In memory of a tribal mediator

In memory of Shareif Salem, the mediator who died to stop a violent conflict

Nadwa Al-Dawsari 

April 30, 2009
 

On April 20, 2009, Shareif Salem Ben Saood, a prominent tribal leader from Mareb, was shot dead while trying to mediate a violent “tribal” conflict. The 53-year old man had been a full time arbitrator and mediator who devoted his life and eventually lost it to prevent and mitigate conflicts in tribal areas in Yemen, particularly in the Eastern governorates of Mareb, Al-Jawf and Shabwa.

The conflict in which at least 4 people died and another 13 were injured started when a tribesman was fired from an oil company more than a year ago. When his tribesmen thought he was unfairly let go, a series of incidents took place starting from appeal at relevant government authorities to bring him back to his job to seizing oil company’s trucks leading to the violent conflict in which Salem was killed.

I knew Shareif Salem back in 2007. As the founder and head of the Future Association for Development and Social Peace in Mareb and a member of a network of local NGOs in Mareb, Al-Jawf and Shabwa, Shareif Salem led an initiative to protect youth and education from conflict. Despite being an “illiterate” man, he believed in the importance of education as a key to development and to put an end to conflict. Salem was a very positive man “If this initiative works, and it will, this will be the beginning of the end of conflict”, he often said.

While Conflicts constitute one of the biggest challenges to development and stability, conflict itself is a manifestation of significant development and governance problems. Poverty, high unemployment, misallocation and mismanagement of resources and lack of basic services are all derivers of conflict. Unemployed youth who do not pay much respect to the tribal traditions commit things that escalate existing conflicts or even cause new ones.

I would like to argue that our bias and stereotyping prevent us from understanding the nature and the root causes of conflict and so we fail to design effective interventions to approach the problem. We often conceive tribesmen to be thugs and criminals who kill for revenge, block roads and kidnap foreigners to extract money and resources.

Conflict and lack of development will continue to reinforce each other as long as there are no serious efforts to break that cycle. Conflict leads to the closure and destruction of schools and health facilities and interruption of development projects. At the same time, planning and implementing development projects and services without understanding the sensitivities and nature of conflict and without involving the locals in the process ignite violent conflicts.  

With the weak presence of formal law enforcement institutions, leaders like Shareif Salem represent the traditional system which has so far maintained a reasonable level of stability and security in those areas. Efforts to address conflict in tribal areas need to bring development and services to those underdeveloped areas and need to make the process of development transparent, accountable and sensitive to conflicts. There needs to be programs which generate education and job opportunities for the youth. Along with that law enforcement institutions should be strengthened and traditional conflict prevention and resolution systems should be respected and integrated into the process.  Effort should engage leaders like Shareif Salem, governorate based NGOs and CBOs as well as youth and women. They are the people with the problem and they should be the owners of the solutions with our help. We should simply put out prejudices and conceptions aside…