you much more often lee so it gives you a different perspective have you ever found yourself in a situation in the filled when you genuinely feared for your life and safety when you thought that you may not believe another date. yes i have several times. and but every time i was very very fortunate because i had friends on the ground who took me in a shelter to me and then help me escape the city and this is something that i'm so incredibly fortunate because i'm a foreigner much a where i go i have a passport that enables me to come to go out to white people who live in conflicts and congolese people palestinian people timorous people they don't have this luxury and the reason i'm asking all these questions is because in both of your books peace land the trouble with congo you're very critical of the expect treats tendency to leave in the bubble driving around in white s.u.v.

leaving behind big was frequenting acts by bars what do you think is driving this tendency what's behind it well there are there are many things that are driving this tendency i think the first one that is that when when peacekeepers or foreign peace builders are are higher to go on the ground and built peace in a country they're sent to a country that they usually don't know the law a lot about and very often they don't speak the local languages and when they arrive they're there for six months a year to year so imagine you're arrives somewhere you don't speak the language you don't understand the culture you don't have any contact and you know that you're there only for a short period of time that's going to put you in the mindset of where you think ok it's better for me to associate with other foreigners than to s.o.c. it was local people and on top of that there are a lot of negative prejudice and negative opinions of local people. that of

a he created among international builders so the whole thing combines to creating this bubble that you were talking about well i've actually also witnessed the self-imposed isolation the with the u.n. observers in syria and it was driven in my opinion not by any arrogance or bias but . simply by security considerations and when i put that question to the former had of the un peacekeeping operations he told me exactly that that there were products for that and that limiting exposure to the locals was deemed as one of the precautions he said that if you some people in harm's way you ought to give them that do you disagree with that yes they do so what it what you say is that is the kind of thing that i hear all the time when i when i talk to peacekeepers or peace builders and they always tell me oh it's because of security issues the thing is that when you go to places like timor leste the or jerusalem or places like that where you have

a really tall security issues or even cyprus where the security conditions are really good you still see the same kind of tendency to live in a bubble so to me there is much more articulate than just security council so in addition to security and safety i think there is also an issue of neutrality of play here if the peacekeepers are seen hanging out in local rather than exploit bars don't you think that that may create a perception of bias depending on who they're hanging out with all it could of course but consider what is the what what are the drawbacks of not hanging out in local bourse not hanging out with people not talking to them it means that they they basically don't know what's going on around them so we're sending people to conflicts we're telling them try to build peace in this place but we don't give them any opportunity to actually do their child because they don't have the knowledge going in that they need knowledge of local. conditions local cultures etc

and on top of that we're telling them stay in your bunker and don't interact with local people so they came to the can't actually develop the knowledge that they need the knowledge of local conditions the understanding of why people are fighting and what it would take to build peace and on top of that it's not as if staying at oh you know removed from our local people was a way to guarantee that peacekeepers are viewed as neutral and objective because you've seen that in syria and in libya and in afghanistan i've seen that in all of the places where i've worked people always complained that the international builders are biased that they're biased in favor of their enemies so the current strategy is not guaranteeing any kind of perception of neutrality or objectivity and on top of that it's making peace building much more difficult now in both of your books you are critical of not only how the u.n. personnel socialize but also how they go about their work and you specifically

argue that the current top down approach to conflict resolution when the u.n. intervenes when it tries to mediate between the leaders of the warring parties is both in a fact if and wasteful how do you think it could be changed it could be changed by complementing it with bottom up strategy so what i mean is that currently the way we build peace it is that we try to interact with him being to try to reconcile governments rebel leaders. we get them around the table and we try to have them sign peace agreements and as we've seen in syria in afghanistan incessant and virtually everywhere these kind of piece of paper that they don't really work oh and they don't actually build peace on the ground so what we need is to start building peace from the grassroots we need to compliment the elites center stretches with strategies that are all centered on ordinary people and local law.

