身份政治的猛兽
伦敦——两名英国士兵和一名天主教警察在北爱被持不同政见的共和党恐怖份子杀害的消息传来时，我正身处约旦，那里是一块虽然处境困苦但却气氛平和的美丽的绿洲。我们从约旦山上遥望天主教徒所尊奉的圣地。回想我曾在北爱度过的岁月，令我感到震撼的是无论在北爱还是在这里，争斗、痛苦和流血所带来的严峻考验在登高俯瞰时都变得非常渺小。北爱、加沙和西岸在地貌上的似曾相识更增添了暴力行为的神秘和可憎。
文化、宗教和种族冲突是否真的让暴力无法避免？历史、语言和我们满足精神渴望的不同方式是否在我们身上植入了暴力的基因？
我幸运地在约旦读到阿敏•马卢夫的一本书，书名叫做 《身份的寻找》。 具有黎巴嫩、法国、阿拉伯和天主教等多重身份的作者在这本书中旗帜鲜明的攻击了他口中所谓的身份政治的猛兽。马卢夫希望有一天他能把整个中东称为自己的家乡，希望他的孙子在读到他写的书时发现它们已经成为就身份问题争论不休的记忆当中一段奇怪的时光。
适用于中东身份政治和决定美欧与伊斯兰关系的那些规律同样适用于北爱尔兰。至少以前曾经同样适用。
我曾为解决北爱的恐怖主义问题殚精竭虑，起初是在20世纪80年代的部长任上，后来又曾在制定《贝尔法斯特和平协议》中改革北爱尔兰省警务和安全计划的专门委员会担任领导。几百年来，基督教和天主教部落断断续续地发生冲突，并且在长达30年的期间内——这段时间被委婉地称之为“问题年代”——恐怖主义已经导致3，000多人死亡，数万人受伤。
这是一种与基督教核心问题无关的身份冲突，却足以令人毛骨悚然、浑身颤抖。我想起第一次参观贝尔法斯特的一间医院，事故急救部的年轻护士们不得不耐心地向我解释基督教和天主教枪击膝盖骨的区别。这既无关于神学也无关于宗教仪式。但天主教徒用猎枪执行这种残酷的惩罚，而基督教徒则用电钻。
“这些都已经写进了历史书，”在最近这次谋杀发生以前，我们曾经这样想。1998年的贝尔法斯特和平协议让和平局面维持了10年以上。处于协议核心的是一个简单的主张：为统一的爱尔兰大声疾呼并用炸弹争取实现统一大计的共和党人——把基督教占主导地位的北方和天主教占主导地位的南方联合在一起——现在也承认只能通过投票来争取宪法改革。
我们说服奉行恐怖主义的爱尔兰共和军及其所属政党参与政治进程和权力共享。作为交换条件，北方的基督教多数势力认可了共和军不应承认他们并不忠于的国家符号。此外，警察和安全部队也需要进行重组以代表全体民众，而不只是代表占人口多数的基督教徒。
有趣的是，警务改革是政党唯一无法依靠自身力量完成的任务。因此我也被邀请参与，同时接到邀请的还有其他警务问题专家。
协议开创了数年的和平局面。这种局面并不完美。民主党人偶尔必须与曾经的恐怖分子达成的妥协很难为人们接受。但结果是使北爱150万人民的生活回归了正常。
我并不认为最近发生的事情是世界末日——尽管对于失去亲人的家庭这无疑带来了悲剧性的结果。这是一小股少数势力无政府主义的武力爆发。在某种程度上，它凸显了北爱已经取得的成就是多么重要。
首先，几乎整个爱尔兰都一致反对所发生的一切。其次，这次发生的暴力事件巩固了政治进程，让曾经的爱尔兰共和军领袖与警察肩并肩谴责凶手。第三，经过改革的警察部队被人们普遍看作全体民众的保卫者，神父和主教则鼓励年轻的天主教徒们加入到警察的队伍。我们应对恐怖主义的力量有所增强，而不是有所削弱。
那么我在从约旦一端驾车来到另一端的时候总结出了哪些教训？教训也许主要涉及两个方面。显而易见，除非与哈马斯开始谈判，否则巴勒斯坦和平根本无法实现——巴拉克·奥巴马总统的中东地区特使乔治·米切尔在成功调解了北爱的冲突后，肯定会赞同这样的观点。
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LONDON – I was in Jordan, that beautiful oasis of calm and moderation in a difficult and dangerous neighborhood, when I first heard the news about the murder of two British soldiers and a Catholic policeman by dissident republican terrorists in Northern Ireland.
