Armed Opposition Groups Research Articles

Peace in an extreme climate: How climate-related security risks affect prospects for stability in Lake Chad

The lake Chad region faces a humanitarian crisis with simultaneous risks coming from conflict and fragility. Climate change is compounding the many political, environmental, economic, and security challenges facing the region, exacerbating the already complex security challenges. Climate change is causing higher temperatures and greater fluctuations in rainfall patterns, making it harder for communities around Lake Chad to sustain their livelihoods. At the same time, the conflict between armed opposition groups and state security forces is increasing people’s vulnerability to climate change risks and undermining traditional coping mechanisms. This article presents the findings of the climate-security nexus assessment of the Lake Chad region to inform response options for the region. We conducted locally grounded, participatory conflict analysis. The conflict analysis is based on 229 in-depth one-to-one interviews, which have been conducted by a locally-led research team with affected communities around Lake Chad in all four countries of the region (Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria). It contributes to an evidence base to assess the specific ways climate change interacts with the risk landscape, systematically analysing how climate change shapes risks and determining appropriate responses for the Lake Chad region. The article sets out four climate-fragility risks: (i) Climate and ecological change increase livelihood insecurity; (ii) Vulnerability heightens as conflict and fragility strain coping capacities.; (iii) Resource conflicts rise due to scarcity.; and (iv) Livelihood insecurity fuel recruitment into armed groups. We argue that the success of stabilisation efforts to end violence in the region hangs on their ability to account for climate risks affecting Lake Chad.

Peacekeeping, Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in Non-State Conflicts

This article theorizes on how military and civilian components of peacekeeping operations contribute to the conclusion of local ceasefires in non-state conflicts involving armed opposition groups or communal groups. A mediation-based logic suggests that civilian peacekeeping staff can provide technical support aimed at resolving the conflict issues and engage with state officials to promote peace. A capabilities-based logic suggest that military peacekeepers can provide security during the negotiations, arrange logistics, and put military pressure on the conflict parties, which all should make the conclusion of a ceasefire more likely. The analysis supports both the capabilities-based and the mediation-based logic. An instrumental variable estimation helps to account for endogeneity. This article contributes to the literature on peacekeeping, mediation, and ceasefires through shifting the focus to non-state conflicts.

Rebels with a cause: Introducing the Post-Rebel Electoral Parties dataset

The Post-Rebel Electoral Parties (PREP) dataset offers an important new tool to study the transformation of rebel groups into political parties. It provides longitudinal data on the electoral participation and performance in national elections of political parties formed by armed opposition groups after civil war. Post-rebel electoral parties sit at the center of overlapping research agendas that address how best to build durable peace, and how to build resilient political systems and capable states after devastating conflict. A better understanding of how and why these parties participate and perform in elections over time is critical to any assessment of liberal peacebuilding. These parties – their strategic choices, organizational development, and impact on the political systems in which they participate – are also relevant to the broader study of comparative democratization, political parties, and party systems. Our dataset follows these parties forward through up to three decades of participation in postwar electoral politics. The current version of the data consists of 78 distinct parties derived from 56 conflict actors. The data cover 322 legislative election years and 216 executive elections in 39 countries over 30 years (1990–2021). This article describes the data and articulates the need for and motivation behind the dataset. We then illustrate the relevance of the data by testing the impact of rebel participation on the long-term peace.

Can criminal organizations be non-State parties to armed conflict?

AbstractThe motivations of armed groups are widely considered to be irrelevant for the applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL). As long as organized violence is of sufficient intensity, and armed groups have sufficient capacity to coordinate and carry out military operations, there is an armed conflict for purposes of international law. It follows that large-scale criminal organizations can, in principle, be treated legally on a par with political insurgent groups. Drug cartels in particular, if sufficiently armed and well organized, can constitute armed opposition groups in the legal sense when their confrontation with State forces is sufficiently intense. This article problematizes this interpretation. It corroborates standing legal doctrine in finding that subjective motives are not a sound basis to exclude the application of IHL, but it argues that a workable distinction can be made between the strategic logic and the organizational goals of criminal groups and those of political insurgents. Drawing on a growing body of empirical studies on the political economy of criminal violence, a strong presumption is defended against qualifying as armed conflict organized violence involving criminal organizations.

