Ex-Combatant Reintegration in the Great Lakes Region: Processes & Mechanisms, Trajectories & Paradoxes

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Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, & Education - Centre for Peace Studies

Ex-Combatant Reintegration in the Great Lakes Region

Processes & Mechanisms, Trajectories & Paradoxes

—

Randolph Wallace Rhea

A dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor – January 2016

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Ex-Combatant Reintegration in the Great Lakes Region:

Processes & Mechanisms, Trajectories & Paradoxes

Randolph Wallace Rhea

Submitted for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor January 2016

University of Tromsø

Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, & Education

Centre for Peace Studies

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… by now I’m fed up with packing my baggage, walking and running, carrying my arms and armour, marching in formation, standing guard, and fighting.

Now that we’ve reached the sea, I want to put all this hard work behind me and sail the rest of the way. I’d like to arrive in Greece flat on my back, like

Odysseus.

- Xenophon

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks is due to the staff of the World Bank’s Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP). This doctoral thesis would not exist without the TDRP’s support in the form of access to datasets, facilitation of field research, and the continued guidance from numerous experts throughout the research process. I am especially indebted to Aki Stavrou for giving me the initial opportunity to work with the TDRP in South Sudan, and then to subsequently center my doctoral research around the TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset. Likewise, I am indebted to Qinyu Cao (Sabrina) for her monumental effort in

synchronizing and merging previous GLR country datasets, and serving as a consistent source of nuanced critique during the initial phases of data analysis. I am especially indebted to Anthony Finn, who through his guidance in the field and consistent effort to make himself available to share his experience and insights in a frank and critical manner, has influenced many of the core ideas in this doctoral thesis. All the internal and external reviewers whose comments have helped to shape the analysis in the original report on which this doctoral thesis is based deserve mention as well.

I am thankful to all the staff and students at Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) at the University of Tromsø (UiT) for providing a stimulating and supportive environment in which to work over the last few years. I am especially indebted to Percy Oware for his assistance in conceptualizing the structure of this doctoral thesis, and to Lodve Svare for his deep engagement and discussions surrounding the meta-theoretical material in this doctoral thesis – it has been good to have a critical realist in the house!

All the members of the International Research Group on Reintegration (IRGR) have been a source of continued inspiration and encouragement. I am indebted to Tone Bleie for her continued support, and the numerous opportunities she has brought to me for learning and collaboration throughout this doctoral research. Desmond Molloy also deserves special mention for his enthusiastic engagement and encouragement – even with my most abstract or controversial ideas.

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Of course, special thanks is due to my two supervisors, Peter Stuart Robinson and Stina Torjesen. Both have played an essential role in supporting me throughout the research processes. Their voices together have served as a consistent source of encouragement, grounding, guidance, and critique.

Lastly, this doctoral thesis would not be possible without the love and support of my friends and family. Thanks is due to my parents, siblings, and extended family who tolerate me living far away from them to pursue my scholarly and leisurely passions, and have supported me without waver. Most of all, I am forever indebted to my girlfriend Liselott who has drawn from a seemingly bottomless well of selflessness and patience while supporting me over the last years.

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Abstract

Since the early 1990’s, the Great Lakes Region (GLR) has been devastated by a wave of interconnected interstate, intrastate, and local conflicts involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers in dozens of armed groups. An important part of the international community’s approach to peacebuilding in the region has involved the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of armed groups. Because of the transnational nature of many armed groups in the GLR, a regional approach to DDR has been adopted. The World Banks Multi- Country Reintegration Program (MDRP) and Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP) have been key institutions involved in facilitating national efforts for the demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants across the region.

While DDR has evolved considerably since 1990’s, the reintegration component remains among the cruxes. One reason for the enduring challenge of reintegration is that while technical approaches to the delivery of reintegration programming have become ever more refined, the nature of the social and economic reintegration processes that reintegration programs aim to affect in individual ex-combatants have remained largely unproblematized.

The mixed track record of DDR programs in the GLR, and around the world, speaks to the idea that without a deep understanding of the endogenous social and economic processes of reintegration, reintegration programs might risk becoming detached from the outcomes they mean to affect.

Through the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of reintegration programming in the GLR, the TDRP has collected vast amounts of social and economic survey data on ex-combatants and community members. Previously, this data has been used to evaluate the extent of

reintegration programming impacts in specific country contexts. However, in 2013 the TDRP merged a series of survey datasets that include the experiences of nearly 10,000 ex-

combatants and community members from across five GLR countries (Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, DRC, and RoC) captured between 2010 and 2012. The merged TDRP-GLR

Reintegration Dataset opens the door to the systematic comparative analysis of the social and economic reintegration processes that individual ex-combatants navigate across GLR.

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In examining the social and economic processes through which individual ex-combatants across the GLR reintegrate, this doctoral thesis explores numerous issues. We investigate the deep set of social and economic disadvantages that ex-combatants carry with them as they attempt to reintegrate, and the ways in which disadvantages can influence the economic livelihood strategies that ex-combatants pursue as a part of reintegration. In turn, we reflect on the relationship of economic processes to a slower moving set of social processes that revolve around negotiating identity and building social networks. Further, we consider the profound role of gender in shaping individual ex-combatants’ social and economic

reintegration experiences.

Based on this set of insights about some of the underlying social and economic processes that ex-combatants across the GLR navigate during reintegration, we move to reflect more broadly about the direct implications for our understanding of the potential role of

reintegration programming in shaping post-conflict societies, and how we understand the successes and failures of reintegration programming through M&E.

