Violence against Civilians
Political Violence
Spring 2022
Doc. Marek Rybář, PhD.

Key questions
•Why are some civil wars so much deadlier than others?
•What accounts for severity of civil wars in terms of battle-related deaths?
•Why do some warring factions engage in indiscriminate violence?
•What is the logic (if any) of indiscriminate and targeted (strategic) violence against civilians?

Why are some civil wars so much
deadlier than others?
•one way to start is to investigate whether factors commonly associated with the outbreak of civil
wars are also responsible for conflict severity
•state strength: is conflict severity a result of weak state capacities? (since weak states provide
a favorable context for civil war outbreak)
•external military assistance, states with rougher terrain, and military quality (expenses per
military personnel) may all serve as proxies for state strength
•ethnicity and religion: ethnic and religious loyalties are often less flexible than other
collective identities, i.e. ideologies (ethnic and religious fragmentation as a proxy)

Why are some civil wars so much
deadlier than others?
•regime type: type of political regime may matter; democracies tend to win wars (perhaps because
they pick the fights, they are likely to win, and try to minimize casualties to avoid public
backlash),
•democracies may be less willing to use the harshest measures against rebels, or perhaps because
democratic governments are in a better position to negotiate, and co-opt rebels than are other
governments
•Lacina (2006) analyzed civil wars between 1946 and 2002
•what did she find?

Why are some civil wars so much
deadlier than others?
•1. state strength variables do not explain why some civil wars kill more people in combat than
others
•the availability of foreign assistance to the combatants is a strong predictor that a civil war
will be severe (Cold War experience?!)
•2. ethnic or religious heterogeneity does not explain the severity of internal war: no evidence
that cultural diversity gives the elites an important tool to mobilize their followers and convince
them to bear the costs of war
•Instead, there is an unexpected link between ethnic homogeneity and large wars (!)
•3. democracy is also associated with fewer battle deaths

Differences between warring groups?
•why do some warring factions abuse noncombatants while others do not?
•armed groups face a strategic challenge:
•when they try to build, maintain, and deploy their fighting units, they inevitably rely on
material resources and logistical support from civilians (noncombatants)
•therefore, we can assume that coercive tactics are potentially costly because they undermine the
civilian base of support for the warring parties
•

Why differences between warring groups?
•Humpreys and Weinstein (2006) study unique data from a nationally representative survey of
ex-combatants in Sierra Leone
•the conflict was known for its unusually cruel treatment of the civilian population
•five waring factions were involved in the civil war, committing all kinds of atrocities: sexual
violence against women, the forcible recruitment of child soldiers, campaigns of killing and
amputations perpetrated by the rebel groups
•however, there was significant variation in how the militias treated civilians: rates of death and
displacement varied dramatically in different parts of the country
•

Are there Incentives for Restraint?
•the rebel groups are in repeated interactions with the population
•one can assume that these very interactions facilitate more restraints on part of the rebels (it
makes it worthwhile to refrain from total extraction, because the militias expect they will need
their resources)
•alternatively, if strong links exist between individual combatants and the population, the rebels
may face higher costs if they employ abusive tactics in their own communities
•in the regions where warring factions share their ethnic identity with the local population, one
can expect lower levels of abusiveness
•

Contestation: between-group
strategic considerations
•the extent of civilian abuse may depend on who/how many rebel groups operate within a given
territory:
•if more than one rebel group can at least occasionally take hold over the territory, the
incentives for restraint may decrease
•(we do not want the other rebel group to benefit from civilian resources too)

Internal composition of the warring factions
•a diversity of group characteristics and formal structures may affect their ability to coordinate
and police the actions of its warriors
•the rebel groups who recruit their new members by promising them private benefits may more abuse
the civilian population
•factions with loose disciplinary structures are likely to engage more in civilian abuse
•
•

Findings
•patterns of abuse are largely explained by internal characteristics of the fighting units
•the type of linkages that exist between combatants and communities or the degree of contestation
between warring factions matter less:
•abuse is more likely when groups lack the tools they need to prevent individual combatants from
committing abuses
•warring factions that recruit combatants with the promise of private benefits are more likely to
exhibit high abuse of civilians
•interestingly, there is no strong relationship between the extent of combatant-community ties and
patterns of abuse (i.e. sharing ethnic/tribal bonds between militias and civilians has no effect on
the level of abuse)
•

What is the logic
driving indiscriminate violence?
•violence is indiscriminate when selection criteria are rough
•indiscriminate violence is generally (seen as) counterproductive in civil wars
•yet, it is a phenomenon that takes place in most civil wars
•Kalyvas argues that it is because indiscriminate violence is much cheaper than its selective
counterpart for the combatants
•it is most likely:
•1. under an imbalance of power between warring groups or
•2. when there is scarcity of resources and information are not availabe
•

