In 1999, along with more than 20,000 Liberian children, 11-year-old Lassana became a soldier. He was kidnapped and forced to use drugs and alcohol, destroy property, and kill in the Second Liberian Civil War from 1999 to 2003.

Now, he seeks peace for himself and his community in Liberia – a long road that has taken him to journalism and peace studies at Kent State University and most recently, to 91����Ƶ’s

“Part of my healing process is to share my story. How do I take that approach and use it in a way that might help or benefit other people?” Kanneh says.

In gaining the tools to share his story, he hopes to promote peace and non-violent action through storytelling and photography. Though his work and mentoring of war victims and perpetrators, Kanneh wants to not only continue to find forgiveness within, but also help others who are suffering “to find forgiveness for themselves, ask for forgiveness from those they have hurt, and forgive those who have offended them,” he says. “I would like to create a safe place for them to tell their stories for healing and forgiveness, and to rebuild their relationships that have been broken by domestic and political armed conflicts.”

“Young people, like me, find it difficult to reintegrate into the community,” Kanneh adds. “We have similar issues to those who have experienced sexual violence and political conflicts. It is very difficult for people returning from being soldiers to find healing for themselves.”

A ‘chance meeting on a muddy road’ changes lives

In 2006, the child soldier Kanneh was recruited again, this time through former rebel commander Christian Bethelson to leave the army and dedicate himself to promoting peace. [Bethelson is profiled in .]

Bethelson, who had formerly recruited, trained and used child soldiers, was himself on a new path. A chance meeting on a muddy road with some Liberian peacebuilders eventually brought Kanneh and five other war-affected youth to American Cynthia Travis’s nonprofit peacebuilding organization, , in northern Liberia.

The healing journey of these six “,” as they’re known, is recorded in the documentary “.” The film depicts how, after rehabilitation and support through storytelling and photography, Kanneh was able to rejoin his community, pursue his education, and speak about his experiences with the protection of the organization. Like Kanneh, the other members of the group are now in their mid-20s and working on degrees in the United States and Liberia in a variety of service-oriented fields.

Travis, who bases her organization out of California, describes her relationship with the former child soldiers as a “mother and also their friend, mentor, and source of financial and academic support.”

Supportive sponsor points young peacebuilder to SPI

It was Travis who suggested SPI to Kanneh. She first came to 91����Ƶ for a winter session in 1999 (taught by co-founding faculty member Ron Kraybill) and then returned that summer and again in 2003, inspired by the stories and conversations of her classmates and colleagues. She says that her time at SPI helped her “form the basis for founding everyday gandhis.”

SPI provides “a mix of grassroots and institutional peacebuilders that bridges the gap between western approaches in peacebuilding and non-western cultures,” she says. Recognizing Kanneh’s interest in peacebuilding, “I realized that at SPI he would meet so many inspiring ‘kindred spirits’ who would also appreciate meeting him.”

One such opportunity was a screening of “The Fight to Forgive” at 91����Ƶ’s Common Grounds. The question and answer exchange afterwards exemplified the spirit of SPI, Kanneh said later. “It’s just wonderful getting to meet people from different countries and with different experiences and backgrounds, and different perspectives when it comes to peacebuilding work and building relationships. Coming together as a group to share stories, there is much hope and inspiration, so many emotions, in a positive way.”

Applying Lessons

During Kanneh’s two sessions at SPI, he gained insights and skills he plans to apply to his future peacebuilding work. One challenge in Liberia, he says, is gender equality. The “Safe Communities and Safe Homes” course, taught by professor , helped him understand more about how gender roles are defined and how those roles can be detrimental for both men and women.

“In my culture, the responsibility for the man is to go out and make money and then come back home and feed the family. The female’s responsibility is to stay home and take care of the home and take care of the kids.”

The class challenged Kanneh to find ways to motivate people to push for gender equality without disrespecting the established beliefs and traditions of the community.

“If you take [gender equality] into a culture that is not familiar with it, at some point it destroys the culture. Those beliefs have been working for people for decades,” he said.

This tension lies at the heart of the peacebuilding work Kanneh wants to pursue. “How do I incorporate [my ideas] with the people’s ideas instead of me going and telling them that these are things that I think that might work in this community?”

The answer, Kanneh says, lies within empowering people to find their own solutions. As a peacebuilder, he can facilitate the discussion process; help identify leaders, talents, and gifts; and offer suggestions. However, ultimately everyone must take responsibility for their actions and decisions, he says, with the goal of creating a cohesive and sustainable society.

A first step is building the trust of his community, Kanneh said, sharing knowledge gained from a  class on organizing communities for social change taught by Mark Chupp.

He says, “Part of the process of organizing communities is to explain the self-story. You have to give your self-story to people that don’t know you. How do you make the community understand that you understand their problems?”

While his classes have raised important questions, Kanneh draws strength and inspiration from his connections with other SPI members. In a way, SPI is a microcosm of the peaceful community he hopes to help build back home: full of teaching and learning and “bringing different communities together as one community.”

Fifteen leaders of regional peace-building groups gathered for the first time during the at 91����Ƶ.

Their May 30-June 4 conference launched a network between existing institutes in Zambia, Ghana, the Philippines and the United States and groups planning peacebuilding institutes in South Asia, the South Pacific and Jamaica. Funding came from a United States Institute of Peace grant written by SPI co-director .

“The peer relationship is important,” said Jon Rudy, who works with the Philippines’ Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute. The Summer Peacebuilding Institute at 91����Ƶ, at 10 years, is the oldest among these nonhierarchical, nonviolence-based institutes, having 1,500 alumni around the world, but MPI has graduated 650 in its five years, while several hundred have completed the newer Philippine and African institutes.

