<p>This dissertation presents an ethnography of youth in Liberia and of how their lives became affected by a civil war which raged in the country between 1990 and 1997. The focus is on the experiences, motivations, and reflections of young combatants who fought for a variety of rebel factions. For these young people, the daily prospect of poverty, joblessness and marginalisation effectively blocked the paths to a normal adulthood; drawing them instead into a subculture of liminality, characterised by abjection, resentment and rootlessness. As opportunity came, their voluntary enlistment into one of the several rebel armies of the civil war therefore became an attractive option for many. Based upon one year of fieldwork during 1998, conducted among groups of ex-combatant youths in both the capital Monrovia and in a provincial town in the rural hinterland, I describe and analyse the young people’s own accounts of their involvement in the civil war; their complicity in atrocities, their coping strategies in the context of armed conflict, their position as ex-combatants in a post-war environment, and their outlook on their past, present and future.</p><p>In the first chapter I set the scene of the Liberian civil war and discuss the central concepts on which my dissertation is built. Chapter two then takes up the methodological issues relating to the particular fieldwork conditions found. This is done by providing an account of my participant observation within a volatile community of ex-combatants in Monrovia. Chapter three deals with the nature of pre-civil war Liberian political and military organisational structures and their rootedness in pre-state institutions such as local warlordism and secret societies. In chapter four I look at the cultural setting of my fieldwork and track elements found within the legacy of violence, to oral literature and patterns of socialisation. Chapter five focuses specifically on the role and predicament of young women in the civil war. Whilst some became active fighters, most participated as auxiliaries in various capacities. Their accounts convey not only the tremendous hardship and suffering, but also reveal mechanisms which helped at least some to survive. In chapter six I discuss the question of a post-war reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime society and show that the prospects of different groups depend primarily on their social and geographical situation, rather than on the negligible effectiveness of aid programmes routinely executed by international organisations and NGOs.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2000. / "RAND Graduate School." Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-120). Also available on the internet via WWW in PDF format.

<p>Försvarsmakten får fler och svårare uppgifter att lösa i framtiden. Internationella insatser blir en allt större del av Försvarsmaktens verksamhet. Konflikterna i insatsområdena är komplexa och kräver att Försvarsmakten har välutbildade officerare och soldater. Samtidigt strävar Försvarsmakten efter att ha förband redo att sättas in och genomföra insats på kort varsel. Detta har medfört att Försvarsmakten i framtiden kommer rekrytera soldater på frivillig grund och det innebär att värnplikten avskaffas. De blir en del av ett stående förband, där motivationen att lösa uppgift är hög. För att kunna rekrytera soldater till förbanden krävs att utbildningen som bedrivs har en hög kvalité, är utvecklande och utmanande för soldaten. Ovan presenterade förutsättningar bidrar till, enligt min mening, att kraven på den som utbildar rimligtvis borde förändras. Syftet, med uppsatsen, är att undersöka vilka krav det, i framtiden,kommer ställas på utbildaren som skall utbilda kontraktsanställda soldater? Undersökningen grundar sig i officerares syn på de nuvarande och framtida kraven på utbildaren. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att kraven på stridsutbildning, i allt väsenligt, kommer se likadant ut. Där kravet på personlig färdighet blir allt viktigare. Däremot kommer krav kopplat till ledarskap och förhållningssätt ändras jämfört med tidigare. Bland annat tror officerare att skapa förtroende och vara ett föredöme i utbildningen är viktigt, för att motivera soldaterna till att utvecklas.</p> / <p>The Swedish Armed Forces gets more task and more difficult problems to solve in the future. International efforts are becoming an increasingly larger part of The Armed Forces activities. The conflicts in the areas of action are complex and require that the Armed Forces have well trained officers and soldiers. At the same time The Armed Forces strive to have units ready to deploy and implement an effort on short notice. This has led to The Armed Forces in the future will recruit soldiers on a voluntary basis and that the compulsory military service will be abolished. The soldiers become part of a standing unit, where the motivation to solve the task is high. In order to recruit soldiers for the troops required that the training will have a high quality, is evolving and challenging for the soldier. The above-presented conditions contribute to, in my opinion that the requirements of the person who educate and train ought to change. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what the requirements, in the future, will be on the trainer to train contracted soldiers? The study is based on officer’s view of the current and future requirements for the trainer. The results of the survey show that the requirements for the combat training, in all inextricably, will be the same. Where the requirement of personal skills are important. However, the requirements related to leadership and attitude will change compared to earlier. Among other things, officers believe that building confidence and be a model of education is important, to motivate the soldiers to be developed.</p>

