It was mid-January and we were in our third and final day of training 35 officers of the 8th Benin Battalion who are slated to join the United Nations peacekeeping force this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While a few of these soldiers had been on such a mission before, most would be venturing for the first time into a conflict that has taken millions of lives since it began in the late 1990s.
The United Nations mission in the DRC, known as MONUSCO, operates in the eastern province of Kivu with about 22,000 peacekeepers. The incoming Benin contingent was training in the city of Parakou in eastern Benin. The responsibility for ending conflict in the DRC doesn’t lie with them. But they are charged with the enormous task of protecting civilians and reducing the toll of violence with very limited resources.
Joseph Sany and I were co-trainers from USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, which works with the U.S. State Department’s African Contingency Operations and Training Assistance Program (ACOTA) to train African peacekeepers in military and non-military skills in preparation for such missions. USIP aims to provide the soldiers with non-violent tools and strategies that they can use every day in protecting civilians -- negotiation, mediation, and cross-cultural communication techniques that peacekeepers can and should use before resorting to force. The Academy has delivered 74 workshops to more than 2,500 African peacekeepers from 11 countries.
During a break on our last day of training, I spoke with one of the participants from a 2012 USIP training with us, Captain Medeto Sylvain. He is the battalion operations officer, with three deployments to DRC under his belt. When I asked him what stuck with him, if anything, from the workshop two years ago, he said he could remember more easily what he applied from the course rather than the course itself.
“During a mission, there are always things people don’t understand,” Sylvain explained. “You have to be willing to let each person express their point of view, even if it’s a criticism against you. You have to let them talk first, and then speak. If you don’t let them express themselves, you won’t get any results from the discussion.”
He recalled an example of a situation where he drew on that skill.
“There were some people in one community who didn’t understand the presence of MONUSCO,” he said. “They wouldn’t let our vehicles go through their village. They insisted on following our convoy to see what our battalion was going to do.
“We approached them on foot and explained the objective of our mission and the benefits that it would bring to them. After that, they understood. Initially, though, they thought we were going to take away their property.”
This may not sound like a life-and-death situation. But in an environment where tensions are sky high and people don’t trust men in uniform, a verbal altercation can easily escalate into severe violence. When I asked the Captain what was the most important thing he learned from the USIP training, he said: “Self control.”
Maria Jessop is a senior program officer in USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding.