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INSIDE AFRICA

Life After War

Aired February 10, 2007 - 12:30:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FEMI OKE, HOST: Hello, I'm Femi Oke. This is INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly look at life and news on the continent, coming to you this week from one of my favorite sites in Johannesburg, Constitution Hill, home to the Constitutional Court. It was also the location of Johannesburg's notorious Old Prison Fort complex, which once had Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela locked up as prisoners. That's just a little bit a history for you, and we'll be looking at history this week as well, as we explore the challenges, the heartaches and realities of returning to life after war.
We take you to western Egypt, where amazingly, World War II landmines are still causing havoc. Then it's on to Burundi and Rwanda to see how the people there are finding their way to healing.

But first, we start in Uganda, home to one of the most brutal and, some say, most overlooked human catastrophes in the world.

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OKE: Tens of thousands of people died in nearly 20 years of rebellion led by the Lord's Resistance Army against the government. And while most of Uganda today is stable, civilians in the north remain under threat from armed insurgents and rebels. For this reason, many remain in camps, set up years ago to house the civilian population.

Of the world's nearly 24 million internally displaced people, more than half are in Africa, and nearly 2 million in Uganda.

21-year old Christine Akello was 10 years old when she was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. The rebels killed nearly her entire family, and she was forced to fight and serve as a wife to one of the commanders until she escaped seven years later in 1998. Akello is among an estimated 30,000 children who were abducted and forced to either work of fight for the rebels. With no home to return to, she's chosen to stay in one of northern Uganda's many internally displaced people's camps, trying to make her way.

CHRISTINE AKELLO, FORMER LRA CHILD SOLDIER: It was not easy, because getting a place like this (inaudible) a lot of money. And you have to work for it.

OKE: Displaced by an insurgency waged against the Ugandan government by the Lord's Rebels' Resistance Army two decades ago, these overcrowded IDP camps are to many the only home they've known. Peace talks between rebels and the Ugandan government have opened the prospects of returning to the homes they abandoned years ago, but it's not coming fast enough, and frustration is mounting for many hoping to end years of misery and squalor in congested camps.

(CROSSTALK)

OKE: Up to 2 million people remain internally displaced as a result of the conflict between the government and the Lord's Resistance rebels. And while a phased decongestion of the camps is under way, the process is slow. First, residents are transferred to smaller transit camps near the homes from where they eventually hope to go back to their villages. And so far, only five out of the 28 IDP camps have been completely disbanded.

NATHAN MUGISHA, UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENSE FORCES: The aim of the recondition is to make sure people have access to more arable land, improved sanitation, and give them opportunity to exploit the abandoned infrastructure, abandoned infrastructure put in place by the government. In this I mean the roads, the schools, the (inaudible) and water.

OKE: But life in the transit camps is not much better, and with no final peace there is no guarantee of safety from rebel attacks. So, many remain in the transit camps, dependent on aid to survive.

WILSON OJOK, IDP RESIDENT: We need security to send us back to our original place. Secondly, we need food to be in our camp, because we're not going yet straight away to our home.

OKE: Still, the difficulty of life in the camps have led some to return to their villages, to begin rebuilding their homes and restoring the farmlands.

But it's not just about rebuilding. Reintegrating and rehabilitating victims and perpetrators such as Akello is another major challenge. And while the prospects of peace may be getting closer, Uganda is still a long way to healing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: That report was prepared by Bart Vakuza (ph) in Gulu, Uganda.

The International Committee of the Red Cross calls landmines the greatest violators of international humanitarian law. Striking indiscriminately, they carry on maiming and killing years after hostilities have ended. Across Africa, many millions of lives continue to be affected by landmines, and they're a big impediment to post-conflict reconstruction. Shahira Amin reports from Egypt.

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SHAHIRA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: 76-year old Howez (ph) is an Egyptian Bedouin, who lives in El Alamein on the Mediterranean coast. He's one of the earliest victims of landmines left behind by the axis and allied armies since World War II.

"I lost my right eye in 1955," he says. "I was just a young lad at the time."

He explains that the accident occurred while he was tending his flock in the desert.

Howez (ph) has to rely on a meager government benefit for his family of 15. He is just one of many casualties of the battle of El Alamein, the decisive battle that forced the axis powers out of Egypt in the autumn of 1942, and led to their withdrawal from North Africa the following year.

More than 7,000 commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives in the 12- day battle are buried in this beautifully preserved war cemetery at El Alamein. Beyond its walls, the now tranquil desert.

But 65 years on, the people of El Alamein continue to pay the price of that war, and are still waiting to rebuild their lives. Several Bedouins, who have suffered a similar fate to that of Howez (ph), gather at Alamein's recently established state medical center for emergencies.

