By the beginning of the chapter, eight Kuwaitis have been sent home and four remain to have habeas hearings in federal court. The hearings considered whether these men had become “part of” the Taliban or Al Qaida. They were all tried before the same judge in 2009. Two had their habeas petitions granted, and two were denied. This chapter considers the evidence at the hearings in depth and analyzes the differing results. Two of the detainees’ proceedings were tainted by evidence and confessions procured by torture; while the other two detainees were abused, they were not the focus of the hearings. The underlying facts relating to the four men had numerous similarities, but the judge had changed her focus in the later hearings, looking far more closely at inconsistencies in the stories of detainees, inconsistencies that she ignored in the first two hearings. The chapter also highlights the conduct of a few detainee informers whose stories kept hundreds of men incarcerated and how easily their evidence was picked apart by a neutral judge.

Chapter 10 reflects on the legacy of Guantanamo over the two dozen years since detention began in response to the changes in the United States after 9/11. It considers the impact on American law and how the outer shell of due process was after many years affirmed, but its core hollowed out. It notes how the executive knew that it had captured the wrong people but dishonestly kept up the illusion that it was doing something about terrorism. The US tortured everybody because that was what politics required even though it was well known that the process was not only wrong but futile. It also considers the impact of Guantanamo on American culture. Torture has become embedded and normalized in American life. American exceptionalism was distorted into a sense of unique grievance and entitlement to ignore core constitutional and international law principles. Guantanamo remains an image of cruelty in the service of retaliation against “the other,” in this case, Muslims. It was part of the build-up of a military security apparatus that undergirds a continuous justification for the executive to declare emergencies and suspend legal and ethical principles.

Chapter 9 begins with Fayiz Al Kandari contemplating the departure of his last fellow Kuwaiti, Fawzi Al Odah, and considering the consequences of his aggressive approach in his first PRB hearing, which was likely to have led to the denial of release. Both Fayiz and his lawyer had made numerous statements questioning the good faith of the US and Kuwaiti governments and suggested that citizens of both countries rise up against this injustice. This criticism would only alienate the decision-makers. Fayiz felt gratitude and loyalty to his previous lawyer but hired the author and his team to try again. Under PRB rules, he was not entitled to a full hearing for three more years. This chapter takes the reader inside the team as it planned strategy both to get an earlier hearing and to get support from Kuwaiti authorities, the military representatives and from Fayiz’s family to convince the board that despite the blemishes in his record, Fayiz was now forty; he had learned from his ordeal; and he was ready to go home. The chapter ends with his return home and being greeted by his father who had only a few months to live.

This chapter introduces the setting for the book and its aims, and describes the layout of the book’s argument. The introduction situates the book within a broad literature on former combatants, and shows how the book builds on previous literature in a number of different respects. The notable continuities across the Global North–South divide in the literature on former combatants pertaining to life after war highlight the importance of making comparisons across boundaries which are often taken for granted, and the book hopes to encourage these literatures to speak more to each other. The introduction shows that while there have been calls for such studies in the past, very few have taken on this challenge. The introduction also explains how this book tries to bridge this gap by studying different types of former combatants from different wars. The book is based on fifty life history interviews with former combatants in Namibia, Colombia, and the United States. Their political life is unfolded through examining how their identity, networks, and activities are shaped by the legacy of war and coming home. The introduction also explains some of the data collection strategies, and rationale for using life histories and life diagrams: these enable an insider’s perspective as well as a more long-term, dynamic, and holistic perspective. These are elements which have been missing in the current literature on former combatants.

This chapter situates the three cases: independence fighters from the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN)/South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO); guerrillas from Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) in Colombia; and Vietnam veterans in the USA. As such, the chapter demonstrates the diversity both between and within these cases. This diversity is important, as any ensuing similarities in the political lives of these former combatants will be particularly striking. The cases are diverse in terms of both the war in general and policies at the end of the war. The specific experiences of the individuals interviewed for this book are also diverse, in terms of how they joined the armed groups, their war experiences, and their reception upon returning home. In Namibia, veterans’ programs were not planned, and the services on offer developed over time and were delivered in a compartmentalized and piecemeal fashion. In Colombia, M-19 was one of several guerrilla groups which demobilized in 1990, and the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) package included economic, educational, health, legal, and political components. In the United States, support was offered following a longer tradition of state support after war, largely used templates from earlier wars. In all three cases, the veterans expressed criticism against these programs. This chapter is important not only in terms of the research design of the book, but also as these war experiences are reinterpreted and reimagined over the course of the former combatants’ lives and therefore become sounding boards for the next chapters.

This chapter examines how the veteran identity is constructed by the former combatants themselves, and as such it tries to address how the veteran identity is politically understood and internalized. The chapter demonstrates how the veteran identity is linked to the (new) regime and state, and notions of citizenship in general, through specific values and roles associated with the veteran, and how these relate to the life path and choices of the returning combatant. This chapter shows how claims of recognition are formulated and how they are directed at the state, society, and other veterans, and the centrality of a culture of heroes among all three groups. Their culture of heroes and recognition claims are important drivers for how former combatants formulate their own involvement in politics, and their own conceptualization of themselves as engaged citizens. The culture of heroes and the centrality of service color how to participate in society after war as they provide moral and political guidance, but also how the research participants evaluate other parts of the veteran community and political community. Their achievements during the war (the outcome of the war or their personal achievement) as well as their grievances associated with the war or their homecoming form the basis for their recognition claims. In relation to this, many expressed a sense of a broken pact with the state, and thus sought more extensive recognition from the state, and ended up being pulled into politics.

The introduction presents the background to the writing of the book. The author is an experienced Guantanamo lawyer who represented many detainees, including the last two Kuwaiti detainees, and was asked by Kuwaiti colleagues and friends to tell the stories of the twelve Kuwaiti detainees their lives before Guantanamo, how they were captured, their torture and treatment at Guantanamo, how they came to be released, and how they have tried to rebuild their lives after their long ordeals. The Core Team is introduced, a Kuwaiti lawyer, Abdul Rahaman Al Haroun, an American lawyer, William Brown, both based in Kuwait, and their colleague in Washington, Marcia Newell. These three strategized and fought every day for fourteen years until the last of the Kuwaitis was released.

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.