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The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building
Peace: John
Paul Lederach
Notes taken
during his address at the Association for Conflict Resolution, 30
September 2004. A book by the same name will be published by Oxford
University Press in December 2004.
This conference
is entitled, Valuing Peace in the 21st Century. To do that, we need
to imagine selves in web of relationships that include our enemies.
These times value neither peace nor CR. There has
never been a wide recognition of our profession, nor a wider gap
between that recognition and the value placed on conflict resolution
in national and global politics. That challenge pushes the imaginative
quest to find who we're about in this field. What's required to
effect change, to heal divisions, to achieve or move toward peace
in polarized world? People in the world’s most violent settings
face the question of how to transcend violence when living in it.
That’s the key question facing us all, esp post 9-11: What
is the essence of peacebuilding? Or, what would make peacebuilding
collapse if it were missing?
"When all else fails, tell a story."
So I will tell three.
Africa:
How the women stopped a war
The first story takes place in Wajir, in Africa. In Somalia in 1993,
a part of the world torn apart by civil war, Dekha Ibrahim recalled
one night that shooting erupted once again near her house. She ran
for her first-born child and hid for several hours under the bed
while bullets crisscrossed her room. While under the bed she had
distinct memory of being held by her OWN mother under a bed to get
out of the range of the bullets. She decided that two generations
was too long for this to go on, and began to talk to other women.
The women wanted a way to get food for their families, and thus
needed a way to make the market safe. The women gathered to see
what they could do. They agreed on basic idea: to make the marketplace
a safe for any woman of any tribe to sell or buy. They established
monitors, ways to report incidents and solve those issues by a committee
representing all the clans. And it work. The fighting, however,
continued. So the women decided to get the men on board. Fearing
rejection of their idea, they thought to work through the clans
and the elders. They convened a meeting of elders, by enlisting
as their spokesperson the oldest of the elders, from the smallest
and thus least threatening clan. He spoke for them, and presented
their ideas to the others. Working this way, they formed a council
of elders who agreed that it was in their interest to work toward
peace. Then the women enlisted the youth, to form a new initiative
Youth for Peace and soon discovered that if the youth were to leave
their guns and the bush, they would need something to occupy their
time and provide income. The business community was then approached
to employ the youth, to work for peace. Finally, they formed a composite
Wajir Peace and Development Committee. Since 9-11, observed Dekha,
there are ever more US troops in Somalia. “Now have to convince
them of better ways -- and, inshallah we will,” she said.
Columbia:
“Now we have decided to think for ourselves."
The second story comes from Columbia. "Josué, Manuel,
Hector, Rosita, Excelino, Miguel Angel, Sylvia and Alejandro shared
several things that forever bound them together. They lived along
the Carare River in an area called La India, in the jungles of Magdalena
Medio in the country of Colombia. They were campesinos, peasants.
They considered themselves ordinary folk. And they faced an extraordinary
challenge: how to survive the wicked violence of numerous armed
groups that traversed their lands and demanded their allegiance."FARQ
entered the picture in late 60's. Landowners had created vigilantes
who collected war taxes – protection money. The law of silence
prevailed: one was silent about the killings, or one’s other
family members would be killed. In 1987 there was a surge of massacres.
The FARQ offered the campesinos amnesty in return for choosing sides
against guerillas, and were given four choices: arm and join us;
join the guerillas; leave your homes, or die. Josué responded:
"Capitan, you speak of forgiveness, but what do you have to
forgive us? You are the ones who have violated. We have killed no
one. You want to give us millions in weapons paid for by the state,
yet you will not facilitate even the minimum credit for our farming
needs. There are millions for war but nothing for peace. And what
has all this served? What has it fixed? Nothing. In fact Colombia
is in the worse violence ever. We have arrived at the conclusion
that weapons have not solved a thing and that there is not one reason
to arm ourselves. Look at all these people you brought here. We
all know each other. And who are you? We know that some years ago
you yourself were with guerrilla and now you are the head of the
paramilitaries. You brought people in to our houses to accuse us,
you lied, and you switched sides. And now you, a side switcher,
you want us to follow your violent example. Capitan, with all due
respect, we do not plan to join your side, their side or any side.
And we are not leaving this place. We are going to find our own
solution."
20 campesino
leaders decided to pursue civilian resistance without weapons. They
organized a transformation: Association of Peasant Workers of Carare
(ATCC), an association of peasant workers willing to break code
of silence: your life, not your money. Their maxim: "We shall
die before we kill." They vowed to speak loudly and publicly
about the massacres, and “to understand those who do not understand
us.” Faced with violence, they chose to talk to and understand
everyone. They posted declarations of no-weapon zones, and declared
the first territories of peace. They sent delegations to meet with
the armed groups, seeking respect for the territories of peace and
the campesinos. “We had to meet the human beings, not the
organization, never giving in to weapons, never giving up on dialogue.
We did it in full transparency. We introduced uncertainty into the
logic of war.”