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List of Abbreviations & Acronyms

ADF Allied Democratic Forces

ADFL Alliance of Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Congo-Zaire CNDP National Congress for the Defense of the People

COIN Counterinsurgency

CVE Countering Violent Extremism

DDR Disarmament, Demobilization, & Reintegration DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

DREAM Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration, & Arms Management FDLR Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda

GLR Great Lakes Region

ICRS Information, Counseling, & Referral System

IDDRS Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization, & Reintegration Standards IDP Internally Displaced Person

ODA Official Development Assistance

OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development LRA Lord’s Resistance Army

M23 March 23^rd Militia

MCTF Multi-Country Trust Fund

MDRP Multi-Country Reintegration Program M&E Monitoring & Evaluation

MLC Movement for the Liberation of the Congo

MONUC United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo MONUSCO United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo

NDDRC National Disarmament, Demobilization, & Reintegration Commission NRA National Resistance Army

QCA Qualitative Comparative Analysis RCD Rally for Congolese Democracy

RCD-G Rally for Congolese Democracy – Goma Faction RoC Republic of Congo

RPF Rwandan Patriotic Force SSR Security Sector Reform

TDRP Transitional Demobilization & Reintegration Program

UN United Nations

UNDP United Nations Development Project

UNDPKO United Nations Department for Peacekeeping Operations UNOMUR United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda - Rwanda UNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda

WNBF West Nile Bank Front

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List of Figures & Tables

Figure 2.1 Social Capital Conceptual Map 53

Figure 2.2 Bridging Social Capital and State Functionality 54

Figure 2.3 Horizontal and Vertical Social Capital 57

Figure 2.4 Livelihood Components 64

Figure 2.5 Sustainable Livelihoods Framework 65

Figure 3.1 Structure of GLR Reintegration M&E Surveys 101

Figure 4.1 Human-Capital Based Livelihood Strategies 135

Figure 4.2 Natural-Capital Based Livelihood Strategies 139

Figure 4.3 Combined Human & Natural-Capital Based Livelihood Strategies 141

Figure 4.4 Social Capital Dynamics 148

Figure 4.5 Social Identity Dynamics 151

Figure 4.6 Integrated Reintegration Processes 160

Figure 4.7 Taxonomy of Country-Level Reintegration Trajectories 174

Figure 4.8 Ideal Reintegration Trajectory 175

Figure 4.9 Problematic Reintegration Trajectories 177

Figure 4.10 Mixed-Success Reintegration Trajectories 180

Table 0.1 Raw GLR Sample Contributions 213

Table 1 Ex-Combatants - GLR Country Demographics 220

Table 2 Ex-Combatant Age at Mobilization 222

Table 3 Ex-Combatant Average Years Spent with Armed Group 225

Table 4 Ex-Combatant Marital Status at Three Time Points 228

Table 5 Ex-Combatant Literacy 231

Table 6 Ex-Combatant Educational Achievement Levels 232

Table 7 Ex-Combatants’ Participation in Skills & Vocational Training 234

Table 8 Ex-combatant Household Membership 241

Table 9 Ex-Combatant Housing Ownership 242

Table 10 Ex-Combatant Change in Access to Arable Land 245

Table 11 Ex-combatant Household Hunger 247

Table 12 Ex-Combatant Economic Status at Three Time Points 253 Table 13 Ex-Combatant Perception of Relative Difficulty of Finding Employment 256 Table 14 Ex-combatant Stigma / Distrust as a Barrier to Gaining Employment 256

Table 15 Ex-combatant Status Contributes to Unemployment 259

Table 16 Ex-Combatant Sole Breadwinner Status 262

Table 17 Ex-Combatant Sole Breadwinner Meeting Monthly Expenses 263 Table 18 Ex-Combatant Sole Breadwinner Average Monthly Income Surpluses and

Deficits 264

Table 19 Ex-Combatant Average Non-Sole Breadwinner Household Income

Contributions 264

Table 20 Ex-Combatant Economic Association Membership 267

Table 21 Ex-Combatant Economic Association Members Breakdown 268

Table 22 Ex-Combatant Frequency of Familial Contact 273

Table 23 Ex-Combatant Desired Level of Familial Contact 274

Table 24 Ex-Combatant Friend Group Demographics Summary 275

Table 25 Ex-Combatant Perceptions of Change in Trust 277

Table 26 Ex-Combatant Perceptions of Community Diversity 279

Table 27 Ex-Combatant Empowerment (Power, Ability, Control) 281 Table 28 Ex-Combatant Perception of Individual Impact on Community 283 Table 29 Ex-Combatant Frequency of Public Gathering to Express Concerns 284

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Table 30 Ex-Combatant Social Change Ladder – One Year Ago and Today 287

Table 31 Community Members - GLR Country Demographics 309

Table 32 Community Member Marital Status 310

Table 33 Community Member Literacy 313

Table 34 Community Member Educational Achievement Levels 314

Table 35 Community Member Household Membership 321

Table 36 Community Member Housing Ownership 322

Table 37 Community Member Explanations for Lack of Livestock 325

Table 38 Community Member Household Hunger 326

Table 39 Community Member Economic Status at Three Time Points 331 Table 40 Non-Economically Active Community Member Outlook on Employment 337 Table 41 Community Member Sole Household Breadwinner Proportions 339 Table 42 Community Member Sole Breadwinner Meeting Monthly Expenses 339 Table 43 Community Member Sole Breadwinner Average Monthly Income

Shortages & Surpluses 341

Table 44 Community Member Average Non-Sole Breadwinner Household Income

Contribution 341

Table 45 Community Member Economic Association Membership 343

Table 46 Community Member Economic Association Members Breakdown 345

Table 47 Community Member Frequency of Familial Contact 351

Table 48 Community Member Desired Level of Familial Contact 351

Table 49 Community Member Friend Group Demographics 353

Table 50 Community Member Perceptions of Change in Trust 355

Table 51 Community Member Perception of Community Diversity 357 Table 52 GLR Community Member Empowerment (Power, Ability, and Control) 360 Table 53 Community Member Perception of Individual Impact on Community 361 Table 54 Community Member Frequency of Public Gathering to Express Concerns 363

Table 55 Community Member Cross-Category Social Change 365

Table 56 Community Member Information Sources on Reintegration 372

Table 57 Community Member Fear of Ex-Combatants 373

Table 58 Community Member Specific Fears of Ex-Combatants in Uganda 375

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1 Ex-Combatant Reintegration in the Great Lakes Region

1.1 Introduction

Since the early 1990s a series of interconnected interstate and intrastate conflicts have devastated the Great Lakes Region (GLR) of Africa. Estimates indicate that between 5.5 and 8.5 millions of lives have been lost and countless millions more have been displaced as they have fled insecurity and violence. Today the GLR is in the process of ongoing stabilization and recovery after the close of nearly two decades of widespread violence. One of the many challenges in peacebuilding in the region has been how to deal with the hundreds of

thousands of soldiers that have taken part in violent conflicts across the region as a part of national armed forces, rebel groups, local militias, or criminal organizations, and which must now reintegrate into a peacetime way of life.

As the violent conflicts across the GLR have come to a close, ex-combatants have been imbued with a range of deep social and economic disadvantages. Having spent much of their adult, or even adolescent, lives in armed groups, ex-combatants may have no experience of formal education; no skills beyond those acquired as a soldier; no economic track record on which to draw; and no secure access to food, housing, income, or land. Given that the GLR includes among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, the disadvantages that ex-combatants face may represent a struggle for basic survival. Because many armed groups across the GLR have regularly abused civilian populations through violence, looting, forced recruitment, and the widespread use of sexual violence, ex-combatants may be

perceived unwelcome perpetrators in the communities in which they attempt to reintegrate.

As such, ex-combatants may face enormous social barriers to building trust and acceptance in familial and communal networks, to the extent that ex-combatants have such networks, and struggle with the interpersonal challenges of reshaping identity and adapting to

peacetime social norms. Indeed, in many ways the “re” in reintegration is misleading. Many ex-combatants in the GLR are not returning to familiar peacetime way of life, but rather building it anew as they struggle to integrate into community settings that may be entirely alien to them.

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The experiences of many faltered peace processes support the that idea that if ex-

combatants in the GLR cannot overcome the challenges of reintegrating into society, then armed groups may continue to represent their best, if not only, sources of survival, mobility, and empowerment – ultimately threatening peace in the region. Thus, the international community’s approach to peacebuilding and development in the GLR has prioritized the needs of ex-combatants through a body of post-conflict security and development

programming called Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR). Disarmament involves the collection and destruction of weapons. Demobilization involves breaking command and control structures through formally discharging and dispersing ex-

combatants. Reintegration programming, however, can take many forms, and is focused on longer-term support to ex-combatants that is meant to help compensate for their social and economic disadvantages as they navigate reintegration processes.

Since the early 1990s, reintegration programming as a part of DDR has been a boom industry of sorts. In the GLR alone easily over a half billion dollars have flowed from international organizations and donor countries into funding reintegration programming. Key

international actors involved in facilitating reintegration programming are the United Nations and, especially in the GLR, the World Bank. However, despite two and half decades of investment in DDR, reintegration programming remains a highly contested concept. There is enduring disagreement about the appropriate and feasible objectives for reintegration programming, which manifests further as a lack of uniform standards for evaluating programming successes and failures. Institutional and scholarly literature on reintegration has tended to reflect on the technical and logistical challenges of programming

implementation, while substantive knowledge about ex-combatants themselves, and the social and economic reintegration processes they navigate, has remained relatively scant. At times, reintegration programming has risked becoming disconnected from the impacts it means to affect.

Indeed, fundamental questions about what it means to reintegrate, at the ontological and epistemological levels, remain unaddressed. By what social and economic processes do ex- combatants themselves reintegrate? By what mechanisms are these processes governed?

How we answer these types of questions about what it means to reintegrate can directly

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shape what we look at, how we go about looking at it, and what we see when we study ex- combatant reintegration. This in itself would seem enough to justify a deep engagement with the fundamental mental nature of what it means to reintegrate. However, considering the inherent normative dimensions embedded in the study of ex-combatant reintegration, a moral imperative may exist. Because all research on ex-combatant reintegration may play some potential role in informing the act of executing DDR programming, in turn affecting the lives of countless individual ex-combatants – their families and communities, engaging with deep questions about what it means for individuals to reintegrate may be essential.

Exploring the fundamental nature of reintegration processes in the GLR, and the ways in which our conceptual and methodological approaches shape our understandings of those very processes, and in turn the space for intervening in them through reintegration programming, is the task undertaken in this doctoral thesis. In this way, we aspire to

Skocpol’s (2003) “doubly engaged social science”. That is, while we are focused on explaining causal processes and mechanisms behind ex-combatant reintegration in the GLR, we are simultaneously enmeshed in debates about the optimal conceptual and methodological approaches for the empirical investigation of those specific processes and mechanisms, and their implications for the normative intervention in society that DDR represents.

