Divided cities

BOSTON — It is a burning reality in Kirkuk, Iraq — as fresh in the air as the acrid smell of another suicide bombing.

It’s there on Belfast’s Ardoyne Road that severs the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

It’s there on the bridge in Mitrovica that separates the Serbs and Kosovar Albanians.

It haunts the mortar-punched ruins that still lie along the green line in Beirut.

And you still can find it smoldering in some corners of Nicosia, Cyprus.

In every one of these bitterly divided cities, you can hear the arrogant assertion that their conflict, their grievances, their hatreds are unique. They will spend hours telling you all about it.

And Padraig O’Malley will hear none of it.

A towering Irishman with a passion for peace-making, O’Malley has gotten to know these cities enough to know that their hatreds are not unique at all. And O’Malley believes that in discovering that their conflict is not so special, the different sides of these fractured cities can unlock a doorway to understanding.

That is the simple idea behind an important international conference pulled together by O’Malley, “The Forum for Cities in Transition,” which is being held here in Boston at the University of Massachusetts starting today and continuing through Thursday.

“People from divided cities are in the best position to help people in other divided cities,” says O’Malley, a professor of peace and reconciliation at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

And so he has brought together some 35 leaders, including mayors and city council members and police officials, from all of these divided cities so that they can share in a gathering aimed at learning how cities torn apart by hatred can heal their divisions.   

“They share behavioral, political, social and psychological traits not seen in people in more ‘normal’ societies. And they end up believing that their conflict is special and that there has never been a conflict like theirs. No one can understand, they like to say, except those who’ve lived through it,” O’Malley explains.

“By sharing their stories with each other they see this isn’t true. There are many similar patterns and there is much that they can learn from each other about how to heal the divisions,” O’Malley adds.

It’s a simple, but powerful, thesis. And it was tested in July 1997 when O’Malley arranged to bring 40 leaders from the key political parties in Northern Ireland to South Africa. There, they met with negotiators from all of the key parties to the conflict in South Africa, where an historic peace agreement was reached in 1994.

The hope was that the Northern Ireland negotiators would learn from their South African counterparts about the possibility for reconciliation. It worked.

When Northern Ireland’s leaders reached the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, they recognized the contribution that the South African negotiators had played in the success of the Northern Ireland peace process.

O’Malley’s belief in bringing together divided cities was tested again in 2007 when he worked with Tufts University’s Institute of Global Leadership to gather key Iraqi leaders, and helped guide them to an agreement to hold a follow-up conference the next year.

And in 2008, O’Malley shepherded some 36 leaders of Iraq’s warring factions — Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Christians and others — to a Helsinki hotel for three days of talks. Out of those talks came a set of principles that provide a framework for negotiations.

O’Malley is a relentless proponent of peace. But he has no air of piety.

His efforts are grounded in action, a graceful humility and a great sense of humor that he seems to reveal at exactly the right moment.

His laugh is contagious and full of mischief — a spirit that plays a key part in cracking the hardened facade built up around those who have learned through generations to hate each other.

The goal today will be to get the different sides of these divided cities to allow those walls to crack and come tumbling down and then to rebuild their cities on a solid foundation of trust. O’Malley believes the conference will be a success if the group of leaders agree to form a permanent council of cities in transition and announce that one of the cities will host another forum next year.

But even if O’Malley has a desired goal, it is classic O’Malley style to get out of the way and allow the parties involved to find their own path forward. As a result, he proudly announces there is no agenda at the meeting.

“I want them to know this conference is theirs," he says. "I want them to know they have a far better idea of what needs to be done than I do.”

Read more about efforts to reach peace:

Congo struggles to move from conflict to peace

Redefining the "peace process"

The ground truth from Belfast