MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Howard Wolpe, Director of the Africa Program and Leadership Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, speaks with Bridget Conley-Zilkic about the a post conflict training program he has instituted in Burundi, and plans to continue with in Congo and Liberia. By working with both political leaders and civil society, Howard believes this program will create lasting peace and stability in areas of past and current conflict.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Hello, this is Bridget Conley-Zilkic. I am sitting in for Jerry Fowler today, and with me I have Howard Wolpe who is Director of the Africa Program and the Leadership Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Howard, thank you for joining us today.
HOWARD WOLPE: Thanks, it is good to be with you.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: We wanted to bring you in today to talk about your recent work on post-conflict peace building in a number of countries, but if you could first begin by explaining to our audience what is the method that you use. How do you go into these countries? What do you do?
HOWARD WOLPE: The strategies and techniques that we are employing in our post-conflict, reconstruction work come out of frustrations that I experienced both as a diplomat and as a policymaker when I was serving in the Congress. We have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on the leaders in a conflict to come to the table, to sign agreements, but we do nothing to really work directly with their mindsets. There is no reason, therefore, to believe that the day after they have signed an agreement that they will see their conflict or each other any differently than the day before they signed that agreement, and so it is not surprising that within five years, most societies that have signed agreements are back at war. What I suggested a few years ago when I was brought on as a consultant to the World Bank was that we try something new; we try to work directly with key leaders, strategically selected from all sectors of the society in building a long-term training program designed to really restore their ability to work collaboratively across all the lines of ethnic and political division. Specifically, there were four objectives that this training strategy has at its core.
First there is the need to change the paradigm of conflict in which people come to see each other as involved in a zero sum game. They believe that their own success or survival can only come at the expense of the other person; there is no recognition of interdependence; there is no value attached to collaboration, and unless people can begin to see that their own self interest requires collaboration with others, I do not believe peace is sustainable in any society.
Secondly, one of the consequences of all conflict is that relationships are fractured and trust is broken. A way must be found to rebuild that trust, to rebuild those relationships so that people can have confidence that when agreements are reached, they will be adhered to.
Thirdly, there is a need to restore some agreement consensus on rules of the game. How should power be organized and structured? How should decisions be made?
Finally, in war time and in conflict, people scream a lot at each other, but they have lost the ability to listen to one another, and you have to strengthen their skills of communication and negotiation so that the way that they deal with each other is conducive to solving problems, not simply an invitation to more confrontation.
Those are the four objectives of the training strategy that we developed, and the idea that we have posed to the World Bank and that we have tried out first in Burundi was to identify a core number of key leaders—no more than one hundred was our initial conception.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: No more than one hundred.
HOWARD WOLPE: That is right. Half of them we wanted to be drawn from the political class—by which we meant not only the political parties, but also the army and all of the rebel groups—and one half from civil society—from the churches, from women’s organizations, from students, faculty of universities, business, and so on—because in all of these divides of society you have two challenges. You have the ethnic divisions among the political class, and it is these political leaders that invariably drive ethnic conflict, and secondly you have got this huge gap between the political class and the mass of the population, and so we wanted to address both of those cleavages simultaneously. The process that we have developed is a long-term training program, not just a one-off workshop. We begin with every group of people with whom we work about 35 at a time, with a six day retreat, and then every month or two we bring people back together again, and for one or two days, shorter experiences to deepen their relationships and to strengthen their skills. The training is directed at communications, negotiating skills, at the analysis of conflict, understanding the basis of perceptions, at techniques for group problem solving and negotiation. The process is very interactive. We do not think it is very useful to lecture people, to preach to them about human rights or about democracy. The challenge is to get people to begin to comprehend their interdependence, to see other as part of the same political universe so that they will not dehumanize their adversaries. What we do is to provide the very first few days of our initial workshop, we do not even talk about the issues or the substance of the conflict. Instead, what we do is focus on the generic skills of leadership: communications, negotiations, and the like. It is very interactive. We use primarily a number of simulations and interactive exercises which give people the opportunity to confront conflict in a hypothetical setting, and then to derive from that experience with conflict, lessons that can be applied to their real world. What we find is that after simply three days of this kind of work that the ethnic and the political barriers that were erected and stood between these people at the beginning of the process come down very quickly so that when we then turn to the substance and invite the participants to identify the issues they wish to tackle, the last two or three days of the initial workshop, they approach that discussion in a very different mindset, no longer seeing each other as coming out of different ethnic and political boxes, but rather as individuals that may have diverse interests, but now have a common commitment to find solutions that will satisfy the interests of all. It is a very powerful process.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: How has this been played out? You have been working in Burundi for quite some time now. When did you first go in? Was it 2002?
