Collaboration Between States and Militias and State Fragmentation: The Cases of Sudan and Sierra Leone

Why do governments choose to fund pro-government militias (PGMs) if doing so could extend costly civil conflict? While PGMs are active in a majority of civil wars, their impact on conflict termination remains poorly understood. We argue that the choice to fund PGMs is a strategic one for states and part of their efforts to influence wartime dynamics and conflict termination. We hypothesize that PGMs’ impact on conflict termination is conditional on whether they are government funded. Government-funded PGMs help states to ward off costly negotiations and encourage the rebellion's gradual dissolution. Using competing risks analyses on civil wars ending between 1981 and 2007, we find robust evidence that PGM funding affects conflict outcomes.

Previous research on non-state actors involved in civil wars has tended to disregard the role of extra-dyad agents in influencing conflict outcomes. Little is known as to whether the presence of such extra-dyadic actors as pro-regime militias affects conflict termination and outcomes. This article develops and tests a number of hypotheses on the pro-government militias’ effect upon civil war outcomes. It proposes that pro-regime militias involved in intrastate conflicts tend to act as proponents of ‘no peace, no war’, favouring low-activity violence and ceasefires over other conflict outcomes. These hypotheses are examined using an expanded dataset on pro-government militias and armed conflict in a statistical analysis of 229 civil war episodes from 1991 to 2015. These findings shed new light on the role of extra-state actors in civil wars.

Does the military strength of rebel movements affect conflict-related sexual violence by pro-government militias (PGMs)? Existing studies on PGMs show the significant role that PGMs can have in shaping conflict dynamics and outcomes. What remains understudied is how the variation in power capabilities between conflict actors and the sources of support for PGMs influences civilian victimization by militia groups. We argue that strong rebels tip the balance of power against the state, making the state more susceptible to authorizing or allowing sexual violence by PGMs. In addition, the level of autonomy of PGMs from the government is likely to influence their sexual violence, conditional on rebel strength. When rebels are militarily strong, states are likely to order or tolerate sexual violence by PGMs that they train and/or provide resources to, thereby resulting in sexual violence by state-dependent PGMs. Examining all civil conflicts from 1989 to 2009 and using newly collected data on state-dependence of PGMs, our empirical findings provide evidence that PGMs are associated with higher levels of conflict-related sexual violence when the government faces strong rebels. Results also show that the likelihood of sexual violence by state-dependent PGMs increases when rebels exhibit strong military capabilities.

It has long been understood that pro-government militia activity and pro-government militia violence increase during civil war. Recent literature contends that pro-government militia activity also rises when a state is involved in an interstate rivalry. We maintain that the combination of these two threats may, somewhat counterintuitively, result in reduced pro-government militia activity in some autocracies. This unexpected outcome can be explained by differences in state capacity and legitimacy. Using Geddes’ categorization of authoritarian regimes, we expect a decline in the number of operational pro-government militias when personalist and military regimes are challenged by both an insurgency and a rivalry. Pro-government militia liabilities are magnified in this context and add to these governments’ already considerable cumulative hazards. Pro-government militia numbers will, in contrast, remain consistent in single party regimes in this same circumstance. Since party governments have ample capacity, well-known disadvantages of pro-government militias rarely pose a threat to these capable regimes. In a sample of 142 autocracies from 1981 to 2010, we find considerable empirical support for our contention.

In recent years, the relations between weak central governments and armed groups in the periphery have attracted great attention. Rebels, warlords and other actors have not only undermined the authorities' grip on power, but gradually come to shape the nature of governance and political system in their countries. Warlordism, rebelocracies and aliocracies are just a few of the political systems identified by students of conflict and armed groups. However, the literature has generally overlooked one category of armed groups and their implications on political order: pro-government militias (PGMs). As PGMs have become ubiquitous in civil wars, this article identifies a new political order emerging in countries where central governments have become reliant on PGMs in counter-insurgency operations. The article defines this order as a militiatocracy. Unlike armed groups in other political orders, PGMs do not seek to overthrow, undermine or replace the central government. Instead, in militiatocracies, PGMs and central governments develop symbiotic relations, which on the one hand help the government to survive an insurgency, but on the other allow militia leaders to secure an increasing presence in politics. The article illustrates the emergence and nature of militiatocracies by employing the case of Syria during the civil war.

