Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword: What Does Trauma Do?
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction An Anthropology of the Effects of Genocide and Mass Violence
- Part I Private and Public Memory
- Part II Symptom and Syndrome
- Part III Response and Recovery
- 11 The Chaplain Turns to God
- 12 Acehnese Women’s Narratives of Traumatic Experience, Resilience, and Recovery
- 13 Rwanda’s Gacaca Trials
- 14 Pasts Imperfect
- 15 Atrocity and Non-Sense
- 16 Growing Up on the Front Line
- 17 The Role of Traditional Rituals for Reintegration and
- Commentary Wrestling with the Angels of History
- Index
- References
14 - Pasts Imperfect
Talking about Justice with Former Combatants in Colombia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword: What Does Trauma Do?
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction An Anthropology of the Effects of Genocide and Mass Violence
- Part I Private and Public Memory
- Part II Symptom and Syndrome
- Part III Response and Recovery
- 11 The Chaplain Turns to God
- 12 Acehnese Women’s Narratives of Traumatic Experience, Resilience, and Recovery
- 13 Rwanda’s Gacaca Trials
- 14 Pasts Imperfect
- 15 Atrocity and Non-Sense
- 16 Growing Up on the Front Line
- 17 The Role of Traditional Rituals for Reintegration and
- Commentary Wrestling with the Angels of History
- Index
- References
Summary
“That’s the most difficult thing for someone to understand about Colombia. The reason why all of us from the same country – between families, friends, neighbors – why we have to have a war. In the end, we don’t know why we have it. Before we had it clear – people fought for a town, for a party, for poverty, for I don’t know what all. For thousands of things. But now we don’t have it clear why there’s this war, and the war now just goes from revenge to revenge. That’s how this war goes.”
– Juan, former combatant, FARC, December 2006Introduction
A key component of peace processes and postconflict reconstruction is the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of excombatants. According to the World Bank, in 2005 more than one million former combatants were participating in DDR programs in some twenty countries around the world at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. DDR is big business, and it is serious business: Both livelihoods and lives are at stake.
Elsewhere I have argued that DDR programs imply multiple transitions: from the combatants who lay down their weapons, to the governments that seek an end to armed conflict, to the communities that receive – or reject – these demobilized fighters (Theidon, 2007, 2009). These transitions inevitably imply a complex and dynamic tension between the demands of peace and the clamor for justice. And yet, traditional approaches to DDR have focused almost exclusively on military and security objectives, a focus that in turn has caused these programs to be developed in relative isolation from the growing field of transitional justice and its concerns with historical clarification, justice, reparations, and reconciliation. Similarly, evaluations of DDR programs have tended to be technocratic exercises concerned with tallying the number of weapons collected and combatants enrolled. By reducing DDR to “dismantling the machinery of war,” these programs have not considered adequately how to move beyond demobilizing combatants to facilitating social reconstruction and coexistence (Knight, Michael, &. Ozerdem, 2004, p. 2).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Genocide and Mass ViolenceMemory, Symptom, and Recovery, pp. 321 - 341Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
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