Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War

Abstract

T he toll of civil conflict is largely borne by civilian populations, as warring factions target noncombatants through campaigns of violence. But significant variation exists in the extent to which warring groups abuse the civilian population: across conflicts, across groups, and within countries geographically and over time. Using a new dataset on fighting groups in Sierra Leone, this article analyzes the determinants of the tactics, strategies, and behaviors that warring factions employ in their relationships with noncombatants. We first describe a simple logic of extraction which we use to generate hypotheses about variation in levels of abuse across fighting units. We then show that the most important determinants of civilian abuse are internal to the structure of the faction. High levels of abuse are exhibited by warring factions that are unable to police the behavior of their members because they are more ethnically fragmented, rely on material incentives to recruit participants, and lack mechanisms for punishing indiscipline. Explanations that emphasize the importance of local community ties and contestation do not find strong support in the data.

Drugs Boosting Conflict? A Micro-Level Test of the Linkage Between Substance Use and Violence

“…Humphreys and Weinstein showed, for instance, in their analysis of Sierra Leonean factions that the higher level of indiscipline permitted inside the armed factions, the greater the perpetrated abuses outside the faction. 34 This is also confirmed by Weinstein. 35 He argues that a rebel group's access to easily accruable income, for example, from lootable natural resources such as drugs, are central in shaping the organizational structure of the movement and its strategies regarding treatment of noncombatants: it makes the organization more violent.…”

Shirts Today, Skins Tomorrow: Dual Contests and the Effects of Fragmentation in Self-Determination Disputes

“…In particular, fragmentation within a community can turn violence inward as factions terrorize civilians as a means to control the population they claim to represent and to punish those that support competing factions (Humphreys and Weinstein 2006;Kalyvas 2006;Weinstein 2007). In Southern Sudan, for instance, a split in the main rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, triggered a fratricidal war between southerners as the factions targeted their rivals' supporters.…”

Behavioral Patterns among (Violent) Non-State Actors: A Study of Complementary Governance

“…A closely-related topic in the security and conflict literature addresses how the presence of multiple VNSAs competing for power can have a negative impact on the local security environment (see e.g. Kalyvas 2006;Humphreys & Weinstein 2006;Balcells 2010;Hoover Green 2011). However, recent field research has found that non-state actors are not necessarily in competition against each other.…”