This chapter turns the focus instead to the political activity of these former combatants after war, asking what paths of political mobilization they have embarked on after coming home from war. In this chapter it becomes clear that war and homecoming experiences have left many traces on the former combatants’ political lives. These experiences, as well as the network and identity, shape their political engagement, both positively and negatively, and together they make up their political life. How their political mobilization waxes and wanes over the years, was in part captured through life diagrams drawn during the interviews. These different life paths can be divided into three types of mobilization paths: Resilient (sustained or increased political mobilization), Remobilized (falling in and out of politics, often multiple times), and Removed (leaving politics). This typology of mobilization paths shows how former combatants from each of the three cases follow similar paths. The distribution of individuals across these types, however, did seem to be gendered, as no women remobilized once they left politics. The chapter highlights how the war experience and the homecoming experience, as well as how their identity as a veteran and their networks, are understood as crucial in shaping these political paths, through both encouraging and depressing their political mobilization. The ways in which these pressures originate and reappear across their lives help us understand why former combatants, not only in these three cases, are often involved in long-term political mobilization.

At the beginning of Chapter 7, two Kuwaiti detainees remain, Fawzi Al Odah and Fayiz Al Kandari, both of whom had their habeas petitions denied and appeared to be out of options. The US government was not talking to the detainees’ legal teams or to the Kuwaiti government. It was feared that they would be “forever prisoners”; the long project to repatriate these men would fail. At a cocktail party, Marcia Newell of the Core Team spoke to Hillary Clinton and told her that they were on opposite sides of an issue because she represented the Kuwaiti detainees; Clinton told Newell to call Ambassador Dan Fried, the key person on Guantanamo. They met at a noisy coffee shop. Newell proposed an Inter-Agency Working Group between the two governments. Fried indicated he was considering such cooperation and a parole-like process. Thus, began a working relationship that resulted in the development of a forward-looking Periodic Review Board process and the development of a rehabilitation center and security protocols that led to the ultimate return of the final two Kuwaiti detainees.

This chapter provides rich descriptions of the lives of the twelve Kuwaiti detainees, before Guantanamo, what brought them to Afghanistan and Pakistan, their capture, their treatment at Guantanamo, their desperate attempts to defend themselves in sham proceedings, their abusive treatment by guards, forced medication, and mistreatment in ways large and small on a systematic basis. It describes their hopes, their attempts to maintain contact with families, and coping with uncertainty and hopelessness. It details how each one gained release and the puzzlement of those who remained about the bases for release decisions. One detainee, whom the other detainees, counsel, and the guards viewed as profoundly disordered, was released and became a suicide bomber. Certain of the detainees spent time with the author after their release, which facilitated more detailed descriptions of their odysseys, including their attempts to rebuild family ties and careers after their return. Because it tells twelve individual stories, this is by far the longest chapter in the book.

This chapter portrays the former combatants’ understanding of their process of coming home, which has been ongoing for on average twenty-four years (M-19), twenty-eight years (SWAPO), and forty-two years (Vietnam veterans in the USA), respectively. Many reveal a range of challenges which faced them as they came home, as they were trying to catch up with their own lives. But they also faced family relations in need of mending, mental and physical health issues, and concerns about their own security, some of which became exacerbated over time. The chapter also details how they make meaning of peace, as a way to understand the transition these individuals embarked upon. Coming home is not a process which is limited in time. Rather, for many this is seen as an ongoing process, and some even expressed a sense of being stuck in that process many years later. The war and the time after war are experiences which carry over, and are not always easily separated. What is clear is that while coming home is a watershed moment, it is also extended in time and is an ongoing process several decades after the end of the war. This combination of a rupture and an ongoing process is important for the way in which the life of politics is formulated for these former combatants. Hence, in this book “coming home” refers not only to the immediate process following war but also this drawn out process of continually reinterpreting these experiences throughout their lives.

