War Victims Have Been Sidelined By 'Peace Negotiators'

Photo courtesy: @TurkanaLand

I am quite distasteful of boardroom peace talks. Well, it is not that I think they do not work or that they are ineffective; I believe such peace efforts are divorced from the reality. They are too academic and hollow in substance. They are conducted far away from conflict hotspots. The villager in West Pokot who has lost her livestock to cattle rustlers can hardly connect with the deliberations of such peace meetings. 

For your information, I am more interested in our "inherited" small tribal wars. Those duels pitting Turkanas against Pokots, Samburus against Turkanas, Pokots against Tugen and so on.

The question I ask myself, and which I wish to throw to you is this: When will victims of war become an integral aspect of peace negotiations?

Put it another way: When will victims of tribal clashes, cattle rustling, politically-fueled ethnic cleansing, resource-linked bloodbath, etc materially benefit from peace building efforts? 

I understand there are some crooked minds who may be rejoicing any time a conflict occurs. It is no news that there exists "enterprises of war" cashing in from those endless peace meetings.

We also have to agree that this enterprise of war is a child of repetitive approaches supposedly engineered to resolve longstanding ethnic differences in northern Kenya. Creative peace building initiatives have never featured on the negotiation table.

I believe I know the reason. Creativity brings disturbance. Disturbance begets disruption. And disruption eventually cuts the flow of blood that powers these enterprises of war.

What do I mean by disruption? It is very simple. Bring the people - yes victims of war - on board. Respond to their immediate needs and cut off the animosity conditioning them to a life of periodic massacres.

Two critical observations: 1) Baringo north has few, far apart schools. No clean water. 2) Jump to Baragoi. Ethnic tension between Turkanas and Samburus has created an atmosphere where each community is cocooned where a majority of its members live hence straining the already few resources at their disposal.

Back to peace building stories. Will empty dialogue foster peaceful coexistence among these communities? Not even for a day. This is why. There is this fallacy controlling the minds of people leading boardroom peace talks. They think warring communities do not talk with each other.

Second thing, the level of laziness sticking out of these talk shows must scare us. I am of the view that a thorough background check must be conducted in order to draw a line between clichés and what could pass as real problems bedeviling warring communities. To the best of my knowledge, only a tiny percentage of all those bodies funding or participating in these peace talks will pass this test.

A number of initiatives will smoothen throats of war victims. One, a complete departure from closed-door, city-based, elite-dominated peace meetings is a must. Real peace makers should have the courage to be with those without limb and livelihood - down there in their caves.

Two, a comprehensive and honest listing of those killed by tribal militias should be conducted. It is quite disheartening that we have normalized bloodbath to a point where a hundred souls can be lost and we just forget and move on. Nadome, Kapedo and Baragoi massacres come to mind. I am afraid certain lives do not count in Kenya. 

But you know what? Those millions of shillings poured to boardroom talks would better be used to create memorial parks in all those conflict-prone areas complete with names, dates of birth and death, occupation, etc of all those who perished in each particular location.

Where memory is lost, we must create one. Memory is peace.

I hear many agencies crisscrossing northern Kenya have special budgets for peace building. For a fact, little is visible on the ground. Much ground has not been covered and bandits and their financiers are still in control. Which ignites another question: Who benefits from these special budgets?

Well, this is what I would propose. A multi-agency response team will come in handy. Not a bureaucratic outfit though. An action-oriented body; an entity that will notice a shortcoming here and act accordingly, without delay, without fanfare and minus media extravaganza. 

An entity that will expend 85% of its budget on projects and 15% on salaries and allowances. Not the other way round.

Evidently, when you talk about wars and victims, it is fundamental to be mindful of who really these victims are. A significant proportion of these are women. So, and this may pose a challenge to some quarters; how possible is it to carry these women along? 

Quick responses: Pour money where women are. Open barefoot colleges even in the remotest of those places. The ingenuity of these people is beyond measure. Make good use of that.

Lemukol Ng'asike is an architect. Twitter:  @mlemukol.