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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMPROMISE AFTER CONFLICT

Ex-Combatants’
Voices
Transitioning from War to Peace in
Northern Ireland, South Africa and
Sri Lanka
Edited by John D. Brewer · Azrini Wahidin
Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

Series Editor
John D. Brewer
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK
This series aims to bring together in one series scholars from around the
world who are researching the dynamics of post-conflict transformation
in societies emerging from communal conflict and collective violence.
The series welcomes studies of particular transitional societies emerging
from conflict, comparative work that is cross-national, and theoretical
and conceptual contributions that focus on some of the key processes in
post-conflict transformation. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and
addresses the range of issues involved in compromise, reconciliation and
societal healing. It focuses on interpersonal and institutional questions,
and the connections between them.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14641
 John D. Brewer • Azrini Wahidin
Editors

Ex-Combatants’
Voices
Transitioning from War to Peace
in Northern Ireland, South Africa
and Sri Lanka
Editors
John D. Brewer Azrini Wahidin
Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Department of Sociology
Global Peace, Security and Justice University of Warwick
Queen’s University Belfast Coventry, UK
Belfast, UK

Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

ISBN 978-3-030-61565-9    ISBN 978-3-030-61566-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61566-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For John’s grandchildren Matilda, Tobias, Merryn, Juliet and Theo
In the hope they never have to live through what their parents and
grandparents did
and
For Azrini’s mother Che Mah Wahidin and her sister Wan-Nita, for their
love and friendship.
 Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies
in Compromise After Conflict

Compromise is a much used but little understood term. There is a sense

in which it describes a set of feelings (the so-called spirit of compromise)
that involve reciprocity, representing the agreement to make mutual con-
cessions towards each other from now on: no matter what we did to each
other in the past, we will act towards each other in the future differently
as set out in the agreement between us. The compromise settlement can
be a spit and a handshake, much beloved in folklore, or a legally binding
statute with hundreds of clauses.
As such, it is clear that compromise enters into conflict transformation
at two distinct phases. The first is during the conflict resolution process
itself, where compromise represents a willingness amongst parties to
negotiate a peace agreement that represents a second-best preference in
which they give up their first preference (victory) in order to cut a deal. A
great deal of literature has been produced in Peace Studies and
International Relations on the dynamics of the negotiation process and
the institutional and governance structures necessary to consolidate the
agreement afterwards. Just as important, however, is compromise in the
second phase, when compromise is part of post-conflict reconstruction,
in which protagonists come to learn to live together despite their former
enmity and in face of the atrocities perpetrated during the conflict itself.
In the first phase, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between
parties to the negotiations in order to make political concessions
vii
viii Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise…

sufficient to end conflict; in the second phase, compromise involves vic-

tims and perpetrators developing ways of living together in which con-
cessions are made as part of shared social life. The first is about
compromises between political groups and the state in the process of
state-building (or re-building) after the political upheavals of communal
conflict, and the second is about compromises between individuals and
communities in the process of social healing after the cultural trauma
provoked by the conflict.
This book series primarily concerns itself with the second process, the
often messy and difficult job of reconciliation, restoration and repair in
social and cultural relations following communal conflict. Communal
conflicts and civil wars tend to suffer from the narcissism of minor differ-
ences, to coin Freud’s phrase, leaving little to be split halfway and com-
promise on, and thus are usually especially bitter. The series therefore
addresses itself to the meaning, manufacture and management of com-
promise in one of its most difficult settings. This book series is cross-­
national and cross-disciplinary, with attention paid to inter-personal
reconciliation at the level of everyday life, as well as culturally between
social groups, and the many sorts of institutional, inter-personal, psycho-
logical, sociological, anthropological and cultural factors that assist and
inhibit societal healing in all post-conflict societies, historically and in the
present. It focuses on what compromise means when people have to come
to terms with past enmity and the memories of the conflict itself and
relate to former protagonists in ways that consolidate the wider political
agreement.
This sort of focus has special resonance and significance for peace
agreements is usually very fragile. Societies emerging out of conflict are
subject to ongoing violence from spoiler groups who are reluctant to give
up on first preferences, constant threats from the outbreak of renewed
violence, institutional instability, weakened economies and a wealth of
problems around transitional justice, memory, truth recovery and victim-
hood, amongst others. Not surprisingly therefore, reconciliation and
healing in social and cultural relations are difficult to achieve, not least
because inter-personal compromise between erstwhile enemies is difficult.
Lay discourse picks up on the ambivalent nature of compromise after
conflict. It is talked about in common sense in one of two ways, in which
 Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise… ix

compromise is either a virtue or a vice, taking its place among the angels
or in Hades. One form of lay discourse likens concessions to former pro-
tagonists with the idea of restoration of broken relationships and societal
and cultural reconciliation, in which there is a sense of becoming (or
returning) to wholeness and completeness. The other form of lay dis-
course invokes ideas of appeasement, of being compromised by the con-
cessions, which constitute a form of surrender and reproduce (or disguise)
continued brokenness and division. People feel they continue to be
beaten by the sticks which the concessions have allowed others to keep;
with restoration, however, weapons are turned truly in ploughshares. Lay
discourse suggests, therefore, that these are issues that the Palgrave Studies
in Compromise after Conflict series must begin to problematise, so that
the process of societal healing is better understood and can be assisted
and facilitated by public policy and intervention.
The contribution of one significant stakeholder to this process of com-
promise—that of ex-combatants—goes mostly unheralded. To their sup-
porters they are martyrs and heroes; to their detractors they are demons.
What this volume calls the ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’ is, the editors’
point out, an unfruitful lens through which to understand ex-­combatants,
and the volume advocates a more nuanced moral framework to locate the
transition they have made from war to peace. It is a compelling book
because it deals with the messy and complex issue of the morality of
political violence and the social and emotional reintegration of those
responsible for it. This gives the volume a high level of originality.
The ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’ also fails to capture that most
people do not emotionally engage them as martyrs, heroes or demons,
but are simply indifferent to ex-combatants. There is an understandable
sense in which ordinary people’s indifference makes them reluctant to
applaud those who give up on the military struggle, since, they argue,
they should never have taken up arms in the first place. This view is naïve
and misplaced. Violence can be virtuous and necessary, especially in the
context of decolonisation, human rights abuses, extreme structural
inequality and repression. This naivety does mean, however, that militant
groups never get the credit they deserve for shifting to a political strategy.
In cases where they win, the new regime can quickly move on from war
economies and war politics, finding ex-combatants an inconvenience, in
x Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise…

much the same way they find victims problematic. Post-apartheid South
Africa comes closest to this case. When they lose, ex-combatants face a
double bind, since criminalisation, social ostracism, rejection and neglect
are added to the loss, as in Sri Lanka. In cases where there is a negotiated
second-preference political settlement, ex-combatants have an ambigu-
ous status as a painful reminder of the legacy of war. This ambiguity is
especially problematic where the mutually agreed settlement is fragile and
contested. Ex-combatants in these circumstances become the focus of the
contestation over the morality of the war and whether the violence was
worth it. Northern Ireland represents such a case. The latest volume in
this series, which addresses ex-combatants in Northern Ireland, South
Africa and Sri Lanka, therefore has unusual pertinence since the position
and status of ex-combatants in each country are quite different.
Another significant contribution made by this book is the way it com-
plements two earlier volumes in the series that captured the voices of
victims in the same three case countries. Cross-national comparisons are
useful in peace research but rarely attempted, often because peace pro-
cesses are quite different, and the comparisons made here with respect to
the status and position of ex-combatants in these three countries allow
contrasts to be drawn between the perspectives of victims and combat-
ants in the three places, and their differences.
Another theme of the volume makes for an even stronger justification
for addressing ex-combatants, which is its focus on the transition many
ex-combatants make toward engagement with peace. They can become,
in the words of some authors, ‘peace warriors’, struggling as hard to con-
solidate conflict transformation as they once did in combat. Ex-combatants
are often a significant constituency in support of political solutions and
many become active in the search for compromise. Their involvement in
‘bottom up’ restorative justice programmes is well documented. It often
takes someone who fights a war to see its emotional costs; bystanders can
be the most belligerent and uncompromising. For this reason, many of
the chapters in this volume address the emotional landscape of ex-­
combatants and give voice to the costs ex-combatants’ military engage-
ments caused them and to their desire for peace.
Ex-combatants are very heterogeneous as a category, and a further
strength of this volume is the distinction it makes between types of former
 Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise… xi

combatants, including, for perhaps the first time, a comparison between

the lived experiences of state veterans and non-state combatants. Significant
differences are shown to exist in the re-integration process back into soci-
ety of former girl child soldiers, men, women and state veterans, as well as
between the three case countries themselves. The parallels and the differ-
ences the authors identify on all these points of comparison make this a
very useful volume and readers will find very much of interest in it.
A purple thread running throughout is the importance of considering
gender when capturing the voices of ex-combatants; the editors make no
apology for this. As the chapters richly show, militarised hyper-­
masculinities are a feature of most male combatants, and women ex-­
combatants tend to be silenced as a result. It is thus important to hear the
voices of both men and women.
Readers should be warned that this book deals with issues that are
controversial. Arguing that political violence can be both virtuous and
necessary will be troublesome to pacifists and to political opponents, but
this volume does not focus only on the revolutionary ‘voice’ but on all
those who have taken up arms, including state veterans. It is original to
consider non-state veterans and state veterans together. This book is also
pioneering in bringing together experiences from the Global North and
the Global South, without giving preference to either one. This volume
therefore collects together researchers from across the generations and the
Global North-South divide, in a way that promotes excellent scholarship
from young researchers in the Global South.
The editors are aware that one of the weaknesses of edited collections
is that they can be disjointed inasmuch as the individual chapters are
written independently. To facilitate cross-referencing, the editors have
provided a conclusion that draws the arguments together and added an
introductory note to each chapter that ‘frames’ the issues it raises in the
light of other contributions.
As Series Editor I very warmly welcome this latest addition to the Series.

Belfast, UK John D. Brewer

September 2020
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
John D. Brewer and Azrini Wahidin

