Hostname: page-component-6dbcb7884d-4tctr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T00:08:39.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2008

Morten Bøås  and
Anne Hatløy
Morten Bøås*
Affiliation:
Fafo – Institute for Applied International Studies, P.O. Box 2947 Tøyen, 0608 Oslo, Norway
Anne Hatløy*
Affiliation:
Fafo – Institute for Applied International Studies, P.O. Box 2947 Tøyen, 0608 Oslo, Norway
*
Emails: morten.boas@fafo.no
anne.hatloy@fafo.no
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 33 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Funding from the United States Institute of Peace (grant SG-157-04F), the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (grant QME1064107) and the Norwegian Research Council (grant 174582/S30) is gratefully acknowledged. Comments from Kathleen M. Jennings and three anonymous reviewers are also highly appreciated.

References

REFERENCES

Abdullah, I. 1998. ‘Bush path to destruction: the origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF/SL)’, Journal of Modern African Studies 36, 2: 203–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azevedo, W. 1989. ‘Tribe and chiefdom on the windward coast’, Liberian Studies Journal 14, 2: 90–116.Google Scholar
Brown, D. 1982. ‘On the category “civilised” in Liberia and elsewhere’, Journal of Modern African Studies 20, 2: 287–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. 1997. ‘Liberia – the hellbound heart? Regime breakdown and the deconstruction of society’, Alternatives 22, 1: 353–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. 2001. ‘Liberia and Sierra Leone – dead ringers? The logic of neopatrimonial rule’, Third World Quarterly 22, 5: 697–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. 2005. ‘The Liberian civil war: new war/old war?’ Global Society 19, 1: 73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. & Dunn, K. C. eds. 2007. African Guerrillas: raging against the machine. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. & Hatløy, A.. 2006a. ‘Living in a material world: children and youth in alluvial diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone’. Oslo: Fafo, Fafo-report 515.Google Scholar
Bøås, M. & Hatløy, A.. 2006b. ‘After the ‘storm’: economic activities among returning youths – the case of Voinjama’, Oslo: Fafo, Fafo-report 523.Google Scholar
Clapham, C. 1982. ‘The politics of failure: clientelism, political instability and national integration in Liberia and Sierra Leone’, in Clapham, C. ed. Private Patronage and Public Power. London: Pinter, 76–92.Google Scholar
Daily Observer, Monrovia. 2006. ‘Riots rock Ganta’, 15.5.2006, 1–2.Google Scholar
Dufka, C. 2005. Youth, Poverty and Blood: the lethal legacy of West Africa's regional warriors. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Ellis, S. 1995. ‘Liberia 1989–1994: a study of ethnic and spiritual violence’, Africa Affairs 94, 375: 165–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, S. 1999. The Mask of Anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Gberie, L. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa: the RUF and the destruction of Sierra Leone, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gifford, P. 1993. Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatløy, A. & Huser, A.. 2005. ‘Identification of street children: characteristics of street children in Bamako and Accra’. Oslo: Fafo, Fafo-report 474.Google Scholar
Heckathorn, D. D., Broadgead, R. S. & Sergeyev, B.. 2001. ‘A methodology for reducing respondent duplication and impersonation in samples of hidden populations’, Journal of Drug Use 31, 2: 543–64.Google Scholar
Honwana, A. 2005. ‘Innocent & guilty: child soldiers as interstitial and tactical agents’, in Honwana, A. & De Boeck, F. eds. Makers and Breakers: children and youth in postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 31–52.Google Scholar
Honwana, A. 2006. Child Soldiers in Africa. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huband, M. 1998. The Liberian Civil War. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2004. How to Fight, How to Kill: child soldiers in Liberia. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Højbjerg, C. K. 2005. ‘Masked violence: ritual action and the perception of violence in an Upper Guinea ethnic conflict’, in Kastfelt, N. ed. Religion and African Civil Wars. London: Hurst, 147–71.Google Scholar
Jennings, K. M. 2007. ‘The struggle to satisfy: DDR through the eyes of ex-combatants in Liberia’, International Peacekeeping 14, 2: 204–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaldor, M. 2001. New and Old Wars: organised violence in a global era. Oxford: Polity.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, T. 2002. ‘The terrible toll of post-colonial “rebel movements” in Africa: towards an explanation of the violence against the peasantry’, Journal of Modern African Studies 40, 2: 181–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moran, M. H. 2006. Liberia: the violence of democracy. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilisation, Reintegration and Rehabilitation (NCDRR). 2004. DDRR Consolidated Report. Monrovia: NCDDRR.Google Scholar
Paes, W. 2005. ‘Eyewitness: the challenges of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration in Liberia’, International Peacekeeping 12, 2: 253–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reno, W. 1998. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reno, W. 2007. ‘Liberia: the LURDS of the new church’, in Bøås, M. & Dunn, K. C., African Guerrillas 69–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, P., Archibald, S., Bruce, B., Modad, W., Mulbah, E., Varpilah, T. & Vincent, J.. 2005. Community Cohesion in Liberia: a post-war rapid social assessment. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Salganik, M. J. & Heckathorn, D. D.. 2004. ‘Sampling and estimation in hidden populations using respondent-driven sampling’, Sociological Methodology 34, 4: 193–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, A. 2005. Beyond Plunder: toward democratic governance in Liberia. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations (UN). 2004. A More Secure World: our shared responsibility. New York: UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.Google Scholar
United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA). 2005. Youth Unemployment and Regional Insecurity in West Africa. Dakar: UNOWA.Google Scholar
Utas, M. 2003. Sweet Battlefields: youth and the Liberian civil war. Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press, Dissertation in Cultural Anthropology.Google Scholar