HOWARD WOLPE: We began our preparations for the process at the end of 2002. Our first workshop in Burundi was in March of 2003. Within six months, we had built such cohesion among the then 65 leaders with whom we were working, and these are people who were such bitter enemies in the past that they would not even go into the same room with one another previously. They had built so much cohesion that the head of the Tutsi army and the six Hutu rebel groups participating asked if we would quickly mount a workshop for their military commanders jointly so that they could prepare for the ceasefire that had not yet been signed. In November 2003, we brought together 37 military commanders in Nairobi for six days. They came literally from the battlefield into the workshop, and by the end of that process—though they began initially very frightened and quite tense and reserved as you might imagine—by the end of the process, they had built so much camaraderie and cohesion that we were asked by both sides to quickly expand this training in as many different directions as possible. Today, about three years later, we are now providing at the request of the Burundian government, training for the high command of the army, newly integrated national army, for the high command of the newly integrated national police force, for the top political party leaders of the country, and for the entire top levels of the new government—the President, Vice President, the Council Ministers, the Parliamentary leaders.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: That is a pretty strong testament to its value.
HOWARD WOLPE: Yes, I would argue that if the Burundians themselves believe this is critical to their future, it speaks to the impact the process has had upon them.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: I was also curious, were there any things that surprised you during this process?
HOWARD WOLPE: It did not surprise me, but I think it surprised some others. We were advised—I remember at the beginning of our process—not to incorporate, in the process, two individuals who were perceived to be very hard-line, extremist, Tutsi figures. One was a former army colonel that was perceived to be involved in the assassination of the first democratically elected Hutu President in 1993.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Directly involved?
HOWARD WOLPE: He was perceived to be directly involved. The second was the general, current general, who was seen as the principal force for opposition to army reform and integration. But when I saw both Hutus and Tutsis tell me that indeed, both of these men were among the people who were critical to their future, we made the decision to invite them. It was one of the wisest decisions we made because it was they that went through perhaps the most dramatic transformations of all, because it turned out it was fear that was driving their extremism, and once they could enter into a different kind of environment, a safe environment, and could begin to have a process enabling them to get beyond the stereotypes, beyond their fears, to being to see what they thought as their antagonists in a very different way, they ended up becoming the principle champions for this kind of process and for its institutionalization within the military. Incidentally, today the army has also asked, and we have begun this process, to train Burundian army officers and police officers so that they can institutionalize this process within both the army and the police, so that every officer will have these skills at building cohesion, building teamwork, and building unified command structures.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: You are training Burundians to run the process themselves.
HOWARD WOLPE: That is right.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: That is excellent. Where is Burundi today? How is the peace process moving forward and consolidating? What are the challenges it faces?
