After the Peace, a Long, Hard Road

The shallow irrigation trench winds away from the women splashing in the spray of a newly dug well, cuts through a patch of tall grass and curves past the spot where John Makur Agok tends to his peace dividends: a fragile array of seedlings swaddled in black plastic, a future of lemons, oranges, mangoes, papayas and dates. "What shows that I've resettled," says the rangy 43-year-old farmer, "is that I'm planting all these trees — and there's nothing to disturb them."

For two decades, the people in Agok's village of Mayenwal have lived a life of fear. When...