BeyondIntractability.org   BeyondIntractability.org
Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
   


Introduction: Is there a way to halt suicide bombings? Mari Fitzduff, the former Executive Director of Irish conflict resolution organization INCORE, and now a professor and the Director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis University, suggests that the violent way a conflict is waged often simply spawns new hatred. She talks about how conflict in Israel and Northern Ireland perpetuates itself.


This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Conflict Roots
Mari Fitzduff
Professor and Director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis University
Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

So it doesn't always work, but what we try and say, for instance is we would say in most of the guerilla groups it's almost impossible because it will keep popping up. You will probably rarely come to the end of suicide bombing in Israel and etc., simply because, as we know in many situations... Take Northern Ireland. The martyrs that develop around the grave become the next problem. Okay, you shoot a couple of perpetrators, and then they have developed their own mythology and the martyrdom becomes sort of an ethos. The myths just develop.

Q: It becomes separate from the initial causes of the conflict?

A: They can actually. This is why the work is incredibly important. We would talk, for instance, to the military and to the British embassies about importing skills to various places they're in, because often what the military is doing is actually counterproductive to what they want themselves. So you have the military creating people who are prepared to give their lives up to a cause. My own personal work showed that there was three reasons people became paramilitaries.

One was mother's milk stuff. It was in the family. That would be very much the Adams and McGuinness. They could not have been republicans, given the context and the people they were.

The second was very much an intervention with the local security forces or their folk being blown up by the IRA. All of these interventions often spawned a reaction, which actually of course increased the number of people who were prepared to use violence.

The third one was very much the male thing, particularly among the loyalists. Sort of the need for meaning, particularly for disenfranchised, unempowered young men.

 
It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person's feeling of self worth, even an opponent's. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation. -- Bernard Haring

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict
Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute
Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI)


Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability
A User's Guide for Third Siders
A User's Guide for Third Siders

The Third Side concept was developed by William Ury. Third Siders are people who try to see both sides of a conflict and encourage cooperative solutions, fair fights, and decision making that advocates solutions which meet everyone's interests and needs as much as possible.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Sean MacBride
Sean MacBride

Former President of the International Peace Bureau, former President of the Commission of Namibia, and 1974 Nobel Peace Laureate

Beyond Intractability Version IV
Copyright © 2003-2007 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact
University of Colorado at Boulder