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Conflict Research and Resolution: Cyprus

Authors:
  • The ARIA Group Inc.

Abstract

As the Cold War recedes and Europe moves into a new union, protracted ethnic conflicts raging around the world pose a major challenge to forging a more peaceful world order in the waning years of the twentieth century. The serious and fresh attention given to these conflicts may also provide valuable conceptual and practical tools for conflict management. This article describes a methodology used for conflict resolution training and intervention in the context of protracted ethnic conflicts, and its application to the Cyprus conflict as a vehicle for research. The methodology suggests that it may be fruitful if parties in conflict, or examinations of conflict, were able to systematically develop a variety of different ways of analyzing the conflict and posing solutions to it. Three different lenses for conflict analysis and management are suggested: adversarial, reflexive, and integrative.
Articulating Goals and Monitoring Progress
in a Cyprus Conflict Resolution Training
Workshop
!
(From Ross, Marc and Rothman, Jay (eds.) (1999)
London:
Macmillan Press)
Theory and Practice
in Ethnic Conflict Management: Theorizing Success and Failure
By Jay Rothman
Introduction
The long-standing conflict in Cyprus presents a unique opportunity for
the field of conflict resolution. For the past three decades, conflict
resolution experts and theorists have gone to the island of Cyprus with
two goals in mind: to attempt some progress in the long stalemate
between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and to simultaneously test and
refine theory and practice in the field. In effect, the conflict in Cyprus has
become an incubator for conflict resolution scholars as they apply their
skills to a relatively non-volatile but nonetheless deeply intransigent
conflict.
The intervention described in this chapter is distinguished from earlier
conflict resolution efforts by its scale and its "multi-track" nature
(MacDonald and Diamond, 1993). In 1994 over four months the
"Cyprus Conflict Resolution Consortium" conducted over 10 workshops
with hundreds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The goals and
backgrounds of the participants was varied: many were community
leaders committed to peaceful paths to peace and seeking an "infusion"
of new skills, connections, and inspiration; some were Fulbright students
studying for degrees in the U.S., and there were political leaders who
came with a mixture of open ears and great skepticism and resistance.
In this chapter I will describe and illustrate how as an action-researcher I
sought to help promote reflexive articulation of goals among and
between participants and facilitators, and to enhance the participants’
reflexive consideration of their experiences during a conflict resolution
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training workshop. An action-researcher has a double role--undertaking
systematic analysis while employing that analysis to enhance self-
conscious and effective practice by those being studied (see Lewin,
1951, Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988). Action-research as I employ it is a
reflexive process by which the subjects become their own objects of
study as participants study their own experience, facilitators their own,
and both each others. By reflexive I mean the experience of interactive
reflection by, in this case, participants and facilitators, about their
respective and shared goals and experiences in such a way that these
goals are refined and self-consciousness is promoted (see Rothman,
1997). This experience of playing the role of action-researcher in a
conflict where I had previously been a convener proved pivotal in the
development of an emerging conflict resolution evaluation methodology
called "action-evaluation" (see Rothman, 1997, 1998 and Chapter X).
In this chapter I will describe my first steps and the rationale in the
development of a systematic approach to goal setting and evaluation in
conflict resolution. This work which is part of a larger Pew Charitable
Trust sponsored research project on defining and measuring success in
conflict resolution, was operationalized initially as part of the "Cyprus
Conflict Resolution Consortium" intervention. I will chronicle my efforts
in this workshop to assist facilitators and participants in defining and
reflecting upon their own goals, designing activities consistent with them,
and promoting active and on-going reflexivity among workshop
participants about their experiences. Both of these activities are derived
from my own theories of practice as a conflict resolution theorist and
practitioner. I believe that much of the richest and most meaningful work
in our field comes when all parties involved in conflict resolution become
finely atuned to their own and each others’ values, assumptions and
goals. Indeed, one of the main goals of my own conflict resolution work
is to employ conflict as a vehicle for reflection among disputants and
facilitated learning by them about shared, unique and contrasting (or
opposed) goals, values, beliefs and so forth. In this way insight can be
fostered and action taken to ensure that those goals that disputants share
are embraced and acted upon, and that those concerns that are different
and unique or opposed are surfaced and agreements are reached about
what (constructively) to do about them (Rothman, 1992, 1997). In short,
that the level of self-consciousness is raised and tacit beliefs and
assumptions are converted into explicit commuications (see Polyani,
1966). This theory of practice guided my work in this intervention as I
switched roles from intervener to action-researcher.
I begin with a brief overview of the Cypriot conflict itself. Next I provide
some background for "Cyprus Conflict Resolution Consortium"
intervention, describing how Cyprus has long been, for better or worse,
international conflict resolution’s testing ground (see Mitchell Chapter 2).
