Mcmullin_2004_reintegration In Mozambique

Reintegration of Combatants: Were the Right Lessons Learned in Mozambique? JAREMEY McMULLIN

Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique’s civil war concentrated exclusively on avoiding a return to violent conflict. Though conflict has not resumed, two challenges to long-term security remain: first, involvement among certain combatants in organized criminal activity; second, political instability from the continuing politicization of reintegration issues. Mozambique’s reintegration programme, in aiming only to avoid a return to war, failed to address these two issues. This has hurt Mozambique and has repercussions for southern Africa and the international community.

A standard worst-case scenario is often invoked to justify the critical need to reintegrate ex-combatants into civilian life following armed conflict within states. Large numbers of combatants on the various sides of a conflict are demobilized after a peace agreement. In the absence of proper care for those soldiers after their demobilization – programmes to help them survive, find employment and adjust to life as civilians – they become disgruntled with peace and use their weapons and skills to re-ignite conflict. Renewed violence initially takes the form of public disruption and rioting, and then escalates into a return to allout civil war. Tragically, this devastation is not merely hypothetical: the above model has its roots in experience. In Angola the lack of alternative employment for troops from the government’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and indeed of any significant reintegration efforts from the second UN Angolan Verification Mission (UNAVEM II) deployed in 1991, left each side still mobilized and well-armed at elections on 29 – 30 September 1992. Once UNITA denounced the election results, the slide back into civil war was rapid and bloody, exacting a devastating human and economic toll.1 Reintegration programmes have since been designed specifically to avoid this scenario. But such a template International Peacekeeping, Vol.11, No.4, Winter 2004, pp.625–643 ISSN 1353-3312 print=1743-906X online DOI:10.1080/1353331042000248704 # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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can overemphasize the immediate, post-election instability caused by demobilized combatants. Implementing demobilization and reintegration programmes (often called DRPs) with an eye solely to avoiding repetition of the Angolan experience of 1992 obscures the long-term security threat that certain combatants pose for a state after conflict. ‘Angola Anxiety’ led the UN and observer governments (the United States, France, Portugal, and the UK) to put a high premium on the reintegration of government and opposition forces in Mozambique during ceasefire negotiations. The fear of combatants disrupting peace prior to, or immediately after, elections is reflected in the prominence given to reintegration support in the General Peace Agreement for Mozambique (GPA) concluded by the RENAMO opposition and the ruling FRELIMO government in Rome on 4 October 1992. Conflict between the two groups had destroyed the country during 17 years of civil war. The demobilization and reintegration programme (DRP) implemented in Mozambique was the most comprehensive ever attempted at the time, aiming to ease the combatant-to-civilian transition of about 100,000 fighters. The UN Secretariat and international aid agencies continue to judge Mozambique’s as one of the most successful war-to-peace transitions. So do many of those who write about such transitions.2 The successes of the peace operation are not easily dismissed. Armed hostilities between RENAMO and FRELIMO did not resume after elections were held in October 1994, after which the UN forces withdrew. Peace has held in the ten years since. These successes are remarkable because they came despite delays in the deployment of the UN force, delays in the demobilization of each side’s troops, an escalation of violence in assembly areas where troops were eventually cantoned, and riots by demobilized combatants. At first glance, then, the reintegration issue in Mozambique seems resolved. A closer examination, however, suggests limits to the programme’s success. Stability, though less precarious in 2004 than a decade before, is still threatened by two issues in particular. First, there is entrenched involvement in organized crime among certain former combatants (including trafficking of drugs and arms). Second, the highly politicized nature of reintegration issues has fuelled further distrust and animosity in an already highly-charged political atmosphere. These issues have impeded Mozambique’s development and eroded its stability. They should prompt re-conception of the lessons learned from reintegration efforts. Mozambique’s DRP did not address broader threats because it focused on one aspect of security alone: the avoidance of the worst-case scenario. If the international community continues to implement reintegration programmes around a model that focuses exclusively on avoiding

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a return to war, peace consolidation as it relates to combatants will be incomplete. Mozambique’s experience with ex-combatants demonstrates the need to re-conceive reintegration to address long-term security threats. This article provides an overview of the reintegration programme in Mozambique. It then evaluates the continuing threats to Mozambique posed by combatants. Third, it will be argued that reintegration goals, tactics, and beneficiaries need to be re-conceived, and I also look at obstacles to implementing these changes. Finally, the article concludes that an exclusive focus on avoiding the worst-case scenario allowed longer-term security threats to fester in Mozambique. Moreover, traditionally lower-order security threats (such as drug trafficking) are increasingly interconnected with higher-order threats (such as terrorism). Mozambique’s Reintegration Experience Security Council resolution 797 established the UN Mission in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) on 16 December 1992. ONUMOZ had four main components: political, military, humanitarian and electoral. Conceived under the gloomy shadow of failure in Angola, ONUMOZ’s mandate stipulated the critical need to link the holding of elections in a post-conflict Mozambique with the complete implementation of all military aspects of the General Peace Agreement (GPA). These were: the monitoring and verification of the ceasefire; the separation and concentration of RENAMO and FAM (government) forces and their subsequent demobilization and reintegration; the collection, storage, and destruction of weapons; the withdrawal of foreign forces (Malawian and Zimbabwean contingents) from Mozambican territory; the provision of security for key transport corridors; the formation of a single, unified army (the Mozambique Defence Force, or FADM); and the disbanding of private and irregular armed groups.3 The GPA specifically called for the economic and social reintegration of demobilized soldiers, but was vague on details. The precise nature of the DRP was left to the UN, to donors, and other state and non-governmental agencies, under the direction of the UN Office for Humanitarian Coordination (UNOHAC). A fierce debate on programme design followed, which one participant labelled ‘acrimonious and chaotic’.4 There was fundamental disagreement over the concept of reintegration. For some reintegration should have been limited to removing former fighters as an immediate threat to peace: reintegration would be achieved when combatants became ex-combatants. For others, reintegration

