Transcript - Rising From the Ashes

__: World leaders gather to put behind them the years of savagery which have been unleashed in the Balkans.

 

MARK SOMMER: When the United States and other Western governments helped broker the peace accord that ended the war in Bosnia more than a decade ago, a dark interlude in the often bloody history of the Balkans came to a close. At the signing ceremony, President Clinton reminded the warring parties of their collective responsibility to ensure a peaceful future for the region.

 

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No one outside can guarantee that Muslims, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia will come together and stay together in a united country, sharing a common destiny. Only the Bosnian people can do that.

 

MARK SOMMER: But at the same time, the peace accord also signaled the beginning of a new kind of international engagement in the war-wracked region. Soldiers, aid workers and government advisers poured into Bosnia from around the world to help rebuild a devastated infrastructure and create a lasting peace from the shattered remnants of what had once been Yugoslavia.

 

__: Yeah, I think of Bosnia as being a success in the sense that we stopped some very brutal killing.

 

MARK SOMMER: More recently, the people of Liberia are just now emerging from a fierce civil war that raged for nearly two decades, killing 150,000 people and making refugees of nearly a million more. With significant financial and institutional support from the UN, the US and other wealthy governments, Harvard-educated president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf faces a daunting array of challenges and a set of expectations that will be hard to meet.

 

ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Liberians generally want to get this matter behind them. I think they’re tired of it. I think they just want to move forward with their lives and want to become normal again. Three million people need to move on. They need to have their development needs met.

 

MARK SOMMER: Today on A World of Possibilities, “Rising From the Ashes: Building Peace in the Wake of War.” While the international community can point to a handful of modestly successful peacebuilding efforts in places like Bosnia and Liberia, many more remain like festering wounds: unhealed and vulnerable to virulent reinfection. In the disorder of the post-Cold War world, hundreds of thousands of people die each year in little-noticed, but costly and intractable conflicts the world over.

 

The global community is accustomed to world wars and unconditional surrenders, but it possesses few tools and little experience in the messy and complicated business of reviving shattered economies, rebuilding devastated infrastructures, reconstructing civil institutions and reintegrating combatants into civilian life. Well, we’d better start getting good at it, since the future promises many more such challenges.

 

Observers agree that we need to develop strategies that enable post-conflict societies to break free of the tortured cycle of conflict and retribution, and help citizens grapple with the trauma of past atrocities in order to build societies strong enough to resist future violence.

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: Dealing with the past should be an ongoing conversation. It shouldn’t be about wrapping things up in neat little packages that are simple and easy to digest, because the world is more complex than that.

 

MARK SOMMER: I’m Mark Sommer. Join us as we sift through the ruins of civil and international wars and seek to build from the foundations of stable and secure societies. Welcome to A World of Possibilities. 

 

Peacekeeping, nation-building, conflict management, peacebuilding -- all this sounds like the soft-headed work of dovish charities, not the slam-bam assertiveness of a warrior class. On the contrary, today’s complex conflicts in nasty neighborhoods like Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan demand military personnel who not only can carry and fire lethal weapons, but can make split-second, highly-nuanced judgments about when and when not to use force.

 

They must know how to navigate dense urban neighborhoods bristling with snipers, engage in delicate negotiations with tribal and religious leaders whose traditions and values they know little about, and defend human rights, even if it sometimes means defending them against abuses among their own ranks. And they must be ready to stick with it for the long haul.

 

Colonel Paul Hughes knows well the multiple roles now required of many military personnel. Now a senior program officer in the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the US Institute of Peace, he led the military and security expert working group of the now-famous Iraq Study Group that submitted his report and recommendations to President Bush in the fall of 2006. To explain the crucial role national and international military forces play today in peacebuilding, Colonel Hughes joins us now from the studios of ABC Radio in Washington, D.C.

 

PAUL HUGHES: When you’re building a nation, that assumes that you’re building everything that’s necessary for that entity to function in a sovereign fashion, whether it’s providing for its defense, providing good governance, providing essential services, stimulating an economy that partakes with the rest of the world market, things of that nature.

 

When you’re talking about peacebuilding, you’re actually talking about a subset that is necessary for the eventual nationbuilding to go on. As far as the United States goes, its military has a great deal of experience in peacekeeping operations, most notably in the Balkans, where we kept the peace for 10 years with our involvement and NATO’s involvement in Bosnia. The thing to remember about peacekeeping is it’s not a short-term process. It’s a long-term process. And it’s worth noting that the Europeans remain in Bosnia to keep the peace while the Bosnians themselves learn to work with one another.

