Non-Violence in Communal War in Central Nigeria
By James Courtright, Staff Writer for RightsViews
On January 30th Dr. Jana Krause came to speak with students and faculty at Columbia’s School for International and Public Affairs about her new book, “Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War.” Her work centers on communal conflict - non-state armed conflict between identity groups - in Plateau state in Nigeria and Maluku province in Indonesia. In both places the violence tended to be simplistically referred to as Christian against Muslim, but upon further investigation she found it was deeply rooted in local political and economic dynamics and narratives. After explaining how communal violence was organized, she then delved into neighborhoods in Nigeria and Indonesia where violence did not occur, analyzing how the choices of civilians and their collective efforts to prevent fighting saved the lives of hundreds of people.
Conflict in Jos
When she first visited Jos, Nigeria in 2010, Dr. Krause had to pass through multiple checkpoints along the road from the...