Irregular Warfare Podcast - Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

In today's episode, we delve into the topic of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants. Our guests explore the theoretical underpinnings of DDR, the motivations behind individuals joining armed groups, and effective strategies for reintegrating former combatants back into society.

Our generation DDR is extremely cross-sectoral. And so it requires a sense of better coordination with security forces to ensure that when you are negotiating and working to off-ramp associates and fighters from armed groups, that you're doing so in a way that is harmonized with security operations instead of conflicting with them. The most frequent pathway into these groups is through familiars, right? Friends, brothers, husbands. And what I've also found is that, you know, speaking with former members of al-Shabaab, it's almost always that same pathway out. If they're the strong pulls out of these groups and you provide a dignified, legitimate pathway to reintegration, they will recruit their family members out of these groups.

Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Alisa Laufer, and my co-host today is Matt Mulray. Laura Jones also helped produce this episode. Today's discussion examines the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, or DDR, of ex-combatants. Our guests begin by introducing the concept of DDR and discussing how the DDR process plays a role in preventing the recurrence of conflict. They then discuss some common challenges of implementing and monitoring DDR efforts,

providing some real-world examples of ongoing and recent DDR efforts in Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, and Niger. Dr. Erin McPhee is a professor of practice at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. She also holds positions as a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Center of the London School of Economics, and as a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University. Dr. McPhee consults regularly for the International Organization for Migration and the UN. She was also previously the Deputy Director of the Irregular Warfare Initiatives Fellows Program. She holds a doctorate in human development from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Simmons University.

Daniela Montemarano is an international mediator and stabilization practitioner. She currently serves as a contracted U.S. Department of State advisor on countering violent extremism and DDR based at the U.S. Embassy in Niger. Daniela previously worked at the International Republican Institute, where she managed peace-building programs in the Sahel and West Africa regions before becoming a Senior Strategist and Subject Matter Expert for the organization's Global Conflict and Stabilization Program Development. She holds an MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a BA in History and Political Science from New York University. You're listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast,

a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Dr. McPhee and Daniela. Erin, Daniela, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you everyone for having me today. So I wanted to start with a pretty introductory question because it might not be so obvious to our listeners how DDR connects to irregular warfare, but you both know very well that DDR plays a critical role in resolving irregular conflicts and preventing the resurgence of violence by former armed rebels, terrorist

organizations, and insurgency groups as well. So could the two of you start by defining for us what DDR is and explaining how it's evolved with changes in the character of warfare over the years? So following a peace process or in the midst of a stabilization of armed combatants from armed forces, armed groups. This can range from terrorist organizations to insurgency groups. And reintegration is the social process by which as combatants, they acquire civilian status, they go through livelihood training, de-radicalization or psychosocial support in this very essential social and economic process to help them return to communities, establish new places of living.

Its first generation, its first iteration as a primarily technical process embedded in a peace process. So in the 1980s, in the early 1990s, DDR was attached to peace process negotiations, and then the subsequent disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of combatants who fought in civil wars, insurgency groups from El Salvador to Mozambique. But since the early 90s, the circumstances under which DDR operates has really changed. There are fewer political settlements and sadly fewer successful peace processes. And this is connected to the increase of intra or super state conflict. So many DDR processes now are not necessarily supported by comprehensive peace agreements, are heavily localized, and they feature fragmented

non-state armed actors, including designated terrorist groups. And this has rendered comprehensive peace agreements to be more difficult to achieve. This has also hindered peace processes due to the entrenched geopolitical interests that prevent a settlement from being reached. In the 2000s, DDR practitioners adapted to the changing conflict landscape and the need for more sustainable reintegration practices by developing a second generation DDR approach. Second generation DDR used practices like community violence reduction to implement

decentralized, really grassroots DDR activities. It expanded on the breadth of reintegration activities and issue of DDR has taken this approach a step further. So developed in the 2010s, third generation DDR has expanded the scope of reintegration to include reconciliation activities, community justice mechanisms, and other approaches related to transitional justice. Third Generation DDR treats the reintegration phase as an integral part of the conflict management process, whereby reintegration activities address socioeconomic and political drivers of the overall conflict, or is oftentimes used to incentivize both individual fighters as well as whole units of terrorist organizations, armed insurgency groups, armed organized crime groups, an active armed group, in order to reduce and eventually end violence. So it's oftentimes