Governments often supplement the regular military with paramilitaries and progovernment militias (PGMs). However, it is unclear what determines states’ selection of these auxiliary forces, and our understanding of how auxiliary force structures develop remains limited. The crucial difference between the two auxiliary types is their embeddedness in official structures. Paramilitaries are organized under the government to support/replace the regular military, whereas PGMs exist outside the state apparatus. Within a principal–agent framework, we argue that a state’s investment in a particular auxiliary force structure is shaped by available resources and capacity, accountability/deniability, and domestic threats. Our results based on quantitative analysis from 1981 to 2007 find that (a) state capacity is crucial for sustaining paramilitaries, but not PGMs; (b) PGMs, unlike paramilitaries, are more common in states involved in civil conflict; and (c) although both paramilitaries and PGMs are associated with regime instability, there is no significant difference between them in that context.

It is typically argued that civil war acutely inhibits inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the evidence is inconsistent and does not support the assumed negative relationship between civil war and FDI. Some studies suggest that FDI enters countries with internal armed conflicts unabated; others show that civil war economies exhibit strong increases in FDI during conflict. Underpinned by a liberal interpretation of war, this scholarship finds these trends to be surprising, counter-intuitive and curious, arguing that FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. In contrast, critical perspectives can provide insights by acknowledging that violence can facilitate economic processes such as FDI, creating a particular form of security and stability that can be conducive to FDI inflows. This article examines the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), a country which exhibited strong increases in FDI during phases of the conflict. It is argued that particular types of violence perpetrated by the government’s armed forces and pro-government militias – groups which were sympathetic to the interests of key investors in the oil industry – facilitated FDI in Sudan’s oil sector during the 2000s to the detriment of large sections of the civilian population affected by the violence.

Given the appalling consequences of civil wars, why are the competing actors within a state unable to come to a settlement to avoid the costs of conflict? How might external parties affect the likelihood that a civil war begins? How do their actions affect the duration and outcome of civil conflicts that are already underway? This project draws on three main approaches—bargaining theory, signaling theory, and rational expectations—to examine how external actors might affect the onset, duration and outcome of civil wars. Signals from external actors are important because they represent a potential increase (or decrease) in fighting capabilities for the government or the opposition if a war were to begin. Costly signals should not affect the probability of civil war onset because they are readily observable ex ante, which allows the government and opposition to peacefully adjust their bargaining positions based on changes in relative capabilities. In contrast, cheap hostile signals make civil war more likely by increasing the risk that an opposition group overestimates its ability to stage a successful rebellion with external support. Cheap supportive signals work in the opposite manner because they represent increased fighting capabilities for the government. Furthermore, signals sent in the pre-war period have important implications for the duration and outcome of civil conflicts because competing intrastate actors develop expectations for future interventions prior to deciding to fight. Expected interventions should have little consequence for the duration and outcome of the conflict because they are endogenous to the pre-war bargaining positions. In contrast, unexpected

ABSTRACTThe research to date on pro-governm`ent militias demonstrates that numerous pro-regime militia groups were actively deployed in civil wars over the last half a century. As hundreds of militia groups emerged amid civil warfare, hundreds more were disbanded, integrated into regular military, or transformed into political forces. This study seeks to improve our understanding of global patterns of militia demobilization. In contrast to the growing body of literature that explores the emergence of militias or examines their relationship with the state, studies on the demise of pro-government militias are notable by their absence. Statistical analysis of 220 pro-government militias involved in seventy-five civil wars from 1981 to 2011, based on a recent database of pro-government militias, demonstrates that the disappearance of militias has little to do with the termination of armed conflict. This study is the first to investigate when and under which conditions militias created to assist governments in fighting civil wars disband.