Then I turn to describing how I worked with the group of interveners and
participants attempting to spell out goals and criteria of success in this
intervention. I also share some of the data generated in illustrative ways.
During this workshop, I experimented with several formats for gathering
and using data in an action-research design which integrated research and
practice. The first was asking all interveners and participants to articulate
their initial goals for the project, to say why they held them and how they
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hoped they might be accomplished. Next, in an effort to make research--
in this case as active, systematic reflection on goals and experiences--part
of participants’ practice, participants were guided through a process of
active self-reflection and on-line analysis of their own goals and
experiences. At the end of each day during the week-long workshop in
which I was involved, several Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot
participants volunteered to meet to summarize the important insights from
the day. They would then organize a presentation for the rest of the
group to be shared at the start of the next day’s workshop in the form of
poems, skits, presentations and journal entries. At the conclusion of the
workshop, after struggling with the best way to summarize and evaluate
what participants learned, we invited them write letters to themselves
which consisted of reflections on how their own goals changed from the
outset of the workshop, and what they felt they gained from their
participation. Finally, we attempted to convene a bi-communal research
team to conduct and analyze post-workshop data about success.
Overview of Conflict
It should be said about the brief summary of the conflict which follows,
that describing the history of protracted ethnic conflicts, like the one in
Cyprus, to the mutual satisfaction of all parties is about as difficult as
arbitrating an acceptable solution--which is to say, nearly impossible.
Each side’s own historical descriptions of such conflicts are loaded with
diametrically different interpretations of past and future. If there is any
historical fact about such conflicts, it is perhaps best found in the
intersubjective meanings that may be discovered in exploring the separate
interpretations each party has about the conflict--its definition, causes,
and possible solutions.
[Ruled for centuries by the Ottomon Empire, Cyprus later became part of
the British Empire until independence in 1960...] While various parties
trace the origins of the Cyprus conflict differently, its modern expression
may be most clearly marked by the uneasy founding of the Republic of
Cyprus in 1960. While representatives of both the Greek and Turkish
Cypriot communities signed the agreements Great Britain, Greece, and
Turkey hammered out the year before, they had not participated in the
negotiations and had no direct say in the political arrangements for the
island. Three years after independence, an uneasy power-sharing
relationship between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots broke
down. As Wolfe writes:
From its creation the new regime showed all the signs of
succumbing to immobility. In the cabinet, Greek Cypriot
ministers accused their Turkish Cypriot colleagues of
obstructionism, and the latter retorted that the government
circumvented them. The failure to establish constitutionally
mandated separate municipalities in the five largest towns
brought about the final deadlock, which [President]
Makarios sought to resolve in November 1963 through the
introduction of constitutional amendments that proved
unacceptable to both the Turkish Cypriots and to
Turkey....Civil war erupted (Wolfe (1986: 110).
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Tension and hostilities between the communities continued on the island
until 1974 when the leaders of an extreme Greek military faction
threatened to annex the island, which in response prompted Turkish
military intervention. The result was a war followed by the division of
the island into two zones one controlled by the Greek Cypriots in the
south and one by the Turkish Cypriots in the north, and the transfer of
people out of areas in which they were a minority. In 1983, the Turkish
Cypriot legislative assembly established the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus, a status Greek Cypriots immediately rejected as illegal,
and to this day Turkey is the only government which recognizes this
fledgling state. Since 1974 repeated attempts to launch meaningful
negotiations have ended in stalemate as each community remains
steadfast on its mutually exclusive position--the Greek Cypriot demand
for a return to a unified state, and Turkish Cypriot insistence on the
creation of two separate federated states. The current situation leaves the
island partitioned along an East-West axis known as the "Green Line."
The Turkish Cypriot territory makes up 37 percent of the island, and is
defended by some 35,000 troops from mainland Turkey. A UN
peacekeeping force controls abuffer zone between it and the Greek
Cypriot population, and movement across the "green line" by Greek and
Turkish Cypriots is greatly restricted (Coughlan, 1992).
Conflict Resolution Efforts in Cyprus
For as long as Cyprus has been divided, outside parties have sought to
contribute to conflict resolution there. Dozens of workshops have been
run with participants from at all sectors of society--grass roots,
professional and political. The first workshop was run in 1964 by some
of today’s leading figures in the field of conflict resolution--including
Chris Mitchell, Herbert Kelman, Roger Fisher, and others (see Chapter
2). This workshop, like many in Cyprus that would follow, in effect
became a testing ground for conflict resolution scholars as they guided
discussions between high level but non-official representatives of the
disputing parties in an attempt to engage in "controlled communication"
(Burton, 1969). Since then, many others have sought a peaceful
resolution of this conflict, including Leonard Doob from Yale University,
Ronald Fisher from the University of Saskatchewan, myself, and most
recently, Louise Diamond of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy and
Diana Chigas of the Conflict Management Group, under a major grant
from US-AID. I believe these attempts by conflict resolution practitioners
have had a mutually positive influence: the often academic third parties
have gained invaluable hands-on experience in a complex conflict
situation and the recipients have gained important insights, meaninful
interactions with colleagues from across the green line, and often
emotionally cathartic experiences constructively recalling profound
political and emotional traumas dating back to the war of 1974 and
before. However, the challenge facing all of these efforts has been
making the transfer from the internal or educational affect, to external or
political change.
