War leaders must tune to people's suffering
Channel: Patrick Chalmers
Date: 28/08/2015

Army commanders should use mindfulness trainings to tune their ears to people's suffering, opening a way for peace, urges former Liberian rebel commander Christian Bethelson. 

The soldier, widely known as General Leopard in his home country, helped bring a negotiated end to the Liberian civil war in 2003. He suggests military leaders the world over would benefit from using a breathing meditation born of Buddhism and the Vietnam war.

“If we can listen to the suffering of the people then of course peace is possible. We need to listen to the voice of the people to bring sanity and healing to the land,” he said in an interview. 

Bethelson spoke from Plum Village in southwest France, where he was a participant in the monastic centre's month-long summer retreat. He is one of tens of thousands of ex-combattants left over from Liberia's decade-and-a-half-long civil wars, spending 27 years as a soldier. Like many others, he suffered severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“After the war was over, and I was like traumatised with PTSD... I didn't know where to go,” he said, crediting his subsequent discovery of mindfulness as key to his recovery.

Bethelson now works as coordinator for ex-combattants and mindfulness training for Liberia's Peace Hut Alliance for Conflict Transformation (PHACT) organisation. Its staff use a mindfulness training developed by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in their work. The technique aims to help people live happily in the present moment so as to transform themselves and build peace in the world. Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam in 1973, settling in France.

Contact: peacehutalliance [@] gmail.com – removing the square brackets and spaces to form a complete email address.