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The ex-combatant ID card:peacebuilding and bureaucraticidentity in LiberiaJairo Munivea

a Peace, Risk and Violence Unit, Danish Institute for InternationalStudies, DenmarkPublished online: 11 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Jairo Munive (2014) The ex-combatant ID card: peacebuilding and bureaucraticidentity in Liberia, Peacebuilding, 2:3, 336-350, DOI: 10.1080/21647259.2014.887618

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The ex-combatant ID card: peacebuilding and bureaucratic identity inLiberia

Jairo Munive*

Peace, Risk and Violence Unit, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark

(Received 24 June 2013; final version received 23 October 2013)

Disarmament demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes have the specificobjective of facilitating the transition of combatants into civilian life. Paramount totheir functioning is the certification of combatants by means of bureaucraticdocumentation: the ex-combatant identification card (ID). In the Liberian case, the ex-combatant category came to embrace a wider segment of the population, thusundermining the basic principle pivotal to all DDR programmes that a dichotomy existsbetween civilians and combatants. The article argues that documents, as exemplified bythe ID card, are not simply bureaucratic instruments used by organisations in charge ofpeacebuilding, but are also constitutive of knowledge, practices and subjectivitiesthemselves. Absolutely essential in the construction of the ex-combatant subject, the IDcard was at the core of bureaucratic practices for managing this group after the end ofthe war. The Liberian case is of wider relevance and importance, since the techniquesfor screening and registration developed there modelled other contemporary DDRprocesses in Africa.

Keywords: demobilisation; reintegration; labelling; bureaucracy; ex-combatants

Introduction

The Liberian civil war, which claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and

displaced a million others internally or into refugee camps in neighbouring countries,

ended in 2003 with the signing of a peace agreement. The agreement called for an

immediate, total and permanent cessation of hostilities, the deployment of an international

stabilisation force acting under the auspices of Chapter VII of the United Nation’s (UN)

Charter, and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of the warring

factions’ combatants. The DDR programme focused on demobilising both the

commanders and the rank and file of the three major warring factions: the Government

of Liberia Armed Forces (GOL/National Patriotic Front of Liberia), the Liberian United

for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia

(MODEL). Representatives from all three factions were included in the national

transitional government of Liberia (NTGL), established to lead the country. More than

100,000 participants went through disarmament, nearly three times the figure that the UN

Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) originally foresaw.

DDR programmes introduced in the aftermath of armed conflict constitute in general

terms a range of initiatives with the specific objective of facilitating the transition of

combatants to civilian life. As outlined in the UN’s Integrated DDR Standards,

disarmament is the collection, management and/or destruction of arms, while

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

*Email: jari@diis.dk

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demobilisation is the controlled discharge of members of armed groups from military to

civilian status, and reintegration is the long-term process of integrating ex-combatants

economically, politically and socially into communities.1 Central to DDR programmes is

the verification and certification of combatants by means of bureaucratic documentation:

the ex-combatant ID card. During the DDR process the ex-combatant ID card is a key

mechanism for distinguishing civilians from combatants and individuals associated with

the fighting forces.

In this article the argument is twofold. First that the ID card issued through the

Liberian DDR programme was the main mechanism and dominant emblem of the formal

dimension of the peacekeeping bureaucracy/technocracy seeking to pacify and stabilise

Liberia in the post-war years. Technocracy is defined here as the systems and behaviours

that prioritise bureaucratic rationality. In its ideal type, it is directed from above, pursues

the imposition of a single policy paradigm and pays little attention to context.2 The ID card

was the central technology for the co-ordination, control, identification and management

of ex-combatants after the end of the civil war. As a document, it carries and contains

affective energies that are put to use in specific webs of social relations and that link the

subject (the ex-combatant/ID card-holder) to the institutional structure of the DDR

programme. ID cards structure and help control the lives of the ex-combatants while at the

same time enabling them to participate in the intervention. The process is, of course, not

free from frictions and intentions to resist by ex-combatants. Second, the DDR ID card as a

document is absolutely essential in the construction of the ex-combatant subject.

Documents are central to how bureaucratic objects are enacted in practice.3 In other words,

documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organisations like the UN but rather

constitutive of knowledge, practices, outcomes and subjectivities themselves.4 The post-

war phase ‘combatanthood’, in other words, is mediated by the ID card, which signifies a

need for improvement, training, empowerment and a decent job. On the other hand, for the

ex-combatants the ID card signifies an entitlement to specific benefits and a potential

material avenue for progress and personal development.

The scale, complexity and scope of DDR work has grown through the years and it now

constitutes a key domain in peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts by the United

Nations, the World Bank, the European Union and bilateral donors that co-fund such

programmes. DDR is a vivid example of what Mac Ginty calls the ‘technocratisation of

peacebuilding’.5 This article does not criticise the DDR programmes, but it does point out

that they perpetuate a particular approach to peacebuilding. It highlights the ‘bureaucratic

imperative’ of DDR and argues that the bureaucratic procedures that characterise them

have largely remained under-studied.

1United Nations, Integrated Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration Standards (IDDRS)(New York: UN, 2006).2Miguel Angel Centeno, ‘The New Leviathan: The Dynamics and Limits of Technocracy’, Theoryand Society 22, no. 3 (1993): 307–35.3Michael Callon, ‘Writing and (Re)writing Devices as Tools for Managing Complexity’, inComplexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices, ed. John Law and Annemarie Mol (Durham:Duke University Press, 2002), 191–217.4Matthew Hull, ‘Documents and Bureaucracy’, Annual Review of Anthropology no. 41 (2012):251–67.5Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Routine Peace: Technocracy and Peacebuilding’, Cooperation and Conflict 47,no. 3 (2012): 287–308.

