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Introduction:
Dennis Sandole explains that force is sometimes needed to prevent violent conflict from escalating.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
How to Deal with Spoilers
Greg Brown
Program Officer, Balkans and Caucasus Programs, International Rescue Committee (IRC)
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A: It is difficult because for example in ??? it was the most politicized
area. To go from one side to the other on the bridges they had what they called
the bridge watchers which basically would be like "We'll beat the crap out
of anyone we see going across that," you know, that type of thing. It
really depends on the place but like I said I think a lot of it was just being
really low key about it. Once it happens obviously we tried to intervene and
that is where the partnerships we had with the U.N. and the other actors in
these times we could call in and be like, "OK, can you mediate some kind of
discussion where maybe we can allow for this to go forward?" But it was
really on an ad hoc basis and it was difficult to because I think sometimes you
can set a precedent of how you are going to deal with it if you don't anticipate
it ahead of time and it is like suddenly you have empowered them to actually
have a say in this when they shouldn't have any say. And sometimes you can allow
for too much like we are so focused on getting funding to these groups that we
are willing to ignore the fact, to forgive them of having to follow these
guidelines. Which basically means that you are suddenly legitimating their
desire to be separate or their desire not to acknowledge the fact that they have
to look out for everyone in their community and opps there is a little part of
their community that is not of their ethnic group which I think conceptually
unfortunately that probably should happen more beforehand but it kind of worked
itself out in a more ad hoc manner. Sometimes it worked out well and sometime it
didn't.
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