 

MARK SOMMER: Does it also take a very different kind of training, a different mission, a different vision, of what the force is to be used for, from what armed forces are traditionally used for?

 

PAUL HUGHES: Certainly, it does. Your first ingredient is you must have a well-trained military capable of performing its basic military functions and capable of responding to thoughtful, educated officers who understand the goal of the peacebuilding mission. Because in peacebuilding, if it goes the wrong way and it reverts back to conflict, your peacekeepers who are trained only in peacemaking are going to be at a severe loss. They won’t be able to react to events. Where a military force that is capable of exerting power through legal means can do that. In Bosnia, for example, we did it many times.

 

That takes leaders who are educated, can think on their feet, understand the capabilities of their units, and understand the commander-in-chief’s intent.

 

MARK SOMMER: It seems like we are asking things of our armed forces that we’ve never asked of them before in terms of almost schizophrenic sense of what they have to be capable of doing. They have to have lethal force. At the same time, they have to have great restraint, they have to have great cultural sensitivity and awareness of human rights. This is a level of complexity -- have we ever really asked our soldiers to do this before?

 

PAUL HUGHES: Yes, we have. In fact, the US Army has an extensive training and education program for its officers and its soldiers on human rights, on negotiation skills and things of this nature, because they realize that these are essential skills that the soldiers have to possess. In fact, if you ever visited Fort Polk, Louisiana, the Joint Readiness Training Center located there exposes soldiers and officers to these very issues in live scenarios.

 

__: If you open the back hatch, they think they’re going to come through and go inside the hatch.

 

PAUL HUGHES: And at Fort Polk, Louisiana, they actually have, for example, today, you can find several Iraqi villages, and, if you didn’t know better, you would think that you’re actually standing in the middle of a small Arab community from Iraq. [street noises]

 

They hire Arabic-Americans who come in and role play as mayors or imams or mullahs or whatever, and the job of these role players are to as accurately portray the challenges as they know it that the soldiers will face in Iraq. [more street noises]

 

Now, it doesn’t purport to teach the officers and the soldiers how to solve everything, because it’s a three-week long simulation, and you can’t learn everything you need to know about dealing with imams in three weeks. But it does alert you that you do have some deficiencies and you need to get fixed on them. And so, the unit then departs Fort Polk and goes back to its home station. And the unit commanders then have a list of things that they need to improve on, and they take corrective action.

 

MARK SOMMER: I guess another question arises as to whether the kind of peacekeeping and peacebuilding we’re talking about, whether that is best done by a truly international force rather than one that comes from particular countries?

 

PAUL HUGHES: That question comes up periodically: Do we need a truly international force? And some will argue, yes, you do. But then the question gets into the details of how do you sustain it and what do you do with them when they are not employed? Are they on standby, and such like that. Now, there are countries, and the UN has a process for this called the Standby Agreement, where countries sign up with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and they say, “If you need an infantry battalion, my country can provide one.” And there’s always one battalion in that country that is kind of on standby call-up for the United Nations in case the call comes.

 

It’s not so much in the realm of combat forces as much as it’s in the realm of very special forces such as civil affairs units, medical units, engineering units, transportation units, water purification units -- things of that nature. The United States does not participate in the Standby Agreement, because its forces have worldwide obligations already. However, the United States has agreed in principle to provide forces when the UN requests it and it meets the national security interests of the United States.

 

MARK SOMMER: The United States has peacebuilding, peacekeeping forces in large numbers in Iraq and in lesser but important numbers in Afghanistan. Both are now going badly after Afghanistan seemed to be going well for a while, it seems to be in decline now. What can we learn from these two experiences and from Bosnia about both the extent and the limits of what even the world’s most powerful military force can do in terms of peacebuilding in other parts of the world?

 

PAUL HUGHES: What we can learn from this is that the continuum that has characterized conflict in the Western world for centuries, a continuum of peace, crisis, war, resolution and back to peace is no longer applicable in the 21^st century. We’re actually seeing a conflict paradigm that is best described as crisis and confrontation -- and you just move back and forth from one to the other. The idea that the military is capable of “winning” a war -- and I use that in quotes -- I think is something of the past now. We don’t win wars anymore, because the world is too globalized, it’s too urbanized, it’s too intertwined to say clearly that we just fought this battle, we’ve ended this war, we’re the victors. It doesn’t work that way anymore. There are just too many dynamics at play.

 

MARK SOMMER: No more “mission accomplished” declarations?

 

PAUL HUGHES: No more, yeah, absolutely -- oh, my God, when I was in Iraq and I heard that, I was just flabbergasted: How could anybody ever say that. It’s just too complex an issue now, and too many people have stakes in the outcome. They’re not going to accept-- I mean, quite frankly, I worked with the Iraqi Army before Ambassador Bremer disbanded them, and not one of the Iraqi generals that I worked with ever admitted to me that they had been defeated.