Since 2010 the World Bank’s Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP) has played an important role in the most recent wave of reintegration programming in the GLR. The TDRP’s main functions have been as a funding conduit, technical advisor to national DDR commissions, and as responsible for the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of

reintegration programming. Through its role in the M&E of reintegration programming, the TDRP has carried out numerous survey-based studies of ex-combatants’ experiences of social and economic reintegration. The data from these surveys has served as the basis for impact assessments of national reintegration programs in individual countries across the GLR between 2010 and 2012. In 2013 the TDRP merged a selection of survey data on just under 10,000 ex-combatants and community members from Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi,

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Republic of Congo (RoC) into a single dataset. The resulting TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset represents what is likely the single most expansive source of survey-based data on the reintegration experiences of ex-combatants in any

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setting, both in terms of the number of individuals surveyed and the range of social and economic data captured. The merging of previous survey data was largely made possible by the fact that a fairly consistent set of survey tools were used across the five GLR countries.

Thus, the TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset also represents what is likely the first source of systematically comparable data on ex-combatants’ reintegration experiences from across different country settings, opening the possibility for systematic comparative analysis.

In 2013 the TDRP commissioned a study (Rhea 2014) to build on previous impact evaluations from the five GLR countries through a comparative analysis utilizing the TDRP-GLR

Reintegration dataset. The overall aim of the study was to help consolidate knowledge and understanding of reintegration processes across a broad range of contexts across the GLR.

This doctoral thesis is a direct extension of that initial study, and seeks to continue to capitalize on the inherent opportunities for comparative analysis of social and economic processes that exist in the TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset. This doctoral thesis builds on the previous study through anchoring itself in an eclectic selection of theoretical and methodological traditions from across the social sciences and goes on to explore a diverse range of issues related to how reintegration processes occur across the GLR, and the space that exists for reintegration programming to affect these processes. We explore the legacies of mobilization and wartime experiences that ex-combatants carry with them as they

attempt to reintegrate, and the ways in which these legacies live on – influencing the distinct livelihood strategies that ex-combatants pursue as a part of economic reintegration

processes. In turn, we explore the relationship of economic processes to a slower moving set of social processes - revolving around negotiating identity and building social networks.

Further, we consider the profound role of gender in shaping reintegration processes across social and economic dimensions. For better or worse, DDR is an intervention in post-conflict societies. It is impossible to run DDR programs without some guiding sense of what allows them to have positive or negative effects on those societies. Thus, we reflect more broadly about the direct implications that this broad range of social and economic processes hold for the potential role of reintegration programming in shaping post-conflict societies - in turn how we understand the successes and failures of reintegration programming through M&E.

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5 1.1.1 Thesis Structure

This doctoral thesis is organized in three main parts. Part I includes this introductory chapter (§1), as well as chapters that outline the conceptual (§2) and methodological (§3)

approaches utilized. Part II includes the analysis chapter (§4) as well as the summary and conclusions (§5). Part III consists of a short introduction (§6) and two detailed data presentation annexes for ex-combatants (§7) and community members (§8). The analysis presented in Part II, which for readability is mostly free of numeric figures and tables, can be thought of as a meta-analysis of the detailed data presentation in Part III. Thus, parts I and II together can be read as a freestanding work, though a serious reading will benefit

significantly from an engagement with the detailed data presentation in Part III.

This chapter, Chapter 1, includes a select introduction to the contemporary history of armed conflicts in the GLR – emphasizing their interconnected and transnational nature. In

addition, we present a brief introduction to the evolution of DDR programs since the end of the cold war as embedded within the broader evolution of approaches to international peacebuilding and development. These two parts are used as the context to develop the point of departure for this doctoral thesis – an inquiry into the social and economic

processes that individual ex-combatants navigate as they return to communities across the GLR.

Chapter 2 details the conceptual approach utilized in this doctoral thesis in three main sections. First, we unpack the concept of reintegration and frame it as a complex social and economic process. With this framing in place we go on to, secondly, conceptualize social reintegration processes within frameworks of social identity theory and social capital theory.

Thirdly, we conceptualize the economic side of reintegration processes within the

sustainable livelihoods framework. These three distinct theoretical traditions share a range of complementary ideas, which in synthesis form the overall conceptual approach in this doctoral thesis.

Chapter 3 outlines the methodological approach utilized in this doctoral thesis in three main sections. Frist, in an effort to take the framing of reintegration as a complex process

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seriously, we root our methodological approach in a complex-realist meta-theoretical framework. Secondly, with this framework in place we turn a critical eye to the primary data source in this doctoral thesis. We explain the origins of the TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset and explore the perspectives embedded within it. Thirdly, with this critical evaluation of our primary data source in place, we go on to reframe the dataset within a comparative case- study framework. Within this framework, we outline the specific methodological tool of process tracing as especially attuned to exploring the underlying processes & mechanisms of ex-combatant reintegration in the GLR.

Chapter 4 outlines the core analysis and findings of this doctoral thesis, and is comprised of two main parts. The first part focuses on the processes and mechanisms through which individual ex-combatant across the GLR reintegrate. We explore the legacies of mobilization and wartime experiences, the distinct strategies ex-combatants take as a part of economic reintegration processes, the importance of social networks and identity for social

reintegration processes and their interaction with economic reintegration processes, and the special gender dynamics in social and economic reintegration processes. Ultimately, we outline an integrated model of all these interrelated dimensions of reintegration processes.

The second part of Chapter 4 moves to situate our understanding of individual-level reintegration processes within a broader conceptualization of country-level reintegration processes in the GLR. We devote special attention to DRC as a unique case in the GLR that highlights a paradox for understanding reintegration processes at the country-level. To address these paradoxes we develop the concept of country-level reintegration trajectories.

