Intrastate Conflict Research Articles

State capacity and termination of terror campaigns: a qualitative evidence from PKK

ABSTRACT This study addresses the following puzzle: Why did the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) manage to sustain its terror campaign when Turkey increased its state capacity, yet ended its campaign of violence when Turkey’s state capacity significantly declined? The effect of counter-responses of violent groups to increases in state capacity and how those responses affect the chance of their survival, however, has not been adequately considered in studying the link between state capacity and intrastate conflict. We argue that increasing state capacity to penetrate the society and provide public services will threaten the survival of the terror group, thereby incentivizing the group to develop coercive and non-coercive strategies to secure its survival, such as coercive recruitment and fundraising, and providing public goods. We hypothesize that developing such strategies will increase the chances of survival of terror groups. Using the process tracing technique to analyse the history of the PKK’s terror campaign (1984–2013), we test these arguments and hypotheses. The qualitative evidence supports the theory, which opens avenues for future research to reconsider the role of state capacity, particularly in non-military measures, on terrorism and civil conflict by incorporating the role of counter-responses of violent groups to changes in state capacity.

Healing Stalemates: The Role of Ceasefires in Ripening Conflict

Ceasefires are often associated with inhibiting conflict ripeness because they remove the immediate costs of conflict and the pressure on conflicting parties to negotiate. Yet, in many intrastate conflicts, ceasefires have proven instrumental in reviving or enabling peace talks. This article provides an analytical framework to systematically assess the impact of ceasefires on conflict ripeness and identify key factors that condition their effects. Enriching ripeness theory with insights from the related bargaining theory of war and ceasefire research, this article identifies three key milestones in the transition from war to negotiated settlement—ripeness for negotiations, for concessions and for settlement—and the conditions that help conflicting parties reach these milestones. It demonstrates how and why ceasefires have the potential to foster ripeness at all three stages, whereas ceasefire violations threaten to undermine the ripening process, particularly after the onset of negotiations. The analysis suggests that temporal limits to ceasefires in the first two ripeness stages increase the probability that ceasefires contribute to ripening, while in the third stage, it is better that parties agree on an indefinite ceasefire or link it to the progress of negotiations in order to enable movement towards settlement. External enforcement of a ceasefire can pose a significant impediment to conflict ripeness.

Operationalizing Human Security in Contemporary Operating Environment

On November 24, 2021, Mr. Stephen Anning presented on Operationalizing Human Security in Contemporary Operating Environment at the 2021 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The key points of discussion included the concept of human security, the differences between interstate and intrastate conflict, the challenges of understanding human security, and how operationalizing human security can address some of those challenges. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives.

The economic local turn in peace and conflict studies: economic peacebuilding interventions and the everyday

ABSTRACT This article calls for a better integration of economic and socio-economic aspects of peacemaking efforts into critical peace and conflict scholarship and can be read as a corrective to the predominance of top-down and state-centric lenses in the examination of post-war economic recovery. As of yet, academic debates surrounding peace interventions have not adequately integrated the economic with the political, in particular at the level of the everyday. Most theories in International Relations that engage with the connection between economics and politics during and after conflict – as well as the original notions of liberal peace – are based on the idea that international trade and market liberalisation reduce the chances of war between states. This neglects the sub-state level, and does not pay attention to the quality of peace that results. Considering the shift to intra-state conflicts, this article discusses the epistemological consequences of neglecting the economic everyday in conflict-affected societies and its implications for peacemaking, for both international and domestic actors. Shifting the level of analysis to the sub-state level and using an intersectional and inter-disciplinary approach broadens our understanding of peace and peacemaking, and how different segments of the populations experience them.