very closely sequenced with security operations, negotiations, and peacebuilding activities in order to holistically manage armed conflict. Great. I mean, I think I can maybe pick up a little bit from there. Thank you so much for that, Daniela. That was very comprehensive and it's tough to add to any of the institutional areas that you were speaking of. Perhaps I can contribute a bit from my experiences in the field. I spent about 15 months living in an informal settlement of mostly split between ex-combatants from the FARC guerrillas in Colombia and victims of the armed conflict. guerrillas in Colombia and victims of the armed conflict. And this was between 2014 and 2016. And I can say from their perspective and from living in these kinds of communities, the reintegration portion of the DDR process in particular is an extraordinarily long and complex process. First of all, you're talking about folks that are either reintegrating into communities

where they had originally come from, which is sometimes the case, but often conditions cool them from being able to do so. For example, in many cases, insurgents can't return to their home communities because they would be pursued by the groups that they defected from. But then sometimes they do return to those communities. So there's navigating these distinctions between whether or not they're reintegrating into known populations versus unknown populations or hostile versus perhaps potentially less hostile populations. So there's that issue of managing their personal security. The other thing is most of these reintegrating populations are also facing very acute daily struggles for subsistence and survival,

as are their neighbors who may be victims of violence or just simply other folks living at the margins of society. Certainly the informal housing settlement that I lived in, the vast majority of the people who were living there were sort of fighting each day to meet their daily needs. So these are very difficult contextual conditions into which they're reintegrating. There was very little state presence, really none at all when I first got there. Nothing like a local health care center, very poor public education facilities. So if they're reintegrating with families, this also adds additional concerns.

And reintegration is also an issue of addressing past physical and psychological traumas that may have occurred during their time as a member of an armed group of some kind. So certainly supports in that regard come to the fore as concerns. And then finally, there's another aspect of reintegration that is often overlooked, which is beyond the vocational training, the emerging strengths of the community-based program and the family-based programming, there's also this issue of sort of refinding one's purpose. Many of people who have demobilized from these armed groups may have spent quite a lot of time in these groups, and in many contexts, many of their key developmental years as children or adolescents in these groups.

So reconstituting this identity outside of these really tightly woven social networks can be another particular aspect of reintegration that also warrants a fair amount of attention. And that kind of leads us to our next question here, which is, who implements DDR efforts and when is DDR considered complete? You will oftentimes have lead agencies, ideally the host government or a collection of host governments who are leading an official DDR process in a first generation approach. This will be after peace agreement is signed and in second generation, third generation approaches. This is just part of a broader, it's a village process. And both from the proverbial, it takes a village, as well as a very community-driven procedure. So in addition to this wide range of actors within any particular government, from ministries related to security, interior security, defense, to humanitarian action, social affairs, health, education, social affairs, health, education. We'll also be including the international community, members of different UN agencies, third-party monitoring groups, especially for the disarmament and demobilization processes. But most importantly, the people who are living

in communities that are receiving former fighters or former associates, people who are former fighters, former associates, traditional chiefs, religious leaders, local municipal officials. These are the individuals who are on the front lines of DDR activities and are responsible for the success of the overall process. Yeah, I absolutely love that phrase, village process, and the way that it reflects sort of coming at it in both directions, both the wide variety of stakeholders that need to be included, as well as the localized, deeply rooted elements of making sure that the development and the implementation is contextually relevant. I think one thing that frustrates me so much across a wide variety of contexts that I've worked in DDR is the waste of resources that

happens when standardized programming isn't appropriately adjusted to the local demands and the needs of the communities in which it's being implemented, because there will always be far more need than there is funding. So yes, this village process of localizing, engaging both the formerly armed actors themselves, as well as the communities that they're reintegrating into is critical from all aspects. And I'll share a little bit about the tripartite mission that was part of monitoring and evaluating the DDR process in Colombia. So at that time, I was working for the International Organization for Migration, and we were supporting an element of that implementation. The tripartite mission was an arrangement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, and the UN observation mission and the government of Colombia that included representatives from all three in order to ensure that all of the stipulations that were in the 312-page peace accord were being adhered to throughout the DDR process. In many ways, it was an extraordinarily effective mechanism and more or

less ensured a somewhat smooth implementation of the initial phases, especially the D&D portions of the Peace Accord. There are certainly other challenges that come with large-scale institutional and multi-sector collaborations. I think an amusing but quite illustrative anecdote is one of the observation mission colonels was speaking with me and said that he actually had to buy his own trash bags to bring into the office each day. And he could sort of bemoan the fact that, you know, when I worked in the Congo, I could just call the UN. If I needed a helicopter, I'd get a helicopter and I can get out of there. But because of the bureaucracy behind moving a tripartite machine, nobody would agree to pay for the trash bags in the office. So something so small and innocuous