2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 11

John D. Brewer

Part I Voices from Northern Ireland and Britain  35

3 Female Ex-combatants in the Irish Republican

Army and the Rocky Road to Peace 37
Azrini Wahidin

4 The Experiences of Loyalist Ex-combatants on Their

Journey from Conflict to Peace 63
David Magee

5 ‘Sin by Silence’: The Claims to Moral Legitimacy

Amongst Northern Irish Paramilitaries 93
John D. Brewer

xiii
xiv Contents

6 British Counter-Insurgency Veterans in Afghanistan123

John D. Brewer and Stephen Herron

Part II Voices from South Africa 149

7 Contested Voices of Former Combatants in Post-

Apartheid South Africa151
Malose Langa, Godfrey Maringira, and Modiefe Merafe

8 The Lives of Women Ex-combatants in Post-Apartheid

South Africa179
Siphokazi Magadla

9 ‘Why Did I Die?’: South African Defence Force

Conscripts Pre- and Post-1994207
Wilhelm Verwoerd and Theresa Edlmann

10 An African Comparison: Girl Soldiers Returning from

a Rebel Group in Northern Uganda237
Allen Kiconco

Part III Voices from Sri Lanka 263

11 Reflections on the Role of Female Cadres in the LTTE265

Bhavani Fonseka

12 Media Representations of Women Ex-combatants

in Sri Lanka287
Ashleigh McFeeters

13 Concluding Reflections315
Azrini Wahidin

Index341
 Notes on Contributors

John D. Brewer is Professor of Post-Conflict Studies in the Senator

George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at
Queen’s University Belfast and Honorary Professor Extraordinary at
Stellenbosch University. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a
fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Social Sciences
and the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a member of the UN Roster of
Global Experts and former President of the British Sociological
Association. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Brunel
University for services to social science. He is author or co-author of 16
books and editor or co-editor of a further six. He is writing a commis-
sioned introduction to the sociology of peace processes for Edward Elgar
Publishers, and with Stephen Herron a volume on the emotional labour
of counter-insurgency soldiering.
Theresa Edlmann is National Programmes Manager at the Black Sash
Trust in Cape Town and a research associate in the History Department
at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her most recent publication is
Zonnebloem College and the Genesis of an African Intelligentsia (1857–1933),
which she co-authored with Janet Hodgson. Theresa’s PhD, Negotiating
Historical Continuities in Contested Terrain: A Narrative-Based Reflection
on the Post-Apartheid Psychosocial Legacies of Conscription into the South
African Defence Force, was based at Rhodes University. While busy with

xv
xvi Notes on Contributors

her PhD, she established the interdisciplinary Legacies of Apartheid Wars

Project, with the aim of facilitating dialogues between people caught up
in apartheid era violence in Southern Africa. Prior to that she was involved
in teaching, supervising and facilitating a range of programmes and
courses at Rhodes, incorporating Drama, Education, History and
Psychology, as well as founding and directing an NGO called The Spirals
Trust. Using creative narrative-based approaches as the core focus of her
professional career, she has also worked in the fields of human rights,
transformation and inclusivity, community development, transitional
justice, teacher training, alternatives to violence, mentoring emerging
leaders and organisational development.
Bhavani Fonseka is a senior researcher and attorney at Law with the
Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think tank in Sri Lanka, with a focus on
research, national and international advocacy and public interest litiga-
tion. Her work has revolved around assisting victims and affected popula-
tions across Sri Lanka, legal and policy reforms and public interest
litigation (PIL) cases. She is the editor of the book Transitional Justice in
Sri Lanka: Moving Beyond Promises. She was an adviser to the Consultation
Taskforce appointed by the Government of Sri Lanka in 2016 and a
member of the drafting committee to formulate the National Human
Rights Action Plan for Sri Lanka for the period 2017–2021.
Stephen Herron is an anthropologist specialising in the study of con-
flict, military and veterans’ issues. He is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and
Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. Dr Herron is co-investigator on a
project led by John Brewer, which is researching the reintegration experi-
ences of UK ex-armed forces personnel who have experienced ‘negative
transitioning’, namely, those who have suffered mental health issues,
been in prison and/or been homeless. This research, the first major UK
wide qualitative study of its kind on negative transitioning veterans, fol-
lows on from a previous project involving Herron as co-­investigator
which examined how counter-insurgency warfare impacts on the post-
deployment reintegration experiences of British land-based military per-
sonnel, also led by John Brewer.
 Notes on Contributors xvii

Allen Kiconco is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of

Witwatersrand. She holds a PhD in African Studies (2015) from the
University of Birmingham. Allen works on the lived experiences of
women and girls in both conflict and post-conflict settings of Africa,
including abduction, sexual violence and forced marriage. Her work
includes extensive fieldwork with ex-combatants and sexual violence
survivors in Uganda and Sierra Leone. Her monograph ‘Conflict,
Reintegration and Gender in Uganda: Returning Home?’ is under contract
with Routledge.
Malose Langa is an associate professor and a senior lecturer in
Department of Psychology at the University of Witwatersrand. He is also
a senior researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and
Reconciliation (CSVR), as well as an associate researcher at the Society,
Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of
Witwatersrand. His research interests include collective trauma, violence,
masculinity and youth at risk. He is the author of the book, Becoming
Men: Black Masculinities in a New South African Township.
Siphokazi Magadla is Senior Lecturer in the Political and International
Studies department at Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. She
worked previously as a research consultant for the Security Sector
Governance programme of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria,
focusing on the role of women in peace and security. She holds a BA
(Hons) in Political and International Studies from Rhodes University.
She was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a Master’s Degree
in International Affairs at Ohio University, USA. Her PhD examined the
state-assisted integration of women ex-combatants into civilian life in
post-apartheid South Africa. She was a fellow of the Social Science
Research Council’s Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship
Program in 2013–2014. She is a Board Member and Book Review Editor
of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (JCAS). She is the 2018
recipient of the Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished
Teaching Award.
David Magee works for the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, where
he has responsibilities for the Peace and Security and Northern Ireland
xviii Notes on Contributors

grant programme, although he writes here in a private capacity. Before

taking this role, he worked for the International Committee of the Red
Cross, after being awarded a PhD from the University of Aberdeen in
2013, which explored the deconstruction of Loyalist military masculini-
ties. David’s earlier career includes over a decade working in the commu-
nity and voluntary sectors in Northern Ireland. He has worked with
young people, women’s groups, migrant workers, restorative justice
groups and in cross-community education. His experience includes
working formally and informally with both Loyalist and Republican
armed groups for humanitarian and peacebuilding purposes. David stud-
ied Theology and Psychology at the University of Southampton, and
completed an MPhil from Queen’s University Belfast on Martin Luther
King’s Philosophy of Nonviolence. This interest in Kingian nonviolence
continues to inform his work. David’s other interests include Northern
Ireland, masculinities, social transformation and peace processes.
Godfrey Maringira is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Sol Plaatje
University, Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. He is a research
associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, Anthropology
and Development Department. He is a senior research fellow at
Volkswagen Stiftung Foundation and is also a principal investigator of
the International Development Research Center (IDRC) research on
gang violence in South Africa. His areas of research include armed vio-
lence in Africa with a specific focus on the military in post-­colonial Africa.
His 2017 African Affairs Journal article ‘Politicisation and resistance in
the Zimbabwe national Army’ was awarded the best author price in 2018.
In 2020, he was awarded the Benedict Vilakazi best author price, African
Studies Journal (Routledge), for his article titled: ‘When combatants
became peaceful: Azania People Liberation Army ex-­combatants in post-
apartheid South Africa’. He is the author of Soldiers and the State in
Zimbabwe (2019).
Ashleigh McFeeters is postdoctoral fellow on the ESRC project
Apologies, Abuses and Dealing with the Past at The Senator George
J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and School of
Law at Queen’s University Belfast. This project examines the role of apol-
ogies for victims of institutional child sex abuse, the Troubles and the
 Notes on Contributors xix

banking crisis on the island of Ireland. Ashleigh received her PhD from
Queen’s in Sociology under the supervision of Prof John Brewer and Dr
Julia Paul. Her thesis investigated the role of the news in peace-­building
by examining representations of female ex-combatants in Northern
Ireland and Sri Lanka and is being published as Gender and Conflict
Transformation in the News—A Study of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka
by Palgrave Macmillan. She holds an MA in Comparative Ethnic Conflict
from Queen’s and a BA (Hons) in English Studies from Trinity
College Dublin.
Modiefe Merafe is a senior community facilitator at the Centre for the
Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR). He has worked with com-
munities in preventing violence and addressing its consequences. Modiefe
has worked mainly with, among others, the South African ex-­combatants,
ordinary men, women and unemployed youth. The focus of his work has
been around gender-based violence (GBV), state-sponsored violence,
youth violence, collective violence and peacebuilding. Modiefe studied
Community Development at the University of South Africa (UNISA).
Wilhelm Verwoerd is a senior research associate and a facilitator at
Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation, Stellenbosch University,
and a teaching associate at Trinity College, Dublin. As a white, Afrikaans,
speaking South African, a former researcher within the South African
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1995–1998) and a peace practi-
tioner in (Northern) Ireland (2001–2012), Wilhelm is devoted to (re)
humanisation/reconciliation in contexts of deep political division. He is
working on a book based on an international ‘Beyond Dehumanisation’
reflective learning project with ex-combatants and survivors from the
conflict in and about Northern Ireland, Israel-­Palestine, South Africa and
the USA. His main research interests include the (incomplete legacy of
the) South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; shared his-
torical responsibility of white South Africans for apartheid and colonial-
ism; relational processes to transform (white) resistance to social justice in
post-1994 South Africa; embodied spirituality of authentic reconcilia-
tion. Many of these interests feature in a recent memoir, Verwoerd: My
Journey through Family Betrayals (2019).
xx Notes on Contributors

Azrini Wahidin is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the

University of Warwick and a visiting professor in the Faculty of Law,
University of Malaya. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
and the Royal Society of Arts. She is author, co-author and editor of 15
books. She is the Programme Director for the Sociology and Criminology
Programme at the University of Warwick and the Director for
Internationalisation, Chair of the Ethics Committee for the British
Society of Criminology and REF panel member for UOA 20: Social
Policy. Her latest single-­authored book, Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace
in Northern Ireland—Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience,
focused on female former politically motivated prisoners and the role of
transitional justice. It was the largest study to be conducted on the experi-
ences of former members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
 1
Introduction
John D. Brewer and Azrini Wahidin

Introduction
This edited collection is a compendium volume to two books published
by Palgrave in 2018 from the Leverhulme Trust-funded research
programme called Compromise after Conflict, which covered Northern
Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The books in different ways addressed
the voices of victims. The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding (Brewer
2018b) and The Sociology of Compromise after Conflict (Brewer et al.
2018a) used victims’ voices to claim that victims had an ‘absent presence’
in peace processes; talked about aplenty but rarely heard from directly.

J. D. Brewer (*)
Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice,
Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
e-mail: j.brewer@qub.ac.uk
A. Wahidin
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
e-mail: Azrini.wahidin@warwick.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

J. D. Brewer, A. Wahidin (eds.), Ex-Combatants’ Voices, Palgrave Studies in
Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61566-6_1
2 J. D. Brewer and A. Wahidin

These volumes argued that victims needed to be mainstreamed in peace

processes because they have a remarkable—and largely unexpected—
capacity to be moral beacons, able to engage in modes of reasoning and
everyday practices that supported peacebuilding in the three case countries
covered by the research programme. The two volumes made a strong case
that victims’ voices should be heard above those who deign to speak on
their behalf, for when we listen to ordinary victims, the majority have an
emotional empathy with the erstwhile enemy that makes them an
example of everyday peacebuilding and compromise that others might
follow. We might call this the dignity of ordinary victims.
The current volume is complementary because it seeks to give voice to
ex-combatants from the same three case countries, with one comparative
case from elsewhere in the Global South. It has not emerged from the
Leverhulme-funded research team, which was led by John Brewer as
Principal Investigator, but from an idea suggested to him by Azrini
Wahidin, whose pioneering work on women in the IRA was published as
part of the Palgrave Studies in Compromise After Conflict Book Series
(Wahidin 2016), which grew from the Leverhulme Trust research
programme. The two editors have a long-time friendship and collaboration.
This volume on the voices of ex-combatants therefore owes its impulse
to the two compendium volumes on victims’ voices, for the two editors
of this volume aspire to give the same voice to ex-combatants as the earlier
volumes did to victims. This volume has the same intellectual interest and
motivation of its predecessors, therefore, in centring ex-combatants’
voices, their lived experiences, emotional landscape and their contributions
to the respective peace processes in the three cases and elsewhere.
However, this volume is much more than a compendium. The focus
on ex-combatants in South Africa, Northern Ireland and South Africa
has value in its own right. There is intellectual coherence in the
comparison. Ex-combatant issues in these three societies operate within a
common legacy: the shadow of empire, a long political struggle of
decolonisation, the material struggle against social injustice and inequality
that marks the colonial experience, and the long and violent nature of
their respective wars of independence and decolonisation. Each
experienced conflict over what are alleged to be absolutist social cleavages,
such as ethnicity (Sri Lanka), ‘race’ (South Africa) and religion (Northern
 1 Introduction 3

