Chair: Charles Glass

Glass is an author, journalist and broadcaster specialising in the Middle East and the Second World War. He began his journalistic career in 1973 at the ABC News Beirut bureau with Peter Jennings. He covered the October Arab-Israeli War on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. He also covered civil war in Lebanon, where artillery fire wounded him in 1976. He was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since 1993, he has been a freelance writer in Paris, Tuscany, Venice and London, regularly covering the Middle East, the Balkans, southeast Asia and the Mediterranean region. In 1986, Glass interviewed the hostage crew of TWA flight 847 on the tarmac of Beirut Airport. He broke the news that the hijackers had removed the hostages from the plane and hidden them in the suburbs of Beirut, causing the Reagan Administration to abort a rescue attempt. In 1987, Glass himself was abducted and held hostage for two months before escaping from his Shiite Muslim captors. In 1988, he exposed Saddam Hussein’s then-secret biological weapons program. The U.S. government rejected Glass’s claims, until Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. In addition, Glass was the only U.S. television correspondent in northern Iraq covering the entire Kurdish rebellion in 1991. He has covered wars in the Middle East, Eritrea, Rhodesia, Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Speakers

Ian Black

Black is the former Middle East editor at the Guardian, where he has worked since 1980 as a reporter. In recent years he has reported extensively on the Arab uprisings and their aftermath in Syria, Libya and Egypt. 2017 marks the publication of Black’s new book, Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, which traces the history of conflict in the region including important milestones such as the Balfour Agreement. Black joined the LSE Middle East Centre as a Visiting Senior Fellow in August 2016.  In 2010, he was awarded a Peace Through Media Award by the International Council for Press and Broadcasting at the International Media Awards in London.

Ghada Karmi

Karmi is a Palestinian doctor of medicine, author and academic. Ghada was born in Jerusalem and was forced to leave her home with her family as a result of Israel’s creation in 1948. They moved to England where Karmi eventually practised as a doctor for many years, working as a specialist in the health of migrants and refugees. Karmi is the author of several books, including her memoir In Search of Fatima, Jerusalem Today, What Future for the Peace Process? and The Palestinian Exodus 1948-1998. She has held a number of research appointments at SOAS and the universities of Durham and Leeds. From 1999 to 2001 she was an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where she led a major project on Israel-Palestinian reconciliation. In 2009, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Currently Ghada Karmi is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

Lord Leslie Turnberg

Lord Turnberg is a medical professional, author and Labour peer. Leslie Turnberg graduated in medicine from Manchester University in 1957. He was appointed President of the Royal College of Physicians in 1992 and received a knighthood in 1994 Birthday Honours for services to medicine. He continues to be active in medical affairs in the House of Lords and is a member of the Committee on Sustainability of the NHS. He was a Jewish Medical Association (UK) founder patron.  In 2008 Lord and Lady Turnberg, in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences, established the Daniel Turnberg Memorial Fellowships. These fellowships are in memory of their late son, a doctor and researcher with a keen interest in fostering links between the UK and the Middle East. In recent years Lord Turnberg has turned his attention increasingly to the thorny problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has used his experience in research and in large organisations to analyse the reasons behind the inability of the Zionists and the Arabs to reach a compromise. As a Labour Peer he focuses on the problems that abound in the Middle East in his interventions in debates in the House of Lords. In April this year, Lord Turnberg published his book Beyond the Balfour Agreement marking the anniversary of the landmark letter and the misconceptions surrounding the declaration ever since.

Dr Jacob Norris

Jacob Norris is a social and cultural historian of the modern Middle East. He completed his PhD in 2010 at the University of Cambridge where he spent a further 3 years as Research Fellow, before coming to Sussex in 2013. Jacob’s research is mostly focused on Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, albeit within global and transnational frameworks. His monograph, Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development, 1905-1948 was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press.

