decision that we couldn’t deal with Arafat; he was a lost cause; and the Palestinian Authority had to be re-formed. By June, the United States made that position clear. Unless the Palestinian Authority was re-formed, and somebody other than Arafat was in charge, we weren’t going to do business.
Meanwhile, one of my daughters was about to be married, and I wanted to return home for her wedding. When nobody came up with objections, I prepared to leave, promising to return if needed. I left on the fifteenth of April.
For the next year, the process went nowhere. I remained under the contract with State Department; but it was clear the administration wouldn’t call on me again.
I did meet with Israelis and Palestinians on a number of occasions, especially at IGCC sessions in Brussels and Athens in the months after my departure. Each time I was asked when I would return. I had to answer, sadly, that I doubted that I would be sent back.
On March 1, 2003, I resigned my position with the State Department. It was pointless to remain under contract and keep the title of Special Advisor to the Secretary of State knowing that I wouldn’t be called upon again. By then, concerns I had voiced about the impending Iraq war made me persona non grata with the administration.
What could we have done that was different?
For starters, there should not have been another special envoy. The expectations and media attention become a detriment to progress with a high-visibility envoy. Also, it was time to get away from personalities. We needed worker bees.
Second, and more broadly, what we were trying to do was take that very small match, light a very narrow fuse, and hope it burned evenly all the way along. We were trying to construct peace by taking sequential steps along a path. Everything hinged not only on the sequence but on each very fragile and vulnerable step. All the focus went on these steps — media, people, leaders. And it’s all too easy to disrupt. Too easy to break. Too easy to attack. And peace fails.
What we need to do instead is put a large delegation on the ground, with a political component, a security component, an economic component, and a monitoring component. The delegation should come from the United States, the Quad, and any others from the international community that we can interest in the process. We should light a thousand fires instead of one fuse with one match. We need to find small positive actions, tiny cooperative measures. We need to go into towns like Jericho, where there aren’t many problems, and start some projects. We also need to start some joint model projects — a joint economic project here, a security arrangement there. While we continue trying to build on the Tenet/Mitchell plans or the President’s “Roadmap to Peace” (which was put forward in June 2002 and covers much the same territory), we’ll have other things generating activity, and giving a sense of momentum or progress to build hope. This is all going to be slow, but it will also go forward on a broad front. It’ll get there in time.
Third, the Palestinian Authority must be re-formed. But those that step up to the challenge like Abu Mazen and Abu Ala’a have to be given support and clout. This can only come from tangible U.S. support for them and from serious negotiations with them by the Israeli leadership.
ACEH
My involvement with the HDC as one of their Wise Men did not cease during my time in the Middle East.
During the first week of February 2002, we held a session in Geneva with representatives of the government of Indonesia and the GAM. The government of Indonesia’s chief representative was retired Ambassador Wiryono and the GAM’s chief representatives were Dr. Zaini Abdullah and Malik Haythar Mohmood. These negotiators were civil and cooperative. I did not see the kinds of theatrical outbursts I had seen in the Middle East; I had a sense that each wanted a successful and peaceful resolution to the issues.
Still, it was a tough meeting with intense negotiating periods. The two sides and the HDC mediators made considerable use of the Wise Men — in addition to me: Surin Pitsuwan, Budamir Loncur, Lord Eric Avebury. These brilliant and experienced statesmen added a great deal to the negotiations. Each negotiating party called on us to provide advice on developing issues and recommendations on constructing points for agreement. We were most effective when discussions hit an impasse and needed a “push.”
The Wise Men were also joined by an additional pair of outside experts in the art of negotiating, who provided valuable insights on procedure and processes.
This new approach (designed by the Henri Dunant Centre) of bringing in multiple parties beyond the traditional three has caused me to look hard at other nontraditional approaches to conflict resolution. This is a critical area that must have a great deal more study and development.
The Aceh process went through several steps.
The first session was aimed at achieving an agreement to accept the political process and get a cease-fire. Though this was far from easy (for all the reasons and issues discussed earlier), we got that.
In the second session we worked with the government to persuade them to make an offer on special autonomy, and then to draft a proposal. Once that had been achieved, we worked with the GAM to get them to understand it.
The third session put together what we called a cessation of hostilities agreement, which was the mechanism through which they would turn this into a political and a peaceful process.
The February meeting ended with the parties signing an agreement titled “Points for Further Consideration.” This was an agreement to continue to meet and a commitment to a peaceful resolution to the problems in Aceh. This was progress. I had learned that signing meant commitment.
We met again in early May outside Geneva, with much larger delegations from both sides, in a beautiful Alpine Swiss estate offered to us as a venue to provide privacy (there was growing press interest). It was an environment conducive to constructive negotiations.
This session produced a more substantive agreement to cease hostilities and pursue a political process to resolve differences. We Wise Men earned our keep — struggling with precise wording of the agreement that would satisfy each party.
All was not sweetness and light, however. I sensed a major roadblock that would later on prove fatal.
The government had proposed a political process with elections; but these elections did not include independence as an option. In the government’s view, the GAM would be no more than one political organization among others that might represent the people in the context of special autonomy.
The GAM leadership could not live with that. They could not bring themselves to publicly disavow their aspirations for independence. The best they could do was accept a nonviolent political process, with elections at the end, that allowed the people to decide whether to accept the government’s offer of special autonomy or opt for independence.
This was a serious impasse, with Jakarta pressing GAM to formally disavow independence as a goal, and GAM refusing to take that step. (They could not even tacitly accept special autonomy without formally acknowledging it, knowing with certainty that independence was not in the cards.)
All that aside, the agreement for a process and a cessation of hostilities was enough to move forward. It seemed to me that if independence didn’t become an immediate issue, we might resolve the block down the road through further negotiations.
Special autonomy was itself no small matter, from the government’s point of view. It set a precedent that could cause problems with other provinces (which is why hard-liners in the government continued to want to resolve the issue with greater military force). Meanwhile, the moderates, headed by the Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, worked to convince President Megawati to accept this peaceful measure.
As the session closed, the mood was upbeat and positive; and I hoped we could sidestep the independence