Ireland), although in all cases the real division was political and revolved
around the legitimacy of the state (for the debate about the political role
that religion played in Northern Ireland, see Brewer and Higgins 1998;
McGarry and O’Leary 1995; Mitchell 2006). The differences in their
respective peace processes—the colonial model of regime change at the
top with little change at the bottom (South Africa), a victor’s peace (Sri
Lanka) and a negotiated second preference settlement (Northern
Ireland)—afford the opportunity also to see whether this has an impact
on the lived experiences of former combatants.
A comparison of ex-combatant issues in these three societies therefore
throws into high relief some key questions about the motivations for
engagement in military struggle, what the lived experiences are of the
various categories of people who fought in these different kinds of war,
and what legacy has been left for former combatants as each country
moves forward on different paths. A number of common themes emerge
from their comparison which focus the current volume: the nature of
their respective demobilisation, demilitarisation and reintegration
programmes, and their effectiveness; the effect of ongoing material
inequalities faced by ex-combatants as a legacy of colonialism; the impact
of masculinity and gender differences on the lived experiences of
ex-combatants; the contested victim status of state veterans and
ex-combatants’ ambivalent engagements with peace.
However, our readers will inevitably ask one question, which was not
raised against the earlier two volumes on victims. Why a book on
ex-combatants, considered by some as the least morally deserving
stakeholder in a peace process? In this Introduction, we want to explain
why we need a book on ex-combatants and to outline what is distinctive
about this volume.
The late Christopher Hill, famous historian of the English civil war
and a former Master of Baliol College, Oxford, put it better than we can
when he remarked that history has to be rewritten for every generation,
for while the past does not change, the present does, and each generation
asks new questions and finds new areas of sympathy as it relives different
aspects of the experiences of its predecessors. More than a quarter of a
century has passed since the ending of apartheid in South Africa; it is
nearly as long since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast,
4 J. D. Brewer and A. Wahidin

and it is 11 years since the massacre that annihilated the Tamil Tigers in
Sri Lanka, bringing an end to its civil war. It is time, thus, for new
generations to seek to understand its predecessors who went to war. As
Christopher Hill might have put it, are there grounds for new
understandings, if not sympathy, for the men, women and children who
were combatants in each country’s war? To learn more about these
combatants, all this time later, is the purpose of this book.

The Rationale for the Book

A book on ex-combatants is important for two reasons: because it is chal-
lenging, and the challenge motivates us; but primarily because theirs is a
voice relatively neglected, and they need to be heard as much as other
stakeholders. Let us deal first with the challenge.
Ex-combatants pose a special problem for academic researchers. They
invoke moral questions from which academics usually shy away. Whether
we like it or not, the very language used to describe ex-combatants is
morally loaded—terrorists, perpetrators, victimisers, wrongdoers—and is
laden with moral judgement. As perpetrators, they have blood on their
hands, forcing upon academics a moral dilemma about whether to engage
with them or not. They are not normally, of course, the only ones to have
killed; and thus they pose a moral dilemma of a different kind in forcing
academics to distinguish between different kinds of perpetrators, choosing
which to address and which to ignore. The fact that most perpetrators
make moral claims about their motivation for involvement in armed
struggle, which form part of the additional claims they make to be
considered as victims, also obscures the moral debate surrounding
perpetrators.
Moreover, the label ‘ex-combatant’ is not solely an abstract one; it
refers to living, breathing people, with motivations, hopes, aspirations,
fears and problems that are no less real because of the moral judgements
made about them. For academics to treat these issues at face value,
suspending moral considerations, and to consider ex-combatants as
people with voices that need to be heard, is likely to open up researchers
to all the moral contempt that some people reserve for certain perpetrators.
 1 Introduction 5

Research on ex-combatants requires otherwise tender academics to have

thicker skins than they normally possess, since it is important to move
beyond simple moral judgements and assumptions and to hear the voices
of those coping on the ground with these problems. The hostility
researchers face from a public opinion that resists hearing ex-combatants’
voices only reinforces the need for such an approach.
Research work on ex-combatants therefore pales in comparison to that
on victims; their voice tends to be even more silent and ignored than
victims. In one sense, of course, the field is already saturated with
ex-combatants’ voices. A Google search will throw up many tens of
thousands of references, but these will be disparate, hard to access, be of
widely variable quality and be of multiple different kinds, only a
proportion of which will be serious academic treatment. There are
biographies aplenty by ex-combatants that glorify, aggrandise and
romanticise their lives. YouTube has put these voices also to video and
screen. The value of this edited collection is that it draws this focus
together between the covers of one volume in a dispassionate manner.
Much of the literature on the internet also reflects what in Chap. 2 Brewer
calls the ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’, making either saints or devils
out of combatants. Much of what is written by ex-combatants themselves
is so self-aggrandising as to the meaningless to new generations who want
to learn something of the life experiences of their predecessors. This
syndrome is an inadequate moral framework to capture ex-combatants’
voices. The syndrome is offered as a formula for critiquing public
representations of ex-combatants and the whole volume is designed to
show the syndrome’s inadequacies as a way of understanding
ex-combatants.
The politics of victimhood often contests, on moral and political
grounds, that perpetrators be considered as moral agents. Their claims to
victim status are particularly disputed. It is for this reason that
ex-combatants rarely get the credit they deserve for giving up on violence,
or for the moral courage they show in face of the threats they face from
erstwhile colleagues who continue the military struggle. McEvoy and
Shirlow (2009) described ex-combatants as ‘moral agents’ for their
engagement with conflict transformation, whereas some victims complain
about them receiving credit for something that was wrong in the first
6 J. D. Brewer and A. Wahidin

place. Three points are worth making about this disjuncture. The first
concerns perspective. Ex-combatants should be perceived as much in
terms of what they do to assist a peaceful future as what they did in the
violent past. Secondly, as we shall emphasise shortly, ex-combatants make
moral claims that in part deal with culpability, arguing there was little
choice but to take up arms. Thirdly, the distinction between victims and
perpetrators is rarely simple, for multiple victimhood (Brewer 2010,
p. 123ff) can result in groups being victims and perpetrators at the same
time (also see Borer 2003). As Jankowitz (2018, p. 97ff) argues with
respect to Northern Ireland, the ‘victim-perpetrator paradigm’, as she
calls it, constructs them as binary and mutually exclusive categories,
when in practice the categories are much more complex and interlinked.
While the politics of victimhood leads some stakeholders to deny this
penetration and complexity, viewing the categories in morally
unambiguous terms between their ‘preferred victims’ and ‘dispreferred
perpetrators’ (see Brewer et al. 2018b, p. 38ff for this distinction), this is
not how perpetrators—or many victims—view themselves.
The aim of this book therefore is to contribute to the developing dis-
course on the experiences of ex-combatants by bringing together in one
volume empirical research on the experiences of different types of former
combatants from Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka (with
one comparative case from Uganda). The categories of ex-combatant we
address here are men, women, child soldiers and state veterans, in the
belief that they each have different lived experiences in the transition to
peace. This approach helps us isolate the impact on masculinity and
gender on ex-combatants’ lives, to explore the stigma faced by child
soldiers, and to discuss the problematic status of state veterans. State
veterans are not normally considered as ex-combatants in this sense, with
the focus usually on combatants from non-state armed groups. Our three
case countries throw up interesting questions about state veterans
however, about how new regimes treat the state forces of now collapsed
governments, and how democratic governments treat soldiers in
peacetime. In many ways the lived experiences of state veterans after
conflict can be as difficult as are those of non-state actors. Setting their
experiences alongside categories more readily recognised as ex-combatants
 1 Introduction 7

allows us to broaden the understanding that new generations can have of

their predecessors who were at war.
This volume aims to make the reader aware of the experiences of for-
mer ex-combatants transitioning from war to peace and to highlight a
series of issues this transition throws up for each category. These issues
include: their motivations for participation in the military struggle; their
lived experiences in transitioning from war to peace; the emotional
legacies, if any, of their former involvement in conflict; other social
reintegration issues back into civilian status (material, economic, social,
cultural, etc.); their ‘techniques of neutralisation’ in their accounts of
their involvement as they look back, and the moral claims they make to
victimhood status now; their engagement or not with reconciliation and
peace today; and their feelings towards the peace process in their case
country, such as the enduring legacy of colonialism, trauma and
ambivalence towards the settlement.
This gives the volume a distinctive focus. It is designed to:

• Capture directly the voices of different kinds of ex-combatant in their

own words.
• Provide the voice of those from below, the rank and file rather than
political leaders.
• Provide insight into the transition issues facing former ex-combatants
across their life course.
• Highlight the cultural, societal and emotional issues in the transition
from war to peace as they affect ex-combatants.
• Explore the various contributions former combatants have made to
post-conflict compromise, reconciliation and peacebuilding.
• Locate in a single framework the contrasting transition experiences of
state veterans and other forms of ex-combatant.
• Isolate the gendered and post-colonial legacies of warfare as they con-
tinue to impinge on some forms of ex-combatant.

In what follows, we iterate the importance of these themes and validate

them for different categories of ex-combatants in different national
conflicts. While there are numerous cases that could have been chosen to
highlight ex-combatants’ voices, we deliberately sought continuity with
8 J. D. Brewer and A. Wahidin

the publications on victims’ voices in Northern Ireland, South Africa and

Sri Lanka so as to be able to place the respective voices alongside each
other. The chapters therefore take a case study format focusing on our
case countries, since this reflects the regional areas of expertise of
contributors. We therefore have explicitly not organised this book
according to themes, as authors are mostly familiar with their own region
of expertise. It is our job as editors in the Conclusion to draw together the
themes as they emerge from the individual contributions. Chapters have
been specially commissioned from recognised authorities with expertise
in the case country. We deliberately neglected to invite some internationally
well-known authors however, in order to ensure demographic diversity
amongst our contributors, in terms of gender, ethnicity, stage of career
and location. We were particularly concerned to invite authors in the
Global South from amongst the formerly dispossessed and disadvantaged
groups, as well as women. Nonetheless, there are some international
scholars of renown amongst the contributors, allowing early career
researchers to be published alongside them. Some chapters are written by
practitioners in human rights groups, NGOs and in civil society groups,
giving the volume the special perspective of that sector.

Bibliography
Borer, T. (2003). A Taxonomy of Victims and Perpetrators. Human Rights
Quarterly, 25, 1088–1116.
Brewer, J. D. (2010). Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity.
Brewer, J. D., Hayes, B., & Teeney, F. (2018a). The Sociology of Compromise after
Conflict. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brewer, J. D., Hayes, B., Teeney, F., Dudgeon, K., Mueller-Hirth, N., &
Wijesinghe, S. (2018b). The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Brewer, J. D., & Higgins, G. (1998). Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland
1600–1998. London: Macmillan.
Jankowitz, S. (2018). The Order of Victimhood. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
McEvoy, K., & Shirlow, P. (2009). Re-imagining DDR: Ex-combatants,
Leadership and Moral Agency in Conflict Transformation. Theoretical
Criminology, 13(1), 31–59.
 1 Introduction 9

McGarry, J., & O’Leary, B. (1995). Explaining Northern Ireland. Oxford:

Blackwell.
Mitchell, C. (2006). Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Wahidin, A. (2016). Ex-combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
 2
Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices
John D. Brewer

Introduction
The focus of this volume is on ex-combatants who have transitioned from
war to peace; it does not address combatants who still seek military solu-
tions to political conflicts. This book’s originality lies in the focus on
representing ex-combatants’ voices from the wide range of types of for-
mer combatant it addresses within the one cover. This chapter elaborates,
however, on the challenges that come with writing such a book. The
moral contestation around the category means ex-combatants are rarely
approached dispassionately. This chapter identifies what it calls the
‘martyr-­hero-demon syndrome’ and suggests that this syndrome is a dis-
torting moral framework with which to capture the lived experiences of
ex-combatants transitioning to peace. Just as we now recognise the

J. D. Brewer (*)
Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice,
Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
e-mail: j.brewer@qub.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 11

J. D. Brewer, A. Wahidin (eds.), Ex-Combatants’ Voices, Palgrave Studies in
Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61566-6_2
12 J. D. Brewer

complexity of victims’ voices and the positive contribution ordinary vic-

tims make as moral beacons to everyday life peacebuilding and compro-
mise, there is need to explore the complexity of ex-combatants’ voices
and to establish their contribution or not to peacebuilding. This chapter
therefore interrogates the complexity of ex-combatants’ voices by isolat-
ing different categories of ex-combatant in Northern Ireland, South
Africa and Sri Lanka—men, women, child soldiers and state veterans.
The inclusion of state veterans is important, for their lived experiences,
reintegration problems, emotional landscape and moral ambiguities are
normally overlooked in the ex-combatant literature. State veterans have
some parallels with the conventional category of ex-combatants that
dominates the research agenda. It is no doubt true that the Andy McNab
style of memoir exists aplenty for state veterans, full of self-­aggrandisement
and sensationalism, but it is original for us here to include academic
research on state veterans alongside the narratives of other categories of
militarist.