 

Back to your point about Afghanistan, I have to say that Afghanistan, you hear about the resurgence of the Taliban, and that is true, but that’s localized down in Helman Province and along the Pakistani border. There are some great success stories coming out of Afghanistan that you don’t hear about just because they’re so far out in the hinterland. There have been some very significant movements forward, but the government in Kabul still has to assert its national authority, and that’s something that’s difficult for it to do right now.

 

MARK SOMMER: Does the United States Institute of Peace work with the Pentagon when it is, itself, as at Fort Polk, seeking to train and teach conflict prevention and resolution?

 

PAUL HUGHES: Absolutely. We do a great deal of work with the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at Carlyle Barracks in Pennsylvania, and this is an institute that is responsible for writing doctrine for the military on peacekeeping operations and stability operations. And we have been working with them to help craft a framework so that everybody can work better together. We can improve our coordinating capabilities and whatnot. And it’s been a very dynamic process in which NGOs have expressed their concerns about the military doing certain things and the military has expressed their concerns about NGOs doing certain things. And in the process, we have worked together to alleviate this tension and craft something that they can use in the field.

 

MARK SOMMER: Colonel Paul Hughes of the Iraq Study Group and the US Institute of Peace. Up next, we take a look at the civilian side of peacebuilding.

 

RICK BARTON: I believe we could probably bring a greater peace, a more lasting peace, to two countries in the world a year.

 

MARK SOMMER: After a short break, we turn to peacebuilding specialist Rick Barton.

 

__: You’re listening to A World of Possibilities. To hear the podcast of this program and to access our show archives, please visit our website at aworldofpossibilities.com or visit iTunes.

 

MARK SOMMER: Peacebuilding operations demand a strong military component to provide security in still-violent postwar environments. But much of the work needed to ensure lasting peace in the aftermath of war is better left to civilians. This work includes reconstructing roads, bridges and other vital infrastructure, as well as reintegrating ex-combatants into civilian life. Rick Barton has worked in dozens of the world’s hot spots for both the UN and the US Agency for International Development. Currently co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he joins us from the studios of ABC Radio in Washington, D.C.

 

RICK BARTON: It needs to be a balanced and integrated approach if you’re going to be successful in these places. The precondition for everything is security and public safety, but the other three pillars of the framework that we have developed requires that we also address the politics and participation, justice and reconciliation and economic and social wellbeing. If you don’t address all four of these pillars with a somewhat integrated model, this is not a question of staying in your lane. What you do in one area has a huge impact on progress in the other areas.

 

And it is a puzzle, one that really requires a tremendous amount of modesty and humility -- this is not really a great opportunity to be terribly paternalistic, even though it appears that you’re seeing much of the human suffering that you would most commonly find in a humanitarian disaster. We’ve had people with past practices, in many cases well intentioned humanitarians, but they have missed the intensely political dimension of this period, when people have really been brought through the rawest kind of human experience, which is a war.

 

MARK SOMMER: Give us a case -- I’m not sure which one you’d choose, Bosnia, I’m not sure -- that seems to have been successful over the long term.

 

RICK BARTON: Well, very few of them have had the long-term yet. Many people talk about Mozambique as a place where there has been a good start. Namibia, as they transitioned, they were successful coming out of a conflict. But it’s still way too early. I think of Bosnia as being a success in the sense that we stopped some very brutal killing. We have bought the time that the society probably needed to heal. My ambition when I worked in Bosnia was that, in 10 years, that people of that area would have realized that they could gain much greater happiness in life if they found a way to live and work together.

 

Now, that may not sound quite as ambitious as having all of the governmental systems and everything in place, but I saw that as being a significant outcome. We’re getting close to that in these places. There’s still a lot of tension, a lot of hostility. There are many people who are eager to provoke in that kind of setting. But I think that if you get to that point of peace holding for about five years, you have a better than even chance that it’ll go on for longer. And what we oftentimes hear when you arrive in one of these places is that there’s war fatigue. Well, it’s a very real factor for the average citizen, but the wars are generally not being fought by the average citizens; they’re being fought by 10, 15, 20, maybe 25 percent of the population. Everybody else is pretty much being pushed around by that reality.

 

So, I think what we’ve done in a number of these places has been successful. I felt that the beginning of the Haiti intervention was a success, but we didn’t stay with it. We withdrew much too fast. There was tremendous political pressure in Washington going into it, so we weren’t able to see whether we could have gotten farther with that.

