By Edward Ladu Terso
Nov. 16, 2006

Mutual confidence is the establishment of trust between two people or two or more groups of people. In our case, it is trust not only between the north and the south but also between the center and the peripheries. There is no such thing as southern problem, Darfur (western) problem or eastern problem. It is the problem of marginalization. We the Sudanese people need to build confidence among each other if we really need peace. But in order to achieve this, huge things must happen in order to break the barrier of suspicion, which has been nurtured for the last fifty years. We need an affirmative action. The backward villages surrounding the capital city of the Sudan are a living testimony of a huge shame. It is a testimony of inhuman treatment of human beings by fellow human beings. This is the source of all the problems we are addressing now. The principle of "do to others what you would want them do to you" has been absent. What characterized our society over the years has been, "let them do to us what we would want them do and we do to them what they would not want us to do to them."

In a word, this is called injustice of the worst degree. Selfishness, greed, lust, avarice and all kinds of disordered passions are encapsulated within there. Just imagine this kind of relationship! It is devoid of mutual trust and confidence. A fellow brother treats his own brother like a slave. It is this slave-master relationship that created the rift.

The renowned Afro-American Reggae Musician, in fact the father of Reggae Music, Bob Marley, had put it this way, "you can fool some people sometimes. But you cannot fool all the people all the time." The time has come when no one wants to be fooled any more because enough is enough. It is time for justice for all. The de-miners are doing their work aptly and commendably. We should also do our part, that is, the de-mining of our minds. Our minds are full of dangerous "mines," the sum total of the entire negative attitude towards each other. We need to re-think our old attitudes and allow sanity into our lives so that we can make our past mistakes to become history. In other words, we need to change our old ways of relating to one another. We should accept the fact that all of us are creatures and mortal men and women and our final destiny is the same. No human being is superior to a fellow human being. This applies to all Sudanese. We should entertain positive thoughts because good thoughts generate a lot more of good thoughts. Once we become positive in our thinking, we will definitely begin to recognize our worth as equals. We are driving at reconciliation and forgiveness. By the way, forgiveness and reconciliation are never tactical. If we engage in this process as a tactical move, it will backfire on us.

We need not forgive and reconcile in order to repeat the same silly mistakes, which only befit the people of the Old Stone Age. If we need peace, we must pay the price for it. Fortunately, all it takes is to offload all the immoral tendencies that have chained us for decades. Peace does not come in pieces. It comes whole. This means, everybody is a stakeholder. No one should consider himself righteous. All of us have contributed in different ways to this peacelessness, if one may call it that way. The effort to build mutual confidence is two-way. At the political and diplomatic levels, we have achieved peace through the CPA. But at the social level, we have not. To make it worst, the same people who labored to achieve the diplomatic and political peace, are the very ones obstructing it from permeating society through their lack of political will to implement the content of the CPA as they should.

This is a great set back. A certain Masami Saionji had this to say, "We need to celebrate our cultural diversities rather than using them as a reason for conflict. There has already been too much suffering for the sake of ethnic and national interests and gains. It does not matter how much power and prosperity a nation achieves if its people are the victims of prejudice and internal conflict." He believes that the future hinges on the capacity of each individual to embrace a commitment to universal love. "We must begin to transcend the barriers, which keep us from seeing ourselves as part of a global family. We have to start caring about what really happens to people. We should promote this compassionate spirit by helping our people to experience their oneness." He encourages all people to take a positive step towards universal understanding. "Touch people with the message of love.

Pray for the peace and happiness of people in all other lands and cultures. Make a commitment to world peace by honoring the earth, honoring its people, and celebrating the unity of the human spirit." Nothing could be more profound and timely. But before going to the world, we should make peace a reality in our own small world here as charity begins at home. Another Musician, Emmanuel Kembe, also said, "if you want peace, work for justice." The achievement of peace entails work. Peace is not a commodity we can obtain through magic. We ought to want it. Once we allow ourselves to be moved by the spirit of peace itself, we will find ourselves already at work. Angry people are never at peace with each other.

Therefore, the work for peace should begin with forgiveness and then followed by reconciliation. Of course, forgiveness comes after acceptance or confession. It is painful but this is the surest way. It requires courage and humility. We can if we are serious.