Research on Ex-combatants
There is now a growing academic literature on ex-combatants’ motiva-
tions to armed struggle (e.g., Brewer et al. 2013; Elster 2004) and to
commit genocide (Waller 2002), as well as the emotional and material
costs of social reintegration back into civilian life after the war is over
(e.g., McMullin 2013). Ex-combatants share with victims a personal leg-
acy from the war. Most people in peace processes wish to move on, to ‘get
on with their lives’, but ex-combatants and victims alike are often unable
to consign their experiences to the past; their lived experiences of transi-
tion reflect an ongoing legacy that remains with them.
Reintegration is a dominant concern in the ex-combatant literature.
Demilitarisation, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) policies are
widely proffered as ways to deal with ex-combatants’ reintegration needs
(see Schnabel and Ehrhart 2005). In some cases of regime change after
war, a select number of ex-combatants can be absorbed into the defence
forces or police, as benefitted some ANC militants in South Africa and
ZANUPF in Zimbabwe. This rarely affects them all, leaving some
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 13

resentment from those who do not gain from this reintegration strategy
(for the views of one ANC militant in South Africa, see Brewer et al.
2018b, p. 126). In cases where the regime does not change and ex-­
combatants lose under a victor’s peace, they can be excluded from DDR
policies and from material and symbolic reparations, affecting pension
rights and rights to memorialisation, amongst many other things (on the
case of DDR policies for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—LTTE—
see Hoglund and Orjuela 2011). In cases where there has been a hotly
contested negotiated peace deal, that leaves many unresolved legacy
issues, such as in Northern Ireland, ex-combatants tend to become
wrapped up in the politics of victimhood and be subjected to consider-
able hostility from those who oppose the deal. This political opposition
adds to their social reintegration difficulties at the level of state policy,
affecting employment and education rights and access to material repara-
tions like pensions, although they can be valorised by the community on
whose behalf they fought (on the reintegration problems of ex-­combatants
in Northern Ireland see as a selection: Gormally 1995; Jamieson 2011;
McEvoy and Shirlow 2009; McEvoy et al. 2004; Rolston 2007). This is
regardless of the positive contribution to the Good Friday Agreement
that is widely acclaimed for Republican ex-combatants in the literature
(see McKeown 2001; Shirlow and McEvoy 2008; Shirlow et al. 2012)
and the support they receive from nationalist communities (on which see
Brewer and Hayes 2015). This is consistent with John Paul Lederach’s
claim that ex-combatants as ‘insider partials’, as distinct from ‘outsider
neutrals’ as he calls them (1997), have the legitimacy and insider knowl-
edge within the armed struggle to move the whole power base of a mili-
tant organisation towards peace. Insider partials form one of the most
important constituencies in a peace process when they shift from a mili-
tary and security mindset towards politics (for an evaluation of the role of
insider partials see Svensson and Lindgren 2013). This is one of the rea-
sons why ex-combatants feature so much in ‘bottom up’ restorative jus-
tice programmes working with young offenders.
Much of this reintegration and DDR literature, however, focuses on
male ex-combatants and child soldiers in the Global South. This focus
under-emphasises the large number of female ex-combatants who par-
ticipated in military struggle, as well as conflicts in the Global North,
14 J. D. Brewer

such as Nazism and the Holocaust, the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans
and Northern Ireland’s so-called Troubles, a euphemism that undervalues
the degree of conflict. Female ex-combatants transgress social stereotypes
and experience unusual hostility for offending cultural gender norms in
addition to whatever criticism they experience for their military engage-
ment. Their challenge to masculinity can marginalise them even amongst
their comrades (on sexual violence against female combatants in Colombia
for example, see Schwitalla and Dietrich 2007). Accordingly, women ex-­
combatants experience both the war and the peace very differently
from men.
Some pioneering studies, however, have documented women’s partici-
pation in armed struggle (Alison 2009; Cohen 2013; Shekhawat 2015;
Thomas and Bond 2015; Wahidin 2016), including in Islamic State
(Chatterjee 2016), Northern Ireland (Wahidin 2016), Colombia (Tabak
2011) and Sri Lanka (Alexander 2014; Alison 2004). Shekhawat’s (2015)
edited collection on female combatants covers several cases in the Global
South, and Gilmartin (2018), by asking what happens to combatant
women after the war, argues they are ‘lost in transition’. The impact of
cultural norms about gender on transition experiences is addressed in
Ashleigh McFeeters’s (2018) analysis of media treatment of female ex-­
combatants in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. McFeeters shows how
much better represented are LTTE women by the Sri Lankan press than
are Republican women in Northern Ireland’s media, affecting both the
public perception of their post-conflict contribution and the opportunity
to participate in state DDR policies.
Child soldiers transgress cultural norms of childhood in the Global
North, as well as the indigenous and traditional authority of the elders in
the Global South, giving them double sources of stigma (for the case of
the double stigma faced by child soldiers in Sierra Leone see Anderson
2018). However, perhaps because child soldiers represent a greater offence
to cultural norms in the Global North, they have been of greater interest
in the past than female ex-combatants. The literature on child soldiers is
extensive (e.g., see Brocklehurst 2006; Denov 2010; Honwana 2007;
Lyons 2004; Ozerdem and Podder 2011; Rosen 2007; Trawick 2007).
There is even a bibliographic resource collating work on child soldiers
(see https://www.questia.com/library/psychology/relationships-and-the-
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 15

family/children/child-soldiers), and an international NGO, Child

Soldiers International, advocates on their behalf and produces Annual
Global Reports. There is special interest in their reintegration (Wessells
2009) and their processing afterwards through supportive transitional
justice mechanisms (Fisher 2013; Nylund 2016; Steinl 2017).
Issues of masculinity intrude here as well, but it works out quite differ-
ently than for female ex-combatants. Male child soldiers are seen as
resolving the transition to manhood through military engagement, while
for female ex-combatants, masculinity is something they have to resist
from male fighters who themselves treat female ex-combatants unequally.
Girl child soldiers are thus one of the most interesting categories of child
soldier because masculinity cannot be the explanatory variable. This is
why many girl child soldiers were not fighters as such but used as sex
objects and mothers, although this is not true for all. This tends to make
girl child soldiers the most forgotten of the ‘hidden victims’ of war.
However, the ex-combatant literature also excludes another important
category. Namely, state veterans, working in the security forces or in pro-­
government militias and paramilitary groups co-opted on behalf of the
state, who also experience material and emotional problems in the transi-
tion to peace. Kuldip Kaur’s (2003, pp. 61–62) analysis of the Guatemalan
peace process, for example, argues that religious conversion by state sol-
diers to evangelical Protestantism was done to manage the emotional
baggage of their former violence by wiping it away under the process of
being ‘born again’, blaming it on their former pre-conversion self. As
another example of this type of work, Breaking the Silence (2012) col-
lated the testimonies of over a hundred Israeli soldiers in the Occupied
Territories revealing opposition to the violence and to Israeli state policy
towards Palestinians.
If the regime they supported survives the war, state veterans can be
treated generously by a grateful state, receiving reparations through pen-
sions and many symbolic forms of commemoration and memorialisa-
tion. Tamils in Sri Lanka, for example, are not allowed to memorialise
LTTE dead, while memorials to Sinhalese soldiers dominate the land-
scape in the Tamil regions; and while state veterans get generous pen-
sions, the Tigers do not. This might suggest better reintegration
experiences for state veterans than other types of ex-combatant, but state
16 J. D. Brewer

veterans often have an ambivalent relationship with the state they served,
and can feel insufficiently supported, or even rejected by the state. This is
especially so with regime change, in which they now form the vanquished
and defeated, such as Afrikaners in South Africa, or are reminders of a
dirty war of counter-insurgency, such as pro-government militias in
Northern Ireland in the various Loyalist paramilitary groups. Members
of pro-government militias can sometimes resist the label of state veteran
precisely because the state was always conditional in its co-option, since
deniability by the state is necessary to disguise the clandestine links with
militias through collusion. Occasionally in the post-conflict phase, the
state comes to no longer value the former connection through embarrass-
ment, thus deniability is mobilised in this case to ensure political dis-
tance. State veterans in counter-insurgency warfare, the special features of
which distinguish them from veterans in conventional forms, are particu-
larly prone to feel they are neglected by a state whose counter-insurgency
warfare ended with no resolution and is publicly unpopular. Members of
the disbanded Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland, for exam-
ple, express such views (see Herron 2014, 2015), and veterans from
Britain’s Afghanistan war experience severe reintegration problems
(Brewer and Herron 2018).
The literature on ex-combatants is thus very uneven in the former
combatants it isolates and the issues it addresses. We need to know more
about the lived experiences of the different kinds of ex-combatants—
men, women, children and state veterans—for differences in how they
experience the transition to peace are worth differentiating. This gives
merit to the focus on voice and in capturing ex-combatants’ transition
experiences in their own words.

Ex-combatant Voices
A striking feature of the ex-combatant literature is its focus on men. This
is only partly due to the fact that the majority of combatants were male.
The patriarchal nature of most social and political systems often provides
barriers to women’s involvement in political violence, and when women
do engage militarily, this engagement is denied, neglected or explained
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 17

away as abnormal. Having crossed the public-private divide by entering

the public sphere and transgressed cultural gender stereotypes, female ex-­
combatants are caricatured and greatly misrepresented. In examining
women’s military behaviour and their political activism, research shows
that women engage in combative activities for myriad reasons. As
Cockburn (2007) attests for feminism generally, female ex-combatants
see their engagement as systematic, not contingent or incidental. It is
thus very important to isolate the lived experiences of female ex-­
combatants, their transition experiences and their contribution to post-­
conflict recovery.
Attention to the lived experiences of male ex-combatants needs to
address their involvement in military and political organisation and to
tease out the discourses they use to explain their military engagement, the
moral and political claims they make to be understood as rational beings
rather than as demons, and to be seen in their own way as victims. It is
necessary to move beyond the gendered lens that explains men’s involve-
ment as part of ‘toxic’ or ‘hyper’ masculinity, in order to stress the moral
and political claims male ex-combatants make to ennoble their participa-
tion in the military campaign. The focus must be on their transition
experiences as well as their subsequent involvement in peacebuilding,
and the moral and political motivations they proffer for their peace mak-
ing. A central feature of their lived experience under the transition to
peace is the enduring legacy of colonialism, as male ex-combatants con-
tinue to struggle against the inequalities and injustices that remain despite
decolonisation.
Children have formed an army of the young in many conflicts and it
is necessary to isolate the experiences and difficulties facing child soldiers
as they move from a situation of warfare to peace. Child soldiers make
two transitions. The obvious one is from war to peace, but the difficulties
in this transition are compounded and complicated by the rapid transi-
tion from childhood to adulthood provoked by their military involve-
ment. Notions of childhood innocence in the Global North form a
cultural and political frame used by Western governments and NGOs to
generously assist former child soldiers in their post-war transition to
peace, but local cultural notions of adulthood in the Global South, and
the status accorded to elders, often cause former child soldiers problems
18 J. D. Brewer

in transitioning into adulthood, resulting in various forms of stigma.