80-year old Ramadan (ph) says he lost both his arms at the tender age of 16. He'd stopped with his livestock at a resting place in the desert to make some tea. The heat from the fire detonated a landmine, he recalls. The blast also left him deaf in one ear.

And those mines continue to claim victims half a century after the guns fell silent. In 1992, Awad (ph) had his right leg amputated from below the knee, after he stepped on a landmine.

AMBASSADOR FATHY SHAZIL, EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT FOR DEMINING: Between the year '82 and '99, we have about more than 7,300 victims. About 700 of them were killed.

AMIN: According to the Egyptian authorities, some 17 million pieces of unexploded ordnance remain beneath the sands of Egypt's western desert, scattered over about 2,600 square kilometers.

British officials question the Egyptian figures. They believe about 900,000 mines still exist in the El Alamein area, half of them British.

There's also been disagreement about who should clear the mines, a task that could cost billions of dollars. In the past, Egypt had insisted that the parties that planted the mines be responsible for their clearance. But recently, the Egyptian authorities seem to have softened their earlier hard-line position. They now say Egypt is willing to take charge of its own de-mining operations.

The army has begun de-mining efforts around El Alamein, but the absence of maps charting the area and the tendency of mines to shift with the winds and sands make it a difficult job. Egyptian officials say that in the long term, clearing the debris of war could help realize the potential of the western desert.

SHAZIL: We're talking about - about 5 billion barrels of oil, 13.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, about 3 million (inaudible) agricultural land, great potential for tourism development.

AMIN: Other estimates suggest there is much less than 5 billion barrels of oil to be found here, but there is plenty of evidence that tourism is coming to the area. New resorts are springing up along the Mediterranean coast, and they may provide safer work than herding livestock in the often dangerous desert.

For INSIDE AFRICA, Shahira Amin, CNN, El Alamein.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: When we come back, the huge task of rebuilding a nation after decades of civil war. What does it really take and for how long? We take a close look.

And ...

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a redemption here, and a new life beginning.

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OKE: Giant acts of forgiveness. How some people are healing the wounds of war. Stay with us.

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OKE: Good to see you again, you're watching INSIDE AFRICA, from the Old Prison Fort complex in Johannesburg at South Africa.

Since the 2005 elections in Liberia, I've been back reporting from that country about once every six months. Each time I go back, there is a little bit more change and a little bit more progress. Unless you see it for yourself, it's really hard to imagine what it takes to reconstruct a nation after war, from reestablishing food supplies and agriculture to rebuilding schools and hospital services. Isha Sesay has more now on Liberia's path to reconstruction.

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ISHA SESAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was one of Africa's most brutal conflicts. Liberia's civil war launched a widespread campaign of rape against women, left 250,000 people dead, and thousands more displaced.

It ripped apart the small West African nation, destroying its physical infrastructure, economy, social services, and even its ability to provide basic amenities like water and electricity.

Fourteen years of bloodshed have left Africa's oldest republic in tatters, and Liberia's recently elected president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has no illusions about the challenge post-war reconstruction poses.

ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF, LIBERIAN PRESIDENT: There would be no quick fix, no magic wand. It's going to be a long, hard road.

SESAY: Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf revealed her plan to reconstruct and develop the nation based on four core pillars: Enhancing security and consolidating peace, revitalizing the economy, improving democratic governance, and revitalizing social and physical infrastructure.

The four pillars were described as part of the first 150 days action plan, a series of short- and long-term actions intended to set the wheels of rebuilding in motion.

The government committed itself to taking the first critical steps by the end of June of that year.

EMIRA WOODS, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES: I think those priorities are clear. Those priorities will help get both the economy and the society functioning again.

SESAY: Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf (inaudible), but the road to post- conflict recovery is a long and torturous one, beset by a number of difficulties. Liberia's economy and infrastructure cannot be rebuilt without the help of the international community, and recently the government has expressed concern about the pace of international support.

During a speech at the U.N. last September, Johnson-Sirleaf warned, quote, "The risk of regression to war in post-conflict societies is high when the government and the international community are not able to make strong efforts at key moment and sustain them over time."

WOODS: What you have is a situation where the international community is not stepping up to the plate, particularly when it comes to the economic recovery of Liberia. So you have (inaudible) Liberia repaying debt to the International Monetary Fund, to the World Bank, to other international bankers.

SESAY: Key to any significant progress being achieved in Liberia is the issue of political stability and long-term peace. This remains far from guaranteed in a nation with more than 90,000 ex-combatants and abundance of weapons, and the police and military riddled with accusations of corruption.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been in power now for just over a year, and though she came up short on her pledge to return electricity to all parts of the capital by Liberia's 159th Independence Day, electricity and water have been restored to limited areas, infrastructure is being repaired, and programs have been launched to get children back to school.

