Fall / Winter 2006
Assefa Nurtures Cease-Fire in Uganda
Heartening news came in early September about successful peace talks in one of the most deadly war zones in the world – northern Uganda, which borders southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It’s a region where more than 100,000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced over the last 20 years, arguably the globe’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
Children have lived in fear of being abducted and forced to kill or be sex slaves. Farmers have been unable to grow desperately needed food.
A Ugandan newspaper trumpeted: “The truce is here. The guns have finally fallen silent. The cessation of hostilities agreement signed on Saturday [Aug. 27] between the Government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) took effect yesterday at 6:00 a.m. This is a landmark truce that could spell an end to the 20-year rebel insurgency in the north.”
CJP rejoiced that one of its own, Hizkias Assefa, had played a key role in negotiating the cease-fire. Assefa is part-time professor of conflict studies at EMU and an 11-year veteran of teaching at CJP’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). Along with Dr. Riek Machar, vice president of the government of Southern Sudan, Assefa moderated the talks.
For more than 25 years Assefa has done political mediation, peacebuilding, and community reconciliation work in many countries in the world – most notably in Sudan, Rwanda, Senegal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Guatemala – as well as in many more countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Assefa, who has advanced degrees in law, economics, and public and international affairs from two U.S. universities, described his latest mediation efforts in two recent e-mails to SPI director Pat Hostetter Martin. Excerpts follow.
Letter #1
August 17, 2006, in Juba [the capital of S. Sudan]
Dear Pat:
Face-to-face negotiations have been going on now
since over a month ago. I plunged into the process
right after leaving SPI [in mid-June] and we have been
conducting the mediation process along with the Vice
President and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Southern
Sudan. At this phase of the mediation process, since the
only place where the top-level leaders of the insurgency
group feel comfortable to meet the mediators is in the
forests at the DRC-Sudan border, we have been conducting
many meetings there while the primary venue for
the formal negotiation between the insurgents and the
government delegates has been in Juba.
So far, the process has been a very interesting mixture of track one and track two approaches, top-level political negotiations and simultaneous grassroots peacebuilding activities. However, what has been happening at the political level has been exasperatingly difficult. The level of deep animosity and distrust among the parties makes whatever proposals coming from the other side automatically unacceptable.
Aside from the problem of dealing with the parties, dealing with other governments that have direct or indirect stakes in the conflict has been equally baffling and excruciating. Although many governments are coming on board slowly to support this mediation process, others seem to be itching for a military solution. It is difficult to understand why they think that something that did notwork for the last 20 years will work now. But that is where we are.
All these have made the process so complicated. When we feel that the process is beginning to move forward, something happens and the whole thing begins to go backwards. Now we are stuck on the negotiations on cease-fire and its monitoring, although we seem to have made some progress on the negotiations on the political, economic, and social marginalization of the region where the insurgents hail from, which we believe is the root cause of the conflict.
Some progress has also been made on the modalities of the resettlement of the 2 million internally displaced people. The terrible thing is that the fighting is still going on while the negotiations are proceeding. In the past week alone over ten people from both sides were killed, and yesterday, a leader of the insurgency was gunned down. This morning, we hear three more have been killed. This has prompted the delegation of the insurgency group to walk out of the negotiations, and we are shuttling between the parties with the hope of keeping the negotiations alive.
Hizkias Assefa (right) with Lt. General Dr. Riek Machar
While this is the status on the formal political mediation front, we are opening a back door to the process in order to make it possible to have inputs and participation by civil society -- religious and traditional leaders, representatives of victims of the conflict from all affected regions, and even political representatives from northern and eastern Uganda. Some very important developments are happening on that front.
We were able to organize informal dialogues between the leadership of the insurgency and civil society inside the rebel base in order to persuade the latter to seriously engage in negotiations. (It was so inspiring to see elderly civic and religious leaders pushing trucks stuck in a horrendous quagmire on the journey to the headquarters of the insurgents just to sue for peace -- all covered in mud from head to toe.) A journey that would have taken about four hours took us close to twenty hours one way because of weather conditions. The same civil society group is also engaging with the government not to scuttle this opportunity for peace.
Civil society leaders [editor: one being Lam Oryem Cosmas --- see following page] are talking about organizing marches and peace convoys by a large contingency of women from the war-affected areas to tell the parties to the negotiations that peace must be given a chance and that they must not play political games with the process. They are lobbying their elected representatives to amend some of the laws that have been obstacles to the negotiations, like their list of terrorist organizations, etc. Some of them are looking at their own traditional system of justice to see how it can be overhauled to address issues of impunity and reconciliation in ways that would satisfy different stakeholders. This side of the work has been quite satisfying.
The process so far has been having so many ups and downs that it is utterly exhausting physically, emotionally and spiritually. The infrastructure here does not allow for any distractions except to sneak in a few more hours of extra sleep here and there when possible.
