Farewell to Arms

How, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, do Maoist rebels in India quit an ongoing insurgency without getting killed?How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in counterinsurgency and in the pacification of insurgencies. In Farewell to Arms, Rumela Sen goes to therebels themselves and breaks down the protracted process of rebel retirement into a multi-staged journey as the rebels see it. She draws on several rounds of interviews with current and former Maoist rebels as well as securitypersonnel, administrators, activists, politicians, and civilians in two conflict zones in North and South India. The choice to quit an insurgency, she finds, depends on locally embedded, informal exit networks. The relative weakness of these networks in North India means that fewer rebels quit than in the South, where more feel that they can disarm without getting killed. Sen shows that these networks grow out of the grassroots civic associations in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface.Correcting the course for future policy, Sen provides a new explanation of rebel retirement that will be essential to any policymaker or scholar working to end protracted insurgencies.

“"Rumela Sen offers a novel, careful, and important study of how rebels leave insurgent groups. This is a crucial but under-studied question; Sen valuably answers it with a blend of new theory and fascinating evidence from Maoist insurgency in India." -- Paul Staniland, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "A lot is known about why people rebel, but little is understood about how rebels quit. Under what circumstances do they feel sufficiently confident about their personal safety to be able to retire from armed struggle and return to everyday life? Sen's fine work provides an answer to this question - an important one for policy - based on scrupulous analysis of data drawn from years of field research in areas of North and South India that have had contrasting experiences. The book is an outstanding original contribution to the literature on insurgency." -- John Harriss, Emeritus Professor of International Studies, Simon Fraser University”

"Rumela Sen offers a novel, careful, and important study of how rebels leave insurgent groups. This is a crucial but under-studied question; Sen valuably answers it with a blend of new theory and fascinating evidence from Maoist insurgency in India." -- Paul Staniland, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago"A lot is known about why people rebel, but little is understood about how rebels quit. Under what circumstances do they feel sufficiently confident about their personal safety to be able to retire from armed struggle and return to everyday life? Sen's fine work provides an answer to this question - an important one for policy - based on scrupulous analysis of data drawn from years of field research in areas of North and South India that have had contrastingexperiences. The book is an outstanding original contribution to the literature on insurgency." -- John Harriss, Emeritus Professor of International Studies, Simon Fraser University

Rumela Sen is currently a Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, where she is also affiliated with the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

How, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, do Maoist rebels in India quit an ongoing insurgency without getting killed?How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in counterinsurgency and in the pacification of insurgencies. In Farewell to Arms, Rumela Sen goes to therebels themselves and breaks down the protracted process of rebel retirement into a multi-staged journey as the rebels see it. She draws on several rounds of interviews with current and former Maoist rebels as well as securitypersonnel, administrators, activists, politicians, and civilians in two conflict zones in North and South India. The choice to quit an insurgency, she finds, depends on locally embedded, informal exit networks. The relative weakness of these networks in North India means that fewer rebels quit than in the South, where more feel that they can disarm without getting killed. Sen shows that these networks grow out of the grassroots civic associations in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface.Correcting the course for future policy, Sen provides a new explanation of rebel retirement that will be essential to any policymaker or scholar working to end protracted insurgencies.

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