Försvarsmakten får fler och svårare uppgifter att lösa i framtiden. Internationella insatser blir en allt större del av Försvarsmaktens verksamhet. Konflikterna i insatsområdena är komplexa och kräver att Försvarsmakten har välutbildade officerare och soldater. Samtidigt strävar Försvarsmakten efter att ha förband redo att sättas in och genomföra insats på kort varsel. Detta har medfört att Försvarsmakten i framtiden kommer rekrytera soldater på frivillig grund och det innebär att värnplikten avskaffas. De blir en del av ett stående förband, där motivationen att lösa uppgift är hög. För att kunna rekrytera soldater till förbanden krävs att utbildningen som bedrivs har en hög kvalité, är utvecklande och utmanande för soldaten. Ovan presenterade förutsättningar bidrar till, enligt min mening, att kraven på den som utbildar rimligtvis borde förändras. Syftet, med uppsatsen, är att undersöka vilka krav det, i framtiden,kommer ställas på utbildaren som skall utbilda kontraktsanställda soldater? Undersökningen grundar sig i officerares syn på de nuvarande och framtida kraven på utbildaren. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att kraven på stridsutbildning, i allt väsenligt, kommer se likadant ut. Där kravet på personlig färdighet blir allt viktigare. Däremot kommer krav kopplat till ledarskap och förhållningssätt ändras jämfört med tidigare. Bland annat tror officerare att skapa förtroende och vara ett föredöme i utbildningen är viktigt, för att motivera soldaterna till att utvecklas. / The Swedish Armed Forces gets more task and more difficult problems to solve in the future. International efforts are becoming an increasingly larger part of The Armed Forces activities. The conflicts in the areas of action are complex and require that the Armed Forces have well trained officers and soldiers. At the same time The Armed Forces strive to have units ready to deploy and implement an effort on short notice. This has led to The Armed Forces in the future will recruit soldiers on a voluntary basis and that the compulsory military service will be abolished. The soldiers become part of a standing unit, where the motivation to solve the task is high. In order to recruit soldiers for the troops required that the training will have a high quality, is evolving and challenging for the soldier. The above-presented conditions contribute to, in my opinion that the requirements of the person who educate and train ought to change. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what the requirements, in the future, will be on the trainer to train contracted soldiers? The study is based on officer’s view of the current and future requirements for the trainer. The results of the survey show that the requirements for the combat training, in all inextricably, will be the same. Where the requirement of personal skills are important. However, the requirements related to leadership and attitude will change compared to earlier. Among other things, officers believe that building confidence and be a model of education is important, to motivate the soldiers to be developed.

This dissertation presents an ethnography of youth in Liberia and of how their lives became affected by a civil war which raged in the country between 1990 and 1997. The focus is on the experiences, motivations, and reflections of young combatants who fought for a variety of rebel factions. For these young people, the daily prospect of poverty, joblessness and marginalisation effectively blocked the paths to a normal adulthood; drawing them instead into a subculture of liminality, characterised by abjection, resentment and rootlessness. As opportunity came, their voluntary enlistment into one of the several rebel armies of the civil war therefore became an attractive option for many. Based upon one year of fieldwork during 1998, conducted among groups of ex-combatant youths in both the capital Monrovia and in a provincial town in the rural hinterland, I describe and analyse the young people’s own accounts of their involvement in the civil war; their complicity in atrocities, their coping strategies in the context of armed conflict, their position as ex-combatants in a post-war environment, and their outlook on their past, present and future. In the first chapter I set the scene of the Liberian civil war and discuss the central concepts on which my dissertation is built. Chapter two then takes up the methodological issues relating to the particular fieldwork conditions found. This is done by providing an account of my participant observation within a volatile community of ex-combatants in Monrovia. Chapter three deals with the nature of pre-civil war Liberian political and military organisational structures and their rootedness in pre-state institutions such as local warlordism and secret societies. In chapter four I look at the cultural setting of my fieldwork and track elements found within the legacy of violence, to oral literature and patterns of socialisation. Chapter five focuses specifically on the role and predicament of young women in the civil war. Whilst some became active fighters, most participated as auxiliaries in various capacities. Their accounts convey not only the tremendous hardship and suffering, but also reveal mechanisms which helped at least some to survive. In chapter six I discuss the question of a post-war reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime society and show that the prospects of different groups depend primarily on their social and geographical situation, rather than on the negligible effectiveness of aid programmes routinely executed by international organisations and NGOs.

Bolstering local perceptions of legitimacy in armed intervention has emerged as an important feature of increasingly complex international peace and statebuilding efforts. Yet, previous research has only begun to explore what local legitimacy entails to those involved in, and affected by, armed intervention. This dissertation advances an understanding of local legitimacy as a perception-based, relational phenomenon. Through this lens, it examines armed intervention in Afghanistan (2001-2014). In particular, this dissertation studies how the relationship between Afghan citizens and intervening armed forces interacts with, and shapes, perspectives on local legitimacy held by the main 'interveners' and those 'intervened upon'. This dissertation consists of an introduction, which situates the study in a wider context, and four essays. Beginning with the organizational perspectives of the main intervening actors in Afghanistan, Essay I finds that the UN and NATO initially conceptualized problems of local legitimacy as principally the consequence of a fragile Afghan state, and not as failings of the intervention. When negative dimensions of intervention became increasingly recognized, principal responsibility for the legitimacy process shifted away from intervening authorities and onto the Afghan state. Similarly, Essay II shows how key U.S. military doctrine, over time, reconceptualized the formal duty of intervening forces in the local legitimacy process, ultimately considering it contingent on, and subordinate to, the will and capabilities of host-state authorities and the local population. Turning thereafter to firsthand accounts from the field, Essay III and Essay IV together contrast personal perspectives on the intervention held by U.S. Army Officers and Afghan citizens. Essay III finds that personal experiences of noncombat contact with Afghans reinforced the Officers' sense of duty toward the local population. Conversely, Essay IV suggests that the local legitimacy of intervening forces became increasingly contested among Afghans, due largely to the perceived intensification of foreign intrusion on 'everyday' life. Taken together, the findings of this dissertation lay the foundation for the development of a new concept, the host-citizen contract. In so doing, it provides a social contract framework to better understand the complex dynamics of local legitimacy in Afghanistan, and beyond.

