As US Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Ambassador Princeton Lyman often faced obstacles in just getting the two parties to sit together at the negotiating table. “In each society there is a deep, deep mistrust and dislike of the other,” commented Lyman during a recent speaking event on campus. Lyman was at Georgetown alongside current MSFS professor and former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (’81-’89) Chester Crocker to discuss their experiences as peacemakers in Africa.
Crocker is credited with devising the “constructive engagement” policy that helped end apartheid in South Africa and with brokering the peace deal between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa which led to Namibian independence in 1990. He offered attendees a glimpse of the process that led to that agreement. “The reason [the deal] worked was because everyone had something to gain,” said Crocker. “The Cubans, for example, wanted out of Angola, but with honor.”
On the ups and downs of recent events in East Africa, Lyman was pleased but circumspect. “The international community came together in a remarkable way, putting the two principals [Omar Bashir of Sudan and Salva Kiir of South Sudan] on the stage and having thirty heads of state tell them repeatedly that they had to do this referendum and do it peacefully,” said Lyman. “We [the United States] can’t speak to Bashir because he’s been indicted by the ICC, so we can’t take the lead role in negotiations. This is why you’ve seen the African Union in the lead. The best solution might be a set of agreements to keep them from returning to war, and to let the next generation take further steps.”
Finding the leverage to push the two sides toward such an agreement will not be easy, according to Crocker. “Leverage is the ability to get parties from where they are to where they need to be for an agreement; mediators need all the leverage they can get.”
MSFS students in attendance found the discussion both pertinent and instructive. “What stood out for me was that we had a practitioner who’s working on these issues right now come in and give us really precise analysis about what’s going on in Sudan,” said Sun Lee (’14). “He was upfront and honest about his opinions and he relayed to us a lot of his experience, which I found valuable.”
Ousseynou Sonko (’13) was born in Senegal and found the talk personally relevant. “One key point that I learned here is the importance of advocacy. I never thought about that until today; how the Sudanese, especially the South Sudanese, were able to bring attention to issues by being very vocal here in Washington,” commented Sonko. ”It is in the interest of the Senegalese to get involved and talk about the conflict which is happening right next to them. African communities should get more involved here in DC and know that not all the work is done in Africa.”
For the event’s organizers, Brian Hurd (’13) and Alex Hagelin (’13), the discussion was an opportunity to connect the practitioners of today with those of tomorrow. “We wanted to talk with Ambassador Lyman and Professor Crocker about the lessons they’ve learned and help the next class of practitioners as they go on to work in peacemaking and diplomacy,” said Hurd. “They introduced a lot of the theory, and backed it up with their own experiences in theaters ranging from Somalia to Sudan and South Sudan, and Mali.”
“After graduation many MSFS students get into humanitarian work with NGOs or governments in conflict zones,” added Hagelin, “and this provides us with a better understanding of the high-level policy dynamics at work in places like that.”
As to how the two peacemakers came to share the stage, their history goes back to the days when Crocker was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. “I got [Lyman] from USAID where he held a number of key positions including the AID mission in Ethiopia at a very difficult time,” said Crocker. “It was obvious that this was somebody who understood how politics and economics worked together. He handled the bilateral relationships with countries that were recipients of US aid and had a big burden on his shoulders. We relied on him heavily. He went on to head the refugee bureau at State, then he went to Nigeria as Ambassador, and then he went to South Africa as Ambassador.”
Crocker teaches two courses at MSFS, Conflict Management and International Mediation, both of which rely heavily on his experience as a mediator. The event with Ambassador Lyman was another way for him to use real life situations to drive home the theory he teaches in class. “The main thing is to try and crystalize and capture from very long difficult negotiations, what was that takeaway? What kind of big-picture lessons do you learn or pointers or guide posts for other cases? So it’s a comparative thing,” said Crocker. “You can’t just say every case is unique and you’ll know it when you see it. You have to take something from lateral learning and comparative learning, so that was the purpose of the event.”
On mediation in general, Crocker doesn’t imagine most of his students will go on to be international mediators, but the skills are valuable just the same. “I’m trying to mainstream conflict mediation because in this field you need it all the time,” said Crocker. “Whether you’re doing work in development, bilateral diplomacy, multilateral diplomacy, or as a business executive trying to figure out what is best practice in difficult areas, it’s important to be able to manage conflict.”