African Women for Peace: Liberia

I have finished viewing the 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell,  a powerful retelling of how women, armed of the sole desire for peace, ended the civil war in Liberia and brought to power the first woman president in Africa in 2005. A great message of hope in what appears to be a simple approach to turning the worse of conditions on their head; simple yes, but not easy. The difference between success and defeat lie in the internal resources tapped into; in qualities like forgiveness, hope and fierce and indomitable determination.

The women of Liberia, in a 2 and ½ year campaign have forced the armies of dictator Taylor and those of the opposing warlords to come to the peace table, and helped to send the tyrant to exile, set up an interim government, and hold free and fair elections. 

Christian and Muslim Women Coming Together

 Leymah Roberta Gbowee  was a social worker who worked with the ex-child soldiers of president Taylor’s army. Working with them she could see how much they too were victims.
In a short time Leymah joined the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) and brought all the women of the Christian Churches together into a group called the Christian Women’s Initiative. The turning point of coalition building came at a service in which Leymah, articulated her requests to the church members and a woman rose up with a loud “Praise the Lord” and presented herself as Asatu Bah Kenneth,  the president of the Liberia Female Law Enforcement Association, and a Muslim.

Soon a new coalition was formed with the women of the Muslim organizations in Monrovia, the capital. The coalition managed to force a meeting with Charles Taylor and extract a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana with the rebels. She then led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process.

Over time this campaign led to an agreement between the opposing parties, an interim government leading to free elections and the first woman president in Africa: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Men with Guns: Women in White Tee-Shirts

Liberia was a country engulfed by senseless. Children soldiers were armed, with license to kill, pillage and rape at will. They were inebriated by all these acts of violence and the feeling to be adopted into adulthood; aditionally lot of violence occurs under the influence of drugs. The blind thirst for power of men like Taylor is accompanied by immense hubris and denial. Taylor regularly attended church and invoked his Christian faith. The opponents were ready to do the same as Taylor once in power.

“Can the bullets pick and choose? (between Christians and Muslims) is the basic question that rallied women of both faiths. The women’s campaign was based on the simple desire for peace, and on parties being able to hear each other; nothing more, nothing less. It mixed great measures of forgiveness and equal determination. Wearing white tee-shirts and rallying with banners for peace, this was the first time that Muslims and Christians banded together. For the first time 2,500 women under the sun had the chance to empathize with one another. On the other front, they put pressure on pastors, priests and imams to break the silence.

And all sorts of ideas emerged, ranging from the playful to the serious. At one point the women decided to start a sex-strike to motivate men to join them in prayers and support for the common cause. But the negotiations in Ghana were another matter. When after 6 weeks talks were stalling the women did not hesitate to invade the hall of the meetings and form a cordon that did not allow delegates to leave, proceeding then to outline their conditions. And one has the feeling that all of this could not have been achieved without the greatest inner faith.

Key ideas emerged when everything seemed lost. Forcing a meeting with Taylor was one such gamble. Whoever would meet him could face the danger of being eliminated by a ruthless tyrant. So, Leymah went to meet him with great fear while the other women prayed for her. And later, when despite the talks, all hell broke loose at home, the women were all in tears, feeling all possibilities of peace were slipping them by. When the women invaded the halls and resisted attempts of eviction, little did they know that they had gained the support of the international community, which threatened to cut funds to all parties if no breakthrough were reached.

And in Rwanda: Immaculée Ilibagiza

The book Left to Tell recounts how Immaculée Ilibagiza, together with another seven women survived for 91 days during the Rwandan Genocide in a damp and small bathroom, of 3 X 4 feet. Though her entire family, except her eldest brother, was killed, Immaculée is an outspoken voice for peace and reconciliation.

At the heart of the book lay Immaculée’s spiritual battle. After many ups and downs, it climaxed the night that Immaculée heard the voice of an infant, crying by the roadside. She kept listening until the cries grew weaker and ceased. In the book she remembers: “I prayed for God to receive the child’s innocent soul, and then asked Him, ‘How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?’ I heard His answer as clearly as if we’d been sitting in the same room chatting: ‘You are all my children, and the baby is with Me now.’ It was such a simple sentence, but it was the answer to the prayers I’d been lost in for days.”

After this cathartic experience of forgiveness, Immaculée prayed all the more intensely. This is how she describes the next transformation, “I sat stone-still on that dirty floor for hours on end, contemplating the purity of His energy while the force of His love flowed through me like a sacred river, cleansing my soul and easing my mind. Sometimes it felt as though I were floating above my body, cradled in God’s mighty palm, safe in His loving hand. … In the midst of the genocide, I’d found my salvation. I knew that my bond with God would transcend the bathroom, the war, and the holocaust. It was a bond I knew would transcend life itself.”

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Tags: civil society, cultural activism, Liberia, movies, Nonviolence, spiritual experiences, sustainable social change, Women