Facilitating dialogue in conflict zones

I’ve got a book out co-edited with David Smock on Facilitating Dialogue:  USIP’s Work in Conflict Zones. For an easy intro, you can try my recent appearance on Voice of America.

This is no coffee-table crusher but rather a slim 170-page compilation of case studies from the last 13 years or so.  It includes two chapters on dialogues in Iraq (Mahmoudiya and Diyala) and one each on Kosovo, inter- and intra-faith dialogue in the Middle East and Colombia, civil society dialogues in Colombia, Nigeria (Niger Delta in particular) and justice and security in Nepal.  David wrote the introduction and we collaborated on the conclusion. The book grew out of a series of internal meetings at USIP that I convened starting in 2009, if I remember correctly, to compare notes on our various dialogue efforts.

The approach in the book is practical.  We were not trying to theorize, as others have, but to demonstrate in practice why dialogue is important, what it involves, the many factors that determine success and failure, and best practices that can increase the odds for success.

All but one of the dialogues described were conducted as United States Institute of Peace projects, with vital contributions by contractors, some of whom had been trained by USIP.  The exception was a USIP grant-supported project in the Niger Delta conducted by Acadmic Associates PeaceWorks.  All were efforts that were at the heart of USIP’s push to go abroad to demonstrate in practice what we thought we had learned in the previous decade or so of peace research, in which the Institute had played a seminal role, mainly through its publications.

When I arrived at USIP in 1998 it was a think tank with training and grant programs.  When I left in 2010 it was also a “do” tank, with a much-expanded training program and grants more focused on peace-building in conflict zones.  This transformation depended on the ingenuity, courage and commitment of the people who contributed to the projects described in Facilitating Dialogue.  These were not efforts for the squeamish, the faint of heart or those who don’t want to risk program failure.

We’ll be launching this book at USIP 10:30-noon on October 17 with a few presentations of the cases (I’ll do Kosovo, Rusty Barber Iraq, Colette Rausch Nepal) and some more general remarks by David Smock.  This will be my first presentation at USIP since I left almost two years ago.  Please join us for the occasion, which I expect will be a stimulating one.