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CONFLICT AND COOPERATION
IN GLOBAL POLITICS
LECTURE 3: DYNAMICS OF CIVIL WAR
Dr. Nel Vandekerckhove
Agenda: Dynamics of civil war
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Causes, trigger & dynamics of war
What is civil war?
Logics of violence
Patterns of power & authority
Elites & economic networks
Identity & social status
Wartime experience (food, suffering)
Causes, trigger & dynamics of war
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Causes
The roots of violent conflict
Often long-term tensions
Historical approach & social embedded focus
Trigger
Spark that lights the violent conflict
Often a conscious strategy
Assassination/symbolic attack
Example. Killing of three girls in traditional dresses
Dynamics
Patterns of civil war not necessarily in line with the onset
of war
Adds to complexity of violent conflicts
What is civil war?
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“Internal or civil war, the most common form
of armed conflict since 1945, has been
defined as armed combat within the
boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity
between parties subject to a common
authority at the outset of the hostilities
(Kalyvas 2006). Operational definitions of
both international and civil war rely on a
fatality threshold—usually 1,000 battle-
related fatalities (Singer and Small 1972)”
(Kalyvas, 2009: 592)
What is armed conflict?
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“An armed conflict is a contested
incompatibility that concerns government
and/or territory where the use of armed force
between two parties, of which at least one is
the government of a state, results in at least
25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year”
(Uppsala Conflict Data Progam)
State-based conflict
Non-state conflict
One-sided conflict
What is civil war?
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Beginning & end of civil war?
Type of violence
Intensity of violence
Low vs. high intensity conflict
Baseline?
Duration of violence
Protracted conflicts
Complex political emergencies
No-war-no-peace situation
Continuum of violence
What is civil war?
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Hoffman (2016):
https://index.heritage.org/military/2016/essays/
contemporary-spectrum-of-conflict/
Logics of violence
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Strategic violence:
Conquer territory & population
Terror & disruption
Physical & mental
Social fabric
Environment
Example: Sudan, Assam
What is the main goal?
Displacement
Annihilation
Provoke response
(Inter)national attention
Logics of violence
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Individual incentives:
Access to wealth, food, benefits
Social status & identity
See Beneduce et. al (2006)
Senseless violence?
War atrocities
Ethnic cleansing
Genocide
Rape = weapon of war
Torture
Patterns of power & authority
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Dynamics of war => transformations
Duration of conflict
Shifts in authority
Beneduce et. al (2006) on the DRC
How?
Parallel governance structures
Territorial enclaves
Hybrid zones of rule
Rebel governance
New political complexes
Patterns of power &
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authority
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-
from-chaos/2018/04/05/when-terrorists-
and-criminals-govern-better-than-
governments/
Elites & economic networks
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“The war has demonstrated that
interests of local elites are best served
through their association with informal
and stateless governance structures”
(Beneduce, 2006: 34)
Elites & economic networks
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Prolonged warfare -> altered networks of
access
Shifts in authority
Disconnection from capital
Globalization = other actors
Incentive for ‘no-war-no-peace’
Shadow economies
Patronage & clientelism
Big bellies & foreign aid
Example. Afghanistan,
Sierra Leone, etc.
Identity & social status
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Violence -> new identity?
DRC example
Weinstein (2006):
Resource poor vs. resource rich militias
Level of violence
Connection with population
Incentive for recruitment
Social & ideology dimension
Forced recruitment
Victim/perpetrator divide?
Stigma
Wartime experiences
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Civil war = total social phenomenon
(Nordstrom, 2004)
Displacement
Survival vs. opportunity
Quotidian suffering
Everyday life in the war zone
Shepler’s (2011) article on food
Why a good example?
Wartime experience
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“Food has the uncanny ability to tie the
minutiae of everyday experience to
broader cultural patterns, hegemonic
structures, and political-economic
processes” (Holtzman in Shepler, 2011: )
“Memories based in food are inescapable,
and they happen every day” (Shepler,
2011: 47)
Wartime experiences
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Shelper’s findings?
What did people eat?
What did rebels eat?
What did politicians eat?
Bigbellies
Greediness of the politicians
Corruption
Responsible for the hunger
Why is rice better than money?
Rice = loyalty
Availability
Next class
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Forced displacement
Please prepare:
Malkki, L. H. (1996). Speechless emissaries:
Refugees, humanitarianism, and
dehistoricization. Cultural anthropology, 11(3),
377-404.
Achilli, L. (2018). The “Good” Smuggler: The
Ethics and Morals of Human Smuggling among
Syrians. The ANNALS of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, 676(1), 77-96.