M. Tech. Business Administration / The study aims to probe into the SANDFs strategic purpose for implementing the MSDS and whether the learners acquire the skills they regard declared as essential. The study will also investigate whether the MSDS fulfils the learners career aspirations and further asses their view regarding the programme.

Participation in Peace Support Operations (PSOs) is one of the most common military duties assigned to present-day Western soldiers. Previous research concerned with the psychological effects of these missions on the individual soldier has focused on issues of mental health and how to ensure military effectiveness. This study takes a different perspective, and examines how PSOs affect the political psychology of the peace soldier, asking: how and to what extent do the sociopolitical psychological orientations of the individual soldier change as a consequence of peace support operations? The study combines theory from clinical, social, and personality psychology to construct a framework for understanding how and why the values and the attitudes toward violence of the soldier may be affected by PSO deployments. It is argued that although combat exposure may cause changes in attitudes and values, these variables will overall remain stable across the deployment. Stability is predicted to be the norm due to the importance of certain attitudes and values to the soldierly identity, and owing to the good person-environment fit that the deployment provides for the soldiers. It is also argued that the individual’s personality traits will predict levels of change and stability. Empirically, two Swedish contingents deployed to northern Afghanistan under the auspices of NATO’s ISAF mission are analyzed. Change and stability are examined by combining statistical analyses of surveys with in-depth interviews carried out at both the pre- and post-deployment stages. As hypothesized, the study finds that both values and attitudes exhibit high levels of stability across the mission. Contrary to expectations the soldiers’ experiences of combat exposure had little to no effect on attitudes and values. Combat exposure was, however, limited during the deployments studied. Finally, the individual’s personality traits are identified as being relatively potent factors for inducing change and stability. By demonstrating that low-exposure PSOs have only minor effects on the sociopolitical psychological orientations of soldiers, the study advances knowledge of the political psychology of the peace soldier and provides additional contributions to the fields of value and personality psychology. Among other things, the study demonstrates the stability of values in a very challenging environment, and how personality traits affect change and stability in values.

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This thesis aims to investigate the phenomenon of war rape in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to understand the dynamics, contextual realities and consequences of its perpetration. Practical and theoretical knowledge is generated which is relevant for health care interventions, humanitarian assistance and peace initiatives, that are cognizant of the actual needs of the affected populations. The study employed ethnographic methodology involving prolonged engagement with the field, participant observation, formal and informal interviews, keeping of field notes and the continuous practice of reflexivity. The four papers in this thesis represent formal interviews with participants from three distinct groups: local leaders (Paper I), ex-child soldier boys (Paper II) and women survivors of sexual violence (Paper III &amp; IV). Qualitative Content Analysis was used for the interview study with local leaders (Paper I). Findings from this study reveal how mass rape and the methods of perpetration create a chaos effectively destroying communities. The leaders draw attention to the fact that an exclusive focus on raped women misses other structural factors that contribute to war and sexual violence, factors such as the global political economy, international apathy, the stance of the church, effects of militarization, inappropriate aid and interpretations of gender roles. Through the theoretical lenses of militarised masculinity and gender based violence, interviews with ex-child soldier boys, seen as both victims of war as well as proxy perpetrators of sexual violence, were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed the systematic and violent construction of children into soldiers, inculcating a rigid set of stereotypical hyper-masculine behaviors promoting dominance by violating the subordinate “other”. These findings argue for a more complex, contextualized view of the perpetrator resulting from the ways society has (re)constructed gender, ethnicity and class. Papers III and IV reflect the interviews and narratives provided by women survivors. Guided by thematic analysis and a matrix of theories: Structural violence, Intersectionality and “new wars”; Paper III bears witness to the women’s expressions of their profound losses and dispossession as they struggle to survive stigmatization in the impoverished margins of the warzone, along with children born of rape. The perpetrator is cited here as well as by the leaders as predominantly Interhamwe. Payne’s Sites of Resilience model used in Paper IV situates stigmatized women survivors suffering in a global context as they navigate survival, demonstrating resilience in the margins through support from their faith in God, scarce health services, indigenous healing and strategic alliances. Findings suggest that collaborations of existing strengthened networks, ie: the church, healthcare and indigenous healers, could extend the reach of sustainable and holistic support services, positively effecting already identified sites of resilience. Findings draw attention to the challenges faced by public health in addressing mass trauma. Women’s raped bodies represent tangible material damage, embedded in a matrix of globalization processes and structural violence involving gender, ethnicity and class. This requires serious reflection.