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There are many aspects to the DDR process that non-experts would rarely stop

to consider. Screening, verification and registration of ex-combatants are some of

these. The phrase ‘technocratic and bureaucratic steps in the DDR process’ evokes

an image of a straightforward, routine, neutral and managerial process.6 This is far

from the case. The process of DDR registration, I argue, has profound implications,

both for institutional actors and for the DDR participants’ bottom–up politics of

identity making. The Liberian case is of paramount importance, since the techniques

of screening and registration developed there modelled other contemporary DDR

processes in Africa.

In developing the argument, the article draws upon ethnographic fieldwork undertaken

in Liberia between 2006 and 2010. The author gathered data through life story interviews

and focus group discussions with over 100 beneficiaries of the DDR programme receiving

reintegration training. Security advisers and officials from UNMIL, UN agencies,

international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) implementing the

programme and the National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilita-

tion and Reintegration (NCDDRR) were also interviewed.7 The article is divided into

three sections. The first section is a theoretical introduction to the processes of ‘labelling’,

which is central to peacekeeping interventions and policies in the aftermath of war and the

process of enacting ex-combatant subjects. The second section describes in detail the

technological and bureaucratic utilisation of the DDR ID cards. This section argues that

the DDR documents are essential for the co-ordination, control, identification and

management of ex-combatants and second, in the construction of the post-conflict label

‘ex-combatant’. Documents, in this case the ID cards, mediate between schemes of

classification and particular people, constructing these individuals as a group of ex-

combatants. In the final section I draw the conclusions of the argument: peacebuilding is

tied to the creation of bureaucratic identities and documents are a centrepiece of this

process.

Labelling ex-combatants

A special note on the category ‘ex-combatant’ is required here. The term refers to

individuals (both children and adults) who have participated in the UN-run DDR process.

The process in Liberia, because it utilised a criterion that was rather lax, set itself up for

large-scale fraud. Over 100,000 people went through disarmament, nearly three times the

figure that UNMIL had expected, suggesting that the ‘ex-combatant’ category

encompasses a much larger population of people than fighters and individuals associated

with the fighting forces. I use the term ‘bureaucratic ex-combatants’ to describe those who

entered the programme and now possess a DDR ID card, but in reality never fought

during the civil war. This mobilisation of additional individuals into the DDR process had

the unintended side-effect of blurring the categories ‘civilian’ and ‘combatant’ and the

result was that thousands of young Liberians were converted into ‘bureaucratic

combatants’ – that is, young people who never fought in the war but achieved

classification as ‘ex-combatants’ in order to access skills training and education

6World Bank Multi-Country Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme, ‘Screening,Verification and Registration: Vital Elements in Demobilisation’, In Focus no. 2 (2008).7All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of the interviewees are withheldby mutual agreement.

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entitlements.8 In this sense, the label ‘ex-combatant’ – just like the label ‘refugee’ – is

about forming and reforming a bureaucratic identity.9

In December 2003, the Liberia DDR programme had the Disarmament (D1) form

ready to collect personal combatant data including weapons information, but the

monitoring and information system was not in place. With political demands

overriding technical concerns, the process started on 7 December 2003. Armed men,

presumably militia fighters, were provided with yellow duplicate copies of the D1

form which, in the ‘ideal’ situation of temporary cantonment, was meant as a

temporary receipt whilst waiting for the official demobilisation card. In Liberia many

of these fighters received the form and returned to their dwelling places. In the

absence of photographic/biometric evidence, and in a city awash with weapons in

the immediate aftermath of war, the yellow forms were sold or given to relatives,

and those with several weapons ‘redisarmed’ and collected more yellow forms with

relative ease.10

In the case of the Liberian DDR programme, rights and entitlements are tied to the

label ‘ex-combatant’. Labelling is a rationing and allocation activity, and thus essentially a

political choice. It is a mode of distribution and redistribution that reproduces existing

categories or gives birth to new outcomes by producing new forms of mobilisation and

voice, which eventually become new constituencies for changing the classification

discourse. The public domain is one of institutionalised power within a wider framework

of political economy, in which policies (through deliberation or default) are constructed to

allocate resources and opportunities under conditions of overall scarcity.11

Labelling – the process of classifying needs and entitlements – is an inextricable

aspect of the implementation and outcome of peacebuilding activities. The interesting

question is how the label is perceived and used by the youngsters who went through the

DDR programme in Liberia. Most participants in the programme actively sought to enter

it, and therefore to acquire the label vis-a-vis the identification card and the ensuing

entitlements; thus in this case the label was only partially imposed. The central proposition

is that the process of labelling and categorisation is a relationship of power, in that the

labels used by some sets of actors to classify others are more easily imposed – upon a

policy area, upon a situation, upon people – than labels created and offered by others.

