Centre for Military Studies

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    Colombia - not so unusual after all : a case study on the transnational making of the boundary between 'defence' and 'public security'
    (African Sun Media, 2020) Viana, Manuela Trindade
    Colombia is often mentioned as an anomaly within the expected framing of defence and public security, an anomaly that arises from a faulty division of labour between the police and the military. In this chapter, I offer a different interpretation: I use Colombia as an entry point to analyse the processes through which the boundary distinguishing ‘defence’ and ‘public security’ has historically been built. The argument unfolds in two parts. Firstly, I analyse how counterinsurgency was raised to a privileged position in the Colombian military doctrine in the second half of the 20th century. The second analytical move looks at the dynamic between the United States and Colombia in the making of a counterinsurgency a la colombiana and inscribes this dynamic in the hemispheric circulation of military savoirs. By dissecting the main direction of transmission in this circuit, I show how defining Colombia as a ‘malfunction’ in the division of labour between police and military is misleading, as it does not account for the transnational impact on what has come to constitute ‘defence’ in Colombia. Moreover, the framing of Colombia as an anomaly avoids questioning the assumptions upon which disputes of anomaly/normality rest. I argue that, by focusing on the circulation of military savoirs, it becomes apparent that the domains of public security and defence are not only constitutively merged, but also transnationally so. This claim is important, given that the boundary separating these domains came to characterise a central part of our institutional imaginaries of democracy since the 20th century, and perhaps more strongly since the late 1980s in Latin America.
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    On controversies, battles, raids and elusive truth : opposing perspectives on Cassinga, 1978
    (Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State, 2019) Liebenberg, Ian
    The South African attack in 1978 on Cassinga, an alleged South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) base during the ‘Border War’, remains highly controversial. For some, Operation Reindeer, as it was called, was an undisputed military highlight, a most successful airborne operation and a victory over the SWAPO and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). For others, it was an undisputed massacre of civilian refugees in an Angolan town far north of the Namibia/Angola border. The drifting dust and smoke of past battles interfere seriously with seeing a clearer picture. In this review article, works from different (even serious contradictory) perspectives by three authors are discussed in an attempt to get more clarity on this much-disputed event and its outcomes.