by Michael Thomson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the address locates the peacebuilding organization where I interned in a plaza, it is actually just another nine-story mass of the limestone, reflective glass, and rebar that dominates central Amman. The security guard at the front entrance, Muhammad, works overlapping hours to mine, so we have grown accustomed to four check-ins per day: one each when I arrive and leave, and another set when I exit and return from lunch. Muhammad is likely in his late 50s or early 60s and takes pride in his job, though he does not mind watching YouTube videos of soccer or boxing now and then. I show him pictures of my niece. He tells me stories of his days as a boxer. I bring him french fries from lunch or a piece of cake when we have an office party. But most importantly, we greet each other with an earnest warmth at the start and end of each work day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can recall only two rules for the office building. The first rule is the prohibition on smoking inside the offices, which drives most staffers to the stairs several times per day. The second rule, which Muhammad relays to me a few months after I start, is to refrain from bringing food in the elevator. This came directly from the building owner, or \u201cthe big boss\u201d in Muhammad\u2019s words, and although we both gave each other an eyebrow-raised glance at this odd command, I abided without comment for Muhammad\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One warm day in October, my supervisor asks to have lunch with me to discuss the latest draft of my conflict analysis report. After we\u2019ve somewhat lowered our mountain of shawarma and fries from the Iraqi restaurant across the street, we return to the office, each carrying a small bag of leftovers. We are still talking so I give Muhammad only a terse Salaam Walekum and forced smile. He looks anxious and returns my greeting quickly before asking, as we are almost at the elevator, for us to please use the stairs because of the food. My supervisor, who I had come to respect, says \u201cno thanks\u201d dismissively without turning his head and walks into the open elevator. I give Muhammad a pained look, follow my supervisor wordlessly, and wait in silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like that guy at all. Sarah said he tried to make her take the stairs the other day too. I don\u2019t know what his deal is, but he\u2019s a bit weird.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh. I actually like him. He\u2019s been pretty friendly to me.\u201d Silence the rest of the ride up, and in our parting in the hallway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My response is weak and non-confrontational. Feeling embarrassed and ashamed, I spend the rest of the day asking myself what I am doing \u2018building peace in the Middle East.\u2019 In the over two years since this day, I have yet to come up with a satisfying answer to this question, which has in turn forced me to rethink not only my role in the peacebuilding field, but the structure of this field as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing More Dangerous<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The organization I worked for at the time, which I will refrain from naming because my goal here is less to deride an organization than to reflect on my views of the peacebuilding field, prides itself as the largest international peacebuilding organization in the world. This is an odd badge to flash given that the peacebuilding field glorifies grassroots organizations and locally-oriented programming. For nearly a decade before I interned there, I had been naming this organization to curious relatives and friends as a potential dream job site. It exhibited all that my idealism sought: a nonprofit<\/em> working in conflict zones<\/em> to bring about reconciliation<\/em> through the creation of spaces conducive to dialogue<\/em>. Having studied at an environmental peacebuilding institute in Israel and conducted peacebuilding research in Palestine, I believed myself more than qualified to intern there. Over time, however, I came to see my line of thinking unwittingly embodied in a quote attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to the street artist Banksy: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Typically interns at this organization either produce background material for grant applications or contribute to ongoing program assessments. Given my background in research and a bit of serendipity, I was offered a different task: to conduct the literature review for this organization\u2019s ten-year strategy in the \u201cGreater Levant,\u201d defined internally as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (senior staff had excluded Israel and Palestine for reasons relating to internal organizational politics, despite the organization having an office in Jerusalem). I was honored to have a role in such a substantive project and dove into it headfirst, reading and writing without pause at a 24-hour internet caf\u00e9. After no shortage of Turkish coffee and Nescaf\u00e9, I churned out a 50-page report stamped with over 300 citations and 60 endnotes in less than a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The team liked my work ethic and offered me the task of writing the Conflict Analysis Report that would guide the entire ten-year strategy. I felt proud and once again threw myself into it, producing another 30-page report with a few hundred citations in two weeks. The methodology section in this internal, confidential document states that its findings are informed by staff insights, nearly one hundred consultations with a diverse body of nationals from the region, and the literature review. In truth, the report was little more than a revised literature review restructured to fit the objectives the organization wished to pursue in the region. These consultations did occur, though for security, visa, and cost reasons I did not participate in any of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Given my lack of Arabic proficiency and the absence of any notes compiled or passed along to me from the consultations, I incorporated no Arabic-language source into this analysis. Indeed, despite repeated requests, I could not even get a short summary or high-level takeaway from any of these consultations, making me doubt whether this report was not simply another box for my team to tick off, as opposed to an integral part of a ten-year strategic review. Given the ostensible purpose of this document to guide this organization\u2019s strategy in four of the most conflict-prone countries in the world \u2014all of which have Arabic as their national language\u2014 over<\/em> the next ten years<\/em>, the absence of any Arabic-language sources in it is a shocking and inexcusable flaw in the analysis. The report appeared and read like solid conflict analysis, but the most important types of sources \u2014some of which were readily available to be included\u2014 were absent and replaced by Western analysis from think tanks and major U.S. publications like The New York Times<\/em> and The New Yorker<\/em>. None of the dozens of national staff working for this organization in each of the four countries examined in the report \u2014who give clout to the organization\u2019s messaging that national staff run national offices\u2014 contributed to the report. Their lifetimes of experience, knowledge, views, and insights were replaced by that of a white American man with less than a year of aggregate experience in the region who cannot speak Arabic but can write conflict analysis that follows all the field\u2019s stylistic conventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet. I received nothing but praise for my work. Senior staff members commented that I was a \u2018gifted writer.