Within the civil war literature, state-rebel relationships are traditionally understood as strictly contentious. However, empirical observations suggest that the two contending parties are not always in a state of total war and their collaboration is possible. Conceived in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, this study contributes to a greater understanding of state-rebel interactions during crises and seeks to explain why some rebel groups cooperate with state-led crisis response operations while the others obstruct. I propose that the nature of rebels’ political goals determine their behaviour vis-à-vis the state. The period of time after a disaster presents a window for rebels to strategically calculate and balance the costs and benefits of collaboration with the state. More specifically, I argue that the more transformative the rebel group’s goals are, the less likely the group will collaborate with the state for crisis relief. A structured comparative case study of the Taliban and Boko Haram lends preliminary support to the hypothesis. As one of the first to examine state-rebel relationships during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study invites future research to rethink how to accurately conceptualise and explain the diverse and puzzling interactions between states and rebels.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-475888 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Law, Kwan Yu Queenie |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för freds- och konfliktforskning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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