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should have entailed finding jobs for the demobilized through training and credit projects. The former view essentially triumphed, with most resources (US$35 million of the $60 million total cost of the DRP) supporting a cash compensation programme, the Reintegration Support Scheme (RSS). The RSS supported the minimalist goal of providing financial support to combatants over a fixed period of time, enough to ‘pay them and scatter them’ over a relatively short period to remove them from the conflict equation.5 The push for employment assistance did, however, find some expression in three additional programmes targeting ex-combatants: the Information and Referral Service (IRS), the Occupational Skills and Development Programme (OSD), and the Provincial Fund (PF). These, too, were limited in scope, and each had ended by 1997. A prerequisite for reintegration was the successful demobilization of RENAMO and FAM forces. The GPA mandated that demobilization be complete by April 1993, with elections to be held in October of the same year.6 Troops did not begin to arrive in assembly areas (AAs), however, until November 1993, and demobilization from the AAs began in early 1994 and finished in late August of the same year, leaving about two months before elections were held on 27 –28 October 1994. Two factors caused the delays. First, the slow deployment of ONUMOZ forces significantly stalled cantonment of troops, as RENAMO in particular did not want to proceed without a strong UN security presence. Second, tactical manoeuvring and a lack of trust between parties meant that neither side was willing to cede military advantage and positions – these tactics stalled the identification of AAs and led to bitter disputes about the numbers of troops on each side to be cantoned and demobilized. Problems within the AAs themselves exacerbated the situation. Soldiers stayed in the AAs longer than planned, and, particularly for government soldiers, whose salaries had not been paid and whose demands for increased salaries had been unmet, the lengthy period of time spent in the camps became unbearable. Riots and mutinies escalated: six violent incidents were reported in January 1994, 13 in March, and 36 in May.7 In RENAMO camps there was also rioting (12, 21, and 31 incidents for the same months),8 where dissatisfaction was linked to the physical conditions in the AAs, as the camps were overcrowded and there were serious food shortages. Demobilization delays had a significant impact on reintegration: they increased disgruntlement among both parties’ combatant populations;

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they decreased the willingness of combatants to volunteer for the new army; and they decreased combatant trust in the institutions and agencies that were to implement reintegration. It was in this uncertain context that the reintegration programme began in early 1994. The RSS was the boldest of the components in size, scale and duration. Payments to demobilized soldiers varied according to their rank and were drawn out over a long period of 24 months from demobilization, with six months provided for by the government and 18 months funded through donors and managed by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The decision to draw payments out over a relatively long period (unprecedented for reintegration programmes) was meant to ensure guaranteed income to combatants during their most vulnerable transition period. The money also helped combatants to win acceptance of resettlement in their communities, because it provided a steady source of spending in those communities. The lure of the monthly payments was also meant to encourage any soldiers not yet accounted for to come forward, register and demobilize in order to claim the benefits.9 There were some problems with implementation of the RSS, especially delays in distribution and combatant confusion over procedure. Sometimes combatants would abuse branch officials of the Banco Popular de Desenvolvimento (the Mozambican bank that distributed payments), and given that sometimes upwards of 6,000 soldiers were collecting cheques from one branch, there was a danger of their anger spilling into violence.10 But discontent was never unmanageable, so ‘pay and scatter’ succeeded at paying and scattering. Additionally, the IRS ironed out many of the procedural problems. The service also offered general advice and counselling, but it never functioned as a job referral service, as was initially planned and as many combatants expected. The success of the RSS did not rub off onto the employment-oriented components of the DRP. The first of these, the OSD, run by the International Labour Organization (ILO) developed an employment-training curriculum featuring 49 courses geared toward skilled and semi-skilled employment sectors.11 Only a fraction of combatants participated in OSD courses, and the ILO never performed a market survey to assess which skills were most in demand. Training programmes were legendary in Mozambique more for their dark comedy than for their success. For example, some combatants trained as electricians in villages without electricity.12 Roughly 70 per cent (or about 6,000) of the programme’s trainees secured employment, but it is unlikely that many of these retained their jobs beyond six months. If anything, combatant experience with the OSD may have made the situation worse, raising expectations beyond what the market could offer.