Local cultural practices in the Global South can restrict male child sol-
diers’ participation in the public sphere, including in peacebuilding.
There are also differences between male and female child soldiers, in that
traditional gendered stereotypes often push female child soldiers back
into the private domestic sphere, limiting their opportunity to avail social
reintegration policies and education, as well as engagement in peace mak-
ing. It is thus important to represent the quite different lived experiences
of child soldiers in transitioning to peace, especially the gendered experi-
ences of male and female child soldiers. Local cultural practices can limit
their subsequent engagement in the public sphere, especially with regard
to peacebuilding. A post-colonial and gender perspective helps us under-
stand the continuing impact of these local cultural practices on child
soldiers.
A category that is rarely considered in comparison to the usual types of
ex-combatant are state veterans. State veterans are rarely thought of as
ex-combatants, and their transition experiences tend to be the most
neglected. The transition experiences of state veterans are greatly affected
by whether they are formal ex-security force personnel or co-opted para-
military surrogates and pro-government militias, and whether the state
regime remains intact or not after the conflict. If the transition has left
the state regime in power, formal ex-security personnel are often lionised
as heroes and treated generously in material and symbolic forms after-
wards. Paramilitary surrogates less so. The same heroic status can confer
on paramilitary members when there is a regime change to which they
have contributed. It is important therefore to isolate the different transi-
tion experiences of the varying kinds of state veterans and explore the
contrasting opportunities they have for subsequent engagement with
peace. Their voices need to be heard alongside other types of
ex-combatant.
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 19

Isolating the ‘Voice’ of Ex-combatants

In recent work on first-generation victims in Northern Ireland, South
Africa and Sri Lanka, Brewer et al. (2018b, p. 1) refer to them as having
an absent presence, in that they are talked about a great deal but rarely
heard from directly themselves. This absent presence applies also to ex-­
combatants. Their voices are rarely heard directly. Their voices tend to be
filtered through the political and moral frameworks that make subse-
quent sense of the conflict, giving others the power to speak on their
behalf. Who the winners and losers were in the conflict determines
whether those who speak about ex-combatants do so negatively or
positively.
In most cases, this silences the voice of ex-combatants, since their voice
is either lost in a victor’s peace, such that their narratives are unacknowl-
edged and unrecognised, or quickly become an embarrassment and are
seen as dysfunctional to the shared future moving forward. There are
other reasons for the voicelessness of ex-combatants. Some ex-­combatants
are silenced because their war is ongoing or they are subjected to continu-
ing threats and human rights abuses, making it difficult politically to be
heard. Others are silenced because the peace is contested, and moral
debates about the legitimacy of the conflict distort serious engagement
with the perspective of those who fought in it. This is true for state and
non-state veterans. Specific groups of ex-combatants are silenced on cul-
tural grounds, in that their participation in military struggle was repre-
sented as culturally abnormal and unusual, offending the likes of gender
notions of ‘nurturing women’ or notions around the ‘innocence of child-
hood’ which pervade the Global North. Female ex-combatants are par-
ticularly subject to processes of silencing, as indeed are women victims
generally (Selimovic 2018; Simic 2018). These cultural frames for under-
standing female ex-combatants and child soldiers disguise rather than
illuminate.
Ex-combatants can thus be overlooked and ignored in the post-­conflict
search for memory, resulting in their voice being excluded or distorted as
a result of the moral and political frameworks through which they are
perceived. The ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’, as I call it, can result in
20 J. D. Brewer

privileging some ex-combatant voices and ignoring others. These differ-

ing moral and political frameworks mean that in some cases it is as hard
to hear the voices of state veterans as it is to hear in other cases the voices
of those labelled ‘terrorists’. It is worth exploring this martyr-hero-demon
syndrome further. Its lens is opaque, shedding little light on the lived
experiences of ex-combatants, but it is useful for characterising the moral
contestation that surrounds their public representation.

The Martyr-Hero-Demon Syndrome

The lived experience of ex-combatants is largely shaped by the nature of

the regime they fought for or against, and the outcome of the war. While
winners and losers is not an appropriate analytical frame for understand-
ing differences in these lived experiences, although it is part of popular
culture, it does matter whether they are victors or vanquished. Stalemate
and impasse in the peace process is much the same as being defeated in
its negative effects on the lived experience of ex-combatants. Even in vic-
tory, however, there can be competing moral frameworks through which
the past conflict is emotionally and politically processed, which bestows
opposite virtues on types of ex-combatant.
The victim literature, for example, emphasises the idea of competitive
victimhood, which imposes a victim hierarchy with one’s own group vic-
tims at the apex as the most heinously treated and the most innocent. The
martyr-hero-demon syndrome is its equivalent for ex-combatants. They
can be lionised or demonised in equal measure where competing moral
frameworks survive, regardless of the outcome of the war. State veterans
can be seen as murderers, and terrorists as freedom fighters. These moral
judgements rarely take into account the level and depth of military
involvement; the categories are thought to be homogeneous and all
deserving the same acclaim or opprobrium.
Some dead combatants are readily turned into martyrs. States memo-
rialise their veterans in official acts of commemoration, sometimes very
selectively, most notably the restrictions on memorialising the dead
amongst Sri Lankan Tamils or Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan geno-
cide. Regime change after war reverses those who are considered martyrs,
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 21

turning demons into heroes, and vice versa. However, sociological pro-
cesses are also important in socially constructing martyrdom. Some cul-
tures, particularly many post-colonial societies, tend to valorise the
tradition of the long dead, making the burden of self-sacrifice, spilled
blood and martyrdom of previous generations literally a dead weight on
the future. The Revolution sets the nation in stone.
This tendency can be a burden in peace processes, which explains
Reiff’s (2016) argument in praise of forgetting. However, the burden of
memory, as Soyinka (2000) calls it, is not easily avoided, and Ignatieff
calls this tendency, the warrior’s honour of ‘keeping faith with the dead’
(1998), and Blustein the fidelity and loyalty of the living to the dead
(2014, p. 189). It results in what Misztal (2004) calls the ‘sacralisation of
memory’. Such cultural honour can be bestowed both on state veterans
and members of paramilitary groups. The very opening sentence of the
1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, the so-called Easter Rising, for
example, signed by those fighting against British colonialism in Ireland,
refers to the dead generations through which Ireland gets her tradition of
nationhood. The Northern Irish Unionist Rev. Ian Paisley, who when he
was alive strongly supported the colonial link to Britain, also regularly
invoked the blood of the martyrs in his evocative evangelical preaching
style; his main Belfast church is even called Martyrs Memorial.
Martyrdom thus deliberately speaks to the present. Martyrs embolden
current combatants, refreshing recruitment with the reassurance that sac-
rifice is never forgotten, whether in poetry, song, oral tradition or in local
and official rituals of commemoration. Martyrs also keep the conflict
alive, always in memory, sometimes also in practice, turning commemo-
ration political (see McDowell and Braniff 2014), as Brown (2013) shows
with respect to some acts of local, community commemoration in
Northern Ireland. Commemoration of martyrs can be a way of continu-
ing the conflict, at least in symbolic form that in effect weaponises memory.
However, martyrdom is not without its issues. The question of who
owns the dead is problematic in conflicts that are kept alive in part
through martyrdom. Steve Biko’s widow, for example, Mamphele
Ramphele (1997), has reflected on the tensions between herself, her fam-
ily and the liberation movement in South Africa on who owned Biko’s
life and death, and the use the liberation movement made of his memory.
22 J. D. Brewer

As leader of the Black Consciousness movement in apartheid South

Africa and viciously tortured to death in prison (on which see Brewer
1986, pp. 12–14), Ramphele describes the personal strain caused by the
way her partner was socially constructed into a martyr for a cause that
interfered with her grief. She contrasts the personal memories of the
human being that was Biko behind the idealised martyr he was turned
into, and poses the question of which Biko she is allowed to remember.
Some members of the family of Bobby Sands, the first Hunger Striker to
die in Northern Ireland in 1981, have issued the same complaint about
Irish Republicans. The dead, of course, have no say in how some are sub-
sequently turned into martyrs.
An interesting sociological question is why martyrdom is selected for
only some dead combatants. What shapes their social construction into
martyrs is only in part their status in life. Some iconic ex-combatants
become martyrs because of the manner of their death. Indeed, photo-
graphs that capture the symbolism of the death can bequeath it to perpe-
tuity. We remember Hector Peterson because he was the first child shot
in the back in the 1976 Soweto uprising and a photograph survives of his
tearful friend carrying him in vain to safety. Important questions also
need to asked about who socially constructs martyrs. States sometime
turn symbolic deaths into iconic martyrs, reflected in stone statues that
reinforce their martyrdom—Lord Admiral Nelson’s column in London
or various monuments to General Gordon’s ‘honourable’ death in Sudan
in Victorian Britain—but Tennyson’s famous poem to the ‘valiant’ six
hundred killed in the Charge of the Light Brigade shows how martyrdom
can also be constructed in symbolic form. Paramilitary groups fighting
against colonial regimes are more prone to this than imperial states, since
their relative powerlessness means they struggle to get recognition of the
death of their comrade and hence turn to martyrdom as a way to honour
their sacrifice.
The manner of the death is often turned into a political weapon against
those allegedly responsible for it, whether the perpetrator be a state
regime or groups labelled ‘terrorists’. Again, the relative powerlessness of
those fighting wars of decolonisation means their deaths at the hands of
imperial powers are more commonly weaponised. This tendency to use
martyrdom as political critique against the state keeps alive, for example,
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 23

all those victims in Northern Ireland killed as a result of collusion between

the British state and Loyalist pro-government militias (on which see, e.g.,
Cadwallader 2013; Unwin 2016). Combatants’ role in life as well as their
role in death helps in the social construction of martyrdom. Martyrdom
is thus determined in large part by the use to which the iconic status can
be put in the present.
Martyrdom is dependent on death; without death, the past does not
speak to the present. Heroes and demons, however, as distinct from mar-
tyrs, can be alive or dead. Living heroes can become martyrs when they
die but while they are alive, they are socially constructed as pre-eminent
figures, champions of the cause, as major protagonists or defenders. After
the conflict or during it, they can become celebrity-like in the way they
feature in the media or in politics and become objects of cultural and
political devotion. In recent work by Bergia (2019), she adds to the fac-
tors that give heroic status to male ex-combatants by isolating the ‘seduc-
tive capital’, as she calls it, that turns some male ex-combatants into sex
objects. This is a process, she remarks, that tends not to apply to female
ex-combatants, the response to which is mostly to try to domesticate
them back to the home and the private sphere (see McFeeters 2018, who
compares the media representation of female ex-combatants in Northern
Ireland and Sri Lanka). Heroism is a highly gendered attribution. The
same is true for demons.
Heroes and demons form a couplet; someone’s hero is invariably
another’s demon. As a couplet, they are ascribed opposing virtues and
qualities: love-hate, respect-contempt, honour-dishonour, reverence-­
derision, veneration-neglect and so on. Human rights discourse is used
differently for each. Those who wish to demonise them are very hard on
ex-combatants and allege them to be amongst the chief abusers of human
rights, while those who want to hero worship them are softer towards
them, portraying them as resistance fighters against human rights abuses.
This ‘dualistic thinking’ simplifies the categories, when what is needed is
‘complexity thinking’ that unpacks them and shows their intricacies.
It might be suggested that in the Global North dualistic thinking
dominates with respect to ex-combatants, rendering the hero-demon dis-
tinction into simple oppositional, right and wrong terms, whereas in the
Global South, where most of the conflicts take place, the terms are seen
24 J. D. Brewer

