The end of the Cold War saw a global increase in civil wars and conflicts that soon earned the label of ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 2007). Many of these conflicts took place in Africa and the continent increasingly came to be equated with state failure and predatory or criminalized states (e.g. Allen 1999; Chabal and Daloz 1999; Bayart, Ellis and Hibou 1999; Kaplan 2000). The idea of ‘new wars’ has been extremely influential but in many ways the extent to which the concept actually captures a distinct phenomenon is questionable. Instead of being a deviation from prior times, the so-called new wars have often reproduced characteristics of the violence used in colonial conquests and company rule as well as in the maintenance of the fragile power of colonial and postcolonial states. Furthermore, the civil wars that took place during the Cold War, for example in Angola, might have appeared much like post- Cold War ‘new wars’ on the ground. They often spilled over borders, involved multiple fighting forces and alliances as well as external players, blurred boundaries between fighters and civilians and involved the extraction of resources like diamonds or oil. This raises the question of whether the favoured interpretations of such conflicts have changed more than their actual conduct, with what used to be seen as political struggles arising from legitimate grievances being later seen as international crime and terrorism arising from greed and religious fanaticism.
Irrespective of the veracity of the ‘new wars’ interpretation, it definitely produced a new perspective on Southern political violence. Whereas it was previously common to understand such violence in political terms, as resulting from political grievances or as being a part of the competition for influence among external powers, the preferred explanations for conflict now became ostensibly non- political concerns9 such as resource scarcity or economic opportunism (e.g. Collier 2007; Collier et al. 2003). This seems to have made it easier to overlook local
9
As Richards (2005) observes, it may actually be hard to draw clear lines between economics and politics, between ‘greed’ and ‘grievance’ in such situations.
political rationales for conflict (and their resolution) and propose externally designed templates of post-conflict reconstruction.
Combined with perceived global security threats and the seeming post-Cold War supremacy of liberal values, this imagery of state failure and new wars produced a policy discourse that demanded that the international community should be active in peace-building, post-conflict reconstruction and state-building, and that human security be placed over that of states (UNDP 1994; Collier et al. 2003; World Bank 2011; Kaldor 2007). With the decrease of neoliberal hostility towards the state in development policy, building state institutions has become a mainstream approach in contexts understood as weak, fragile or failed. At first sight, such neo- institutionalism would seem to have much in common with historical studies of state formation.10 However, while the state-building and state-formation perspectives both
stress the significance of social, political and economic institutions, they differ in their treatment of intentionality and consensuality in political processes.
Indeed, apart from having been criticized for being a form of global governmentality or neo-colonial trusteeship that aims to curb Southern development problems that are increasingly understood as Northern security problems (Duffield 2001, 2007; Chandler 2007; Buur, Jensen and Stepputat 2007), the securitization of development and state-building have also been accused of overlooking the significance of local political processes to the reasons and potential solutions for Southern conflicts (Richards 2005; Nordstrom 2004a; Hagmann and Hoehne 2009; Thies 2007: 729). Northern post-conflict reconstruction and state-building models tend to suffer from a technocratic approach brought about by their instrumental interest in engineering societies, which leads to underestimating the complexities of local political environments, as well as simplified, judgmental notions of the role of organized violence in state formation. They prefer globally circulating, general concepts like ‘fragility’ and liberal templates of political institutions and governance to local social and political structures and decision-making mechanisms that have emerged both from gradual increases or contractions in statehood as well as more radical shifts, such as conquests or transitions from colonial to postcolonial regimes.
10
It ought to be noted that such new institutionalism takes (at least) two different forms within the field of development: the first supplements the basically liberal and interventionist agenda of aid agencies, while the second underpins ideas of domestic processes of institution building as keys to strong statehood and economic development.
Focusing on processes of state failure or collapse over a period of only a few years necessarily produces a different, and usually bleaker, picture than taking into consideration the longer histories and possible future outcomes of local social processes. Without wanting to downplay the very real suffering associated with African conflicts, the continent also exhibits many surprisingly rapid recoveries from even long-standing state crises: Mozambique, Uganda and the northern part of Somalia now known as Somaliland (Anonymous 2002; Doornbos 2002), may be considered examples.
