Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T08:39:38.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2006

MACARTAN HUMPHREYS
Affiliation:
Columbia University
JEREMY M. WEINSTEIN
Affiliation:
Stanford University

Abstract

The toll of civil conflict is largely borne by civilian populations, as warring factions target non-combatants 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.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2006 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdullah Ibrahim. 1998. “Bush Path to Destruction: The Origins and Character of the Revolutionary United Front Sierra Leone.” Journal of Modern African Studies 36 (June): 20335.Google Scholar
Azam Jean-Paul. 2006. “On Thugs and Heroes: Why Warlords Victimize Their Own Civilians.” Economics and Governance 7 (January): 5373.Google Scholar
Ball Patrick, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert Spirer. 1999. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Bates Robert H., Avner Greif, and Smita Singh. 2002. “Organizing Violence.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (October): 599629.Google Scholar
Brown Michael (ed.). 1993. Ethnic Conflict and International Security. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chesterman Simon (ed.). 2001. Civilians in War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSUCH). 2005. Child Soldiers Global Report, 2004. London, UK: Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
Collier Paul, and Anke Hoeffler. 2004. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers 56 (October): 56395.Google Scholar
Collier Paul, and Nicholas Sambanis. 2005. Civil Wars: Africa, Evidence and Analysis, ed. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR). 2003. Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru). Lima, Peru: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Fafchamps Marcel, and Bart Minten. 2002. “Returns to Social Network Capital Among Traders.” Oxford Economic Papers 54 (April): 173206.Google Scholar
Fearon James, and David Laitin. 1996. “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation.” American Political Science Review 4 (December): 71535.Google Scholar
Fearon James, and David Laitin. 2003. “Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war.” American Political Science Review 97 (February): 7590.Google Scholar
Gambetta Diego. 2006. Crimes and Signs. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gates Scott. 2002. “Recruitment and Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (February): 11130.Google Scholar
Ghobarah Hazem, Paul Huth, and Bruce Russett. 2003. “Civil Wars Kill and Main People—Long After the Shooting Stops.” American Political Science Review 97 (May): 189202.Google Scholar
Ghosh P., and D. Ray. 1996. “Cooperation in Community Interaction without Information Flows.” Review of Economic Studies LXIII: 491519.Google Scholar
Goodwin Jeff, and Theda Skocpol. 1989. “Explaining Revolutions in the Third World.” Politics and Society 17 (December): 489509.Google Scholar
Hechter Michael. 1987. Principles of Group Solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Horowitz Donald L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hultman Lisa. 2005Killing Civilians to Signal Resolve: Rebel Strategies in Intrastate Conflict.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC.
Human Rights Watch. 1998. Sowing Terror: Atrocities Against Civilians in Sierra Leone. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch. 2001. Sierra Leone: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch. 2003. We'll kill you if you cry: Sexual Violence in the Sierra Leone Conflict. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Humphreys Macartan, and Jeremy Weinstein. 2004. “What the Fighters Say: A Survey of Ex-Combatants in Sierra Leone.” Working Paper, Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development, Columbia University.
Humphreys Macartan, and Habaye ag Mohamed. 2005. “Senegal and Mali.” In Civil Wars: Africa, Evidence and Analysis, ed. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
INSEC. 2005. Human Rights Yearbook. Kathmandu, Nepal: INSEC.
Kaldor M. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kalyvas Stathis. 2003. “The Ontology of Political Violence: Action and Identity in Civil Wars.” Perspectives on Politics 1 (September): 47594.Google Scholar
Kalyvas Stathis. 2005. “Warfare in Civil Wars.” In Rethinking the Nature of War, ed. Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom. Abingdton: Frank Cass.
Kalyvas Stathis. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kaminski M. M. 2003. Games Prisoners Play: Allocation of Social Roles in a Total Institution. Rationality and Society 15 (May): 188217.Google Scholar
Keen David. 1998. The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars. Adelphi Paper No. 320. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Keen David. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey.
Klemperer Paul. 1995. “Competition When Consumers Have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade.” Review of Economic Studies LXII: 51539.Google Scholar
Kuran T. 1989. “Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution.” Public Choice 61 (April): 4174.Google Scholar
Lacina Bethany, and Nils Petter Gleditsch. 2005. “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of Population 21 (June): 14566.Google Scholar
Levitt Steven, and Sudhir Venkatesh. 2000. “An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (August): 75589.Google Scholar
Lichbach Mark. 1994. “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary: Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Rebellion.” World Politics 46 (April): 383418.Google Scholar
Lichbach Mark. 1995. The Rebel's Dilemma. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Miller Gary. 1992. Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moore Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorships and Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Muana Patrick. 1997. “The Kamajoi Militia: Civil War, Internal Displacement and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency.” African Development 22 (3/4): 77100.Google Scholar
Mueller John. 2004. The Remnants of War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Olson Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ostrom Elinor, and T. K. Ahn. 2002. “Social Capital and the Second Generation Theories of Collective Action.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA.
Popkin Samuel. 1979. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Posen Barry. 1993The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” ed. Michael Brown. Ethnic Conflict and International Security. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Prunier Gerard. 1997. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press.
Prunier Gerard. 2005. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Richards Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford: Heineman.
Ross Michael. 2004. “How Does Natural Resource Wealth Influence Civil War: Evidence From 13 Cases.” International Organization 58 (Winter): 3567.Google Scholar
Sambanis Nicholas. 2001. “Do Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Wars Have the Same Causes? A Theoretical and Empirical Inquiry (Part 1).” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (June): 25582.Google Scholar
Shepler Susan. 2004. “The Social and Cultural Context of Child Soldiering in Sierra Leone.” Paper prepared for presentation at the PRIO workshop, “Techniques of Violence in Civil War,” Oslo, Norway.
Skocpol Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Skocpol Theda. 1982. “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?Comparative Politics 14 (April): 35175.Google Scholar
Smilie Ian, Lansana Gberie, and Ralph Hazelton. 2000. The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, Diamonds, and Human Security. Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada.
Taylor Michael. 1988. “Rationality and Revolutionary Collective Action.” In Rationality and Revolution, ed. Michael Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tilly Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Valentino Benjamin, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay. 2004. “Draining the Sea: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare.” International Organization 58 (Spring): 375407.Google Scholar
Valentino Benjamin. 2004. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Weinstein Jeremy. 2005. “Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (August): 598624.Google Scholar
Weinstein Jeremy. Forthcoming. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wickham-Crowley Timothy. 1992. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wilson James Q. 1989. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York: Basic Books Classics.
Wood Elisabeth. 2004. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.