The World Today
March 1999

Getting Wired for Peace
By: Cathy Gormley

 

The growth of the Internet in recent years, in terms of accessible material and perceived audience, has accelerated at a speed comparable only to the increase in the number of conflicts across the globe. A sweeping statement, perhaps, about two fields as far removed from each other as physics is from fine art. But perhaps not. We live in a very different world today. We have different wars, different warriors, and different weapons.

 

The internet is just one of the new weapons used to plunge the world’s conflicts into other dimensions. The computer wizards and Information Technology (IT) prodigies are now as important as the conventional warrior, with his gun and ammunition. These IT experts are able to wage a war of words on their enemy, in an arena never before more public. With some estimates identifying up to 161 ongoing conflicts in the world in 1997, 1 it has not taken long for those engaged in even the more obscure of them, to realise the potential of the Internet and how it can enhance their own particular ideological agendas.

The Peruvian Tupac Amaru (MRTA), which was responsible for holding hostages at the Japanese Ambassadors residence in Lima in 1996/97, is one such group with a strong web presence. Their official web site, Voz Rebelde, 2 in Germany, offers information in Spanish, English, Japanese, Italian and Norwegian. It posts communiqués, holds a video clip of the group allegedly planning its attack on the embassy, and has links to a number of other organisations in solidarity with it. One such group is the MRTA Solidarity Page 3 which is hosted on a university server at the University of California, San Diego.

There are a number of characteristics of the Internet that are quite appealing to the Tupac Amaru, the MRTA Solidarity Group, and those involved in other conflicts. Firstly, governments have so far been unable to control the flow of information into and out of countries through the Internet. This is seen as a benefit. Certain restrictive procedures have been put in place, but if a person gets access to the Internet it becomes virtually impossible to disconnect them, unless the government or authorities in question intend to bring down the entire telephone system, and begin confiscating computers.

In some cases, as in Mexico, governments have closed down web sites that are hosted through servers in the same country. 4 The impact of this is usually quite limited, since many revolutionary groups have links with other solidarity organisations internationally, which are only too willing to give them space on their sites.

And secondly, the Internet as a publicity/propaganda machine is a relatively inexpensive form of communication and reaches a much wider audience than printed matter, thereby promoting further the group’s ideals, aspirations, and views.

It is not only revolutionary movements that have been quick to utilise the advantages of the Internet. Governments have become more and more high tech, especially those in divided societies. A case in point is Sri Lanka, where the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils, many of whom live in the north, has raged for some years.

The Sri Lankan government has censored all news items relating to the conflict since June 1998, in an attempt to keep the number of fatalities on both sides hidden from the general public. Foreign reporters have to rely for their stories on what the government and the rebels say.

Both government and rebels have been known to significantly exaggerate the conflict and fatalities to their own advantage, and so the world at large is really unaware of the true picture. Censorship of the printed press has meant that the Internet is now being used by both sides to promulgate their positions. For the outside observer, however, things remain as vague as ever.

The month of September 1998 illustrates the confused information about Sri Lanka. After an attack on the Killinochchi Army base in the north of Sri Lanka on 29 September, news reports abounded. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) “confirmed” that they had 337 cadres dead. 5 The Defence Ministry “claimed” that 200 of its soldiers had died. 6 Yet the LTTE International Secretariat in London “counter-claimed” that its forces had handed over 600 bodies of Sri Lankan soldiers to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

BBC World Service then reported that, “The Sri Lankan army has lost at least 600 men as it tries to hold onto the key town of Killinochchi in the face of a major Tamil offensive. The Tigers have handed over the bodies of 600 government soldiers to the ICRC; until now, the government had acknowledged losing 200 fighters.. .the separatists say that they have lost 275 soldiers. The government believes the figure is far higher.” 7

Another illustration is, of course, in Northern Ireland where the republican party Sinn Fein seemed to realise the potential of the Internet in 1995, a number of years before any of its adversaries. International students and journalists using the Internet to retrieve information on the conflict, found that they could only find material from the nationalist, Republican perspective. It took a number of years before parties from the rival Unionist tradition realised that they were inadvertently missing publicity.

Conflict and information warfare in the form of potential inlsrepresentation of the facts, as in Sri Lanka, and the imbalance of available material, as shown in the earlier years in Northern Ireland, have made the job of conflict resolution even more difficult. But just as cyberspace conflicts have accelerated in recent years, so have attempts at electronic conflict resolution increased.