Examining militia relationships with the government and civilian populations can help scholars and policymakers better assess differences in militia form, function, and behavior. In this article, we examine the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGU), a pro-government militia in the Philippines, to better understand how militia participants view insurgents, politicians, state security forces, and civilians based on their experiences serving in the group. We argue that analyzing these beliefs is critical to understanding how militias influence civilian security and the risk of political violence in conflict-contested areas, as well as the trajectory of civil conflict in states like the Philippines that rely on militias to perform core security functions. We base the analysis on surveys and interviews with CAFGU members and civilians living in the Eastern Visayas, a region of active and ongoing conflict, where insurgents and other armed militants advance their aims through acts of violence and terrorism. In doing so, we contribute to a growing literature on the role that militias play in civil war, as well as the implications that follow when states choose to arm “civilians” to aid in counterinsurgency and conflict suppression.

Introduction

Civil wars have occurred often in the post–World War II era. Their frequency of initiation decreased after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the persistence of these conflicts meant that there was not a dramatic decline after the end of the Cold War. The causes of civil wars and their consequences for the stability of the international environment have, however, changed dramatically in the last two-and-a-half decades. During the Cold War, most civil wars were proxy battles between the Soviet Union and the United States; both superpowers were interested in maintaining regimes that were sympathetic to their side. The Soviet Union was never interested in the promotion of democratic regimes. The United States professed a commitment to democracy, but when faced with a choice between a Communist or even left-leaning democracy and an autocrat who aligned his state with the West, the United States chose the latter. The strongly positive statistical relationship between per capita income and democracy, which holds for most of the period between 1820 and 2000, disappears during the Cold War, when both superpowers were more interested in external alignment than in democracy.1The impact of civil wars on the stability of the international system has increased during the twenty-first century. September 11, 2001, marks a watershed because, for at least some observers in the advanced industrialized world, the ability of transnational terrorists to destroy two of the tallest buildings and kill thousands of people in the commercial center of the most powerful country in the world, as well as to fly a commercial airliner into the command center of the most powerful military (an event that one of us witnessed first-hand from inside the Pentagon and the other witnessed from the State Department across the Potomac River) represented a sea change in the extent to which developments in poor and remote countries could affect even the strongest and most powerful. September 11 created an urgency that was absent during the 1990s, when major powers believed that they could walk away from war-torn countries such as Somalia with limited consequences for their own polities.Greater urgency however, has not led to agreement, even in the academic world, on two critical issues: First, what are the potential threats to stability that might emanate from civil wars and weak governance in poor and remote areas of the world? Second, what policy instruments, if any, can be deployed to treat civil wars and reduce the downstream effects on other states and global order? There are no consensus answers to any of these fundamental issues.Rather than trying to identify some common ground, which we do not believe exists, we offer our own assessment of the consequences of civil wars, the nature of civil wars, and possible interventions that external actors might most effectively pursue. Our judgments have been informed by the essays in this issue of Dædalus and in the previous issue, but are not dictated by them.Civil wars can impact the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world. The most consequential potential impacts are transnational terrorism and pandemic diseases, global crises that could be caused by intrastate conflict. Civil wars might also lead to large-scale migration, regional instability, and potential great-power conflict. And high levels of intrastate violence and loss of government control can often give rise to massive criminality, though this is most effectively addressed through domestic law enforcement rather than international initiatives.The nature of civil wars varies. The most important distinction is between civil strife that is caused by the material or political interests of the protagonists and civil strife that is caused by transnational ideological movements. The latter, if successful, might threaten regional stability and even the stability of the contemporary international system that is based on sovereign statehood. Transnational ideological movements, which in the contemporary world are almost all associated with particular versions of Islam, base legitimacy on the divine and reject both existing boundaries and secular authority. While transnational movements claiming divine authority are more threatening to the existing international order, it is very difficult for such movements to secure material resources. Institutions that control these resources, primarily states but also international organizations, NGOs, and multinational corporations, are manifestations of the extant global order. When combatants in civil wars are motivated by material incentives and accept the principles of the existing international order, then the “standard treatment” for addressing civil strife- UN peacekeeping plus some foreign assistance-is the most effective option if combatants believe that they are in a hurting stalemate, and if there is agreement among the major powers. If, however, combatants reject the existing order, then the standard treatment will not work.Finally, based on most, but not all of the essays in these two issues of Dædalus, the opportunities for external interveners are limited. Countries afflicted by civil strife cannot