Mutual Interventions in Africa

AbstractGlobal datasets on interstate armed conflict suggest that African states clash with each other rarely and only for short periods. This research note shows that existing datasets paint a misleading picture. In fact, African states fight each other more often and for longer than is commonly thought, but they do so by mutually intervening in each other's intrastate conflicts. Instead of relying solely on their own armed forces, they support their rival's armed opposition groups. Such mutual interventions—most prevalent in Africa but also evident in other regions—thus span the boundaries of interstate and intrastate conflict. As a result, they have been largely overlooked by conflict scholars. Our note conceptualizes mutual intervention as a distinct form of interstate conflict, comparing and contrasting it with concepts like proxy war, competitive intervention, and international rivalry. The note then presents the first systematic survey of mutual interventions across the African continent. We identify twenty-three cases between 1960 and 2010 and demonstrate that they typically ended independently of their associated intrastate conflicts. We conclude with a research agenda that involves studying the onset, duration, termination, and consequences of mutual interventions, including collecting data on mutual interventions outside Africa to explore cross-regional differences.

Positivism or Understanding? The Complexity of Analyzing the Objectives of Armed Opposition Groups

The analysis of armed opposition groups is heavily tainted by gross categorizations and labeling. Using vague terms that reduce the objectives of such groups to a uniform binary of secessionist or reformist defies their ideational complexity, undermining the effort to gain a nuanced and in-depth understanding of their actual motives. A closer look into the Ogaden National Liberation Front in Ethiopia reveals the type of complexity we might expect to find in armed opposition groups’ objectives, and thus the problem with superficially labeling them to make for easy comparative analyses.

Can There Be a Crime of Internal Aggression?

Aggression is usually conceived as a phenomenon of inter-state relations. However, this view seems lacking in an era in which most – and certainly the deadliest – wars are conflicts within states. Yet, much in line with the general view in international law that there is no internal jus ad bellum, there is no international norm that criminalizes, in a straightforward manner, the wrongful resort to armed force within states. Crucially, if the normative core of the crime of aggression is to address the unjust killings that it entails – including killings that might be lawful under jus in bello – then the absence of an internal equivalent of aggression reflects an inconsistency. This Chapter, therefore, offers a preliminary discussion of a crime of internal aggression. Building on a previous work, it argues that international human rights law can serve as an internal equivalent of jus ad bellum. It then discusses whether existing international criminal law captures wrongful killings that do not violate international humanitarian law, when these occur in internal conflicts. Arguing that the answer is negative, this Chapter imagines a crime of internal aggression, applicable both to the leaders of states and of armed opposition groups.

How do states collapse? Towards a model of causal mechanisms

ABSTRACT State collapse is a highly consequential event. But we know very little about the reasons why and how states lose their capacities of violence control, rule-making and taxation. In order to explore the underlying causal mechanisms, we use a nested analysis combining Qualitative Comparative Analysis and comparative process-tracing. While the mobilisation of armed opposition groups is a necessary condition for state collapse, it only works in concurrence with other conditions, namely political transitions, repression, factionalism, intra-elite rivalry and external interventions. Thus, the article presents a causal model that shows the alternative pathways leading to state collapse.

