War, Civil

Even though civil wars by definition take place within national borders, they can become global problems when they become a serious threat to international peace and security and when they involve international peacekeeping forces. Civil wars are often protracted and very destructive; and when they “spill over” into neighboring states, they can become international or transnational conflicts. Whereas civil wars used to be waged by rebels against governments solely for political reasons, such as a competition over state power—as a means to revolution, for example—both the causes fought over and the nature and number of warring parties have, in recent years, become much more diverse.

Religious divisions often impact on civil wars, and they can allow parties to claim a divine sanction for their war aims, even though very few civil wars are fought over religion as such. Some civil wars are fought over ethnicity in the sense that the opposing groups are more or less ethnically homogenous and recruitment follows ethnic divides. In some cases, this may provide scope for atrocities that might otherwise not be possible—including outright genocide—as it is easier to dehumanize people if they belong to a different ethnic group and thus easier for unscrupulous political leaders and commanders to entice troops to kill civilians. In some cases, the war aim of the insurgents is to secede from the “mother state” and form an independent state, often because they form an ethnic or national minority in the larger state but would become the majority in the secessionist one. This may be more tempting if the secessionist entity happens to be home to valuable natural resources (e.g., oil) to which the secessionists would then acquire exclusive ownership rather than having to share the revenues with the rest of the mother state. This does give the mother state even stronger incentives to prevent secession—but even when [Page 1760]there are no such material motives, virtually all states oppose secessionist attempts, even if this may require protracted counterinsurgency campaigns.

Although some analysts credit greed with being the dominant cause of civil wars, the often encountered “greed or grievance” controversy is rather artificial and based on a false dichotomy, as such grievances as make political, social, or even ethnic or religious groups resort to an armed struggle are often related to economic matters—for example, to the experience of being marginalized and discriminated against—and the apparent greed motive is thus articulated as political grievances. Conversely, civil wars ostensibly fought over grievances and with clear political goals may be driven partly by greed on the part of the leaders, but as far as the followers and foot soldiers are concerned, they are better understood as a coping strategy, that is, a quest for survival in a difficult environment. It is also entirely possible that a civil war may begin over political grievances but gradually develop into a fight over resources (e.g., control of diamond fields). In any case, the need to raise resources to feed the troops, acquire weaponry, and so forth forces even the best intentioned rebels to raise funds, either by exploiting natural resources or by preying on (i.e., “taxing”) the civilian population, usually mainly the peasantry. However, the more stationary a rebel group is, the better it tends to behave toward the civilian population, because it relies on its support for the continuing struggle.

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