Who would question the existence of thousands of ex-combatants in Liberia? Essentially

the power of labelling and categorisation is what establishes a contact point and a dialogue

between those who are trying to make claims and those with the power to distribute

matching resources and services.12 Is it at all possible to think of a UN-backed

8For a detailed account on the concept of the bureaucratic ex-combatants see Jairo Munive and StineJakobsen, ‘Revisiting DDR in Liberia: Exploring the Power, Agency and Interests of Local andInternational Actors in the “Making” and “Unmaking” of Combatants’, Conflict, Security &Development 12, no. 4 (2012): 359–85.9Roger Zetter, ‘Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity’, Journal ofRefugee Studies 4, no. 1 (1991): 39–62.10United Nations Development Programme’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery,Monitoring and Evaluation for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Programmes(Geneva: UNDP, BCPR, 2009).11Geoff Wood, ‘Labels, Welfare Regimes and Intermediation: Contesting Formal Power’, in ThePower of Labelling: Why It Matters, ed. Joy Moncrieffe and Rosalind Eyben (London: Earthscan,2007), 17–32.12Ibid., 24.

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peacebuilding intervention without the category of ex-combatants? And this is an issue of

utmost importance: a key enabling factor behind the growing peacebuilding technocracy

and its standard templates like DDR is tied to the framing of the problem: thousands of

restless armed youth legitimise the technocratic response.

Labelling is connected to how interventions transform the subject. The process of

labelling is twofold: linking and de-linking subjects.13 De-linking occurs in the process of

transforming individuals into a policy target with one principal label, in the present case

‘ex-combatant’, which provides the insight into their whole human condition. In this way,

the individual is transformed into an object, into a ‘case’, and de-linked from his or her

own story. Wood notes that ‘the greater the separation of the case from the story, the more

the tendency away from self-evidence in terms of label applicability, and thus this

separation is an index of power for the possessor of the case’.14 Thus, successful labelling

may link the subject closely to the penetrative authority of government. The ex-combatant

ID card provides this link.

On the other hand, never before have DDRprogrammes been so expansive in their

scope and areas of competency as they are now.15 Contemporary DDR programmes are

concerned with an ever expanding field of interventions regarding access to land,

employment and livelihoods, to name just a few. Concerns about the reintegration of ex-

combatants are linked to perceptions of the post-war political and economic context.

Analysts consider the Liberian state to be fragile, unable to ensure land rights and order, or

to provide economic opportunities for its population.16 Ex-combatants are discursively

framed by government, local people, international NGOs and the UN mission as the very

source and incarnation of danger and destabilisation. In their ‘idleness’ or

‘unemployment’ they represent the criminal and subversive, even if engaged in legitimate

and legal, but unregulated, economic activities.17 The perception of ex-combatants as the

central threat to post-conflict stability in Liberia is based on a discourse that casts them as

surplus, a special group in need of targeted assistance.18 This depends on a depiction of

combatants’ participation in the war that presents them only as perpetrators of violence, a

group of people accustomed to socialisation by means of the gun.19 The war, the

argument goes, caused a rupture and a violent break in the combatants’ lives, that is, a

break with previous livelihoods, as well as a separation from civilian structures and

local communities. The ex-combatant is beyond the pale, living on the margins of

society; his or her reintegration is imperative for post-conflict citizenship. Proper

13Cf. Geoff Wood, ed., The Politics of Development Policy Labelling: Essays in Honour of BernardSchaffer (London: Sage, 1985).14Wood, ‘Labels, Welfare Regimes’, 22.15Antonio Giustozzi, ed., Post-Conflict Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration: BringingState-Building Back (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012).16Martin Sola, ‘Liberia: Security Challenges, Development Fundamentals’, Third World Quarterly32, no. 7 (2011): 1217–32.17Jairo Munive, ‘The Army of “Unemployed” Young People’, Young. Nordic Journal of YouthResearch 18, no. 3 (2010): 321–38.18UN Secretary General, Sixteenth Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United NationsMission in Liberia, 2008, S/2008/183.19See also Jaremey McMullin, ‘Integration or Separation? The Stigmatisation of Ex-Combatantsafter War’, Review of International Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 385–414; Munive ‘The Army of“Unemployed”’, 32–8.

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employment is seen as the long-term antidote to breaking the malicious military chain of

command.20

In sum, DDR programmes are best understood as a governmental activity that

identifies key objects of regulation (ex-combatants) and to do so, relies upon a body of

experts and authorities (mostly international and a few national bureaucrats) who are in

charge of the surveillance task and of monitoring the behaviour of the objects – including,

importantly, producing knowledge about these objects to feed into strategies of

stabilisation, control and individual progress. Extending Jabri’s argument on peace-

building as governmentality, it is argued here that the DDR as a concrete intervention

exemplifies peacebuilding as the government of populations.21 It is in order to explore

these processes that I analyse the set of practices, processes and effects related to the

labelling of ex-combatants vis-a-vis the ID cards.

What is significant from the point of view of this article is that peacebuilding is based

on the objectification and subjectification of ‘ex-combatants’, and second, that the

programme’s ID card mediates between these schemes of classification and individuals.

From an ethnographic point of view, this raises many questions and doubts about the

validity of post-conflict surveys in Liberia concerning ‘ex-combatant’ reintegration. These

surveys aim to explore who the combatants were, where they came from and their pre-war

experiences. They aim to provide comparisons across armed groups, or with civilians, and

suggest the motivation for joining armed groups. In reality, these surveys were carried out

with participants of the DDR exercise (in other words both civilians and combatants) and

can therefore at best, in my opinion, provide answers only about the motivations of the

kinds of people who joined the DDR programme, and not the much smaller group of

people who actually fought. The existence of what I call bureaucratic ex-combatants has

implications in terms of policy and academic approaches to reintegration.

