Step 4
Conduct Track II Activities
The manner in which any track II activity is conducted depends on what the activity is. However, several implementation challenges are present in almost all situations. These include building trust, adjusting goals and strategies as necessary to meet unanticipated needs and unexpected events, managing “people problems” and group dynamics, overcoming obstacles, and managing power inequities. Working with the media and coordinating with track I and other track II programs are other tasks that feature in many track II efforts.
Manage Distrust and Build Trust
Building trust between the intervenors and the participants and among the participants themselves is critical and challenging. Before that is possible, however, one must deal with the high degree of distrust that exists between the parties, and often between each of the parties and the intervenor or the intervention process. For adversaries, not trusting the other is safer, as it does not leave one vulnerable to attacks or abuse from one’s own side—or from the adversary if things go wrong. Being wary of the intervenor is also logical. It protects the parties from harm if the intervenor turns out to favor the other side or otherwise act in ways that are perceived as dangerous or hostile to a participant. As a first step toward building trust, intervenors need to ask themselves what the risks are to the participants if and when they engage in the process. What will happen to them if things go wrong—if an embarrassing story becomes public, for example, or if the other side reneges on an agreement? While these risks cannot be completely avoided, working with the participants to develop a process that limits potential damage can be helpful in transforming distrust into trust.
Usual y very little trust exists at the beginning of an activity so the process needs to be designed to allow relationships to be built and trust to be earned. In order for the trainer, mediator, or facilitator to earn the participants’ trust, it is important to
➤ treat all participants equal y and with respect and dignity at all times, and to encourage all the participants to do the same;
➤ create an environment that makes the participants feel comfortable
and safe;
➤ let each party know that the trainer, mediator, or facilitator is listening to them, understands their problems and how they feel about them, cares about their problems, and can serve as a resource to help them
address those problems;
➤ show that the trainer, mediator, or facilitator has no stake in the outcome of the conflict that will prevent the participants from pursuing their own interests and goals (“stake” can include high pay; highly paid intervenors may be suspected of wanting a settlement for their own financial benefit, which is why unpaid—and usual y independently wealthy—intervenors may have more credibility with the parties);
➤ never assign blame, criticize or judge a participant or party, or tell the participants what they must do (though one can enforce mutually agreed upon ground rules in a respectful way);
➤ ask nonthreatening, open-ended questions; and
➤ listen empathetically, reframe unclear or unnecessarily hostile language sympathetical y, and encourage others to do the same.31 The participants, too, need to be able to earn one another’s respect and trust, though this happens slowly over time. Typical y, a facilitator wil first engage the participants in “easy” tasks, such as discussing familiar and nonthreatening subjects. Many start with icebreakers, exercises that are designed to help people get to know each other as people, not as adversaries. Sometimes, for example, dyads or small groups are asked to introduce themselves to each other and talk about something completely unrelated to the conflict—for instance, their jobs (if they are not conflict-relevant) or their personal interests.
The Public Conversations Project usual y starts its dialogues with meals at which people are al owed to talk to each other about anything except the conflict at hand and their views on it. This helps people make connections with each other and begin to see the commonalities between them, before they begin to focus on differences.
After the icebreaking stage, the facilitator can move on to relatively easy conflict-related tasks. A common one is setting the ground rules for the process. These are usual y fairly noncontroversial, yet col aborating to set ground rules gives participants a sense of accomplishment. They learn that they can, indeed, work together and make progress. In addition, if the ground rules are col aboratively set, the participants are more likely to follow them, and will often self-police each other when the ground rules are broken. This is helpful on several levels: it generates buy-in, it generates a sense of progress and success, and the ground rules themselves create a positive working environment. Those three things together, over time, help build trust and commitment to the process.
Trust also tends to build with familiarity. In workshops that bring people together for several days of uninterrupted discussion, the participants have no option but to interact with “the other” continuously: during meetings, at meals, in the gym in the morning, and at the bar at night. They tell stories and connect on a human level—learning that they share the same fears, needs, and concerns. As these commonalities are discovered, so too is trust, respect, and friendship that enable the process to go forward effectively.