and sort of silly can also be illustrative of the kinds of challenges that occur when many institutional actors convene to implement a DDR program. And obviously, if trash bags are a small issue, imagine what some of the bigger issues can be. But certainly these multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder efforts are critical for at least setting the groundwork for successful implementation of DDR programming. I think another thing to consider is also, as far as the who is concerned, is the different strengths that the different actors can play. So I've found, for example, that religious leaders in many settings are among the most trusted individuals and actors. So communities, receiving communities who are contending with having these people come back into their fold and maybe not feeling so great about that,

will trust their religious leaders in a way that they won't trust, let's say, the armed forces or the public forces or the blue helmets or even UN missions. So they would be critical actors to engage when you're thinking about implementing more community-facing, on-the-ground elements of the reintegration programming, whereas donor agencies or international organizations like those in the UN mission are really strong in bringing to bear processes, technical expertise, a wide range of experiences that span the globe in a way that can hopefully inform but not dictate what happens in a given context. And they also, frankly, bring the purse strings that are necessary to implementing something as costly as a successful DDR program,

reintegration in particular being extraordinarily costly financially. And then you've got sort of the NGOs and the academics, which are a bit more agile, a bit less constrained by bureaucracies that might constrain, let's say, an official from USAID or somebody working in a UN mission. let's say an official from USAID or somebody working in a UN mission. So there's an agility, there's an alacrity that they can exercise that can often be very helpful in implementation as well. So certainly bringing the village together. And then I would also just add, you know, identifying what the strengths are of each institutional actor and putting those to work in a concerted way that advances the objectives of a DDR mission overall. And sort of when is it complete?

Well, I think it's a lot easier to say when it's not complete, unfortunately. Reintegration in particular. I mean, certainly, you know, demobilization. There are some great examples coming out of Colombia and other contexts where there have been, you know, regular reporting, number of cash found, regular reporting on the number of weapons that have been warehoused and things like that. But certainly the longer process of reintegration is a lot harder to measure when it's complete. I can certainly say that the assessment of the completeness of reintegration and its success, those metrics should be generated on a context-by-context basis.

So just saying 10% of the ex-combatants did not or did rearm once again, that could be very successful in some contexts, that could be very unsuccessful in others. So it's important to understand the precedents and the possibilities in a given context. I would also say that, you know, I think Sierra Leone's a really good example of why it's hard to say when reintegration is done. Certain armed group activities at the end of last year had folks that were recognized forward combatants that had demobilized 20 years ago participating and leading some of that insurgent activity shown in the national media. So certainly what might have looked like successful reintegration for quite a long time might be pegged now as unsuccessful on those case-by-case bases. But I would say certainly

over the longer time, levels of recidivism are metrics that can be somewhat applied in each context. Also thinking about access to services that former combatants are able to receive. Cycles of revenge, violence might also be indicators, as well as overall community stability and social cohesion. Well, first of all, I loved the trash bag anecdote. I think that's something that folks even in the U.S government, might be able to relate to in terms of getting different organizations to pay for resources.

I can imagine that gets even more complicated in the context you're discussing. But on your last point about metrics, that actually brings me to the next question I want to ask, which is about monitoring, where I imagine there are also some metrics involved. So how is DDR typically monitored and what kinds of coordination is there between the parties to the DDR agreements and the external monitors, some of which you touched on already? And are there typically

enforcement mechanisms that parties can use to ensure that these DDR efforts stay on track? Both Erin and I have been talking pretty extensively about already the multi-sectoral coordination that is absolutely necessary for a successful DDR process. So here in Niger, for example, there are regional level coordination groups that exist between the late Chad region countries, for example, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, managing a regional DDR process involving government officials, civil society leaders, traditional religious leaders, international stakeholders. And these mechanisms can sometimes fall under presidential decrees, or they can be attached to regional or international multilateral organizations. There are oftentimes local

affiliates or local coordination bodies that function alongside or under these broader coordination missions. These individuals will create feedback mechanisms and loops between communities and the people who are receiving or welcoming home, former combatants or former associates, and their families and other stakeholders in the region. Our generation DDR is extremely cross-sectoral. And so it requires a sense of better coordination with security forces who are conducting security operations, both on the military side and law enforcement side, to ensure that when you are negotiating and working to off-ramp associates and fighters from armed groups, that you're doing so in a way that is harmonized with security operations instead of conflicting with them. And it's very similar for civil society organizations who are supporting those peace-building activities in an act of conflict. I'm sure Erin's had this experience as a bi that you're on the ground working in the DDR context that there's a constant stream of negotiating around political interests, around considerations that fall outside the sphere of DDR, but nonetheless bring to bear a considerable influence about what decisions are taken regarding the length of time that someone may spend in informal settlement or formal transition camp.