Conference topics included fundraising, burnout, organizational evaluation, theory in relationship to practice, and generalized versus regional skills, noted facilitator Bill Goldberg, a special projects assistant with 91����Ƶ

Strategists of unconventional warfare have for decades sought to turn the anger and might of a military giant against itself. Thus, the September 11 attackers stand in a tradition of unconventional warfare with a considerable track record of success.

1. Small militant groups at the fringes of society were able to challenge much more powerful enemies using guerilla warfare strategies in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
   • Che Guevara, icon of unconventional warfare movements in Latin America, taught that small groups of militants should avoid direct military engagement with powerful governments. Instead, the primary goal in early phases is to provoke governments into heavy-handed response. This embitters large numbers of innocent civilians who provide a sympathetic social base for terrorists, and ultimately recruits and financial support.
   • The Viet Cong used unconventional tactics successfully to turn the civilian populace of South Vietnam against the U.S.-backed government in Saigon; the Afghani resistance accomplished the same goal in their ten-year struggle to drive vastly superior Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.
   • Today’s terrorists are using with far greater sophistication the same tactics that ensnared the U.S. in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and which have engulfed large segments of Latin America in ongoing violence.
2. Unconventional strategy capitalizes on the tendency of powerful governments to rely on outdated doctrines of security.
   • Traditional military doctrine, which seeks to defeat the enemy by overwhelming force, assumes an enemy with conventional fighting forces (armies) which are easily identified, located, and isolated from civilian populations. It also assumes readily detectable weapons with limited capacity for destruction. All are outdated assumptions.
   • Terrorists who engage in unconventional warfare blend into civilian populations, making it impossible to engage them without widespread, indiscriminate destruction of civilian populations.
   • Compact explosives, portable missile launchers, atomic weapons the size of a suitcase, biological weapons, and massive international trade now mean that even a small number of indistinguishable individuals can cause large-scale destruction. “Defeat” of such an opponent is an out-dated concept.
   • Over confidence in the effectiveness of superior conventional force makes it relatively easy for states to be enticed into costly mobilization. If heavy damage is inflicted on civilian populations, the civilian support base for the unconventional group will be exponentially expanded.
3. Unconventional strategies rely on the fact that military combat usually unites civilian populations who are casualties.
   • Terrorists face a difficult problem: the communities they seek to mobilize are diverse. These groups are almost always on the fringes of their society, in the same way that extremist hate-groups are on the fringe of American society. Even when many agree with the goals of terrorists, few would normally support military combat against a more powerful nation.
   • Terrorists benefit from the tendency of outsiders to overlook these distinctions and to treat whole groups as though they were the part of the terrorists’ group.
   • Thus, those relying on unconventional warfare depend on the response of their powerful victims to create something that they cannot alone create: a broad seedbed of sympathizers among people previously apathetic or even hostile to their cause.
4. The challenge in dealing with unconventional warfare: to limit their capacity to do grave harm without doing large scale, grave harm in response and to address the concerns in larger populations which those using the unconventional warfare try to exploit. Key elements:
   • Prudent defensive measures at home
   • Military restraint abroad
   • Engagement and consultation with the domestic populations abroad to recognize, strengthen, and collaborate with the majority elements in those populations which oppose violence.
   • An active effort to understand and address the desperation of those populations which terrorists seek to exploit – If we are seen as respectful of and concerned for their needs, they will not become recruits for terrorists.

At the time of publication, Ron Kraybill, PhD, was professor of Conflict Studies at 91����Ƶ’s Conflict Transformation Program.

Thus far, we have been impressed by the generally restrained and cautious responses we have heard from the media. However, we have not seen clearly articulated options outside of the model of “revenge” responses. While revenge is an understandable human response, we also know that long-term peace will require us to find other ways of responding to these attacks.

As we shape our public responses to these events, we thought it might be helpful to consider the following issues, which are raised by our work in conflict transformation.

First, this attack points to the extreme complexity of security issues and demonstrates that there is no technological mechanism — however simple or complex — that can create and maintain more than a modest amount of security against a determined attacker. Our real source of security will ultimately rest on our development of positive, collaborative relations with peoples and nations around the world and at home.

Second, there are numerous potential sources of threat to the United States — both foreign and domestic. In a moment of crisis it is incumbent upon all of us to refrain from jumping to conclusions about responsibility for these horrific events.

Third, moderation in discussing the identity of actual or potential responsible parties is critical in the context of a globally diverse community such as the Shenandoah Valley. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Arab-Americans and residents of the United States of Middle Eastern descent experienced harassment, intimidation, and fear. We need to ensure that all members of our community feel safe during this difficult time. Even when the perpetrators are identified, we urge journalists and public officials to remind the public that the vast majority of people who may resemble the attackers have no connection to these events and are as shocked as everyone else. People of good will in our community may want to take the initiative to reassure those who may be vulnerable to prejudice that we will not stand by idly if they are targeted by others in our community.

Fourth, violence is interactive and it is incumbent upon all Americans to ponder seriously the question, “What has the United States done, deliberately or inadvertently, in its role as the ‘one remaining superpower’ to inspire such hatred and anger?” This in no way implies that we excuse or condone the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. It simply recognizes that we can understand the emergence of such fury and hatred only if we are willing and able to critique our own activities as well as those of others.

Finally, as the full magnitude of the horror of these events becomes apparent, the repercussions are going to be personal as well as political, social, and cultural. We will each experience this trauma in our own way and our responses will be shaped by our past experiences with war, violence, and terror. It is important that we each find places where we can process our personal horror. We also need to be particularly mindful of the impact of these events on our neighbors whose lives have already included violence and terror in the United States and around the world.

Please feel free to email one of us, if you have any questions.