1

Two faces of reconciliation:

The case of post-war Sierra Leone 1

Laura Stovel
lstovel@alumni.sfu.ca

The 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone was notoriously brutal and left an enormous

burden of trauma, loss and culpability in its wake. Yet despite this baggage, Sierra Leoneans have

good reasons to reconcile. This was not an ethnic war with easily-sustained factions. It was a

political conflict that divided families and communities in a way that could not be sustained in

peacetime. After the war most combatants and displaced people needed to return home or

integrate into other communities. This provided an excellent opportunity to observe reconciliation

in action.

This research examined how Sierra Leoneans were reconciling and building trust in their

communities a year after the war ended and attempted to draw lessons for post-conflict

reconciliation in general. The findings are based on 3 ½ months of field research conducted

across Sierra Leone from February to May 2003. The research involved 65 in-depth interviews:

55 with diverse Sierra Leoneans and ten with foreigners working for aid or human rights

organizations or for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It also drew from

ethnographic observations and observations of TRC hearings.

The research found that the reconciliation process in Sierra Leone was at an impasse.

While Sierra Leoneans were quick to say they would reconcile with and forgive excombatants,

when asked to define reconciliation almost all said it means they will interact with excombatants

and not take revenge. Only two Sierra Leoneans interviewed said that reconciliation should come

1
I gratefully acknowledge the funding support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
 2

from the heart. No respondent said that he or she trusted returning excombatants and few

mechanisms existed within communities to build that trust.

This paper explains this impasse by examining the range of conciliatory and

peacebuilding activities during the transition from mass violence to peace in Sierra Leone. Early

peacebuilding activities prioritize security and peaceful coexistence and often involve unjust

compromises for the sake of peace. I argue that this undermines later conciliatory needs that

require some form of justice. These early activities, then, may prevent deep and sustainable

reconciliation from being achieved.

I also argue that even when trials for serious crimes are difficult or undesirable, postwar

justice is still possible. The philosophy behind restorative justice encourages us to think of justice

as more than trials for individual crimes and instead to think of it in terms of just or fair

outcomes. Thus justice is a flexible concept that allows us to consider, among other things, what

victims need to feel safe and accepted in their communities after a violation has occurred. The

Sierra Leone experience shows that war victims are often seriously harmed not only by the acts

committed against them but also by society’s response to those crimes. A program of justice must

ask, ‘what can be done to restore dignity to the victim and give her real choices in her life given

her altered circumstances?’ Just outcomes may involve changing social attitudes through

education or ‘sensitization’ programs, amending discriminatory laws or providing targeted

medical or economic support for certain groups of victims.

Much talk about postwar reconciliation centres around war violations and uniting the

major war factions. However, a strategy for promoting postwar reconciliation must go well

beyond this. It must consider the tensions that led to the war to avoid reinforcing or reproducing

them in the transitional period. It must also consider new divisions that arose from the war and

the challenges of integration for combatants and victims in the postwar period. A discussion of

reconciliation, therefore, must begin with a brief overview of the war itself.
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The war

In March 1991, a small group of rebels, calling themselves the Revolutionary United

Front (RUF), invaded Sierra Leone from Liberia with the support of Liberian warlord Charles

Taylor and his forces. Led by a disgruntled former Sierra Leone Army corporal, Foday Sankoh,

the RUF sought to overturn the corrupt and unpopular government in the capital, Freetown. In

the first year of the war, the RUF gained some sympathy and support. Sankoh was a skilled orator

whose populist, anti-elitist rhetoric attracted some people who had grievances against national or

local rulers. 2

Nationally, political elites were enormously unpopular. Over the past two decades, top

politicians, especially former president Siaka Stevens, had bankrupted the state and its

institutions. In its place they created a clientalist system of governance in which they used their

control over jobs and state resources to accumulate power and wealth. By 1991 when the war

broke out, Sierra Leone was the poorest country in the world and the state was almost irrelevant

to the rural population. 3

Abuses of power were also felt at the local level. As in much of Africa, the colonial

system of indirect rule concentrated power in the hands of cooperative chiefs who gained

enormous authority over their constituents, including a near-monopoly on the interpretation of

customary law. Many used this power to accumulate wealth, penalize challengers and reinforce

strict hierarchies of age, gender and class. 4 Decades after colonialism, these ‘customary’ ruling

relations remain. Young men often bore the brunt of this abuse as powerful older men often saw

