Michael de Laine

Truth and reconciliation are also on the agenda in the Middle East

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen, 4 March 2009

Truth and reconciliation processes are probably best known from South Africa (1995), but they stem from the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War and truth and reconciliation processes in South America – Argentina in 1983, Chile in 1990.

Unlike these, however, the truth and reconciliation processes that have started in the Arab Middle East are not connected with transitions from one form of rule to another, but have taken place under a continuing rule – sometimes with the aid of the rulers, sometimes without.

Sune Haugbølle of the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, has studied truth and reconciliation processes at close hand in Lebanon and Syria. He has also edited a book, ‘The Politics of Violence, Truth and Reconciliation in the Arab Middle East’, together with Anders Hastrup.

The book features studies of six Arab countries in which legacies of political violence have been challenged through various initiatives to promote “truth-telling” and transitional justice.

Pressure for political liberalisation and the growth of civil society and independent media inside Arab countries have prompted the debate about violent events in the post-colonial period. As well as Lebanon and Syria, both Morocco and Algeria have set up truth commissions, while the trial of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein is considered by come to be form of truth and reconciliation process.

And perhaps today’s announcement that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has now issued an arrest warrant against the present Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians in Darfur, can lead to a truth and reconciliation process in Sudan.

The book’s articles highlight how the interplay between state-orchestrated initiatives (such as truth and reconciliation committees and ministerial committees), civil society actors (including former political prisoners, investigative journalists and NGOs), and external actors (such as transnational NGOs, state-sponsored dialogue initiatives, the UN and the EU) is creating a new political field.

The book examines the extent to which this field challenges the Arab nation-state’s monopoly on history and violence, and asks whether public narratives of violence, memory and justice consolidate or challenge political legitimacy of current regimes.