Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts: Small Steps to Peace 9781685851064

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Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts SMALL STEPS TO PEACE

Dekha Ibrahim Abdi Simon J. A. Mason

For audio clips of interviews with Dekha and additional information about the peace agreements mentioned, please see www.mediation-governance.ethz.ch.

Published in the United States of America in 2019 by Kumarian Press A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Kumarian Press A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB © 2019 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-62637-776-9

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America Printed on 30% postconsumer recycled paper The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Foreword, Ambassador Heidi Grau Acknowledgments

1 Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

Part 1 The Framework

2 The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

3 Short-Term Responses: Contextualized Mediation and Process Design

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4 Medium-Term Responses: Developing Interim Peace Structures

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6 Linking Inner and Outer Peace: Effective and Authentic Peace Practitioners

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5 Long-Term Responses: Toward a Peaceful State for All

Part 2 Cases in the Kenyan-Somali Context 7 The Kenyan-Somali Context 8 The Wajir Peace Process

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Contents

9 Mediating the Pokot-Samburu Conflict

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11 Mediation in the Kenyan Election Crisis

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10 Mandera: Supporting a Mediation Process

Part 3 Conclusion

12 Key Messages and Their Transfer to Other Contexts

Bibliography Index About the Book and Authors

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207 219 229 241

Tables and Figures

Tables 7.1 11.1

Kenya Conflict Timeline Timeline of 2007–2008 Election Violence and Mediation Response

Figures 2.1 2.2

3.1

4.1

4.2 5.1 6.1 7.1

The SMALL Framework for Peace in Fragile Contexts Mix of Mediation and Governance Building in the Short, Medium, and Long Term Mobile Approach to Process Design: Multiple Interdependent Balancing Acts Functions, Roles, and Building Blocks of an Effective Peace Committee Setup of Local or District Peace Committee From the Predatory Sphere to Collaborative Governance Cross-Country Cleavage Collaboration Model: From Aligned Cleavages and Disappeared Cleavages (ACDC) to Cross-Cleavage Collaboration Map of Kenya vii

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48 53 67 91 104

Foreword

This book by Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Simon J. A. Mason about mediation and governance in fragile contexts opens a window to fascinating and rarely accessible facets of the world of conflict resolution. It offers a refreshing and enlightening journey through diverse (and sometimes adverse) mediation and peacebuilding moments and settings. The book shows how these specific and singular experiences can usefully be translated into a more universal framework of reflection about mediation and peacebuilding. It is a timely and welcome contribution to the growing corpus of literature on mediation and peacebuilding, one of the most dynamic fields of international diplomacy. Mediation and its role in building peace are key, not only to the international community as a whole, but also for governments and groups affected by violent conflict, for communities and the people benefiting from peace. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi’s steadfastness and courage in doing her utmost to stop violence and to bring about societal transformation command respect and are proof of the evolving and growing space for women in mediation and peacebuilding. She moved from mediating in her community at the local level, to the regional level, and then to the national level, working in a multitrack mediation process supporting the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his mediation to end the violence following the 2007–2008 elections in Kenya. The book develops an innovative approach to linking mediation and governance building. It does so by relating context-specific insights of ix

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Kenyan-Somali peace practice, culture, and traditions to more generic mediation and peacebuilding approaches. By joining together the voices and experiences of Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Simon J. A. Mason, the book provides a unique encounter between continents: Africa and Europe meet in the exploration of mediation. The book offers a novel perspective on interlinking what is referred to as track one (the level of powerholders and formal decisionmakers), track two (the level of informal or indirect decisionmakers), and track three (grassroots level) efforts in peacebuilding. The authors encourage us to be clear in our objectives and in the sequence and phasing of possible interventions by carefully taking into account the essential time component. The subtitle of the book, Small Steps to Peace, is emblematic of the manner the authors feel is workable when mediating conflicts in fragile contexts. They center their reflection on how to work in situations in which trust is low. Trust is a basic condition for negotiations. The book shows that trust can be built—step by step, level by level, and phase by phase. This key message of Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Simon J. A. Mason’s Mediation in Fragile Contexts: Small Steps to Peace is there to guide us in our future mediation and peace work. Why is this book also important for Swiss mediation? As a staunch supporter of mediation worldwide, Switzerland is often called on by conflict parties to mediate. In doing so, it seeks the consent of the parties and exercises impartiality toward its interlocutors. In designing and conducting mediation processes, Switzerland carefully considers the links between the different levels and phases so clearly laid out in this book. Whereas the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs is active more often in track one mediation processes, we are aware of the importance of the other levels and the necessity as well as the challenges of inclusive peace processes. This book provides a deep understanding of how to manage tensions between the levels. It allows us to better use potential crosscutting opportunities that may develop in a particular situation and process. Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts is a timely source of inspiration for mediators and supporters of peace processes to improve the way we work together. —Ambassador Heidi Grau Head, Human Security Division Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to those who knew Dekha for supporting the project or checking key passages: to Dekha’s family—parents, Habiba Samatar and the late Ibrahim Abdi; husband, the late Abdi Nur; brother, Mohamed Ibrahim; and children, Kaltuma Noorow, Ibrahim Noorow, Nuria Noora Noorow, and Balqeesa Noorow. And to Dekha’s friends and colleagues: Nuria Abdi, Amina Hassan Ahmed, Rahma Mohamed Ibrahim, Fatuma Mohamed Mire, Lieutenant General Lazaro Sumbeiywo (Rtd.), George Wachira, Meredith Preston McGhie, Pat Johnson, John Kibaso Warioba, Mohamed Khalif, Shaikh Ali Gure, James Ole Serian, Francis Mutuku, Tecla Namchanja Wanjala, Ken Menkhaus, John-Paul Lederach, Saba Douglas-Hamilton, and especially Halima Shuria for facilitating much of the feedback from Kenya. Dekha always worked with others in a collaborative manner. It is not possible to mention everyone she worked with, how her involvement impacted their own work, and who through their collaboration helped shape her insights reflected in this book. I wish to mention, however, some of those known to me: in Wajir, Fatuma Mohamed Mire, Oray Adan Hussein, Rukia Ali Hassan, Ebla Sugule, Rukia Abdullahi Barrow, Nuria Abdullahi Abdi, Fatuma Sheikh Abdulkadir (from Isiolo), and Halima Abdi Omar Shuria (from Garissa). In the Pokot-Samburu case, Francis Mutuku. In Mandera, Shaikh Ali Gure, Rahma Mohamed Ibrahim, Amina Ahmed Hassan, and Lieutenant Colonel John Kibaso Warioba. In the Kenyan election crisis, George Wachira, the late Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat, Lieutenant General Daniel Opande (Rtd.), Lieutenant xi

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General Lazaro Sumbeiywo (Rtd.), and all the Kenyans who were part of the Concerned Citizens for Peace network. In various networking and peacebuilding initiatives, Osman Moalim Muhidin, Irungu Houghton, Angela Yoder Maina, Dickson Magotsi, Jebiwot Sumbeiywo, Meredith Preston McGhie, Seline Korir, James Ole Serian, Alice Nderitu, Abjata Khalif, and Tecla Namchanja Wanjala. And on the international level, Emma Leslie, Sue Williams, Janice Jenner, Simon Fisher, Donna Copnall, Richard Smith, Emmanuel Bombande, Stella Sabiiti, Bridget Walker, Marwan Darweish, Joan McGregor, Scilla Elworthy, Susan Collin Marks, Jean-Paul Lederach, Ken Menkhaus, and Pat Johnson. A very special thank you to Julian Thomas Hottinger of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) for guiding and inspiring the development of analytical frameworks used to conceptualize Dekha’s work from a mediation perspective—the book would not be what it is without his support, encouragement, and generosity in sharing his knowledge. Special thanks also to Katrina Abatis of the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich (CSS ETH Zurich), who copyedited this book, transforming the interview transcripts of Dekha into readable English with the greatest care and commitment. She also provided invaluable support on structure and work process. Special thanks also to Elizabeth Baumgartner (swisspeace) for jointly interviewing Dekha with me; it was an enriching and enjoyable experience for all of us. Because of the special situation in which this project had to be finalized without Dekha, the generous help of Pat Johnson, who knew and worked with Dekha in Somalia, is deeply appreciated and was key in respecting Dekha’s voice and making it accessible to a wider audience. She carefully read and commented on the full-draft manuscript more than once. Many thanks to my colleagues at the Mediation Desk of the Swiss FDFA: during the initial phase, Murezi Michael; in the past few years, Georg Stein. The book would not have been possible without their encouragement and constructive feedback. Many thanks also to Andreas Wenger, Owen Frazer, Anna Hess, Valerie Sticher, Jonas Baumann, Sabina Stein, Govinda Clayton, Angela Ullmann, Oliver Thränert, and Myriam Dunn Cavelty from the CSS ETH Zurich; Anne Isabel Kraus from the University of Viadrina; Sara Hellmüller from swisspeace; and my father, Christopher H. Mason, for very helpful discussions and comments on draft versions of these chapters and for providing invaluable help to improve structure, logic, and clarity of the book. Thank you to Charles Hornsby for feedback on Chapter 7. Thank you to Kurt R. Spillmann, ETH Zurich, for supporting my first steps in peace research; Yacob Arsano, Addis Ababa University, for having first introduced me

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to customary forms of mediation; and Jeremy Brickhill and members of the Council of Chiefs from Zimbabwe for having helped to deepen this interest in recent years. Portions of Chapter 6 have been reprinted with permission from Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya,” a paper published by the Ara Pacis Initiative (API), “Meditations on Forgiveness,” April 10, 2010. Special thanks to Miriam Dahinden from the CSS ETH Zurich for beautifully and clearly designing the figures. Thank you also to Marion Wessner, Raffaela Albione, Sabrina Kassam, and Grace Bolton for transcription of the interviews, and to Ayse Kocakulah and Inbal BenEzer for assisting with references. Special thanks also for the patient support from my family: Sybille Berchtold Mason and our children, Chiara, David, and Jonas Mason. Special thanks and appreciation for the financial support of the Swiss FDFA, in the framework of the Mediation Support Project (Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich and swisspeace, funded by Swiss FDFA), and the Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich. For audio clips of interviews with Dekha and additional information about the peace agreements mentioned, please see www.mediation -governance.ethz.ch. —Simon J. A. Mason

1 Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

smaller things, if they are coordinated, that can lead to the transformation of the bigger picture. In Dekha’s ethnic Somali language, dadahad means the person who stands in the middle, the person to whom both sides have access.1 A mediator facilitates the understanding of both sides through dialogue or discussion and generates the way forward for two or three conflicting groups. Whatever the outcome, it is owned by the people and not suggested by the mediator, who is not arbitrating. The mediator facilitates and is a witness to the discussion, enhancing and bridging the communication between the parties. In this book we address the question: How can we mediate and work for peace in fragile contexts? We seek to answer that question by introducing a new framework for analyzing and practicing mediation in the most challenging contexts. The methods we propose focus on how to deal with violent societal conflict and thus are suited to intercommunity, community-state, and nationwide ethnopolitical conflict. Developed during decades of experience in the Kenyan-Somali context, and drawing on work with conflict parties worldwide, the framework suggested here combines Somali cultural, Islamic, and Western approaches to mediation and peacebuilding, developing an innovative, flexible approach that can be adapted to various conflict contexts. The book grew out of the collaboration between a Kenyan-Somali peacebuilder (Dekha Ibrahim Abdi) and a Swiss researcher-practitioner (Simon J. A. Mason). 2 It breaks out of the insider versus outsider dichotomy to develop a framework inspired by the specific work of

The small is as important as the bigger picture. It is these

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Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

Dekha and complemented by more generic mediation approaches from Simon so as to speak to peace practitioners and conflict resolution researchers working in fragile contexts around the globe. Very sadly, Dekha passed away in June 2011 after a car crash, and consequently she was not able to help in finalizing the project. In shorter excerpts in Part 1 and longer case studies in Part 2, Dekha’s narrative from our interviews is left true to the original, using an oral history, storytelling style, to maintain the richness of her experiences and insights and to allow readers to draw their own lessons. A vast literature explores the question of how to mediate conflict, yet almost all existent work has emerged from stable Western democracies, with little, or no, firsthand experience of living within a fragile context. As such, the peacemaking literature often tends to be disconnected from the reality of mediators living and working in conflict contexts. At the same time, the rich experiences and reflections from local peace practitioners seldom reach the Western or global audience, since they are too quickly labeled as unique to the given case, with limited transferability outside of the respective context. In particular, the voices of women mediators working in such contexts remain largely unheard because they are seen to be far removed from the centers of political power dominated by men. This book is different: we unite the insider perspective from within the conflict context with the outsider perspective on mediation methodology, bringing forth a new approach to the mediation of conflict in fragile contexts. Built on the work of Dekha, a mediator and a woman living in a Muslim context, this approach is also unique in its very clear but nonantagonistic way of dealing with gender questions in a culturally sensitive manner. We hope readers gain insights on the contribution of local mediators, long neglected in the literature, to peacemaking. Outsider mediators such as Kofi Annan in the 2008 Kenyan election crisis are often irreplaceable, but they complement rather than replace local insider mediation teams from within the conflict context. This book is separated into two parts. In Part 1 we introduce a framework to analyze and guide mediation and peacebuilding practice in fragile contexts. In Part 2 we illustrate this framework with four cases in which Dekha was involved as a peace practitioner. Part 1 begins with Chapter 2 by outlining some of the specific challenges but also opportunities mediation faces in fragile contexts, in situations where governance is perceived as being ineffective or illegitimate. Though we use the term fragile context to refer to situations in which people perceive the forms of state or nonstate governance they experience

Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

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as being severely inadequate, we intentionally avoid the problematic concepts of “fragile” or “failed” state. Understanding a context as being fragile in relation to the governance it experiences is well illustrated by the dynamics that took place in the context Dekha grew up in: Wajir is situated in northeastern Kenya, some 500 km from Nairobi, close to the Ethiopian and Somali borders. This area has long been affected by intercommunity and cross-border conflicts over land and water as well as political strife that often escalate into violence during periods of drought and around election times. Throughout history, the central state of Kenya intervened in this peripheral region in different ways: at times using a heavy-handed military approach, at times using dialogue to adapt policies, and at times ignoring the region. As a response, the nonstate, traditional clan systems of mediation, justice, security, economic livelihood, and governance have always existed, and continue to exist, in a mixture of harmony and disharmony with the “modern” state forms of governance. In such a context, there is therefore more space for mediation but also a greater degree of complexity to deal with, as mediation moves in a continually changing space of state intervention, absence of the state, and developing (or eroding) forms of state and nonstate governance. As a response to such challenges, we develop the Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages (SMALL) Framework for Peace. This provides guidance on the necessary processes and structures and the way peace practitioners can work in fragile contexts. It argues that shortterm mediation without linkages to medium- and long-term structures for peace, security, and governance is as short-sighted as long-term peacebuilding and statebuilding or “state formation” efforts that do not adequately address medium- and short-term conflicts and crises.3 The framework thereby responds to the debate on statebuilding (i.e., with a focus on state actors and long-term processes) versus peacebuilding (i.e., with a focus on nonstate actors and shorter-term processes), providing orientation on how to organize peace practice in short-, medium-, and long-term efforts toward peace.4 We aim to provide guidance specifically on how to create linkages between these efforts. The four dimensions of this framework are elaborated in Chapters 3 to 6. In Chapter 3 we explore the short-term responses to conflict, focusing on mediation process design. We argue for a highly contextualized approach, yet one that respects basic principles of mediation. A central element of contextualized process design is careful analysis of the context as well as ongoing adaptation of the various process design dimensions and the linkages between them throughout the process. Mediation (i.e., the short-term peace work) may end with the signing of an agreement, but

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further efforts are needed to implement the agreement and avoid conflict reoccurring. This is why peace practice beyond mediation is needed and discussed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4, we argue that peace committees (in various contexts called “local peace committees,” “district peace committees,” “peace and security committees,” “early warning, early response systems,” “local councils,” or “security councils”) are the medium-term bridge between the short-term mediation efforts and the long-term efforts of building states for peace. We outline the setup and functions of medium-term structures, including state and nonstate actors, drawing from both customary and modern forms of governance and mediation practice. In Chapter 5, we outline some of the necessary long-term responses to conflict, providing nuance to the peacebuilding versus statebuilding debate and exploring how to address the structural causes that fuel conflict. We explore the concept of the “predatory sphere,” a space that develops in the fuzzy interface between customary and modern forms of governance—allowing conflict and criminality to go unaddressed. Longterm responses to conflict need to focus on how to harmonize customary and modern forms of governance as well as how to create policy frameworks at the national level that allow for medium- and short-term peace practice to operate. In Chapter 6, we focus on the people dimension. Mediation processes and structures for peace are shaped by people; we therefore explore how to link inner and outer peace, to be both effective and authentic, with the necessary motivation, mind-set, skills, and knowledge in all three types of peace practice. The importance of motivation is also illustrated by Dekha’s own experience: “Shock and paralysis was what I felt when the local conflict in Wajir turned to violence—children killed, women raped, neighbors unable to greet each other. The shock gave rise to an avalanche of emotions that propelled me and people in Wajir to get the energy and motivation to bring change in our society.”5 When questioned about the vision that motivated her work, Dekha responded: “I wanted life for my daughter to be different from the life I had lived when I was young, and the kind of life my mother had lived. We both (my mother and I) were born into a violent, unstable society. I wanted peace in the most basic sense of safety. I wanted my child to be able to count on civilian law to protect her.”6 The inner dimension of peace practice needs to be linked to the outer dimension to become effective. This can occur through cross-cleavage collaboration, where people from across the main divides of a conflict collaborate on a mediation team, in the peace process, or on a local peace

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committee. Chapter 6 ends with our exploration of how to analyze conflict cleavages and draw the necessary implications for peace practice. Part 2 is built around case studies, showing what the SMALL Framework for Peace looks like in action. The cases focus heavily on the short-term mediation work—because this book emphasizes mediation— with reflections on how this links to medium- and long-term peace work as well as the transversal skills and roles of a peace practitioner needed in all phases. Each case study starts with a short background on the conflict addressed and ends with a discussion in relation to the SMALL Framework for Peace introduced in Part 1. Part 2 starts with Chapter 7, which summarizes the Kenyan conflict context since independence, with a special focus on the Kenyan-Somali periphery and the main conflict cleavages. Based on literature, this chapter should help non-Kenyans situate the following case studies in the broader context. Chapter 8 focuses on Dekha’s engagement in pastoral Wajir—where she developed many of her ways of working and where she played the role of an insider mediator. Key issues addressed are how to transform passivity and a sense of victimhood into motivation for peace practice, and how this always requires teamwork and engaging with multiple types of actors. The case study shows how competing peace processes can do harm and what can be done to minimize this problem. The outcome of this peace process was a peace agreement that combined state and customary law, illustrating some of the benefits and challenges of hybrid state and nonstate peacebuilding. Chapter 9 focuses on Dekha’s engagement related to the PokotSamburu conflict, detailing the mediation methodology she used in a twoday co-mediation where she acted as an outsider mediator. About five hundred participants were involved in this mediation, calling for creative approaches to format and sequencing. Questions of how to start large meetings, how to deal with impasses, and how to combine intragroup and intergroup formats are highlighted. The chapter ends on the question of how to draft peace agreements and make sure they are implemented. Chapter 10 focuses on Dekha’s mediation support role during the Mandera mediation processes. It shows how responses to conflict crises (short term), establishment of local peace committees (medium term), and work on policy questions (long term) are linked. Mediation and peacebuilding efforts in Mandera, situated close to the borders of Ethiopia and Somalia, had to consider the intercommunity, Kenyan national, and Kenyan-Ethiopian-Somali international dimensions of this conflict. The case study also shows the limits of mediation and how

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hard security as well as other approaches such as trauma healing may be needed before, in parallel to, or after mediation. Chapter 11 outlines the account of Dekha’s moment-to-moment engagement during the election crisis of 2007–2008, where she played the role of an insider mediator together with other eminent peace practitioners in the countrywide crisis. It shows how the Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP) platform developed, and how it engaged with all levels of society. Though a lot has been written about multitrack, inclusive peace processes, this case study illustrates how such a process can actually work in practice: with links to the track-one process run by Kofi Annan as well as outreach to medium-level actors and mobilization of efforts at the grassroots level. The complementarity of local, national, and international mediation is highlighted. In the final chapter, we discuss the SMALL Framework for Peace in a condensed manner, clarifying its use as an analytical tool and as an approach to guide peace practice. We emphasize how to use the framework and adapt it to various contexts. A central lesson from Dekha’s work and this book is that it is possible to bring seeming “opposites” together. Building peace is possible in fragile contexts, even if this often occurs only in small steps. Notes 1. The more formal word for mediator in Somali is dhexdhexaadiye. 2. Dekha and Simon collaborated over the course of seven mediation training workshops between 2008 and 2011: (1) the Insider Mediator’s Workshop in Switzerland with the Berghof Foundation, 2008; (2) the Peace Mediation Course in Oberhofen in 2009, 2010, 2011 organized by the Mediation Support Project, a joint initiative of the Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich and swisspeace, funded by the Swiss FDFA, see www.peacemediation.ch; (3) Mediation Training for Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Member States in 2010 in Kampala, Entebbe; and (4) Mediation Training at the Graduate Institute in Geneva in 2010 and 2011. Dekha agreed to be interviewed about her mediation work, and Elisabeth Baumgartner (swisspeace, at that time working in the Mediation Support Project) and Simon interviewed her on May 10–12, 2010, and March 15–17, 2011. The audio files were transcribed, edited, and the English carefully corrected by Katrina Abatis, who removed repetition and created grammatically correct sentences while always remaining true to the meaning and style of the audio interviews. Excerpts from the audio interviews can be listened to at www.mediation-governance.ethz.ch. 3. State formation can be understood as the “interaction and bargaining processes between government and society”; see Englebert and Tull, “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa,” 138. 4. Call and Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. 5. Ibrahim Abdi, “Acceptance Speech—Dekha Abdi: The Right Livelihood Award.” 6. Ibrahim Abdi, “A Discussion with Dekha Ibrahim.”

PART 1 The Framework

2 The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

practitioners. Some principles and approaches to mediation are universal, and some aspects are specific to the use of mediation in fragile contexts.1 Here, we outline some of the key challenges and opportunities for mediation in fragile contexts as part of developing a framework to help analyze and guide mediation and peace practice in such contexts.

In this chapter, we develop a framework to orient peace

Challenges and Opportunities for Mediation in Fragile Contexts The challenges and opportunities for mediation in fragile contexts are made clear by contrasting the process to the way mediation works in stable contexts. In a stable context, if the parties fail to solve the issues through mediation, they can bring the case to court. If they do reach an agreement, the parties can implement it in a stable governance framework. The space for mediation is thus quite predictable and limited in regard to the issues and actors involved. This is not the case in fragile contexts. In the following, contexts are considered “fragile” if the effectiveness or legitimacy of governance is seen as gravely insufficient by those being governed.2 Governance can be understood as the norms, rules, institutions, and processes used to deliver security and services (e.g., economy, justice, health, education, and environment) expected by the people who are being governed.3 The use of the term governance—by state or nonstate actors—helps to overcome some of the problems of the 9

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approaches often associated with “statebuilding” and the corresponding concepts of “fragile” or “failed” states, which overly focus on the role of state and international actors (see Chapter 5). There are two complementary angles to understanding governance. The first one focuses on the societal and communal regulation of behavior. The second one focuses on the institutional perspective. Depending on context and their cultural background, people will likely place greater emphasis on the sociological or anthropological angle or on the institutional, legal angle. Whatever the specific understanding of governance, its quality—at the state or substate level—shapes the challenges but also the opportunities for negotiation (understood as interdependent decisionmaking between two or more actors) and mediation (understood as assisted negotiation) in various ways:4 First, dynamically changing space for mediation: The space for mediation in fragile contexts can be considered as situated on a spectrum of “full space for negotiations” to “no space for negotiations.” In situations of very authoritarian forms of governance, where institutions may be seen as effective but illegitimate, the space for negotiations may decrease. Those using coercive power may limit the space for negotiations, fearing their loss of influence. Peace practitioners who do try to use negotiations or mediation during such a period may end up in prison or may be killed. In situations where the primary problem is the weakness and ineffectiveness of the state institutions, however, the space for negotiations may increase, as citizens try to solve conflicts directly through negotiations and mediation rather than waiting for the governance structures to help. The vacuum of effective governance is filled by a greater space for negotiations. This can be seen as an opportunity for mediation. In reality, the mix of effectiveness and legitimacy of governance is of course more complex, as power is never limitless and institutions are rarely totally ineffective. The space for negotiations is therefore continually changing, related to both what can be negotiated and who can be involved in the negotiations. Peace practitioners from within the context tend to have the best insights on what work for peace can be done without posing unacceptable risks to those doing it or affected by it. The question of the “space for negotiations” is a key parameter that influences the subsequent points. Second, complexity of issues and actors in mediation: As a result of the changing space, mediation in a fragile context has a far more complex set of issues and actors to deal with than mediation in a stable context. This poses greater challenges to process design, with a much more delicate balancing act between the various dimensions of a process (e.g.,

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goal, participation, venue, funding, and format) within the specific context. To ensure that mediation of specific issues does not create alliances that do more harm than good in relation to the broader issues or cleavages that are polarizing society, awareness of these cleavages is essential. Third, challenge of sustainability of mediation outcome: If the mediation process is to not only solve the immediate dispute but also lead to peace, further efforts are needed both to implement agreements and to avoid relapse into conflict.5 A link therefore has to be made between mediation and the medium- and long-term efforts toward better governance. Without this, mediation ends up supporting negotiation and repeated renegotiation of issues that could be more effectively dealt with via widely acceptable norms, rules, institutions, and processes. In other words, there is a need to work toward effective and legitimate governance that integrates the interests and needs of the affected people in a longer-term time frame. Fourth, importance of relationships: The peace practitioner in a fragile context is faced with a myriad set of challenges beyond that of a mediator in a stable context. Stable contexts are characterized by an (over)specialization of professions, whereas the complexity and dynamism of fragile contexts call for people who are able to respond in an integrative and creative manner to the numerous challenges that arise, with a stronger focus on relationships. The implementation of an agreement, for example, is more challenging in a fragile context because the power balance may change quickly after an agreement has been signed and the institutions to guarantee implementation are weak. Thus, transforming the relations and getting local ownership for the agreement are even more important than just designing a technically sound agreement text. This is also an argument for moving forward in small steps, because a small step that is implemented can lead to other steps, but a big step that is not implemented can derail the trust in negotiations and mediation. For this type of peace work, peace practitioners need the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of a mediator and in-depth knowledge of the context they are working in as well as a strong network of relationships. The context knowledge comes more easily to those insiders living within the conflict context, but outsiders who have spent years or even decades working on a specific context may also get close or may support the processes in another way. Because insider and outsider are relative terms, with both bringing added value to a mediation, we try to emphasize their complementarity. We use the term peace practitioner to refer to people working for peace from within a conflict context as well as those from outside the conflict context. A peace practitioner is a mediator whose work does not

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end with an agreement or a peacebuilder who uses the consensus-oriented approach of a mediator. For our purposes, the term includes the mediation role, but with a broader remit, for example, working toward establishing structures for peace in a consensus-oriented manner. At the same time, we use the term to describe a role that is narrower than a peacebuilder, who may use all the tools for peacebuilding as often described in the literature, including, for example, agricultural programs, limited military intervention, or human rights promotion.6 The SMALL Framework for Peace The four points outlined above affect mediation in fragile contexts and shape the Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages (SMALL) Framework for Peace developed below and summarized in Figure 2.1.7 Here, it is also important to distinguish between conflict and violence, as Dekha pointed out: “Conflict is a normal phenomenon of everybody’s social life. It helps us build relationships, make judgments and expand our horizons. What is not normal is for conflict to become the cause of violence.”8 Any framework for peace needs to help deal with complexity and include but also go beyond mediation, according to Dekha: [Working for peace] requires a holistic approach that links all levels and sectors from top to bottom, from political and economic to social, deep spiritual soul searching and development.9 . . . We were naive to think that we were at the end of the road when we had a deal, when we had a group who all agreed and who disseminated the information in the agreement. You also have to find a strategy for any new emerging conflict.

One of the key criteria in developing a framework for peace, therefore, is that it helps to link levels (e.g., local, regional, national) and sectors (e.g., economic, security, political) as well as inner and outer peace work. It also needs to be able to conceptualize mediation and its relations to other forms of peace practice beyond the reaching of an agreement. The SMALL Framework organizes the goals and activities of mediation and peace work into short-, medium-, and long-term phases and clarifies the links between the three phases, between inner and outer peace work, and between actors from across the divides—or cleavages—to foster collaboration (see Chapter 6 for discussion of the principle of cross-cleavage collaboration).

The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

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Figure 2.1 The SMALL Framework for Peace in Fragile Contexts F ct fli n rt: con iatio o t - sh n e d m ve m iu pre p of d e to tu e m sis se ag aly pid ams k a e n n Li • A • R t

Short-Term Responses, Contextualized Mediation: Peace practitioners support negotiators to reach an agreement

d w oi : allo es av r m t o o iu t tu s t ou e d ork ruc ge g -m ew e st han akin g on a m e a c l c bre e l y fr id p turalict g a ic r uc f nk ol yb tr on Li • P h • S c

Medium-Term Responses, Interim Peace Sturctures: Peace practitioners establish “network of networks” for cross-cleavage collaboration

: m iu ced tru m e f s ems rt- tabl s o o h n nt rs bl e s me e to ro ag ple reem dica ral p k n m g n u Li • I a • I t

Long-Term Responses, Peaceful State for All: Peace practitioners use consensus building to support effective and legitimate governance

: es ng ici -lo pol m st iu ich ed h ge tru m n w han sed state e o ag ut d c rea he nk np ee nc n t Li • I n • I i

The name of the framework also acknowledges that being too ambitious in peace work can be detrimental, especially in fragile contexts, and that small, modest steps—if coordinated—are not only more feasible but also more likely to be context-sensitive and useful than seeking the ultimate peace agreement or constitution to solve all problems. All three phases of response can happen at the same time, but they occur in various frequencies and over different time horizons (e.g., weeks, months, years, decades). In other words, during the long-term work for peace (taking decades), some medium-term structures are built (taking years), and during the phase when medium-term structures are built, many short-term processes occur (taking months). The key question is how to consciously link these phases. Besides the linkages, the argument of the SMALL Framework is that the mix of mediation and governance building changes in the three phases.10 Mediation focuses on reaching agreement; governance building, on establishing effective and legitimate norms, rules, institutions, and processes. Medium-term structures for peace mix the two aspects, while the short term has a heavy focus on mediation, and the long term a heavy focus on governance building (Figure 2.2). In the rest of this chapter, we summarize the different types of peace work in the different phases that we then explore in more depth in

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Figure 2.2 Mix of Mediation and Governance Building in the Short, Medium, and Long Term Short term

:A iation M ed

Long term

Medium term

imin

gree g at a

ment

at ming g : A i l i v ery n i d l i e ce bu itimate d rna n G o v e v e a nd l eg rv i ces e s ti ef f ec ri t y a nd u o f se c

the following chapters. We also boil down the essence of the framework into five SMALL guidelines for peace, presented below and discussed in relation to the case studies in the conclusions at the end of the book. The First SMALL Guideline: “Design and Redesign”

Short-term responses entail adaptive mediation process design, which requires ongoing balancing of goals, participation, and other process dimensions in relation to the ever-changing context. Short-term work consists of mediating acute conflict. Because mediation needs to grapple with a larger and more fluid set of issues, actors, and changing context factors, process design must be dynamically responsive. It necessitates greater efforts toward the ongoing balancing of process goal, participation, mediation team, format sequencing, timing, venue, funding, and communication. Rapid adaptations may be needed to respond to difficulties as they arise in what is often a volatile context with low levels of trust. Furthermore, if short-term efforts are to lead to results beyond the signing of a peace agreement, work in the short-term phase must link up to medium-term structures for peace. Thus, it is important to reflect on the structures and mechanisms that will help monitor and verify the agreement before it is signed. Issues that cannot be dealt with in the agreement can be flagged and delegated to medium-term structures, such as a local peace committee. Peace practitioners therefore must be able to look forward (to implementation of an agreement, future peace work) as well as backward (to historical context) while remaining present to what is happening in the moment.11 The Second SMALL Guideline: “Network of Networks”

Medium-term peace structures need to be developed to facilitate the short-term peace work of mediation and the long-term peace work of

The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

15

governance building and to help build bridges between them. Mediumterm peace work consists of developing interim structures for peace that act as bridges between short-term mediation efforts and long-term efforts of building states for peace. Such peace structures (often referred to as local peace committees or early warning, early response mechanisms) address both acute conflict and structural causes of conflict and are ideally constituted of both state and nonstate actors. The nonstate actors are both customary actors (e.g., religious leaders, elders) and “modern” actors (e.g., more recently, organized women’s and youth groups). Thus, they are neither classic state structures nor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) but rather a hybrid form of a “network of networks” of both state and nonstate actors, involving those from across the major lines of tension (cleavages) in that community. The principle of cross-cleavage collaboration (discussed in Chapter 6) provides orientation on how different actor groups can collaborate across divides in society, and thus also guides the composition of a peace committee. The Third SMALL Guideline: “Shrinking the Predatory Sphere”

Long-term peace responses in fragile contexts entail using a consensus orientation to harmonize competing sources of authority, transform discriminatory policies and state structures, and improve governance. Long-term peace work consists of building governance structures and states for peace. In the long term, the nature of the state systems, state actors, and nonstate actors shapes the type of possible responses available to peace practitioners. The more authoritarian the government and insecure the context, the less space for dialogue there may be with state actors, which can push mediation and peacebuilding toward more medium- or even short-term efforts that focus on the local level. However, if there is space for dialogue with some of the state actors, longerterm processes and structures can be created in a consensus-oriented manner, developing the technical capacity and political will for democratic change and including all relevant sectors of society. Consensus can be understood as a decision that all can agree to, accept, and live with, or at a minimum not oppose. 12 Thus, there are different degrees of consensus: full agreement and unanimity may not be possible, but is it possible to find a consensus key actors will at least not oppose? The principle of consensus means that the work is time-consuming, but it allows state actors to agree to such efforts without fear of losing control. One of the key ideas of building states for

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peace is that some of the typical ingredients of a democratic state— meritocracy, rule of law, separation of powers, and representation of the people—are combined with the consensus-oriented principle. This work can, for example, explore how to harmonize customary and modern law and institutions, how to adapt policies for peace, and how to increase the efficiency and accountability of the state. Some aspects of mediation and peacebuilding, which make up the fourth and fifth SMALL guidelines, are transverse to short-, medium-, and long-term peace work. The Fourth SMALL Guideline: “The Inner Struggle”

Linking inner and outer peace work makes peace practitioners more authentic, resilient, and effective. A key question is how peace practitioners can develop the motivation and authenticity, as well as the necessary knowledge and skills, for peace work. We argue that this can be done by linking inner and outer peace work. This affects the role of the peace practitioner in all three phases shown in Figure 2.1. The inner dimension of peace work relates to the peace practitioner’s motivation, ethics, and psychological or spiritual understanding of violence and how to work toward peace. In Islam, it is often referred to as the “inner jihad,” the inner struggle.13 It is key for people to be in tune with their inner psychological and spiritual search for peace because this shapes the outer struggle for peace, sustains efforts during challenging times, and creates credibility with the actors peace practitioners are working with. The outer dimension of peace work relates to the peace practitioner’s capabilities of reflective action, learning from cases, and developing the knowledge, concepts, and skills for peace practice. When it comes to the question of facilitating interaction between “enemies”— arguably a core activity of a peace practitioner—the inner mind-set and the outer skills need to be linked so the peace practitioner can be both authentic and effective. The Fifth SMALL Guideline: “Feast with Your Enemies”

Cross-cleavage collaboration involves actors from across the cleavages that are tearing society apart learning how to work together. This approach was central to how Dekha worked: In conflict situations, colors do not mix. All the yellows remain yellow, all the browns remain brown, these colors are not supposed to

The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

17

mix—color meaning the different political and ethnic groups. That is what people expect from the reality of a conflict setting: that people go back to their own zones. When you create your own space across the divide, working with others but remaining in your own community, people are confused. People really do not understand those who can work together across the divide, yellow together with brown and even with blue. That is not how it is meant to be in their eyes.

The principle of cross-cleavage collaboration guides peace practitioners in working across conflict cleavages and is both a deeply spiritualpsychological challenge and a question of appropriate “outer” skills, knowledge, and techniques. Discussion In the following, we assess the SMALL Framework along five dimensions, the first four focusing on its strengths, the last one on its limitations. First, the SMALL Framework helps to clarify linkages between sectors, tracks, and levels: The framework complements other frameworks that separate peace work into sectors (e.g., economic, political, environmental), tracks (e.g., track one involves state actors; track two, mediumlevel leaders; track three, grassroots actors; multitrack involves them all), and levels (e.g., local, regional, intranational, international, internationalized), enabling linkages and overlaps of these categories to be recognized.14 To name a few examples: a conflict may seem to be mainly taking place in the economic sector, which would call for economic peacebuilding experts, but what if the business actors in this conflict are also employing militias and have been elected as politicians? A conflict cleavage may exist between the state/elite and the community actors, pointing to the need for multitrack diplomacy involving both state (track one) and grassroots nonstate actors (track two or three), but what if ethnopolitical or religious alliances cross this state-nonstate cleavage? Furthermore, what if the conflict is localized, but on both sides of an international border—is it a local, intranational, or international conflict? The SMALL Framework can deal with some of these “overlap” challenges by focusing on the analysis of conflict cleavages within a given context without predetermining the key sectors, tracks, or levels. This then provides the basis to design a contextualized and time-sensitive mix of mediation and governance building that crosses the actual conflict cleavages. In this way, the framework helps to overcome the weakness of multitrack models that overly focus on specific types of actors.

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Different multitrack models have been used, for example, those with three tracks or nine tracks, yet all of them specify the types of actors, whereas these are left open in the cross-cleavage collaboration approach (Chapter 6).15 Of course, any given framework—this one included— highlights some dimensions and tends to ignore others. The main argument here is that the SMALL Framework can usefully complement many of the frameworks currently in use. Second, the SMALL Framework supports the creation of linkages between phases: The framework encourages peace practitioners to reflect and consciously strengthen the linkages between short-, medium-, and long-term peace work. Some other frameworks for peace, such as the Integrated Framework for Peacebuilding, also integrate the time dimension, yet one of the comparative strengths of the SMALL Framework is the explicit focus on linkages between phases.16 Third, the SMALL Framework highlights the importance of mediumterm responses: The framework encourages a focus on medium-term responses, counterbalancing a natural tendency of peace practitioners and conflict parties to focus heavily on the short term (e.g., putting out the fire) and long term (e.g., envisioning a stable, peaceful state; establishing a new constitution). Because of the ambivalence of the medium term between the obvious now and the visionary future, it is often difficult to see and establish medium-term, pragmatic structures for peace that can act as the bridge between the short and long term. Missing this medium-term step means mediation without long-term impact and statebuilding that can create violence rather than peace. Fourth, the SMALL Framework is highly adaptable to dynamic contexts: The framework has many advantages specifically in regard to adaptability to fragile contexts, where sectors may overlap; multiple conflict cleavages may cross, align, disappear, or reappear; and conflicts are not necessarily contained within national borders. By focusing on the mix of mediation and governance building, the framework emphasizes the type of work that can be done in different time frames rather than who does it at what level. The changing forms of medium-term peace structures illustrate the flexibility of this framework: the more fragile a context, the more medium-term structures swing to the short term and the mediation of acute conflict. The less fragile, the more they swing to long-term peace practice and the development of governance structures. Fifth, a limitation of the SMALL Framework is that it leaves many questions unanswered: A flip side of the adaptability of the framework is a key limitation of the framework: the framework leaves many questions open because it is not a prescriptive model. It is, rather, a sense-

The SMALL Framework in a Nutshell

19

making model to reflect and organize work in relation to the given context. For example, the framework does not specify what exactly constitutes “short,” “medium,” and “long” in a given context. One could say that short-term work happens in a period of days to months, mediumterm work in a period of months to years, and long-term work in years to decades. However, in some contexts this is not the case, and establishing medium-term structures may take decades, while the building or formation of a peaceful state may take generations. Furthermore, the framework does not prescribe the exact mix of mediation and governance building. Elements of mediation methodology may also be useful when working toward effective and legitimate governance in the long term. Likewise, some forms of organization and governance building may be essential in mediation work. The mix of mediation and governance building is shaped by the given context. The lack of prescriptive clarity of the framework can thus be seen as a weakness, but we argue the inbuilt flexibility is necessary to respond to the diversity and fluidity inherent in fragile contexts. The experiences outlined in the following chapters indicate that the nature of peace work changes in the short, medium, and long term. The SMALL Framework echoes and elaborates the way in which peace practice unfolds on the ground and can thus provide orientation on how it can be organized. Notes

1. United Nations, United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation. 2. The definition of fragile from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC): “a fragile region or state has weak capacity to carry out basic governance functions, and lacks the ability to develop mutually constructive relations with society” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Supporting Statebuilding in Situations of Conflict and Fragility; quoted in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Improving International Support to Peace Processes, 85). The key components of fragility are lacking effectiveness of governance (weak capacity to carry out basic governance functions) and lacking legitimacy of governance (e.g., the lack of mutually constructive relations with society). 3. Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility and Governance.” 4. Mediation can be defined in the way Dekha expresses it in this book’s introduction, or following the UN: “Mediation is a process whereby a third party assists two or more parties, with their consent, to prevent, manage or resolve a conflict by helping them to develop mutually acceptable agreements.” United Nations, United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation. 5. Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap. 6. Reychler and Paffenholz, Peacebuilding.

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7. The SMALL Framework has been shaped by: (1) Dekha’s work (described in this book); (2) Julian Th. Hottinger’s categorization of conflict issues and process steps into short, medium, and long term as part of conflict analysis (Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland); (3) Jeremy Brickhill’s focus on transitional or interim security phase in the security sector (see Brickhill, “Mediating Security Arrangements in Peace Processes”); (4) Ken Menkhaus’s idea of complementarity of mediation and governance, which is based on analyzing Dekha’s work (outlined in Menkhaus, “Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya”); and (5) John Paul Lederach’s approach of looking at different aspects of peacebuilding in different time dimensions (in “An Integrated Framework for Peacebuilding” in Lederach, Building Peace). 8. Ibrahim Abdi, “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya.” 9. Ibrahim Abdi, “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya.” 10. Menkhaus, “Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya.” 11. Point mentioned by Pat Johnson in an email to Simon Mason, January 23, 2018, based on her peacebuilding work in the Somali region, which was in conjunction with Dekha’s. 12. Christopher W. Moore, presentation at the Master of Advanced Studies ETH Mediation in Peace Processes (www.mas-mediation.ethz.ch) on December 29, 2017, Zurich. 13. “The Arabic term jihad is properly defined as ‘struggle’ or ‘striving’ and is generally described as taking place at two levels: the inner (or greater) and the outer (or lesser). According to the hadith (records of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad), inner jihad is the struggle within oneself to avoid sinful behavior and live according to the principles of the Qur’an, Sunna (example of the Prophet Muhammad), and Sharia (values or principles elaborated into Islamic law).” DeLong-Bas, “Jihad.” In this book the “inner struggle” refers to a person’s inner psychological and spiritual search for peace, rooted in any practice, culture, or religion acceptable and helpful to that person and that does not harm others. 14. Fisher et al., Working with Conflict; Lederach, Building Peace. 15. For an example of a three-track framework, see Lederach, Building Peace. A nine-track framework is: (1) government, (2) professional conflict resolution, (3) business, (4) private citizens, (5) research and education, (6) activism, (7) religious, (8) funding, and (9) public opinion/communication. See McDonald, “MultiTrack Diplomacy.” 16. Lederach, Building Peace.

3 Short-Term Responses: Contextualized Mediation and Process Design

mediate conflicts in fragile contexts? Mediation entails direct interaction with the actors in conflict (i.e., communication, negotiation, mediation skills—all discussed in the case studies in Part 2) and process design, sometimes called mediation strategy. In this chapter we focus on mediation process design, which, we argue, is improved in fragile contexts by following the first SMALL guideline: Design and Redesign. A mediation process can be understood as a series of identifiable steps with a start and an end. The mediator structures the process to help the parties reach a mutually acceptable agreement. To leave as much decisionmaking autonomy as possible in the hands of the actors in conflict, mediators focus on the process while leaving decisions over content (the issues in the conflict) to the actors in conflict.1 The debate about whether, and how, mediation process design needs to be contextualized is probably one of the most fundamental debates in international mediation at the moment. 2 On the one hand, there is a technocratic or “social engineering” approach to mediation. This school of thought argues that knowledge of a conflict and of the context in which the actors are embedded is not important, as long as mediators stick to their skills and techniques of how to shape a process, clarify the emotional atmosphere between actors, and define the issues. On the other hand, the opposite argument in its extreme form says that you cannot learn from one case and apply it to another case because each conflict is totally unique, thus rendering the conceptualization of mediation practice futile. Mediation is therefore not

In this chapter, we respond to the question: How do you

21

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something that can be taught or learned, and it is not a method that can be professionalized but rather is a political activity improvised by those who engage in it as they go along.3 Between these two extremes, the contextualized mediation approach argues that the way a mediator approaches the same problem in two different contexts is different, but there are still some universal principles, methods, and skills that are valid across contexts. Therefore, lessons can be learned from one case and used in another as long as this knowledge is contextualized. According to this school of thought, checklists and the simple logic of doing one thing as a direct response to another are not useful, but mediators can still be inspired from one case to work in an adapted manner on another.4 This contextualized mediation approach is well theorized by the Cynefin framework, which argues that solutions to problems in complex systems have to emerge from within the system to be appropriate.5 Checklists and standard operating procedures may work, but only in simple systems with clear cause-effect relationships (which is not the case in most social and political conflicts).6 Thus, the answer about how to design a process in complex systems is to engage deeply with the system and recognize patterns that emerge from within the system. Furthermore, the answer to one process design question (of the nine process design questions listed below) shapes the answers to other questions because various process design dimensions are interconnected. This is the reason why questions cannot be answered independently of context and of each other. Dekha described this contextualized approach to mediation: The mediator is responsible for designing the process. A comparison can be made to architects, who design systems with needs in mind, and when different needs arise, they redesign. If a new design is required and a copy-and-paste approach is used, rather than taking time to think through the design, it will fail. So, every time you’re designing something different.

One way of contextualizing mediation is to focus on how to balance different process design questions in relation to each other and the specific context. These questions, summarized in Figure 3.1, are as follows:7

1. Context and conflict analysis: What is the context in which the conflict is taking place? Context factors can be understood as factors that shape the mediation process but that cannot be directly shaped by the mediator or the actors in the conflict. Con-

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23

flict analysis looks at who is involved in the conflict, what they are fighting about, and why they are doing this.8 2. Goal and content: What is the goal of the process and the content to be negotiated to reach the goal? 3. Participation: Who are the actors involved in the conflict, and who needs to participate in the process to be able to agree on an implementable outcome? 4. Mediator/third party: Who is an acceptable, impartial third party, and what role can they play (e.g., facilitator, mediator, insider, outsider)?9 5. Format and structure: What is the process format and specific process design structure, including how issues are sequenced and different settings are used (e.g., plenary, small groups, shuttling, intragroup, intergroup)? 6. Timing: How long and how frequent are the meetings? 7. Venue: Where is the process to take place (e.g., close to or far from conflict, under a tree, in a boardroom)? 8. Funding: How is the process financed (e.g., self-funding, external, in-kind, cash)? 9. Communication: How is the communication organized within the process (e.g., see the guidelines in Chapter 9), and how is it organized for those outside of the process (e.g., oral, written, privatepublic, media relations)?

Figure 3.1 illustrates the way these different balancing acts occur within each dimension. For example, there may be a question of finding the balance between the legitimacy and availability of funding, the confidentiality and transparency of the communication, or the use of a venue that is close to the conflict and one far from it. Figure 3.1 also illustrates the balancing questions between different process design dimensions, such as between goal and participation. The balancing act is thus multiple and interconnected. If the balance within one dimension or between two or more dimensions changes, the entire process design changes, very much like pulling at one part of a mobile, interconnected web. Figure 3.1, therefore, does not dictate which are the key factors to balance or where the right balance is but rather provides examples of factors and balancing acts a mediator may have to address when designing a process. Examples of these balancing acts are discussed generically in the following sections and within specific processes in Part 2 of the book. This chapter is structured along the nine process design questions introduced above.

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Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts

Figure 3.1 Mobile Approach to Process Design: Multiple Interdependent Balancing Acts is lys s na ces A o t r t lic P x nf it» nte C o o «F o C o . 1 t t

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Context and Conflict Analysis The mediation process design needs to fit the context: as the context changes, the balancing acts between the different process dimensions may have to be adjusted (see Figure 3.1, where “context” comes at the highest level). The preparation phase and ongoing conflict analysis are as important as the mediation meetings themselves. This step includes preparing the society, conflict parties, and team for the process. Conflict analysis is a “practical process of examining and understanding the reality of the conflict from a variety of perspectives.”10 It is used for different purposes: • Understanding: To monitor the conflict, to understand the situation in order to define and detect trends of the conflict.

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25

• Early warning: To provide information for early warning and early action by providing strategic advice to decisionmakers. • Strategizing: To inform efforts to develop effective strategies and to take practical actions. For example, to introduce information regarding the conflict into the public domain to encourage dialogue and debate and to raise awareness, or to prepare for a mediation process or work on policy issues.11 • Empowering: Conflict analysis itself can be an intervention. When living within a conflict setting, the act of making sense of the conflict transforms and empowers actors. • Learning: To develop theories from practice that will inform one’s understanding of the conflict systems, to learn from failures as well as successes.12

There are different types of analysis; for example, some focus on sectors (economic, security, humanitarian, political, health, environmental, etc.), levels (community, regional, national, international levels), process phases (pre-pre-negotiation, prenegotiation, negotiation, implementation), and time horizons (immediate in crisis, preparation for and ongoing during a process, and long term, strategic). Conflict analysis can use different types of approaches, both approaches oriented toward conceptual, academic, and rational factors as well as those oriented toward emotional, psychological, and spiritual factors. Such emotional, psychological, and spiritual approaches can be used for analysis as well as preparing society for mediation. For example, by taking time to listen to and analyze songs, poetry, posters, children’s plays, drawings, or speeches, people can understand the dynamic of the conflict using these different creative forms as ways of analyzing the context and making sense of it. Thus, conflict analysis can also be done by poets, writers, artists, photographers, and musicians. Even venting anger can sometimes be used as a form of analysis because it releases negative energy and expressing emotions can help people to transform and deal with their emotions if it is done in the right moment and environment. Society needs to be prepared for a mediation process, psychologically, spiritually, and socially. In many contexts, dealing with the issue of spirituality, whether it is reading passages from the Quran, the Bible, or other such texts, helps people to understand the process. Preparation allows people to be heard and to give their own views of how they want the process to be shaped.

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Goal and Content

A mediation process needs a goal to provide orientation. When formulating the goal of the process, the peace practitioner sometimes oscillates between a goal that is either too visionary and vague or one that is too concrete and divisive. If the goal is too visionary and vague—“We are working for world peace”—it does not provide guidance to the process. If it is too concrete, it is likely to be divisive, as it will not include all the aspirations of the involved actors; an example is “maintaining historic water rights.” In swinging between the extremes of too vague/visionary and too concrete/divisive, the idea is to move toward a less extreme way, until one finds the right balance (see Figure 3.1). A useful goal formulation has information on the geographic scope as well as the aspirations of all conflict parties for a future, more positive state. An example is the Nile Basin Initiative joint statement: “To achieve sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.”13 Sometimes, however, one needs to accept a simply formulated goal, such as: “We would like to reach an agreed outcome that is beneficial to both and that can lead us to peace.” At a minimum, the desired outcome and the character of the meeting must be agreed on at the beginning so that when the process gets chaotic, and someone refuses to listen to the other side, they can be reminded: “You agreed that you wanted to reach an outcome to lead toward peace, and we have to work until we reach this outcome.” Parties are held accountable to the goal and guidelines they agreed to initially so as to move the process forward. The goal often provides hints at the content issues that need to be addressed. Getting to the issues requires listening to the participants. In some situations, the conflict actors want to start with a long historical narrative. This should be explored because the energy and anger in the narrative needs to be vented, but the actors need to be asked to locate the current issues from that history. A possible question is: “Okay, can we bring that to current times? What is the issue now?” A lot of the history of a context is divisive, but mediators can find places where the conflict parties’ narratives come together. In comparison, at certain junctures some people are against looking at history, so mediators have to find ways of creating processes by looking at the energy of the conflict parties. Participation

Participation can never be totally inclusive because this would mean involving all actors in society. On the other hand, when participation

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27

is too exclusive, a process and its outcome lack legitimacy and sustainability. Key actors who may later spoil the process may be missed, or decisions may be made without involving those affected by them. A useful guideline for including the right participants is considering participation in relation to the goal and the fundamental cleavages that are tearing society apart. A determining factor regarding participation is whether the process is about preventing direct violence or addressing structural issues. The more urgent and the less the process is dealing with structural factors, the more exclusive it can be. The more time the process has and the more it is dealing with structural factors, the more inclusive it needs to be. One urgent situation is when human rights are being abused and there is a need to save lives and property. Is an agreement essential to stopping the violence? The speed needed to get to a ceasefire agreement may be critical, and getting the two principals to agree on something may be vital. Therefore, it could be unfavorable to have too many people bringing other agendas to the table when the urgent agenda is a cessation of hostilities or a ceasefire.14 In such a situation, if everybody clamors to participate, the mediators will be dealing with secondary issues rather than the substantive one. Conversely, if a process is dealing with structural causes of the conflict, various stakeholders may need to be involved, and timing is less urgent. At times, however, it is hard to separate the work of addressing the symptoms (e.g., violent clashes) from that of addressing the causes (e.g., discriminatory politics) of a conflict. Sometimes, therefore, a mixed process is needed. This can involve closed meetings with the key leadership; consultations with women, youth, and religious leaders; and other meetings for the general public. In some situations, mediators may allow people to participate passively in order to enable the principals to get on with business. In other cases or phases, it is important to involve everybody and for all the stakeholders to be on board. As the saying goes, it is better to have someone inside the tent, pissing out, than outside the tent, pissing in. Participation Affecting Implementation

Implementation of an agreement is shaped by public enforcement and public buy-in. Public enforcement is effective if the authorities are seen as legitimate and there is no contestation of authority. When legitimacy is contested, enforcement becomes very difficult. The only fallback position is public goodwill and public commitment to the process, which has to be rooted in the culture and tradition of the society.

