Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War

Lyall, Jason

doi:10.1017/s0003055409990323

Cited by 238 publications

(164 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…More generally, our arguments matter for understanding insurgent group fragmentation (Bakke, Cunningham and Seymour 2012;Driscoll 2012;Staniland 2014). While previous research stresses ethnic divisions (Lyall 2010;Staniland 2012), we highlight the importance of civilian support-both passive and activeto insurgents in explaining insurgent in-fighting.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 55%

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Civilianizing Civil Conflict: Civilian Defense Militias and the Logic of Violence in Intrastate Conflict

Clayton¹,

Thomson²

2016

int stud q

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This article examines how civilian defense militias shape violence during civil war. We define civilian defense forces as a sedentary and defensive form of pro-government militia that incumbents often use to harness the participation of civilians during a counterinsurgency campaign. We argue that civilian defense forces reduce the problem of insurgent identification. This leads to a reduction in state violence against civilians. However, we also claim that these actors undermine civilian support for insurgents, which leads to an increase

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 55%

“…Ethnic cleavages and other social networks pervading insurgent groups can exacerbate this process (Lyall 2010;Staniland 2014:97). In this way the emergence of civilian defense forces can turn the insurgency in on itself.…”

Section: Hypothesis 2: the Presence Of A Civilian Defense Force Incrementioning

confidence: 99%

Civilianizing Civil Conflict: Civilian Defense Militias and the Logic of Violence in Intrastate Conflict

Clayton¹,

Thomson²

2016

int stud q

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“…These biases lead civilians to condition their interpretation of events on the perpetrator's identity (Lyall, 2010). As a result, we expect that support for combatants will depend on the combatant's identity, as will the effects of actions taken by the combatants.…”

Section: Why Identity Matters: Intergroup Bias and Support For Combatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan

2013

Self Cite

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How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan -the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive questions about support for different combatants. We demonstrate that civilian attitudes are asymmetric in nature. Harm inflicted by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is met with reduced support for ISAF and increased support for the Taliban, but Taliban-inflicted harm does not translate into greater ISAF support. We combine a multistage sampling design with hierarchical modeling to estimate ISAF and Taliban support at the individual, village, and district levels, permitting a more fine-grained analysis of wartime attitudes than previously possible.

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“…Research on counterinsurgency highlights the pivotal role of state alliances with armed non-state actors. Locally raised, informal forces are often better positioned to identify insurgents within the population and to issue credible threats against civilians for noncooperation than are regular troops (Lyall 2010;Biddle, Friedman, andShapiro 2012, Staniland 2012a;Stanton 2015). The opportunity to join progovernment militias motivates rebel fighters to defect (Staniland 2012b;Oppenheim et al 2015).…”

Section: The Fortified Aid Compound Reloaded By Mark Duffieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

TheJournal of Intervention and StatebuildingTen Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

Aaronson¹,

Ahram²,

Duffield³

et al. 2016

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

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The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This special volume opens up with a selection of nine of the most influential articles published in the journal. JISB's editorial team has asked the authors for their reflections on their original articles, telling us more about the writing process at that time, what they would do differently (with hindsight), or how they see their articles contributing to current debates on intervention and statebuilding. We have selected one article per volume, and we have ordered the contribution starting from volume 1 (2007) to volume 9 (2015). The articles will be made open access for the year, and we highly recommend (re-)reading the original articles along with the comments from the authors. Strong data provided by Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper support the thesis of the limits of the democratization that can be brought about by foreign powers. In their study 'Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building', they examined 18 US interventions seeking to promote democratization by coercive regime change prior to the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They found that 13 failed to produce long-term democratic rule, including sustained attempts in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The five successful interventions include a tiny country (Grenada); one that is far from clearly democratic (Panama); Italy (in which the US did not play much of a role), and two that are indeed great successes: post-World War II Germany and Japan (Pei and Kasper 2003).I hence set out to ask what sociological conditions set these cases apart from the others, and whether these might be reproduced in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. I found that these conditions include (a) cessation of all hostility, (b) a high level of domestic security, and (c) local acceptance of the foreign occupation and the democratization drive. In addition, these nations had (d) a strong national unity, (e) competent government personnel, and (f) a low level of corruption. Furthermore, they had (g) strong economic © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.JOURNAL OF INTERVENTION AND STATEBUILDING, 2016 VOL. 10, NO. 1, 3-24 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2015 fundamentals, including strong industrial bases, established infrastructure, educated populations, and vigorous support for science and technology, corporations, business and commerce. Their (h) cultural values included hard work, high levels of saving, and other forms of self-restraint and capacity to defer gratification, essential for democratic development. (i) Finally...

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Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War

Cited by 238 publications

References 58 publications

Civilianizing Civil Conflict: Civilian Defense Militias and the Logic of Violence in Intrastate Conflict

Civilianizing Civil Conflict: Civilian Defense Militias and the Logic of Violence in Intrastate Conflict

Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan

TheJournal of Intervention and StatebuildingTen Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

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