Tajikistan:
Talking Poetry with the Warlord
Lederach was in Tajikistan meeting with 24 Tajik professors about
issues related to peacebuilding. A man named Abdul asked Lederach
for a private conversation, and proceeded to tell this story. "I
was asked by the government to convince a key commander in the mountains
to enter negotiations. Not only was he considered to be a notorious
criminal – he had killed my close friend. He arrived to our
meeting late, and we prayed together. Then he asked me how a communist
could pray. I said I was not a communist, only my father was. Then
he asked what I taught in the University. We soon discovered we
were both interested in Philosophy and Sufism. We started talking
Sufi poetry. Our meeting went from twenty minutes to two and half
hours. In this part of the world you have to circle into Truth through
stories.”
In the hallway Abdul’s gold capped teeth sparkle with a smile
as he relays his message: “You see in Sufism there is an idea
that discussion has no end.” His point well conveyed, the
Professor picks up the story again. “I kept going to visit
him. We mostly talked poetry and philosophy. Little by little I
asked him about ending the war. I wanted to persuade him to take
the chance on putting down his weapons. After months of visits we
finally had enough trust to speak truths and it all boiled down
to one concern.”
“The
Commander said to me, ‘If I put down my weapons and go to
Dushanbé with you, can you guarantee my safety and life?’”
The Tajik ‘If I put down my weapons and go to capital, can
you guarantee my life and safety?’ I told him truth: ‘I
can't guarantee your safety, but I will guarantee to go with you
side by side, and if you die I will die.’ That day the commander
agreed to meet the government. He first met with the commission
on peace, and told them ‘I have not come here because of you.
I have come here for honour and respect of this Professor.’’
You see, this is Tajik mediation. "
The essence of the 3 stories: stories invite you
to participate, and there is always room for more.
Four
elements comprise the moral imagination:
• The
capacity to imagine the web of relationships.
When roots are broken, it challenges the capacity of individuals
to imagine relationship even with our enemies. Art is what the human
hand touches, and shapes our deeper sense of being. So does peacebuilding.
Perpetration of violence requires the belief that change can be
achieved without a change in relationships. Peacebuilding takes
place in a context of interdependency. We must see selves as part
of pattern. Violent acts emerge from recognition that I am part
of pattern and what I do affects it. We must take personal responsibility
and recognize mutual relationships. "I have travelled the world
on the backs of people whose lives are tied together by the wars
they fight,” observed Lederach.
• The discipline of sustained curiosity, to take care of,
cure and care, physical healing.
That requires careful inquiry beyond accepted meaning of things
not easily understood; passion and deep caring for people and the
meaning of their experience. We must find ways to incite the part
of the imagination that fuels passion and caring.
• Eternal belief in the creative act, the coaching of the
moral imagination.
We need to provide space for creative act to emerge. Violence is
not barren, as artists who live in it still give birth to something
new, think about how we know and are in the world and what is possible
in it.
• Willingness to take a risk, to step into the unknown with
no guarantee of success or safety. Violence is known. Peace is the
mystery, and thus requires guidance.
Creation, curiosity, risk. We must purse conflict resolution as
an art, not just as technical expertise or communication management.
We must introduce creative elements, and give equal space to vocation
-- the deepest voice of who we are and what we are called to be
– as we do to process flow.
We must unleash and follow our deepest passions, care deeply about
craft and dream about what's beyond what's presented.
Lederach recounted sitting where Martin Luther King Jr was murdered."On
that balcony of the Lorraine hotel there is a small commemorative
plaque that carries a verse from the book of Genesis drawn from
the story of when Joseph’s brothers plotted to get rid of
him. It reads: “Here comes the dreamer. Come now, let us kill
him…and we shall see what will become of his dreams.'"
Or, in the words of an aboriginal man, "This is the century
when we shall see each other again with the eyes of the ancestor.
Lederach concluded:
"What will become of our dreams?
Do we have the passion, care and dreams to face the absolute daunting
challenges of this Century? I say, “bring ‘em on.”
Why dream small? We need big challenges to assure the authenticity
of hope. This is our Century. It is our Century to shape and mold.
Bring on the challenges. To the divide between the Islamic and Western
world, this is the Century of great promise, awakening and reconciliation
that will the bury myth of clash of civilizations. I say bring it
on. To the Palestinians and Israelis, this is your Century. The
spiral of destruction has but tilled the soils. The seeds are planted.
The rising will come. To the peoples of Burma, Nagaland, Manipur,
Tibet and Nepal, this is your Century. Let it rise. From Magdalena
Medio to Choco, nuestra querida Colombia, this is the Century the
fifty-year war will end. To the first peoples of this land we now
share, Lakota to Mohawk, Cherokee to Navaho, this is the Century
when we will see each other again for the first time with the eyes
of the Ancestors. The Century of the circle is here. To the peoples
of Africa, the land of grace and creation, that gifted to us the
tenacious joy of life, this is your Century. Dreamkeepers do not
give up on us. The rising is come.
Gather out of
star-dust, Earth dust Cloud dust Storm dust And splinters of hail.
One handful of dream dust Not for sale.
(Langston Hughes)
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