanding Success and Failure of International Mediation, Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 2 (1996): 360–89.

19. Christopher W. Moore, The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict (New York: Wiley, 2014).

20. Terrence P. Hopmann, Two Paradigms of Negotiation: Bargaining and Problem Solving, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 542 (1995): 24–47.

21. Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Conclusion: International Mediation in Context, in Mediation in International Relations: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management, ed. Jeffrey Z. Rubin and Jacob Bercovitch (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 251–54.

22. Nahla Yassine-Hamdan and Frederic Pearson, Arab Approaches to Conflict Resolution: Mediation, Negotiation and Settlement of Political Disputes (New York: Routledge, 2014).

23. Richard N. Haass, The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance, Foreign Affairs, May–June 2008, at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2008-05-03/age-nonpolarity.

PART ONE

General Trajectories and Challenges of Mediation in the Arab World

1

Peace Agreements in the Middle East

A Regional Challenge to Mediation

Peter Wallensteen and Stina Högbladh

This chapter addresses an empirical question that also constitutes a challenge to mediation in general: Why have there been relatively few peace agreements in the Middle East in the past half century? This situation is frequently observed with respect to the region as a whole and for the Palestinian conflict,¹ but here we attempt to document it with the use of empirical information gathered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).² It also means taking a regional approach to questions on the general conditions that stimulate peace agreements. Here we are interested both in those general questions and in understanding a particular region. Whether parties are willing to enter into a peace agreement might, in fact, be an indicator of regional conditions as a whole. Furthermore, we address this question by studying the experiences of other regions that have had more peace agreements, which leads us particularly to consider Africa, the region with the most peace agreements, to gain further insights into the regional differences in peacemaking.

Regions, of course, differ in many respects. However, raising the issue of regional patterns could at least be the beginning of a discussion regarding whether (a) there are regional variations and (b) there is something special to be observed at the regional level. In particular, we ask, Is the Middle East region, with its many and special traits, different in the field of peacemaking? This certainly leads to the third question: (c) Why is this the case for the Middle East, and does this special case require a particular approach to the conflicts there?

Thus, in this chapter we make observations on the Middle East based on regional and global data and some illustrations from other war-torn regions, in particular Africa. These two regions do have many similarities in addition to being the locations for consistent and intensive armed conflicts for the past several decades: both emerged from colonialism after the Second World War; they continue to have close ties to some colonial powers; they have attractive resources (oil, minerals); their state-building effort are of similarly recent origin; and they have experiences of political ideologies that stretch beyond the individual states (pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism, pan-Islamism).

Regional Patterns of Armed Conflict since 1975

This section presents the regional trends in armed conflict since 1975. This period gives us a reasonably long perspective. It includes the last fifteen years of the global Cold War as well as the first three decades after the end of this global confrontation—in all, a period of more than forty years. During these four decades, historical patterns of decolonization, regained independence, and establishment of sovereignty were no longer central, although they would still color decision making around the world. To get a picture of the global developments for these decades, figure 1.1 is most instructive. The top line shows the fluctuations in armed conflict globally through this period, with a peak in the early 1990s, then a remarkable reduction. The low numbers in the 1990s and early 2000s were followed by a new peak in 2014, and conflict has continued to be on this high plateau since then, with the UCDP reporting more than fifty ongoing armed conflicts each year.

1.1. Number of conflicts by region, 1975–2018. Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

The Middle East has seen a similar trend, with a plateau in the number of conflicts from 1979 to 1996 and then a decline before a steady rise to the highest number of armed conflicts in 2018 with twelve ongoing armed conflicts. Similarly, Africa was the other world region where the number of conflicts reached a peak in 2018 with twenty-one conflicts, a level the region first experienced in 2015.

The global number of battle-related deaths (figure 1.2) saw a peak after 2013, although the rates are still lower than those of the 1980s. The conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq were the main drivers of the high number of fatalities in the 2010s.

These global patterns have a regional basis. A considerable number of armed conflicts are taking place in a few regions. Even from a long-term perspective, the Middle East and Africa stand out. Table 1.1 demonstrates that they are the most conflict-torn regions in absolute numbers.

Table 1.1 shows that Africa and the Middle East together are the locations of half of all the world’s armed conflicts from 1975 to 2018, although they house only one-fifth of the world’s population. The other half of all conflicts is spread out over the remaining 80 percent of the world. Thus, these two regions are overrepresented in relation to the experience of armed conflict in this period.

1.2. Battle-related deaths by region, 1975–2018. Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

Obviously, Africa saw more conflicts in absolute numbers, and many of those conflicts were the most devastating in this period (e.g., the wars in southern Africa, repeated wars in the Horn of Africa and western Africa, and the protracted conflicts in Congo and Sudan). This is not to say that the Middle East is not without similar devastating events. The war between Iran and Iraq (1980–88) is among the most destructive conflicts in the world since the end of the Second World War. Similarly, the internationalized Syrian civil war that began in 2011 is among the most catastrophic conflicts. Many politically significant wars in the Middle East saw smaller numbers of casualties, notably the two US interventions against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, respectively, although they set in motion dynamics that continue to generate conflict in the region.