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The second employment-centred component was the PF, a programme that intended to address fears that, once the RSS subsidies ended, there would be no employment opportunities for combatants. The International Organization of Migration (IOM) and the German aid agency, Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammemarbeit (GTZ) coordinated micro-enterprise and income-generation activities and offered grants and technical assistance to businesses and other enterprises willing to hire or train combatants. The World Bank provided additional funds in 1995 to strengthen the efforts of GTZ and IOM.13 The PF benefited a small percentage of the total combatant population. Combatants were placed in arbitrary cooperative groups with little market incentive to succeed. Once grants ran out, many employers laid off ex-combatants who they had hired as part of the scheme. Other employers were not employers at all: they filled out impressive applications only to take the money and run. Employment programmes highlight a central problem with reintegration: post-conflict states with impoverished economies offer little to reintegrate into. Mozambique, where only a tenth of the population had formal employment, was no exception, giving rise to the quip: ‘The government told us, “Now you are all equally poor. You have been reintegrated back into basic poverty”’.14 Despite problems in securing employment, combatants did not return to arms to protest about their poverty, which suggests that ‘pay and scatter’ indeed averted the worstcase scenario. Thus, while the overall results of different reintegration components were mixed, programme failures did not compromise the central goal: ‘do not repeat Angola’. In post-conflict Mozambique, however, other threats emanating from problems with reintegration have come to the fore. These threats have developed outside the framework of the DRP. Nature of the Peace: Problems Initially, concern about a return to civil war trumped consideration of other security challenges. Based on assumptions about how to avoid a return to war, analysis focused on criminality and violence among the general combatant population.15 After elections, the IOM catalogued a number of incidents of insecurity or criminality with confirmed or suspected involvement of demobilized soldiers, former militiamen or other paramilitary groups.16 The worst violence in the country since the end of the war ocurred on 9 November 2000 in Montepuez, Cabo Delgado province, when armed RENAMO men killed ten people in an attack in the town centre. The police arrested scores of RENAMO men linked to the attack, and almost 100 later suffocated to death in an overcrowded

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cell.17 Tensions ran high in the community again during municipal elections in November 2003. Elsewhere during these same elections, there were allegations and evidence of police harassment of RENAMO supporters and candidates.18 Although return to civil war seems unlikely, relations between the former warring parties are hardly serene. It is, of course, a logical strategy to prioritize avoidance of a return to conflict in reintegration programmes. Other challenges, however, include organized criminal activity and the continuing politicization of reintegration: each endangers the stable functioning of the democratic political process. Organized criminal activity in Mozambique takes several forms: drug trafficking, arms trading, money laundering, contract assassinations and the smuggling of stolen vehicles, human organs, and items illegally imported into the country.19 Each of these fields of activity depends on the subversion of the state’s criminal justice system, the buying off of well-placed officials through bribery and coercion, and the use of violence. The impact of such activity on state security is acute: ‘Powerful criminal networks can almost be seen as having created a parallel power base from which to challenge the structures and capacity of the state’, leading many within Mozambique to wonder whether it has become a ‘gangster state’ or ‘an impracticable country’.20 The idea of failed reintegration sparking a return to war relies on the premise that combatants will turn to criminal activity and violence in pressing their economic grievances and that this will spiral into full-scale combat. The pattern of criminality in Mozambique, however, suggests that this is not the case, at least for all combatants. Peasants made up the vast majority of the two armies and lack the connections or wherewithal to transform themselves from foot soldier to crime boss, nor is there evidence that this has happened. The ex-combatant – criminal nexus is more apparent, however, among middle and high ranking officers, who have the stature and connections to be caught up in such activities.21 Their involvement is viewed as particularly significant in the trafficking of drugs and arms. Criminals in Colombia, Chile, Spain or elsewhere in Europe direct most transnational drug smuggling and use Mozambique as a transit point only. Within Mozambique, much of this is conducted by Nigerian criminal networks (cocaine) or Pakistanis and Mozambican citizens belonging to the local Pakistani community (hashish and methaqualone). These groups rely on the protection of senior members of Mozambique’s political establishment, including former combatants occupying positions within the military and police force.22 Officers living in Maputo’s military quarter were implicated in the trade of drugs for local consumption in

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April 2001.23 Trafficking networks also rely on some of Mozambique’s banks, foreign-exchange bureaux and casinos to launder money, some of which have been investigated since September 2001 for having links with the Al Qaeda terrorist network.24 Additional evidence suggests that soldiers are implicated in the drugs trade in other ways. Surveys of Mozambican military personnel in 1997 show that 14 per cent believed that demobilized soldiers were responsible for transporting drugs to urban markets in Maputo, and 17 per cent believed that other military personnel were responsible. Most (41 per cent) attributed this involvement to ‘trafficking networks’, but 29 per cent also held former and present military personnel responsible for the Mozambique networks. Eleven respondents acknowledged being involved in selling illicit drugs. Those interviewed identified unemployment and problems with reintegration as major causes of combatant involvement in drug trafficking.25 Drug trafficking poses serious threats to Mozambique and the region. Mozambique is the southern African transit point for South Asian hashish, South Asian heroin, and South American cocaine destined for South African and European markets, and it is a significant producer of cannabis for local trade and methaqualone for export to South Africa.26 The abundance of arms in the country also threatens regional security. ONUMOZ collected just over 200,000 weapons during and after demobilization: none of these was destroyed. Originally, the UN envisaged sending all collected weapons from AAs to regional depots. The government opposed the transfer as differences in the pace of cantonment and demobilization meant that, initially, more FAM troops had demobilized than RENAMO troops, and the government argued that transfer of weaponry away from the AAs would leave FAM troops vulnerable should RENAMO break the ceasefire. Destruction of weaponry, therefore, was not politically viable.27 Still, it is puzzling why the UN did not advocate weapons destruction once the demobilization of the two sides had evened out. Some commentators suggest that once it became clear that the two sides were unlikely to return to war, there was no motivation within ONUMOZ to give disarmament a high priority and that the mission shifted its emphasis from military-security matters to electoral-political ones.28 It was clearly a missed opportunity to destroy over 200,000 arms, which eventually found their way into the hands of criminals and which continue to be peddled to willing buyers. Additionally, the weapons collected represent a fraction of the total. Even the most conservative estimates place the number of AK47s imported to the country during the war at between 500,000 and one million.29 There was no attempt to locate and destroy the arms caches