2
TRC of Sierra Leone. Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
Vol. 3a (2004), http://www.trcsierraleone.org.
3
William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1995); UNDP, Human Development Report 2005, Financing Human Development, (1991)
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1991/en/.
4
Reno, supra n 3.
 4

them as contenders for wives. 5 Denied even the right to speak in their own defence, many fled

their villages for towns or diamond fields where they were easy recruits for armed forces. 6

In April 1992, a coup by junior army officers seemed to bring about the change in

government that many Sierra Leoneans desired. Young people in particular hoped that this would

end the old gerontocratic order. 7 This hope was short-lived as the new regime proved to be as

corrupt as its predecessors but it drew potential supporters away from the RUF and into the army.

The new government hastily recruited thousands of soldiers and sent them with only cursory

training to fight the rebels. 8 Despite the poor training, by late 1993 the army and its allies almost

succeeded in eliminating the RUF. But at that point the RUF made the fateful decision to change

its tactics to guerrilla warfare. 9

Militarily, the RUF’s new terror tactics were devastatingly effective. They were quickly

able to divide, confuse and frighten the poorly-trained soldiers. By stealing soldiers’ uniforms and

attacking villages in them, they were also able to discredit the army in the eyes of the civilian

population. By 1994, the word ‘sobel’ – soldier turned rebel – had gained popular currency. We

cannot know how many soldiers did collude with the RUF, but the widespread belief that soldiers

could not be trusted demoralized many loyal soldiers and turned the army into an oppositional

force. Ironically the military government perpetuated the belief that soldiers had betrayed the

country. It began supporting the creation of civil militias, based on traditional hunting societies,

to fight the rebels – and rebel soldiers – and to defend communities. 10 The most famous and

feared of these were the Mende Kamajor militias.

Politically the RUF’s terror tactics were counterproductive. By seeking to make the

country ungovernable and to control the population through fear, they alienated the very people

5
Interview 63.
6
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, supra n 2.
7
Interview 63.
8
Jimmy Kandeh, Coups from Below: Armed Subalterns and State Power in West Africa (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
9
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, supra n 2.
10
Ibid.
 5

they claimed to be fighting for. In a tragic but familiar story, war became theatre and

amputations and terror became the new ways of communicating with the government and forcing

it to negotiate a power-sharing deal. As the violence escalated, the rebels had to rely increasingly

on abductions, primarily of children, to gain recruits. Many abductees were forced to commit

atrocities in their home villages before being taken away and resocialized into becoming young

killers. Girls were forced to do double duty as ‘wives’ of commanders.

This overview cannot do justice to the complexities of the war and does not touch on

such factors as the scramble for diamonds, which many observers see as a driving force of the

war. 11 However the history presented here identifies major war and pre-war tensions that are

relevant to reconciliation. While RUF forces committed most crimes, all sides – the army, the

RUF and civil militias – tortured, raped, murdered captives and civilians and recruited children. 12

When the war officially ended in January 2002, members of all factions needed to reconcile with

their communities and with the population at large.

Three conciliatory challenges

At the end of the civil war, Sierra Leone faced three main conciliatory challenges.

Combatants from all factions, many of whom committed serious crimes, needed to (re)integrate

into their own or other communities; victims needed to reintegrate into, and feel safe in, their

communities; and citizens needed to reconcile with their political leaders, the state and state

institutions, especially the army and police. Though tensions between citizens and the army

emerged from the war, most tensions between citizens and the state preceded it.

11
John Hirsch, Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2001; Ian Smillie, Lansana Gberie & Ralph Hazelton, The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone,
Diamonds and Human Security (Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada, 2000).
12
Of the violations reported to the Sierra Leone TRC, 59% were attributed to the RUF and other 10% were
attributed to ‘rebels.’ As the TRC hearings and the report revealed, however, the identity of perpetrators
was often unclear. As the report states, “In terms of dress and behaviour, the RUF and AFRC (former
soldiers who became an oppositional force) fighters were virtually indistinguishable; both had ready access
to SLA (army) uniforms but commonly combined military fatigues with civilian clothing.” (TRC of Sierra
Leone. Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Appendix 1,
(2004), 23, http://www.trcsierraleone.org.)
 6

The literature on restorative justice throws light on the first two conciliatory needs. In

contrast to legalistic justice which sees victims and offenders as autonomous individuals,

restorative justice assumes that humans are relational beings who need to live in community with

others. Crimes committed within a single community not only hurt victims, they create rifts

between the community and both victims and offenders. When a crime occurs, victims feel less

secure in the community. They need to heal from the shock and injury and see justice and

concrete change before they feel like full community members again. The offender, for his or her

part, has lost the trust of both victims and the community and has to earn that back. 13 Moberly

argues that the community too has been injured because its ‘moral tone’ has been lowered by the

crime. 14 (See diagram one below).

