Pathways to Violence in Civil Wars: Combatant Socialization and the Drivers of Participation in Civilian Targeting

Recent research has drawn attention to the role of socialization in shaping the behaviors of rebel combatants during civil wars. In particular, scholars have highlighted how vertical and horizontal socialization dynamics can bring combatants to engage in a range of wartime practices, including the use of violence against civilians. This article synthesizes existing theories of combatant socialization and combines them into an integrated framework, which casts the focus on individual pathways toward civilian targeting and specifies the underlying sociopsychological mechanisms through which socializing influences motivate participation in violence. Specifically, the article charts five key pathways that operate through different mechanisms and that are based upon varying degrees of internalization regarding the legitimacy of civilian targeting. In each case, I also identify a number of unit-level factors that are likely to make a given pathway particularly prevalent among combatants. The article then illustrates how these pathways map onto the actual experiences of civil war combatants by examining the drivers of individual participation in violence against civilians among low-ranking members of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. The case study evidence highlights the equifinal nature of violence perpetration during civil wars, shedding light on the different social needs, influences, sanctions, and constraints that may motivate involvement in violence. By analyzing rebel behavior through the prism of perpetrator studies, this article thus seeks to establish the civil war literature on firmer theoretical grounds, providing a synthetic account of the individual experiences, motives, and trajectories that are often left unaddressed in this body of research.

THE IMAGE OF THE CIVIL WAR IN “TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS” BY AMBROSE BIERCE

The article deals with the image of the Civil War in war stories by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). The specifics of the war's representation in writer's literary works are analyzed, the features of man at war are revealed. The particularity of the artistic world of stories by A. Bierce is recognized. The research is carried out on the material of the collection of short stories “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians” (1891): “Killed at Resaca” (1887), “A Son of the Gods” (1888), “One of the Missing” (1888), “A Tough Tussle”, (1888), “A Horseman in the Sky” (1889), “Chickamauga” (1889), “The Affair at Coulter's Notch” (1889), “The Coup de Grâce”, (1889), “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890), “Parker Adderson, Philosopher” (1891). The analysis is provided in the context of American Civil War literature of 1880s and 1890s and by taking into account writer's biography, a conclusion about the genre features of his literary works is also presented. The scientific novelty of the work is a complex analysis of early creativity of A. Bierce in the context of American military fiction.

Thinking outside the (temporal) box to explain protracted intrastate conflict

Conflict duration has been one of the central and enduring questions driving civil war literature. Still not enough attention has been given to the interdependency of conflict duration dynamics. In an effort to bridge the gap this study introduces a new variable that positions conflict duration as a function of the duration of the pre-conflict phase. I argue proto-insurgents are able to protract conflict due to good choices made before large-scale conflict erupted – or during a period of time called ‘incubation’. After controlling for standard explanations, this study offers statistical evidence that proto-insurgent incubation duration is statistically significant and positively related to conflict duration. This study further explores the usefulness of thinking outside of the standard temporal space of wartime by moving beyond the widely accepted assumption that insurgents are empowered and constrained primarily by wartime decisionmaking and the wartime environment in which they find themselves.

Desventuras do Pós-independência em Moçambique: nacionalismo, guerra civil e memória coletiva

O presente artigo apresenta as principais contradições do projeto político nacional da Frelimo, em sua tentativa de construção de uma consciência nacional no pós-independência em Moçambique. É possível identificar alguns aspectos que interagiam e moldaram a memória coletiva do povo moçambicano com relação à guerra civil, como no romance Ventos do Apocalipse de Paulina Chiziane, onde a autora enuncia, de forma crítica ao governo socialista e unipartidarista em Moçambique, uma narrativa literária que pode ser analisada como fonte histórica.Palavras-chaves: Moçambique. Nacionalismo. Guerra civil. Literatura.Abstract This paper presents the main contradictions of Frelimo's national political project, in its attempt to build a national consciousness post-independence in Mozambique. It is possible to identify some aspects that interacted and shaped the collective memory of the Mozambican people in relation to the civil war, as in the novel Ventos do Apocalipse by Paulina Chiziane, where the author critically enunciates the socialist and unipartisan government in Mozambique, a literary narrative that can be analyzed as a historical source. Keywords: Mozambique; Nationalism; Civil war; Literature; History of Africa

Containing Ethnic Conflict: Repression, Cooptation, and Identity Politics

Why do states target some civilians with collective punishment while coopting others with material goods during an ethnic civil war? This article examines how the Turkish government calibrated its repression and cooptation policies towards the Kurdish population during the counterinsurgency of the 1990s. In contrast to the situational conflict dynamics emphasized by the civil war literature, we explain the distribution of cooptation and repression with the state’s identity policy: government policies were more punitive in areas that displayed strong Kurdish linguistic/political identity, or high tribal concentration, while they were more cooptative where the government had fostered a Sunni-Muslim Kurdish identity. The study is based on a novel dataset that includes information about displacement, tribal concentration, and violent events from archival sources.

Rebel Rivalry and the Strategic Nature of Rebel Group Ideology and Demands

How does the presence of multiple combatants affect rebel groups’ ideological and demand positioning? Although violent forms of inter-group conflict have been widely studied in the civil war literature, rebel groups’ strategic use of ideology and demands has received scarce scholarly attention. We argue that the pressure of competition forces rebel groups to differentiate themselves ideologically and demand-wise from their rivals to maximize their chances of survival and success. Rebel groups strive to set themselves apart by offering unique products to their supporters and recruits. Thus, we contend that rebel groups are more likely to modify their ideologies and demands from the government in the face of competition from rival groups. We test this theory using novel data collected from rebel group manifestos and public statements. Our findings suggest that groups are more likely to shift their ideology and modify their demands as the number of rival groups increases.

Poverty and conflict in Thailand’s Deep South

Thailand’s so-called Deep South has experienced much deadly violence since the early 2000s. This article investigates its determining factors in the context of the larger civil unrest/civil war literature—work on Southeast Asia being sparse and work on Thailand almost non-existent. The focus is on 37 sub-provincial districts of four of Thailand’s 77 provinces covering the years from 2012 to 2019. Centering on descriptive statistics with additional panel regressions, it is found that reduced poverty incidence, increased educational attainment for males, and increased district-level per capita income are all associated with reduced conflict intensity (a smaller number of conflict-related deaths). In contrast, ethno-religious backgrounds and certain geographic features are not associated with either increases or decreases in conflict-related deaths.

Fifty Years After the Nigerian Civil War: Lessons from Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Nigerian Civil War literature has become a veritable medium for stocktaking and appraisals. Numerous novels in this subgenre have been examined in terms of the causes of the civil war and its implications for different facets of Nigeria. This study aims to project the major lessons and the correctives demonstrated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. We argue that 50 years after the civil war, the factors that necessitated the war, namely, a corrupt elite, tribal sentiments, political patronage, the loss of social and moral values, a faulty political structure/lopsided federalism, internecine conflicts, the reign of terror and lawlessness, interethnic tensions, the posturing for power by the three major ethnic groups, the struggle for survival and self-assertion by the minorities, etc., are still visible and pervasive in the country. These socio-political factors are depicted through Adichie’s use of symbols and metaphors. However, Half of a Yellow Sun demonstrates how the metaphorical broken bridges of Nigeria may be rebuilt to reconnect the various indigenous peoples across the country. The novelist does this by undermining tribal/ethnic stereotypes and foregrounding the relevance of preserving and instilling a good sense of history in post-war generations. Thus, she uses her story to humanise her audience.