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Title: | 'Getting in, Getting Out': Militia Membership and Prospects for Re-Integration in Post-War Liberia |
Authors: | Boas, Morten Hatloy, Anne |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
Volume: | 46 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | March |
Pages: | 33-55 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Liberia |
Subjects: | veterans urban youth militias motivation Military, Defense and Arms Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Miscellaneous (i.e. Demography, Refugees, Sports) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/30224873 |
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. The data were collected in November 2005, interviewing 491 ex-combatants in Monrovia. 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 T. Mkandawire's (2002) uprooted urban youths or I. 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 suggests that disarmament, demobilization, reintegration and rehabilitation approaches are in need of re-thinking that links them more directly to social cohesion and societal security. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |