The Peacemakers

I've been out of touch for a couple weeks now, traveling around Plateau State and conducting interviews with key stakeholders throughout seven of the seventeen local governments. One of the most enlightening aspects of the interviews came with this question: Who is most responsible for promoting peace in your local government?

In many of the local governments deemed "high conflict," the respondents had an immediate answer: Religious leaders, they'd say, followed closely by traditional leaders. Government sources tended to cite political efforts. One man confidently asserted that women were the most responsible for promoting peace. These answers, in and of themselves, gave us an idea of who was working in troubled communities and which groups needed support. Those with actual projects instead of platitudes are the mostly likely to be targeted.

However, arguably more interesting were the answers from communities that have known little to no conflict. When asked who was working the most toward peace, nearly every respondent had to pause to think. When pressed with suggested peace actors from other communities, respondents said that they couldn't measurably say who was working the most toward peace because nearly everyone was involved. Political leaders brought together religious and traditional leaders as well as women, youth, civil societies and NGOs. Each group has its own constituencies, and by bringing them together to work toward peace, these low-conflict LGAs were reaching every member of their community.

This seems like a straight-forward answer, but it inevitably is not. Every single Local Government Council praised the efforts of their chairmen calling together all actors for meetings and discussions. But there were subtle differences between those who have successfully resisted violence and those where violence has torn at the very fabric of the community.

These differences came from the interviews with non-governmental traditional, religious, women, and youth leaders. In conflict communities, many complained that when the government held meetings, they were just talking sessions. They met, they aired grievances, and they left. Nothing filtered down to the actors committing violence. Nothing was asked of the participants, and no practical action plans ever emerged from these monthly meetings.

The peace communities carried a different tone. Stakeholder representatives stressed that dialogue was important, but that dialogue couldn't stay within the upper echelons of these stakeholder groups. Representatives took their message to their constituents, and all were involved in forming individual community action plans: whether that involved inter-religious neighborhood watches, community relief, or any number of tangible interventions to control violence. The important introduction of women and youth leaders brought these messages to a wider audience, as these most vulnerable groups have often been ignored by local government officials who look for those in power to curb the violence, rather than looking at those most affected by violence.

It's difficult to stress how important this distinction is. By including typically disenfranchised groups in the decisions and the responsibilities of conflict and peace, the local governments in these areas have turned them from victims to actors. Rather than bemoan their lot, women realize that they have the power and the responsibility to affect change. Rather than participating in violence as little more than paid thugs, youth are tasked with the responsibility to avoid conflict. They realize then that the best way to protect their community is not to attack another, but to ensure peace through cooperation. In the end, it's a much more monumental task, one that asks something of everyone regardless of status or power. However, with that shared sacrifice comes the knowledge that everyone has something to lose if their efforts come to naught. By delegating responsibility to all, the Plateau's peace communities have fostered stronger, more resilient communities. After all, isn't this the truest responsibility of government? To prevent rather than to react? To build rather than divide?

Bombings and Boko Haram (Part II)

The insurgency continues in Maiduguri and though conversations aren't solely centered around the violence there, Boko Haram maintains its grip on the go-to subject in Nigeria. However, instead of looking at the issue in its current, bloody incarnation, I'd prefer to use it as a model for conflict in general, especially here in Nigeria.

I'll refer to a model from the Conflict Research Consortium, more essays and diagrams can be found here:



Ah, the majestic bell curve. The simple beauty of statistics, literary arcs, and bellmakers. The Boko Haram latent conflict can be traced back to the vestiges of colonialism and the divide and rule tactics of the British. In Nigeria, the British allowed for indirect rule of the northern states, which, from the time of the Fulani jihads, had a feudal system based on the religious power of the Sokoto caliphate. As part of this system, the British did not allow missionaries to evangelize in the North, nor did they spread the Western system of education in the Northern states.

Boko Haram, as previously mentioned, is Hausa for "Western education is forbidden." The group is extremist to say the least, but if one were to take them at their name, the foundation of their grievances is the challenge that they perceive Western education systems present to their way of life. So let's just call that the latent conflict in this scenario.

The conflict emerged through the creation of this organization and their call for an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria. Now at this point, the curve can diverge: conflict can escalate or a peace may be negotiated. It was obviously not in the Nigerian state's interest to negotiate the secession of a significant chunk of the country.

Here's where the conflict escalates: Boko Haram is a militant organization, but there are rumors that several politicians used the group for electioneering purposes. Hired thugs are unfortunately all too common in a country where 46% of the youth are unemployed. The justice system is egregiously broken in much of Nigeria as well, so the few arrests that have been made target only the foot soldiers, not the "big men" pulling the strings.