And that the regular forums that allow stakeholders to collaborate, evaluate progress, troubleshoot challenges, that it's essential to ensure a steady flow of communication between these key actors. I have found myself, and I'm sure Erin has as well, conducting constant informal shuttle diplomacy between national level political actors from different ministries, all the way down to chiefs, different religious leaders, local NGOs who are providing services and informing the full implementation of a DDR process, as well as forward combatants, associates, their families themselves. There's really a vast array

of political concerns that either incentivize or disincentivize critical stakeholders to commit to a DDR process. And so oftentimes we have a third party or quasi third party actor, myself from the US side or from other-party entities that are domestic or international, that they can play a critical role in mediating disputes and unblocking bureaucratic gridlocks that would otherwise derail a DDR process. What are some recent examples of DDR efforts that have been successful? And if so, why? And if not, can you give an example of where they weren't successful and why they broke down? Yeah, I can certainly pick up there. I feel like I've done quite a lot of talking about Colombia. So I'll actually talk about some smaller initiatives.

I also think Daniel has offered such great insight on some of the larger scale programming as well. So I'll talk about two cases, one in El Salvador and one in Mexico, which are not commonly thought of as traditional DDR scenarios. But certainly when you're thinking about former members of the Mara gangs, which is a transnational criminal organization in El Salvador, or the Sinaloa cartel, which is obviously equally a transnational criminal organization network in Mexico. When these individuals decide to leave these groups or are otherwise compelled to do so, this is very much a DDR process for them. And so I think there's some real value in applying DDR

frameworks and thinking about these other settings. And certainly I'm not the first person to do so. But in El Salvador, there's an organization that's been working with incarcerated youth, preparing them for reinsertion into civilian life. And what they do is through not just literacy training, but also narrative training and writing exercises, have them re-narrate the stories of their lives. And there's a lot of sort of psychological research, social psychological research behind this, but have them re-narrate their lives in a way that sets the path forward for them of an alternative future outside of these armed groups, right outside of the Mara Selva Trucha. And so by the time that they exit the incarceration facility, they actually already exit with a plan, with networks, and with some training. For example, there was a training for raising chickens that happened inside the prison. So they have this training. If they're going back to the countryside, they know how to sort of begin their own small

farm and sustain themselves. And sort of with some of the tools that they need, both technically, but then also sort of psychologically and in terms of self-esteem, to build a life outside of these really cyclical pathways into and out of these groups. I'll keep it sort of on the local level for these examples. In Mexico, I've also done some fieldwork. I lived in a drug rehab center. I was doing research there. I was not myself rehabilitating. And many of the men who were there were former members of the Sinaloa cartel or otherwise involved in the cartels. And what the center did was it combined both family counseling and therapy. It was actually a requirement of the center that these individuals' families agree to

also participate in weekly counseling sessions with individual counseling and therapy, and also exercises, sort of train-the-trainer modules, where once these men graduated from the program and showed demonstrable progress in their own reintegration trajectories, were then hired by the program to lead exercises and workshops in communities affected by cartel violence. And one of the communities that I've worked in, it's called sort of a narco-ghost town, right? It was a small fishing community that was occupied by the cartels. And then, you know, once that port was discovered by authorities, the cartels moved somewhere else. And what they left behind was a completely vacuous economy that was only sustained by meth addiction and prostitution. And there were very high reduction of gender-based violence. And actually, it was so popular that the men of the community who were the secondary targets of this training actually sort of came knocking at the NGOs doors. You know, we heard there was this really great training program.

We want to participate. And so what is really great about these programs is the successful combination of economic reintegration, which is really the fundamental scenic one on. It's just not going to happen if these people cannot sustain themselves and their families, but certainly the minimum but not sufficient requirement. It combines this economic reintegration with these other more affective, social, psychological, and relational elements that really promote individual, familial, and community healing simultaneously while providing alternative economic options to continued participation in these kinds of groups. Another lesser known DDR example is that of Niger. I say this as I'm sitting in Yamé listening to the call to prayer echoing across the city.

Interesting case study of a successful first-generation DDR approach, inspiring and informing a separate third-generation DDR process 20 years later. So the lesser-known chapter in Niger's DDR history starts in the mid-1990s, when a series of armed groups from the Tuareg ethnic group in northern and central Niger launched an insurgency against the central government, demanding greater political autonomy and development funds, development support for Niger's northern regions. A peace process ended the insurgency in the mid 1990s and formally disarmed and de-globalized former insurgents and integrated them into military and civil circuit positions. So 20 years later, when Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad secured