We elaborate a taxonomy of possible country-level trajectories and explore the implications for our understanding of reintegration programming successes and failures, as well as the related idea of the “scope of possible programming impacts”.

Chapter 5 is includes a summary of the context, conceptual and methodological approaches, and findings of this doctoral thesis. As a conclusion, the analytical contributions to

reintegration research and implications for future reintegration research and programming are discussed.

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Chapter 6 is a brief introduction to the technical components of the TDRP-GRL Reintegration data presentation in the annexes. The annexes themselves, Chapters 7 and 8, include

detailed data on ex-combatants and community members from the five GLR countries on demographics; housing, land, livestock, and food security; economic issues; social capital;

and DDR experiences. These three chapters (6-8), are taken almost directly an earlier report published by the World Bank’s TDRP (Rhea 2014).

1.2 A Brief Introduction to Conflict in the Great Lakes Region

The GLR countries have experienced a complex set of multifaceted and interlocking wars in the post-colonial era. The scale of devastation to the region in terms of loss of life and displacement of people has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Though the region as a whole has seen considerable improvements in stability over the last decade, pockets of local

conflict persist – most notably in Eastern DRC. Even in the large parts of the GLR where some form of peace has emerged, millions of individuals have lost their livelihoods, trapping them in poverty. Indeed, when combined with the retarding effects of war on development in the region more broadly, as many as 56 million people in the GLR remain in extreme poverty (UNDP 2014). Throughout the course of the conflicts in the GLR dozens of armed groups have participated organized violence. At various stages of peacebuilding in the GLR most of these armed groups have participated in some form of DDR programming - including those individual ex-combatants in the TDRP-GLR Reintegration Dataset on which this doctoral thesis is based.

To better understand the origins of armed groups in the GLR and to give historical context to the analysis in this doctoral thesis, this section offers an outline of the main conflicts since the 1990s. What is offered is a select review that attempts to highlight the broad cleavages in the GLR, and their sources. A comprehensive examination of the many interrelated wars in the GLR is a weighty task well beyond the bounds of this doctoral thesis. This section

proceeds in two subsections. First (§1.2.1), we outline the colonial-era distortion and entrenchment of ethno-cultural power structures and their disastrous consequences of for the post-colonial era in the GLR. The epicenter of this narrative revolves around the Hutu-

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Tutsi divide and its role in the Rwandan Revolution, Rwandan Civil War, Rwandan Genocide, as well as the First and Second Congo Wars. The warped colonial-era antagonisms between the Hutu and the Tutsi remain relevant for understanding ongoing violence in Eastern DRC today. In the second subsection (§1.2.2), we very briefly outline the emergence of the World Bank’s MDRP and TDRP.

1.2.1 Distorted Power, Entrenched Cleavages, and Endless War

Throughout the 1800’s, industrial development in European countries created demands for natural resources, e.g. raw minerals, far beyond their ability to produce at home. In order to fuel continual industrial development, and also enabled by industrialization itself, European powers became focused on consolidating their interests in the African continent, and elsewhere around the word, through conquest and colony at a level not previously possible.

The era of the European colonization of Africa approached its zenith in the Berlin Conference of 1885, where European leaders met to agree on the premises of African colonization - in effect Balkanizing the continent. In the GLR, what is current day Burundi and Rwanda went to Germany, DRC to Belgium (first as a private territory of King Leopold II, which Belgium would take over in 1906), Uganda to Britain, and RoC to France. However, as a part of the treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI, Germany would cede its colonies in the GLR, and Burundi and Rwanda were transferred to Belgian rule. Millions of people divided among hundreds of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups were now forced together under imposed colonial power structures.

In the European discourse, colonialism was framed as a “necessary humanitarian

intervention conceived to save, guide, and civilize the Africans” (Omeje 2013: 26). Mbembe (2001) argues that the “fiction of compassion and benevolence” legitimated the destruction of local political, social, cultural, religious, economic, and legal structures and replacement with the colonizers own “enlightened” values - thereby lifting Africans into modernity. In the most critical historical interpretations, the discourse of humanitarian intervention and enlightenment concealed that the sole agenda of colonialism was resource extraction and economic exploitation for the benefit of European colonial powers (Rodney 1972). Solid minerals and cash crops were especially important, and what little infrastructure colonizers

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developed, e.g. railroads, was almost exclusively intended to facilitate the evacuation of these resources to Europe – a fact that plays a continuing role in the economic development of the region today. To get at resources colonial powers appropriated land and displaced untold numbers of people. Forced labor and migration was commonplace. Others found themselves displaced and landless, having no other option but to begin a desperate search for wage labor from colonial powers under newly imposed, and brutally enforced, market economies. In the GLR, an important example of this dynamic is the relocation of huge populations from Rwanda into Eastern DRC to work in the vast mines and plantations that fed European industrialization. Over several generations, Rwandans in Eastern DRC would eventually outnumber the local Congolese populations, but have continued to face

contested access to land, resources, and power structures in the region toady (Jourdan 2005).

Through the arbitrary drawing of boorders, the large-scale displacement of people, and the privileging of certain groups over others in an effort to establish control over the region, the entire geo-demographic power landscape of the region was distorted (Kagame 2006). Even as the colonial era came to a close, European powers were unwilling to grant independence to their colonies without first entrenching power structures that could serve their continued interests in the region. Omeje (2013) argues that rather than transforming the power

structures in the post-colonial era, the local elites that came to power have simply

maintained the iniquitous colonial-era power structures, many of which have pre-colonial origins, and turned them to their own favor – effectively replacing the colonizers, and perpetuating the societal divisions that were distorted, amplified, and ingrained under colonialism. No place are these distorted divisions so evident as in the Hutu – Tutsi divide in Rwanda and Burundi, which would ultimately come to affect the entire region.

