Congo “peace” in the balance

David Pankratz, director for the Institute for Community Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, met with demobilized Mai Mai militia in Congo this August, where a people torn by civil war are struggling to make the transition to peace.

“The transition is messy, with violence always in the background,” said Pankratz, who was part of a monitoring team during democratic elections last year.

David Pankratz meets with ex-militia members in the village of Kasika in eastern Congo.

Militia members agree to give up arms and live amongst their enemies, as long as they aren’t brought to justice. Often they bring back the women they’ve abducted and raped, who are outcast as “damaged property” by their former husbands.

“The country is full of unhappy families. The only thing holding communities together is not wanting violence, but only the most obtuse observer would call it peace,” said Pankratz. More than four million have been killed over a five-year period, not including those who were raped.

Without a stronger government presence, said Pankratz, peace-building initiatives will take longer. “As far as I know, the people are learning to recover on their own – inventing programs for the transition to peace.”

One of the programs is the militia demobilizing incentive. Men are given a two-week session on how to live in community, and are offered a sum of money if they go back to their units to convince their friends to lay down arms.

In a country that has been heavily evangelized in the last half century, church leaders have lacked the resources in the past to deal with conflict. “Sometimes people would tell me, ‘We would never have had this problem if you would have taught us about peace when you first came 50 years ago,’ ” said Pankratz. “The question for them is how to treat their enemies – and not just their neighbours – especially when they become neighbours.”

Pankratz also met with church leaders and government officials on his networking visit to Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania.

—AS