these critical military victories against Boko Haram, a designated terrorist organization in the Lake Chad Basin, members of the Boko Haram group, as well as other smaller groups in the Lake Chad Basin, began to defect en masse. And so this defection process was unfolding simultaneously in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. simultaneously in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. So on the Niger side, based on its experiences during the Tuareg insurgency, the immediate response was to manage the defections by creating a third-generation DDR program that actively invited former Boko Haram associates to voluntarily leave the group and reintegrate into their communities. I was a part of what I was interning at the State Department's Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operation back in 2017, when imams and traditional leaders in deeper region, which is Niger's section of the Lake Chad Basin, were receiving men, women, and children from Boko Haram. And they were advocating up to their governors and

up to the nation that the only just response to these defections and this exit is to forgive and is to reconcile. And so there is this inspiration from the Tuareg insurgency, but also this Islamic and traditional values that inform this initial advocacy for a DDR process. And from the beginning, this aspect of de facto amnesty was on the table because this was the most aligned with local values regarding reconciliation. And so this became to allow defectors to be amnestied and then to be rent-a-rate into their communities with significant socioeconomic support. And Niger decided to adopt that as its national approach. And you had various different agencies within the Nigerian government come together to create

a legal and a policy framework to facilitate defections from Boko Haram and other terrorist organizations in the Lake Chad Basin and facilitate this community reintegration process. So since 2019, this was the first graduation of individuals, former associates of Boko Haram from the DFER region's Defection Center. Over 500 former associates have graduated, receiving small business startup kits, de-radicalization mentorship sessions with local religious leaders. And this process has become a hallmark of Niger's approach to countering violent extremism, countering armed banditry, countering any type of armed violence that exists in Niger.

So since that initial graduation that happened in December 2019, there has been an expansion of Niger's DDR approach to include individuals coming out of transnational criminal organizations in the Baha'i region bordering Nigeria, as well as expanding the program to include other types of violent extremist groups in other regions of the country. Erin mentioned recidivism as a sign of success for a DDR program. And if you look at those metrics, Niger's DDR program has been extraordinarily successful in that it's enjoyed a very low recidivism rate. In the beginning, when imams were advocating for the amnesty of former associates in Boko

Haram, there was a considerable amount of reticence and reluctance from communities in deeper region because they had been severely traumatized by the attacks that were staged against their own communities, the deep sadness and trauma of seeing your sons, your daughters leaving to go fight, being forcibly recruited, being incentivized monetarily. And so communities are really resistant, rightfully so, to accepting former associates back into their families, into their communities. Chiefs on the ground in DIFA, local civil society organizations, religious leaders launched transformative and effective campaign to address these challenges and these fears that

communities had towards the DDR process. And so obviously they had success and support from the governor, from every angle of the New Jersey government in order to effectively carry out these campaigns. And we talked earlier about when does reintegration end? What is the process of DDR as it goes through its full cycle? And when you have a third generation DDR process that is looking at economic factors as the primary motivation for recruitment and participation in armed activity, you have to address the unemployment and the challenges around education, access to livelihoods training in order to close that loop of reintegration for former associates. Unfortunate situation, poverty rates in Dheera region and across Niger have not improved to the point where people leaving Boko Haram and participating in Niger's CDR process can successfully get jobs, find sustainable livelihoods after the conclusion of their participation in the program. And so this is a continued concern and challenge. This is something that we're continuing to ask and to interrogate regarding

the challenges around the economic reintegration, as well as the constant evolution of conflict on the ground. Each fighting season that comes after the rainy season brings with it new shifts in the internal structures of armed groups from Boko Haram to JNM in Western Niger to different transnational criminal organizations. And the process to incentivize defections and participation in DDR, they also change with every fighting season and every shift in the conflict. Daniela, that is such an exciting example to learn more about. And I really appreciate you

sharing that. Certainly, I think there's so much that can be learned from that experience that would be particularly generative for the Somali context. And it makes me think of a few things that might be useful to compare across those two contexts and then also think about more widely in terms of DDR programming. So I was in Mogadishu towards the latter half of last year chatting with some former members of al-Shabaab. And what really struck me, and two sort of points of distinction here are that the Somali government also receives former combatants into government roles. The pathways are sometimes a little bit more insidious. They had previously potentially been double agents within al-Shabaab and then come out and now work for the government in the intelligence agency. That's not always the pathway,

but sometimes it is. And then the other aspect is to think about whether or not former combatants would be reintegrated actually into the armed forces of the given context. So that's sort of another axis of differentiation when you're thinking about analyzing from context to context, you know, what some of the relevant factors are. But what really stood out to me in what you were talking about was, you know, this relationship of sort of what came to be revealed to me as these informal mentoring networks. So in many of these contexts, certainly in terms of Boko Haram and al-Shabaab, generally the most frequent pathway into these groups is through familiars, right? Friends, brothers, husbands, cousins, they bring you into the group, right? And what I've also found is that,

