Transforming West African militia networks for postwar recovery

Abstract

Conventional analyses and policy prescriptions for postwar societies in West Africa typically conflate wartime networks with continued violence and criminal economic activities. However, while posing real problems, these networks also are potential vehicles for economic transformation. As evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone shows, some of these networks show signs of developing commercial activities outside old political patronage networks based in the national capital. They provide avenues for ex-combatants to gain direct access to economic opportunities in defiance of the control previously exercised by local political insiders. Alongside this unexpected development lies the risk that foreign-sponsored reform programs unintentionally strengthen centrally organized insider networks that are, to many wartime combatants, avenues of privilege and exploitation. The analysis presented here provides a contrast to the view that the survival of wartime associations of combatants is purely negative in its effects on society and the economy. It suggests that appropriate reform strategies should take into account the potential for some of these associations of ex-combatants to develop as more purely business operations and should seek ways to integrate them into the formal economy.

Citation

Reno, W. (2010), "Transforming West African militia networks for postwar recovery", Berg Harpviken, K. (Ed.) Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflicts (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-149. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-6310(2010)0000027009