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For example, if it is culturally acceptable to take a public oath, this can act as an internal regulatory mechanism for the individual, which can be very powerful. Society needs to be involved in the mediation process to reach a commitment at a national level, through methods such as public prayer, which acts as an oath of allegiance. If the principals in the conflict have signed an agreement, it is helpful if the public is in agreement with them to guarantee goodwill in assisting enforcement or implementation of the agreed outcome. When this feeling is lacking, people are likely to express that the peace does not belong to them but to the politicians, because it is something that is signed in an office, removed from their own reality. This can be very dangerous and unsustainable in the long run. Role of Women

Women—just like men—contribute both to violence and to peace, even if they sometimes do this in different ways. Women’s roles in peacebuilding can include coordination, convening, organization, mediation, trauma healing, social reconciliation, training, and financial mobilization. Women are often motivated to join the peace movement to be able to practically address the violence that affects the whole of society. Good practice involves both genders in dialogue and analysis. Bringing in the voice of women, even in cases when this is forced on the process by having women give statements publicly, changes the whole conflict analysis and conflict dynamics. Women analyze the conflict from a different perspective and may intentionally raise issues in the dialogue that men do not see or do not want to mention for strategic reasons. Thus, it is important to have a diversity of contributions coming from both women and men. However, it is necessary to respect culture, for example, in providing specific dialogue processes for women and men when they cannot sit together, combined with other ways of bridging any gender divide in such situations. Dekha specifically highlighted that “ideally women should be in all roles—negotiators, facilitators, and mediators, but the analysis is key. I sometimes say that not being on the negotiation team is not the end of the world if you can find your way of influencing it.” The second issue is about the public-private interface. In many cultures, women contribute in the private space. An examination of formal and informal processes of women’s participation in an IslamicMuslim-Somali context might not reveal their contribution in the public space, but someone who understands that women are the engine

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driving the process privately can capture their contribution. Assessing group dynamics, Dekha specifically noted: From my observation it has always been effective to allow for separate meetings of different groups and age ranges initially and to bring them together at the end. Otherwise, there are too many issues and the agenda will be dominated only by one interest, one group, or one gender. Separating them at the beginning allows for more space. The youth perceive the conflict in a different way than the older generation and the elites. The process is like bridging different perceptions from the multiple interest groups.

Sometimes the process design makes it difficult for women to attend, in terms of the timing and logistics of the meetings. It is important when designing a workshop in a specific location to be sensitive to the norms, culture, tradition, and religion of the community. For example, a design with flawed logistics would ask young working mothers to attend a workshop during the day with no childcare facilities or would not allow breastfeeding mothers to bring their children. Islamic women may want to bring their mahram, which can be their father, son, or brother, to the workshop.15 When women are not allowed to bring their mahram, their participation is prevented. In one case in the Philippines, thirty women were invited to a workshop, but forty-five participants attended; the others were men accompanying the women. Also, insisting on a mixed workshop for women who have requested a women-only workshop hinders participation. Specific cultural knowledge tailored to logistics is key for a third party. Role of Business Actors

In general, participation of the business community is a double-edged sword. They can be facilitators of violence or facilitators of peace. It is common to have a “mixed bag” of business actors who fund both violence and peace. It is often known which businesses solely support violence, despite their actions being hidden, and it is important for peace organizations to take loans only from “clean” businesses. Business actors are key individuals who may double as community and religious leaders and who may have links to a specific social or political group. When their social, economic, and political spheres overlap, they can become a springboard for good or for violence. Sometimes they just want to protect their assets, and in order to do so they use an armed or political group. However, third parties can help them realize

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that this direction may not help them economically or that it does not help society. Then, with this awareness, they can take on a crucial role. Therefore, it is important to engage in dialogue with business actors to show them how they can use their roles constructively rather than becoming predatory to the system. Third Parties: Mediators, Teams, Styles A mediator is not an arbitrator, deciding on solutions for the parties, but rather the person who enhances and bridges the communication between the parties. In many contexts, including the African and Islamic contexts, a mediator is not always an outsider and could also be an insider. Mediators are expected in principle to be impartial, even as insiders and even if they are closer to one or the other side. Occasionally, it is more important to engage an outsider who is expert at leading groups than someone who knows the context. The acceptability depends on the context, and mediators may need to prove their knowledge, skills, and attitude to engage with a community. Sometimes the process is a dance between the insider and outsider working together, each handing over the process to the other in appropriate situations. Mediation Teams

In complex processes typical of fragile contexts, mediators work in teams within a system, supported by others who assist with the communication, media, logistics, and political process. How the team works together is a central factor affecting the process. Another important factor is the involved parties’ perception of the impartiality of the mediation team.16 Dekha elaborated on these points: We were once working as a team of four women mediators intervening in a women’s conflict. The process came to a halt, not because there was a problem between the conflicting groups, but because the two conflicting groups had an issue with us, as the team of mediators. After seeing each group individually, they told us: “The problem is not all of you, but one of you.” We discussed how to deal with this in our team and the member of our team asked the groups: “What will help so that I can feel and you can feel that I am being impartial?” The group stated: “You have to act and behave like this. . . . If you agree that you’re going to be consciously aware of your impartiality, then you are fine to be in the group of mediators.”

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It is really important to take time for preparation, reflection, and dealing with stress within the team. Another form of broader teamwork is when a mediator is situated farther away but is still accessible and can therefore act as a sounding board to help the mediators on-site discuss how to change something seemingly impossible. Such mediation support actors can reflect on the process and make suggestions. Kenyan-Somali Cultural Approach

The cultural setting has a great impact on what is expected of and what is constructive in a mediation process. The Western approach to peacebuilding tends to lean on concepts and academic approaches, while other cultural contexts more often use the arts and storytelling. According to Dekha: In the Somali context, you must have a sense of humor and a number of stories to illustrate, and you must avoid giving judgment. When caught in a place where you are not making headway, ask for a break and stop the process. In this case it is important to have a prayer, a song, or something that can give you nourishment. Your leadership is tested, so you must have an understanding of the culture, politics, religion, and knowledge of the nitty-gritty within that community so that you can go back to history, where this was resolved in a certain way. It can help them to move forward if you can provide resources and case studies.

It may be worth mediators expanding their scope of interventions by learning from other cultures. Even within the same culture some people may gain insights through concepts, others through stories and metaphors, and many benefit from a mix of approaches. Mediation and Arbitration

In some processes, mediation can be used up to a point, and when the limit of mediation is reached, the mediator is expected to arbitrate. When mediators are caught in a position where they are expected to give a judgment, some third parties arbitrate and some do not. Some avoid giving judgments by telling a short story or satire that comments on a certain problem (see Chapter 10). The processes of mediation and arbitration are occasionally mixed, such as when the third party starts the process as mediation but later arbitrates between the groups. When this happens, the third party has to take responsibility for the outcome. In other situations,

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third-party arbitration is not accepted and the process has to be restarted. Using different approaches such as negotiation, mediation, and arbitration at different stages can be better than using one style or approach throughout. However, third parties should be clear in what they are doing and in clarifying the terms they use so the parties know what to expect. Different Reference Systems

Different cultures use different reference systems to assess whether an agreement is fair and acceptable. Often the difference at the level of reference systems is greater than at the level of the actual process method. Other key differences in the cultural influences on mediation are whether the parties tend to focus on the individual or on the collective, and whether they take a more voluntary approach or a more legal, enforced approach. Western mediation might look at the role of the individual before considering communal roles. Those with a Western education tend to think more of using national law as a reference system, taking the individual rights approach. In the Somali context, there could be a link between traditional mediation and Islamic mediation because a lot of Somali traditional culture is rooted in Islam. Islamic mediation strictly uses the Quran and its teachings and might not include Somali cultural approaches. Dekha expanded on the Islamic approach as follows: In Islam there is something called soluh, which is like consensus building on an issue through dialogue.17 If somebody says: “He has hurt me and broken my tooth,” the Islamic approach is to have a dialogue, take responsibility, and offer an apology and an explanation of what led you to hit this person. Perhaps your intention was not to break his tooth, but it was your anger. Listening to each other, you are given a menu of options, as the victim and the perpetrator. The victim might have the option to forgive, or the option to request for compensation, but be encouraged to forgive. If the person insists that compensation is necessary, they go back to the Quran and say: “What does the law say if somebody loses a tooth? What’s the value of a tooth in relation to compensation?” Compensation is calculated, accepted, then signed off and paid. The basis of the compensation is not what the national and legal constitution says but what the Islamic law says.

Dekha further explored the nuances in the Somali traditional culture and how it relates to the religious culture: In the Somali traditional culture, the first process of forgiveness is similar, but when asking for compensation, the Somali traditional

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culture will also include the precedents of past agreements. They ask elders who can answer: “From this clan and this clan actually the precedent is that they don’t pay anything to each other.” Or: “The precedent is to pay this amount, an agreed value.” This is also acceptable to Islam because it is something mutually agreed and not forced. For example, the precedent of the two clans could be that even if people are killed, compensation is not paid, but forgiveness is given, or a token is paid as an apology. To present the issue of forgiveness in traditional processes, they will offer a dry stick and a green stick and tell you: “Choose your journey, to go for forgiveness or not!” There is pressure put on either the individual or on the community to follow the path of peace. The traditional process contains more group pressure, while the religious process is for you to sit, reflect, and take that personal responsibility between you and God, to say, “This is going to be my journey.” In the traditional way even if you want to go down the path of violence individually, you are forced to take the path of peace, because there is pressure on you from the group. Personally, I more often use the approaches of the Islamic traditional, the collective, inner responsibility by the individual and their conscience, more than human rights approaches. However, it is case by case. We use a combination of approaches. For example, you use the traditional process to apply group pressure and then the Islamic process for an individual to take the inner responsibility, but this is enforced by the national law. The traditional and Islamic approaches prepare the ground for the Western, national, and legal approaches, because rather than having someone arguing the case, you need to have that inner voice and inner conscience agreeing that what they are saying is the right thing. Then if they give the word, it holds. It combines individual rights with recognizing that this is important, and rooting it within the culture and religion, thus bringing different sorts of thinking together.

In many contexts, religious leaders, traditional leaders, and Westerntrained third parties can work together, and their different methods can complement each other. Any approach can be used as a starting point and can be transformed to a different approach as appropriate.

Format and Structure The key question for a mediator working with an angry community is how to design processes around the substantive content of the issues the people are dealing with. When different needs arise, mediators must

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design and redesign the process because a copy-and-paste approach will fail. As Dekha explained: In northern Kenya, we designed our process on the value of inclusion, to be linked from local to national to regional levels. If somebody does not take time to design but simply tries to include women, youth, and elders, it will not work. As you are designing a process, you must have something in mind to inform it based on an understanding of your context.

Intra- and Intergroup Work

Sometimes mediators need to work with only one group; at other times they must bring both groups together. Processes can involve mediators shuttling between groups that are at different locations, especially in the early phases when the level of trust is low, there is a power imbalance, or there is no communication. Even in the analysis stage, sharing information (but doing so carefully so as to avoid being seen as biased) and being the trusted go-between can be helpful.18 Sometimes agreements can be reached this way, without any face-to-face meetings. Yet if mediators seek to transform the perceptions and relationships, face-to-face meetings have many advantages over a pure shuttle mediation approach. The venue is very important in shuttle mediation. When mediators go to people where they feel comfortable and can retain their sense of power, the people feel like the mediators are coming to them and making a request. In African and Islamic cultures, guests are respected, and hosts try to be on their best behavior when a guest comes. When there is a power imbalance, shuttling helps because mediators can meet people in the place the people feel comfortable. As one woman told Dekha and her colleagues, “The district commissioner is like my grandson, calling me to his office, lecturing me and expecting me to listen to him. You, our daughters, came to my house. You’re my guests, how can I refuse my guests what they request of me?” There is never a clear-cut answer about when to bring the parties together. Mediators have to use their intuition and observe the group dynamics. Too many internal divisions in one group is often a sign that the group needs more preparation before it meets with the other group. A sign of when one group is ready to meet the other side is when they start asking questions that can best be answered by the other side. Those doing the shuttle mediation must then take the initiative to point out that they have become a hindrance to the process and must encourage the parties to talk to each other directly—with or without a mediator facilitating this process. In Dekha’s words:

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In such situations, the facilitator or mediator needs to deal with their ego and say: “That’s it, they don’t need me anymore in this role. They can do it themselves and can sit face to face. It’s time to let go, stand back, and allow them to get on with it.” Modesty is important as it is not about your process, but theirs. It is the time to pray and to sit and wait for them to come to you. After they finish their business, for example, they can ask you to come in and be witness to the process.

Depending on the complexity and length of the process, one third party can hand over leadership of the mediation to another third party as the mediation shifts between phases. For example, one mediator shuttles during the early phases and then hands over the mediation to another mediator during the face-to-face phase. Timing

There is an ongoing debate about using milestones and deadlines in mediation. Some argue deadlines can be useful if they are not artificial, yet many others argue that the mediator is in charge of keeping progress going in the process, but not setting deadlines because they can be a counterproductive form of pressure.19 Dekha’s explanation follows: In terms of time in a traditional setting, you have to have an expectation that the process may take longer, you cannot just say that this session is going to take three or four days. It takes whatever it takes. For example, in the first five years in the Somaliland process, they spent three and a half years of the five in the dialogue mediation process. Some events lead to other events, with part implementation and part reflection. It is the beginning of a long-term process with many stops in between.

The degree to which the third party manages time is highly based on culture. Collaboration between an insider and outsider on this question can help the outsider better understand common expectations and practices as related to time. Venue and Logistics The nature of the venue is critical and the selection of venue can either facilitate or destroy a process, which is one reason why the venue needs to be agreed on in advance. It is very important to find a meeting place where people are comfortable and that all parties see as impartial.

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Mediators do not decide upon a venue in isolation; they listen to the advice of their team and those who know the local situation. Venues and spaces are interlinked in that a venue is physical, but the space within the venue has an emotional context. A space can create engagement, disengagement, and distance. Dekha highlighted this: For me, the logistics of the venue and organization are as important as the content, if not more so, because I have realized in supporting many mediation processes at the community level, that people cannot move on if they don’t know and agree on the venue. It can be a sticky point of disagreement, even before a meeting takes place, and takes a lot of energy to resolve. It is vital not to dismiss this because if the parties can agree on the venue, then they can agree on the substantive points. For this reason it is important to stay engaged on a disagreement over the venue until a place that everyone feels comfortable with and can access is agreed upon. There are places that naturally have the symbolism of certain connections—for example, places called the “peace center,” “peace tree,” or “peace town,” and this is important if there is division within the group because a feeling of where you are placed has an impact on the individual.

Close to or Far from the Conflict

A venue close to the theater of conflict brings reality, emotional closeness, and less distance from the people; conversely, a venue far from the theater of conflict brings distance that may be needed to work on certain issues, but may also bring a disconnect from reality. It therefore often depends on the timing whether the venue should be inside or outside the conflict zone. Sometimes it is important to start a process at the theater of the conflict, because everybody will be following and emotionally involved, which can sustain the process. However, once the parties have reached a space where they are having direct dialogue and negotiating the substantive issues, they often need to remove themselves from proximity to the conflict by moving to another venue. Mediators may also reflect on the impact of the climate, for example, finding a cooler place to calm emotions. Sometimes it is important to have the entire meeting take place within the conflict space, whereas at other times it may be important to rotate venues, for example, when a conflict covers a geographical region that encompasses many towns. A change in venue brings a different space in the physical sense but also a change in the conceptual, intellectual space, creating distance between

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the people and the substantive issues they are discussing so that they can engage. Dekha recounted the following case to demonstrate the impact of venue on parties’ behavior: There was a hilarious story about the Arta process, which took place far from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, which is another country, but still within a Somali context.20 A warlord went to a cafeteria to change some money and there was a young girl working there. He was impatient with her and she was rude in responding to him, and everybody looked at the young girl and the warlord and said: “If this warlord was in Mogadishu, he would have shot this young woman.” He was not in his immediate environment, and being under the rule of a different government regulates public behavior. Therefore, he was very polite and respectful in responding to the young woman. If he was in Mogadishu, he would have slapped or even shot her for talking rudely to him, but in Arta he could not do that because he was not in his own space. People said: “Oh my God, how wonderful that a young woman can reply to a warlord like that.” This helps shape the peace and the mediation process in a different way than if the parties were in their own natural environment.

This shows there is value in having the sessions both in the conflict theater and outside the conflict theater, to bring people on board and to keep people away. Venue should be considered strategically, with a balance to be struck. The negotiators at the table may not be directly exposed to or affected by the violence. It is important for a chief mediator to be rooted in reality, for example, to go to the real theater of conflict to see the impact of the violence and bring that reality to the table. The Practicalities and Symbolism of Logistics

It is critical to look carefully at logistics, both for practical reasons and because they may have a symbolic impact. Some people feel comfortable talking around a table; others prefer to sit on a mat. Where people drink tea or coffee and how to organize the outdoor spaces where people can work must also be considered. Often, the real discussions happen over refreshments rather than at the table in the mediation session. Depending on culture, people place different symbolic importance on sitting under a tree, being in a building, sitting on chairs, or sitting on rugs. During informal discussions, some people prefer to sit on the floor, but during the formal part of the process, they prefer to use tables. In some cultures, starting around a table is very formal, signifying that

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all the discussions will be formal. Dekha explained how informal formats can facilitate broader participation: In traditional societies, you may be dealing with four hundred to a thousand people in a mediation process within different groups. There are those in charge of catering and sometimes women are given the hospitality roles. In highly oral societies women who are cooking or serving are also listening, acting as passive participants in the process, but able to give their opinions while they are serving.

Thought must also be given to the location of the secretariat that records and documents the process. They may be placed in an area visible to all within the same space or outside the building, which affects the parties’ trust in the reliability of the documentation (an example of this appears in the case study in Chapter 9). It is also important to look at personal safety issues and what people are permitted to bring to the venue, such as walking sticks, which can be used for support or as a status symbol, or knives and weapons, which may be culturally acceptable for some people to carry. The security of the participants in the venue has to be addressed before actors meet, for instance, clarifying whether they are allowed to bring weapons. Financing and Resourcing Finances can be enabling but also destructive. There are different types, timing, sources, and perceptions of funding, and they all relate to the legitimacy and outcome of the process. Types and Timing of Funding

Financing can involve hard cash but also different types of funding, including in-kind contributions such as time or providing a venue, food, or other resources. Sometimes the biggest resource that is required is logistical, such as the provision of a vehicle, plane, venue, or technical support. Funding needs change over time. Often, more money is available at the beginning of the process or when an agreement is likely, but it dwindles over time or when progress is slow. The costs of a process can rise quite high, especially in long mediations, with months of meetings with hundreds of people. In just two or three rounds of meetings, which may not reach an outcome or even agree on an agenda, tens of thousands of dollars can be spent. Tension rises around the fact that money is available

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at the beginning of the crisis, when people are willing to provide funding, but could gradually run out when the process is close to reaching agreement, which is often the critical point when a huge sum of money is required for implementation. Sustaining the momentum through the phases of crisis, negotiation, outcome, implementation, and postimplementation is difficult. Very few funding organizations understand the different phases and provide funds throughout the entire process. Sources of Funding

At the local level, any process of mediation, facilitation of dialogue, or negotiation that is jointly financed by the actors in conflict is generally more sustainable. When parties foot their own bill, they take more ownership and are more cautious in the process, and they are more motivated to resolve the issues. The main question is how the involved parties see the legitimacy of the sources of funding, whether they are local or external. Another approach is a form of mixed funding, when the actors in the conflict initiate and jointly finance a process but later look for other financial resources to enable them to move forward. In this case, the parties still take ownership of the process, or they have the perception of ownership, which is critical. Often, it is better for the parties not to take a large sum of money from one source but to take smaller sums, like basket funding, from diverse sources. Allowing other sources to make smaller contributions to the process is another way for people to participate and own the process. Perceptions of Funding

Parties’ perception of the source of funding influences the outcome of the process. When actors understand the funding source and its rationale, especially one that is an enabling factor, this can support the conclusion. Dekha pointed out in an interview: People want answers about your interests and agenda for funding a process. An answer such as: “I’m doing it out of the goodness of my heart” or “we want to solve the problem” will not suffice. Naming a legitimate interest such as being out of business because of the conflict, is clearer, rather than side-stepping the question.

Whether the funding organization takes on a facilitating role rather than aiming for maximum visibility, to allow off-the-record and

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on-the-record work, also shapes the perception of funding legitimacy. In the crisis phase, when financing is difficult to come by, allowing the rootedness of the work and the actors in the conflict to take ownership or lead the peace process is important. This is how Dekha explained it: In my experience, the donors who want to be hands-on prefer to be led by either a local team or local organization who understand the context. Sometimes you double up by working for the donor as a local, but this can be confusing as to which one of you is taking the forefront. Many donors prefer not to fund a process in the initial phase because they are not sure whether it will work and it can be confusing when there are so many actors. Once a certain point of a transformation is reached and the process is systematically moving so that hope for agreements is possible, then donors join in. This requires a local mechanism where people can respond to the immediacy of the crisis and the community can fund the early days of the process, when failures are common. At the beginning, it looks like a black hole into which you are investing, but it is not working—it is just failure, failure, and more failure. So you need to keep trying and then finally you get somewhere.

The local-national link is critical when an external organization is funding the process and becomes a witness to it. An agreement must be made about what information can be made public and what should not be discussed in reporting on the process. This is a matter of negotiation with the external or internal resourcing organizations.21 Communication A key question regarding communication is how to deal with the media. It is important for mediators to appeal to the media and to try to make them an ally. It is not helpful to block media access. Nor is it helpful to give the media free rein. Rather, mediators need to sit together with the media to help them understand the rationale and design of the mediation process. If they understand, they can then be a part of the process and your ally in promoting peace. For example, if someone were to make a hot-headed statement, which may help sell newspapers but also harm the peace process, a newspaper with an understanding of the process could impose its own blackout and not report it. Some people make polarizing statements just to be heard without thinking what the impact could be—it is not helpful if they are given media coverage.

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In certain situations where the state is repressing information and denying that conflict is taking place, the media can also be the mediator’s ally as they can undertake investigative journalism and bring issues to light. They can mobilize the public, for example, by bringing attention to the existence of violence that is being denied by state or community institutions. By bringing such issues to the public, the media creates space for wider society to engage with them and work toward transformation. Your task as a peace practitioner is to try to make the media your ally, help them understand the process, and encourage them to take on the role of assisting in the transformation of society. Another important aspect of communicating about mediation in wider society is to clarify terms, such as dialogue, negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. What do these words mean, and what can they do or not do? As Dekha discussed: In Kenya, negotiators sometimes call themselves mediators, when they were actually negotiating for their political party. They were using the terms interchangeably. There needs to be assistance to help people understand what mediation is, the role of the mediator, and some of the techniques used. Some people think that the mediator has the power to coerce the conflicting parties into an agreement, rather than having the role of a facilitator or an enabler of the process. Therefore, it is really critical in the preparatory phase to help societies conceptually understand what mediation can and cannot do, rather than allowing them to get a distorted understanding from the media.

Any formal mediation process is supported by a number of informal processes. Sometimes it is not the role of the mediator to explain to the public what mediation is; instead, it is the role of others in society to write an informal paper or do an interview on television or in the newspaper to explain mediation to the public. In the media, the terminology used is often not defined correctly, and someone must explain what traditional African mediation processes and Western mediation models are. The venue also has an impact on communication: if the process takes place behind closed doors, then the mediator communicating with the media is vital to bringing information to the public. The mediator has to find ways in which to communicate what is going on in a phased and systematic way. This way, the public is informed about how the mediation is progressing inside the four walls and that there are outcomes. For a society accustomed to making verbal agreements that are as valid as written agreements, the question is: Who should summarize the

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words? Should the mediator announce the agreement, or should two individuals from the conflict parties say the words so that the agreement is heard to come from the parties? Should they make the announcement in the venue where the dialogue took place, or in a government office? Will they go to a mosque, a church, or a shrine and make the announcement? What is the symbolic importance of the mosque, the church, or the shrine (which are ritual spaces), or a government office, in terms of legitimacy and enforcement? In verbal communities, the person who summarizes the agreement and the location of this event have symbolic weight. Linkages The nine process design questions explored above—and there are many more—are shaped by decisions of the mediator in consultation with the key parties and mediation support actors. The degree to which the linkages between the process design dimensions are considered greatly shapes how the mediation process is contextualized. For example, the goal of the process affects the type and number of participants, and the type and number of participants impacts which goal is attainable and the amount of funding needed as well as the type of venue that could work. The venue affects which formats are possible and what type of communication is appropriate. Whether the process is held in an open space, where everybody can see it, or as a closed-door meeting influences how the mediator and the actors work with the media. None of the process design factors can be decided in isolation of the others—thus the analogy of a mobile used in Figure 3.1. The short-term work of mediation and the medium-term work of building structures for peace are linked in various ways (as shown in Figure 2.1). The first short-medium link relates to the negotiation of implementable agreements. This includes mechanisms for disseminating the agreement and making sure it is implemented. Such mechanisms or structures may be established by the peace agreement, or more permanent structures for peace, such as a local peace committee, may take on the role of monitoring and verifying the agreement. The second shortmedium link is the fact that the mediation process can highlight policy questions that cannot be dealt with in the short term by the mediation but that still need attention. Thus, the mediation work can feed information about key issues that need to be addressed to the medium-term structures. A key determinant of a feasible mediation is that it does not try to solve too many issues all at once or ignore key issues. The medi-

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ation process should work on something achievable and hand over other issues to the medium-term peace structure.

Notes 1. Mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger in presentations at Peace Mediation Course (PMC) 2008–2017, e.g., May 7–19, 2017 (www.peacemediation.ch). 2. Mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland. This debate is also related to the way mediation research is carried out. Duursma highlights “the relative strength of case studies when studying mediation. In contrast to quantitative studies, case-studies can examine the unique context in which mediation takes place.” Duursma, “A Current Literature Review of International Mediation,” 85. 3. This argument was discussed at an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) expert meeting on July 12, 2011, in Vienna on strengthening the mediation-support capacity of the organization. 4. Mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland. 5. Snowden and Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.” In simple systems, there are clear and easy-to-see cause-effect relationships—one can use standard operating procedures and checklists. In complicated systems, there are clear cause-effect relationships, but they are hard to see—one needs experts to help. In complex systems, characterized by flux, there are no clear cause-effect relationships, as interactions between elements shape dynamics, but patterns can be identified emerging from the system—one needs intensive engagement with the system to probe and try out what works. In chaotic systems, characterized by turbulence, there are no clear cause-effect relationships, and one has trouble seeing any patterns— here one may not be able to try out what works but must first try to stabilize the system. See also adaption of the Cynefin framework to mediation in Mason, “Combining, Best, Good, and Emergent Practice.” 6. Snowden and Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”; and Mason, “Combining, Best, Good, and Emergent Practice.” 7. Moore, Mediation Process; Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland. 8. Fisher et al., Working with Conflict. 9. United Nations, United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation. Impartiality means treating all actors fairly. 10. Fisher et al., Working with Conflict, 17. 11. From Dekha’s presentation on conflict analysis from the Peace Mediation Course (Swiss FDFA, swisspeace, and Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich), March 14, 2010. See also Fisher et al., Working with Conflict, coauthored by Dekha. Her conflict analysis approach is closely related to this book. 12. List from Dekha’s presentation, March 14, 2010, Peace Mediation Course (Swiss FDFA, swisspeace, and Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich), Oberhofen. The point of “empowering” was added based on the interviews with Dekha. 13. Nile Basin Initiative, “Nile Basin Water Ministers Address Strategic Issues.” 14. For an overview of different terms, see Brickhill, “Mediating Security Arrangements in Peace Processes.”

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15. Here, mahram is the escort of a woman from her close family (e.g., unmarriageable kin such as father, brother, son) for a journey. 16. Mason and Kassam, “Bridging Worlds.” 17. Soluh, also spelled in English as solh, solha, or sulh, comes from Arabic/Quranic language, from a root meaning “to mend/restore.” It refers to any effort that leads to an agreement ending the dispute or the hostilities, be it dialogue, traditional mediation, arbitration, or some other process. Thanks to Abbas Aroua, who clarified the term in an email to Simon Mason, April 3, 2018. See also Aroua, Quest for Peace in the Islamic Tradition. 18. In highly sensitive contexts, one approach to information sharing is to only pass written messages between the parties and to make sure these messages are written in the handwriting of the parties, so as to avoid later allegations that the mediator changed the information. 19. Merikallio et al., The Mediator; Nathan, “No Ownership, No Peace.” 20. The Somalia National Reconciliation Conference held in Arta, Djibouti, from May to August 2000 was facilitated by the Djibouti government following extensive consultations and resulted in the formation of a transitional national government. However, key entities refused to participate, including armed faction leaders in south-central Somalia. Pat Johnson, email to Simon Mason, March 10, 2018. 21. For more on funding of peace initiatives, see Jenner and Ibrahim Abdi, Voices of Local Peace Initiatives.

4 Medium-Term Responses: Developing Interim Peace Structures

ation and peace practice create the conditions for sustainable peace? The medium-term peace work of establishing locally rooted peace structures is the centerpiece of how to make short-term peace work more sustainable. This follows the second SMALL guideline: Network of Networks. Different forms of interim peace structures often use different labels for similar phenomena. These include “local peace committees,” “early warning, early response mechanisms,” “confidence-building mechanisms,” “joint asset development committees,” and “local security committees.”1 In the following, we briefly explore four approaches to the development of medium-term peace structures. Then we focus on the first two. First are peace committees, typically used when there is an acknowledgment of (potential) conflict and insecurity in society. Often such committees are formed out of a short-term response to conflict and grow into something more institutionalized and strategic once the acute conflict has been dealt with. Local peace committees can be separated into two major groups: those committees established by a national directive, and those committees set up by local actors without support at the national level (often in more fragile contexts).2 Second, joint asset development committees often are used in polarized societies where there is limited awareness of potential conflict but joint socioeconomic interests are the main driver of cooperation. These structures typically start as medium-term responses to socioeconomic challenges and can then sometimes grow into mechanisms that also

In this chapter, we focus on the question: How can medi-

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support short-term responses to acute conflict and feed the long-term development of national policies. In the third approach, peace structures are built around remnants of political structures. This approach can be seen in Libya, where the municipal councils elected in 2014 were still partially functioning in 2017 and had taken on many functions of a local peace committee, even if the overall national political framework that helped to establish them was in disarray. The municipalities in some parts of the country convene regular meetings between key actors—women’s groups, militias, traditional elders, and state representatives—to analyze the situation and discuss and organize possible responses. Because of the volatility of the situation, these efforts are still very much geared to facilitating the short-term work but are also potentially a bridge to the long-term work.3 In a fourth approach, the development of interim structures originates in initiatives to fill a governance vacuum, such as with local councils (also called “local administrative councils”) on the provincial, city, and municipal level in opposition-held areas in Syria during the war. Initiated in 2012, they are generally politically aligned to the opposition (and are therefore limited in how far they can cross cleavages) but have also developed a degree of independence to better respond to local needs. Their primary focus is to provide services to the community, including monitoring humanitarian aid, running schools, and supporting local forms of justice. They also deal with localized tensions using local mediation, such as negotiating security and humanitarian issues in the community or easing civil-military tensions. The tendency is to focus on the short-term, immediate crisis, but in some cases these councils have also started more long-term planning work.4 These four forms of medium-term structures illustrate how interim peace structures may be initiated from a security, economic, or political angle but then over time take on other functions in different sectors and time frames. The degree they can do this depends heavily on the context. For example, if there is a countrywide policy directive to support such structures, as in Kenya, the nature of the structure’s work may shift more to the long term. However, in highly volatile contexts such as Libya and Syria during civil war, the nature of the structure’s work shifts more to short-term responses. Three criteria are important to consider when assessing the effectiveness and sustainability of such interim peace structures. The first is that they have a mix of mediation and governance functions; in other words, they are designed to link short- and long-term responses to conflict. The second is that they include key actors from across the conflict

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cleavages, at least those that are relevant for the conflicts they are dealing with. The third is that, if possible (which is not always the case), they involve both state and nonstate actors so as to facilitate the longterm work of building states for peace. Developing Peace Committees What are local or district peace committees? Odendaal defines local peace committees as “an inclusive forum operating at the subnational level (district, municipality, town, or village) that provides a platform for the collective local leadership to accept joint responsibility for building peace in that community.”5 Odendaal examined various forms of local peace committees around the world and found that their activities can be organized into two clusters: (1) early warning and rapid response (including information collection, analysis, response planning, and execution), and (2) fostering social cohesion (including capacity development, joint activities, policy, and advocacy work). The Kenyan National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (NSC) uses a definition of peace committees that focuses on their relevance at various levels and involvement of diverse actors: Peace Committees are community representative institutions that facilitate peace forums at the various governance levels and bring together traditional dispute resolution mechanisms involving elders, women, and religious leaders and modern mechanisms for conflict resolution (security agencies, NGOs).6

A peace committee is a response unit for addressing both direct and structural violence. As it is a network, both state and nonstate and modern and customary actors should be included. Functions of a Peace Committee

Peace committees are characterized by six functions, as summarized in Figure 4.1. We discuss the six functions before focusing on the participation, organizational setup, information sharing, timing, and financing of peace committees.

Response to Emerging Conflict. Many peace committees begin as a response to an immediate crisis and emergent conflict. The network can analyze a situation and, for example, realize that the youth are involved

Figure 4.1 Functions, Roles, and Building Blocks of an Effective Peace Committee (6) Policy and advocacy - Policy awareness - Social contract - Research - Documentation - Policy guidelines

(5) Capacity development - Training (both short and long term, and technical and transformative linked to all sectors) - Events for learning - Exposure visits

(4) Management and systems - Secretariat functions - Governance - Administrative, financial, and logistical systems - Program planning and strategy development, monitoring, evaluation and learning systems - Networking and coordination

(3) Participation and ownership - Mobilizing and organizing public and private participation - Public mobilization, sector sensitization - Partnership development - Accountability and feedback structures - Open days (festivals / peace days)

(2) Strategic issues influencing conflicts (addressing underlying causes of conflict) - Conflict-sensitive transformative development - Rehabilitation of violence affected communities - Change of policy - Infrastructure - Implementation of the agreement (1) Emerging conflict issues and incidents, reactive strategy (responding to immediate causes of conflict) - Structure for analysis and response - Network of interveners (team of mediators for cross-border work, negotiators, researchers, analysts) - Framework for dialogue meeting once a month and as needed during crises, as well as daily to monitor the agreement - Logistical capacity, standby funds for local response

Source: Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, CamelBell Consultants, January 29, 2007, with thanks to Garissa S District Peace Committee and National Steering Committee Kenya. Notes: Box 1 refers to the acute conflict and the approaches to deal with this, often in the short term. Boxes 2 and 6 relate to analyzing the underlying structural causes of the conflict and the longerterm policy work to deal with these. Boxes 3, 4, and 5 are related to further work of the peace committee in order to be able to address acute and structural conflict.

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in crime and violence. This then suggests the need for community policing involving youth, security, and religious leaders. A single event at the market can be handled at a low level. However, if there are multiple events, or events on a regional or national level, the whole assembly will need to be called. The decision to act is made collectively. One or several of the committee member networks implement the action, with the support of the secretariat. The response unit established by a peace committee for a specific problem is generally smaller and a subset of the entire peace committee (box 1 in Figure 4.1). Analysis of Strategic Issues Influencing Conflicts. Those responding

to the conflict must also analyze the underlying structural issues. Strategic conflict analysis can take place in a peace committee during the breathing space between phases of responding to acute conflict in the short term. Long-term analysis involves learning, planning, reflecting, and thinking to understand patterns of conflict and the structural causes of conflict. For example, timelines can be used for planning purposes in conflict analysis workshops. Timelines often show peaks of violence, for example, around an election or a drought. This enables understanding of the patterns in repetition of conflict and the factors that lead to its reoccurrence. Dekha recounted her direct experience of this: In doing the timeline, we realized that a drought reoccurs every five to ten years. Environmental factors interplay: if you are in a desert you can get drought or floods. Another factor leading to violence is elections, a political process. Elections happen every five years. Violence happens before, during, and after elections, as well as during droughts. Therefore, there was a pattern that repeats itself. Then we asked ourselves: “When is the next election, when is the next drought likely to occur?” This helped us decide what to do and where to focus by preparing and talking of prevention.

Preventing every occurrence is impossible since, for example, drought will always come, but context-specific strategic analysis shows patterns, such as around water management or the distribution of relief aid. This can lead to ideas of whom to engage with, for example, providing water user associations with conflict resolution skills to manage the water system and develop schedules of water usage to include those living in the area as well as outsiders coming through. The regional and international level of analysis is also important. In many fragile contexts, where national borders are artificial constructs from colonial

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times, conflict is not neatly contained by state lines, which calls for an analysis of conflict across international borders that may occur at the local level but with links to different national and international dynamics (box 2 in Figure 4.1). Participation and Ownership. A peace committee also needs to

engage questions of public participation and mobilization. This can be in the format of a peace festival or in another format, where the committee can show accountability and inform the public about what it is doing and how it works. The goal is for the public to feel like the peace committee belongs to them and responds to their needs and priorities (box 3 in Figure 4.1). Management and Systems. To have an immediate and a longer-term response, it is necessary to have the backup of a management board and secretariat—a peace support unit; otherwise, the response system is weak. As Dekha highlighted in an interview regarding her work supporting the Garissa Peace Committee: Through a discussion with the committee members, I realized that you can have a very good rapid response, and contribution to policy, but then your administrative financial side can be a problem and pull the organization down. For example, religious leaders who are mediators are not accountants or bookkeepers. They will be told: “Okay, we need a response, here is a vehicle, take it and then go to that village.” The religious leaders will take the vehicle to the gas station, but will not remember to pick up the receipt for fuel. The unrecorded expenses accumulate over time. The religious leaders will say: “You all know we have been there!” However, the accountant does not know. It may be a response unit of religious leaders, women, or elders, but there should be others such as administrators and bookkeepers to accompany them, so that they can carry out their role. Otherwise, they will not write narratives or reports about the situation and then the question will come: “Where is the report? Where are the pictures?” They will respond: “For goodness sake, I was putting out the fire, I was not interested in taking pictures!” In this way, there is no proof that they did this.

To be effective, a management board is needed from a legal standpoint. Management and operational expertise are required to decide on vision, governance, and length in office, programmatic decisions, and financing. The peace committee also needs a secretariat as a support unit,

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which is often made up of people who are either volunteers or employees (box 4 in Figure 4.1 and level 3 in Figure 4.2). Capacity Development. A peace committee needs to invest in training

and capacity building. On the one hand, this is needed to build up and maintain high-quality staff for the peace committee. On the other hand, training capacity is also often one of the responses a committee may use, for example, as outlined above, with water user associations. Training can happen through workshops as well as on-the-job training and through mentoring (box 5 in Figure 4.1). The skills and mind-set one needs to train are discussed in more depth in Chapter 6 and Part 2.

Policy and Advocacy. Strategic conflict analysis often leads to insights about what has to change at the policy level on specific issues, such as around water use, distribution of relief aid, or land policy rights, and about which policy frameworks are needed to facilitate the establishment of peace committees (box 6 in Figure 4.1 and Chapter 5).

An effective peace committee has interlinkages between these six functions. Often the effectiveness or legitimacy of peace committees suffer when too much focus is placed on one function to the detriment of the others. According to Dekha, often the problem is a lack of balance between these functions: If the organization becomes too effective in their administrative and financial work and they have an efficient NGO style, without a good rapid response, then people working in the peace committee will also not feel they belong there. They will say: “Oh, this thing has just become another NGO. The good old days when we could just rush off and we didn’t have to go through all these books, we were much more efficient!”

Participation and Setup of a Peace Committee

Peace committees are good as political platforms, so everybody wants to be on one. However, the role, function, and contribution of potential members should determine who becomes a member. In Kenya, the district peace committee coordinator, the chair, and the government have a say in membership. Participation is upon invitation by the district peace committee chair, together with the coordinator and the members. They invite actors to sit and listen and see if they are ready to become part of the

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peace committee system and then allow the actor to decide. Some types of members are also listed in the standard guidelines that the Kenyan government has written.7 Typical members of a Kenyan peace committee are religious mediators, elders, peacebuilding NGOs, youth for peace, women for peace, representatives of local authorities, community policing, divisional peace committees, livestock market councils, members of the District Security Committee (DSC) and Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP), and district education officers (DEOs). The standard guidelines used in Kenya developed out of experiences such as Wajir (see Chapter 8) and were then improved over time. To develop the standard guidelines, people presented several examples, the commonality between them was found, and this helped set the principles for developing the structure of a peace committee. The structure designs the types of intervention, which should be led by the needs on the ground. This approach was called the collaborative framework and named the Peace and Development Committee. Dekha explained the legal setup: We were asked whether it was a nongovernmental organization, to which we replied: “No, it’s not nongovernmental because almost half of the committee are government, coming from the political field, members of parliament and ministers, or the District Security Committee. So, it’s a quasi-government/civil society/private sector/ religious organization. It is all of these things coming together!” A lot of people had difficulties in understanding this, for example, when registering it as an NGO for legal purposes the government officials immediately said: “Okay, we are not part of this!” This is why the standard guidelines became useful.

Peace committees have different governance structures and components compared to normal organizations. It is useful to think of them as a system made up of four levels or components: (1) the peace committee assembly or “network of networks”; (2) the response units, put together by the peace committee, made up of a subset of all the represented networks; (3) the board and secretariat, taking on the function of management; and (4) the member groups or networks, which normally choose their representative to send to the committee (Figure 4.2). The first two levels are discussed below, and the fourth level is discussed in the section “Coordination Below and Above Local Peace Committees.” The first level of the peace committee is the level of the full committee assembly (large dotted-line circle in Figure 4.2). The assembly is not just a legislature because it gives programmatic direction and responds actively. Another way to look at it is that in a given area, the district peace committee is a constituent peace assembly. The assembly represents the

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Figure 4.2 Setup of Local or District Peace Committee

Board

Secretariat

1. Network of networks of peace practitioners acts as the constituent assembly of the Peace Committee 2. The Peace Committee can form a sub-network of mediatiors for a specific conflict 3. Board and Secretariat 4. Network of similar actors, for example: Business Actors Women’s Groups Religious Actors Government Security Local Government Tribal Leaders

broader peace constituency, it is a network of networks, and it is represented in the peace committee by actors who share a vision of a peaceful society. The peace constituency should be as inclusive as possible, encompassing people of different genders, sectors, and technical expertise. It is a structure for information gathering and dissemination and for conflict response and mitigation. The overall committee agrees on a framework and comes together regularly, for example, once a month, to do joint conflict analysis. Each sector contributes what it knows of the conflict, creating a space for analysis and program planning to look at the context, who should respond, and what should be done. If the assembly comes together, they can analyze and design a response: a network of interveners, a team of mediators for cross-cleavage engagement, negotiators, researchers, or analysts, as required. The second level of a peace committee is the level of the response unit, a subset of the members of the peace committee for a specific

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conflict (zigzag line in Figure 4.2). For instance, in a case related to cattle rustling, a religious mediation unit, elders, local authorities, government security, and livestock market traders may make up a response unit. If there is an incident with youth and crime, the district education office, the women for peace, the community policing, the youth for peace, peacebuilding NGOs, local authorities, and the District Security Committee may get involved. Generally, a response unit focuses on short-term emergent conflict, but a response unit may also be put together to deal with a specific longer-term policy question. To give an idea of how such a response unit works, Dekha provided the following example: There was a specific case where a criminal act of an individual threatened to escalate into societal conflict. The role of the women was to work on all levels to bring in youth, community policing, human rights groups, and civil society to hold the government machinery (hospitals, judiciary, police) accountable so that all sectors worked together effectively. The community was asked to exercise restraint, including the religious side, who were not permitted to enforce Islamic law on the case as the victim and perpetrator were from different religious backgrounds. Extra sensitivity is required in such cases as in a divided society the acts of individuals are interpreted through the lens of religion, culture, or economics and people respond more emotionally. This means an investigation needs to be handled across different divisions and the outcome has to be acceptable and verifiable to both sides. The fact that the women recognized this and took initiative showed that the system worked, avoiding escalation. The judiciary realized that if such cases are not handled very carefully, they could become communal riots, escalating into religious or ethnic riots. The fact that there was restraint by all key actors shows the growth of an organization. It shows that if the system works for an individual (protecting both the victim and the perpetrator and bringing the perpetrator to justice), then the collective are not called upon. But if the community feels that the police are covering up, or they might not get their justice through this system, then they’ll go and look for other forms of justice, which can be very bad. I was sitting there, I didn’t do anything and the system was working. I was very happy.

Communication and Sharing Information

It is very important that the peace committee can engage in constructive dialogue. As Dekha pointed out:

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Sometimes at the first meeting there will be an outburst of anger and blame cast at each other. However, if people have compassionate hearts, they will listen and take responsibility to improve and make changes: “Okay, having heard what you said, we’re sorry. We’ve made these changes.” The peace committee is a technical and transformative space and there has to be a willingness to change. If people see analysis as an accusation, it can be a problem.

The different members of networks that form the peace committee assembly are independent, with their own processes. The way the state security committee deals with information, for example, is very much as a closed information system. The other actors, including religious leaders, elders, women, and businesspeople, also have their own ways. However, there is the space (level one, discussed above) where an open information system is created collectively. Whatever an actor (e.g., District Security Committee, religious leaders, women’s groups, elders) feels it can share publicly is shared and analyzed together to develop strategies. A challenge sometimes arises when a group sends only junior staff. Dekha explained one way of dealing with this: When a group only sends junior staff to the local peace committee meetings, the other group may feel this is a sign of a lack of respect. In societies where people look at personalities, they do not see the institution. I told them: “You have to take minutes on everything, and let them have the minutes. By documenting it, giving it to them and reviewing it at the next meeting they will become responsible, because things are on record and this is public accountability. It’s as powerful as them being present. So don’t worry if the junior officer comes! Maybe next time they will send more senior officers!”

For this reason, the secretary taking minutes should have administrative skills and a conflict analysis background because the minutes act as a distilled and organized analysis and strategy development space. Time and Funding

Ideally, peace committees should meet regularly (e.g., every month), whether there is a problem or not. When there is a crisis, they should meet much more often. Self-funding of the peace committees increases members’ ownership. In the Kenyan case, the peace committee is financed by each side and they also have a collective pool of funds. They meet every month, and the meetings last about two to three hours.

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Coordination Below and Above Local Peace Committees

Local peace committees are not stand-alone structures. Peace committees can be established at different levels, from the village level to the national level. In Kenya, for example, they are established at the local and district levels. There is a risk here: if the districts include different ethnopolitical constituencies without central coordination, the danger is that the peace committees become linked to one clan and they start competing against each other. The peace committees turn into war committees. Therefore, it is important to create peace committees at different levels, always making sure they cross the key conflict cleavages of society rather than reinforce them. To be effective, they also require coordination below the local peace committee level (i.e., within each network represented in the local peace committee, level four in Figure 4.2) as well as above (i.e., district and national levels). The interdependent network of these formal and informal structures and capacities for peace in a country is sometimes referred to as “infrastructures for peace.”8 We explore the level below first, then end this section with some ideas about coordination at the level above. At the sublocal committee level, there is already a lot of coordination within one component of a local peace committee. In the case of Wajir, the women for peace come from different backgrounds, thus crossing some of the potential societal cleavages. If they are successful, they can help the other networks in the peace committee cross cleavages, and the peace committee can then help the rest of society do this. A women’s network that crosses societal cleavages also has the potential to be an effective and impartial co-mediator in a specific, acute conflict. Dekha explained how to coordinate different approaches and styles: If you take the example of women and look holistically in terms of the different components of the long-term sustainability of women’s programs, it seems like there are four kinds: traditional, Western, Islamic, and youth. The key asset is mothers who have the traditional cultural knowledge. They bring the knowledge of how conflict resolution, transformation, and mediation are done through a cultural resource and a policy point of view. The social contract is developed through using the cultural resources. They are the pioneers of the peace work. Complementing these women are the Western-educated women. They become an added cultural resource in bringing in other education. Over time we realized that Islamiceducated women, who are teachers in the madrasa, also bring a cultural approach. We talk about the English-speaking women and the

Medium-Term Responses

Arabic-speaking women. In order for us to sustain this, we have another key resource of an intergenerational women’s network. We are now getting young interns, fresh from university so that we can have the intergenerational link of the young and the old. For us to sustain peace work, we have to create bridges between the traditional, Western- and Arab-educated women, old and young. In order for them to grow holistically as a group, we are giving them an educational component that comprises the traditional, the Islamic, and the Western. This model comes from the women’s peace movement in the north of Kenya, and we hope it will influence the mediation councils, which in some cases currently consist of only religious leaders, while others are only cultural. In order for mediation councils to look holistically in terms of their own institutional evolution, we should have different components and ways of bridging them to address the whole. The Wajir Women for Peace was the basis of the peace movement in Kenya. Mama Fatuma Mohamed Mire and her women mediators had no secular education, but they had some Islamic and a lot of cultural knowledge. They met on the fifth of every month, whether there was a problem or not. Their structure comprised approximately thirteen women mediators from Wajir town and the villages. They had a management committee, who also doubled up as mediators. The recording and writing were carried out by the formally educated women, but the thinking came from the elderly women, who were the bridge. Later, the women peacebuilders collected monthly contributions of 500 shillings (seven to eight U.S. dollars) per person from forty women. Using the money that they raised, they constructed an office as a women’s space so that they could undertake peace work and other issues that were important to them. Mama Fatuma is nearly eighty, and she told them: “I’m old, but I want you guys to take over from us since we are aging and need continuity in this work. You can do this as a team to enhance our peace, development, and security.” She advocated for a cohesive team of civil servants, madrasa (Islamic), and secular teachers, nurses, and businesswomen to work harmoniously.9

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Coordination above the level of local peace committees can be carried out by district peace committees or higher; there may also be national-level forms of coordination (see Chapter 5). An interesting situation is the need for coordination related to a specific conflict. An entry point for different structures, initiatives, and institutions to work together for peace related to a specific conflict is the idea that each group has a specific approach. All these approaches make vital contributions, but they all have limitations. Where one group’s work ends,

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another group’s work begins. This requires various groups to take up different roles throughout a specific process. The phases and sequencing of peace processes are important, with different actors responding to the problem by making a unique contribution. Within a given conflict system, an institution may need to coordinate and incorporate this, although this does not mean that that institution needs implementation capacity. Instead, it has to create the common space in which these different institutions, organizations, and groups can come together for information sharing, joint analysis, but not necessarily joint action. The Concerned Citizens for Peace described in Chapter 11 is an example of such an initiative seeking to coordinate efforts for peace from the local to the national level. In summary, peace committees are constituted as a “network of networks” of actors to analyze societal tensions early on. They are prepared to send out response units and to work on structural conflicts. Each actor shares a permitted amount of information, and the constituent peace assembly shares information and analysis as a basis for response. Peace committees are special because they are generally made up of state and nonstate actors, with the nonstate actors typically being traditional (elders, religious actors) and nontraditional (youth, women’s groups) actors. Local peace committees are governed differently from other organizations. A steering “constituent assembly” may also be involved in response activities (i.e., this is unlike the typical separation between the steering committee and the executive, operational staff). Joint Asset Development in the Kenya-Somalia Border Area The second type of medium-term peace structure that we explore is socioeconomic forms of collaboration, such as a joint asset development committee. The following passages are focused on the question of cross-border asset development between Kenya and Somalia. The example shows how peace work can happen even when actors deny there is a conflict and are not ready for mediation. This conflict prevention work allows cross-cleavage communities to develop so as to minimize the chances of violent conflicts arising. It helps to address the root causes of structural conflict by creating interdependencies between communities so that they can respond peacefully when a situation, such as drought or elections, occurs that could lead to violence. This structural entry point is used when there is no visible,

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direct violence, but there are hidden underlying tensions and mistrust. In such cases, work can focus on comanaged service-delivery projects, which include the development of public assets, for example, a water point, a borehole, or a school. The procedure of establishing jointly developed, owned, and managed assets leads to trust and structures of cooperation. It often needs to be facilitated by a third party. Dekha explained how this was done in the Kenya-Somalia cross-border region: If you tell them a mediation team needs to be created, they will offer resistance by denying that there is a conflict and question the need for a mediation team. However, if this is put to them by asking: “But how about water, health care, schools, or livestock markets?” then there is an entry point. For example, you can create the livestock market through an economic avenue, with a management system that is jointly managed. This builds relationships and creates mediation capacity as a confidence-building measure, without explicitly naming it as such. You are doing something together and then in the process people learn and trust grows.10 At first you discuss issues around the public asset, even regarding the venue, committee membership, and contract. This will be conflict-laden and energy-draining. However, confidence slowly builds if you persist and ask: “Okay, who do you think should get the contract? What sort of a contractor? What sort of process?” More conflict will arise, but if you stay engaged and transform the conflict positively by slowly accompanying the group, you will finally end up with a product that is a physical reminder of the work together, as well as a structure, system, and procedures. The public participation in the decisionmaking and the visibility of all groups is really critical.