On the other hand while most of these efforts have been well managed
and at least internally meaningful for the participants, some of the
academic-interveners have erred badly, or at least that is the perception in
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Cyprus, on the side of "testing" and have given all interventions a bad
name. Some five years ago as I was researching the conflict on the
island, I was pointedly told by one person I met: "Some years ago one of
your ilk ran a so-called 'conflict resolution' workshop with us, promised
confidentiality and then proceeded to write a biased and harmful article
about the situation. He should have called it a ‘conflict escalation’
workshop." While research like this can indeed lead to conflict escalation
if perceived as biased or if confidentiality is broken; if done thoughtfully,
conflict resolution research can also become a useful tool for constructive
change. This can occur when an inclusive process of articulating goals
takes place with full input from participants, through engaging them in
reflecting upon and telling their own stories about their hopes for
reconciliation and peacemaking and how the specific conflict resolution
activity they are engaged in may contribute (see Rothman, 1991).
Moreover, by helping participants engage in "research" about their goals
for and experience in a conflict resolution effort while it is underway, that
experience can become more integrated into participants own
experiences and "action-learning" (Morgan and Ramirez, 1984).
Hopefully, so goes the theory of practice behind many conflict resolution
workshop type interventions, as participants in such micro-experiences
internalize and become self conscious about such insights such that they
can explain them to others, upon "re-entry" to their personal and political
lives "back home," they may facilitate a transfer new ideas for peaceful
change to the general population or to policy elite (see Fisher, 1996).
This "spillover effect" may then help to foster an environment conducive
to problem solving and negotiation (see Kelman, 1992).
This kind of interactive research process is all the more important when it
comes to the sensitive and potentially loaded issue of evaluation. No one
wants someone looking over their shoulder while engaged in delicate on-
line work, especially if they feel they may be poorly evaluated for any
"mistakes" or decisions. Moreover, determining what makes a conflict
resolution initiative successful is in itself a daunting task. To date there is
no agreed-upon standard for what constitutes success (internal, external
or both) in ethnic conflict resolution and accordingly, evaluation in this
context is akin to shooting at a moving target. Therefore, in addition to
interveners’ sensitivities about evaluation, how can outside evaluators do
their job in good faith if standards for success are so lacking? Thus while
the need for effective evaluation is so evident in conflict resolution,
carrying it out is often stymied. Only when criteria for success have been
richly articulated and agreed upon first and foremost by those conducting
and participating in conflict resolution efforts, will it be really possible to
evaluate them effectively. Thus, we have pioneered a method, first
foreshaddowed in this Cyprus workshop, to encourage people within
projects to systematically and interactively articulate their goals and
criteria for success. These goals as internal criteria-of-success are then
used to guide projects as well as provide standards, as these goals evolve
and are monitored, for evaluation.
The Cyprus Conflict Resolution Consortium and Action-Evaluation
The Cyprus Conflict Resolution Consortium’s intervention which is my
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focus here was a week long workshop held in Ledra Palace, an old
luxury hotel (now in a decrepit state), in the middle of the no-man’s land
patrolled by UN peacekeeping forces. It brought together forty
community-based representatives of the two sides (i.e. teachers, lawyers,
bureaucrats, artists, activists, and so forth) who are divided by the neutral
zone and thus have had virtually no contact since the island was
partitioned during the 1974 war. This workshop was part of the
Consortium’s larger project aimed at helping community and political
leaders on each side find ways to reach across the divide. In developing a
strategy of action-evaluation, I gathered data on workshop goals and
reflections on them in four ways during the week-long session which I
now describe. At the same time it should be clear that while I describe
various goals the parties established, the data we collected do not speak
to the question of the extent to which either the participants’ or
interveners’ goals were actually met.