A caveat is called for here. By labelling, I do not mean stigmatisation (through

narrative or discourse) of ex-combatants as a security threat, neither do I mean their

exclusion, separation or marginalisation.22 My vantage point is that combatants are not so

much excluded or controlled by DDR programmes as constituted and put into action by

their bureaucracy and technocracy. The article argues that the DDR bureaucracy structures

the field of actions of the programme’s participants. Material objects play a decisive role in

the way governance is practised and shaped.23 Peacebuilding governance is a case in point.

In this context, although such things as ID cards, diagrams and forms of monitoring and

evaluation are emphasised in the DDR discourse and template, they tend to appear as inert

and invisible objects. Rather than seeing these as passive material devices, I came to see

20See, for example, United Nations Office for West Africa, Youth Unemployment and RegionalInsecurity in West Africa (Dakar: UNOWA, 2005); Christian Bugnion and others, External Mid-Term Evaluation Report of the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and ReintegrationProgramme in Liberia (Monrovia: UNDP, 2006).21Vivienne Jabri, ‘Peacebuilding, the Local and the International: A Colonial or a PostcolonialRationality?’, Peacebuilding 1, no. 1 (2013): 3–16; Mark Duffield, ‘The Liberal Way ofDevelopment and the Development–Security Impasse: Exploring the Global Life-Chance Divide’,Security Dialogue 41, no. 1 (2010): 153–76.22A narrative or discourse analysis approach to DDR and ex-combatants in Liberia is provided in arecent contribution by McMullin, ‘Integration or Separation?’. The present article complements andenriches this approach.23Bruno Latour, Aramis or the Love of Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1996).

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them as giving DDR practices concrete form. Indeed, DDR comprises assemblages of

discourses and ‘things’ in which material objects, just like the programme’s participants,

play a constitutive role. It is through technologies, rather than discourse, that governmental

rationalities and programmes become capable of deployment.24

The ex-combatant identification card

In 2008 a poster from the NCDDRR and the UN advertised the last phase of DDR for ex-

combatants in Liberia. It was the very last chance to enrol in the programme, it stated. The

poster was ubiquitous in the landscape of the capital city, Monrovia – it was in the ex-

combatants’ residence areas, the so-called ‘ghettos’, near thebeach, downtown and in the

offices of ministers, government institutions and international organisations. The writing

on the poster was in Liberian English and presented two conversations under theheadline

‘This is your last chance to use your DDR ID card’:

Conversation 1, two women:

1–Kimba! Have you heard the news?2–What news?1–They say. If you got your DDR card with your own photo . . . you can go to NCDDRRoffice and apply.2–Apply for what?1–Training! They will train you so that you can be able to work. Ain’t you got your ID card?2–Are you joking?1–I am not joking! . . . I want to learn something so I am going to NCDDRR with my ID cardnow.2–Wait for me!

Conversation 2, two men:

1–Hey Joe, What’s up?2–I am just on my hustle. Doing nothing.1–Did you disarm before?2–Yeah, but I did not have time for training. It was not good money.1–This time if they train you . . . You will be able to get good money.2–So what do you want me do?1–Since you have your ID card go to the NCDDRR office and apply for training. Let me tellyou that this is the last opportunity to use your ID card. If it does not got a hole go to theNCDDRR office and apply for training. That is something for the ex-combatant.2–I am going there! 25

The poster is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it signals the centrality of the ID

card in the DDR programme, as it is mentioned several times. Second, the poster

unambiguously makes the promise of training and the achievement of financial welfare:

‘You will be able to make goodmoney as long as you make use of the ID card and the

entitlements attached to it.’ Third, it signals the importance of the DDR in the public

imagery – ‘Have you heard the news?’

24Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999).25National Commission for Disarmament Demobilisation Rehabilitation and Reintegration, DDRInformation Poster (Monrovia: NCDDRR, 2008).

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Co-ordination, control and (mis)management

During demobilisation at the cantonment sites each participant was registered on a pre-

printed form giving him or her a unique ID number.26 Once the programme participants

had gone through all the registration processes, they were photographed using a digital

camera configured to work with a laptop with the software ID Works. The software

captures the serial number on the disarmament form, the name of the participant and her or

his age. The age determined whether an ID card for an adult or a child (up to the age of 18)

would be issued. UN camera operators at the cantonment sites carried out this activity. The

information gathered at the cantonment sites was then sent to Monrovia, where the

different forms were registered in the central database (i.e. the database from which

payment lists were produced for the UNMIL finance section and payment vouchers

produced for the participants to sign). The ID cards were finally printed and sent with UN

escorts back to the cantonment sites, together with vouchers for the cash payment of ex-

combatants’ so-called Transitional Safety Allowance. When the participant received the

ID card, he or she was declared officially to be an ex-combatant.