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of the two sides during the post-conflict transition. Widespread illicit trading of weapons occurred after combatants dumped weapons at caches (later to be looted by profiteers) or onto the market. As thousands of guns and other weapons flooded into the hands of South African criminals, the South African government labelled the flow a major threat to regional security. This led to some progress on the issue when, in January 1995, President Nelson Mandela and President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique signed an agreement to increase cross-border police cooperation to fight the spread of illegal weaponry. This cooperation produced a series of joint operations, codenamed Rachel, that succeeded in locating and destroying thousands of weapons within Mozambique. Thousands, but not hundreds of thousands, and in large part, the damage had been done. Although various buy-back programmes and ‘tools for arms’ initiatives have tried to reverse that damage, arms in circulation and arms still buried in the ground present a significant threat to state and regional stability. South African intervention on the arms issue highlights the general weakness of the Mozambican state to confront these issues on its own. The second long-term threat to stability in Mozambique is the continuing politicization of reintegration issues not resolved with the DRP. One cause of this is the exclusion of certain groups from reintegration benefits. The first such group, paramilitary fighters and officially sanctioned government militias, plays a particularly destabilizing role. During the ONUMOZ mission, paramilitary groups, jealous of RSS benefits afforded to demobilized RENAMO and FRELIMO soldiers, protested and demanded comparable treatment. Sometimes this protest took violent forms.30 Although such groups lack the power and resources to return the country to civil war, their alienation from the formal reintegration process and their dissatisfaction with their economic and social lot has kept reintegration politically contentious. This has contributed to instability within local communities, and rival groups have clashed, sometimes violently, during election periods. RENAMO soldiers have also complained of exclusion from full reintegration benefits because they are not eligible for pensions.31 The government argued that RENAMO fighters did not deserve pensions because they did not have pension allowances deducted from their salaries as did FAM soldiers. RENAMO countered that its fighters had received no salaries during the war, so there was nothing from which to make deductions. RENAMO proposed extending pension benefits to its soldiers, appealing to national reconciliation, but the FRELIMO majority in parliament voted against it. RENAMO leaders believe that FRELIMO used the pension issue for political gain to make RENAMO

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seem ineffective in providing for its own supporters. RENAMO asked the international community to support its position, but outsiders refused to intervene on grounds that it was a purely domestic issue. RENAMO has charged that FRELIMO uses heavy-handed tactics to undermine the opposition, which in turn weakens transparency and accountability and encourages corruption.32 FRELIMO counters that RENAMO is an ineffective opposition. Some politicians incorporated the pension issue in their municipal election platforms in November 2003, and others planned to use it to secure votes in the 2004 national elections. Part of this is democracy at work: finding issues that mobilize voters and creating reintegration policies that better the lives of citizens. The problem, however, is that keeping a contentious issue alive further polarizes an already fragile political divide and revives in ex-combatants a collective grievance that could prove dangerous. High unemployment rates among former combatants do not help matters. Despite relatively quick economic growth, few Mozambicans see tangible improvements in their quality of life, leading many to ask where the spoils of increased growth are going.33 A widespread perception is that the spoils of any growth go to party supporters and increase opportunities for corruption and organized crime.34 Within RENAMO, there are serious divisions and a loss of confidence in the party’s leadership.35 One RENAMO ex-general comments that: ‘All of us generals who fought during the war expected better. If we do not get more we will go back to war’.36 The extent to which such threats could or would be implemented is debatable, but such anger demonstrates that the parties are not separated by differences of policy or ideology but by outright animosity. For the government, the issue is resolved: reintegration is a problem of the past. Part of this is understandable. A state trying to rise from the ashes of devastating conflict wants to consolidate its authority. Treating the reintegration issue as resolved is one way to reinforce that authority. But this strategy belies a crisis of political representation in Mozambique and can lead the state to ignore serious warning signs. A high level of organized criminal activity combined with widespread disenchantment with government is not a recipe for stability. Re-conceiving Reintegration The UN and international aid agencies have yet to make connections between the DRP of the past and security challenges of the present, suggesting a gap between the political and development responsibilities of the UN. The main lesson that UNDP has drawn from Mozambique’s

