CCTS
Newsletter 11

Introduction

There is a ceasefire agreement pledging the warring sides to demilitarisation. International agencies come in, organising re-integration - dishing out jobs, training and trauma counselling. They throw in some local capacity building for local NGOs and set up a process for investigating the crimes of the war. And hey presto!

There you don't have it. There are no easy recipes for demilitarisation.

Militarisation at its worst constructs self-perpetuating war machines that accentuate hostility towards the Enemy in order to legitimise their own existence and power. It creates an authoritarian environment of intolerance that celebrates values such as patriotism and toughness. To concentrate on the problems of militarisation is not to rule out that there may also be some positive features of the military ethos. Militarisation, however, refers to the preponderance of the military - of military institutions, of military modes of organisation, of military forms of behaviour within the society, of military ways of looking at the world. Such militarisation has to be understood not only as a process - the result of interactions between rival forces - but also as a way of asserting certain interests, as a means to construct a power base.

Three general points on demilitarisation

1. The structures of militarisation - social and personal - have their own momentum, and are reinforced by other elements of the continuing conflict. Military institutions have an interest in their own survival as well as pursuing the interests of the economic and social groups with which they are aligned. The people caught up in those institutions - from the elite level down to the base - also have interests that they see as most likely to be served through the military.
2. There are different levels of demilitarisation. What I shall refer to as the 'surface level' is disbanding forces, surrendering arms, implementing ceasefire agreements. The term 'surface' is in no sense pejorative here: this is usually the level that puts an immediate end to the fighting. A UN report refers to recent peace operations as working "to divert the unfinished conflict, and the personal, political or other agendas that drove it, from the military to the political arena, and to make that diversion permanent"₁, a useful description of surface level demilitarisation. What I am calling 'deep demilitarisation', on the other hand, seeks to address the roots of militarisation and to undo the legacy of war and militarisation as part of an effort to reconstruct society on a different basis.
3. There cannot be deep demilitarisation unless civilians take issue with militarisation, question militarised perceptions and build up a counter-force to militarised institutions. Deep demilitarisation requires social struggle.

This paper begins by looking at aspects of militarisation, noting ways it threatens peace in a post-civil war situation but placing all militarisation - from the superpower down to the local warlord or paramilitary thug - on a continuum. The second section looks at 'surface level' demilitarisation, discussing some of the dilemmas faced by UNMIK in Kosovo. The third section refers to various lines of action, primarily by civil society actors, for deep demilitarisation.

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