When do ties bind? Foreign fighters, social embeddedness, and violence against civilians

Abstract

How do foreign fighters affect civilian victimization in the civil wars they join? Scholars of civil war have gone to great lengths to explain why states and insurgent groups victimize civilians, but they have not explicitly examined the impact of foreign combatants. Furthermore, while contemporary conventional wisdom attaches an overwhelmingly negative connotation to foreign fighters, history shows that the behavior of those who travel to fight in wars far from home varies significantly, especially when it comes to interacting with local populations. To address this variation, I demonstrate how differences in the embeddedness of foreign fighter populations combine with incentives that foreign fighters face to remain in the conflict zone over the long term to shape tendencies towards civilian victimization. My findings from an analysis of insurgent groups from 1990 to 2011 suggest that, overall, foreign fighters lead to escalations in violence against civilians. When comparing across groups that recruit foreign fighters, however, levels of violence differ depending on foreign fighter populations’ coethnicity to the rebel groups they join, and the distances they travel to reach a conflict zone. Specifically, the presence of coethnic foreign fighters leads to fewer escalations in violence, relative to the recruitment of non-coethnic individuals from non-neighboring states. The study provides empirical support to the claim that degrees of embeddedness across foreign fighter populations are important indicators of when and where their presence is likely to pose significant dangers to local populations.

Civil war as a social process: actors and dynamics from pre- to post-war

“…This and other forms of support are, in turn, shaped by such considerations as international rivalries between host states and potential patrons, armed groups’ ability to pose a threat to the state, and competing armed groups’ transnational constituencies (Salehyan et al, 2011). 11 While augmenting armed groups’ resources, such support can impose constraints on these groups’ behavior, for example, regarding tactics against the state and civilians (Moore, 2019; Petrova, 2019). It also has repercussions on armed groups’ ability to mobilize support (Bakke, 2014), their cohesion and fragmentation (Tamm, 2016), and their decisions to form alliances with each other (Bapat and Bond, 2012).…”

The Fortification Dilemma: Border Control and Rebel Violence

“…Recruitment patterns compound this dynamic. Resource-rich rebels attract opportunists, who are more interested in loot than civilian protection (Weinstein, 2007), and struggle to embed themselves in local communities (Moore, 2019).…”

“…Second, while interdiction of their transnational networks increases militants' need to cultivate local support, it also shifts their recruitment patterns in a way that bolsters their capacity to do so. Without ample resources, groups attract fewer income-motivated opportunists (Weinstein, 2007) and more intrinsically-motivated locals, who are better equipped to cultivate civilian ties (Moore, 2019). Fortification also directly reduces inflows of foreign fighters, forcing increased reliance on local recruits (Tyson, 2006).…”

The Effect of Child Soldiers on Rebel Violence against Civilians

“…These groups have little incentive to engage in violence as this would only decrease their support base. In contrast, groups with external sponsors, foreign members, or who operate from outside the conflict zone are less dependent on and have weaker links with civilian communities, meaning that they have less incentives for restraint and hence attack civilians more often (Moore, 2019;Salehyan et al, 2014;Stewart and Liou, 2017;Wood, 2014).…”

“…In contrast, groups that have little or no ability to mobilize locally have no such incentive to spare civilians from violence. Instead, they may even be incentivized to use violence against civilians as attacking and pillaging local communities may be their main way of obtaining material supplies (Koren and Bagozzi, 2017;Moore, 2019;Stewart and Liou, 2017). Their training will thus focus on turning recruits into loyal and unhesitantly violent fighters but not on rules governing the good treatment of civilians.…”