Why Some Rebel Organizations Attack Americans

Asal, Victor; Linebarger, Christopher; Jadoon, Amira; Greig, J. Michael

doi:10.1080/10242694.2021.1878320

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…To do so, we followed prior studies of a similar design combining kidnapping-incident records from the GTD with the organization-level data from the Big Allied and Dangerous Insurgency Dataset (BAAD-I) (Asal et al 2018). A number of peer-reviewed studies have taken this approach, merging incident-level data from the GTD with the BAAD group-level attributes to conduct group-level analyses on violent political actors ( see for example, Asal et al 2021; Boyd 2016; Carter et al 2021; Mierau 2015; Pilny and Proulx 2022). BAAD-I contains 1,386 group-year observations on 140 insurgent groups between 1998 to 2012, selected based on whether they had no less than 25 battlefield deaths as recorded in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) in any of the observed years.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A handful of studies have examined factors related to the distribution and frequency of kidnappings across countries and perpetrating groups (Asal et al 2019; Forest 2012b; Gilbert 2020; Pires et al 2017; Rasmussen 2017). They found that kidnappings tend to happen in weaker and less stable states (Pires et al 2017; Rasmussen 2017) and are committed by more resourceful groups with a larger membership size, holding territories, and with more criminal connections (Asal et al 2021; Forest 2012b). These results highlighted the impact of organizational capacity and resource on kidnapping decisions, directly supporting the first strand of theoretical explanation that insurgents engage in kidnappings when it is easier to accomplish.…”

Section: Why Insurgents Kidnap: Explaining Involvement Versus Event-f...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond Ransom and Political Concessions? Explaining Changes in Insurgents’ Kidnapping Involvement Versus Event-frequency

Liu

Eisner

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Kidnapping is a common tactic used by insurgent groups. However, why insurgents commit kidnappings remains insufficiently understood. Based on 1,386 group-year observations of 140 insurgents between 1998 and 2012, we analyze conditions driving the within-group temporal changes in their involvement (1 vs 0) versus event-frequency in kidnappings. We find that changes in specific quasi-state activities (i.e., extraction and provision of public services), which may rely on kidnappings for coercive enforcement and social control, predict kidnapping “involvement” only. Meanwhile, general resource and capacity conditions (i.e., territory-control, criminal networks and combat-lethality) influence changes in both kidnapping involvement and event-frequency.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Insurgents Kidnap: Explaining Involvement Versus Event-f...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Ransom and Political Concessions? Explaining Changes in Insurgents’ Kidnapping Involvement Versus Event-frequency

Liu

Eisner

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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“…A question arises about how to define ideology in the context of this study on DP. One approach is to rely on categories that depict the groups’ political doctrines, such as left-wing, right-wing, anti-government, ethnonationalist, Islamist and/or other religious types (Polo and Gleditsch, 2016; Wood and Thomas, 2017; Sarwari, 2021; Asal et al , 2021). These categories are useful for capturing political incompatibility with the incumbent government’s official policies.…”

Section: Ideological Appeals and Durable Peacementioning

confidence: 99%

Rebel group legitimacy, ideology and durable peace

Druckman,

Vuković,

Verbeek

2023

IJCMA

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Purpose This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements. Design/methodology/approach Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP. Findings The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor. Research limitations/implications The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP. Practical implications The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment. Originality/value Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

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“…A growing body of research examines the dynamics of competition and conflict among militant groups. This literature has largely considered the consequences of intergroup competition, finding that militant group rivalry affects everything from the treatment of civilians to group longevity (Asal et al 2021;Biberman and Zahid 2019;Bloom 2005;Gaibulloev, Hou, and Sandler 2020;Young and Dugan 2014). 1 One implication of this research is that intergroup rivalry may be counterproductive for militant groups seeking to gain leverage over their competitors.…”

Section: Rivalry and Its Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition from Within: Ethnicity, Power, and Militant Group Rivalry

Conrad

Greene

Phillips

et al. 2021

Defence and Peace Economics

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Why do militant groups turn on each other? This behavior is somewhat puzzling, since such groups are often on the same side of a conflict. A growing body of literature seeks to understand political violence by looking at cooperative and competitive relationships among non-state actors. Debates continue about the sources of militant group rivalry. We argue that shared motivations, especially ethnic motivations, along with power differences among groups should help explain inter-group fighting. Our analysis uses new dyadic data on rivalry among the militant groups of Africa and Asia since 1990. Unlike some previous studies, we analyze both terrorist and insurgent organizations. Results suggest that pairs of groups with a shared ethnic identity are more likely than others to have rivalrous relationships. Power asymmetry is also somewhat associated with rivalry, but interaction models indicate that the association is only statistically significant in the presence of shared ethnic motivations.

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Why Some Rebel Organizations Attack Americans

Cited by 8 publications

References 52 publications

Beyond Ransom and Political Concessions? Explaining Changes in Insurgents’ Kidnapping Involvement Versus Event-frequency

Beyond Ransom and Political Concessions? Explaining Changes in Insurgents’ Kidnapping Involvement Versus Event-frequency

Rebel group legitimacy, ideology and durable peace

Competition from Within: Ethnicity, Power, and Militant Group Rivalry

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