The populations of Rwanda and Burundi are roughly 80% Hutu, 15% Tutsi, and 2% Twa. The Hutu are Bantu speaking horticulturalists that are thought to originally have migrated to present day Rwanda and Burundi, where the Pygmoid hunter-gatherer Twa were already settled, around 3000 years ago from coastal areas of present day Cameroon. While today it is generally accepted that the Tutsi originated from the Nilotic-Luo speaking groups of present day South Sudan, due to their generally taller stature and more slender noses

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colonialists originally thought the pastoralist Tutsi to be of Ethiopid or Hamid decent. This classification would have serious consequences. Prior to colonization the Hutu and Tutsi labels were somewhat permeable. In the feudal-era, elites labeled themselves as Tutsi, a term that literally described a wealthy person, and all those that they conquered as Hutu.

Further, over time the Hutu and Tutsi peoples become so interrelated through marriage that the terms Hutu and Tutsi had become less indicative of ancestral ethnic identities, but of socio-economic classes that individuals could move between, even if they often fell across ancestral lines (Omeje 2013). De Forges (2004: 34) summarizes the sources of colonial (mis)understandings of these three groups well:

“The Belgians believed that Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa were three distinct, long- existent and internally coherent blocks of people, the local representatives of three major population groups, the Ethiopid, Bantu and Pygmoid. Unclear whether these were races, tribes, or language groups, the Europeans were nonetheless certain that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu and the Hutu were superior to the Twa - just as they knew themselves to be superior to all three.

Because Europeans thought that the Tutsi looked more like themselves than did other Rwandans, they found it reasonable to suppose them closer to Europeans in the evolutionary hierarchy and hence closer to them in ability. Believing the Tutsi to be more capable, they found it logical for the Tutsi to rule Hutu and Twa just as it was reasonable for Europeans to rule Africans.”

With this understanding, the Belgian colonial power institutionalized privileges for the Tutsi in terms of access to education, public service, positions in police and military forces, private business, and Christian missions. Ultimately, the Tutsi monarchy (prior to colonization numerous kingdoms spanned the region) was recognized by the Belgian colonial powers as a regent to its own authority, solidifying Tutsi minority’s economic and political dominance over the majority Hutu who, with the Twa, were largely relegated to physical labor. With this, the Belgian colonial powers had transformed what was previously a somewhat flexible socio-economic status into an entrenched ethnic division with deep social and economic imbalances (Omeje 2013). As independence approached by the middle of the 20^th century, a large and dissatisfied Hutu middle class had emerged. In 1959 the marginalized Hutu

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majority rose up and the Rwanda Revolution began. Around 20,000 Tutsis were killed and another 200,000 fled across the borders into Uganda and Eastern DRC (Cohen 2007). The Tutsi monarchy was abolished and a Hutu government was elected at independence in 1962.

In what would become a recurring motif in the GLR, power had come into the hands of a group (in this case the Hutu) that had been marginalized through power structures entrenched during the colonial era, but instead of dismantling the iniquitous power structures that had denigrated them in the past, once having attained power they instead reversed and intensified those very suppressive power structures against those that had previously lorded over them (in this case the Tutsi) (Omeje 2013).

Throughout the 1960s and 70s the Hutu’s continued vendetta against the Tutsi in Rwanda fueled ongoing displacement as Tutsis fled the country into exile. While Rwanda had maintained a “veneer of stability” though the total exclusion of Tutsi, in Burundi a continuous chain of coups and counter-coups saw repeated reversals of power and

suppression between the Hutu and Tutsi (Omeje 2013). In 1990 the Rwandan civil war began when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a militia of exiled Rwandan Tutsi in Uganda,

invaded Rwanda with the goal overthrowing the Hutu government that refused to recognize their right to return after nearly 30 years of exile since the Rwandan revolution. With the help of French and Belgian troops the Hutu government of Rwanda managed to hold back the RPF. In 1993 a ceasefire was reached when the Arusha Accords, which allowed exiles to return and mandated a coalition government with power sharing between Hutu and Tutsi, were signed and the first UN peacekeeping missions to the region (UNOMUR and UNAMIR) were deployed.

UN peacekeeping missions tried to maintain the ceasefire while preparations were made for the Arusha Accords to come into effect. Meanwhile the Hutu government of Rwanda

intensified it persecution of Tutsi and dissident Hutu within the country. Daley (2006) argues that this was driven by the Hutu elite’s unwillingness to cede power in the face of the

upcoming accords. The Hutu government began an expanding propaganda campaign as well as training youth militias, including the now infamous Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, to terrorize Tutsi populations. In 1994 the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both Hutu, were assassinated when unknown assailants shot down their plane. This is generally

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acknowledged as the spark that ignited the Rwandan Genocide. An interim government was formed in Rwanda, but the Hutu-led military assumed de facto power. The full machinery of the Rwandan state was mobilized to plan and execute the genocide, and within a hundred days between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and dissident Hutu were slaughtered (Cohen 2007). The genocide ended when the Tutsi RPF fought its way to Kigali and overthrew the Hutu government. Fearing reprisals, over a million Hutu refugees, including those Militias that executed the genocide, fled across the border into Eastern DRC. While Burundi avoided the “genocidal implosion” of Rwanda, it became embroiled in civil war for the next decade, with over a dozen armed groups in the mix (Omeje 2013: 41).

