Introduction to the Forum on Helmets for Peace

This forum, as a place for the opportunity to correspond with one another and follow under the guise of the goal for cross cultural communication that the Société Imaginaire promotes, is open to the general public while being specifically directed to members of the armed forces around the world. This should be a new platform open to all to share their experiences and observations no matter where they are stationed in the world. These statements then can begin various correspondences with other individuals whose result should then illuminate in a most unique way their various positions. The armed forces around the world are more or less beginning to play the same game. Their role has changed drastically from their former historical purposes. Therefore there can be found many similarities between soldiers serving various nations and it is our goal that through this forum they can come to share these experiences with one another and thereby begin to come to a more solid understanding of themselves and others. Below are a few statements from some initiators of this idea and they help to provoke further responses which you can find here in the list of contributions.

Political borders separate people from people all around the world. People of different habits or different religions can live together. People from one side and the other of borders can live together. Borders are not challenges. Bridges between enemies can be constructed. Blue Helmets and UN civilian personnel can build bridges between people. Blue Helmets and Un civilian personnel works impartially from their race, employment, or class - men and women, officers, soldiers, doctors, engineers, mechanics and other civilians persons. They build bridges with their daily work. What they do personally and their own live experience changes them, their lives and the live of the other persons who connect with this persons. They take their experiences with them and change their environment. They build bridges from soldier to soldier, soldier to civilian, man to man and state to state. In the most recent tendencies of the missions for peace, as always possible, the armed forces are accompanied by all the civil capacities which can help to reconstruct the social fabric and the infrastructure of the countries under deployment, in general catastrophic situations as consequence to the crisis which gave place for the mission. Soldiers and civilians can be part of this net that connects people of different cultures. Soldiers of the Uruguayan Army have participated in a lot of the UN missions all around the world, working shoulder by shoulder with their personnel. Lot of kind of tasks for the Uruguayan Army has changed. Fighting for human rights outside our land has become fundamental. When called to action in other countries, the soldiers of Uruguay have gained the respect of the people all over the world. Soldiers of Uruguay are interconnected with the armed forces of many countries in partnership for peace. This is also to see in general the connection of the armed forces and civilian personnel of different countries is able to be extended into the wide world. All sacrifices and risks are not sufficient to bring peace to the humanity. Our fight now, it’s will be the way to find the common objective…”peace”. Nowadays, the effort to visualize and shape the “World without Borders” of Maestro Batuz is more current than ever. Interaction without borders, the interaction with military person and civilians, using the highway conceived by Batuz, is an invaluable contribution for a better world. Thank you for your message, Maestro Batuz. Thank you for teach us the effort in the name of peace.

The Armed Forces and the Societe Imaginaire

The missions for peace and the human factor

Blue helmets for peace which build bridges

The Idea of the Societe Imaginaire

“The problem surfaced from globalization is that for the first time in mankind’s history he is faced with all of the world’s cultures simultaneously. Cultures have been progressively uniting with the rapid advances of the day and yet people remain divided merely because they grope towards their individual ancestral identities. A great challenge of integration emerges from this evolving union which has for the most part been approached through a linear resolution. Instead of having the tools for facing this challenge with a new approach, mankind is continually repairing the old ones, and trying to overcome something that demands an entirely new mechanism with old machines. He continually faces the new challenges proposed by globalization with the old one-sided viewpoint he has always cast upon cultures of the past.

The Societe Imaginaire proposes an approach which overcomes the difficulties involved in “building bridges between individuals by applying instruments which can bring to attention many commonalities, by allowing the identification amongst themselves of those multiple identities, it enables their communication and understanding above the classical territorial barriers and the riches belonging to the national culture.

Of these instruments we can name the arts, humanitarian aid, the support of children, the aged, and those of similar critical situations, as in sharing work and sacrifices so as to achieve common objectives. That’s to say, the elements recognized as positive value which we can encounter in any culture.

In this way is it possible to recognize, understand and respect the other and in this way we can âovercome borders and go create with the sum of these individuals together defined by new common properties, to express it in mathematic terms, which allows us to manage the challenges implanted by globalization for a peaceful coexistence.

At one time, in the 90's, I read a sentence which I believe reveals a great truth and at once a challenge. It said: “we are all foreigners…in almost the entire world”. The way in which the Société Imaginaire can create instruments which free this idea of its negative weight, would put us on a good path.

The Armed Forces, The Missions for Peace and The Societe Imaginaire

The armed forces, in as much as they are organisms profoundly embedded in their respective national societies and with a space of responsibility orientated to work, exactly so, confronted with the major negative effects and difficulties mentioned, we believe that they do not escape the necessary way for new approaches in the same sense as we are here exhibiting.

In practice this evolution has been evolving since the 90's; the epoch which has begun the system of operations for peace by the United Nations has developed in significant form. Let us consider that these missions permit their constituents to make contact with the societies in profound crisis and contribute in what way possible to the overcoming of such, but even more they are placed in contact with the human beings, the individuals who, sharing a sacrifice and professional risk and members of the most diverse cultural origins, generalities, religions and ideologies, from vast social differences and of well-being, confront together and in general overcome together the gravest of problems, establishing through this experience a relation very particular, entrenching the road towards peace.

