In the 1960s, only 10% of peace agreements included some element of political-military accommodation – namely, military integration. From Burundi to Bosnia to Zimbabwe, that number had increased to over 50% by the 2000s. However, relatively little is understood about this dimension of power-sharing often utilized during war-to-peace transitions. Through an examination of the case of South Sudan between 2006 and 2013, this book explores why countries undergoing transitions from war to peace decide to integrate armed groups into a statutory security framework. This book details how integration contributed to short-term stability in South Sudan, allowing the government to overcome wartime factionalism and consolidate political-military power prior to the referendum on self-determination in 2011. It also examines how the integration process in South Sudan was flawed by its open-ended nature and lack of coordination with efforts to right-size the military and transform the broader defense sector, and how this led the military to fragment during periods of heightened political competition. Furthermore, the book explains why integration ultimately failed in South Sudan, and identifies the wider lessons that could be applied to current or future war-to-peace transitions. This book will be of great interest to students of war and conflict studies, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, African security issues, and International Relations in general, as well as to practitioners.

This book explores the conditions under which non-state armed groups (NSAGs) participate in post-war security and political governance. The text offers a comprehensive approach to post-war security transition processes based on five years of participatory research with local experts and representatives of former non-state armed groups. It analyses the successes and limits of peace negotiations, demobilisation, arms management, political or security sector integration, socio-economic reintegration and state reform from the direct point of view of conflict stakeholders who have been central participants in ongoing and past peacebuilding processes. Challenging common perceptions of ex-combatants as "spoilers" or "passive recipients of aid", the various contributors examine the post-war transitions of these individuals from state challengers to peacebuilding agents. The book concludes on a cross-country comparative analysis of the main research findings and the ways in which they may facilitate a participatory, inclusive and gender-sensitive peacebuilding strategy. Post-War Security Transitions will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, security governance, war and conflict studies, political violence and IR in general.

While disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR) have become integral statebuilding tools in post-conflict states, the existing empirical literature examining their relationship has focused on supply-side considerations related to the programming of both processes. In practice, though, DDR and SSR are implemented in the wider context of war-to-peace transitions where the state is attempting to establish a monopoly over the use of force and legitimize itself in the eyes of domestic and international communities. This paper therefore assumes that to identify opportunities and constraints for establishing closer practical linkages between DDR and SSR it is important to take the local politics into consideration. It examines two past externally driven peacebuilding interventions in West Africa, namely Liberia and Sierra Leone, featuring cases in which the central state had essentially fragmented or collapsed. Through this comparative analysis, the paper aims to provide a stepping-stone for future studies examining demand-side considerations of DDR and SSR in post-conflict contexts.

Negotiating a peaceful end to civil wars, which often includes an attempt to bring together former rival military or insurgent factions into a new national army, has been a frequent goal of conflict resolution practitioners since the Cold War. In practice, however, very little is known about what works, and what doesn’t work, in bringing together former opponents to build a lasting peace. Contributors to this volume assess why some civil wars result in successful military integration while others dissolve into further strife, factionalism, and even renewed civil war. Eleven cases are studied in detail—Sudan, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Rwanda, the Philippines, South Africa, Mozambique, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi—while other chapters compare military integration with corporate mergers and discuss some of the hidden costs and risks of merging military forces. New Armies from Old fills a serious gap in our understanding of civil wars, their possible resolution, and how to promote lasting peace, and will be of interest to scholars and students of conflict resolution, international affairs, and peace and security studies.

World Bank Discussion Paper No. 331. With the assistance of Emilio Mondo, Taimi Sitari, and Tadesse A. Woldu. Provides a detailed analysis of the intricate nature of the political, economic, and sociocultural issues that arise during the transition from war to peace in Ethiopia, Namibia, and Uganda. These countries offer a unique range of conditions and program models, as well as a variety of successes and failures from which to learn. A recently released overview, The Transition from War to Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (Stock no. 13581; ISBN 0-8213-3581-2), is based on these country studies and a synthesis of reports of demobilization and reintegration programs in several other countries.

Zimbabwe's guerrilla veterans have burst into the international media as the storm troopers in Mugabe's new war of economic liberation. In this book, Norma Kriger gives the unfolding contemporary drama a historical background, and shows continuities between the present and past. Between 1980 and 1987, guerrilla veterans and the ruling party colluded with and manipulated each other to build power and privilege in the army, police, bureaucracy and among workers. Both relied chiefly on violence and appeals to their participation in the anti-colonial liberation war as they sought to vanquish their then political opponents. Today, violence and a liberation war discourse continue to be salient as Mugabe's party and its guerrilla veterans struggle to maintain power through land invasions and purges of a new political opposition. This study gives a critical review of guerrilla programs and the war-to-peace transitions literatures, thus changing the way we view post-conflict societies.

This book explains how facilitative mediators, those without material leverage, contribute to progress in peace negotiations. While existing theories of mediation have offered suggestions about what a mediator should get parties to do to reach an agreement, the puzzle that has remained is: how does a mediator get parties to do what is prescribed? The book argues that a communication perspective is key to understanding facilitative mediation and that framing is the main mechanism by which facilitative mediation functions. Based on an empirical analysis of the United Nations mediation in El Salvador between 1990 and 1992, the work breaks new ground by uncovering three underlying mechanisms that explain how a mediator can get their framing adopted by the negotiating parties, thereby advancing the negotiations. The book offers a novel theory of facilitative mediation as framing and an innovative methodological approach that focuses on negotiation impasses to study the process of how negotiations progress. Practitioners will also appreciate the framework for thinking about when and how framing and reframing can be used to increase mediation’s effectiveness as a tool for ending armed conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, negotiation, Latin American politics, and International Relations, as well as practitioners.