The Hutu exodus into Eastern DRC would lead to the First Congo War. The very Hutu militias that had perpetrated the Rwandan genocide now used refugee camps in Eastern DRC to wage a two-fronted war. First, Hutu militias carried out cross-border attacks on the RPF government of Rwanda. Second, the Hutu militias attacked Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan descent who had been living in Eastern DRC since they were moved there in the colonial era to work in mines and plantations. Congolese Tutsi of Rwanda descent were still not

recognized as citizens of DRC and their presence was still highly contested, despite the fact that they had been there for a century and represented the majority of the population in the region. Thus, Hutu militias carried out local attacks with impunity from DRC’s government.

As a response, in 1996 Rwanda and Uganda backed the Alliance of Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) militia as the Congolese face of a campaign to protect Congolese Tutsi of Rwandan descent by driving back Hutu militias and overthrowing their implicit support from DRC’s long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Uganda’s involvement in the campaign in DRC was a result of the deep allegiance between the RPF and the Ugandan Government. During the Ugandan Bush War, the Tutsi’s that had been exiled to Uganda during the Rwandan Revolution fought alongside the Ugandan NRA in their own, eventually successful, efforts to take control of Uganda. Tutsis exiled to Uganda, now experiences in combat, would become the RPF that returned to Rwanda to take power the end of the genocide.

The seven-month campaign in DRC ended in Mobutu’s ousting and replacement by the ADFL leader Laurent Kabila. In the process, around 800,000 people were killed and hundreds of

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thousands were displaced. True to the trend in the region, as the new head of DRC Kabila did not dismantle the power structures that had supported Mobutu’s 30 years of dictatorship, but rather turned them in his favor and accelerated the persecution of those seen as threats to his absolute rule (Van Reybrouck 2014). Kabila quickly fell out with Rwandan and Ugandan leaders, whose lingering presence he saw as undermining his authority, and ordered their militaries to leave the DRC immediately. The Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan descent in Eastern DRC, now left defenseless, were especially alarmed by the withdraw of Rwandan and Ugandan forces. In 1998 Rwanda and Uganda would support Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan descent, most notably the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) militia, to begin a war to overthrow their previous ally Kabila. The Second Congo War, also known as the African World War, had now begun. Over the next five years Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Sudan, Libya, and Chad would all become directly or indirectly involved in supporting the Kabila regime’s fight against the Rwanda-Uganda coalition. The 1999 Lukasa Agreement slowed the large-scale mobilization of state military forces against each other and mandated the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC) and the disarmament,

demobilization, and reintegration of all non-state armed groups. At this point the World Bank’s MDRP would come to play a central role in DDR in the region. However, none of the non-state armed groups that were to be demobilized had partaken in the peace process, and without their consent large-scale violence between militias continued even though their state sponsors had mostly pulled away (Autesserre 2010). In 2003 the largest remaining non- state armed groups fighting in DRC, most notably the Rwandan backed RCD and the

Ugandan backed MLC, signed the Sun City Agreement, ostensibly ending the war. Death toll estimates for the Second Congo War range as high as 5.4 million (Coghlan et al 2006).

While the war was “over”, more focused local violence continued across Eastern DRC. In the mainstream discourse, this ongoing violence was a product of elites, from all sides of the Second Congo War, manipulating local proxy groups to maintain their continued interests in the region – most notably in the extremely profitable illegal resource extraction business.

Eastern DRC is among the richest sources of gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper, and coltan in the world. Throughout the first and second Congo Wars illegal mining provided the financial means to keep armed groups going, and at times became an end in itself. Indeed, criminal motives have played some role for all sides involved in the Congo wars. This dynamic

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continued in the post-war conflict landscape and was exacerbated by the growing presence of multinational mining corporations competing for access to the same mineral resources - sometimes buying concessions from non-state armed groups. It was thought that once the manipulative elites could be coopted into national power structures and the state could be strengthened enough to represent a credible authority in the “Hobbesian” east of the country, the remaining local armed groups would dissolve and be easily handled as a part of DDR or SSR programs (Autesserre 2009).

Autesserre (2010) argues, counter to the predominant narrative, that continuing violence in Eastern DRC revolves around complex local disputes over land access, mineral resources, traditional tribal authority, taxation, and social status. Local armed groups continue to fight to accomplish their own local agendas, which previously had been subsumed into the broader national and regional conflicts. Local armed groups are not mere puppets of distant elites, but rather actively ally themselves with elites who hold complementary agendas.

Autesserre (2010) calls this the “joint production of violence”. An important part of the local conflicts that continue to drive violence in Eastern DRC revolves around continued

antagonisms against Congolese Tutsis of Rwanda descent. The contested status of the Congolese Tutsi of Rwandan descent’s right to access resources and power in the region has enticed some communities to allow Rwandan Hutu militias (most notably the FDLR) to remain in the region (ibid). In turn, this has motivated Tutsi militia factions to remain in the region (most notably the RCD-G, a faction of the original RCD, from which the CNDP would faction off from, and in turn which M23 which would faction off from) as well as continued tampering from Rwanda and Uganda in the region. Ultimately, these continued local issues have occasionally threatened the macro-level peace between DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda.

However, in 2010 the UN peacekeeping force MONUC was given an updated mandate to reflect the de-escalation of national-level tensions and renamed MONUSCO. Likewise, the World Banks MDRP was replaced with the smaller TDRP program. Despite the improved relationship between the GLR states, over a decade after the end of the Second Congo War devastating local violence continues in Eastern DRC (North and South Kivu, and Ituri

provinces) along the border with Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi.