Why International Lawyers Would Be Better Off Without the Concept of Personality

This paper argues that an unwarranted bias against the international legal personality of non-State entities has been passed down through generations of international lawyers since the 19th century and continues to influence the interpretation and application of contemporary norms across the board in the international legal system. Contrary to conventional wisdom, international law did not apply to States alone until World War II, only to transform during the second half of the 20th century so as to include non-State actors as its subjects. Rather, positive law developments since the 18th century consistently corroborate the notion articulated by Hans Kelsen that the international legal personality of an entity – be it a State, an armed opposition group, or an individual – is solely contingent upon interpretation of international norms. In other words, the answer to the question of the international legal rights and obligations of any entity is, and always was, strictly empirical. Yet, the ‘States-only’ conception of international legal personality is seemingly so ingrained in the minds of many contemporary international lawyers that they inadvertently rely on it when faced with concrete treaty provisions directed at non-State entities. The paper presents two manifestations of this phenomenon: 1) the general perception that EU law is ‘a new legal order’; and 2) the widespread notion that armed opposition groups are only bound by common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II to the extent that these norms reflect customary international law. Similar examples of the ‘States only’ conception’s continued impact may be found in other subfields such as international criminal law, international human rights law, and international investment law. Against this background, the paper questions not only the way in which students worldwide are taught about international legal personality, but the overall value of this concept in international law.

Terrorist or Armed Opposition Group Fighter? The Experience of UK Courts and the Implications for Public International Law

Abstract The aim of this article is to explore British courts’ jurisprudence relating to the actions of those who have committed acts abroad which, in some circumstances, might be considered terrorism. It does this by identifying three different types of attacks: against civilians, against UN-mandated forces and against another State’s military forces. What emerges from this analysis is that British courts readily classified the first two forms of attack as terrorism while remaining flexible in respect of the third. The article draws on domestic law concerning terrorism and also that which relates to immigration and asylum claims. From this it is apparent the courts have used a complex patchwork of international and domestic law to distinguish between terrorism and ‘legitimate armed attacks’. This is significant because the discussion of the issues by the courts might be of assistance in clarifying and developing the distinction in international law.

Introductory Remarks by Vincent-Joël Proulx

In recent years, individuals have increasingly travelled from their respective countries to join the ranks of armed opposition groups and terrorist networks, oftentimes in zones of ongoing armed conflict. One must look no further than recent newspaper headlines to realize that the “foreign fighters” phenomenon is as pervasive across borders as it is challenging, both from policy and legal standpoints. While the prospect of individuals travelling abroad to join ongoing hostilities is far from novel, the number of such foreign fighters lending support to terrorist organizations has been unprecedented in recent years, posing considerable threats to domestic, regional, and international peace and security. Hence, domestic, regional, transnational, and international actors have adopted measures to counteract terrorism, more broadly, and have begun to address the problem of foreign (terrorist) fighters. The contributions of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are particularly noteworthy and, indeed, there has been growing interest in that organ's “quasi-legislative” activities.

The Strategic Use of Peace: Non-State Armed Groups and Subnational Peacebuilding Mechanisms in Northeastern India

ABSTRACTThe northeastern region of India has witnessed several armed movements that have sought to achieve a variety of political goals ranging from secession to limited autonomy for specific ethnic groups. In seeking to limit the violence perpetrated in the course of these contemporary subnational insurgencies, a multilayered approach has been developed by the Government of India (GoI) and, more specifically, by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in coordination with the provincial (or state) governments. The range of de-escalation mechanisms range from ceasefire agreements to the more contemporary Suspension of Operations (SoO) frameworks as well as “Surrender and Rehabilitation” packages for individual members of armed groups. In certain cases, autonomous tribal governance institutions have been created within the federal structure in the backdrop of ceasefire and SoO agreements. The overall consequence of these strategies has been a measureable reduction of direct violence between the security forces and armed opposition groups. Conversely, there have been several occurrences of ethnic clashes (sometimes involving former belligerents) that have led to large-scale loss of life and forced internal displacement in the region. Furthermore, the absence of violence has not necessarily led to development. Rather, we see a situation of peace without peace dividends.

