Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the most reverend Primate on the third of his excellent speeches which I have heard over the past weeks—first, in the Abbey on the plight of Christians in the Middle East; then at the start of our Brexit debate; and now on the good Christian theme of reconciliation. The Epistles talk of ambassadors for Christ with the gospel of reconciliation, and Christ himself spoke of peacemakers as blessed, so I gladly give a few random reflections on his theme.

First, it is absolutely right that he mentions the interlocking and complementary roles of the three departments—Foreign Office, Defence and International Development—in pursuit of reconciliation. Attempts by us to solve conflicts often require a combination of these three and others.

A good example is the western Balkans during and after the bloody wars of the 1990s. Think of the horror of the massacre of 7,000 or 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica. The three departments had been involved in seeking solutions to these conflicts, mostly in coalition with the European Union and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said, with the United Nations. Now the FCO and the Ministry of Defence, with their substantial reduction in resources, must view with envy the fixed financial commitment available to DfID. There is surely a need for a debate on rebalancing and redefining the role of the three departments. For example, our military was used, properly, to combat the Ebola outbreak, a development crisis.

Often, early military intervention can save lives. I cite the Rwanda genocide in 1994 when, over three months, 800,000 people were killed. A simulation exercise by West Point concluded that 500 or so military at the outset might have prevented the carnage. I had the honour of chairing two reconciliation meetings of Hutu and Tutsi representatives at the Christian Centre at Ashburnham, near Battle in Sussex, at the time, and learned at first hand of the horrors.

Surely there is no lasting development without peace and stability. Well-judged military intervention and skilful diplomacy can lead to peace, as we saw with the excellent military intervention of our forces in Sierra Leone. We should also not forget the role of arbitration mentioned by the most reverend Primate—for example, the arbitration by the Pope over the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile.

We should be encouraged by recent progress on conflicts which earlier appeared incapable of solution. I look forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and listened with appreciation to the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. After Sharpeville and Soweto, the South African problem appeared intractable, as did the problem in Northern Ireland, but Churches, the private sector and the civics—the community groups—played a key role in bridge-building at the time.

This raises the question of the role of Governments as against individuals and communities. Governments cannot forgive injustices—only the victims can. Governments can, however, provide encouragement and facilities for individuals and groups to promote reconciliation. Governments can also learn lessons from the past—lessons for good and for ill. Contrast post-war Germany and Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In Germany after 1945, yes, the leaders of the Nazis were disposed of at Nuremberg, but the great majority of people, such as Konrad Adenauer, who played such a key role in democracy-building, were given the opportunity to build the structures of the very democratic Federal Republic of Germany. By contrast in Iraq, after 2004 the neocons in Washington overruled the State Department and Colin Powell and demobilised the Iraqi army, unpaid and keeping their arms, and destroyed the structures of the state, which led to the chaos that followed.

There are limits to the possibility of reconciliation, often not recognised by Church leaders. However worthy the cause, however strenuous the effort, some world problems may indeed be without solution and our best efforts must be directed at preventing the worst—or, in despair, redrawing national boundaries, as happened, for example, between Ethiopia and Eritrea and is now in prospect between Serbia and Kosovo.

Perhaps also the Arab-Israeli conflict may fall into this category. Much valuable work has been done at a micro level and I applaud the work of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, and bodies such as Tracks of Peace. The best efforts of President Clinton—and what US President has made as much effort on a particular foreign problem as he—and the shuttle diplomacy of Secretary of State Kerry failed even though there is, among most people of good will, a broad consensus over the outlines of a solution. Bottom up, yes, and top down. Solomon would no doubt have found a solution but, even if the effort is worth while, alas, our diplomats cannot find one.

Similarly in Cyprus—on which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, played a significant and excellent role—the broad lines of an agreement are clear in the Annan plan, but this is the Mediterranean, with all the passions of the Mediterranean, and even moderates such as President Anastasiades of the republic and Mr Akinci in the north, with strong personal chemistry, have failed to reach an agreement.

Further, it may be misplaced to seek reconciliation with some leaders. It would be impossible to seek reconciliation with a Hitler or a Pol Pot, however good one’s intentions. Think of the frozen conflicts around Europe, mostly the result of Russian adventurism in Georgia, Crimea, Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh, which defy the best international efforts at reconciliation.

There are, however, some signs of hope in the gloom, making a search for solutions worth while. I was co-founder and senior vice-president of a body called AWEPAA, the Association of West European Parliamentarians for Action against Apartheid, in which the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, of the Liberal Democrats, and my good and noble friend Lord Boateng played a significant part. For over a decade from 1984 I visited South Africa regularly, mostly under Church auspices. I recall in 1984 that whites were avidly reading Alistair Horne’s excellent work, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62, and fearing the worst. Horne had described how, after a number of terrorist outrages, the middle ground between the Muslim majority and the French minority collapsed, which led to a mass exodus to metropolitan France of the Pieds-Noirs as the infrastructure of Algeria was destroyed.

The whites in South Africa feared that this might also be their fate but, of course, as the white tribe, most of them had no homeland to return to. North of the Limpopo in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s policies of retribution led to economic collapse and political chaos, but in South Africa, south of the Limpopo, the middle ground largely stood firm. Christians such as Archbishop Tutu, Bishop Hurley, the South African Council of Churches and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference built bridges between black and white. Christians in this country such as Viscount Brentford of the Newick Park Initiative brought communities together.

Civic community organisations flourished, as my noble friend Lord Boateng knows very well personally. Individuals can make a difference for good or ill: a Mandela—Madiba—or a Mugabe. We should also remember that reconciliation can be dangerous. I recall the fate of the Afrikaner leader, Johan Heyns, the moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church. He invited Nelson Mandela to speak to the congress of his Church and for his pains was assassinated shortly after. I think of the poisoning of Frank Chikane, the head of the South African Council of Churches, and other Christians such as Dean Farisani. I criticised government policy at the time. It was labelled as constructive engagement, but it was a very one-sided engagement that often protected the apartheid state from international pressure. Eventually the release of Nelson Mandela avoided the temptation of retribution by the black majority.

I will make two brief final comments. We in the UK are not Norway or Canada, essentially soft-power exponents. We have at our disposal many instruments across the range in the form of first-rate military and intelligence skills, an experienced Diplomatic Service and a major aid programme. Let us also not forget the diaspora communities in our own country, which in my judgment are not used sufficiently. We have Tamils in terms of Sri Lanka and we have Kurds in terms of Iraq and Kurdistan.

Of course, as colleagues have said, we should not overlook the work of the British Council in the Middle East and over many years in South Africa, educating under apartheid. I was invited by the trade unions of the British Council to debate with Father Huddleston of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was a great man, but he was an absolutist. He had closed the Church schools in 1954 and he wanted to withdraw the British Council from South Africa as if he expected new black leaders to arise like Chinese terracotta soldiers after liberation. Happily, the unions of the British Council decided against him. We won the debate and the British Council stayed on to play a significant role.

I recall the words of the Prophet Micah in chapter eight: yes, we should walk humbly with our God, but what does the Lord also require of us but to seek justice and love mercy? Let us think of Archbishop Tutu’s justice and reconciliation committees. By all means let our government departments across the board seek reconciliation, but we should recognise the limits. More importantly for us is that our Government should search for justice to underpin that reconciliation. Finally, I would submit that without justice, efforts at reconciliation will be built on sand.