The ID cards were central for monitoring the further implementation of DDR activities

and for keeping track of the participants through the stages represented by the four letters

(A, B, C and D) printed at the bottom of the card. The first letter (A) was punched when the

participant was about to leave the cantonment site and had received the first cash

instalment of USD150. The second letter (B) was punched a few weeks or months later,

when the participant received the second payment of USD150. If the ID cardholder

decided to participate in one of the reintegration programmes, the third letter (C) would be

punched. If the participant completed the reintegration programme of her or his choice, the

last letter (D) would be punched. The card would then no longer be of any use within the

programme, though it certainly provided solid proof for many employers and communities

that the person had been ‘rehabilitated’ and ‘reintegrated’.27 Four punched letters thus

proved that the cardholder had fulfilled the programme and achieved reintegration into

society, as the card stated: ‘This is to certify that the holder of this card has gone through

the DDR programme.’With their ID cards in their hands, the DDR participants left the

cantonment sites and were ‘on their own’ until the final Rehabilitation and Reintegration

(RR) phase began. While waiting, some returned to their villages, but many others decided

to remain close to the cantonment sites. In the period from the DD to the RR, the ID cards

were the only ‘links’ that the participants maintained to the programme. The card was by

then the only recognised proof of their status as ex-combatants and the key to accessing

any further assistance, or as one adviser put it: ‘No ex-combatant who is registered with a

26The DDR process is explained in Kathleen Jennings, ‘The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR through theEyes of Ex-Combatants in Liberia’, International Peacekeeping 14, no. 2 (2007): 204–18; JaremeyMcMullin, Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State Challenges of Reintegration (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 197–232; Munive and Jakobsen, ‘Revisiting DDR’; Sukanya Podder,‘From Recruitment to Reintegration Communities and Ex-Combatants in Post-Conflict Liberia,International Peacekeeping 19, no. 2 (2012): 186–202; James Pugel, ‘Measuring Reintegration inLiberia: Assessing the Gap between Outputs and Outcomes’, in Security and Post-ConflictReconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War, ed. Robert Muggah (New York:Routledge, 2009), 70–102.27This was expressed in interview with the chair of the Liberian Chamber of Commerce in Monrovia,November 2006, and in interview with the chair of the Lebanese Business Association in Monrovia,October 2006.

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valid ID card will be left out of the programme.’28 Thus, for the person in charge of the

DDR programme, the ID card was central to keeping track of the participants, while for the

latter the ID cards were proof of their enrolment in the DDR and of their entitlement to

assistance. After the DD phase, there was a remarkable shift in the vocabulary used by

officials, from an emphasis on the combatant/civilian distinction to one on the distinction

between cardholders and non-cardholders. In the words of Moses Jarbo, NCDDRR’s

Executive Director in 2005, ‘there is interaction between the host community, non-

carrying card members and carrying card members. For us, that is commitment and

nationalism.’29

By speaking about ‘non-carrying card members and carrying card members’ of

communities, the chair of the NCDDRR was consciously making the distinction between

combatants and civilians superfluous, since only the document, the card, now had

significance for the DDR programme. The ID cards had acquired a central role. And as at

the beginning of the programme, the DDR now became what Paes calls ‘commercialised’,

since a market for ID cards emerged at the cantonment sites.30 Some sold their ID cards,

while older ex-combatants passed their cards on to sons and daughters or younger

relatives.

In the last phase of the programme (also known as the ‘residual caseload’), the misuse

of ID cards was so widespread that the NCDDRR and the UN had to announce in the local

media that one of the criteria of admission into the reintegration component of

theprogramme was ‘To have your own DDR ID card and [that] your facematches the card’

and ‘You must bring your own valid ID card and apply at the NCDDRR office nearest

you.’31 Thus in post-conflict Liberia the ID card became the key to access reintegration

activities or ‘benefits’. As one participant put it: ‘Without ID cards no benefits: just like if

you don’t have money, you won’t have friends.’32 The DDR’s reintegration phase

officially ended in July 2009, two years later than planned, by which time 98,000 of the

101,495 bureaucratic ex-combatants had benefited from reintegration opportunities

through projects funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) trust

fund and by bilateral and multilateral donors.33

Entitlements and subjectivity

While most Liberians and observers agree that the removal of weapons and demobilisation

of combatants was a necessary step towards establishing security and stability in Liberia,

the reintegration component of the DDR programme has been the subject of heated debate.

Is providing targeted assistance to ex-combatants morally right? Might the dispropor-

tionate targeting of aid to perpetrators more than to the victims cause resentment?34 The

entitlements to assistance given to ex-combatants through DDR were seen by many

28Interview with UNDP policy adviser in Monrovia, November 2006.29UNMIL, Press Brief, January 19, 2005, http://reliefweb.int/report/liberia/liberia-unmil-press-briefing-19-jan-2005 (accessed October 15, 2013).30Wolf-Christian Paes, ‘The Challenges of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration inLiberia’, International Peacekeeping 12, no. 2 (2005): 253–61.31NCDDRR, DDR Information Poster.32Interview with ex-combatant from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia in Whekhpa, June 2007.33Eco Consult, Country Level Evaluation Liberia, Final Evaluation (Monrovia: EuropeanCommission, 2010), 168.34See also McMullin ‘Integration or Separation?’.

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Liberians as a perverse ‘reward’ to perpetrators. A youth project officer from the Young

Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) expressed this view, for instance: ‘Rewarding them

– the ex-combatants? Oh! And not the pacifiers? They [the pacifiers] will engage in future

war, as they know now what to expect.’35 Threats of violence are a recurrent theme in

Liberia in the post-war years, specially in connection with accessing entitlements, so the

quote should be interpreted with caution.36 On the other hand, according to the UN Policy

Adviser in charge of the DDR, a non-targeted approach had been applied with little

success in the reintegration initiatives launched in 1997 after the first phase of the war.37 In

fact, evaluations highlight the non-targeted approach to reintegration as one of the causes

of combatants resuming fighting.38 In the end, it was decided that the Liberian DDR

programme (2003–09) should target both ex-combatants and the wider community in

labour infrastructure programmes.