Attacks against health care in Syria, 2015–16: results from a real-time reporting tool

Collecting credible data on violence against health services, health workers, and patients in war zones is a massive challenge, but crucial to understanding the extent to which international humanitarian law is being breached. We describe a new system used mainly in areas of Syria with a substantial presence of armed opposition groups since November, 2015, to detect and verify attacks on health-care services and describe their effect. All Turkey health cluster organisations with a physical presence in Syria, either through deployed and locally employed staff, were asked to participate in the Monitoring Violence against Health Care (MVH) alert network. The Turkey hub of the health cluster, a UN-activated humanitarian health coordination body, received alerts from health cluster partners via WhatsApp and an anonymised online data-entry tool. Field staff were asked to seek further information by interviewing victims and other witnesses when possible. The MVH data team triangulated alerts to identify individual events and distributed a preliminary flash update of key information (location, type of service, modality of attack, deaths, and casualties) to partners, WHO, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and donors. The team also received and entered alerts from several large non-health cluster organisations (known as external partners, who do their own information-gathering and verification processes before sharing their information). Each incident was then assessed in a stringent process of information-matching. Attacks were deemed to be verified if they were reported by a minimum of one health cluster partner and one external partner, and the majority of the key datapoints matched. Alerts that did not meet this standard were deemed to be unverified. Results were tabulated to describe attack occurrence and impact, disaggregated where possible by age, sex, and location. Between early November, 2015, and Dec 31 2016, 938 people were directly harmed in 402 incidents of violence against health care: 677 (72%) were wounded and 261 (28%) were killed. Most of the dead were adult males (68%), but the highest case fatality (39%) was seen in children aged younger than 5 years. 24% of attack victims were health workers. Around 44% of hospitals and 5% of all primary care clinics in mainly areas with a substantial presence of armed opposition groups experienced attacks. Aerial bombardment was the main form of attack. A third of health-care services were hit more than once. Services providing trauma care were attacked more than other services. The data system used in this study addressed double-counting, reduced the effect of potentially biased self-reports, and produced credible data from anonymous information. The MVH tool could be feasibly deployed in many conflict areas. Reliable data are essential to show how far warring parties have strayed from international law protecting health care in conflict and to effectively harness legal mechanisms to discourage future perpetrators. None.

Between Afrocentric Foreign Policy Thrust and Domestic National Security Interest: A Review of Nigeria's 'Intervention' in Mali

This paper focuses on Nigeria’s participation in the military intervention in Mali in January 2013 to assist the country’s beleaguered government fight the al-Qaeda supported Tuareg rebels and restore peace and stability to the West African neighbour. While the paper contends that Africa as the centre-piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy since its attainment of independence in 1960 is understandable given the country’s vantage position in Africa, it nonetheless examines the rationale for troops deployment to Mali in the face of threat to its domestic national security orchestrated by the activities of Boko Haram in the North and other armed opposition groups elsewhere in the country. This is with a view to finding out whether its action is in consonance with its perceived national interest or African solidarity or both. The national interest approach will be utilized for the paper.

Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of Symbolic Violence: what´s happening into Colombian Classrooms?

This discussion paper arises from the academic proposal made for elective seminar of the Doctorate in Education from Universidad Santo Tomás in Bogotá Colombia ‘la violencia simbólica en la obra de Pierre Bourdieu y el acto pedagógico’. In a very particular scenario being presented in the Colombian nation in recent months in which the political, economic and cultural academic country seeks ways out of decades of war between the government and armed opposition groups, it is necessary that this topic enters into the classroom and reflect about these very pointed and particular tensions that every day are fought at schools, colleges or universities. In this sense, one of them has to do with power relationships between teachers and students, the study of its genesis, its development and evolution are essential for understanding today's school as the setting in which they are educating the new generation of Colombians who, apparently, will be the first to live in a country at peace. It is assumed therefore that the author’s ideas on Bourdieu’s theory stem from the author’s experience of working in Colombia as a teacher in several schools and universities. After years of pedagogical experiences, this would make an interesting insight, through the lens of Bourdieu, into the dominant educational pedagogical approach in a country which is perceived to be unstable by other nations. A position paper on how students may be discriminated against or oppressed because of the power struggles or tensions within the classroom and what Bourdieu might call cultural arbitraries, would make interesting reading. For this analysis, it is assumed that the theory of Pierre Bourdieu can be helpful to understand this phenomenon, since it allows to address the issue from the theoretical but also leaves the possibility of understanding the phenomenon from teaching practice and the school.

