Understanding Civil Wars

Continuity and change in intrastate conflict

Edward Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134715428
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Liberté politique

This volume explores the nature of civil war in the modern world and in historical perspective.

Civil wars represent the principal form of armed conflict since the end of the Second World War, and certainly in the contemporary era. The nature and impact of civil wars suggests that these conflicts reflect and are also a driving force for major societal change. In this sense, Understanding Civil Wars: Continuity and change in intrastate conflict argues that the nature of civil war is not fundamentally changing in nature.

The book includes a thorough consideration of patterns and types of intrastate conflict and debates relating to the causes, impact, and 'changing nature' of war. A key focus is on the political and social driving forces of such conflict and its societal meanings, significance and consequences. The author also explores methodological and epistemological challenges related to studying and understanding intrastate war. A range of questions and debates are addressed. What is the current knowledge regarding the causes and nature of armed intrastate conflict? Is it possible to produce general, cross-national theories on civil war which have broad explanatory relevance? Is the concept of 'civil wars' empirically meaningful in an era of globalization and transnational war? Has intrastate conflict fundamentally changed in nature? Are there historical patterns in different types of intrastate conflict? What are the most interesting methodological trends and debates in the study of armed intrastate conflict? How are narratives about the causes and nature of civil wars constructed around ideas such as ethnic conflict, separatist conflict and resource conflict?

This book will be of much interest to students of civil wars, intrastate conflict, security studies and international relations in general.

1
Introduction

Civil wars represent the principal form of armed conflict since the end of the Second World War, and certainly in the contemporary era. This form of conflict has had a fundamental social and political impact in terms of the building and re-building of states and territorial boundaries, and in defining the political and economic organization of public life within societies, in addition to the terrible human suffering caused. The nature and impact of civil wars suggests that these conflicts reflect and are also a driving force for major societal change. In comparison, interstate war, although far from extinct, is at historically low levels and remains an unlikely prospect for most countries. There are certainly difficulties relating to defining and analysing civil war and, as this volume will demonstrate, many challenges to understanding and explaining armed intrastate conflict remain. Moreover, at least in recent decades, civil wars and armed intrastate conflict appear to be in decline both in absolute numbers and magnitude, in the context of a broader decline in organized violence. Nevertheless, this form of armed conflict is one of the principal intellectual and policy challenges for those interested in collective violence in the 21st century.

This volume will explore the nature of armed intrastate conflict and civil war in the modern world and in historical perspective. The focus is primarily, but not exclusively, on the political and social driving forces of such armed conflict and its societal meanings, significance and consequences – rather than the character of warfare and violence. This will include a thorough consideration of patterns and types of intrastate conflict and debates relating to the causes, impact and ‘changing nature’ of war. In so doing, the book considers whether there are shared narratives that form a common thread across civil wars in different cases and historical contexts, or indeed if the concept of ‘civil war’ is analytically problematic. It also explores methodological and epistemological challenges related to studying and understanding intrastate war.

A range of debates and controversies are addressed within the book. What is the current knowledge regarding the causes and nature of armed intrastate conflict, and the factors that help to explain their onset, duration, intensity, termination and recurrence? Is it possible to produce general, cross-national theories on the significance of these factors which have broad explanatory relevance? Can the study of such conflicts be ‘scientific’? Is the concept of ‘civil wars’ empirically meaningful in an era of globalization and transnational war? Has intrastate conflict fundamentally changed in nature in recent years? Are there historical patterns in different types of intrastate conflict? Is the era of large civil wars over, and if so, why? What are the most interesting methodological trends and debates in the study of armed intrastate conflict? How are (subjective) narratives about the causes and nature of civil wars constructed around ideas such as ethnic conflict, separatist conflict and resource conflict?

An underlying theme of the volume concerns the ways in which knowledge about civil wars is generated. The scope and objectives of civil war studies remain contested. There is disagreement on how to understand and explain civil war, what the object of study should be, and what constitutes reliable knowledge. Scholars and analysts interested in intrastate conflict are defined and divided by their epistemological worldview and methodological approaches. Attempts to categorize intrastate conflicts and identify patterns are fraught with difficulty. The role of a wide range of variables – such as ethnicity, poverty and inequality, culture and religion, regime type, demographic factors, environmental factors, regional insecurity, resource scarcity and abundance, amongst others – in explaining the onset and nature of civil wars remains controversial.¹ More fundamentally, there is disagreement on the political and societal significance and meaning of such conflicts – or indeed whether there is any such significance in the contemporary era – and whether intrastate conflict and civil wars are changing in nature.²

The volume also explores a number of arguments related to the nature of armed conflict. Some scholars have argued that armed conflict is fundamentally changing in nature, and that contemporary civil wars reflect 21st-century forces of globalization, identity, transnational networks and state failure. In this context military tactics, the role of technology, ideas of victory or defeat in war, and the way that conflicts are understood seem distinctly contemporary.³ Other scholars have argued that intrastate conflicts are the criminalized, anarchic remnants of war, devoid of political meaning.⁴ Rupert Smith suggests that war – industrial war as a major deciding event in international affairs – no longer exists.⁵ What we have instead is war amongst the people, which does not qualify as war within the old frame of reference. Quantitative research certainly points to a decline in the number and magnitude of intrastate conflicts, which suggests a decline of major civil war. Recent research also explores the apparent declining importance of the state, focusing upon variables and explanatory factors above and below the state, such as identity, globalization, transnational political or religious ideologies, and international intervention. The significant attention that is given to the state tends to focus on state weakness and failure as an enabling environment for upheaval. The theme of statebuilding and consolidation as a source of contemporary intrastate conflict receives much less consideration.

