Hidden Brain - Episode 18: The Paradox of Forgiveness

Episode Date: January 26, 2016

After more than a decade of brutal civil war, perpetrators and victims attempted to find peace around bonfires across Sierra Leone. This week on Hidden Brain, a story about forgiving the unforgivable, and the cost of reconciliation.

Thousands of children under the age of 15 have been directly involved in the conflict in Sierra Leone. United Nations Refugee Agency says it believes soldiers, loyal to the former military regime, are holding many civilians as hostages. For more than a decade, the West African nation of Sierra Leone was ravaged by a brutal civil war. The fighting was triggered by the refusal of the hunter. In the struggle for control of the West African nation, since last month's brutal rebel attack on the capital free-town. Children as young as seven were given machetes and machine guns and forced to become killers.

From systematic amputation of limbs to mass rape, murder, and enslavement of the civilian population, some election days are more momentous than others. the amputation of limbs to mass rape, murder, and enslavement of the civilian population. Some election days are more momentous than others. For example, today in Sierra Leone, the West African nation is attempting to elect a legitimate government after a decade of brutal civil war in the first multi-party election there in 25 years. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Today we're talking about reconciliation. Now when we talk about forgiveness, we usually mean forgiving minor violations. It's one thing to forgive someone who says something offensive or steals your purse or accidentally crashes a car into yours. But could you forgive a neighbor who kills your father or cuts off your hand? Could you continue to live next door to that person? Could you go back to being just neighbors?

I was always fascinated by this question of how we can restitch the fabric of society in the aftermath of war. This is Andrella Dubé. She is an assistant professor of political science and economics at New York University. And here's the question she set out to answer. Can there really be reconciliation after atrocities on the scale seen in Sierra Leone? Over 50,000 people were killed, thousands more were raped and amputated, and a lot of this

violence was actually neighbor on neighbor. So when a conflict like this came to an end, you could find yourself living next door to someone who is responsible for amputating you or for hurting your family members. And the question that I really wanted to ask is, how does a community move on from something like this? I was a small boy when the war entered my village. This is Numa, he's from a small village in East Tansierra, Leone. Everyone packed their bags and began to flee to Guinea.

I began to go, I began to go, I began to go. I began to go, me. We met the rebels on the road. They looked at me keenly and said, no. They said, let me not pass again. They would not let me pass. I was captured. So me being one of me, brother. While I was with them, they also captured my friend by the name Saur.

I knew Saur very well. We grew up together. And here is Saur, new must childhood friend. This war really destroyed me. When the rebels invaded, they captured me in the bush, and my father too. You're hearing two producers read subtitles from a documentary made by a nonprofit group called Catalyst for Peace. The rebels asked Numa to do something terrible. It was part of a systematic pattern they were using to turn friend-on-friend, neighbor-on-naber, and destroy the social ties that held communities together. They commanded me to beat him up. I refused and said, this is my friend, I won't do it.

But the rebels weren't making a request, they were issuing a command. A rebel fighter raised his gun and aimed it at Numa. So what was the name of the family? Then they shot me. The bullet pierced Numa on his right side just at the hip. Numa felt he had no option. He turned on his childhood friend. That was Buddha.

I beat him. The rebels handed Saur a knife. They gave me a knife and told me to kill my father. But I told them I wouldn't kill my own father. The rebels handed the knife to Numa. At gunpoint, they ordered him to kill Sars' father. Fearing for his own life, Numa took the knife. He slit the throat of his friend's father.