 

Primary Source

The Internet can help resolve conflicts. From a purely theoretical perspective, there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, information always passes through a filtering process and is thus weakened in most forms of “real time” news and information. The Internet is one medium which doesn’t weaken it. It offers primary source information “straight from the horses mouth.” The Mexican underground group, the Zapatista National Liberation Group is a case in point. The leader of this rebel group is known to write his communiqués on a laptop computer, which is carried around in a backpack, and plugged into the lighter socket of an old pickup truck when needed. 8 With a telephone modem and a cellular phone, he is able to hook onto the Internet even while he is on the run.

 

Good to Talk

Secondly, the Internet provides a much needed line of communication. Considering that most conflicts result from a series of misperceptions, misrepresentations, and communication breakdowns, keeping lines of communication open at all times is absolutely essential.

When a situation degenerates to the point of armed conflict, this is exactly the time when governments call home their ambassadors and diplomats. The recall of the Russian ambassadors to the US and the UK as a result of the December Gulf Crisis exemplifies this. Governments tend to close the most obvious line of communication when it is needed most. The Internet, and the access to the relevant people that it provides, can serve as an alternative.

Thirdly, it provides a cost-effective, consistent and time-efficient service. It is cheaper to communicate electronically on such matters than to fly experts from around the world to a central location for a number of days, to brainstorm about solutions. Discussion groups online offer a consistency and permanency of access, which produces results. The usual constraints of differing time zones across the world are not an issue.

 

Track Two

From a more practical perspective, the impact of electronic conflict resolution becomes more readily apparent. It is generally based on the premise of track-two diplomacy. Track two diplomacy has always played a vital role in helping to resolve conflicts and disputes. Its informal nature has meant that academics, diplomats, and public policy analysts have been able to come together to consider issues, without the discussions ever being interpreted as official government policy.

The aims of Virtual Track Two Diplomacy and electronic conflict resolution are very similar. But instead of face to face meetings, issues are primarily debated through restricted access discussions lists, e-mail and video conferencing.

The University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Co-operation (IGCC) has one of the most developed electronic conflict resolution projects. Initially it was designed to link social scientists and policy makers with science and technology experts to develop Internet applications for increased multi lateral co-operation in the Middle East and Northeast Asia.

Wired for Peace aimed to support the peace processes in these areas by sustaining track two communications and promoting co-operation between the key players through multilingual document libraries, data archives, discussion forums, workgroup schedules, and tools for collaborative document writing and data analysis. 9 In a sense, these virtual communities have become almost as important as the real thing.

There are many criticisms of the Internet, and a great number of them focus on the integrity of information. True, there is a multitude of propaganda which is used to promote conflict. However, there also is an abundance of good quality material. Policy makers, practitioners, academics and researchers working in the field of conflict resolution should be able to distinguish between the two.

Regardless of the quality, the Internet offers primary source material, with information on the relevant groups from themselves. This gives a much better insight than speculating about their aims and objectives. The Internet allows groups and organisations to read what the “other side” is saying without the message being filtered or weakened in any way.

However, information warfare does exists. And it has the potential to lead to serious misinformation, an issue that needs to be discussed. Still, it is true that this medium of information has transformed the nature of our conflicts and will continue to do so in ways which have not yet even been envisaged.

Endnotes

Note 1: PIOOM World Conflict Map (PIIOM Databank, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands).  Back.

Note 2: http://www.voz-rebelde.de/  Back.

Note 3: http://burn.ucsd.edu./~ats/mrta.htm  Back.

Note 4: See “Tupac Amaru’s Web Page is Hot Spot on the Internet”, at http://burn.ucsd.edu./~ats/MRTA/wsj1.htm  Back.

Note 5: See http://www.lanka.net/lakehouse/1998/09/30/introsec.html. The news item actually states “...LTTE transmissions have confirmed yesterday...”.  Back.

Note 6: As above.  Back.

Note 7: See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_182000/182260.st m  Back.

Note 8: Charles Swett, “Strategic Assessment: The Internet”, 1995. Available on-line at http://www.fas.org/cp/swett.html  Back.

Note 9: See http://www.neacd.llnl.gov/ for details.  Back.