. It should be noted that the data presented below is part of a
total "action evaluation" process (see Rothman, 1998) of using goals to
help various stakeholders in conflict resolution initiatives articulate
success and then compare, monitor and finally assess it within and across
their groups (e.g. conveners, participants, funders, etc.). When this
Cyprus workshop was conducted, however, it was still very early in the
evolution of action evaluation and in this case the main purpose and use
of goal articulation was to encourage the various individuals and
stakeholding groups involved to be explicit and self-conscious about their
goals. The full action-evaluation process is designed to articulate and
analyze shared goals, unique goals and contrasting goals within and
across different stakeholding groups. This analysis is then fed back to
intervention organizers as they plan next steps in an intervention and
attempt to design a process which is responsive to the goals and
motivations of as many stakeholders as possible. It also provides a
baseline for agreements about success that can be used to monitor the
project, watch as goals evolve from this baseline and ultimately use
evolved goals as internally agreed upon standards for assessment.!
Goal-Setting
In order to determine internal criteria for evaluating success, it was
necessary to first develop a baseline of the participants’ and interveners’
goals. What were their general and specific objectives for involvement in
conflict resolution and in this particular initiative? What did the different
parties think about their initial and evolving goals and the extent to which
they had been met when they had an opportunity to revisit their goals
throughout the workshop and in the months following it.
An immediate end to violence and the promotion of peace are only the
most superficial (or grandiose) and often not very realistic of goals for
small-scale workshops in bitter conflict situations such as Cyprus. To
understand conflict resolution in theory and practice, a much more
nuanced view about the nature of success and how those engaged in
such initiatives define and track it is required. As an action-evaluator, I
sought to play a double role: a somewhat detached observer who would
write about the goals guiding the intervention, but also an engaged
researcher whose observations would have a positive and immediate
impact on the ongoing intervention design of my colleagues. In the latter
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role, I sought to promote a self-consciousness about evolving
motivations, insight and goals among all involved--interveners and
participants alike. My hope was admittedly very ambitious and surely
only attainable in part: that this process would help raise the level of
learning to that of deep inquiry in which everyone involved would
continously reflect upon and discuss their respective and shared
experiences and insights. My goal was to promote a workshop
environment of collaborative self-study to encourage ownership and mid-
course corrections of the design which would most fully reflect the
analysis and evolving goals of participants as well as the abilities and
insights of the interveners.
During a preparation meeting for trainers and researchers the day before
the workshop, the trainers and I collaboratively designed a research
instrument for the articulation of goals that would serve as part of the
training itself. We agreed that at the start of the workshop participants
and trainers would be asked to interview each other in pairs about their
own goals for the workshop.
Prior to the start of the Cyprus initiative, a meeting for
many of the third parties and researchers involved was held in
Washington DC to set an agenda. We broke into the various groups
represented in this complex "partnering" effort: The Institute for Multi-
Track Diplomacy (IMTD), Conflict Management Group (CMG),
Researchers, and National Training Labs (NTL). While each of these
organizations has engaged in conflict resolution in bitter ethnic conflicts,
it is also the case that the style and focus of each is distinct. Thus, there
are a number of similarities and differences between the sponsoring
organizations which may be seen in the goal statements the team
members of each of the group’s offered in the Washington meeting.
Through a process of having all members of each group together
articulate their goals (in terms of what, why and how), we then analyzed
these goals in terms of shared, unique and opposing concerns. Below are
goals regarding what each of the teams sought to accomplish, followed
by the subgroup of goals shared by two or more of the groups:
Trainers' Goals.
Conflict Management Group
To expand participants’ competency and understanding; to be self-
conscious of the extent to which what we present is laden with values; to
understand the Cyprus conflict better and assist parties empowering them
with capacity to catalyze change, appreciate differences, and engage in
dialogue; and to produce a precedent for interventions in other conflicts.
Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy
To further world peace and nourish those seeking peace in Cyprus by
bringing the communities together; to increase awareness and skills of
participants; to build trust and confidence among participants; to build a
critical mass of people in two communities for peace building; and
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toestablish a conflict resolution center in Cyprus.
The National Training Lab
To understand basic theories of dispute resolution and develop new skills
at using and adapting theories in individual behavior; to be active
teachers, learning with the participants; to help build and maintain a
creative team of interveners; and to leave in place a competent, goal-
directed, and highly motivated bi-communal team of Cypriots.
Shared Goals
All: To increase participants' skills and understanding ("competent and
goal-directed;" "empowering them with capacity to catalyze change,
appreciate differences and engage in dialogue;" "nourish those seeking
peace").
IMTD/NTL: Building critical mass of people in two communities for
peace building.
The usefulness of this process is multiple. First of all just the process of
articulating goals in advance of intervention, can give conveners the
opportunity to really think through their plans carefully and cooperatively
before the intervention itself. Secondly, exploring the goals which the
various convening bodies share and do not share can provide them with
the opportunity to clarify what they separately and together want to
accomplish which can help both with internal team building and further
contribute to effective and coherent design. Finally, establishing a
baseline of goals like this early in a process can provide a point of
departure for monitoring how goals evolve and can contribute to visions
of success which can later be used as standards to assess the achievement
of success.
