It’s not just about the guns

The question as to why certain disarmament programmes work while others don’t is the focus of DISARM, a 3,5-year-long project on the effect of disarmament on conflict recurrence. Funded by the Norwegian Research Council, the project is a pivotal collaboration between Stellenbosch University (SU) and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). The institute researches the conditions necessary for peaceful relations between states, groups, and people.

The leader of this project on the SU side, Dr Guy Lamb from the Department of Political Science, has spent more than 25 years researching conflict, arms control, peace building, and violence reduction in Africa. But, he says, the DISARM project is the first systematic global study to look specifically at what causes conflict recurrence after disarmament has taken place. “Disarmament is often approached in a technical way and is seen as a priority by the United Nations.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defines  disarmament as “the act of eliminating or abolishing weapons either unilaterally or reciprocally”. With this in mind, Lamb says the focus tends to be on how best to remove weapons from combatants, and how to subsequently destroy them. But there is no work being done on whether the process is effective and whether it has a lasting impact on peacekeeping.

The Namibian ‘success story’

The absence of a significant recurrence of conflict in Namibia after close to three decades of war is often hailed as a disarmament success story. While there have been flare-ups — Caprivi secessionist violence in the late 1990s and reports of ongoing violent crime — the situation in the country has remained comparatively controlled after three decades of war ended in 1989, noted SU researcher Haylene Bossau in a presentation at the British International Studies Association (BISA) 2023 Conference.

Lamb attributes this phenomenon to the multi-faceted dynamics that played a part in Namibia’s reasonably successful transition to democracy. Various disarmament processes and government support of ex-combatants helped to reduce conflict. “South Africa’s withdrawal from Namibia to focus on its own democratic transition also certainly helped,” says Lamb.

Mozambique’s ‘fragile peace’

Mozambique, however, offers an example of how disarmament efforts that ticked all the boxes for a peaceful transition can still be followed by conflict. “There was complete disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, and still weapons resurfaced,” says Lamb.

In SU PhD candidate Monique Bennett’s analysis of the conflict situation in Mozambique over the past 50 years, also presented at the BISA 2023 Conference, she questioned why the country’s warring parties, Frelimo and Renamo, returned to armed conflict even after the UN proclaimed the DDR process a success when the civil war ended in 1992.

Persistent mistrust between the parties posed a challenge to the long-term success of disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR), explained Bennett. She said the mandate was ambiguous, and the UN — faced with timing and resource allocation issues — could only find temporary solutions to the problems. She added that Renamo still had the same access to weapons as it had during the civil war that lasted from 1977 to 1992, and wartime networks also prevailed. The resultant tension between Renamo and Frelimo spilled over into banditry and criminal activity.

Well-intended attempts at DDR can have negative outcomes when coupled with unresolved grievances, Bennett emphasised. “If not done with adequate, careful design or implementation, as in the case of Mozambique, disarmament can create a ‘fragile peace’.”

Women and war

An often neglected aspect of disarmament — namely the impact it has on women combatants — is another topic under consideration by DISARM.

Of the 33 armed conflicts that took place in 2022, 23 occurred in countries with a low level of gender equality. Yet, gender is a filter not often applied to discussions around disarmament and reintegration, explains Lamb. “We need to understand how women view weapons and what the implications of disarmament will mean for them. Do peacekeeping programmes take the needs of women into account?” Whereas previous studies have looked at women as victims, more needs to be done to investigate the role of women combatants in peacebuilding, he says.

In a conference paper titled “Still lacking representation: Women and minors in DDR provisions (1975–2021", presented at Folke Bernadotte Academy in February this year, Júlia Palik noted: “Women and minors participate in conflict directly as combatants or commanders, and in several different indirect roles. Despite the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and the UN’s Integrated DDR Standards’ (2006) explicit calls to include women and minors in DDR programmes, both groups remain grossly underrepresented in these processes.” Palik, a senior researcher at PRIO and leader of the DISARM project, adds that, in a study of 126 peace agreements with at least one DDR component each, only 2 made reference to women, 11 mentioned minors, and only 9 referred to both groups. Furthermore, these mentions of women and minors were “essentialist, vague”, with both groups portrayed as victims.

The true power of weapons

One of the focal points of the DISARM project is the symbolism of weapons. “Disarmament cannot merely be a technical exercise,” says Lamb. Programmes need to take into account the myriad of factors at play. Different genders, for example, have different associations with weapons. For men, a gun may be a symbol of masculinity and dominance. For women combatants, having a weapon is a means of asserting their power and establishing an equal footing with their male peers. Disarmament efforts that fail to take this aspect into account could have a profound effect on the women involved, says Lamb.

The symbolism of weapons can even carry through to the national flag. This is the case in Mozambique, the only country in the world whose flag depicts a modern weapon. The AK47 is said to represent vigilance, but for opposition parties, this remnant of the Frelimo flag symbolises violence and civil war.

DDR programmes are deemed to have failed when implementation is incomplete, resulting in weapons not being handed in, or combatants and commanders remaining in contact after conflict has supposedly ceased, notes Lamb. Often, the governments involved are unable to prevent arms trafficking, despite the agreements that are in place. Understanding the impact of the availability of weapons on efforts to secure a peaceful resolution will benefit many contexts, he argues.

The way forward

The outcomes of DISARM’s fieldwork, as well as the quantitative analysis of peace agreements in the period under review, will contribute to a novel set of policy recommendations that will have concrete applications in regions affected by conflict, says Lamb, even on a local level.

In the Western Cape, for example, where the availability of illegal guns has escalated gang violence in certain areas, the findings of the DISARM project will be highly relevant. Alarmingly, Western Cape Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen revealed that 699 unlawful firearms were confiscated in only the first quarter of 2023, yet none were destroyed.

“This project will provide critical input to stakeholders in disarmament by providing empirically sound and gender-sensitive policy recommendations on disarmament design,” Lamb concludes.