Actors and audience members perform for an energized crowd. Here a 19-year old takes a stand for victims of land conflict. (photos by Elise Webb)
By Elise Webb
Our van rumbles up the dirt roads with ruts running deep from the rainy season. Children seem to be the first to spot us and call out; many even chase after us. In the rear view mirror you can see them waving and yelling; filling up the frame with arms and feet, dust building up between us and them. The only word I understand is ‘muzungu’ (white person) and it’s yelled over and over again like it’s my name. I get a bit worried in the old social researcher sense that the very fact I am there is changing the process. read more…
Last month, Palgrave Macmillan published a new book entitled Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions and Complexities. The volume was co-edited by Reza Aslan and Aaron J. Hahn Tapper. Aslan is an acclaimed writer and professor at U.C. Irvine as well as the founder of Aslan Media, a nonprofit which focuses on discussing issues facing the Middle East and its diaspora. Tapper is a religious studies professor at the University of San Francisco and the co-executive director of Abraham’s Vision, an interfaith peacebuilding organization. The two met as Ph.D candidates in the religious studies department at U.C . Santa Barbara, where they were both part of a group of Jewish and Muslim grad students who would get together once a month to break bread together and discuss issues that concerned both communities in the US, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Participating in these discussions convinced them of the need for more scholarship examining the similarities and differences between the Jewish-American and Muslim-American communities. read more…
Protesters celebrate President Saleh's temporary ouster (from bbc.co,uk).
On Sunday, anti-government protesters in Yemen gathered to celebrate President Saleh’s temporary departure. Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled the country for 33 years, was recently wounded during an attack on the presidential compound that killed at a least seven and wounded more. Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia this weekend to seek medical attention. Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has taken over responsibilities in the interim.
Protesters have already echoed the chant popular in the Egyptian revolution, “The people, at last, defeated the regime,” but with Saleh vowing to return in a few days, are they jumping the gun?
Saudi Arabia has helped to broker a cease-fire agreement and Saudi officials are encouraging Saleh to step down for the sake of regional stability.
Yemen expert, Gregor Johnsen told Reuters:
“If Saleh remains out of the country and if his sons and nephews don’t begin instigating or taking provocative action, Yemen can avoid all-out war. At the same time, we have come dangerously close in the last couple of weeks to what could easily be classified as a civil war, so it’s too early to say. It could go either way.”
Furthermore, as other revolutions have shown, removing an unpopular leader is not the end of the road to reform. The process of reconciliation and rebuilding is often more difficult. As in Egypt, there is no one leader of the protests but unlike Egypt, there is greater dissent about what a post-Saleh country would look like. Saleh’s departure could easily leave a power vacuum. “There is no single institution or individual in Yemen who is capable of exerting control,” says Yemen expert Khaled Fattah. Saleh’s departure will also not fix many of the underlying issues (especially economic) that fuel anger and discontent.
Read the rest of Reuters’ analysis here.
Yemenis celebrate Saleh’s departure in Sanaa, but Yemen’s future remains uncertain.
Earth
The earth opens her warm arms
to embrace me
The earth is my mother
She understands the sorrow
of my wandering
My wandering
is an old crow
that conquers
the very top of an aspen
a thousand times a day
Perhaps life is a crow
that each dawn
dips its blackened beak
in the holy well of the sun
Perhaps life is a crow
that takes flight with Satan’s wings
Perhaps life is Satan himself
awakening a wicked man to murder
Perhaps life is the grief-stricken earth
who has opened up her bloodied arms to me
And here I give thanks
on the brink of ‘victory’
By Partaw Naderi (1953 – present)
translated by Sarah Maguire
Partaw Naderi was born in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, in 1953. In the 1970s, shortly after he began to write poetry, he was imprisoned for three years by the Soviet-backed regime.
Have poetry, pictures, video that you think has a powerful message? Let us know and we may feature it!
Alassane Ouattara arrives in the hall in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire for his inauguration, May 21. (Rebecca Blackwell, AP)
The post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire, following the county’s disputed fall elections have left at least 3,000 dead by most estimates. The violence further inflamed underlying tensions between the North and South of the country and acted upon the issues of belonging and identity that have long plagued Côte d’Ivoire. read more…
We recently wrote about the work Search is doing on the conflict between the Munzaya and Enyele communities of northern Congo since the outbreak of violence in the Equateur province, two years ago. Now Reuters’ Johnny Hogg takes a closer look at the process of reconciliation:
Access to fishing ponds similar to these is one of the underlying issues in the conflict between the Munzaya and Enyele communities. (from mtforge.com)
By Jonny Hogg
MONZAYA, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 27 (Reuters) – The actors circle and glare in mock anger, surrounded by villagers who have come to witness a performance played out on the sandy earth in the shade of mango trees in northern Congo.
In a flurry, the performers clash, miming fighting, killing, mourning — and eventually forgiveness.
For the spectators, this narrative is not fiction but reality, after the people of Monzaya and Enyele in Congo’s northern Equateur province began a dispute over fishing rights in 2009 that killed scores and triggered a refugee crisis.
With partial peace restored by the Congolese army, the United Nations, working with the international NGO Search For Common Ground, is now trying to build bridges between the two communities through ceremonies and workshops.
The latest of these meetings took place in the tumbledown church in Monzaya, with 20 members from each community taking part and ending with speeches and participative theatre to spread the message of peace…
The following clip shows scenes from a recent signing of a nonagression pact between the two communities that was accompanied by a traditional reconciliation ceremony and a three-day peace festival:
Read the rest of the Reuters article here and learn about the work we’re doing in DRC!