Having helped conveners to articulate and compare their goals, when the
workshop took place some six months later we also devised an opening
process whereby the participant too would articulate their goals.
. After introductions in the plenary session, we broke
the 40 particpants into pairs (it was their choice who to pair with, some
stayed within national groups others went across them), and they
interviewed each other about their goals and motivations in coming to the
workshop, their prior commitments to peacemaking, but also talked about
each others’ resistances. These revealed goals such as: respecting each
other, learning, communication, self awareness, collaboration,
participation in bi-communal projects, as well as fears such as: the time
commitment involved, speaking totally openly with those on the other
side, the need to accept that the "other" is not mostly to blame, and go
public about the experiences
Participants' Goals
.
Each person was then asked, to write down his or her personal goals for
the workshop. Some evoked deep feelings about the conflict and a desire
to find new ways to address it. For example, one eloquent participant
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wrote:
My first goal is to learn new techniques about human
relations. This will lead me to a new and open view as an
actor and a leader in society. Second, I want to express
myself and my society's needs to the other society [Greek
Cypriots] and I would like feedback to see if the other side
understands what I am trying to say to this small group of
people. Thirdly, I want peace. I want to talk about our future
not about the past. I want to make people look forward, not
back. I want to be able to tell my family that I believe
brilliant days will soon come.
Using all 200 goal statements from the participants (such as this one in
which four discreet goals statements were "extracted": 1. learn new
techniques for human relations; 2. express myself and my community’s
needs to the other community; 3. be understood; 4. promote peace in
Cyprus.), we then categorized them thematically into groups which had
at least three similar goal statements in each. Once they had been
grouped together with at least three similar goal statements, we then
named the common theme they shared.
Participants Goals
Increasing our sense of hope and empowerment about the
situation.
Increasing self-awareness about our own and each others
perceptions and attitudes about each other and the conflict.
Gaining new understanding, empathy and trust for the other
side.
Aquiring conflict resolution skills.
Learning to deal effectively with resistance or opposition to
cooperative efforts between Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-
Cypriot communities.
Gaining and promoting new vision about the conflict and
how to solve it.
Designing bicommunal projects.
Helping to resolve the Cyprus conflict.
Sharing insights from this training project with others.
These goals were then presented back to the group as those which we
found shared across at least three or more of them and were also
presented to the convener team in the hope that it would contribute to
their on-line processing and on-going desing of the workshop.
. As ongoing research was introduced in this
workshop as part of practice, we sought to include participants in
continual analysis about and reflection on their experience. In addition to
general discussions about what went well and what could be improved at
the end of each day, we also recruited two Greek-Cypriot and two
Turkish-Cypriot volunteers to meet after the workshop, to write
separately on a question such as "Compare and contrast your feelings
Daily Debriefings
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from yesterday and today." and, "What have we gained from this
experience, and what are our hopes and fears as we return to our home,
workplace and communities?", and then to meet in the evening and
combine their responses in a formal to be presented at the start of the next
day’s session.
Following a very emotional session around half-way through the
workshop in which each side told its own "story" we focused on the
following question "As my experience was expressed and the other side
heard and absorbed it, how did that effect me?" Two participants wrote
and interwove letters to each other about this experience and shared this
to the whole group the next morning. This experience of having
representatives of the two communities work together to articulate their
shared, unique and possibly contrasting experiences and perceptions was
a means of raising the level of all participants’ ongoing and deepening
ownership of and reflection on the workshop.
Reflections
What a striking feeling... No sleep, no rest... We both left the
Saturday meeting very upset, annoyed, fearful, unsettled...
What had just happened? Such tension, such violence, not
even eye-contact... Both communities had to talk about and
then present their own human drama. We spent a couple of
hours discussing and arguing about what the issues were
and how to present them... The content was burning all of
our essence to actually see that a lot of voices were lost, a lot
of resources not used, and a lot of energy wasted. At times,
arrogance took over and the voice of the heart could not be
heard.
Not surprisingly, the way the two groups worked reflected
shared culture of the two communities. However, during the
presentation a different mode evolved. The Turkish Cypriots
started by expressing a lot of pain through their personal
experiences whereas the Greek Cypriots expressed a lot of
anger. Here is some of our reflections of both presentations:
***
"How much we brought to this room as Turkish Cypriots:
pain death, blood..humiliation... and it is wonderful to still
have hope to push for the resolution of our conflict. I
wonder whether Greek Cypriot compatriots thought we
were "exaggerating" whether they can understand our true
feelings... We are going deep now"
"As a Greek Cypriot, this is how I felt as I listened to the
Turkish Cypriot presentation: I don’t know what
happened... I’m sorry that you are in such pain... I didn’t
realize that you are so much hurt... What can I do? I hope
nobody hurts you like that again. I’m really sorry. I heard a
lot of anger in the presentation by my compatriots, a
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different kind of pain than before. Pain with anger... I
wonder why ... I don’t know what to do... Does the other
group feel that we have pain? What is their experience
listening to us?"
