The keys to peace in the Middle East may rest inside a Web-based database.
This database is the focus of a US Department of Commerce-sponsored conference intended to teach computer professionals from this embattled region how to use information technology to knit closer business ties. The conference, running through next Tuesday at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, is part of the Middle East-North Africa PeaceNet project, which studies ways to remove barriers to free trade and investment in the region, and with the United States.
Twelve attendees from Jordan, Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza will learn about the latest networking tools, but perhaps more importantly about building business contacts in the Middle East, northern Africa, and the United States. Success here would help to overcome barriers such as border closures that hamper commerce throughout the region.
"This system is closure-proof because the Internet continues even with blocked borders," said Marc Siegel, executive director of the International Technology and Trade Network, the main organization running the conference.
This equation of technology plus business is just the calculus organizers hope will factor into a resuscitation of the ailing Mideast peace process. "What you have is a privatization of the peace process - a ground-up approach to helping people [of warring factions] to know each other professionally," Siegel explained. "When they work together, they can go to the government and say, 'Hey, we can work together,' and push to have the political barriers removed."
The MENA PeaceNet project was created in 1996 following a meeting between the trade ministers of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and the United States. The Clinton administration arranged the meeting to help find ways of using the Internet and other technologies to foster closer economic cooperation in the region.
Conference goers in San Diego will learn the nuts and bolts of Unix servers, how to set up Web servers and security systems, database programming, and linking databases to the Web. At the same time, they will get to rub elbows with their counterparts who belong to organizations that are the catalysts in building international commerce, namely chambers of commerce, trade offices, and standards bureaus. The hope is that the attendees will become master teachers for their own countries and regions, returning to share their newly acquired knowledge with their organizations, which in turn will share it with businesses.
In addition, conference graduates will begin work on country and regional databases that will serve as a practical resource center giving businesses information on how to go about trading and dealing with other companies in the other companies and regions. These various databases will be centralized in the respective countries which will then send on their contents for storage in one comprehensive database to reside at the Supercomputer Center. The participating countries and regions will host mirror sites.
And this extended weekend conference is only the beginning. Siegel is hopeful that his organization will be successful in wooing US information technology companies into the effort to donate equipment, training, and perhaps jobs. This move away from governmental organizations is deliberate, and Siegel believes it will have a big role to play in the Mideast peace process, eventually.
"Business can be more imaginative [than government] in fostering cooperation. If people have an economic stake, then they'll be more interested in the peace process," said Siegel, noting that business is largely expected to play a big role in PeaceNet.
"Programs like this one are difficult to do in government framework because you don't have the link to finding work after the training. You do when companies are sponsoring the effort," he said.