The timing of such a process largely depends on the depth of animosities and the extent of interpersonal fear and distrust. When processes are undertaken with people on both sides who are eager to work with the other side to build relationships and find new approaches for seeking peace—members of “the peace constituency”—this can be fairly easy and the process can move quickly. When working with people who are more skeptical about the feasibility of working successful y with the other side, the process must proceed much more slowly.
Some people even think it helps to allow the initial hostility and anger to come out—so rather than setting ground rules prohibiting personal attacks early on (as many do) they start by allowing parties to vent. This allows participants to feel as if they have shown the depth of their feelings and are not being forced to be someone they are not. But the venting is done in a controlled environment, and is not allowed to escalate. It is taken as a starting point, from which the facilitator moves to reframe from hostility to new ways of approaching both the people and the problem.
ICR practitioner Jay Rothman developed what he cal s the “ARIA Framework”—a process that slowly moves people from “Antagonism,” to “Resonance, to Invention, to Action.” In the first, antagonistic portion of his workshops, Rothman expects the parties to behave negatively toward each other. They focus on the profound differences in their positions, usual y in “Us vs. Them” terms. They are encouraged to vent their frustrations and anger in a control ed way, but, they make their feelings about the other and the situation very clear. Rothman then helps them to reframe their very opposed positions into interests and needs. All sides have a need for security, all sides have a need to honor and confirm their identity, and as Rothman points out, identity and security are not zero-sum, but are actual y self-reinforcing. The more one side feels secure, the less it will feel a need to attack the other side, so the more the other side will feel secure as well. This understanding leads to what Rothman cal s “Resonance.” The ARIA framework then keeps building on this resonance to invent new approaches to problems and devise ways to put them into action. This can take a very long time; it is seldom accomplished in a day or even a week, and can take months or even years.32
Refine Goals and Strategies as Needed
Although the people who designed the process probably defined the goals initial y, these goals may change as the process goes on. Formative evaluation (evaluation that takes place as the activity is ongoing) may suggest that the initial goals were too ambitious or not ambitious enough. The agenda might have been too wide or too narrow. Needs and interests of the participants may be different from those initial y expected.
Effective intervenors are flexible, yet unbreakable. Their guiding principles are immutable and they will be very reluctant to abandon particular goals, ground rules, and other key elements of their chosen approach, but they also are able to recognize what can be changed without imperiling the overall purpose of the activity and what should be modified to make the activity more fruitful. Being able to adapt both the process and the substance to unanticipated situations is important if maximum impact is to be achieved. If an approach is not working, it should be changed. Disappointments in one area may well lead to breakthroughs in another. Flexibility, creativity, and resilience are keys to success.
For example, an intervenor who plans to work with several key local leaders should anticipate that some of those people may be unwilling to participate and should have ideas for other people who could fill the same roles. Similarly, if a training plan does not seem to be resonating, do not stick with it, change it. Work with the participants to figure out what they want and need (and how that differs from what you are providing). In the story about Lederach and the “gringo training,” Lederach quickly learned that his initial training plan was based on what has come to be called the “North American model” for mediation. The mediator is an outsider neutral. Insider partial mediation is more culturally appropriate in Central and South America, he learned that day, as he talked to the participants about why they said their compatriots “looked like gringos.” Lederach tried to adjust the training as best he could at the time of that first intervention, but he has adapted his trainings much more in the years hence.
In addition to challenges, unexpected opportunities sometimes arise. If intervenors are present in a conflict area for a long time, they begin to be trusted and seen more like a local than are those practitioners who fly in for a week and then leave again. That means, if problems develop when locals seek outside assistance, the track II providers who are there and are known and trusted are likely to be sought more than those who are far away and unknown. If practitioners are alert to changing conditions, they can often move into areas that were closed to them before.
Deal with “People Problems” and Group Dynamics
Even when participants are careful y screened before participating, “people problems” often develop and group dynamics may be challenging. Especial y at the beginning of a process, people are likely to be very hostile or reserved toward people from the other side of the conflict. Participants arrive with very different worldviews, badly flawed stereotypes, different norms of communication (e.g., explicit or al usive), and different expectations about the process and the anticipated outcomes. Often, participants expect (and behave) as if they were in an adversarial process, such as a court case or a traditional hard bargaining process. It can take some time to convince them that this process is something different and some participants are never persuaded. (This is one instance in which elicitive approaches may not be optimal; if the predominant approach is adversarial, then embracing that approach is likely to lead to more conflict, not less.) Participants need to be coaxed into using alternative nonadversarial processes (dialogues, integrative bargaining, analytical problem solving, etc.) as an alternative to adversarial bargaining.
