Response Paper #2

Peter Konich
Response Paper #2

I would have to agree with Stewart’s claim that the difficult interactions and meeting between the two groups helped lead to the outcome of the first few years. Stewart constantly had different leaders of the 50 (and increasing in number) different political parties in the area. It seemed at first that everyone wanted the same things; jobs, money schools, and a say in the government and councils in the area. But they all demanded these things from Stewart and the Coalition at the different meetings and most meetings like this seemed to accomplish little but to ease the unrest within the certain group of people attending the meetings. Because they were not seeing immediate changes and everyone seemd to be in disagreance on who should be on the councils, they acted rather irrationally, and frankily, irresponsible at the meetings which I believe ultimately caused these meetings to accomplish very little. Translation was a debatable problem at most negotiations but I believe that in some cases the structure of the meetings were more to blame for their inefficency. For example, if certain people were not invited for meeting at the CPA, these people would organize a demonstartion at the gates which would cause Stewart to meet with their leader to calm the crowd. When Seyyed al-Musawi used this very tactic, little was accomplished at the meeting that he showed up late to because he wished for a spot on the council that Stewart knew he would not be getting. Therefore the meeting was pointless and a waste of the CPA’s time. This can also be seen when another demonstartion took place outside the CPA and Stewart took the four supposed leaders into his office to discuss things. The unshaven, “opium eyed” man caused this meeting to be very inefficent because instead of discussing matters, he demanded things which were already being demanded by almost the entire area, jobs and the like. But because he was barking out orders and not sitting down to have a true conversation, little diplomatic advnaces could be made so Stewart could not take the man too seriously as a political leader because of this. He also demanded make-believe requests like the theft of the red mercury from the area. For these reasons and examples, I believe that the meetings were sometimes pointless and inefficent because they were sometimes troubledly translated, things were demanded and not discussed, and many meetings seemed to be repetive with their demands and topics.