Introduction "We are going to visit the house of my father," explained Adão, my field assistant, as we were cycling through the dry bush of Macoco, one of the more remote rural communities of Maringue, a district in Sofala Province, central Mozambique. Adão had served as a Renamo combatant in Macoco during the war and knew the area very well. Renamo, the Mozambican National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional de Moçambique), had been involved in a violent conflict with the government run by Frelimo, the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) , between 1976 and 1992. In 1985, at the age of eighteen, Adão was forced to join the rebels after Renamo fighters attacked his village in Marromeu, a neighboring district. He was soon taken to Maringue, where he served in Renamo, first as a combatant and later as a politician, charged with explaining Renamo''s objectives to the local population. In the mid-1980s Maringue became a rebel stronghold after Renamo''s main base was established in the area. The location of Renamo''s central headquarters within the district changed frequently, with Macoco serving as the movement''s base for a short while. Adão''s family still lived in Marromeu, and I was therefore puzzled that his father''s house was in Macoco.

Just as I had concluded that this was another example of the--for me--surprisingly high mobility of people in central Mozambique, Adão said that we were actually going to visit his "wartime father." "They [his wartime father and the wartime father''s wife] did the ceremonies as if they were my parents. It was necessary for getting married," he explained. Adão was referring to negotiations over the lobolo , the bride price. These negotiations generally take place between the parents of the future husband and wife. During the war Adão did not know the whereabouts of his biological parents, and searching for them would have been dangerous, as crossing from rebel-held areas to government areas and vice versa was a life-threatening undertaking. Adão was still keen on marrying, however, as he did not want the war to "hold him down." His wartime parents, who were civilians living in Macoco, assisted in the lobolo negotiations.

"Lobolo was agreed upon as it should [be]," Adão commented, emphasizing that he had followed more or less the expected "lobolo schema." This was important to Adão, as it rendered the marriage legitimate and ensured the children of the marriage would become part of his ancestral lineage. Adão and his first wife remain married to this day. Arriving in Macoco, we entered the courtyard of Adão''s wartime parents. Adão greeted them with respect by kneeling and clapping his hands. They had not seen each other in five years, and we were welcomed with warmth and laughter. Strolling around Macoco later that day, Adão showed me the place where he and his wife had settled following their marriage and where their first two children had been born. The plot was overgrown with high grass and bush.

The family''s huts had long since disappeared. But Adão recalled happy memories of family life in the midst of a rebel structure and among people such as his wartime father, living under Renamo occupation. *** This ethnography is about the war and postwar trajectories of ex-Renamo combatants in central Mozambique. It is about male and female veterans and their attempts to secure a tolerable life for themselves within the difficult social, political, and economic situation in Maringue. Contrary to most academic work on ex-combatants and their so-called reintegration processes, this study is not primarily about violence, trauma, and the reacceptance of ex-combatants back into the community. Rather, it is about ex-Renamo combatants navigating unstable and sometimes dangerous social and political landscapes, seeking to increase their social possibilities and life chances. Such a focus shifts the gaze from ex-combatants as individuals scarred by warfare--as perpetrators, victims, or otherwise--to their "projects of social becoming" (Vigh 2006: 11) in environments of conflict and war and in relation to the specific social, cultural, and political context of Maringue. The preceding vignette about Adão''s wartime parents is illustrative in this respect.

First of all, Adão''s experiences offer a glimpse into the patchwork of relationships between civilians and combatants that were ruptured, but also forged and maintained, throughout war and peace, in this case marriage and fictive kinship. Second, the vignette shows that this patchwork is not neatly encapsulated by dichotomizing categories of before and after war, civil and military life, victims and perpetrators, nor in singular understandings of "home" and "community." Third, it underlines how Adão envisioned certain life goals, in this case marriage, and went a long way to organize lobolo "as it should be," which demonstrates how processes of social becoming were obstructed, but nevertheless sought after, during the war as they were postwar. Fourth and finally, the example of Adão''s wartime parents highlights combatants'' ability to maneuver and innovate in constraining and unstable social environments. Stories like Adão''s made me rethink what is generally understood by the process of reintegration of former combatants. Such reintegration is seen as a crucial element of peace processes, based on the premise that when combatants'' reintegration fails, they might see no other option than to pick up arms again (Berdal and Ucko 2009: 2; Humphrey and Weinstein 2007). Reintegration is often situated in the context of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs that have been a central element in most peace interventions deployed by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank since the early nineties (Humphrey and Weinstein 2007; Muggah 2009: 8; Torjesen 2013). Despite increasing criticism from academics as well as practitioners who are questioning the effectiveness and feasibility of reintegration programs, reintegration continues to be the default for studying and dealing with former fighters of warring parties, especially on the African continent (McMullin 2013; Muggah 2009; Munive and Stepputat 2015).

This book starts from an uneasiness with the notion of "reintegration" and with the ways in which it has shaped the study of former combatants. The term is derived from humanitarian program language, in which it is largely defined as a social and economic process, which takes place at the community level (UN 2006). Reintegration is often rendered technical as it supposes the supporting and equipping of ex-combatants and recipient communities for successful acceptance in a peaceful society (Peters 2006: 3; Bolten 2012). Thereby, it assumes the return to a status quo in which "integration" is presupposed (Peters 2006), largely ignoring history and politics (Duclos 2012: 8; Kriger 2003: 20) and implying that social and military contexts are two separate spheres, conceiving fighters as wholly separated from society. These assumptions have far-reaching implications for the study of (former) combatants'' trajectories in general, which are often understood in relation to two recurring themes: a break with society and a break with the past. Their recruitment and incorporation into military life is regarded as a break with society, exemplified by abduction, integration into a military system, and the perpetration of violence against relatives, resulting in a breakdown of combatants'' identification with prior systems of social norms (Honwana 2006: 49-50; Minter 1989; Nilson 1993; Roesch 1992: 472; Wilson 1992: 545; cf. Schafer 2007; Finley 2011). Such descriptions of combatants'' experiences underline the loss of identity, culture, and home.

Not surprisingly, the combatants'' return to their families and communities must be accompanied by recuperation of their civil identity and the renunciation of wartime networks, hence the emphasis on reintegration rituals and leaving the past behind (Cobban 2007; Granjo 2007c; Honwana 2005: 14; Lundin 1998). Consequently, scholars have sought to view ex-combatants'' postwar life as revolving around dealing with this violent past and have underlined the importance of restoring what was broken by this violence (i.e., trust, family bonds). Such processes are framed in terms of reconstruction, reconciliation, return, reincorporation, and reintegration. For the ex-Renamo combatants participating in this study, recruitment into the armed group meant a new kind of life, often one of hardship, involving new rules, the regular transgression of values and norms, and experiencing and perpetrating violence. It is not surprising that their life histories were divided into "before," "during," and "after" the war. But to view their time with Renamo as a rigid break with ordinary social life and to examine the postwar period through concepts such as reintegration or repair obscures processes and relationships that unfolded during the war and continued into the postwar period as well.

As Erin Finley (2011: 22) notes in her ethnography about U.S. military deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, "war does not mean suddenly slipping outside life as we know it. Wartime may, in many ways, be an aberration of the course of life--a period different from any other--but is still part of that life course." This resonates with Lubkemann''s (2008) understanding of war as a "social condition" in which daily social life is shaped not only by war violence but also by "the pursuit of a complex and multi-dimensional agenda of social struggles, interpersonal negotiations and life projects" (Lubkemann 2008: 13). The same holds true for social processes in the aftermath of war, which are often singularly framed by the need to deal with a violent past and by severing ties with the (former) armed group. Thu.