The implemented reintegration activities focused on equipping ex-combatants with

productive skills and options for employment, which were seen as key to a sustainable

transition to civilian life.39 The rationale was that providing ex-combatants with an entry

point into and a stake in the national economy would foster in them a sense of ownership,

prestige and thus self-esteem, which would support the political process of national

security and recovery.40 The reintegration component of the DDR programme offered

beneficiaries a choice between participation in formal education, agricultural programmes

and vocational training in trades like masonry, carpentry, construction, auto mechanics,

welding, agriculture, tailoring, cosmetology, pastry making and baking, tie and dye and

soap making.41 For those enrolled in formal education, the DDR programme paid school

and training fees for up to three years and a monthly stipend of USD30 for the first

academic year, dropping to USD15 during the second year, and ceasing altogether in

the third year. Vocational training or agricultural programmes lasted from six to nine

months, and participants received free training materials, a subsistence allowance of

USD30 per month and a set of tools valued at USD150–200 upon completion of training.

Ex-combatants had already chosen their preferred reintegration activity when they filled

out reintegration forms at the cantonment site, in which 50% opted for vocational training,

42% for formal education and only 4% for agriculture.42

In view of Liberia’s limited formal job market, international donors and the

government regarded agriculture as the best solution for the majority of ex-combatants and

35Interview with YMCA project officer in Monrovia, June 2007.36For perceptions of security in the post-war years see, for example, Small Arms Survey, ‘A Legacyof War. Perceptions of Security in Liberia: Liberia Armed Violence Assesment’, Issue Brief no. 1(2011).37Interview with UNDDR policy adviser in Monrovia, November 2006.38Creative Associates International, Assessment of the Demobilisation and Disarmament Process inLiberia, Final Report (Washington, DC: CAI, 1997).39United Nations Development Programme/Joint Implementation Unit, Liberia DDRR Programme– RR Handbook 2, no. 1 (Monrovia: UNDP/JIU, 2006).40Ibid., 1.41United Nations Development Programme/Joint Implementation Unit, Liberia Disarmament,Demobilisation and Reintegration and Rehabilitation Programme (DDRR) Trust Fund ActivityReport 1 (Monrovia: UNDP/JIU, 2004).42United Nations Development Programme/Joint Implementation Unit, Liberia Disarmament,Demobilisation and Reintegration and Rehabilitation Programme (DDRR) Trust Fund ActivityReport 2 (Monrovia: UNDP/JIU, 2005), 55.

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the young population in general.43 But nearly half of the DDR participants chose formal

education as their preferred reintegration activity, thus indicating no wish to return to

cultivating the land. Formal education was also valued by DDR implementers as an ideal

activity for facilitating reintegration into civilian life due to its specialised institutional

environment, discipline and structure. In the reintegration phase a whole new array of

actors enteredthe field of forces within which the DDR programme was implemented –

from local administrators of the DDR bureaucracy to individuals acting as power brokers

between the programme and the beneficiaries, and many others with power, agency and

interests in the larger DDR economy. The private schools and organisations approved by

the trust fund to provide skills training and formal education for ex-combatants became

central players in managing the bureaucratic procedures involved. The reintegration

service providers had to register participants and send lists with all names to Monrovia for

cross-checking or ‘validation’, to use the technical term, with the DDR programme’s

database in order to prevent participants enrolling in more than one reintegration activity.

The service providing institutions also had the final say over the monthly payment of

stipends, which depended on participants having a minimum 75% attendance record and

showing good conduct and performance in the reintegration activity. The reintegration

component, like the DD phase, thus experienced severe problems with fraud and

corruption because it recreated a hierarchical structure in which local actors, without any

checks and balances, were given the power to decide who was entitled to benefits and

who not.44

The argument here is that, for the programme participants, the ID card came to

represent a symbol of welfare and of access to certain entitlements that were not available

to the wider population. But the tremendous importance given to the ID card by my

informants is not only related to the benefits offered by the programme: for many of the

youngsters I interviewed, the DDR card was in fact their only personal identification

document. The Liberian government has only recently resumed registering births

following a 19-year interruption due to the war.45 According to Liberia’s Demography and

Health Survey, from 2007 only 4% of children under five had access to birth registration.46

Thus, the DDR ID card may be the only tangible ‘official’ proof of one’s existence and

identity. So, even though the DDR process has now ended, the ID cards produced as part of

it are still kept in case another programme targeting combatants or ‘war-affected persons’

should materialise. But the ID cards also turned out to be tools for assertions of the self

among marginalised youth in Liberia and instrumental for achieving public visibility as

citizens.47 Ex-combatants’ organisations have mushroomed in the post-war phase, and

membership in most of them is linked to participation in the DDR programme, as

43Government of Liberia, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (Monrovia: Government of Liberia,2008), 61.44Jennings, ‘The Struggle to Satisfy’; Munive and Jakobsen, ‘Revisiting DDR’.45Since the war, and only in Monrovia, the registration of births had resumed by 2006. Interview withofficer at the Office of the Vice-President in Monrovia, September 2006.46Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services, Liberia’s Demography and HealthSurvey (Monrovia: LISGIS, 2008).47Programme participants’ average age was 26 years; see UNDP/JIU, Trust Fund Activity Report,vol. II. In Liberia, youth is defined by the government as those between the ages of 15 and 35 years.The rationale behind the broad definition is that the 14 years of war have left over-age youth illequipped to cope in the aftermath of war. National Youth Policy (Monrovia: Government of Liberia,2005).