In recent years, the development policy establishment has attempted to take into account criticisms concerning the importance of local dynamics and actors, but still often falls back on a hopelessly consensual view of state formation. For example, while OECD (2008) discusses such critiques, and situates state-building in the context of state formation, it remains stuck with a number of problematic assumptions, such as the state-society dualism or the idea of peaceful negotiability in all situations (OECD 2008: 7-8, 14), which avoids the question of the nature of the forces that compel competing authorities to negotiate their views and interests with each other or with various social groups. Indeed, the authors appear to assume the existence of the kind of institutionalized reciprocity and trust that is actually a result of a successful state formation process instead of its precondition. In a related vein, Mary Kaldor (2007) argues for the ‘bottom-up’ approach that involves local political actors in humanitarian interventions. However, when she writes that ‘it is always possible to identify local advocates of cosmopolitanism, people and places which refuse to accept the politics of war – islands of civility’, it soon becomes clear that the point of view of international policymakers is conflated with that of the ‘beneficiaries’. Instead of drawing lessons from the real heterogeneity and multiplicity of the life situations of the latter, let alone their value preferences or political aspirations, the only acceptable forms of politics seem to be those that take the normative agenda of human security and concomitant liberal-democratic political institutions as their starting point. Instead of constituting a legitimate sphere of contestation, politics in this view is something to be downplayed, and controlled as a potential source of conflict. Paradoxically, therefore, this view offers an increased awareness of the significance of local politics but, at the same time, a narrow conception of what forms ‘politics’ can take (see Chandler 2007). As Waldorf argues, ‘the notion is that political and economic liberalization promotes
sustainable and “positive” peace. Consequently, liberal peacebuilding efforts are directed at building the rule of law, instituting electoral democracy, and carrying out neoliberal economic reforms’ (Waldorf 2012: 173). These represent fundamental values that render many forms of local politics suspect or unacceptable in practice.
The propensity of the state-building and peace-building policy establishment to keep overlooking the deeply political and conflictual nature of state formation processes provoked one observer to bitterly remark that ‘the idea of learning to do state-building and implementing it in a planned fashion is such a ludicrous notion that it ought to prompt serious concern over a political mainstream and an academic discipline which allows itself such surreal historical amnesia’ (von Trotha 2009: 39). Although it is impossible to guess the exact reasons for such amnesia, the persistence of formalized, general and Eurocentric solutions is less likely to be a result of a lack of knowledge than of the incommensurability of in-depth, contextual analytic knowledge and instrumental policy interests. Certainly, the assumptions of the ‘state failure’ literature and state-building policies have been criticized to such an extent in recent years (Hagmann and Hoehne 2009; Bliesemann de Guevara 2010) – and also from a policymaking perspective (e.g. Fritz and Menocal 2007; Boege et al. 2009) – that it is hard to believe that they have gone unnoticed by the policy establishment. It is more likely that it is just too difficult to reconcile external involvement and the ideals of liberal democracy, human security and market economy with the view that state-formation processes are largely endogenous and conflictual, and take a long time (see the next chapter for a more thorough discussion of this).
Programmes of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), as well as security sector reforms, have become an integral part of the above-discussed palette of peacekeeping, conflict resolution and state-building policy instruments (see e.g. Gleichmann et al. 2004). Modern DDR programmes started in the 1980s and since then have numbered in the region of sixty, two thirds of which have taken place in Africa and involved such international actors as UN agencies, the World Bank and various NGOs (Muggah 2009; McMullin 2013a: 1). The Namibian DDR process that was implemented by the UNHCR and the Council of Churches in Namibia in 1989-90 was the first DDR programme formally sanctioned by the UN Security Council (Muggah 2009: 5).
A survey of the broad outlines of the now voluminous literature on policies concerning ex-combatants reveals that they tend to reproduce an acontextual view of ex-combatants, reproducing them as a special category that differs less across contexts than from other social groups in its particular surroundings.11 With the new explanations of Third World violence after the Cold War, and the associated concept of ‘new wars’ discussed above, the concepts of ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘guerrillas’ have given way to ‘rebels’ and ‘warlords’ in the lexicon of policymakers and social scientists. Likewise, former participants in violent conflicts in the global South tend to be discussed as ‘ex-combatants’ instead of ‘veterans’, predominantly being seen as a security problem with supposed violent and criminal tendencies that need to be tamed by reintegration (e.g. Schulhofer-Wohl and Sambanis 2010: 7-17).12 Yet
despite perceptions of ex-combatants as being different from others, their ex- combatantness is imagined to be a passing stage. The aim is to defuse any sense that ex-combatants might have of themselves as a special category, and transform them into ‘ordinary’ civilians (e.g. Nilsson 2005; ILO 2010).
