No Place Like Home? Postdeployment Reintegration Challenges Facing South African Peacekeepers

• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19894719
• Author: Nina Wilén,Lindy Heinecken
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

No Place Like Home?

Postdeployment

Reintegration Challenges

Facing South African

Peacekeepers

Lindy Heinecken

1

and Nina Wil ´

en

2,3

Abstract

This study focuses on soldiers returning from peacekeeping missions and the chal-

lenges they experience adapting to the home environment in the postdeployment

phase. The article focuses on South African peacekeepers returning from missions in

Darfur/Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi. Interviews with

50 South African peacekeepers on the challenges they face in terms of their

homecoming, family reintegration, and military support were conducted. Overall,

the study found that both external military factors such as deployment length and

nature of mission, and internal factors specific to the soldier affected reintegration.

We highlight three major findings of our study: Firstly, our analysis show that

peacekeepers across gender, rank, and race identify the absence from their children

as a major challenge. Secondly, while relational turbulence characterized by

ambivalence and concerns about infidelity was prevalent among all, there was a clear

difference in the answers between the male and female peacekeepers. Thirdly,

a large majority voiced the need for more support from the military institution for

their families, before, during, and after deployment.

1

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

2

Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels, Belgium

3

Universit´

e Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Nina Wil´

en, Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels 1000, Belgium.

Email: nina.wilen@ulb.ac.be

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(3) 415-434

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19894719

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Keywords

peacekeeping, postdeployment reintegration, relational turbulence, parenting,

family reintegration

Homecoming is an important event filled with expectations for a deployed soldier.

It is the time when the soldiers reconnect with loved ones and hope to recover their

positions among family and friends. Yet, for many soldiers returning from peace-

keeping missions, homecoming is far more difficult than imagined and for some, it is

closer to a new front rather than to a safe haven (Basham, 2008). Why does this

period turn into an anticlimax for so many returning from deployment? What

changes in family relations affect this reintegration and how could the soldiers and

their families be better prepared for these challenges? This topic has been subject to

considerable debate in recent years given the extensive deployments in Iraq and

Afghanistan. Soldiers are often exposed to situations of extreme human suffering

and abuse even when they are not part of actual combat missions. Inevitably, the

peacekeeper returns home a changed person, which affects the reintegration to the

family (Basham, 2008; Knoblock & Theiss, 2012).

Studies show that virtually all soldiers report some degree of relational turbu-

lence that affects their ability to adapt in the postdeployment reintegration phase

(Bolton, Litz, Gleen, Orisillo, & Roemer, 2002; Kaplow, Layne, Saltzman, Cozza,

& Pynoos, 2013, p. 323; Knobloch, Mchninch, Abendschein, Ebata, & McGlaugh-

lin, 2016; Knoblock & Theiss, 2010; Moelker & van der Kloet, 2003; S. A. Riggs

& Riggs, 2011). While there is a considerable amount of research on the effects of

military deployment on family relations and the difficulties soldiers face upon

homecoming (Adler, Huffman, Bliese, & Castro, 2005; Danish & Antonides,

2013; Vitzthum, Mache, Joachim, Quarcoo, & Groneberg, 2009), most of the

research has focused on Western soldiers returning from peacekeeping missions.

Comparatively, little research has been done on those returning from missions in

Africa, even from major troop contributing countries like South Africa. Since

2001, South Africa has been involved in 14 peacekeeping missions with around

3,000 soldiers deployed at any one time (Heinecken & Ferreira, 2012). The most

recent deployments have been to the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the

United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Congo and the Force Intervention

Brigade, and to Darfur/Sudan, to protect civilians, referred to as the world’s worst

humanitarian crises (Sikainga, 2009). Both of these missions are dangerous and

hostile, and soldiers are often caught up in skirmishes, attacked, or ambushed

(DefenceWeb, 2016a, 2016b). Yet how these deployments affect soldiers and their

reintegration back into the home unit and family has received scant attention. The

few studies that exist focus mainly on military family resilience, family support,

and relational stability (Kgosana, 2010; Ntshota, 2002; Pitse, 2009, Van Breda,

1999, 2001), but beyond this, it remains a relatively unexplored subject. This

416 Armed Forces & Society 47(3)