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documented by the ID card. This coincides with a recent argument for the Liberian case

that reintegration programmes influence the politics of ex-combatants partly through

resources obtained in the programmes, enabling access to politics in a different way.48

In short, the ID card has become a highly valued object with a use and exchange value

of its own: in the period immediately after the war, it was probably the most valuable

object any individual could possess. In their words, it was their ‘secret jewel’, protected

from rain and dust by plastic bags, and hidden for ‘security’ in boxes, roofs or holes in the

ground. At the beginning of fieldwork in rural Liberia, I did not know exactly how to react

to the reverence with which ex-combatants waved their ID cards. It was intriguing, since

on only a few occasions (for instance, at the outlets offering training to ex-combatants) did

I ask specifically for ex-combatants. Not only were the individuals’ relations with the DDR

programme strongly mediated by the ID card, but in a sense the card could even express

the type of subjectivity that was being forged by the youngsters and their engagement with

the international community through the programme.

For the ex-combatants, the importance of the ID card not only depends on the

materiality of the card (even though this is an important aspect), but also, the article

argues, on keeping a connection between the object (ID card), the UN-sponsored DDR

programme and the institutions associated with it such as the UN, the NCDDRR, the

schools and other outlets offering training. The ID card creates the appearance of a potent

object ultimately anchored in international production, that is, UN production, rather than

that of the Liberian state, which was sidelined for most of the process. The almost

obsessive attention paid to the document can be partly explained by the international

character of the intervention in the eyes of the Liberian public in general. Furthermore, the

importance of the document was anchored in the capacity of the DDR programme to

deliver the promised benefits of cash, training, education and ultimately a job, as well as a

degree of recognition (present and future) by the international community. Note for

instance how a mid-level commander recognises the significance of the cash injection,

waving his own ID card and several others:

Ain’t you see today? I am selling my small small things at the tea shop! Ain’t you see theproducts for sale here. The 300 US did it for me. Me and my two wives are eating now [gettingby]. I am still eating from it . . . one of my two wives is also pregnant. And I built the househere. The only thing that is making me to live small (survive) is the DDR money.

When asked why he had kept some of his previous subordinates’ ID cards he replied: ‘Just

in case anything unexpected comes up. You know, NGO projects requiring ex-combatants.

This is the entrance to any programme targeting ex-combatants. Oh this is the proof!’49

For the DDR implementers, the UN and the donors, the ID card was a ‘technology of

power’, to use a Foucauldian term, which made the ex-combatant population visible and

maximised the surveillance of this segment of the population. However, the creation of a

visible and countable population is not the only effect of the cards. The identification and

recognition ofcardholders as ‘ex-combatants’ also facilitated the mobilisation and

empowerment of this population. This is, in fact, one of Foucault’s points: techniques of

power and discipline co-produce the possibility of resistance.50 For many ex-combatants,

48Johanna Soderstrom, ‘The Political Consequences of Reintegration Programmes in Current Peace-Building: A Framework for Analysis’, Conflict, Security and Development 13, no. 1 (2013): 87–116.49Interview with ex-combatant in Ganta, June 2008.50Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1977).

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this led to them making claims on the state and the international community for the first

time. Note, for instance, the letter below, delivered by a group of ‘disappointed ex-

combatants’, as they call themselves, to the chairperson of the NCDDRR:

We the disappointed, abandoned and rejected NCDDRR students of Ganta city Nimba Countyappeal that you find way out possible to enable us achieve our formal education and skilltraining as said, we were going to do while we were at the cantonment site.

We have tried many times to go school using the DDR ID card but, we are always rejected onthe ground that we have taken our benefit under the Liberian Community InfrastructureProgramme (LCIP) which is not true. LCIP influenced us to leave the street and joint the roadside brushing and swamp project . . . When we asked if this was part of our DDR benefit, theanswer was no. Unfortunately now we are always rejected as we go to register for our formaleducation and skills training on the grounds that LCIP have taken our benefit already.

We don’t want to be useless citizens in the next Liberia to come . . . Sincerely yours

[Hundred of signatures plus ID card numbers follow].51

For this group of ‘disappointed ex-combatants’, enrolment in the DDR programme has

certainly generated a new type of civic engagement. The letter is dated May 2006, when

the offices of the NCDDRR had just opened in the countryside. Most reintegration

activities were funded by the UNDP trust fund and by bilateral and multilateral donors

(including EU, USAID and UNICEF). Within the reintegration component, different

implementing partners developed their own training system with no direct guidance and

oversight from the programme as regards to the quality and contents of the training. The

‘disappointed ex-combatants’ felt ‘pushed’ into the agricultural programme, since at that

time it was the only training available in the countryside. For these ‘disappointed ex-

combatants’ the DDR had opened up a political field: ‘we don’t want to be useless citizens

in the next Liberia to come’. Thus in this case they linked the success of reintegration to

the exercise of active, productive citizenship. The fact that the letter was also signed and

endorsed with their ID card numbers made it not only a manifestation of how disappointed

the ex-combatants were with the programme, but also of how they had been cast as a

specific group of people, a group entitled to benefits. The letter also reveals a perception of

the DDR ID card as an object with a life of its own: ‘We have tried many times to go

school using the DDR ID card.’The card is seen as a currency that brings material benefits

to its holders.

