Why Are Some Civil Wars More Lethal Than Others? The Effect of Pro-Regime Proxies on Conflict Lethality

Abstract

Previous large-N studies on conflict lethality have focused in large part either on structural factors or on the properties of key conflict protagonists – governments and rebels. This article challenges the dyadic two-actor approach to studying conflict lethality that examines exclusively the key actors of the dyad, and – on the example of pro-regime militias – hypothesises that participation of extra-state actors in civil wars can exert significant influence on battlefield lethality. It is proposed here that pro-regime militias can swell the number of combat deaths through, first of all, acting as ‘extra boots’ on the ground, providing governments with auxiliary forces and local intelligence, and enabling incumbents to launch more effective and often more deadly attacks on insurgents. Militias also affect the number of battle deaths by forcing rebels to protect their civilian support bases, which exposes insurgents to lethal government attacks. This assumption is empirically tested on 88 civil wars from 1981 to 2015 with militia presence. The findings show that the presence of pro-regime militias in civil wars is highly conducive to the incidence of high-casualty conflicts.

Violent Resistance

“…War-weary communities may want to bring an end to the war themselves and so form militias. What is difficult to ascertain here, however, and what needs more research, is the precise causal direction; though I argue that prolonged civil war leads communities to adopt militias, there is some cross-national evidence that militias themselves make wars last longer (Aliyev 2020a).…”

“…They empower civilians to protect themselves and at the same time fundamentally restructure the social and political order by providing what has been denoted as non-state governance (Blocq 2014; Malejacq 2016). They form to limit political violence but become violent actors themselves, often increasing the length and lethality of civil wars (Clayton andThomson 2014, 2016;Hoffman 2011;Starn 1995;Mitchell, Carey, and Butler 2014;Aliyev 2020aAliyev , 2020b. Finally, though militias are often formed during war, they shape the political process in the postwar era, in particular when they are excluded from demobilization and reintegration processes and co-opted by political elites (Acemoglu, Robinson, and Santos 2009;Mazzei 2009;Coelho and Vines 1992;Hoffman 2003; Daly 2016).…”