I hope things are well with you and that the term has started well. Give my warmest regards to Earl.
Peace,
Hizkias
Letter #2
August 28, 2006, in Juba
Dear Pat:
I am happy to say that we were able to have a
breakthrough. Yesterday, we signed an agreement on
cessation of hostilities between the government and the
insurgents that included significant elements of cease
fire and even the first steps towards demobilization. The
rebel troops have agreed to move out of their bases of
operation in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, and Sudan and to be given safe corridors monitored
by international forces to assemble at designated
locations on the border of Southern Sudan. They will be
protected by the forces of the Government of Southern
Sudan. This way the clash between the insurgents and
the Ugandan government armed forces will cease; the
harm that was being inflicted on the civilian population
will also stop. We are also in the process of getting the
insurgency group to agree to release the children under
their control to humanitarian agencies.
This cessation of fighting between the government and the rebels will also allow the people in the horrendous displaced people’s camps to begin to return home with the assistance of the UN and other agencies. So we have opened up significant doors that would allow for negotiations on the remaining issues more vigorously and expeditiously. Let us hope the momentum continues.
At this point my energy level has hit rock bottom. We had to work at times until 3 in the morning when we were drafting the latest agreement for signature. Although many of us feel it is time for a break, others feel that the momentum that is building in the peace process cannot be allowed to dissipate by taking a break and we must push on.
Hopefully, there will be a chance for sharing more later. But in the meantime, I hope things are going well with you and the family and your holiday has reenergized you to face the new academic year with vigor.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Hizkias
Hizkias Assefa finds grassroots reconciliation processes, such as one he facilitated in the Middle Belt Region of Nigeria over the past five years, to yield more certain results. Political mediation processes, such as this one in Uganda, are so multi-faceted and internationalized that it is difficult to see a direct link between effort and result.
Trauma workshop near Ugandan border in southern Sudan, led by CJP professor Nancy Good Sider (standing center right) and CJP alumnus Babu Ayindo (front, right).
“Some political mediations in large-scale conflicts have come to successful completion with peace agreements that have held,” he says. “Others have led to agreements, but new developments have created the need for renegotiations, at times after relapse to conflicts. One of the big challenges of these processes is how the changes that come with the peace process get internalized in the society.”
One of the goals of CJP is to enable graduates and trainees to help guide their societies toward “internalizing” peace, so that effective alternatives to violent conflict are well understood and pursued.
Two other CJP alumni, Lam Oryem Cosmas, MA ’04, and Fred Yiga, MA ’06, are working at establishing and preserving peace in northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.
Assefa says he hears regularly from Cosmas, who is in charge of the Justice and Peace Council of the Ecclesiastical Province of Gulu. With the support of his Catholic church, Cosmas has been educating and mobilizing the average citizen to work for peace.
'Talk Until You Succeed'
If Assefa looks out a hotel window where the peace negotiations are occurring and sees hundreds of demonstrators holding signs with slogans like “talk until you succeed” and “no more violence against civilians,” he knows Cosmas probably played a large role in what he’s seeing.
Cosmas, who has spent years working in communities ripped apart by the Lord’s Resistance Army, believes that those at the top absolutely must hear from the “direct victims of the 20-year insurgency,” including from the women who were raped and the children who were abducted and forced into killing.
He has led countless workshops in untold numbers of villages on “effective community participation for peace and reconciliation.”
Meanwhile, in an entirely different role from the peace negotiators and activists, Fred Yiga is trying to ensure that Southern Sudan and Uganda have a group of people in place to maintain “law and order” without violence and corruption once peace is agreed upon.
Lam Oryem Cosmas
A 19-year veteran leader of Uganda’s police forces, Yiga has been assigned by the United Nations Development Programme to be an advisor to the inspector general of the police in Southern Sudan, working from Juba, the capital.
In an interview at EMU last spring, Yiga said he hoped to promote standards of community service and restorative practices in both the Ugandan and Sudanese police forces – standards under which corruption and abuse are not acceptable.
“Policemen have a lot of authority – we wield a lot of power. The time has come to use that authority positively,” Yiga said at the time of his graduation from CJP last spring.
Cycle of Training
In addition to the full-time presence of Cosmas and Yiga – with Assefa at the negotiation table – CJP graduates and faculty members have come to Uganda and Southern Sudan to lead short-term trainings of people who, in turn, train others. (Read an account of one such training by David Anderson Hooker.)
Also let us gratefully acknowledge the presence in CJP’s current masters-degree class of these three Ugandans – Nelson Latimer Katabula, a Fulbright scholar interested in monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian projects in conflict zones; Emmanuel Lomoro LoWilla who works on reconciliation issues; and Rev. Okiror Sam Eibu of Amuria District in northern Uganda.
Eibu’s work to assist displaced peoples and survivors of brutality was featured in the May/June ‘06 issue of A Common Place, which can be read online at www.mcc.org/acp.