An army for peace?

Mel Duncan, founder of the Nonviolent Peace Force, is selling peace bonds to raise funds to train, pay, and send nonviolent peace workers into war-stricken areas around the globe. Unlike other peace intervention groups, this one is not "about creating martyrs"; they train workers in nonviolent negotiations, human rights monitoring, and other skills. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, the group has offices in Belgium, Ecuador, India, Canada, England and San Francisco and more than 12,500 supporters in 47 countries. The sale of 100,000 "peace bonds"--at $10 a pop--will help fund the group's pilot project to send 15 workers to Sri Lanka for a three-year stint. Sri Lanka's 19-year old civil war has killed more than 65,000 people and displaced 1.6 million.