Reconciliation as Realpolitik - Abrahamic Family Reunion

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380 Joseph V. Montville Reconciliation as Realpolitik 381 their forebears. And victims are ordinarily so intensely absorbed by their own losses that they rarely understand the complexities and moral ambiguities their oppressors might have experienced in the past. It is especially important to take into account the fact that the victimizers may also have been victims at some point. This is why revision of history books-getting the story straight-is common in successful political reconciliation processes (Willis 1965, Montville 1986, 1990, and Luttwak 1994). Taking a reasonably accurate history of a conflicted relationship in effect sets out the agenda for healing in a psychologically informed conflict resolution strategy. Participants in a leadership group or workshop or council of historians will lay out what Volkan (1992) calls their "chosen traumas", those losses in history which have greatest symbolic meaning for their profound sense of victimhood and which continue to nourish their feeling of unacknowledged injustice. We have dealt theoretically with the critical importance of acknowledgment in ethnic and sectarian conflict resolution. It might be useful at this point to look briefly at two case studies for the impact of historic loss on contemporary violent conflict. Understanding the Mind of Serbia Most observers of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic credit a speech he gave in Kosovo in April 1987, as the beginning of his climb to dominant power. In the speech, he implored the Serbian minority to stay in the province even though it was economically distressed. Kosovo's population was 90% ethnic Albanian, but the province was also the birthplace and symbolic center of Serbia's national identity. The Serbian Orthodox monasteries of Kosovo are a legacy of a tribal chieftain Stefan Nemanja, who established the first independent Serbian state in the twelfth century CEo On June 28, 1989, Milosevic returned to Kosovo to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Serbia's national day that, ironically, marks the defeat of Serb forces by the Ottoman army at the Battle of Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs from Yugoslavia and around the world gath- ered at the site for the event that commemorated the loss as an enduring sacrifice of the Serbian nation for the benefit of Christian Europe. "Six centuries ago," Milosevic said, "Serbia defended itself on Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. She found herself on the ramparts for the defense of European culture, religion and European society as a whole." The Serbian epic poem declares "Whoever is a Serb and of Serbian blood and comes not to fight at Kosovo ... Let nothing grow from his hand ... until his name is extinguished forever." Thus Kosovo represents for modem Serbs not only the signature event in the establishment of national identity, but also a gift for which Europe shows no gratitude. Furthermore, Serb leaders rationalized their contemporary genocidal violence in Bosnia as the continuation of their struggle against Islamic "fundamentalism," again in the face of an ungrateful Christian Europe. Psychologically, there is a direct link between the pro-Nazi, Roman Catholic Croatian Ustashi genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Serbs during World War II, and the loss at Kosovo, five centuries earlier. Indeed; there is also a direct link between the Catholic Fourth Crusade's destruction of Orthodox Constantinople in April, 1204 CE, in Serbian memory. Each case, the Serbs perceived Latin Europe as indifferent to their sacrifices. And each case nourished the profound sense of victimhood that tells Serbs that the world cares nothing about their well being, sacrifices and losses. The majority of Serbs who kept Milosevic in power unhis overthrow in 2000 appeared until then to live in an awesome loneliness in which they concluded that they may use any means to defend their identity from extinction. The new democratically elected Serbian government has made important and psychologically healthy strides towards connection with Europe and the West. The Uncivil War in Northern Ireland Unlike Milosevic, The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has not come close to majority support either in the Republic or among the Catholics in Northern Ireland, but it has endured as a lingering symbol of Irish Catholic victimhood in the historic relationship with England, even after the 1999 Good Friday peace agreement signed by Northern Ireland political
382 Joseph V. Montville Reconciliation as Realpolitik 383 party leaders through the mediation of former Senator George Mitchell. When one understands the psychology of victimhood and its capacity to flourish generation after generation unless dealt with, it becomes easier to comprehend the meaning of the IRA's attempt to blow up Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in Brighton in 1984, car bombs in the British Parliament's parking garage, the rockets fired at No. 10 Downing Street and every other incidence of IRA terrorism. And terrorism it is, denounced vigorously by the Irish government and the great majority of Irish Catholics in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. But there has been a remarkable persistence and determination in the hatred of the tiny minority of IRA militants against Britain, cease-fires notwithstanding. A symboHc walk through the history of the Anglo-Irish relationship helps to explain why. Such a walk could be a valuable stimulus to English memory and a contribution to current peacemaking efforts for Northern Ireland. By all available evidence, official Britain has persisted in avoiding or denying its historic moral responsibility to the Irish people for a centuries-old record of extraordinary violence and repression. This contemporary resistance to acknowledgment of and contrition for past aggression kept alive an Irish instinct toward defense of the collective self expressed, among other ways, in IRA violence. Any number of historical works could be used to "take the history" of English oppression of the Irish people, but The Story ofthe Irish Race, by Seamas McManus (1993), first published in 1921 and still in print is representative. In a chapter called "Suppressing the Race," the author begins by saying, "Through these many dread centuries England's energies were concentrated upon an effort, seemingly, to annihilate the Irish race (1993, 399)." McManus quotes a letter from the eminent English conservative statesman and political philosopher, Edmund Burke: All [of Cromwell's penal laws ... were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid to provoke ... every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as I I edgment i enemies to God and man; indeed, as a race of savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself (McManus 1993,399). Oliver Cromwell landed at Dublin in 1647, with 17,000 men in a vengeful Puritan passion, "Bible-reading, psalm-singing soldiers of God-fearfully daring, fiercely fanatical, papist hating .... and looking on the inhabitants as idol-worshiping Canaanites who were cursed of God, and to be extirpated by the sword (McManus 1993, 423)." Cromwell's Christian soldiers slaughtered thousands of men, women and children at Drogheda, "in the streets, in the lanes, in the yards, in the gardens, in the cellars, on their own hearthstone" (McManus 1993, 424). At Wexford Cromwell made no distinction between defenseless civilians and armed soldiers. Britain through the 17th century had conducted a policy of active genocide against the Irish race. In the 19th century there was a policy that could be called passive genocide. By the 19th century, the potato was the primary food of the Irish peasant majority. Cereals, meat, and dairy products were produced, but they were sold largely to England. When the potato blight hit in 1845, followed by complete crop failures in 1846 and 1848, the export pattern of other foods to England was maintained. Peasants died of starvation. Sir Charles Trevelyan, permanent head of the English Treasury said that to feed or clothe the dying would be to interfere with the free market. The Irish population was estimated at 8.5 million in 1848. By 1851, emigration and starvation had reduced it to 6 million. (Today the population stands at about 4.5 million.) The famine had a powerful psychosocial impact. There was a sense of cumulative degradation in both those who remained and those who immigrated to North America. Yet there has been a significant development in the centuries old Anglo-Irish antagonism. In November, 1997, British Prime Minister Tony Blair formally expressed regret at London's role in the Irish famine. Further, Blair came out in support of a memorial to Irish famine victims in Liverpool where many of them were buried. He also promised to explore sources of government funding for the memorial. The Irish News said on November 20, the prime minister's powerful and sympathetic letter [of support] will be seen as an act of reconciliation and acknowlof the hurt that was caused in those terrible years. There is no
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