The need for community is central here. Almost all people need a social and economic

environment in which they support themselves, enjoy relationships and to which they feel they

belong. War creates militarized communities for combatants – social groups that sustain

themselves through violence whose members feel loyalty to one another. When the war ends,

however, opportunities for economic gain through violence decrease and these groups cease to be

sustainable. Most combatants need to integrate into some kind of peacetime community and

economy.

13
Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Waterloo, ON: Herald Press,
1990).
14
In Gerry Johnstone, Restorative Justice: Ideas, Values, Debates (Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2002),
104.
 7

Diagram 1 Reconciliation needs addressed by restorative justice

Victim Offender
• Personal healing • Personal healing
• Regain trust in • Regain trust of
community community
• (Reconcile with • (Reconcile with
offender?) victim?)

Community
• Restore moral tone
• Reconcile victims
and offenders with
community

After an intracommunal conflict, the need for community provides the incentive for

excombatants to meet and integrate with those who they or their faction harmed. Although this

kind of integration is difficult, it forces a kind of confrontation and negotiation, spoken or

unspoken, between combatants, victims and their communities. All have an incentive to make the

reintegration process work: combatants because they need the community; victims and other

community members because they may empathize with, or want the return of, their sons,

daughters or neighbours and because they fear a return to war. (This incentive, and consequent

negotiation between victims, perpetrators and their supporters does not exist to the same degree in
 8

an identity-based war because combatants often reintegrate into civilian communities that regard

them as heroes and support their actions). 15

Governments can do a lot to facilitate this negotiation. They can provide excombatants

with training and economic alternatives to war, prepare families and communities to receive

them, and help set up community structures to handle potential conflicts. This is exactly what the

Sierra Leone government did. With donor and UN support, it set up the National Commission for

Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR). Excombatants were given job

training or education, transportation money and small allowances to help them gain skills and

integrate into the peacetime economy. NCDDR officials, religious leaders and NGO workers also

travelled across the country ‘sensitizing’ Sierra Leoneans about the need to reconcile and forgive

for the sake of peace. They used the saying, ‘There is no bad bush to throw away a bad child,’ to

convey an ontology of African society as being naturally inclusive and forgiving and of Africans

as needing to be with their own people. They also stressed that many combatants, especially

children, were forced to join the rebels and committed crimes under duress.

This ‘sensitization’ campaign was very successful. While many Sierra Leoneans noted

that child combatants committed some of the worst atrocities and often enjoyed their power over

adults, people also showed tremendous empathy toward them. All Sierra Leoneans I spoke with

were willing to accept most excombatants back and interact with them peacefully, calling this

‘reconciliation’ and ‘forgiveness.’ But many also described this as the ‘bitter pill’ they needed to

swallow for the sake of peace. No one said they trusted returnees and my research found that few

mechanisms existed within villages to build that trust. Reintegration organizations often

discouraged excombatants and the families and villagers who received them from talking about

15
There are cases, however, such as the conflicts in the Great Lakes Region, where conflicting groups are
so interwoven that they cannot live apart. This was clearly illustrated in Esther Mujawayo and Souâd
Belhaddad ‘s La fleur de Stéphanie: Rwanda entre reconciliation et déni (Paris: Flammarion, 2004, but it
was also a point that was stressed to me by my students from the region).
 9

the past and strong strictures existed within villages that prevented open dialogue about these

issues.