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While Rwanda and Burundi have been largely stable, seeing minimal internal conflict since 2000, this not the case in other parts of the GLR. Uganda has fought its own war rooted in entrenched colonial-era power inequalities between the Acholi peoples of Northern Uganda and the Bantu of the South. In the late 1980’s, parallel to the NRA Bush War, Acholi militias formed to challenge the colonially favored Bantu. The most notable armed group is the now infamous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who have destabilized large parts of the GLR as they have moved throughout Uganda, Eastern DRC, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In the wake of the LRA conflict other armed groups like the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) have emerged with their own unique agendas – to some extent as a response to the Ugandan government’s own abusive tactics in the region and ultimate inability to protect them from the terror of the LRA (Borzello 2007). While the situation within Uganda is largely stable today, the spillover of armed groups into Eastern DRC has continued to play a role in the ongoing violence and instability in the region.

The Republic of Congo (RoC) is geographically separated from the overlapping conflicts along the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC; and thus has a somewhat separate narrative. Nonetheless, similar motifs of colonial suppression and unequal access to power have shaped the contemporary conflict landscape in RoC. After gaining independence from France in 1960, RoC established a single-party scientific socialist regime that lasted until the end of the Cold War in 1992. In the new pluralist political landscape, ethnic leaders formed their own militias to vie for power. RoC experience two civil wars between 1993 and 1999, the second of which saw proxy backing from the two sides of the ongoing Angolan civil war to the south, both of whom were also simultaneously backing proxies in the Second Congo War in neighboring DRC. In the early 2000s contested presidential elections would see violence from the Ninja militia in the Pool district (including in the capital Brazzaville).

Though direct clashes with the government ceased in 2003, the Ninjas continued to engage in criminal activities until eventually disarming and demobilizing in 2008.

The conflicts that have plagued the GLR since 1990 have killed millions and displaced millions more. The disastrous consequences for the region include: the destruction of infrastructure and resources, the retardation of economic development, the ruining of the environment, the spreading of disease, the militarization of society, the reshaping of cultures, the

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disruption of families, and the inflicting of untold traumas including the pervasive use of child abduction and sexual violence. The scale of damage to the region is nothing short of cataclysmic. Even as the GLR continues to stabilize today, the catastrophic legacies of war will live on through generations to come.

1.2.2 A Regional Approach to Disarmament, Demobilization, & Reintegration

Due to the interrelated nature of the conflicts across the GLR, and the transnational nature of many of the armed groups involved, it was decided that international peacebuilding initiatives in the GLR should take a regional approach that could engage with the

interconnected social, political, and economic issues that spanned the region. The World Bank’s Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program (MDRP) is an example of exactly this. Starting in 2000, backed by a 500 million dollar multi-country trust fund (MCTF), the MDRP supported demobilization and reintegration programming for around 250,000 combatants from dozens of armed groups across the Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, DRC, and RoC (as well as Angola and the Central African Republic). The MDRP came at exactly the era when DDR as a whole was beginning the transition towards second-generation approaches anchored in an expanding development agenda (discussed in §1.3.1).

In 2010, as a part of the general de-escalation of national conflicts in the GLR, the

Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP) succeeded the much larger MDRP. The TDRP has taken on a facilitating role in supporting nationally owned DDR commissions in demobilizing and reintegrating remaining armed groups as the region continues to stabilize. In this regard, the TDRP’s main functions are as a funding conduit, a provider of technical expertise, and as responsible for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of demobilization and reintegration activities. Indeed, under the TDRP an infrastructure UN and World Bank actors, partner agencies and organizations, and local DDR commissions has emerged. In comparison to the MDRP, the TDRP is mandated until the end of 2015 and is backed by a relatively small 33.7 million dollar trust fund.

The MDRP and TDRP have ostensibly contributed much to the overall security in the GLR through the enormous task of dealing with soldiers in the aftermath of conflict. In addition,

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the TDRP has built a strong knowledge base on the dynamics of ex-combatant reintegration in the GLR through M&E of demobilization and reintegration programming. However, there remains much to be learned about the activity of disarmament, demobilization, and

reintegration programming and, perhaps more importantly, the complex processes through which individual ex-combatants who are supported by that programing go through as they reintegrate into society. To develop this point we now turn to a discussion of the evolution of DDR programming within broader approaches to international peacebuilding and

development.

1.3 DDR & International Peacebuilding

The act of disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating soldiers has existed, at one level or another, for as long as there has been war. In order to better understand the nature of contemporary DDR programs, it is important that we take a moment to briefly outline their evolution over the last 25 years. During this time, DDR programs have coevolved within the broader discourses of international peacebuilding and development. This section proceeds in two subsections. First (§1.3.1), we outline the broad strokes of the evolution DDR since the end of the Cold War. While in general DDR has seen an ever-expanding set of mandates within the shifting context of international peacebuilding and development, certain areas have remained largely unproblematized. In the second sub-section (§1.3.2), we argue that the underlying social and economic processes that the reintegration component of DDR programs purport to affect in individual ex-combatants almost always remain implicit and unoperationalized - we call this the program - process divide. We use the conceptual distinction between reintegration programs and processes as a point of departure for this doctoral thesis going forward.

1.3.1 The Evolution of DDR

Since the wind down of the Cold War at the end of the 1980’s there have been no fewer than 60 separate DDR programs undertaken across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. In the vast majority of these cases, DDR programs have been carried out as