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The Camp David Accords: 45 Years Later

By
Leo Weakland
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Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin

September 17th, 2023, was the 45 anniversary of the signing of the Camp David Accords, between U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The agreement led to peace between Israel and Egypt, the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and the normalization of political and economic relations between Israel and Egypt, including the Egyptian recognition of Israel as a state. 

While the Accords did not end the broader Arab-Israeli conflict or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they were the first step towards a lasting peace in the region. It ended a state of war between Israel and Egypt that had lasted for 30 years, and has endured for almost half a century, despite the constant turmoil in the region and various crises in both states. 

All three leaders involved chose to work together to achieve peace, with Carter mediating between two men who had to make important sacrifices to secure peace. For Israel, Begin relinquished the Sinai, which Israel had occupied since 1967, while for Egypt, Sadat became the first Arab head of state to recognize Israel, a risky move that ultimately led to his assassination in 1981. The peace agreement marked the end of the era of outright war between Israel and Arab state actors; the Arab-Israeli conflict subsequently became centered on Israel and sub-state actors such as the PLO/Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah. In the decades that followed, further peace treaties were signed between Israel and other Arab states such as Jordan, even as peace with the Palestinains and other neighboring states remains elusive. 

What is remarkable about the peace won at Camp David is that it outlasted the careers of the three three men who were responsible for it. Sadat ,as mentioned, was assassinated  by extremists within his own military. Begin led Israel into a war in Lebanon in 1982 and subsequently lost reelection 2 years later; and Carter lost his own reelection bid in in 1980 despite having secured this significant diplomatic victory. Since the September 17, 1978 signing of the Accords, peace remains in effect between Egypt and Israel, with Egypt sometimes also mediating to build further peace in the region.
The region still faces significant turmoil, between the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the devastation of the Syrian Civil War, and the seemingly unending conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Subsequent attempts to find a lasting, peaceful solution, most notably the 1993 Oslo Accords, have failed to achieve long-term peace. Camp David shows that peace is possible in the region, even between two states that had viewed each other as enemies. Sadat and Begin took many risks to make peace. They were not perfect. However, they demonstrated the importance of human connection in peacebuilding. This is a lesson for both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders today, who often prefer inflammatory rhetoric to building a closer personal relationship for peace. If they follow the lead of both their predecessors and even some of their own people, peace can be achieved, no matter how impossible it might seem. 45 years later, Camp David shows us that peace is always possible.

The Concerns of Youth in Conflict-Stricken South Thailand

By
Tara Abhasakun
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Nurainee

Nurainee Jangoe was 13 when bombs and bullets ripped through the neighborhood surrounding her school in Thailand’s southern province of Pattani in 2004. 

“There were bombings, shootings, and arguments between the police and army, and people at that time,” she told Peace News Network.

Thailand’s ‘Deep South,’ which includes the provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat, as well as four districts of Songkhla province, is the center of an ongoing conflict. Muslims make up 76% of the region, with Buddhists comprising around 23%, and Christians and other religious groups making up smaller percentages of the population. The majority of Thailand’s Muslims are ethnically Malay. Muslim separatist groups, most notably the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), wish for the region to secede from the rest of Thailand.

Between January 2004 and March 2022, 3,686 people were killed in violent incidents related to separatism or politics in the Deep South, according to the NGO Deep South Watch. Another 10,872 were injured. When also counting killings related to drugs, other crimes, resource conflicts, and other such causes, the numbers stand at 7,344 deaths, and 13,641 injuries. The violence has impacted South Thailand’s youth in a number of ways, particularly in education. Analysts and academics say that students in the region face a number of challenges, including underfunded schools, and threats against activities on university campuses.

Nurainee, now a data analyst at Deep South Watch, said that the Thai government provides less funding for Islamic public schools than other Thai schools. 

“Most of the teachers, or good teachers, don’t want to teach at Islamic public schools,” she said. “If the government can support the budget more for good teachers at Islamic public schools, it would make teachers interested in teaching students in Islamic public schools. This can help students get more knowledge and education.”