But in my mind, I thought my friend would not blame me. I was forced to do it. After the war was over, a nonprofit group named Fumble Talk began to organize reconciliation ceremonies in different villages. Fumble Talk is a career for family. And it's an old tradition. It's as old as a family. It's safe. There is an actual reconciliation ceremony that takes place, which is a two-day event, where people from these ten villages in this community come to participate. Andrella was working with another nonprofit group called

Innovations for Poverty Action, which was active in Sierra Leone. When Andrella heard about Fumble Talk's work, she was immediately intrigued. Steeped in tradition, the reconciliation ceremonies call for community members to confront one another in a public setting, admit to wrongdoing, and seek forgiveness from people they have heard. And in this ceremony where there's a bonfire around this bonfire, victims actually testify to the atrocities they experienced, perpetrators admit to crimes and seek forgiveness, but

a very important component is no one is prosecuted or otherwise punished for participating. Numa and Saur attended a fumble talk gathering. By now, they were young adults. One of the boys who stepped forward and testified talked about the experience that he had during the war when he, his friend and his father were taken into the backwoods by the rebel groups. People clashed out around a bonfire. Saar stepped forward to speak. The man that did this to me is here. I saw him.

The man that beat me and killed my father is here. The man who did this to me is here. He's right there. This is the man. Saar points to Newman. At the time that he said the person who did this, he's here in the audience, he became quite emotional and he actually approached the other boy seemingly in a kind of moment of anger and one of the others in the village stepped forward, pulled him back a little bit to ensure that they didn't actually engage in some sort of you know physical tussle. So there was a very tense moment where they were very close to each other and the boy who had actually committed this crime and admitted.

They gave me a knife to kill his father. I took that knife and cut his father's throat. But what I did was not much choice. Not so easy on a young man like you. Please forgive me. I'm looking at him, Haka for us. And then the boy whose father had been killed said, and I had named how I'm on Gunggyumpe. I have accepted and I have agreed to forgive him.

I don't accept him. I'll forgive him. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.

Forgive me. Forgive me. So this was one of the most, you know, kind of striking examples that has always stayed with me and there are many other accounts like this. Sometimes they're not always so easily resolved. There's more tension that flares up as their accounts are being told and emotions run high. So this is the type of account that takes place. When we come back, we'll tell you more about what happened to Numa and Sarr, and also

examine the counterintuitive effects of the reconciliation ceremonies in Sierra Leone. Going through these memories of war in a short, intense fashion can actually reopen some old wounds. Stay with us. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. We're talking with Andrela Dubay today. She's an assistant professor of political science and economics at New York University. Andrela finds that traditional forgiveness ceremonies after brutal atrocities can achieve the kind of reconciliation between neighbors that many of us might consider impossible.

The ceremonies don't just affect the individuals involved, they have a big impact on community ties and cohesion, what researchers would call social capital. You know, what we find is that the reconciliation process was inordinately successful in healing the community. So we've talked about forgiveness in this particular anecdote. But when we look at the data, we find that it actually fostered forgiveness on a widespread level. We have these measures from the psychology literature that we used to gauge affect toward former combatants.

And we find that, you find that people report nine months, or up to 31 months later, after these bonfire ceremonies, that they have forgiven their perpetrators to a greater degree. But they don't just feel differently. They're actually behaving differently as well. There are more friendships in the community. People say they rely on each other more for help.

They participate more in civic associations like PTA's and village development committees. They also contribute more to their communities. They give more to families in need. They spend more time and resources building schools and health clinics. They really changed the community orientation of their behavior. So you find that there is this extraordinary effect, as much as almost two and a half years after these ceremonies,

that the ceremonies have brought people together, people are cooperating, more people are not just cooperating with the perpetrators, but in general, displaying all kinds of other ways in which social capital and social cohesion has increased. But you also are finding that there's a potential downside. Can you talk about that? What we find is that, you know, this process of talking about the past is actually painful

and personally difficult for people as manifest in worsened psychological well-being in these communities. So we have three different measures that we look at, measures of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. And we find that all three outcomes are actually worse in the communities that have gone through this process. And we think this is consistent with the idea that going through these memories of war in a short, intense fashion can actually reopen some old wounds.

