Introduction
1. This is the same distinction that Correlates of War researchers make, in that in order for a civil conflict or war to occur, both sides must be engaged in the armed conflict demonstrating effective resistance (Small and Singer 1982). This allows armed conflict to be differentiated from one-sided violence or a massacre.
Chapter 1. Conflict Dynamics
1. An enduring rivalry is defined as a dyadic conflictual relationship between two opponents that is long lasting and that involves repeated militarized engagement (DeRouen and Bercovitch 2008; Kriesberg 1998; Goertz and Diehl 1993). Rivalry involves multiple engagements between elites, creating an enduring history of conflict. All rivalries are conflicts, then, but not all conflicts are rivalries.
2. There is a difference between strategy and tactic. The use of tactic here is with intent. A strategy of terrorism, for instance, would likely take the form of a campaign of attacks designed to achieve some overarching goal. Terrorism as a tactic might be limited to one attack against civilians. The focus here is on tactics because it is fairly rare to find reliable strategy documents for nonstate actors. In contrast, tactics are more easily observed.
3. See also the work of Rauchhaus (2009), Kuperman (2008), and Crawford and Kuperman (2006) on the moral hazard of intervention into civil wars.
4. Coalition forming has been studied quite extensively through research on the American Congress or parliamentary systems. What motivates various forms of coalitions, however, is likely to be quite different depending on the context (Reisinger 1986).
5. It is not the intention of this work to provide a comprehensive listing or analysis of definitions. Rather, its intent is to focus on the common aspect of targeting civilians or innocents that is present in the literature. Che Guevara’s classic work on guerilla warfare specified that guerillas target “the oppressor and his agents,” which is read by many to mean government and its bureaucratic implements.
6. Keesing’s World News Archive (formerly Keesing’s Record of World Events and Keesing’s Contemporary News Archive in electronic and print versions) is a fee-based online collection of news. The source began collecting materials in 1931 and currently includes in excess of 114,000 entries.
Chapter 2. Resources and Conflict
1. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) has collected information and data on armed conflict since 1946 and has built the reputation of being one of the most reliable sources for both statistical data and up-to-date summaries of conflict dynamics in the field. One of its products that was used extensively for this book is the UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia, which is an online resource (http://ucdp.uu.se/?id=1). The authors accessed the source throughout this multiyear project. Because the source is regularly updated, material used here may no longer be available.
2. Taylor’s support for the RUF was described by the SCSL (2004) as follows: “[Prosecution] submits that [Taylor] was the “father” or “godfather” of the RUF in the sense that he created the RUF as a viable organized armed force; nurtured and sustained it by providing a secure training environment, supplies, instructors, and new recruits; ensured its continued survival; taught it how to terrorize civilians; directed it in its first endeavours, protected it from outside threats to its existence, and strengthened the basic unity of the group” (14–15).
Chapter 3. Elite-Led Episodic Rivalry
1. Brazzaville is the capital of the Republic of the Congo. As a result, references to the Republic of the Congo are frequently made as Congo-Brazzaville allowing readers to easily distinguish the Republic of the Congo from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2. Clark (1998) actually suggests two cleavages existed. The first involved the international Cold War divisions.
3. Instrumentalist tactics are employed by politicians to rally support. They typically involve ethnocentric pleas to their ethnic kin at the expense of other identity groups in society. See the work of Saideman (1997) or Olson Lounsbery and Pearson (2009) for more on this topic.
Chapter 4. Ethnic Conflict over Time
1. According to Hassan (2009), the Tamil diaspora numbers about seventy million and served as the main source of funding for the Tamils. The Tamil approach to fundraising within the diaspora communities is unique in that it includes the use of threats and violence to ensure that the Tamils abroad continue to pay. After the end of hostilities, in fact, a French court convicted twenty-one LTTE members of extorting millions from the expatriate Tamils in France (Falksohn and Rao 2008). It is likely that this can be attributed to the group’s committed drive to increase its capacity, resulting in the identifying of those Tamils who were not actively supporting the cause as being complicit with government.
2. One of the unique strategies adopted by the LTTE through the years was the systematic use of suicide bombers. The Black Tigers were an elite suicide attack group within the LTTE. The group was so influential that the government demanded its disbandment as a condition of a ceasefire in 2002 (Hopgood 2005). “Black Tigers serve two main strategic purposes for the LTTE: first, to compensate for a lack of heavier weaponry; and second, to engage in commando-like actions to secure inaccessible or difficult targets, including assassinations. They are best understood, in other words, as elite soldiers selected for the most dangerous missions—ones with very little chance of survival, and none at all in many cases” (Hopgood 2005, 46). The Black Tigers are therefore fairly unusual in the world of suicide attacks. They go into the attack, at least in some cases, with the possibility of survival if their actions are sufficiently skillful. Furthermore, whereas other suicide bombing tactics focus on killing as many in one attack as possible, the use of the Black Tigers was more to take out the government’s strategically important assets (individuals, materiel or economic assets). In some ways it is a tactic of warfare rather than terrorism, as the goal is the military advantage rather than instilling fear or inflicting casualties. The Black Tigers are important in the context of this study in that they represent a method that the LTTE employed in an attempt to overcome the government’s superior capacity.
Chapter 5. A Case of Enduring Rivalries
1. The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), a military junta that seized power in 1988, renamed the country of Burma to Myanmar. Much of the international community resisted this change and continued to refer to the country as Burma in protest to the SLORC’S decision to retain control over the country after the National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election in 1990. Recently, the U.S. government has moved to refer to the country as Myanmar in response to political developments that seem to indicate the government moving in the direction of openness. For the purposes of the chapter, Burma is used when referencing the country prior to 1988. The country is referred to as Myanmar in post-1988 discussions and more generally.
2. The pro-democracy movement, led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) and popularized by Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of revolutionary leader Aung San, is not examined in this chapter as an armed conflict. The ABSDF emerged from this movement, and several ethnic rebel groups gained membership and support from participating students (particularly those forced to flee Rangoon). The movement itself, however, is a nonviolent struggle and, as such, does not constitute a rivalry, which by definition requires the militarization of conflict (see Goertz and Diehl 1992; Olson Lounsbery 2005).
3. Silverstein (1997) estimates that approximately one million Burmese citizens were missing from the census counts, most of whom resided in border or frontier areas where the central government has little control. As a result, the minority groups, such as the Karen, are more likely to be undercounted.
4. In 1988, the Burmese government appeared to be democratizing by holding national elections. The National League for Democracy and Suu Kyi won many seats but were not permitted to take them, resulting in massive protests ultimately leading to the arrest of Suu Kyi, among others, and more government repression. The debacle led to a large-scale Western boycott and sanctions of Burmese goods.
Chapter 6. Challenges of a Heterogeneous Population
1. One outcome of this was that soldiers (South Moluccas citizens both from there and those who had been in the military and stationed in Java) who had yet to be demobilized and had fought against Sukarno for the independence of South Moluccas (numbering about five thousand including their families) were subsequently sent to the Netherlands with the promise that they could return, but they were never allowed to do so. This resulted in agitation and demonstrations in the Netherlands as the deportees attempted to get the Dutch government to intervene on their behalf and on that of the Republic of South Moluccas.
Chapter 7. Rivals, Conflict, and Ideology
1. For an explanation of determining poverty and extreme poverty rates, see World Bank (1993, 13).
2. Peru is separated into twenty-four administrative departments.