"As a Turkish Cypriot, this was how I felt after listening to
the Greek Cypriot presentation: How much injustice there is
in the thinking and convictions of people... Only 4 out of 16
had respect for the Turkish Cypriot community as a whole.
Most of them did not acknowledge the experience of
Turkish Cypriots during 1963. Most did not deal with the
reasons of the conflict, but with the symptoms and the
consequences..."
***
After all this explosion of feelings and opening of wounds,
what else was left but to go home without even saying
good-bye... Most of us couldn’t sleep, and kept on
scratching wounds, only to create more pain... In the
morning, we brought our bleeding wounds into the same
room to see what would happen next. On Sunday we
practiced how to listen, appreciate, paraphrase and express
our own view. A difficult but powerful process. How hard
is it to express appreciation for a view that you don’t
actually share... Even harder it is to get rid of your ears,
forget they are there and listen with your eyes, those eyes
look into the heart... Will that make a difference? Will it
bring any solution... We don’t know... We can’t make any
promises. However, we saw the group transforming by
internalizing a deeper understanding of who the other is.
Gradually, some of the pain and frustration gave way to a
new possibility of understanding.
. At the conclusion of the workshop, I had planned to
ask each participant to revisit their original goals for the workshop and
evaluate their "satisfaction" with how each of them specifically had been
met or evolved. Along with the trainers, however, I decided to look for a
more organic way to further track and monitor participants’ goals that
would deepen their own learning and insight in addition to providing
data on the changes that had taken place in the workshop. I therefore
decided to ask each participant to write a letter to themselves in whatever
format seemed appropriate which reflect on their original goals in light of
the workshop experience. A number of participants commented that this
was a useful exercise in summarizing their experience to themselves and
they found it even more meaningful several weeks later when their letter
arrived at their door and the experience of the workshop was vividly
reawakened.
Letters to Myself
Dramatist that he is, the same person who wrote the narrative excerpted
in the section above under "participants’ goals," wrote about a journey
that began poorly but ended well. In this letter, a prototype of the
reflexively rich narratives that were written by the participants, by way of
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reflection on his own goals, the author wrote allegorically, both about the
Cyprus conflict and its negative hold over him and about his involvement
in this workshop and the changes it wrought within him.
"
Dear Me,
How do you feel? I feel well now. If you ask me the
weather here; well, I think the freezing days have already
past and the spring came at last.
I had a bitter experience at the first day. Everywhere was
dark, cold and I was frightened. I tried to light a fire but I
had no lighters. I looked for matches and I found out that my
matches were wet in my pocket. I tried to find a secure, non
windy corner, but wind was flowing everywhere. I was
almost hopeless. I could see thunder and lighting through an
open hall window. I was cold, wet, and frightened.
I needed a warm chest to put my head on, but I couldn’t. I
then lay down on the floor and started to recover myself by
my own spirit and energy of life. I breathed and breathed.
On the second day, the wind was not so strong (somehow).
I discovered that I was rolling on the floor with the waving
of the waves. I discovered that I was in a ship. An ancient
ship which was as old as the history of the human being! I
rolled onto someone’s arm. I heard a voice. I searched with
my hands. I was afraid to get up. Afraid of stepping on
someone’s body. And I was afraid of being stepped on. I
touched to someone’s face. I tried to realize how he would
look like. I felt someone’s hands on my face, beard, neck
and all the rest of my body. It was not friendly, it was not
dangerous. I then tried to catch the hand. I held it. I saw the
thunder through the window. We started to walk together,
holding each other’s hands.
The other day we reached to the window. Another thunder
lightened my other’s face. I saw pain, I saw tears, I saw
wounds on it. It was a crying baby doll! The next day after
yesterday I kicked to the window. I kept on kicking the
window for a year. That was not enough. I kept on kicking
for the past twenty--thirty--thirty-nine years. I with a baby
doll in my hand. I feel dawn on a boat. Suddenly I realized
that the wind was not strong and the waves were not so high
I could hardly see now. I now was a baby with a doll and
alone on a boat. In fact there was no wind, no waves. I was
shaking the boat rushing from here to there.
The day after...
I am hopeful. It’s already sunrising time. I started to climb
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on the mast.