Kenya and Somalia have a 700-km border, and through the support of the US government and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), public assets have been developed on each side of the border, co-owned by Kenyans and Somalis, because these peripheral areas are minimally governed by the central state. Different partnerships were created between communities along the Kenya-Somalia border, including Mandera, El Wak, Diff, and Dhobley (see Figure 7.1 later). For example, if one side has a hospital, the other side has a school. There is not enough money for two schools, and in any case, having two schools may support divisions in the society. If a school is built on the Kenyan side because the Kenyan government can provide teachers, a boarding wing is also built so that the Somali children can use this school. Then the water borehole is built on the Somali side, where the natural resources are better utilized. Those who own livestock move to

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Somalia and this is comanaged by Kenyans and Somalis. In this way a symbiotic relationship between the two countries is created.11 This form of peace practice sometimes also calls for engagement with nonstate armed actors or people who are close to them. The local groups who do this are often accused of supporting the nonstate armed actor. Dekha highlighted how some responded to this critique: “Listen, we don’t choose who comes to the border. We have seen UNOSOM 1 (United Nations Operations in Somalia), we have seen different warlords, UNOSOM 2, we’ve seen all of these. So, what are we supposed to do? Does it matter whether it is UNOSOM, Al-Ittihad, Al-Shabaab, or warlord X? We’ve seen them all!” Those accusing the people in the periphery listened and agreed that locations should be labeled in such a way that they were unrelated to the names of armed groups, for example, the community hospital, rather than the Al-Shabaab or Transitional Federal Government (TFG) hospital. Schools were constructed and water points were rehabilitated and monitored by the public. Groups such as Al-Shabaab, armed warlords, UNOSOM, and TFG will come and go, but the community remains, so it is important to develop the capacity of the community by building confidence and sharing public assets.

The challenge is often that one can find a way of working with such actors at the local level, but it is then not understood at the national level. The community level focuses on pragmatic approaches across the border, whereas the national level has a different set of priorities. One way of trying to convince national actors is to argue that the military can help to “win” the war, but to “win” the peace, symbiotic relationships are needed, developed incrementally by working together on socioeconomic issues, slowly building trust and confidence. Linkages The development of links between short-, medium-, and long-term peace work is the centerpiece of medium-term peace practice. One of the medium-short links is that the peace committee can facilitate the establishment of a mediation team—using existing networks to put together the right type and composition of mediators rapidly. Response is therefore much faster than if a mediation team has to be established from scratch. A second medium-short link is that the peace committee can work on analysis and more structural and gover-

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nance questions, thereby minimizing the need for mediation, because there are fewer reasons for conflicts to occur in the first place. The establishment of peace structures is a form of conflict prevention. One of the medium-long links is for peace structures to aggregate insights about what is causing conflict and feed that information into the longer-term work of adapting the national policies, laws, and constitution, thereby easing the work of medium-term structures. A second medium-long link is to provide insights on what facilitates peace, for example, what are the core elements of a peace committee that can be integrated into a national policy framework for peace? A third mediumlong link is the development of expertise and networks of people. The committees are a place where people from across conflict cleavages collaborate, practicing in a small and relatively safe environment for the type of peace work that is needed on the national level. They are also a source of developing human expertise and attitudes about how to deal with conflict that benefit long-term peace work. The focus on establishing functioning interim peace structures with links to short- and long-term peace practice is one of the ultimate goals of peace practice. It is a way to work mediators “out of a job”—to make society function in a more sustainable, fair manner without continuous intervention by mediators, or with clear roles for a mediator supported by legitimate and functioning governance structures, making the context less fragile.12 When exploring the types of structures that can take on this medium-term peace practice work in different contexts around the world, it is important to be flexible in one’s analysis; they may grow from different sectors (e.g., economic, political, security) and take on different shapes. The determining factors are the mix of mediation and governance functions and that they cross conflict cleavages. The mix of mediation and governance (shown in Figure 2.2 earlier) can change in a flexible manner depending on the fragility of the context. In a more stable environment, the medium-term structures focus more on the long-term work. When the context is more volatile and fragile, the medium-term structures swing toward the short-term work, focusing on supporting short-term responses. Notes

1. Leach, Preventing Violence; Mason and Siegfried, “Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) in Peace Processes”; Mason, Why Security Sector Reform Has to Be Negotiated.

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2. Odendaal, A Crucial Link. 3. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, “Libyan Mayors Hold Historic Meeting.” Ghassan Salamé, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), addressing the mayors at a meeting organized by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, pointed out that “Libya needs strong local governance in order to build a strong national government.” 4. Point mentioned by Sara Hellmüller, email to Simon Mason, July 17, 2018, based on research of local peace initiatives in Syria. See Hajjar et al., Perceptions of Governance; swisspeace, Inside Syria; Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Local Governance Inside Syria. 5. Odendaal, A Crucial Link, 6. 6. National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management, Peace Building and Conflict Management Directorate, Republic of Kenya, “Peace Committees.” 7. National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management (NSC) Secretariat, Standard Guidelines and Terms of Reference. 8. Kumar, “Building National ‘Infrastructures for Peace.’” 9. The last two paragraphs, including quotes from Fatuma Mohamed Mire, were kindly checked with her by Nuria Abdi and confirmed in an email to Simon Mason, May 15, 2018. 10. This is also explained by contact theory, discussed in Chapter 6: joint action where the experience is perceived as being positive supports relationship and trust building. 11. USAID, PACT, and Act, Change, Transform, Peace in East and Central Africa II Program. 12. Point mentioned by Meredith Preston McGhie, interview with Simon Mason, June 10, 2016, Oberhofen.

5 Long-Term Responses: Toward a Peaceful State for All

work toward a peaceful state for all citizens? We explore the nature of the state related to fragile contexts, how to harmonize customary and modern law, and how long-term responses to conflict involve transforming policies that fuel conflict and establishing national policies to facilitate short- and medium-term peace work. The motivation for this long-term work is clearly articulated in Dekha’s acceptance speech for the Right Livelihood Award:

In this chapter, we focus on the question: How can we

As I and others continue to work for peace in Kenya and share our learning with the rest of the world, I am too aware that the underlying issues of structural violence that contribute to violent conflict still remain unresolved. It takes time. I have learned to take each issue, understand it, and transform it. I have learned to question what is seen or understood as normal. For example, livestock raiding, I learned, is not just a normal traditional form of restocking but a political and economic strategy, for example, as an election strategy to destabilize a situation so that the population does not register its voters or does not have access to voting. Raiding a village, taking away people’s lives and livestock, is taking away their rights to have and control their own lives and livelihood. Such rights are a basic human need, the foundation to life. It is not normal—it is a crime.1

Dekha’s experiences and insights on long-term responses to conflict in fragile contexts provide innovative perspectives on the peacebuilding versus statebuilding debate.2 Interpeace summarizes this as follows: “In this sense, state-building and peace-building are potentially contradictory 63

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processes—the former requiring the consolidation of governmental authority, the latter involving its moderation through compromise and consensus.”3 We present elements of this debate below before discussing how Dekha’s approach provides ideas on how to deal with these challenges. Statebuilding Can Undermine Peace States are needed for peace because they can provide public security and services and they represent units of organization in the international system. The statebuilding process, however, can induce armed conflict.4 Statebuilding seems especially conflict inducing if: (1) the state is controlled by a small segment of the elite, at the expense of other elites (horizontal tensions) or the rest of society (vertical tensions), with insufficient inclusion of a diverse set of actors in the statebuilding process.5 This may lead to human rights abuses, extraction of resources from the population without providing services, and discriminatory practices against an ethnopolitical, geographical, or religious group. (2) The problems mentioned above seem especially likely if the central state gains powers too quickly and if state borders are leftovers of colonial borders that are artificial and lack legitimacy. (3) Furthermore, statebuilding is often conflict inducing if it is externally driven by the agendas of other countries, for example, related to a resource exploitation agenda or legitimized by the analysis that “weak, fragile, or failed states” are a threat to the interests of other countries.6 This has often resulted in political (e.g., the West imposing a liberal, democratic Weberian state), security (e.g., military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya), and economic (e.g., resource extraction deals or programs to foster market economy, such as through structural adjustment programs) interventions that have largely failed.7 Reasons for this failure seem to stem from the interventions’ lack of respect for context, culture, and historical dynamics; the technocratic, top-down approach; confusing use of terms and policies; faulty analysis; lack of criteria of what constitutes a “successful” or “failed” state; and lack of capacity for the task at hand.8 Peacebuilding Can Undermine Statebuilding Peacebuilding involving nonstate actors is often necessary to minimize some of the problems of the state-centric approach. Local peacebuilding initiatives, however, may also be ineffective or problematic from a state-

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building perspective, including for the following reasons: (1) they often rely on local, customary approaches to governance, for example, using collective responsibility, hereditary forms of leadership, and treating men and women differently. These customary approaches may contradict the central state’s rule of law, separation of powers, and forms of democratic representation. (2) Local peacebuilding initiatives may also be susceptible to corruption and abuse by a small elite and become politically compromised or may represent only a partial sector of society; (3) they may lack capacity and resources and adequate policy frameworks to work effectively; (4) they are often limited in effectiveness in the face of large-scale armed conflicts, cross-border conflicts, or conflicts instigated by powerful outsiders; and (5) they sometimes focus heavily on managing conflict rather than dealing with the underlying causes, with an emphasis on short-term solutions that ignore or impede long-term policy transformation.9 Complementarity of Statebuilding and Peacebuilding The arguments listed above indicate some steps forward: statebuilding requires a greater focus on consensus building, inclusive political processes, and national ownership; peacebuilding requires a greater focus on linking local peacebuilding initiatives with national processes as well as considering the impacts of short-term efforts on long-term processes.10 Although statebuilding and peacebuilding are not the same and should not be conflated, they are potentially complementary if they follow a consensus and contextualized approach.11 On the basis of its participatory action research in the Somali region, Interpeace, for example, suggested that “the challenge for both national and international peacemakers is to situate reconciliation firmly within the context of state-building, while employing state-building as a platform for the development of mutual trust and lasting reconciliation.”12 Working together with local researcher-practitioners in the Somali region, Interpeace found that such a consensus orientation calls for an inclusive, incremental step-by-step approach, where the organization of peace meetings was often linked to efforts at strengthening local governance systems.13 In the Somali context, locally led peace practice was found to be more consensus-oriented, pragmatic, and legitimate as compared to internationally driven peace initiatives focusing on reestablishing the central state.14 Indeed: “Succumbing to quick-fix approaches that favour statebuilding at the expense of peacebuilding undercuts traditional

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conflict resolution systems and local governance initiatives, undermines grassroots ownership, and reinforces the general public’s anxieties about a return to an imposed and authoritarian government.”15 Ken Menkhaus expands on this idea of putting consensus building and reconciliation at the center of peacebuilding and statebuilding in the concept of a “mediated state” that was used to explain state-nonstate relations in early modern Europe. He describes the idea of a mediated state: “central governments with very limited power rely on a diverse range of local authorities to execute core functions of government and ‘mediate’ relations between local communities and the state.”16 Terms referring to similar phenomena include negotiating statehood, legal pluralism, bottom-up statebuilding, and hybrid political orders.17 Despite the problems with hybrid state and nonstate peacebuilding and governance efforts, Menkhaus sees no alternatives in fragile contexts. He argues that the key debate is not about statebuilding versus peacebuilding. Rather, the question is whether hybrid state-nonstate systems are an interim, best-of-the-bad-options form of governance used until the central state develops or if it is unlikely that a democratic, effective, and legitimate state will develop in the periphery in the long term, and thus this hybrid form of governance remains the only viable option. Furthermore, he argues: “In a mediated state, however, there is no contradiction between improving the governance capacity of non-state authorities in border areas and simultaneous efforts to build formal state capacity. One is part of a short to medium-term governance and peace-building strategy, the other is part of the long-term state-building project which, under the right circumstances, may eventually displace mediated governance.”18 His analysis, based on the work of Dekha and her colleagues, highlights how short-, medium-, and long-term peace and statebuilding can be complementary rather than competitive processes. Dekha’s experiences fit with the ideas of those who argue that hybrid state-nonstate peacebuilding and statebuilding are needed. Explicitly linking short-, medium-, and long-term efforts and involving state actors in the medium-term institutions minimize the risk of such interim peace structures undermining the central state, since state actors in the local peace structure can veto anything they see as too threatening to statebuilding. This pragmatic approach to state-nonstate governance requires clarifying the interface between state and nonstate systems of justice and dealing with conflict. A lack of clarity between state and nonstate spheres results in a “predatory sphere,” where individuals are not held accountable to the state or the nonstate, customary system. The result may be violent conflict.

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The consensus orientation is important to improve mutually constructive relations within and between state and society—the lack of which is a definitional component of fragility. This insight is highlighted in the third SMALL guideline on consensus-oriented statebuilding, Shrinking the Predatory Sphere, and is illustrated in Figure 5.1. The Predatory Sphere and Individual Versus Collective Cultures Violence in fragile contexts can be understood using a framework of the different spheres of authority. There is the civic sphere, which is the state, where authority is governed by civil law as represented by the central state. Then there is the traditional sphere, where authority is exercised through customary or traditional law. An unclear interface between these two spheres and the selective application of civic, state, Figure 5.1 From the Predatory Sphere to Collaborative Governance

State: Formal civic sphere, lacking delivery of services and security

Predatory Sphere: Selective application of civic and customary law

Nonstate: Customary sphere, “modern” civil society often absent

Collaborative Sphere: Nonstate: State: Harmonization of state Customary sphere, Formal civic sphere, and nonstate active “modern” civil legitimate and effective governance processes society (e.g., organized delivery of services women and youth) and security

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or traditional law creates another sphere in between. Dekha called this the predatory sphere and described it as follows: The “predatory sphere” is where authority follows “bandit law” and there is a selective application of civic law. During crises, a lot of people retreat from the civic sphere, which comprises courts and the police, either back to the traditional or predatory sphere, for example, using armed guards. This is a very dangerous sphere and any one of us can join that predatory sphere at a time of stress. Half of the traditional sphere has also joined the predatory sphere, moving from ministers to traditionalists, misusing powers as a chief or using violence to make gains.

The concept of the predatory sphere is related to the question of individual versus collective cultures, as the customary sphere is built around collective community identities, and the idea of the modern democratic state is built around the notion of equal rights for all individuals protected by the state. Some people therefore argue a modern state is only possible if the notion of individual responsibility and accountability exists. Dekha responded to this assertion: The criminal act of an individual can lead to a societal conflict, and a societal conflict can express itself as an individual act, or an act of organized crime. The challenge we have is that the criminal act of an individual is accepted as representing a group. Therefore, the individual never takes responsibility. When there is a death the community pays the blood money. Whereas this might help in lowering the temperature of the violence at the community level, in the long run, people do not feel the heat or take responsibility. The protection of the community lengthens this culture of impunity and is counterproductive. That collective sense when harnessed toward peace is good, and the community should be able to move from the protection of individuals to the protection of us all. I think there is a fine balance between individual and collective understanding, especially in a divided society. If the state mechanisms work for everyone, then the collective group becomes irrelevant and people stay as individuals because their individual rights are protected. When the state works in the interests of a certain elite or social group, then everybody goes back to the box of their social group to counterbalance that dominance and protect their individual rights within the communal rights. This is when the ethnicity or the religious aspect becomes relevant. When the group act then becomes institutionalized, it poses questions. Collective responsibility can work positively or negatively and you really need continuous navigation and analysis of it.

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Harmonizing Customary and Modern Law The goal of peace practice in fragile contexts in the long term is to clarify the interface between modern and customary law rather than to get rid of customary law. This also involves grappling with the question of how to deal with two types of customary laws that may clash. Dekha explained how the challenges were dealt with in Kenya with the Garissa and Modogashe Declaration developed from the Al Fatah Declaration (discussed in Chapter 8): The Modogashe Declaration was signed in 2001, but has been constantly revised to deal with new dynamics of the conflict and the individual cultural context. 19 A large part of the country is made up of one large pastoralist belt. The government of Kenya decided to tease out from the Al Fatah Declaration and its procedures whatever could be used in the other pastoralist areas. All the peace committees were called together at a place called Modogashe, which is an area between these two belts, to create some principles, standard processes, and procedures for dealing with conflicts, including livestock raiding and deaths. They decided what should be done based on traditional customary law rather than the formal state law. The constitutional law says that when you commit a crime you do so against the state. People were asking: “How can you harmonize crimes against the state as well as crimes against the community and the family?” If you arrest a person, who is in prison for ten to twenty years, the day you release them the issue is as fresh as the day he or she went in. Therefore, the government wanted to ask: “How do we blend Kenyan constitutional law and this traditional role that people have in their psyche of a societal group conflict rather than an individual criminal act? How should it be dealt with? What are the procedures when a man or a woman gets killed?” Customary law can work hand in hand with formal, national law. Elements such as collective punishment or the principle of “guilty if you cannot prove the contrary” can be validated as interim measures in the context of the law of the land. Agreements and laws cannot be judged as “good” or “bad” independent of the context in which they are made. There are problems with collective punishment, but in dealing with the cattle raiding problem in Wajir, it was accepted by all the relevant actors as the best solution. The violence decreased and the clans and their elders became part of the system, rather than fighting the governmental authorities. Of course, to a certain extent a local mechanism and a national mechanism may contradict each other, so it has to be clear what system is to be used when, and how. For example, the three-day period

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stipulated in the Al Fatah Declaration is a way of saying: “You do it your way if you can. If not, we will use another system.” The area in which the Al Fatah Declaration was first developed was a Muslim pastoral society. The procedure of arresting livestock was agreed here and it was a normal process observed during the British colonial time, which was blended with Islamic culture. If a woman is killed you pay fifty camels, and if a man is killed you pay a hundred camels as blood money, which is acceptable within the Somali Muslim culture. By using ideas from the Al Fatah Declaration, and broadening them to include further principles that were based on customary law from a wider context, we came up with the Modogashe Declaration. The Modogashe Declaration was contested by the pastoralists from areas that were non-Muslim: “Sorry, for you Muslims, the value of a woman is half the value of a man, but for us it is of equal value.”20 So this Modogashe Declaration was very much geared toward the culture of the Muslim pastoralist in terms of human life, omitting the Nilotic Christian and African traditionalist customs. The government realized that such clauses would not work, so they moved the Modogashe Declaration to Garissa to be discussed and revised so that the intercultural blockages could be removed. They understood that policy could not be standardized and it could not result in a blanket law. It is normal practice that policy is standardized, as every citizen of Kenya has to be treated equally before the law, but in the case of customary practices, this is not possible. These results that have come out of practice have been put into a document that can be used by the community and the state. It takes time to create standards and at the same time keep the principles and procedures “fitting” to the area. The constitution does not mention all of these issues, but you have to deal with them because you cannot take such cases to the courts.

The experience in Kenya shows how one can take specific agreements from different local contexts and tease out the general principles. These principles can be used to create a backbone of an agreement that can then be applied and adapted to a new context.21 The other key lesson is to create procedures that allow for customary practices, but if they do not work, then the modern state system kicks in. A second challenge is when two different collective but clashing cultures are involved. Dekha gave an example and explained how to deal with this: According to the Modogashe/Garissa Declaration, you have to negotiate the way forward if you have two different cultures involved in the conflict to bridge the worldviews. For instance,

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there is a town called Desyuno, which acts as a melting pot for two communities, the Amima and Nurin. When the Nilotic group raids the Cushitic group, especially during rites of passage, the government finds it very difficult. The Desyuno Peace Committee became familiar with the season for the Moran rite of passage. The Samburu culture is that during this time Morans cannot eat food from their home, are in the bush, and are not supposed to be in physical contact with women. The committee said: “We are forcing these young men to steal. The women are the ones who cook. If they cannot be in their own home and cannot meet women, then they must get food from other sources, which means stealing from someone else. This culture is going to lead to raiding every year in the season of the rites of passage.” Some NGOs had kitchens and the Catholic Church started putting kitchens in the open where the Morans passed by so that they could eat without stealing. In a similar way, people asked: “Can we find alternative ways to allow them to get livestock and allow them to marry, without raiding? If it has to be a challenge, can we look for alternative options? Can it be a sport, like a running race, where they get a prize that will allow them to go and buy the cows? Are there alternative solutions to eat and prove your manhood?” Organizations were looking for pragmatic ways of transforming the culture, without demonizing it. The Samburu district tried to find creative solutions to these cultural issues.

The Modogashe/Garissa Agreements were attempts to gradually move from a district-specific agreement (Al Fatah) to a more regional approach. This entailed a continual balancing act between seeking standards that were acceptable for different cultures and respecting them. Creating alternatives for the Samburus’ rite of passage to manhood that did not require cattle raiding illustrates how this can be done. The need for young men to go out and test their courage and strength is not denied, but ways are sought to do it without impinging on the cultures of neighboring tribes. In some cases, the Garissa Declaration also highlighted the need for intercultural negotiations to deal with conflicts rather than prescribing the precise procedures. Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages When Transforming Land Conflicts

Land conflicts are typical in fragile contexts, and the different responses to them are illustrative of the SMALL Framework. In the short term, the immediate concern is that the violence has to be

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stopped. Mediation may be needed, as well as security services to bring individuals to court, to avoid the individual crime escalating into an intercommunity conflict. In the medium term, peace committees may be needed to maintain and build social cohesion and prepare people for policy changes. Even if longer-term structural problems are causing tensions in relationships, once these relational tensions exist, they have to be worked on to allow structural changes to happen. If the relational aspect is not dealt with, there may be resistance to any structural changes. In the long term, the structural problems, such as related to land policy, have to be addressed to prevent conflict from reoccurring. This requires longer-term processes involving another broader set of actors. It may even require processes on the national level related to the organization of land property rights. An example is the type of long-term policy work that started after the success of the short- and medium-term work in dealing with an acute conflict in Garissa in October 2010. At first sight, the conflict was a contestation over ownership of urban land. Two individuals both claimed a piece of land belonged to them, but this grew into two clans contesting the political ownership of the town of Garissa, which was related to contestation over economic and political assets before the upcoming general election of 2012, which would determine who would become governor and have the upper hand. Dekha recounted the long-term response to this case:22 What I found very interesting was that the Northeastern Provincial Commissioner, James Ole Serian, took things a step further after the violence had calmed down.23 He looked at it in a very basic way, which is sometimes good because you can put in different layers of politics and it becomes very complicated. When we talked on the phone, he said: “Although this is a relational problem between the social groups, the root cause of it is actually policy. Therefore, we need to take responsibility for it as a government. Let me take the basic layer, which is the land. What’s the issue with the land? Who owns urban land?” For me, this was a very innovative way of looking at the conflict, and it comes up in different cases.

The provincial commissioner systematically consulted all stakeholders, including the elders of all clans, the land registrar, the surveyor, the political leadership, women and youth, religious leaders, and security committee members, to discuss the root cause of the perennial land conflicts in the town of Garissa. The stakeholders agreed that the

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provincial commissioner should contact the Office of the President to ask it to remove the ban it had imposed on all land allocations of community lands in 1998. The provincial commissioner wrote a letter to the Office of the President, and the ban was removed within three months. This provided space for the technical team to plan the town with the supervision of the stakeholders. The stakeholders agreed that the planning should be done by the technical staff, but allocations of plots to individuals were to be decided by the stakeholders, especially the different clans living in the town of Garissa. Any disputes over allocations were to be settled by an impromptu panel of elders assembled as the need arose rather than through the criminal court. All land disputes were to be arbitrated by the elders, and people who refused to abide by the decisions of the elders would be referred to the police and the criminal court. Many people in Garissa, as well as more generally in pastoral areas, have little faith in criminal courts because they often see them as having insufficient understanding of pastoralist land issues, being prone to corruption, and taking too long to resolve disputes. A land dispute in court can take about five years, whereas elders can resolve the matter within a few days. As Dekha explained: Garissa town had been planned so that social groups lived in different corners, without mixing. The Northeastern Provincial Commissioner suggested: “Let’s create a new city, with enough plots and services so that anybody can apply and get land in a transparent way. But make it a mixed community. Don’t make it sectarian!” Although he was an administrator, he had a vision, thinking as a planner and considering from a policy level, which I think can solve the problem.

Shrinking the predatory sphere does not mean shrinking the customary sphere but rather calls for a clarification of the interface between the modern and customary authorities and long-term efforts to change discriminatory laws and policies that fuel conflict—some of which are legacies from colonial times. The shift from a state providing for the interests of just one group—whether it is ethnically, geographically, or religiously defined—to a state representing the interests of all calls for political leadership, governance structures that serve all people, and creation of a collective identity across the various cleavages of society.24 An important step in this direction is the development of a national framework to allow for short- and medium-term peace work, which is explored below.

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How to Develop a Long-Term Policy Framework to Facilitate Peace There are important links between long-term policy work and mediumand short-term responses to conflict. One such link is when a policy framework is established at the national level that can facilitate medium- and short-term peace work. Peace or security policy frameworks may be created at the center, and then a blueprint is sent out and implemented in the periphery—the top-down approach. In the case of Kenya, the process was the opposite. It was more a bottom-up approach, learning from dealing with conflict and violence in the pastoralist periphery, and then establishing a national framework for peace that could help the development of local and district peace committees in other parts of the country. Three factors led to the development of a national framework for peace at the Nairobi level, the National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (NSC), which linked state and nonstate actors: traditional, communal and formal, and constitutional processes.25 First, an existing policy framework was used in a new way. In Kenya, no policy framework for peace work existed, but there was an existing pastoral development program by the World Bank, which created multidonor interest. Therefore, the existing framework was used and rationalized by showing that the pastoral development was affected by conflict. The mandate issue was still important because the World Bank could not do conflict work, but it could examine the impact of conflict on the program. In this way, there was a central office and link to the donor community and the government. Dekha explained: From 1996 to 2000, these ideas started coming together and the perfect institution to anchor these ideas and experiment further was the World Bank program, which fortunately was based in the same ministry as internal security. The NSC was created as a multistake forum, consisting of business actors, religious leaders, donor partners, civil society, and government line ministers.26 However, it was kept hidden and remained incubated, being attached to an existing program. It did not have a budget, a policy framework, or any recognition. The practice was merely there and used by donors. Under the Moi regime, it was forbidden to do peace work because if you said you were doing peace work, you would be implying that there was war, and if you claimed that war existed,

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you could end up in prison. This meant people had to hide what they were doing until 2003, when there was a regime change.

Second, an existing system of rotation of state employees was used for networking. The staff of the Kenyan national civil service work in all parts of the country and rotate through different regions. They work in the periphery, but it is often possible for employees to be transferred to the center. Someone working in the military can be transferred from the field to military headquarters. This also occurs in the opposite direction, for example, an individual working in the Office of the President being transferred to the periphery. It is common for people in the civil service to be mobile, which creates a center-periphery link and which is an asset in regard to the long-term infrastructure for peace, building personal relationships and experiences not bound to one place. Third, national commitments to international protocols were used to enhance work at the domestic level. When the regime change started in 2003, a group that was strategically connected to the NSC network anchored its work to a protocol the Kenyan government had signed in 2002 called the IGAD Conflict Early Warning, Early Response.27 This protocol was still new, allowing the group members to make language changes and to state they were doing conflict early warning and early response to help the government implement what it had signed in Khartoum. The NSC housed a regional protocol that the government of Kenya had signed, although it was still seen as mainly relating to pastoral questions. The idea that the conflict was not a national issue but only one of the periphery persisted for a long time. Nevertheless, this structure was very important in building relationships between state and nonstate actors and for bringing regional and peripheral issues to the heart of the country. The case of Kenya shows how a peace policy framework takes time to develop and can creatively use existing frameworks and systems, further developing and fine-tuning them for the purpose of peace work. Linkages Creating linkages between long-term peace work and medium- or shortterm peace work needs to be based on an understanding of the context. The less the state serves the interests of all individuals, the more people fall back on their collective communities to protect their needs and rights. Whereas this is a logical survival strategy in the face of a

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weak or authoritarian state, it can lead to a vicious cycle if the interface between the modern and customary is unclear and the state is discriminatory toward specific communities. An example of this is when collective communities compete with each other to capture the central state (e.g., using violence and elections), and the state then serves the “winning” community rather than all citizens. This vicious cycle decreases trust in the state, increases people’s reliance on their respective communities, increases confusion about the interface between state and customary authority, and enlarges the predatory space, which may result in violence. Although this type of loyalty to one’s own group may make sense for the purpose of short-term survival, it hinders long-term peaceful statebuilding or state formation. This points to what must be done to reverse such dynamics: place consensus building at the heart of statebuilding and consciously seek to establish links between long-term and medium-term peace practice. There are two obvious long-medium links. The first is that the longterm peace work supports the medium-term (and thereby indirectly also short-term) peace work by establishing a policy framework for hybrid state and nonstate actors to work together. The second longmedium link focuses on transforming structural dimensions, such as land policies that fuel conflict, to ease the work of medium-term structures. The links between short-, medium-, and long-term peace work should not be seen as unidirectional. Effective work in any of the three types facilitates work in the others—if links are created between them. To create linkages between long-term peace work and the other forms of peace practice explored in this book, it is helpful to move from a dyadic (state-individual) to a more pragmatic triangular (state-collective-individual) understanding of governance, a typical characteristic of medium-term peace structures. It does not help to pretend that collective identities (e.g., built around ethnic or religious communities) will suddenly cease to exist in the face of the utopian state that was built overnight for the benefit of all. The Western dyadic approach to statebuilding focuses on state and individual rights and duties. This does not sufficiently consider the foreign and imposed nature of many “states,” the importance of collective communities in postcolonial situations, or the time needed to build states for peace for all citizens. It is interesting that even in Western states, there are examples of triadic state-community-individual forms of governance that give special rights and protections to certain minority communities (e.g., language communities in Switzerland). Ulti-

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mately, all contexts around the world are fragile, to a varying degree throughout history. Notes

1. Ibrahim Abdi, “Acceptance Speech—Dekha Abdi” (punctuation corrected in this version). 2. “Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.” United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, Decision of the Secretary-General, May 2007. Statebuilding can be understood as “an endogenous process to enhance capacity, institutions and legitimacy of the state driven by state-society relations.” Fragile States Group (FSG), Statebuilding in Situations of Fragility, 1; Call and Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. 3. Menkhaus et al., “A History of Mediation in Somalia Since 1988,” 6. 4. Call and Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. 5. Nuruzzaman, “Revisiting the Category of Fragile and Failed States”; Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood.” 6. Call, “Building States to Build Peace?”; Call and Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace; Brickhill, “Mediating Security Arrangements in Peace Processes,” 29. 7. Nuruzzaman, “Revisiting the Category of Fragile and Failed States.” 8. Englebert and Tull, “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa”; Grimm, “The European Union’s Ambiguous Concept”; Nuruzzaman, “Revisiting the Category of Fragile and Failed States.” 9. Chopra, “When Peacebuilding Contradicts Statebuilding”; Menkhaus, “The Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya”; Chopra, “Justice Versus Peace in Northern Kenya.” 10. Call and Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. These ideas are also found in the principles of the “New Deal” agreed in Busan in 2011, focusing on the need for “country owned” and “country led” peacebuilding and statebuilding. See International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, A New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States. See also Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Supporting Statebuilding. 11. McCandless, “Caution Against Conflation.” 12. Johnson, “The Search for Peace,” 261. 13. Ali Amber “Oker” and Habibullah, Community-Based Peace Processes in South-Central Somalia. 14. Johnson, “The Search for Peace,” 257–261. 15. Menkhaus et al., A History of Mediation in Somalia, 68. 16. Menkhaus, “The Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya,” 30. 17. Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood”; Unruh, “Land Rights and Peacebuilding”; Wennmann, Aid Effectiveness; Boege et al., On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States. 18. Menkhaus, “The Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya,” 34, 35.

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19. The Modogashe Declaration was negotiated in 2001 using the facilitation of local peace committees in five districts. It was revisited in 2005, when it was amended and renamed the Garissa Declaration. Odendaal, An Architecture for Building Peace, 41. See also Ayuko and Magotsi, “The Modagashe Declaration III.” 20. A possible Islamic response to this comment is that it is not a question of inequality but a question of fairness based on different roles expected of men and women in that culture. Abdul Hye Miah in an interview with Simon Mason, October 22, 2018, Zurich, Switzerland. 21. A principle also used in other contexts when looking at local peace agreements from a state perspective. Point mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland. 22. These paragraphs on the long-term response to land conflicts in Garrisa were kindly checked by James Ole Serian, the Northeastern Provincial Commissioner during the period the Garissa land conflict took place in 2010, in an email to Simon Mason, June 4, 2018. 23. Prior to 2013, Kenya was subdivided into eight provinces, and the provinces were divided into forty-six districts. Provincial commissioners were the national government’s representatives. Post-2013, devolution meant that the roles of provincial commissioners were recalled. 24. Dekha mentions the case of Ethiopia: “Let me take Ethiopia for an example. There is a region called the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). In the main city of Awasa, there is a huge billboard that shows all the faces of the different nations and nationalities of Ethiopia. They cannot define themselves by one ethnic group and are trying to redefine their identity. It is important to sit and craft something that everybody can see themselves in.” 25. For the website of the National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (NSC), visit http://www.nscpeace.go.ke/. 26. A line ministry is responsible for implementing a program (e.g., agriculture) rather than focusing on general planning (e.g., finance). 27. Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism, https://igad.int/divisions/peace-and-security.

6 Linking Inner and Outer Peace: Effective and Authentic Peace Practitioners

improve peace practice? The insights and principles are transverse to the short-, medium-, and long-term work of a peace practitioner. In all phases, peace practitioners benefit from linking introspection and psychological and spiritual work, on the one hand, with reflective action, conceptual learning, and cross-cleavage collaboration, on the other. We move from the inner to the more outer aspects of peace work as we go through the chapter, establishing linkages and ending the chapter with the development of the cross-cleavage collaboration model. A growing literature addresses the question of linking inner and outer peace work in mediation. Bowling and Hoffman, for example, argue that there are three steps in mediator development: (1) know the skills and techniques, (2) understand how the process works, and (3) develop “presence,” which also entails personal development and psychological and spiritual questions.1 This third step is also addressed in arts-based approaches to conflict resolution, which show how mediators can use the arts to develop their intuitive and emotional capacities as well as for the purposes of self-healing. 2 The conflict transformation school argues that the “professionalism” of the peace practitioner cannot be separated from the private person, thus demonstrating the need for personal transformation in addition to relational, structural, and cultural transformation.3 A key factor related to linking inner and outer peace is the focus of peace practitioners. Some emphasize work related to relationships and changing “hearts and minds,” whereas others focus on structures

In this chapter, we focus on the question: How can we

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and institutions.4 Here we argue that linking inner and outer peace can and should be done more or less at the same time (e.g., taking time for inner peace work during each day) rather than focusing on inner peace first for years and then working for peace in the world, or working for peace in the world for years and only in retirement then focusing on inner peace. Furthermore, research indicates that actors in conflict contexts are more resilient to trauma if they engage in regular rituals related to inner peace.5 When Dekha was training in mediation courses, she would show the film The Wajir Story.6 She would introduce the film, then leave the room and pray while the participants watched it. Dekha did not place the outer work for peace (as shown in the film) in opposition to the inner work for peace (as represented by her taking time for prayers); she continually linked them and strengthened them through these linkages. Our work to facilitate peace in the world is nourished when we take time for inner peace. Furthermore, inner peace is rooted in and modesty is developed through our engagement with the outer world. The Inner Struggle Being a Muslim and inspired to work for peace by Islam, Dekha was not closed to other religions. Traveling by train to a mediation training in Switzerland, Dekha read a book given to her: Peace Is Every Step, by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.7 Dressed in conventional Islamic attire, someone who always said she was rooted in traditional Islamic conflict mediation practice, she was reading this book by a Buddhist and exclaimed while reading: “This is the inner jihad!” Rather than seeing a different tradition and culture as competing, she saw the heart of all religions and peace practice as one. We explore three dimensions of the inner struggle and how this relates to linking inner and outer peace work: (1) motivation, (2) spirituality, violence, and peace, and (3) forgiveness and reconciliation. Motivation

Motivation for peace work comes from different sources, for example, from birth, upbringing, life experiences, and teamwork. One of the keys to sustaining motivation is to work with others but also to give freedom to come and go and to realize when it is time to hand over. Dekha explored the dimension of motivation as follows:

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The following image comes to mind: normally you visit the primary schools where your children are studying. There are some children that will come and stand close and look at the adults. Others realize that there are some adults who really need to sit down, and without anybody sending them, they rush up and take a chair and bring it to you. What explains which child brings the chair and how they have this awareness without being asked? It is not that they are given this role, they are just being helpful and you wonder who taught them that. It is not as though all the children from one family do it, so it is not just education.

Even if it seems that some people are born with a calling for this type of work, events can also lead to motivation. Dekha told the following story: Perhaps the motivation and realization that something has to be done and you can be part of it is the key, rather than the skills, techniques, and concepts. I remember a colleague of mine. In 1984 he observed the violence of the Kenyan security forces. It blocked his mind to this institution and he never saw any good in it. He could not bring himself to work with people who were part of the problem and did not believe that they would change, so for him it was a futile exercise. Truly, we also knew we were engaged in a futile exercise, but we did not have the courage to voice it like he did. Nevertheless, he would come in some days and withdraw on other days. This went on until one day when an event took place. A colleague of ours had died. One hundred of his livestock had been raided and a hundred of another person’s livestock was raided in counter-revenge. Within hours the police responded nonviolently, without raping women or burning villages. They went to the scene of the violence and made sure that the raided livestock were returned. Once he had witnessed that, he said: “Yes!” He started getting engaged. The experience changed his outlook.

However, events alone are not enough. Teamwork is needed to sustain motivation, as Dekha explained: What sustains this motivation is finding other people with the same energy. Then you stick it all together, which sustains the momentum. I realized this when we started in 1993 and I found people with similar energies, although from different backgrounds: men and women, young and old. We created a flexible process where it was possible to come in and go out. You cannot do it alone, but if you join energies with others, you can move mountains. Working within teams, we saw that in a small way it is possible to resolve things nonviolently with state and nonstate actors

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collaborating. This will not restore the whole peace, but it created a small, successful model that allowed more people to buy in to the process publicly. You learn from each other and you “unlearn” some of the stereotypes you had about each other. Slowly, by working together, you build confidence. We are all insiders in our context, and the building of confidence and trust comes by really going through the process together, crying and feeling the frustration together. A sort of comradeship comes through this experience, which is demonstrated when you are in the town and violence has erupted there. We used to call each other and ask: “Are you okay? Last night we heard gunshots from your side of the town; we feared for your personal safety.” Sometimes the situation becomes very difficult at the personal level and someone gets the feeling it is time to let go, saying: “This is not getting anywhere and our energy is drained.” When one person thinks like that, another feels more optimistic. When one person feels down, the others pick them up.

Keeping motivation fresh is also a matter of allowing change. Signs that it is time to hand over the process may include a feeling of being stuck in the past. Handing over peace work can be important, enabling someone to take on new tasks and giving space to new ideas and people. Dekha illustrated as follows: I was living and working in Wajir until August 1999. I moved to Mombasa in 2001 after a two-year teaching role at Responding to Conflict, Birmingham (UK). I wanted a teaching role, for reflection and the opportunity to write away from the context, because a lot of the people who started the process were naturally moving away, and I kept hearing myself repeat, “We used to,” or, “We did it like this.” When I heard myself saying that, I began to hate and pity myself, thinking: “This is how dictators are made!” I needed to prepare somebody to take up my role, while redefining my role in supporting the Wajir process and freeing myself to support other processes. It was necessary to look at the wider picture so that I did not become the only resource for Wajir because you can really become too territorial and attached to processes. My two years in the UK in a teaching role helped me to step out of that. When I came back, I didn’t go back to Wajir but went to Mombasa and supported different processes such as in Nairobi and Mandera.

If the motivation to work for peace is habit or for visibility and praise from others, the danger is that one will hold on to a process when others can do a better job. The key to a healthy motivation and dealing with ego seems to be, first, to acknowledge that we all have ego and can

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fall into the trap of being overly guided by it. Ego needs to be contained. At the same time, the ego drive should not be demonized, as it is generally a healthier and more sustainable motivating factor than selfsacrifice that is not rooted in inner freedom and peace. Nevertheless, the goal is to have our outer work for peace more and more rooted in inner freedom and peace, as this helps to minimize the problems of the ego factor. In the following, we explore how this can come about through self and societal reflection. Spirituality, Violence, and Peace

There is a spiritual dimension of peace practice that also shapes our understanding of violence, peace, and human nature. Dekha explores the understanding of Islam that explains violence as resulting from a process of the division of good and evil, where evil is projected onto the other. The act of blaming the other is an indication that one is on the path of violence. The following section by Dekha is an extract from “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya”: Islam seeks to help us understand how an individual can become violent—how one person can get to the point of being willing to use violence against another, and how this can be remedied. The individual’s perceptions, relationships, and spiritual state are crucial to an understanding of violence. The transition from a peaceful to a violent state occurs, and is accompanied by, particular changes and dynamics in the individual and in society. The dynamic, as we understand it, is that the person begins to divide good from evil, placing all the good in himself and his allies, and all the evil in “targets” outside himself, thus distorting reality. A key phase is the movement toward blaming, when the individual blames what is wrong in his or her own life on outside forces. This is described by the Nafs al-lawamah, “the blaming soul” (Surah 75:2), characterized by blame of self or others, vanity, hypocrisy, and love of fame and authority. It is this distancing which permits the individual to go on to attack the outside force, by diminishing the sense of connectedness with it. As the blaming increases, so does the distance. The blaming and anger permit the individual to act violently toward someone else. Violent behavior, in turn, makes it even more difficult, even more unimaginable, to think of the self as connected in any way to the “target.” At the most extreme point, the individual comes to believe that the target must be destroyed, even at the cost of his/her own life. This is described by the Nafs al-ammarah, “the soul that incited evil” (Surah 12:53), associated with pride, anger, lust, envy, and violent behavior.

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Given this dynamic, it follows that reestablishing a peaceful state will require reversing the pattern. The individual must be reconnected, and see and understand both his/her own involvement in the problems in his/her life, and the good, as well as bad points of the outside force which has been blamed and targeted. This is not primarily an intellectual exercise, however. It is spiritual, psychological, and emotional. This is described by the Nafs al-mutma’inna, “soul at peace” or “tranquil soul” (Surah 89:27), characterized by trust, gentleness, adoration, gratitude, contentment with fate, and patience under calamities. “The soul at peace with God is in perfect control of its own attributes and the body that it governs.”8 Peace starts with the individual, then moves toward the other. Understanding one’s own soul is the beginning and the primary goal of development. In a context where the violence is social, political, economic, and involves groups, this guidance can still be useful in understanding and changing actions through spiritual means if the group has shared values and culture. This approach of self and societal reflection has relevance for other faith traditions, by rooting it to the appropriate holy scriptures.9

An example of how self and societal reflection can be rooted in different faith traditions is provided by comparing the similarity of Dekha’s reading of the three stages of the development of the soul in Islam with the three stages of compassion as outlined by the Dalai Lama: (1) treat others worse than myself, (2) treat others the same as myself (the golden rule in all religions), (3) treat others better than myself.10 Another example are verses from the Bible, such as the one that encourages people to “love your neighbor as yourself” or to reflect on how to be reconciled with one’s brother and sister before stepping before God.11 Reconciliation and Forgiveness

A central approach to relationship building for peace practice is to try to understand the other. Not to judge or condemn them, or ignore their behavior, but to honestly try to understand why they say or do something. Trying to understand the other does not automatically lead to peace, but it is at the heart of mediation and peace practice. The premise of this relational model is that one’s behavior and that of the other can change. This follows what Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, the Quran, the Bible, and the Harvard Negotiation Program point to, which is to make a distinction between the actor and the action, between the person and the behavior.12 If one does not believe in this distinction and the possibility of change in behavior, there is no need to engage in peace work.

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When grappling with this principle of peace work, people often do not understand how to achieve it. Dekha’s explanation of how we project evil onto others as a key dynamic in demonizing the other, which leads to violence—as well as the opposite process of acknowledging both “good” and “bad” in ourselves and in the other—is one possible response to the question of how to separate the person from the problem/behavior. This has the effect of allowing for oneself and the other to change, because we all have good and bad aspects. Paying attention to the language we use and avoiding labeling actors (e.g., “spoiler,” “sellout,” “terrorist”) can help to focus on changing behavior rather than getting rid of actors. This approach of focusing on understanding the self and the other is at the heart of the path of reconciliation and forgiveness, as Dekha explored in the following passage from “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya”: In order to strengthen the relationship that has broken down, one way of trust and confidence building is the journey of reconciliation and forgiveness. This is a long process of searching for community safety and security. It takes time, needs the patience and goodwill of the parties in conflict, their commitment, as well as financial resources. It is dangerous, tedious work, and cannot be achieved by one structure. My experience is that there is a crucial preparatory phase that creates the environment for further work, but this is not always understood and valued. 13 The process requires some fundamental areas to be addressed to guide the process of reconciliation and forgiveness (e.g., confidence in governance institutions, participation in decisionmaking, and a structure to implement the agreement). . . . It involves breaking the victim-perpetrator’s cycle and moving the journey to healing and collective security: the process toward reconciliation needs to deal with unresolved trauma in society affected by violence. If cumulative societal trauma is not dealt with, it resurfaces, even from generation to generation, in ways such as: (1) acting against the self, (2) helplessness/hopelessness, (3) an unchanging story, (4) a desire for revenge, (5) acting out against others, and (6) continuous violent conflicts. Finding collective security through trauma healing; building and transforming relationships; working beyond the hurt of today toward a desired future that promotes the security of our neighbors, friends and enemies alike; moving beyond “fight, flight, or freeze” reactions—all these processes require attention to healing body, mind, and spirit. Breaking the cycle is more healing than chasing the enemy and becoming the perpetrator. Forgiveness is an essential tool for reconciliation, but before the issue of forgiveness can be approached, truths have to be

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accepted, starting with one’s own self and then the other. Facing the truth is a tough journey that many fear; it is necessary to help individuals and society to come to terms and to go beyond the victimperpetrator mentality. In our experience in Kenya, the social and spiritual realms were invoked by using verses from the Quran to heal individual and collective reflections of self, community, and state, so that people could have an honest dialogue with themselves first and then with the other. Reconciliation and forgiveness is a process and comes gradually; it is an essential and integral part of transforming society to arrive at a just and sustainable peace. However, it does not come automatically as part of a political negotiated settlement, but rather it is a social and spiritual process that uses the power of collective wisdom by creating a culture of peace and nonviolence that has been designed, resourced, and implemented over generations by committed individuals who play the role of the critical “yeast” essential for the growth of a peaceful society. To prepare society affected by violent conflict is a challenge; this is due to the fact that violence has become the norm and people fear peace processes, partly as they require revisiting the past and the tough work toward the journey of reconciliation and forgiveness. . . . For sustainable reconciliation and forgiveness to be reached, it requires time to work on all sectors and levels; if the focus is only on one, there is a situation of unstable peace and the recurrence of violence is likely. This is because it is a fragile and complex process, a cyclical process that is an integral part of the wider peacebuilding and conflict transformation process. The reconciliation and forgiveness journey creates space for individual and collective transformation of attitudes, beliefs, and behavior toward former “enemies” or offenders, and working toward creating a resource for peace in society.14

These inner aspects of peace practice—motivation and the readiness for forgiveness and reconciliation—require ongoing reflection and outer structures and processes, discussed in the following sections.

Reflective Action Moving to the outer part of peace practice, we now focus on bridging the theory-practice gap and linking practice and academic and policy work. Nevertheless, in the same way the sections above show how outer structures and external aspects of security are necessary for inner peace work, so too the inner dimension of attitude and mind-set of the peace

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practitioner is the basis for outer conceptual, skills-oriented, and institutional learning explored in this section. The idea of reflective action or reflective practice is to avoid a stark division between theory and practice. Kolb, Fry, Borton, and Schön focus on how different professions develop their practice through reflective action: “When a practitioner becomes a researcher into his own practice, he engages in a continuing process of self-education.”15 There is a three-step approach: starting with specific experiences (Kolb’s “experience and observation” represented by Part 2 of this book) and seeing how this relates to general mediation and peacebuilding theory, concepts, and debates (Kolb’s “conceptualizing,” represented by Part 1 of this book). The final step is to explore what has been learned from the dialogue between practice and theory, examining what this tells us about translating theory to practice (Kolb’s “testing,” Chapter 12 in this book) in other contexts.16 The basic idea is that practice can lead to “soft theory” or “hypothesis” building, or a framework such as the SMALL Framework, that develops conceptual tools to structure, guide, and make sense of mediation and peacebuilding practice. The aim is to generate more generalized concepts than individual insights from a specific case, but with more concrete and operational approaches than those of social science theory or even middle-level peacebuilding theories (e.g., conflict management, conflict resolution, conflict transformation).17 This is the idea of this book, wherein discussing and developing mediation and peacebuilding concepts in relation to Dekha’s real-life cases seeks to provide guidance to peace practitioners around the world. In Dekha’s words: I am also aware as an individual that over time we accumulate knowledge and experience and become the institutional memory of the society. How can this information, knowledge, skills, and accumulated wisdom be in the public sphere? I have realized that such information is a source of power, and power, if one is not careful, can corrupt. In 1997, I realized that I was the custodian of the accumulated knowledge of Wajir Peace due to my role as the coordinating secretary. I was in utter shock one day when I realized this and I asked myself: “What will happen if I die, what have I left behind? Will the movement go beyond my personality?” This was the beginning of systems thinking and seeing the big picture of a peace structure that can sustain itself. It has two key strategic approaches: how do we interest more people in peace work, especially at the coordination level, and how do we make Wajir Peace a professional movement owned by all? How do we create the next cadre of peace workers?18

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The idea of reflective action is not just to learn from one’s own experiences but also to help others conceptualize and communicate their insights, to affirm that what they are doing is right, and to help them be better with what they feel they did not do well. It is reflection both for institutions and for individuals who are new to the field. Dekha did this with the Garissa Peace Committee, using work with them to inspire work at the official level (summarized in Figure 4.1 in this book): When the Garissa Peace Committee saw this they said: “Ah, you created that! I remember, but we thought you threw the flip chart away.” I answered: “That is knowledge. You don’t throw away flip charts. You guys helped the entire country.”

Peace practitioners can learn from each other and reflect on their practice to redesign programs in specific ongoing processes and shape policy and practice more generally. Dekha provided some insights based on her training experiences outside the Kenyan-Somali context: Many insights occurred or relationships were built during tea breaks. People asked: “In Kenya, do you have Muslims and Christians? Do you get along?” I answered: “Yeah, there are some Muslims I don’t get along with and there are some Christians I get along with; it’s not about religion. Our relationship is not dictated by the state; it is a personal choice. There are ‘bad’ Muslims and ‘bad’ Christians, and there are ‘good’ Muslims and ‘good’ Christians.” Within Israel, the lens of religion and politics is used all the time, and some of the issues are just about governance. . . . However, I can see how religion and the state are so intertwined that you cannot differentiate between one and the other. Religious identity has transcended the ethnic or geographical identity. When this identity is questioned in asking what you think is a simple question, it can actually be a deep-rooted no-go question. As an outsider, you do not realize this.19

Practitioner exchanges between contexts can help peace workers ask fresh questions, look at things from a different perspective, and bring in comparative insights. Partnerships between local and international peace practitioners can also entail a change of roles, for example, Dekha as a local peace practitioner in Kenya taking on the role of an international peace practitioner outside Kenya.20 Such partnerships and changes of roles can help all involved gain recognition and motivation, and can support lessons and activities, with a focus on learning from locals in their specific context rather than going and teaching them.

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To make reflective practice effective, practice, policy work, and research need to be connected, as Dekha highlighted: Policy must be anchored in research and documentation. People at the local level, whether the district security or the parliamentarians, are transformed by seeing practice. However, when dealing with national parliament, they really need to see that your work is based on sound documentation and research. This work is also useful for courses and to create learning that comes out of practice. It needs to be anchored partly in academia, so that you can distill the theory from the practice to institutionalize the learning. Academia without practice in peace work is useless. Practice without policy is also not effective. The three dimensions are really critical.

As a way of evolving and institutionalizing the work, the Wajir, Garissa, and Mandera community of peace practitioners got together to establish a Center for Peace and Applied Research, aiming to do action research, to document, and to bring a wider pool of community practitioners working in different contexts to jointly learn and document this to inform academia and policy. The aim was to create a peace university so that all these actors could feel the heritage they were leaving behind, with a focus on long-term sustainability and creating a culture of peace, and with institutions as the repository of this knowledge located within the context they grew out of and functioning as a resource for a wider audience. The vision of a peace system from the practice to the policy and academia level would be represented in this way.21 There are many ways of bridging the research-practice divide. One is to enable peace practitioners from one context to visit peace practitioners in another context to conduct research and reflect with them on their specific case. Another is the institutionalization of research-practice interactions, seeking to support “research practitioners” as one and the same person, and encouraging closer collaboration between researchers and practitioners in all phases of practice and the reflection process.22 Here, we argue the practitioner’s “voice” should be more actively presented in research, as demonstrated in this book, and the researcher’s “voice” could also be more active in the actual practice (e.g., embedded in ongoing reflection before, during, and after the process). Dekha’s vision of a peace university can be seen in this light. We illustrate the research-practice dialogue in Chapters 8 and 9, where some basic mediation skills (e.g., positions-interests, brainstorming, externalizing questions) are discussed in relation to actual mediation cases.