Economy of an Intra-state Armed Conflict: The Case of Syria

Contemporary international relations have been witnessing many armed conflicts. As usual, they do not cause dissolution of states due to the factors that include adaptation of economies to extraordinary conditions with common and specific features of country cases. The need of analyzing them to find ways for conflicts’ settlement explains the theoretical importance of the article. Facing the diversity of notions describing conflicts, the author assumes existence of a notion of economy of an intra-state armed conflict (EISAC). Such hypothesis looks new exploiting two groups of arguments based on content analysis and empiric materials accumulated during the author’s stints as a diplomat in Damascus. Firstly, any EISAC has closer links with the conflict itself than the relevant state. It can emerge under scenarios of “failed state” (Somalia), “partially failed state” (Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen), parallel economies (Syria), a formal split of a state (South Sudan), or in more than a country (ISIS). Secondly, Libya, Syria, and Yemen have proved that the EISAC does not mean manipulation with meanings of similar definitions including a wartime militarized economy or a peace-time defense sector (USSR, North Korea) not correlating with the crisis generating economy (Lebanon) or the sanctioned economy (Iraq:1980-2003, Iran). Also, it does not make a hyponym of the economy in a conflict inspired by foreign aggression (Kuwait: 1990-1991). Yet, the scale of damage caused by foreign aggressions could be compared with that resulting from intra-state conflicts. Syria has been chosen as its economy has acquired classical features of the EISAC.

Global Security Entanglement and the Mobility Paradox

The world today is profoundly interconnected, but also characterized by ongoing national competition and intra-state conflict. At the nexus of these dynamics is the question of cross-border mobility, which cuts through and connects myriad, disparate areas of “entangled” security—from pandemics to climate change, to conflict and military engagement, to challenges to democracies in the form of internal polarization and external threats. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a striking illustration of this “global security entanglement” in action. This essay presents the concept of security entanglement, illustrates how it operates, and explores some of its theoretical and practical implications.

Гражданское общество в Йемене в эпоху сетевых коммуникаций и новых медиа: к проблеме гражданского активизма

The purpose of the study is to analyze the specifics of the Yemen “new media” functioning associated with the use of the Internet and digital technologies, paying special attention to the functioning of citizen journalism. The problems of studying Arabic online communications in the context of regional and intrastate conflicts are touched upon. Materials reflecting the activity of various groups of civil society in modern Yemen are considered. We analyze the changes in the consumption of media products in the context of the civil war, the peculiarities of Internet com-munications and some contradictions in the media discourse in the Yemen Internet sector. Based on the socio-cultural and information-culturological approaches to the media, we note the reasons for the lag of “new media” and establish the factors that affect the nature of civic activism. A particularly important factor is the impact of mass culture, reflecting the patterns of globalization. We draw conclusions about the reasons for the backlog of the national media in the era of the “digital divide” caused by the economic crisis and the civil war. The prospect of studying civic activism on the Web will be to analyze the impact of the “Arab Spring” on the student audience in Aden.

Nevojni aspekti strateškog odvraćanja

Nowadays state and its citizens are exposed to a wide range of threats that are not necessarily of a military character, which requires a systemic and strategic response. The main hypothesis of the paper is that the very change in the perception of security, as well as the increasingly diverse manners of endangering it, which are also reflected in the theories of modern wars, impose on state the obligation to expand the concept of strategic deterrence to other spheres of social activities, in addition to the military, which still remains crucially important. In order to better understand the concept of strategic deterrence, the authors try to provide answers to the questions: who should be deterred and what from? In addition to armed aggression, which strategic deterrence is primarily aimed at, the paper indicates that the focus has to also be on all other phenomena and activities that lead to the destabilisation of society, the collapse of institutions, some form of intrastate conflict and, ultimately, the collapse of state and/or violent regime change. Having in mind that deterrence is, in essence, a matter of perception, a special part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the situation in Serbia, that is, the perception of its internal weaknesses that affect the ability of strategic deterrence. For the purpose of this analysis, in the paper the authors use some databases and reports by international organizations, which make it possible to do a comparative analysis with other countries and monitor its trends. Theoretical assumptions and analysed data are used as a basis for answering the question: how to deter? For strategic deterrence to be effective, first of all it must not be partial and has to encompass all domains of national power. In this sense, it is pointed out that military power is important, but not sufficient. Moreover, in the context of strategic deterrence, the importance of strengthening the international position of state through cooperation with others, as well as attracting foreign investment, is emphasized. Finally, as a key condition for the credibility of strategic deterrence, the authors emphasize political stability and the functioning of institutions. Bearing in mind the expansion of the context of strategic deterrence, important institutions in this regard are, in addition to the military, police, intelligence and security services, certainly also the judiciary, financial institutions, educational and health system, cultural and information institutions, etc. For a country that has not managed to ensure the minimum of unity within its society for strategic decisions, or at least the absence of extreme polarisation, as well as the proper functioning of the state apparatus and other segments of society, there are not armed forces that could defend it. Such a state will not be externally attacked by potential enemies, but internally. Precisely due to this, the authors conclude that without a comprehensive and systemic approach, without strong and efficient institutions, without establishing a functional and democratic society, there is no successful deterrence.