Featured image: From left to right: Lord Allenby (commander of British forces in Palestine 1917), Lord Balfour, and Sir Herbert Samuel, first British High Commissioner of the Mandate attending the 1925 opening of Hebrew University.

When people think of diaspora populations, their first thought tends to be of refugee populations, the migrant crisis, and communities fleeing conflict as a result of what’s reported in the media. However, this is only part of the story. Often these scattered populations across the globe continue to have an enormous impact on their homelands.

The European Research Council has sponsored 5 years of extensive research and close to 500 first-hand interviews among Kosovo, Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Kurdish, Iraqi and Palestinian diasporas, and a large-scale survey. These displaced, real, diverse people, living in European countries from the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France give us a unique insight into the homelands from which they originate.

This resourceful, entrepreneurial section of the population are important actors in the conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction processes of their homelands, be that Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia or Armenia.
Conflict-generated diasporas can have a huge influence on war and peace, and it is often something that is under reported in the media.

Dr. Maria Koinova, Principal Investigator for the ERC Project implemented at Warwick University, and her team will present their paper “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”, and be joined by journalists to discuss the wider importance of their work and how it can influence public policy today.

For more information on the project, visit their website here.

Chair

Chris Morris – BBC Correspondent

Morris regularly contributes to BBC News, Today and From Our Own Correspondent, and is the author of the 2005 Granta publication The New Turkey. He was BBC Turkey Correspondent from 1997-2001 based first in Ankara and later opening the BBC’s new bureau in Istanbul covering the 1999 İzmit earthquake and the arrest and trial of the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. From 2001-2005 Morris was the BBC Europe Correspondent based in Brussels covering the European Union, the proposed European constitution, and other European stories.

Speakers

Dr Maria Koinova – Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”

Before joining Warwick University in 2012, Dr. Maria Koinova held research fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., the European University Institute, and Uppsala University, among other academic institutions. Koinova is the author of Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States. Since 2006 Koinova has worked on topics related to diasporas, conflicts, post-conflict reconstruction and democratization, and has conducted multi-sited fieldwork among the Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Croatian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, and Ukrainian diasporas in the US and/or in Europe.

Tony Barber – Financial Times Europe News Editor

Tony is a columnist and specialist writer on European political, economic and business news and currently the Europe editor for the Financial Times. From 1990 – 1997 he was the East Europe Editor and Europe Editor at the Independent. Before that, he worked as a Reuters Foreign Correspondent from a range of cities from New York, Vienna, Moscow, Warsaw to Belgrade.

Dr Ben Margulies –  post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of Warwick 

Ben’s research background is primarily in comparative and European politics. He is also interested in the way that nations and party systems respond to migration and globalisation. His Ph.D. “Liberal Parties and Party Systems” used data taken from European party manifestos to track when parties moved left or right, and showed how these movements affected vote shares that liberal parties received. Ben joined this project to help develop a large-scale survey among conflict-generated diasporas in Europe.

Dr Dženta Karabegović – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Dženeta’s Ph.D. research project analyses diaspora influence on a weak state in post-conflict environments. Her work has looked into Bosnian diaspora mobilisation in Europe around issues of transitional justice, genocide remembrance, and political participation. This research was undertaken in the form of interviews, participant observation and process tracing with multi-sited fieldwork. Dženeta holds an MA. from the University of Chicago and was a visiting scholar from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

Dr Oula Kadhum – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Oula Kadhum’s research investigates in a comparative perspective diaspora mobilisation for state-building following the 2003 intervention in Iraq. Her work explores how the diaspora in the UK and Sweden mobilised towards this end and why there were differences in their approaches to building the state. Oula completed her Masters degree at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, a postgraduate certificate in Education at Kings College London, and a Bachelors degree from Queen Mary University of London.

Featured image: protestors demonstrating against Turkish President Erdogan’s visit to Strasbourg. France Oct 4th, 2015

Based on new archive research and original interviews with leading correspondents and diplomats, the book explores why this fiercely contested region exerts such a pull over reporters: those who bring the story to the world. Despite decades of diplomacy, a just and lasting end to the conflict remains as difficult as ever to achieve.

Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent at BBC News, said: “At a time when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is under unprecedented scrutiny, James Rodgers provides an essential and insightful historical perspective on the long “war of words” behind a major conflict of our time. Rodgers’ book is essential reading for those seeking a greater understanding of the difficult dynamics behind reporting – and resolving conflicts.”

James Rodgers is an author and journalist. His previous books are Reporting Conflict (2012) and No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013). A former BBC correspondent in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza, James lectures in Journalism at City University.

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. Previous experience has shown that members often gain insight and inspiration from discussions with the author, which enable them to continue reading the book in a new light.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR THE FRONTLINE CLUB: Save 30% when ordering on palgrave.com. Please e-mail Sophie Kayes for the code. Valid until 31 October 2015. Terms and conditions apply.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks. 

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both happier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

L-R Jon Snow, Gabrielle Rifkind and Giandomenico Picco

Snow introduced the discussion with a statement. He said with reference to war:

“You are not dealing with a conflict, you are dealing with a people.”

With this, the human and humane undertone to the evening’s discussions were set. Evidently a central theme in their book, Rifkind described how her and Picco’s shared understanding was that in conflict resolution, “whoever you are dealing with, underneath there is a human being”.

Rifkind said they named the book after McNamara’s iconic film The Fog of War. McNamara, former US United States Secretary of Defense, admitted to never getting “into the mind of the enemy”. Evidently, this is a shortcoming alien to Picco’s approach. Despite himself being kidnapped four times, he spoke unscathed about the art of negotiation.

While Rifkind emphasised the complexity of each conflict resolution process, Picco focused on the need to engage with important players. He said:

“You have to enter the mind of the individual, understanding his narrative first . . . his personal narrative.”

He gave examples of negotiating with Rafsanjani and later Khatami by focusing on their individual character interests. The idea that Iran, where Picco and Rifkind first met, sits outside possible conflict resolution was debunked by Picco with the little known fact that Iran has negotiated with the West 12 times in the last 30 years. And according to Picco, “we, the West, have always got what we wanted.”

Thus the concept of the impossibility of a truth but rather an individual truth was brought to light. On the term impartiality Picco fervently said, “I do not like to use words that do not exist.” He continued to highlight the need to be discerning:

“Listen a lot and listen very carefully, bearing in mind that most of the things that are said are not relevant or not true, and every individual is profoundly different. . . . Trying to define people by groups is not very productive.”

Snow agreed and pointed out that “the best journalists are politically motivated. . . . They want to change the world.” To which Picco responded:

“As long as you take your side and take responsibility for what you say and what you do, the world changes.”

In retrospect, Picco referred to Cold War conflict resolution as a kid’s game in comparison to what it is today. Rifkind explained:

“In the Cold War it was much easier to have moral clarity, who was right who was wrong. . . . We still want goodies and baddies.”

This dichotomy has been weakened and Snow challenged mainstream media in the West which is currently and wholeheartedly siding with Ukraine. He offered up a Russian insight into the conflict and Rifkind added:

“With the idea of the Ukraine leaning towards the EU we are immediately more sympathetic. . . . If you are serious about managing conflict you have to put competing narratives into the same space.”

Towards the end of discussions, Picco notably expressed hope in future Saudi–Iranian relations, predicting talks between the two, pointing to the intelligent people on both sides.

One audience member wanted to know the potential audience for the book. Rifkind answered, “Of course we would like people at the centre of power to read it because it is a different way of thinking about conflict.”

The evening’s questions could have carried on well after closing time. In the book signing queue that followed someone asked Rifkind, “Why do you do what you do and why carry on doing it?” She responded tellingly, “Its easier to live in a world with conflict if you can find a way to get involved.”

Watch the event and listen again here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-fog-of-peace