Faculty Member Mac Maharaj Guides Iraqi Peace Negotiations

The BBC, CNN International, The Guardian UK, Al Jazeera, The Independent Online, and The South African Star, among scores of other international news organizations are reporting that Bennington College faculty member Mac Maharaj and former visiting lecturer Roelf Meyer have helped guide recent Iraq peace talks, reportedly involving more than 30 “high-level delegates from the feuding groups to study lessons learned from successful peacemaking efforts in South Africa and Northern Ireland,” according to the Associated Press.

The Iraqi delegates were “hand-picked by Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi” according to The Sydney Morning Herald and according to The South African Star, participants included "representatives of the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; the leader of the largest Sunni Arab political group, Adnan al-Dulaimi; and Humam Hammoudi, the Shi'ite chairperson of the Iraqi parliament's foreign affairs committee." Gathering for four days at an undisclosed location in Finland at the beginning of September, participants were reported making “huge strides” towards peace with “representatives from Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq agreeing on a roadmap to peace...,” The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The roadmap, dubbed The Helsinki Agreement, outlines a 12-point blueprint towards peace for the war-torn country. The AP: “The Iraqi delegates agreed on a list of twelve recommendations and nine political objectives, ranging from the disarmament of armed groups during peace talks to the establishment of an independent commission to deal with the legacy of the past. They also included sending coalition troops home—once Iraqi security forces are ready to replace them.” South Africa's Star observes: "The agreement coincided with US President George Bush's unannounced visit to Iraq and appears to have contributed towards his upbeat statements about the prospects for peace." 

"The response of the delegation from Iraq went beyond our expectations," commented Mac Maharaj, former African National Congress activist. "Against the backdrop of the experiences of Northern Ireland and South Africa they rose to the challenge of committing themselves to an inclusive process of negotiating reconciliation among Iraqis and of removing the use of violence as a means of resolving political differences in Iraq. They began to take ownership of this enormous task."

In 1964, while working underground for the African National Congress, Maharaj was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison on Robben Island. Escaping into exile in 1977, he was appointed secretary of the Internal Political and Reconstruction Department of the ANC. He served on the Revolutionary Council and National Executive Committee of the ANC and, after clandestinely reentering the country, was commander of Operation Vula from 1988 to 1990, running an underground program of armed resistance against the apartheid government. After Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Maharaj was a lead negotiator for the ANC in talks with the National Party government and joint secretary of the Transitional Executive Council, overseeing South Africa's transition to democracy. Mandela appointed Maharaj minister of transport upon becoming president in 1994; Maharaj served in parliament until 1999. Maharaj, along with Reolf Meyer, participated in the Living Democracy: Perspectives from South Africa conference held at Bennington College in March 2005. Maharaj joined the Bennington College faculty in the fall of 2005.

To read The Rutland Herald's coverage of this story, click here.
To read more about the process, as reported by The Boston Globe, click here.