While checking into a major international chain of Hotels in Cairo, a couple of years back, I was intrigued more by fascination than surprise by the “ Pin” all the staff were sporting on the lapel of their jackets; it read, “Yes is the answer, What’s the Question?”.
A great slogan I thought for the service industry. Upon return, I suggested its adoption to my CEO; he sneered at me from behind his bold rimmed glasses and said,” Do you know our culture? I can only shudder to imagine and think of what type of questions clients would be asking to our young colleagues, particularly the young girls at the counters.” His valid remark nailed my enthusiasm. I have today tweaked the slogan for coining the caption to this piece.
Dialogue is a process of communication in which people with different perspectives sit around a table to seek understanding of each other’s point of view. This allows for driving a certain mutual understanding of issues. There is no problem or issue that cannot be tackled or resolved through dialogue.
For coexistence, equality is not a necessity. But what is important is the willingness to avoid conflict and embrace the concept of engagement and conversation. There is an English proverb: “ Let’s agree not to step on each other’s feet, said the cock to the horse”.
After having dumped upon each other all the ammunition and thousands of kilograms of sulphur, in the wake of which several innocent human lives are lost, nations decide that enough of warfare, let’s sit down and discuss the terms of ceasefire. Peace is an after-thought. War is a passionate pursuit.
Battles are fought where victories are at best temporary. A member of the Wali Khan family of KPK, who is a dear friend and a former colleague, narrated to me that there was this old lady in Charsadda, who was proud to have lost her only son to martyrdom during 1965 War.
Post-war in a conversation, a villager informed her that following a ceasefire brokered by the Soviet Union, the two warring countries had signed a declaration to go back to the defined Line of Control, and peace had been restored through “talks”. The old lady broke down and sobbingly remarked, “before killing each other, why couldn’t they do what they did later?” Her loss was of no avail. It disturbed her, eternally.
In defiance of the World War I peace treaty, Adolf Hitler began annexation of countries, starting with Austria and Czechoslovakia (1938). Poland fell next, when Hitler outwitted the Russian leadership with a promise to split Poland between Germany and Russia. It never happened.
If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were war mongers, Winston Churchill was no less. Historians, several of them, have analysed that while Hitler was merrily sweeping away Europe by capturing neighbouring states of France, Hungary, etc., Churchill through his statements and comments was actually egging Hitler to attack Britain. Although history records him as a “statesman”, I believe it was the “Politician” inside him, which impelled him to provoke a war upon Britain, because in that he saw an opportunity to be recognised later as “a great Leader”.
Churchill’s role in World War II shall remain controversial. Neville Chamberlain who Churchill accused of appeasement of Hitler was in favour of a dialogue with Hitler. Churchill checkmated him and succeeded to become prime minister in 1940. He found glory for himself in War, which otherwise was nowhere in sight; he thundered his speeches with, “if British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was the finest hour’”. To redraw the map of Europe, he preferred “dialogue”.
WWI ended with the ‘negotiated’ the Treaty of Versailles and the Paris Peace Treaties ended WW II - both wars cost loss of over one hundred million innocent human lives, of which the guesstimate is that forty million were civilians alone in WWII.
The League of Nations formed to maintain peace following WW I miserably failed and progressively grew weaker and with the outbreak of WWII, it died a natural death. Churchill and Roosevelt got together to form a new international organisation that was meant to promote dialogue as against war in resolving international disputes.
The new organisation was christened as the ‘United Nations’ by Roosevelt. It is another matter that the UN has also miserably failed in its objectives; the flashpoints of Kashmir and Palestine are still on fire. The growing belligerence of Israel in Gaza and Palestine is a testimony to its (UN) failure.
To drop a gun, it is not necessary to pick up a gun. Hostilities between people, societies and nations can be settled through dialogue. All the killing fields of Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Cambodia were followed with ‘talks’. The civilian population in Vietnam was bombed out of their wits with lethal napalm bombs.
After a humongous and tragic loss of human life, Henry Kissinger and Lee Duc Tho ‘sat together’ to arrive at peace and disengagement - the world honoured them with Nobel peace prize. But no action is taken against those who triggered and fuelled the war and kept it alight for political considerations. These are politicians who invariably, globally, go scot free.
Joseph Stalin in aligning with Hitler forgot the basics of human instinct and rendered himself to appeasement, which is a self-assurance that if one was to feed a crocodile it is not a guarantee that it will eat the feeder last. Appeasement and ruthlessness are not on the same side of the fence; both cannot co-exist or be together. It is difficult to reason in bunkers and bomb shelters. The decision to go to war is normally taken far away from the battle-field and those in the heat of the theatre of war find themselves at the mercy of obstinate, greedy and obdurate politicians.
Dialogue is not a surrender; it is a mechanism to bridge difference of opinion and perspective. If the attitude is yield to all, soon there would be nothing to yield.
War is sometimes seen as the beginning of the end of dialogue. All wars and conflicts however end with a dialogue.
The outcome of dialogues must remain in harmony with interests. John F Kennedy in an address to the UN general assembly had said, ‘Peace does not rest in charters and governance alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of the people’ (1963). I would remind readers to the horror being played out in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East and then contextualize Kennedy’s words. In today’s leadership there is a total void in place of heart and mind; if anything, it is brimming with passionate venom and is mostly a warehouse of hate.
Dialogue allowed foreign adjustment of conflicting interests as it gives each adversary the satisfaction of believing that he has got what he wasn’t to receive and is deprived of nothing except what was justly due. (This thought is borrowed and amended from Ambrose Bierce). In the process of negotiation the warring parties must keep a clear distinction between losing the saddle than the horse.
Dialogues shouldn’t be entered for reasons of fear but none should fear to negotiate or initiate a dialogue. Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Being disagreeable is tolerable but when parties become impossible that’s when dialogues break down. Benjamin Disraeli had said, ‘my idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me’.
Dialogue allows for understanding of each other’s position, a feeling of empathy develops that melts the ice of stubbornness and ushers the hostile parties towards confidence-building measures. In our own recent history, Z A Bhutto delayed ‘talks’ with Pakistan National Alliance (a motley crowd of politicians who were united by a single objective of being anti-Bhutto).
However, once they entered into a dialogue, they reached consensus and finally arrived at an agreement, late in the night, on July 4th 1977, but before the dawn break of 5th July 1977, Z A Bhutto was in custody. From there he went to the gallows; the rest is history. Dialogue delayed proved to be extremely expensive for him and the nation.
Dialogue shouldn’t be resisted. Politicians should ensure that they never arrive at a point of no return. The importance of possessing an attitude of obstinacy against the need for flexibility can never be underscored. Ego is the enemy of dialogue. Politicians must work hard to keep in wrap and check their egos (mostly fragile); it must not be permitted to block a mature view of the realities, both existing and emerging. There is no issue that cannot be negotiated across a table. All it needs is willingness.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025