The late US General Douglas MacArthur famously claimed that “old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” As with so many things Douglas MacArthur said, that’s nonsense —  check out the robust museum built around MacArthur’s grave in Norfolk, Virginia. There is, however, a growing academic literature on what happens when MacArthur’s aphorism is half-correct when old soldiers don’t die but also refuse to fade away. In the next two editions of Deep Dive, we’ll look at new research on how conflict shapes future political participation by ex-combatants.

In a new article in Security Studies, Anders Themnér and Niklas Karlén examine why ex-combatants in civil wars often don’t act the way policymakers assume they will once conflicts end. Many peace deals in civil wars involve disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs, that are meant to help fighters transition from being professional soldiers to being professional literally anything else. The goal is to break up military units and end their capacity for further organized violence after a peace deal has been signed. To that end, the programs often provide money, job training and other resources to help launch ex-combatants into civilian careers that will take them far away from their former comrades.

It turns out, however, that even after they’ve gone through these programs, many ex-combatants in civil wars end up living together, in tight-knit groups that closely resemble their wartime units. That’s a source of great consternation to policymakers, both because it makes DDR programs seem like a waste of money and, more importantly, because if military units are just continuing to exist as social networks, it probably isn’t hard to reconstitute them as military units. Those social networks, in other words, can be seen as threats to the durability of a peace deal.

Themnér and Karlén argue that a leading cause of this suboptimal DDR outcome is the connection of ex-commanders to post-conflict patronage networks. In instances where ex-commanders are easily able to distribute patronage to their former soldiers, there is little reason for the soldiers to maintain horizontal ties between them — all they need to survive is the vertical tie to their former commander. Conversely, if ex-commanders aren’t a steady source of resources and ex-combatants have a hard time becoming self-sufficient in a post-conflict economy, dense horizontal ties with old comrades make a lot of sense. By living close by and sharing resources, a demobilized military unit can create its own safety net, protecting its members from the vicissitudes of civilian life by maintaining its cohesion.

To test their theory, Themnér and Karlén looked at two ex-combatant networks in Liberia to see how they came to assume their current structures. By focusing on two ex-commanders and the social networks that have formed around them, Themnér and Karlén found that there were significant variances between the two in the way their networks functioned. Both ex-commanders were in frequent contact with their former fighters, but one — the authors gave him the pseudonym Paul — was the main source of resources for his network, while the other — Edwin — was not.

As Themnér and Karlén predicted, the ex-fighters in Edwin’s network interacted nearly three times as often with each other as the ex-fighters in Paul’s network. Even more strikingly, Paul’s network was much more politically cohesive than Edwin’s. When Paul gained entry into (and patronage from) a new political party, the vast majority of his former soldiers moved with him to the party. For Edwin, however, most of his former soldiers are political free agents relative to their old commander, with few of them following his post-conflict political moves.

As Themnér and Karlén note, these results suggest that some of the fundamental assumptions of DDR programs may be incorrect. It may actually be better for stability to keep some military units intact after disarmament, so long as commanders can be integrated into political patronage systems, because they provide ex-combatants the resources they need to continue living as civilians and avoid relying on their skills as violence specialists. By denying the power of ex-combatant mutual aid networks, peace pacts may be creating new risks.

Halima Gikandi reported on the economic threat COVID-19 poses in Africa. The World Bank now estimates that the continent, home until recently to many of the fastest-growing economies in the world, will enter a recession this year for the first time in a quarter century. The African Development Bank has pledged $10 billion to help African countries fight the virus, but many experts argue that those countries will need far greater international support — including debt relief — in order to have the liquidity necessary to fund public health and social programs.

Andrea Little Limbago argued for US policymakers to take the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to strengthen digital privacy protections. With social distancing forcing so many interactions online, concerns about privacy on common utilities like Google and Zoom are growing more widespread. At the same time, countries around the world are using COVID-19 as an excuse to increase digital surveillance and roll back data privacy. Given US prominence in the tech industry, a move toward legal data privacy protections in the US could have a major effect worldwide.

Rupa Shenoy spoke to refugees and humanitarian aid workers about the potential for COVID-19 to reorder gender roles among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The virus has not yet reached Bangladeshi refugee camps, where some 900,000 Rohingya live in close quarters after fleeing genocide in Myanmar, but there is widespread fear that it will be devastating if it arrives. Rohingya society is largely patriarchal, but women are typically the primary caregivers, a role that will take on increasing importance as the pandemic nears. Pandemic preparation and response could end up propelling the Rohingya women leading those efforts into longer-term leadership roles.

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