George A. Lopez

War and Christmas day have always stood in awkward juxtaposition. We know of battlefield greetings exchanged between French and German soldiers in local, private truces during World War I. We came to expect the negotiated Christmas ceasefires during the Vietnam War. The proclamation of peace on earth to people of good will carries a power rare in the world of realpolitik.

But a fluid, global war on terror knows no Christmas peace. Nor will a truce come in Iraq or Afghanistan in reverence of this day ‘s meaning. These wars tempt us to believe that peace on earth is more elusive than ever. But nothing could be more untrue.

For most of the modern era, war prevention or ending war depended on a major crisis intervention or a peace treaty forged by prime ministers and presidents. The implementation of such a peace, especially if it was contentious and fragile, usually rested on the shoulders of soldiers assigned as United Nations’ blue helmet peacekeepers.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, a set new practices and principles have emerged for how to establish and maintain a peace among warring factions. These programs developed often by trial and error and in response to the brutal character and devastating nature of the internal wars of our era. Dealing with these violent conflicts created space for new thinking, new opportunities, and even a new lexicon about peace. As part science and part creative art, the current task faced by those of good will is peace-building. It integrates the psychological, social, economic, educational dimensions of community redevelopment with the more traditional aspects associated with military peace-keeping.

Peace-builders are a mixture of insiders and outsides to a violent conflict. They are professionals and volunteers, former victims and, even in some cases, former perpetrators of violence. Of course, political leaders play a role. And police and soldiers are essential to establishing order and essential security in the immediate post-war time period. But because the structure of success peace-building demands such a fundamental reorientation of many aspects of war-based life, it requires many different kinds of construction workers.

A number of trends across the cases of successful peace-building - which range from Ache to Sri Lanka - have emerged as ‘best practices’. These new ways to peace deserve some recognition for the power of their processes to achieve a new, stable and viable order in what was formerly a war zone.

The first outstanding practice involves disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, known simply as ‘DDR’. In this process, armed combatants are provided a host of incentives, from retirement benefits and job training for government soldiers, to medical care and assistance with relocation and jobs for rebel factions, in exchange for ending the fight. Gun buy-back programs, strategies for holding weapons caches under external supervision, and inclusion of former fighters into a political process are key elements of DDR.

Where war has lasted for nearly a generation, as in Angola or Afghanistan, this task is more complex than in shorter wars like Kosovo. But evidence from long-term civil wars like El Salvador illustrate that a DDR process is not only possible, but essential to peace-building. Just last week the disarmament phase of DDR was finalized in Ache.

A second trend of note involves intensive work with youth across the warring groups. In places as different as Palestine and Ulster, educational, ethnic and church leaders bring children of the warring factions together in intentional communities or integrated schools. They engage in cooperative, shared tasks in order to burst the stereotypes of hate and division which dominated the lives and actions of the parents of these youth.

One of the harsh realities of recent war is the predominance of young fighters on the front lines. Conservative estimates are that wars in sub-Saharan Africa have included no less than 300,000 child soldiers as combatants in these devastating struggles. Many of these teenagers are abducted as pre-teens from their towns and villages. Forced to serve, they are often drugged and coerced into their first acts of killing, with the targets frequently being their own families and friends. This makes more difficult the task of reintegration and reconciliation.

But specialized youth camps, which often include drug rehabilitation and tribal rites of healing and recovery of self have been operated successfully by local peace-builders in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. They are staffed by trauma specialists, child psychologists and teachers from the region, Europe and the US. Their staff often include tribal elders, local healers and former victims.

A third major trend addresses the economics of peace-building. Recent research from the World Bank points out that even factions which embrace peace and build new relationships across their ethnic or ideological divides will fail unless a proper array of economic opportunities exist in the post-war environment. In this new peace-building task, peace now means development. Without jobs for idle youth, without infrastructure construction, or bold business entrepreneurs, there is no lasting peace.

Much like combatants do for war, peace-builders have learned a fourth critical principle turned praxis: to turn war into peace requires strategic planning. As the most noted theoretician-practitioner of our era, John Paul Lederach, points out, when a society has been at war for a decade or longer, we are naïve to believe that it will take any less time than that to implant, nurture and institutionalize peace. In fact, he argues, peace takes longer; and thus makes more important serious and detailed planning that recognizes the full scale social change involved to become a society at peace.

Cutting across these four trends are many new realities. Women have emerged as decisive actors in local and national peace-building. Whether in their work with youth, truth and reconciliation committees, or in their participation in micro-financing programs, women are breaking new ground in their cultures. And thus they become powerful new role models for breaking traditions of violence and building peace.

The radicalism of religion as a motivator for violence has dominated much of our consciousness for the past decade. But mobilizing religion as a source of healing and reconciliation often provides critical bridges in peace-building. Inter-religious dialogue between Christians and Muslims has supported social and political change for peace in areas as diverse as Nigeria and the Philippines. And religious themes of forgiveness and reconciliation have become a counter-weight to violent extremism among Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir.

With members of the Christian Peacemakers Team who accompany potential targets of assassination in Iraq being themselves victims of kidnapping, we are reminded that the world of peace-building is also one of considerable risk and filled by people of bravery and courage.

These peace-builders make us realize – whatever our own religious denomination - that there are indeed many people of good will who emerge from war and who forge stable peace. Their experience teaches us that peace is built one action, one day, one person, and one community at a time. In the face of war, they represent this day’s best sentiment.

Blessed are the peace-builders.

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George A. Lopez is a senior fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The mission of the Kroc Institute is to conduct research and training in peace-building.

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