<p>Rebel attacks on civilians constitute one of the gravest threats to human security in contemporary armed conflicts. But why do rebel groups kill civilians? The dissertation approaches this question from a strategic perspective, trying to understand when and why rebel groups are likely to target civilians as a conflict strategy. It combines quantitative studies using global data on rebel group violence with a case study of the civil war in Mozambique. The overall argument is that rebel groups target civilians as a way of improving their bargaining position in the war relative to the government. The dissertation consists of an introduction, which situates the study in a wider context, and four papers that all deal with different aspects of the overall research question. Paper I introduces new data on one-sided violence against civilians, presenting trends over time and comparing types of actors and conflicts. Paper II argues that democratic governments are particularly vulnerable to rebel attacks on civilians, since they are dependent on the population. Corroborating this claim, statistical evidence shows that rebels indeed kill more civilians when fighting a democratic government. Paper III argues that rebels target civilians more when losing on the battlefield, as a method of raising the costs for the government to continue fighting. A statistical analysis employing monthly data on battle outcomes and rebel violence, supports this argument. Paper IV takes a closer look at the case of Mozambique, arguing that the rebel group Renamo used large-scale violence in areas dominated by government constituents as a means for hurting the government. Taken together, these findings suggest that violence against civilians should be understood as a strategy, rather than a consequence, of war.</p>

Rebel attacks on civilians constitute one of the gravest threats to human security in contemporary armed conflicts. But why do rebel groups kill civilians? The dissertation approaches this question from a strategic perspective, trying to understand when and why rebel groups are likely to target civilians as a conflict strategy. It combines quantitative studies using global data on rebel group violence with a case study of the civil war in Mozambique. The overall argument is that rebel groups target civilians as a way of improving their bargaining position in the war relative to the government. The dissertation consists of an introduction, which situates the study in a wider context, and four papers that all deal with different aspects of the overall research question. Paper I introduces new data on one-sided violence against civilians, presenting trends over time and comparing types of actors and conflicts. Paper II argues that democratic governments are particularly vulnerable to rebel attacks on civilians, since they are dependent on the population. Corroborating this claim, statistical evidence shows that rebels indeed kill more civilians when fighting a democratic government. Paper III argues that rebels target civilians more when losing on the battlefield, as a method of raising the costs for the government to continue fighting. A statistical analysis employing monthly data on battle outcomes and rebel violence, supports this argument. Paper IV takes a closer look at the case of Mozambique, arguing that the rebel group Renamo used large-scale violence in areas dominated by government constituents as a means for hurting the government. Taken together, these findings suggest that violence against civilians should be understood as a strategy, rather than a consequence, of war.

Limited systematic research has investigated how conflict events shape the spatial-temporal variation of insurgent violence against civilians. Although previous research has investigated how degrees of territorial control relate to general levels of violence against civilians, it remains largely an open question how the dynamics within territorial control determine violence against civilians by insurgents. This study aims to address this gap by hypothesizing that (1) insurgents become more likely to commit fatal violence against civilians, and (2) kill more civilians in contested areas when they lose territorial control. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) was used along with Peace Research Institute Oslo’s (PRIO) GRID Dataset to create a novel data frame of all territorially contested area-weeks on the African continent between 1997 and 2017 (n = 3035). Contrary to theoretical expectations, logistic regressions indicate a lower risk of insurgent violence against civilians in contested areas following an insurgent territorial loss than following a break-even. Zero-inflated negative binomial regressions moreover tentatively indicate that insurgents kill more civilians following territorial wins in the short-term, and following territorial loss in the long-term. These results suggest that proactive counterinsurgency campaigns are in the interest of civilians in civil war.

Scholars have in the recent decades actively been searching for answers for why actors of war sometimes choose - and other times choose not - to direct violence against civilians. However, their focus has been largely on one-sided violence during wartime, and much less on post-conflict occurrences. This study aims to fill this research gap by examine in what way wartime livels of casualties affect post-conflict levels of one-sided violence. A total of 164 conflict episodes and their post-conflict periods between 1989 and 2016 show that there is a significant positive correlation between wartime one-sided violence intensity and post-conflict one-sided violence intensity. A similar correlation is not found between battle-related deaths and post-conflict one-sided violence, although the result shows that rebel groups are more prone to direct violence against civilians after high levels of wartime battle-related deaths than after low levels.

