Chapter 1 begins with the story of the 2015 La Línea customs fraud scandal and its connections to the criminal structures mounted by military intelligence at the height of the 36-year civil war. Drawing on this illustrative example, the chapter reframes debates on post-conflict statebuilding and puts forward a novel argument about how counterinsurgent elites introduce institutional innovations that undermine core state activities. It further lays out the key theoretical contributions of the book, specifically as they relate to war and state formation and post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction. The chapter also introduces the Central American context and explains why it is a fruitful setting in which to explore the institutional legacies of civil war. It then discusses the book’s methodology and the unique archival and interview sources of data.

This chapter analyses the increasing trend of African post-conflict states contributing troops to multilateral peace operations. In particular, it focuses on the case studies of Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors argue that troop contribution can become a shortcut to reforming, restructuring as well as unifying post-conflict armies through international assistance and training linked to peace operations. This saves budget-constraint post-conflict governments from investing significant funds to the project of building a functional and professional army. In addition, for post-conflict states, which may have remaining domestic issues, sending troops abroad may ease tensions at home and thus facilitate governing. The authors also look into the identity dimension of post-conflict states who contribute troops to peace operations. The decision to contribute troops can assist states to transform their identities from that of post-conflict states to peacekeeping states. Such a transformation can have important consequences on relations with both internal actors and international partners.

This chapter begins with an overview of police integration worldwide. Nearly 40 percent of modern peace agreements include police reforms, and the makeup of the police rank and file is often central to these reforms. Yet, despite the police’s central role in peace-building, existing literature on power sharing pays little attention to this critical institution. I argue that in divided societies, the police rank-and-file’s unique combination of three characteristics – visibility, discretion, and capacity for violence – makes it especially influential in shaping citizen–state relations. The second half of the chapter details causal mechanisms linking police integration with citizens’ attitudes and expectations. For example, language differences between officers and citizens may make citizens feel less comfortable communicating with officers, or citizens may fear that cultural differences will prevent officers from understanding their situation. When the police are integrated at the patrol-level, officers can monitor their colleagues’ treatment of coethnic citizens and deter bad behavior.

This chapter examines the role of international finance for post-war transitions and its relationship to international law. That relationship is considered in two respects: first, the international legal norms relevant to ‘who should pay?’; and second, the relevance of international aid to the development of international law. Section 2 tracks the evolution of post-conflict funding for settlement implementation and reconstruction in light of historical transformations in peace-making practice; and addresses the financial demands on conflict-affected states. Urgent needs for international aid to finance settlement implementation and peacebuilding, raises questions about whether third states might have a duty to provide finance. Thus, Section 3 evaluates prospects for international legal duties to provide that aid. The relevance of post-conflict finance and aid conditionality to the development of international law is considered in Section 4 to shed a different light on debates about an emerging law of peace-making or lex pacificatoria.

The intellectual history of just war thinking should be understood as unfolding in three traditions: the Augustinian, the Westphalian, and the Liberal. The Augustinian tradition of just war thinking rested on the idea that natural law exists and should guide human social and political order to fulfill natural human moral aspirations; that sovereignty means responsibility for the common good; and that justice should guide states to use force to defend the common good. In the Westphalian tradition, sovereignty evolved from defense of the common good to defense of international borders, and just cause shrank to encompass only territorial self-defense. In the embryonic Liberal tradition, concepts like human rights and accountable governance do the work that natural law and justice did in the Augustinian tradition: external standards outside and above the state used to judge the state’s legitimacy. The Liberal just war tradition allows war to vindicate the rights of individuals suffering under a humanitarian emergency, insists on respecting individual rights in how war is fought, and understands the vindication of individual rights a crucial part of ending wars justly.