HOWARD WOLPE: Burundi is still clearly a fragile process. Though enormous strides have been made, it would be premature to say that we are there yet, but there have been huge gains. Let me just mention a few of the success stories. They are pretty stunning. For one thing, though there are now significant political tensions in the country, they no longer have an ethnic characteristic. It is no longer Tutsi versus Hutu; it is government versus opposition. Within the army and within the police, one of the most dramatic new developments is the building, deepening cohesion within the command structures. An example of that was this recent allegation of a coup attempt against the government which most observers think was quite specious, but there was no such coup attempt. On the one hand, however, the fact that there was a perception of a coup attempt was testimony to the continuing sense of insecurity, almost paranoia on the part of Burundians who look back at their history and see how many instances in which governments have been overthrown by force. Then there is always a deep seeded insecurity, especially by the new government which was formally the rebel movement, came into power with little government experience or no government experience and a lot of fears and insecurities. On the other hand, what has been stunning has been to see army command officers, both Tutsi and Hutu, both rebel and former Burundian government army people, almost laugh at the allegations that there was a military coup, saying to themselves and to others, “If there is a coup in process, we know something about it.” The fact of the cohesion of these security structures is vital to the Burundians future, and that is something that is really very much in evidence, as well as they say the diminishing nature of the tensions that are defined along ethnic lines. In addition, the government has taken some very important new policy initiatives that are quite stunning. It is the first government, perhaps, in Burundian history that is much more oriented to uplifting the rural mass of the population than to simply serving the Bujam Bore political elites within the capital city, so you have primary education, a free primary education program, programs of maternal and child healthcare that are being disseminated throughout the countryside and are beginning to be really deeply appreciated by the mass of the population that has been historically very neglected by political elites that were pretty much self serving elites, so there are a lot of things that are happening very positively. On the negative side, you still have security structures that are in many ways still dysfunctional. You have some very serious human rights violations that have occurred, many of which produced by the so-called intelligence services of the community which there have been some extrajudicial killings and some torture, and violence has occurred. Those are issues that the government itself has acknowledged which is also a first in Burundian history, but it is testimony to the progress that still has to be made if we are going to have finally achieved conditions for lasting peace and stability. You have a country that is still, perhaps, one of the poorest in the entire world, and development assistance has been very slow to come into the country. You have huge challenges of a variety of sorts, one of which could still undermine what has been a very affirmative trend line, and one which, my hope of course, the international community will not respond to the negatives that are out there in ways that will make impossible the ability to really accelerate the economic development of the country and provide the support necessary to address the dysfunctional institutions.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Since Burundi, you have also done work in Congo and you are beginning work on Liberia as well. We just have a few minutes, but I wanted to ask you, as you are moving these models from one place, whereas you have just described it has been very successful, into new environments with new challenges, what are some of the challenges you face in implementing this process?
HOWARD WOLPE: In the Congo, you are talking about a country of 60 million, compared to Burundi’s six million.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: That is enormous.
HOWARD WOLPE: So the first problem is simply critical mass; that is you have to reach more people to have a comparable institutional impact. The other issue in the Congo is that the Congo, unlike Burundi, was much more of a failed state; that is the level of fear and insecurity among the Burundians was even deeper because they have actually experienced a genocide and inter-communal massacres and a loss of about a third of their population as refugees and internally displaced persons. Congo, except in the eastern part, has not experienced that level of violence, but it has experienced horrendous collapse of all of its institutions, and the war in the Congo is estimated to have claimed—more indirectly that directly, but by virtue of the consequences of war perhaps—three and a half to four million lives. You have a tremendous challenge at really building minimal capacity in this new government, and also, although divisions among the Congolese might not be as intensely felt as they were when we began the program in Burundi, there are many more parties, so you have to work at making certain that your training programs are really inclusive and that all the key elements of the society are part of the process.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And Liberia?
HOWARD WOLPE: In Liberia you also have a failed state. In Liberia there is not even historically much of a national identity, and so the issues of cohesion and capacity building are as serious and fundamental in Liberia as anywhere. My own view is that if we can mount the resources, which have not yet been mobilized to replicate a Burundi style program in Liberia on a national basis, that the impact could be even quicker and more profound in Liberia than in Burundi because the population is half the size of Burundi population, and because the intensity of the divisions among the population are not as emotionally felt as they were in Burundi, but the levels of mistrust, the extent of social cleavages that exist in the country—for example, as between the Liberians of American ancestry or relationship on the one side, and the interior population on the other—those divisions are very, very deep, and in some ways the evolution of the new government because of the need to bring in people that have technical skills into the new government is kind of deepening that historical cleavage between the better educated American Liberians on the one side and the interior population on the other. There are major challenges there, and a final distinction about Liberia that ought to be noted is the youth demographic is uniquely significant, a tremendous youth population that is unemployed, uneducated, alienated, available for mobilization by warring groups, and needs to be really incorporated into the development process very directly and very quickly.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Howard, thank you very much for speaking with us today and I hope we have the chance to speak with you again to learn more about the Congo process and hopefully a Liberia process.
HOWARD WOLPE: Thank you. Thank you very much.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Thank you.