 

MARK SOMMER: All of this seems to say that one needs a different base of financial and logistical support than national governments who have other interests and other priorities, that will tend to cause the pull-out of their forces and their resources before the job is done. What is another base of financial support for, say, a truly international peacebuilding capability?

 

RICK BARTON: There’s been discussion for at least 10 years about having an international fund, but the key problem with that idea is that the contributors are likely to be governments, and governments are reluctant to put their money into what they then call a slush fund, a fund that just sits there waiting for an opportunity to knock on its door. Without that kind of liquidity in one place, it is pretty hard to move ahead. We haven’t even been able to do that within the US government, even though our commission reports and others have suggested that you needed to have a multi-billion dollar fund that would have the liquidity to move quickly.

 

You’ve got to be able to move in with financial assets, because, generally in these situations, there is no money available to do anything, and there’s no ability of a host government to collect revenues. So you’ve got to infuse the situation with cash pretty quickly. Some of that could be done at the United Nations, but there is this reluctance to give that kind of carte blanche to the UN. So, it’s going to likely be some combination of situation-driven cases where we have the most familiar models, the donor conference. We have a problem, we all convene as quickly as possible, and then there are these inflated pledges that the governments of the world make. The US usually contributes about 25 percent, which is about what we contribute to peacekeeping forces, as well.

 

But oftentimes there’s a lead country. So, in the case of Sierra Leone, it was the UK. In the case of Cote D’Ivoire, it’s the French. We obviously took the lead in Afghanistan, but that’s very much of an international effort, and oftentimes when we move in the Japanese and other close allies move in with huge and generous amounts of money, as well.

 

MARK SOMMER: As you step back from the particulars and you look at the scale of the need at this point, do you think that that need for a real peacebuilding capability that’s not tied to individual nations and that’s truly robust will grow over time? Are we going to see more of these kinds of post-conflict situations, that if we allow them to fester will turn brush fires into forest fires?

 

RICK BARTON: I think there’s a great likelihood that over the next 10 years we will have several more cases, and the possibility that we may see these kinds of situations in Nigeria or Pakistan is real, and we’re really not ready as an international community. So, we have to build up this capability. We are creating offices in the US government. There is a new office at the State Department, the Coordinator for Reconstruction Stabilization, and there’s a similar office at the Pentagon. So, based on what we’re likely to face, we should be thinking about this stuff. Based on the reality that we generally do a very poor job of anticipation and of analysis and of understanding the context, we should be preparing for these cases.

 

Part of that is to have a fund to have some kind of standby capability. We should be thinking that way, otherwise we’re going to continue to stress out organizations like the US military that have real strengths, but are not necessarily well prepared in this realm. Plus, we’re going to have central bankers coming in and doing something that might be important, but may be out of synch with the demands of the place. So, I believe, if we were to do it, we could probably bring a greater peace, a more lasting peace, to two countries in the world a year, and by 10 years it would be a completely different world with only a few pockets of conflicts. So, I do believe that there’s a real opportunity.

 

MARK SOMMER: Rick Barton, co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Next we travel to Liberia, home to one of the most robust international peacebuilding efforts in the world today. In 2003, the country emerged from nearly two decades of civil war, held free elections, and elected the first woman president of Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Thus far, most observers have judged peacebuilding efforts in Liberia a success, but, as President Johnson Sirleaf notes, there is still an immense task ahead and little time and few resources with which to meet the expectations of a people so long and brutally abused by their leaders.

 

ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF: We’ve got hundreds of thousands of war-affected youth, both victims and ex-combatants, that have been equally affected by the war and the inability to be schooled. And so, one of our biggest challenges is to reverse this trend and to move up this generation, so that they become competitive. We’re talking about putting our young people to work, the thousands of these people who are unemployed, on the streets, and it’s linked to the infrastructure development program, to the community development program.

 

MARK SOMMER: Liberian Bartholomew Colley, executive director of an organization called the Resource Center for Community Empowerment and Integrated Development, provides counseling and skills training to ex-combatants and other war-affected people. Bartholomew joins us now by phone from his office in the Liberian capital of Monrovia. He speaks with our associate producer, Brittany Danish, who worked in Liberia with international observers during the election that brought President Johnson Sirleaf to power. Phone lines in Liberia are choppy at best, and can be hard to understand, so though he’s speaking in English, we voiced over Bartholomew’s interview to make sure you hear his message clearly

 

BARTHOLOMEW COLLEY: We were trying to work with ex-combatants and the non-combatants. All of them were working on public works sites. They were working on roads, they were working on bridges, they were working on the reconstruction of school buildings. And all of this is meant to increase the confidence level, because what the war has shown is that there is a confidence crisis between the fighters and the civilian population.

