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Armies for Peace in Nicaragua
Not long ago they fought each other. Now they fight together. As Nicaragua’s Peace Promoter Network, former soldiers from the Sandinista and Resistance armies are using their military skills to set examples of discipline, sacrifice and self-examination in the reconstruction of this central American nation.
And Nicaragua needs these qualities. The country is poor, structurally poor, lacking in the skills and infrastructure necessary to economic well being. There are no jobs. None that would guarantee a decent living at least, for former soldiers or anyone else.
Nicaragua is also run down. Years of civil war have ravaged roads, communication facilities, farms, water distribution networks... And human relationships and sensibilities.
‘Violence occasions both visible and invisible damage,’ notes Dr Alejandro Bendaña, President of the Managua-based Centro de Estudios Internacionales (CEI). ‘It is not only infrastructures, but relationships and self-images which require rehabilitation. Formal peace settlements and elections may entail the formal end of hostilities, but bitterness and antagonism may remain alive in a society, along with access to weaponry, which can re-ignite latent rivalries.’
It is a familiar story. Post-War is not Post-Conflict. As UNESCO’s Director-General, Federico Mayor, points out, ‘countries in post-war situations frequently continue to be characterised by political instability, insecurity and everyday violence.’
Idle armies are a danger. They may take up warfare again as a means of protest, survival or delinquency, sometimes consituting powerful armed bands, both rural and urban.
‘Demobilisation is not synonymous with reintegration any more than the absence of war is with peace,’ notes Bendaña. ‘More sacrifices are warranted in the post-war period, which is not a post-conflict one, but rather a stage characterised by complex and prolonged processes of social, economic and psychological reconstruction.’
Once held up as heroes or models for society, soldiers often find themselves now treated as troublesome reminders of a traumatic past. Sometimes, when they return to their families, they are humiliated and persecuted. They begin to see themselves as misused: the mechanical implementers of others’ decisions.
In Nicaragua, however, ex-soldiers are seen as assets. The country’s infrastructure needs rebuilding. Soldiers have useful skills.
‘There are a number of traits associated with war which are also indispensible in peace-making,’ notes CEI’s Bendaña. ‘Dedication, sacrifice, solidarity, discipline, teamwork, administration and organisation.’
Hence the former Sandinista and Resistance armies have been re-mobilised. Via the CEI’s Education and Action for Peace Programme, they are being re-tooled in the arts of peace. The first of these is to value peace, to see it as something worth fighting for.
‘Often there is the proclivity towards violence and contempt for life that may carry over into civilian life,’ says Dr Bendaña. ‘Training must emphasise the importance of a full life, organisation and coalition building. People must be able to see the importance of not fighting. Training in conflict resolution can play a positive role: more than resolve conflicts, training is geared to learning to handle conflicts creatively and, of course, non-violently.’
The Education and Action for Peace Program attempts to build on the positive traits the soldiers already possess using a participatory training methodology. Open learning packs are designed and explained.
‘Human training (accompaniment, as opposed to counselling, based on empathy, including personal and collective psychological rehabilitation) is the groundwork for technical training,’ says Bendaña. ‘Too often governments and agencies neglect the role of reflection in training - or ascribe it to the religious sphere - when therapy and self-therapy should also be considered part of that training/human rehabilitation.’
Workshops aim at developing a mutally agreed action plan based on the needs the soldiers observe in their communities, as well as peace-building strategies. During implementation, the action plans are regularly reviewed and developed. Thus, as Bendaña puts it, training becomes the marriage of ethical and technical contents, of social and economic concerns.
| ‘The experience of groups like the team of CEI, in training soldiers and ex-guerrillas to take on pacific civil roles, would be useful for those working with urban guerrillas in Euro-North America (sic).’ |
At the beginning, he notes, the trainee peace promoters may be ‘committed to peace-building and may do many things in the short-term to achieve it, yet they may not have envisioned what a peaceful society might look like ten or fifteen years in the future. The CEI’s work in the seminars to develop longterm vision and articulate what types of institutional structures are needed in the future helps the promoters to develop indicators that would reflect both a concrete expression of peace-building in the present and a way to identify the changes that have taken place or must take place to build peace.’
The Education and Action for Peace Programme began in 1991. Its first group of thirty graduates emerged in 1993. Since then, these Peace Promoters have received refresher seminars where they evaluate the skills they acquired in the original course and develop new skills. A permanent peace course has evolved. The aim is to support the ex-soldiers in becoming multiplier agents for peace in their regions.
The CEI calls this peace building from below.
‘In and of themselves,’ Bendaña argues, ‘cease-fires, elections and political power-sharing will not produce democracy and development. The institutional arrangements in each country remain understandibly fragile, as negotiated agreements at the top can rapidly unravel or indeed fail to hold much consequence for those at the bottom. Herein lies the importance of promoting peace-building and development from below... Contrary to many assumptions in the North about outside ‘neutral’ mediators as the best reconciliators, we would look to resources within a people in order to arrive at a self-sustainable reconciliation and stabilisation process.’
The results are very encouraging.
‘Few images can be more depolarising than that of joint enemies working and caring together,’ observes Bendaña. ‘Demobilised soldiers from all sides of the conflict are communicating, building relationships of trust, and beyond that tackling common problems in a unitary fashion. Not that they have been converted, reneged on their past or abandoned old political allegiances, but rather they have established new working frameworks of reconciliation in a framework of tolerance and mutual respect.’
Governments and agencies also think that ‘neutral’ mediators are the best reconciliators. Those who come from outside the conflict area. CEI sees it the other way around. Only those who need the peace will keep the peace, its staff believe. The aim is sustainable stability.
This article is largely based on ‘Peace-building and Reconciliation in Post-War Settings - The Experience of Ex-combatants and an NGO in Nicaragua’, by Dr. Alejandro Bendaña.
Feedback please to
j.verhoeven@euconflict.org