become Denmark or be placed on the road to Denmark; they cannot be transformed into prosperous democratic states. The best that external actors can hope for is adequate governance in which there is security, the provision of some services especially related to health and possibly education, and some limited economic growth. This is true whether the standard treatment is applied or if one side can win decisively. More ambitious projects aimed at consolidated democracy, sustained economic growth, and the elimination of corruption are mostly doomed to fail and can be counterproductive regardless of whether the combatants are interested in seizing control of an existing state or are motivated by some alternative, divine vision of how political life might be ordered. National political elites in countries afflicted with civil strife will be operating in limited-access, rent-seeking political orders in which staying in power is their primary objective. National elites will not accept accountability, legal-rational bureaucracies, or free and fair elections, all of which would threaten their power.The essays in these two issues of Dædalus and the literature more broadly identify six threats from civil strife that might directly impact the wealthy and more powerful polities of the world, or the nature of the postwar liberal international order. The first two-pandemic diseases and transnational terrorism-are potentially the most consequential, although neither poses the kind of existential threat presented by war among nuclear armed states.Pandemic diseases. As the essay by Paul Wise and Michele Barry points out, since 1940, some four hundred new diseases have emerged among human populations.2 Most of these diseases have been zoonoses: disease vectors that have jumped from animal populations, in which they may be benign, to human populations, in which they might cause serious illness. Most of these outbreaks have occurred in a belt near the equator, where human beings intermingle more closely with animals, such as bats and monkeys. The main impact of civil wars is, however, not in increasing the number of new diseases, but rather diminishing the capacities of health monitoring systems that could identify, isolate, and possibly treat new diseases. Effective detection requires constant monitoring, which is extremely difficult in areas that are afflicted by civil war. Epidemics, or at least disease outbreaks, are inevitable given the ways in which human beings impinge more and more on animal habitats, but allowing an epidemic to evolve into a pandemic is optional. If effective detection and monitoring are in place, a disease outbreak will not turn into a pandemic that could kill millions. So far, the world's population has been spared such an outbreak. If, however, a disease can be transmitted through the air, and if civil strife or something else prevents effective monitoring, the likelihood of a pandemic increases.Transnational terrorism. Terrorism, which in recent years has primarily, but not exclusively, been associated with Islamic jihadism, can arise in many different environments. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden were resident in Afghanistan, a very poor, land-locked country. Before that, Bin Laden had found refuge in Sudan. Most of the participants in the September 11 attack, however, were born in the heart of the Arab world, namely in Saudi Arabia, and had resided for a number of years in Germany. The perpetrators of the July 7 attacks on the mass transit system in London were Muslims of Somali and Eritrean origin, raised and schooled in the United Kingdom. The bomber, whose efforts to bring down an airliner headed for Detroit were frustrated by a courageous and alert passenger, was a Nigerian citizen who had spent time with jihadi ideologues in the Middle East. The attacks in Paris and Nice in 2015–2016 were carried out by individuals born in North Africa, but who had lived for many years in Western Europe. The murders of fourteen people in San Bernardino, California, were perpetrated by a U.S. citizen born in Chicago, whose parents were from Pakistan and who was educated at California State University, San Bernardino, and his wife, who was born in Pakistan but spent many years in Saudi Arabia. The massacre at the Orlando, Florida, night club in 2016 was carried out by the American-born son of a man who had emigrated from Afghanistan and had lived for many years in the United States.While terrorism associated with Islamic jihadism is hardly an exclusive product of safe havens in countries afflicted by civil strife or poor governance, the existence of such safe havens does, as Martha Crenshaw argues, exacerbate the problem.3 Safe havens are environments within which would-be terrorists can train over an extended period of time. A number of terrorists, even those raised in Western, industrialized countries, have taken advantage of such training. Transnational terrorist organizations might or might not secure weapons of mass destruction; they might or might not develop more effective training; their operatives might or might not be discovered by intelligence services in advanced industrialized democracies. Civil war and weak governance, however, increase the likelihood that transnational terrorist groups will find safe havens, and safe havens increase the likelihood of attacks that could kill large numbers of people.Global pandemics and transnational terrorism are the two most serious threats presented by civil wars. The probability that either will significantly undermine the security of materially well-off states is uncertain, but both are distinct sources of danger. Civil wars and weak governance increase the likelihood that large numbers of people could be killed by either threat. Neither is an existential threat, but both could have grave consequences for advanced industrialized democratic states. Hundreds of thousands or millions of people could die from a pandemic outbreak resulting from an easily transmissible disease vector or from a transnational terrorist attack that could involve dirty nuclear weapons, an actual nuclear weapon (still quite hard to obtain), or artificial biologics (increasingly easy to produce).Either a global pandemic or terrorist attack, possibly using weapons of mass destruction, would almost certainly lead to some constraints on the traditional freedoms that have been associated with liberal democratic societies.Migration, regional instability, and