Authors: David Alan Harris
We reproduce in our 13th edition this article by David Alan Harris first published in Intervention, The International Journal for Mental Health, Psychosocial Support and Counseling in Areas of Armed Conflict in November, 2007.
Here, David eloquently describes his careful, thoughtful and highly creative intervention working with a small group of former Revolutionary United Front (RFU) members who had failed to reintegrate successfully after the ending of the Sierra Leonean conflict. The article highlights the power of an intervention that successfully fuses western understanding of trauma with local, culturally based knowledge, traditions and rituals.
The intervention group consisted of twelve 15-18 year old orphaned, socially isolated, former members of the RUF, who had not previously received any psychosocial intervention, and only one of whom had received any DDR provision. The intervention took place in Koindu, in the Kailahun District, an area that had suffered greatly in the 11 year Sierra Leonean armed conflict. A previously thriving town, Koindu had still not recovered from the ravages of war some four years after the cessation of hostilities when this intervention began.
As David describes the dance/movement group sessions, he leads the reader through the development of intertwining group processes as they unfold over time, illustrating how dance/movement activities enabled participants to communicate their own histories, current lives and desires for the future. Group rituals allowed the former combatants not only to symbolize their losses but also to draw upon those memories and experiences that were sources of potential strength and resilience. First learning to trust each other, these disempowered, angry survivors of war also re-learned how to experience and cope with the human emotions that they had been forced to block out in order to survive their brutal war time experiences. Gradually, they became able to signal both their capacity and need for empathy and reconciliation. Initially shunned by their community, by the time the intervention ended, these young people felt empowered to start re-engaging at the local level. In a powerful role play of their choosing, enacted before some 300 local community members, they were able to use ritualized dance and movement to illustrate their own war time victimization, their participation as perpetrators and their desire for forgiveness.
By publicly demonstrating their rediscovered capacities for empathic interaction, group participants opened the way for the process of reconciliation to begin. As the author states: “the youths having learned to embrace and embody empathy for their victims had in turn opened the way to empathy for themselves” (p227). This mutual learning of empathy for former enemies represents an important first step on the road to reconciliation.
From the perspective of the young participants, the group resulted in a growth in their ability to share their problems, a reduction in their tendency to isolate themselves and a restored confidence in their ability to control their angry impulses and to cope with difficult situations. From the author’s perspective, the intervention empowered these young people to “move together from being impulsively enraged loners to becoming mutually attuned, empathic, hopeful young adults with a newfound sense of communal belonging” (pp 230-231).