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reintegration experience is that money and time matter: the RSS successfully bought peace during and after the elections of 1994 by giving warweary combatants the financial means and the time needed to make nominal adjustments to civilian life.37 A second lesson is that peace in Mozambique worked because combatants were willing partners in their own demobilization. The military (and civilian) population was tired of war and sceptical of the gains its continuation or re-ignition could produce. But reintegration cannot be viewed solely in terms of the RSS and a non-return to war. Mozambique’s trajectory after the GPA suggests new ways of conceiving reintegration and highlights the difficulties that the UN and others had in assisting Mozambique with reintegration. The two sets of lessons are linked, as a re-conception of reintegration approaches can assist international and state organizations in their implementation of actual programmes. These lessons can then be used to ask whether additional steps can be taken to make reintegration more complete, to counteract long-term security challenges and enhance long-term development prospects. To ‘re-conceive’ reintegration in the design of programmes requires questioning assumptions concerning reintegration goals, tactics, and targeted beneficiaries. Re-conceiving the goals of reintegration involves revisiting the debate about whether programmes encourage combatant demands for special group status. According to the ‘pay and scatter’ standard, many in the international community judged the lack of widespread and sustained violence by combatants in Mozambique, and the shift in resource allocation from short-term emergency aid to long-term development assistance, as demonstrating that combatants were becoming civilianized. There is evidence that this is true. Combatants feel accepted by host communities. The ‘combatant’ label is not their primary identifier. But, they also believe in the value of organizing around interests that they share and in forming associations to advance those interests. In response to the idea that ex-combatant organizations are potentially menacing, they disagree and say that they made unique sacrifices and deserve special treatment from the government.38 In some ways, the formation of interest groups is natural to democratic politics. Veterans of many wars in many states continue to demand special treatment long after a war has ended, whether through economic assistance or symbolic recognition. Why should the international community expect combatants of civil wars to behave differently? If reintegration is depoliticized then it is unproblematic when combatants group together or desire special group status (similar to veterans groups elsewhere). But, if reintegration remains highly politicized, as in

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Mozambique, then group identification presents problems. It is less productive to centre reintegration design on whether or not combatants should be treated as a special group. Some group concessions, like cash compensation programmes, are always necessary to win support of combatants as key conflict actors, and combatants are naturally prone to group identification. Instead, the international community could apply political pressure during the peace process to grant equal access to reintegration benefits in order to depoliticize the issue. This does not mean giving combatants excessive concessions that could alienate civilian populations by creating resentment; it implies emphasizing actions that can make reintegration less politically volatile between competing groups. The tactics of reintegration also need to be rethought. This involves using a combination of ‘carrots and sticks’ to link reintegration to the security requirements of the peace agreement. Reintegration is not just a process of granting benefits but of expecting compliance as well. In the light of the Angolan experience, the programme in Mozambique neglected the ‘sticks’ and placed excessive reliance on the ‘carrots’, as the failure to link reintegration to disarmament demonstrates. A strong UN or regional role in disarmament efforts was needed to prevent the flow of arms from combatant to black market outlets during the reintegration process. Such a role was feasible for ONUMOZ during its mission, but it was not pursued. Under its mandate the UN could have taken additional action by destroying seized weapons or seeking out undeclared or illegal arms caches. It could have empowered military personnel to seize weapons transported in vehicles across borders; instead, ONUMOZ troops could only watch and note license plate numbers as scores of weapons flowed from Mozambique to other areas in the region.39 The UN took a narrow view about the duties of the armed ONUMOZ contingent, both to avoid confrontation between the parties and because it considered disarmament to be a function of those administering the AAs and not the troops stationed along security corridors. Using a combination of carrots (in the form of buy-back programmes) and sticks (disqualification from reintegration benefits for combatants caught selling or transporting arms illicitly, prosecution, or more aggressive reporting of such transactions as violations of the ceasefire), the UN could have averted some of the problems now associated with disarmament. Finally, re-conceiving reintegration requires changing the way benefits are distributed, by focusing on the combatants most likely to disrupt the peace: middle and high ranking officers. Combatants are not all the same. They have different skills, experiences and expectations. Programmes must therefore disaggregate ex-combatants, addressing the needs of

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different groups of demobilized soldiers. Among ex-combatants in Mozambique, the higher-ranking soldiers have tended to fall into two extremes: those who reaped huge economic rewards through connections, where giving in to criminality is ever present, and those who commanded large battalions only to find themselves now living in poverty.40 To reach a more satisfactory outcome in Mozambique, the UN needed to actively counteract elite ex-combatant involvement in criminal and illicit activity. To counteract the economic lure of illegal activity, implementing agents could sweeten the deal on offer to those combatants most likely to become spoilers. This approach was proposed by Aldo Ajello, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Mozambique, shortly after his arrival in the country in 1992. He suggested that senior officers and generals could be given shares in newly-privatized industries to buy their participation and reduce any incentive to become involved in illicit pursuits. The donors did not respond to the idea, however, both because they did not know how to make it operational and because they disliked the prospect of giving the most brutal of the soldiers the most generous packages.41 The problem is that much of Ajello’s plan came to pass anyway, but without any oversight, through cronyism and, sometimes, corruption. If buy-off programmes are not palatable, then training or micro-credit programmes could be targeted directly at this class of soldier (where they may be more likely to succeed, given different levels of education and expertise, than in the selective targeting among all combatants). Direct negotiation with senior officers and generals could have ameliorated the problem as well. Finally, reintegration efforts should not rule out negative incentives to deal with criminal activity during and after the transition, including disqualification from benefits or prosecution. These blows could also be softened through conditional amnesties or rehabilitation programmes. DRPs are designed on the assumption that combatants want to be reintegrated following a conflict. To consider that certain incentives exist for some combatants not to reintegrate requires changing a number of assumptions held in the international aid community, not least of which is a shift from focusing on a passive programme of development stimuli to a more active one of combating involvement in criminal or illicit activity within certain segments of demobilized soldiers. Obstacles to Re-Conceptualization Even if DRPs are re-conceived for reintegration goals, activities, and distribution of benefits, there is no guarantee that such changes can be