great-power conflict. Civil wars are also dangerous because they could lead to greater refugee flows, regional destabilization, and great-power conflict. Not every civil war has the potential for generating these global crises, but if generated, they would be a product not just of civil strife but also of policy choices that were made by advanced industrialized countries. In this regard, they should be contrasted with possible pandemics and transnational terrorism that, arguably, would occur regardless of the policies adopted by wealthy democratic states.As Sarah Lischer's essay shows, the number of migrants–especially people displaced by civil wars–has increased dramatically in recent years.4 Most of these migrants have been generated by three conflicts, those in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. The wave of migrants entering Western Europe has destabilized traditional politics and contributed to the success of Brexit in the UK, the increased share of votes secured by right-wing parties in a number of Western European countries, and the electoral gains of a number of right-wing parties in Eastern Europe. Anxiety about immigration contributed to Donald Trump's victory in the United States. European countries, even those on the left like Sweden, have responded to rising numbers of refugees by tightening the rules for potential migrants. The European Union reached a deal with Turkey in 2016 to provide financial resources in exchange–among other things–for an increase in acceptance of refugees. At the same time, the sheer number of refugees in Jordan and Lebanon can potentially undermine government control in those countries.The impact of civil wars in one country can spread to surrounding areas. ISIL's ambitious campaigns have afflicted Syria and Iraq. Civil strife in Somalia has, as Seyoum Mesfin and Abdeta Beyene write, influenced the policies of Ethiopia.5 The FARC insurgency in Colombia impacted Venezuela and Ecuador. Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) drew in several neighboring states. Some regional conflicts have resulted in millions of deaths, most notably the war in the DRC, with limited impact on and attention from wealthy industrialized countries. Wars in the Middle East, however, have been more consequential because they have led to the involvement of Russia and the United States, they are closer to Europe and have therefore generated more refugees, and Middle Eastern oil is a global commodity on which much of the world depends. Regional destabilization in the Middle East does matter for the West; regional destabilization in Central Africa may only matter for those who live in the neighborhood.Direct confrontation between major powers has not occurred since the end of World War II. In well-governed areas, where civil wars are absent, the likelihood of great-power conflict is small. Territorial conquest has been delegitimized (though Russia's annexation of Crimea stands as a recent exception to this norm). The existence of nuclear weapons has removed uncertainty about the costs of a confrontation between nuclear-armed states with assured second-strike capability. Great-power confrontations are, however, more likely in areas that are afflicted by civil strife, because instability and appeals from local actors could draw in major state actors with vested interests. This is especially true for the Middle East. Moreover, in countries on the periphery of Russia that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, especially those with sizeable Russian ethnic populations, the government in Moscow has demonstrated that it can increase the level of internal unrest. There is no guarantee of stability, even in countries that might have been stable absent external support for dissident groups that would otherwise have remained quiescent.As Barry Posen suggests in his essay, multipolarity makes all aspects of external involvement in civil wars more fraught, including the possibility of a conflict among the major powers.6 In a multipolar world, no single pole is likely to be able to dictate outcomes to potential combatants. The possibility of a hurting stalemate declines because all sides hope that their fortunes could be resurrected by some outside power. Absent a hurting stalemate, which makes the standard treatment including UN Peacekeeping Operations (UN PKOs) and other forms of assistance attractive to major combatants, civil wars are more likely to continue. The contemporary international environment is more multipolar than was the case during the bipolarity of the Cold War or the unipolarity of the United States that lasted for a little over a decade after the Soviet Union collapsed. Managing civil wars will now be more difficult. The possibility of great-power conflict has increased. And because wars will prove harder to end, refugee flows will persist.Criminality. Criminality is a final area in which there may be some association between civil wars and weak governance, and the well-being of individuals in advanced industrialized countries. Because of the ease of transportation and communication, criminality is not limited to specific countries. Internet theft can originate from and impact many different countries. The loss of billions of dollars a year, drug smuggling, and human trafficking are familiar manifestations of transnational criminality. As Vanda Felbab-Brown writes, large-scale criminality can greatly exacerbate the challenges states face in defeating insurgencies and ending civil wars.7Addressing criminality associated with civil wars is fraught with difficulty. The association between criminal gangs and the state may be uncertain. National elites may protect criminal organizations. Some criminal organizations may generate revenues that help national elites stay in power. Yet while transnational criminality does affect individuals and institutions in the wealthier democracies, it is not a threat to their domestic political orders. The problem is best dealt with through national and international law enforcement.The most important conclusion that emerges from the discussions at the core of our project is that the policy options for addressing civil wars are limited. The essays in these two issues suggest that there are four factors that external actors must take into account when considering responses to intrastate warfare in weakly governed polities: the extent to which the interests of external and national political elites are complementary; the