Why do some rebel groups perpetrate conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) while others do not? A growing body of research has suggested various explanations, but offers no consensus regarding this puzzling question. At the same time, recent studies have recognized how foreign fighters impact rebel groups’ violence against civilians. Yet, to what extent the presence of foreign fighters could also explain rebel-inflicted CRSV remains unexplored. In this study, I argue that rebel groups with foreign fighters are more likely to perpetrate CRSV than rebel groups without foreign fighters, based on two causal mechanisms. Firstly, foreign fighters pose a risk to the internal cohesion of rebel groups, which is why CRSV is initiated as a socialization tool. Secondly, foreign fighters alleviate the rebel groups dependency on the local civilian community, thereby enabling such violence. The results from logistic regressions, based on a sample of 45 rebel groups between 1989 and 2014, indicate that there is indeed covariation between the presence of foreign fighters and CRSV occurrence. The findings contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate trying to explain variations in CRSV, as well as to the emerging field of foreign fighters' effect on violence against civilians. The results also have relevant policy implications for the international efforts in preventing CRSV.

United Nations Peacekeeping has proven to be remarkably effective at reducing violence against civilians - without using compellent force. A recent turn towards peace enforcement raises the questions: Does the use of force within a peace enforcement mandate affect the use of violence against civilians by an armed group? If this is the case, by what mechanism does this effect occur? This thesis provides two novel explanations on how the use of force by peacekeepers could affect violence against civilians by the targeted armed group. One predicts decreased- and the other one increased levels of violence. These explanations are tested on the Force Intervention Brigade, which was deployed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2013. A most similar comparison between the three most powerful armed groups in North Kivu at the time is drawn and examined with the method of structured focussed comparison. The most similar comparison does not reveal a clear correlation. Yet, temporal order as well as anecdotal evidence give tentative support for the main argument of the thesis. It suggests that compellent force against an armed group leads to strengthened deterrence and physical separation, which ultimately results in fewer civilian targeting.