As a result, when I asked people how they learned to trust returning excombatants the

answer was inevitably, “We watch them.” The words of one man in Port Loko were typical,

“Well, we are watching them. Some of them are still aggressive. They can’t change totally. They

change gradually. So as time goes on they gain our trust. So we are watching them.” 16 Former

RUF and RUF captives, who were tainted by association with the rebels, knew that they were

being watched and described acting out humility in order to regain people’s trust and respect. 17

Civil militias or civil defence forces (CDFs) were an exception to this experience. These

militias were formed by communities, with the help of local chiefs and with the cooperation of

families, to protect their villages. As a result, they were usually welcomed back home. Although

CDF militiamen did commit serious crimes, these often targeted ‘outsiders’ who were seen as a

threat. A number of people I interviewed quietly noted CDF crimes but it was not safe to talk

about them openly within communities. By contrast, it was safe to condemn the RUF, the army

and the government. Former militiamen I interviewed did not describe experiencing difficulty

reintegrating into their communities; instead they described themselves as heroes. 18 Thus

villagers who are concerned about CDFs will watch them, as they watch other returning

combatants, but CDFs do not feel the need to act out humility to gain trust. This sense of

entitlement and lack or reflection about CDF crimes may cause problems in the future.

While the need to reintegrate excombatants and reconcile them with their communities

was clear, the second conciliatory need – that of reconciling victims with their communities – was

16
Interview 24.
17
The sad situation facing RUF captives when they returned to their communities after the war was
captured in an interview with a young former RUF captive who returned home. Nobody asked her what
happened and she could not talk with anyone outside her immediate family about her experiences but she
knew people were making accusations about her behind her back. She described having to walk and talk
humbly in order to regain their confidence. Thus, without the possibility of dialogue she was ‘on trial’ for
this forced association.
18
The exception to this was a group of CDF amputees I interviewed in a camp outside Freetown. They
were rejected by their families not because they were CDF but because they were amputees.
 10

less obvious – or more forgettable, as victims did not pose a serious security threat. The Kabbah

government created the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) to oversee the return of

refugees and displaced people to their homes, set priorities for assistance to civilians, and channel

donor money to communities for economic projects or infrastructure. NaCSA was sometimes

touted as the civilian equivalent of NCDDR but the two programs were not the same. Unlike

excombatants, most civilians did not receive individual help through NaCSA and this created a

sense of imbalance and grievance. While most Sierra Leoneans knew that excombatants needed

to reintegrate and did not begrudge them assistance and training, many resented the fact that they

could not afford to send their own children to school or receive training themselves. To some, this

implied that excombatants were being rewarded for their crimes.

Paradoxically, victims of serious crimes such as rape or amputation often had more

difficulty integrating and being accepted than excombatants did. In a society in which survivors

of rape are severely stigmatized, a woman can be rejected by her husband or denied chances of

marrying for these acts inflicted on her. This has serious implications for her economic security.

Most of Sierra Leone is governed by customary law which ties women’s legal status to their roles

as mothers and wives. Under most customary laws, women cannot inherit property and they gain

access to property through their relations with men – their fathers, husbands or sons. Women who

have been rejected or who cannot bear children due to sexual violence against them have little

status in society and often suffer extreme poverty.

Some amputees were also rejected as unproductive burdens by desperately poor families

struggling to survive. But many did benefit from skills training and some housing assistance that

raised their status within the family.

These examples show that a crime is not just a violation; it must be understood within a

social and economic context. Reconciliation and justice for victims requires that they begin to

feel safe in their communities. This is unlikely to happen when they face rejection due to acts

committed against them.

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The third conciliatory need – reconciliation between citizens and the state – is the most

challenging. While Sierra Leoneans were strikingly willing to accept excombatants, they directed

enormous blame and anger toward politicians and government officials who they accused of

corruption, greed and mismanagement. Everybody, including President Kabbah, saw corruption

as the root of the war but, as one Sierra Leonean observed, blaming corruption says everything

and nothing. The finger always points elsewhere.

To reconcile with the government, Sierra Leoneans need to see significant changes in

governing practices and concrete improvements in basic services and infrastructure to enable the

economy to run effectively. They also need to engage in broad-based dialogue about what good

governance looks like, both locally and nationally, and what they want for the future. The Sierra

Leone TRC began this public dialogue; other avenues need to be found to continue it.

Mind vs. Heart: The two faces of reconciliation

But what is reconciliation? If we look at the literature on the subject a variety of

definitions emerge. In one sense, reconciliation occurs when former adversaries at both the

national and local levels agree to work together toward a common future. Reconciliation in this

sense is about coming to agreement, imagining a shared future, coming together, coexisting and

interacting peacefully. These were the dominant interpretations of reconciliation in Sierra Leone

at the time of my research.

In another sense, reconciliation involves healing from, and coming to terms with, the

wounds of the past and building trust - between individuals, between individuals and their

communities, and between citizens and the state. These forms of reconciliation were not

emphasized by most transitional programs, with the exception of the TRC.

