![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
In both academic literature and policy discourse, ex-combatants are at times depicted as a threat to peace rather than agents of positive change. However, many of my ex-combatant interlocutors in Burundi were working actively on conflict resolution and peace-building projects. In addition, their experience and knowledge of combat was frequently stated as a deterrent for going back to such a situation. Though it may seem contradictory, the reasons my informants gave for having joined the war sounded remarkably similar to motivations for social activism. They usually expressed it as a desire to contribute to a better, more just, community. I argue that ideology played an important part in motivation to join armed groups during the war and carries over in participation in social activism today. These decisions need not be seen as polar opposites, but rather as similar motivations towards contributing to positive change taken in different circumstances.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jesper Bjarnesen, Mats Utas, Astrid Jamar, Helga Þórey Björnsdóttir, Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir and the two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. The research received grants from the Icelandic Research Fund [grant number 152143-053]; the Nordic Africa Institute and Icelandic International Development Agency.
Notes
1. Berdal and Ucko, ‘Introduction to the DDR Forum’; Colletta and Muggah, ‘Context Matters’; Muggah, Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction; Knight and Özerdem, ‘Guns, Camps and Cash’; Kingma, ‘Demobilization of Combatants’; Gear, Wishing Us Away.
2. Nussio, ‘Ex-Combatants and Post-Conflict Violence’; Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’, 296.
3. Nussio, ‘Ex-Combatants and Post-Conflict Violence’.
4. Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’.
5. Colletta and Muggah, ‘Context Matters’; Muggah, Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction.
6. See for example Berdal and Ucko, ‘Introduction to the DDR Forum’; Colletta and Muggah, ‘Context Matters’; Knight and Özerdem, ‘Guns, Camps and Cash’; Muggah, ‘No Magic Bullet’; Muggah, Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction; Özerdem, ‘A Re-Conceptualisation of Ex-Combatant Reintegration’; Theidon, ‘Transitional Subjects’.
7. Colletta and Muggah, ‘Context Matters’, 431.
8. Berdal and Ucko, ‘Introduction to the DDR Forum’.
9. van der Merwe and Smith, ‘Ex-Combatants as Peacebuilders’, 9.
10. Debos, ‘Fluid Loyalties in a Regional Crisis’; McMullin, ‘Reintegration of Combatants’; Subedi, ‘Ex-Combatants, Security and Post-Conflict Violence’; Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’; Zyck, ‘Former Combatant Reintegration’.
11. Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’; Subedi, ‘Ex-Combatants, Security and Post-Conflict Violence’.
12. Söderström, Peacebuilding and Ex-Combatants; Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’; Nussio, ‘Ex-Combatants and Post-Conflict Violence’; Kaplan and Nussio, ‘Explaining Recidivism of Ex-Combatants in Colombia’.
13. Nussio, ‘Ex-Combatants and Post-Conflict Violence’.
14. Mitton, ‘Where Is the War?’, 325–326.
15. Sonpar, ‘A Potential Resource?’.
16. Uvin, ‘Ex-Combatants in Burundi’.
17. Nussio, ‘Ex-Combatants and Post-Conflict Violence’.
18. Themnér, ‘A Leap of Faith’.
19. Brett and Specht, Young Soldiers.
20. Sonpar, ‘A Potential Resource?’.
21. Cook, ‘Veterans of Peace in Post-Conflict South Africa’; Sonpar, ‘A Potential Resource?’; Wood, Insurgent Collective Action.
22. Graham, ‘People’s War?’.
23. van der Merwe and Smith, ‘Ex-Combatants as Peacebuilders’.
24. Ibid.
25. Gutierrez Sanín and Wood, ‘Ideology in Civil War’, 215.
26. Collier and Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’.
27. Özerdem and Podder, Youth in Conflict and Peacebuilding.
28. Richards, No Peace, No War.
29. Hoffman, The War Machines; Utas, ‘Sweet Battlefields’.
30. Guichaoua, Understanding Collective Political Violence; Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘Demobilization and Reintegration’.
31. Guichaoua, Understanding Collective Political Violence; Özerdem and Podder, Youth in Conflict and Peacebuilding.
32. Henriksen and Vinci, ‘Combat Motivation in Non-State Armed Groups’.
33. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action.
34. McEvoy and Shirlow, ‘Re-Imagining DDR’.
35. Emerson, ‘Conflict, Transition and Education’.
36. Simić and Milojević, ‘Dialogues between Ex-Combatants and Youth in Serbia’.
37. Dwyer, ‘Sometimes I Wish I Was an “ex” Ex-Prisoner’.
38. Clubb, ‘The Role of Former Combatants’.
39. Alonso and Bada, ‘What Role Have Former ETA Terrorists’.
40. Clark, ‘Giving Peace a Chance’.
41. Ngaruko and Nkurunziza, ‘An Economic Interpretation of Conflict in Burundi’.
42. Wittig, ‘Politics in the Shadow of the Gun’, 144.
43. Daley, Gender & Genocide in Burundi, 67.
44. Prunier, ‘Burundi’.
45. Daley, Gender & Genocide in Burundi, 68.
46. Lemarchand, Burundi.
47. Lemarchand, ‘The Burundi Genocide’.
48. Ngaruko and Nkurunziza, ‘An Economic Interpretation of Conflict in Burundi’, 376.
49. Lemarchand, ‘The Burundi Genocide’, 330.
50. Chrétien and Straus, The Great Lakes of Africa, 320.
51. World Bank, MDRP Final Report.
52. Birantamije, cited in Grauvogel, ‘Burundi After the 2015 Elections’, 10.
53. Gilligan et al., ‘Reintegrating Rebels into Civilian Life’.
54. Peterson, ‘A Beacon for Central Africa’.
55. Grauvogel, ‘Burundi after the 2015 Elections’.
56. Reyntjens, ‘Institutional Engineering’.
57. Richards, No Peace, No War, 12.
58. Vigh, Navigating Terrains of War, 22.
59. Geertz, ‘Deep Hanging Out’.
60. van der Merwe and Smith, ‘Ex-Combatants as Peacebuilders’; Author interview with Mats Utas, Associate Professor in Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 23 October 2017.
61. Uvin, ‘Ex-Combatants in Burundi’.
62. Kaplan and Nussio, ‘Explaining Recidivism of Ex-Combatants in Colombia’, 23.
63. Richards, ‘New War’, 5.
64. Ibid., 4.
65. Clausewitz, On War.
66. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action.
67. Clubb, ‘“From Terrorists to Peacekeepers”’.