 

On the other hand, the ex-combatants have been traumatized by the level of violence that they participated in, and have carried out. So, in our work these past few years, we try to provide support to ex-combatants suffering from psychological trauma or what is technically called post-traumatic stress disorder. How can they be helped so that they can begin to reclaim their humanity and come back to normalcy?

 

BRITTANY DANISH: What are you and others doing to help these ex-combatants recover from the post-traumatic stress disorder?

 

BARTHOLOMEW COLLEY: We’re providing some counseling for them and we try to direct them to school, so that they have the opportunity catch up and so that they can learn some skills.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: I’m interested in hearing a little bit more about the counseling that you and others provide?

 

BARTHOLOMEW COLLEY: We have a group of ex-combatants and we all sit around and in a very African way we have a storytelling session. And then they begin to share their war experiences. And then we usually also have sessions with them individually. We try to manage their cases and follow up with them in their communities. And as a result of the trust and confidence they have for us, when they find themselves in a crisis situation, most of the time they’ll come to see us.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: What are some of the experiences they talk about?

 

BARTHOLOMEW COLLEY:  Some of them were very young when they were conscripted into the fighting forces. Some joined the fighting forces because they were left alone and there were no parents, so the way out for them was only to become fighters. And some of them willfully joined. They witnessed the massacre of their parents and relatives and certain points in war, so they decided, “Well, if this is the way of life, we may as well join and make something out of it.”

 

For those with the most protracted cases, they were involved in serious violations themselves, including rape, summary execution, and then the level of drugs they were taking and alcohol in order to keep some level of distance from the violent culture they were involved in.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: It seems like it’s going to be a long, long struggle for most of them to rebuild their lives, and then be able to go back to their communities or find a new community. Can you talk maybe one individual that you’ve worked with that you think has really made a lot of progress.

 

BARTHOLOMEW COLLEY: I’ve been involved with several of them who I think have made some strides. There is one girl named Karu, who was a fighter. The other day she called me up. She was interested in women’s work, so I put her in a program which gives women fighters some skills in areas like tie-dye, hair dressing, sewing, baking, and so on, and, at the same time, provides some counseling for them. Karu is a great girl, and I hope that one of these days you will visit Monrovia and I will take you to her house.

 

MARK SOMMER: Bartholomew Colley, speaking with associate producer Brittany Danish. I’m Mark Sommer, and this is A World of Possibilities, distributed by the WFMT Radio Network.

 

__: This is A World of Possibilities. If you wish to contact us, please direct emails to comments@aworldofpossibilities.com. This program is distributed by the WFMT Radio Network.

 

MARK SOMMER: I’m Mark Sommer, and this is A World of Possibilities. This program, “Rising From the Ashes: Rebuilding Peace In the Wake of War,” is underwritten by the Compton Foundation. Coming up in this half-hour, we take a look at how neighbors torn apart by conflict work to reknit their country’s social fabric by sharing stories about their often-horrific war experiences. But first we explore how some countries working to resolve conflicts have turned to constitution-drafting processes as a means of introducing the skills of negotiation to warring factions and other interest groups.

 

Michele Brandt has worked as an advisor to the UN in a number of these situations, most notably in East Timor and Afghanistan. She currently directs the Interpeace Representation Office in New York. Speaking with associate producer Brittany Danish, Michele Brandt joins us now by phone from her office in Manhattan.

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Historically, constitutions were written by victors of a conflict, and they were very focused on dividing power, determining power structures. Now constitutions are more negotiated settlements to a conflict. The constitution in a post-conflict setting can play a really important role in peacebuilding. It’s not just about dividing the spoils and about establishing the base of power. It can be critical to establishing a new nation’s identity, national reconciliation, and the role of the public in participating in this process is key, because often in these post-conflict environments you have the population extremely mistrustful, not only of those in power, but also of other communities.

 

And this process can be a way to create dialogue, to look at ways of moving forward, what does it mean to be a citizen of that particular country -- what has really happened in the past and what are the measures they want to take to overcome that and forge a way forward that’s going to lead to a sustainable peace? And if you don’t address these issues through the process, you can create a very quick constitution, but it’s not going to help support the process of peacebuilding in the country.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: And why are constitution-making processes a particularly good forum for tackling some of these post-conflict citizen participation needs?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Well, if done properly and if the objectives of the process include aspects like national reconciliation and looking at the new national identity of the country, you clearly get at the root causes of the problem. Constitution-building can include educating the public about the peace process, about the role of constitutions, about democracy, helping to instill the rule of law in countries where basically it’s been the rule of the gun. And I think that the constitutional process, because it’s creating a contract, a compact, for society, is a key way to really bring people together to discuss how they want to form a new nation -- what are the values, what are the principles, how do they see themselves coming together as a nation?