Table 1.1

Armed Conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and the World, 1975–2018

Sources: Population data come from United Nations Population Fund, The Power of Choice: State of World Population 2018 (New York: United Nations, 2018), at https://www.unfpa.org/publications/state-world-population-2018; data on armed conflicts come from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

The recent rise in the number of armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa can be compared to the reductions in armed conflicts in other regions, most notably East Asia (particularly in fatalities)³ but also South and Central America. Before 1975, these regions had many of the worst conflicts since 1946 (the Chinese Civil War as well as the Korean and Vietnam Wars definitely belonging to this category, while Central America and the Caribbean were exposed to repeated US interventions as well as nuclear brinkmanship during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962).

A strong contrast is the low number of conflicts in western Europe. Instead, much of the conflict energy was consumed by the global crisis between East and West in general: military arms races; continuous challenges between the United States and the Soviet Union over eastern Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere; ideological divisions between communism and liberalism; and so on. For the period we concentrate on here—that is, the years of the last phase of the Cold War and the first few decades thereafter—the Middle East and Africa constitute special challenges to international peace and security. Let us now contrast this picture of armed conflict with efforts at peacemaking. Figure 1.3 gives the global picture of high activity in peace processes resulting in different types of peace agreements, notably in the 1990s and early 2000s. The two regions show an interesting contrast, as we explore in this chapter.

1.3. Armed conflicts, peace agreements by type, global trends, 1975–2018, in absolute numbers (Full = full agreements; Partial = partial agreements). Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

Regional Patterns of Peacemaking

Since 1975, there have been slightly more than one hundred armed conflicts with countries in the Middle East and Africa as their primary actors. As we just noted, many of them belonged to the devastating wars in this period. In addition to the destruction of wars, there have also been other alarming events, such as the genocide in Rwanda and violent repression by many authoritarian regimes. The many and intensive wars as well as other major events should give strong incentives in both regions to work for ways to terminate armed conflicts and build peace. However, this is where the regions diverge in a way that draws our concern.

Table 1.2 presents data on this divergence. It demonstrates that the Middle East is different from what we could expect if thinking of the global picture. In this period of almost forty years, from 1975 to 2018—which correspond to the emergence of a postcolonial generation without personal experience of foreign rule—more than a third of all armed conflicts saw a peace agreement (35 percent). Africa is above the average, with 43 percent, while the Middle East is well below it: only five conflicts in the latter region have ended with a peace agreement during these forty years, meaning that only 16 percent of the conflicts saw a peace agreement. For these five conflicts, there was a total of twenty-five peace agreements, the bulk belonging to the Iran-Iraq War and the Israel–Palestine conflict. Attempting to end conflicts through negotiations, in other words, has not been a rewarding experience for the entire postcolonial generation in the Middle East. Certainly, a peace agreement is not necessarily the only way to end a conflict. Victory, cease-fire arrangements, and a gradual winding down of conflict activity are also possible. However, peace agreements are special because they are negotiated endings that build on relative openness, removing some of the exclusive and secretive attitudes likely to surround other outcomes. Some data show that negotiated settlements are more likely to generate solutions that are beneficial for the development of democratic conditions and long-term peace.⁴ Thus, the lack of negotiated endings raises questions with respect to both conflict frequency and general societal development.

Table 1.2

Peace Agreements in the Middle East, Africa, and the World, 1975–2018

Sources: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se; Therese Pettersson, Stina Högbladh, and Magnus Öberg, Organized Violence 1989–2018 and Peace Agreements, Journal of Peace Research 56, no. 4 (2019): 589–603.

Figures 1.4 and 1.5 focus on the number of peace agreements versus the number of ongoing armed conflicts. They give an even stronger image of the difference between these two war-torn regions. Figure 1.4 indicates that more peacemaking activity in Africa has resulted in agreements. In all, 187 peace agreements were made for thirty-four armed conflicts in the studied period. However, as can be seen in the figure, this number of agreements has not resulted in a lasting decline in armed conflict. Although a high number of peace agreements can in part explain the low number of conflicts in the 2000s, the number of conflicts has increased since 2010 in this region. The efforts at concluding agreements have not resulted in a general ending of armed conflict in Africa. Nevertheless, the contrast to the Middle East remains, which is borne out by figure 1.5. Since 2003, there has been an almost continuous rise in the number of conflicts in the Middle East, as seen in the upper line. We can observe how the gap between that line and the lower one on peacemaking has become increasingly more pronounced. By 2018, that gap was larger than at any other time in this period.