\u2019 My supervisor, his supervisor, and his<\/em> supervisor, all of whom were men not hailing from the region and two of whom were white U.S. nationals, did indeed use my analysis to guide the formation of the ten-year strategic objectives in the region. They brought me into senior-level meetings to present my analysis and incorporated my contributions during strategy discussions. They have written glowing recommendations for me for academic and professional applications. To this day, I become viscerally sick when I dwell on this too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Too Close to Home<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another inflection point in my evolving views on this topic occurred in the early summer of 2020. After the conclusion of my internship and a brief stint farming with a family in Togo (long story), the Covid-19 pandemic forced my premature return to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I would stay with my parents until starting graduate school in the fall. A few months into this respite, Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin murdered<\/a> George Floyd, and the city I grew up in erupted<\/a> in protests, rioting, and escalating use of force by MPD officers. This violence, and the blocks of destroyed buildings<\/a> on Lake Street left in its wake, spotlighted a history of racial bias and overcriminalization<\/a> among law enforcement, as well as a longer and more insidious history of structural violence and division<\/a> in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have studied, conducted research, and worked in the peacebuilding arena in Croatia, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, and yet I have observed no stronger visual representation of disunity than on the street a few miles from my parents\u2019 house in South Minneapolis. The graffiti on the walls surrounding the George Floyd Global Memorial<\/a> bore such a striking resemblance to that on the walls of the Separation Wall between Israel and the West Bank that it brought back my PTSD symptoms from living there. My Jordanian and Palestinian friends were posting about George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and racial inequities in Minneapolis on their Facebook pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This experience reminded me of the problems with the underlying logic of international peacebuilding organizations. Perhaps the most (over)used term in peacebuilding literature is \u201csocial cohesion,\u201d which is almost never defined yet frequently cited as the crucial variable for successful peacebuilding programming. Put most simply, the dominant approach to peacebuilding, derived from Gordon Allport\u2019s Intergroup Contact Theory, assumes that people who interact with each other are less likely to fight with each other. Social cohesion, then, refers to the degree of solidarity within any given community, and often acts as a metric for gauging the amount of tension between members of groups in conflict. The theory has spurred a whole genre of peacebuilding programming referred to as \u201cpeople-to-people<\/a>\u201d programs (P2P), which bring together members of groups in conflict for sport matches, dialogue, academic study, and thematic workshops. Like almost all other peacebuilding organizations, the one I interned for centered P2P and Intergroup Contact Theory in their programming, organizational mission, and theory of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But could I apply the tenets of peacebuilding to my hometown? The discussions that occurred within the organization I had left a few months earlier were both made for the simmering tensions in Minneapolis and seemed absurdly inappropriate. I am certain that almost everyone I knew in the city, including myself, would have scorned intervention by an international peacebuilding organization led by people from other countries to bring MPD officers and protesters together for dialogue. How could they possibly gain legitimacy in the eyes of those whose attitudes they sought to transform? How could superficial events bringing people together for brief periods possibly address the breadth and depth of division and the undercurrents of injustice rooting it? Discussions of social cohesion? Not in my backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Definition of Insanity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly thereafter, during my first year in graduate school, this organization recruited me to lead the conflict analysis for their ten-year strategy in the Arabian Peninsula, centered on the conflict in Yemen. Attracted by the higher pay, opportunity to learn more about conflict in the region, and potential for career advancement, I disregarded my ethical reservations and took the contract. Over the next eight months, I completed the same tasks as when I was an intern, except this time for more money and with less oversight. As before, almost all material I used in my reports came from English-language sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This research process also exposed how my lack of experience was mirrored in organizational leadership. For instance, the director of the Yemen country office, who has a staff of roughly 60 Yemeni nationals working for him and is one of the few non-Yemenis in that office, does not speak Arabic and asked me<\/em> if there were any readings that I would recommend to him in order for him \u2018to better understand Yemen.\u2019 Just as with the \u2014perhaps also apocryphal\u2014 definition of insanity attributed to Albert Einstein, I am not sure why I expected \u2018this time\u2019 to be any different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through this research I met virtually with Nadwa al-Dawsari and Peter Salisbury, two of the leading conflict analysts for Yemen. Both provided a wealth of insight that foundationally shaped the analysis in my reports. Al-Dawsari is Yemeni and had until recently lived her entire life in Yemen, founding the Yemen Chapter<\/a> of Partners Global and working extensively with Yemeni tribes to implement programs and conduct conflict analysis. Peter Salisbury, International Crisis Group\u2019s Senior Researcher on Yemen<\/a>, has spent 12 years writing conflict analysis on Yemen\u2019s war. Both al-Dawsari and Salisbury spoke with me again recently to discuss positionality and purpose in peacebuilding and conflict analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nadwa enters a room with a commanding presence. Her straight posture, wedged haircut, and bright crisp blazers radiate a contagious and youthful buoyancy. However, over time I realized that her wardrobe masked a fatigue that revealed itself in deeply etched circles around her eyes. Nadwa\u2019s exhaustion went beyond her busy schedule; her spirit was weary, as if she was tired of being tired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWestern institutions have hijacked the Yemen narrative that fits their ideological and institutional objectives,\u201d al-Dawsari told me. The co-optation and mangling of Yemen\u2019s conflict narrative by Western think tanks, policymakers, and analysts is an overarching theme in al-Dawsari\u2019s writing and in our discussion. I could not help but notice my contribution to this problem. My analysis, besides the gaps identified above, had to ultimately orient towards strategic objectives that promoted dialogue, reconciliation, and other nonviolent means of resolving conflict. It would be an awkward and untenable position for the organization if my report advocated for a renewed violent offensive in Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n