But when you've forgiven someone and you've made the effort to forgive someone, you would think that has a healing effect on you, that you basically, yes, you're reminded of the terrible thing that happened, but you have found a way to master it. Why isn't that not happening? It's complicated to think about how forgiveness translates into personal psychological well-being. On the one hand, it might have this healing effect. On the other hand, these war memories

are so potent and so powerful, and now they have been re-invoked. So you might feel better toward the person. You might be able to forgive the person for the things that they have done, but at the same time be coping with these traumatic events. We think that it's the way in which these memories are brought up in this kind of short intensive manner without follow-up for dealing with the negative images and feelings that actually lead to this worsening of the psychological outcomes. See a little bit more about that.

You're saying that there's something about this process, it's a very dramatic process that might be good for social cohesion, but not so much for individuals. The reconciliation process allows people to collectively acknowledge what's happened, and allows them in a sense to be able to move on. Prior to going through this process, you know, many people avoided certain places and certain

activities on account of the fact that they knew that the perpetrator, the person who was responsible for either hurting them or hurting their family members, would be present in those areas. After going through this public acknowledgement and this process of, you know, confronting what's happened, many people have been able to find closure in that event in a sense and now are ready to interact with other members of the community. This is the sense in which reconciliation can serve as a powerful force for societal healing, but at the same time these negative consequences on the individual psyche are still there. And I think the

question now is how can we harness these very powerful societal benefits and conduct the reconciliation process in a way that mitigates the psychological impact. It may be possible, for example, to couple these types of programs with ongoing counseling so that people are able to better cope with the negative memories that are re-invoked. I'm wondering if you have a sense on why it is there has been this persistent view, maybe this is just a layman's perspective, but there's been this persistent view that forgiving other people is psychologically healthy for you. That idea that it's not just good for the perpetrator, but it's actually good for the person who's doing the forgiving is such a widespread view.

And I don't think your study basically says the two things can't go together, but it says the two things don't automatically go together. That's exactly right. So in fact, there's been work in the psychology literature that shows that forgiveness is a positive psychological force. But one has to think about the positive benefit that comes from that and weigh that against some of the negative benefits that comes from reinvoking these memories. And I'm wondering in terms of your recommendation, so when you think about this, you think this is its one study,

probably would have to be replicated again in maybe a different context to see if the same result holds up, but are there implications that you think that we can draw from this study and how we're thinking about reconciliation in other contexts? Absolutely. So, you know, every reconciliation process

has some elements that are unique, but this one has all of the core elements. So, you know, this is a context in which victims are sharing their accounts and which perpetrators are admitting to crimes in which no one is prosecuted. In that sense, it has the core elements that we think of as common to a wide range of reconciliation programs. So, you know, I do think this is something that applies to a wide range of conflicts, not just Sierra Leone, not just civil wars in Africa, but any context in which people have gone through tremendous acts of violence and now we're at a point where they need to find a way

of restitching together the fabric of society. I wanted to know what happened to Numa and Saur. They reconciled more than five years ago. What happened afterwards? Did Numa and Saur remain friends? Anthony Mansouré innovations for poverty action helped André-la work on the reconciliation project evaluation. He recently tracked down Numa and Saur.

A few weeks ago, he went to their hometown in Kailahun district in Eastern Sierra Leone. Anthony found that Numa and Saur have not only stayed in touch, but they remained friends. The friend who killed the father now occasionally helps the boy whose father was killed. Anthony found that Numa and Saur have not only stayed in touch, but they've remained friends. The friend who killed the father now occasionally helps the boy whose father was killed, doing some farming and some other activities because he's not able to do this very well, given the injury to his leg. We don't know the personal psychological effects, the reconciliation ceremony has had on Numa and Saur. What we do know is that N mind helps Saur plant cassava.

They attend church together. Sometimes, they joke with one another. We begin now together. They are, after all, all friends. The film The film The film The film The

film The film The film The film The film The film

The film The film The film The film The film The film The

film The film The film The film The film The film The film The film The film The film The film The film clips from their film Fumble Talk to Anthony Mansouré from innovations for poverty action who tracked down new man Saur and to Kevin Leahy and Ahmad Omar for their voice work. You can find more of Hidden Brain on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Sign up for our newsletter by emailing us at hiddenbrain at npr.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam and this is NPR. Bu videonunize iyi bakın.