jurors and that in my research i've shown are actually working well i certainly agree with you in a sense that when we when we look at the goals of many u.n. peacekeeping operations there they are termed in a very general very abstract language confidence building power sharing strengthening the rule of law etc but we all know that the devil is always easy detail what does it take to operationalize what would work basta in the congolese context as opposed to let's say the syrian context i assume it's it's always different isn't it yes it's always different so and so i think that giving you an example would be the best way to answer your question there is an island in congo that's called each week it's right at the border between congo and rwanda so it's in the most violent area of congo and and it has everything all of the conditions that have led to violence in other parts of congo knowing that congo is

the stage of the deadliest conflict since world war two between two and five million people have died there so each we has the same preconditions that you find around it you find lend culturally you can find extreme poverty ethnic tension sure stretch education everything but in the island people have managed to build peace and to maintain peace for close to fifteen years by using local leaders ordinary people but i'm crestwood strategies i think in this kind of situation it would be very tempting for the united nations to look at this very successful example and try to apply to other conflicts and you actually were also critical of that because you believe that this cookie cutter approach isn't working well and my question to you is whether these standardized approach to conflict resolution isn't really the direct consequence of the us all organising. structure and can you introduce those

changes on the micro level without changing this very big bureaucracy first yes you do need to change the bureaucracy i completely agree with you there needs to be a huge reform of united nations peacekeeping so that first the people we send to the ground are people who knew about the countries and the situations in which they're going to work so that then they can support local people and also we need to change the mindset of the peacekeeping operations and the outside is builders so that they don't arrive with this idea that as outsiders we know what the solutions are we know what we're going to do we have the answers but rather the idea should be we're coming in support of local populations because they know they are the experts of their own conflict and so what we need to do is to support them rather than to direct them and to tell them what to do you keep coming back to this idea of having to have the knowledge of the local communities which sounds very self

explanatory and yet i take it from your writing you've got it is actually not there why do you think the united nations ban so much money it spends a lot of money on peacekeeping operations and yet the knowledge of those specific conflicts as you argue is not present. in the united nations is predicted on the idea that there oklo balkan aviation so they need generalis they need people who know about change or about human rights about organization of elections and then they can deploy these people to any conflicts and so to congo to syria etc and when you look at the carrier of people who work for the united nations the hope from conflicts into conflict zones because they're hired for their what i call death of my tickets purchased their expertise in gender in elections in human rights and nobody really cares about what they know about the conflict in the country or. the

feel age in which doesn't work it's seen as something that second year wait that's not as important what really matters for them is to have the expertise of change or an election to cetera because that's what the u.n. values and that i think is one of the things we absolutely need absolutely need to change in the united nations well i have to say that it's pretty shocking for me to hear that. several decades after discussing how to improve the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations that's still the case but professor just so we have to take a very short break now we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. brace for a single. a super. star

training very young. eight months of intensive school. rats. and they save lives. as a spy you have to really split your own personality into two you don't is that committed to harvest that was still alive within me and then there is the person who wanted to counter everything they want to do and then try and dismantle everything they were doing so you have to really become a production in order to. you have to follow your own family in order to for them. because you know provision i might by going to what was on their theater like oh if you're talking. about a car. oh. you're so your height oh alaska's. oscars i just got any of the.

resources you know. anybody among my film of those in person but the better honestly i don't know if there's really a. joining us as you know but i was you know. you know just i mean what almost what it i'm already what it was but the bar would be just going to be a i mean it was the lord we're going to. give it up as well i must say i mean thirty years i just don't get it on getting worse but those were the old they're just beautiful sounds both the particulars but i'm one of those but i would say like how this latest this or this one of these i will ask him i will write about him we classically call credible but you suspect that they're already yes equestrian to the thought of getting up there calling quiz you just implemented much about a lot of problem you just got to go you. are

. welcome back to worlds apart based severin professor of political science at barnard college columbia university professor auto sarah these mole localized grassroots approach that you are advocating presumes that there's a genuine interest in and doing all those conflicts can one really presume that in this day in each wall of four people who are victims of the conflict while living in the conflict zones yes the overall majority of the people i've met whether again we're talking about people in afghanistan in congo in israel in the palestinian territories. i would say ninety nine percent of them told me that the absolutely want peace they want to have a way to send their children to school. to feed their family to have

a career without swearing whether tomorrow they're going to be killed they're going to be torture of they're going to be dead well professor i said i can fully attest to the fact that for most people in conflict zones peace is the ultimate value but that puts them at odds with me in the other war x.-prize and politicians who publicly advocate for armed resistance as a way to a teen democracy dignity or some foreign policy goal it's a strange question to ask what makes you believe that peace should be housed as the ultimate value reach i think is a promise in much of your writing no i really believe that peace is the ultimate value for me what i believe is that people should be given the choice and that we shouldn't impose our choices so what i mean is that there is a tradeoff between peace and democracy between peace and justice we cannot at

