Peacekeeping Experiences as Triggers of Introspection in the Ghanaian Military Barracks

Abstract

<jats:p> African political elites have been forthcoming with military support for United Nations peacekeeping missions, contributing substantially to these missions’ workforce. Despite their contribution, most studies on peacekeeping omit the African soldier’s voice on his experiences of the African war theatre. This article features Ghanaian soldiers’ narratives based on their peacekeeping deployments and illuminates how Ghanaian peacekeepers connect their experiences to their home society. In this contribution, I illustrate how Ghanaian soldiers’ narratives about peacekeeping experiences are framed as deterring examples for their home society, thus potentially impacting their actions and behaviours. Based on long-term qualitative research embedded with the Ghanaian military, drawing from interviews and informal conversations with peacekeeping veterans and serving military operatives, it is argued that Ghanaian soldiers’ narratives of peacekeeping experiences and the collective processes through which these narratives gain currency in the barracks and beyond are informed by introspection in the post-peacekeeping deployment phase. </jats:p>

Soldiers, Masculinities, and Violence

“…It is misleading to assume that soldiers begin to do violence in war. Soldiers approach deployment with a sense of masculinity (Agyekum 2020). Importantly, war context is not a passive space; it invokes particular forms of masculinity in the midst of violence.…”

African peacekeeping operations in recent years

“…African peacekeeping operations are an essential part of the world of modern security (Agyekum, 2020;Richmond, 2021;Elliott et al 2021, Fisher & Wilen, 2022Besenyő, 2023). There are a lot of dangers in the world that must get addressed, and there are a lot of problems and conflicts in the modern era that are to be handled.…”