The article has described so far how the problems identified by policy-makers and

bureaucrats positioned ‘ex-combatants’ as a group with shared needs for intervention. It

may therefore be tempting to see the DDR process as responsible for the formalisation of a

post-conflict ex-combatant identity. However, as the example above shows, this is to miss

the point. The very identification with the ex-combatant label serves different purposes at

different times.52 Identification as ex-combatants does not only come from ‘above’, it is

certainly also performed from ‘below’, being a hot issue discussed in various arenas, from

workshops to markets. The head of one of the biggestex-combatant associations in Liberia,

the Liberian Ex-Combatants Anxious for Development (LEAD), states for instance:

We are having problems with the name of our organisation: Liberian Ex-Combatants Anxiousfor Development, so we gathered and changed the name to Liberian Emissaries Anxious for

51Unpublished letter from ‘Disappointed Ex-combatants’, Ganta, dated May 15, 2006.52For the same line of argument see McMullin ‘Integration or Separation?’.

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Development, so we did not have to change our acronym. However, our members numberbetween 9000 and 10,000. They are all people who have the disarmament ID card. Most ofthem want to make use of the ID card.53

The problems the organisation encountered mostly had to do with the label ‘ex-

combatant’. According to LEAD’s president, many of the international NGOs and the

Liberian central government were reticent in using the word ‘ex-combatant’. Liberia as a

nation had to show international donors that progress towards peace and stability had been

made. So in the end the organisation changed its name from ‘ex-combatant’ to

‘emissaries’. The change should indicate that, four years after the end of the war, its

members were no longer ex-combatants, a situation very different from 2004, when

hundreds of LEAD members paraded through the streets of Monrovia on the country’s

157th Independence Day, in what they called a ‘March for Forgiveness and Unity’.

LEAD’s president recalls that, on this occasion, the ex-combatants wore white t-shirts with

the inscription, ‘We Are Sorry, Please Forgive Us’. Thus at that time, visibility as a special

group, as ex-combatants, was the preferred tactic. With memories of the war still fresh, it

was appropriate to parade under the banner of ex-combatants.54

Conclusion

The article demonstrates the centrality of the ID card as a technique of power for

controlling and monitoring the ex-combatants’ participation in the DDR programme. The

ID card was the central technology for the co-ordination, control, identification and

management of ex-combatants after the end of the war. As a document, the ID card carries

and contains affective energies that are put to use in specific webs of social relations and

that link the subject (the bureaucratic ex-combatant) to the institutional structure of the

programme. ID cards structure and help control the lives of their owners while at the same

time enabling them to participate in the intervention. The ex-combatant ID card as a

document is absolutely essential in the construction of the ex-combatant subject.

‘Combatanthood’, in other words, is mediated by the ID card and signifies to the

bureaucracy the need for improvement, training, empowerment and a decent job. On the

other hand, to citizens the ID card represents the ‘right’ to specific entitlements/benefits

and a potential material avenue for progress and personal development. The right question

to pose when thinking about ‘ex-combatants’’ special entitlements is therefore not who is

and who is not an ex-combatant, but rather who has access to an ID card and who has not.

The card’s value lies in its ability to secure entry to spaces of intervention (skills training,

formal schooling, etc.). However, through utilising the cards, programme beneficiaries

have also been able to organise and enact active citizenship, while ex-combatant

organisations have constructed their existence on the basis of their members possessing

ID cards.

Criticism has been raised of the Liberian DDR programme, arguing that it only

benefited ex-combatants and not communities in general. As I have shown this may not be

entirely the case, since, due to the politics of labelling, the programme resembled rather a

programme for war-affected people that covered combatants and non-combatants alike.

This unplanned enlargement of the caseload was, however, very much controlled by

faction leaders and commanders. The payment of the transitional safety allowances – the

53Interview with the chair of LEAD in Monrovia, June 2007.54Ibid.

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centrepiece of the DDR programme – created expectations, especially among Liberian

youth. It led both combatants and non-combatants to participate in the programme, as the

DDR was the first tangible intervention (in terms of cash) after the signing of the peace

agreement. Thus the eagerness to enter the DDR programme created a further

‘mobilisation’ of young people, which reinforced the blurred lines between civilians and

combatants. The bureaucratic process of disarming and reintegrating combatants as a

centrepiece of peacebuilding and stabilisation created circumstances where identities

became blurred. The bureaucratic ex-combatant will not be governed in relation to his/her

individuality but as a member of a specific population. The embodied individuals are of

interest to the peacebuilding machinery insofar as they can be identified, categorised and

recognised as members of the ex-combatant cohort. Peacebuilding is tied to the creation of

bureaucratic identities and documents are central to this process. DDR bureacratically

might be at oddswith the integrative and normative goal of reintegration. Perhaps it is time

to examine alternatives to a standardised template that has serious limitations in post-

conflict contexts, and specifically to a template that is based upon the premise that a

dichotomy exists between civilians and combatants, victims and perpetrators.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the two anonymous referees and to Mark Duffield, Finn Stepputat and BirteVogel for constructive comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Notes on contributor

Jairo Munive is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Peace, Risk and Violence Unit of the DanishInstitute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen. His research focuses on DDR processes inAfrica, youth employment, labour markets and the process of economic recovery after conflict.Munive obtained his doctoral degree from the Faculty of Humanities, Copenhagen University. Hehas published in International Peacekeeping, Conflict Security and Development, Forced MigrationReview and Journal of Agrarian Change, among others.

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