1.4. Conflicts and peace agreements in Africa, 1975–2018, in absolute numbers. Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

It is also interesting to observe that none of the twenty-five peace agreements in the Middle East from 1975 to 2018 was signed by an international governmental organization. This is a further contrast to Africa, where a plethora of regional and global organizations have been involved (e.g., Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Organisation of African Unity/African Union, Economic Community of West African States, and the United Nations [UN]).⁵ There are fewer regional organizations in the Middle East, and those that exist actually exclude some key states as members, which of course further reduces the organizations’ utility. For example, the League of Arab States (or Arab League) includes neither Turkey nor Israel nor Iran. Its inception largely expressed a pan-Arab ideology following the end of Ottoman rule over the region, but it was also formed in the face of the confrontation with Israel and drew a political line between Arab and non-Arabic cultures in the area. The continent-wide organizations in Africa for a long time excluded the remaining colonial and white-settler communities, applying pan-Africanism in a way similar to the application of Pan-Arabism, but otherwise were quite inclusive (e.g., including Morocco and Egypt in spite of their perceived hegemonic aspirations).

1.5. Conflicts and peace agreements in the Middle East, 1975–2018, in absolute numbers. Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), at www.ucdp.uu.se.

Together, table 1.2, figure 1.4, and figure 1.5 show the contrast between the two regions. Africa saw the conclusion of thirty-four conflicts with peace agreements in this period, but the Middle East only five. The difference is striking and noteworthy. It becomes even more interesting when we study these five cases in some detail to draw lessons for peacemaking in the region.⁶

Agreements between Iran and Iraq date back to 1975. They were mediated through the good offices of Algeria, and the peace process consisted of twelve peace agreements, as seen in figure 1.5. It aimed at regulating the control over the shared waterway Shat al-Arab/Arvand Rud but also at ending Iranian support for some factions in the Kurdish area of Iraq. The agreements bridged a territorial issue between two neighboring states. They also involved the Arab–Persian divide. Thus, the League of Arab States was of no use (although Jordan tried), but Algeria served as an acceptable mediator to both nations. Because Iraq at the time was ruled by the radical Ba’ath Party, Algeria was acceptable to the regime. Iran, ruled by the shah, certainly did not subscribe to a radical ideology but could still accept Algeria because the latter was a leading member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The agreements were then breached by Iraq’s unilateral military actions in 1980, only to be reinstated in 1988 as part of the ending of the devastating war between the two countries.

The second situation, the Taif Agreement on Lebanon 1990,⁷ is a most interesting and formative case. It demonstrated the Arab states’ ability to deal with a protracted war through the means available to them and without involving outside organizations or interests. The Tripartite Committee of the Arab League—Algeria, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia—mediated the groundwork of the Taif Agreement, which was then negotiated by parliamentarians who represented groups that had been involved in the conflict during its earlier years but were not included among the warring parties active in the Lebanese conflict at the time of negotiations. The negotiators found a way to end the war through an elaborate power-sharing agreement involving the major politico-religious-ethnic groups in the country, with an agreed intervention by Syria (which pulled out of the country in 2006). The Taif Agreement is still in principle guiding political arrangements in Lebanon. Unlike for other agreements, the League of Arab States did have a role in this one, although mediation was done by particular states.

The conflict in the region that has seen the most negotiated agreements is the one between Israeli and Palestinian bodies (the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian National Authority). UCDP counts nine agreements between 1993 and 2007. Most of them regulate various issues in the conflict; thus, they all are defined as partial rather than full agreements. The latest one, the Annapolis Conference Joint Understanding on Negotiations, outlined a process (road map) for the pursuit of talks for a settlement, thus not resolving any of the substantial issues. In spite of attempts at restarting negotiations during the Obama presidency, no new agreements on substantive issues have been signed between the parties since 1999—that is, for more than twenty years. Interestingly, since September 1993 the United States has been party to all agreements. In terms of direct violence, the conflict is now at a relatively low level, but the parties’ mutual relations are marked by other forms of violence. Obviously, the plan presented by President Donald Trump of the United States in January 2020 does not meet the definition of a peace agreement.

In Yemen, there is an interesting and initially promising sequence of events. The largely nonviolent resistance led to a regionally brokered agreement by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 2011, which included the peaceful departure of the incumbent president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. This framework was then overturned by an emerging actor, the Houthi rebels (formally known as Ansar Allah), that challenged the new government by force. The Peace and National Partnership Agreement of 2014 was the outcome of a deliberative national process to end the civil strife that emerged.⁸ This settlement built on the GCC initiative and saw the involvement of the UN secretary-general’s special representative, Jamal Benomar. The agreement was in practice largely annulled in January 2015 when one of the parties seized the capital. Later the same year, Saudi Arabia intervened militarily, and five years later, in early 2022, the war was still ongoing. In April 2022, the UN helped negotiate a cease-fire, and by 2023 the cease-fire was still holding up. It was reinforced by the surprising return of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023, done with mediation by China.

