NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9463

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-21 | 5.3 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Jon Harder)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: MCC COMMENTARY:  SUSTAINABLE RECONCILIATION IN SOMALIA
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Date: 18 Dec 92 21:13:00 GMT
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HARRISONBURG, Va. -- "If all you have is a hammer, all you see
are nails," says an adage.  Somalia has captured our attention.
However, as 30,000 international troops land on its shores, we
cannot rely exclusively on the hammers of food relief and its
secure delivery.  We need tools that help bring about sustainable
reconciliation in Somalia.  We need a comprehensive, creative
approach to restoring peace that addresses both immediate
humanitarian concerns and the long-term challenges of
transforming the conflict.

The following concrete steps will develop additional tools for
our toolbox:

1.  While food is needed immediately and mechanisms for its
delivery negotiated with respective parties, this sense of
urgency should not be used as leverage to push for an immediate,
high-profile, internationally convened peace conference of select
Somalis.  Such an event would only create increased suspicion.
Somalia does not need a trickle-down approach to peace.  Somali
reconciliation must instead be based on regional sub-clan and
inter-clan consultations that build toward a national forum.
These consultations have already started in numerous regions.
They have been well-documented and attended by international
observers.

The central and southern areas of Somalia, where international
troops are concentrated, must not create a Mogadishu-centered and
driven- peace process.  The peace process must reflect the deep
aspirations all regions have for attaining a voice in the affairs
that affect them locally.

In favor of this approach, the international community should
encourage and support the logistics involved in local and
regional peace conferences, building toward a national
conference.

2.  Negotiating with those who control guns is crucial so food
can be delivered immediately but it is not the key to long-term
peace.  Continued focus on armed groups enhances their status and
power.  Long-term transformation must create a Somali peace
constituency that serves as an infrastructure for reconciliation.
In Somali society that infrastructure lies in the foundation of
traditional elders, intellectuals for peace, religious leaders,
poets, traders and women.  We must give priority to re-empowering
key cultural and historical institutions unique to Somali society
and to integrating them into the peace process.

3.  Somalia is an oral society.  The international community
should help establish and maintain a "radio-for-peace" that
provides regular and unbiased information about the peace
process.  As much will be accomplished for sustainable peace with
regular, objective information via radio -- airing regional peace
conference reports, poetry for peace, advocacy for dialogue from
elders and religious leaders, and concrete details of
humanitarian relief delivery and plans -- as the placement of
30,000 troops.

4.  Relief efforts must be linked with serious programs for
disarmament and strengthening the arms embargo.  The challenge is
to initiate and maintain the transition from sustenance by gun to
sustenance by work and civil government.

A comprehensive approach to peace must create alternatives to
militarization.  This cannot be simplified to creating proper law
enforcement, nor a formula of food or cash for weapons.  A
broader socio-economic view of the situation suggests development
and employment packages in exchange for weapons, especially
targeted at youth.

Likewise, the cycle of weapons and munitions entering the
situation must be addressed with equal seriousness as placing
30,000 international troops in the country.  This calls for
international will and regional coordination to stop those who
simultaneously fuel the conflict behind the famine and profit
from it through weapon sales and trafficking.

Pilot projects aimed at providing training and employment for
weapons with targeted youth in th
e country are needed.  Further,
we could fund research on arms movements in the region and into
the country, convene regional conferences to establish mechanisms
for arms control and use direct pressure to target a handful of
people who are profiteering from the sale of weapons.

Finally, to fund these efforts I suggest all governments and
international agencies providing relief aid make a voluntary
commitment to a "self-tax" whereby at least 5 percent of the
money spent on food, medicine and delivery logistics be given to
conflict resolution and reconciliation activities.

-30-
John Paul Lederach, MCC International Conciliation Service
PO Box 500, Akron, Pa., 17501-0500  [phone]

pls18december1992
Since 1989 John Paul Lederach has worked with Somalis to create a
regular forum, known as Ergada Wadatashiga Somaliyeed, for
dialogue across clan lines and more recently participated in
consultations with United Nations personnel responsible for
developing a national reconciliation effort.