Sincerely yours,
Me
Having systematically gathered goals before,
during, and at the end of the workshop, we hoped to track the impact of
workshop and devised a follow-up questionnaire based on the goal
categories the participants had generated at the beginning of the
workshop and sent to participants nine months after the intervention. The
Cypriot research team, made up of volunteers from both sides of the
island, asked all participants about the extent to which they felt the
workshop had helped them attain the goals in each of the ten categories.
The team asked all 40 to fill out a questionnaire concerning the extent to
which they felt the workshop had helped the to gain "insight/skills/tools."
Apparently due to a host of logistical problems confronting the research
team as it tried to do follow-up research on the divided island where
contact across the two sides is severely circumscribed proved too difficult
to surmount. Only 18 (and, worse, only three from Turkish Cypriots)
were been collected so it is not possible to say much about the
substantive impact of the workshop. While this was the most
unsuccessful part of this action-research project, I nonetheless wanted to
briefly mention the effort as at least in principal it seems like it could be
an effective way to longitudinally track workshop "success" based on the
goals and standards for success that the participants (and other
stakeholders) themselves articulated and which were, more or less, used
to guide the intervention itself.
Longitudinal Analysis.
Conclusion
The larger theory of practice beneath this process of systematic
articulation and monitoring of goals by key stakeholders in conflict
resolution interventions is that in through process internal goals of
participants will become aligned and external goals for their positive
effect on the wider conflict system shared. That is, for example, were
conveners and participations to richly share goals for their activity
together, they could soon become team players in pursuing them.
Further, in being on the same team, as it were, in terms of their activities
with each other, conveners and participants could at some point turn their
shared energies to determining how best to generalize their learning and
progress beyond the micro-intervention to the larger social and political
arena. In this essay, however, only the initial activity of developing
shared and explicit goals was demonstrated.
Morever, while indeed this experiment in goal articulation did have a
noticeable and I believe salutory effect on the Cyprus workshop
described, the main benefit of this action-research project was not so
much in what it contributed to it, or in the micro-analysis of a specific
intervention that it enabled, but rather as a pilot-test for a new
methodology. It illustrated for the way goal articulation and self-
consciousness about workshop goals and experiences for facilitators and
participants can be fruitfully and fairly unobtrusively woven into the
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specific workshop design. More broadly this action-experiment became a
central experience in the evolution of "Action-Evaluation," a research
methodology used for developing, monitoring, and tracking goals as a
vehicle for establishing criteria of success (described in the concluding
chapter of this book). This workshop proved pivotal in the development
of action-evaluation for two reasons. First it showed how rich goal
articulation can be and how organically it can be woven into actual
intervention and training work. Secondly, it demonstrated the need for a
more systematic means of gathering, organizing and analyzing the very
rich data that can be generated by having individuals and groups in
conflict resolution efforts articulate and reflect upon their goals at various
stages in interventions. Once again, for better and perhaps for worse, the
Cyprus conflict has proved to be an invaluable resource for the
development of conflict resolution theory and practice. Hopefully the
field of conflict resolution has done half as much for Cyprus as Cyprus
has done for conflict resolution.
References
Argyris, Chris, et. al. (1985).
. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Action-Science: Concepts, Methods, and
Skills for Research and Intervention
James H. Wolfe, "A Historical Review of the Dispute." In Diane B.
Bendahmane and John W. McDonald (eds.),
Washington, D.C.:
Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, 1986.
Perspectives on
Negotiation, Four Case Studies and Interpretations
MacDonald, John and Diamond, Louise, (1993)
The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Washington, DC.
Multi-Track Diplomacy
Lewin, Kurt, (1948). "Action Research and Minority Problems." In K.
Lewin, (G. Lewin, ed.) New York: Harper
and Row.
Resolving Social Conflicts
Polyani, Michael (1966). . New York: Doubleday.The Tacit Dimension
Coughlan, Reed (1992). "The Cyprus Problem..."
Rothman, Jay (1992). From Confrontation to Cooperation: Resolving
Ethnic and Regional Conflict. Newberry Park, CA.: Sage.
Rothman, Jay (1997). Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations,
Organizations and Communities. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Rothman, Jay (1997). "Action-Evaluation Methodology and Conflict
Resolution Training."
Journal of International Negotiation, Winter.
Rothman, Jay (1998). "Action-Evaluation and Conflict Resolution in
Theory and Practice." Mediation Quarterly, Spring.
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About Us News Method In Print Projects Success Stories The
ARIA Group Questionnaire
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... At the same time, there is a very extensive source base devoted to the analysis of the Cyprus conflict and the search for ways to resolve it [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Political science studies of the role of personality in Cypriot politics are mainly focused on the first President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios. ...
