3 - 1999

Germany and the War in Kosovo

Editorial

There is still war in Kosovo. Hopes for a real peace have not yet been fulfilled, not even the hopes for an end to the murdering. Now it is especially Serb families that are being driven out. The delusion of creating an ethnically "pure" area still lives and whoever at the moment has the power to do it expels the others. There are also other experiences. Even in the midst of the war in Kosovo there are people of different ethnic groups who live together in peace and friendship. But in an atmosphere of hate and violence, people who do not want to take the one or the other side have it tough.

So many armed conflicts beside the Kosovo war rage in so many parts of the world that many of them show up only in the brief news items of the newspapers. Spreading in Germany, but certainly not only here, is deep disappointment that with the end of the East-West confrontation no time of peace has begun. Instead, age-old and new conflicts are resolved by violence in many countries.

The churches do much to contribute to a change in this situation. In many countries with conflicts churches try to bring the warring parties together around a table and to preach and to live reconciliation. Church programs for development and reconciliation need and find the financial support of the churches and church aid agencies in countries like Germany. Churches in all the world are tireless in pointing out that the abject poverty of larger groups of the population and a growing gulf between rich and poor contributes decisively to making small incidents into great and long-lasting wars. Therefore the involvement for one world in which all could live in dignity is quite a decisive contribution to peace.

When conflicts escalate, it is important to support all chances for a peaceful solution and to hold to the people and groups that speak a clear "no" to hatred and violence. Looking back, it is clear that these groups in Kosovo received in the past ten years far too little international attention and support. Because of this insight the German churches, but also the German government, want to support more strongly than in the past peace and reconciliation initiatives throughout the world. They want to send into conflict regions experts who can get people at local, regional and national levels talking to one another and help them find ways to live peaceably together.

It will be necessary for the German churches to devote themselves more to the sensitive subject of the international arms trade, in which German companies are essentially involved. It were the many millions of more modern and easy-to-use weapons that have made many conflicts so murderous. The war in Kosovo can become the starting point for translating the sentence "resist the beginnings" into church and political practice.

In the contributions to this issue it becomes clear how difficult it is for international politics, the churches and the peace movement to establish peace and reconciliation once the first shot has been fired. For the sake of the people in Kosovo we must hope that after the hatred and violence nonetheless there will be a peace that is deserving of the name.