The Influencing Factors on SUDAN’S DISPUTE Settlement and Its transition to the Democratic System

Purpose: In the case of a conflict that today destabilizes a country s system such as a complex civil war, it is quite difficult to resolve it on its own. If disputes are not any more internal problems and threaten international security, efforts by the international community cannot help but be made. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the resolution of disputes in a country and the transition of democratic systems can be achieved through multilateral cooperation among various actors in the international community. Method: To this end, the situation of Darfur in Sudan will be selected as a case study. First, the factors that influenced the resolution of conflict faced by Sudan and the transition of the democratic system will be divided into internal and external factors, then I look at how these factors worked and what the correlation between them is. Results: The two internal factors, the demand for democracy by civil society, which used the coup as an opportunity for change, and the resolution of disputes by the transitional government and the tran-sition to a democratic system, had positive impacts on Sudan. The external factor pushed by the U.S. has affected the will of the interim government for the transition to the democratic system. Efforts by the international community, including the United Nations, served as a positive external factor, too. The creation of a peace-building mission in response to the Sudanese government s willingness to re-solve the problem has served as a practical external factor of the international community. Conclusion: Intra-state conflict is not easy to be settled by the country’s single will. Therefore the Sudan case has meaningful implications to us on how that state and the international community will have to seek more inclusive efforts.

Challenges to Afghan Refugee Children’s Education in Pakistan: A Human Security Perspective

Human security is an essential component of the contemporary intra-state conflicts; promulgating renewed understanding of the perpetuating nature of the Afghan problem. Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion to the US’ long war, faces continued Human Security challenges, especially lack of education in around 80 percent of school-aged children of Afghan refugees. Pakistan, which itself has the second largest number of school-aged children out of school, faces illiteracy in children of Afghan refugees as the surmountable challenge that links down to the seven broader components of human security identified by Mahbub-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s former finance minister and economist, in the 1994 Human Development Report. The growing illiteracy in second and third-generation Afghan refugees is the product of poverty, socio-economic disparities, and socio-cultural restrictions, especially in regards to the relative discouragement of female education. In order to offset the gravity of challenges to the educational aspect of human security, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is continuously cooperating with the Pakistani government in enhancing educational infrastructure in terms of community and home-based schooling, vocational and technical training, and capacity building of Pakistan’s schooling system to accommodate Afghan refugee children. Therefore, the paper takes qualitative checks of the primary sources from the government of Pakistan and UNHCR and secondary sources to find the answers to three following questions in different four parts of the paper. The result of this study is that the main challenge for Afghan refugee child education in Pakistan is the poor quality of education. Therefore, UNHCR should work with the Pakistani government to develop investment programs and put in place solid surveillance and oversight of schools to improve their quality to an acceptable standard.