you know, speaking with former members of al-Shabaab, it's almost always that same pathway out. So this should really be a call to action for governments, international agencies, and folks working on the ground in these domains to why reintegration and DDR as a whole should be a top policy priority. Because if they're the strong pulls out of these groups and you provide a dignified, legitimate, and reasonable pathway to reintegration that is an alternative for these individuals, they will recruit their family members out of these groups. Most of these people would not have joined these groups if they had had another option. They're just the best option in the time. And I would contend that out of the four of us who are, you know, on this conversation right now, three out of four of us would make the same decision under the same set of circumstances. So really thinking about those informal mentoring networks

that can be formed and mobilized for folks to come out of these groups is really important in creating the conditions for them to have these dignified pathways out and really recruit out as much as they did recruit into these groups. The other thing this example also made me think of was the challenge in terms of, you know, obviously if an ex-combatant's demobilizing and coming out of the group and they can't get a job, they're going to be at much higher risk for recidivism, right? Which is a huge challenge and a huge problem for DDR worldwide. The other challenge that this also brings to light is when you do offer appropriate supports or sufficient

supports for these individuals, what that can do is actually cause resentment and complicate their reintegration process in the community. Because as I mentioned before, so many of these people are reentering a society or transitioning into a society or a community that is living under extremely precarious and vulnerable conditions. So if I'm a victim of a member of this armed group, or if I'm just somebody that's poor, and I see this formerly armed actor getting monthly stipends and education and healthcare and trauma services, I'm going to be pretty resentful about the fact that this person that was firing on innocent, or that I perceive, right, not all of them obviously

participated in active violence, but that this person who I think this violent, bad person coming out of this group is getting all of these benefits, and yet I still don't have protein for my children at the end of every day, that can really sediment sort of existing tensions and resentments between populations in these communities. So that's also why what Daniela was talking about, these third-generation approaches, these community-based approaches that focus on improving overall community, social cohesion, and well-being, and dignity and sustainability are very important because they also sort of ameliorate those potential resentments and divisions that can occur when one group is getting benefits at what is perceived to

be the cost of the other. That's something that came up in the initial conversations on the DDR process around the Lake Chad Basin, so in Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger itself. And something that Niger piloted that was really an idea that came up through the communities who were expressing their concerns was the five-to-one deal that is commonly talked about across the country. And so the deal that was struck that communities were able to get on board with is that for every one defector or former associate who participates in the DDR program, there need to be five community members who gain a benefit from the same activities and the same support. And so a lot of the DDR activities that are happening in deeper region are happening with

that five to one ratio. And that has been incredibly helpful for mitigating those grievances and those legitimate fears. And also mitigating what some call the DDR recruitment logic, that if I join Boko Haram and then decide to leave Boko Haram, I will then get access to livelihood support, I will get a reintegration kit. And so this also has mitigated that recruitment concern, whereby people associate a group with then receiving support from socioeconomic initiatives. And the point that you made as well about the local level negotiations and the familial ties that both incentivize recruitment and sustain recruitment lines, as well as nourish those same calls to return.

It's a question that I don't really get when I'm in Yemen or I'm around the region and people's like, how do you like negotiating with local Vatik Shumis groups to incentivize people? But in fact, I'm like, well, that's definitely not what I do because I'm actually not the best place to have those conversations. It really is local chiefs who carry a tremendous amount of weight socially and politically, as well as mothers, fathers, uncles, brothers, sisters who have those ongoing relationships. I think the issue of these mentoring networks and pulling folks out of the groups is a really interesting one, especially from a practitioner standpoint, right? Because it's one of those things that can be ruined by trying to formalize it, I suspect. I don't think it's the domain of international agencies or governments or maybe even NGOs to try to formalize what appears to be, at least anecdotally, an effective method of outgroup recruitment, which are these sort of familial ties and already reintegrating peers and relatives. But at the same time, there is a role for these NGOs and government agencies and international organizations to create the kinds of conditions where that kind of recruitment can

flourish, right? So it's a delicate balance, and I think there's a lot more to be learned there and a lot more to think about. But yeah, I think the best we can do for now is maybe creating those conditions. And I think that five-to-one deal that you mentioned is fantastic and a really innovative and what sounds to be quite effective approach to addressing this issue of quite legitimately and understandable resentments or legitimately leveraged and understandable resentments of folks who are suffering and at the margins and victimized by armed conflict and who see their former aggressors benefiting. I think environmental peace building is actually, and I won't get too much into this because it starts to wander a bit, but it's one way that can sort of foreground the advancement of the community commons in a way that also creates the space for all actors to be involved in both receiving resources and also

participating in the improvement of those commons. And certainly those effects that you were talking about in terms of anticipated benefits loomed large in my time in Colombia as well. In 2015, as people were anticipating the signing of the Peace Accord, they started burning the hills in the rural areas of Caquita to plant coca plants because they anticipated that there would be some kind of land restitution or crop substitution program that they could then present themselves for once the peace accord was signed. But then in the absence of a successful crop substitution program, which was in fact an element of the peace accord but has not been implemented to much degree of success, that really just contributed to a versioning of the production of cocaine in Colombia. So these anticipatory actions can have quite long-ranging and deleterious effects for overall DDR and stabilization over the long term as well. Yeah, and I think that segues really nicely into the next question, which is the