In order to facilitate such a transformation of attitudes, expectations, and behaviors, intervenors and trainers need to take control quickly, making the ground rules for interaction and behavior clear. If participants strongly resist ground rules requiring nonadversarial behavior, the intervenor might opt to be prescriptive and urge the participants to give this “new approach” a chance. (The intervenor, it should be noted, can never force the participants to do so.) But if participants are at least somewhat amenable to new approaches, then it can be helpful to suggest a set of nonadversarial norms for interaction, explain why these ground rules are needed, and invite discussion. At this point, participants can modify and/or add rules until they come up with norms of interaction that are acceptable to everyone. This process of discussion and revision of the ground rules gives participants a taste of working together in a cooperative manner, makes participants more likely to buy into the ground rules, and encourages them to engage in self-enforcement when violations occur.
However, such cooperative generation of the ground rules is more appropriate in some situations than it is in others. For instance, one assumption of both dialogue processes and interactive problem solving is that the conflict is driven by a set of relationships and norms of interaction that contribute to escalation and perpetuation of the conflict. Facilitators of dialogues and problem-solving workshops, therefore, general y set out an alternative set of norms for interaction that, they explain, tend to improve relationships and deescalate conflict. Although participants can add more ground rules and perhaps modify the set of norms in minor ways, facilitators usual y resist efforts to make significant changes. Because the workshops are private and confidential, participants usual y feel safe enough to adopt these new forms of behavior. The goal is to help participants eventual y understand that these new norms are more constructive than their existing approaches, and thus persuade them not only to use these newly learned behaviors outside of the workshop setting but also to encourage others on the outside to adopt such behavioral norms.
Strong emotions can be particularly disruptive, especial y when they are
expressed to the detriment of other participants or the process as a whole, or when they are unexpressed but allowed to build, sometimes to a point at which very angry or frustrated individuals either explode in rage or leave the process. Ways of dealing with strong emotions vary considerably from one culture to another, and the task becomes especial y tricky when working with multicultural groups, as some cultures accept and expect the direct expression of emotions, while others do not. If overt discussion of emotions is culturally acceptable, using active listening to tease out emotions and deal with them proactively is often helpful. Sometimes processes are specifical y designed to let each side exhibit their emotions through “venting,” though care must be taken to prevent escalation during such processes. Setting ground rules that prohibit personal attacks and encourage participants to focus on problems, not people, and to reframe strong negative statements in more palatable ways can allow the emotions to be expressed and handled without derailing the process.
If the participants’ culture frowns on the expression of certain emotions, yet those emotions seem to be roiling just below the surface, separating the participants temporarily and letting them cool down can help defuse tensions. Another tactic is to enlist an intermediary to translate and carry messages back and forth between the two sides until a calmer atmosphere can be created and maintained.
Address Power Inequalities
The parties to a conflict are rarely evenly matched in terms of power (in terms, that is, of the ability to accomplish what they want, whether by political, military, economic, or other means), and the greater the disparities in power, the greater the problems posed for many track II (as well as track I) processes.
In the first place, the higher-power party in a conflict may be reluctant to participate in a track II activity because it sees no benefit in doing so or because it fears that participation will exact a cost—such as having to give up some of its power. Consequently, the purpose and the process design must be clarified and made sufficiently attractive and safe to attract the higher-power party so that they will participate. One way to accomplish this is to persuade that party that it can participate without losing power— and that participation might even enhance its ability to satisfy its needs rather than diminishing them. (When these processes are used in stalemated situations, as they often are, this is not a hard argument to make, as no progress is being made otherwise.) track II intervenors need to find the people who, even in hard times when distrust and anger are high, realize that violence and conflict escalation is not a way to meet their own needs. A small cadre of such individuals can keep the candle of peace alive—hopeful y—until calmer heads prevail in the general populace and track I environments.