 

BRITTANY DANISH: In these countries, you have often have an elite class that has a monopoly on political processes. How do they often react to increased participation by citizens?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Well, I think, initially, I think those in power of course want to keep their power, and the opening up of the process can feel very threatening. For example, in East Timor, the dominant political party, Fretilin, they’d had an overwhelming mandate to draft the constitution, and the people actually protested in front of the constituent assembly, the media demanded every single day, would Fretilin consult with people on the draft constitution, and how would the people’s views be considered? And Fretilin finally relented and agreed to a one-week period to consult on the constitution.

 

And initially, too, I think that, in some countries, there’s a view, “Well, many of our population are illiterate and what do they really know about constitutions?” And I think they’re quite surprised how sophisticated the public is when they go and have these discussions and they really learn a lot about the country by traveling to all of the different areas. I think it’s quite a transformative process for some elites.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: Did any of the recommendations or the suggestions made by the citizens make it into the constitution?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: The reports of that consultation were sent to the constituent assembly, but I was the advisor to the constituent assembly and I was there every day, and I never saw one of the constituent assembly members look at that report, they didn’t trust the report, because they didn’t have any hand in preparing it. But the whole process was a bit flawed, because the constituent assembly really wasn’t representative of the power base that exists in East Timor, and so the constitution that was adopted was really, most people feel, was considered Feterlin’s constitution. It was a one-party system. There wasn’t much compromise there.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: Can you identify sort of points in the process when a different decision might have been made to improve citizen participation?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Earlier on in the process there should have been at least six months of educating people about what was going to happen and constitutional issues, and then, ideally, there could have been -- this is what civil society was calling for, was a two-part process, whereby we would have a constitutional commission that was very representative, including, you know, some people who were experts from different aspects of society, different regions, women, civil society groups, the church, helping to prepare the draft constitution, and first doing a wide consultation with people all around the country to get their views, and then preparing a draft that would have gone to an elected constituent assembly.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: Since this constitution was drafted in East Timor, the country has sort of begun to move forward. Are there any consequences of the fact that the constitution didn’t fully reflect broad citizen participation? Has that caused any problems?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Yes, in fact, they’ve had a great deal of trouble lately, that the prime minister had to resign. And when the UN went to consult with different political parties there, they all said they wanted to ... (inaudible) constitution, to change the constitution, and I think that was a result of the fact that they never saw the constitution as really their constitution. They thought it was really a one-party constitution.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: So, if East Timor is perhaps an example of a process that didn’t work as well as it might have, is there another example that had a better, a more consultative process?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Well, South Africa is really established as the model. That process really was nationally owned and led with highly participatory-- They took years to develop the constitution. It was very much a process of negotiations between the different parties. And the parties themselves had strong representational base, so they would go back and discuss these issues with the people. And that’s really held up as sort of the standard, as one of the really successful constitution-making processes.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: What were the particular circumstances of South Africa that allowed for that sort of leisurely pace to be able to educate and consult that maybe was absent from East Timor?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Well, I think it was those in power decided that this was the kind of process that they wanted to have, this was the process that was needed to take that country forward, that there were many complicated issues that took a long time to negotiate between the different parties, and they started out very much having negotiations between only a few actors, a few of the elites representing the parties, and then they opened up the process as they were able to negotiate a set of core principles upon which the constitution had to adhere.

 

So, the process became more transparent and more participatory as it moved forward. And they decided that this was the length of time they were going to need to make a constitution that was really going to be legitimate and have ownership. I think in East Timor there was, the international community probably had some hand in pushing the process forward faster than it needed to go -- so did the dominant political party at the time. And I think that did have ramifications.

 

BRITTANY DANISH: Many constitutions around the world have been drafted with very little citizen participation -- the United States being key among them. Does citizen involvement in constitution-making processes necessarily lead to a better constitution?

 

MICHELE BRANDT: Not necessarily. It depends on the context in which we’re preparing constitutions. Nowadays, because it’s a different kind of objective of the process, initially, if you want the warring factions to lay down their guns, you need to bring them together to dialogue on what are the key aspects in the transition which is going to allow them to do so? And as the process proceeds, opening up the process, to ensure communities can come together and discuss what conflict has been between them.

 

Oftentimes there’s issues with regard to resources and development, which has been very unequal. All of these issues need to come up and be addressed in order to move forward.

 

MARK SOMMER: Michele Brandt. After a short break, reestablishing justice and reconciliation in countries riven by conflict.

