Jess Murrey, advisor at Search for Common Ground (2006 Skoll Awardee), recently spoke with two peacebuilders, Shoqi Al-Maktary from Yemen and Ehsanullah Abrar in Afghanistan, to learn how countries torn by years of armed conflict are coping with COVID-19 while continuing to build the path forward for peace.
Shoqi Al-Maktary, Regional Conflict Sensitivity Advisor to Search for Common Ground’s efforts in the Middle East, has spent eight years leading the work to build the social infrastructure for peace in Yemen. When COVID-19 came to Yemen, it was, in his words, “a crisis on top of a tragedy.” Yemen is a country with a history of conflict, but as Al-Maktary, said, “Until now we’ve known when to stop. Starting in 2014, external actors jumped into the conflict. As a result, Yemen has been bombarded for five years, and the entire infrastructure has been destroyed.”
Enter COVID-19. “At first we thought the isolation of Yemen was a blessing,” Al-Maktary said. “We know now that’s not true.” Al-Maktary says the difficulty of an effective response to the pandemic includes finger pointing among competing authorities, a collapsing health care system, no water for hand washing, lack of basic gear to support hygiene, and an abundance of conspiracy rumors that contradict sound advice from experts. “A perfect storm has taken over Yemen,” he said.
Nonetheless, Al-Maktary believes there is opportunity for peacebuilding in the midst of a pandemic. “Start by recognizing the relevance between peacebuilding and COVID-19,” he said. “In order for anything to function we need peace. Establish peace and every other problem can be resolved.”
Second is the opportunity to combat the lack of information and spread of misinformation. Along with over 500 peacebuilders embedded in local communities, Al-Maktary is working with religious and community leaders to distribute information to explain what COVID-19 is and present options for social distancing.
Finally, Al-Maktary is working on a local level to mobilize youth and women as part of the solution to the COVID-19 crisis. “We’re trying to provide assistance for basic hygiene with hand washing stations at local markets as well as employing women to produce masks.”
Ehsanullah Abrar is a local on-the-ground peacebuilder at the recently opened Search for Common Ground office in Afghanistan. In a country convulsed by decades of war, Abrar was beginning to see glimmers of hope in Afghanistan’s recent election and ongoing peace talks between the US government and the Taliban.
When COVID-19 arrived, Abrar was in the process of conducting a conflict assessment report on what local communities saw as their greatest challenges to peace and what they hoped to gain from the peace process. Today, he sees a country in confusion as communities respond to the pandemic.
“COVID has divided people,” Abrar says. The disease has created a line between people who take protective measures and those who believe in the will of god. Religious leader versus experts. Those who stay home and those who must go to work to support their families. Those who spread rumors that COVID is propaganda and those who see COVID as a serious health issue. The most successful approach to combatting the confusion, Abrar believes, is to work with elders and religious leaders to get the message out. “They are the key stakeholders that are most trusted by communities,” he said.
While peacebuilders in Afghanistan work to provide access to justice, health care, employment, and education—especially for women and girls—Abrar believes the pandemic will make the process less inclusive than it could be. “COVID-19 will make it increasingly difficult to hear the voices of the most marginalized,” he said.
COVID-19 challenges all of us. The virus respects no national boundaries. “If we can stop pointing fingers, we can defeat the real enemy: COVID 19,” said Al-Maktary.
The solution, he believes, is compassion with each other, and working together until we reach the new normal. “If we can collaborate on COVID-19, which is a problem we share in common in Yemen, we can learn to manage other things in common,” he says.