A second concern is that the stronger players may not take the weaker players seriously, and the weaker players may feel reluctant or unable to participate ful y. A third problem arises from the fact that power differences can affect the objectives of participants. For instance, it has been observed that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians often participate in track II activities with the express purpose of fostering changes in Israeli political views, while Israeli participants tend to be more concerned with establishing lines of communication and building social connections.33 When powerful groups’ political views remain unchanged, weaker parties sometimes view track II processes as ignoring the power imbalances and not addressing the central problems in the conflict.34
Although little can be done by track II actors to change the power differentials in the conflict itself, the process designers and facilitators can do a great deal to change the power dynamics within the track II setting. This, indeed, is a key to success.
The first step for dealing with power differences is to ensure that everyone who has been chosen to participate is accepted as a legitimate party at the table. Simply by agreeing to let lower-power groups participate, the intervenors and the high-power groups are taking one step toward power equalization. In addition, ground rules must state that all participants be treated and addressed in the same way. For instance, either formal names should be used for everyone, or informal names should be used for al . Using formal names and titles for representatives of the powerful parties and informal (e.g., first names) for members of the lower-power parties reinforces power distinctions. Seating arrangements must also be designed so that so all groups feel they are participating as equals.
The resources and skil s available to the parties should also be equalized as much as possible within the track II setting. Typical y, the powerful groups have large staffs to do preparatory work and extensive experience with political discussions and negotiations. The lower-power groups have no such staffs and often little political or negotiating experience. All parties stand to benefit from efforts by the track II intervenor to give the lower-power groups extra time to prepare for discussions and negotiations and assistance in analyzing issues and formulating and articulating their substantive concerns. The more evenly matched the parties are in these respects, the more likely they are to have a productive discussion.
Overcome External Obstacles
Although separate from track I, all track II dialogues still take place in the political context of the region and conflict they are trying to address. Like others in an escalated political conflict, track II participants are affected by the news and by the ups and downs of official diplomatic initiatives. When hostility increases in the relationship between the two sides, track II participants tend to become wary and distrustful of each other and of proposed (or ongoing) track II processes. Yet, as noted earlier, this is when track II is the most important and stands to make the most progress, thus track II providers should not give up.
Rather, they need to go underground and try to continue to operate, but at a much less visible level. This is where having established networks can be extremely valuable. If you have a cadre of local people who know you and trust you, you can work through them to set up track II processes without setting off alarm bel s in—and without inviting harassment or obstruction from—the outside community.
A key to successful recruitment, therefore, is providing good cover. Although promises of absolute secrecy should never be made because they probably can not be honored, participants should be protected from outside eyes as much as possible. Media should never be involved, and strict ground rules should be set for participants about confidentiality. Confidentiality, participants should be persuaded, protects everyone, themselves included. While someone might still leak information about the track II effort to the outside, those leaks usual y hurt the source of the leak as much as they hurt the others—a fact that can be used as one of several grounds to encourage compliance with confidentiality rules.
It is also useful to have venues in which people can meet without first having to secure official permission. If track I parties are at each others’ throats, they are likely to see any track I process as a threat. So officials are unlikely to issue visas al owing participants to travel “to the other side” or otherwise try to prevent such meetings. Thus, track II processes, if they are to continue, must be very low key, running under al official and media radar.
Overcome Internal Obstacles
Internal obstacles also pose problems. Participants who were enthusiastic at the beginning may become less so over time if the process is not addressing their interests or needs or unfolding in the way they had expected, or they may become increasingly apprehensive about the direction of the discussion and increasingly obstinate and hostile. Care must be taken to enforce ground rules of interaction to redirect and work through hostility and negotiate around stumbling blocks. A particular issue that is too technical y complex or political y charged to deal with by the full group can be delegated to a smaller group of people who have the expertise to grapple with it and who are willing to do so. Another approach is to put difficult topics aside and deal with easier topics first. Then, as participants become more comfortable with the process and each other, they may be more willing to tackle the more difficult topic.