presence of irreconcilable groups in a civil conflict; the threat of great-power conflict; and the costs of intervention.Alignment of interests. Of these four factors, the greatest impediment to successful interventions is the misalignment of domestic and external elites' interests. Domestic elites governing an area afflicted by civil strife will be primarily interested in keeping themselves in power. The path to Denmark is paved with free and fair elections, rational-legal bureaucracies, and the rule of law, all of which are antithetical to the interests of those who hold power in closed-access or exclusive polities.The best that external actors can hope for is to bring some degree of security to areas that are afflicted with civil strife, which is easier to accomplish if none of the combatants are motivated by ideologies that cannot be reconciled, and if competing major or regional powers are not in proxy wars. even if irreconcilable and states are not part of a civil ambitious for and will fail because domestic elites are primarily interested in staying in not in and security assistance has been effective in a limited number of state institutions and the of civil but then only and only to some assistance might of but these are likely to or away when foreign assistance is the support of domestic external actors will fail to civil wars or effectively deal with from such of the world's especially polities by intrastate are rent-seeking states in which the political in power through foreign assistance and will not lead to into the night the number of votes the number of that political to stay in power. The in which the government is to but to within a is not the of almost all of human in almost all in the world, were and If individuals could the of the state they some external actors might be able to the incentives of national elites in the which this might are elites in countries by civil war are almost in what and political have an exclusive Their primary is to stay in power. This requires the and of of their support Most they must have command over of those who control the of violence that they cannot be in exclusive or rent-seeking orders are on the loss of and even life that would from a loss of will efforts for hold free and fair or to corruption as existential more like which are often sources for elites in exclusive might be as actors are only likely to have if domestic elites are on foreign as essay is often the and if external actors can threaten to which is often not the If domestic have sources of such as from or if the state is will not be able to threaten to assistance as government and have constraints were in Afghanistan, where the United States, billions of dollars in elections, and was to the of the rather than efforts to the fundamental of because such his The were because could not (though corruption on all to the of some from the of were by because the his and his in his essay, a for the that occur when the interests of external and internal actors are which will be the case when external actors to in rent-seeking on security that an effective national security at least effective in the of external is much harder than has been or As interests of domestic elites are often different from the interests of external The on power and domestic threats to their while the more on international or transnational threats that could their is, as a problem that cannot be the United States is most likely to provide security assistance to states that are governed if these polities were they would not external security In rent-seeking political will not the military as an the armed will be as as a potential that must be through some of and military in that to the of the A military of effectively in the is what in rent-seeking states do not As it would be almost for an external to such as with military or or which would be in the interests of national but not in the interests of external actors to an effective national military this the collapse of the in in one decade of U.S. military and billions of dollars of was hardly The United States that to effectively its ideological an that would not threaten and their on wars do not the that countries to stable polities and significantly the economic of large of the As with to the Middle East, the rent-seeking that were the conflict are likely to be during of civil is a that elites to those with they to stay in the of the external powers is the problem of to when the challenges of monitoring the of security assistance actors are not likely to be able to or even the interests and of actors in countries by civil may be may be power and their live in and for a while foreign and often for one at if the of the United States or other external is to help countries that have been afflicted with civil war consolidated democracy and there will be between the of domestic and foreign presence of and powers. If one or more of the major are or if two or more major powers have and interests conflict policy options to treat civil wars will be terrorism has been motivated primarily by ideological movements that reject the extant rules and of the global order. As the essays by and motivated have a that is antithetical to the almost of in the contemporary international the sovereign state The principles and associated with and international are to those that have been and by Islamic jihadi Islamic as points out, other authority is from not from some Islamic there is a fundamental distinction between the world of by Muslims and by Islamic law, and the of or where Islamic law is not to some of Islamic law, Islamic states can only with other Islamic with the world, are limited to the most contemporary of Islamic jihadi has that its is to a in the Middle East. a would state and the and rules of an secular who to a sovereign state the same to external powers that a on the of the contemporary international system and the of existing state cannot be with foreign assistance and they will not accept such the most policy option for those to the of the might be to war a As the armed were able to the while to the international order, from the of the may however, be to may have to be as the of Afghanistan and when with a a or parties are a more attractive as the misalignment of domestic and external interests has policy do the misalignment of major interests. The presence of major powers in a civil as can potentially threaten the security of as well as the international the