Growing up around these issues, Nurainee became determined to make things better for her community. She founded a summer camp for youth from the Deep South. The camp, TU Southern, encourages youth to study at universities in other areas of Thailand, in order to help widen their horizons. 

Students at a TU Southern camp

Nurainee noted that in the past, many Muslim parents did not want their children to study far away from the Deep South, since they worry about other environments not being friendly and supportive towards strict Muslim values. However, Nurainee says she sees most parents’ attitudes on this topic have shifted, since they have seen that the atmosphere in Bangkok is indeed friendly and supportive toward Muslims. 

Another issue for youth in South Thailand is threats against activities on university campuses.  On June 7, 2023, a student group in South Thailand held a mock referendum for a separate state in Thailand’s Deep South. The group, Pelajar Bangsa, made headlines across Thai media for the event. The deputy commander of Thailand’s 4th Army Region, Major General Pramote Prom-in, said the event was prohibited based on Section 1 of the country’s 2017 constitution, which states that Thailand is one indivisible kingdom. It was reported that security agencies were considering legal action against the group. 

Pelajar Bangsa is reportedly a reassembly of student activists that formed after the Federation of Pattani Students, known as PerMas, was disbanded.  A lecturer at the university’s Institute for Peace Studies, Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, said that Pelajar Bangsa is an umbrella organization for the region’s Malay Muslim students. She said the event was not surprising, since Malay Muslims “have been vocal about the right to self-determination for many years.”

However, two unnamed Pelajar Bangsa leaders told Thai media that there was no political motive for the mock referrendum.They said that it was meant to gauge opinions on how to end the long-standing violence in the Deep South.

Daungyewa Utarasint, a visiting assistant professor of political science at NYU Abu Dabai, who formerly worked at Prince of Songkhla University, provided some insights on her conversations with the group after the mock referendum. She told Peace News Network the group wanted to recruit more students and become better known. 

“They said their purpose was, according to their words, to find something interesting to invite more students to come and join. It was just more of a fun activity to do as students,” Daungyewa said.

Surveys from recent years indicate that most people in the Deep South don’t want the region to separate from the rest of Thailand. 

The Peace Survey Network, a network of 23 academic institutions and civil society organizations, conducted a survey on public opinions on peace and solutions in the Deep South in 2019. The survey questioned 1,637 respondents. The largest group of respondents, 23.3%, wanted a system of governance that reflected their unique identity which would still fall within the boundaries of Thai laws. The second-largest group, 20.7%, said they wanted to keep the incumbent governance system. The third-largest group, 17.9%, wanted decentralization of power like in other regions of the country.  Only 10.1% of the respondents wanted the Deep South to secede as an independent state from Thailand. 

On the topic of cultural representation, Nurainee said that southern Thai Muslims want their language, Kelantin-Pattani Malay, to be an official language, instead of only having Thai as an official language. She added that youth in the Deep South also want officials to stop imposing curfews in their area.

Daungyewa said that based on conversations she has had with some youth in the region, many have changed their minds about politics.

“They really believe in democracy, They really believe we should fight on the ground, not under the ground. And they really see that anything that goes through Parliament can really change what’s going on in the south, more than the underground tactics,” she said.

“Any acts or regulations that can go through the Parliament can actually help people in the southern part of Thailand more than the separatist movement.”

The peace process is still moving slowly among officials. In April 2022, one insurgent group, Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), refused to negotiate with Thai officials if the Deep South’s separation was off the table. This was after PULO committed a double bombing attack in Pattani that killed one and left three injured. In March 2023, BRN representatives failed to show up for scheduled peace talks in Malaysia. 

Civil society and ordinary people, however, have continued to fight for peace. In November 2022, Muslims and Buddhists demanded peace at a rally in Narathiwat province. The group We Peace mobilizes women in the Deep South to collaborate on projects promoting peace.

