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ICfC Senior Associate David Steele to lead conciliation efforts in Iraq

ICfC Senior associate David Steele has accepted a position with the United States Institute of Peace as a reconciliation facilitator working with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams operating out of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and in 25 locations throughout that country.  The U.S. Institute of Peace is a federal government agency with which Dr. Steele has had an affiliation for many years.  During the past year he has written a paper for USIP on recommendations for reconciliation in Iraq and provided leadership of an advanced facilitators workshop for Iraqis held last October.  Since January, while recovering from cancer surgery, he has been writing training curriculum and editing for publication his recommendations for Iraqi reconciliation.  His new responsibilities, beginning April 13, require living in the Green Zone in Baghdad for a year and traveling throughout the country to develop and implement U.S. Government programming for reconciliation in all 18 provinces.  

The training event held last October is a model of the kind of work Dr. Steele will be conducting over the next year.  In that workshop he was part of a team that helped a group of Iraqis assess their efforts at facilitating a dialogue event in Mahmoudiyah, a municipality just south of Baghdad.  Mahmoudiyah had been, until recently, at the center of the triangle of death, an al-Qaeda controlled region that witnessed terrible fighting between Sunni and Shi’ite factions.  In the past few months, however, Sunni tribal leaders from Mahmoudiyah have joined the Awakening Councils that have begun to oppose the presence of al-Qaeda.  The U.S. Institute of Peace was instrumental in organizing the first inter-sectarian dialogue process in that region, bringing together Sunni tribal leaders who had previously fled to Jordan with Shi’ite leaders from the municipality.  The process was led by local Iraqis, with support from USIP staff. Witnessing the strong commitment of these Iraqis to reconciliation and joint efforts at reconstruction was extremely encouraging.  

The challenging nature of this reconciliation process was also apparent, however, especially when the workshop then focused attention on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul which is now experiencing the worst fighting in the country.  The participants from Mosul described their predicament as a people caught in the crossfire between al-Qaeda’s alignment with three local tribes, Kurdish rebels fighting for an independent homeland, and criminal gangs out for money and power.  The levels of violence described were astounding.  Yet these people began to map out what would need to happen in order to set their city and region in a peaceful direction.  Dr. Steele’s task during this next year will be to replicate the Mahmoudiyah process in places like Mosul and as many other parts of Iraq as possible, training and supporting local facilitators to be agents of reconciliation.