The fifth conflict with a peace agreement involved the unification of Yemen and thus preceded the one we just mentioned. On March 6, 1979, the Arab League proposed a peace plan that included troop withdrawal, an immediate cease-fire, and the restoration of normal relations. It was accepted by both North Yemen and South Yemen. The peace agreement signed in Kuwait on March 30 was negotiated under the auspices of the emir of Kuwait. The North Yemeni capital, Sana‘a, would be the capital for the unified state, and President Saleh (of North Yemen) would become president of the unified country. On April 22, 1990, the final agreement was signed, integrating the Yemen Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen as the Republic of Yemen. It is another agreement made entirely among Arab states, with an Arab negotiator. Like the Taif Agreement, it demonstrated the possibility of intraregional solutions.

Only one of the five conflicts with agreements has seen a durable situation of peace after the signature: the war between Iran and Iraq restarted six years after the agreement; in Yemen, the agreement lasted only a few months; and Israeli–Palestinian relations are still marred by continued occupation. The Taif Agreement in Lebanon has been the most durable, although it has been exposed to repeated challenges, notably in 2008, when Qatari mediation helped to defuse the situation. Refugee pressures from the Syrian civil war and popular, nonviolent uprisings in 2019 again strained the arrangement. Still, the agreement with its amendments of 2008 helps to guide Lebanese politics. Finally, the agreement on the merger of the two Yemeni states that was carried out in 1990 seemingly functioned for two decades but was again severely challenged during the late 2010s with renewed calls from the South for a separate state. We can also note that the Israeli–Palestinian relations remain unique in view of the very high international involvement, notably by the world’s strongest power, the United States. It is a typical case of a biased mediator being accepted by the parties.⁹ So far, the mediation has not led to a durable settlement.

Thus, the record for peaceful settlements in the Middle East is highly limited. It does not reflect a general belief in the possibility of settling conflicts through negotiated means. At the same time, as we noted earlier, the wars remain highly protracted and destructive. Thus, military actions, too, are unable to terminate conflicts. This record is very different from the one witnessed in Africa, with continuous and renewed efforts to solve the same conflicts again and again. For instance, the conflict in Burundi saw thirteen agreements between 1998 and 2008; the Central African Republic eleven between 2007 and 2017; Chad fifteen between 1978 and 2007; and Sudan twenty-four between 1988 and 2016.¹⁰ Thus, we can safely conclude that there is a marked difference between these two regions: the Middle East stands out as exceptional in its limited peacemaking record even within a larger region that has considerable conflict challenges. This exceptionality prompts us to discuss possible explanations and ways forward.

Possible Explanations

Explanations for this contrasting pattern can be sought in different directions. Some can be drawn from conflict resolution theory: some basic trust as well as previous positive experience in having tried a peaceful solution are needed to initiate negotiations. The contrast might also suggest that there is limited experience in mediation or that the mediation strategies used so far are less than optimal. We explore these explanations later.

Alternatively, the divergence could be related to important historical legacies in the way power and peace are viewed, not the least because the two regions have colonial experiences but largely with very different colonial powers. This points to the importance of historical and contemporary extraregional interventions.

Furthermore, there are also matters of governance to be considered, including democracy, transparency, and gender equality.

Here we briefly touch on each of these explanations, with the hope of initiating a discussion on the contemporary predicaments of the Middle East.

Lack of Trust

Much conflict resolution theory points to a basic requirement of some degree of confidence, or even trust, between the conflicting parties for negotiations to succeed. There has to be a belief that the other side has the will and capacity to carry out its part of the deal. If not, one or the other side is likely to argue that it must resort to power to force the other side, which in fact could be the continuation of conflict but with political and diplomatic means—to reverse the classical statement attributed to Carl von Clausewitz.¹¹ The role of third parties, then, is to provide some degree of reassurance that the other side can be trusted. Of course, this moves the trust equation one step further: Can the go-between be trusted? If there is little trust in the opponent or in the third party, there is likely to be little confidence in any form of negotiation. This suggests that the lack of agreements in the Middle Eat might reflect a general lack of trust in outsiders or opponents to stick to their words. This explanation fits with the statistics we have presented: very few agreements, very few peace processes, very little use of outside mediators in the Middle East, in contrast to the patterns documented for Africa with its many agreements, continuous peace processes, and considerable reliance on third parties. The reason for the trust factor in the African context, however, is unclear unless we assume that it is a remnant of pan-African thinking. The decolonization struggle involved considerable solidarity, especially in the long, shared focus on confronting the Apartheid regime in South Africa. To some extent, the Arab isolation of Israel may have served a similar