The Politics of Reintegration and War Commemoration. The Case of the Kosovo Liberation Army
The Politics of Reintegration and War Commemoration. The Case of the Kosovo Liberation Army

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. This article examines the contentious question of the appropriate position of veterans in a postwar society, by juxtaposing the externally led reintegration policies with local conceptions of (re-)integration propagated in the veterans’ circles of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Reintegration assistance, a constituent part of post-conflict reconstruction efforts, ultimately aims at demilitarization by supporting the return of former combatants to civilian life in the wake of armed conflict. As is illustrated with the case of Kosovo, reintegration programs can hardly live up to their overly ambitious aims; the assumed division between the combatants and the rest of the society is problematic in the context of partisan warfare. Despite pledges to contextual sensitivity, reintegration programs cannot do justice to the complexity of postwar realities. Hence, if disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) is to be successful beyond dismantling the machinery of war, more attention has to be paid to existing social cleavages and group boundaries formed on the basis of varying wartime experiences.

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