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About me Before that though I served in 1978/79 as a non-commissioned officer with the UNIFIL [1] peacekeeping forces in the south of Lebanon. As logistics commander of the Dutch battalion transport unit I probably spent some 35% of my mission time outside UN controlled area. I had frequent contact with Lebanese civilians, notably in West Beirut, a prerogative not available to my college brothers (and occasionally sisters) in arms. It was during this period in Lebanon that my curiosity for culture and conflict was born. The mission submersed me in an active conflict setting as a military person, be it within a peacekeeping force but nevertheless myself being armed day and night (literally, e.g. standard procedure was to sleep with a semiautomatic sub-machine gun in a sleeping bag). I obviously was trained to use weapons and "exercise power", and at occasions experienced what it means to be under attack. As convoy commander I had casual liaison contacts with both State army officers as well as local militia, renegade-like "armed elements" and common civilians (mainly in then infamous West Beirut). This military period proved a valuable asset to my later work with the Red Cross in conflict settings (which - in comparison - transpired to be far more dangerous and challenging, and cause more hardship than the military service experience). In total I worked approx. seven years abroad in conflict and post-conflict situations, mainly in the Middle East (Lebanon, Yemen) but also in the Sudan. At The Red Cross Headquarters at The Hague I have been responsible for emergency assistance coordination and National Society development assistance, notably during the Gulf War, the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Kosovo War, and for numerous natural and man-made disasters elsewhere in between. In this position I frequently visited the Balkans, the Middle East and African countries. I studied Arabic at the AUC in Cairo and worked for both the ICRC[2](Geneva) as well as the IFRC[3](Yemen and Sudan). My life companion was born in the colourful and buzzing medina of Fez, making our nine year-old son a “non-western immigrant” according to official Dutch statistics, even though he was born in the Netherlands. This all submerses me both professionally as well as privately in a world as diverse as it can be.
I Live in a small yet densely populated country, in
the city of Leiden, renowned for its historic hospitality and multiculturalism, its Law Faculty, and
of course Rembrandt. See
Fascinated but concerned by the magnitude of miscellaneous public and State reactions following 11/9 and the resulting polarisation in European countries between (ex) migrant groups and indigenous populations, I embarked on a study of interculturalisation at the University of Utrecht[4] which had developed the course jointly with the Universities of Kent (UK) and Örebro (Sweden).
[1]
“United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon, background”,
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/
I have made a few other sites, some of them already
longer then ten years on the net and - unfortunately - not all of them up to
date. See http://family.hils.org
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