Deepening readers’ knowledge of armed conflict in Africa is a common purpose of the books discussed in this essay. Each author advances beyond the established explanations of the conflicts and combatants’ involvement in these conflicts. All provide the political, economic, and cultural-historical and contemporary context that allows readers to understand better these armed conflicts and the affected populations. The authors make the point that without careful examination of these context-specific issues, policies and programs will be ineffective.

Christine Ryan focuses on child soldiers in Southern Sudan during the second civil war. She argues that because “child soldiers” are conceptualized through a Western perspective of childhood, they are rendered incapable of making informed decisions and are politically voiceless. Through qualitative interviews the former child soldiers reveal their decision-making related to involvement in the war. NGO staff members’ interviews reveal the discrepancy between their own perspectives and those of the former child soldiers, particularly on whether child soldiers demonstrated agency in their participation in this war. Ryan explores the element of agency in former child soldiers’ choices and the ineffectiveness of reintegration programs that failed to take their individual and collective agency into consideration.

Krijn Peters takes an anthropological approach to the subject, basing his study of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, its rise and attraction to rural youth, and its longevity as a movement on nearly one thousand interviews. He examines the role of corrupt state systems, village elders, and chiefs in the breakdown of traditional rural socioeconomic structures that left no space for youth to become educated, acquire farmland, and assume expected adult male responsibilities. This “crisis” of rural youth was a major factor contributing to the RUF’s becoming a powerful option for disenfranchised youth. Peters also explores when and how the RUF lost this revolutionary focus and perpetrated the mass atrocities with which they became associated. While there is no entirely satisfactory explanation for this violence, his analysis of the phases of war and structure of the RUF movement provides a useful understanding of the dynamics that led to these atrocities.

The wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia are the subject of Danny Hoffman’s ethnography. He discusses these wars together because the political and economic events in one country influenced events in the other. Hoffman follows the lives of the men who were a part of the Kamajors and Civil Defence Forces (CDF) in Sierra Leone and Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) in Liberia. He moves beyond describing in rich depth the events of these wars for each group and employs a deep Marxist analysis of what these wars produced and how they were waged. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “war machines,” Hoffman examines how young men were mobilized for violent labor whether as soldiers or workers—on battlefields or in mines and plantations—and as vulnerable, involuntary conscripts in different phases of the same struggles.

Wojciech Jagielski’s first-person narrative takes readers on a journey to a town in northern Uganda at the center of the armed conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). His relationships with three individuals propel this story, each one a composite of several real people: a program director of a rehabilitation center for formerly abducted children, a former child soldier, and a townsperson who guides his research. Jagielski’s narrative integrates interviews with actual former LRA leaders, community leaders, and other reporters with existing literature, thus providing accuracy to his narrative. The book is organized into three chapters. The first centers on a town in northern Uganda affected by the LRA, its residents, and the child soldiers. The second moves the story to the country’s capital, Kampala, and connects the armed conflict of northern Uganda to a larger political, economic, cultural, and pan-African context. The third returns the focus to northern Uganda and the process of individual and societal postconflict reconstruction. Jagielski weaves together the present and past histories, giving the reader an understanding of the complexity of the lives of those affected by armed conflict.

Each of the works argues that it is important to understand the factors leading to former combatants’ involvement in these conflicts. The voices of former child soldiers are primary in Ryan’s research. Her interviewees report joining the SPLA to fight for freedom from the Khartoum government and also because there was no future for them if they remained in the village—no education, constant attack by the Khartoum forces, and the prospect of relocation to camps. These interviews point out the multiple considerations that were weighed by the former child soldiers. Jagielski’s narrative provides a different experience of child soldiers in northern Uganda as he details their abductions and forced participation in the LRA conflict. Peters’s interviewees discuss the corruption of the political and economic systems by the elite power holders which erased young men’s opportunities to attain social and economic positions of respect and responsibility. Initially combatants joined voluntarily, but as the RUF became increasingly isolated they resorted to capturing people. Hoffman’s analysis of the same war context deepens this understanding of marginalized youth disconnected from sociocultural avenues of adulthood and explores how the work of violence becomes the organizing element that holds men in these armed forces.

The reintegration of ex-combatants is another issue addressed by the authors. In the case of the former child soldiers from Southern Sudan, Ryan states that children were not asked about what their needs were. In combat they perceived themselves as having power, leadership roles, and responsibility, yet in the DDR process (Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration) they reported being treated like children. The concept of reintegration is problematic when families are no longer in the same place and there is no family to return to; this leads to the question of what “reintegration” means. Peters assesses the utility of DDR programs that do not support former combatants in skills they will need in their villages. He identifies the promise of community farming associations that provide former combatants with future opportunities and capture the ideas that many of ex-combatants were hoping to achieve through their movement. Hoffman’s analysis shows that youth of the Kamajors, CDF, and LURD are entrenched in systems of violence as their means of livelihood, with some becoming regional warriors and others becoming miners or providing protection for the diamond extraction industry. He predicts that these are the avenues through which marginalized men will create their futures in the global economy. Jagielski’s narrative portrays the uncertain world that former child soldiers encounter upon returning to their villages, where one of the challenges is encountering former LRA abductors who are living in the same town under the protection of the army. As a result of these and other difficulties, some former child soldiers choose to return to the LRA.

Reintegration for former combatants is and will continue to be problematic. These books succeed in deepening readers’ knowledge and understanding of the historical and contemporary factors contributing to each of these conflicts, the motivations of the former combatants, and the work ahead. Each author captures the experiences and voices of the former combatants and involves them as active participants in these works. These voices help the reader to understand the human element in inhuman circumstances. One weakness, perhaps, is the minimal presence of women in these works, with the exception of Jagielski’s. Girls and women were involved in each of these conflicts in roles and functions that were similar to those of men and young boys. Just as these authors examine the contributing factors of combatants’ involvement in armed conflict, future works must include the voices of girls and women during and after these conflicts.