What is the logic
driving indiscriminate violence?
•incumbent indiscriminate violence typically takes place in context of military campaigns that seek
to search and destroy insurgents and to undercut civilian basis of the insurgency
•the fact that insurgents do not shy away from this practice confirms that indiscriminate violence
is related to lack of information (rather than ideology)
•Insurgents also use it when they lack information: against villages that openly support the
incumbents, or in the areas where their presence is limited (such as urban centers)
•

What is the logic
driving indiscriminate violence?
•indiscriminate does not mean meaningless:
•it aims to deter people from collaborating with the rival actor; it collectively sanctions
suspected collaborators and also those who are related to them
•if the “guilty” cannot be identified and arrested, then violence targets innocent people that are
somehow associated with them
•the underlying assumption is that the “innocent” will either force the “guilty” to change their
behavior OR the “guilty” will change their course of action when they realize its impact upon
“innocent” people they care about
•

How effective is indiscriminate violence?
•a general perception is that it fails to achieve its strategic goals
•there is the tendency of insurgents to actually welcome incumbent indiscriminate violence because
such reactions bring in new recruits
•the most infamous example of the futility of indiscriminate violence is possibly the Nazi reprisal
policy in occupied Europe
•several reasons for its alleged failure are put forward
•
•

Emotional reactions
•it targets people independently of what they did, and as such is perceived as deeply unfair
•the desire for revenge produces armed reaction only if there is an organization that makes such
action possible:
•the absence or weakness of organizations leads to passivity or sloppy actions doomed to failure
•no matter how outraged, civilians will have no choice but to collaborate with the indiscriminate
actor
•

Ambiguity of structure
of incentives for cooperation
•compliance is almost as unsafe as noncompliance, because the “innocent” can do little to nothing
to escape punishment and the “guilty” are no more threatened
•consequently, there is little advantage in being a collaborator
•indiscriminate violence lacks almost every feature generally considered to be necessary for the
effectiveness of sanctions:
•it is 1. late, 2. arbitrary, 3. inconsistent, and 4. disproportionate
•furthermore, credible protection requires the establishment of incumbent control
•

Ambiguity of structure
of incentives for cooperation
•however, incumbents typically raid an area, kill civilians to take revenge for their lack of
support, and then depart
•There is a lesson for a counterinsurgency : try to “clear-and-hold” rather than “search-and-clear”
the area
•when there is no prospect of holding an area that may be cleared, no effort should be made to
involve the inhabitants on the side of the government
•

Reverse discrimination
and selective incentives for rivals
•Incumbent indiscriminate violence often produces a reverse discrimination against “non-rebels” and
“anti-rebels,” who wrongly believing that their “innocence” will protect them
•civilians will be likely to collaborate with a political actor who credibly offers them
protection, when its rival produces only indiscriminate violence

Why does
indiscriminate violence occur anyway?
•there is no systematic empirical evidence that indiscriminate violence is ineffective
•most accounts of indiscriminate violence focus on the individual level, pointing to a combination
of weak discipline and strong emotions that generates frustration and stress, eventually leading to
indiscriminate violence
•they remain unsatisfactory, because they do not consider whether emotions and attitudes, such as
fear, anger, or racism, are the causes, the correlates, or the results of using indiscriminate
violence
•

A general theory of indiscriminate violence
•there is ample evidence in many civil wars documenting such a shift to higher levels of
discrimination in violence over time
•it can be explained by their better access to local information
•the persistent use of indiscriminate violence indicates that political actors are fundamentally
weak: this is the case with civil wars in failed states
•high levels of indiscriminate violence emerge because no actor has the capacity to set up the sort
of administrative infrastructure required by selective violence (state collapse)
•

When does selective violence occur?
•selective (discriminate) violence is process, jointly created by the actions of both warring
actors and civilians
•information and violence are the key resources around which the process is ordered
•political actors need information in order to be able to target selectively, to distinguish from
among civilians those who are helping the enemy
•civilians have information, which they provide through denunciation
•

When does selective violence occur?
•there is a great potential for abuse in such a system, but violence need only be perceived as
selective in order to avoid the pitfalls of indiscriminate violence
•denunciation will only occur when potential denouncers perceive the political actor as able to
protect them from retaliation
•in civil wars, selective violence can only take place in those areas where control is complete
enough for denouncers to denounce
•(but not so complete that defectors have either fled or simply ceased to be of concern to the
political actor)
•