Political party formation by former armed opposition groups after civil war

ABSTRACT Under what conditions are rebel groups successfully incorporated into democratic politics when civil war ends? Using an original cross-national, longitudinal dataset, we examine political party formation by armed opposition groups over a 20-year period, from 1990 to 2009. We find that former armed opposition groups form parties in more than half of our observations. A rebel group’s pre-war political experience, characteristics of the war and how it ended outweigh factors such as the country’s political and economic traits and history. We advance a theoretical framework based on rebel leaders’ expectations of success in post-war politics, and we argue that high rates of party formation by former armed opposition groups are likely a reflection of democratic weakness rather than democratic robustness in countries emerging from conflict.

Main Political and Economic Events of February 2016

In February 2016, the RF Government actively discussed its anti-crisis plan and reached a consensus to the effect that the automotive and housing construction industries, as well as non-raw material exports and agriculture, should be subsidized from the budget. At the same time, the Government failed to strike a balance between its good intentions and budget revenue. To further complicate matters, the anti-crisis plan omitted the issue of the debt of Vnesheconombank, whose head Vladimir Dmitriev resigned in mid-February. It should also be noted that in January and February 2016, oil prices were twice lower than those envisaged in the budget. As a result, the Government came to the decision that in April 2016 the budget should be considerably revised. As a matter of fact, the Government did not discuss any specific cuts in budget expenditure, while its privatization plans were encumbered by a number of conditions that could hardly attract many bidders. In a separate development, in Syria, where Russia had become engaged in an aerial campaign against the Islamic State terrorist organization, the government of Bashar al-Assad and some of the armed opposition groups announced that they had reached a truce deal. However, neither a political nor a military solution to the Syrian crisis appears to be in the offing.

A Ghost in the Ivory Tower: Positivism and International Legal Regulation of Armed Opposition Groups

Why do scholars, who generally acknowledge the international legal personality of non-State entities, still question the bindingness of the law of non-international armed conflict on insurgents? This article examines the relationship between the two dominant positivist conceptions of international legal personality and the rights and obligations of insurgents as a matter of positive international law. First, the article illustrates that the evolution of the law of non-international armed conflict corroborates Hans Kelsen’s idea that the international legal personality of an entity, be it a State, an armed opposition group, or an individual, is solely contingent upon interpretation of international norms. Second, it shows that the traditional perception of States as exclusive subjects of international law – though never reflected in positive norms governing non-international armed conflict – continues to influence the current debate on the theoretical underpinnings for binding insurgents. The orthodox ‘States-only’ conception of international legal personality is seemingly so ingrained in the minds of contemporary international lawyers that they inadvertently rely on it when faced with international legal regulation of non-State entities. Finally, the article addresses the implications of these findings for the overall question of international legal obligations of non-State actors.

A Syrian neurosurgeon's journey.

A Syrian neurosurgeon's journey.

On the Dynamics of Extremist Violence

AbstractMany modern armed conflicts contain more than two fighting parties, or armed opposition groups that have factions within them. It is the moderates in an armed opposition that governments negotiate with. But the agreement’s fate depends on the approval of all other significant actors within the opposition. We construct a dynamic model of conflict in which such an actor is to decide whether to accept a peace agreement signed by the moderates or not. Using this model we analyze the behavior of our decision maker, focusing on outcomes like the optimal settlement strategy, expected duration of the conflict, and the decision maker’s expected payoff from conflict. We then determine how these outcomes are affected by changes in the conflict environment. Finally, we extend our model to analyze the implications of commitment problems, and the possibility that the conflict ends with military victory of either side.