Environmental Peacebuilding and Sustainable Peace

By
Farah Hegazi
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A coal fired power plant on the Ohio River just West of Cincinnati

We can decrease the risk of conflict and build peace by implementing projects that improve communities’ ability to adapt to climate change and increase their resilience. For example, through strengthening people’s livelihoods, providing them with alternative livelihoods, or supporting them in strong natural resource management, it is possible not only to address income generation, but  also improve relationships within and between communities, which can increase social cohesion and contribute to peace. Examples from Ethiopia, Sudan, Nepal and Peru show us the possibilities. We are not at a stage where we can definitively identify what works and what doesn’t when it comes to addressing climate security. 

Environmental peacebuilding offers another entry point for building and sustaining peace. Natural resources and the environment are central to many people’s livelihoods in fragile and conflict-affected settings and one of the most important things that needs to be done in the aftermath of conflict is provide people with livelihood opportunities. 

The environmental peacebuilding field has grown tremendously and interest from practitioners and policymakers has grown with it. It started as a research endeavor in the early 2000s with Ken Conca and Geoff Dabelko’s book Environmental Peacemaking, which focused on how cooperation over environmental issues can  build peace. Since then, much more research has tried to understand how the environment can be used as an entry point and what the conditions are for it to be successful. Now, the environmental peacebuilding community has its own association with members from research and practitioner communities to exchange experiences and learn from each other. 

On the research front, there have not been many major developments in the last few years. But, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently published a report called Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk, which brings together all the research on the relationship between the environment and conflict and makes recommendations for the policy community—broadly—on how to navigate a just and peaceful transition toward more sustainable practices in the long-run.   

The needs and priorities of local communities should be accounted for in any project or program that is being implemented because they are essential for a successful outcome. Now, this is not a new lesson; research has shown this time and time again, but development and peacebuilding programs and projects still struggle to do this, and the dominant model is a top-down one that involves little consultation with communities.

We also know that the effects of climate change can increase the likelihood of conflict. For peacebuilders, this means that the work that they do has to be climate-sensitive and account for how climate change will affect the projects, programs, and agreements that they implement and negotiate so that they do not break down in the future. The city of Baidoa in Somalia, for example, experienced an influx of internally displaced persons and climate-induced land degradation, which undermined a local power sharing agreement, in turn negatively affecting governance and statebuilding efforts in Somalia.

The other side of the coin is that addressing the effects of climate change can reduce conflict and build peace if it is done well. Climate adaptation projects, for example, can not only help communities adapt to the effects of climate change, but they can also increase trust and build social cohesion within and between communities, which is important for sustainable peace. In terms of relevance for peacebuilders, it points toward thinking more broadly about how to do peacebuilding and considering entry points that addressing the effects of climate change can offer.

Women’s agency in Islamic traditional schools in post-conflict Aceh

By
Rizki Amalia Affiat
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Feminist literature and gender studies often has a global North bias, which stems from the epistemology of a Western-European paradigm in portraying Muslim women as submissive and subjected to male privilege in a ‘patriarchal’ religion. Saba Mahmood’s ‘Politics of Piety’  dismantled the biases towards Muslim women’s religious-based movement as a mere tool for men to maintain power. In fact, from this perspective, these women are powerful, politically conscious, and represent significant masses of society. She calls it a ‘docile agent’. From there, we use the lens of critical peace education – which helps with a nuanced understanding of, and engagement with, context, power dynamics and social relations, and a decolonising analysis.  

The strategic ways women in Islamic traditional schools in Aceh navigate their agency is through a constant power negotiation. They do so by maintaining their piousness, and through their reputation of piety that  society respects and gives them a social, economic, and political platform, despite some challenges from various forms of masculine politics. 

