Learning from others in conflict - CAIN

‘other side’ – relatives were often fighting relatives. Eventually a ceasefire wasagreed and a security zone – with the River Dniester as the dividing line – wascreated between the two sides, manned by Moldovan, Transdniestrian andRussian forces (who still maintained a presence in Transdniestria). After theceasefire an international mediation process was initiated. This failed and 15years after the conflict first broke out there has been no resolution to the statusof Transdniestria. Our organisation tries to create an environment where asolution can be found. People like us do not have the authority to resolve theconflict but we can hopefully create a more positive environment in whichpoliticians can start to resolve it. However, even the military people whocontrol the security zone complain that they put in a lot of work to maintainpeace but the politicians fail to use this opportunity to reach agreement. Somepeople might say that there is no conflict in Moldova because there is nofighting going on, but there is continued division and the border betweenMoldova and Transdniestria is marked with checkpoints. Transdniestria haspractically all the formal structures of a state: its own parliament, its ownmilitary forces, and courts. As long as this problem remains unresolved theworse the economic conditions become, in both parts. In Soviet times Moldovaand Transdniestria had one economy, with different industries on either side,and now one side cannot function properly without the other. In our organisationwe explore issues which could bring together people from all levels withinMoldova and Transdniestria. This gives us a chance to get ordinary people intodiscussion with each other, and with their own government officials.[Mol/Trans] I am a Russian, born inVolgograd, formerly calledStalingrad. After I finished the armyI graduated as an engineer and wasworking in Moldova. For me,Moldova then was like any otherpart of my motherland, it was a partof the Soviet Union. This was in1975. At that time I remember readingin the newspapers about the problemsI remember reading about theproblems in Northern Ireland butthought that this type of conflictcould never happen to us. Suddenlywe too found ourselves involved in aviolent conflict, and in a short periodmore than 1000 had been killed.in Northern Ireland, and other places in the world, but we thought that this typeof conflict could never happen to us. Suddenly we too found ourselves involvedin a violent conflict, and in a short period more than 1000 people had beenkilled. Initially, it started by certain groups of people raising tensions onnationalist issues. For example, Moldovan nationalists, whose language is basedon the Latin alphabet, wanted to make it the compulsory state language, but thisthreatened those from a Russian and Ukrainian background whose language isbased on the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet. These tensions erupted while I was themayor of a town (in Transdniestria) of 100,000 people, and there were massiveprotest demonstrations. I appealed for people not to be violent, but to no avail.15