7 November, 2007: Boston, MA -- A tsunami in Asia. An earthquake in Iran. A hurricane in the United States. It’s the ultimate reality television—thousands glued to their television sets or computers watching the latest disaster unfold.

In the last decade 231 million have been affected by natural disasters, according to “Beyond Disasters: Creating Opportunities for Peace” by Michael Renner and Zoe Chafe of the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D.C. To be labeled a disaster an event must kill 10 people, affect 100, or need and emergency declaration or a call for international assistance. By that definition, 348 disasters have struck each year in the past decade.

Yet only a few catch the international community’s attention, resulting in public declarations of sympathy from heads of state and offers of aid, sometimes even from countries in conflict, leading many to wonder: With the barriers down, are diplomats presented with a unique opportunity to create peace?

It seems possible, Chafe and Renner argue in their report, that hardship can create goodwill and aid can create trust. “In some cases,” they wrote, “The destruction wrought by a disaster may be so great that reconstruction in conflict afflicted regions is able to proceed only with a ceasefire or peace agreement.”

It is certainly an idea that Ilan Kelman, post-doctoral researcher of disaster diplomacy and founder of disasterdiplomacy.org, found plausible. He admits that when he began his research he did so with the idea that when disaster strikes enemies can make peace, but he found “that hypothesis was quite naïve.”

“Politicians or diplomats often have higher priorities than humanitarian aid,” Kelman said. In fact, it’s often what’s happening between countries when disaster strikes that creates peace. Disasters, in effect, offer a short-term influence. Non-disaster activities, he said, are the true instruments of peace.

He sites the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Greece in 1999, killing 17,000 Turks and 7,000 Greeks. Although tensions were high, Greece immediately offered aid to Turkey, who was hit first. Later, Turkey returned the favor.

Yet, a closer examination of events reveals that Turkey and Greece had already begun secret negotiations two days before the first of the earthquakes struck, and Greece had already begun to support Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.

In fact, Kelman believes, the earthquake had a detrimental effect on Greece and Turkey’s tentative steps toward peace. “The earthquakes thrust that into the spotlight,” he said, putting pressure on diplomats to come up with results.

He cites a similar instance when Kashmir suffered and earthquake in 2006. India’s portion of Kashmir began cooperating with Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir to bring relief to the suffering region. Again, Kelman points out, there was already a bus service that had begun to cross the borders.

Often, said Kelman, even the offer of aid can create tension. While the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations have repeatedly said that aid offered during a disaster should have no strings attached, Kelman pointed out, “Any disaster relief has strings attached.”

He cited the U.S.’s wariness during the Hurricane Katrina disaster as an example. While Iran, Cuba and Venezuela—with governments that are historically at odds with the United States—offered aid, the U.S. was hesitant to acknowledge the offer. The government’s official policy had been that no offers of aid would be turned away, yet when these governments offered aid, the U.S. reacted with suspicion.

“Often the enemy country reacts like a human being,” said Kelman, adding that once the offer of aid has been made, diplomats can’t help but wonder where the politics come in.

Dr. Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, professor of earth sciences at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and co-author of “Earthquakes and Human History” agreed. He said a country’s history of offering aid could come into play, even in the middle of a disaster. Part of the issue, he said, is that Cuba has often offered aid to African countries and, once there, subverted the government. So when it offered aid to the U.S., the “knee-jerk response” was simply “No I don’t want those people here.”

That’s a response that often greets the United States’ offers of aid to other countries, said Kelman, such as during the Iranian earthquake in 2003, when a high-level U.S. delegation was turned away at the Iranian border.

However, Kelman said, he does believe that disaster situations create windows of opportunities to generate peace—they’re just often badly handled.

“Care is very much needed in disaster diplomacy,” Kelman said. Specifically, a simple, often violated rule is that those offering aid, must also attempt to understand the culture of the disaster-stricken area. For example, some cultures see offers of aid from an enemy as a humiliation.

“Power and might are not always appreciated by smaller players,” Kelman said. “A little prevention goes a long way.”

Zeilinga de Boer agreed that often cultural boundaries are overstepped, such as when western Europeans attempted to offer aid in Iran after the earthquake. While trying to help, male doctors often caused tensions by attempting to examine women in a culture that does not allow a woman to be viewed by a man other than her husband.

However, Zeilinga de Boer said if done with sensitivity, personal contact after disasters is important. “A lot of goodwill could come out of that type of connection,” he said.

Kelman suggested that larger countries should show humility when offering aid and a sense of culture and the history of a conflict, rather than expect a rapid-onset event to create a peace solution.

“It’s almost inevitable that it will fail.” He recommended using a disaster to begin a long-term peace process. “Otherwise we end up with Band-Aid solutions.”

As with most diplomatic negotiations, timing is of the essence, said researcher Michael Renner. The 2004 tsunami that struck Asia resulted in vastly different outcomes for Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

With the Sumatra Aceh province fighting for liberation from Indonesia, said Renner, both sides had a sense that the conflict was a no-win situation. Renner said, when the tsunami struck, Aceh was under martial law, but the new Indonesian president recognizing a sense of exhaustion in the country, campaigned on the promise of creating peace. Similarly those fighting for Aceh liberation were realizing they didn’t have enough international support to win the conflict, leaving them open to a peace deal.

“Both sides realized that things definitely needed to change,” Renner said.

Sri Lanka, which had already come to a ceasefire, began wrangling over aid and tensions and conflict brought on by the tsunami actually broke the peace.

“(Aid) became a real political football,” said Renner.

Renner said that while it is tempting to try to find a pattern in disaster diplomacy, the success or failure of such attempts depend on the circumstances of the conflict and the type of disaster and can’t be looked at in “blueprint terms.”

Earthquakes, he said, often produce a sense of shock and a need to respond, said Renner. “The opposing side is seen as victims who deserve sympathy.”

Meanwhile, floods are often seen as a seasonal event, rather than a sudden disaster. Droughts, also, often receive little attention because they are a slow-onset disaster without a clear beginning or end. Furthermore, in situations of internal conflict, droughts may increase tensions as the people on opposing sides may be competing for scarce resources. Renner said he believes drought played a hand in the increased tensions in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

Still, the “right” disaster at the right time can create an opportunity to make overtures and improve relationships, he said. “I think a disaster has to be of a certain size to produce any of these kinds of responses.”

Among other strategies, Renner and Chafe’s report recommends:

- Integrating “conflict-sensitive” strategies into disaster relief plans.

- Minimizing relief inequities between sides.

- Analyzing and learning from past cases.

- Raising awareness of the stresses in a disaster situation that can worsen conflicts.

- Create plans for aid-sharing in disaster situations.

Dr. Zeilinga de Boer said he’d like to see the U.S. create an “Aid Army,” in which volunteers join and train as carpenters, electricians, and other personnel needed to rebuild a disaster-stricken region. This “army” could be deployed to help in disasters around the world and at the same time learn about different cultures and create personal relationships.

Kelman is hopeful for disaster diplomacy to make strides. In fact, he’s currently investigating an 1880 cyclone in Samura. With three fleets ready to war with each other, the cyclone hit and a peace deal soon followed. Kelman is currently checking into whether there were secret peace negotiations at work, or if the disaster truly created the peace that followed.