This article introduces the global Pro-Government Militias Database (PGMD). Despite the devastating record of some pro-government groups, there has been little research on why these forces form, under what conditions they are most likely to act, and how they affect the risk of internal conflict, repression, and state fragility. From events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria and the countries of the Arab Spring we know that pro-government militias operate in a variety of contexts. They are often linked with extreme violence and disregard for the laws of war. Yet research, notably quantitative research, lags behind events. In this article we give an overview of the PGMD, a new global dataset that identifies pro-government militias from 1981 to 2007. The information on pro-government militias (PGMs) is presented in a relational data structure, which allows researchers to browse and download different versions of the dataset and access over 3,500 sources that informed the coding. The database shows the wide proliferation and diffusion of these groups. We identify 332 PGMs and specify how they are linked to government, for example via the governing political party, individual leaders, or the military. The dataset captures the type of affiliation of the groups to the government by distinguishing between informal and semi-official militias. It identifies, among others, membership characteristics and the types of groups they target. These data are likely to be relevant to research on state strength and state failure, the dynamics of conflict, including security sector reform, demobilization and reintegration, as well as work on human rights and the interactions between different state and non-state actors. To illustrate uses of the data, we include the PGM data in a standard model of armed conflict and find that such groups increase the risk of civil war.

In nearly two-thirds of civil wars since 1989, governments have received support in their counterinsurgency operations from militias. Many scholars predict higher levels of violence in conflicts involving pro-government militias because governments are either unable or unwilling to control militias. This article challenges this view, arguing that governments can and do often control militia behavior in civil war. Governments make strategic decisions about whether to use violence against civilians, encouraging both regular military forces and militia forces to target civilians or restraining regular military forces and militia forces from attacking civilians. In some cases, however, government and militia behavior differs. When a militia recruits its members from the same constituency as the insurgents, the militia is less likely to target civilians, as doing so would mean attacking their own community. Statistical analyses, using new data on pro-government militia violence in civil wars from 1989 to 2010, support these arguments.

This article examines how civilian defense militias shape violence during civil war. We define civilian defense forces as a sedentary and defensive form of pro-government militia that incumbents often use to harness the participation of civilians during a counterinsurgency campaign. We argue that civilian defense forces reduce the problem of insurgent identification. This leads to a reduction in state violence against civilians. However, we also claim that these actors undermine civilian support for insurgents, which leads to an increase in rebel violence against civilians and overall intensification of conflict. A statistical analysis of government and rebel violence against civilians from 1981 to 2005 and a qualitative assessment of a civilian defense force operating in Iraq from 2005 to 2009 offer strong support for our theoretical claims. These findings provide further insight into pro-government militias and their effects on violence. They also have wider ethical implications for the use of civilian collaborators during civil war.