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Multiple Trajectories Towards Reintegration

Poster Presentation prepared for LSA conference 23-25 March 2007 at Indiana

UniversityMaarten Bedert, Ghent University

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Content

• 1. On the conflict in Liberia

• 2. Towards the end of the conflict

• 3. The official trajectory towards reintegration

• 4. Analytical assumptions

• 5. Multiple trajectories towards reintegration

• 6. Conclusion

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1. On the conflict• Historic complexity

– Americo-Liberian settlers– TWP regime (1846-1980)– Coup d’ état by Samuel Doe (1980)– Taylor regime (1989-2001)

• Regional and international dimensions– Civil war in Sierra Leone– Training of professional soldiers in Libya– United States’ unresponsiveness– ECOMOG intervention monitored by ECOWAS

• Weak state– Implosion of economic and political institutions– Loss of monopoly over the use of violence

• Involvement of youth in the conflict

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Involvement of youth: complexity and diversity

• Combatants recruited by force• Youth recruited as labor forces• Conflict as a revolution of the youth• Fighting as a means to obtain strategic upward

mobility• Fighting against the lack of opportunities in

society• Link with initiation into adulthood (secret

societies)

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2. Towards the end of the conflict (2003)

• Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)– 2.1 Establishment of UNMIL: far reaching

influence at different levels of governance and policy making

– 2.2 Bring back the many refugees and reintegrate the many combatants: start of the reconstruction

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2.1 Establishment of UNMIL

• UN Security Council resolution 1509• 15,000 military personnel• 160 staff officers• 1,150 civilian police officers• “Assist in the maintenance of law and order

throughout Liberia, and the appropriate civilian component”

• Far reaching influence at different domains of policymaking

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2.2 Reintegrating ‘Ex-combatants’

• “Although efforts are underway to reintegrate them into society, they still remain a target group for either ensuring peace or creating further instability”

• “Liberians, long fearful of this volatile population, are concerned at what will happen if ex-combatants are left idle”

• “the presence of UNMIL is crucial […] to facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants […]”

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3. The official trajectory towards reintegration

• 3.1 UNDDRR

• 3.2 RR at work

• 3.3 Social implications of UNDDRR

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3.1 UNDDRR

• UN DDRR program– Disarmament

– Demobilization

– Rehabilitation

– Reintegration

– Step-by-step program

– As a Natural continuum

• Implemented ‘from above’

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3.2 RR at work

• Entering an institutionalized structure

• Disarmament– Registration for

reintegration program

– ID-card

• DDRR programs– Formal education

– Vocational training

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3.3 Social implications of the DDRR program

• Put in a ‘waiting-room’ before returning to society

• Opportunity to accumulate economic, social and political capital

• Label ‘Ex-combatant’ = stigma

• Homogenization trough categorization

• Social exclusion– Return to the margins of society?!

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4. Analytical assumptions

• 4.1 On Reintegration– A never ending process?!

• 4.2 On Identity– Beyond primordialism

• 4.3 On Social navigation (Vigh, 2006)– A non-transparent field in motion

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4.1 Reintegration

• Definition? Objective?– No consensus on definition– No consensus on how to achieve

reintegration trough social practice

• ‘ex-combatants’ are an object rather than a subject

• To be reintegrated to be brought in by others

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4.2 On Identity

• Identity as production (Hall, 1990)– Never ending process– Importance of the context

• Identity = positioning trough representations• Play of history, culture and power

– Flexibility– Room for imagination

• Constantly renegotiated trough articulation– Possible but therefore not necessary connection

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4.3 Social Navigation (Vigh, 2006)

• Focus on process of social being as well as becoming

• Social terrain– environment = never stable or solid but always in

motion and non-transparent

• Social navigation– movement is never completely free– constant intertwining between agency and social

forces

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4.3 Social Navigation (Vigh, 2006)

• Constant intertwining between agency and social forces:– Strategy

• process of creating and consolidating space

• Appropriation from above

– Tactics• space of the other

• actions directed at making the best of them, using and bending the rules

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5. Multiple trajectories towards reintegration

• 5.1 Fieldwork

• 5.2 Complex social reality– Relations with former commander– Intra-ex-combatant relations– Reintegration trough social practice

• 5.3 Rejecting the DDRR program

• 5.4 Formal and informal reintegration

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5.1 Fieldwork

• Three months in Voinjama (Lofa County)

• Describing how ‘ex-combatants’ explore different trajectories rather than evaluating the reintegration process

• Focus on experience

• Registration of personal stories– Formal and informal interviews

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5.2 Complex social reality

• ‘Ex-combatants’ = ‘Community of experience’

• Break down of (combatant) social relation?– Relation with former commander to come to

reintegration– ‘ex-combatants’ look out for each other– Meeting place = ‘the shop’ aka ‘the ghetto’

• Where past, present and future meet

• A “place of love”

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5.2 Complex social reality:

Relations with former commander• Former commanders are

involved with local NGO’s to reach out to the ‘ex-combatants’ to engage in reintegration programs

• “he is a good man, when you are vex, he can talk to you and calm you down. If you have a problem he would call you and ask you ‘wa happen’ and help you”

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5.2 Complex social reality:

‘Ex-combatants’ look out for each other

• ‘ex-combatants’ rely on each other for economic and personal help

• “If I have something today, I will share it with my friends; if my friends have something tomorrow, they will share it with me”

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5.2 Complex social reality:

‘The Shop’ (insiders) aka ‘the Ghetto’ (outsiders)

• Shop: food, alcohol and drugs for sale

• Public = male and ‘ex-combatant’

• Discussions about their past, reintegration, the future, marginalization, exclusion and politics

• By outsiders considered as obstacle to achieve reintegration

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5.3 Rejecting the DDRR program

• Story of ‘an ex-combatant’:– Scar from bullet wound = personal ID-card– Lack of trust in the government

• “former commanders live in big houses and forgot about those who fought at their side during the conflict”

• DDRR programs only send you “from one workshop to another”

– Job as security guard for an international NGO– Key player in the local football team

• Reintegration by exploring his own trajectory

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5.4 Formal & informal reintegration

• Registered as ‘ex-combatants’: ID-card• No consensus about their position in society:

– Label = help• “it’s a good thing because […] after giving my weapon to them,

they gave me an ID-card and small money, it can help me with my future”

– Label = stigma• “they think of us as bad people but we are not like that. When the

war came, there are two things you can do, run or fight. They killed my parents, that’s when I decided to pick up arms. I had no one to support me. […] But I am not a bad person”

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6. Conclusions

• Complex social reality– Regard broader social context– Diversity as the norm rather than the exception– Stress on a field motion: dynamic and open for

renegotiation

• Reintegration = process– Becoming as well as being– Dynamics ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ always

intertwined