Contrary to some of this scholarship, the implications of this book are that – from a societal perspective – armed conflict is not fundamentally changing in nature as a result of transnational networks, the resurgence of identity, or technological advancements, even though forms of warfare and the way in which conflict is expressed may indeed change. It therefore challenges the idea that contemporary armed conflict is best characterized as a form of ‘new war’ driven by specifically 21st-century forces, and that armed conflict – particularly intrastate conflict – evolves in an historically linear manner.

In recent scholarship state incapacity is a widely accepted and persuasive explanatory theme for the onset and nature of intrastate conflict. However, this volume challenges the idea that the state has become or is becoming less relevant – except by its absence or ‘failure’ – to understanding the onset and nature of intrastate conflict. Indeed, a core, underlying argument is that a state-centric perspective of intrastate war provides a compelling lens through which to understand these forms of armed conflict, and not only in terms of state weakness. This book will therefore consider how, as a thread of continuity in the late modern era, intrastate armed conflict can be explained and understood as a function of a broader range of processes around the state. These include armed conflicts associated with coercive statebuilding; contestation over the control, political vision and constitution of the state; the imposition of an ineffective, inappropriate or illegitimate state; violent challenges to the territorial control and reach of the state; and state disintegration into which competing militarized groups, communal conflict and conflict over the spoils of the state emerge.

This volume, in focusing upon different dimensions of the state in understanding armed intrastate conflict, is mainly concerned with structural or societal factors. This approach focuses on the significance of intrastate conflict and civil war primarily as they relate to social and political breakdown and transition, and the reconfiguration of societal institutions of governance and distribution. In this sense, the volume presents intrastate armed conflict as a continuing expression of modernity, especially in states that are struggling to centralize power and those facing failing legitimacy. In line with this, a further argument in this book is that contemporary armed conflict – including low-intensity conflict in developing countries – should generally not be seen as politically meaningless or chaotic. Even when conflicts in the developing world do not conform to externally conceived models of political and military rationality, this does not mean that they have no political or social significance. The circumstances that give rise to these conflicts and their consequences reflect fundamentally important processes and changes, and their impact is felt locally and sometimes globally.

This does not imply that a state-society focus is the only approach to understanding and explaining intrastate conflict. Different perspectives can be provided through different experiences or roles: as a warlord, child soldier, mercenary, war crimes victim, peace activist, non-governmental organization (NGO) staff member, government soldier, academic analyst, insurgent, or empowered thug. There is arguably no single unifying narrative that encapsulates the myriad dynamics of civil wars in a coherent manner; the ‘meaning’ of civil wars is to some degree subjectively constructed. Moreover, national narratives of civil wars can be quite different from their local dynamics, as Kalyvas demonstrates.⁶ In line with this, one of the objectives of the book is to illustrate how different, subjective, narratives about intrastate armed conflict emerge in general and in connection with specific cases.

Some armed conflicts appear to be local and unrelated to the modern state, and many factors that drive intrastate conflicts defy state boundaries.⁷ Yet the nature of the state – in situations of statebuilding, consolidation, disintegration, contestation – often provides an enabling environment or driving force for this violence, even when violence is essentially local. This argument does not imply that ‘nothing changes’, or that international factors do not play a role. The state-centric approach certainly accepts that armed intrastate conflicts are often characterized and conditioned by international processes and events, although not necessarily any more than at earlier times in recent history. By focusing on the state and the societal implications of intrastate armed conflict, this book observes one way in which armed conflict has not fundamentally changed (especially, not as much as many seem to believe), but this is not to argue that nothing has changed.

The state-centric approach is not the only way to view civil wars but it is an interesting and compelling one which points to continuity as well as change. Seen in historical perspective this holds important implications for a number of defining conflicts of the 21st century and for future trajectories of war. It suggests that the underlying sources of conflict and instability, especially in the developing world, are not particularly new, even if they are expressed in the language and through the technologies of the 21st century. These underlying sources point to the problematic nature of the state – especially in the post-colonial world – as a political and social concept, and to violent processes related to the consolidation and disintegration of the state as the driving force or enabling environment of much contemporary armed conflict. There is, in academic and policy circles, significant attention to weak state institutions as an explanation for instability and conflict. This volume goes beyond the ‘failed state’ narrative and seeks to refocus on themes – in particular statebuilding and societal transformation – which have not been explored as much in recent scholarship on armed conflict. In this sense history provides a valuable context for understanding the nature of armed conflict in the contemporary world because it suggests a number of perennial political and social processes. It also points to continuities that lie – often well disguised – underneath the apparently new processes and technologies of the 21st century.⁸