It is worth signaling that this positive effect produces in as much an endogenous as an exogenous form within the members of a peace force, made up of members from diverse nations, in their realization with diverse communities of the region in which the mission is deployed.

This is also to emphasize that in general the connection, the professional and human respect amongst the members of the armed forces of different countries is rather sound and able to be extended into the future when it produces within the frameworks of a force for peace, as a consequence of sharing the sacrifices and risks within the search for the common objective, as in the satisfaction derived in its success.

In the most recent tendencies of the missions for peace, as always possible, the armed forces are accompanied by all the civil capacities which can help to reconstruct the social fabric and the infrastructure of the countries under deployment, in general catastrophic situations as consequence to the crisis which gave place for the mission.

All of which definitely signifies that bridges can multiply themselves, the body of individuals with common identities can be extended: the Societe Imaginaire can continue to grow.

The missions for peace with civil and military constituents, from various countries, with the objective to help reconstruct the coexistence within the groups of another nation which has manifested its willingness to surpass archaic confrontations, are without a doubt a way further to build bridges, of summing the construction of the Societe Imaginaire. Augmenting the possibilities and ways for contact amongst all human beings and through which encourage the indispensable “strategy of exit” seems to be an interesting challenge.

To gain an understanding of the potential of such an instrument, let us say that in November of 2007, there are throughout the world 16 missions for peace in action, consisting of 82,701 men from 119 countries of the 192 that make up the UNO. Countries of the most diverse territorial, economic, social, religious and cultural characteristics which stretch from for example Kazakhstan, Palau, Uruguay, to Germany, France, Russia and the United States of America.

In effect, another example of Helmets for Peace would be in this case the Blue Helmets.

What Madness The aroma of tea flooded my office, creating a relaxed atmosphere. The conversation ran smoothly, accompanied by the purring of the air conditioner which was having difficulty in fighting the humid, scorching heat of the Congo. There we were, the three of us talking. Lieutenant Colonel Rashad of Pakistani army, Lieutenant Colonel Sugand of the Indian army and me, Lieutenant Colonel García of Uruguayan army. This was not one of many stressful briefings or meetings which attended daily as a part of our work as Ground Staff in the Western Brigade of the United Nations' Mission in Congo. This was the year 2007 and Kinshasa was a city still divided by the after-effects of a ravaging war. We were there to protect innocent civilians from the imminent battle to come and, as professional soldiers, we had a clear idea of what we would soon confront. After several months on mission, both the other officers had given me more than sufficient proof of bravery, determination and competence on several occasions, in the fulfilment of their difficult task as Peacekeepers in the Congo. But this meeting was more a break among friends and comrades in arms to discuss professional and personal matters. We has get-togethers of this kind regularly in my office, when the assisting officer, Major Asad of Pakistan, did his best to surprise us each day with varieties of tea, a drink of which he was clearly a connoisseur. In spite of the interesting conversation, I found myself distracted thinking "What madness! Here I am in this relaxed and friendly atmosphere sharing tea with people who are enemies back home!" Both officers had done time in the Cashmeri hot zone between India from Pakistan, both are conscious that they might face each other again in that bitter dispute that now even involves nuclear arsenals. And yet here they were, drinking tea… "What is an enemy?" I mused as I watched them. "Someone who can't be your friend?" Well, that definition definitely did not fit. The three of us not only made up a very effective work team – Sugand as Information Officer, Rashad as Operations Officer and myself as Chief of Staff – but had found that we had so much in common than it was easy for us to enjoy our mutual company. The professional matters we had discussed at our early get-togethers had long since given way to more personal ones. We then discovered that we shared the same worries and difficulties: having to balance career, family, money and ourselves at the turn of 40. Art and culture were not foreign topics to our conversation either. Quite the contrary: hand in hand with typical foods and great places to see, we were discussed myths and legends, and discovered that we shared a common ethos far beyond what we had though possible. So there we were, three soldiers drinking tea, wearing our respective uniforms and enjoying our respective cultures with respect. "What madness!" I thought again. "I am here with two men who are enemies at home, but friends in the Congo!" Then I understood my error. Why shouldn't they be friends if they have so much in common? This was not madness. Madness was to assume they might not be friends.

To General Hans-Peter von Kirchbach

Sir General:

I have always thought it admirable how you made the Bundeswehr participate in the luminous project for peace by Batuz on the border of Germany and Poland, a border so overwhelmed with memories.

Upon reading your proclamation to the soldiers, I feel that in it vibrates the spirit of the Société Imaginaire and its idea for a world in which borders stop being ramparts in order to transform themselves into bridges that communicate. No one is better than soldiers to understand this message as they live translations of fighting and today undergo missions for peace in very different countries, sometimes not even known by them.

Ideas like this move the world. They should move a world which has been so often pulled down by ideas of confrontation.

With appreciation

Julio Maria Sanguinetti

December, 2007