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successfully implemented. First, aggressively enforcing the rule of law and cracking down on organized criminal activity requires a strong police force. ONUMOZ had difficulty supporting Mozambique’s existing police force. The GPA charged the FADM with cooperating with the country’s Police Command to protect civilian inhabitants against crime and violence of all kinds. But the FADM is short-staffed, having attracted only about a third of the 30,000 soldiers envisaged in the Agreement, leaving the country’s new military in no position to fulfill the policeassistance role given to it by the GPA. This led the UN to consider more policing. Although, in 1994, ONUMOZ eventually added a civilian police (CIVPOL) component and the Security Council authorized a force of up to 1,114, the Council also made it clear that the creation of CIVPOL should accompany a reduction in the military component in order to keep costs the same.42 Total manpower was not increased. Additionally, CIVPOL’s activities were passive, limited to monitoring police neutrality in the provinces, and never intended to contribute robustly to the consolidation of the rule of law. The lack of a strong police presence allowed organized criminal activity to flourish without significant challenge. Second, the UN’s duty to avoid interference in ‘domestic’ matters within states has made it difficult for the organization to depoliticize reintegration in a highly-charged political atmosphere. Incentives, especially in the form of money, are almost always welcomed by postconflict governments, but punitive or enforcement measures are out of the question unless there is consent. Reluctance to intervene on issues typically considered to be part of a state’s sovereign control, such as domestic criminal activity and corruption, meant that the UN maintained only a consultative role through its agencies on these issues.43 This is not an atypical stance for the UN, but inaction led to an atmosphere of impunity, and compounded the weakness of the state to resolve law and order issues during the crucial transition period. A continuing failure to resolve such issues threatens to compound a cycle of violence that could threaten stability on a larger scale. The costs of inaction, then, outweigh whatever political goodwill is bought through a general deference to the disputants, and suggests that the UN could deal more aggressively with parties to civil conflicts in negotiating the post-conflict security of the state. Finally, basic organizational and operational limitations of the UN lead to a prioritization of emergency measures over long-term security concerns. Problems with troop deployment and limited funding, commitment and political will on the part of troop-deploying countries, and coordination of humanitarian efforts during operations with numerous UN agencies and NGO and state partners were obstacles not unique to

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Mozambique in the 1990s. These limitations cause the UN to emphasize exit strategies and to dedicate resources to short-term efforts designed to guide a post-conflict state to its first elections and no further. Host countries are concerned about the UN outstaying its welcome. But the focus on security immediately before and immediately after elections can ignore long-term threats to state stability, particularly by individuals who come to see themselves as losers in the distribution of post-conflict spoils. Reintegration in Mozambique aimed to buy peace in the short term and expected that local reconciliation and broader development processes would stabilize that peace in the long term. It is not clear that this stabilization occurred. UN strategy treated the 1994 election as an end in itself, and withdrawal shortly thereafter meant that a long-term investment in the security and development of the state was rhetorical.44 The price of an exclusively short-term approach may well be a subsequent breakdown in law and order among elite segments of the ex-combatant population and, if dissatisfaction remains unchecked, the possibility of political conflict among a broader segment of the population later. Conclusions The UN Secretary-General called ONUMOZ ‘a major success story in UN peacemaking, peacekeeping and humanitarian and electoral assistance’.45 Certainly, in the wake of the Angolan disaster in the early 1990s, the intervention in Mozambique stands out as comparatively more successful. But in the reintegration context, more could have been done to anticipate long-term security challenges. For some states, the threats emanating from criminality constitute mere ‘law and order’ concerns. But for Mozambique, as for many developing countries, they threaten the stability of the state itself. The effects of a breakdown in the rule of law are more acute in a state where the legitimacy and authority of governmental institutions are already tenuous. Domestic political conflict regarding a highly-charged issue like reintegration is often interpreted by the ruling party not as spirited debate or criticism but as a threat to the survival and cohesion of the nation. Combined with persistent unemployment and the ready availability of arms, allowing a breakdown in the rule of law could be merely a recipe for postponing the worst-case scenario. The cross-border manifestations of such a breakdown threaten regional security, as has been the case with Mozambique and its neighbour, South Africa. The fundamental challenge in Mozambique was to create a durable security environment. ‘Pay and scatter’ took a least common denominator approach to development, which was logical given the limitations of