If we look at these two groups of definitions, three striking differences can be observed

with important implications for post-conflict transitions. First, reconciliation in the sense of

coming to agreement, coexisting and interacting peacefully reflect processes that can be planned
 12

for, measured or observed. We can see when a peace agreement is signed and we can observe

when opposing sides are able to work together in a transitional government. We can also tell if

people are coexisting or interacting without incidents of violence. I call this group rational or

measurable reconciliation and it is the focus of much peacebuilding work.

The other group of conciliatory processes are guided not as much by rational debate as by

feelings. When we heal emotionally, psychologically and physically after a loss or injury; when

we begin to trust those around us again, especially those who hurt us; and when we come to terms

emotionally with what happened, we feel this physically. We may say we have reconciled and we

may agree to obey the law and not seek revenge, but until we feel reconciliation and forgiveness,

that reconciliation is only partial. I call this group sentient reconciliation and this form of

reconciliation is very difficult to measure.

There is a second important difference between the two groups. Rational forms of

reconciliation do not require justice to succeed. Agreements do not have to be just or fair and

peace agreements are prime examples of this. They tend to reflect the power positions of the

parties involved. All too often peace agreements guarantee amnesty to those responsible for

massive crimes. Settlements often entrench war gains – as they did in Bosnia – or contain power-

sharing deals that jettison warlords to political office. Similarly, processes aimed at reintegrating

combatants into peacetime society and achieving peaceful co-existence benefit those who

committed abuses while those who suffered from their actions do not receive equivalent help. In

Sierra Leone, people accepted this largely because they were powerless to do otherwise. 19

19
The Kairos Document (http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/AfricanChristianity/SAKairos.html), a public
statement signed in 1985 by 156 South African Christian theologians opposed to apartheid, highlights this
point. The theologians challenged ‘Church Theology’ which promoted reconciliation as key to conflict
resolution. This may be fine for private disputes, the authors wrote, but in other conflicts:

…one side is right and the other wrong. There are conflicts where one side is a fully
armed and violent oppressor while the other side is defenceless and oppressed… To
speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of
reconciliation, it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant… We are
supposed to do away with evil, injustice, oppression and sin – not come to terms with it…
 13

By contrast, healing and building trust probably do require some form of justice. We can

reasonably assume that for sentient reconciliation to occur, victims and community members

need to feel that they have been treated fairly and that the circumstances that permitted violence

or failed to protect them have changed.

Once again restorative justice provides a useful way of looking at justice and the kinds of

changes required for justice to be achieved. It recognizes that justice is more than trials and

punishment – which may or may not satisfy victims. A just resolution is an open question that is

answered through dialogue between victims, offenders and community members and that differs

depending on the needs and circumstances of the parties involved. Restorative justice encourages

us to ask what victims see as a fair resolution – leaving open a broad range of possibilities – and

what they would need to feel secure in their communities.

These questions would encourage us to look backward, not just at the crime itself but also

at the structural context that drove or enabled it. Part of that context is the war – the recruitment

and resocialization of children that led many to commit terrible crimes; the fear and vulnerability

that pushed some people to seek the protection of armed groups; the lack of payment of soldiers

and irregulars that encouraged looting. 20 But much of that context relates to pre-war power

structures that so strained the society that war came to be seen by some as the only route to

meaningful change. Abuses of power by national and local leaders, discriminatory laws, rigid

hierarchical relations and a culture that discourages the questioning of authority resulted in

extreme poverty; the alienation of certain groups, especially young men; and the inability of

In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unChristian to plead for
reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed.
20
These do not excuse crimes but they partly explain them. This was well understood by many of those I
interviewed. As one young abductee whose family was murdered by RUF forces said, ‘Because, if it’s a
normal situation, nobody would just get up and kill my family.’ (Interview 33).
 14

Sierra Leonean society to adapt effectively to changing circumstances. 21 Postwar justice requires

meaningful, broad-based dialogue about these structures followed by concrete changes. This can

go a long way in making victims – and citizens in general – feel that the war will not resume.

A truth commission with a mandate to look at the root causes of the war can be a

tremendous forum for such broad-based dialogue, enabling people to speak publicly who have

never yet had a voice within their communities. I see this as a truth commission’s greatest

potential contribution to justice and reconciliation. In a sense it is a collaborative project that

offers a diagnosis of what went wrong and what is needed to change the situation. But a diagnosis

is of little value without action to follow up; in other words, justice is not achieved, and in fact

can be undermined, unless the truth commission’s recommendations are implemented.