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Cross-Cleavage Collaboration: “Feast with Your Enemies” Dekha always worked in teams that crossed the main conflict divides or cleavages.23 The cross-cleavage collaboration (CCC) model developed in this section entails (1) analyzing cleavages (below and in Chapter 7); (2) the collaboration across cleavages of groups of mediators, peace practitioners, or actors in conflict who agree to work together for peace, even if they themselves may come from across the cleavages that are tearing society apart (sections above in this chapter, and Chapter 3); and (3) developing mechanisms to deal with cleavages nonviolently (Chapters 4 and 5). The model is a combination of insights from Dekha and other peace practitioners, cross-cutting cleavage theory from political science, and contact theory from social psychology.24 The way it is presented here grew out of interviews with Dekha and with Swiss mediator Julian Th. Hottinger.25 The idea of cleavage theory is that any society has lines of conflict, or cleavages, that split it into opposing groups.26 There are three cleavage scenarios that differ in their likelihood to become violent and that may call for different responses. First, aligned cleavages (AC): If the cleavages are all aligned, with all of society more or less opposing each other in two large camps, violence is more likely; in the literature this is often referred to as reinforcing cleavages (aligned cleavages are shown in Figure 6.1a).27 The focus of CCC in such a situation is both collaborating across cleavages as well as developing mechanisms to deal with cleavages nonviolently. Second, disappeared cleavages (DC): One often finds a context in which the cleavages are neither strictly aligned (first scenario) nor all crossing (third scenario). Rather, in many contexts, the dominance of one cleavage may render other cleavages less visible, including crossing cleavages. If the dominant cleavage is between opposing ethnic groups, for example, this does not mean that all other cleavages are aligned but that only one main cleavage is visible, while all the others (e.g., religion, economic class, geographic) have been suppressed or have disappeared from the public discourse (disappeared cleavages are shown in Figure 6.1b). Dalton, Flanagan, and Beck discuss the LipsetRokkan cleavage model and highlight the phenomena of disappearing and reappearing cleavages: “While the structure of the cleavages is considered to be relatively fixed, the political salience of the various cleavages and patterns of party coalitions may fluctuate in reaction to contemporary events.” 28 The focus of CCC in this second scenario,

91 Figure 6.1 Cross-Country Cleavage Collaboration Model: From Aligned Cleavages and Disappeared Cleavages (ACDC) to Cross-Cleavage Collaboration 6.1a Aligned Cleavages (AC) = Prone to Violence

6.1b Disappeared Cleavages (DC) = Prone to Violence

6.1c Cross-Cutting Cleavages (CC) = Prone to Peace

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beyond the activities outlined in the first scenario, could be to very carefully bring to the surface crossing cleavages that have disappeared from the public discourse, as they may soften the main, hardened, visible cleavage tearing society apart. There are empirical indications that both the scenarios of aligned cleavages and disappeared cleavages (ACDC) are susceptible to violence.29 The scenario of disappeared cleavages will often be misperceived as a scenario of aligned cleavages. While conflating AC and DC has little relevance in our assessment of whether these scenarios are prone to violence, the differentiation opens up interesting peacebuilding avenues: in the disappeared cleavages scenario, the relative importance of different cleavages is seen as being more flexible, and with some deeper analysis and peacebuilding work it may even be transformed into the third scenario of cross-cutting cleavages. Third, cross-cutting cleavages (CC): There are indications that where a high degree of cross-cutting cleavages are present, peace is more likely.30 If the cleavages cross each other, violence is less probable because it is harder for elites to mobilize one group around one cause against another, and various alliances may be built between subgroups crossing the main cleavage; this is a key idea of cross-cutting cleavage theory and one of the goals of CCC (Figure 6.1c). The idea of CCC is threefold: 1. To analyze visible and disappeared cleavages, and to potentially expose those disappeared cleavages that cross the main visible cleavage. 2. In all scenarios, but especially in the AC and DC scenarios where this is often lacking, to foster collaboration across the cleavages. 3. To work to develop and implement mechanisms to deal with the conflict cleavages in a nonviolent manner.

Thus, the goal is to move from ACDC to CCC. By raising awareness about visible and disappeared cleavages in society, a multiplicity of topics and alliances can be discussed, created, and negotiated, helping society move toward a situation of visible crossing cleavages and a nonviolent manner of dealing with them. Although all societies have cleavages (some aligned, some disappeared, some crossing), the question is the degree to which they are visible and dealt with through nonviolent mechanisms. The CCC model has implications for long-, medium-, and shortterm peace work. It traverses the phases. However, it plays out to a

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varying degree in each one. The most important implications are for long-term peace work, because one of the core tasks of sustainable governance and peaceful and just state structures is to develop mechanisms to deal with societal cleavages in a nonviolent manner. Developing medium-term structures for peace is a useful testing ground to discover and analyze these cleavages and find ways of dealing with them nonviolently. The criterion of an effective interim peace structure is that its members cross the cleavages the structure is trying to address. Lessons from the development of medium-term structures can then be used for long-term peace work. In the short term, the key cleavages of a society may not all be relevant to a specific conflict issue (e.g., the urban-rural cleavage may be irrelevant to a rural conflict). However, awareness of the cleavages is important to avoid doing harm, such as creating an agreement that unintentionally deepens a core cleavage of society, for example, one that fosters two ethnic communities siding together against another ethnic group. The CCC model is therefore useful to provide orientation to peace practitioners regarding how to work (with others across conflict cleavages), what to work toward (mechanisms for nonviolent management of cleavages), and what to avoid (entrenching, aligning, or reinforcing cleavages). The CCC model shapes the way we analyze conflict, as analysis is the basis for designing mediation processes (short-term) and developing structures for peace (medium- and long-term). It leaves open the question of which are key cleavages in a given society.31 Rather, it argues one has to find the conflict cleavages (both the visible ones and those that have disappeared and are being ignored) before deciding what the key issues are, who needs to be involved in the process, and what third party can facilitate the processes and structures to bridge the various cleavages. The model is thus based on the idea that it is not enough to seek common ground between the two main conflict parties, but one should also look for areas of disagreements within each of them that may indicate areas for alliance building across the main cleavage as well as the identification of new interests and options beyond the existing hardened positions. Rather than “divide and conquer,” one could summarize this approach as “recognize hidden divisions for genuine, pluralistic peace.” This work must be done with extreme care to avoid doing harm as it is delicate and can lead to factionalism and escalation. An example illustrates how the CCC model can be used as an analytical tool to understand how a situation is transformed from violence to peace: the religious cleavage between Catholics and Protestants was one of the main causes of violent conflict in the history of Switzerland

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between about 1520 and 1650. This cleavage was at the time also aligned with the rural (primarily Catholic cantons) and urban (primarily Protestant cantons) and economic cleavages. Today, other cleavages, such as the language cleavage between the German- and Frenchspeaking parts of the country—called the “Rösti Graben” (fried potato ditch)—are more important than the religious one. At the same time, they are crossed by other cleavages (religious, economic, liberalconservative, and urban-rural) and are managed through nonviolent mechanisms. Over time, principles were established to make sure various geographical and language regions were adequately represented when electing the Federal Council.32 One way of interpreting the last 150 years of peace in Switzerland is that the cleavages have remained crossed and institutional mechanisms and political culture were developed to deal with them in a nonviolent manner.33 Social psychological theory, such as contact theory, can also help further identify criteria for effective cross-cleavage collaboration. Developed by social psychologists such as Allport and Tajfel, contact theory points to mechanisms of minimizing prejudice and overcoming competition through contact between two or more social groups.34 Research indicates that contact between social groups leads to less intergroup prejudice: (1) when groups experiencing this contact have equal status, (2) groups work toward a common goal, (3) reaching the common goal involves intergroup cooperation, (4) contact is supported by authorities, law, or custom, and (5) when “crisscrossing” (individuals are members of different groups) and multiple identities are fostered.35 Research, however, also indicates that intergroup contact has limited impact without a change in the underlying structures that create social divisions.36 This has interesting implications for the CCC model, indicating, for example, criteria for an effective peace structure: members should have equal status and be affiliated with different groups (i.e., the “network of networks” idea), and they need to work together toward a common goal achieved through cooperation, and this should involve changing the underlying structures causing the divisions (i.e., peace structures work on both acute and structural causes of conflict). Furthermore, ideally state and customary authorities support the peace structure (i.e., a long-term policy framework to facilitate their work). Dekha’s practice of working in teams across conflict cleavages emerged out of necessity and proved to be effective in the context she worked in, independent of theories developed in other contexts. At the same time, the combination of insights from (1) her and other peace practitioners’ experiences, (2) structurally oriented cross-cutting cleav-

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age theory, and (3) social psychological contact theory in the CCC model helps to contextualize analysis and process design for peace practice in fragile contexts. Linkages Inner and outer peace, self- and societal reflection and transformation need to be linked. Dekha’s focus on understanding one’s own soul as the goal of development is put into perspective by her statement in Chapter 12 that the culprit is not the people but the policy or the law. The CCC model— more poetically worded by Dekha as “feast with your enemies”—is an example of an outer approach to peace that calls for a lot of inner work. The interplay in Dekha’s life between her inner peace and her outer peace work is illustrated by how she processed the impact of people who tried to humiliate her or avoid listening to her. Pat Johnson helped organize a conference of three hundred Somalis at which Dekha was to give a keynote address.37 Dekha was held up at the gate by security guards, who played with their power by preventing her from entering the conference center. Although visibly affected by their treatment, Dekha recovered quickly and shortly afterward delivered her address, speaking powerfully to the Somalis with a core message that Big Brother (Ethiopia) was not going to go away: “This is your neighbor, accept that reality and learn how to deal with it: ‘Feast with your enemies!’” Pat describes how Dekha challenged power brokers in the gathering in a way that only she could get away with—calm, uncompromising, and with utter integrity—because the Somalis knew she herself had done all the impossible things she was asking them to do. In the tea break, Dekha approached Pat and told her how security guards like the ones who had accosted her at the conference entrance had come to her during the postelection violence in Kenya, saying: “We have done bad things. We were Blue Helmets [UN peacekeepers] and should have known better. Please let us work with you and help to make peace. What shall we do?” Dekha explained: “You see, it is only because I am a woman—and a Somali woman—that those men were able to come to me.” Her vulnerability might sometimes have resulted in attempts to humiliate her, but it also meant she was nonthreatening and approachable. Pat sums up this experience: “Dekha gave me a small piece of her heart in sharing this lesson of how she transformed every bit of her life experience with humility, generosity, and wisdom in the cause of peace in people’s hearts and in the world. This is how Dekha lived.”

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After presenting the SMALL Framework for Peace and its five guidelines in Part 1, we now move to Part 2 to present cases Dekha was involved in. The SMALL Framework covers a substantive part of Dekha’s approach to peace practice, but it would be presumptuous to argue that this is comprehensive and that there are no other ways of clustering ideas or discussing her approach. With this in mind, we decided to leave the original case studies in an oral history format in Part 2 so that readers can derive their own lessons. Notes 1. Bowling and Hoffman, “Bringing Peace into the Room.” 2. LeBaron, MacLeod, and Floyer Acland, The Choreography of Resolution. 3. Lederach, The Moral Imagination. In this book, Lederach also has a case study that is based on Dekha’s work in Wajir. 4. The Dalai Lama: “Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way.” Dalai Lama, Foreword, vii; “Activities must connect to other activities at the socio/political level to result in changes that really contribute to peace.” Anderson and Olson, Confronting War, 54. 5. Jerryson et al., “Buddhist and Islamic Coping Strategies.” 6. Maletta, Hensel, and Acquah, The Wajir Story. 7. Hanh, Peace Is Every Step. 8. Murata, The Tao of Islam, 271. 9. Excerpt from Ibrahim Abdi, “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya.” 10. Dalai Lama and Norman, Beyond Religion. 11. Matthew 5:24 (King James Version). 12. Mahatma Gandhi: “I non-co-operate in order that I may be able to co-operate. I cannot satisfy myself with false co-operation—anything inferior to 24 carats gold. My non-co-operation does not prevent me from being friendly even to Sir Michael O’Dwyer and General Dyer. It harms no one, it is non-co-operation with evil, with an evil system and not with the evil-doer.” Gandhi, The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, I:47; “Where action is concerned, you have to oppose. You have to stop; you have to try to stop. Even use a bit harsh method. You know? But, as far as actor is concerned, you should not develop negative feeling and should keep a more compassionate attitude.” Dalai Lama and Ekman, Emotional Awareness, 102; in Islam the distinction can be seen in the different translations of the English word conflict: where Khilaf or Shijar means difference over an object and behavior, but not antagonism between the actors, whereas Khisam means a negative attitude between actors. Aroua, The Quest for Peace in the Islamic Tradition, 55–56; Mason, “Mediation Perspectives”; one of the four principles of the Harvard negotiation school is to separate the person from the problem and behavior. Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes. 13. Edited sentence; original is: “This in my experience is a crucial preparatory phase which creates the environment for further work but is always not understood and valued.”

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14. Ibrahim Abdi, “Community Reconciliation and Forgiveness in Kenya.” 15. Kolb and Fry, “Towards an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning”; Borton, Reach, Touch and Teach; Schön, The Reflective Practitioner, quote from Schön, 299. 16. Kolb and Fry, “Towards an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning”. 17. Paffenholz, “Understanding Peace Building Theory.” 18. Ibrahim Abdi, “Acceptance Speech—Dekha Abdi: The Right Livelihood Award” (punctuation corrected in this version). 19. More about Dekha’s engagement in Israel and Palestine as well as in other peacebuilding efforts can be found in Leslie et al., No Failure in Peace Work: The Life and Teaching of Dekha Ibrahim Abdi. 20. Hellmüller, The Interaction Between Local and International Peacebuilding Actors. 21. Halima Shuria gave an update on where the initiative stands in an email to Simon Mason, April 2, 2018: The Commission for Higher Education has sent a letter of acceptance regarding the proposed university. Five hundred acres of land has been acquired, allotted by the county government. There are challenges in getting the land title, which has slowed down the fund-raising. Efforts are under way to develop curriculum in the topics of trauma healing, conflict transformation, and disaster management. 22. A similar approach was taken by Interpeace in Johnson, “The Search for Peace.” 23. Scilla, “‘Feast with Your Enemies’—Dekha Ibrahim Abdi.” 24. Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments”; Lipset, Political Man; Gubler and Selway, “Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War”; Allport, The Nature of Prejudice; Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.” 25. The ideas for the cross-cleavage cooperation model and how classical crosscutting cleavage theory (e.g., Lipset and Rokkan) can be adapted and used for mediation originate from interviews with Julian Th. Hottinger with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland. 26. Lane and Errson, Politics and Society in Western Europe, refer to cleavage as a “division on the basis of some criteria of individuals, groups or organizations [between] whom conflict may arise. These criteria can be ascriptive, such as race, caste, ethnicity, language, or attitudinal, that is, ideology, preference, class, or religion.” Quoted in Selway, “The Measurement of Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Other Multidimensional Cleavage Structures,” 48. 27. Gubler and Selway, “Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War.” 28. Dalton, Flanagan, and Beck, Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 44. Quoted in Lipset, “How Do Political Parties Arise?” This Week’s Citation Classic. 29. “Indeed, in our data set the probability of civil war onset is an average of nearly twelve times greater in societies with low ethnic crosscuttingness than in societies with high ethnic crosscuttingness”; Gubler and Selway, “Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War,” 227. They clarify what can be understood as a perfectly cross-cutting society—illustrated by a society with the cleavages of ethnicity and religion—as one where “it is impossible to guess an individual’s religious affiliation, given that we know his or her ethnicity. In other words, ethnic groups are distributed identically among religious groups, and vice versa,” 214. 30. Gubler and Selway, “Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War.”

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31. The idea of the cleavage model of Lipset and Rokkan was to “systematize the structural factors underlying the diverse character of European political systems.” The cleavages of center-periphery, church-state, land-industry, and workerscapitalists were seen as outgrowths of the national revolution and Industrial Revolution. One of its criticisms, therefore, was that it assumes too much rigidity. Lipset, “How Do Political Parties Arise?” Nevertheless, if one uses the idea that there are cleavages in a society, but does not define them and does not predetermine their relative importance throughout history, one comes up with a flexible model for analysis (and later engagement on) cleavages of society, as we argue for in the CCC model. 32. Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, art. 175 cl. 4: “In electing the Federal Council, care must be taken to ensure that the various geographical and language regions of the country are appropriately represented.” 33. Linder, Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies, 29. 34. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice; Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.” 35. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice; Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations”; Pettigrew, “Intergroup Contact Theory”; Hewstone and Swart, “FiftyOdd Years of Inter-Group Contact.” 36. Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.” 37. Pat Johnson, working at the time for Interpeace, mentioned this story in an email to Simon Mason, March 10, 2018.

PART 2 Cases in the Kenyan-Somali Context

7 The Kenyan-Somali Context

familiar with the Kenyan-Somali context gain a basic understanding of the situation in which Dekha began her work, which broadly included Kenya, the regions inhabited by Kenyan Somalis, and the border regions of Kenya and Somalia.1 To provide orientation, I use a timeline, showing how conflict presented itself in Kenya during the administrations of Jomo Kenyatta (1963–1978), Daniel arap Moi (1978–2002), and Mwai Kibaki (2002–2013). Key milestones are summarized in Table 7.1. The map in Figure 7.1 provides geographical orientation. Many overviews of Kenyan history focus primarily on politics circling around the central state, that is, the capital, Nairobi. However, Kenya is a prime example of the importance of politics in the so-called periphery. Pastoralism in the periphery is the main production system in Kenya’s arid and semiarid land, which covers 83 percent of the country and is home to 25 to 36 percent of the country’s population and about 60 percent of the country’s livestock.2 Dekha worked in the periphery in the pastoralist belt in northeast Kenya, but her work was also related to politics of the central state. Thus, the following overview swings between the center and periphery, showing how they affected each other but also experienced their own dynamics. Transverse to the historical narrative in the center and periphery are various cleavages in Kenyan society, and it is helpful to keep in mind how they were dealt with. For this, I use the ACDC and CCC models introduced in Chapter 6.

The purpose of this chapter is to help readers who are not

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102 Table 7.1 Kenya Conflict Timeline Date

1895–1963 1905

1952–1960

1963

1964–1978

1964

1963–1967

1964–1966

1969 and 1974 1978 1978–2002 1980 1982

1983–1984 1984 1984–1991

1987 1990 1991–1992 1991–1993 1992 1995–1996 1997 1997

Events

British colonial rule Establishment of ethnic reserves, minimizing interaction between ethnic groups and hardening ethnic identity Mau Mau uprising (dominated by Kikuyu with some support from other tribes)—brutally suppressed by the British Independence elections

Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu) years of presidency (Kenyatta was prime minister in 1963 to 1964) End of key aspects of decentralized power and regionalism that were established in 1962–1963 “Shifta” war: ethnic Somali independence movement, backed by Somalia, militarily crushed by Kenyan army with British support. This movement was related to the independence of Somalia in 1960 and the idea of uniting all ethnic Somalis under one flag Oginga Odinga (Luo), vice president with a redistribution orientation (later detained between 1969 to 1971) Elections, single party: Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu) reelected Jomo Kenyatta dies

Daniel arap Moi (Kalenjin) years of presidency Drought, 40,000 people affected Failed air force coup by Luo officers—used as justification for greater state repression Drought, food shortage Wagalla airstrip massacre of approximately 3,000 ethnic Somalis—the number is not clear, with estimates ranging from 500 to 5,000 Repression, detention, and torture of political opponents by Special Branch Drought, 4.7 million people affected Murder of foreign minister Robert Ouko (Luo) Drought, 1.5 million people affected Goldenberg scandal—government involved in grand corruption First multiparty elections after 1991 constitutional amendment: approximately 800–1,500 people killed in land-related ethnic violence in Rift Valley; Moi reelected Drought, 1.4 million people affected Drought, 2 million people affected Elections, approximately 100–200 people killed and many thousands displaced in land-related election violence on coast and in Rift Valley; Moi reelected

continues

103 Table 7.1 Continued Date

1998

1999–2000 2002

2002–2013 2003 2004

2004–2005 2005 2007–2008 2008 2010

2010–2011 2011 2011

2013 2013–

Events

Bombing of US embassy in Nairobi by Al-Qaeda, over 200 Kenyans and 12 US citizens killed Drought, approximately 4.4 million people affected Moi retires. Elections, relatively peaceful, cross-ethnic opposition alliance (headed by Mwai Kibaki [Kikuyu] but also including Raila Odinga [Luo]) defeats Uhuru Kenyatta running for Kenya African National Union (KANU, which had been in power since 1963)

Mwai Kibaki (Kikuyu) years of presidency John Githongo appointed by government to advise the government on corruption, resigns in 2005, and flees into exile after exposing corruption Anglo Leasing scandal revealed—government involved in corruption. Gradual fallout between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga Drought, 2.3–2.5 million people affected Constitutional referendum, “No” Orange side wins against “Yes” Banana side. Mwai Kibaki then sacks Raila Odinga and his allies from government Disputed national elections: approximately 1,200 killed, 600,000 displaced in subsequent widespread violence across much of the country, especially the Rift Valley, Nyanza, and urban areas Kofi Annan mediates peace agreement: Government of National Unity, Mwai Kibaki (Kikuyu) as president, Raila Odinga (Luo) as prime minister New constitution—introduction of certain aspects of devolution, abolition of prime minister Drought, 3.5 million people affected Six Kenyan politicians indicted by the International Criminal Court, including Uhuru Kenyatta (Kikuyu) and William Ruto (Kalenjin) for the 2008 violence Kenya participates in “War on Terror” in Somalia against Al-Shabaab, partly as a response to attacks by Al-Shabaab in Kenya Elections, relatively peaceful; Raila Odinga (Luo) loses and unsuccessfully contests in court Uhuru Kenyatta (Kikuyu) years of presidency

Sources: Data from Hornsby, Kenya: A History Since Independence; Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011; BBC News, “Kenya Profile— Timeline”; Wachira, Kamungi, and Sillah, Stretching the Truth; Maxon and Ofcansky, Historical Dictionary of Kenya. Droughts between 1980 and 2011 are based on Balint et al., “Monitoring Drought with the Combined Drought Index in Kenya.”

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Figure 7.1 Map of Kenya SUDAN ET H IOPIA ET Rhamu Ramu

Ma Mandera Belet Hawa

Wak El Wak k SOMALIA

Marsabit KENYA

UGAND DA A

Wajir W ajir Diff Dif ff

Busia

Liboi

Isiolo Meru Mer eru

Kisumu Kericho Homa Bay Migori

Dhobely

Amaiya

Bungoma Eldoret Kakamega

Nakuru Nyeri Muranga Naivasha Embu

Narok

Damassa

G Gariss Garissa

Kiambu Nairobi Machakos Kajiado Namanga

TA TA N Z A N I A

n

Kilifi

ea

Mombasa bas Kwale alee

In

d

n ia

O

c

Road River Highlands Country border

Hornsby outlines the following long-standing conflict cleavages in Kenyan society.3

1. Ethnicity A vs. ethnicity B vs. “Kenyanism”: Tensions among the ethnic groups of the Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo, and Kalenjin, with various constellations of alliances and confrontation between them and others.

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Each of these communities also has aligned with other ethnic groups. At the same time, tensions exist regarding the importance of ethnicity versus the national identity of being “Kenyan.” 2. Centralism vs. regionalism: Tensions between a strong central state and a decentralized, regionalist approach with power devolved to substate units. The issue of land management has often played out along these lines. 3. Self-reliance vs. internationalism: Tensions between a focus on nationalism, Africanism, traditionalism, and economic self-sufficiency and an international orientation (to the West or to Russia and China) and (free) trade. 4. Capitalism vs. socialism (or development vs. redistribution): Tensions between a capitalist (state-controlled or more liberalized) and a socialist orientation, the latter at times with a state-controlled central planning angle and at other times with a more grassroots, local orientation. In the Kenyan context, this is often seen as an orientation toward development versus an orientation toward redistribution.4 5. Authoritarianism vs. political space and rule of law: At various times during Kenyan history, the country has been ruled by an authoritarian approach, and at other times more space for dissent and political diversity were sought and gained. In general, Kenya has enjoyed a certain degree of rule of law, but this has at times been fairly applied to all citizens, and at other moments used in an arbitrary manner by those in power. The specific violent conflicts elaborated in the following chapters are easier to understand when we trace the ways such cleavages in Kenyan society formed, aligned, crossed, and disappeared throughout history. Precolonial Period In precolonial Kenya there was no such thing as “Kenya.” There was an area where various agropastoralists and pastoralists lived side by side, but the communities that lived in this area were no more closely linked or organized with each other than were their clan members living in neighboring areas that were later to become Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania.5 The ethnic identity of the communities was also much less rigid than it was to become under colonial rule. Identity was formed around the family, subclan (with various levels of sub-sub-clan), and superclan (aggregation of various clans) levels. The importance of the level and affiliation with other communities was changing and fluid.6

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Colonial Period, 1895–1963 British colonialism in the area that was to become Kenya was driven by an exploitative economic agenda as well as a racial supremacist ideology that sought to bring so-called civilization to Africa. The brutality with which it was carried out entirely undermined any credibility of the British rhetoric of the values of their “civilization mission.”7 The Imperial British East African Company was established in 1888, and the British East African Protectorate in 1895, with the main goal of building a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. This was part of Britain’s attempts to maintain control over the headwaters of the Nile to protect its interests in Egypt and Sudan.8 It was also fueled by scenarios reaching far beyond Africa: without British supremacy over the Nile headwaters, other European powers would gain control of the Nile, build a dam in Uganda to put pressure on Egypt, and thereby push Britain to withdraw from the Suez area and to lose control over India.9 Various strategies were used to control the African population: taking land from cattle-grazing territory of the Maasai, taking productive agricultural land, and then subsequently using Africans as cheap labor on the seized “white highlands.” Ethnic reserves were established, which minimized interaction between the communities and hardened the ethnic identities that would become so important in the political landscape of Kenya. Various modern conflicts that have erupted around land questions, including the 2007–2008 violence, can be traced back to the forced relocation and definition of communities that occurred during the colonial period.10 Since the Kikuyu in the productive agricultural lands of the Central Province were closest to areas of European settlement and therefore directly targeted by this colonial marginalization policy, it is no surprise that they were one of the first and most vocal communities to resist white rule. The Mau Mau war of 1952–1960 pitted Africans, mainly Kikuyu, against white rule. Tens of thousands were detained in concentration camps, with many tortured, forced to starve, and murdered.11 There was also conflict between the Kikuyu “Home Guard” loyal to the colonialists and the Kikuyu aligned with the Mau Mau—a rift that would continue within the Kikuyu community long after the war ended. The systematic torture and ill treatment of Kenyans at the hands of the colonial administration—with responsibility up to the highest levels of leaders, such as Winston Churchill—was long ignored.12 In 2013, there was an out-of-court settlement by the UK government following a suit in a London court by Mau Mau veterans. For the first time, the UK for-

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eign secretary recognized on behalf of Her Majesty’s government the torture that took place under the colonial administration.13 At independence in 1963, the white populace of 56,000 amounted to 1 percent of the total population of 8.6 million, with Kikuyu being the largest ethnic community, constituting approximately 20 percent.14 The purpose of the colonial state was to protect this 1 percent from the other 99 percent of the population. The legacy of colonialism was not only hardened ethnic identities and land disputes but also the acceptability of the use of violence in politics and the creation of a central state that was developed to protect the interest of the white settlers rather than to serve all citizens. In the pastoralist periphery, the northern and northeastern parts of Kenya were marginalized under colonial rule and basically left to their own customs, governed by their own chiefs.15 In particular, the Northeastern District was seen as a buffer zone to Ethiopia and Somalia. This led to very weak and often securitized state presence in the entire northern pastoralist belt. This region, therefore, experienced different and stronger inter- and intraclan dynamics and conflicts than some other regions of the country—one reason why many approaches to peace practice also first developed there. Thus, many of the cleavages that were to continue in Kenya after independence were created through the use of force during the colonial era: tensions between ethnic groups, a strong central state that marginalized the periphery, and a Western-oriented state-controlled form of capitalism that was not developed to provide services and opportunities for all citizens. Jomo Kenyatta, 1963–1978 In the run-up to independence in 1963, efforts were put forth to make the central state more democratic and responsive to the Kenyan African majority’s opinions. However, the strong central state was soon reestablished after independence and taken over by the new Kenyan elite rather than fundamentally transformed. The dominant role of Kikuyu in the newly independent Kenya was legitimized by their large number as well as their role in the Mau Mau struggle.16 The land deal that was agreed on before independence allowed for a gradual transfer of land: Kenyan Africans could settle parts of the formerly white-controlled farms, but they had to buy the land. Loans would be made available from a fund established by the British, and buyers had

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to repay the loans. Some of the land was allocated regionally and thus to ethnic communities; other sectors were open, allocated according to a “willing seller, willing buyer” model.17 Many Kenyan politicians disliked the deal, arguing instead that there should be redistribution according to need and that there were greater benefits in collective land rights and questioning why land stolen by colonialists should be paid for. However, the Kenyan elite accepted the deal as a necessary compromise to get the British out of the country and to stabilize the economy. Kenyatta adopted a forgiving attitude, seeking to reconcile the country: “We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future.”18 The independence elections of 1963 led to a government headed by Kenyatta, dominated by the Kikuyu, but also with strong representation by other communities. Oginga Odinga, a Luo with a more socialist orientation than Kenyatta, was the vice president in the new government until 1966, when he acrimoniously parted ways with Kenyatta. The sons of Kenyatta and Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, campaigned against each other in the 2013 and 2017 elections, showing the continued importance of these families in Kenyan politics. In the pastoralist periphery in arid and semiarid regions of Kenya, conflict dynamics were affected by tensions between the central state and the Kenyans of Somali ethnicity and the ongoing changes in the pastoralist livelihood system. The cleavage between central Kenya and Somali Kenyans developed around independence and was also a result of the artificiality of the colonial borders of Kenya. The British government had organized a plebiscite in 1962, prior to independence in 1963, which showed that 87 percent of the population of the Northern Frontier District (later North Eastern Province) wanted reunion with the Somali Republic. Nevertheless, the newly independent government of Kenya stated that it would “defend her territorial integrity by every means” and branded the insurgents as shiftas (bandits), indiscriminately criminalizing the Somalis.19 The central state adopted a heavy-handed military response to the independence movement of the ethnic Somalis in newly independent Kenya. The Somali government’s support of the insurgency proved insufficient to counterbalance this, and it failed. At the same time, the Kenyan government placed far-reaching emergency rule in the North Eastern Province that was only lifted in 1992.20 The Kenyan government’s military strategy against the Somali insurgents in the 1960s also included confiscating camel herds and a policy of sedentarization through fortified villages (manyattas), severely damaging the pastoralist way of life.21 Sedentarization—a popular policy of centralized states around the world to deal with pastoralism—was thus driven by security considerations.

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Pastoralism is well suited to large, open, arid and semiarid rangelands, as fluctuations in rainfall can be compensated for by moving the herds to areas with grazing and water. The economic importance of pastoralism is often ignored.22 Paradoxically, given that this economic system is very well adapted to big climatic variations, pastoralism as a livelihood system has long been under threat in Kenya and worldwide. Compared to agrarian production systems, the accumulation of wealth in pastoralism is limited, in any case, and “wealth” is generally amassed in the form of larger herds for local subsistence, to pay bride wealth, sell for cash when needed, and be ready for the next drought.23 If, however, the limited surplus wealth (e.g., sales of meat and hides) is taken by the business-political elites and reinvested in the urban centers, with their diversified economic strategies, rather than in the pastoralist societies, poverty, dependency, polarization, and conflict may result.24 Daniel arap Moi, 1978–2002 Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, served as vice president under Jomo Kenyatta from 1967 and took over the presidency when Jomo Kenyatta died in 1978. Moi followed Kenyatta’s pro-Western state-controlled capitalism model, promising to follow in Kenyatta’s footsteps.25 However, economically the country was struggling. Moi followed a mixed path, at times protecting the economy from international forces, while at other times seeking international financial support and thus being put under pressure to adopt Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. SAPs helped liberalize the economy and gain access to international financial support but also led to an increasing divide between the rich and the poor. Corruption and mismanagement of the government became a problem especially in the later Moi era, as demonstrated by the Goldenberg scandal in the early 1990s.26 The attempted coup in 1982 by a small number of Luo officers greatly shocked Moi and was a turning point in his presidency. The coup was suppressed and Moi increasingly took an authoritarian approach to deal with dissent. Detention and systematic torture of political opponents became more common.27 After the failed coup, Moi also sidelined politicians who he viewed as being too powerful and thus potentially threatening to his presidency, particularly among the Kikuyu.28 In the later years of his presidency, Moi followed a “Kalenjinization” policy, with Kikuyu in key positions of the state and the parastatal companies being replaced with trusted Kalenjin. Trust was linked to ethnicity and was

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more important than the establishment of a meritocracy. Kalenjinization made the Kikuyu feel sidelined, contributing to grievances that would resurface in later elections. In the early 1990s, domestic mobilization as well as global changes with the end of the Cold War meant that Moi was under intense pressure to open up the political space. Moi introduced multiparty democracy in 1991–1992 but was clearly against it: “Don’t you ever believe that in Africa . . . multi-partyism will produce stability. It will never.”29 The 1992 elections led to increased tensions between ethnic communities, with some 800 to 1,500 people killed in the Rift Valley in the lead-up to the elections.30 Part of the violence stemmed from local grievances over land. However, there are many indications that a great part of the violence was politically orchestrated, with politicians hiring gangs to instigate violence, to evict other ethnic groups from what they considered to be “their” areas, to ensure a unified vote. 31 One witness said that he was paid 17 USD per person killed and 10 USD per house burned down.32 A politician paying someone to kill and burn can thereby trigger more widespread violence within society. Insecurity was also a result of problems in the security sector, where police at times did not intervene or were as much a part of the violence as seeking to hinder it.33 The opposition was divided, and Moi won. In the Rift Valley, the violence between an alliance of Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, and Samburu on the one hand and the Kikuyu on the other hand continued in 1993 and 1994. The 1997 elections again led to Moi winning, and again to violence between Kikuyu and Kalenjin-Maasai in the Rift Valley, with more than 120 people killed. Mwai Kibaki, later to become president, argued that the Kikuyu had a right to self-defense.34 Violence also broke out in the coastal area, with more than 100 people killed in the Likoni violence against “up-country” people.35 Internationally, the postcolonial alliance between Kenya and the United Kingdom was replaced over time with an alliance between Kenya and the United States—even if there were often also tensions in this relationship. Western donors had long turned a blind eye to corruption, as their primary goal was to keep Kenya stable. The concept of a “gatekeeper state” points to the role of the government in accessing international resources and determining how they are used domestically. 36 Control of the government, therefore, also means control of international resources. The “Cold War” was replaced with the “War on Terror” as a legitimizing framework for a Kenya–US alliance, lasting to this day and, in particular, shaping Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia from 2011 onward related to Al-Shabaab’s attacks in Kenya.

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In the pastoralist periphery of Kenya, there are estimates that several thousand people were killed in nonstate conflict in the period 1990– 2015.37 Besides direct fatalities, displaced people in the tens of thousands, economic loss on a vast scale, and widespread human insecurity were other negative consequences of these conflicts that were also shaped by developments in Somalia and Ethiopia.38 Following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia in 1991, a famine claimed an estimated 240,000 Somali lives and created a large-scale flow of refugees and arms to Kenya.39 The three factors (collapse of the state in Somalia, introduction of multiparty politics, end of emergency rule) occurring close together in the early 1990s created a highly volatile situation that easily erupted into violence. For many Kenyan Somalis, the actions of the central Kenyan state were seen as being highly problematic: from the “Shifta War” and emergency rule to counterterrorism policies with increased “search-andarrest” and widespread discrimination against Kenyan Somalis. Mwai Kibaki, 2002–2013 Moi had backed Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, in the 2002 elections. The family ties and Moi’s business and political realism, with the Kenyatta family representing a form of protection for Moi in retirement, may partly explain this decision. A strengthened opposition, however, was created out of an alignment of Luo (behind Raila Odinga) and Kikuyu (behind Mwai Kibaki). Odinga suggested that Kibaki be the sole presidential candidate of the opposition alliance (the slogan was “Kibaki is enough”)—as a non-Kikuyu presidential candidate from the side of the opposition, he would have lost all Kikuyu votes to Uhuru Kenyatta. As part of the same deal, constitutional reform was to be speeded up and a post created for Odinga to be prime minister.40 Kibaki won the elections, which were predominantly peaceful, because of the cross-cutting ethnic opposition alliance and also because Moi and Uhuru Kenyatta accepted defeat.41 As Kibaki took the presidency, he promised change and improvement. However, the opposition alliance that brought Kibaki into power soon crumbled because the common goal of ousting Moi was no longer pulling them together. Constitutional reform was delayed, and Odinga was not given the position he had been promised.42 Furthermore, Kibaki suffered from poor health. Signs of extensive corruption and misuse of state apparatus appeared before long, made known, for example, by the revelations around the Anglo Leasing scandal. Comparable to the

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Goldenberg scandal under Moi, those members of government involved in the corruption legitimized it for the purpose of gaining resources for election campaigns and for the benefit of their constituencies. A leading figure in exposing the Anglo Leasing story was John Githongo, a Kikuyu. In her book Our Turn to Eat, Michela Wrong explores the “logic” of corrupt use of state resources and its links to politicians’ manipulation of ethnic identity: in this discourse, members of Moi’s Kalenjin tribe had had their time to eat from the governmental coffers during his time in power; so now it was the turn of the Kikuyu tribe to make best use of the state apparatus for their community under Kibaki, including regional favoritism in developing infrastructure, schools, and health services.43 In this process, individual politicians face a dilemma: if they stick to the law, they have only a small chance of advancing politically or gaining access to wealth needed for political patronage. If they do not stick to the law (which is often complex and hard to understand and may change over time), they make themselves vulnerable to being brought to court—often by former allies—as a means to politically marginalize them.44 Efforts to reform the constitution had been promised by the opposition alliance in the 2002 elections but proved far more complicated than anticipated. By 2005, a draft was presented to Kenyans in a referendum, although it was watered down and far from the original reform ambitions. The “no” camp (symbolized by an orange) fought against the “yes” camp (symbolized by a banana). Odinga was vocal in the orange camp (also supported by Kenyatta, Moi, and Njonjo—note the crossethnic cleavage alliance); Kibaki held back, but shortly before the referendum asked Kenyans to vote “yes.” The orange team won—and many interpreted this as a vote against government performance. The referendum marked the end of the phase of the opposition supporting Kibaki to oust Moi and began a new phase in which Odinga and the Luo used the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party for campaigning for the 2007 elections against Kibaki’s Kikuyu-dominated alliance, which developed into the Party of National Unity (PNU). Thus, the referendum campaign contributed to defining the “sides” in the divisive campaigns for the elections in December 2007. On December 29, 2007, ODM declared its victory based on the vote tally that was coming in. On December 30, the electoral commission declared Kibaki the winner by 232,000 votes. By January 15, 2008, 500 people had already been killed, and within two months more than 1,000 people had been killed and about 600,000 displaced.45 In retrospect, the Independent Review Commission (IREC) stated: “The conduct of the 2007 elections was so materially defective that it is impossible—for

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IREC or anyone else—to establish true or reliable results for the presidential and parliamentary elections.”46 After the PNU victory was announced, ODM refused to accept the result, did not trust the court system, and adopted a strategy of trying to make the country ungovernable, while PNU adopted a strategy of holding onto state power above all, suppressing and ignoring dissent as far as possible. The result was violence on a massive scale. The reasons for the voting patterns and postelection crisis were different according to region and ethnicity: for Luo, the grievance included Kibaki’s betrayal of Odinga in 2003 (not giving him the promised position as prime minister) and the general sentiment of being marginalized from the state since independence, including the political marginalization of Oginga Odinga and the murders of high-ranking Luo politicians.47 For Kalenjin and Maasai in the Rift Valley, the fear of Kikuyu domination fueled their efforts to cleanse the Rift Valley of Kikuyu people, following the patterns of elections in the 1990s. For communities along the coast, the election, as well as the violence, was about the sense of regional inequality—and many saw Odinga and ODM as favoring regionalism and local government. ODM supporters also saw the clear victory by the “orange” side in the 2005 constitutional referendum as demonstrating that Kibaki could only win by cheating. On the other hand, for the Kikuyu, the dominant issue was to back Kibaki as one of their own who could protect them from losing out as a social group as they had under Moi’s time in power. The violence in the Rift Valley after the 1992 and 1997 elections also heightened Kikuyu perceptions that they would only be safe if Kibaki won.48 The election crisis was mediated by the African Union’s Panel of Eminent African Personalities, including former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, former president of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa, and an international advocate for women’s and children’s rights, Graça Machel from Mozambique. Kofi Annan’s mediation was crucial to ending the postelection violence and benefited from his experience and moral standing; the mediation process also had coherent and unified regional and international support. The process is well described and analyzed in Kofi Annan’s book Interventions and the article “A Choice for Peace? The Story of Forty-One Days of Mediation in Kenya.” 49 The track-one mediation process went hand in hand with multiple efforts from civil society, some of which are described by Dekha below. One of the outcomes of the track-one mediated process was a grand coalition government with Mwai Kibaki as president and Raila Odinga as prime minister.

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Discussion The conflict cleavage model helps to analyze the above dynamics related to the political elite’s changing ethnopolitical alliances and competition: in the 2002 elections, there was a Luo (Raila Odinga), Luhya (Wamalwa Kijana), and Kikuyu (Mwai Kibaki) alliance against the Kikuyu (Uhuru Kenyatta) backed by Kalenjin (Daniel arap Moi), thus the ethnopolitical cleavage crossed the change versus status quo cleavage and the socialistredistribution (Odinga) versus capitalism-development (Kibaki) cleavage; the result was a relatively peaceful election. The 2005 constitutional referendum had the “no” and “yes” camp aligned mainly along policy questions related to regionalism versus centralism. With Odinga (Luo), Kenyatta (Kikuyu), and Moi (Kalenjin) on the “no” side and most of the government led by Kibaki (Kikuyu) on the “yes” side, the ethnopolitical cleavage was cross-cutting with the regionalism-centralism cleavage. The cross-cuttingness of cleavages is one way of explaining why this referendum was peaceful. In the 2007–2008 election crisis, however, the policy cleavages such as centralism versus regionalism aligned with the ethnopolitical cleavages, and this partly explains the ensuing violence. There were hardened ethnopolitical cleavages between the Kikuyu, on the one hand, and the Luo, Kalenjin, and Maasai, on the other. Mwai Kibaki stood for status quo, continuation of state-controlled capitalism, a strong central state, and development with an international orientation to the West. The opposition stood for change, a push for regionalism, decentralization, and more socialism and redistribution. Thus, the ethnopolitical cleavage aligned with and reinforced the status quo versus change cleavage, the centralism-regionalism cleavage, the development versus redistribution cleavage, and the internationalism versus self-sufficiency cleavage. Violence resulted. At first glance, the ethnicity cleavage seems to be the primary division that has led to violent conflict in Kenya, often overriding other cleavages. Ethnic identity and social group cohesion, however, are not fixed. The key point is that ethnicity is “used as a tool by communities to pursue what they need—protection and access to resources.”50 Hence, a grand deal among senior leadership can sometimes switch most of a community from one “side” to the other, changing the political party at the same time if needed. The struggle over access to resources is one driving factor of conflict. These resources include land and water but go beyond natural resources to also include relief aid, education and health services, trade routes and markets, political power, and security services.

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There are different patterns of election competition and conflict in different parts of Kenya; in some regions candidates from the same ethnic background compete. However, in many regions and at key moments through history, ethnicity—or, more precisely, the political manipulation of ethnicity—has played a significant role in elections and conflict. The political use of ethnicity can contribute to shaping group cohesion and the role of political leaders and political parties. A Kenyan member of parliament (MP) is not first and foremost a member of a political party pursuing a political party’s ideas and agenda for the entire country. Instead, an MP is seen primarily as a representative of his or her constituencies, for example, ethnically or geographically based. The role of the MP is to pursue his or her constituencies’ interests in return for which the constituency elects the MP through block voting.51 MPs use their political authority to get the government to expand the administrative units they control and provide services to their ethnic community living in these administrative units. At times this can even lead to local ethnic cleansing.52 As a result, the creation of administrative units and any changes in boundaries often lead to conflict. Political parties play an interesting role in this dynamic. Leaders and communities seem more clearly and consistently linked than political parties and communities. According to Hornsby, Kenyan political parties are “elite-led, ethnically focused patronage parties, despite their rhetoric of mass appeal. They were designed to obtain power, with scant policy foundation, and therefore had little to hold them together when there were no direct material benefits. Their financial positions were shaky and they survived on donations from wealthy individuals and voluntary labor.”53 The statement is perhaps a bit extreme but does indicate that in some cases political parties are used to access resources and protection around a given community identity. Both in the center and in the periphery, therefore, the analysis of conflict cleavages highlights the close interaction of: (1) a community’s coherence, which is often linked to clan ethnicity (“to be clan blind is to be conflict blind”),54 (2) political contestation around elections intensified by the “winner-takes-all” system, where the first-past-the-post voting method disproportionately favors larger parties that are geographically concentrated, (3) access to land and natural and economic resources that is tied to control of the state, and (4) in the periphery, regional cross-border dynamics between Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Thinking ahead to the coming chapters, we now have a better understanding of what leads to conflict and a basis for reflecting on who has to be included in a mediation or peacebuilding process. The history of

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Kenya does not just show conflict dynamics but also highlights multiple ways of dealing with societal cleavages and conflict, using innovative mediation and peacebuilding approaches. This is the largely untold story of Kenya, and Dekha’s account of how she and her colleagues dealt with conflict is part of telling this story. In the ensuing narrative, it is specifically noteworthy how she consistently sought to build bridges across the cleavages that were leading to violence, both within the mediation teams and among the actors she brought into the process. Notes This chapter was written by Simon Mason; if there are any biases, they are due to ignorance and cannot be ascribed to Dekha. Many thanks to George Wachira, Charles Hornsby, and Tecla Namchanja Wanjala for helpful comments on a draft version of the chapter. Nevertheless, any remaining mistakes and biases are the responsibility of Simon Mason. 1. Kenyan Somalis are ethnic Somalis holding a Kenyan passport, for example, those in the northeast. 2. Regional Learning & Advocacy Programme for Vulnerable Dryland Communities, Key Statistics on the Drylands of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, 1; Davies, “Total Economic Valuation of Kenyan Pastoralism,” 6; 4,620,199 in arid and 9,424,648 in semiarid counties in the 2009 census, Republic of Kenya, Vision 2030 Development Strategy, 3. 3. Simplified version of points mentioned in Hornsby, Kenya: A History Since Independence, 7–13. 4. Branch, Kenya. 5. Hornsby, Kenya, 21. 6. Little, Somalia. 7. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning. 8. Hornsby, Kenya, 26. 9. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning. Because most of the Nile waters come from Ethiopia, and only 14 percent from the White Nile, this scenario is unrealistic even just from a geographic point of view. 10. Hornsby, Kenya, 29, 59. 11. Estimates vary between 14,000 (Hornsby, Kenya, 47) and up to 300,000; see Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 366. A critical analysis of her research can be found at Parry, “Uncovering the Brutal Truth About the British Empire.” 12. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 352. 13. BBC News, “Mau Mau Torture Victims to Receive Compensation.” 14. Hornsby, Kenya, 22–24. 15. This is well illustrated by the statement by Sir Geoffrey Archer, officer in charge of the Northern Frontier District: “There is only one way to treat the Northern Territories, the home of nomadic camel, cattle and sheep owning people, and that is to give them what protection one can under the British flag and, otherwise, to leave them to their own customs, as far as possible, and under their own chiefs. Anything else is certainly uneconomic.” Quoted in Barber, Imperial Frontier, 209; quoted in Hogg, “The New Pastoralism,” 319.

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16. Hornsby, Kenya; Branch, Kenya. 17. Hornsby, Kenya, 71, 76. 18. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 362. 19. Quoted in Howell, “An Analysis of Kenyan Foreign Policy,” 38–39; quoted in Ringquist, “Bandit or Patriot,” 116; regarding criminalizing the Somalis: in the words of Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta, “Many of you are herdsmen during the day and Shifta at night.” Quoted in Ringquist, “Bandit or Patriot,” 100. 20. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis. 21. Ringquist, “Bandit or Patriot.” 22. Despite the historical lack of economic support from the central state, pastoralism is estimated to contribute 13 percent of Kenya’s GDP, Ced Hesse, interviewed by IRIN News. Catley, Lind, and Scoones, Pastoralism and Development in Africa. Summary of book at IRIN News, “Pastoralism’s Economic Contributions Are Significant but Overlooked.” 23. Gebru and McPeak, Herd Accumulation. 24. An estimate from the government of Kenya is that 60 percent of Kenya’s livestock is found in the pastoralist belt and are worth about 6 billion USD, with an annual milk value of around 76–107 million USD. Quoted in Davies, “Total Economic Valuation of Kenyan Pastoralism,” 6. 25. Hornsby, Kenya, 332. 26. Hornsby, Kenya. 27. Branch, Kenya, 161–168. 28. Hornsby, Kenya, 389. 29. Hornsby, Kenya, 487, quote from Moi from January 1992 in a BBC interview. 30. Hornsby, Kenya, 493; Branch, Kenya, 207. 31. Branch, Kenya, 197–207. 32. Branch, Kenya, 202. 33. Hornsby, Kenya, 548. 34. Hornsby, Kenya, 620. 35. Human Rights Watch, “Playing with Fire,” 24. 36. Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat; Cooper, Africa Since 1940. 37. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program estimates that 3,467 people were killed in nonstate violence (i.e., not involving the government as an actor) in Kenya between 1989 and 2016 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program [UCDP], “Country Profile: Kenya”). Higher numbers are given by BBC, for example, the figure of 2,000 people killed in conflict in 1992 in the west of Kenya alone (BBC News, “Kenya Profile—Timeline”). Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Janice Jenner estimate that about 1,213 people were killed in Wajir District between 1992 and 1995 (Ibrahim and Jenner, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Wajir,” 137). 38. See also Kumssa, Jones, and Williams, “Conflict and Human Security,” and Rawlence, “Bring the Gun or You’ll Die.” 39. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis, 12. 40. Branch, Kenya, 249. 41. Hornsby, Kenya, 695. 42. Wanjui, The Native Son. 43. Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat. 44. Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat. 45. Lindenmayer and Kaye, A Choice for Peace? 46. Hornsby, Kenya, 766–767. 47. Examples include Tom Mboya during the presidency of Jomo Kenyatta, and Robert Ouko during the Moi presidency.

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48. Branch, Kenya, 266–267. 49. Annan and Mousavizadeh, Interventions; Lindenmayer and Kaye, A Choice for Peace? 50. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis, 6; Little, Somalia. 51. The “adaptation” of democracy to African societies is well illustrated in Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works. 52. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis, 28. 53. Hornsby, Kenya, 544. 54. Somali proverb, quoted in Ibrahim Abdi and Walker, “Policy Matters,” 82.

8 The Wajir Peace Process

clan tensions as well as lack of enforcement of law by the state. The local conflict was greatly influenced by the severe drought in 1991– 1992, the collapse of the state in Somalia and ensuing inflow of refugees, and the introduction of multiparty democracy in Kenya. The conflict started over land and livestock raids between the Ogaden and Degodia clans but was also related to the elections of 1992. The Degodia clan sought support from the Borana, and the Ogaden from the Ajuran (former allies of the Borana). In the absence of an effective state response, the clans took security into their own hands, and violence erupted.1 The background and response to the conflict are well documented in the online video The Wajir Story.2 This text comes directly from interviews with Dekha and is recounted in her voice.

