(cont.) Moakley Rallies Iraqi Political Leaders in Baghdad
The meetings that led to the Helsinki Agreement were largely funded by Robert Bendetson who is CEO of Cabot House furniture, a trustee of Tufts University, member of IGL's external advisory board and a former student of O'Malley's at Tufts.
Reached for comment in Beirut where he is currently working on another book (O'Malley's last work, Shades of Difference, a political biography of Mac Maharaj is available at the University of Massachusetts book store), O'Malley made a special tribute to the role played by Mr. Robert Bendetson: "Bobby is a special human being. He gives new meaning to the word philanthropist. He epitomizes the values of doing the right thing for no other reason than it is right. Besides his enormous generosity, he made a number of significant interventions that kept the process going when it might have otherwise broken down.” O'Malley also paid tribute to Iraq’s two Vice Presidents who saw the value in going forward with this initiative when he first proposed it to them in June 2007. "They jumped on board. They caught the idea behind the process right away and gave it their full blessing. That made bringing others on board a lot easier.”
O'Malley said: “It was no accident that the participants from the SA Indaba (gathering) were in Helsinki. These were people who knew each other and who had developed camaraderie over the years that made them the a seamless team of facilitators at Helsinki and that camaraderie made their interaction with the Iraqis easier and at the same time more forceful. The principle underlying these talks is very simple: the almost too obvious notion that people from divided societies are in the best position to help people from other divided societies.
The conflicts, of course, are different, but the behaviors of peoples in conflict tend to be similar. In this way they can benefit from hearing the narrative of what negotiators from other conflicts went through as they struggled out of violence into non-violence, from positions of 'never' to positions of compromise, from facing the tasks of carrying a new message to their constituencies as they moved from one course of action to another to bringing them fully on board. Hearing the NI and SA narratives of conflict and negotiation and then settlement, the Iraqis were able to identify with what they were hearing and adapted some of the documents used in both conflicts to their own use.
Now we have transferred ownership of the process we began in Helsinki just one year ago to the Iraqis. Whatever role, we the conveners and the facilitators from Northern Ireland and South Africa play in the future depends entirely upon the Iraqis. We stand ready to serve if called upon. But the Iraqis are now equipped with a set of tools to bring to reality the prospects of a stable & secure Iraq.”
Bendetson with two members of the Iraqi delegation at Helsinki II, April 2008
Helsinki I, September 2007
In Baghdad, July 2008, conferring before the announcement of the Helsinki Principles
December 2008 Inspector General's Report on Iraq Reconstruction.