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Looks at a range of explanations for civil war and why civilian harm is so extensive
Citation preview
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