The conflict in Wajir from the early 1990s involved inter-

The Process The tension in Wajir became very high, especially if we went across the ethnic divide. Wajir had mental red lines, which should not be crossed, but even early on, we did cross these lines. A family member of your friend was killed across the divide, and we went to their burial. When you go to the burials, people look at you as if you should not be there. They seemed to be saying: “Your clan killed that person, do you represent your clan?” You can say: “I’m not here representing my clan. I’m here out of solidarity with you.” We did these kind of small things early 119

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on to help us cross the clan divide. Attending each other’s family funerals and coming together really helped in saying that it was okay to come together. All of us observed the violence and talked about it in different ways. Everyone was doing something individually for their family or going to funerals across the divide. The Wedding Feast: Realizing That the Situation Could Be Different

We were talking about this one evening at a wedding in June 1993. On that day, there was a lot of violence and military action in town. When we came to the wedding hall, we were safe in between those four walls. The thing that strategically moved us forward was that when we came for the wedding, we were local and international people. In the workplace in Wajir there was a lot of tension, but there was this magical moment in the wedding hall, where everyone was relaxed—dancing, smiling and eating. And we started to ask ourselves: “This is how it used to be in Wajir—why is there so much tension these days?” Others said: “What do you mean ‘used to be,’ it still can be! It’s not like it’s all gone!” The chairman of the local Red Cross said something should be done, and suggested that the women do something and they would support them. He said that for men it could be a bit tough to begin, but if the women started, they could support them. This was not a women’s movement, but women mandated by men, bringing together insiders and outsiders to start a process. We decided to begin by talking to other women on our way home every day before the curfew at six. For two weeks we were talking and convincing women, asking the questions: “Do you like what is happening in Wajir? Do you want to do something about it?” The answer was always: “No, I don’t like it, can I join you? What should I do?” We told each of the women: “Go and convince another woman! Then we’ll have a meeting!” The Meeting: Taking on Responsibility, Listening, and Taking Practical Steps

In that first meeting there was a lot of tension between the women. The way they viewed the situation was that the violence was all created by the men. Many women said: “Women are poor victims and not part of the violence. We are not accepted by the government and not accepted by the elders, we don’t have a role.” But I and some of the other women replied: “We are not ready to listen to that crap. We cre-

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ated the problem, are part of problem, and are sustaining the problem. If we sit here saying ‘We are poor victims,’ then we are not interested. How many of you sold your jewelry, made the tea, or read the poems supporting your clan’s fighting? Suppose you said ‘no’ to it—just how many of your men and youths would continue to go out if you stopped supporting them?” The meeting was challenging, with some women claiming to be victims and others saying: “We need to take responsibility; we cannot tell other people that they are responsible and that we are not. It is true that there are problems with the men in the government, but are we taking any responsibility?” There was a realization that we were part of the problem and needed to join together to do something about it. Accepting that personal responsibility was an important step. The second step was listening to other voices. There were three international women present. One of them was from Mogadishu and this was during the time when the state of Somalia had collapsed. We asked her: “How is Mogadishu? How does it feel to lose your state, your country, your community? How does it feel when your friends from yesterday and today can no longer talk to each other?” Another woman, called Susie Cohen, was from London.3 She spoke personally about her own feelings and her family. Susie was a humanitarian doctor working with UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund], who had made a personal sacrifice, being motivated to come and help women and children and serve UNICEF. The last thing she wanted was for the society she came to help and support to be killing women and children. It had been such a personal struggle for her to convince her family that it was a good thing to work in Africa. Her father had asked why she had a calling to serve in Africa rather than being a practitioner at home. She told us how she did not know how to explain to her parents what she was doing, when the same community she was serving was killing women and children. She said it was also very hard to explain to herself. The third woman, who was German, stated that for her the violence against women and the rape of young children was really devastating. She expressed this well, as a personal reflection without assigning blame but rather by stating the facts of what was happening. The international women struggled when they saw what was happening, and they wondered whether to inform people at home or whether to hide it from their families. Hearing the stories of these humanitarian women working in our community was very transformative and reflective, like a mirror held to our society, reflecting it back to us.

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Susie explained the story of the Holocaust and the role of women supporting the Jewish community by helping families cross Europe. She told us how she and her parents were alive because women in Europe had taken the risk of hiding Jews and taking them to a safe haven. The Second World War was different in Europe from the experience in Africa. In Africa it was a European war, so there was no reason for Africans to fight in it. Ours was a fight for our own liberation. In Europe what had happened? What was the Holocaust? Even Europeans have different tribes, what were the issues? We were opening up to international education and understanding geopolitics. If those women had taken their own mandate and initiative, we too could take initiative. This was the beginning. Part three of the meeting involved taking practical steps. Having heard experiences of international women and women living with us, we had to examine who we were and what our reality was. Could we do something acting as women? Yes! What were some of the obstacles? Was it our elders? No, it was actually the government officials, who only listened to male elders. Women explained how they had reported to the police that a woman had been killed. If the police official had listened to the reports, they could have de-escalated the violence. When the police do not listen to a woman and they think that what was reported is incorrect and has to be verified by men, then many lives are lost. Men give only one perspective and women have a different perspective. The men are actors in the conflict and may hide things. The women at the meeting wanted to act collectively as a society rather than individually. We decided to create a network of ten women from different sectors of the town to monitor the market. In the market it is possible to see where the tensions are and have an immediate effect. This is the moment we began specializing in the use of an “early warning, early response” approach—which is described in the film The Wajir Story.4 Afterward, we went back to the men and discussed our progress and next steps. From then on, men and women formed a team to go to the youth, the elders, and the government. This involved a lot of shuttle mediation. Through that, one understands the worldviews, the conflict issues, which individuals champion one particular view or the other, and what can be done about it. It was also helpful to become aware that we all had prejudices: “I am prejudiced against you and your group, and you have your prejudice against me and my group”—the feeling of “us” and “them.” This changed by working together, even if we still had these different worldviews.

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Giving Space for Imagining Magic Solutions

Sometimes you try to look for a magic solution that will end the problem immediately. This can help you get out of a depressive phase. Sometimes you have to find a space where you sit down and say: “Okay, let’s plan the way out of this problem!” I remember one day we had this crazy idea. Our problem analysis was that there were a lot of guns in the hands of the community, particularly the youth. Should we organize disarmament? Would that help with the mediation process? How would we get all the guns? Should we buy all the guns? We realized that would be useless. How about buying all the bullets? How many were there? Maybe six thousand to ten thousand? What if we got someone to finance us and covertly bought all the bullets? It was in the middle of the crisis when there was death and violence every evening. You were not sure when you woke up whether your nextdoor neighbor had been attacked or not. People were not ready to come to a dialogue process. We took a pen and paper and calculated how much money we needed. Feeling like a plan exists already lifts you from your depression, to a level where you think, “That’s it!” Maybe you can talk to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the World Bank to get the money. As if this problem has already been solved, you move on to the next level. What do we do about the bullets? We should put them all into a helicopter and fly out to the Indian Ocean and drop them there. It sounds crazy, but it is a good exercise in imagination. Then you realize that you can buy all the bullets in Wajir, but where is the source of the bullets? It is funny, you are doing the analysis of one sector, and suddenly realize there are other sectors. The bullets come from Somalia, from Ethiopia, or from the Kenyan police, who are corrupt. And you realize you can buy forever, you can drop bullets into the ocean forever, but you would create a ready market for more bullets. We realized this was crazy and we burst out laughing. From Dreams to Reality

That laughter gave us the energy to decide to start mediation and community education about guns and bullets. After learning from one person that they paid 40,000 shillings to buy a gun, we questioned, “How many goats can you buy for that?” They responded: “80 goats.” We enquired further about the price of the bullets and were told they cost 70 shillings (roughly a dollar). We went on calculating: “How many goats and how much milk is that? With 80 goats, after one good breeding year

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you could have 160 goats. Your assets are frozen in this gun, and it kills. It can kill you and it can kill your family. It does not reproduce, it’s a killing machine.” We educated people like this. People in the community said: “I don’t feel safe. If you can assure me that nobody is going to kill me and my family, and take away my livestock, I will think about it. But the government security officers are corrupt and we get weapons from Somalia and Ethiopia to ensure our safety.” Thus, we moved away from reconciling the warring groups and started focusing on how to create good governance and policing the police, to make sure that these institutions were not contributing to the escalation of the violence. In doing that, we had another idea. Police vehicles used to go on escort and the police would say: “We saw bandits and shot a hundred rounds of ammunition.” However, they would also say that they did not manage to kill the bandits or get their guns. The conclusion was that they had then lost a hundred bullets. We had a very good district commissioner, Mr. Kibithi Rintari, who said they should bring back the empty cartridges if they were not able to kill the bandits or get their guns.5 Getting the police to bring back the empty cartridges was a way of budgeting the ammunition, to prove that it had not been sold. Prior to this, some of the officers were local to the area and had been siding with their clans in taking the guns and ammunition as their contribution to the violence, with others selling them for money. We had to develop such verification mechanisms with checks and balances, holding the security institutions, like the police, accountable. We started using rapid response teams. The state security personnel and the community went out together so that both could verify what was being done. This meant that the community that was visited would feel confident talking to the security forces because there was an elder within the rapid response team. These groups do not commit human rights abuses since they monitor each other. This way you create a partnership. Once we were sure that our security institutions were not part of the escalation of violence, stagnation in the process was unblocked. People could buy goats instead of guns, because they felt safe. During our team analysis sessions, we realized that we were trying to find a magical answer when there was none. You have to work through to the right answer. At the same time, we needed that laugh; it was critical. Imagining ways out, even if the first ideas are not realistic, can break the depression that often comes with conflict. Once we had the energy from brainstorming ideas, we could trace the economic nerve of the conflict, comparing the price of guns and goats. Then we realized the security

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environment was insufficient, and we started to work on the police, making the system more accountable with simple ideas: bringing back the empty bullet casings and organizing joint police-elder teams to create trust and accountability. Meeting the Businesspeople: Linking the Local and National Levels

To sustain your energy, it is important not to be stuck in your own context all the time. Therefore, on some days we traveled for business to Nairobi or to the town of Wajir. It was really good to meet, socialize, and eat together in another place and to talk about subjects other than the conflict. I remember one day going out with colleagues for lunch in a hotel when we saw businessmen that we knew from Wajir walk in, a group that we suspected were the Kenyan mafia, who were supporting the violent process on the ground. After the meal, we asked for the bill, but there was no bill. The businessmen had paid for our lunch! Not wanting their money, or to be associated with them, we wanted to vomit. They viewed us as poor NGO workers from Wajir. There is this moment when you wonder: “Shall I say thank you?” It is an empowering process to deal with your own sense of prejudice toward others. As much as we say that the general public carries prejudices, we peace practitioners also carry them, being part of the conflict and the process. We are also actors. You have to deal with such internal feelings and realize your own prejudices. Later we looked for the businessmen to thank them. That opened a door to discuss what was happening locally and helped us when initiating the Al Fatah process at the national level in Nairobi. They paid for the flight and other logistics. After that, we never saw them as a competing process or group. That was the first time local and national actors came together. It helped us to get the first breakthrough and led to the signing of the Al Fatah Declaration, which spelled out the ceasefire. Our local work would not have carried the weight needed without the support of the national, political businessmen from Wajir. Ego Factors: Merging Competing Processes

Ego factors can spoil or facilitate processes. We had a meeting of the elders in the Red Cross Center in Wajir toward the end of our locally run process where we had everything signed. The following day there was violence. The violence and the tension at the local level was not

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clan-led but had a religious dimension with tensions between Muslims and Christians. To this day, I do not know who was behind it. There were three conflicting clans, which we visited, talking openly and agreeing on a ceasefire, then agreeing jointly to go to different marketplaces to announce that there would be a ceasefire. The government officials wanted to be at the meetings in the Red Cross Center, but the committee refused. The logic was that the conflict had originated between the clans, and had been resolved between them, so there was no need for other actors. But we were wrong. The following day, there were rumors: “Did you know that the Quran was thrown into a toilet?” Public emotion was high with speculations that it could have been the Christian community or World Vision. World Vision was in Wajir for humanitarian aid. There was a petrol bomb incident and it seemed as if somebody was diverting our attention from the issues and disrupting our unity in order to cause a dispute based on religion. We knew the religious dimension was not the cause of this new, emerging conflict but that it was being used to stop the process from succeeding. There is dialogue between Muslims and Christians in Wajir, and the Christian group is not big. What we were calling a Christian institution was really World Vision. Of all the people working in World Vision, a lot were Muslims and there were a few Christians. We had an interfaith dialogue and the Christian community said: “We would not be so stupid as to throw the Quran into the toilet in a Muslim region. For goodness sake! We came here as a humanitarian organization, in response to the drought. We are not here to evangelize; we would not do such a stupid thing!” We had to look within and outside of ourselves. Who was this strategic spoiler? Who had knowledge of the right nerve to touch? There must be a third force, which really did not want us to have peace. Who was behind this third force, changing the dynamic of the peace movement? Rather than celebrating our achievements, we had this new crisis to deal with. During the following days, a group of jetsetters flew in from Nairobi, picked the same people as we had, but put them in a different venue and said that they were taking over the peace process, and we could be involved or leave the process. We were a team locally engaged in a process, and we had not had an interest in the Nairobi process. At this point, do you say: “Rubbish, we’re not getting involved,” or do you say: “Okay, it’s the same people. What might be the added advantage of having other third parties?” The advantage was that the Nairobi process had the governmental, political, and business backing. So we agreed to

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join them. If the peace agreement works, and it is better than the agreement we had had two weeks earlier, why not? Our position quickly changed from leading the process into a supporting role. Among our team were women who had good secretarial skills. They said: “The notes from the process are all here, do you want to read them?” The group from Nairobi answered: “Fantastic, you are supporting our cause.” So we tried to combine processes so that they became complementary. You do not lose anything by having the Al Fatah label instead of having “our” Red Cross label.6 For us, both venues and processes were important, but this new group had local and national support. The Red Cross process was only local; there was not even anyone from the government involved. So, in hindsight, one could say the Red Cross process was a more exclusive, preparatory internal dialogue and the Al Fatah process was phase two. In this second phase, the process was consolidated by bringing on board the remaining actors: the business actors, political leaders, the local and national government. Therefore, it was a more inclusive and open process. It was just sheer luck for us that we combined these two processes. It could easily have developed into a conflicting parallel process. Did the rumors and disruption of our process happen intentionally so others could initiate another process? The main fact was that we had a group who really wanted a resolution, and it did not matter who was the mediator. I learned what it means to be the “wheelbarrow pusher.” Forget about the “CNN factor,” forget about who takes the glory. As long as you have the resolution, that is all that matters. If things are heading in a new direction, you can complement a process by changing roles. Your role may then be facilitating logistics, doing secretarial and administrative work, and acting in a linkage role. In this way, the Al Fatah process was owned by everyone. You have to know when you are the lead force, and when to be in the back seat. It is important to be able to read the signs of what is happening. The Outcome: The Al Fatah Declaration— Combining Customary and State Law The agreement became the comprehensive document that clarified the relationships between the local and national actors, who all signed it. The government agreed to support the implementation. The agreement also stipulated the principles to be used, which were like operating guidelines. For example, if there is a raid, you send in the elders rather

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than the army. If clan A raids clan B, there are certain standards that have to be followed. You have to look at the geographical place where the raiding occurred. First, you call the elders from that area and the chief and let them find out what happened. You give them three days before the army goes in. This gives the people a chance to say: “We cannot track the animals here; the animals must be in village B.” So the question goes to village B. If village B does not say anything and they are hiding something, then there is collective punishment. Rather than arresting people, livestock are confiscated. This is the economic element. You take all livestock—even the milking cows. Village B is told: “We suspect that the raided livestock is in your area. You guys are not telling us whether the raided livestock is here or elsewhere, so you are suspect. We are taking your livestock.” You still do not know who is responsible, whether it was done by one individual or by the group. But if information is not provided, the Al Fatah Declaration gives permission to take the livestock. The government will send the army to collect the livestock in the geographical area of the suspected group. Then they are given another three days. If nothing happens, the livestock is taken from the grazing area into the town. Then the farming area or community does not have food or access to the economy. It’s like someone has frozen your bank account. The pressure is increased gradually. If 20 cows are stolen, you withhold 60 good milking cows. The livestock are returned as the information is disclosed. After some time the clan says: “It was so and so who did this. I’m not going to suffer this, since you are the one who did it.” So, instead of hiding things done by members of the same clan, people start to take personal responsibility. Instead of the police or army going in, who do not know what is going on exactly and who is responsible, the clan does the work. The Al Fatah Declaration demands: “State your innocence; if you cannot, then you are guilty.” You have to state your innocence by saying: “Yes, those livestock were actually taken, sold, killed, given away, or hidden.” Or you say, “We did not see it” and have to prove this. These local people are very good at tracing footprints; a team goes out to track the missing cattle. The process was developed through negotiation and became legal after inclusion in the Al Fatah Declaration. You have not finished your work, even when you think you have, because new crises can emerge. Some people had relatives in Nairobi and decided to hire a lawyer to challenge the law, which they said was “quack” or “bush” law against the rights of animals and families, entailing collective punishment. The Nairobi lawyers came to the district com-

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missioner that was implementing the principles and procedures for raids. The commissioner told them that this was an interim measure in order to maintain security, and these actors had signed it. His job was to implement and enforce what had been agreed. It was not his law; it was the peoples’ law. Under the Kenyan constitution, you can create a framework of engagement to resolve things out of court. This is how we got peace in Wajir. When we got peace, we had a framework and we thought that was enough. All of a sudden, we realized that these hostilities were spreading. Therefore, we had to create a framework of engagement in other areas as well and find different tools of engagement with neighboring districts. That’s how the movement spread. Lessons from the Processes Experiencing and observing the violence was part of the motivation to do something about it. However, it is interesting that the energy to start doing something was born in a moment of feeling that it could be different, that moment at the wedding. We realized it had been different, and it could be different again. Hearing from people who came from abroad about how they saw our society, how women during the Holocaust had helped people survive, was also key. When we widened the circle, we were confronted with many women who saw themselves only as victims, we had to deal with this, show how women were also responsible. The problem with feeling that you are a victim is that you are passive, you see no way you can change things. Thus taking on responsibility for a situation is a step to getting out of passivity. Another important aspect was to start with practical steps and create mediation teams or networks from people across the divide. At the beginning, each one sees their own representative in the mediator group. They don’t see that the group is creating a mediative capacity together. So as long as they see someone from the other group, they are wary. I remember during the early days in our team, how we made jokes about each other: “I thought you were buying guns for your clan, are you spying for your clan?” The level of trust was not high, but this was not voiced. However, the more they worked together, the more they realized: “You are not what I thought you were.” We also realized that community, political, and security actors need to be included in a process, even if the conflict initially seems to be just community-based. If it is “community versus community” conflict, it can be transformed and resolved. If it is a “community versus

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community plus political actors” conflict, a different level of resolution is needed. However, when it is “community versus community plus political and security state actors” who deliberately oppose the resolution, at least at the beginning, it really becomes complex. You have to look at all actors, even if the conflict looks simple. These three groups (community, political, security) have to be included if the agreement is to be sustainable. By merging the competing processes to make them complementary and by giving up ownership and making the process more inclusive, we could get all the actors on board and make peace. What is important about including the state institutions is that they need to feel that they are not just part of the problem but also part of the solution. The intercommunity violence often involves the state, the police, or state soldiers. When soldiers get killed, their families are also victims. The state wanted a solution, as it was in their interest not to have any state security soldiers killed. As Kenyans who are also affected by the violence, they need to be part of the negotiation and mediation process. This changes the dynamic and involves many communities, who have issues with each other as well as collectively with the state institutions. In those days the state institutions, civil service, and political party were one. Agreements need implementation, and the state security structures are useful in the implementation and enforcement phase, for example, to clear roadblocks or arrest individuals inciting violence. A joint implementation strategy team is created (including state and nonstate actors), to implement, monitor, and follow up on the agreement. Discussion Following Dekha’s account of the events in Wajir, this discussion aims to highlight various aspects of the case in relation to the SMALL Framework. Short-Term Responses: Mediation Process Design

The idea of adaptive process design is that the various dimensions, discussed below, fit the specific case, and the various dimensions are also interlinked:

• Context: The context of the conflict in Wajir included the collapse of the state and outbreak of civil war in Somalia, the introduction of

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multiparty politics in Kenya, Kenyan policies affecting the domestic migration of ethnic Somalis in Kenya, and the devastating impact of the drought on nomadic families. • Goal and content: In the Red Cross process, the goal was to resolve conflict at the intercommunity level, while the goal of the Al Fatah process encompassed the state and security level in addition. The issues of the conflict included contested access to land and water, livestock raiding, responses to drought and floods, lack of clarity between modern and customary law, migration, limited economic opportunities, and the lack of accountability of the security sector. The issues were not all resolved, but the process and ensuing Al Fatah Declaration did specifically resolve some of the interclan conflicts, for example, by clarifying how to deal with livestock raiding through a clearer role division between modern and customary approaches. It also led to greater accountability of the security sector. The process and its outcome thereby minimized the region’s vulnerability to becoming entangled in national (e.g., political contestation related to elections) and international (e.g., impact of conflict from Somalia) conflict dynamics. • Participation: The actors in the Wajir conflict can be clustered into traditional nonstate actors (clan leaders, religious leaders), “modern” nonstate actors (women’s groups, youth, humanitarian NGOs, business actors, militia groups), and state actors (parliamentarians in Nairobi, central administration dealing with development, local administration, justice, military, and police). Of course, there are overlaps between these actor groups, such as local business actors from Wajir also being parliamentarians based in Nairobi, and women’s groups bridging the traditional and modern divide. The participation in the first Red Cross process included the first two groups, and the second Al Fatah process included all three groups. Special attention needs to be given to how Dekha dealt with women’s participation. Three points stand out: first, the engagement of women was included in a nonantagonistic manner. In Wajir, the women’s engagement stemmed from a mandate given by both men and women. At times the women working for peace also used an elder from one of the minority tribes as a spokesperson, when they wanted to communicate with other elders7—another example of collaboration, rather than “us” against “them” thinking. Second, women had a different perspective on certain issues. Ignoring this perspective means vital information is lost. Third, women can take on roles that cannot be adopted by men or that men traditionally take on but are neglecting or failing at.

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In Wajir, women had access to different information and actors, for example, at the marketplace, and were seen as less threatening or not part of the problem because they were not carrying guns, and thus were suited to roles that men could not do. Honorary elder Fatima Mohamed Mire explains this eloquently: I can remember a time when I used to walk with the thirty-six elders as the only woman. I can remember a man asking me: “Why is it that you are the only woman working with these men?” I told him, “If your house is burning, then would you wait for a man to come, or would you extinguish it yourself?” He told me he would extinguish it himself. So I said: “My house is on fire, and I am going to extinguish it.”8

• Third party: There were mixed third parties that changed as the process developed. It started with an informal women’s group. These women were part of the conflict but chose to work across the tribal conflict cleavage as a mediation team. The nonthreatening, small “corner” tribe helped facilitate dialogue between the main fighting tribes, and later the state also became involved as a third party (while also being a party to the conflict), and the women who initiated the process helped support this process. • Timing: The Wajir process illustrates the shift from immediacy and crisis mediation to a greater focus on analysis and structural work over time. • Format and structure: The process shifted from the use of more informal (women’s meetings) to more formal settings (including the state actors). The adaptation of the process goal and participation within the context is well illustrated by the shift from the Red Cross to the Al Fatah process. A process redesign was key in resolving the conflict. • Venue: The process started informally in various locations before being held at the Red Cross Center and finally in the Al Fatah Madrasa. • Funding: The process was paid for locally, with some contributions later on from businesspersons, UNICEF, and NGOs such as Oxfam. The local and mixed sources of finance helped maintain ownership and independence.

One way of understanding the shift from the Red Cross to the Al Fatah process is to know that the process dimensions, such as goal and participation, were no longer a good fit and had to be readjusted in ways specific to the process. Adjusting goal and participation adjusted the system boundaries of the process.

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Links to Medium- and Long-Term Responses

The integration of the state actors into the Wajir process facilitated the implementation of the agreement and created linkages to mediumterm peace work. This medium-term peace work consisted of establishing a local peace committee, more strategic conflict analysis, as well as working toward a harmonization of customary and modern law, as outlined in the Garissa/Modogashe Declaration.9 The mediumterm work then also helped shape the long-term development of a national level policy framework for peace, creating standard guidelines for developing structures for peace.10 Linking Inner and Outer Peace: Mediation Skills

Moving from positions to interests, needs, and concerns. A clas-

sical approach in negotiation and mediation is to focus on the interests, needs, and concerns, not just the positions of conflict parties.11 The idea is simple: negotiations are more effective in reaching a mutually acceptable outcome if actors do not focus mainly on positions (what they want) but rather on interests (why they want something, i.e., “whatever each party cares about that might be affected by a negotiation”).12 Although the theory is simple, to put it into practice is challenging; it has to be internalized. Take an example from the Wajir case, when Dekha and her colleagues were addressing the issue of gun ownership. Rather than trying to shift immediately from “positions” to “interests” (position: “I want to keep my gun”; interest: “because I want safety”), they used a gradual, incremental staircase approach—following the speed of the person being spoken to, and slowly leading them down the steps to the interest and need level: “How much money was used for buying the gun? How many goats could you have bought with that money? How much money could you make with the goats?” The questions already start to point to economic interests and needs that may not be met by the present situation. At one point the idea of pushing an argument to its bitter end is used: “Your assets are frozen in this gun, and it kills. It can kill you and it can kill your family . . . it’s a killing machine.” Here the interest level is reached, which in this case is safety. Therefore, if assurances could be made for safety, this would allow the person to think about buying a goat instead of a gun. This simple example shows how a mediator can slowly guide a person from a positional level to an interest level using questions, and that a mediator can be confrontational at times when there is enough trust.

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Dekha thus highlights two ways to help actors get from positions to interests: (1) use questions to guide a person in a gradual, incremental staircase approach so that the person can get used to the idea slowly and is not pushed from positions to interests too quickly (i.e., the “diving board” approach); (2) rather than blocking a debate about positions, push the positional argument to its bitter end to show that it will not work (e.g., “Your assets are frozen in this gun, and it kills”).13

Narrative mediation. There is a multiplicity of conceptual frame-

works to make sense of mediation. One interesting framework is the narrative mediation approach.14 This complements the positions-interests framework discussed above. In the narrative mediation framework, the mediator works with the party to deconstruct the problem-saturated conflict story (e.g., “the conflict is caused by clan B”) to create a solutionsaturated narrative (“If we can create security, we can invest our resources in economic assets”) by using questions to externalize the problem. Externalizing the problem means using questions to shift the way an actor makes sense of reality from seeing the problem inside the other or inside oneself (which leads to a blame game, paralyzing victimhood, or legitimization of violence against the other). Instead, the actor can begin to see the problem (which may be called “conflict,” “elections,” “drought,” “system of government,” etc.) situated outside of themselves or the other actor. The problem is externalized once we see how it affects us and how we affect it.15 Once externalized, we can regain agency, seeing in a much more nuanced manner where we are responsible and can do something, and where we cannot and do not need to worry about it. Externalizing the problem does not mean abdicating responsibility or taking on too much responsibility but rather finding the middle ground in discovering appropriate responsibility, which can liberate energy to act. Notice the similarity to this approach with the work to move from a “blaming soul” to a “soul at peace,” discussed in Chapter 6. Dekha provides numerous examples of this approach. One example is her work with the women in Wajir to move from victimhood to discovering where they have responsibility, as well as where they do not, and, thus, that they have to work with other actors (elders, men, government). The dialogue excerpt regarding gun ownership in the Wajir case also beautifully illustrates how a dominating conflict-saturated story can be challenged when using a confrontational style of narrative mediation by questioning how this person’s assets are frozen, creating a spiral of violence. The logic behind the externalizing questions in this interaction means to show the person how insecurity is affecting them

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(“your assets are frozen”). It also leads to reflections about how the person affects the insecurity (“it’s a killing machine”), thereby exposing an alternative discourse, clarification of responsibilities, and space for action (i.e., if there is security, you can invest in economic development rather than in arms). The advantage of the narrative mediation framework is that it provides the mediator with a broader logic of what she or he is doing and in what sequence. The more confrontational style of narrative mediation to deconstruct a discourse may fit better for insider or local mediators, who are familiar with a specific discourse, than for outsider, international mediators, who are less familiar with a specific discourse and may have to tread more carefully to maintain their acceptance and impartiality with the actors in conflict. Working on will. Trust, common understanding, and will are three

dimensions that have to be worked on in any negotiation or mediation.16 As one of the elders in Wajir said: “All these children want is peace. We have failed as elders because we have not protected our people. Our children want peace. Will we give them war?”17 This statement led to a breakthrough in the process. Often this appeal does not come from the mediator but from some moral authority respected by all. The mediator’s or facilitator’s role is to bring in people who can make such statements and to help create the space and time for this to happen. Brainstorming options. Brainstorming options before agreeing on a

mutually acceptable outcome is a core principle of the Harvard negotiation approach as well as one phase in classical mediation.18 The main idea is that decisions are suboptimal if parties rush to a decision and do not first brainstorm all possible options. In the Wajir process, Dekha and her colleagues used brainstorming to help them deal with the insecure situation. They used the classical brainstorming approach of “thinking crazy solutions” because the crazy ideas can bring peace practitioners to realistic ideas that they would not have reached if they only stuck to the realistic ones from the start. An interesting additional element that Dekha highlights in this process is that brainstorming crazy ideas also helps motivation. Humor while brainstorming is important, as it allows for more creativity. Violent conflict can be depressing and paralyzing; brainstorming crazy ideas and making jokes is a way to free oneself from this paralysis and to become reenergized for action (“That laughter gave us . . . energy!”). This emotional aspect of brainstorming is generally not mentioned when the brainstorming technique is taught

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in negotiation and mediation training; thus, it is something to be learned from this case and integrated into training future mediators. Notes Many thanks for helpful corrections and comments on a draft version of this chapter by Halima Shuria and Amina Hassan Ahmed in an email exchange with Simon Mason, June 20, 2018. 1. Ibrahim and Jenner, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Wajir.” 2. Maletta, Hensel, and Acquah, The Wajir Story. 3. The story is also mentioned in Ibrahim Abdi, “A Discussion with Dekha Ibrahim.” 4. See also Leach, Preventing Violence; Maletta, Hensel, and Acquah, The Wajir Story. 5. Name of the district commissioner provided by Halima Shuria in an email to Simon Mason, June 20, 2018. For more on the different roles of different district commissioners, see Ibrahim and Jenner, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Wajir,” 140. “In April 1994 a new District Commissioner was appointed to Wajir District. This DC has been central in the work of restoring peace to Wajir. He has been actively involved in the entire peace process and has made government resources available to restore security to the district.” 6. “A series of meetings between the clan elders finally led to a several-day meeting of elders in late 1993. Under the leadership of Mr. Hamad Khalif, then Member of Parliament for the Wajir West constituency, the elders agreed to a code of conduct, the ‘Al Fatah Declaration,’ which established guidelines for the return of peace to the District.” Ibrahim and Jenner, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Wajir,” 139. 7. Maletta, Hensel, and Acquah, The Wajir Story. 8. Maletta, Hensel, and Acquah, The Wajir Story. 9. Ayuko and Magotsi, “The Modagashe Declaration III.” 10. National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management (NSC) Secretariat, “Standard Guidelines and Terms of Reference.” 11. Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training; Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes. 12. Sebenius, “What Roger Fisher Got Profoundly Right,” 136. 13. This was also used in the Burundi peace process (Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, Renens, Switzerland). The idea is that parties need to think things through to their logical conclusion, even if the conclusion is not politically correct or it contradicts what the mediator would see as a valid option. Instead of blocking the idea and debate, pushing the argument to the bitter end shows how it cannot work and enables parties to be open to look at something else. 14. Winslade and Monk, Narrative Mediation. 15. For those who feel more comfortable in the framework of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, this externalizing (narrative mediation) is one way of talking about separating the person from the problem (Harvard negotiation principle). Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes. 16. Mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger, quoted in Mason and Siegfried, “Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) in Peace Processes.” 17. Ibrahim and Jenner, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Wajir,”139. 18. Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes; Moore, The Mediation Process.

9 Mediating the Pokot-Samburu Conflict

the establishment of a conservancy on shared grazing land, several hundred people were estimated to have lost their lives, and over twenty thousand were displaced in the period between 2004 and 2009.1 The case in which Dekha was involved was specifically over the question of ownership of Amaiya (see Figure 7.1). The push to develop such conservancies was in line with the government policy of engaging pastoralist communities in resource management in northwestern Kenya. The grazing lands of this region are home to wildlife such as giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, and antelopes, and the establishment of conservancies aims to create revenue from tourism.2 The conservancy-tourism aspect in northwestern Kenya adds another dimension to those addressed in Wajir and Mandera. However, what is similar in all cases is the general marginalization of the entire northern arid and semiarid pastoralist rangeland of Kenya. During periods of drought, the Pokot and Samburu communities traditionally shared the grazing land. Through the establishment of a conservancy in 2004, the grazing land became much more limited and people were displaced. The Samburu were in favor of the conservancy, with animal reserves, mixed grazing, hotels, and eco-tourism, seeking to gain economic benefits from it. They wanted some framework to bring down the violence to go ahead with their economic plan. The Pokot were against it, wanting the land for grazing, and saw their livelihood threatened. The Pokot were politically well connected. Each side had different advantages. Willis Okumo points to the role of the government in such conflicts as involving “a very weak property rights infrastructure and the bias in the enforcement of these rights by the state.”3

In the intercommunity Pokot and Samburu conflict over

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Dekha highlights the role of boundary setting in shaping electoral constituencies as a further factor in this conflict. This is one of the reasons why the government was not seen as an impartial third party, and why they asked Dekha and Francis Mutuku Nguli, CEO of PeaceNet Kenya, to mediate the specific meeting that is discussed in this chapter. The text of this chapter comes directly from interviews with Dekha and is recounted in her voice. The Process

There were two of us invited by the government to be mediators in the Pokot-Samburu mediation process. There were nearly 500 participants, made up of about 150 from each of the two groups, as well as government, security sector, and NGOs. We got very little briefing. Only the middle-level government officials gave us any briefing. The top government officials and the ministers did not brief us because they were not there during the night when we were called in. They really wanted both sides involved, especially the top level of the two protagonist groups. Politically, they wanted this process to move on, and you wonder whether it is ethical to say “yes” to mediation in such a situation, as you should have far more time to be prepared. I was with a colleague, Francis Mutuku Nguli, the coordinator of PeaceNet. The two of us were from civil society. This process had already had thirty-four meetings with the government and so this was the thirty-fifth meeting. We arrived together to find ourselves at the opening speeches with a grand opening by government ministers and another by top civil servants. They really had brought in the cream of the crop. While carefully listening and taking notes, I realized how far this process had come, and that I was entering this process from a certain point with a need to make this part of the process succeed. The large protagonist groups, made up of elders, youth, intellectuals, women, and religious and cultural leaders, were sitting on opposite sides of the room, with a small line between them. Ministers, members of parliament, and government officials were all seated. You could see the dynamics between the two sides looking at the government. They were thinking: “Who is she? You are now bringing us a Muslim Somali woman to be a mediator. This is a joke!” I could see that tension, while scribbling and listening to the dilemmas of the government officials’ discussion. I realized they had set issues after thirty-four meetings and had hopes for the outcome of this meeting. Ideally, Mutuku and I needed a break for discussion, but there was not time. All we had was eye contact. Then it

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was: “Now we hand over to our lead mediator for this session who will facilitate things for us, Dekha Ibrahim and her team.” More than four hundred people and government officials; I wondered: “Shall I go for it, shall I stand there and begin? Should I go into the analysis and the plenary now?” I had the trust of my colleague and got this quick insight of what the next step should be. In this situation you have to trust your gut feeling of what is guiding you in the moment—it could be right or wrong, but you need to go with it. What came to me was: “Before we go into this session, we should have guiding principles for this meeting today.” Jointly Developed Ground Rules

I stood up and I said: “Thank you very much. We’ve had thirty-four meetings, so you can look back. How many of you have attended all thirty-four meetings?” Hands up on both sides: great! I continued: “So you know a good meeting from a bad meeting. Okay, write down the suggestions for me of the elements of a good meeting, and the elements of a bad meeting, from those thirty-four meetings.” They listed the ideal mediation process, an ideal outcome, and the principles that come with that and then the principles of a bad meeting. We asked them to write in English and to translate into Swahili so that each group could speak in their own local language, with someone to translate. I checked with them, “Has everyone understood?” Then I continued: “Now this is your meeting, not my meeting. You have come here in big numbers. Which meeting do you want: this one, or that one? The choice is yours. How many of you want the bad meeting?” No hand went up. “How many of you want this meeting to be a good meeting?” All the hands went up. “In order for it to become the meeting we would like, what do we need to do? These are the ground rules to make this meeting work. Do you all agree? You can agree by a show of hands.” They all raised their hands. There were some basic points in their definition of a bad meeting, for example: “A bad meeting is if we all speak at the same time” and “If the outcomes are not reported, there is no follow-up and no actions come from the meeting.” The meeting did not belong to me, Mutuku, or the government. I got them to take ownership for their own meeting. Logistics and Buy-In

We realized that, logistically, it’s a nightmare for two people to facilitate four or five hundred people. We had loudspeakers and breakout

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rooms. Each group had their secretary, who are powerful people. I told the secretaries they would be part of our team. Strategically, we were getting the secretaries to work with us because, in knowing the process, they would not mess it up. There were also two NGO people supporting the process who were volunteers. Expanding the team from two to six people was logistically important. A tea break gave the opportunity to immediately come together and get the secretaries to be part of the planning with the NGOs and the government officials. Internal Dialogue

What we realized was that as much as the two sides wanted to talk with each other, each group needed to talk among themselves. People wanted to talk then and there about the issues, what the causes of the conflict were from their worldview, and the strategies to resolve it. They were really ready to go at each other’s throats. That was not going to allow us to do anything. All the thirty-four previous dialogues involved accusing each other. More internal dialogue was really needed. There were young warriors, elites, the political side, women, and elders. They did not have the same understanding of what the issues or the triggers were, or of the way forward. We had a long time for each group, so we said: “We are going to have an internal dialogue between the Samburu and an internal dialogue between the Pokot. Each of you will have your own secretaries, but you will also have facilitators from our team. These are the critical questions that you will discuss.” The questions were regarding the causes, the triggers, and the strategies for the way forward. We asked them to give us options from their views, distilled and discussed in their groups, and then asked them to come back together and each present their views. Within each side, there were preexisting leaders among the elders, the youth, the women, but they were there as a collective. That’s the part that takes time to sort out: “Who’s our chair, who’ll be our secretary, what shall we say, who will facilitate the meeting?” These are process questions that we asked them to take time to agree upon. Even regarding how to sit, who should talk, and so forth: for example, will there just be one person speaking on behalf of all of them, or will they allow the views of everybody? During this internal dialogue, we had little rooms for the breakaway groups. We had to physically make sure that the two groups were not in earshot, because each wanted their own space. It was funny because some of the people representing the government at the political level were ministers, but they still came from the two conflicting

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groups. They had a double role. Sometimes the security people just stayed outside, sometimes they had meetings with key people on the side, and sometimes they came into the meetings. Overnight and the following day, the two groups physically avoided each other—eating on different sides of the room. Slowly my gender disappeared. I was no longer a Muslim Somali woman. Each group wanted me to be theirs: “You are our daughter. You are one of us.” So I kept on moving and listening. By the evening, I called the secretaries to compare the notes before they were presented. Overnight they had a discussion and brought the notes back together the following morning. In that part of the analysis and in presenting the items, there were delicate moments. They were spying on each other and things were not going right. Sometimes we thought, “Please, God, please make it happen!” Sometimes you just have to pray a lot, sometimes you have to think on your feet, sometimes you have to come together as a group. There are a lot of emotions that are involved. One of the government official’s colleagues was in Mecca doing his pilgrimage and was asked to pray for us. Using a Role-Play

After the analysis and before the presentation on the next day, we did a micro-skills exercise, a sort of role-play on negotiation in the middle of all these traditional elders and senior politicians. The reason for this was that the issues of the negotiation were about land ownership and land use, over who owns Amaiya. We did a mini role-play with a few of them, to help them look at how both sides can win by agreeing and having a win-win outcome. In the role-play, they both went for the hard approach, saying: “This is our position,” but nobody discussed the needs of the two sides and how to create options for shared needs. The strategy of each group for the way forward was “everything for our side”—nothing jointly, and nothing mutual. We made sure that one group out of ten had a win-win solution. The others asked: “How did they get a magic solution? Wow, that’s impossible!” We helped them break the ice, think out of the box, and apply these lessons to the way forward. Harmonizing the Two Documents

After the role-plays, the two secretaries presented the views and options on behalf of their group, with each group listening and harmonizing in

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plenary. It was not easy. Their analysis and worldviews were different. However, the discussion on the way forward was much more in line with each other and became the focus of what these groups should do and what they expected the others and the government to do. It then became a tripartite agreement, which was the critical part. To be involved in these processes you must have knowledge of the bigger picture and you must have the attention to detail. This is why I always emphasize the importance of administrative support for mediation. The printer was just outside the hall. One side typed up the document and said they would go and print it. The person was accompanied, so we thought he was not going to change a word. We asked each side to read their document and we tried to get the harmonized document. By sheer luck, I was the one doing the reading and translating in Swahili with the two secretaries checking the document as to whether it was actually what they had discussed and approved. As I was reading, I realized we hadn’t said that, we hadn’t included that! I looked at the guy, and I felt like I was going to kill him for changing the document! Showing emotions would have been seen immediately, so I kept a blank face but skipped number four. The guy later told me he realized the mess he had created. If I had read number four that would have been the end of it, there would have been no meeting. He realized that and prayed I wouldn’t read it. I skipped it, and he said, “Thank God!” Everyone agreed to the document. During this process we worked on two papers. The government did not interfere with the people as the community would not have allowed this. In the two documents being prepared, each group saw the government as being an actor and was working with them in mind. Each group read their paper with the issues and triggers listed, and then the strategies for the way forward. They discussed similarities and differences and questioned what they should adopt. In a way, we knew partly in which way the discussions would go, because by the end of the evening, the secretaries were coming to brief us on where things were going and what the issues were. We were now also sitting with the government officials. Issues Added and Bracketed

There was a place in the draft document where it was stated that the document was binding to all the Pokots in Kenya. I added my bit, by using the words “and beyond.” The parties asked: “Why ‘beyond’? This is just a Kenyan issue.” I said: “Listen, from my experience there are Pokots in Kenya, but there are Pokots in Uganda. These documents are for Kenyan Pokots, but we must make it fly in Uganda. Because the Ugandan Pokots

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will do something silly near the border and you (Samburu) guys will say the Kenyan Pokots did it. It’s a system. This country is connected.” At another point, I needed to add my input to make the document really work. I told the groups: “Whatever we agreed today is binding, even if there is violence in the next hour. We will deal with that as secondary, treating the incident as separate and using an intervention strategy. It is not going to make this agreement null and void.” They questioned why, and I explained that in my experience it happened in Wajir as there were secondary issues. I asked: “How many of you are here? Four hundred, but four million are out there. You haven’t reached the youth or other people. There will be a criminal who will shoot somebody in the street. That does not mean that all of you have sanctioned that shooting. That is a secondary incident.” Thus we talked about the primary agreement and secondary incidents and they agreed it made sense. We negotiated some parts regarding the government and it was finally agreed, reworded, retyped, and checked. Then we got the government’s signatory and the signatures of the community leaders. Things that could not be done immediately and that needed a longterm strategy were bracketed. If you agree to work together, you can then go on the ground and resolve the issues together. The groups wanted arbitration and we were not going to arbitrate for them. We asked them: “What are long-term and what are immediate strategies? You guys are agreeing to talk about who Amaiya belongs to: go to Amaiya. Are the youth here? Go to your youth jointly!” So we gave them the task of agreeing to work together with the government and each other. There was only enough agreement to start the process of signing and moving on. It took two days and two nights. Half a day for the opening and the exercise of the good versus bad meeting; the remaining part of the day into the night was internal dialogue. Then the role-play negotiation exercise took place in the early morning. All of the afternoon of the second day was taken to present and finally to bracket things and agree. By very late evening the following day, we had an agreement. Outcome The final agreement was not earth-shaking. It was just a principle that the media should refrain from inflaming the situation, the government should provide security along the border, and there should be development by the government, but all of them were happy. There were things they all agreed upon, some things they had to be responsible for, and other things that someone else had to take the responsibility for. They agreed to work

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together to both go to the site of the contestation and to have a dialogue with the youth. Each side agreed to work and resolve the problem together. So it helped them to create the joint framework for problem solving, rather than us being the ones to solve the problems for them. Before the process, each group felt very superior in comparison to the other, saying things like: “Yes, you might have a lot of intellectuals but our capacity for violence is better,” but after the agreement both sides felt like they were really getting what they wanted. Each of them realized it became a win-win or lose-lose situation, depending on whether they worked together. We got this deal that was signed by everybody, including the government, with an implementation framework and it continued for over two years. It was signed in 2006, and in 2007 and 2008, they were still meeting, reviewing, and implementing. The assistant ministers, who were then MPs, became very close to me through the process and they asked me, “Can you meet with us?” We became a sort of joint problem-solving team discussing problems together. On October 21, 2008, there was an incident of highway banditry. Somebody shot at somebody else in one of the territories of the Pokot and Samburu groups and they immediately gave me a call, saying, “It happened! There was a shooting on the road! But we are just pursuing those people. It’s not going to have an effect on our peace deal and we will still continue the implementation and will just consider this incident as independent, a criminal incident. Even if it is connected, we’re not going to break the peace deal.” So there was a level of learning that had been realized. The agreement exists in a booklet. Once the paper was bound and glossy, that was when the government started taking it seriously. Lessons from the Processes Factors Leading to Resolution

The process was fast because of the thirty-four other meetings they had already had. They were ready. What brought the ripeness was the fatigue and the things they had experienced. Both sides had used violence: they raided and counterraided, killed and retaliated. The government had used violence toward both sides and government officials and the military had also been killed. Everybody had tried violence, but the violence had not worked in calming the situation down. In addition, I don’t think they got all sides to come together at the same time. There were many meetings, but only bilateral meetings

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took place, and this didn’t bear fruit. Legally and politically, people thought they would lose their influence in having the government redraw the map to give the administrative direction to whoever the area belonged to. It was a politically sensitive year [elections were due in late 2007], and the government was not ready to openly give things to one side. So, there was “push and shove” politically: they tried something and then saw it couldn’t work. Finally comes the question: what’s next? So there was this grand meeting that brought all these sorts of elements and different people and stakeholders together, and it was the fact that a large number of people were being brought together which made it really significant. The government came in full force with a big delegation, as well as the military, the police, administrators, and politicians. People felt they had nothing else to lose, and it was a good opportunity to put their case together. Everybody wanted to win for their side, thinking that the others would lose. That was also the motivation that brought them there. Role of the Government

The government officials also tried to work behind the scenes with the leaders, to help facilitate the process. There was the public process but also a private process happening on the side. One of the advantages was that the hotel was situated very far from the town, so nobody could leave. The government promised them if they came to a deal they would be taken through the national parks or for a game reserve ride. The government was part of the problem but also part of the solution. For example, when the Pokot and Samburu were analyzing the conflict, they said that the inefficiency of the military or the police really escalated the violence. They explained, “You guys have to be efficient. You don’t put enough police patrols on this border. We cannot control our youth. It is the responsibility of the government to put a police border post here!” Another issue was: “Why is the government not putting a school there? This area is underdeveloped. Why are the youth using violence? Why does the government not invest in education?” No civil servant administrator was interested in the violence, but the government is an amorphous animal, with one side being political and then the purely administrative, civil side of the government. Amaiya and its boundaries was an issue—if Amaiya became a conservancy, should it belong to this district, and where would the borders of Amaiya be? All these questions came up because our meeting was in

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October 2006 and the government was creating political constituencies in order to win the general election in 2007. People were asking: “Why boundaries? There is this helicopter that landed in this area, was it a military or a tourist helicopter?” The government administrators did not understand: “What helicopter? Why does the government want to create another district here? Why should we have another administrative unit here?” If an administrative unit and a political constituency are linked to land, it already changes the use of the land. It is no longer grazing land or an economic conservancy for eco-tourism. But the government officials also played a critical role in supporting the process. They got PeaceNet and me involved because they wanted to keep their distance. The other meetings had been facilitated by government officials, and they knew they were part of the mess. They genuinely wanted the problem to be resolved, so they wanted to have external experts. What was amazing was that one of the government and one of the district officials, said: “This is really an art. You guys just deal so easily with us, making us move this way and that, without us realizing it. You guys are skilled, you know.” They started seeing the professional side of mediation and facilitation. Roles and Responsibilities

There were some civil society members there who were outsiders and some who were insiders, often the secretaries. At another level, there were chairmen of the peace committee from each side who could represent the peace committee of the district. They were called to sign on behalf of their two communities, which gave them responsibility and allowed them to avoid becoming war councils. The peace committee chairmen are just negotiators for their side, but when it came to the signing ceremony, they signed on behalf of their side. Then the government signed and the parliamentarians signed as witnesses, so all had taken joint responsibility. This peace committee is a collaboration of government and civil society. Unfortunately, the districts of Pokot and Samburu have the same names as the ethnic groups, despite the border areas where people from Samburu live in Pokot areas and people from Pokot live in Samburu areas. The contested areas are the joint areas where these people have lived on either side. The National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management, which is the official government directorate for peacebuilding in Kenya, was the organization alongside Oxfam GB, which

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supported the implementation process. The committee worked so our role was just for those two days and then to follow up with the process. Knowledge of the Case: Focus on Process

My colleague, Mutuku, and I didn’t know many details of the case. In a way, I thank God we didn’t have to know them! If we had known too many details, I don’t know that it would have helped. All we needed to know was how to create a process that they felt was theirs, for them to do their own internal analysis. The disagreement was not even between the groups, it was within the groups. We just decided on a single identity framework, where each side had that single identity dialogue, discussion, and analysis, and then came together to share it in order to create a joint framework of action to solve the problems together. You have to bank on your intuition and your previous experiences, but you have to trust yourself and your understanding of processes, rather than the content, and in terms of designing the framework of engagement for the process. Don’t use the little time you have to get self-understanding; the understanding should be for the people in the context. You don’t have to know everything; it’s not for you to agree. It’s their process, not yours, so use the time available to help gain insight into what will help you design the framework. The sort of questions that are useful to focus on are: What happened before? How many meetings were held? Where is this process leading to? Where did the various actors come into this process? Co-Mediation, Mandate, and Task Focus

Mutuku and I laughed together because we created this rapport and trusted each other using eye contact and by picking up on things that we could build on. If somebody had observed and recorded our body language, they would think that we were fantastic mediators in working together and would feel that there are some people who just go together. Mutuku had never been in such a situation; he was learning. He also trusted some of the things I did, which was good. Some mediators worry about being accepted. To tell you the truth, I didn’t bother trying to make everyone accept me, because if I had started focusing on myself, it would not have helped. The thing was to focus as much as possible on them and away from myself. I just dived into the task after having made eye contact with my cofacilitator. I wasn’t asking for their mandate. I just focused on the task and then got

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their buy-in. Once we did that, they were engaged. They didn’t have time, and I didn’t allow time, to focus on me, but rather I wanted us to focus on the task and what we needed to do and achieve together. I did tell them: “I’m a former headmistress, I like to stick to time!” As the lead facilitator, I did not want to be associated with only sitting in one session of one group all the time. I moved between the groups and sometimes sat with government officials. I was a fly on the wall for them all. Cultural Proximity

Being an insider or an outsider is relative. You can be an outsider in the immediate context, and an insider if you look at the wider context. In the Pokot-Samburu case, I was completely an outsider. Culturally an outsider, gender-wise an outsider, geographically an outsider, religiously an outsider. That really helped. There is this element that people think that if we influence the mediator, we bring them to our side, then our cause will be so and so. Later on, they said: “Yeah, you are a pastoralist!” Sometimes they have to look for a bridge to you. Both sides agreed that I had a pastoralist background, and agreed that I had been born and raised knowing about violence just like them, so that helped. They stated: “You really understand what we’re going through, more than these others.” I don’t know whether it was by sheer luck, or whether it was by design or default, but the provincial commissioner, a top government official, was also an ethnic Somali. The National Steering Committee coordinator from the government side and one of the district commissioners representing the Pokot were also ethnic Somalis, and the district commissioner was from the north. They looked closely at us when we were all fasting. We stayed in a hotel and, because there were only a few of us fasting, we all had to break our fast together. We were a big contingent of ethnic Somalis, all coming in our own right. The most violent group in Kenya at a certain period of time were now the peacemakers! There was an acceptance that we were talking from experience, and we were not seen as either government or civil society when they looked through the glasses of ethnicity. We were really lucky, as although they saw a difference, there was also an entry point and connection for them. Progress

Many people take it for granted that the government can ask you to become a mediator from civil society, but that is not the case. It was such a moment of realization for me. You hear some people who are new to the field complain how bad things are. You tell them: “You really don’t know

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how bad it has been. It’s bad, yes, and I acknowledge that, but we came through worse situations.” The challenge is how you affirm somebody’s feeling of how difficult and challenging the process is, without negating their feeling, while also telling them that it’s better than it was in the past. Discussion

As with the previous case study, after Dekha’s account above, the following discussion highlights various aspects of this case in relation to the SMALL Framework, here specifically focusing on short-term mediation process design and transversal mediation skills. Short-Term Responses: Mediation Process Design

• Context: The lack of clear property rights, upcoming elections of 2007, and the related question of a new administrative unit were context factors shaping the dynamics of the conflict. • Goal and content: The contested issues involved the use of land for shared grazing or for eco-tourism, the border demarcation that was related to land use and electoral constituencies, youth unemployment, lack of development, and insecurity. • Participation: The actors included the Pokot and Samburu communities: elders, leaders, women, and young warriors. It also involved state actors, both from the region and from the center, and included both state civil and security actors. • Third party: Being both actor and third party in previous meetings, the government chose two NGO actors as third parties, who were outsiders to the conflict but knowledgeable about intercommunity conflicts. The presence of a mediator who was a woman was initially very disconcerting to the parties, but Dekha was able to shape the process in such a way that the parties took ownership of it (and her identity as a woman became an asset for her role as a mediator). Whereas in the previous case study in Wajir the mediation consisted of different actors (“conflict parties”) from across the ethnic divide who agreed to work together, in the Pokot-Samburu case the third party was appointed by the state. Dekha transformed this into a form of cross-cleavage collaboration by asking the two secretaries of the two groups to join the facilitation team. This expanded their logistical and organizational capacity, but, even more importantly, it created ownership of the process by having the two groups begin to work together on the process design within the facilitation team. The secretaries were then also able to reach out to their respective groups

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to get information and consult on content and process in a much more effective manner than if Dekha and Mutuku would have done this alone. • Format and structure: The two-day meeting described in the case study came after thirty-four other meetings. The dynamics in the context seemed to help push the process in a constructive direction, as did the way the meeting was mediated. The key process question in this case seemed less one of participation (which was the case in the Wajir process), and more one of providing space for internal negotiations before negotiating across the conflict cleavage. Integrating a training component, a role-play on positions and interests/needs, also helped to change the antagonistic style of the meeting. The coordinated support from the state actors and the mediation by nonstate actors also seemed key factors that helped direct the process toward a resolution. • Timing: The actual meeting was short (two days) but came after thirty-four other similar meetings. • Venue: The location was in a hotel far from the actual site of conflict, allowing for a more relaxed atmosphere. At the same time, the decision was made to do a site visit, to see what was really going on. • Funding: The process was financed by the government and partly by Oxfam GB and US Agency for International Development (USAID). • Communication: It was agreed from the outset that media was to be involved in stages during the opening and the closing ceremonies. The government officials used their communication staff to liaise with the media to coordinate their participation. The media also got copies of the agreement. Beyond the meeting, it was agreed that the top leaders from both the Samburu and Pokot communities were to hold an immediate major joint meeting at Amaiya within a specified date. On the side of the government, the signed peace declaration was an important document to be disseminated within the Ministry of Internal Security and the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Security and Provincial Administration. The National Steering Committee was to disseminate the same information to the membership of the committee and the mainstream Office of the President.4

In 2018, Francis Mutuku highlighted the following: “The peace situation has been steadily improving since the signing of this agreement, although there have been interludes of [a] few serious incidents. By and large, this agreement has restored a clear semblance of sustainable peace between and amongst the two communities.”5 The process illustrates how the internal coherence of actors is one of the key criteria when assessing the timing of cross-cleavage collaboration. If there is limited internal agreement within a community, bringing parties together across the divide does not work. Cross-cleavage

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collaboration within the small scale of the cofacilitation team can thus prepare for the questions of when and how to carry out cross-cleavage collaboration with the larger group, for example, by providing space for them to agree internally before engaging across the divide. Linking Inner and Outer Peace: Praying and Using Mediation Skills

The way the mediation team asked their colleague who was in Mecca to pray for their process is an example of how inner and outer peace can be linked. It seems more common in such a cultural setting to pray to God, sharing the responsibility of success and failure, rather than believing it all lies in human hands. The case also shows some fascinating ways in which attitudes, skills, and knowledge of mediation can be used. Set Guidelines

It is a classic mediation technique to set the framework and the guidelines of a meeting before going into the substance of the negotiations.6 Dekha used this classic technique but refined it by combining the task of setting guidelines with the task of clarifying what the parties would see as a constructive meeting. She used a “technical” aspect of mediation to create ownership by exploring with the actors what kind of meeting they wanted. The question trail she used can also be read in a narrative mediation framework: she helped the parties to deconstruct the problemsaturated story (e.g., “the other clan is the problem”) by externalizing the problem (e.g., “meetings without results and follow-ups are useless”) and shifting things to a solution-saturated story (e.g., “meetings where everyone can speak and we have results to implement are useful”). Use of Role-Play

Dekha and Mutuku’s use of a role-play in the Pokot-Samburu mediation is an indirect but effective approach on how to shift parties from positions to interests and needs. Role-plays are often used in training settings but less frequently in actual mediations. However, the use and timing of a roleplay as “awareness raising” seemed very helpful to show that if you stick to positions you will not move ahead; you need to get to the interests and needs level. A role-play in the middle of a mediation process can give breathing space, because it does not directly deal with the conflict at hand but can still change the way people think about how to deal with conflict. The challenges in using role-plays in such a setting seem to be threefold:

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first, to get participants to engage in the exercise, somewhat delinked from their conflict but sufficiently related for them to see the benefit. The choice of the role-play is key (different context but similar dynamics). The second challenge is that to experience the role-play in such a way that the lessons emerge, some guidance may be needed. The third challenge is to relink the experience of the exercise to the actual mediation and harvest the lessons, for example, through debriefing and plenary discussion. Drafting Peace Agreements

The basic principle of mediation is that the mediator structures the process but leaves the content of the agreement up to the parties.7 However, even in this model of mediation, the mediator can raise technical questions about any duplications, lack of coherence, or gaps in the agreement. The fundamental point is that the mediator raises the question but does not impose his or her ideas of what should go into the agreement without the consent of the conflict parties. Dekha sticks to this principle and raises two key “technical” questions about the PokotSamburu agreement: How are Pokots in Uganda bound by the agreement? What will happen if there is a violent incident (knowing there always are)? When there is hesitation, she goes to the interest level, and once the parties are convinced, they accept these addendums. The first point needs contextual knowledge (e.g., role of clan relations across borders); the second is general good practice (how to make an agreement survive violations). This illustrates the need for mediators to have both knowledge of the bigger picture and attention to detail. Notes Many thanks for helpful corrections and comments on a draft version of this chapter by Francis Mutuku in an email exchange with Simon Mason, February 8, 2018. 1. Okumu, “Conflict over Ltungai Conservancy,” 224–245; IRIN News, “Pokot, Samburu Conflict Displaces Thousands.” 2. Okumu, “Conflict over Ltungai Conservancy.” 3. Okumu, “Conflict over Ltungai Conservancy,” 231. 4. This paragraph on communication was contributed by Francis Mutuku in an email exchange with Simon Mason, February 8, 2018. 5. Francis Mutuku, email exchange with Simon Mason, February 8, 2018. 6. Typical guidelines include setting mobile phones to silent, respecting time, using constructive communication, and setting rules for the use of information (confidentiality clause, Chatham House rules, or an agreed public statement). 7. For example, see Moore, The Mediation Process.