A theory of competing interventions by external powers in intrastate conflicts: implications for war and armed peace

ABSTRACT This paper presents a game-theoretic model of competing interventions in civil conflict. We analyze the conflict between an incumbent government (as defender) and its rebel group (as attacker) when the two parties receive military support from different external powers. In contrast to the traditional analysis of non-competing or biased intervention by a single third party, we first show how competition in external powers can strategically alter the outcome of the two-party conflict and then identify the conditions under which the defender launches an effective strategy to deter the attacker. We find that (i) when the stakes that the competing external powers have in their respective supported parties are equivalent, the amounts of military support endogenously offered by the external interveners are comparable. The government’s deterrence strategy is ineffective, and the fighting persists despite the warring parties’ valuations for political dominance being asymmetric. (ii) when the external power that supports the government has a higher stake than the competing external power that supports the rebel group, the government’s arming allocation can deter the rebellion. (iii) These results have implications for multi-power interventions so that the equilibrium outcome can be ‘armed peace’ or a prolonged war as observed in civil conflicts.

BOOK REVIEW CHARLES THOMAS AND TOYIN FALOLA, SECESSION AND SEPARATIST CONFLICTS IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA. CALGARY: UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS, 2020. PP. VIII, 344.

The book, Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa, is a timely intervention on this important dimension to conflicts in Africa, especially in the post-cold war order where intra-state conflicts have become the norm rather than exception. Armed with suitably relevant historical analysis and epistemological methodology, the authors cleverly approach the varieties of conflict cases associated with secessionist, separatist and irredentist moves and Movements across Africa. Such liberation efforts span through struggles towards decolonization and struggles for self-determination or autonomy. The arrangement of the book is methodical, encompassing the dynamics and structures of successful, failed, protracted and short-lived attempts at secession and separatism in Africa and implications for sub-Saharan African states.

The Genesis of the International Criminal Court

Abstract This work analyzes the practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the most ambitious project aimed at combating and preventing mass violations of human rights in inter-and intrastate conflicts. Sure thing, such an institution has not emerged from anywhere, but it is the culmination in the progress of international criminal law evolution. That is why the progress that was made over the centuries and historical conditions forcing its establishment cannot be ignored. This article studies the formation of the International Criminal Court through the prism of the history of previous models of judicial bodies bringing to justice war criminals. Moreover, it analyses the historical conditions and international debates around the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. Conclusions focus on the problems that arose during the establishment of the ICC, and the ways in which they affect ICC activities nowadays.

Illiberal peacebuilding in a hybrid regime. Authoritarian strategies for conflict containment in Myanmar

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.

The role of governmental weapons procurements in forecasting monthly fatalities in intrastate conflicts: a semiparametric hierarchical hurdle model

ABSTRACT Accurate and interpretable forecasting models predicting spatially and temporally fine-grained changes in the numbers of intrastate conflict casualties are of crucial importance for policymakers and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using a count data approach, we propose a hierarchical hurdle regression model to address the corresponding prediction challenge at the monthly PRIO-grid level. More precisely, we model the intensity of local armed conflict at a specific point in time as a three-stage process. Stages one and two of our approach estimate whether we will observe any casualties at the country- and grid-cell-level, respectively, while stage three applies a regression model for truncated data to predict the number of such fatalities conditional upon the previous two stages. Within this modeling framework, we focus on the role of governmental arms imports as a processual factor allowing governments to intensify or deter from fighting. We further argue that a grid cell’s geographic remoteness is bound to moderate the effects of these military buildups. Out-of-sample predictions corroborate the effectiveness of our parsimonious and theory-driven model, which enables full transparency combined with accuracy in the forecasting process.