The problematic concept of civil war

The concept of ‘civil war’ is empirically problematic and, some might say, rather outdated. In assuming an armed conflict between government and non-government protagonists with vying political agendas, confined largely within recognizable boundaries, the idea seems to be defied by a lot of recent experience. Many major intrastate conflicts – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, Afghanistan and Syria, amongst others – have been internationalized, transboundary, and do not conform to neat distinctions between government and non-government actors. Their causes and consequences and the factors that explain the behaviour of individuals who are involved cannot be fully understood as ‘national’ phenomena. The distinction between civil war and other forms of collective violence is sometimes arbitrary and debateable. Moreover, the nature, scale and duration of armed conflicts described as ‘civil wars’ have varied so enormously that the singular category for describing them as such seems problematic from an analytical standpoint; as Cramer has noted, ‘there may be more variation within a group of civil wars than between some civil wars and other cases of violent social conflict’.⁹ In addition, the emergence of ‘critical’ perspectives in security studies has raised important doubts about understanding armed conflicts through objective narratives.

A very brief look into different intrastate conflicts spanning very different historical periods – and explored in detail in later chapters – will illustrate the problematic nature of ‘civil war’ as a concept. The civil war in Japan in 1877 was a culmination of a number of counter-revolutionary uprisings led by members of the former elite – the samurai warrior class – who violently opposed some aspects of the modernization of the country, the loss of traditional values and the loss of their customary privileges. It also represented a regional rebellion which sought greater autonomy, in the hope that at least in some peripheral regions the values of old Japan might be retained, separate from the pace of change in Tokyo. The rebels – in particular the leadership – had little hope that their uprising would reverse the direction that the country was taking; the modernization, industrialization and centralization of the country had been going on for some years, and their rebellion was politically and militarily futile. In the end – or indeed for some, right from the outset – the aim of many of those fighting was to achieve the ultimate esteem: to be allowed to die in ritual suicide as a demonstration of their purity and honour.

The US Civil War of 1861–65 was an industrial armed conflict on a massive scale, involving the mobilization of millions of men into huge uniformed infantry armies which pioneered the modern practices of total war and trench warfare. Declarations of war were issued and justified with reference to constitutional law, self-determination and liberal values, and a remarkably high level of political consciousness can be found amongst those involved in fighting, at all ranks. Generals learned from and applied the tactics of the great European battles of the 19th century – indeed, they had probably read Clausewitz – and over 600,000 combatants and innumerable civilians died. The conflict was in part financed by war bonds issued by both the Union and Confederate governments, something that became standard practice in the great industrial wars of the 20th century.

The first Liberian civil war of 1989–96 was launched by a few hundred disaffected men with little or no formal military training. They terrorized rural inhabitants into compliance and mobilized a fighting force of disaffected part-time – often child – ‘soldiers’ numbered in the thousands and financed by looting and pillage. The distinction between combatants and civilians was often meaningless, and the motivations and rituals of combatants – including cannibalism and voodoo – confounded most observers by their brutality and ‘barbarity’. The conflict was driven largely by rural disaffection, the greed of warlords who manipulated tribal tensions amongst poor youth, and fuelled by regional antagonisms amongst West African elites. Set-piece battles were non-existent. Control of the country essentially centred upon control of the capital, Monrovia, and the conflict petered out when the principal warlord was elected president of the country.

The civil war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 emerged out of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and acute communal anxieties related to security. Within this context armed factions within Bosnia – ostensibly aligned to religious or national communities – vied for territorial control and communal defence. The conflict was characterized by high levels of human rights abuse and the high profile of irregular forces. Some narratives – explored later in this book – suggest that the ‘war’ was in reality the rampage of empowered thugs at the local level, whilst others see it as a Serbian war of aggression with the goal of unifying ‘Serbian lands’ across the western Balkans.

Sri Lanka experienced intermittent civil war between 1983 and 2009 in which – according to some sources – well over 70,000 people died. It is generally described as an ethno-nationalist separatist conflict: a violent struggle between a minority, geographically concentrated, Hindu Tamil separatist force and a unitary state dominated by a Buddhist Sinhala population. The conflict grew out of the colonial legacy of a centralized state, the manipulation of ‘ethnic’ difference, and the delicate balance of rural land use that was politicized as a focal point of exclusive ethnic polarization and competition. In turn, this was exacerbated by divisive legislation and policies that were pursued after independence. The armed conflict was partly about securing territory. Tamil Tiger control of the areas that it considered the Tamil heartland bolstered its political claims and facilitated de facto autonomy, as a step towards secession. Sri Lankan government control of disputed territory was a demonstration of territorial integrity.

These conflicts reflected the context of their social and political circumstances – although, even as individual cases, they arguably defy an objective, singular narrative. They certainly appear to defy a shared narrative as civil wars. Their scale and dynamics – in terms of causes, nature, impact, protagonists, social structure and consequences – are so diverse and va...