Equally importantly, efforts to provide justice also need to look forward at the social

structures that inhibit a victim’s healing and reintegration – such as social rejection after rape and

the legal and economic ramifications of such rejection. A just resolution in such cases may

include creating sensitization programs that seek to change attitudes towards rape victims and

eliminating discriminatory laws that prevent women from inheriting or owning property in their

own right.

The third important difference between rational and sentient reconciliation relates to their

timing. Rational forms of reconciliation tend to come early in the peace process and sentient

forms follow. When opposing sides begin to conceive of a shared political future, when a genuine

peace agreement has been signed, when former enemies begin to work together in a shared

political process, and when combatants disarm and reintegrate into peacetime communities and

coexist without violence with other community members, these are early, rational forms of

reconciliation. They need to be seen as part of the three immediate peacebuilding priorities of

transitional states: establishing security; creating a sustainable peacetime economy; and

21
For a good description of these dependency relations and rigidities see Mariane Ferme, The Underneath
of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone, Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001.
 15

(re)building accountable government (including state institutions). (See diagram two below).

Only the latter goal requires fairness or justice to succeed.

Diagram 2 The flow of transitional and conciliatory processes

Stage 1. Bring conflicting parties to the negotiating table

Stage 2. Peace agreement*

Negotiate transitional government

St. 3. Transitional government Security/reintegration Economic reconstruction

- Shared political process - Disarm, demobilize, & - Change from war economy
- (Re)establish governing reintegrate combatants to peace economy
institutions and rule of law - Refugee return - Rebuild infrastructure
- Peaceful coexistence

Stage 4. Truth, broad justice and dialogue

• Truth commission (National narrative reconciliation);
• War crimes trials and broad justice (reparations, legal reform, etc);
• Broad-based dialogue regarding governance and social processes;
• Action based on TRC recommendations and dialogue

Stage 5. Sentient reconciliation

• Trust: In individuals, community and government
• Healing: Physical and psychological
• ‘Coming to terms’ emotionally with events and actions

* Forms of reconciliation marked in bold

Only once basic security and the re-establishment of some reasonable level of democratic

governance are in place can the institutions and process that may promote healing, trust-building

and ‘coming to terms’ with events begin to function. Truth commissions; fair national judicial

processes to deal with war-related crimes; counselling, psychiatric and health services; and
 16

processes of dialogue and civic education all require social stability to be able to run effectively. 22

Sentient reconciliation, then, only begins once a basic level of economic and physical security has

been achieved. Moreover these forms of reconciliation may take decades, even generations, to

occur. 23

This helps explain the impasse. Early peacebuilding activities may undermine the healing

and trust building that need to follow because they typically involve unjust compromises in their

efforts to end to violence. This situation is exacerbated by the real danger that donors and policy

makers may see peaceful coexistence as a substitute for deeply felt reconciliation. For those

seeking measurable outcomes, peaceful co-existence may seem adequate and all that can be

‘realistically’ expected. Where this view prevails, victims who demand justice and change risk

being cast as unpatriotic troublemakers.

Conclusion: Implications for peacebuilding after intra-community violence

Security-oriented arguments for rational forms of reconciliation are inadequate to defend

human rights and justice or to achieve sustainable peace. An expanded vision of reconciliation is

needed to address these concerns. If the framework for understanding reconciliation presented

here is persuasive, what policy implications can we draw?

First, while compromises are necessary, peacebuilding processes must incorporate

criteria of justice from the start to avoid undermining later conciliatory goals. As early as the

peace negotiations, standards of human rights, democracy and civilian representation in

negotiations should be in place before an agreement receives international recognition. Minimal

international standards could be established by an international commission similar to the

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty which produced the report, The

Responsibility to Protect. If international supporters of negotiations stood by these criteria it

22
Judicial processes outside of the country such as the special tribunals for Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court do not require peace to be able to operate.
23
For an excellent illustration of this, see La fleur de Stéphanie (Mujawayo & Belhaddad, supra n 15.
 17

would give extra weight to civilian interests – countering the tendency of peace deals to reflect

‘facts on the ground.’