as more complex, less clear cut and not mutually exclusive. In the Global
South, the victim-perpetrator distinction is deconstructed and experi-
enced as ambiguous, so that the moral virtues ascribed do not render
them into mutually exclusive heroes and demons. Everyday experiences
in the midst of the conflict in the Global South work against the con-
struction of this dualism. There tends to be greater moral confusion—
and rightly so—in the Global South about categories like martyr, hero
and demon.
Demonisation is also sociologically interesting, for example, when
deconstructed. The criminological literature on probation officers’
responsibilities to prisoners emphasises relational and practical duties,
summed up in the trinity ‘advise, assist and befriend’.1 This encourages
probation officers to see beyond the abstract category ‘prisoner’ to view
the human being within and to establish an interpersonal relationship.
The befriending is for a purpose, such as to build trust, gain their confi-
dence, assist their reintegration and avoid recidivism. The extensive lit-
erature on ‘talking to terrorists’, an evocative title used as a marketing
ploy by publishers (for a selection see Bew et al. 2009; Powell 2015;
Speckhard 2015; Taylor 2011) also emphasises the relational and practi-
cal effects of so doing for ex-combatants. Humanising the ex-combatant
by looking beyond the dualisms associated with the category is the begin-
ning of relationship and trust building, the practical effects of which can
be ex-combatants’ imprimatur for a negotiated peace deal. ‘Advise, assist
and befriend’ is as much the watchword for ex-combatants as non-­
political prisoners, regardless of the attributes associated with them as
demons. Looking beyond the demonisation to see human beings allows
ex-combatants’ voices to disclose human stories (see Brewer et al. 2018b
for similar human stories from victims). There is a certain dignity in the
ordinariness of the lives of most ex-combatants transitioning from war to
peace that matches the ordinary dignity of victims.
This dualistic, oppositional categorisation of ex-combatants who sur-
vived, as either demons or heroes, occurs independently of the outcome
of the war; it is explained by the continuance of competing moral
frameworks that survive into the peace. Peace processes that are settled

1
I owe this insight to Azrini Wahidin.
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 25

with a compromise deal do not necessarily change people’s private per-

sonal feelings towards killers, even if in the public sphere they practise
tolerance (see Brewer et al. 2018a). In fact, the true measure of reconcili-
ation, regardless of political progress, is when people in transitioning
societies no longer use mutually exclusive moral frameworks to denigrate
opposing perpetrators or hero worship their own combatants.
The point I wish to argue is that martyr-hero-demon syndrome that
venerates or denigrates ex-combatants in equal measure is not the best
frame through which to understand their lived experiences. It misrepre-
sents them through vainglorious attempts to put them on the side of the
angels or the devil, and it is very selective in the ex-combatants whose
voice is heard in the process. Ex-combatants are neither cherubs nor
Satanists; and all have a right to be heard at face value. We need, there-
fore, to hear the voice of ex-combatants directly so as to capture their
lived experiences in their own words without the moral clamour that so
often surrounds their representation by others. In this respect, it is neces-
sary to hear the moral claims that ex-combatants give voice to.

Ex-combatants as a Moral Category

One of the limits of the parallel with the criminological literature on

probation officers’ engagement with prisoners is that it is restricted to
relational and practical dimensions. I contend there is a moral dimension
to the engagement with ex-combatants. The ex-combatant category is
political and legal, but it is also a moral one. There are two sides to this
moral dimension: the competing moral frameworks through which ex-­
combatants are understood by subsequent generations; and the moral
claims to legitimacy made by ex-combatants themselves. I will briefly
look at both in turn.
Severe moral judgements about ex-combatants, which turn them into
martyrs, heroes or demons, are affected by three factors: the repressive
nature of the regime, which can legitimise resistance against it; the moral
virtues embedded in cultural norms in the Global North that offer excuses
and mediating factors for some ex-combatants, notably women and chil-
dren; and the moral claims that ex-combatants themselves make. These
26 J. D. Brewer

mediating processes further diminish the value and relevance of the

martyr-­hero-demon syndrome for understanding the lived experience of
ex-combatants.
Colonial, authoritarian and autocratic regimes, and regimes that abuse
human rights, tend to resolve most of the moral ambiguities that affect
ex-combatants when there is regime change, affording them the status of
‘freedom fighter’, for perpetrators experience daily moral humiliation in
everyday life under repressive regimes. In these instances, the moral
dilemma is posed for state veterans rather than resistance fighters. State
veterans who fought in support of Nazism, the Latin American dictator-
ships or apartheid, for example, are severely judged morally after regime
change, leaving resistance fighters to recoup moral legitimacy. In his
excellent account of what he refers to as ‘wrongdoers’, Jon Elster (2004,
p. 149) describes the retrospective ‘instrumental justifications’ that state
veterans of autocratic regimes sometimes offer. These include the claim
that working for the regime was necessary under duress for fear of reprisal
or death, that it could not be resisted, or was a necessity in order to be
able to work against the regime from the inside. Instrumental justifica-
tions like these can be flipped for members of pro-government militias.
Killings through acts of collusion with militias can be instrumentally jus-
tified by the state, for example, as a necessary strategy in order to stop
further killings. This ends up as a ‘lesser evil’ moral claim. It is used often
by pro-state militias to subsequently rationalise and justify their acts of
violence on behalf of non-democratic and repressive regimes.
To be able to hear moral claims such as these is one of the reasons why
it is necessary to consider state veterans alongside other forms of ex-­
combatant; the nature of the regime ex-combatants fought for or against
is important to the moral claims that ex-combatants subsequently make,
as well as our response to them. The view that Nelson Mandela was a ter-
rorist shows that international supporters of failed regimes can carry on
the morally charged language to denigrate, but failed regimes usually and
quickly lose their international supporters. Perhaps the collapse of the
Soviet Union is the exception, given that many people in Russia today
view the privations of the present through the rose-tinted glasses of the
communist past.
 2 Listening to Ex-combatants’ Voices 27

A further complication that clouds simplistic moral judgements of ex-­

combatants is the excuses and mitigations that are inherent in cultural
norms in the Global North towards certain types of combatant. Women
ex-combatants and child soldiers carry moral virtues in the Global North
because of Western conceptions of gender and childhood that contain
inbuilt excuses and mitigations. Women and children, the argument
goes, must have inevitably been functioning under duress. We therefore
hear, for example, about the LTTE forcing women and children to be
fighters in Sri Lanka’s war, with little ability to resist, as if the intent to
want to fight is inconceivable because it is contrary to how cultural norms
in the Global North perceive womanhood and childhood. Gender- and
age-related excuses—they were young, they were raped, they were
drugged—constitute the moral framework that mitigates severe moral
judgements in the Global North about these categories of
ex-combatant.
By corollary, the severest moral judgements are reserved for adult males
who supposedly carry the moral agency to have understood what they
were doing. Sexist assessments like this are worth testing in case studies,
such as those within this volume. The different cultural norms in the
Global North that impinge on the moral virtues of types of ex-combatant
deserve interrogation, including how these cultural norms compare to
cultural norms in the Global South, which can give different moral mean-
ing to female gender and childhood. In some cases, patriarchal norms in
the Global South are the most repressive, severely affecting the lived expe-
riences of female ex-combatants. The status afforded elders in some tradi-
tional societies has a parallel effect on increasing the stigma experienced
by former child soldiers, especially girls.
The final source of moral confusion concerns the moral claims that
ex-combatants themselves make. These moral claims function as tech-
niques of neutralisation, as the old sociology of deviancy literature puts
it. They are different from excuses and justifications; excuses and justifica-
tions entail admission of wrongdoing and recognition of the need to take
responsibility. Moral claims, however, transcend culpability. Moral claims
make the choice to fight a rational means-end decision, avoiding having
to accept their actions as wrong and in need of excuse.
Another random document with
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bees in spring-time, like, xii. 121.
beggarly, unmannered corse, xii. 285.
beggars are coming to town, The, etc., viii. 408 n.
beguile the slow and creeping hours of time, xii. 157.
Begun in gladness, whereof has come, etc., vii. 57.
Behold the fate of a reformer, etc., vi. 378.
Behold the lilies of the field, etc., xi. 504; vi. 392.
Behold the twig, to which thou laidest down thy head, is now
become a tree, v. 199.
Behold thy mother, etc., v. 184.
beholds that lady in her bower, etc., viii. 308.
Believe me, the providence of God, etc., vi. 100.
believes him to have been the greatest genius, etc., v. 123.
believes in a fat capon, x. 69.
bellum internecinum, iii. 61; xi. 469.
Below the bottom of the great abyss, etc., v. 315.
Belton so pert, and so pimply, viii. 120; x. 38.
Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales, etc., iv. 272.
Beneath the hills, amid the flowery groves, etc., vii. 233.
Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure, v. 80.
best can feel them, xii. 43.
best company in the world, the, viii. 82.
best of kings, i. 305; iii. 41.
best of men (The) that e’er wore earth about him, was a sufferer,
etc., v. 185.
best tennis players, the, vii. 42.
best-found, and latest, as well as earliest choice, viii. 392.
best thing (that the) that could have happened to a man was never
to have been born, etc., i. 1.
bestow his tediousness, xii. 40.
Better be lord of them that riches have, etc., vi. 111.
better none, x. 185.
Beware, therefore, with lordes for to play, etc., iii. 385.
Beyond Hyde Park all is a desart, etc., vi. 187; vii. 67; viii. 36.
bidding, at his, viii. 236.
bid a gay defiance to mischance, must, etc., viii. 160.
Bidding the lovely scenes, etc., ix. 94; xii. 151.
Bigger than a mustard seed, at first no, etc., x. 395.
bis repetita crambe, vii. 126.
bitter bad judges, i. 94; vi. 310, 407.
black and melancholy yew trees, No, ix. 145.
black mutton or white, v. 114; vii. 173.
black upon white, and white upon black, vi. 319.
blasts from hell, viii. 363.
blazons herself, viii. 74.
bleating oratory, the, v. 323.
blesses the Regent, etc., iii. 42.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, etc., i. 22.
blights the tender blossom, etc., xii. 140.
blind with rain, ix. 109.
blindness to the future kindly given, Oh! etc., vi. 250.
blinking Sam, xi. 221.
blocking out and staying in, xii. 233.
blossom tear? Ah! why so soon the, xii. 207.
blotted out the map of Europe, xii. 291.
Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind, xii. 122.
blown about by every wind, etc., xii. 441.
blushes with blood of queens and kings, vii. 225.
body of this death, the, xii. 125.
bony prizer, viii. 357; xi. 367.
bonzes and priests, of all religions, the, etc., viii. 104.
book in the world he was the best pleased with, viii. 94.
book, sealed, ix. 29.
Books do not teach the use of books, vi. 73.
Books, dreams are each a world, and books, we know, are a
substantial world, both pure and good, v. 247; vii. 372; viii. 120;
x. 38; xi. 295.
book and brain, within the volume of the, etc., vi. 173.
bordered on the verge of all we hate, viii. 188.
Borealis race, Or like the, iii. 141.
born for the universe, iv. 251.
Born for their use, they live but to oblige them, etc., vii. 80.
born in a garret sixteen storeys high, iv. 258.
born to converse, to live, and act with ease, xi. 381.
Born universal heir to all humanity! vi. 42, 253.
born within the sound of Bow-bell, vii. 70.
bosom of its Father and its God, v. 137.
both end and use, iii. 323.
both living and loving! ii. 310.
Both thought it was the wisest course, etc., viii. 66.
bound them with Styx, xii. 260.
bow their crested pride, iii. 11.
brain would have been like a smokejack, my, vi. 275.
brangle and brave-all, etc., iii. 314.
brave man in distress, a, xi. 533.
brave sublunary things, vi. 193; vii. 265; xii. 153.
brazen throat and iron tongue, with its, etc., xii. 55.
break out like a wild overthrow, vi. 164.
breath that under heaven is blown, By every little, iv. 333; xii. 22.
breath can mar them as a breath has made, A, vii. 52; xi. 197.
Breathed hot, From all the boundless furnace of the sky, etc., v. 88.
breezy call of incense-breathing morn, ix. 51.
Brentford on one throne, So sit two Kings of, ix. 236.
Brentford to Ealing, from, etc., viii. 168, 318.
Brightest, if there be remaining Any service, without feigning, etc.,
v. 255.
brilliant land! Ah! etc., viii. 441.
Bring back the hour of glory in the grass, etc., vi. 257.
Bring but a Scotsman frae his hill, etc., xi. 446.
Britain’s warriors, her Statesmen, etc., iii. 162, 258; xi. 429.
Britain’s warriors, the flower of, etc., xi. 429.
Britannia rival Greece, bid, vi. 270.
broad as it is long, as, xi. 369.
brother, and half the story had its, etc., viii. 399.
brother of the groves, a, viii. 467; xii. 133.
brother, Sir Charles, lived to himself, her, vi. 90.
brothers of the angle, xii. 19.
Brownies and Bogilis full is his Buik, of, x. 311.
Brunswick’s fated line, iii. 117. bubble knocks another on the head,
one, etc., viii. 464.
bud of the briar, the, v. 323.
building up of our feelings through the imagination, vii. 408 n.
Buonaparte, little bookselling, xi. 386
burden and the mystery, the, v. 67; ix. 159.
buried as a man, he had been, etc., xii., 353.
burning and shining light, i. 60.
burnished fly in month of June, a, v. 88.
Busied about some wicked gin, xi. 581.
But a little way off, they saw the mast, etc., v. 323.
But for an utmost end, etc., xi. 265.
But he so teazed me, viii. 255.
But I will come again, my love, An’ it were ten thousand mile, ii.
290.
But if, unblameable in word and thought, etc., v. 94.
But not for me the merry bells, viii. 525.
But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, etc., v. 74.
But still the world, etc., iii. 254.
But ’tis the fall degrades her to a whore, etc., iii. 46; vii. 368; xi.
475.
But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain,
etc., i. 177.
But the commandment of knowledge, etc., v. 332.
But there is matter for a second rhyme, etc., xi. 282; xii. 275.
But thou, oh Hope, with eyes so fair, etc., viii. 436.
But where are the other eleven? i. 257.
But where ye doubt the truth not knowing, Believing the best, good
may be growing, etc., v. 280.
butterflies flutter around, And gaudy, xii. 25.
buttress, wall, and tower, Where, ix. 266.
by a long tract of time, by the use of language, etc., vii. 387.
By him lay heavie Sleepe, cosin of Death, etc., v. 196.
By our first strange and fatal interview, etc., xii. 28.
By the first part of this last tale, etc., v. 275.
by the help of his fayre hornes on hight, v. 42.
By the mass I saw him of late call up a great black devil, etc., v.
288.
by words only ... a man becometh, x. 135.