The Role of Gulf Cooperation Council in Conflict Management, 1981–2019: A Comparative Study

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considered one of the most important regional organizations in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, which effectively solves some of the crises in the sub-region and the wider Middle East. GCC has employed many diplomatic procedures to address regional crises, including mediation, negotiation, and arbitration. Undoubtedly, GCC has successfully resolved some intrastate conflicts, particularly border conflicts among its member states. However, despite these achievements, the GCC has failed to resolve several regional disputes, and the continuation of such crises threatens the region’s security and stability. This article seeks to explore why the GCC institutions are ineffective in resolving some regional crises. In doing so, it addresses the comparative study by focusing on two case studies (the Iraq–Iran War and the ongoing Yemen Crisis) and provides three main results: first, the GCC has not directly intervened as an institution to resolve certain disputes; however, some GCC members have acted on its behalf and represented it. Second, despite the GCC member states’ efforts, they are still unable to resolve and settle some disputes because they prioritize self-interest over collaboration. Third, the conflict of interest of various regional actors contributes to the lack of significant progress in resolving crises.

Diverse neighbors and post-conflict recovery at the village level: Evidence from Iraq after ISIL

Why do some towns recover faster than others after intrastate conflict? Many important decisions about post-conflict recovery are made at the substate level, but little empirical work has investigated what causes differences in recovery outcomes within a country. This article suggests that proximity to ethno-religiously diverse neighbors slows a town’s post-conflict recovery. A town has ‘diverse neighbors’ if towns with different plurality ethno-religious groups are nearby. This hypothesis is tested by exploring variation in recovery speed among Iraqi towns after the 2014–17 Islamic State insurgency (ISIL). The article constructs 81-month panels of economic activity for 379 Iraqi settlements occupied by ISIL by using satellite-observed nighttime light emissions as a proxy for economic activity. The panels reveal large variation in post-conflict recovery among towns during the first year of peace. Village-level survey data are then used to construct a measure of neighbor diversity, which is combined with lighting-based recovery scores in spatial autoregression. The results show that greater neighbor diversity is robustly associated with slower settlement recovery. The neighbor diversity penalty cannot be fully explained by cleavages between groups ‘on opposite sides’ of the conflict; proximity to out-group neighbors appears to slow recovery even between wartime allies. Several explanations are considered, and this article suggests that the types of post-liberation controllers that arise in diverse areas – which tend to be substate militias rather than the government – may be one important mechanism.

Arming for conflict, arming for peace? How small arms imports affect intrastate conflict risk

Although a prevalent technology of conflict, the impact of small arms imports on the risk of intrastate conflict outbreak has not been examined so far. This article argues that small arms not only enhance general military capabilities, but also contribute to state capacities necessary for conflict prevention. These two mechanisms are incorporated in a formal model of power shifts. The derived hypotheses are tested on 146 countries for the period 1993–2014. Using split-population and penalized fixed-effects logit models as innovative estimation methods for rare-events data, small arms imports are found to have no or even a risk-reducing impact.

W]hat Lies Beneath: Using Latent Networks to Improve Spatial Predictions

Abstract Spatial interdependencies commonly drive the spread of violence in civil conflict. To address such interdependence, scholars often use spatial lags to model the diffusion of violence, but this requires an explicit operationalization of the connectivity matrices that represent the spread of conflict. Unfortunately, in many cases, there are multiple competing processes that facilitate the spread of violence making it difficult to identify the true data-generating process. We show how a network-driven methodology can allow us to account for the spread of violence, even in the cases where we cannot directly measure the factors that drive diffusion. To do so, we estimate a latent connectivity matrix that captures a variety of possible diffusion patterns. We use this procedure to study intrastate conflict in eight conflict-prone countries and show how our framework enables substantially better predictive performance than canonical spatial-lag measures. We also investigate the circumstances under which canonical spatial lags suffice and those under which a latent network approach is beneficial.

Disparity and Diversion: Domestic Economic Inequality and MID Initiation

Abstract Scholarship has demonstrated that domestic economic inequality is related to a number of forms of intrastate conflict, such as civil wars and rebellions. There are good reasons to believe that it also has an impact on the initiation of militarized interstate disputes for diversionary reasons. Such use of external force may refocus popular attention and may reinforce the strong nationalist sentiment that tends to prevail in societies with substantial economic inequality. Our empirical results support this contention in democracies but, as expected, not in autocracies. At a time when domestic economic inequality is rising across the world, our findings may be timely.