BY STEPHEN KAUFMAN | WASHINGTON, DC Selection for Seeds of Peace camp in Maine is a great honor, and it opens doors for future educational and career opportunities. But it also imposes a hard burden when participants return home, as new Seeds and try to convince skeptical family, friends and neighbors that peace with sworn enemies is a very real possibility.
The Seeds of Peace program recruits 14-15 year olds from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Europe to attend three-week camp sessions in Maine, where they interact with peers on the opposite sides of their conflicts, learn to communicate with them and even form lasting friendships.
Several Seeds of Peace alumni and friends gathered in Washington March 4 for a gala to raise awareness and support for the program among visiting ambassadors and U.S. Congressmen. In remarks to the audience and in interviews with the Washington File, alumni discussed challenges they face in trying to overcome the doubt, convictions and prejudices of those who did not have the benefit of the Seeds of Peace experience.
“I found myself responsible when I went back home,” said Ahmad, an Afghan Seed. “So I started from my classmates, from my best friends. … I was not sure about the reasons, about how I would be able to teach them, but after a few months I saw a certain progress.”
“[T]hey never had the chance to taste and to feel the real meaning of peace because everyone my age was born in war and they have grown up in war,” he said.
The Seeds from Afghanistan faced a challenge far different from that of other delegations. “We never had a problem with other countries; the problem was with different ethnic groups,” he said. Therefore, the Afghan Seeds had to struggle at camp to become one, united delegation.
“[W]e are trying to let them know that discrimination against different ethnic groups really is something dangerous for the country. I feel myself responsible for converting them to the message of peace,” he said.
Stereotypes, Mistrust Formidable Barriers
To many of their respective compatriots, Sahar and Rashna, two college-age girls, would seem to be unlikely friends. Sahar, who is from Lahore, Pakistan, met Rashna, a native of Bombay, India, as bunkmates in Maine, and reminisced about how they enjoyed each other’s company.
They returned home, ready to spread the message that the Indian and Pakistani people need not be enemies, but sometimes they had trouble finding people who were receptive to that message.
“As soon as we got back from the camp in 2001 we started going to our schools,” Rashna said, holding conferences and talking about their experiences so that “people who didn’t get the opportunity to go to Maine get a chance to be part of the process in their own countries.”
“There is a lot of skepticism about Seeds of Peace, because you are telling these people that what they believe in, it’s not actually true, [and] that there’s another story to it,” Sahar said.
Stereotypes of bitter enemies die hard. Sahar was told by friends and family that Indians always would mistreat Pakistanis and the distrust never would end. They believed that “you should not even talk to each other … and not even accept any type of a relationship because nothing would come out of it,” she said.
Among older people, Sahar found it difficult to talk about peace, because they would tell her, “You were born into a peaceful situation. You didn’t see any wars.”
Most of the older generation has doubts about the possibility of real peace, said Kobi, a Seed from Israel. “In the kind of environment where there are so many hardships and terrorism is part of your life, you become a skeptic.”
However, “kids are not jaded by reality. They’re still kids and they dream of being able to fly. … They dream of being able to travel. They dream of unlimited amounts of ice cream. And they dream of peace,” he said.
Political Agenda?
Sahar said she tells those who are skeptical of the program as “American propaganda” that the experience is not political. “It’s not about getting rid of your beliefs and your political ideas; it’s about being able to discuss them with each other. That’s the most important thing.”
Rashna said that five years after she met Sahar in Maine, “I still think Kashmir should be Indian and she still thinks Kashmir should be Pakistani. But we can stand here and talk with each other.”
The Seeds of Peace home-stay program has provided a way to increase the network of friends and family exposed to the organization, and to young people they once might have considered an “enemy.”
When Indian participants came to Lahore, Sahar invited family members and friends who had not participated in the program to come and meet them. It’s “an ongoing process involving more and more people,” she said. “We have this program where once every two or three months we invite friends from our school and tell them about our experiences and about our program.”
Neither shy away from being labeled idealists.
“I’m called an idealist very often but I just feel that if you don’t have an ideal then you’re not moving in any direction, so it’s not a bad thing,” Rashna said.
Sahar agreed. “You have to dream in order to achieve something.”
Peer Resentment
With so many Seeds of Peace alumni now studying in some of the world’s top universities or beginning lucrative careers, it is easy to imagine some resistance to its message, based in part upon bitterness about their personal successes, in many countries where good educational and career opportunities are hard to find.
“There is a little resentment, definitely,” Sahar acknowledged.
After returning home to Hebron and seeing the suffering and despair that he had escaped while in the United States, Fadi, a Palestinian Seed, said, “in my mind I felt extremely selfish that I had this opportunity. … There is nothing to worry about [in America] compared to what they have.”
Fadi, who now studies in a US university, said he did not feel he could return to the United States in good conscience. “I am not better than you, I grew up with you, and you have nothing from what I have,” he told his friends.
But they replied, “Fadi, you have a choice, but we don’t.”
“They’re absolutely right,” he said. “[But] sometimes I wish I can see Seeds of Peace as an organization that literally can include all Palestinian and Israeli children.”