 

__: This is A World of Possibilities, a production of the Mainstream Media Project. We love hearing from our listeners. Contact us at comments@aworldofpossibilities.com.

 

MARK SOMMER: One of the most confounding questions faced by citizens working to put a violent past behind them is what to do with the perpetrators of often horrifying human rights abuses. Starting with South Africa in the mid-‘90s, truth commissions have emerged as one way to help societies grapple with these complex emotional issues. As executive secretary of the now-famous South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, Paul van Zyl dealt with such issues in excruciating detail. Now as executive vice president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, he provides guidance to truth commissions in post-conflict situations around the world. Paul van Zyl joins us now from his office in New York City.

 

MARK SOMMER: You were involved intimately in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And that was, in some ways, I think, by most accounts, this sort of grandfather of them all, the first of such efforts. Tell us about your experience in it and how successful you think it really was.

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: I think there were two things that stood out for us. The first was that, if granting impunity to people who had committed atrocious crimes was the price that they demanded in order to allow us to transition from Apartheid to democracy, we felt that it was non-negotiable that those people who got amnesty should come forward in the bright glare of publicity, should disclose the crimes that they had committed, and for that to be part of a national reckoning of the past.

 

Our second commitment was that nations need to grapple with their past in as broad, as diverse, as democratic a way as possible. And by that I mean you want to give ordinary people, people whose suffering is all too often concealed, neglected and buried, an opportunity to step up onto the national stage and tell their stories, and have their suffering acknowledged, so that you get a sense of the true horror of what human rights abuse is really like.

 

And I think that we did many things badly, but if we did one thing well, it was we spent three years relentlessly engaging our society about the past, in order that it be properly remembered, to allow us to be able to move on.

 

MARK SOMMER: You say you did many things badly. What did you feel were the mistakes and what can you learn from them to advise others in future efforts like this one?

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: I think that we were naive. I think we thought that when we finished our work, the government would automatically do whatever we recommended. And, in fact, the end of the Truth Commission’s work coincided fairly closely with the transition away from Nelson Mandela and the government of Thabo Mbeki. In some fundamental respects, the Mbeki regime was much more ambivalent about dealing with the past. There hasn’t been enough justice at the backend of the Truth Commission.

 

MARK SOMMER: In Timor Leste, there was a community reconciliation process. What was that community reconciliation process and how successful was it?

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: The Timor process, in some senses, responded to a significant deficit in the South African process. In South Africa, once you applied for amnesty and were granted amnesty, you really bore no responsibility, your criminal and civil liability was extinguished, and in East Timor there was a preexisting cultural tradition called Biti Bot in which community members would sit down with elders, there would be a conversation about a particular crime that had occurred. If somebody burned down a house, the elder would say, “Your sentence is to apologize and to help rebuild the house.” If somebody killed somebody’s water buffalo, your sentence is to disclose what you did, to apologize, and to work in the person’s field for a month, doing the work that the water buffalo would have done.

 

And this kind of approach, a sort of restorative justice approach, if you like, we thought made a lot more sense in the Timor context, because perpetrators had to something tangible to show that when they said they were sorry they really meant it. And their actions increased the likelihood that victims would be inclined to forgive, would welcome them back into the community and the underlying conflict would be dealt with in a sustainable way.

 

MARK SOMMER: It would seem that, in all of this, media and education have very important roles to play, not only in bringing these processes to much broader public awareness, but essentially imbuing or instilling in future generations and current generations an ethical sense or a moral sense of what is and isn’t sort of civilized behavior?

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: Well, one of the reasons why the South African Truth Commission was effective was because it really made use of the media so effectively. We developed a whole series of systems which made it easier for journalists to cover our work, and, you know, the story of the transformation of Germany from a country that gave birth to the Holocaust to a modern, rights-respecting democracy today is one in which poets and playwrights and journalists and television producers interrogated the past and discussed it again and again and again, in countless different ways, and that is part of a nation’s moral regeneration and the media is at the very heart of that.

 

MARK SOMMER: I was also thinking about Germany, and it’s often compared to Japan, which had a somewhat different approach. There was a great deal of shame in losing the war, but there was not a public self-questioning process. Many Japanese today say that they’re very much in danger of returning to militarism because they never really did face the crimes that were committed during World War II and before, for example, in relation to Korea and China.

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: I think the contrast between Germany and Japan couldn’t be more stark. You’ll recall Prime Minister Koizumi, the previous Japanese prime minister, had state visits to both South Korea and to China cancelled because of his insistence in visiting the Jazakuni Shrine, a shrine where people responsible for war crimes during the past conflicts are buried. It would be unimaginable for a German chancellor in a personal or an official capacity to go and visit a graveyard where Nazis are buried. And that just is a very stark indicator of how far their consciousness has transformed in Germany and how far Japan still has to come.