This shift has also tended to question the political agency of combatants. Instead of being framed as having legitimate grievances and political aspirations, they are either portrayed as motivated by greed, or victimized and indoctrinated by power-hungry warlords. Consequently, the collective agency of ex-combatants in post-conflict situations is seen as potentially risky: as a force to be harnessed within the parameters of liberal democratic institutions. There is a tendency to portray ex- combatants – and the movements to which they belong(ed) – as a potential threat that could easily relapse into political violence or common crime if it seemed opportune. Thus the issue often appears to be one of how rebel movements can successfully transform themselves, or be transformed, into political parties, and how their members can become participants in peaceful (democratic) institutions: a valid, but ultimately narrow liberal question of leadership and political institution building.
11
McMullin (2013a: 21-22) has arrived at the same conclusion. For example, when Nilsson (2005) writes about contextual factors what is actually under discussion are a few specific issues that supposedly have the same influence across contexts, rather than context in the sense of a historically formed, particular institutional set-up.
12
Such concerns of order and security are of course not new but have lain at the core of development from its origins as a collection of programmes aimed at solving the side-effects of capitalism (Cowen and Shenton 1996), to the administration of colonies and postcolonies (Hussain 2003; Hansen and Stepputat 2005, 2006), right through the current obsession with the security-development nexus in development policy (Buur, Jensen and Stepputat 2007; Hettne 2010; Stern and Öjendal 2010).
This largely overlooks the possible diversity of the forms and consequences of ex- combatant politics that depend on differences in the histories of armed groups and in the institutional settings in which different cases of reintegration take place. In other words, the political associations and interests of ex-combatants tend to fade from view, overshadowed by the potential problem they are assumed to pose.
The academic literature that examines DDR policies is a varied genre. A significant part of it mirrors the instrumental concerns of connected policies, even if critically, assessing the successes and shortcomings of reintegration, and offering correctives in the interest of improving interventions (e.g. Muggah 2009, 2010; McMullin 2013a; Humphreys and Weinstein 2007; Lamb 2012). However, there is also a considerable body of literature, often produced by anthropologists or ethnographically-oriented political scientists, that argues for socially grounded, contextual explanations of conflicts to counter explanations that lay stress on ‘new barbarism’, neo-Malthusian ideas or greed instead of grievance in explaining conflicts; in general, this material rejects monocausal, non-contextual explanations (Richards 2005; see also Nordstrom 2004a). Another strand of scholarship explores the role of ex-combatants in the politics of post-conflict settings as such, without the direct instrumental interest of policy-oriented studies (e.g. Utas 2012).
These bodies of research contain a wealth of incisive arguments addressing the reasons for conflict, the motivations of ex-combatants, and their social, political and economic situations in post-conflict settings. One prominent and recurring theme is a concern with the reasons fighters join armed groups (e.g. Richards 1996; Bøås and Hatløy 2008; Barrett 2011). Another line of research focuses on the transformation of rebel movements into political parties, and the political agency of ex-combatants in the institutional setting of party politics (e.g. Söderström 2015; Sindre 2014); the focus of these studies tends to lie predominantly within the sphere of formal politics and the political participation of ex-combatants. Substantial work has concentrated on ex-combatants as a social category, examining their social and political relations, networks and ‘navigation’ as well as their livelihood strategies in particular contexts (e.g. Fithen and Richards 2005; Utas 2005; Utas and Jörgel 2008; Christensen and Utas 2008; Bøås and Bjorkhaug 2010; Finnström 2008; Vigh 2006). Still other studies have focused specifically on the relations between ex-combatants and civilians (e.g. Podder 2012; Bolten 2012; Schafer 2007).
