Distancing through peacekeeping: global peacekeeping assemblages and the Gambian armed forces

Abstract This article contributes to the understanding of incentives for peacekeeping contribution from non-democratic countries through the largely unexplored case of peacekeeping under authoritarian rule in The Gambia. It argues that President Yahya Jammeh (1994–2017) aimed to use peacekeeping to help keep himself in power, fitting a broader global pattern of peacekeeping for regime maintenance. However, the research also demonstrates that leadership's aims for peacekeeping can be misaligned with the experiences of soldiers. Rather than draw soldiers closer to the regime, the peacekeeping experience involved a distancing from the forces for Gambian soldiers when they returned home. The findings draw on interviews with returned peacekeepers and military decision makers in The Gambia, as well as publications from the armed forces and new public sources of information made available after the 2017 political transition. The article proposes that viewing the deployment experience as a global peacekeeping assemblage helps to understand the more subtle, yet significant, ways in which soldiers' views can shift following peacekeeping deployments.