10 Mandera: Supporting a Mediation Process

thousand, is situated in the northeast of Kenya, at the border of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia (see Figure 7.1).1 The “Mandera Triangle” consists of three districts: Mandera West, Central, and East. Since 2010, they have made up Mandera County, which is currently six subcounties (formerly districts) and has a population of more than one million.2 While conflict was escalating in Wajir District between 1992 and 1995, the situation in the Mandera Triangle was relatively calm. However, many of the structural conflict causes that shaped dynamics in Wajir District also exist in the Mandera Triangle.3 Clashes began between the Garre and the Murulle in 2004, triggered by competition over grazing land. In Dekha’s words: “You could feel and see the tension in the community in Mandera. It was really bubbling.” From January to March 2005, fifty people lost their lives and thirty thousand people were displaced.4 Similar to the previous two cases discussed in this book, conflict over land resources was only one aspect of the situation. Dekha referred to the situation as a conflict “lasagna” because of its multiple layers, described more fully below. One layer involved ethnic Kenyan Somalis being forced to migrate from west Kenya eastward. A second layer was related to the way in which political and administrative units were divided along ethnic lines, which led to intercommunity conflict being linked to the moves of businessmen and politicians based in Nairobi. A third layer was related to the movement of Somalis from Somalia westward into east Kenya, in addition to the cross-border ethnic affiliations. A fourth layer was associated with the periodic cycle of

The town of Mandera, with a population of over forty

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drought, which increased tensions over natural resources, such as in 2004. We explore the first three layers independently before looking at how all four of them interacted to create conflict. First, there is the layer of ethnic Kenyan Somalis fleeing from the west of Kenya because of the pressures they were facing as a result of changed policies at the central state level. After independence, Kenyan citizens enjoyed freedom of movement in the country. For pastoralists, this meant that they could live and graze anywhere, with the Tana River and the Ewaso Ng’iro River areas being especially attractive for their wet grazing areas. In Dekha’s words: “These people left their homes, came here, and lived in the area for many years. They were used to going to the river for water and they were used to natural rain coming from the sky with the available good natural resources, rather than using boreholes or wells.” Other areas, such as Isiolo, were used as holding grounds that Dekha explained were “multiethnic, pastoralist economic zones, for fattening and treating the animals.” These were attractive to pastoralists for selling their animals, which the government bought and exported to other parts of Kenya. However, this changed in 1989 when a screening procedure was introduced by the Kenyan government that meant that all Kenyans of Somali origin and Somali nationals living in Kenya of age eighteen or older had to carry a special identification card. Human Rights Watch described these so-called pink cards as being used for “the purpose of all state services and bureaucracy, including education, trade, financial transactions, and land transactions, as well as for internal and external travel,”5 and the cards were heavily criticized as discriminating against Somalis. The government’s justification for the screening was to identify and deport illegal immigrants from Somalia. As a result of the government’s actions, many pastoralists were forced to move eastward. However, when these pastoralists moved back to the areas they had left long ago, these areas had been settled in the meantime, and clashes resulted. The waves of migration eastward coincided with conflicts at different times, depending on where and when the pastoralists arrived in these areas. Conflict was thus connected to a group of traumatized pastoralists, who had lost their economic system, who had to come back “home,” and who had to learn new ways of living. Second, there is the layer of tensions arising because ethnopolitical clans are linked to administrative and political units and voting patterns. Of the clans living in Mandera, Garre are the majority, followed by the Degodia, and then the Murulle, the third-largest clan. Other than these three major clans, there are collections of smaller clans that are jointly named as corner tribes. The political dimension arose from the fact that “in

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1988 a new constituency, Mandera-Central, was carved out of ManderaEast to provide a seat in parliament for the Murulle. Prior to that time, the two constituencies in Mandera were routinely held by the numerically dominant Garre. As in Wajir, it was thought that a separate constituency in a mainly Murulle zone would serve as a conflict prevention device by eliminating political competition between the Garre and Murulle. Instead, it accelerated it.”6 As with the Wajir case, the intercommunity level has links to Nairobi, with the MPs based in the capital mirroring, stoking, or abating tensions at the local level. Dekha identified the financing and design coming from Mandera and Nairobi as the “big players.” Third, the international dimension related to dynamics in Somalia played a role. The westward movement of pastoralists from Somalia to Kenya led to an increased population in the Mandera region as a result of Somalis fleeing the crisis in Somalia. A special feature of the Mandera area is the cross-border movement in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Pastoralists often move their herds irrespective of international borders, and cross-border clan affiliations are often stronger than official national affiliations. If there is a crisis in any of the bordering countries, it has a direct impact on the neighboring states, as was also apparent in the Wajir case study, when Somalis fleeing the collapse of the state and resulting famine in Somalia put further pressure on pastoralists’ scarce resources during a drought in the Wajir area. Mandera on the Kenyan side and Belet Hawa on the Somali side are separated by just 3 km. Informally, the borders are often highly porous, with Somalis coming to Kenya for health and education services, and Kenyans going to Somalia for cheaper and faster internet services. The Garre and Murulle in Mandera have roots in Ethiopia, and the Garre live in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. This means the Garre could call on their alliances with these groups, which in turn led to the Murulle creating alliances with the Marehan clan. In Dekha’s words: The Garre were faced with two fronts of violence. The first was the fight with the Murulle within Kenya, and the second was the fight with the Marehan in Somalia. Furthermore, nationally and politically, the Garre representation in parliament was not through the National Alliance Party for Kenya (NAK) but was from the KANU or other parties, so they were not nationally aligned to the ruling group.7

In such a situation of multilayered conflict, clashes over natural resources, for example, triggered by drought, easily turned into violence with national and even international dimensions. In the sections that follow, Dekha outlines her direct experience of the violence in Mandera in 2004, when she coached the mediators and

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worked to prevent a spillover to Wajir, and again when the violence escalated in 2008. This material comes directly from interviews with Dekha and is recounted in her voice. Getting Engaged

On December 31, 2004, I was visiting my in-laws near Rhamu. The town was empty and people were quiet. Both sides had sent their militias to fight, but nobody spoke of what was happening. Language was important, and when people heard us speaking the Somali language they refused to give us information. But our driver spoke the Garre language, and they told him: “Don’t stop, even for food. There is a government military vehicle on the road, so just go now! If you don’t, you will be shot on the road.” The driver insisted that we leave immediately, so when we went to my in-laws’ village, I just visited my aunt. On January 1 on the journey back in the car, we saw two dead women on the road and a child who was injured. There was public transport on the road; a bus driver stopped us and told us: “Please, take this child and rush him to the hospital, because he’s losing a lot of blood.” I was with all my children and my husband, so we drove this child to the hospital as quickly as possible. However, upon entering Rhamu, we couldn’t go through the town to the hospital, because the entire town was armed with pangas and the like.8 I got out of the car to speak to the crowd, who didn’t know me and were suspicious of what I would tell them. They could have just killed me. I said: “I am just a fellow human being. I don’t know you guys, but all I did was to bring this child to the hospital. Just allow us to take this child to the hospital.” It was only later that I discovered that the injured boy was a distant relation of mine, but at the time I had no idea. It was just a child on the road that we were rushing to hospital. You have to do your own security assessment. This is what I learned from many years of living in Wajir. When the violence is hot, you should immediately leave that area. If you wait overnight, that is when the revenge attack is organized and then you will be in trouble on the road. So, after we brought the child to the hospital, and reported it, we left. My mother-in-law told us that we should not leave, but I knew what we were doing. We left the area immediately and I returned to Wajir. Developing a Response Strategy On returning, I did two things. I called Arid Lands in Nairobi, because they are the development wing of the government that deals with pas-

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toral development. I told them: “What I saw happening on that road in that community showed that Mandera is in a mess. Something needs to be done very fast!” Arid Lands responded by calling their offices in Mandera. Then I called the coordinator of Wajir Peace and I said: “You know what I have seen in Mandera? It will quickly spread to Wajir. Because these are pastoralists, and the same groups who live here also live there. It will just take two people fighting at the well, and this conflict will spread. Please, call for the peace committee! I can come as an outsider-insider and give you my observation of what I saw on the road during the twenty-four hours I was there.” So, they quickly called all who were present in the committee. I gave them my observations, which they discussed and then came up with a strategy. The number-one strategy for Wajir was to prevent the escalation of the violence in Mandera spreading to Wajir District. This involved alerting all the elders and members of the networks along the border area between Wajir and Mandera to the conflict and asking them to come up with a strategy to deal with the spillover. The second strategy was to call the Garre and Murulle living in Wajir to warn them by explaining: “Your two clans are fighting in Mandera. Leave them to solve their problems, but don’t contribute to the problems or bring the problems here. If you contribute, then we will hold you accountable! We want to be part of the solution; we don’t want to be part of the problem.” This was made clear to the leadership so that they could take control of their constituency. The elders announced this to their clans. All the government chiefs along the border were also alerted and told: “If there are pastoralists running away from Mandera, who are running away with their livestock, allow them to come and graze, but make sure they do not bring in any guns.” It was as if we were creating a flood-defense mechanism for Wajir. Then I drove back to Mombasa and communicated the information there. The government officers had not even woken up yet. The timing of events was an issue: the district commissioner of Mandera had been transferred away over Christmas to be replaced by a new district commissioner on January 6. In addition, most of the District Security Committee went back to their hometowns in other parts of the country over Christmas. This left a security vacuum. That was the reason why the tribes had decided to stage the violence during these six to seven days, to take advantage of this fact. I reported to Arid Lands, which was effective because at that time Arid Lands was linked to the office of the president, within the development section. They informed the security section, and the government

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put together a team quickly. I was not informed of the exact mandate, which perhaps consisted of a verification team, a mediation team, and a facilitation/dialogue team. However, it comprised parliamentarians from the region, headed by a minister and assistant ministers. Arid Lands then informed them that they needed a woman on the delegation. They agreed, but asked Arid Lands to provide them with someone suitable. Arid Lands phoned me when I was taking my daughter to school and asked me to do it. I answered: “Okay, let me organize myself and I’ll come.” Government-Led Team Goes to Mandera

By January 11, 2005, I was on a plane, heading to Mandera in a government-led delegation. They hired a plane to take us to Mandera by nine o’clock and then to fly back to Nairobi by five o’clock. That is the reality of a government delegation. You are told: “Go in, figure out the situation, calm it down, solve it if you can, and come back.” And you have just one day to do this! Immediately after we arrived in Mandera, we met the district commissioner and went for a meeting with the Garre and with the Murulle, which was a general public meeting. Then we had another meeting with the general public at two o’clock. By that time, we realized that we were not going to make it back to Nairobi by five o’clock. The tension was so high and the anger was too great. So we called Arid Lands and asked: “Can you allow the pilot and the plane to stay overnight and we will fly tomorrow morning at six? We can’t fly today. If we leave these people in this situation, we have actually created more mess than good.” As we had a senior minister with us, it was permitted. The budget became an issue because a certain price had been negotiated for the plane, and if you are going to keep a plane overnight, you pay by the hour. This was going to double the price, so there was the problem of raising the shortfall. The national coordinator of Arid Lands went and talked to the airline and the owner of the plane. The owner agreed not to charge overnight because we were working for security and peace. This is an example of the in-kind contributions that companies sometimes provide when they understand the nature of the work. The owner of Bluebird Aviation was from the North, he was a former military observer, and he understood what this was all about. Everybody had only brought clothing for the day. At two o’clock we had a public meeting, which lasted until five o’clock. Then we realized that we needed to have a second meeting with the two main protagonist groups and we needed private meetings with both because at

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the first meeting people were so angry. The anger was directed at the government for coming too late and for not putting security measures in place, as well as for not having enough police officers. It was nonstop work. All we had was water; there was no time to go for lunch. These people wanted to be heard immediately. By six o’clock in the evening, we started a meeting with one group and then we had another meeting with the other group. After that we needed to make sense of all that had been said. By this time, it was two o’clock in the morning. I left at two o’clock in the morning because I couldn’t stay awake anymore, but the minister, one of the assistant ministers, and one of the parliamentarians stayed seated. They told me we would have a review meeting at six o’clock to plan the way forward and that at seven o’clock we would be on the flight. The minister had a cabinet meeting at nine o’clock. At six we met with the security team and with a few people from Mandera. They said there was need for a military strategy, a military presence to create a buffer at the borders of Kenya, because the problem was not local, it was regional. So, at least armed actors from the Somali or Ethiopian side could not come in and armed actors from Kenya could not leave the country. Secondly, it was decided that there was a need to have an internal policing system so that the police would undertake to do their jobs well and no more people would be killed under the flag [i.e., by police or state security forces]. Also, it was identified that the people who were actually escalating the violence emotionally were the women, who were motivating their men to go to war. I was tasked with coming up with a strategy of women’s participation and involvement toward a peaceful resolution to prevent violence from spreading to the neighboring districts. We agreed with the district commissioner and the framework was created immediately, which was typed and circulated at the cabinet meeting. I reported back to Arid Lands, Women for Peace, Wajir Peace Committee, and Garissa Peace Committee. Women Talk to Women, Ringleaders Arrested

We also reported to PeaceNet in Nairobi and an organization called Urgent Action Fund, which gives emergency funding to women’s organizations. They agreed to support our project and we received around $5,000 within thirty-two hours. With this funding we got women from different areas in Kenya, including the North, Nairobi, Garissa, and Wajir, to travel overland from the border of Wajir and

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Mandera and to stop in every village on the way to talk to women over a cup of tea until they reached Mandera and then to return. We hired a vehicle for them and got women soldiers to escort the vehicle so that it was completely a women’s delegation. We also had a diverse delegation of elders from different religious and cultural backgrounds doing the same activity. First, they would offer condolences and then they would talk to the public, pleading: “Please don’t escalate this further. Let’s find a resolution to this.” This may have had some impact on a one-to-one level, but it only had at most a 5 percent positive impact on the broader psyche of the society. The people being addressed allowed the women and elders to talk about peace, but at the same time many of them were saying to themselves: “After they go, we resume our violence.” Women, children, and babies as young as two weeks old were killed. The government was not ready to intervene militarily. From January, when the initiative was started, until mid-March, eighteen people were killed. It was not even just killing but also mutilating; it was really terrible. Therefore, the government realized that mediation or dialogue was not working and they would have to use military action. The government now started using intelligence and started asking who were the ringleaders, activists, and financiers behind the violence. Key leaders who were known in Nairobi and Mandera were arrested, which immediately brought down the temperature. Government Tries to Talk to Community

In El Wak, where the eighteen people were killed, the community was so annoyed and angry that they refused to talk to the government officials. It was a slow, nonverbal demonstration, a very effective strategy. When the government security landed with a helicopter in the village, everybody closed their doors and their shops and stayed indoors; the streets were empty. The people responded in silent protest, sort of saying: “Where was the flag of Kenya when our people were killed?” It was so frustrating for the government officials because it is not possible to go into houses and force people to have a dialogue with you. One of the government officers was Lieutenant Colonel John Kibaso Warioba, who at this point called me to ask where I was. I told him I was in Mombasa. He answered: “I’m in El Wak right now. We have arrested the key leaders, but we want to do something different, which we cannot do alone without the public. Nobody will come out and I think in this situation we want the heart and the soft power of women. Do you have

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a member of Women for Peace in El Wak? Is there a leader? What’s her name? Please call her and give me her number. I will call her and you can call her to tell her to come out of the house and talk to us.”9 So Rahma Mohamed Ibrahim came out and talked to the military and then she told the other women and elders: “Okay, we’ve made our point, so now let’s engage in the dialogue.”10 The dialogue between the citizens and the security structures started with a public bazaar and the people vented their anger on the state institutions and about what was going on at the Nairobi level. The colonel asked: “What should we do?” The people responded: “We need people to mediate this problem. The military and police presence, the curfew, all that is not going to help. Arrest the culprits who are known as being responsible for planning and financing this violence, you know them, they are in Nairobi.” He asked what kind of mediators they would like, and the community gave some names. The colonel called us and asked for more names. Then he said: “We really need to have a team who will stay put on the ground, rather than this approach of flying in and flying out; we need people who have the support of the government and who have the support of the public to intervene in this, but we also have our military pressure to intervene, if the soft approach doesn’t work.” The government saw a need for Muslim religious leaders. We told them: “Actually, at this point we really need both Muslim and Christian religious leaders.” So, we contacted the Muslim and Christian religious leaders and asked them to come. The Christian religious leaders responded: “Okay, we agree, but let’s do this systematically. This is a Muslim region. Let’s support the Muslim religious leaders going out and we will be on the back burner, so if they need our support, we can go out. But if we go out alone, this will give a different message. The tension is so complex.” We agreed to this.11 Acceptable Mediators

By then the government had already come up with a list of who they wanted to send out to the field and had contacted some religious leaders. We knew who the public would agree to. At the Nairobi, Garissa, and Wajir level, this had to be clarified. It was fortunate that Lieutenant Colonel John Kibaso Warioba and I had a good relationship, so I could say to him: “Colonel, read your list and I will read my list and we will see if the names are the same.” Luckily, his list and my list were very similar, and there were only one or two differences. We agreed I would

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contact the religious leaders, who were both based in Nairobi and Garissa, and then the government would officially contact them. That way both sides would know they were acceptable. The government hired a plane, supplied a vehicle, and had a preparatory meeting in Nairobi, where they received initial agreement from the two parliamentarians representing the two clans to demonstrate via television media that they agreed to the intervention of the government through the support of the religious leaders, who would stay on the ground in Mandera. This was announced and shown very vividly to attempt to bring down the public temperature. The six religious leaders, including Shaikh Umal and Shaikh Ali Gure, were sent for, and they met with the Mandera religious leaders and stayed on the ground almost for forty-five consecutive days. They were starting from scratch, but building on that. Even during the Nairobi preparatory phase, there was the Garre group, who are Oromo-language speakers, and then the Murulle, who are Somali speakers. The Garre group told the religious leaders: “We don’t want Somali-speaking religious leaders, we want Oromo-speaking religious leaders. You Somali-speaking religious leaders will side with the Somali-speaking side of the conflict and parties. Hence, we don’t feel confident about you.” The religious leaders were feeling very depressed about this and didn’t know how to proceed, because this would have caused a delay for the whole process, but at the same time, it was a valid point. I called them at this junction and asked them, “How is the process going?” Shaikh Ali Gure said: “Oh my God, we really don’t know what to do with the Garre today. They have sort of chased us away. They don’t have confidence in Somali-speaking religious leaders. They want the Oromo-speaking religious leaders.”12 Intuitively, I said: “Allow them to do this. That’s not a big deal! And tell them ‘If you don’t want us as Somali religious leaders, that is fine! There is nothing wrong with that, but we are not coming as Somali religious leaders, we are coming as Muslim religious leaders. We are coming with a religious identity, not with an ethnic identity. You guys are Muslims, right? So, we’re coming to you as Muslim religious leaders. Do you accept us as Muslim religious leaders?’” When they heard this, the Garre community burst out laughing and said: “Oh! That’s okay, we wanted your impartiality, we wanted your neutrality.” Shaikh Ali Gure told me: “Dekha, that was such a brilliant suggestion, it created a breakthrough, they’ve now accepted us, and we are moving on.”

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The most interesting thing the religious leaders did in Mandera was sitting and talking to people, but when an incident took place they stopped what they were doing and went to investigate. If the incident involved a death, they would go to help with the burial and mourning, to calm the family, and investigate. They would investigate incidents like a shootout and gave a series of public lectures, arming people spiritually and preparing people psychologically. They had meetings with women, youth, elders, and government officials to ask about the issues. People would continuously come to them. They told me there was a young man from the Garre community who had 15,000 shillings in his pocket and wanted to buy a gun. He came as a negotiator and a spy for his clan, but he joined the delegation and listened closely to the lectures. Through these lectures he was transformed. Something touched him and he decided he would not buy a gun, that he would instead join the mediation process. Public Mobilization to Support the Process

The religious leaders stayed in a hotel and then the government asked whether to provide security, but I replied that they should not worry. Once the religious leaders were working on the ground, we began initiating mobilization in Nairobi at the public level to support the peace process. At this juncture when the religious leaders became the official team of mediators on the ground, my role became more one of supporting that process. For example, we got the phone numbers of the six religious leaders and asked people to support the peace process by putting airtime onto their phones. In those days the religious leaders did not know the system where you can top up credit. All they saw was that this credit from the mobile company was coming in. When I called them, I asked: “How’re you doing? How is your phone?” They answered: “My God, we’re getting money through our phones! Maybe the companies have made a mistake. We’re unable to use our phones, because we fear we will be using somebody else’s money; how do you send this money back to the company?” I laughed and said: “Shaikh Ali Gure, these are people who are supporting you and they don’t want to put their money into the war contribution, they want to put their money into the peace contribution, and this is how they are doing it. So tell the religious leaders ‘Feel free to use your phones’ because it’s meant to support you in the peace process, it’s meant to support you to talk to your family because you are very far from your homes.”

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Outcome A lot of the young religious leaders among the group were Arabic speakers, and all their notes were produced in Arabic on their laptops. Debriefing was also done in Arabic. We asked Shaikh Ali Gure to use bilingual secretaries and they produced documents in both languages as requested, continuing until they had a seven-point agenda of the peace agreement with an eighteen-month implementation plan, including compensation that was calculated in terms of losses, listing actions, and who should be paid what. This agreement was signed by the two sides and then by the government. They announced the ceasefire agreement in the mosque, and they asked for the key leaders of both communities to swear in front of the public that they would uphold the agreement, including the points on compensation, return of arms and ammunition, and sharing natural resources (access to water, grazing lands). Normally, when an agreement is reached the parties stay in the government office and sign in front of the government rather than in front of the public in a mosque with the announcement being transmitted at all mosques. On that day in April 2005 it rained unexpectedly, which blessed the commitment ceremony. By swearing in front of the public in the mosque, the parties were taking personal responsibility in front of God, before taking personal responsibility in the eyes of the law of the country. It was very new and scary for people to take that responsibility, but they did so. On the Monday following the weekend, there was a lot of dissemination work regarding the content of the ceasefire agreement, and the agreement was brought to the government offices. I was invited as well as members of parliament and the provincial commissioner for the public signing ceremony in front of the state. In this way there was a community level and a state level. The community level demonstrated making a public commitment to disengage from violence, as this was done on behalf of the communities with an oath taken in front of the public. The state level was for enforcement. The agreement created an internal monitoring mechanism. After the agreement was signed, the religious leaders left and slowly began to give support from a distance. There were six external leaders, and approximately ten internal leaders joined them during the process. The population of that region is approximately 300,000–400,000 people. The religious leaders were based in the town of Mandera, but for monitoring purposes, they placed two people in different villages. The implementation phase began in April 2005, when a sum of money was

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immediately due to be paid out, with a further two installments due after another six and twelve months. There was also a clause for the return of arms and ammunition. Organizing the security on the Ethiopian and Somali side was done by the military. The agreement held between 2005 and 2007, but in 2008 violence reoccurred. From this first case in 2005, the Mandera religious leaders were coached and gained practice. They created a framework of eighteen months’ duration with both monitoring and implementation of the 2005 agreement. Conflict and Process Between Garre and Marehan During 2005 and 2008 By June 2005, once the conflict within Kenya between the Garre and Murulle subsided, the conflict now began on the Somali side between the Garre and the Marehan over the contested town of El Wak (El Wak crosses the Kenyan-Somali border, with a Kenyan El Wak and a Somali El Wak). This became another, bigger war that involved sending “technicals” from Kismayo and military groups from Ethiopia.13 The war completely razed the Somali town of El Wak to the ground and almost killed everyone. The district commissioner in Mandera at that time and the military officer from Kenya knew that in the interest of Kenya a framework for the resolution of the conflict needed to be found. Again Shaikh Ali Gure and other shaikhs within Mandera were invited back from Garissa, and a mediation process was held in El Wak, Kenya, for a conflict that was inside Somalia. The justification the Kenyan government used was that if nothing was done about the problem in Somalia the newly brokered peace in Kenya would not hold. The Actors

Shaikh Ali Gure is an ethnic Somali Kenyan religious leader, from the Ogaden subclan in Garissa. I provided process advice. The Garre and Ajuran as people belong ethnically to a certain group but have a different linguistic orientation.14 The Garre are ethnically Somali, but linguistically they can also speak Oromo. They straddle the three countries (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia) and they have a lot of interaction with Ethiopian Oromos, which is why they speak the Oromo language. However, ethnically and politically they are ethnic Somalis. As people with

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a dual identity, they use one identity if it suits them and another if this identity suits them better. As a result of wanting to complicate matters, they tried to refuse mediation by saying that they needed Oromo mediators. In truth at that time, however, they were in conflict with the Oromos and the Boran in Ethiopia. They also wanted to make a point of testing the mediator. If the mediator accepts this point and looks for an Oromo mediator, then the Garre will say: “Aha! We have confirmed our suspicion that you guys never welcomed us into this Somali club politically, that’s why you have to look for outsiders to be our mediators.” So whatever you do, you are damned. The Process

At first we just called the elders to El Wak, which did not work. We had to raise money again and call for the Kenyan parliamentarians from this area to call for Barre Hirale from Kismayo as well as the Garre from Ethiopia to come together. A regional meeting that involved the three countries was organized. Everyone agreed on the agenda. One of the things that needed to be discussed was: “To whom does El Wak town belong? Does it belong to the Garre? Does it belong to the Marehan?” Sometimes it is important to bracket issues. Shaikh Ali Gure said: “I’m not a Somali national. It’s for the Somali government, which is just now being formed, to help you make decisions, such as to whom El Wak belongs to, so let’s give that issue to your government.” The Garre and the Marehan asked Shaikh Ali Gure: “Before you go into the mediation, we want to know who is right and who is wrong.” Shaikh Ali Gure responded with a story: “Once upon a time there was a blind person and a person without legs. The blind guy was standing under a tree with wonderful fruit. So the guy without the legs told the blind guy: ‘We’re standing under a tree which has fruit which are very high up.’ So, the blind guy lifted the guy without legs and put him on his shoulders. The guy with eyes but no legs was about to pluck fruit from the tree when the owner of the tree arrived.” Shaikh Ali Gure asked the community: “Then who is the thief? Is it the blind guy? Or is it the guy without legs?” Both clans started laughing, but nobody answered the question. In Somalia one has to give an apology, called saben. Shaikh Ali Gure told them as they had not answered his question he would fine them both 10,000 shillings. He took the 10,000 shillings from one group and gave it to the other, then did the same to the other group before starting the dialogue. This was like breaking the ice in order to have the conversation. He indicated that technically both parties were guilty but

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that was not important as the dialogue should be started to find out together. They agreed to begin the dialogue, which was like giving him a mandate. They wanted arbitration, but he was not ready to be an arbitrator and told them he was a mediator. After disagreement about where the venue should be for the mediation, he said: “Give me the mandate and then I can suggest the venue. But if you don’t give me the mandate, then I don’t even have the power to make suggestions.” It continued like that with Shaikh Ali Gure using psychology, Somali poetry, and religious stories to bridge and translate between them. Outcome and Follow-Up As mediator, he asked them how they should share the administration of the town. They came up with a formula that if the mayor is Garre, then the deputy should be Marehan, if the chief police officer is Marehan, then the deputy should be Garre. This was a framework of power sharing and joint management of the town. An agreement on the cessation of hostilities and the return of militias back to Kismayo and Ethiopia was made, making sure violence would not spread to Kenya. Other issues discussed included the demining of the land for safety, as well as returning the displaced people and cleaning the town. They agreed on some basics and said: “Okay, let’s review it in six months and by that time if your government has grown and become strong, then we can decide who this land belongs to because it’s your land, it is Somali land, so Kenyans cannot decide for you.” After brokering that deal in Kenya, they were told to get their own mediator for the second part of the negotiations. Kenya paid for the first part of the meeting, so the Garre and Marehan had to pay for the second part to take the process forward. Relapse into Conflict in 2008 In October 2008 there was a relapse of the Garre-Murulle conflict, which this time was in Kenya only. It was a contestation over land and rights to it. October is the rainy season and there was a flash flood. The Murulle community who lived in the town of Mandera had settled on a floodplain, and the flash flood had swept them away, so they were looking for higher ground to settle on. There was a disconnect between local and national processes. Normally, there is a District Steering Group (DSG) committee, which deals

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with development, floods, and conflict-related issues. They organize the public, for example, concerning what should be done and what the response should be. However, because it was the new [political] year with new parliamentarians who did not understand how the system works, a parliamentarian decided to intervene himself to tell them where they could settle. The place he was telling people they could settle in was empty land but with title deeds attached to it. Those who had the title deeds were Garre, so when the Murulle came and settled there, the arguments began and quickly escalated to violence. From October 2008 onward, again the insider mediators and religious leaders, who now numbered fourteen among them, quickly got together and mediated. What happened was that when these people affected by the flash flood began fighting, then all of a sudden in all the other places where Garre and Murulle were living, the conflict spread. It is possible to resolve the immediate and some of the substantive issues, but if people’s behavior and attitudes are not transformed, then anything can trigger and bring back even the substantive issues that had been resolved previously. The response of the government was to send in the army without delay. The military came and beat people indiscriminately, committing human rights abuses. For example, there was a teacher who resigned when he was in the classroom holding a piece of chalk, and the military arrived and slapped and kicked him. He decided from that point that he could not be a teacher anymore. They put a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the district. During this violence, the religious leaders were on the ground intervening and pleading: “This violence is not going to help.” By that time parliamentarians were talking among themselves at the national level about a framework of engagement without being realistic with what was happening on the ground. They seemed to be in support of the military action, but they did not properly negotiate with the government to prevent human rights abuses. The fact is that the military and the police were coming out of a very tense year in Kenya: a year with heightened tension and a high level of trauma (see Chapter 11). There was no proper debriefing for the Kenyan security officers. Therefore, they were full of venom, which is understandable considering their experience. Even the parliamentarians from the region were really shocked by the viciousness of the Kenyan security forces. The religious leaders, women, and business leaders, who would later join to form the Mandera Mediation Council, came together to ask what they needed to do about the underlying tensions. They had long dialogue sessions trying to find out what was happening and were told by the people: “There are elements of the peace agreement of 2005 that

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were not fully implemented and this is informing what is happening right now.” It then became a task of revisiting the peace agreement of 2005 to look at what was done, what was not done, and what was left out. These issues were then consolidated together. Based on this, a plan was developed for what needed to happen and who needed to do it. Trauma Healing

The religious leaders agreed to a number of road shows to talk to the community and undertake social reconciliation trauma healing workshops at the community level. This was to provide spiritual guidance, to design the desired future for everyone rather than negotiating in a piecemeal style. Four experts were sent from Nairobi to support the religious leaders on the ground, to provide the strategic, operational, and program issues to consolidate actions. At that juncture, the strategy team decided they needed a trauma healing component, because a conflict analysis would be divisive at this time and people would be blaming each other. A trauma healing component, in comparison, brings people together by realizing that everyone is affected and examining what has caused the trauma and how long they have been traumatized. This leads them to look into how to create a society and a future without these traumatic events. A program called Pact Now (linked to Pact Kenya) was developed as a whole series of trauma healing programs for security officials, chiefs, women’s groups, youth groups, schools, and so forth. Understanding how to recognize signs of trauma really helped in society making a breakthrough. Prior to this, people felt very depressed and victimoriented, but the trauma healing program lifted their spirits in enabling them to see themselves collectively and in this way make sense of what had happened to them. It was the first time that this shared transformative experience came together. Before the trauma transformation program, they were really in negotiation for lives: “You killed two people from us, you have to pay!” The other side would respond: “You killed five people, you have to pay!” They were bargaining with: “Okay, two on one side, five on the other side, you guys have to pay three more.” With the trauma program they moved from that bargaining phase to a phase where they realized: “We are a lost society as we’ve lost a lot. Our trauma is vicious, selfreinforcing, and self-destroying. The destruction is individual and collective. Let’s stop and look at each other and let’s talk about how to create a desired future.” Blending mediation process and the facilitation of

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a dialogue process with social reconciliation and sharing of feelings created an outline for the process. What do peacebuilding processes consist of? Mediation cannot be stand-alone. Trauma healing also cannot be stand-alone. They have to be connected and transformative. Dealing with the past in order to transform the future, trauma healing, and social reconciliation are not clinical psychology that deals with an individual. It is an individual and a collective process dealing with hundreds of thousands of people. How then do you look at the needs of the individual as well as the needs of the broader society? What processes can you create for the individual and what processes can you create for society? Establishing the Mandera Mediation Council In 2008 the Mandera religious leaders stood up collectively with one voice and became an insider mediator. From there they formalized themselves into the Mandera Mediation Council. By 2009, when the cross-border conflict arose over governance and other issues, this meant that they had already institutionalized themselves. The realization came that as insiders they needed to take responsibility rather than wait for outsiders to respond. The Mandera Mediation Council was founded as a permanent structure with fifteen religious leaders, who understood Islam as well as Somali culture. These leaders understood English and Arabic, and they had a grasp of governance and administration and different levels of diversity: political, social, and intellectual. They created representation, consisting of two people in all the mosques in greater Mandera, so that if an incident happened, the response to that incident would be closer to the theater of the conflict. This meant that they would not have to leave Mandera town and travel hundreds of kilometers to the incident but that they could have the issue monitored or solved in situ. The Mandera Mediation Council then took time to systematically discuss, process, and create procedures and an institution. They took the route of developing their institutional capacity and engaging more with the government and Nairobi politicians, as well as involving the community more. It was agreed to take a long-term view in stating that they were available to respond to any incident, however small, by carrying the issues forward. In creating the Mandera Mediation Council, it was realized that the conflict in Mandera seemed to be centered within one ethnic group. The Garre had a problem within the community, having,

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on separate occasions, conflict with the Murulle, the Marehan, the Adjuran of Wajir District, and the Borana of Ethiopia. Some of the religious leaders and others within the mediation council now started taking a step further to look internally within one of their own social groups. This process was mainly led by urban elites, saying: “There is a conflict of internal issues within the Garre that is so close to us that everybody fears to deal with it. That’s why we’re good at fighting other people. So how about if we look internally and sort ourselves out?” This began a longer process of examining the problems in Mandera, and the mechanisms for resolving the conflicts among the Garre. They examined the question of to which authority a group takes their internal conflicts, for example, whether they go to the judiciary, the police, or the council of elders. A new Garre council of elders was created to provide processes and procedures within the Garre community to resolve social, political, family, and business conflicts. This means that now within Kenya there is a structure in which if there is an individual who has a behavioral or attitude problem, there is a place where this can be reported. This led to a significant decrease in the conflict within the Mandera district. The religious leaders who created this mediative capacity within Mandera focused on looking inside Mandera as well as externally toward Ethiopia and Somalia so that they could respond to conflicts from all directions. The Mandera Mediation Council also created smaller mediation councils in El Wak and in smaller villages. There is additionally an El Wak–Somali mediation council. This means there is a group of religious leaders who can respond to each other, which is critical. In the Mandera case, I was not the mediator but was supporting the mediation process. This included giving financial advice and providing administrative assistance, mentoring, and coaching. Part of my work with the Mandera Mediation Council was to listen, listen, and listen some more, then to write up notes and ask further questions. It was a process of affirming what they were doing, challenging them, and then strategizing with them to be effective in certain areas. I have done that for individuals as well as for organizations.15 When you take on a duty, a responsibility, you pray: “Oh my God, I hope this really happens.” Discussion Following Dekha’s account of the events in Mandera, this discussion aims to highlight various aspects of the case in relation to the SMALL

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Framework. Focus is placed on some of the process dimensions before exploring the role of the mediator. Short-Term Responses: Mediation Process Design

Following are the particulars of design to this case:

• Context: Even more than in the other cases, the international context and dynamics in Ethiopia and Somalia played a major role here— indeed, without the Kenyan military’s security presence partially isolating the conflict from the international dimensions, a local process would not have been feasible. • Goal and content: The goals of the processes swung between dealing with the immediate violence, trying to de-escalate it (at times unsuccessfully), and dealing with the contentious issues fueling it. The contested issues included control of the town of El Wak, party political affiliation linked to ethnic affiliation, migration, access to land and water, and a security vacuum exploited by individual criminal actors. • Participation: In addition to the types of actors that were also included in the previous cases (state, traditional nonstate, modern nonstate), the Mandera conflict is unique in that it involved actors from different clans (Oromo, Garre, Murulle, Marehan), and these clans in turn were spread across the borders of several countries: Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. • Third party: Multiple third parties were involved, including state actors and the Mandera Mediation Council. The state could adopt certain roles in the process, but they had to be complemented by the elders and religious actors. The involvement of local Kenyan mediators in a local conflict in Somalia also shows the way international borders have a different meaning in this context and clan affiliations across borders may be more relevant than nationalities. • Format and structure: One can learn as much from a failed process as from a successful one. When violence is ongoing and intense, mediation may not work. The case study shows how in such situations a more forceful approach may be needed to calm the situation before mediation can work. In a multilayered conflict such as the one discussed above, pressure may be needed to isolate the conflict one seeks to address from individual criminal elements (e.g., the use of intelligence and police to capture individual ringleaders) as well as from the international dimensions (e.g., military presence at the borders to isolate the Kenyan part of the conflict from the Somali and Ethiopian

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parts). While the Wajir case illustrates how to make a process successful by adapting and expanding participation in the process (adding the state), the Mandera case illustrates how one can make a process successful by scaling it down and isolating certain actors from the process (specific individuals and the international spillover). Both cases called for an adaptation of system borders, that is, the balance between goal and participation in a given context. • Timing: The case study shows the emergency form of mediation organized overnight to try to find out about the conflict and to minimize escalation. Over time, this then had to be transformed into a more sustainable process, working in parallel with the police, intelligence, and military to deal with individual criminal elements and cross-border dynamics. • Venue: Different venues were used; noteworthy is the use of state and religious venues (e.g., the mosque) to create both legal and religious/ cultural commitment. • Funding: There were multiple funding sources, including local actors and government funding through Arid Lands, as well as donations and in-kind contributions from businesses and private individuals in a crowdfunding style. An interesting funding setup was the partial contribution from Kenya for the process related to El Wak Somalia as part of trying to avoid spillover effects.

Links to Medium- and Long-Term Responses

The Mandera case aptly demonstrates the mediator’s realization that a medium-term structure—the Mandera Mediation Council—had to be established to avoid an overdependency on Nairobi for mediation capacity. It also supports the ability to work on more structural and policy-related questions, such as regarding the Garre community. However, the Mandera case also highlights how the limits of mediation, where other approaches—such as trauma healing programs—and more directive interventions—such as policing—may be needed to complement mediation. The phase when mediation is severely challenged is related to a period of acute violence, which is intentionally orchestrated by certain key leaders. In this situation, intelligence and security forces had to be used. However, once the direct violence calmed down, mediation efforts could resume. Mediation may also be challenged when people are traumatized, and trauma healing programs may be needed as part of the broader peacebuilding efforts. Pressure to

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calm the situation and dialogue to deal with the root causes and trauma healing to address wounds of the past are complementary.16 Linking Inner and Outer Peace: Mediation Skills and Roles

Impartiality. The question of impartiality, that is, that a mediator treats all sides in a fair manner, is at the heart of all mediation approaches. General good practice is for a mediator to hand over her or his mandate if she or he is no longer perceived by the parties as impartial.17 However, impartiality and perceptions of impartiality depend on context. In the Mandera case, Dekha sensed that the parties’ challenge to Shaikh Ali Gure’s impartiality was not really about impartiality per se, but about “testing the mediator,” seeing under what identity he was approaching them, and how respectfully, strongly, and competently he reacted to a problem. Handing over his mandate in this case would have been a mistake, whereas taking up the concern of the parties (“we are not coming as Somali religious leaders, we are coming as Muslim religious leaders”), while sticking to his mediation role, was vital to show authority and respect while letting the process proceed. One needs to know the actors, issues, and context to make this type of judgment call.

Using arts-based approaches. Whereas the West has traditionally tended to rationalize approaches to mediation and peacebuilding, Dekha’s cases highlight the power of humor, art, stories, and cultural practices, as illustrated by Shaikh Ali Gure. It is only very recently that the Western mediation and conflict resolution community have (re)discovered such nonrational approaches.18 In a sense, the Western conflict resolution world is lagging behind many other cultures in this regard. Using arts in this way can help link inner and outer peace work. Notes Many thanks for helpful corrections and comments on a draft version of this chapter by Halima Shuria and Amina Hassan Ahmed in an email exchange with Simon Mason, June 19, 2018. 1. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis. 2. Mandera County (established under the 2010 constitution) used to be part of the North Eastern Province (with Wajir and Garissa) and has a population of 1,025,756 following the 2009 census. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, “Kenya: 2009 Population.” 3. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis. 4. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis.

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5. Human Rights Watch, “Screening of Ethnic Somalis,” 1; Lochery, “Rendering Difference Visible.” 6. Development Alternatives, Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis, 28. 7. NAK was founded in 2000. In 2007, it joined the Party of National Unity (PNU), headed by Mwai Kibaki, competing with its main rival the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), headed by Raila Odinga. In 2012, NAK was rebranded to National Alliance under Uhuru Kenyatta, president of Kenya since 2013; KANU was founded in 1960 and was the ruling political party between 1963 and 2002 and the political base of the prime minister and president Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu) from 1963 to 1978 and President Daniel Moi (Kalenjin) from 1978 to 2002. 8. A broad heavy knife, often used in East Africa as a tool or weapon. 9. This section was kindly checked with John Kibaso Warioba in an email exchange with Simon Mason, April 22, 2018. 10. This part was kindly checked by Rahma Mohamed Ibrahim and confirmed in an email to Simon Mason, May 18, 2018. 11. This section was kindly checked with John Kibaso Warioba in an email exchange with Simon Mason, April 21, 2018. 12. “Shaikh Ali Gure has confirmed that the information in the document is a true representation of what happened. Mohamed Khalif printed out the section that had the Shaikh’s quotations and translated the part to him bit by bit and the Shaikh confirmed that it was all true.” Halima Shuria, email to Simon Mason, June 1, 2018. 13. The term technicals is used to described militarized pickup trucks (the term originated from aid agencies’ budgets, where there was a need for an acceptable cover-up term for the agencies’ security jeeps). 14. Ajuran is also spelled Ajuraan and Ajurann. 15. One example is the interaction between Dekha and a Somali group based in Europe. They were doing training but were not keeping a register of who they had trained, at what level, and the trainers’ names. The coaching helped them see that they needed this to develop a business plan for improving. They were also organizing money transfers after talking to the Foreign Office, the police, and Western Union. Dekha supported them in documenting this work where possible, as there were useful lessons for the world, how to create new policies and avoid people using back channels for sending remittances. 16. The idea about finding the right level of pressure was illustrated by Julian Th. Hottinger with a metaphor: the banks (the pressure) of a river have to be set close enough so that the water (actors in dialogue) flows, but not too close, otherwise the water will break the banks. Not enough pressure is bad, as is too much pressure; thus, one has to find the right balance. See Mason, Learning from the Swiss Mediation. 17. United Nations, United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation: “Handover to another mediator, or mediating entity, if they feel unable to maintain a balanced and impartial approach,” 10. 18. LeBaron, MacLeod, and Floyer Acland, The Choreography of Resolution.

11 Mediation in the Kenyan Election Crisis

during the election crisis of 2007–2008, Dekha provided some background information in interviews, which is summarized here.1 As a preliminary point, furthermore, she highlighted how election-related violence is not divorced from other conflicts in society:

Before explaining what Dekha and her colleagues did

I observe a lot of donors and governments focus on elections and election-related violence, arguing we should have systems in place etc., and you then really become myopic, really zooming into one. Elections are not divorced from other factors in a society. Election can trigger a crisis, but anything else could also have triggered this crisis.

She also pointed out how one cannot understand the 2007–2008 events without looking back in time. Related to the general elections of 1992, much of the violence was in the Rift Valley. In the elections of 1997, violence occurred mainly in the urban coastal area—shaping the tourist industry’s response in 2007. In the 2002 elections, there was little violence because everyone feared the worst with the transition of power from President Moi. As Dekha stated: “In my own perception, sometimes a collective fear in the psyche of a society is good because you are more aware and this awareness protects you.” In contrast, in 2007–2008 people were not expecting violence, because they had peacefully transitioned from the Moi years, and were thus caught by surprise. The constitutional referendum of 2005 had been relatively peaceful, but the country was polarized as a result, and 177

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the elections of 2007 played out along those cleavages. Speaking from the perspective of the pastoralist periphery, Dekha highlighted how Until December 30, 2007, conflict in Kenya was seen as an economic question, belonging to a certain economic and geographical group, the pastoralists, who have had conflicts and violence for hundreds of years. In this way it was depicted as if raiding is part of the culture of those living in an underdeveloped area, perpetuated by people who were not contributing to the national economy and with a “barbaric” culture. The events of 2007–2008 became a leveling ground for Kenya: it showed that whether you lived in the North or in the South, in an urban or a rural society, violence could happen anywhere.

It is precisely because of the decade-long experience of the periphery with conflict that some of the early warning and early response mechanisms prepared by actors in the periphery were then used across the country in the 2007–2008 crisis. These included: (1) local efforts, as in Wajir, (2) networking efforts across the country (e.g., by PeaceNet), and (3) the development of a national policy framework and institutional setup for peace work (e.g., in the form of the National Steering Committee for Peace [NSC]). At the local level, there were efforts to get politicians to commit to peaceful campaigning. Aspiring candidates who came to Wajir were informed about the peace committee and asked to sign to prove their commitment to a peaceful election. When questioned about why this was necessary, because elections are all about competition, Dekha revealed that they answered as follows: Two little children singing for two different candidates can slap each other, then their two mothers slap each other, then their fathers, until the whole society is in conflict. Then it’s no longer peaceful electioneering. So can you state the issues, what is in your manifesto, without being abusive to the other side? Some discipline is needed.

Another such initiative was the installation of election mediators in hotly contested constituencies and polling stations. T-shirts were supplied for elders who acted as cross-party mediators to monitor the violence and intervene. If someone doubted the number put into the ballot, the election mediator would go and check with them. They investigated arguments, stopped rumors, and made sure the police were present. Such local experiences regarding peaceful campaigning commitments and the use of election mediators were adopted by PeaceNet

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and used on a national level in 2002 in many areas of the country. In Dekha’s view, the PeaceNet conference of 1995 had been a breakthrough moment, as it was the first time Kenyans saw the interconnectedness of their work and the importance of networking rather than working in isolation.2 In 2007, PeaceNet also placed monitors, mediators, and “social healers” on the ground. Nevertheless, despite the establishment of these systems, the violence of 2007–2008 hit Kenya and the world by surprise. Table 11.1 presents an overview of key events. The following sections come directly from interviews with Dekha and are recounted in her voice. Events of December 27–30, 2007 On December 27, 2007, we had the election. The result was due to be announced by December 29, but this did not happen and people were really anxious. There was a lot of tension in the media and at the votetallying center in Nairobi. People knew that the results of the 2002 election had been announced by December 27 and were wondering why things were so slow and whether there was vote rigging. The tension started building up in different parts of the country. It was a highly publicized election, so everybody in their homes could see via

Table 11.1 Timeline of 2007–2008 Election Violence and Mediation Response December 27, 2007: National elections between President Mwai Kibaki (PNU) and Raila Odinga (ODM) as leading candidates. December 30, 2007: President Kibaki is announced the winner and sworn in for a second term. Violence breaks out between Kikuyu and non-Kikuyu, clashes in Eldoret and Mathare, a slum of Nairobi. January 9, 2008: African Union chair President John Kufour encourages Kibaki and Odinga to negotiate. January 22, 2008: Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan arrives to mediate. Already 650 people have been killed and 250,000 displaced. Ethnic attacks, primarily between Luos and Kikuyus, have been ongoing. February 3, 2008: Odinga and Kibaki agree to meet and take action to end the violence. February 5, 2008: The Kenyan Red Cross states that 1,000 people have been killed, thousands injured, and 304,000 are homeless. February 28, 2008: Kibaki and Odinga sign a power-sharing agreement, with a prime minister position to be filled by Odinga. Source: Chronopoulos, “Timeline: Kenya’s Post-Election Path.”