C.
Cætera desunt, vi. 121.
calamity, the rub that makes, etc., xii. 199.
call evil good and good evil, to, xi. 341.
Call not so loud or they will hear us, vii. 377.
call up him who left half-told, And, xii. 27.
Calling each by name, etc., ix. 401.
Calm contemplation and majestic pains, iv. 274; vi. 26; ix. 44.
Calm contemplation and poetic ease, v. 71; xi. 432, 508.
calm, peaceable writers, vi. 254.
came, saw, and were satisfied, we, viii. 455.
Canning had the most elegant mind since Virgil, xi. 336 n.
canny ways and pawky looks, xii. 91.
canonised bones, his, vi. 58.
cant religious, cant political, etc., xii. 338.
capacity, a greater general, etc., x. 178.
caput mortuum, xi. 495.
careful after many things, They are, etc., xii. 197.
Care, mad to see a man so happy, etc., v. 129.
Care mounted behind the horseman, etc., vi. 87.
cares, And ever against eating, etc., xii. 142.
Carnage is its daughter! i. 214; vii. 374; viii. 348.
Carnage is her daughter, iii. 120 n.
Carnage was the daughter of Humanity, i. 391 n.; iii. 166.
Carnation was a colour he never could abide, xi. 457.
Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those, etc., vi. 124.
carries noise, and behind it, it leaves tears, it, viii. 348.
cast both body and soul into hell, xii. 359.
cast some longing, lingering looks behind, viii. 250.
Castalie, the dew of, v. 14; x. 156; xii. 294.
castle walls crumbled into ashes, his, etc., viii. 309.
casuist, that noble and liberal, i. 235; viii. 186.
cat and canary-bird, the, etc., x. 195.
catalogue they go for actors, in the, viii. 465.
Catch a king and kill a king, xi. 551.
Catch ere she falls, The Cynthia of the minute, xi. 402.
catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn! vi. 27; xi. 267; xii.
42.
catch the breezy air, vii. 70.
cathedral’s gloom and choir, The, etc., ix. 207; xi. 535.
Caucasus, the frosty, xii. 149.
cause of evil, re-risen, iii. 117.
cause was hearted, the, xii. 288.
Cease your funning, viii. 194, 255, 323. 470.
censure the age, When they, etc., vii. 377.
Centaur not fabulous, xii. 228.
certain lady of a manor, a, i. 422; xi. 273 n.
certain little gentleman, a, iii. 312.
Certain so wroth are they, iii. 268.
certain tender bloom his fame o’erspreads, A, xii. 207, 262.
Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold, etc., v. 324.
C’est un mauvais métier que celui de médire, vii. 205.
Chaldee wise, The, etc., v. 292.
Challenges essoine, from every work he, xii. 46, 225.
chamber, was dispainted all within, His, etc., viii. 128.
chapel-bell, the little, xii. 305.
chargeable, very, x. 172.
Charity begins at home, iii. 289; xi. 319.
Charity covers a multitude of sins, vii. 83; viii. 33.
charm these deaf adders wisely, xi. 415.
Charming Betsy Careless, the, viii. 144.
Charron, Or more wise, viii. 93 n.
chase his fancy’s rolling speed, x. 120.
cheap defence, i. 295.
cheat the gallows face, xi. 551.
cheese-parings, as a saving of, etc., vii. 273.
chemist, statesman, fiddler and buffoon, i. 85; x. 207.
cherish our prejudices, etc., xii. 395.
child and champion of Jacobinism, iii. 99, 227; iv. 6; xi. 422.
child is father to the man, the, vii. 231; xi. 334.
children of yon azure sheen, As are the, xii. 262.
children of the world are wiser, the, etc., xi. 522; xii. 298.
children’s play, Come, let us leave off, etc., iii. 132.
children sporting, We see the, etc., vi. 92; xii. 130.
chips of short-lung’d Seneca, The dry, etc., x. 98.
chop off his head, viii. 201.
choosing songs the Regent named, In, etc., iv. 359.
Christ, inscribed the cross of, etc., xii, 261.
Christ Jesus! what mighty crime, etc., vi. 239.
Christian could die! to see how a, xii. 330.
chrysolite, this one entire and perfect, xii. 105, 235.
Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli, etc., ix. 270.
Circled Una’s angel face, and made a sunshine in the shady place,
v. 46; x. 77.
cities in Romanian lands, Of all the, etc., xii. 323.
city, no mean, ix. 69.
city set on a hill, a, etc., x. 335.
clad in flesh and blood, i. 13, 135.
Clad in the wealthy robes his genius wrought, etc., ii. 108.
Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd’s song, etc., v. 315.
clap on high his coloured winges twain, v. 35; x. 74.
clappeth his wings, and straightway he is gone, viii. 404; ix. 70.
clear it from all controversy, to, etc., iv. 335; vi. 52.
Cleopatra, will be the fatal, xii. 310.
clerk there was of Oxenford also, A, etc., i. 84.
clock that wants both hands, A, etc., viii. 434.
Close to the gate a spacious garden lies, etc., ix. 325.
clothed and fed, with which they are, ix. 93.
cloud by day, neither the, etc., ix. 361.
clouds in which Death hid himself, the, etc., vii. 14.
clouds of detraction, of envy and lies, through, vii. 367.
clouds over the Caspian, like two, xii. 11.
Cockney School in Poetry, xii. 256 n.
coil and pudder, xi. 554; xii. 335, 383.
Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs, etc., v. 212.
cold icicles, the, from his rough beard Dropped adown upon her
snowy breast! v. 38.
cold rheum, vi. 304.
Colonel took upon him to wear a shirt, x. 382; xii. 142.
colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, etc., vi. 74.
come betwixt the wind and their nobility, vii. 378.
come, but no farther, xii. 108.
Come, gentle Spring, etc., v. 86.
come home to the bosoms and businesses of men, i. 200; v. 333;
vii. 293, 337; viii. 91; xi. 548; xii. 377, 400.
Come, kiss me, love, viii. 265.
Come, live with me and be my love, v. 99, 211, 298.
Come, say before all these, etc., viii. 265.
Come then, the colours and the ground prepare, etc., vii. 290; viii.
73, 186; xi. 240.
comes like a satyr, iv. 246.
comes the tug of war, viii. 219.
comforted with their bright radiance, xi. 346.
coming and going he knew not where, i. 90.
Coming events cast their shadow before, vii. 50; x. 221; xii. 113.
Coming, gentlemen, coming, x. 382.
Coming Reviews cast their shadows before, x. 221.
common people always prefer exertion and agility to grace, ix. 173.
companion of my way, Let me have a, etc., vi. 182.
companion of the lonely hour, xii. 53.
companions of the spring, The painted birds, xi. 271.
company, Tell me your, etc., vi. 202; xi. 196; xii. 133.
compelled to give in evidence against himself, i. 129.
complex constable, that, iii. 299.
compost heap, a, vi. 37.
Compound for sins they are inclin’d to, etc., viii. 18.
conceit or the world well lost, all for, xii. 363.
condemned to everlasting fame, x. 375.
confined in too narrow room, iii. 290.
conformed to this world, to be, iii. 275; viii. 146.
Conniving house (as the gentlemen of Trinity), etc., i. 56.
conquering and to conquer, xi. 418.
conscience and tender heart, Where all is, ii. 371; iii. 155; iv. 204,
326; vi. 165; vii. 173, 280; x. 238.
conspicuous scene, etc., xii. 31.
constant chastity, unspotted faith, etc., iii. 208.
constrained by mastery, iii. 166; iv. 220; v. 86; vii. 197; viii. 404; ix.
17; xii. 188.
constrain his genius by mastery, viii. 479.
consummation of the art devoutly to be wished, a, viii. 190; xii. 125.
contagious gentleness, viii. 309.
contemporary bards would be admired when Homer and Virgil
were forgotten, xi. 288.
contempt of the choice of the people, i. 394, 427; iii. 32 and n., 175,
401.
contempt of their worshippers, in, xii. 244.
content man’s natural desire, vi. 324.
Continents have more, of what they contain, etc., iii. 272; vi. 205;
xii. 16.
Contra audentior ito, xi. 514.
conversation, To excel in, etc., vii. 32.
converse with the mighty dead, Hold high, ix. 69.
convertible to the same abandoned purpose, iii. 91.
cooped and cabined in by saucy doubts and fears, viii. 477; xii. 125.
copied the other, Which of you, ix. 33.
Corinthian capitals of polished society, the, iv. 290; xii. 131.
coronet face, the, xii. 226.
Corporate bodies have no soul, vi. 264.
corrupter sort of mere politiques, The, etc., v. 329.
could be content if the species were continued like trees, he, v. 334.
could he lay sacrilegious hands, etc., viii. 269.
counterfeiten chere, To, etc., iii. 268.
courage never to submit, etc., xii. 192.
courtly, the court, viii. 55; ix. 61.
courtiers offended should be, lest the, etc., iii. 45; viii. 457.
Cover her face: my eyes dazzle: she died young, v. 246.
covers a multitude of sins, vii. 83; viii. 33.
coxcombs, the prince of, proud of being at the head, etc., viii. 36,
83.
crack of ploughs and kine, xii. 380.
Craignez Dieu, mon cher Abner, etc., ix. 116.
Created hugest that swim the oceanstream, vii. 13.
Creation’s tenant, he is nature’s heir, xi. 500.
creature of the element, a, etc., xii. 30.
Credat Judæus Apella, xii. 266.
Credo quia impossibile est, vii. 351.
credulous hope, the, etc., xii. 321.
cries all the way from Portsmouth, etc., viii. 322.
crisis is at hand for every man to take part for, the, etc., vi. 154.
crown which Ariadne wore, etc., x. 186.
crown of the head, From the, etc., xii., 247.
cruel sunshine thrown by fortune on a fool, etc., xi. 550.
crust of formality, a, vi. 356.
cry more tuneable, A, etc., xii. 18.
cubit from his stature, a, viii. 263.
Cucullus non facit monachum, vii. 236.
Cuique tribuito suum, v. 368; vii. 191.
Cupid and my Campaspe play’d, etc., v. 201.
Cupid, as he lay among Roses, by a bee was stung, v. 312.
cups that cheer, but not inebriate, The, etc., vi. 184.
cure for a narrow and selfish spirit, a, xii. 429.
curiosa felicitas, v. 149; xi. 606.
curl her hair so crisp and pure, to, etc., viii. 465.
curtain-close such scenes, And, etc., xii. 328.
Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait, etc., v. 206.
cut up so well in the cawl, They do not, etc., iii. 321; vii. 202; viii.
340.
cuts the common link, xii. 402.
Cymocles, oh! I burn, etc., x. 245.