Department of Defense has DDR in the phase six or final phase of conflict within doctrine, but we pay very little attention to this. And I think the most famous example will be the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But what can the military offer DDR, if anything, and why should military leaders pay attention to DDR efforts? Yeah, I'm happy to jump in there. I mean, I think, yeah, obviously the invasion in Iraq is an example that looms large. Certainly the case in Sudan right now is also an example of, in my opinion, largely driven by a failure to reintegrate, a failure to implement the reintegration component of the Juba agreement in which the RSF was meant to be transitioned into

the formal military. Never was. And now we see what's happening. Of course, there's other factors at play there, but that's a pretty darn primary driving factor there. I think what's critical is there are certain elements of the military that are well-trained and selected for doing this kind of liaison work that would need to be done between civilian and military entities, certainly military police, civilian affairs, psychological operations, other folks who have had direct and extended relationship building and experience in these communities and with these individuals, maybe not conventional military, right, but these other specially trained individuals would be well

positioned to facilitate this process. It's certainly not the sexy fun part of defense activities. So I think that's maybe part of why it gets dropped off. And it certainly requires a great deal of support and funding and time and patience. There's the issue of logistics, feeding and housing forces providing security and protection to local partners. So certainly there is a role and frankly, in my opinion, a responsibility of the DOD to sort of stick around a little bit longer and make sure that it does not sown the seeds for its future adversaries. But there are understandably challenges to that. But fostering those civilian military collaboration relationships are fundamental,

I think, to advancing in that regard. The last question I want to ask before we get into talking about policy recommendations explicitly is kind of a tough question for the two of you, and that's how can DDR be successful if the only fact on the ground that's really changed is that the fighting has stopped? You've touched on the fact that a lot of the deep-rooted feelings of mistrust and hostility stick around even after the fighting stopped. And if issues in economic access or governance structures haven't really changed, will DDR projects really only serve as a temporary fix? The question you're asking essentially reflects this general tension between the concepts of negative peace and positive peace. Two concepts have influenced the evolution of DDR.

So just a quick definition, negative peace refers to the absence of large-scale fiscal violence, while positive peace takes a broader view of conflict to account for the presence of social, economic, and political conditions like access to clean drinking water or equitable and representative government structures and ensure human security. So DDR essentially has evolved past its first generation iteration as a technical process that upholds a peace agreement, primarily because practitioners have recognized that just ending hostilities alone doesn't guarantee human security, doesn't bring you clean drinking water, it doesn't reopen schools that have been closed during a war. And so these days when you are looking at a signed peace agreement that a DDR process supports, you'll likely see second generation

DDR activities embedded in the overall process. So DDR is now integrated into other interventions that support a peace agreement, including transitional justice and community development. But essentially, if this integration doesn't happen, if you just have DDR being the technical approach only without the broader considerations of economic development, of government reform, of social service provision, that there'll be a really limited return on your investment, return on the efforts that everybody has put into the process, and there'll be a higher likelihood of either individual or group-level recidivism into armed conflict.

First of all, that distinction is super important between negative and positive peace. And I think most folks working in this area are looking at this from a positive peace angle, which, as Daniela mentioned, is much more holistic and longitudinal in nature. Again, I would just reiterate something I said earlier, which is the vast majority of these people would do something else if something else were an option. Now that those pressures, those push and pull factors certainly differ from one context to another. But now, having worked in quite a few contexts around the world, the dynamic is quite similar, which is this is just the best possible option, sometimes really the only option in a given

moment. So if you put anything else in front of them that's feasible, dignified, and sustainable, it will be taken up. I've spoken with probably over a thousand ex-combatants at this point at great lengths doing life history interviews, semi-structured interviews, sharing my daily life with them, or having them actually is the better way to say it, share their daily lives with me. And I can count on one hand the number that seemed to me like just bad people, you know? So these are very complex stories and histories that are interwoven with things like lack of access to education and healthcare and resources and opportunities,