The above literature has contributed to nuancing the accumulating knowledge concerning ex-combatants and their situations though the degree to which such research has spoken directly to the central concerns of this study – the interplay between ex-combatants and the authorities and the implications that this interaction has for state formation and citizenship – has varied. However, as a collective body, it offers a matrix for some intriguing questions concerning different kinds of post-conflict situations and, concomitantly, different kinds of ex-combatant / veteran agency on the African continent. To cut a long story short, the overall picture that emerges, mainly on the basis of Western, Central and Eastern African cases, is one wherein politics appears predominantly in a patrimonial guise (e.g. Utas 2012; Christensen and Utas 2008; Reno 2007). As Reno (2007) argues (see also Roitman 2004, 2007), in patronage-based states armed groups generally arise in the context of a weakly centralized constellation of hierarchically placed, partly competing authorities, and subsequently contribute to state disintegration; this, in turn, influences the nature of their role after the conflicts are resolved. The central actors in these processes include rebel groups, their internal hierarchies and mutual relations, civilian communities, Big Men and international actors. The state features more as a formally recognized arena for competing interests than as a cohesive structure that has much integral agency of its own. In these cases, DDR has been a largely transnational affair, involving multiple external agencies. While Muggah (2010: 3) argues that ‘in virtually every country where DDR has been pursued, UN and World Bank representatives have sought (sometimes unsuccessfully) to ensure that national authorities assumed a key role in various aspects of its preparation and implementation’, one may ask how ‘key’ can a role be that is based on external delegation, in this case from the UN and the World Bank. As McMullin (2013a: 235-6) argues with regards Sierra Leone and Liberia, ‘the national commission model adopted in these two countries simply gave national cover for the determinations of international actors about program duration, components and targeting.’
In even stronger contrast to the negotiation-centred state-building approach discussed above, some authors who have studied African real governance have raised the possibility of state formation from scratch in situations of state fragility (e.g. Raeymaekers 2010; Reno 2009; Bayart 2000: 244-5; Herbst 2000; Hagmann and Hoehne 2009; cf. Arce and Long 2000 in a Latin American context). They have
revitalized Tillyan arguments of positive long-term political institutionalization emerging as a possible, if unintended, outcome of conflict and competition between authorities when the central authority retreats from some areas of national territory or functions of administration. Such retreat leaves room for the activities of other political actors or alternative sovereigns, such as rebels and gang leaders, who might sometimes – but not necessarily – garner more, not less, legitimacy than the central government, particularly when they are socially rooted in the area where they operate and provide protection and possibly welfare, economic opportunities and goods to the population (e.g. Podder 2012). After the cessation of open conflict, the shifting of ex-combatants to post-war economic competition with the help of the wealth and connections generated during the war, may have modernizing effects such as accelerated rural to urban migration, privatization of land and primitive accumulation (Reno 2009: 315-316, 319-320; see also Munive 2010; Raeymaekers 2010; Hagmann and Hoehne 2009). In this literature, ex-combatants have political agency that is potentially transformative in positive directions, even if violent. Their enduring networks also appear more as a resource than a threat, in contrast with the mainstream reintegration narrative. Additionally, in this perspective, the external recognition of existing state territories and the power-sharing arrangements typical of internationally driven peacebuilding approaches may halt the process of the monopolization of violence (and its legitimation as a relation of protection) and thus, state formation (Herbst 2000; Englebert 2009: 189, 213).
While the literature that addresses policy-oriented state-building tends to focus on the relatively short-term, peacefully and consensually achieved outcomes of intentional action, the above discussions focus on the longer-term, unintended results of political struggles and conflicts. They offer a refreshing corrective to current received policy wisdoms but might be too assertive in the other direction for a number of reasons. First, European state formation happened over such a long time and involved so many different actors and institutions that impatient institution- builders and ‘neo-Tillyans’ (Meagher 2012) alike should be seriously cautioned about the prospects of repeating it. An additional problem with trying to learn from the European experience is that such an exercise is retrospective: how does one account for those cases of organized violence that did not contribute to state formation? Second, putting too much emphasis on coercion as a factor behind successful state-formation trajectories might lead one to overlook the associated
changes in productive relations and institutional transformations that generate legitimacy over time. Third, in contrast with state formation in Europe, Africa finds itself in a very different system of international economic and political relations (Meagher 2012: 1078): external powers continually influence the outcomes of internal conflicts, and attaining the seat of highest power in the internationally