Chapter 4- A Theory of Irregular War I: Collaboration

Chapter 5- A Theory of Irregular War II: Control

From“The Logic of Violence in Civil War”

by Stathis N. Kalyvas

Presented by Amy Jorgens

Irregular War

Lacks front lines – “the front is all around, and the rear is nowhere”

(Paludan)– Cooper in German-occupied Russia:

Russians aheadRussians behindAnd in betweenShooting

The boundaries separating two or more sides are blurred and fluid

Sovereignty in Civil War

Courtesy of wikipedia.org (Feb 18, 2013)

Areas controlled by pro-Assad forces

Areas controlled by anti-Assad forces

On-going fighting/Unclear situation

Syria Civil War – Controlled and Contested Areas in December 2011

Division of Sovereignty in Civil War

Zones of incumbent control – Government- ability to exercise effective control– Troops and administrators- ability to move with

safety day and night– Sovereignty-undivided (in favor of the government)

Zones of insurgent control– Insurgents- ability to effectively prevent the operation

of government forces day and night– Government-absent and unable to perform basic state

functions such as tax collection, military draft, etc.– Sovereignty-undivided (in favor of the insurgents)

Division of Sovereignty in Civil War

Contested or twilight zone (Armstrong)– Most important arena of struggle (McColl)– Zone of contested control– Neither actors hold permanent sway– Some instances the government would have

nominal control but by night the insurgents will conduct raids and take reprisals

– Irregular war alters the nature of sovereignty

Sovereignty and Distinct Population Sets

• Zones of incumbent control • Zones of Insurgent control

• Contested or twilight zones

Populations under full control of actors

Populations actors must sharePopulations completely outside their control

Sovereignty-Population• Zones of incumbent control • Zones of Insurgent control

• Contested or twilight zones

Populations under full control of actors

Populations actors must share

Populations completely outside their control

S E G M E N T E D

F R A A G M E N T E D

Irregular War Alters the Nature of Sovereignty

Courtesy of wikipedia.org (Feb 18, 2013)

Russian Civil War

Identification Problem

Irregular combatants and the spies and agents of either side hide among the civilian population– “Two out of 10 people here hate you and want to

kill you. You just have to figure out which two.” –from an American soldier patrolling an Afghan village (Zucchino)

– Soviet soldiers referred to their Afghan adversaries as dukhi or ghosts in English (Baker)

Two Dimension to Identification Problem

• Categorical refusal of at least one side, the insurgents, to be reduced to a single identity, that of combatant (Andreopolous)

• Refusal of the surrounding population to identify them to their opponents:– The people do not know who is really an insurgent– They refrain from identifying the insurgent

combatants who hide among them-out of diverse motivations, including sympathy and fear.

Support

• The outcome of irregular war hinges on the behavior of civilians; civilian support or popular support – ‘the sine qua non of victory”

• Two different ways of thinking about popular support-attitudinal support (preferences, or allegiance)-behavioral support (actions)

Support

Question- If an insurgency grows rapidly does it mean that it represents popular support aspirations and had broad popular support?

Why People Support?

-People can be coerced -Violence can be used to force people to alter their behavior that may not be consistent with their preferences-Many fighters are conscripted or abducted -Curiosity and prospect of excitement and adventure-Lure of danger-Acquistion of new and more rewarding individual identity

Incentives of Support-Collaboration may provide access to public goods (such as dispute resolution, or protection against common crime, which explodes when state authority waners) or individual material benefits-Protection against indiscriminate violence from the opposite side-Escape from obligations that are seen as more onerous (such as military or labor drafts)-Acquisition of higher status including what status can be obtained via access to guns

IS SUPPORT ENDOGENOUS TO THE WAR? WHY? WHY NOT?

What is collaboration?

• The minimum core of collaboration is generally nonbetrayal to the enemy

• For a civil war it being a polarizing process collaboration and noncollaboration tends to be zero-sum.

In practice, political actors want:

• Active collaboration from a small number of dedicated supporters, and passive but exclusive collaboration from the population at large

• To prevent civilians from collaborating with their rivals

• Prefer exclusive but incomplete collaboration to nonexclusive collaboration (such as neutrality and hedging)

• Prefer a low level of collaboration to no collaboration at all.

Military Resources and Control

• To achieve control military resources generally trump the population’s prewar political and social preferences

• Enormous amount of military resources is required for the imposition of full and permanent control in a civil war-torn country

• Premium on the effective use of violence as a key instrument for establishing and maintaining control-thus for generating collaboration and deterring defection

Relation Between Collaboration and Control

• Allocation of collaboration among belligerents is closely related to the distribution of control

• Control has a decisive impact on the population’s collaboration with a political actor

• Hypothesis: the higher the level of control by a political actor in an area, the higher the level of civilian collaboration with this political actor

Sovereignty-Population-Collaboration

Zones of incumbentcontrol

Zones of insurgentcontrol

Populations under full control ofincumbents

Collaboration with incumbents

Populations under full control ofinsurgents

Collaboration with insurgents

Relation Between Collaboration and Control

Question- What is the direction of the causality-Does control spawn collaboration or is it the other way around?

Russian Civil War-100,000 men-army, 3 mo, 40 m, universal resentment of the preceding admin (Brovkin)Cuius regio eius religio

Relation Between Collaboration and Control

• False – control emerges exclusively from collaboration and never shapes it

• False – “median voter” view of civil war, namely that patterns of control during the course of the civil war reflect majoritarian preferences, especially as reflected in the prewar period. Indeed it is not necessarily the case that political majorities enjoy a military advantage over minorities, in fact the opposite may be true. Bosnia-great number of Muslims did not translate into a military advantage

Forms of Defection

Noncompliance – Public and private; collective and individual– Actions such as complaining and critiquing, tax

evading, shirking, and fleeing– Motives: Economic considerations and survival– If left unpunished, noncompliance may trigger

cascades of more serious instances of noncollaboration

Forms of Defection

Informing– Act of supplying information about one side to its

rival– Indicates some form of association with the political

actor to whom information is being directed, and thus it is private

– It is individual rather than collective and its effectiveness tends to be unrelated to the number of informers

– It matters: it provides a direct military advantage, and it solves the identification problem

Forms of Defection

Informing (cont’n)– Motivations: political preferences; expectations of

personal gain, private grudges, coercion and blackmail, or survival considerations

– It is responsive to risk-violence may deter informing

Forms of Defection

Switching Sides – Both individual and collective – Usually public- defectors openly start collaborating

with a rival political actor– Widespread in civil wars, and repercussions– Some may switch more than once, or serve in

several rival armies