Chapter 8 provides a description of the process of putting together an effective Periodic Review Board (PRB) presentation for Fawzi Al Odah. Fayiz Al Kandari elected to stay with his confrontational lawyer, who attacked both the US and Kuwait and argued about human rights violations. Fawzi Al Odah adopted the strategy of the author to present Fawzi as having matured and ready to return and live a peaceful life with his family. It describes visits with the client to make him mentally ready for what might happen at the hearing and to convince him to put away his legitimate grievances and convince the decision-makers that he should not be a forever prisoner, dealing with difficult facts but focusing on the family and Kuwaiti government infrastructure that would support him. In addition, Fawzi had built trust with the military representatives who were part of the PRB team, and they supported his release. Fawzi knocked the presentation out of the park, and it was clear that the Board trusted him and the process. A month after the hearing, we were notified of a positive decision, although bureaucratic hitches resulted in an additional three months before he could go home.

Chapter 2 presents a snapshot of the country in which the Kuwaiti detainees were raised, lived, and worked. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with vast hydrocarbon wealth. Unlike many countries in the region, it is not a complete autocracy; its hereditary Emir rules, but there are certain checks and balances, unlike many other countries in the region. It is a quiet, hardworking, family-oriented place, with generous social benefits and a highly educated urbanized population. The country’s history is defined by two great inflection points: Saddam Hussein’s brutal invasion, with the subsequent liberation led by the United States; and 9/11 and its aftermath, where Kuwait and Arab countries generally were caught up in the Global War on Terror. Because Kuwait owes its very existence to the United States, it is highly pro-American and the thought that young Kuwaitis were supporting terrorism against the United States was both hard to believe and profoundly troubling. The Family Committee and the Core Team were on their own until, some time later, the emir indicated that he would be supportive if it could be demonstrated that these men were wrongly detained.

In the concluding chapter, the main similarities of the experience of the former combatants in the three cases are discussed in an effort to help us see the traits and challenges of this global phenomenon. In order to make sense of these findings, the interviews and how they were conducted is further reflected on. The extended time perspective of this book helped both to see and understand the longevity of these dynamics. The legacy of the war and coming home from the war is not constant and overtly present in their lives, but continuously available for resummoning and recollection later in life, and thus also becomes part of the political present for these individuals. Ultimately coming home from war is not an experience limited in time. Through the eyes and lives of former combatants in Colombia, Namibia, and the United States we can see how questions of identity, networks, and political mobilization feed into each other. Despite large variations between these cases, similar patterns of political engagement can be located in the political lives of the individuals within these groups. In this way, the personal lived experiences of coming home from war are also connected to universal and comparative questions related to this process. Through displaying and engaging in how fifty former combatants navigate politics, how living politics is socially and emotionally embedded, we start to understand how they move toward peace and coming home from war.

Chapter 4 describes six years of extraordinary developments in American law and the relationship between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. The Supreme Court found that detainees had certain rights, and the executive immediately tried to use gaps in those decisions to eliminate any meaningful due process, while Congress tried to strip the courts of jurisdiction by passing statutes that the Supreme Court struck down. The Supreme Court tried to proceed cautiously, but the other branches and the lower courts manipulated that caution to maintain absolute discretion in the executive to release or detain men at Guantanamo. The detainees had multiple victories in the Supreme Court, but they were largely pyrrhic. The Obama administration eliminated some of the most abusive aspects, including banning torture, but continued to take a restrictive approach. Many detainees were released because Guantanamo did not have the infrastructure to maintain such a large population, but the releases were largely done on an ad hoc and random basis, without reference to any security issues presented by individual detainees.

Chapter 1 begins with the departure of the last detainee, Fayiz Al Kandari, in 2016, after fourteen years as a detainee, and then introduces Guantanamo as a naval base run by the United States but on Cuban territory, which was used to detain nearly 800 men under appalling conditions. It describes how they were rounded up not by US forces on any battlefield but handed over by Afghans or Pakistanis for bounties. There was no pre-planning and no mechanism to determine whether there was a basis for holding these men or to evaluate them. Senior military officers at Guantanamo knew early on that they had not holding major terrorists, but this could not be part of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 narrative. The Defense Secretary ordered aggressive interrogation, ratcheting up to torture, to get actionable intelligence from people who had nothing to offer. Torture was supported through twisting of the law by compliant Bush administration lawyers. When Kuwait learned that twelve Kuwaitis were there, it was initially reluctant to take any action against an angry, panicked superpower.