that if those opportunities were present, certainly there would be a different future ahead. So all that said, there's plenty of people that do still reintegrate under these austere circumstances. So it's certainly not, you know, let's wait until things are better, until we begin these DDR programs. Everything needs to be happening simultaneously at multiple levels. Yes, you absolutely need those national level DDR programs because they will fall flat on the ground and fail if there is not the high level leadership and political will that backs these initiatives in order to guarantee or at least set the stage for their success. But also certainly these more

localized undertakings that factor in the differentiated needs of different kinds of communities. I mean, rural reintegration is an entirely different beast than urban reintegration and as are different trajectories and forms that we've already talked about at length. So certainly, you know, there have been some great successes. I would say pockets of success in each context that can fuel sort of a global set of more generalizable lessons learned. And principles, I would say the principles tend to be generalizable, but the implementation strategies and actions really need to be done on a context by context basis. Those were some really insightful reflections. Thanks for sharing that context around the reasons people ultimately choose to engage in violence. Erin, as you reflect on your

research and the many interviews you've conducted in the field, are there any key implications of your research that you think are most important for policymakers and academics to consider? I'll start with academics because I think that's the shortest answer is go there, be there, spend time in the field. This is not a set of problems that can be addressed by desk research alone. And I think mixed methods, you really need a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. So thinking about research teams rather than individual researchers. And of course, that can happen from different locations and positionalities.

But go there and do this work in the field and spend time with the people that you're writing and thinking about. I think that's the most important thing. In terms of practitioners and policymakers, well, for practitioners, I would say at the high levels, the donor levels, I think there's a really important conversation that needs to be had around measurement and evaluation, accountability, and reporting, because so many of the actions on the ground that I've seen spending time living in these communities and with these populations are driven by the anticipation of having to report to Congress why we spent $25 million on this particular reintegration program. And that decision on, okay, we need to see 40 workshops implemented, 50% presence of women, 25% of indigenous populations, and 75% of people need to report that they are reconciled, right? Those kinds of metrics that kind of make sense at an aggregate,

very distant, faraway level, give rise to all kinds of perverse actions and activities on the ground. And by perverse, I just mean sort of gaming the system a little bit. I mean, I worked in a government, I won't name it, but I worked as an intern in a government in a reintegration program early on in my studies. And my job was to do a find and replace in all of the documents. I searched for the word reintegration and I replaced it with reconciliation because the donor mood was shifting from funding reintegration projects to funding reconciliation. So was there a substantive change in the programming? Absolutely not. It was just a semantic one. But it's these kinds of bureaucratic measurement dances that happen. And certainly at the local level, I've seen folks really putting in everything that they can of their own blood, sweat, and tears into making these reconciliation workshops happen.

But then when they kind of fall short of what the donors were asking for, completely forging the evidence of these workshops in a way that was legible to donors. So still complying with the spirit of the initiative, but the quote-unquote evidence that was eventually, you know, six months later and 10 bureaucratic levels down the line reported to Congress was completely fabricated. So closing that gap for practitioners and policymakers between what is being desired to be seen and what is actually happening on the ground is really important because real and substantive actions are happening. It's not that these people are manipulating the system and running off with this money to build a house somewhere in the hills. They're doing the work

most of the time, but it's just the measurement and the metrics don't match up with what's needing to be reported to the donors. And I think there needs to be a serious conversation with the high-level donors from all countries about how to more substantively connect to folks on the ground. And I think one way to do this, and this comes more from a budgeting standpoint, is to make sure that the major projects that are being implemented have these inception phases built into the budgeting, as well as some kind of longitudinal follow-up. Because if we're talking about processes that take 1, 5, 7, 20 years to implement, and you're only measuring it on a six-month, nine-month project basis, you simply cannot capture the change that you're trying to

enact through the actions that you're implementing. Thanks, Erin. I want to build on that by turning to Daniela to ask you as a practitioner, what would you like academics to focus their work on? And also, what would you hope policymakers prioritize going forward? Now that we are a decade into third generation DDR as a robust and widely used approach, I'm eager to see academic studies on its efficacy and ending or positively changing the trajectory of an armed conflict. We've seen third-generation DDR work in specific cases at the local and national levels, but I'm curious, what are the variables across third-generation DDR that position the intervention to reduce or end violence? I, myself as a practitioner, can point to specific case studies that I've worked on

from Niger, from Cameroon, from Chad, and can look at the interaction of DDR with other stabilization approaches, both kinetic and non-kinetic in nature. But at a more regional or global level, I'm curious what conclusions we can draw from our practice and what we can then assert as an effective third-generation approach that has proven efficacy across regions and across contexts. Erin, Daniela, this has been a really insightful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the Regular Warfare podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you, everyone, Warfare podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you everyone for having me today.

Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Ben and Catherine will discuss SOF's role in strategic disruption with Eric Robinson and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations

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