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This book examines the ideological and socio-political discourses shaping the remembrance and representation of Britain and the Cyprus conflict of 1974 within Greek Cypriot society. By combining the official with the popular and drawing on an extensive range of oral history interviews, this monograph shows that a suspicion born out of Britain's long (neo-)colonial connection to Cyprus has come to frame the image and understanding of British actions associated with the events, and lasting consequences, of 1974. Indeed, with the island of Cyprus still divided, and the requirement to remember a national imperative, this book has a direct contemporary relevance. However, within the existent literature, while much has been written about the political roots of the Cyprus conflict, no study has yet sought to systematically analyse and understand the influences shaping the history and memory of British actions on Cyprus in 1974. One defined by the existence of 'partitionist' conspiracies, collusive accusations and a series of memory distortions which continue to resonate strongly irrespective of the evidence that is now available. As such, by analysing the influences shaping the image of Britain in 1974, one can begin to understand in ever greater detail the Anglo-Greek Cypriot relationship in a modern context.
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Purpose This paper aims to explain how peace research has influenced a re-conceptualization of the international relations (IR) notion of security and conflict, the nature of the global arena, how to effectively negotiate conflict resolution and strategies for peacebuilding. The paper argues that – although peace research had contributed to reducing the threat of interstate conflict – IR scholars have failed to recognize the need for a more inclusive theoretical strategy for dealing with the new challenge imposed by intrastate conflict. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses Cyprus as a case to compare the conflict management strategies of the liberal peace agenda and the integrative, multi-level, multi-dimensional approach to peacebuilding that is proposed by peace research. The Cyprus case is also used as an example of how the alternative approach to participatory political communication has moved the Cyprus situation off deadlock and in the direction of more promising outcomes. Findings The research reveals that although the liberal peace agenda (i.e. the state-centric and established diplomatic approach to conflict management) is effective in getting the two sides of the conflict to the negotiating table, it is inadequate in addressing the underlying cause of conflict; thus, in many instances, there is a reoccurrence of conflict and violence. Research limitations/implications The paper is limited in its ability to place peace research within the context of theoretical developments in the field of IR (e.g. this is even more-so true in regard to researching international politics). Although peace research has made enormous contributions in reducing the threat of interstate conflict (e.g. it is acknowledged that peace research contributed to ending the Cold War, thus bringing about new perspectives on how the global arena is defined, the nature of conflict and the role of communicative action in global relations), there has not been a corresponding development in the theory and practice of IR. Practical implications The paper explains how recent developments in communication theory and information communication technology have altered the nature of the global arena and the factors impacting global social movements. Thus, the paper indicates factors that are vital to cross-border interactions, cross-border social movements and alternative approaches to interstate social-political activities that deserve further research. Social implications The research analyzes the contribution to participatory political communication in conflict management, reconciliation and peacebuilding processes. The paper also highlights the role of alternative media as a component of the infrastructure for peace (e.g. in the Cyprus context, it provides a forum in which agents from an otherwise divided community can participate in establishing shared values and common objectives). Originality/value Cyprus represents one of the longest running conflicts and, in addition, one of the longest running peacekeeping missions of the UN. This paper explains how unique features of the peace research approach to peacebuilding contributes to producing more positive results in what has heretofore been a deadlock in the divided community of Cyprus. Thus, this paper provides an indication of how the lessons learned by peace researchers in the Cyprus micro context contribute to addressing macro-level IR challenges (e.g. north-south and east-west challenges that occur because of outlooks in the proverbial other).
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This article discusses the use of action-evaluation in conflict resolution assessment as a way to unite theory and practice, helping all stakeholders articulate and reach their goals. A systematic plan for evaluation can both satisfy evaluative requirements and also significantly enhance program effectiveness. Action-evaluation, as defined here, is designed to facilitate and merge effective program design, implementation, and monitoring with evaluation. It is supported by user-friendly research tools, including a computer-based and interactive goal definition process intended to help project organizers, facilitators, participants, and sometimes funders interactively define their shared goals in order to better achieve them.
Perspectives on Negotiation, Four Case Studies and Interpretations MacDonald
  • James H Wolfe
James H. Wolfe, "A Historical Review of the Dispute." In Diane B. Bendahmane and John W. McDonald (eds.), Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, 1986. Perspectives on Negotiation, Four Case Studies and Interpretations MacDonald, John and Diamond, Louise, (1993) The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Washington, DC. Multi-Track Diplomacy
From Confrontation to Cooperation: Resolving Ethnic and Regional Conflict
  • Jay Rothman
Rothman, Jay (1992). From Confrontation to Cooperation: Resolving Ethnic and Regional Conflict. Newberry Park, CA.: Sage.
Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations, Organizations and Communities
  • Jay Rothman
Rothman, Jay (1997). Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations, Organizations and Communities. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.