D.
daily food and nourishment of the mind of the artist, the, etc., vi.
125, 126.
daily intercourse of all this unintelligible world, the, etc., viii. 420.
dainty flower or herb that grows on ground, No, etc., iv. 353.
dallies with the innocence of thought, That, etc., xii. 177.
Damn you, can’t you be cool, etc., iii. 226.
damnation round the land, iv. 224.
dancing days, Such were the joys of our, etc., viii. 437; xi. 300.
dandled and swaddled, vi. 270.
Dapple, and there I spoke of him, There I thought of, vi. 61.
dark closet, with a little glimmering of light, a, etc., xi. 174.
darkness dare affront, and with their, xii. 198.
darkness that might be felt, in, iii. 57; vi. 43.
darling in the public eye, iv. 298.
darlings of his precious eye, the, xii. 195.
dashed and brewed, vii. 140; x. 235.
dateless bargain, to all engrossing despotism, a, xi. 414.
daughter and his ducats, his, xii. 142 n.
daughters of memory, the, iv. 348.
day, It was the, etc., viii. 288.
Dazzled with excess of light, viii. 551.
dazzling fence of argument, the, xii. 358.
De apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio, v. 341 n.; vii.
50; xii. 56, 217.
De mortius nil nisi bonum, viii. 323.
de omne scibile et quibusdam aliis, vi. 214; vii. 315.
de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, xi. 467.
d’un pathetique à faire fendre les rochers, vi. 236.
deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue, v. 274.
Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends, etc., v. 300.
Death may be called in vain, and cannot come, etc., v. 357.
death there is animation too, Even in, ix. 221.
deathless date, vi. 291.
decked in purple and in pall, etc., viii. 308.
declamations or set speeches, His, are commonly cold, etc., i. 177.
decorum is the principal thing, v. 360.
dedicate its sweet leaves, i. 386.
Deem not devoid of elegance the sage, By Fancy’s genuine feelings
unbeguiled, etc., v. 120.
deep abyss of time, fast anchored in the, vii. 125.
deep, within that lowest, etc., xii. 144.
defections, his right-handed, etc.,
vii. 181.
defend the right, to, x. 167.
degree, in a high or low, etc., xi. 442.
Deh! quando tu sarai tornato al mondo, ix. 251.
Deh vieni alla finestra, viii. 365.
deity they shout around, A present, etc., x. 191; xii. 250.
deliberately or for money, iv. 339; vi. 56.
delicious breath painting sends forth, What a, etc., ix. 19.
delicious thought, of being regarded as a clever fellow, i. 93 n.
delight in love, ’tis when I see, If there’s, etc., viii. 73.
delight in! to fear, not to, xii. 243.
Deliverance for mankind, vi. 152 n.
Delphin edition of Nature, xi. 335.
Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, etc., viii. 94.
Demanded how we can know any proposition, but here it will be,
etc., xi. 130.
Demogorgon, dreaded name of, the, xii. 259.
demon that he served, the, vii. 285.
demon whispered, L——, have a taste, Some, vi. 94, 403.
demure, grave-looking, spring-nailed, the, etc., vi. 221; vii. 242; xi.
530.
Depreciation of Pope is partly founded upon a false idea, etc., xi.
490.
depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, In the, etc., xi. 267.
Descended from the Irish kings, etc., i. 54.
deserter of Smorgonne, iii. 54.
Desire to please, etc., viii. 278; xii. 177, 183, 426.
Despise low joys, etc., xii. 31.
Despise low thoughts, low gains, etc., v. 77.
Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain, etc., iv. 300.
Detur optimo, vii. 187.
Deva’s winding vales, xii. 265.
devil said plainly that Dame Chat had got the needle, the, v. 288.
Devil was sick, The, etc., xii. 126.
Devil upon two sticks, viii. 404.
devilish girl at the bottom, a, viii. 83.
Di rider finira pria della Aurora, iii. 371.
diamond turrets of Shadukiam, the, iv. 357.
Diana and her fawn, etc., xii. 58.
Did first reduce our tongue from Lyly’s writing, etc., v. 201.
Did I not tell thee, Dauphine, etc., viii. 43.
Did not the Duke look up? Methought he saw us, v. 215.
Die of a rose in aromatic pain, vi. 249; vii. 300; viii. 143; ix. 391.
Died at his house in Burbage-street, etc., vi. 86.
differences himself by, v. 334.
digito monstrari, vi. 286.
dim doubts alloy, no, xi. 321.
dip it in the ocean, and it will stand, iv. 197; vi. 160 n.; ix. 133 n.
dipped in dews of Castalie, v. 14; x. 156; xii. 294.
direct and honest, To be, etc., xii. 219.
disappointed still are still deceived, And, ix. 287.
disastrous strokes which his youth suffered, the, viii. 96.
discipline of humanity, a, i. 123; vii. 78, 184; xii. 122.
discoursed in eloquent music, vii. 199.
disdain the ground she walks on, i. 71 n.
disembowel himself of his natural entrails, etc., vi. 267; xi. 322.
disjecta membra poetæ, viii. 423; ix. 309.
distant, enthusiastic, respectful love, viii. 160.
distilled books are, like distill’d waters, etc., xi. 203.
divest him, along with his inheritance, to, etc., viii. 72.
Divide et impera, vii. 147.
divinæ particula auræ, ix. 361; xii. 157.
divine Fanny Bias, iv. 359.
divine, the matchless, what you will, the, vi. 175.
Do not mock me: Though I am tamed, and bred up with my
wrongs, etc., v. 252.
Do unto others as you would, etc., vi. 396.
Do you read or sing? If you sing you sing very ill, vii. 5; viii. 319.
Do you see anything ridiculous in this wig? viii. 21.
Do you think I’ll sleep with a woman that doesn’t know what’s
trumps? viii. 427.
docked and curtailed, xi. 316.
Does he wind into a subject? etc., vii. 275; viii. 103.
does a little bit of fidgets, viii. 469.
dog, he still plays the, viii. 263.
dogs, among the gentlemanlike, etc., iii. 278.
Don John of the Greenfield was coming, vi. 359.
Don Juan was my Moscow, etc., iv. 258 n.
Don’t forget butter, viii. 264.
Don’t you remember Lords—and—who are now great statesmen;
little dirty boys playing at cricket, etc., v. 118; vii. 205.
double night of ages and of her, The, etc., xi. 424.
Doubtless the pleasure is as great, etc., iii. 169; vii. 204; viii. 302.
douce humanité, iii. 36; xi. 525.
doux sommeil, iii. 108.
Down the Bourne and through the Mead, ii. 87.
dragged the struggling monster into day, viii. 164.
dramatic star of the first magnitude, a, viii. 164.
drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again, vii. 59.
dreaming and awake, ’twixt, vi. 71.
dregs of earth, the, xii. 41.
dregs of life, the, vii. 302.
Dress makes the man, the want of it the fellow, etc., vii. 212.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, etc., v. 306.
dross compared to the glory hereafter, etc., xi. 322.
drossy and divisible, more, vii. 173, 453; xi. 174.
drunk full ofter of the tun than of the well, v. 129.
dry discourse, but, xi. 25.
Duke and no Duke, viii. 263.
Dulce ridentem Lalagen, Dulce loquentem, vi. 61.
Dull as the lake that slumbers in the storm, iii. 22; vii. 278.
Dull Beotian genius, viii. 370.
dull cold winter does inhabit here, vii. 176; ix. 62.
dull product of a scoffer’s pen, v. 114.
dulness could no further go, The force of, vi. 46 n.; x. 219, 377.
dumb forgetfulness a prey, for who to, xi. 546.
Dum domus Æneæ Capitoli immobile saxum, etc., vii. 12.
dungeon of the tower, From the, etc., xii. 158.
durance vile, xi. 237.
Durham’s golden stalls, iii. 123.
dust in the balance, But as the, iv. 63.
Dust to dust, etc., xii. 53.
dust we raise! What a, vi. 240.
dwelleth not in temples made with hands, ix. 48.
dwelt Eternity, ix. 218.
dying Ned Careless, viii. 72.
dying shepherd Damætas, I give it to you as the, etc., xi. 289.
E.
Each lolls his tongue out at the other, etc., xi. 527.
Each man takes hence life, but no man death, etc., v. 225.
ear and eye, He is all, etc., xii. 121.
earth, earthy, of the, i. 239; vi. 43; ix. 55, 389.
ease, he takes his, xii. 123.
eat, drink, and are merry, xii. 16.
eat his meal in peace, vi. 94.
Ebro’s temper, the, viii. 103.
eclipsed the gaiety of nations, i. 157; viii. 387, 526.
Eden, and Eblis, and cherub smiles, iv. 354.
Edina’s darling Seat, xii. 253.
Edinburgh, We are positive when we say, etc., viii. 105.
effeminate! thy freedom hath made me, xii. 124.
Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, etc., v. 36.
eggs, with five blue, i. 92.
Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees, etc., v. 194.
elbow us aside, who, iv. 99.
elegant Petruchio, an, v. 345.
Elevate and surprise, vi. 216, 290; x. 271, 388.
elegant turn of her head, ix. 147.
eleven obstinate fellows, the other, xii. 326.
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, vii. 366.
Elysian dreams of lovers, when they loved, Th’, etc., viii. 307.
embowelled, of our natural entrails, and stuffed, are, viii. 417.
embryo fly, the little airy of ricketty children, iv. 246.
Emelie that fayrer was to sene, etc., i. 400.