Civil War Mediation and Rebel Use of Violence Against Civilians

• Author: Paulina Pospieszna,Karl DeRouen,
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16647538
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Civil War Mediation and

Rebel Use of Violence

Against Civilians

Paulina Pospieszna

1

and Karl DeRouen, Jr.

2

Abstract

Violence against civilians is portrayed as an antecedent of civil war, a cause, or both.

Civil war creates opportune environments for planning and carrying out these acts

that in turn can have detrimental effects on peace processes. Since not all civil war

factions will see peace as beneficial, some actors may use violence to undermine the

peace talks. The rebels may use indiscriminate violence to demonstrate their ability

to exact costs on the government thus forcing the latter to negotiate. This article

focuses upon acts of violence committed by rebel groups during mediated peace

process. The central hypothesis is that violence against civilians increases the

probability of mediation that in turn increases the prospects for violence. Using all

civil war episodes from 1970 to 2008 as observations results from bivariate probit

analysis endogenizing the choice of mediation bear out this theoretical argument.

Keywords

rebel violence, mediation, violence against civilians, civil wars, spoiler violence

Violence against civilians can be understood as an antecedent of civil war, a cause,

or both (Boulden, 2009; Krueger & Laitin, 2008). Civil wars create opportune

environments for planning and carrying out acts of violence against civilians. Since

1

Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poznan, Poland

2

Department of Political Science, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Paulina Pospieszna, Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan,

Umultowska 89a, Poznan 61-614, Poland.

Email: paulina.pospieszna@amu.edu.pl

Armed Forces & Society

2017, Vol. 43(3) 500-522

ªThe Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16647538

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not all civil war factions will see peace as beneficial, some actors may use violence

as a strategy to undermine the process. Actors engaged within the peace process, as

well as outside parties who are excluded from a peace process, might perceive the

peace as a threat to their power, status, and interests (Stedman, 2000). Therefore,

these groups may use violence to undermine attempts to achieve peace (Stedman,

2000). This article focuses upon acts of violence against civilians carried out by

rebel actors during a specific form of peace processes.

The relationship between third-party mediation and violence against civilians in

civil wars is likely nonrecursive. Mediators are more likely to be involved in costly

wars involving high casualties (Bercovitch & Gartner, 2006), such as the type involv-

ing violence against civilians. In turn, mediation is associated with peace processes

and thus could be linked to the use of violence against civilians. It might decrease the

scale of violence if it successfully offers alternatives to waging war. However, media-

tion could be associated with violence in civil wars if the rebels groups, or groups that

splinter from the main organization, are dissatisfied with mediated peace process and

resort to violence as a means of undermining the peace process. Stedman (1997) refers

to such groups as inside spoilers, who are involved in peace talks but over displeasure

with the peace process choose to disrupt it. Jonas Savimbi or Radovan Karadzic were

such actors who used violence to derail peace process, nevertheless were engaged by

United Nations (UN) mediators when searching for negotiated solution of the conflict

(Zahar, 2010, p. 265). As for another example may serve the Real Irish Republican

Army broke from the main Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1997 in the wake of

the ceasefire with the United Kingdom and began carrying out criminal and violent

actions during the mediated Northern Ireland peace process. Their most notable attack

came in 1998 in Omagh and resulted in 29 deaths.

We argue the use of violence against civilians attracts mediation, but mediation in

turn may trigger spoiler violence that occurs in the wake of mediated talks between

governments and rebels. The study will further the civil war mediation (CWM),

spoiler, and rebel violence knowledge bases and provide practical information for

counterterror policy makers and mediators.

This potential two-way relationship is explored using the bivariate probit model-

ing method. Bivariate probit is specified with two dependent variables that are

expected to impact each other in the same time period (Wiggins & Poi, 2010). In

this case, the two dependent variables are rebel violence against civilians and med-

iation. Bivariate probit allows for the ‘‘endogenous choice of mediation’’ (Beards-

ley, 2008, p. 731).

This article is situated in the CWM, logic of violence, and spoiler literatures. We

provide empirical evidence of negative side effects of mediation that shows media-

tion can lead to increased violence against civilians. To our knowledge, this is an

original contribution to the ever-expanding mediation literature. There are empirical

studies that consider the effect of mediation on resolution of the conflict, but here we

ask different questions whose answers can help shed light on why mediation might

not always be the answer or might need to be redesigned in some cases.

Pospieszna and DeRouen 501