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targeted employment schemes. But it also took a least common denominator approach to security, where reintegration meant buying off success in the short term. Failure to encourage the full participation of the former military elites in the project of peace and democracy allowed corruption and criminality to go unchecked, which in turn creates an atmosphere where more dangerous security threats can develop. Failure to guarantee equal treatment of combatants in the ten years since the end of war has soured relations between and within the two main parties. For the UN and its partners, a preference for reintegration in the short term rather than investing in long-term solutions also calls into question their credibility as peacebuilders. More states could choose reconstruction without UN involvement (as Angola decided in 2003 to manage reintegration of about 105,000 UNITA troops in the wake of their leader, Jonas Savimbi’s, death). Or coalitions intervening in other states can dictate the terms of reconstruction, demobilization and reintegration (as in Afghanistan and Iraq). These are not necessarily desirable approaches, as the UN tends to have more operational expertise and more experience accessing and mobilizing donor funds than war-torn societies or external forces. The UN tendency to withdraw after postconflict elections signals a frail commitment to the long-term security of states that lack the means to consolidate the rule of law on their own. It calls into question the extent to which elections alone should justify a full transfer of sovereignty to newly-reconstituted states. For security, a failure of reintegration programmes to recognize the importance of threats other than all-out war comes at a time when traditionally lower-order security threats (such as drug trafficking) are increasingly interconnected with higher-order threats (such as terrorism). The nexus between the drug trade and terrorism in the Tri-Border region of South America, for example, has been a cause of concern for the United States. Will alleged links between criminal networks in Mozambique and their external supporters in Pakistan or Colombia exacerbate the synergistic trend? It is increasingly clear that it is a mistake to marginalize security problems short of immediate resumption of civil war. Mozambique’s experience with reintegration demonstrates that a prolonged and generous subsidy can placate and disperse the majority of demobilized soldiers, but is less capable of preventing certain combatants from threatening stability in the state and region, or of diluting the ability of political leaders to use incomplete reintegration to stir up old grievances. That combatants did not return Mozambique to war may be gratifying. But unless reintegration can encompass other security challenges that certain ex-combatants pose, then states and international organizations are left with an outdated template. In this sense the Angola of today is

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perhaps more instructive than the Angola of 1992. UNITA representatives would not plunge the country into civil war again, at least not as UNITA. But they warn that there will be ‘banditry, more organized criminal activity, ambushes and similar violence if [reintegration] needs are not addressed’.46 Call it ‘Angola Anxiety Redux’. NOTES 1. The Secretary-General reported that, within three weeks of the elections in 1992, only 41 per cent of government and UNITA troops had been demobilized, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Angola Verification Mission II’, UN doc. S/24245, 7 July 1992, p.10. 2. See, for example, Kees Kingma (ed.), Demobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Development and Security Impacts, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 3. ‘Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ)’, UN doc. S/24892, 3 Dec. 1992, p.5. 4. Author’s interview with Timothy W. Born, Team Leader, Private Sector Enabling Environment, USAID Mission to Mozambique (formerly chief coordinator for USAID’s involvement in demobilization and reintegration activities), Maputo, 18 Sept. 2003. 5. Ibid. 6. After a visit from Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on 22 October 1993, the government and RENAMO agreed to reschedule the implementation of the GPA, and consequently the date of elections. The UN saw this as a necessary step to avoid elections taking place in a context where both parties were still mobilized and armed, and therefore to avoid the result that occurred in Angola. 7. Joao Paulo Borges Coelho and Alex Vines, ‘Pilot Study on Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Mozambique’, Oxford: Refugee Studies Programme, 1994, p.16. 8. Ibid. 9. Eric Berman, Managing Arms in Peace Processes: Mozambique, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 1996, p.82. 10. Authors’ interview with Gareth Clifton, former Northern Region Coordinator for the Reintegration Support Scheme, Maputo, 19 Sept. 2003. 11. Chris Alden, ‘Making Old Soldiers Fade Away: Lessons from the Reintegration of Demobilized Soldiers in Mozambique’, Security Dialogue, Vol.33, No.3, 2002, p.345. 12. Author’s interviews with 15 ex-combatants from RENAMO and FRELIMO in urban and rural districts, Maputo and Moamba, 23–26 Sept. 2003. 13. World Bank, ‘War-to-Peace Transition in Mozambique: The Provincial Reintegration Fund’, Findings (Africa Region), No. 90, July 1997, accessed at www.worldbank. org/afr/findings/english/find90.htm). 14. Interviews with ex-combatants (see n.12 above). For a detailed account of the economic devastation caused by Portuguese colonialism, the Cold War, Renamo destabilization tactics, and structural adjustment programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund, see Susan Willett, ‘Ostriches, Wise Old Elephants and Economic Reconstruction in Mozambique’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.2, No.1, 1995, pp.34–55. 15. Willett, for example, warned about the potential for warlordism resulting from the collapse of social and economic order, ibid., p.48. 16. International Organization for Migration, ‘After One Year: What is the Status of Reintegration in Mozambique?’ Maputo: Information and Referral Service/Provincial Fund for Demobilized Soldiers, May 1996. 17. Joe Hanlon, ‘Local Election Email Special Issue 1’, Mozambique Political Process Bulletin, Maputo: European Parliamentarians for Africa, 16 Nov. 2003, accessed at