In Aceh, since the coming of Islam, dayah is the grassroots education, which was the only education people were exposed to even before colonialism. It produced ulamas, poets, traders, travelers, and community leaders, and  created vibrant cosmopolitan societies, especially around coastal areas. It was during the colonial era by the British, Dutch, and French, among others, that grassroots education in regions across Asia and Africa was uprooted and systematically destroyed or changed. Education is starting to be created to fulfill the demand of the global market – enough basic skills for the colonised to read, write, and do work under imperialism. 

Indonesia is an archipelago multicultural country, so there are various ways that our different landscapes – coastal, interior, highland, rural, urban – shape our understanding of social realities. Grassroots education – communal, religious, customary for family-based – stems from how people develop their philosophy, values, and practical needs to address challenges and to function collectively in various settings. Rethinking grassroots education is more relevant than ever now that we are constantly homogenised into one particular standard of intellectual and intelligence, and often it erases the cultural, social and historical aspects of younger generations. 

Women’s stories and lived realities in the dayah must be understood within their own context if we aim to understand more about the variations in more silent or covert forms of agency, as women negotiate their space to maneuver in restricted spaces. This shall contribute to the feminist discussion of what resistance is and how we situate gender equality or empowerment in its historical and social realities – even if we want to challenge a specific gender norm. 

Acehnese has a matrifocal culture, and it balances the patriarchal element in their culture so men and women share various and different roles in both public and private. But this balance was disrupted during conflict because the state enforced its masculine, gender ideology, which was about militarism and paternalistic symbols. Again, even the dichotomy of ‘private’ and ‘public’ can be more nuanced than the modern European conception. In Aceh tradition, and in many Muslim communities, the ‘private’ sphere is not a derogatory space for women. Rather, it is a space where social gatherings are hosted, food is served, and the social reproduction of daily life is centred around. It was not antagonistic to the so-called public sphere. This dichotomy, thus, seems capitalistic – relevant in the settings of specialised and gender division of labour for the purpose of alienating people as they work for an economic arrangement that uprooted people from their tradition and philosophy of home and communal space. 

The lesson learned is to acknowledge the historicity of how the women’s domain in their social reproduction is closely related to their role as peacebuilders because they sustain the ‘operation’ of daily life even during conflict. For women education leaders in religious spaces, education embodied their feminine role of nurturing and transmitting intergenerational values, but at the same time, it rebuilt together a sense of unity among people who are torn by violent conflict. We have stories of religious women leaders who initiated peace during the outbreak of violence in Aceh and Ambon region – it took a different kind of courage to step up in the face of a bloody conflict, facing the threat of vulnerability against their own lives – and demand the men to stop fighting. After the conflict ended, some of them run for political offices, maintain their community advocacy, and continue to struggle for justice even when formal and official politics sidelined or undermine them. They did the political negotiation in the beginning and negotiate the patriarchal and masculine politics. This strength is what we need to acknowledge and adapt into the peacebuilding mechanism.  


This research was conducted at ICAIOS (International Center for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies) as part of the research team with Prof. Eka Srimulyani and Maida Irawani, in collaboration with Dr. Mieke Lopes Cardozo and Faryaal Zaman from the University of Amsterdam. It is published under the title “Silent struggles: women education leaders’ agency for peacebuilding in Islamic schools in post-conflict Aceh” in Journal of Peace Education, Vol 19, 2022, Issue 2.

Image: School children, Julien Harneis

Illegal Mining and the challenges for “Total Peace”

By
Andrei Gómez-Suárez and Chiara Chiavaroli
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On his first day in office, President Gustavo Petro invited all illegal armed groups in Colombia to work towards “total peace”. In November 2022, Congress approved Law 2272 of 2022 granting him the legal framework to open negotiations. In this context, the self-defined Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC, also known as Clan del Golfo, a splinter group created after the demobilisation of the AUC-paramilitary organisation in 2006) expressed their intention to join “total peace” by reducing offensive actions. On 30 December 2022, Petro signed Decree 2658 initiating a bilateral ceasefire with the AGC. To date, however, the possibility of establishing a negotiation with this group remains uncertain. In this bumpy process, the violent actions that occurred in the context of the miners’ strike in Bajo Cauca, between 2 March and 5 April 2023 have a particular political weight. In this piece, we look at the challenges and opportunities for materialising “total peace” in territories characterised by a strong dependence on illegal mining. 