Also, rather than fully accepting the logic of sacrifice for the sake of peace, as was the

case in Sierra Leone, civilians should see a balance between assistance for excombatants and for

them. Rich incentives to top commanders should be kept to a very minimum. If top commanders

are so dangerous that they continue to threaten the stability of the country then they too should be

among those indicted by the Special Court.

Second, peacebuilders need to avoid reinforcing the conditions that led to the war in the

first place. Where problems with national and local governance are widely seen to be at the root

of the war, donors should avoid prematurely reinforcing undemocratic elite structures before

citizens have a chance to discuss problems of the past and directions for future governance. The

British government, for example, pre-empted possible change in Sierra Leone when they funded

the Paramount Chiefs Restoration Program in 2000 despite their own reports that identified power

abuses by chiefs as a root cause of the war (International Crisis Group, 2004). 24

Military commanders and pre-war elites may have to be used to facilitate reintegration –

and in Sierra Leone, chiefs were very helpful in this role, generally ensuring that returning

excombatants were safe and supported. However, the administrative practice of using these elites

as gatekeepers who control access to benefits meant for their underlings invites corruption and

reinforces relations of dependency. Research by Ferme and Hoffman indicates that pressure from

below may be changing this administrative practice. Whereas in the past, goods ‘intended for

collectivities … would have been handed over to a senior member of the group for allocation,’

people are now confronting this ‘corporativist logic’ by insisting that resources be distributed

individually ‘no matter how time-consuming the process, or how small the amount.’ 25

24
International Crisis Group, Liberia and Sierra Leone: Rebuilding Failed States (8 December, 2004)
www.crisisweb.org.
25
Mariane Ferme & Danny Hoffman, “Hunter Militias and the International Human Rights Discourse in
Sierra Leone and Beyond,” Africa Today, 50, no. 4 (2004): 84.
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Third, policy makers and donors must recognize that reconciliation only begins once

peaceful coexistence has been achieved. Though the end of violence may seem to justify a

withdrawal of international support – especially with other global emergencies vying for

resources and attention – this is the point at which solid funding is necessary. Once citizens have

agreed to live and work together, processes must be put in place to involve a wide cross-section

of the public in identifying problems of the past and deciding on directions for the future. This

can be seen as a process of public consultation, but also political education and consensus and

nation building.

Truth commissions provide a prime way of doing this. As a victim-centred, dialogical

process, they provide a credible public record of war-related crimes and can identify root causes

of the war and obstacles to fair integration. To do this, they must not only ask about gross human

rights violations conducted during the war; they must also ask: ‘What social, political and

economic tensions contributed to the war and enabled the violence?’ ‘How are people integrating

after the war?’ And ‘are these integrative processes recreating unjust pre-war conditions?’ Given

a broad enough mandate, truth commissions can produce what I call a conciliatory history of the

war: a history that exposes everything that is relevant to reconciliation.

But the truth commission is only the beginning. Its focus is on the past and present. Other

forums are needed to involve the public in identifying how governing structures need to adapt to

be more accountable to the people and what is expected of citizens in a democratic state. Truth

commissions have proven that low levels of literacy and geographic isolation need not be

obstacles to these consultations. A consultative forum on governance could travel around the

country and have a similar oral structure or it could be more informal, guided by civil society

organizations.

Fourth, identifying problems and recommending solutions are not enough to promote

sentient reconciliation. Solid action is needed. Government, donors and civil society must be

firmly committed to ensuring that the recommendations of the TRC and other consultative forums
 19

are implemented. National and local government leaders are key in this process as their

credibility is most at stake. The time of transition is by definition an opportunity for change and a

time for political leaders to show their worth – their ability to admit mistakes, listen to the people,

and implement necessary changes. Much can be gained by courageous and decisive action on the

part of leaders – and much can be lost if they fail to act. Participating in consultative processes

requires a leap of faith on the part of citizens; failure to respond to recommendations would not

only reinforce existing distrust of government, it would make the public much less willing to

engage in constructive peacebuilding efforts in the future.

Finally, I must stress that these conclusions are drawn from a situation of intracommunal

violence which has built-in incentives for reconciliation that may not exist in most intercommunal

conflicts. Perpetrators have reasons to want to integrate and victims and communities have

reasons to be generous. With adequate national and international commitment to providing

justice, enabling broad and meaningful dialogue about governance and building the accountability

and service-providing capacity of government, deep reconciliation has a good chance of being

achieved.