Think-tanks and world peace

AFTER exhausting conventional means of containing the influence of Taleban and al-Qaeda forces, Nato now needs to change course in Afghanistan and push for a political solution, even if it means talking to the Taleban leaders, says a think-tank in Canada.

In a report issued on March 1, the Calgary-based Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) spells out that the 3Ds (defence, development and diplomacy) are not working very well in Afghanistan and there is considerable doubt that Nato will be able to meet its objective of providing the Afghan people with a stable life after decades of conflict. Written by Gordon Smith, a former Canadian foreign affairs deputy minister and ambassador to Nato, and a small team of political and military experts from across Canada, the report emphasises what Western governments urgently need to face, namely that the Taleban and al-Qaeda have resisted all conventional means of containing their influence by force and that radically different alternatives — which include negotiating with Taleban leaders — offer the only hope for stability.

One of the first parties to welcome the advocated dialogue is a local NGO, Canadian Islamic Congress, which said in a media communique{aac} that the think-tank offers an approach that is "honest and with reasonable solutions that Ottawa cannot afford to ignore".

There are countless policy advocacies proposed by an untold number of think-tanks around the world in recent decades, displaying the growing influence of such centres in a wide range of issues, from development programmes to peacemaking initiatives. Some think-tanks advocate dialogues on equal footing between conflicting parties to achieve peace, some create furore by imposing the scholars' biased judgment on the public.

Some of us still remember how Muslim communities in the region became more or less affected when the American think-tank Rand issued its reports in 2003 and 2004 that basically say that any dialogue with the "Islamists" is rendered impossible since they do not know of moderation. The authors behind Rand 2004 report go as far as to question whether a moderate political Islam is able to exist anywhere in the contemporary Muslim world at all. 0The think-tank, which markets itself as providers of "objective analysis and effective solutions to clients" recommended that not only Islam must be influenced to adopt the values of the West but also that the West should support the moderate and secular Muslims by political, social and military efforts to promote moderate and secular networks, disrupt radical networks, enhance secular education, and promote interpretations of Islam that are compatible with the liberal and secular West. Now in Brunei Darussalam we, too, have a think-tank — the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies (CSPS). Though it was born only in July last year, its inception began some 20 years ago when a number of government officers and private sector organisations informally discussed its establishment, being aware of the need for a mechanism for inputting information to relevant stakeholders to facilitate intelligent, informed and educated decision-making.

The centre has named its focus areas, namely economics, social security, education and youth unemployment — all strategic issues that need to be handled well in the face of slow pace of economic diversification and the looming depletion of Brunei's natural resources even as time is running out.

With regards to the question of income disparity among certain members of the community, the Centre even considers it to be "the metaphorical time bomb to explode social discontent".

The think-tank begins today its two-day CSPS-UBD Forum 2007 in which scholars from Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Brunei will discuss effective public management and good governance, and how best to implement the findings here. Though the forum will give great weight to economic discourses — one of the gates toward peace and prosperity for the people — we hope there will also be ample discussions on how Brunei can contribute even more to the regional and international quest for world peace.