Facile Acronyms and Tangled Processes: A Re-Examination of the 1990s ‘DDR’ In Uganda

Abstract

Uganda's mass discharge of serving military personnel in the 1990s is touted as one of the most successful cases of donor-supported Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR). However, a closer look at that process reveals a much more complex and less dogmatic approach to managing armed factions than the linearly conceived model often encountered in the ‘peacebuilding’ literature. Contrary to common assumptions about that country's conflict management, particularly after the ascendance in 1986 of the Museveni government, the newly installed regime deliberately eschewed the policy of ‘demobilization’ and, in the process, made disarmament unnecessary, primarily by resisting donor pressure to subordinate long-haul pacification to short-term fiscal considerations. Using Uganda as a case study and DDR as a reference point, the article calls for a less perfunctory approach to the interpretation and management of the multifaceted processes of political development in the conflict-plagued pre-industrial countries of the Third World.