USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010604.0601 (On Screen): In the 1970's, there was a civil war in Lebanon, especially in Beirut. The different sides clashed constantly, and there was a lot of use of artillery and rockets for area bombardment. The International Community was aghast, and international diplomats kept going in trying to arrange "cease fires". And everyone would agree to a cease fire at a certain date and time, and it would come and indeed the shooting would cease -- for maybe 18 or 36 hours. And then they'd be back to fighting again. I think this must have happened about ten times in Beirut over the course of a couple of months. Each time a cease fire would collapse, the international diplomats would start trying to negotiate another one.

In the 1980's there was a civil war in Somalia. And the same thing happened. Outsiders would come in and get everyone involved to agree to a cease fire, and when it came it would last maybe a day or two, and then fighting would start again

Why did they fail? Why didn't the cease fire hold? It's because the outsiders completely misunderstood the situation. They wanted the fighting to stop, and assumed that the participants shared their goal. But the active participants in the conflict had decided to fight for a reason, and the cease fire didn't eliminate the reason. If that reason was worth fighting for in the first place, it was worth beginning to fight for again. The outsiders assumed that the participants were weary of war (as were the outsiders) and wanted peace (as did the outsiders) and, most critically, didn't care how it was gotten (as did the outsiders) — and all those assumptions were wrong. The leaders of the participants agreed to the cease fires simply because if they didn't they'd be branded as "bad guys" in the international press. But the participants emphatically did care about the terms of the peace and at the moment of the cease fire the state of affairs wasn't acceptable. So they started fighting again.

As long as the fundamental issue causing a struggle remains unresolved in the eyes of one side in the conflict, simply declaring a cease fire is doomed to fail. (discuss)