True Courage

Here are a couple of stories about people trying to piece their societies back together after civil war or strife. I can't imagine the strength of character and faith it must take to know that your neighbor murdered your family and yet set aside your personal feelings and animousity for the greater good of the country. Anything I can think to say seems condescending. There aren't words.

Twenty-five miles south of Kigali, Mayange is a world away from the bustling capital. In this district of 10,000 people, the passage of time is marked by the planting and harvesting of maize. A dozen mud-brick shops are scattered around the main square, and shoeless children play on the red clay.

The modest village is at the forefront of Rwanda's plans to put the past in the past. Genocide victims and killers built it together with money from the government and donors, given on condition that they live in peace.

Xavier, a Hutu, stares at the floor as he remembers, and his small frame seems to shrink. It is hard to believe this man with the round, kind face and the thin mustache did what he did.

"We were told the Tutsis were evil and needed to be killed," he says, as the children play on the dirt floor and Cecile listens expressionless to a story she has heard before. "We really hunted for the Tutsis, searching out their hiding places and killing them wherever we found them."

The mob in Mayange killed hundreds. Cecile's Tutsi family fled to the parish church, but it was hit with tear gas and grenades. She and her mother escaped to a refugee camp in Burundi. She never saw her father, brothers or sisters again.

'Feeling nothing but anger and hatred'
The anger still flares in her brown eyes when she tells the story. Her voice remains barely audible, as is considered polite in Rwandan society.

After the war, the Tutsis threw Xavier and about 120,000 other killers into jails designed to hold 20,000. There were no toilets and no room to sleep. Guards used hoses to wash prisoners, who were packed like sardines in their own filth in huge open cells.

Xavier stood in prison for 18 hours a day and longed for revenge. Most African civil wars re-ignite within 10 years of a cease-fire.

When Cecile returned home from Burundi, her hatred too ran deep. Even today, she can instantly switch from cheerful matron to suspicious survivor.

"Whenever I saw a Hutu child around the age of 12, I wanted to get a club and bash their skulls in because my two brothers and my two sisters were dead," she says, with the calm matter-of-factness common among genocide survivors in Rwanda, where showing emotion is frowned upon. "I would lay awake at night feeling nothing but anger and hatred."

The killers who confessed did what small penance they could. They worked the fields for the widows, and built them new homes. But Xavier was still afraid to face the survivors in private.

"When you confess, you are asking that person for something," he says, looking to Cecile. "To forgive is to give something, and that is much more difficult."

It was close to impossible. When Cecile passed a Hutu in the village, she never made eye contact. She became angry when anyone spoke of reconciliation, including the pastor at church. She fantasized about revenge.

Then district leaders brought everyone together for a meeting.

"We sat on different sides of the room. I was nervous because I thought one of them would get a club and beat me, or throw stones at me," Cecile says, looking at Xavier as if remembering him as a different person. "The following nights I had nightmares that the killing would begin again."

For Xavier and Cecile, Mayange is hope. As Cecile laid bricks for the new village alongside Xavier, she slowly learned to accept that he was only a pawn in the genocide. It helped that they went to the same church, the church where Cecile's family once hid.

She is still not quite sure how or when they became friends, as she sits in her four-room brick house with a tin roof that Xavier helped build.

"A sense of closeness would begin to form between us — we just found ourselves together," she says, smiling at how inadequate the explanation sounds. The strength of her will is clear — it is almost as if she is willing peace, and believes any less would be a betrayal of her faith and her village.

Iraqi Sunnis, Shites and Kurds are facing the same difficulties. Convincing themselves that for the sake of their neighbors and their children they must forgive and let go of their well-deserved resentments. It's a lot to ask. I'm not sure I could shake the hand of a member of Al-Quaida who participated in the planning of the World Trade Center and I didn't lose a father, son or wife.

Iraqi lawmakers are debating the U.S.-backed draft law that would pave the way for the creation of a National Commission for Accountability and Justice, an independent body that would screen former Baath members in place of the de-Baathfication commission, which many Sunnis have complained has been overly zealous in purging low-ranking party members who had in many cases joined the party under pressure from Saddam and been following orders.

"Reconciliation must continue," Odierno said.