Au courant des dernières années, les chercheurs s’intéressant aux guerres civiles ont proposé une multitude de théories pour expliquer pourquoi les groupes rebelles en viennent parfois à cibler les populations civiles. Malgré cette abondance théorique, notre compréhension des processus et des mécanismes menant les combattants de rang inférieur à participer à cette violence demeure, étonnamment, très limitée. Cette carence est en partie due au fait que les travaux existants reposent souvent sur des postulats implicites – et parfois infondés – à propos des combattants se situant au bas de la hiérarchie militaire et qui sont ceux qui mettent en œuvre la violence envers les civils sur le terrain. Ainsi, certaines questions importantes sur les micro-déterminants de la violence au sein des groupes rebelles demeurent, à ce jour, sous-étudiées dans la littérature sur les guerres civiles. Cette thèse pose donc la question suivante : comment les combattants rebelles en viennent-ils à tuer des civils non-armés durant les conflits intra-étatiques? Mobilisant des méthodes mixtes (i.e. analyses statistiques et études de cas) et explorant une variété de cas empiriques, cette thèse puise dans la sociologie et la psychologie pour soutenir que la participation des combattants rebelles à la violence envers les civils peut être comprise comme étant le fruit d’un processus de socialisation. Spécifiquement, la thèse conceptualise cette participation comme découlant des puissants besoins, sanctions, contraintes, influences et incitatifs sociaux auxquels les combattants font face – et qui deviennent souvent prépondérants – durant les guerres civiles. Au fil du temps, ces forces sociales façonnent les dispositions attitudinales et les tendances comportementales des combattants, motivant chez ceux-ci la recherche d’un alignement par rapport aux normes et aux attentes de leurs dirigeants et de leurs pairs. Bien que les trois articles qui forment cette thèse abordent des sujets distincts, ils sont tous informés et unis par ce cadre théorique. Le premier article de la thèse synthétise les théories existantes sur la socialisation des combattants et les incorporent dans un modèle intégré, qui distingue cinq trajectoires pouvant mener ceux-ci à la violence. Ce faisant, l’article spécifie les principaux mécanismes socio- psychologiques au travers desquels les dynamiques de socialisation peuvent encourager la participation à cette violence. Sur cette base, l’article illustre la valeur ajoutée de ce modèle en explorant les trajectoires vers la violence des combattants rebelles durant la guerre civile au Sierra Leone. Le deuxième article explore la manière dont le contexte opérationnel au sein duquel les combattants évoluent peut façonner la nature des influences de socialisation auxquelles ils sont exposés. S’intéressant aux variations entre et au sein des groupes rebelles utilisant des tactiques de guérilla, l’article soutient que le degré « d’intégration opérationnelle » (operational embeddedness) de ces groupes au sein des populations locales influence de manière importante le type de relations que les combattants développent avec les civils. Entamant un dialogue entre les littératures sur la gouvernance rebelle et la socialisation des combattants, cet article mobilise des tests statistiques et une étude de cas qualitative (l’insurrection des Talibans en Afghanistan), mettant en lumière la manière dont l’environnement opérationnel d’un groupe affecte l’essence des dynamiques de socialisation et, par conséquent, le répertoire d’actions des combattants. Le troisième article examine comment les caractéristiques organisationnelles des « new new insurgencies » (NNIs) – tel que définies par Walter – affectent la propension de ces groupes djihadistes transnationaux à cibler les populations civiles. L’article soutient que l’idéologie de plus en plus fratricide des NNIs, le fait que leurs dirigeants ancrent leur autorité dans des sources divines et la présence de combattants étrangers radicalisés au sein de ces groupes créent de puissantes dynamiques de socialisation, qui tendront à motiver une participation accrue à la violence envers les civils. Mobilisant également des analyses quantitatives et une étude de cas qualitative (l’insurrection d’al-Shabaab en Somalie), cet article démontre que les NNIs sont associées à des taux de violence particulièrement élevés par rapport à la fois aux autres types de groupes rebelles, mais aussi aux groupes islamistes antérieurs et non-transnationaux. L’article souligne ainsi l’importance de prendre en considération l’idéologie, l’autorité et les processus de mobilisation transnationaux pour mieux comprendre le comportement rebelle. Ainsi, les trois articles brossent un portrait théorique systématique des processus et des mécanismes au travers desquels les combattants rebelles en viennent à tuer les civils durant les conflits intra-étatiques, plaçant ainsi cette littérature sur une base conceptuelle plus solide. Ce faisant, la thèse met en lumière la considérable diversité des trajectoires, l’inhérente complexité des processus menant à la violence et la fondamentale humanité des combattants rebelles. / Although the civil war literature is replete with theories purporting to explain why rebel groups wield violence against civilians, we still have a surprisingly limited understanding of the processes and mechanisms driving low-ranking combatants to participate in civilian targeting. As I argue in this thesis, this is in part because much of existing research on rebel behavior relies on implicit, unstated, or even unfounded assumptions about the flesh-and-blood individuals who carry out such violence on the ground. Accordingly, a number of fundamental questions about the perpetrators of wartime violence and the micro-level drivers of their behaviors have remained largely under-addressed in the scholarship on civil war violence. This thesis thus asks the following question: how do low-ranking rebel combatants come to kill unarmed civilians during intrastate conflicts? Leveraging mixed methods that combine statistical analyses with case studies and exploring a variety of empirical cases, the thesis draws from the conceptual repertoire of sociology and psychology and contends that violence perpetration can best be understood as a socialization process. Specifically, I conceptualize participation in violence against civilians as deriving from the potent social influences, needs, incentives, sanctions, and constraints that rebel combatants experience – and which often become overriding – in the midst of civil wars. In turn, these powerful social forces progressively shape combatants’ attitudinal dispositions and behavioral tendencies, creating strong pressures for them to seek alignment with the violent norms and expectations of their leaders and peers. While the three articles that form this thesis tackle different topics, they are informed and united by this overarching theoretical approach. In the first article, I synthesize existing theories of combatant socialization and combined them into an integrated framework, which charts five key pathways toward civilian targeting. The article also specifies the main underlying socio-psychological mechanisms through which socializing influences motivate participation in such violence. It then illustrates how these pathways map onto the actual experiences of civil war combatants by examining the drivers of individual participation in violence during the Sierra Leone Civil War. In the second chapter, I explore how the environment in which rebel combatants operate can affect their repertoire of action by shaping the nature of the socializing influences to which they are exposed. Focusing on variations across and within rebel groups waging guerrilla warfare, this article argues that the extent of a group’s operational embeddedness – that is, the degree to which its operational bases are physically integrated within civilian communities – can considerably affect the type of relations that combatants come to nurture with civilians. Bridging the rebel governance and combatant socialization literatures, the article mobilizes cross-national statistical analyses and case study evidence from the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan and finds strong empirical support for these arguments, highlighting the importance of the operational context in shaping socialization dynamics and, consequently, rebel behavior. In the third chapter, I examine whether the organizational characteristics of “new new insurgencies” (NNIs) – as defined by Walter – affect the extent to which these transnational jihadist rebel groups target civilian populations. Specifically, this article argues that the increasingly fratricidal ideology of NNIs, the fact that their leaders anchor their authority claims in divine sources, and the presence of radicalized foreign fighters in their membership base create potent socialization dynamics that are likely to steer combatants toward violence. Using cross-national statistical tests and qualitative evidence from al-Shabaab’s insurgency in Somalia, the article highlights that this new – and increasingly prevalent – breed of insurgents indeed tends to impose a particularly heavy toll on civilian populations, relative to both other types of rebel groups as well as earlier and non-transnational Islamist groups. The article thus emphasizes the need to account for ideology, authority, and membership when studying the determinants of rebel behavior. Together, these three articles thus offer a systematic theoretical account of the processes and mechanisms through which low-ranking rebel combatants come to kill civilians during civil wars, placing debates over the determinants of rebel behavior on a more solid conceptual footing. As a whole, therefore, this thesis advances our understanding of civil war violence by casting the focus on low-ranking combatants and by calling attention to the fundamental diversity of their trajectories, to the inherent complexity of the perpetration process, and to the basic humanity of perpetrators of political violence.

Why do some communities experience more violence against civilians than others? This study argues that civilian communities embracing relationships that bridge salient group divides and norms of non-violence, will commit to actions of protection across those divides, which will in turn limit possibilities for armed actors to commit violence against civilians. On the other hand, communities that do not embrace bridging relationships and instead promote more violent norms, will commit to denunciation of other civilians during war. This will in turn create more opportunities for armed actors to commit violence against civilians. Through interview-based field research I test this theory on two communities in Kosovo. I compare the town of Prizren, largely spared from violence against civilians during the war of 1998-1999, to the town of Gjakova, which experienced higher levels of violence against civilians. The results show support for the theoretical argument. However, I cannot fully account for alternative explanations to the difference in violence. Research on civilian agency during the Kosovo war has been severely lacking, an empirical gap which I aim to partly fill through this research.

When violence against civilians is high in armed conflicts, it is predicted that the UNSC will pay close attention to those conflicts. However, it does not always happen to an equal degree. Based on recently collected data of UNSC agenda-setting behaviour by Susan H. Allen and Amy T. Yuen, this paper asks: why do some conflicts receive more UNSC attention than others, despite similar levels of violence against civilians? The thesis looks into the role of ROs in the UNSC agenda-setting. To account for the variation, the thesis argues that ROs are able to influence the UNSC agenda-setting in a way that leads some conflicts to have more recurrences of items on the agenda and others less. By applying a structured focused comparison on the conflict in Darfur between 2003 – 2007, and the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar between 2016-2022, I find a correlation between representation of ROs and recurrences of agenda-items. However, correlation is not causation, and I conclude that ROs had little influence in the UNSC decision-making and that it was the interests of the P5 and the institutional role of the UN Secretary-General that lead to the variation in the number of recurrences of items on the agenda.

The question of how armed group ideology influences its behaviour has been tentatively explored in the past decade. However, which role distinct ideological commitments play in civilian targeting has not been satisfactorily discussed thus far. This thesis turns to research on genocide and mass violence and incorporates the concepts of ‘exclusionary ideologies’ and ‘threat perceptions’ to fill this research gap. It addresses the following question: to what extent do exclusionary ideologies of armed groups influence their use of violence against civilians during civil conflicts? When revolutionary armed groups pursue their goals, threat perceptions determine which groups are considered legitimate targets for attack. Therefore, it is hypothesized that exclusionary groups will employ more violence against civilians than inclusionary groups because the former have a more expanded understanding of legitimate targeting than the latter. Through a structured focused comparison, discourse analysis and process tracing applied to the cases of Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab, moderate support for this hypothesis is found. It is shown that both armed groups to varying extents invoke threat perceptions regarding certain out-groups to legitimize and rationalise their patterns of violence. Nonetheless, a descent into indiscriminate violence by Boko Haram and data shortage of Al-Shabaab attacks warrant caution.