all politicians are always telling us all we can have everything of the same time we can have peace and democracy blah blah blah in a pulse conflict situation or in a war situation that's not true and so what i mean is that instead of telling people well you can have everything and then failing to deliver on everything and we should be ferric here and say ok you can have peace like some kind of peace you can have some kind of democracy you can have some kind of justice in the short term but unfortunately we cannot field everything at the same time so someone has to make a choice and in the current system in this current international system it's outsiders who make these decisions for people on the ground for syrians for congolese and what i'm saying is that they should be the one deciding now i suddenly bring my own sound of biases and experiences to this conversation but having reported on a number of arab conflicts i'm absolutely convinced. to be someone who was never the first priority. in either syria or libya for that matter those conflicts were

intentionally flame from the outside and local communities there were some communities i personally reported on who tried to resist this violence and they and were absolutely helpless to do that do you think these changes at a micro level could be meaningful without major changes on the micro jule political level. basically which we need to say we need both what has been saying so far is that if you don't have the chance just on the micro level if we don't feel peace from the grassroots then limit to what you do at the time it's not it's not going to work because people are always going to have reasons to fight let's say you know you and i are fighting over a piece of flesh and if our presidents make an agreement and then they decide there are peace you and i was still continue to fight over a piece of land we don't care about what happens among the elites and by the same token if you and i make a deal our presidents won't care whether we've made

a deal or not so we really need to have both top down and bottom piece of that we can have an end to this country that we've been talking about but if i may disagree with you a little bit maybe in african conflicts people are still fighting over resources and access to water but in many of the arab conflicts they were fighting over. the top position in the country and changing a person who sits or who rules the country was a major objective of a number of foreign states so you know i can tell you my personal story i reported on the jews a village in in syria they were they were very dedicated to making sure that this bloodshed that they were around them does not affect them but that they and they failed because if a foreign militant group. funded and trained the broth comes in to in to your village into your area. you're absolutely how close in resisting it this is what i

mean don't you think that we ultimately have to change the way we relate to war and stop calling somebody else's terrorist another man's freedom fighter it isn't what you're saying is don't we have to work with elites and i've been telling you from from the store the chance we do have to work with elites we do have to work with presidents and rebel leaders because as you say they can jeopardize and they think that we have to achieve on the ground but what i'm saying is that it's not efficient it's not sufficient because we've seen over and over and over again that these kind of agreements between presidents and rebel leaders or the fact of replacing one strong man was another strong man it doesn't bring peace look at what happened in afghanistan we've replaced one president was another president one regime was another reach into we see peace on the ground no we don't so what i'm saying is that yes it's important to look at that to look at these personalities ah

at these elite conflicts and but also we absolutely have to look at what orton every people can do to filkins and the other way is that i often get the question that you're asking me being like well you know if if any elite and the president and the rebel groups can attack a village and then and then destroy their peace then it doesn't matter whatever peace that that they've been able to to achieve for the past few weeks all the best few months all the best few years and like well if you live in the village if you think about the human beings who lives in that village the fact that they've been able to have some kind of peace some kind of security for a few days for a few weeks for a few months for a few year it's so important it actually makes a huge difference in their lives and to me that's what actually matters it's not abstract piece of papers is where there are people on the ground ordinary people.

all going to have a life that is a little bit better for at least a few more days or a few more years while i absolutely agree with you for people who are on the ground whose lives are being jeopardized peace is always the ultimate priority it is it only becomes abstract when you talk about it in foreign capitals think about your your country's strategic interests anyway. you point out in your recent article that un peacekeepers are the second largest military force deployed abroad after the us military and the americans often pre-trained die a military presence in foreign lands as a ensuring peace and stability how is the un experience of peace building peacekeeping different from what the americans attempted in both afghanistan that you mentioned and iraq well when the when the u.n. goes and when the united nations goes in usually there or invited by all of the warring parties and when they arrive on the ground very often people have

a good opinion of the united nations have a lot of very high expectations the blue helmets the soldiers of the united nations are viewed as a symbol of peace and it's only time that people see that their expectations are not being met and then they start changing their views of united nations peacekeepers but for the first few years usually there is this treaty really really high expectations and and united nations peacekeepers i remember when they arrived in congo in one thousand nine there were so incredibly popular because everybody thought oh yeah the savior has arrived and they're really really here to help as another twenty years from now they're seen as an occupying power as you know pretty much another army but from the start the expectations the attitudes are the whip. people relate to nations peacekeepers is completely different but when the

