Meet The Peacemakers: Xhabir Deralla
August 30th, 2007 by Heather
Hi there, thanks for stopping by Smart Peace. I’m Heather Roberson, co-author and lead character of the graphic novel Macedonia: What Does it Take to Stop a War?
Wow, things have been busy these past few weeks. The book is really taking off and getting a lot of good press and attention. It’s exciting! If you’re interested, you can look at the reviews and clips by clicking here.
I started this blog, because I wanted to prove that Peace is more than just a dreamy ideal. In fact, it’s a viable, real-life strategy for resolving conflicts and for satisfying human needs.
It’s a case that I think will be made best through example. That’s why I’d like to introduce, as part of this blog, some people who have committed their lives to the work of Peace. I’m calling it “Meet the Peacemakers.”
I’ll start with my friend, Xhabir Deralla, who works on Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) reduction in Macedonia.
I met Xhabir in 2003 when I was a Peace Studies student traveling in Macedonia. At the time, Macedonia was holding a weapons amnesty. The program was sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, and reportedly yielded over 7,000 weapons.
What really fascinated me, though, was that everywhere I went, I saw these really cool billboards advertising the weapons amnesty. With vivid imagery and powerful slogans, the signs urged people to give up their guns and to move forward into a peaceful, prosperous future. I saw one my first morning in the country…
There were also ads on television, posters on restaurant doors, pins that you could stick on your clothes. Every place I looked seemed to have something with an anti-gun logo on it.
I started asking around about the signs and, one night, I was led to Xhabir, who was celebrating his birthday, but invited us over. The room was packed with well-wishers and there he was, in the middle of it all, with bundles of T-Shirts, pins, and posters in his arms.
We met the next day and he explained to me the basics behind the campaign. The idea was to give people a way to dispose of illegal weapons without fear of arrest, while also providing incentives for disarming. For instance, in exchange for a Kalashnikov rifle, a person might receive a the chance to win a household appliance or a car. Xhabir’s job was to raise awareness of the campaign on a local level and to get people to sign onto the project.
This kind of work was hardly new to Xhabir. He had become an anti-war, anti-gun activist since 2001, when Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority took up arms against the Macedonian government. At the time, the country had become flooded with illegal weapons.
Xhabir saw the destruction Macedonia was headed for and vowed to speak out. Unfortunately, the Macedonian media seemed more interested in propelling the war forward, leaving him with no outlet for getting out his anti-war message.
And so, he got creative. He explained to me:
That’s right, he launched his own anti-war, guerilla marketing campaign. His posters were clever, eye-catching, and poignant. Pretty soon, he was putting on peace workshops and concerts as well. Whatever it took to get people to denounce war, he would do it.
As it turned out, Macedonia’s conflict ended fairly quickly with an internationally-brokered agreement that coupled disarmament with government reform. It was natural that Xhabir would become a local touch-point for these international efforts, and he started an organization called CIVIL, so that he might bring other local voices into the fold. When the international community initiated the weapons amnesty in 2003, Xhabir was an obvious choice for getting the word out. He’s tireless!
Every time I visit Macedonia, Xhabir is doing something new and innovative to encourage people to renounce violence and to resolve their problems in new ways. Now, he’s even banding together with other organizations like his to create a Balkans-wide strategy for weapons reduction and other peace initiatives.
This November, Xhabir will host Macedonia’s 8th annual Peace Unlimited Festival. There will be music, art, and workshops to educate people about the importance of Peace and the harmfulness of War.
I, for one, can’t wait to be there. I look forward to telling you all about it.
(Stay Tuned.)
September 1st, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I am so glad you covered this subject in this blog. I was really curious about this character in the book and wanted to know more about him. It seems to me that there’s a broader subject here–the role of the arts in peacemaking. I can remember in the Vietnam protest movement that the artists were leading everywhere, with wit and intelligence. The art–visual, theatre, music, always full of life and humor–totally defused protests that could have gotten grim or even violent. A number of artists that may have seemed not to be particularly political were very successful leaders b/c protestors were so sensitized to the subject of the war and, of course, civil rights.
Every now and then I hear that there’s no peace movement left but that’s wrong. The peace movement today is as strong as it was in the Vietnam days, but it’s more diffuse, less centered. The media is trying to ignore it. There’s a pretty good body of protest music being written but it’s not getting played except on small community radio stations. We need the artists, and I mean especially those with subtlety and wit, to lead the way again.
So thanks for covering the story of Xhabir.