Reintegration of combatants: were the right lessons learned in Mozambique?

Abstract

Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on avoiding a return to violent conflict. Though conflict has not resumed, two challenges to long-term security remain: first, involvement among certain combatants in organized criminal activity; second, political instability from the continuing politicization of reintegration issues. Mozambique's reintegration programme, in aiming only to avoid a return to war, failed to address these two issues. This has hurt Mozambique and has repercussions for southern Africa and the international community.

Notes

The Secretary-General reported that, within three weeks of the elections in 1992, only 41 per cent of government and UNITA troops had been demobilized, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Angola Verification Mission II’, UN doc. S/24245, 7 July 1992, p.10.

See, for example, Kees Kingma (ed.), Demobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Development and Security Impacts, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

‘Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ)’, UN doc. S/24892, 3 Dec. 1992, p.5.

Author's interview with Timothy W. Born, Team Leader, Private Sector Enabling Environment, USAID Mission to Mozambique (formerly chief coordinator for USAID's involvement in demobilization and reintegration activities), Maputo, 18 Sept. 2003.

Ibid.

After a visit from Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on 22 October 1993, the government and RENAMO agreed to reschedule the implementation of the GPA, and consequently the date of elections. The UN saw this as a necessary step to avoid elections taking place in a context where both parties were still mobilized and armed, and therefore to avoid the result that occurred in Angola.

Joao Paulo Borges Coelho and Alex Vines, ‘Pilot Study on Demobilization and Re-integration of Ex-Combatants in Mozambique’, Oxford: Refugee Studies Programme, 1994, p.16.

Ibid.

Eric Berman, Managing Arms in Peace Processes: Mozambique, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 1996, p.82.

Authors' interview with Gareth Clifton, former Northern Region Coordinator for the Reintegration Support Scheme, Maputo, 19 Sept. 2003.

Chris Alden, ‘Making Old Soldiers Fade Away: Lessons from the Reintegration of Demobilized Soldiers in Mozambique’, Security Dialogue, Vol.33, No.3, 2002, p.345.

Author's interviews with 15 ex-combatants from RENAMO and FRELIMO in urban and rural districts, Maputo and Moamba, 23–26 Sept. 2003.

World Bank, ‘War-to-Peace Transition in Mozambique: The Provincial Reintegration Fund’, Findings (Africa Region), No. 90, July 1997, accessed at www.worldbank.org/afr/findings/english/find90.htm).

Interviews with ex-combatants (see n.12 above). For a detailed account of the economic devastation caused by Portuguese colonialism, the Cold War, Renamo destabilization tactics, and structural adjustment programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund, see Susan Willett, ‘Ostriches, Wise Old Elephants and Economic Reconstruction in Mozambique’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.2, No.1, 1995, pp.34–55.

Willett, for example, warned about the potential for warlordism resulting from the collapse of social and economic order, ibid., p.48.

International Organization for Migration, ‘After One Year: What is the Status of Reintegration in Mozambique?’ Maputo: Information and Referral Service/Provincial Fund for Demobilized Soldiers, May 1996.

Joe Hanlon, ‘Local Election Email Special Issue 1’, Mozambique Political Process Bulletin, Maputo: European Parliamentarians for Africa, 16 Nov. 2003, accessed at www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2 = ind0311&L = Mozambique-study-group&D = 1&T = O&F = &S = &P = &P = 414).

Ibid. The municipal elections were hardly serene: Renamo and Frelimo contested results in multiple municipalities, and the Constitutional Council, although validating the ultimate results, harshly criticized the National Elections Commission for committing elementary errors and for violating ‘the principles of security, stability, confidence and transparency that should guide the electoral process.’ See Joe Hanlon, ‘Constitutional Council Validates Local Elections’, AIM Report No. 268, Maputo: Mozambique News Agency, 19 Jan. 2004, accessed at www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2 = ind0311&L = Mozambique-study-group&D = 1&T = O&F = &S = &P = 182).