We had looked out across what Christians call the Holy Land from the Jordanian hills. What struck me, thinking back to the days I once spent in Northern Ireland, was how both there and here the crucible of so much struggle, bitterness, and bloodshed is very small. There is an intimacy about the geography of Northern Ireland, Gaza, and the West Bank that makes the violence seem all the more inexplicable and obscene.
Is this violence made inevitable by the clash of cultures, religions, and ethnicities? Is it programmed into DNA by history, language, and our different ways of meeting our spiritual yearnings?
It was my good fortune to be reading in Jordan a book called On Identity by Amin Maalouf. It is a brilliant assault on what the author, who is Lebanese, French, Arab and Christian, calls “the panthers” of identity politics. Maalouf hopes that one day he can call all of the Middle East his homeland, and that his grandson will find his book a strange memento of a time when these arguments had to be put forward.
What is true of identity politics in the Middle East, and in shaping America’s and Europe’s relationship with the Islamic world, is equally true about Northern Ireland. Or at least it was as true.
I spent part of my life working on the problems of terrorism in Northern Ireland, first as a minister in the early 1980’s and, later, chairing the commission that drew up reform for policing and security in the Province as part of the Belfast Peace Agreement. For centuries, the Protestant and Catholic tribes had intermittently clashed, and over a period of three decades – a time euphemistically known as “the Troubles” – terrorism had claimed more than 3,000 lives and tens of thousands of injuries.
This was an identity clash that had nothing to do with the essential messages of Christianity. But it was bleakly horrific. I recall that the first time I visited a hospital in Belfast, the young nurses in the Accident and Emergency Unit had to describe patiently to me the difference between a Protestant and a Catholic knee-capping. This was not a matter of theology or even liturgy. But the Catholics used a shotgun for this brutal punishment, and the Protestants an electric drill.
“That is all for the history books,” we thought, until the recent murders. The Belfast peace agreement of 1998 has secured more than 10 years of peace. At its heart lay a simple proposition: the republicans, who called for and bombed for a United Ireland – hammering together the predominantly Protestant North and the overwhelmingly Catholic South – accepted that constitutional change could come only through the ballot box.
We talked the terrorist IRA and their political wing into the political process and the sharing of power. In return, the Protestant majority in the north accepted that republicans should not have to accept the symbols of a state to which they felt no loyalty. Moreover, the police and security forces were to be reorganized so that they were seen to represent the whole community, not primarily its Protestant majority.
Interestingly, the issue of police reform was the only one that the political parties could not resolve by themselves. So I was called in, together with a group of experts on policing, to sort it out.
The result of that deal has been years of peace. It is not perfect. Some of the compromises that democrats must occasionally make with one-time terrorists are difficult to stomach. But the outcome has been the return of normality to the one and a half million people of Northern Ireland.
I do not take an apocalyptic view of what recently happened – tragic though it is for the bereaved families. It is an anarchic spasm of violence by a tiny minority. In a way, it underlines the importance of what has been achieved in Northern Ireland.
First, virtually the whole of Ireland is united against what has happened. Second, the violence has strengthened the political process, with one-time IRA leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with the police to condemn the murders. Third, the reformed police service itself has been widely seen as the protector of the whole community, and young Catholics have been encouraged to join it by their priests and bishops. It is now more, not less, able to deal with terrorism.
So did I think of lessons to be learned in the Middle East as I drove from one end of Jordan to the other? Perhaps there are two. Obviously, there will be no peace in Palestine unless we start to talk to Hamas – a point that President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the region, Senator George Mitchell, will surely appreciate after his experiences as a successful mediator in Northern Ireland.
By Chris Patten
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