New Armies from Old: Merging Competing Military Forces after Civil Wars

16 So What?

Chapter 16 sO whAt? roy licklider So what does all this add up to? The cases are all interesting, but we are not historians; we are interested in them for what they may tell us about current and future situations . Each is obviously different, but do any common elements emerge? Perhaps the most counterintuitive conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that it is in fact possible under a variety of circumstances to integrate personnel from competing military groups after civil wars. Obviously the outcomes varied a lot, but none of the integrations failed because of violence within integrated forces. In many instances there was intermittent, low-level violence, and some cases there were close calls, but the overall record is quite positive. Forces were successfully integrated in countries where there was intensive international involvement, like Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sierra Leone, and where there was not, like South Africa and Zimbabwe. They were created when integration was linked to negotiated settlements, as in Burundi and Sudan, and when it followed a military victory, as in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. They were created where military integration had substantial local political support, such as South Africa and Mozambique, and where it did not, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Gaub (2011, 133–37) attributes this to the military culture, which stresses hierarchy. Zirker, Danopoulos, and Simpson (2008) argue that militaries in developing countries may develop an identity so strong that it is equivalent to a separate ethnicity; something like this seems to have happened in some of these cases. A second generalization is that the military capabilities of the new forces were often irrelevant to their successes. New armies in South Africa and Mozambique were weaker than their predecessors; those in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lebanon were weaker than potential adversaries. But all seem to have had some impact with the example of integration that they set for their societies—although, as Krebs points out in chapter 15, these conclusions are based on anecdotes rather than precise evidence from processtracing exercises. This was true where there were no obvious external enemies (South Africa and Mozambique) and where there were (Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina). I expected that the most extreme test of the new militaries would be fighting other members of groups that had been integrated. The new armies were asked to do this in Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and the Philippines, and in all these cases it seems to have strengthened rather than weakened the army’s cohesion. The general point may be that integration is facilitated when it has an immediate task. A substantial portion of the new forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo collapsed AlterNAtIve PersPeCtIves 260 almost immediately when asked to do this, but this unfortunate group had so many problems that it is hard to isolate the importance of this particular issue. At the same time that the militaries were being integrated, their numbers were usually also being drastically reduced as a result of the end of the civil war, the lack of an obvious security threat (in many cases), and a desire to get a peace dividend to bolster the economy. This meant that, in the end, relatively few people were employed (one reason there was not much support for the causal model about employing former fighters), but this may sometimes have allowed more selectivity in recruiting (Gaub 2011, 129–33), which presumably increased the chances of success. wheN wAs mIlItAry INtegrAtION AttemPted? Military integration is often linked to negotiated settlements of civil wars. But this project shows that it can also be employed after military victories. The obvious case is Rwanda, where a group that had been victims of a genocide won the civil war (itself an unprecedented event) and then created a new military with a majority from the losing ethnic group, including former genocideiares. In Sierra Leone the British intervention essentially created a military victory, and in the Philippines the MNLF seems to have been mostly defeated before it agreed to be integrated into the Philippine army. All these cases look like successes to one degree or another. This may just be because civil wars that end in military victories are less likely to resume than those that end in negotiated settlements (Licklider 1995; Toft 2010), although that issue remains open to debate. whAt strAtegIes were mOst effeCtIve? Former adversaries were integrated as individuals rather than units in nine of the eleven cases in this volume; only...