Peacebuilding

The first section of this article argues that the best-known definition of physical courage, stemming from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, is less than fit for today’s military. Having done so, a short outline is given of more ‘scientific’ approaches to physical courage, drawing mainly on insights offered by psychologists, and of the problems that are inherent to these approaches. Subsequently, the article turns to a topic that is often paid lip ser v ice to in the military, yet remains somewhat hard to pin down: moral courage. Although both forms of courage are intertwined, they are so in a less straightforward manner than is often thought. The way the de velopment of physical courage in today’s military is undertaken, for instance, contributes little to the de v elopment of moral courage.

My research examines the combined effects of third-party peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and development interventions on resiliency of different actors in civil conflict, using Somalia as a case study.  Understanding the effects of these interventions requires knowledge of what is happening on the ground at the local level and how the local level dynamics impact the broader conflict. These interviews will provide unique insights on those local dynamics from the perspective of the peacekeeping troops from Burundi in their support role to AMISOM.

Are combatants from insurgent and counterinsurgent groups the same people? Evidence suggests that they go through different war experiences and socialization processes and may also behave differently after demobilization. In this study, we demonstrate that members of guerrilla and paramilitary groups in Colombia were already driven by clearly distinguishable motivations in their decision to join the respective groups, beyond contextual constraints. This implies that the insurgent-counterinsurgent cleavage does not only stem from macro-level conditions, but is also situated in the minds of potential recruits since before they join. Our analysis is based on a systematic integration of relevant hypotheses extracted from earlier studies and a validation of their findings with a survey database of 1,485 ex-combatants in Colombia.

By presenting four cases from everyday life in war-torn Acholiland, northern Uganda, I will argue that Uganda's celebrated political reforms have reproduced violent patterns that force us to question the country's alleged success story. In today’s emerging global realities, war and violence are the very means of order and control, especially at the peripheries. More particular in the Ugandan case, war and a murky counterinsurgency industry are steadily becoming permanent. Even the involvement of the international community, I will show, is questioned by people in the war-torn north.