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“During the 21-year civil war, the churches of Sudan in the south, were really the only viable institution,” said Rev. Braaksma. “Everything else was broken and destroyed.” It was the peoples’ faith that saw them through. They told the Braaksmas, “All we have is Jesus. He is our only hope.”
The war was not just between the north and the south in Sudan, Rev. Braaksma related, but between various factions in the south’s liberation movement, with persons from the same religious denominations fighting against each other.
“It was quite clear to those watching from the outside,” said Rev. Braaksma, “that the government was really using a divide and conquer strategy: ‘Let them kill themselves — it’s easier.’” The government was, in fact, supplying both sides with arms, she said. Finally the churches took it upon themselves to lead a peacemaking movement, which they called the People-to-People Peace Process.
Besides meeting the spiritual needs of the people and providing relief work, the primary thrust of this movement has been peacemaking. One of the first and largest of these peace conferences involved the Dinka and Nuer people, who had fought on different sides of the liberation movement in the south, a conflict marked by vast numbers of civilian atrocities and casualties at the same time bombings by Sudan’s government were taking place.
People of all religions in that area were brought together for the conference — Christians, followers of traditional African religions and Muslims. The only ones not asked to the table were the high level military commanders who had the most to gain by continued warfare. As the people pointed out, the conflict was not so much about politics as power, and it was the civilians who were suffering as a result.
An African proverb quoted by Rev. Braaksma holds, “When elephants fight, the grass is trampled.” In Sudan, the trampled grass is bloodstained from years of carnage. “What was going on in Darfur since 2003 was going on in South Sudan for two decades,” she related. Estimates are that more than two million lives have been lost and almost twice that number displaced.
The people themselves wanted peace, but were being used. “They were desperate, they were hurt, they were hungry. People in that kind of a situation are often easy pawns,” she said.
In the church-sponsored workshops, thousands were brought together to share their personal stories, describing their pain and loss in the presence of those who had fought on the opposing side, who in turn related their own tales of suffering. In the process, each side became more human to the other. They began to realize, said Rev. Braaksma, that they were hurting people just like themselves.
The second focus of the NSCC was organizing international pressure on Sudan’s government in Khartoum for a just peace. This was highly successful, she noted, due to the efforts of many religious denominations involved in Sudan. “It is what got Sudan on the U.S.’s agenda,” she said, noting the peace treaty signed between the north and the south in January 2005 was due to the churches of South Sudan and their support from the United States and Europe.
Once the peace agreement was in place, the country faced several hurdles in transforming South Sudan’s culture of war into a culture of peace. Needed first was trauma healing. “The human rights violations were horrific,” said Rev. Braaksma. “Everything from slavery to child soldiers to rape to bombing hospitals, schools, feeding centers.”
The brutality had left the people traumatized and this need was one of the first things the churches sought to address. “If you’re in pain, you inflict pain,” Rev. Braaksma said. “Just like an abused child often becomes a child abuser.”
Flowing out of the healing process was learning to forgive. “Reconciliation is a big part of what we do,” she said. “It flows out of the trauma healing.” For this, they turned for their model to organizations in South Africa, where much reconciliation work had been done following apartheid through teaching conflict transformation skills.
“In a war, when you disagree, you just pick up your guns,” noted Rev. Braaksma. “And you can’t disagree with a military commander or you are dead.”
There was also a great need for civic education. After years of obeying military commanders, the war-weary Sudanese needed education on human rights, the principles of democracy, self-governance, and the relationship between church and state.
It was in response to these needs that the New Sudan Council of Churches created RECONCILE in 2004, asking the Presbyterian Reformed Church in America (RCA) to send a missionary to serve on its team. As the church’s supervisor in America for African mission programs, Rev. Braaksma had the task of presenting the NSCC request.
The more she and her husband looked at the qualifications needed for the post, the more apparent it became they were describing themselves. Both were missionaries with ministry skills and seminary training and had expertise in community development (with master’s degrees from the University of Edinburgh). Additionally, they had experience living in Africa in an insecure environment, having lived for 11 years as missionaries in Kenya on the Somali border during the war there.
They had contemplated working in Sudan after their children (two in high school, one in college and one just out of college) were grown, but after talking and praying the family agreed to answer the call of the church in Sudan. They moved to neighboring Uganda, a more stable environment, in 2005 and travel in and out of Sudan to help conduct the RECONCILE workshops.
The only Westerners on the team, they work alongside a Sudanese director. “That’s the way missions should always be done,” she said. “It shouldn’t be done by people from the outside — it’s together with people.” Within the next year they hope to be able to move into Sudan itself, as the situation there stabilizes.
A particularly rewarding workshop experience, Rev. Braaksma related, took place in the community of Akobo in the Upper Nile region of South Sudan, an area which has experienced horrendous devastation. An estimated quarter of Akobo’s population was killed over the past several years of war.
“Everyone was in quite a state of trauma and reeling from all they’ve experienced,” she said, “but yet, hopeful.” They told the Braaksmas, “We can smell the peace, but we haven’t tasted it yet.”
So eager were the people for the healing workshops that hundreds welcomed them at the airport, singing and dancing. The workshop could only accommodate 55 participants, but the inhabitants begged that 15 more be allowed to stand by to watch. “They won’t eat meals with us or anything,” said the residents, “but they want to listen.”
When the Braaksmas did a follow-up visit four months later, they were delighted to hear the excitement in their former workshop students’ voices as they related six different incidences in which they personally averted bloodshed using methods they had learned in the workshops. “And after each one the people would clap and cheer, they were so excited to see that things don’t have to be resolved by guns,” said Rev. Braaksma.
RECONCILE is presently building a training center in Sudan in the town of Yei to facilitate these workshops, with some of the funding coming from Catholic organizations such as Caritas Switzerland and the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD) in Great Britain. “The Catholic community has really been behind us and working well,” she said.
Rev. Braaksma stressed the importance of maintaining pressure on the government of Sudan to implement the comprehensive peace agreement with the south, which they have been slow to put into practice. She emphasized that international advocacy is paramount to the survival of the inhabitants of Sudan, and encourages visiting the Web site of the Sudan Advocacy Action Forum, www.sudanadvocacy.com, and joining its e-mail list. The site often provides letters that are simple to cut, paste and send to government officials, she noted, “to rattle the cage.”
At this point, the Braaksmas have not been able to bring the healing workshops into Darfur, due to the active conflict still raging there. “It’s a very serious situation,” said Rev. Braaksma of Darfur, noting she is continuing to advocate for the people there during her time in the United States. “There may be a time when, once the active conflict is over, that we could go and help,” she added.
She described Darfur’s present situation as bleak, as the genocide continues there, and expressed grave concern as to what would happen if the African Union troops serving as peace monitors pulled out as scheduled at the end of September. They have since extended their peacekeeping mission through December, but the government was continuing to refuse U.N. peacekeepers in to replace them, which would leave Darfur’s already devastated population there totally at the mercy of the government forces. Humanitarian aide to Darfur had already dwindled alarmingly in the wake of accelerating violence.
“The peace agreement that was signed in May just never even began to hold,” Rev. Braaksma said. “It’s a very dangerous place, and without any peacekeeping force in the area, we are very, very concerned that hundreds of thousands could be killed.” |