Participant turnover is another commonly encountered problem. Most track II processes work best if they involve the same people working together over a substantial period of time, be it a week, once a week, or once a month for a year or more. The longer the time that people have to get to know one another, and the longer they have to build trust with one another and with the process, the better. By the same token, however, the departure of a regular participant presents a problem because his or her replacement wil not have the same history of interaction and of understanding and trust built up over time. Especial y in the cases of processes that are spread out over months and years, intervenors should strive to persuade participants to stay with the process. This can be done by making it clear how essential each person’s participation is, and by urging participants not to sacrifice the significant effort and time they have already invested. Peers can be encouraged to make the same arguments as wel (and often do so without encouragement, because loss of continuity hurts everyone, not just the person leaving). But if a participant is determined to exit, the intervenor should do as much as possible to make the newcomer feel comfortable with the people and the process as soon as possible.
Coordinate with Other Processes
As this handbook has sought to emphasize, many different kinds of intervenors conducting various kinds of interventions are usual y found within each complex conflict. Amid such a profusion of track I and track II activity, it is not possible—but also, fortunately, not necessary—for all intervenors to know at all times what all the other intervenors are doing. Track II actors will find it very useful, however, to have a good idea of which other third-party actors are active in the conflict and a general understanding of what each of them is doing.
Among its other advantages, this kind of awareness will reveal opportunities to cooperate with other intervenors. Such cooperation can take many forms, from sharing information, to col aborating on service delivery by combining events, projects, or programs. One typology summarizes the various forms of relating to other intervenors as the “four Cs”:
➤ communication (sharing information, sharing analysis);
➤ coordination (planning together, synchronizing activities);
➤ cooperation (resource sharing, maximizing the impact of separate initiatives); and
➤ collaboration (working in collaboration, maximizing the impact of joint initiatives).35
Communication is the lowest level of relating (i.e., it is the easiest to accomplish), but it can nonetheless be very useful. Media reports on conflict situations are usual y highly suspect: they are inevitably incomplete, almost always inaccurate to some degree, and often slanted. Intervenors are likely to get a more reliable sense of what is happening on the ground by sharing information and analyses with other intervenors. Moreover, some kinds of information (such as which areas are safe to work in and which individuals should be recruited for workshops) can only be obtained by talking to colleagues, acquaintances, and other contacts. The broader one’s network, the more information one can obtain and the more varied the range of analyses and strategies one can consider. In stressful situations—as most arenas for track II activity are—multiple perspectives on the same information are likely to generate a keener understanding of the situation and a more effective range of options.
“When the Conflict Management Group (CMG) and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) worked together on the Georgian-Ossetian Dialogue Project, NRC’s staff in the conflict zone not only provided CMG (based in Cambridge, Mass.) with information on local developments related to the peace process, but also participated actively with CMG staff in analyzing the implications of those developments.”36
Communication between track I and track II is also valuable. Track I mediators can talk with track II facilitators about stumbling blocks encountered in track I deliberations that might be paralleled in a track II meeting. Alternatively, track II facilitators can share with track I actors creative ideas that emerged from a track II problem-solving workshop that might help move a track I negotiation forward. Although both track I and track II negotiations are almost always confidential, intervenors can usual y secure permission from the negotiators to share potential y useful information with a few key people involved in other negotiations.
Coordination, which involves a closer degree of cooperation than does communication, can be particularly useful in preventing duplication of effort. Coordination between multiple track II actors al ows them to divide up tasks according to their specific strengths and interests, as wel as according to the areas (geographic, topical, or procedural) in which they are active. Moreover, each track can engage in activities that help the other, utilizing its strengths to make up for weaknesses in the other process, and fitting together in a way that is mutual y supporting.
“In 1999, the track I intervenors in the Moldovan-Transdniestrian conflict (the OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine) discussed broad plans with the track II intervenors (MICOM, the Moldovan Initiative Committee on Management). This discussion led MICOM to organize a study visit to Northern Ireland with the expert groups from both sides of the conflict and the OSCE, Russian, and Ukrainian mediators. While MICOM’s activities remained separate from the track I negotiation process, the shared planning al owed for increased complementarity of the separate processes.”37
Cooperation goes yet one step further with resource sharing. Resources may include expertise, personnel, or equipment. When one intervenor sees a need that it, alone, is unable to fil , it is very beneficial to have strong enough (and trusting enough) relationships with other groups—either track I or track II—to which they can turn for assista