Security beyond militarisation 

During the miners’ strike, a security crisis unraveled due to the violent actions carried out by the AGC, such as the burning of public transport vehicles and ambulances and vandalism. These actions were a reaction to the destruction of some dredges used for illegal mining between the Bajo Cauca and Sur de Cordoba regions, carried out by the army between 2 and 20 March 2023.

At the beginning of the strike, the Petro administration set up a negotiation table with the mining sector. However, while the strike’s committee was negotiating with the government, on 19 March, six more vehicles were burnt down by unknown actors on the road between Caucasia and Medellin. In response, Petro suspended the bilateral ceasefire with the AGC and reactivated military operations against this group. 

Social leaders and grassroots organisations expressed fear that Petro’s decision was leading to the reactivation of the military operations of the AGC against civilians. The challenge emerging for “total peace” from this scenario was resolved by pushing for a human security policy going beyond the militarisation of the territory. 

Destigmatising social protest for civil society participation 

In a context where all actors (including bureaucrats, private companies, and the security forces) need to establish a relationship with local illegal armed groups, there is a great risk of stigmatising social protest. 

During the miners’ strike, strong tensions emerged in relation to the participation of the AGC in the miner’s mobilisations. In several local and national media, the strike was portrayed as a “fake mobilisation” orchestrated by illegal armed groups. Under the accusations of collusion with the AGC, the strike committee rejected the violent actions occurring during the strike.

A critical point of tension during the miner’s strike was the request of the strike committee to cease military operations against the mining machinery (backhoes and dredges), whose use is prohibited by the Law 1450 of 2011. In this context, the committee’s interests coincided partially with the interests of the AGC, which finance themselves through this machinery participating directly in the extractive activities or collecting a tax from local miners. 

The participation of AGC in the mining sector turned this topic into a key challenge for “total peace”, whose key pillar is the participation of civil society. Hence, the Petro administration decided to try to articulate the fight against large-scale illegal mining alongside a dialogue with the informal mining sector. 

Reconversion of illegal economies while respecting the environment

Economic inequalities in mining regions highlight the necessity of formulating new environmental management plans. The reconversion of the illegal economies under a framework of respect for the environment emerges as a central challenge. 

The Bajo Cauca region, with the highest index of unsatisfied basic needs in Antioquia,  has seen a history of failed attempts for the reconversion of illicit economies. For example, municipalities have been included in the ‘Territorial Development Plans’ and the ‘National Plan for the Substitution of Illegal Crops’, both programs created by the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP, but they have been poorly implemented. Petro inherited the failures of these schemes. 

During the miner’s strike, the need to imagine alternative pathways for socio-economic development and to break economic dependency on mining, emerged as a priority for the implementation of “total peace”. Achieving just land distribution involves recognising big legal mining enterprises like Mineros Aluvial as part of this conflict. 

The chances for “total peace”  in the Bajo Cauca region.

The penetration of illegal armed actors in the political life of regions that rely on illegal mining highlights that social and political agreements are required in order to bring about structural transformations and push forward new programs of socio-economic development. At the same time, this process must be paired with a human security policy centered on protecting human rights.  

Petro’s decision to suspend the ceasefire with the AGC and to continue dismantling illegal economies in the region while supporting the legalisation of small-scale miners through the implementation of a Mining District is a bet to demonstrate that “total peace” coincides with an attempt to transform the war economies that have been sustaining the armed conflict in the last 30 years. If the AGC demonstrates a commitment to support the process of economic reconversion and fully respect civilians, it is possible to imagine the reactivation of the bilateral ceasefire which will open the road for negotiations in the near future. 

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