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Juggling and the
Kashmir-Jammu Conflict
By Alyn Ware
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[Ken Tannenbaum/Getty
Images] |
I am visiting a school in
rural New Zealand and am with a group of 15 students outside on the
playing field. I have a bag of balls at my side.
"Who here knows how to juggle a couple of balls?" I ask, tossing two
balls into the air as I speak. A few hands go up.
"How about three balls?" I query as I perform a simple three-ball
pattern. A couple of hands remain.
"How about eight balls at once?" The hands go down and there is a
somewhat disbelieving but expectant look on their faces.
"Well, today I am going to teach you how to juggle eight balls at once."
Now they think I am joking. "It’s too difficult to do alone. I can only
juggle four by myself. But together we can juggle eight! It’s called
group juggling. Let’s do it."
So in a circle we begin by throwing one ball from person to person until
everyone has received (caught) the ball from one person and thrown it to
another. We then throw the ball around the circle in the same order.
Once we have established the order in which the ball travels from person
to person, we can then get a second ball going around the circle after
the first--and then a third, a fourth, a fifth, etc.
Each person is merely receiving balls thrown to them in succession by
one person and then throwing them to another--but the effect of many
balls traveling through the air at the same time is amazing. We do
indeed manage to get eight balls in the air. The feeling of joint
accomplishment is wonderful and there are huge smiles all around.
This is one of the many games we play as part of peace education in New
Zealand schools to reinforce messages about working together and to
build cooperation skills.
But I have found that the games are not just suitable for teaching
school-children--they can also be useful in building trust,
understanding and cooperation at the international level. I work in the
field of international disarmament and am often in workshops with
ambassadors or other officials from opposing sides in conflicts--such as
Russians and Americans on the nuclear weapons issue, or Indians and
Pakistanis over the Kashmir-Jammu conflict.
Being Defense-less
Once I was in a five-day workshop with officials from eight nuclear
weapon states, and we had introduced the idea of a treaty to abolish
nuclear weapons. There was a lot of skepticism from the officials. They
feared that some of the other countries might not abolish all their
nuclear weapons but would hide some of them. And the officials did not
trust that the others would not attack them if they were "defense-less."
I thus felt that these officials needed more experience in being
"defense-less" but having to trust the others. I led them in a game of
Circle Fall. This is where one person stands straight with arms at their
sides in the middle of a small circle of people. The people in the
circle have their hands up to jointly take the weight of the person in
the middle as s/he leans over. As the person in the middle becomes more
confident that the others won’t drop her/him, s/he can fall further into
their hands as s/he is passed around the circle.
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Students in New Zealand play a cooperative game |
As these officials played the game, their mood definitely lightened up.
In our group we had a very large and very stern-looking Russian general
who had been silent during the discussions. He had no intention of
playing this game--perhaps he thought it was stupid. Perhaps he did
not feel comfortable enough with others in the group to play. Perhaps he
did not trust that others would catch him. In any case he just stood
back and watched.
However, as each of the others had a turn in the middle of the circle
and he saw how we all worked together to support the weight of the
central person as s/he was passed around the circle, his mood also
lightened--enough that at the end the other officials all turned to him
and invited him into the middle of the circle. And indeed, as he let us
bear his weight, a smile crept across his face for the first time in the
five days.
Following the game, the officials were much more open to considering
cooperative security arrangements and verification agreements to enable
a disarmament process to occur while building international trust. The
Russian general was amongst those who became most enthusiastic about
possibilities for nuclear abolition.
Starting Small
Another time I was leading a group of officials from Asia--including
from India and Pakistan--in a workshop on the Kashmir-Jammu conflict.
There were about 11 areas of conflict between the Pakistanis and the
Indians which were raised--some small issues, such as when cross-border
bus and trade services could commence, and others much bigger and
seemingly intractable.
At the beginning of the workshop the Pakistanis and Indians would not
look at each other. They would each assert how they were the peaceful
side with integrity but how the other side was for conflict and was
always thwarting the possibilities for peace. And they were very
emotional about the bigger issues.
I realized that the first step was to get them looking at each other in
a nonconfrontational way, and the next step would be to get them to put
aside the very tough emotionally charged issues for the time being
and to build some success in dealing with smaller issues.
So I decided to lead them in group juggling. In this way the Indians and
Pakistanis had to look at each other in order to receive and throw the
ball--but it was looking at each other in a friendly way with no issues
to deal with apart from whether they can throw and catch (something
quite easy for two nations that love cricket). I had 11 balls at my
side. The group managed to juggle eight of them. We thus built a
friendly working relationship between the officials. More than that, we
had a model on how to address the conflict. I noted that in the juggling
we started with just one ball--and made it very easy. Thus, in the
conflict I suggested we start with just one of the issues--the easiest.
The Pakistanis and Indians agreed and managed to find some possibilities
for addressing it. This success gave a basis for then addressing some of
the other issues.
I also noted that there were 11 balls and that this time we had managed
to juggle eight--a great achievement--but of course not all of the
balls. Similarly in the conflict, we should not expect to solve all 11
issues at once. We should expect that some would need to be left until
later when we have had more experience with implementing the easier
issues to solve.
The workshop finished with a program of ideas for the issues agreed by
all participants and with greater trust between the participants and a
stronger confidence that these ideas could be implemented.
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Alyn Ware
is consultant at large for the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear
Policy, outreach educator for the Aotearoa-New Zealand
Foundation for Peace Studies and global coordinator of the
Parliamentary Network for ...Nuclear Disarmament. |
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