Two years ago, however, the military got involved and captured the group's leader, Muhammed Yusuf. They turned him over, and it looked like the conflict would enter a period of de-escalation and the group might fade back into obscurity. However, after the military turned Yusuf over to the police, years of impunity were transformed with a little street justice, and Yusuf was dead before he ever reached a court for trial. Since his arrest and extrajudicial execution, Boko Haram has experienced a resurgence, freeing 300 of its members from a prison in Bauchi last year and virtually taking over the city of Maiduguri.

Now the state and Boko Haram have entered the stalemate. The military operation in Maiduguri is ongoing, but the organization, like all asymmetric powers, has gone underground and rumors persist that there are cells like it all over the north. The army has been accused of human rights abuses in Maiduguri in part because they cannot differentiate civilian from combatant and are under constant pressure from improvised explosives that kill soldiers daily. Boko Haram itself says that it refuses to negotiate with a government trying to kill its members. That's not exactly crazy, as the last time one of them pitched up at the police station, he wound up dead.

So as the violence continues to unfold in Maiduguri, it will remain to be seen whether the conflict will rise, fall, or remain in its current stasis. As long as the military crackdown continues, I'm sure it will remain the topic of conversation.

This Is My Home. They Will Bury Me Here.

“We don’t have any other country than Nigeria. Nigeria is our father, is our mother. We must embrace Nigeria.” The old man spoke with a tear in his eyes, which soon led to several, an outpouring of emotion for his home and the changes that have torn at his community over the past ten years.

I’m spending the next three months in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, interning with Search for Common Ground (SFCG), an international NGO that focuses on addressing and transforming conflict in some of the world’s most dangerous places. In the past ten years, Jos has been rocked by ethno-religious violence pitting Christians against Muslims, engulfing whole communities in an area known as “The Home of Peace and Tourism.”

This is the first major activity that we’ve undertaken in my time here. The goal: unite religious and community leaders with media partners to promote peace in the region. To this end, today we brought together forty journalists and community leaders to discuss issues they’ve faced over the course of nearly a decade of violence. The man who spoke the above words captured everything at stake in this conflict and, for me, drove home the emotional, human side of violence.

He was a community leader, a Hausa, a Muslim. He had grown up with Christians and Muslims sharing the same space, going to the same schools, working alongside one another as neighbors and friends. From his childhood, he remembered his Christian playmates, and his community has successfully avoided violence in part because community leaders from both sides, Christian and Muslim, have remembered their common humanity and come together to protect one another in times of crisis.

But the strain on these men and women was palpable in his voice, and he perfectly articulated how he and other leaders were “tired.” Tired of the violence, but also exhausted from their attempts to hold back forces that are often outside of their control. The sad truth is that Nigeria suffers from horrible infrastructure, a failing health and education sector, an economy entirely reliant upon oil revenues, and corruption that is endemic to nearly every part of life. Youth unemployment is impossibly high, and it is often young, unemployed men who are the main protagonists in the violence. “It’s people instigating this issue. It’s a government effort, all the industries. No one is working a job. How many industries do we have in Jos, in Kaduna, in Bauchi? How many industries do we have that are working? Most of our children are graduates; when it comes to employment, sorry if you don’t know anybody. You don’t know how, where you will find employment.”1 This man articulated all of these issues in one fell swoop, painting a picture of a conflict far more complex than the simple Muslim/Christian dynamics represented in far too many media depictions of the Jos violence.

But even when these problems are all stacked up, one on top of another, in seemingly insurmountable opposition to any solution, these community leaders are still committed to peace. The stakes are too high to do anything but to continue to strive toward a solution. Thousands have died in Plateau State in the past decade. The violence has displaced hundreds of thousands and caused billions of naira in property damages. Many adolescents cannot remember a time in their lives in which Christians and Muslims trusted one another, let alone lived amongst one another as neighbors and friends. Many worry that these children, knowing nothing but trauma and fear, would carry hatred with them into their adult lives, further alienating any chance of a future peace.

The old man finished his speech in a voice fiery and defiant, his tears giving him the strength to remember a past in which Christians and Muslims were not separated by violence: “We’ve grown up together. We’ve schooled together. We’ve worked together…I was born in Bauchi, but I settled in Jos. They will bury me here. This is my home. Let us go back and tell our people, ‘We will defend our lives and everything for them.’”

For many, it is the loss of this past, a history of tolerance and mutual respect, which gives them reason to continue the struggle for a solution to the violence. Jos was once known as a cosmopolitan city that married various and diverse cultures from all over the country. Now it is known mostly as the front for a battle that could tear apart not only Plateau State, but all of Nigeria. However, with these dialogues, perhaps there is hope for a unified state and a sustainable peace. For the future of Jos, and for its past, I certainly hope so.