americans for example. started their campaign in iraq we also saw on american television how ecstatic crowds were to greet them. does it mean that. the locals extend this a welcome to u.n. forces in this case the american forces well it's really did this thing that it depends on the finish that you're talking about the defense on the on the communities. the kind of welcome that that soldiers get even no united nations peacekeepers still get a very warm welcome in some communities and same for the u.s. soldiers in in some villages in iraq so i think it's really hard to make this kind of blanket statement and to talk about the overall perception of united nations peacekeepers or overall perception of united states soldiers what matters to me is

what they can do with these perceptions and how they can use this perceptions to actually. guilty so on the ground and i'm not sure that that the u.s. army in iraq and in afghanistan really had as a primary goal to build peace wife or united nations peacekeepers it's in their mandate it's absolutely their role to build peace on the ground now i'm speaking to you from moscow so i have to ask you about the russia's recent forest into conflict resolution particularly in syria and i think for now it is using some of the. u.n. methods for example it deploys its own military police. stuff primarily by by muslims to do the work that the blue helmets normally do in other conflicts zones what are the potential process of individual countries trying on this peacekeeping mantle well whether we're talking about individual countries like russia. or big

organizations like the united nations i think the fundamental problem is that we're relying on foreigners to actually do things that should better be done by local people so for instance what can a russian soldier or french soldier for that matter what to or russian policeman or a french policeman what can this person know about the conflicts that are defining a syrian village unless this person has a ph d. in syria and history which i doubt many many many soldiers and policemen have that don't know the ins and outs of the situations so the idea of bringing outsiders to resolve conflict within a conflict within a country to me it's flawed from the start so again we need to step back and we need to review these kind of but they'll turn it to dod would be sending the syrian official police force into the same villages. i suspect that. may be met with

far greater fear and distrust on the part of the local population and that would be quite a disaster and that's not that's not what i think would be the best solution the best solution is ok let me give you the example of an organization that i like it's called the life and peace institute and its team in congo have developed a way to help local people build peace so they were can ferry very divided phillips's philippus where you have different armed groups ethnic groups that are fighting and that all associated with different rebel leaders and presidents so you know the kind of conflict that you see and you say there intractable we can never do anything and the way an lp i in congo works is that they go in and then they start talking with everybody was all of the philip shares to try to understand what from the feel or just point of view what all the reasons for the fighting's what would be potential solution. and what fitch are sneed in terms of international

support to to implement these solutions and then the they help people implement the solutions so what i'm saying is that it's a stretch to add that doesn't rely on an outside force like you know the russian police or the russian army or united nations peacekeepers it doesn't rely on the state or on the national army or on the national police but it relies on local capacities and supporting local capacities and putting people in the driver's seat letting people decide how they want to handle their own conflict well professor out of sarah labs hope we see you more inspiring examples like these in two thousand and nineteen but for the time being we have to leave it there thank you very much for sharing your thoughts thank you so much for having me on your show our viewers can keep this conversation going in our social media pages as for me hope to see same place same time here on worlds apart.

us veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo from the secretary defense office says we're got to act and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the walls with them money on those with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and

willing to risk being killed for a war then surely we can risk some discomfort for uneasiness for us. when they came back from iraq out of marijuana her was cocaine methamphetamine so anything that's altering trying to get us out. that bad mindset using a chemical that would be self medicate. i want to be drinking and drinking ino noon just killing myself by drinking alcohol links don't drink to get drunk alcoholics drink to feel normal. that's why alcoholics that's why drug addicts do what they do a shot while still feeling in their. star cool under which these guys are going through to it it just means to. reduce need to be helped and the good pushed on by

the v.a.'s are as drugs go and stuff they need to be helped. and they just really shouldn't be looked at like numbers they should be looked at like people if they go to a veteran center for health issues be considered as someone who really needs attention . perfect there someone else living inside of me or controlling my body. the byproduct of the drug the the cause like severe depression. because it literally made him into zombie is crazy. you know and we don't have to do anything it's not our fault you know she's crazy and all that. the fears traumatic things long time to get rid of.

all. such. in the stories that shape the way care not say français a nine consecutive weekend of yellow vests protest with eyes.