In her latest book titled Girlhood at War, political science scholar Vjosa Musliu tells the story of the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, through the eyes of her 12-year-old self. Musliu explains how following the end of the war, international organisations were quick to offer workshops on reconciliation and peacebuilding for Serbs and Albanians who lived in Kosovo.

In the final chapter, “Little Red Riding Hood”, she describes one such session she attended as a teenager in 2002. Led by facilitators from Belgium and the United Kingdom, the workshop began with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, which the participants were asked to reimagine from the perspective of the wolf.

In the reimagined version, massive deforestation had left the wolf increasingly isolated, so when he met the girl in the red hood, he had not eaten in weeks. Driven by hunger and fear that he might die, the wolf ate the grandmother and the girl.

The story puzzled Musliu and her peers, who struggled at first to understand how hunger could possibly justify the wolf killing the little girl and her grandmother, and second, to see the purpose of this story in a reconciliation workshop. The facilitators explained that the exercise was meant to show that there are many perspectives to every story, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and there could always be different truths.

Absurd as it is, more than 20 years later, I found myself in a very similar situation. In October, I attended a workshop organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to bring together young women from Kosovo and Serbia and teach them dialogue and peacemaking.

Just like Musliu, we too had a foreign facilitator and several international speakers. This time, they had also added two assistant facilitators, one from Kosovo and one from Serbia; it was clear that both had been given a detailed script to follow, which they could not........

© Al Jazeera