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the television what was happening at the tallying center. There was a blackout moment and all of a sudden people started noticing that there was a strategic positioning of soldiers around the tallying center in Nairobi. On the evening of December 30, the presidential results were announced and then the swearing-in ceremony took place immediately and was shown on television. By sunset, Kenya was already divided. Everything happened too quickly, both the speed of the swearing-in ceremony, which is not traditional in Kenya, and the appearance of the military on the streets of Nairobi. There was a sense of shock and a division of emotions, with one half of the country very happy and the other half very sad. These are two emotions that are really critical in a conflict setting. For example, the ODM had thought that they would win and perhaps the margin of difference was very minimal. However, the losing side was given no space. In 2002, people were also fearful, but their fear was managed. For example, by holding the swearing-in ceremony in a public garden with the presence of the military, civilians, and representatives from neighboring countries, people could understand that one party was leaving, and another was coming in. This time it was done at the State House on the evening of December 30, 2007. Therefore, by the morning of the thirty-first, the entire country went wild. People were unable to sensitively manage their emotions, and this was critical, sparking the violence when the winning group celebrated without consideration toward the losing group. The country was divided into two camps with affiliation to the two main political parties: the PNU and the ODM. Mombasa at that time was in the opposition zone. The middle part of the country was seen as a PNU area and the rest was seen mainly as an ODM area. The public anger and frustration were expressed in arson attacks by burning bars in Mombasa and shops in the Rift Valley. Houses where people were celebrating were burned, and youth were stealing from shops. By December 31, there were many incidences of violence throughout the country, with the exception of the pastoral areas. People wanted to vent their anger. How do you channel the frustration and anger when the tension is so high? In Kenya during Christmas and New Year it is customary for people to leave the city and go to the tourist resorts of Mombasa or to the rural areas as it is the hottest season of the year. As a result, Nairobi is empty during this time, so nobody expected violence. There were two competing theories regarding the outcome of the elections. The PNU theory was: use state apparatus and state institutions

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to resist the violence as much as possible, and the other group will fizzle out and we will stay in power. The ODM’s theory was: demonstrate, use mass action, make the country ungovernable. So the two sides were really playing a game of cat and mouse, and society was caught in the middle. Nobody really cared about the social issues. Starting to Respond In such a situation, who do you count on to put out the fire? What systems are there for you to activate? Who should begin? Who should do what? Who gives you the mandate to start? Do you expect the state, the business actors, or the religious leaders to do something? There will be those who will be following events on television, and there are those who will look for the next flight out of the country. But there are also those who will want to do something. One of the things that really helped us as a country was that a system existed with peace networks linked to the center. Since the 1992 election, we feared that every local election would have some level of violence. This meant we had about a hundred monitors who also had mediation skills. All the monitors had a cell phone, with which they could send an alert, and the alerts could then be centrally collected. The information could be sent to whoever needed it: humanitarian information to the humanitarian side, and crime to the relevant people. One of the first systems to be activated by PeaceNet was that of the hundred monitors who were positioned mainly in the hot spots of the Rift Valley, central Kenya, and Nairobi. The monitors reported, but they also did whatever they could on the ground. I was in Mombasa during the elections of December 30 and 31 and was frustrated because all I could do was call my colleagues: “Are you okay? What’s happening?” We called members of the NSC, who were both in and outside the government, and asked them if they were well. People were contacting each other using their personal relationships. All around my neighborhood, shops were burned and more people were arriving in my compound. The thing that gives you your personal security is not bringing an armed guard into your house but bringing more internally displaced people into your compound: employees, neighbors, and so forth. The fact that your house is full and that you share your compound with people means security, which is fantastic in terms of social cohesion. Class and money issues disappear and you depend on your neighbor for your own personal safety. The TV was showing violence

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everywhere; the country was on fire. There was also the fear: will the youth come to your house after looting the shops, what are you going to do, will the people in your compound be safe? All these emotions flood through you in terms of what decisions you are going to make. By December 31, at four o’clock, I got a phone call from Nairobi: “Dekha, where are you, what are you doing?” I answered: “I’ve made some phone calls, I’m so frustrated, I’m in the kitchen cooking chapati.” My hands were covered in flour, as I was kneading the chapatis. As you knead them, you try to get your frustration out. You want to do something, but you do not know what to do, you can make a few telephone calls, send some airtime, yet you want to jump into action, without knowing where to begin. Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat and my colleague George Wachira were in Nairobi and they said: “Okay, put those chapati in a paper bag, get a fast flight out, we need you in Nairobi. We are trying to find a way to meet in Nairobi so that we can make a public appeal on television.”3 Their thinking was that after the evening of the thirtieth, when the president was sworn in, the Kenyan television blacked out so nobody knew who was in charge and the president never appeared to address the country. Therefore, somebody needed to fill that vacuum and to appeal to Kenyans. Besides Ambassador Kiplagat and George Wachira, there were also two ex-army generals. One was General Daniel Opande, who is known by a lot of Sierra Leoneans and Liberians, and the other was General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, who mediated the Sudan peace process, a retired chief of staff of the Kenyan army. These four men called me and asked me to join them in Nairobi.4 For your own personal safety, the first people you negotiate with are your children. I told them, “Tomorrow morning I’m going to Nairobi.” They replied, “Mum, really?” I explained: “Our country is in a mess, I have to go.” So they agreed. How do you even get a plane? I finished cooking the chapati while calling my travel agent. Because of the roadblocks there was no way I could get into town from my house. You fear the Kenyan police, military, and the militia groups. There is no way you can just walk outside. Thank God for the technology to receive an airline ticket on your phone. So by four o’clock in the morning I was at the airport, at six o’clock I left Mombasa, and by seven o’clock I was in Nairobi. It took me just seven minutes from the airport in Nairobi to reach the Serena Hotel, where the meeting was going to take place. Those who know Nairobi will realize that was in lightning speed; normally it can take two or three hours. The streets were empty and nobody was out. Around Uhuru Park and major buildings there were red berets. In

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Kenya when you see the red beret (General Service Unit) on the streets, it is not good news. Formation and Work of Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP) I was in Nairobi and I didn’t have luggage with me, because I thought it was a one-day meeting. You don’t want to carry things in that sort of crisis. All you need are the clothes you are wearing. So I reached the Serena Hotel, and half an hour later I was told to go to the Canna room. The day before, General Sumbeiywo and Ambassador Kiplagat had made an announcement on the radio and television, asking all Kenyans who have an idea of what we can do for our country to come to the Serena Hotel to the Canna room. We were in that hotel because Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the Commonwealth chairman monitoring the election and former president of Sierra Leone, was there. By that time on the thirty-first, Ambassador Kiplagat and General Sumbeiywo had already talked to him: “You’ve done the monitoring. Please finish your report about the election. But now we want you as a fellow African elder. Go and talk sense to these guys. Find out what is the agenda for the country.” The Canna room was small, but at that time it was the only available space in the hotel. I was told: “Sit in this chair, you’re our chairperson and convener and we expect Kenyans will come through this door and want to find out what we can do.” By eight o’clock, the five of us were seated and I was worried: “Oh God, Ambassador Kiplagat, are you sure anybody will go out onto the streets to come to this place?” The first people who arrived were the youth from the informal settlements. They said: “We heard the appeal yesterday and we came; we want to do something.” Soon the Canna room was full. All the chairs were taken and people were standing, even outside the door. The first thing we did was to ask: “Okay, what is the situation from where you come from? You came from the informal settlements—how was it to get here?” People described where they came from and the journey to the Canna room. That gave a flavor of Nairobi. I explained the situation in Mombasa and someone else explained the situation in Eldoret, where they had relatives. We started calling different parts of the country. There were Kenyans who had worked in Liberia, or in various UN missions, as well as people who were on holiday, who were stuck. The group realized: “Goodness, it’s just twenty-four hours, but what we have seen so far is really terrible.

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If we continue at this rate for the next twenty-four hours, there will be no Kenya left.” The analysis was based on individual experiences as well as calling people who were in different parts of the country. Thank God hotels have flip charts. We decided on mapping the “hottest” areas, that is, the youth were causing violence in Mombasa, so it was colored red. Nairobi, Eldoret, and Kisumu were also red. We drew the map of Kenya and gave reports on what was happening, and we did a quick analysis. After mapping the really hot spots, we turned our attention to places that were cold, that is, where people were celebrating. The analysis showed the hot places, the cold places, and the indifferent places. You could see the country was divided into three: the red spots where people were pro-ODM and unhappy with the results, so property was being burned down and there was a complete breakdown of security. There were other places where people were happy with the announcement because they had won, the blue spots. The pastoral North was quiet and indifferent: due to the shock of what happened, I think they were frozen. However, in the towns of the Samburu and Isiolo, when ODM and PNU supporters wanted to fight, they insisted on keeping peace. Schools were open and things were running normally. There were a lot of weapons in this area, and if this group had participated in the violence, I think Kenya would have been destroyed. The places that were not hot had the capacity to become hot. What would make these blue places become red? We realized there was a symbiotic relationship between some actors. For example, people who originate socially from one area had farms in another area. If their farms are burned, or they are displaced or killed, they will move back to their home districts, and once people move from the red area to the blue area, the blue area will become hot. That analysis was really prophetic, as early on we could see such a symbiotic relationship in those places and imagine their role in spreading violence, and by January 20 this is what happened. By about nine o’clock a phone call came from Eldoret for General Opande, who lived there. He was told: “Quickly leave and come to Eldoret. Things are bad.” Military people rarely pass on information, even if they have a lot. He did not want to scare us, so he just wished us luck and said he had to go to Eldoret. In Eldoret a great number of houses were burned overnight, so many people had been killed, the Rift Valley was really burning. You can see images of it in the book Kenya Burning.5 In General Opande’s own compound there were 150 people because people felt safe to come to him as a military general. By ten o’clock, we stopped as we did not want to hold people for more than two hours and more people were coming. We took a break

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and were wondering what to do with the large amount of information and knowing we had raised expectations. We started calling the media houses, and they were quick to respond. We told them we had no story, but they had a responsibility. A public relations company from South Africa agreed: “Okay, we will run it as a public relations piece; give me a statement from the four of you that you want Kenyans to hear. I’ll get a sound bite from you, we’ll publish it.” National media agreed to publish for free when we spoke to them. Other newspapers were also ready to publish. The local newspaper, the Daily Nation, said: “Whatever you want to do, do it, you can have this room and make a public appeal.” The newspapers had no [positive] stories to write. Publishing a picture with our faces and a few words was good, it would sell. Even in the midst of crisis, the newspapers must have something to sell. By two o’clock, we had crafted some messages and made a public appeal through the television and the newspapers. Appeal to Youth and Principles

The following morning we came together and wondered if people would come back. People came and I was permanently stuck facilitating that session. We started with analysis for the first two hours. The pattern was to ask: “From where you woke up this morning, how did the world feel? From which part of Kenya do you have information?” This way we got a variety of experiences. People told us about what they had heard from relatives. By then, the Kenyan Red Cross had taken a helicopter ride across the entire country and had created images. They were looking at the country from a humanitarian point of view, but it showed the reality of the conflict. The secretary general for the Red Cross was so annoyed by what he saw, he immediately delivered a copy to the president. The following morning we used the humanitarian facts and satellite images that were printed by Google Earth. We told the people who came: “This is where you are, these are some facts, this is what the Red Cross has found, this is what the reality is, this is what the newspapers are saying. We are just here to have these ideas and don’t have the capacity to act on anything. But if you come with an idea, be ready to act on it.” We also appealed to non-Kenyans. Ethiopian, Sudanese, Congolese, Rwandan came and wanted to speak to the youth via the media as they believed we needed a youth strategy. We got a young Rwandan to talk about the genocide and Somali and Eritrean youth to talk to their fellow Kenyans by giving them airtime. We did not have resources, but if we

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asked the TV companies for a press conference on youth that was news and they would come. The newspapers also gave us space. Somebody else came and suggested going to the three top protagonists in the conflict, the political parties of ODM, PNU, and the Orange Democratic Movement–Kenya (ODM-K). Their idea was to get musicians, religious people, and other influential people to deliver a message to the politicians. They would carry small lanterns in the evening, when the sun was about to set, as the president was inaugurated when the sun was setting on the country. There was curfew, so they had to negotiate with the police, but by January 3, there was a walk with lanterns and a statement and copies of the newspaper were delivered to ODM and PNU houses. People had a lot of creativity. There was a young woman who worked with Oxfam and another young man who worked with the Israeli embassy who suggested creating a one-page newsletter, with a paragraph of analysis and a paragraph of key events, detailing who is doing what and the number of the dead. The Amani Sasa (“peace now”) started with those stuck in their homes able to volunteer to get stories, write, type, or photocopy. Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP) Meeting with Donors

On January 4, we called together all the donor partners who were then in Nairobi. We had written to them on the previous day, and the morning forum focused on presenting to them what we had done so far. It was really fantastic. Our message to them was: “We Kenyans are in a mess. We don’t know what we’re doing, but this is what we’ve done so far. It might continue in this way for a long time or it might not. But one thing that we’ve learned that can cause conflict is money injected into a crisis. If you must support this process, please sit together as the donor community and think about what you can say and what you can do.” At the diplomatic level, there were already divisions between the United States and the United Kingdom. The United States was actually very helpful in this context, while the United Kingdom was not at that time because of their engagements. The United Kingdom is part of our conflict system because British citizens own huge tracts of land in Kenya. Therefore, when the British ambassador says something, his statement is heard as coming from somebody representing an interest. Accepting UK money in an atmosphere of diplomatic tension is stating where you stand in the conflict. If you are seen to be biased, you cannot intervene. The source of money and who you talk to can be part of the

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problem. When we talked to the donor partners, we explained these issues and what we had done as well as asked them to have a coordinated framework of engagement with a joint statement. How the Concerned Citizens for Peace Forum Worked

People asked: “What do we do with this information? Who are you? Which political party do you represent? What is your interest in leaving your house in Mombasa and coming here? Who’s paying for this Canna room?” Ambassador Kiplagat answered that we were concerned Kenyans, concerned citizens, not for this or that party. In fact, initially nobody was paying for the Canna room—the hotel had given us the space for free as they were in any case not making any money.6 Concerned Citizens for Peace was not an organization or an institution, it was just a forum and a space for meeting.7 The structure was two hours for analysis in the morning to understand the situation and then taking action. If you brought an idea, you needed to get someone to help you; this was not a funding agency. I was convener, which was easier being a woman, neutral, and a northerner. Of the five of us that got together, we knew each other and there was not much ego between us, so it worked. I would convene one meeting, but another meeting would be convened by Ambassador Kiplagat because he had certain connections. General Sumbeiywo had other connections, so everyone could bring in their links. All sorts of people came to the morning forum, including state security and the intelligence [officers] of the political parties. You allow this because part of the framework of the process is to transform people, so you should just believe. Some people will come in rubbishing the whole process and after a while they come to appreciate it and then they want to use you for their own advantage. Among the people who were coming to the morning forums, some came to gather information for their groups, some came to share what they had done in response to the violence and were looking for support and ideas, and some came to listen and to contribute. A lot of the people who were very supportive were retired military generals from the Kenyan security and military. They formed a partnership with their neighboring communities. If they were from an affiliated estate with an informal settlement next to them, they create a partnership, sharing water and electricity. They talked to the youth from the informal settlements to create a partnership for peace between the affluent areas and the downtrodden areas. This bridging was done by retired

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civil service, businesspeople, and ex-military people. They came to the forum to explain how they were working with their neighbors. Somebody picks up an idea and plants the idea in another place, or says: “I have an idea for this project. Who will join me?” The pattern that emerged was a morning meeting from eight to ten o’clock collecting information and reporting ideas. Then from eleven to one, we did analysis, strategy, and thinking. A few of us remained for strategizing what needed to be done and who wanted to act on this, and people left their phone numbers behind. We asked people to work with PeaceNet in organizing the youth. The afternoon was action time: from two to four we did what had to be done before the curfew. Some of the actions took place overnight. The action could be a press statement, working with youth, writing something with celebrities, or giving information to humanitarians. This was the way in which we worked for the first one or two months. The activities were really numerous and diverse. People came with crazy ideas and we supported them. Later, the process became more strategic. These activities occurred before Kofi Annan arrived, continued while he was present, and he was even part of them. The morning forums continued to produce the “nonpapers.” For example, the panel of eminent persons would request a paper on land in Kenya. Through the morning forum we would raise the question: “Which research institute is doing something on land? Who has a paper on land?” and someone would have something, so we could ask them to summarize it in four pages and present it to the team the next morning. A lot of Kenyans did not understand the term mediation. Adding to the confusion were people acting as negotiators from the government and opposition sides, who called themselves mediators. We explained this on television and on an FM radio station. Kenyans from as far afield as New Zealand and Canada called in to the radio to ask questions. It was really helpful to use those avenues for communication. Later, we realized that our work and action happened at three levels, which we called upstream, middle stream, and downstream.8 Upstream Work

The upstream work entailed engaging with the top leadership of the political parties that were in conflict and with international people that we thought would help us, like embassies and eminent African people. General Opande, General Sumbeiywo, and Ambassador Kiplagat were engaged in the upstream work. We requested that the former president of Sierra Leone should intervene and change his mandate after getting

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support from Bishop Desmond Tutu. He came to Kenya for two days, talking to people, meeting with the protagonists, making contacts, and interacting with the former African heads of state. By January 10, we had four African heads of state visiting the theaters of the conflict that were accessible. At that time, President Kibaki was in complete denial of the magnitude of what had happened. Having external people coming to visit Kenya to do an independent assessment and telling the president there was a big problem was extremely important. CCP had a meeting with these former heads of state: Ketumile Masire, former president of Botswana; Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia; Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania; and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique. Along with the five co-members of the Concerned Citizens for Peace, we got the people doing community, humanitarian, or political work to sit together for lunch. It was the first day of the year that we had eaten lunch—prior to that we had survived on tea masala, provided generously by the hotel. We told them: “Okay, listen, so far from January 1, we’ve done this. Maybe it’s a futile exercise and a waste of time. As former heads of state, who have come from outside, and who have gone to see the villages to see what’s happening in our country, what do you advise us?” We told them: “We want to listen. We’ve just been doing, we pulled up our sleeves and acted. But, as people who have headed countries and seen what has happened, are we doing the right thing? What do you advise us? Give us some wisdom!” The four heads of state were silent. It was that kind of silence where just two minutes is as heavy as two hours. We were thinking, “Oh God, what did we do?” The first to speak was Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, who later became part of the Panel of Eminent Persons. He said, “If what happened in Kenya for the last two weeks happened in Tanzania, I would worry! What you guys have achieved and done in these last two weeks is just amazing. You’re doing fantastic work! You have raised yourself above ethnic, political, religious, gender, and geographical origins to do it. That’s the beauty: you’re just doing it. And there is no answer, just do it!”9 His words really affirmed that what we were doing was good. Prior to that, some days we would sit and cry, or we would want to give up. Therefore, this meeting with the former heads of state at the upstream level was fantastic. We had discussions with the diplomats, both those based in Kenya and abroad, including UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who happened to be in Ethiopia at that time and passed through Kenya. We stopped him and asked what we could do together. Having meetings with

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him was very important. Later on, when the team led by Kofi Annan [the previous UN secretary general] came, our team also supported them and gave them what we called the “nonpapers”: papers that were generated out of the analysis that we were doing every morning. By January 9, we had produced a strategy document called “The Way Forward—Pathways to Peace for Kenya” (also called “Citizens Agenda for Peace”) with assistance from consultants at KPMG.10 They came to the morning forums to offer their time, saying, “I have this skill, I can help you.” We had any number of people who came to this morning forum and remained behind to help with their expertise. They churned out documents related to their expertise, such as on the constitution. Some did research using the internet, for example, to see models in countries such as Germany to compare ways forward, and others did deep analysis to be combined and formed into the final document that many people signed. When you are an insider mediator, responding to your own context, and trying to do something without knowing exactly what to do, you get hit left, right, and center.11 From day one, there were people who were suspicious about who was paying for our expensive hotel. We were not trusted by the government, the opposition, or the citizens. At one time people suspected we were supported by the government, because we were talking with such power and conviction. Then at another time I did the press briefing, talking and reading through the points agreed in the morning forum, and someone said: “Oh, Dekha, fantastic, I saw you on the television. Now you’re in the opposition! I can see how you talk!” I replied: “Then thank God, it’s balanced. Yesterday I was with the government; today I’m seen to be in the opposition, what does it matter?” That was the reality of being an insider mediator. Middle Stream Work

The middle stream work involved engaging middle-level public and private institutions, such as government ministries. Before January 7, we visited the Ministry of Education and asked: “Are we opening schools? Are we opening universities? What will happen? What are we supposed to do?” We got the perspective of the Ministry of Education from the permanent secretary, as there was no minister. There was frustration about the ethnic cleansing of teachers, concern about the universities being used as centers of political activity and that the students would join the things that were happening. But it was also not good for the children to remain at home, glued to the TV. Some children had already been killed; some were traumatized. There were questions about what could be done.

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We brought that information to the morning forum to give an update on what was happening at this level and to highlight the people who needed help. In this way we could provide psychologists and counselors to offer support, for example, with “first aid” counseling. These were aspects that we did not initially consider. An important element of this middle stream work was mobilizing the media. The media can be dangerous, especially FM stations, the internet, bloggers, and text messaging. There were people sending hate messages through SMS. We talked to service providers, such as Safaricom, and appealed to university students, with standards of excellence and intellectuality to give us countermessages. The service provider agreed to send these countermessages out for free. Later on, they sent peace messages as the popup message sent after topping up credit. Downstream Work

Some things linked the middle stream to the downstream. For example, I needed to see my children and could not be stuck in Nairobi, so one weekend I went home to keep my sanity. Sometimes there is no need for experts in strategy development; the experts can be a six-, ten-, or sixteen-year-old. I wanted to share with my children what I was doing in Nairobi and I asked them if the school had been opened and whether they were going to school. My children told me they were not going to school and would only be going back “when Raila is happy.” When questioned about when Raila would be happy, their answer was, “when Kibaki shares the presidency with him.” My children also had views on why Raila was unhappy. They gave me their worldview and understanding from what they had seen on television and from other sources. I asked both of them and my brother’s kids to write this for me and to tell me what we could do in order for them to go back to school. This was then the information I used to share with the morning forum. I also went to my colleague, the local provincial commissioner in Mombasa, and asked him what was happening. They (the hotel industry) had learned from the events in 1997 and were only now economically breaking even ten years later. The strategy taken was to prevent displacement. In Mombasa, after the planeloads of tourists left, the business leaders from all religious backgrounds came together and decided that coastal people would be prevented from moving “upcountry.” They argued that if people leave one area to go to another, emotions would arise in the cold (i.e., peaceful) areas. Theirs was a more

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pragmatic, economic approach with the tourism industry in mind, so they aimed to prevent conflict from spreading and escalating. Another important lesson from Mombasa was to listen to the local community. An official got information from the local community that youth were organizing violence in a specific location. He asked his staff to check and verify the information; they told him all was fine. He asked another branch of security, and they found that it was true, a thousand youth were ready to create havoc, but because they had listened to the local community they were able to nip it in the bud. From mid-January, the violence moved away from the hot areas into the cold areas because revenge attacks were being planned. The first wave of violence was a spontaneous reaction, but the second one was strategically planned; therefore, it was even worse. We got information through the morning forum that Nairobi was soon going to become a bloodbath and we immediately reflected on what we could do. Our conclusion was: “We have to focus on the downstream. And one of the downstream areas we have to focus on is Nairobi. If the capital is a bloodbath, forget it, the country is gone! The face of Kenya is Nairobi.” We wanted to start something to bring a framework for peace for Nairobi, in the style of CCP, consisting of a strategy with daily meetings. When we went to talk to the public administrator, we suggested he organize this, but he replied he could have done this in the past, in 1997 or in 2002, but now in 2008 the police were killing people in the street. There was a lot of hatred toward the state. Being part of the state institution, he felt he did not have the moral convening capacity to call the public to come for a meeting. He suggested to partner up with CCP for the first two or three meetings, as people knew CCP from the media. Joint Action: Cross-Cleavage Burials

We had to be practical. At the downstream level, we created what we called “decent burials.” Due to the fact that many people were killed, many bodies needed to be buried. Our theory of change at that time was that violence can happen and people will be killed, so regardless of who killed them, the reality is that we need to get justice and to follow the perpetrators. But we realized that families want to see a decent burial for their loved ones. It becomes more traumatic if you cannot bury your dead in a respectful way. Every day there were demonstrations and violence such as death, injuries, and rapes. We started realizing the need to count the dead.

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Every morning, when calling around the country, there were figures like 300, rising to 500—the number kept on increasing. It did not matter if they were killed by militia groups, social groups, or the police. The number of dead bodies piling up in the mortuaries, the streets, and elsewhere was just too much. We started looking at the long-term implications: if nothing was done about the dead bodies, what would happen to our society? It is bad to kill individuals and to leave the body to rot without a decent burial. All this would have haunted us as a society. We started an initiative called “Decent burials for Kenyans and mourning the dead.” We wanted to connect people and have a cross-party and cross-ethnic divide burial committee. People can disagree over a party, or over who won and lost, but at least they can agree on the need for a decent burial of the dead. After identifying the need, we quickly raised the money through organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, a Quakers organization. It was a very important healing space. Space for Mourning

Creating space for mourning was also important. A Kenyan lady of European origin named Saba Douglas-Hamilton came to the morning forum and told us how, in Europe, flowers are placed on the site where violence occurred as a form of mourning. As the flowers could not be sold anyway at that moment, they could be donated as a way of remembering the dead. It seemed crazy and some people questioned, “Flowers? In the middle of a crisis?” But so be it, no one had the right answers to the crisis. A group of us supported Saba Douglas-Hamilton and we said: “Okay, Uhuru Park is in the middle of the town, and has a Freedom Corner, in which Professor Wangari Maathai planted trees. The police have circled the park, and nobody can go there. Near the Freedom Corner we can create a mourning corner.” We negotiated hard with the local authorities and the police to get a small corner of the park to put down some flowers. In a divided society nothing is easy. The idea was that people could place a flower there as a symbol of the fragility of our country. Just like a flower, it can wither, but at the same time it has a nice scent.12 We also placed a burial signature book there so people could come and sign it. This was a really important ritual. It is not possible for everyone to act as Kofi Annan, but at least they could come and sign this book and put down a flower. This was contested because people

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could be targeted if they were seen by one group as going there to sign the book, so it also took an act of courage to go to this Freedom Corner and was an important element of the mourning process. Workplace Healing

One activity that was adopted by companies and embassies was what we referred to as “workplace healing.” The country was divided in the middle, so in terms of embassies or companies, the workforce was also divided. People were not talking to those from other groups; if someone used their own vernacular, others were suspicious, asking: “Why are you speaking your vernacular? Are you planning to kill me?” We started with the Coca-Cola Company. Another approach for immediate workplace healing came from the US ambassador. He had about seven hundred nationals working at the US embassy in Nairobi. The embassy wanted us to go and to speak to the employees so that they could contribute positively to the process, rather than allowing the anger and frustration between workers to build and result in fighting or killing each other in the embassy building. This program of workplace healing was popular with companies and we had a lot of facilitators. People coming for the morning forums had no employment (or their workplace was closed) at that time, so we were able to offer them paid work through water companies, Coca-Cola, and Barclays for workplace healing. Trauma healing work, team building, and making sense of the context of the workplace was very important. There was also a ban on speaking in vernacular to reduce tension; only Swahili and English were permitted, because these two languages were universally understood. From Crisis to Continuity

The CCP meetings began on a daily basis, then were reduced to three days a week, two times a month, and one day a month, before the idea was adopted in different localities. Forums were set up in the pastoral areas, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Eldoret. Eventually, the government conceded in writing that peace committees were acceptable, saying: “It is okay to have a collaborative structure for peace. We don’t have a policy, but we have an administrative directive that you can have a collaborative structure for peace to deal with what’s happening.” From this point, it was not necessary to hide a peace committee in Kenya, and they came into the public sphere.

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Looking Back Looking back at the election-related violence and response to the crisis in 2011, three years after the crisis, Dekha highlighted a few key points that are summarized below. The Role of the Army, Police, and Leadership

Dekha noted how the peak of the violence occurred before the army was deployed to calm the situation. The reason why it took time to deploy the army was related to the question of whether it would protect the president or the people. Traditionally, the integrity of the army of Kenya has meant that it transcends individuality and is seen as more neutral and impartial than the Kenyan police. According to Dekha, the president was probably unsure as to whether the army would support him or not, due to internal divisions in the army at a personal level. Thus time was needed for internal negotiations so that the military would stand for the country as a whole. When they were then deployed, they cleared the roads of roadblocks and prevented revenge attacks. The problem of state involvement in the violence came more from some of the police acting on instructions outside the normal policing procedures: a police within the police. This is also why it was unclear whether one of those, who was taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, was responsible or whether he had a police force that he had no control over. At the same time, Dekha pointed out that even in these “special forces” there were individuals who behave differently. The deployment of paramilitary police, called the General Service Unit (GSU), is generally regarded with concern, as people know they use violence. However, in one case, for example, a GSU officer appealed to a youth mob by explaining that the country had been developed over the last forty years and should not be destroyed in four minutes. Subsequently, he was given a reward in recognition of his effort. Regarding the question of leadership and identity in the politics of Kenya, Dekha said: Who should become the president of Kenya? Should it be someone from the dominant tribe or region, someone with a certain agenda or values, or should there be a different reason? Our political development is still based on geographical regions and social groupings. Thank God, it has never been based on religion and I hope we do not go in that direction. We need to find and redefine

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the identity of what it means to be Kenyan for the collective good of the country, with something that can hold us together and with leadership in which we can all feel comfortable. The Peace Agreement and Devolution

Dekha pointed out how the peace agreement managed to resolve a political dispute between presidential hopefuls, but this was only the tip of a deep division in society. Kenyans expected a lot from the two leaders who negotiated the peace agreement, but the leaders did not internalize what they had signed. As Dekha said: The fact that the two principals did not sit at the negotiation table, and the negotiations were done on their behalf, may have been good or bad. It was good in that it resolved the dispute quickly, but in retrospect this led to many arguments between the principals. They had no relationship, consultation, trust, or teamwork between them; this agreement did not transform them or bring them together as a coalition.

On the positive side, she revealed how the four agenda items of the agreement (one: stop the violence, two: deal with the humanitarian situation, three: settle political conflict, and four: deal with underlying structural conflict causes) helped to hold the country together and precipitate the adoption of a new constitution, which created hope.13 Her assessment of the constitution entailed elements of hope and caution. On the one hand, she saw a growing awareness among the majority of Kenyans that they were no longer ready to die for a cause or for one person. On the other hand, she also pointed out how a new constitution does not automatically give one the right behavior or attitude to implement it. Change had started, but the conflict energy still often seemed to be channeled toward destruction and breaking relationships rather than toward transformation.14 This was in part because of the different levels of dealing with conflict, with systems to deal with conflict at the local and international levels, but lacking at the national level. As Dekha pointed out: If something happens, we always ask, “Where is Kofi Annan? Where is the ICC?” Kenya is always looking to the outside, and I think that is something that makes our country and processes unsustainable nationally.

Dekha explained that the ICC can help to deal with the past and regulate people’s behavior today to prevent reoccurrences. At the same

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time, the national systems have to be strengthened, and this is often politicized. The first year of the establishment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), for example, seemed to have been spent in quarreling over who should be in the lead. One of the constitutional changes was devolution, with greater power given to the decentralized administrative units. In Dekha’s assessment, she expected this to reduce national violence of the type in 2008 but to increase localized conflict. The problem is specific to districts that are formed out of entities that do not get on well with each other. Thus, a result of devolution could be that violence will be more localized and contained in trouble spots rather than flaring up at a national level. The metaphor Dekha used for the devolution process was the following: Conceptually, the idea is not bad, but it is similar to a bone setting process, where somebody is whole and then goes through an accident, so the bones are broken and then set back together. It is impossible to return to the original hand when the bones are set back together: there are marks and scars of trauma and conflict.

Mediation and Elections

Dekha pointed out how mediation after an election can be dangerous for a democratic process because of the idea that if you contest the outcome you can get half of the cake. Nevertheless, each case has to be looked at separately, and in some cases mediation seems to be necessary to stop the violence, even if it is not ideal. In the case of Kenya, Dekha believed the mediation intervention was critical to create the space for dialogue and institutional reforms and to stop the country from completely degenerating and disappearing from the map. She also mentioned the case of Ghana, where there was a national mediative capacity with the infrastructure for peace. The council of elders could hold the space for governance when the national state institution failed. Thus, no outside intervention was needed because they had the capacity internally. Another positive example she mentioned was South Africa, where potential hotspots were marked and preventive mechanisms were used before the elections in 2009. Obasanjo was invited with a team to monitor and provide mediative capacity. They took a preventive approach, creating dialogue and relationships between the political parties. As questionable examples, Dekha mentioned Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast, where an envoy from Kenya was sent for:

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Even before having left Kenya, the envoy had already decided who was right and who was wrong. This is not the role of a mediator or even an envoy, who should go to the space to try to create a bridge between parties to find a way forward without dictating who is right and wrong. In such a crisis where you are trying to find a way forward, you hold the coal in your hand, but don’t burn your hand at the same time.

Dekha’s conclusion regarding the link between mediation and electoral processes was centered on the essential role of an independent electoral commission. If the incumbent holds the state institutions and loses the election, what happens? As Dekha explained: The role of a completely independent electoral commission is important, having the electoral and mediative capacity, perhaps even by having international actors in the national electoral commissions. The electoral commission needs to act as the bridge between the incumbent president and the challenger, holding a neutral, impartial space for all, so that all parties with a grievance have a right to be heard and to be shown that they have genuinely lost. Due process is critical to allow for acceptance and grieving. This is done by building the capacity of the electoral commissions and making them completely independent of other state institutions, so that they can be the fourth arm of the government, acting as the mediative arm and the national ombudsman for the country.

Dekha pointed out how there were cases where the Independent Interim Electoral Commission (IIEC) used their mediative capacity and due and fair processes were held regarding disagreements related to the by-elections after the 2007–2008 crisis, creating public confidence in the institution and in the judiciary’s handling of complaints. Discussion In the following paragraphs, we focus the discussion on the short-term process design dimension as well as some of the medium- and longterm linkages. Short-Term Responses: Mediation Process Design

The following factors relate to the case of election-related conflict discussed in this chapter:

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• Context: The colonial, postcolonial, and Cold War context strongly shaped the development of the state of Kenya and how conflict cleavages were dealt with. At the same time, the global and regional need for a stable Kenya was a contextual factor that greatly helped the process of dealing with the election-related conflict. International support for the process grew out of the West’s alliance with Kenya related to Somalia (e.g., “War on Terror”) as well as the interest of regional actors such as Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that depend on Kenya for trade and transport routes and that were concerned about negative spillover effects.15 Kenya also provides a critical platform for relief operations in the Horn of Africa, particularly South Sudan and Somalia: alternatives would be both very cumbersome and expensive. Therefore, all of Kenya’s neighbors shared a common interest in swift and peaceful resolution of the crisis, which resulted in a coordinated response and a reduction in the risk of external spoilers who would feed the conflict.16 • Goal and content: The conflict cleavages outlined in Chapter 7 cover the main conflict issues that were tearing the country apart. The ethnic cleavage aligned with the centralism versus regionalism and capitalism versus socialism cleavages. One reason was because prominent politicians within an ethnic community who had divergent views on policy questions were silenced (e.g., a Kikuyu supporting socialism and regionalism, or a Luo supporting centralism and capitalism). A result of this analysis was that the conflict issues that had to be negotiated to end the conflict had to include questions related to, for example, regionalism versus centralism; they could not just deal with the ethnic cleavage. At the same time, it is hard to negotiate content during a violent crisis. Thus, both the track one process mediated by Kofi Annan and the multitrack process mediated by CCP had to differentiate the conflict issues in the short term (e.g., insecurity and humanitarian crisis), medium term (e.g., political power sharing between Odinga and Kibaki), and long term (e.g., constitutional reform, including topics of the center-periphery balance of the political system). The goal of the CCP process was announced on television. The crisis context and those chosen to make the television appeal made it clear that, although it was broadly formulated, it was about stopping the violence and holding the country together at a moment when it was in danger of disintegrating and slipping into civil war. That the goal was reached is a sign of the success of this process in conjunction with all other civil society efforts, the track one process led by Kofi Annan, and the impartial intervention of the Kenyan army.

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• Participation: The actors in this conflict included the political actors (ODM and PNU and their respective heads, Odinga and Kibaki), the ethnic groups (Luo, Kikuyu, Kalenjin, and others), the security forces (police, military, militias), the religious actors, the youth (from the slums of Nairobi but also from all settings, including the farmlands of the Rift Valley), the media, businesses, NGOs, and regional actors. In a sense, everyone in the country was affected (with those in the northeast being the least involved). The neighboring countries were also affected, and this was one reason for the coordinated international response. The participation in the CCP process was broad and inclusive: “For all Kenyans.” Indeed, it even went beyond all Kenyans, and anyone who was interested in helping Kenya in this moment of crisis was made welcome. The participants included civil society, political parties, academics, NGOs, intelligence officers, government officials, religious actors, and more. Inclusivity was also enhanced by getting phone and SMS input from people far away (as distant as Kenyan diaspora in New Zealand) who could not physically be at the forum. The benefit of very inclusive and broadly participatory processes is the richness of information one can gather, the number and quality of actions one can develop, and the resulting legitimacy that one gains by creating a space that is really open for everyone. The danger of very inclusive and broadly participative processes is that they get messy and it becomes impossible to make decisions. If not managed carefully, people can easily disrupt such processes. Noteworthy here is that everyone did not come all the time, but the open forum allowed people to come for the morning session, without being requested to come to subsequent sessions. The goal and participation had an impact on how decisions were made and the format of the process. • Third party: The co-mediation CCP team was made up of five people: four men and one woman, with military, ambassador, and civil society backgrounds. They all had peacebuilding credentials, from mediating the process in Sudan, to working in Sierra Leone, to mediating in the “bush” in northeast Kenya. As a team, they crossed the ethnic and political party conflict cleavages and were therefore “impartial,” even if as individuals they were not necessarily seen as being impartial. Though the facilitation role was rotated, it seemed that Dekha did the majority of the facilitation, because she was seen as nonthreatening, being a woman and from the Somali ethnic group that was “experienced in conflict,” but not directly involved in the ongoing election dispute. • Format and structure: Information sharing and decisions seemed to have occurred at three levels. (1) The plenary level focused on analy-

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sis and information sharing. In the plenary, the concept was for participants to bring ideas and for those who wanted to contribute to agree and join the action, so there was little need for formal decisionmaking procedure. (2) Decisions made within the smaller groups focused on action. Thus, not everyone present in the plenary room had to agree on everything, but only those directly involved in the joint action. Decisionmaking on a subplenary level over specific actions helped to minimize the danger of the large and diverse number of participants blocking the decisionmaking process. (3) The CCP conveners and supporters made decisions on process design and on some of the strategic engagements they got involved in, such as in the upstream work. This model of large and inclusive participation, without seeking to develop a written agreement that everyone signs (as in some national dialogues), allowed the transparency and legitimacy that come with large groups to be combined with the efficiency of decisionmaking that comes with small groups, whose composition changed depending on the issue. Large groups need smaller groups to guide them and get decisions made. Small groups gain in legitimacy, networking, and richness of ideas and actions by working with large groups. All types of groups tend to benefit from some form of structure and sequence. The CCP daily morning meetings were structured along the lines of: (1) collecting and updating information, which also led to new ideas and restrategizing, (2) analyzing and strategizing action based on the updated information, and (3) acting and implementing actions. This structure seems especially suited to large groups working in a rapidly evolving crisis environment, allowing for extremely agile analysis and immediately implementable actions. The process design was innovative in the way it was very inclusive, but at the same time it was not blocked in decisionmaking and action. This was done by separating the analysis and consultation parts of the meetings (where all could be involved) from the strategic decisionmaking and implementation parts (where a small group was involved). Note the similarity to how a local or district peace committee does the analysis (level 1 in Figure 4.2), but if a specific mediation intervention is needed, a subset of the peace committee is put together and sent out for the action (level 2 in Figure 4.2), and a small team (here the five CCP conveners) helps coordinate and focuses on process design (level 3 in Figure 4.2). • Timing: The timing of the four- to six-hour sessions was partly dictated by the curfew imposed in the evenings. The frequency with which the sessions took place was based on needs: daily meetings at first, reduced to three a week, and later to one a month. The national

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scope of the CCP forum at the hotel was over time replaced by the regional forums that took up the idea at a subnational level. • Venue: Serena Hotel was chosen because it was central, but not directly in the center, and it was both fairly accessible and secluded. It was frequented by all actors—diplomatic, political, and business. The ownership of the hotel was also seen as being impartial related to the government-opposition conflict. Kofi Annan’s choice of the same hotel later on was coincidental, but useful from a point of view of linking tracks.17 • Funding: The mediation team was very conscious that it would lose its impartiality if it was paid by the wrong donor. There were many in-kind contributions, for example, from the hotel, the media, and the mobile telephone company. Participants financed themselves, and the ones who came up with ideas were also asked to bring, or look for, resources to implement the ideas. Specific joint actions were then financed by different sources, such as NGOs like Oxfam. Overall, the process was low cost, due to the self-funding nature of the participants and the focus on information sharing and coordination of the meetings. At the same time, a key action of CCP was to encourage the donor community to coordinate themselves, as money injected in the wrong way into a crisis can do harm. • Communication: CCP engaged in a very active media outreach campaign, using this as a way of countering hate speech. Medium- and Long-Term Linkages

The CCP process was built around the logic of crossing the key divides or cleavages that were tearing the country apart: ethnic, political, regional, and sectoral. At the same time, the CCP process was a shortterm response; it was never transformed into a formal medium- or longterm structure. The idea was more to deal with the acute crisis and then trigger other medium-term structures, such as the peace forums in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Eldoret. The national-level peace agreement mediated by Kofi Annan and his team with its four agenda items also highlights the approach of clustering negotiation topics into short term (stopping the violence, providing humanitarian aid), medium term (overcoming political issues), and long term (working on poverty, inequality, unemployment, and a change of constitution). The reform of the Kenyan constitution in 2010 can be seen as long-term peace work that was partly triggered by the events of 2007–2008 and that aimed to transform the

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state structures to better deal with conflict cleavages (e.g., centralizationdecentralization) in a nonviolent manner. Using the SMALL Framework for Peace does not mean that a peace practitioner, such as the CCP, has to engage in all types of peace work but rather that one needs to analyze who is doing what and make sure efforts are made in the short, medium, and long term. Notes Many thanks for helpful corrections and comments on a draft version of this chapter by Lazaro Sumbeiywo in an email to Simon Mason, April 20, 2018; George Wachira in an email to Simon Mason June 18, 2018; and Meredith Preston McGhee in an email to Simon Mason, July 6, 2018. 1. On Dekha’s response to the election crisis, see also Ibrahim, Working for Peace in Conflict Systems in Kenya: Addressing the Post-Election Crisis 2008. 2. Such efforts were supported by organizations such as the Mennonites, Oxfam, and Action Aid. 3. Late Ambassador Kiplagat was Kenya’s former ambassador to London. An African elder with experience in both civil society and government, he was involved in Mozambique and brokered the negotiations that led to the transitional government in Somalia in 2004; George Wachira has also written about the CCP process in the publication Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya—2008, by Wachira, Thomas, and Charles. 4. United Nations, “Secretary-General Appoints Lieutenant-General.” Daniel Opande served as force commander in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone from 2000 to 2003 and in the United Nations Mission in Liberia from 2003 to 2005. Lieutenant General Lazaro Sumbeiywo was chief mediator in the IGAD process between North and South Sudan that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. An excellent publication on the mediation work of Lieutenant General Lazaro Sumbeiywo is Waihenya, The Mediator. A very useful publication by him is Sumbeiywo, “To Be a Negotiator.” 5. Kahora, Kenya Burning. 6. For more details of the funding, see Wachira, Thomas, and Charles, Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis. 7. See also Wachira, Thomas, and Charles, Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis. 8. Terms Dekha used are close to track one elite = upstream; track two midlevel leadership = middle stream; and track three grassroots = downstream. See Lederach, Building Peace, 39. 9. The quote was confirmed by President Benjamin Mkapa by signing a printout of the text on February 27, 2018. Thanks to Macocha Tembele for facilitating this. 10. KPMG is a network of firms providing audit, tax, and advisory services. 11. In an interview with Simon Mason in June 2016 in Mutare, Zimbabwe, Lazaro Sumbeiywo mentioned how dangerous the work they did actually was. To illustrate this, he said he received a phone call from one of the political parties, warning him that they would burn down his house if he did not leave Serena Hotel. His answer was, “Go ahead and burn it, when I go to heaven, I will not take my house with me anyway.”

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12. The previous paragraphs were kindly checked by Saba-Douglas Hamilton on May 25, 2018, in a Facebook message to Simon Mason, and she added the following lines: “We had over ten thousand flowers, mostly roses, all donated by the flower farms in Naivasha and Nanyuki, and scores of volunteers giving them out free to anyone who passed by as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. Crowds would come to pin messages of peace or grief on to the memorial board. They came from every walk of life—high court judges, ex-gangsters from the slums, businessmen, Muslim women, heavily armed General Service Unit (GSU), all laying roses in memory of the dead. Some people just came and knelt in front, others broke down completely, or fell into the arms of “others” embracing their enemy in shared grief. Pouring out all the sadness, anger, and horror in their souls. It was an island of peace amidst the madness.” 13. (1) Stopping the violence by the state institutions as well as by the community actors; (2) dealing with the humanitarian crisis and the displacement, which had not been addressed effectively; (3) settling the political conflict that led to building the coalition government; and (4) dealing with the underlying causes. See Lindenmayer and Kaye, A Choice for Peace? 14. As Dekha stated: “The right to free association in the new constitution created debate. For example, there was a new alliance, called the KKK. The three Ks do not stand for ‘Kenya, Kenya, Kenya’ but for ‘Kikuyu, Kalenjin, and Kamba,’ which are the areas of the Rift Valley, eastern provinces, and the central province. National cohesion requires a cohesive national society, so if the free association is political and is exclusive to a certain geographical and ethnic zone, what does that mean for a country with a diversity as varied as forty-two social groupings?” 15. United Nations, United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation. 16. For Somalis, the relatively quick resolution of the violent Kenya crisis demonstrated the effectiveness of a coherent, coordinated, and focused intent to broker peace, in stark contrast with the prolonged international policy of “containment” in Somalia. The Somali perspective was highlighted by Pat Johnson in an email to Simon Mason, March 10, 2018. 17. Point mentioned by George Wachira in an email to Simon Mason, June 18, 2018.

PART 3 Conclusion

12 Key Messages and Their Transfer to Other Contexts

guidance and motivation for peace practitioners. We have attempted to do this by combining insights and case studies from Dekha’s mediation and peace practice with more generic mediation and peacebuilding approaches. In these conclusions, we highlight key messages by discussing the application of the SMALL Framework of Part 1 to the case studies of Part 2 and how these insights can be used and adapted to other contexts around the world.

The purpose of this book has been to provide practical

The SMALL Guidelines for Peace Design and Redesign

Short-term responses entail an adaptive mediation process design, which requires an ongoing balancing of goal, participation, and other process dimensions in relation to the ever-changing context. The core idea of this approach to contextualized mediation is to use in-depth knowledge of a given context to decide on how to use general mediation principles, skills, and process design models. Dekha used innovative process design approaches based on her reading of the specific context. For example, in Wajir the key question was how to deal with a new competing process and the role of the government. Her response was to merge the two potentially competing processes and support the government-led process. It is an insightful example of how one has to adapt the balance between “goal” and “participation” to unblock a stuck process. 207

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In the Pokot-Samburu mediation, Dekha said she did not know much about the conflict, seeming to contradict the point mentioned above that in-depth knowledge of a context is needed for process design. One way to compensate for lack of detailed knowledge of a case is to work with those who do have this, like Dekha did with the peace secretaries from Pokot and Samburu. She also had broad contextual knowledge of pastoral conflicts and the policy framework affecting them. One of the key factors in the process design was the decision to carry out intragroup negotiation before moving to the intergroup negotiation. Only with minimal internal cohesion was movement between the groups feasible. The goal is cross-cleavage collaboration, but only when the actors are sufficiently prepared. A role-play or exercise somewhat removed from the context can highlight the usefulness of first exploring needs, concerns, motivations, and interests before working on options and solutions. In Mandera, the mediation approach sometimes did not work and had to be complemented by trauma healing programs, intelligence, police, and military actions. When violence is at its peak, it may have to be de-escalated by judicious use of force to provide the space for addressing the substantive issues through dialogue. This requires balancing issues, actors, and third parties: at various times in the process, governmental and nongovernmental actors, religious and customary elders, and women and men were involved as mediators, and their respective characteristics allowed them to shape the process in a specific way, illustrating how diverse types of mediators can work together in a complementary manner. Finally, Dekha’s work in the Kenyan election crisis of 2007–2008 highlights how separating analysis (which should be comprehensive with as many different actors bringing in their perspectives) from the action (of a subset of actors) and process design (by the third party) is an innovative way of increasing inclusivity without sacrificing efficiency of action and implementation. Process design is contextualized by the mediator, in consultation with the actors in conflict. A key question is whether the mediator does this in a more facilitative or directive manner. In all four case studies, the predominant approach used was a nondirective one, where the mediator enjoyed credibility and a reputation for fairness but generally lacked power to force people in a particular direction. The Wajir Peace Group asked the elders of the minority clans to mediate between the elders of the warring clans. The Wajir elders called the Wajir Peace Group “children,” questioning their authority and power—while simultaneously not

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feeling threatened by them. The government of Kenya asked Dekha and Mutuku to mediate in the Pokot-Samburu case, but the initial reaction from the parties was: “They must be joking, they are sending us a woman?” The parties in Mandera challenged Shaikh Ali Gure to arbitrate and make a decision, but he refused, saying it was not his role. Each example shows that the role of the mediator was not to have political, economic, or military power and decisionmaking authority to put pressure on the parties. The “power” of the mediator comes through her or his impartiality and ability to structure the process and help the parties communicate better with each other. A lack of classical power and leverage is often a benefit in such situations, as it means the mediator is nonthreatening and is thus acceptable. Knowing the potential but also the limitations of mediation in fragile contexts helps to use it where it can work and to know when one has to move beyond mediation to engage in other approaches and work on medium- and long-term peace practice. Network of Networks

Medium-term peace structures need to be developed to facilitate the short-term peace work of mediation and the long-term peace work of governance building and to help build bridges between them. Mediation processes and outcomes can be used to establish medium-term structures for peace, for example, in the form of an agreement implementation committee. Medium-term peace work, however, goes beyond the implementation of a single agreement. The purpose of developing interim peace structures is to prevent reoccurrence of violence by facilitating future mediations (medium-short linkages) and working on the structural questions that remain after an agreement has been signed (medium-long linkages). Such structural problems may have led to the conflict in the first place, and they are likely to lead to the conflict reemerging if they are not dealt with. Developing local peace committees (Wajir, Mandera, Garissa) and engaging in joint development of community assets (e.g., schools, health services, Kenya-Somalia border region) are examples of such medium-term peace work. It is important to be careful with peacebuilding efforts that only focus on improving communication and building relationships. Tense interpersonal or intercommunity relations are often not the problem, but symptoms of a structural problem, such as faulty laws and policies or a lack of inclusive development. Mediumterm structures for peace must therefore consider how to deal with the relationship and structural aspects of conflict.

