‘Getting in, getting out’: militia membership and prospects for re-integration in post-war Liberia

Abstract

Liberian ex-combatants are generally seen as uprooted urban youths with a history of unemployment, underemployment and idleness. The data that form the basis of this article suggest another picture. What caused the Liberian youth to fight were mainly security concerns, suggesting that the effects of ‘idleness’ and ‘unemployment’ are overstated with regards to people joining armed groups. They went to school, worked and lived with parents or close relatives prior to the war. They are not Mkandawire's (2002) uprooted urban youths or Abdullah's (1998) ‘lumpens’. They lived quite ordinary Liberian lives, and based their decision on whether to join an armed group on the security predicament that they believed that they and their families were facing. This suggest that disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and rehabilitation approaches are in need of re-thinking that links them more directly to social cohesion and societal security.

Fieldwork after conflict: contextualising the challenges of access and data quality

“…Without police data, for instance, it becomes difficult to analyse crime patterns; without census information, it is hard to understand demographic shifts or to compare subpopulations with the general population. For researchers hoping to use probability sampling, the absence of complete records to serve as sampling frameworks results in the lengthy and difficult process of constructing a framework or the use of ‘second‐best’, non‐probability sampling methods (Bøås and Hatløy, , p. 35; Haer and Becher, , p. 4). Even when data are available, the quality may be poor.…”

The Cosmopolitan Military

“…However, if international-local dialogue is to be an open and meaningful interaction, this might involve an encounter with hostile and oppositional viewpoints, some of which may appear incongruent with the objectives of the international intervention. In many intra-state conflicts, the distinction between the membership of what is normally assumed to be civil society and the membership of armed groups is poorly defined, particularly when involvement in armed groups reflects a strategy for survival, rather than a particular political inclination (see Ballentine, 2003;Ellis, 2007;Bøås et al, 2008). Similarly, in situations of what Ramsbotham (2010) refers to as 'radical disagreement', the seemingly intractable clashes of perspective which have manifested themselves in political violence make it unlikely that apparently enlightened 'islands of civility' might be easily discerned.…”

How to Assess Social Reintegration of Ex-Combatants

“…Herein lies a problem: ex-combatants returning to a changed environment require community efforts to facilitate their reintegration however; communities may be intrinsically and understandably fearful, resentful and apprehensive of ex-combatants. One of the key obstacles to this is community resentment related to the benefits received by ex-combatants to facilitate their reinsertion and reintegration (Bøås and Hatløy 2008). Unless the community see a benefit to accepting ex-combatants back this can have the effect of heightening tensions and making social reintegration more difficult.…”