Abstract
Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) operate in complex environments, commonly existing as one of the many organizations engaged in one-sided violent attacks against the state and/or the civilian population. When trying to explain the execution and timing of these attacks, most theories look at NSAGs’ internal organizational features or how these groups interact with the state or civilian population. In this study, we take a different approach: we use a self-exciting temporal model to ask if the behavior of one NSAG affects the behavior of other groups operating in the same country and if the actions of groups with actual ties (i.e., groups with some recognized relationship) have a larger effect than those with environmental ties (i.e., groups simply operating in the same country). We focus on three cases where multiple NSAGs operated at the same time: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia, from 2001 to 2005. We find mixed results for the notion that the actions of one NSAG influence the actions of others operating in the same conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we find evidence that NSAG actions do influence the timing of attacks by other NSAGs; however, there is no discernible link between NSAG actions and the timing of attacks in Colombia. Nevertheless, we do consistently find that there is no significant difference between the effect that actual or environmental ties could have in these three cases.
Highlights
The escalation of violent attacks from Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs), in frequency and number of casualties, is a central threat to international security today
Does the behavior of one NSAG affect the behavior of other armed groups operating in the same environment? is behavior only affected by the more formal relationships that have captured the attention of the literature, or can it be affected by the mere fact of operating in the same environment or fighting in the same conflict? In this paper we provide a preliminary exploration of these questions, focusing exclusively on the execution of one-sided violent attacks
Instead of looking within armed organizations or at the interactions of armed groups with civilian populations or with the government, we focus on the relational environment in which NSAGs operate and examine how they might influence each other’s actions—something that has received relatively less attention in the conflict literature
Summary
The escalation of violent attacks from Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs), in frequency and number of casualties, is a central threat to international security today. Understanding the dynamics of violent attack execution better is essential for both scholarly research and policy-making. Despite widespread assumptions made by theories of violence (e.g., in civil war research), armed conflict is rarely dyadic (Jentzsch, 2014). The portrayal of conflict both as combat between an incumbent state and a rebel organization, and of armed groups operating and making decisions in isolation, obscures the fact that multiple armed organizations commonly operate in the same conflict settings. To cite just one dramatic example, during the peak of the Syrian civil war, it was believed that as many as 1000 non-state armed groups were commanding about 100,000 fighters (BBC, 2013)
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