Retirement of Armed Rebels through Exit Networks: Evidence from India

• In Event: Democratization in the Shadow of Civil War: Parties, Warriors, and Voters

Abstract

This paper, based on evidence gathered during fine-grained fieldwork in conflict zones in North and South India, shows how rebels quit armed groups and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow. I argue that various incentives (land, jobs, cash) offered under the surrender and rehabilitation policies of states are not enough to lure rebels back into the democracy because they do not address the biggest fear of retiring rebels that they would be killed as soon as they disarmed. This fear, I argue, is addressed by informal exits networks that flourish in the shadows of democratic civic associations in the grey zones of insurgency-democracy interface. This paper analyzes the origins and composition of these locally-embedded exit networks. I also lay out the multi-staged protracted process of rebel retirement, which sheds light on the microdynamics of state-society, democracy-insurgency interaction in conflict zones.

Author

• Rumela Sen, Columbia University