I draw insights from the Augustinian and Liberal traditions and, to a lesser extent, the Westphalian tradition to offer ordered liberty as a central organizing concept for just war thinking. Ordered liberty is the rightful purpose of statecraft, the just aim of the state—which means it is also the just purpose of warfare. This helps answer the two questions animating this book. When is war just? The violent disruption of ordered liberty is the “injury” in response to which force may be used and war may be justly waged. What does justice require? Justice requires the vindication and restoration of ordered liberty in, through, and after warfare. The upshot of this argument is that while just cause is more expansive than is conventionally understood, the responsibilities of post-conflict restoration are commensurably far higher.

This chapter, together with Chapter 1, introduces the four East African liberation movements individually and as part of a distinct collective, a collective whose politico-military leadership would push to re-structure regional politics in the decade that followed its ascent to power. In doing so, the chapters delineate not only the ideas and relationships developed in the bush that would later shape regional politics but also how these ideas and relationships were themselves constantly shaped and re-shaped by contingency and context – as they would continue to be following victory. Chapter 2 focuses on the four movements’ liberation struggles themselves, explaining how support structures, wartime experiences and the manner in which each liberation struggle ended moulded each movement and its elite and set it on a particular path in the post-liberation era.

This chapter explores how the four East African liberation movements transitioned into governments and begun to negotiate their place within the region. The central argument of this chapter is that the early regional relationships of EPRDF, EPLF and NRM post-liberation elites were dominated by pragmatic, domestic preoccupations, and managing tensions with, and the distrust of, regional counterparts. Revolutionary change, at least at the regional level, was therefore far from being a lodestar. Diplomatically isolated for much of its first decade in power, NRM Uganda found itself in an instantly antagonistic set of relationships with its conservative neighbours, who feared it would seek to replicate its revolution in their own territories. Seeking to allay these concerns, Kampala promoted itself as a regional conflict mediator in Somalia and vacillated in its support for the RPF, which launched its first invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990. In the Horn, EPRDF and EPLF elites focused mainly on settling the question of Eritrean independence and the shape of post-liberation Ethiopia’s political and constitutional order. The elites of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda first came together in the early 1990s around shared security concerns – the perceived threat from Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist Sudan – rather than ideological agendas.

Chapter 4 introduces the case study of Rwanda, which offers a paradigmatic example of what happens when thousands of minors are accused of, and pursued for, committing acts of atrocity, in a post-conflict state that has been thoroughly decimated. The chapter first provides a synopsis of the civil war and genocide, describing in particular children’s involvement as perpetrators. It then turns to post-genocide Rwanda to explore the impact of the genocide on the social fabric (in particular the perception of the child and society’s demand for justice and accountability) and the judicial system, and outlines the involvement of international and domestic actors in the reconstruction process. Finally, it briefly examines the position of the child offender under Rwandan law, noting also Rwanda’s international obligations at the time covered by the book. In addition to setting the scene, the chapter draws out the challenges generated primarily by the genocide (recognising that some issues were latent) so as to contextualise both Rwanda’s responses to child perpetrators as well as the approach adopted by international actors, in particular UNICEF.

Over 4,500 children were detained in Rwanda in 1998, most accused of participating in the genocide. This chapter introduces the issue of children accused of committing genocidal acts, but also more broadly, children involved in atrocities (including terrorist attacks). It explains the rationale for the book, noting that states have discretion to prosecute children but that there are various minimum standards, contained primarily in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, that must be upheld. These standards are binding in respect of all states that have ratified the treaty, yet post-conflict states often face significant reconstruction challenges. What, then, are the implications where states decide to prosecute minors for atrocity crimes? The chapter also introduces the role that international actors can play in enhancing implementation of, and compliance with, international standards, noting in particular UNICEF’s role as the lead UN agency for children in conflict with the law. The chapter notes the contribution of the book to existing scholarship and outlines the multidisciplinary approach, assumptions and methodology of the study, which includes semi-structured interviews and archival research, institutional and doctrinal analysis, and grounded theory and process tracing approaches. It also discusses the limitations and challenges involved in empirical research.