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19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2 ¼ ind0311&L ¼ Mozambique-study-group& D ¼ 1&T ¼ O&F ¼ &S ¼ &P ¼ 414). Ibid. The municipal elections were hardly serene: Renamo and Frelimo contested results in multiple municipalities, and the Constitutional Council, although validating the ultimate results, harshly criticized the National Elections Commission for committing elementary errors and for violating ‘the principles of security, stability, confidence and transparency that should guide the electoral process.’ See Joe Hanlon, ‘Constitutional Council Validates Local Elections’, AIM Report No. 268, Maputo: Mozambique News Agency, 19 Jan. 2004, accessed at www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2 ¼ ind0311&L ¼ Mozambique-study-group&D ¼ 1&T ¼ O&F ¼ &S ¼ &P ¼ 182). For a detailed investigation into the dynamics of each of these activities see Peter Gastrow and Marcelo Mosse, ‘Organised Crime, Corruption and Governance in the SADC Region’, presented at the Institute for Security Studies Regional Seminar, Pretoria, 18–19 Apr. 2002. Ibid., pp.10, 17. Perceptions of these connections are rampant in Mozambique. Sometimes allegations are overblown, and direct evidence is not always publicly available. Nevertheless, interviews with journalists, researchers and community leaders conducted in Maputo, 15–26 September 2003 confirm that some links exist. Additionally, interviews with former government officers conducted by other researchers have produced the same conclusion (see Alden, n.11 above, p.350). An atmosphere of fear developed in the wake of the murder of Carlos Cardoso, a journalist assassinated in 2001 while investigating the disappearance of US$14 million from the Commercial Bank of Mozambique. Before his death, Cardoso made similar claims in articles and interviews about the complicity of high-ranking government officials (including military personnel) in criminal activity. Gastrow and Mosse (see n.19 above), pp.5–8. Ibid., p.5. Ibid., p.9. UN Office of Drugs and Crime, The Drug Nexus in Africa, Vienna: UNODC, Mar. 1999, p.101. United States Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2002: Mozambique, 1 Aug. 2003, accessed at www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mz.html). Berman (see n.9 above), pp.46,48,87–88; Martinho Chachiua, ‘The Status of Arms Flows in Mozambique’, in Tandeka Nkiwane, Martinho Chachiua, and Sarah Meek (eds.), Weapons Flows in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Swaziland, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, monograph 34, Jan. 1999, p.26. Martinho Chachiua and Mark Malan, ‘Anomalies and Acquiescence: The Mozambican Peace Process Revisited’, African Security Review, Vol.7, No.4, 1998, accessed at www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/&No4/Anomalies.htm). Christopher Smith, ‘Areas of Major Concentration in the Use and Traffic of Small Arms’, in Jayantha Dhanapala et al. (eds), Small Arms Control: Old Weapons, New Issues, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, p.107; Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey 2001: Profiling the Problem, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.64. Berman (n.9 above), pp.76–7. Disabled RENAMO veterans are entitled to pension benefits under a separate scheme, but the bureaucratic process involved is too complicated for many disabled veterans, and not all disabled RENAMO fighters know that they are eligible for these benefits. Author’s interview with Raul Domingos, founder and president of the Democratic Institute for Peace and Development (IPADE) and former unofficial ‘second in command’ of RENAMO and chief RENAMO negotiator during the Rome talks, Maputo, 19 Sept. 2003. Brian Slattery, ‘Development without Equality: An Interview with Raul Domingos’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.57, No.1, 2003, pp.129–34.

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34. Interview with Domingos (see n.32 above). Domingos makes the same point in Slattery, ibid. 35. RENAMO performed much poorer than expected in the municipal elections; and, after having been expelled from the party earlier, Raul Domingos formed a third party to challenge RENAMO candidates. 36. Author’s interview with General Vareia Mange (‘Chimuanza’), Costa do Sol, Maputo Province, 15 Sept. 2003. 37. UN Development Programme, Report on the Reintegration of Demobilised Soldiers in Mozambique 1992–1996, Maputo: UNDP, 1997, p.27. 38. All combatants interviewed by the author shared this view (n.12 above). 39. Dennis C. Jett, Why Peacekeeping Fails, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p.84. 40. RENAMO officers, such as General Vareia, have tended to fall into the latter category, unless they joined the FADM. 41. Interview with Born (see n.4 above). 42. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 898, UN doc. S/RES/898 (1994), 23 Feb. 1994. 43. The lack of a more active police role was also due to resource constraints, a desire to show trust in the government, and the lack of a precedent for more involved police intervention. 44. Willett (see n.14 above), pp.48–9. 45. The United Nations and Mozambique 1992–1995, UN Blue Book Series, Vol.V, New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1995, p.3. 46. International Crisis Group, ‘Dealing with Savimbi’s Ghost: The Security and Humanitarian Challenges in Angola’, Luanda and Brussels: ICG, Africa Report No. 58, 26 Feb. 2003, p.6.