For a detailed investigation into the dynamics of each of these activities see Peter Gastrow and Marcelo Mosse, ‘Organised Crime, Corruption and Governance in the SADC Region’, presented at the Institute for Security Studies Regional Seminar, Pretoria, 18–19 Apr. 2002.

Ibid., pp.10, 17.

Perceptions of these connections are rampant in Mozambique. Sometimes allegations are overblown, and direct evidence is not always publicly available. Nevertheless, interviews with journalists, researchers and community leaders conducted in Maputo, 15–26 September 2003 confirm that some links exist. Additionally, interviews with former government officers conducted by other researchers have produced the same conclusion (see Alden, n.11 above, p.350). An atmosphere of fear developed in the wake of the murder of Carlos Cardoso, a journalist assassinated in 2001 while investigating the disappearance of US$14 million from the Commercial Bank of Mozambique. Before his death, Cardoso made similar claims in articles and interviews about the complicity of high-ranking government officials (including military personnel) in criminal activity.

Gastrow and Mosse (see n.19 above), pp.5–8.

Ibid., p.5.

Ibid., p.9.

UN Office of Drugs and Crime, The Drug Nexus in Africa, Vienna: UNODC, Mar. 1999, p.101.

United States Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2002: Mozambique, 1 Aug. 2003, accessed at www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mz.html).

Berman (see n.9 above), pp.46,48,87–88; Martinho Chachiua, ‘The Status of Arms Flows in Mozambique’, in Tandeka Nkiwane, Martinho Chachiua, and Sarah Meek (eds.), Weapons Flows in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Swaziland, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, monograph 34, Jan. 1999, p.26.

Martinho Chachiua and Mark Malan, ‘Anomalies and Acquiescence: The Mozambican Peace Process Revisited’, African Security Review, Vol.7, No.4, 1998, accessed at www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/&No4/Anomalies.htm).

Christopher Smith, ‘Areas of Major Concentration in the Use and Traffic of Small Arms’, in Jayantha Dhanapala et al. (eds), Small Arms Control: Old Weapons, New Issues, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, p.107; Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey 2001: Profiling the Problem, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.64.

Berman (n.9 above), pp.76–7.

Disabled RENAMO veterans are entitled to pension benefits under a separate scheme, but the bureaucratic process involved is too complicated for many disabled veterans, and not all disabled RENAMO fighters know that they are eligible for these benefits.

Author's interview with Raul Domingos, founder and president of the Democratic Institute for Peace and Development (IPADE) and former unofficial ‘second in command’ of RENAMO and chief RENAMO negotiator during the Rome talks, Maputo, 19 Sept. 2003.

Brian Slattery, ‘Development without Equality: An Interview with Raul Domingos’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.57, No.1, 2003, pp.129–34.

Interview with Domingos (see n.32 above). Domingos makes the same point in Slattery, ibid.

RENAMO performed much poorer than expected in the municipal elections; and, after having been expelled from the party earlier, Raul Domingos formed a third party to challenge RENAMO candidates.

Author's interview with General Vareia Mange (‘Chimuanza’), Costa do Sol, Maputo Province, 15 Sept. 2003.

UN Development Programme, Report on the Reintegration of Demobilised Soldiers in Mozambique 1992–1996, Maputo: UNDP, 1997, p.27.

All combatants interviewed by the author shared this view (n.12 above).

Dennis C. Jett, Why Peacekeeping Fails, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p.84.

RENAMO officers, such as General Vareia, have tended to fall into the latter category, unless they joined the FADM.

Interview with Born (see n.4 above).

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 898, UN doc. S/RES/898 (1994), 23 Feb. 1994.

The lack of a more active police role was also due to resource constraints, a desire to show trust in the government, and the lack of a precedent for more involved police intervention.

Willett (see n.14 above), pp.48–9.

The United Nations and Mozambique 1992–1995, UN Blue Book Series, Vol.V, New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1995, p.3.

International Crisis Group, ‘Dealing with Savimbi's Ghost: The Security and Humanitarian Challenges in Angola’, Luanda and Brussels: ICG, Africa Report No. 58, 26 Feb. 2003, p.6.