we do well to discuss that i'm now joined by several of us there professor of political science at barnard college columbia university and the scholar of peacekeeping professor out us or it's great pleasure talking to you thank you very much for your time thank you so much for having me professor let me start with a personal question i know you spent years studying african conflicts which happen to be some of the dadley of conflicts on this planet and you started them primarily through field work rather than social media issues to be a custom these days what made you saw attracted to these inherently dangerous subject well it's an inherently dangerous subject but it's also fascinating and the impact that research can have if we can get things right if we can understand how to build peace what works in building peace that can impact the lives of millions of people so to me it's really worth it if i remember it may sound like a sexist question but as

a woman who worked in conflict zones i think i can ask you that violence and sexual violence is prevalent in most conflict zones and i assume africa is no exception did you are as western a scholar as a young attractive woman. from the same risks as some of the people whose experiences you are studying well i think that no matter who you are or once you end up in a conflict zone there is a likelihood that you're going to end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and then for example it's happened to me several times that i was in a place that was considered safe and then rebel groups started bombing the city and one of the bombs actually fell in my garden so that's the kind of thing that no matter who you are or what you look like no matter your gender you're going to face if you work in conflict zones and know being a woman that has a lot of additional risk and a lot of additional disadvantages but also it brings a lot. opportunities because other woman talked to you much more often leave 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 leave 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 am 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 to marie's people they don't have this luxury the reason i'm asking all these questions is because in both of your books peace land and 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 and 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 hired 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 there for six months a year to year so imagine you're arrive 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. it's

a negative opinion of local people that are vehicular among international builders so the whole thing combines to creating this bubble that you were talking about well i've actually also witnessed 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 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 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 can't they 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 you know removed from a 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 current see the way we build peace it is that we try to interact with in between try to reconcile governments rebel leaders presidents get them around the table and which right 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 the don't really work oh no they don't actually build peace on the ground so what we need to is to start building peace from the grassroots we need to compliment the elites center stretches with strategies that are. centered on ordinary people and local leaders

and that too my research has shown are actually working well i certainly agree with you in a sense that when we when we look at the goals of many un 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 basket 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 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 conflict you can find extreme poverty ethnic tension shows try to 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 that 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 conflict. the u.n.

own organizational structure and can you introduce those changes on the micro level without changing these 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 all 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 they take it from your writing god 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 that the united nations is predicted on the idea that they're 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 career of people who work for the united nations the hope from conflicts into conflict zones because they are hired for what i call death of my tickets purchased their expertise in gender in elections in human rights and nobody really cares about. no but the consciously the country or the fits in which doesn't

work it's seen as something that second wave that's not as important what's really matters for them is to have the expertise of challenger and lections etc because that's what the un five use and that i think is one of the things we absolutely 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.

i think that. you know. what politicians do you should. put themselves on the line. they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express. something want. to do right. it's like. three of the people. i'm interested why. should.

nobody could see coming that false confessions would be that prevalent in this population the fall of the birch. any interrogations out there what bill c. is promise threat promise threat lie a lie a lie the process of the turkish was designed to put people in just that frame of mind make the most comfortable make them want to get out and don't take no for an answer don't accept their denials she said if i were poor prairie santa stayed there i would be home by that time the next day there's a culture of odd accountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with solving their crime. welcome back to worlds apart this separate officer professor of political science

at barnard college columbia university professor artists are 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 and age well of four people who are victims of the conflict who are living in the conflict zones yes the overall maturity of the people has 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 they 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 say i can foody a test of 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 axe prison politicians

who publicly advocate for armed resistance as a way to attain democracy dignity or some foreign policy goal it's a strange question to ask good what makes you believe that peace should be how it 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 at the same time we can have peace and democracy blah blah blah in a post closely 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 crowd 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. be someone who was never the first priority in either syria or libya for that matter those conflicts were intentionally flee from the outside and local communities there were some communities i personally reported on who tried to resist this violence there and were absolutely how plus to do that do you think these changes at a micro. level could be meaningful without major changes on the micro jewel

political level. basically what we need is that we need both what i've been saying so for is that if you don't have the changes 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 they're our peace you and i would still continue to fight over our stuff and we don't care about what happens among 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 and 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 all the number of foreign states so you know i can tell you my personal story i reported on the druze a village in in syria they were they were very dedicated to making sure that this bloodshed that they saw around them does not the fact that 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 his men which you're saying is don't we have to work with. at least and as been telling you from

from the store the tears we do have to work with at least we do have to work with presidents and rebel leaders because as you say they can jeopardize and they think that we are 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 or 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 or 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 paper first is where there are people on the ground ordinary people are going to have a life that is a little bit better for 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 key. think about the your

your country's strategic interest 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. ensuring peace and stability how is the u.n. 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 they 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 reading really high expectations and and united nations peacekeepers i remember when they arrived in congo in one thousand nine they were so incredibly popular because everybody thought oh yeah the savior has arrived and they're really really here to help 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 way people relate to united nations peacekeepers is completely different but when they're merican for example. started their campaign in iraq we also saw on american television how ecstatic crowds were to greet them. does it mean the. the locals extend this a welcome to. u.n.

forces in this case the american forces well it's really depends thing that it depends on the finish that you're talking about it depends on on the communities. the kind of welcome that that soldiers get even know 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 of your perception of one thousand 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 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 and 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 cons 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 did 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 flowed from the start so again we need to step back and we need to review these kind of hyper terms but they'll turn it to a dad would be sending the syrian official police force into the same villages. i suspect. 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 they 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 and then they start talking with everybody was all of the philip shares to try to understand what from the filters point of view what all the reasons for the fighting's what would be potential solutions and what phillip surest needs are in terms of international support to to implement these solutions and then they are to 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. you know the russian police

tell the russian army all 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 seats letting people decide how they want to handle their own conflict well professor out of sara last 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.

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