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Shrinking the Predatory Sphere

Long-term peace responses in fragile contexts entail using a consensus orientation to harmonize competing sources of authority, transform discriminatory policies and state structures, and improve governance. Although some states have been established using a coercive monopoly of force, the transformation of state structures calls for a consensus orientation to minimize the risk of doing harm and making the situation worse. Replacing the elite at the top with another elite at the top is not going to automatically transform the structures of governance. The consensus orientation is needed to get state and nonstate actors on board and to involve all key actor groups from across the conflict cleavages in the transformation process. The transformation of structures does not just mean focusing on the problem (the “conflict system”) but also strengthening the response capacity (the “peace system”). Institutionalizing peace capacity and developing solid institutions and mechanisms that can deal with cross-cleavage tensions in a nonviolent manner takes time. It is generally necessary to think in decades rather than in months or even years. Because local and national actors have to live with the solutions developed, they should be the drivers of such long-term processes. The role of international actors is to support, not to impose. The Inner Struggle

Linking inner and outer peace work makes peace practitioners more authentic, resilient, and effective. Linking inner and outer peace is needed for authentic and effective peace practice. Without it, there is a danger of frustration, giving up, burnout, or arrogance on the side of the peace practitioner. Dekha provides examples of people who started at the personal “inner peace” level and then engaged in resolving societal conflict and people who engaged in resolving societal conflict at the “outer peace” level and saw the impact as a first step to reflecting on inner peace. There is no standard sequence of starting at the inner level and going outward, or vice versa. What seems important is to be aware of the two levels and how they are interlinked and to keep enough space and time to do inner peace work on a regular basis, such as reading holy texts, using prayer, meditating, creating art, being in nature, or whatever helps one enter a space of peace. Dekha points to another interesting aspect of linking inner and outer peace, and this is her understanding of the human origins of violence, based on her reading of the Quran in relation to her work: we

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tend to project the “bad” onto the other, thereby legitimizing violence against them. Peace work is thus “inner” work in the sense that it entails taking back these projections and seeing both “bad” and “good” in oneself as well as in the other. Linking inner and outer peace work also means that peace practitioners need to continually develop the attitudes, skills, and knowledge for mediation and peacebuilding. Reflective action allows for ongoing learning and adaptation. Without it, one runs into the danger of ignoring what has worked in the past or elsewhere, or one repeats lessons from elsewhere without adapting them to new contexts. There is thus a dire need to continuously develop human resources, research what works and what does not work, and understand why this is the case. Some of this work can also be facilitated by a local peace committee, but other efforts are needed, such as national and international sharing of lessons and experiences and training and research by universities, including research on how to combine various approaches to conflict transformation (e.g., Islamic, human rights, or Somali customary practice and norms). Dekha’s experiences in training outside her context showed how she differentiated between aspects that seemed unique to a specific context (e.g., the nexus of religion and politics in Israel-Palestine) while also seeing patterns of conflict behavior (e.g., becoming paralyzed by trying to solve the “big” conflict, ignoring the more local efforts one could be engaged in). Reflective action thus goes beyond national borders because it feeds into the improvement of global but contextualized mediation and peacebuilding practice. It entails greater acknowledgment of locally developed methods and increased sharing of these on regional and global levels. Feast with Your Enemies

Cross-cleavage collaboration involves actors from across the cleavages that are tearing society apart learning how to work together. Because it entails analysis of the cleavages and consideration of the necessary steps to bridge these cleavages, CCC guides analysis, composition of a mediation team, choice of participants in a process, the setup of a peace committee, and the development of state institutions. The principle is therefore valid in short-term, medium-term, and longterm peace work. Combining cross-cleavage analysis with classical multitrack approaches helps to address weaknesses of the multitrack approach. Rather than the tendency of the multitrack approach to be overly fixated on hierarchy (state vs. nonstate, or elite of the rebel

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group vs. foot soldiers or community actors), cross-cleavage analysis seeks to look at all tensions in society (ethnic, religious, geographic, economic, etc., e.g., using the ACDC model) before deciding on who should be involved in a process. Peace work without cross-cleavage collaboration is likely to lead either to no peace, an imposed peace, or a peace that is based on the segregation of communities (e.g., the model of Bosnia’s Dayton Accord, or the ethnic separation in the Taif Agreement in Lebanon). At the same time, the cross-cleavage principle should not be followed blindly, because at times groups of actors need to work internally first (as in the Pokot-Samburu case) and mediators need their own space to regain energy and inspiration before working again. One of the most sustainable ways of preparing for cross-cleavage collaboration for moments of crisis is to establish it as a principle in “peace committees” during phases where the conflict is not at a crisis point. The overall added value of the SMALL Framework, encapsulating these five guidelines, is to focus a peace practitioner’s attention on the shifting mixture of mediation and governance from the short to medium to long term. It also explicitly seeks to encourage greater reflection and creation of linkages between these three forms of peace practice. Furthermore, the SMALL Framework helps to complement other frameworks for peace, such as those built around tracks, levels, or sectors, by highlighting different aspects and linkages between various types of peace practice. For instance, different actors (track one, two, three) and levels (local, regional, national) can all be involved in short-term peace work (e.g., local or national ceasefires), mediumterm peace work (e.g., setting up local peace committees, national coordination networks, or provisional or transitional governments), and long-term peace work (e.g., development of local administrations or country-level constitution and policy reform). The similarity of work in different phases may lead to closer collaboration and lessons learned than if they are looked at through other frameworks. Transfer to Other Contexts We discuss the question of transfer of key messages from this book to other contexts along four dimensions: first, a reflection on which aspects of the SMALL Framework are more generalizable and which aspects are more context specific. Second, how the SMALL Framework needs to be adapted as the context changes over time in the same geographic area.

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Third, how a three-step approach can be used to adapt lessons from theories and cases to another context, and fourth, how local, national, and international peace practitioners can improve collaboration. Generalizability and Specificity of the SMALL Framework

The more generalizable aspects of the SMALL Framework include: (1) the broad pattern of a mix of mediation and governance building changing over time and in response to the degree of fragility or stability of a given context; (2) the need to focus on the dynamic interactions between mediation process design dimensions; this is also the case for mediation in stable contexts, even if the interactions change less quickly; (3) the benefit of explicitly trying to bridge short- and long-term peace practice by identifying what could constitute useful medium-term peace practice in a given fragile context and working toward strengthening this; (4) using consensus-building approaches in the long-term development of a peaceful state, complementing the work toward separation of powers, rule of law, and representation of people being governed; (5) linking inner and outer approaches to peace, which seems to be valid in all forms of peace practice but also in other types of work; and (6) fostering collaboration across conflict cleavages in all societies and doing this in a carefully prepared and structured manner. Dekha highlighted some of the globally applicable aspects of cross-cleavage collaboration and working to transform long-term policies as follows: When I was training in Asia, the Middle East, or other parts of Africa, people began by saying: “My context is different and special!” This is true, but the principles of the issues of divisions in society or conflict within societies are so similar. I think the principle of the way of working and creating inclusive processes is universal in any place where there are state and nonstate actors with fault lines involving these actors. Therefore, whereas the context might be different, the principles can generally be applied across settings. Sometimes when I see people describe conflict through the lens of religion and culture and I can see policy-related or governance aspects, I ask: “Is this really about relationships between communities, or is this fueled by the structure of the state and the governance system?” When you start asking those questions, then people start thinking that it is not just about bad behavior and viewing people as culprits, but bad policies. This requires people to work together in

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order to transform the law. People always start from the divisions and the labels they assign, for example, ethnic, religious, geographic, or economic, but later they realize the structural elements are fueling the conflict. That can be universal if you start looking through those lenses.

The aspects of the SMALL Framework that may need more contextualization include: (1) what constitutes specific time periods (the short, medium, and long terms) varies greatly in different contexts; (2) though various mediation process design principles (e.g., consent, impartiality, and sufficient inclusivity) and approaches (focusing on the interaction of process dimensions) seem rather stable across different contexts, the reference system of what constitutes fair and wise content of an agreement varies greatly from one context to another; (3) the context-specific policies fueling conflict may differ and the country-level policy framework that allows for, or hinders, the development of medium-level peace structures varies greatly: in some contexts the central state will not provide such a framework (e.g., Libya or Syria in 2018) and in other cases it will (e.g., Kenya in 2018). Partly as a result of this, the specific form, functions, composition, and labels of medium-term peace structures differ greatly from one context to another (e.g., in Kenya, Ghana, and Nepal the use of the term peace committee; in Timor-Leste, local conflict prevention and response networks; in Syria, local councils; in Libya, municipal councils); (4) culturally legitimate and effective forms of governance vary a great deal from one context to another, as does the specific role state and nonstate actors have to play in governance; (5) where there also seems to be a high degree of cultural, religious, and even personal plurality in different contexts is the way of linking inner and outer peace, even if the necessity of doing so in some form seems rather universal; and, finally (6) all societies have cleavages, yet what constitute the key cleavages of a society and what mechanisms can help deal with these in a nonviolent manner are very different around the world. Dekha highlighted some approaches that are specific to cultures rooted in Islam, but that can still be found in different Islamic cultures around the world: Islam is rooted in a certain culture, so you may look at what is blended in the culture and what is religiously specific. In terms of processes and procedures, when we talk about the council of elders in Kenya, and colleagues in Afghanistan talk about their Shura, it is very similar. This can be applicable in many Islamic contexts.

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Adaptation over Time in the Same Geographic Region

The SMALL Framework may have to be adapted when used in the same area but in a different historical context. For example, since 2012, the main source of violence in northern Kenya stems from Al Shabaab attacks and counterinsurgency operations of the Kenyan state. Mediation requires a minimal willingness of the parties to talk with each other, which currently does not seem to be shown by Al Shabaab or the government of Kenya, so there seems little space for mediation in this type of highly securitized conflict. Nevertheless, even in such situations there are sometimes surprising moments when very specific demands and issues can be looked into in the short term. Furthermore, this securitized conflict is just one layer of the broader “conflict lasagna,” feeding off and interacting with: (1) the local community level, with tensions over the use and management of resources, also indirectly shaped by climate change, (2) the national level related to the current effectiveness and legitimacy of state and nonstate governance in Kenya and Somalia, as well as (3) the broader international level in the Horn of Africa and global context. When mediation and governance building as outlined in the SMALL Framework are blocked at one level because of a lack of willingness of the parties to engage with one another, the framework can still be used at other levels where there is willingness to engage with the “other.” Peace practice can thereby indirectly work to influence the insurgency and counterinsurgency level. In a nutshell, a key step when adapting the insights from this book to other contexts is to analyze the various conflict levels and how they interact and then to identify “wiggle” room where actors are willing to engage across conflict cleavages or prepare for such activities. A Three-Step Approach to Move from Theory to Practice

It is helpful to think in three distinct steps when using mediation and peacebuilding theories and cases (from this book or elsewhere) in another context.1

• The first step is to understand mediation and peacebuilding theories and learn from cases in a variety of contexts. This is the easiest step. While reading different theories and studying different case studies, it is important not to become prisoner to any one theory or to copypaste from any case. A single-theory approach is doomed to fail because it is highly likely to miss the complexity of reality. The way

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forward is to develop the intuition to learn when to use which theory and how to combine theories and recognize the interdependence of mediation principles (e.g., impartiality and consent). The same is true for case studies. It is useful to have studied multiple cases to see the diversity and commonality among them. Actors in different conflicts find comparative case studies inspiring and useful. However, it is vital not to take them as a blueprint but rather to see how certain ideas can inspire other ideas in the given context. • The second step is to adapt this knowledge to the new, specific context. When adapting general knowledge to a new context, the overarching idea is that “the nature of the process should be shaped dependent on the nature of the conflict.”2 The context and conflict need to be carefully understood before shaping any type of peace practice. There are different approaches (e.g., the conflict cleavage model, various conflict analysis tools; see Working with Conflict3), and all have their pros and cons. All approaches to understanding a context from outside have their limitations, however, and we need to engage with people living and working in a context to get a better understanding (an example of the need for “emergent practice” in complex contexts following the Cynefin framework). Dekha repeatedly suggested that if people found a specific tool or theory was not useful for their context, they should immediately discard it. Principles and insights can be translated to practice in different ways, so we need to develop the intuition of what is relevant and how it has to be adapted and used as part of emergent practice from a given context. Intuition can be defined as having knowledge without knowing where the knowledge comes from. It is often faster and more integrative than rational analysis, and therefore essential in peace practice.4 Intuition can be trained and generally improves the more one practices and reflects on how and when it was useful. At the same time, intuition can be wrong, and recognizing this allows for modesty, humility, and care. One safety measure is to work in teams, to share responsibility and thereby gain richer perspectives. • The third step is to communicate the insights from the first two steps in a way that is understandable in the new context. This is the hardest of the three steps. Peace practitioners need to learn how to communicate in a “listening mode” with actors in a conflict context in such a way that those involved understand each other. The idea is to “listen and throw away your prejudices.” 5 Actors in a conflict may have prior exposure to mediation that failed, and ideas presented will be viewed through the prism of this past experience. Actors in conflict may also be sensitive to “outsiders” coming in with ideas and talking

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to them in a biased or paternalistic manner. Mediators are also victims of their past experiences (however diverse these are, and however well trained they may be). Good communication takes time and starts with listening without judging and without thinking of how to respond. Working in culturally mixed teams may help translate ideas in a culturally sensitive manner. Storytelling as a form of communication seems to be an approach that Western mediators and peace practitioners, in particular, can still improve on. Local, National, and International Collaboration

Transfer and contextualization of lessons from one case to another is generally facilitated by collaboration between local, national, and international peace practitioners. Ideally, this is based on their respective added value in relation to the specific context.6 For international peacebuilding practitioners, the complexity of conflict cleavages points to the need to work with local peace practitioners. Locals often have the added value of knowing the situation very well, having access to diverse networks in society, staying in the context when the internationals move on, and through their rootedness and commitment having a high level of local and national legitimacy and sustainability.7 A useful question for international peace practitioners to ask is how far the local actors work across the main conflict cleavages, because this greatly adds to a local actor’s potential to have a positive impact on peace. Such local actors can always be found, although they may not be found in the country’s capital, and it is therefore vital to look for them beyond the capital. Local peace practitioners—at the very local or at the national level—may benefit from international support and linkages if these are created with knowledge and respect for the local peace practitioners. International peace practitioners and mediators can bring international legitimacy, resources, and methodological knowledge as well as insights from other cases (e.g., Kofi Annan). International mediators may be particularly important in cases where the country is disintegrating, and external third parties are needed to cross cleavages in an impartial manner and shape a process to help stabilize or transform the situation. A useful question for local peace practitioners to ask is how far the international actors can support and shape a mediation process in an impartial manner, leaving decisions about the content of the agreement and governance structures in the hands of the local and national actors from across the conflict cleavages.

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Bringing “Opposites” Together The four reflections above on the transferability of insights from this book to other contexts is easier to put into practice when bearing in mind the essence of the approach outlined in this book. It seems an essential aspect of Dekha’s work was the art of bringing “opposites” together. For Dekha, it was not state actors against nonstate actors, but a question of how structures can be developed where both nonstate and state actors collaborate for peace. It was not practice over policy, research, or spirituality, but how to link practice, policy, research, and spirituality to improve our work. It was not how is an Islamic, traditional approach to mediation better than a Western approach, but how can these approaches be brought together to enrich each other. While Dekha saw and respected differences, she could also see the commonality and transformative core within diversity. By seeing the potential of life and peace in the midst of mess and violence, she helped give birth to it. Bringing together that which seems opposed happens in small steps, but it is motivated by the realization that this is the way of peace. In Dekha’s words: “Peace is not an event or an end, peace is the way, though the journey is long and the road winding and difficult.”8 Notes 1. This three-step approach was presented by Julian Th. Hottinger at a meeting with Simon Mason, April 25–27, 2011, in Renens, Switzerland. 2. Mentioned by Julian Th. Hottinger, interview with Simon Mason, May 9, 2011, and conceptualized by Snowden and Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.” 3. Fisher et al., Working with Conflict. 4. Mason, Allen Nan, and van de Loe, “Dancing Through Conflict.” 5. Hottinger, “Throw Your Prejudices Over Board and Listen.” 6. Hellmüller, The Interaction Between Local and International Peacebuilding Actors. 7. Mason, “Insider Mediators.” 8. Original quote without English corrections: “Peace is not an event, an end, but the peace is the way, though the journey is long and the road winding and difficult.” Ibrahim Abdi, “Acceptance Speech—Dekha Abdi: The Right Livelihood Award.”

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Index

Abatis, Katrina, 6n2 accountability, state influenced by, 68 ACDC. See Aligned Cleavages and Disappeared Cleavages acceptability of, consent to, mediator, 19n4, 23, 30, 152, 161, 209, 214 actors, in mediation, 10–11, 16–17, 27– 30, 43, 165–166 adaptation, of SMALL, 118n51, 213– 215 advocacy, of peace committees, 51 Africa, 122, 175n8. See also Ethiopia; Kenya; Somalia African societies, 118n51 African traditionalist customs, 70 African Union, 113 Agency for International Development, US (USAID), 150 agreement effort (soluh), 44n17 Ajuran, 119, 165–166, 175n14 Aligned Cleavages and Disappeared Cleavages (ACDC), 90–94 Allport, Gordon Willard, 94 Amaiya, 137. See also Pokot-Samburu conflict Amani Sasa, 186 Amima community, 71 analysis, of conflict, 24–25, 49–50, 90– 94 Anderson, Mary B., 96n4 Anglo Leasing scandal, 111–112 Annan, Kofi, 2, 6, 113, 188, 190, 196, 202–203 arbitration and mediation, 31–32

Archer, Geoffrey, 116n15 argument, debate encouraging, 136n13 Arid Lands, 156–158 Aroua, Abbas, 44n17, 96n12 arson, 180 Arta, Djibouti, 37 arts-based approaches, 174 authoritarianism, 105 Awasa, Ethiopia, 78n24

bandits (shiftas), 68, 108–109, 117n19, 124–125, 144 Ban Ki-moon, 189–190 Barre, Siad, 111 Barre Hirale, 166–167 Belet Hawa, Somalia, 155 Bible, 84 the blaming soul, 83–84, 134–135 Bluebird Aviation, 158 Blue Helmets, 95 Boran, 119, 166 Borton, Terry, 97n16 Bowling, Daniel, 79 brainstorming options, in Wajir, 123– 124, 135–136, 208 Brickhill, Jeremy, 20n7 Britain, 106–108, 116n15 British East African Protectorate, 106 bullets and disarmament, 123–125 burials, cross-cleavage, 192–194 Burundi peace process, 136n13 business actors, 29–30 businesspeople, of Wajir, 125 buy-in, and logistics, 139–140

229

230

Index

Canada, 188 Canna room. See Concerned Citizens for Peace, formation and work of capacity development, of peace committees, 51 capitalism, socialism versus, 105 case studies, 5, 43n2, 96n3 Catholics, 93–94 cause-effect relationships, 43n5 CCC. See cross-cleavage collaboration CCP. See Concerned Citizens for Peace Center for Peace and Applied Research, 89 centralism, regionalism versus, 105 Central Province, 106–107 Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 62n3 change, motivation freshened by, 82–83 chaotic systems, 43n5 Charles, Simon M., 203n3 children, 121, 191, 208–209 Chissano, Joaquim, 113 “A Choice for Peace?” (Lindenmayer and Kaye), 113 Christians, 70, 71, 88, 125–127, 161 Churchill, Winston, 106–107 “Citizens Agenda for Peace” (CCP). See “The Way Forward—Pathways to Peace for Kenya” civilization mission, 106–108 clans, 104–105, 119, 154–155, 165–167 Coca-Cola Company, 194 Cohen, Susie, 121, 122 Cold War, 110 collaborative governance, predatory sphere and, 67 collective cultures versus individual cultures, 67–68 colonial period, in Kenya, 106–107 co-mediation. See mediation Commission for Higher Education, 97n21 communication, 40–42, 54–55, 150, 202, 216–217 community, 129–130, 160–161 complex systems, 43n5 complicated systems, 43n5 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, 203n4 Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP): appeal in, 185–186; continuity in, 194; crisis in, 194; cross-cleavage burials in, 192–194; donors in, 186–

187; downstream work in, 191–192; formation and work of, 6, 199–203, 203n3; forum in, 187–188; joint action in, 192–194; meeting in, 186– 187; middle stream work in, 190– 191; mourning in, 193–194; overview of, 183–185; principles in, 185–186; space in, 193–194; upstream work in, 188–190; workplace healing in, 194; youth in, 185–186, 188 conflict (Khilaf or Shijar or Khisam): analysis of, 24–25, 90–94; of community, 129–130; in Islam, 96n12; of Kenya, 5, 63–64; of land, 71–73, 77n22; as lasagna, 153–156, 215; peace committees responding to, 47–49; strategic issues influencing, 49–50; venue’s distance from, 36–37; violence distinguished from, 12. See also Kenyan-Somali context; Mandera, Kenya; Pokot-Samburu conflict confidence building measures (CBMs), 58–60. See trust-building Confronting War (Anderson and Olson), 96n4 consent. See acceptability constituent assembly, 58 contact theory, 62n10, 94 containment, in Somalia, 204n16 content, of mediation process, 26, 131, 149, 152, 172, 199 context, of mediation design, 24–25, 130–131, 149, 172, 199 contexts, messages transferring to: adaptation and, 215; generalizability and, 213–214; local peace practitioners and, 217; overview of, 212–213; practice and, 215–217; SMALL Framework for Peace and, 212–215; specificity and, 213–214; theory and, 215–217 contextualized mediation approach: communication of, 40–42; conflict analysis of, 24–25; content of, 26; context analysis of, 24–25; financing of, 38–40; format of, 33–35; goal of, 26; linkages of, 42–43; logistics of, 35–38; overview of, 22–24; participation in, 26–30; resourcing of, 38–40; structure of, 33–35; third

Index parties of, 30–33; timing of, 35, 38– 39; venue of, 35–38 contextualized process design, 3–4, 21– 43 continuity, in CCP, formation and work of, 194 coordination, peace committees and, 56– 58 countermessages, 191 coup, of Luo officers, 109–110 crisis, in CCP, formation and work of, 189, 194 cross-cleavage burials, 192–194 cross-cleavage collaboration (CCC), 4–5, 16–17, 90–95, 211–212 cultural proximity, 148 cultural approaches to mediation, 31–33, 56–57 Cushitic group, 71 customary law, 69–71, 127–129 Cynefin framework, 22, 43n5, 216

dadahad. See mediator; person standing in middle Daily Nation, 185 Dalai Lama, 84, 96n4 DC. See District Commissioner December 27-30, 2007, 179–181 decent burials, 192–194 Degodia clan, 119 democracy, adaptation of, 118n51 Department for International Development (DFID) (UK), 59–60 Design and Redesign guideline, of SMALL Framework for Peace, 14, 21, 207–209 Desyuno Peace Committee, 71 devolution, of power, 196–197 DFID. See Department for International Development dhexdhexaadiye. See mediator; person standing in middle direct violence, prevention of, 27 District Commissioner (DC), 34, 136n5, 157 District Security Committee, 52, 157 District Steering Group (DSG), 167–168 Djibouti, 37 donor partners, 39–40, 74, 177, 186–187 Douglas-Hamilton, Saba, 193–194, 204n12

231

downstream and middlestream work, 191–192 DSG. See District Steering Group Duursma, Allard, 43n2 Dyer (general), 96n12 dynamic contexts, SMALL Framework for Peace as adaptable to, 18–19

early warning, early response, approach, 45, 75, 122, 178 East Africa, 175n8 effectiveness, of governance, 9, 19n2, 46–47 ego, 82–83, 125–127 Egypt, 106 Ekman, Paul, 96n12 Eldoret, Kenya, 184 election crisis: of Kenya, 2, 110, 112– 113, 204n16, 208; Somalis influenced by, 204n16. See also mediation, in Kenyan election crisis elections, and mediation, 197–198 El Wak, Kenya, 160–161, 165–167, 171, 172, 173 El Wak, Somalia, 165–166, 171, 172, 173 Emotional Awareness (Dalai Lama and Ekman), 96n12 enemies, 16, 86 escort (mahram), 29, 44n15 Ethiopia, 78n24, 107, 111, 116n9, 155, 159, 165–166; guns from, 124; Somalia and, 172 ethnicity, in Kenya and Somalia, 104– 105 Europe, 122, 175n15 events, and motivation, 81, 179–181 Ewaso Ng’iro River, 154

failed states, 3, 10 Al Fatah Declaration, 69–71, 125, 127– 129, 131, 132, 136n6 Feast with Your Enemies guideline, of SMALL Framework for Peace, 16– 17, 211–212 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, 98n32 Federal Council, 94, 98n32 financing, of contextualized mediation approach, 38–40. See also funding first level, of peace committee, 52–53

232

Index

Fisher, Roger, 96n12, 136n15 flowers, and mourning, 193–194, 204n12 forgiveness, of inner struggle, 84–86 format, mediation design, 33–35, 132, 150, 172–173, 200–201 fortified villages (manyattas), 108–109 fragile contexts: challenges for, 9–12; definition of, 2–3, 9–10; mediation in, 9–12; opportunities for, 9–12 fragile states or regions, 3, 10, 19n2, 67 free association, 204n14 Freedom Corner, 193–194 funding, 38–40, 150, 202; of Mandera, 173; of peace committees, 55; from Urgent Action Fund, 159–160; of Wajir, 132

Gandhi, Mahatma, 96n12 Garissa, Kenya, 69–71, 72–73, 77n22 Garissa and Modogashe Declaration, 69– 71, 77n19, 133 Garissa Peace Committee, 50–51, 88 Garre, 155, 157; Mandera Mediation Council influencing, 170–171, 173; Marehan and, 165–167; Murulle and, 158, 167–170; as Somalis, 165–166 gatekeeper state, 110 gender, 2; men, 120–122, 159; women, 28–29, 56–57, 95, 120–122, 121, 131–132, 134, 159–160 generalizability, of SMALL, 213–214 General Service Unit (GSU), 195 Getting to Yes (Fisher and Ury), 96n12, 136n15 Ghana, 197 Githongo, John, 112 goal, 26, 131, 149, 172, 199, 207 goats, 123–124 God, 84 Goldenberg scandal, 109, 112 governance, 9–12; as collaborative, 67; Libya needing, 62n3; predatory sphere and, 67; vacuum of, 46 government, 59–60, 145–146, 158–159, 160–161 GSU. See General Service Unit guidelines, 151, 152n6 guns, 123–124, 134–135 Gure, Ali, 163–164, 165–167, 174, 175n12, 209

Hanh, Thich Nhat, 80 harmonization, 69–71, 141–142 Harvard Program on Negotiation, 96n12, 135, 136n15 healing, 169–170, 173–174, 194 Hoffman, David, 79 Holocaust, 122 Home Guard, 106 Hornsby, Charles, 101, 104–105, 115 Hottinger, Julian Th., 20n7, 43, 78, 90, 136n13, 175n16, 218n1 Human Rights Watch, 154 hypothesis building, 87–89

Ibrahim, Rahma Mohamed, 161 ICC. See International Criminal Court IGAD. See Intergovernmental Authority on Development IIEC. See Independent Interim Electoral Commission imagining solutions, 123 IMF. See International Monetary Fund impartiality, 30, 43, 164, 174 Imperial British East African Company, 106 implementation, participation influencing, 27–28 inclusivity. See participation independent electoral commission, 198 Independent Interim Electoral Commission (IIEC), 198 Independent Review Commission (IREC), 112–113 India, 106 Indian Ocean, 123 individual cultures versus collective cultures, 67–68 information sharing, 44n18, 54–55 inner jihad, 16, 20n13 inner peace work. See linking, of inner and outer peace work inner struggle, 20n11, 80–83, 84–86 The Inner Struggle guideline, of SMALL Framework for Peace, 16, 210–211 insider versus outsider peace practitioners, 11–12, 30. See mediator Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), 75, 203n4 intergroup work, 34–35 interim peace structures: effectiveness of, 46–47; governance vacuum filled by, 46; joint asset development

Index committees, 45–46, 58–60; linkages of, 60–61; overview of, 45–47; political structures building of, 46; sustainability of, 46–47. See also peace committees internal dialogue, 140–141 International Criminal Court (ICC), 195, 196–197 internationalism, self-reliance versus, 105 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 109 international protocols, national commitments to, 75 Interpeace, 63–64, 65–66 Interventions (Annan and Mousavizadeh), 113 intragroup work, 34–35 IREC. See Independent Review Commission Isiolo, 154 Islam, 32–33, 80, 83–84, 96n12, 214– 215, 218 Islamic-Muslim-Somali context, 28–29 Israel, 88, 186 issues: in conflicts, 27, 49–50; in mediation, 10–11 Ivory Coast, 197–198

Jenner, Janice, 117n37 Jews, 122 jihad, 16, 20n13, 80 Johnson, Pat, 95 joint action, 62n10, 192–194 joint asset development committees, 45– 46, 58–60

Kabbah, Ahmad Tejan, 183 Kahora, Billy, 184 Kalenjinization, 109–110 KANU. See Kenya African National Union Kaunda, Kenneth, 113 Kaye, Josie Lianna, 113 Kenya, 46, 69–71, 117n22; ambassador of, 203n3; Christians in, 88; Colonial period, 106–107; conflict of, 5, 63– 64; Eldoret, 184; election crisis of, 2, 110, 112–113, 204n16, 208; El Wak, 160–161, 165–167, 171; Garissa, 69– 71, 72–73, 77n22; joint asset development committees in, 58–60; livestock of, 117n24, 128–129; long-

233

term policy framework influencing, 74–75; map of, 104; Mombasa, 82, 106, 157, 180, 191–192; Muslims in, 88; nonstate violence in, 117n37; peace committees in, 51–52; peace in, 74–75; pre-Colonial period, 105; provincial commissioners of, 77n23, 191–192; Quran in, 86; Rhamu, 156; Somalia border with, 58–60; state employees of, 75; state of, 75–76; subdivisions of, 77n23; UK alliance of, 110; US alliance of, 110; violence in, 95, 117n37. See also KenyanSomali context; Mandera, Kenya; mediation, in Kenyan election crisis; Nairobi, Kenya; Pokot-Samburu conflict; Wajir, Kenya Kenya African National Union (KANU), 155, 175n7 Kenya Burning (Kahora), 184 Kenyan Red Cross, 185 Kenyans: mafia, 125; MPs, 115, 144, 155; as Somalis, 108–109, 111, 116n1, 154 Kenyan-Somali context: colonial period in, 106; discussion, 114–116; Kenyatta, J., in, 107–109; Kibaki in, 111–113; Moi in, 109–111, 112; overview of, 101–105, 114–116; precolonial period in, 105; timeline, 101, 102–103 Kenyan-Somali cultural approach, 31 Kenyatta, Jomo, 107–109, 111, 117n19, 117n47, 175n7 Kenyatta, Uhuru, 108, 111, 175n7 Khalif, Hamad, 136n6 Khalif, Mohamed, 175n12 Khartoum, Sudan, 75 Khilaf. See conflict Khisam. See conflict Kibaki, Mwai, 110, 111–113, 175n7, 189 Kikuyu, 106–108 Kikuyu, Kalenjin, and Kamba (KKK), 204n14 Kiplagat, Bethuel, 182, 183, 187, 188, 203n3 Kismayo, Somalia, 166–167 KKK. See Kikuyu, Kalenjin, and Kamba Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG), 190, 203n10 Kolb, David, 97n16 Kufour, John, 179

234

Index

KPMG. See Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler

Lake Victoria, 106 land conflicts, 71–73, 77n22, 115, 153 lasagna, conflict as, 153–156, 215 learning, 21–22, 86-89, 97n16 Lederach, John Paul, 20n7, 96n3 legitimacy, of governance, 9, 19n2 Liberia, 203n4 Libya, 46, 62n3 Likoni violence, 110 Lindenmayer, Elisabeth, 113 line ministry, 78n26 linkages: long-term, 75–76, 202–203; ; medium-term, 60-61, 202–203; shortterm, 42–43 linkages, of governance, 17–18, 71–73, 95–96; of contextualized mediation approach, 42–43; of interim peace structures, 60–61; long-term, 202– 203; of long-term peace work, 75–76; to long-term responses, 173–174; medium-term, 202–203; of mediumterm peace work, 75–76; to mediumterm responses, 173–174; of shortterm peace work, 75–76; of Wajir, 125, 133. See also Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages Framework for Peace linking, of inner and outer peace work: CCC of, 90–95; inner struggle, 80– 83, 84–86; in Mandera, 174; overview of, 79–80, 210–211; in Pokot-Samburu conflict, 151; reflective action of, 86–89; in Wajir, 133–136 literature, from Western democracies, 2 livestock, of Kenya, 117n24, 128–129 local level linked with national, 125, 212 local peace practitioners, 217. See also mediator local peace committees. See peace committees logistics, and buy-in, 139–140 logistics, and venue, 35–38 London, UK, 121, 203n3 long-short links, 13, 75-76, long-medium links, 13, 76 Luo, 108, 109–110, 113 Maathai, Wangari, 193–194

Machel, Graça, 113 mafia, Kenyan, 125 magic solutions, 123, 141 mahram. See escort Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya—2008 (Wachira, Thomas, and Charles), 203n3 management, of peace committees, 50– 51 mandate, 74, 120, 122, 131, 147, 167, 174 Mandera, Kenya, 5–6, 82, 137, 209; clans in, 154–155; discussion, 172– 174; engagement of, 156; format of, 172–173; funding of, 173; lasagna conflict in, 153–156; linking of inner and outer peace work in, 174; longterm responses of, 173–174; mediumterm responses of, 173–174; Nairobi influencing, 155, 156–160, 173–174; outcome of, 164–165; overview of, 153–154, 172–174, 208; participation in, 172; pastoralists influenced by, 154, 155; short-term responses of, 172–173; SMALL Framework for Peace on, 172–174, 208; structure of, 172–173; third parties of, 172; timing of, 173; venue of, 173; Wajir and, 155, 156–158. See also Garre; response strategy, of Mandera Mandera-Central, 155 Mandera County, 174n2 Mandera-East, 155 Mandera Mediation Council, 170–171, 173–174 manyattas. See fortified villages Marehan clan, 155, 165–167 Masire, Ketumile, 113 Mau Mau war, 106–107 Mboya, Tom, 117n47 media, and communication, 40–41 mediated state, 66 mediation: actors in, 10–11; arbitration and, 31–32; challenges for, 9–12; comediation, 30, 56, 147, 200; definition of, 19n4; examples of, 197–198; in fragile contexts, 9–12; Islamic approach, 31–33, 56-57; issues in, 10–11; learning of, 21–22; opportunities for, 9–12; outcome of, 11; process design of, 21–24, 130– 132, 149–151, 198–199, 207–209;

Index skills of, 21, 89, 133–136, 151–152, 174, 181; social engineering approach to, 21–22; Somali, cultural approach, 31–33, 56–57; space for, 10; sustainability of, 11; teaching of, 22; third parties and, 30–32; UN on, 19n4, 175n17; Western, 31–33, 56– 57, 174, 218. See also contextualized mediation approach; Mandera, Kenya; Pokot-Samburu conflict mediation, in Kenyan election crisis: December 27-30, 2007, in, 179–181; devolution in, 196–197; election examples in, 197–198; events influencing, 179–181; mediation examples in, 197–198; Nairobi in, 182; overview of, 177–179; peace agreements in, 196–197; response in, 181–183; roles in, 195–196; timeline, 179. See also Concerned Citizens for Peace, formation and work of mediation, in Kenyan election crisis, discussion of: on communication, 202; on format, 200–201; on funding, 202; on mediation process design, 198–199; overview, 198; on participation, 200; on short-term responses, 198–199; on structure, 200–201; on third parties, 200; on timing, 201–202; on venue, 202 mediator (dhexdhexaadiye, dadahad), 6n1, 147–148, 152, 161–163, 175n17, 208–209; insider, outsider, local, 2, 11, 30, 35, 120, 135, 146, 148, 157, 190, 217; medium-short links, 13, 60–61, mediumlong links, 13, 60–61 members of parliament (MPs), Kenyan, 115, 144, 155 men, 120–122, 159 Menkhaus, Ken, 20n7, 66 merging, processes, 125–127 messaging, 44n18, 191. See also contexts, messages transferring to middle and down stream work, 190–191 military, in Nairobi, 180 Ministry of Education (Kenya), 190–191 Ministry of Internal Security (Kenya), 150 Mire, Fatima Mohamed, 132 Mire, Mama Fatuma Mohamed, 57

235

Mkapa, Benjamin, 113, 189, 203n9 modern law, customary law harmonized with, 69–71 Modogashe/Garissa Declaration, 69–71, 77n19 Mogadishu, Somalia, 37, 121 Moi, Daniel arap, 74, 109–111, 112, 117n47, 175n7, 177–178 Mombasa, Kenya, 82, 106, 157, 180, 191–192 The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi), 96n12 Moore, Christopher W., 20n12, 43n7, 136n18, 152n7 Morans, 71 motivation, and inner struggle, 80–83 mourning, 193–194 Mousavizadeh, Nader, 113 Mozambique, 203n3 MPs. See members of parliament municipal councils, in Libya, 46 Murulle, 155, 157, 158, 167–170 Muslims, 70, 80, 88, 125–127, 161

Nafs al-ammarah, 83–84 Nafs al-lawamah, 83–84 Nafs al-mutma’inna, 84 Nairobi, Kenya, 74–75, 82, 125, 126– 127, 128–129; Arid Lands in, 156– 158; Mandera influenced by, 155, 156–160, 173–174; in mediation in Kenyan election crisis, 182; military in, 180. See also Concerned Citizens for Peace, formation and work of NAK. See National Alliance Party for Kenya narrative mediation, of Wajir, 134–135; in Pokot-Samburu, 151 National Alliance Party for Kenya (NAK), 155, 175n7 national commitments, to international protocols, 75 national level, linked with local, 125 National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (NSC), 47, 74–75, 146– 147, 150 network of networks, peace committees as, 58 Network of Networks guideline, of SMALL Framework for Peace, 14– 15, 45, 209

236

Index

New Deal, 77n10 New Zealand, 188 NGOs. See nongovernmental organizations Nguli, Francis Mutuku, 138–141, 147– 148, 150 Nile Basin Initiative, 26 Nile River, 106, 116n9 Nilotic Christians, 70, 71 nine-track framework, 20n15 “no” camp versus “yes” camp, 112 nonantagonistic engagement, 131 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 71, 125, 140, 149–150 “nonpapers,” 188, 190 nonstate violence, 117n37 Northeastern District, 107 North Eastern Province, 174n2 Northeastern Provincial Commissioner, 72–73, 77n22 Northern Frontier District, 108, 116n15 Northern Territories, 116n15 North Sudan, 203n4 NSC. See National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management Nurin community, 71

Odendaal, Andries, 47 Odinga, Oginga, 108, 113 Odinga, Raila, 108, 111, 113, 175n7, 191 ODM. See Orange Democratic Movement O’Dwyer, Michael, 96n12 OECD-DAC. See Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Assistance Committee Office of President (Kenya), 73, 150 Ogaden clan, 119 Okumo, Willis, 137 Olson, Lara, 96n4 Opande, Daniel, 182, 184, 203n4 opposites, brought together, 6, 218 Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), 112–113, 175n7. See also mediation, in Kenyan election crisis Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC), 19n2 Oromos, 165–166 Ouko, Robert, 117n47 outsider mediator. See mediator

Our Turn to Eat (Wrong), 112 outcome, of mediation, 11, 143–144, 164–165, 167 outer peace work. See linking, of inner and outer peace work outsiders, 11–12, 216–217 overlap challenges, 17–18 ownership, of peace committees, 50 Oxfam, 186 Oxfam GB, 146–147, 150

Panel of Eminent African Personalities, 113 Panel of Eminent Persons, 189 Parliamentary Committee on Internal Security and Provincial Administration (Kenya), 150 participation, 149, 200; in contextualized mediation approach, 26–30; implementation influenced by, 27–28; in Mandera, 172; of peace committees, 50, 51–54; in Wajir, 131–132, 207 Party of National Unity (PNU), 112–113, 175n7. See also mediation, in Kenyan election crisis pastoralism, 101, 105, 107–109, 111, 117n22, 117n24; Mandera influencing, 154, 155 peace, 218n8; inner-struggle and, 80; in Kenya, 74–75; long-term policy framework facilitating, 74–75; practitioners, 11–12, 217; soul at, 84, 134–135; statebuilding influencing, 64–67 peace agreements, 77n21, 152, 196–197 Peace and Development Committee, 52 peacebuilding, 64–67, 77n2, 77n10 peace committees, 212; advocacy of, 51; analysis of, 49–50; capacity development of, 51; communication of, 54–55; conflict response of, 47– 49; coordination and, 56–58; definition of, 47; first level of, 52–53; funding of, 55; information sharing of, 54–55; in Kenya, 51–52; management of, 50–51; Modogashe Declaration facilitated by, 77n19; as network of networks, 58; overview of, 4, 45, 47; ownership of, 50; participation of, 50, 51–54; policy of, 51; second level of, 53–54; setup of,

Index 51–54; on strategic issues, 49–50; systems of, 50–51; time of, 55; in Wajir, 52, 56–57; women of, 56–57 Peace Is Every Step (Hanh), 80 PeaceNet Kenya, 138–141, 146, 159, 178–179, 181, 188 peace practitioners, insider versus outsider, 11–12. See mediator peace structures, medium-term. See interim peace structures peace work, medium-term, 75–76, 209 perceptions, of funding, 39–40 person standing in middle (dadahad), 1 perspectives, by gender, 131 Philippines, 29 PNU. See Party of National Unity Pokot. See Pokot-Samburu conflict Pokot district, 146 Pokot-Samburu conflict: discussion, 149–152; guidelines set by, 151; linking of inner and outer peace work in, 151; mediation process design of, 149–151; outcome, 143–144; overview of, 5, 137–138, 149–152; peace agreements drafted by, 152; role-play used by, 151–152; shortterm responses of, 149–151; SMALL Framework for Peace on, 149–152, 208. See also processes, of PokotSamburu conflict policing, 173–174 policy framework, 51, 74–75 political space, authoritarianism versus, 105 political structures, 46 positions, interests, needs, of PokotSamburu, 151-152; of Wajir, 133–134 power, of mediator, 208–209 practicalities, of logistics, 37–38 practice, 87–89, 97n16, 215–217 praying, 28, 141, 142, 151, 171, 210 precolonial period, 105 predatory sphere, 4, 66–68 prejudices, 122, 125 pressure and mediation, 33, 35, 95, 161, 172, 175n16, 209 principles, in CCP, formation and work of, 185–186 processes, 147, 165–167; content and, 152; design of, 3–4, 21–24, 130–132, 149–151, 198–199, 207–209; lessons from, 129–130; merging of, 125–127;

237

public mobilization supporting, 163; in response strategy of Mandera, 163; of Wajir, 119–120, 125–127, 129– 130, 132, 135–136 processes, of Pokot-Samburu conflict: buy-in of, 139–140; documents of, 141–142; harmonization of, 141–142; internal dialogue of, 140–141; issues influenced by, 142–143; logistics of, 139–140; overview of, 137–138, 208; role-play used by, 141; rules of, 139 processes of Pokot-Samburu conflict, lessons of: cultural proximity as, 148; government role as, 145–146; knowledge as, 146; mediators in, 147–148; process as, 146; progress as, 148–149; resolution factors as, 144–145; responsibilities as, 146– 147; roles as, 145–147 professionalism, 79 progress, through process, 148–149 Protestants, 93–94 provincial commissioners, of Kenya, 77n23, 191–192 public mobilization, 163 public-private interface, 28–29

The Quest for Peace in the Islamic Tradition (Aroua), 96n12 Quran, 32–33, 86, 126, 210–211

raids, response to, 127–129 rape: of children, 121; in Wajir, 4 reconciliation, of inner struggle, 84–86 Red Cross, 125–126, 127, 131, 132, 185 reference systems, 32–33 reflective action, 86–89 reflective practice, 87-89, 97n16 regime change, 74, 75 regionalism, centralism versus, 105 relationships, and mediation, 11–12, 43n5, 62n10 resolution factors, 144–145 resourcing, of contextualized mediation approach, 38–40 responses: long-term, 63–76, 173–174, 210; medium-term, 18, 45–61, 133, 173–174; short-term, 21–42 response strategy, of Mandera: community in, 160–161; government in, 160–161; government-led team in, 158–159; mediators in, 161–163;

238

Index

overview of, 156–158; process in, 163; public mobilization in, 163; ringleaders arrested in, 159–160; women in, 159–160 responsibilities, individual, 68, 121, 134, 146–147 Rhamu, Kenya, 156 Rift Valley, 110, 177–178, 180, 184 Right Livelihood Award, 63–64 ringleaders, arrest of, 159–160 Rintari, Kibithi, 124 roles: of force and leadership, 195–196; of government, 145–147; of mediation, 174; role-playing, 141, 151–152; of women, 131–132 Rösti Graben, 94 rule of law, authoritarianism versus, 105 rules, 139

Safaricom, 191 Salamé, Ghassan, 62n3 Samburu district, 146 Samburus, 71. See also Pokot-Samburu conflict SAPs. See structural adjustment programs second level, of peace committee, 53–54 Second World War, 122 security institutions, of Wajir, 124–125, 130 self, understanding of, 85–86 self-reliance, internationalism versus, 105 Serena Hotel, 202, 203n11. See also Concerned Citizens for Peace, formation and work of Serian, James Ole, 72–73, 77n22 Al-Shabaab, 110, 215 shiftas. See bandits Shijar. See conflict Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages (SMALL) Framework for Peace, 96, 203; adaptation of, 215; case studies of, 5; contexts, messages transferring to, and, 212–215; Design and Redesign guideline of, 14, 21, 207–209; discussion, 17–19, 149– 152, 172–174; dynamic context adaptability of, 18–19; Feast with Your Enemies guideline of, 16–17, 211–212; generalizability of, 213– 214; The Inner Struggle guideline of,

16, 210–211; land conflicts illustrating, 71–73; linkages influenced by, 17–18; on Mandera, 172–174, 208; mediation process design in, 130–132; medium-term responses highlighted by, 18; Network of Networks guideline of, 14–15, 45, 209; overview of, 3, 5, 6, 9, 12–14, 17–19, 212–215; on PokotSamburu conflict, 149–152, 208; practice leading to, 87–89; questions answered by, 18–19; short-term responses in, 130–132; Shrinking the Predatory Sphere guideline of, 15–16, 67, 73, 210; specificity of, 213–214 short-medium link, 13, 42–43 short-term peace work, 75–76, 209 short-term responses, 130–132, 149–151, 172–173, 198–199 Shrinking the Predatory Sphere guideline, of SMALL Framework for Peace, 15–16, 67, 73, 210 Shuria, Halima, 97n21, 175n12 Sierra Leone, 183, 188–189, 203n4 simple systems, 43n5 skills, of mediation. See mediation SMALL Framework for Peace. See Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Linkages Framework for Peace SNNPR. See Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region social engineering, 21–22 socialism, capitalism versus, 105 “soft theory,” 87–89 soluh. See agreement effort Somalia, 37, 44n20, 70, 203n3; containment in, 204n16; El Wak, 173; Ethiopia and, 172; guns from, 124; joint asset development committees in, 58–60; Kenya border with, 58–60; Kismayo, 166–167; Mogadishu, 121; Somalis fleeing, 155; traditional culture approach to mediation, 32–33. See also Kenyan-Somali context Somalia National Reconciliation Conference, 44n20 Somali-Kenyan cultural approach, 31 Somali region, Interpeace in, 65–66 Somali Republic, 108 Somalis, 95, 148, 159, 165; election crisis influencing, 204n16; in Europe,

Index 175n15; Garre as, 165–166; Kenyans as, 108–109, 111, 116n1, 154; Somalia fled by, 155 “soul at peace,” 84, 134–135 South Africa, 185, 197 Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), 78n24 South Sudan, 203n4 space, for mediation, 10, 123, 193–194 special forces, 195 specificity, 213–214 staircase approach to positions-interests, 133–134 statebuilding, 10, 64–67, 77n10 state employees, of Kenya, 75 states, 3, 75–76; accountability influencing, 68; in community conflict, 130; failed, 10; formation of, 6n3; fragile, 10; gatekeeper, 110; law, 127–129; as mediated, 66; peace agreements from perspective of, 77n21; responsibility influencing, 68 story telling in mediation, 31, 166, 217 strategic issues, 49–50 strategies, long-term, 143 structural adjustment programs (SAPs), 109 structural issues, addressing of, 27 structure, 33–35, 132, 150, 172–173, 200–201 Sudan, 75, 106, 203n4 Suez, Egypt, 106 Sumbeiywo, Lazaro, 182, 183, 187, 188, 203n4, 203n11 sustainability, 11, 46–47 Switzerland, 93–94 symbolism, of logistics, 37–38 Syria, 46 systems, 32–33, 43n5, 50–51

Tajfel, Henri, 94 Tana River, 154 Tanzania, 189 targets, 83–84 teaching, of mediation, 22. See reflective action teams, 30–31, 56-57, 158–159, 200, 202–203 teamwork, motivation sustained by, 81– 82 technicals, 165, 175n13

239

theory, practice contrasted with, 87–89, 215–217 “The Way Forward—Pathways to Peace for Kenya” (CCP), 190 third parties, 149–150, 200; arbitration of, 31–32; of contextualized mediation approach, 30–33; KenyanSomali cultural approach to, 31; of Mandera, 172; mediation and, 30–32; reference systems of, 32–33; of Wajir, 132 Thomas, Arendshorst, 203n3 time, and SMALL, 215 timing: funding and, 38–39, 55; of mediation, 35, 132, 150, 173, 201– 202 TJRC. See Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission torture, 106–107 traditionalist customs, 70 tranquil soul, 84 trauma healing, 169–170, 173–174 tribes. See ethnicity trust building, 11, 59, 62n10, 82, 85 Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), 197 Tutu, Desmond, 189

Uganda, 106, 142–143 Uhuru Park, 182–183, 193–194 UK. See United Kingdom UN. See United Nations UNDP. See United Nations Development Programme UNICEF. See United Nations Children’s Fund United Kingdom (UK), 59–60, 106–108, 110, 121, 186–187, 203n3; Britain, 116n15 United Nations (UN), 19n4, 95, 175n17, 203n4 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 121 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 123 United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation (UN), 19n4, 175n17 United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), 62n3 United States (US), 59–60, 110, 186– 187, 194

240

Index

UNSMIL. See United Nations Support Mission in Libya “up-country” people, 110, 191–192 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 117n37 upstream work, 188–190 Urgent Action Fund, 159–160 Ury, William, 96n12, 136n15 US. See United States USAID. See Agency for International Development, US

venue, and logistics, 35–38, 41, 132, 150, 173, 202 vernacular use, and tension, 194 violence, 117n37; conflict distinguished from, 12; direct, 27; in Kenya, 95; Likoni, 110; in Wajir, 125–127; against women, 121

Wachira, George, 182, 203n3, 203n6, 203n7, 203n17 Wajir, Kenya, 3, 4, 5, 82, 137; brainstorming options in, 135–136; bullets in, 123–125; businesspeople of, 125; case study based on, 96n3; customary law of, 127–129; dreams in, 123; ego factors in, 125–127; Al Fatah Declaration influencing, 127– 129; format of, 132; funding of, 132; goal in, 207; imagining in, 123; linkages of, 125, 133; linking of inner and outer peace work in, 133–136; local level and, 125; long-term responses of, 133; magic solutions in, 123; Mandera and, 155, 156–158; medium-term responses of, 133; meeting in, 120–122; men of, 120– 122; merging in, 125–127; narrative mediation of, 134–135; national level and, 125; overview of, 119, 207; participation in, 131–132, 207; peace committees in, 52, 56–57; positions of, 133–134; processes of, 119–120,

125–127, 129–130, 132, 135–136; Quran in, 126; reality in, 123–125; security institutions of, 124–125, 130; short-term responses in, 130–132; space in, 123; state law of, 127–129; structure of, 132; third parties of, 132; timing of, 132; venue of, 132; violence in, 125–127; Wajir Women for Peace in, 57, 87; will in, 135; women of, 120–122, 131–132, 134 Wajir District, 117n37, 136n5, 157 Wajir Peace Group, 208–209 The Wajir Story, 80, 119, 122 Wajir Women for Peace, 57, 87 Warioba, John Kibaso, 160–162 War on Terror, 110 wedding feast, 120 Western mediation, 32, 174, 218 Western states, 2, 76 White Nile, 116n9 will, in Wajir, 135 willing seller, willing buyer, model, 108 winning community, 76 women, 28–29, 95; men motivated by, 159; of peace committees, 56–57; in response strategy of Mandera, 159– 160; responsibility of, 121; violence against, 121, 160; of Wajir, 56–57, 120–122, 131–132, 134; women talking to, 159–160 workplace healing, 194 World Bank, 74, 109, 123 World Vision, 126 World War II. See Second World War written messages, 44n18 Wrong, Michela, 112

“yes” camp versus “no” camp, 112 youth, in CCP, formation and work of, 185–186, 188

Zimbabwe, 197–198

About the Book and Authors

mediator and a Swiss scholar-practitioner, Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts introduces an innovative, practical approach to resolving an enduring issue: How can conflicts be resolved in polarized societies? This approach breaks out of the insider/outsider dichotomy to develop a framework for achieving peace in the most challenging of contexts—a framework that unites outsider perspectives on mediation methodology with the rich experiences and reflections that only local peace practitioners can provide. The authors lay out the framework step by step, present case studies that show it in action, and clarify how interim peace structures can act as a bridge between short-term mediation and long-term statebuilding efforts around the world.

The result of a long collaboration between a Kenyan-Somali

Dekha Ibrahim Abdi (1964–2011) was a Somali Muslim of Kenyan

nationality who grew up in Wajir in a pastoralist community. Unusually for the time, Dekha’s mother and father encouraged their daughter to get a formal education. As education was based in the urban centers, this meant that Dekha experienced both urban and rural life of Kenya. She started her career as a teacher, exploring how to educate pastoralists who were always on the move. This led her to face the problems of violence confronting these communities. Dekha’s mediation work focused on Wajir from 1990 until 1998, when she left to work as a training and learning coordinator for Responding to Conflict (RTC) in England. She returned to Kenya in 2001 and later got involved in the mediation of the Pokot-Samburu conflict in 2006, the conflicts in the Mandera region in 2004 and 2008, the mediation efforts related to the Kenyan election crisis in 2007–2008, and with the 241

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About the Book and Authors

Garissa Peace Council in 2007. Dekha was also involved in KenyanSomali confidence-building measures, setting up peace committees, joint asset development committees, and advising on peace policy issues at the local, regional, and national levels. Her international experience included training and working with actors from diverse contexts, including the Philippines, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Jordan, and Israel-Palestine. Dekha was named Kenya Peace Builder in 2005, and in 2007 she received the Right Livelihood Award “for showing in diverse ethnic and cultural situations how religious and other differences can be reconciled, even after violent conflict, and knitted together through a cooperative process that leads to peace and development.” In 2009 she received the Hesse Peace Prize.

Simon J. A. Mason, doctor of environmental sciences, is a senior researcher and head of the Mediation Support Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich (www.css.ethz.ch). He has been working in the Mediation Support Project (MSP, a joint project between the CSS and swisspeace, supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs [FDFA]) since 2005 and in the Culture and Religion in Mediation project (CARIM, supported by the Swiss FDFA) since 2011. He is a trained mediator, accredited by the Swiss Mediation Association SDM. He has been involved as a trainer or facilitator in workshops on conflict analysis, dialogue, negotiation, and mediation with actors from diverse contexts around the world, including from Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Libya, North Korea, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe. He has also been involved in mediation training for various policy-related and academic institutions (e.g., the United Nations, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE], Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and European Union). He co-organizes the Peace Mediation Course of the FDFA (with CSS ETH Zurich and swisspeace) and is a trainer in the annual UN Ceasefire Mediation Course (organized with the UN, FDFA, and the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the Religion and Mediation Course (with the FDFA and the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers). He is senior adviser in the master of advanced studies, mediation in peace processes at the ETH Zurich (www.mas-mediation.ethz.ch). Furthermore, he is a member of the UN and OSCE mediation rosters. His main research interests lie in the use of mediation in peace processes, the use of mediation in conflicts where religious and cultural issues play a role, the mediation of security arrangements, and the nexus of environment, natural resources, conflict, and peace.