 

MARK SOMMER: So, you know, when you're trying to cover this as a media story, obviously the tendency of many mass media is to focus in on the atrocities for the lurid aspect that can make it a kind of a sensational news event. But how can media actually go several steps deeper into some very ambiguous questions of ethics and morality that are maybe not even answerable yet, but that we really have to grapple with, about people who say, for example, that they were only following orders and they had no choice in committing atrocities, and what do you do with the fact that they will not acknowledge what they’ve done unless they’re given absolution or amnesty.

 

PAUL VAN ZYL: I think you want to explore the difficulties and the moral conundrums. What do you do with child soldiers aged 13, who have hacked off people’s limbs, who have been responsible for rapes, who have killed dozens and dozens of people, but did so as young teenagers who themselves were drugged and recruited and forced into awful circumstances, and who need schooling and need reintegration and need to be back with their families more than they need to be in prison cells? What do you do with state broadcasters in authoritarian societies who simply, uncritically broadcast the propaganda view of the regime in power?

 

What do you do with doctors who either courageously reported on torture or, on the other side, failed to report on torture or enabled torture by, you know, treating people and working with torturers to see how much pain people can take? What do you do with politicians who vote for laws which allow indefinite detention without trial when we know that as soon as you allow detention without trial torture almost certainly flourishes? Now, those lawmakers are not the people who will end up in jail.

 

It’s often the low-level thugs who do the torturing who become the scapegoats, but the people who made it legally possible to commit the crimes often get off scot-free. And I think the role of the media is to tease these things out, because dealing with the past should be an ongoing conversation. It shouldn’t be about wrapping things up in neat little packages that are simple and easy to digest, because the world is more complex than that.

 

MARK SOMMER: Paul Van Zyl, executive vice-president of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Who could have imagined in the triumphal days following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union that the Cold War’s end would bring not the permanent peace we’d all hoped for, but a new era of savage small wars that would leave their victims bleeding and bereft of the barest necessities of civilized societies. None of our international institutions or national armed forces have been prepared for the new burdens thrust upon them by the social and economic chaos that’s followed civil and international wars in Africa, Asia and Europe.

 

Hamstrung by a lack of resources and authority, the great powers resist yielding to it. The UN issues largely unheeded calls for help. The United States is tied down by exhausting commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and finds itself unable to lend a hand and ill-equipped by training and political inclination to do so. And the European Union, witnessing the Iraqi debacle, watches warily from the sidelines. We seem to be preparing the last war, in fact the last world war, at a time when we need most of all to prepare for peace, which is, in some respects, a more complex challenge.

 

Reintegrating ex-combatants, rebuilding economies, reconstructing infrastructure, reknitting the fabric of war-torn communities, these are large, long-term, subtle and profound transformations that require the utmost skill, attention and commitment. Where in this world of quick fixes, shock and awe and hard power are to be found the patience, persistence, sensitivity and understanding essential to peacebuilding? How can we redirect the immense material and financial resources now being squandered in the backstreets of Baghdad to tasks that might actually reduce the threat of terrorism by repairing the damage wrought by war and poverty?

 

As Iraq has amply demonstrated, the most advanced armies and armaments the world has ever known are largely helpless against the mayhem that a ragtag assemblage of feuding sects can inflict upon them. So it’s time to retrain our troops and re-conceive our strategies. The real enemy is not them, but it: war, poverty, chaos, hate. And the real weapons in this war are our understanding, patience and persistence, and the wisdom not to go in with guns blazing, but with eyes open, minds clear, and hands prepared to rebuild rather than annihilate, to construct, rather than to conquer.

 

Our GIs are learning this the hard way, one wound, one death, at a time. But when, oh when, will those who call themselves our leaders ever learn this lesson. I’m Mark Sommer, and this has been A World of Possibilities. Thanks for listening.

 

__: You’ve been listening to A World of Possibilities. For more information on today’s topics, please click on the listener action link at aworldofpossibilities.com. This program was produced and edited by Chuck Rogers, Brittany Danish, and Tammy Ray Scott, with administrative support from Allie Cook and Susan Seminov. Production engineer is Chuck Johnson. Support for this program is provided by the Compton Foundation. Music is courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, Lyric Chord, Putamayo World Music, Island Def Jam Music Group, Masada Recordings and ATO Records. Sound clips courtesy of the News Hour and PBS, the BBC, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk. This program is distributed by the WFMT Radio Network. Thank you for listening.

 

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