Bosnia, Los Angeles, Somalia, Haiti, Azerbaijan -- the Post-Cold War hotspots grow in numbers and in intensity. Even many military people don't see military solutions to these frustrating situations. What can peace-minded people and groups do? What are they doing right now, if anything?

In fact, many things are being done right now, and the momentum for doing more is growing among justice/peace/mediation people in this country and elsewhere. It is an exciting development, in the midst of the overwhelming violence of our day. These efforts don't get much attention in the media.

A number of groups, like International Fellowship of Reconciliation, do nonviolence/mediation training in countries where there is conflict, preparing citizens to experiment with ways of ending conflict and empowering their own lives. This happened in the Philippines. Hundreds were trained and were key in the action that stopped the tanks, which led to Marcos' downfall. The same was true of the nonviolent protection and preservation of Yeltsin in the Moscow government building when "hardliners" were attempting a coup. Such, training workshops are going on in the former Yugoslavia. One story illustrates the fruit of this training. Members of the Pancevo Peace Movement brought 47 Serbs and Muslims together in the Serbian village of Bretovac after violence broke out against a Muslim minority. This mediation led to a healing of divisions. It also gave many Serbs in the village who wanted peaceful relations with their Muslim neighbors the courage to voice this desire.

Round Tables of Reconciliation are taking place, where members of fighting groups are brought together in a neutral place to carry on dialogue and discover the humanness and commonness they share, so they can carry that back into their own enclaves. Catholics and Protestants in North Ireland have been doing this since "the Troubles" began in 1968. In 1991, an Orthodox Serbian patriarch, a Muslim Immam and a Roman Catholic Bishop came together in Switzerland and out of the dialogue came a joint statement calling for "the immediate, unconditional and irrev-ocable end of the war" in former Yugoslavia. There is a vision of having regional Roundtables of Reconciliation in that area.

We are all familiar with the Gang summit; mediators have been busy bringing the gangs together from our cities. Carl Upchurch has been "lifting up these urban voices" of mediators from the streets. A city in North Carolina is undertaking a creative gang mediation venture.

Another type of intervention/mediation is a third party intervention by peace teams such as Witness for Peace and Peace Brigades International. These attempt to reduce violence, document human rights abuses, stand in solidarity with the oppressed in the country and influence public awareness in the international community.

I was part of such a peace team venture to Bosnia this past August. Called Mir Sada (Peace Now in Serbo-Croatian), the project originally intended to have international peacemakers live in Sarajevo and two neighboring cities for a three month period. We would stand in solidarity with the victims of the war, witness to a nonviolence that contrasted with the ethnic hatreds, have a citizens' peace conference condemning the abuse of human rights, and be of assistance to people where we were. By the time the project began, the goal shifted. The question became: can we even get to Sarajevo, with intensified fighting along the routes to the city?

Our caravan of buses, vans and cars got about half-way, entering the war zone at Prozer in Bosnia. The Mir Sada organizers ended up calling off the attempt to reach Sarajevo because of the danger ahead. Many of us had wanted to proceed through the fighting as a large caravan of unarmed peacemakers into the capital. Instead, as an alternate plan, Mir Sada organizers arranged for us to go to the besieged city of Mostar, the capital of the southern province of Herzegovina. We were in the Croatian side of the city for about three hours, near the battle line, vigiling and conversing with citizens. We were unable to enter the Muslim side.

While the original goal of Mir Sada was not achieved, we did provide a witness to a nonviolent alternative way of resolving conflict. Perhaps above all, we learned more from our mistakes: how NOT to do many things. The original plan of the Italian organizing group, Beati, insisted on nonviolence training and screening for all who wished to participate. They also insisted on a democratic process with small group/large group dynamics. The French organizing group did not adhere to this, so there was a rapid breakdown of any common discipline and focus. Conclusion: there must be a strictly adhered to process and structure, and agreement on the goals of the project. Also, there must be an alternate plan ready in advance in case the original plan cannot be carried out. We also found out that the logistics of the huge undertaking must be well organized, from how you provide latrines and food in a war zone to how you take care of peacemakers wounded or killed during the venture.

Yes, there is real movement toward the creation of these kinds of intervention/mediation forces as a way to diminish and stop various kinds of violence in society. It is an exciting time. Michigan Faith and Resistance Peace Team has been created to help in this process of assisting people to enter armed conflict zones and communicate this vision to the public. For more information, contact me at:

Peter Dougherty
319 Charles
E. Lansing, MI 48823
Phone (517) 337-1748.

---

Fr. C. Peter Dougherty is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Lansing, ordained in 1961. Since 1970, he has been involved in a social justice and peace work ministry. He is a co-founder of Covenant For Peace, Michigan Faith and Resistance, and Michigan Faith and Resistance Peace Team. Through these he has been active in campaigns for disarmament, the end of war, violence, education, advocacy, public vigils and civil resistance. Williams International in Walled Lake (makers of cruise missile engines), Wurtsmith and K.I. Sawyer Air Force bases in Michigan, and the Nevada nuclear test site are some of the sites for these efforts. He has been in jail many times for civil resistance. In August this year, he was part of the over two thousand from the U.S. and Europe that went into Bosnia's war zones with a message of peace, calling for the end of the war. Fr. Dougherty also works with the homeless at Loaves and Fishes Shelter in Lansing.

Return to the Index of Synapse 40, Summer 1997