Lessons In Peace

From The Shores of Lake Turkana

There are some names that do not appear widely in history books, yet they continue to live inside the memory of people and for good measure.

Hiile Korichir is one of those names.

Among the Daasanach tribes of North Kenya, born in the 19th century, near the Illeret town that borders Ethiopia and Kenya, on the lower shores of the Omo River and Lake Turkana, he is remembered as more than just a chief or warrior. A man who understood that survival in harsh lands require more than plain, brute strength, it requires the paramount importance of wisdom.

The pastoralist Daasanach community recounts oral stories of him with the ability to foresee impending danger; whether attacks from enemy tribes, which had different cultures (Gabra and Hammar) or a drought or natural disaster. When warriors from all sides were sharpening their weapons to attack, he personally travelled with one question in mind to negotiate peace between them “Would you rather use your energy to feed your children, or let revenge feed your anger?” He reminded these communities of shared wells for water, shared ancestors, marriage and barter ties and the truth that no single group can survive alone in any land.

IR scholars may frame this path as idealism today, with multiple countries increasing advances in nuclear weapons technologies for national security, but it was more of a survival strategy woven into cultural ethics rather than a Western lens of understanding. His principles still stand true today such as the following:

Conflicts must have a witness/witnesses – hidden anger festers, leading to damages beyond control. The Gaza strip can be seen as an unfortunate example of how underlying anger and an extension of negative peace, which bursts out and leads to innocent lives being claimed.
Reconciliation requires compensation – Lives lost must not only be acknowledged, but also avoided in the first place. The unwarranted death of an individual is a heavy price paid by families and related individuals with no fault or authority of decision making. The U.S. invasion on Iraq in 2003 depicts the lack of this conscience to families of a country in deteriorating conditions.
Peace is not simply a declaration of peace, it must be performed – it is re-enacted in meetings, practical symbolic gestures and the ability to restrain conflict before thousands of lives are lost or property is damaged.

Sustainable peace is therefore made possible especially by those who belong to where the conflict exists. We could look at India’s generational conflicts for example, whether in the North East, the caste system tensions, language conflicts instead of diverse harmony, deforestation and pollution are all attempts that need much work and solutions to these fail, partly when external institutions without cultural grounding intervene to reform problematic structures.

In remembering him, I am reminded that all of our ancestors across continents and countries were not “simple people” of the past. They were diplomats of necessity, philosophers of survival. They were theorists with complex and grounded thought processes which are applicable in the modern world for common challenges, much like Western theorists such as Machiavelli, Wilson, Kissinger or Thoreau’s relevance today.

Korichir and those similar to him remind us: There is a pressing necessity is to be humane in today’s conflictual world.