Laetitia Bucaille's sociological study, Making Peace with Your Enemy: Algerian, French, and South African Ex-Combatants, originally published in French in 2010, opens with a provocative set of questions. She asks, ‘Under what conditions can … a combatant be brought to forswear his enemy, understand the reasons that motivated him, see him as an equal, pursue cordial or friendly relations with him, and/or develop a new relationship with him on the basis of shared interests’ (1). In order to answer these widely applicable questions, she focuses on South Africa, Algeria, and France, cases where ex-combatants inflicted and endured unspeakable violence during apartheid and decolonization, respectively. Concentrating on the experience and discourse of the ex-combatant, Bucaille argues that three factors are central to shaping the combatants’ perceptions of themselves, their past actions, and their place in contemporary society. First, they must believe that ‘the conflict's resolution was fair or at least constituted an acceptable compromise’ (2). Second, the representation by the state and government shapes ‘the places that ex-combatants occupy in their societies’ (2). And third, ‘the possibility or impossibility of forming contacts with former enemies plays a decisive role in the evolution of reciprocal perceptions’ (3).

Relying on extensive oral interviews that she conducted with ex-combatants in South Africa, Algeria, and France between 2003 and 2009, Bucaille vibrantly presents the lived experience and potent memories of a wide range of men and a few women (for example, 128–31). In South Africa, she demonstrates how, after nearly fifty years of apartheid rule, Nelson Mandela and his successor Thabo Mbeki steered the African National Congress (ANC) and postapartheid South Africa toward reconciliation and social transformation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission proceedings, the most potent example of this effort, deliberately incorporated and created an official place for the former adversary, thus enabling former apartheid officials, prison guards, and policemen to account for their past actions and envision a future for themselves in which the state officially recognized them. Former militants of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, however, frequently expressed feelings of exclusion and resentment in the post-conflict order, which they attribute in part to the ANC's renunciation of violence and emphasis on racial harmony.

In Algeria and France, ex-combatants physically separated themselves after the brutal war (1954–62), and since that time have largely lived in different countries. For them, Bucaille shows divergent outcomes. In Algeria, the National Liberation Front (FLN) used its victory as a source of legitimation and power. This approach, which conferred political, social, and material benefits to former combatants in postcolonial Algeria, also necessitated persistent depictions of France as a colonial oppressor. Therefore, from the FLN's perspective, no public reconciliation with France or French combatants was possible. By contrast, in France after 1962, the official state position on decolonization was silence. In an effort to thwart public discussion of French colonialism and its undoing, Charles de Gaulle amnestied former Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) combatants, who at the end of the war went to extreme lengths to preserve French Algeria, including attempting to assassinate de Gaulle. His actions legitimated their struggle and offered them an official place within the nation. Yet, unlike their South African counterparts, former OAS members did not modulate their positions on violence, which as Bucaille illustrates, stems from the state's struggle to grapple with and account for its colonial past.

Making Peace with Your Enemy asks critically important questions about what shapes post-conflict societies and the ex-combatants who participated in the conflict. This line of inquiry is of great interest to a range of scholars across many disciplines, especially historians of Africa. However, there were several points Bucaille could have further developed which would have strengthened her study. First, Bucaille compares South Africa, Algeria, and France, and while they share a history of oppression and violence, they vary in significant ways. The most important difference for this study in my view is that in postapartheid South Africa the former combatants continued to live in the same country, whereas in the case of Algeria and France, the ex-combatants live at a distance from one another in their respective countries. This fact does not fundamentally challenge some of Bucaille's conclusions. However, it likely influences ex-combatants’ post-conflict identity and the position the state takes with respect to their past actions and future place in the nation. The author does not account for this difference. Moreover, Bucaille does not adequately explain the rationale for comparing South Africa, Algeria, and France, beyond a brief mention in the introduction which notes how ‘the resulting analyses demonstrate the value of comparing diverse fields for the purpose of understanding phenomena that are at once near and distance, commonplace and particular’ (3). Providing more robust comparative analysis throughout the book may also have made the connections between the case studies clearer. Lastly, at times, especially in Parts Three and Four, I had difficulty following the organization of the book. Whereas Parts One and Two focused on South Africa, Algeria, and France, in that order, the second half of the book, where most of the primary source material appeared, adopted a different approach and switched between cases in a haphazard fashion.

Ultimately, Bucaille's study encourages us to more fully consider ex-combatant voices when studying post-conflict societies. The result, as her research makes clear, is a kaleidoscope approach to publicly acknowledging the past and charting one's own and the state's future.