She still has a long way to go. Three quarters of the Liberia's population live on less than a dollar a day, and unemployment is at 85 percent. In such conditions, perhaps the biggest challenge of all is simply managing people's expectations.

Isha Sesay, CNN, Atlanta.

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OKE: Earlier, Isha Sesay spoke to Gebreselassie Tesfamichael. He is an expert when it comes to rebuilding a nation after war. He was also the finance minister of Eritrea during the early day of reconstruction. Isha asked him, what does it take to rebuild a country after a conflict?

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GEBRESELASSIE TESFAMICHAEL, FMR. ERITREAN FINANCE MIN.: You have much -- part of the population either internally displaced or as refugees in foreign countries. You have the whole infrastructure not only degraded, but also sort of destroyed during the process. Roads were totally degraded by the use of heavy machinery, tanks, and being not maintained for about 30 years. We're talking about everything being dilapidated.

SESAY: So, how does a government, we take Eritrea as an example, but any post-conflict government, how do you set about deciding on your priorities, and what do you start with?

TESFAMICHAEL: What we did in Eritrea was, first of all, that we understood we have to sort of confront all the problems on all fronts, but at the same time, to prioritize within sectors. We have to jump-start the economy, production, starting an economic life, words of paramount importance.

We must understand that at the root and heart of the reconstruction process is that this is a nation-building process, which is -- sort of failure of nation-building that results in this conflict in most instances, and we fail to use that, you know, to bring about a comprehensive, you know, social, political and economic agenda, to start (ph) a nation- building process and to use this - the reconstruction process to advance this initial rebuilding process, which is admittedly a very long-term program.

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OKE: That is Gebreselassie Tesfamichael speaking to us earlier.

We also asked some journalists on the continent what they see as the major challenges and priorities when it comes to rebuilding a nation after war. Here is what they had to say.

Kim Kluti (ph) from South Africa say, "It is vital to rebuild the economy and keep up international support. Some kind of truth commission is also key to help people heal and move on."

Yaya Tamani from Burkina Faso writes, "What we can do in rebuilding a nation is to promote peace, tolerance, social cohesion, and a fair distribution of national wealth."

And if you'd like to send us your thoughts about the program, our e- mail address is INSIDEAFRICA@CNN.COM, INSIDEAFRICA@CNN.COM. We're always delighted to hear from you.

Just ahead, they lived through the atrocities of war, and now they're learning to live alongside those who committed them. An amazing story of forgiveness and redemption, coming up next.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She spent about an hour, hour and half telling us about it, and the thing is, she didn't cry at all during it. She just quietly and slowly took us through the events when her husband and her baby were killed, she was - she was raped. So it was a pretty horrific time for her.

We spent the day with Jeannette (ph), and she took us to her coffee fields, and she now employs on her coffee farm some of the people who killed her relatives, including the man who she says helped kill her husband. She's just getting to the point where she feels like she can interact with these people, and particularly this man who killed her relatives.

We asked her if she would be willing to help us find Anastas (ph), this man who was involved in killing her husband, and she sort of quietly said "yes, I would," and so she took us to his house. And we went in the house and talked to him.

So as we were leaving, he went over to her, and she stood there, and she stuck her hand out. And as you can tell, it was really powerful. It's the guy who was around in the village, and he is a Hutu -- he actually trained a lot of people in the village to do the killing. He has since gone blind, since the genocide, and he sometimes asks her to buy him a drink. She said she does.

Gregoire's (ph) son was killed by a childhood friend. Gregoire had known the family of this - of the killer for years. They were neighbors. The killer and the killer's mom both got down on their knees and apologized to Gregoire, and he accepted the apology. And now, Gregoire and the mother of this, the killer, have forged this connection.

The symbolism of the egg, when you step on that egg, you're breaking open a new life, and returning to the innocence inside, represented by the egg. I think that's an important symbolism. And, you know, looking down the line of the 400 ex-rebels who were standing there ready to step on the egg, sort of a quiet excitement. And I talked to one - one ex-rebel, a woman named Betty Atto (ph), and she'd been kidnapped when she was about 13, and she was in the bush as a rebel soldier for about six years. And that day, she was stepping on the egg. And beforehand, she told me she wasn't sure it was going to have a huge impact. She said, "I hope it does something." But afterwards, you could tell she was quite moved by it, and she said, some of the - "some of the bad things in my heart, they're gone."

Well, I think Africa in this case presents a really interesting example to the rest of the world. Maybe it's the idea that perhaps, no matter how awful the things are that someone has done, perhaps they're not beyond redemption.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: And that's it for this week's show. But join us next week, when I'll be in Nigeria with a former U.S. president on a road trip. You'll have to tune in to see who it is. I hope you'll let INSIDE AFRICA be your window to the continent every week. I'm Femi Oke. I have a plane to catch. I'll see you next weekend in Nigeria.

END

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