The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to former Finnish president and veteran international peace negotiator Martti Ahtisaari is well merited.
Here is a man of high moral purpose, a former primary school teacher-turned— diplomat, who has used his extensive international contacts and considerable diplomatic skills to seek to broker ends to conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Indonesian province of Aceh, Namibia, Kosovo, Iraq, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. That he did not always succeed misses the point that very often his were the first, often behind-the-scenes efforts to demonstrate to all parties in bitter conflicts that negotiation was ultimately the only way forward.
As with the neighboring Norwegians, whose tireless efforts to bring peace to Sri Lanka rank as one of the most persistent and admirable international efforts for conflict resolution, Ahtisaari benefited from the fact that he came from a country with absolutely no political axes to grind in the wider world. Whereas Tony Blair as Middle East peace envoy must struggle to overcome the fact that he was George W. Bush’s partner in the disastrous Iraq aggression, Finland has spent the last 60 years at peace with the world while busily selling it principally paper and Nokia mobile telephones. Now aged 71, Ahtisaari earned a reputation for infinite patience when he set about trying to bring an end to violent conflicts whose genesis often went back far into history and which fed on almost genetically programmed enmities, such as those in the former state of Yugoslavia.
Conflict resolution requires an extraordinary ability to go over the same well-worn ground again and again as each side presents its arguments, while looking for any factor, however small, upon which the first light of agreement can be shone.
There is no place for personal pride or protest by the intermediary in such peace negotiations. There probably were times when Ahtisaari felt extreme frustration as rival delegations maneuvered for advantage or blanked progress by refusing to discuss some of the most basic concepts. But he always plugged on and in cases like Aceh and Namibia, his dogged determination paid off. Upon hearing the news of his Nobel laureateship, the veteran negotiator said that he considered Namibia to be his greatest achievement and many would agree. Yet even when that peace deal was in sight, the greatest violence in the whole conflict between the rebels and the apartheid South African-sponsored government broke out.
Yet despite this final spasm of bloodshed, Ahtisaari got the rivals back around the table and the peace deal was finally inked.
The only sour note to this year’s peace prize has been the behavior of the Chinese government that mounted a vigorous campaign to stop the prize going to one or both of two imprisoned human rights activists Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng. Beijing warned the laureateship should be awarded to “the right person”. Some may suspect, almost certainly wrongly, that the Nobel Committee surrendered to Chinese threats. But China’s diplomatic bullying must not be allowed to detract from Ahtisaari’s richly deserved award.
