Lecture 3 explaining civil war

Civil war

Last week, impact of war on civilians

?Why do

civil wars begin

What iscivil war ?

a contested incompatibility which concerns types of political system… where the use of armed force between two parties…

… of which at least one

is the government

and the state,

results in at least 1,000

battle-related

deaths per year

(PRIO 2013)

When an identifiable rebel organization challenges the government militarily and the resulting violence results in…

… more than 1,000 combat related deaths,

with at least 5 % on either side’

(Collier et at 2003: 11)

If… groups are fighting each other this does not constitute a civil war, but communal violence. The rebel groups must be able to inflict fatalities on the government side, otherwise the violence is classed as a massacre, pogrom or genocide (Hoeffler 2012)

“

civil war

Exp

lain

ing

1identityhatred

people are brutalised and

killed not because of

anything they have done… but simply because

of who they are… Tutsis in

Rwanda, the Tamils in Sri

Lanka, the Kurds in Iraq…

[Such wars] are about… the

pursuit of malevolence and they are

unrestrained by any legal or

moral rules’ (Garnett in Baylis et al,

2002: 83)

“Hist

orically

rooted”

“Ancient

”

“primordial”

clash of civilizations”

2Narcissismo f m i n o r d i ff e r e n c e (Ignatieff, Freud)

‘contained’ by Cold War…

burst out in

globalizatio

n

“scours away distinctiveness at the surface of our

identities and forces us back into ever more assertive defence of

the inner differences - language, mentality,

myth and fantasy - that escape the surface scouring.

As it brings us closer together… we react by clinging to

the margins of difference that remain

globalization

Ignatieff 1997: 58

identity is not a

skin, but a mask”Ignatieff 1997: 58

“Nationalism is not… an eruption of

ancient historical rivalries and

antagonisms…

Ignatieff 1997: 58

It is a modern language game, invented to respond... to the uprootings of modernity

globalization has collapsed identity by bringing us all into ever closer contact

“Identity is a narrative that takes the facts of difference and turns them into a narrative justifying political self-determination

Ignatieff 1997: 58

3The new barbarism

motivated and executed in

primeval savagery

Characterized by belligerent and irrational males on ‘pot and dope’

Civil war involves the paramilitaries, guerrillas, militias, and warlords who are tearing up the failed states of the 1990s

”

and the barefoot boys with Kalashnikovs, the paramilitaries in wraparound sunglasses and the turbaned zealots of the Taliban’ (Ignatieff 1997: 7)

These are wars where the veneer of civilisation has been ripped away to reveal participants motivated not by the narcissism of difference but by…

… the narcissism of violence, where torture

is exciting, rape is fun, and looting is profitable

Gray (1999): 277.

Civil war is thus caused by refusal to engage with modernity

and neoliberal

values (Kaldor 2007)

4Badgovernance

loca

lly

civil society attacks State, state defends

Corruption, patronage, nepotism

authoritarian repression

Impoverishment, ignorance and ill-

health

Civil War

Contagion theory

civil warfare directly

connected with inadequate government

Mueller (2002: 36)

5Badgovernance

glo

bally

It also arises from international system

(Pugh and Cooper, 2004: 23)

Civil war not simply about bad rulers…

World Bank and IMF

International economy (privatization)

MNCs (diamonds, oil)

Capitalism?

6greed and grievance

wars for PROFITrebels may be motivated by the opportunities of private gain that organized violence can offer (Hoeffler 2012: 181)

fighting for ‘justice’ or

‘revenge

Aggravated by resource values on international markets

Resourcecurse

7The new wars

Cold War ends, superpower control over TW reduces

Globalization facilitating crowd-sourced democracy but

Challengers include

warlords as well as civilians

No more patronage

local resources used – oil, drugs, diamonds, minerals

Resourcecurse

Guerrillas combine with civilians against governments

But

‘Barbarians’ invoked to legitimise West

‘civiliza

tion

’

Blaming ‘barbarism’ conceals the role of

and liberal, global markets

IFIs and state policy?

?What do we know

(Dixon 2009: 707)

200+No. of variables

7No of variables with consensus

We know very little with any certainty

But we know a lot about the impact on civilians

Landmines reveal continuity

Between direct and

Indirect violence

Number of active mines worldwide

110 million in 70 countries

Incidents per month

2000 (44% mortality rate)

De-miners injured and killed

3 in every 5,000 mines cleared

Centuries to clear all mines11

% of child

victim

s 24

85% civilians, 15% military

no. of mines still in Viet Nam 3 million

Size of victim

and type of mine

Access to hospital?

What hospital?

Got surgeon?

Got power and meds?

Got family?

Who’s tending fields/shop/income?

Daughters taken out of school

Prosthetics/social stigma/marriage?

Drain on the state