Civilian Victimization and Ethnic Civil War

• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Francisco Villamil,Simon Hug,Livia I. Schubiger,Lars-Erik Cederman
• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719898873
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Civilian Victimization

and Ethnic Civil War

Lars-Erik Cederman

1

, Simon Hug

2

,

Livia I. Schubiger

3

, and Francisco Villamil

1

Abstract

While many studies provide insights into the causes of wartime civilian victimization,

we know little about how the targeting of particular segments of the civilian pop-

ulation affects the onset and escalation of armed conflict. Previous research on

conflict onset has been largely limited to structural variables, both theoretically and

empirically. Moving beyond these static approaches, this article assesses how the

state-led targeting of specific ethnic groups affects the likelihood of ethnic conflict

onset and the evolution of conflicts once they break out. Relying on a new data set

with global coverage that captures the ethnic identity of civilian victims of targeted

violence, we find evidence that the state-led civilian victimization of particular ethnic

groups increases the likelihood that the latter become involved in ethnic civil war.

We also find tentative, yet more nuanced, evidence that ethnic targeting by state

forces affects the escalation of ongoing conflicts.

Keywords

civil wars, ethnic conflict, one-sided violence, repression

In recent years, conflict researchers have made a major effort to understand the

relationship between civilian victimization and dynamics of civil war. We now have

a much better understanding of why armed actors use violence against civilians and

1

Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zu¨rich, Zu¨ rich, Switzerland

2

D´

epartement de sciencepolitique et relations internationales, Universityof Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

3

Department of political science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Lars-Erik Cederman, Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zu¨rich, Haldeneggsteig 4,

Zu¨rich 8092, Switzerland.

Email: lcederman@ethz.ch

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(7-8) 1199-1225

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002719898873

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the consequences of this type of violence. Focusing on th e microlevel, Kalyvas

(2006) spearheaded this research program by treating selective one-sided violence

(OSV) as a predictable wartime phenomenon, whose spatial and temporal variation

is accounted for by dynamics of territorial control. Following this pioneering work,

scholarly attention to the dynamics of civil wars intensified, including the wartime

consequences of victimization (e.g., Condra and Shapiro 2012; Downes 2007;

Kalyvas and Kocher 2007; Kocher, Pepinsky, and Kalyvas 2011; Lyall 2009; Schu-

biger 2013a).

However, violence against civilians is not only a wartime phenomenon. Victimi-

zation also takes place in peacetime, for example, when governments resort to

violent repression of nonviolent challengers. In fact, repression could escalate vio-

lence and play a role in the onset of civil war itself. Thus, to assess the impact of

violent repression on conflict onset and escalation systematically and on a large

scale, it is necessary to study civilian victimization during peaceful episodes as well

(Davenport, Armstrong, and Lichbach 2006; Siegel 2011; J. K. Young 2013).

Moreover, the dominant focus on microlevel dynamics in this literature can be

limiting in that it tends to overlook more aggregate phenomena. If we want to

understand the evolution of conflicts in their entirety, it may not be sufficient to

analyze the spatiotemporal distribution of individual conflict events. When explain-

ing conflict onset, this limitation becomes even more obvious. In many countries,

state-led repression targets particular groups because of their alleged links to violent

or nonviolent challengers. Therefore, it is important to account for processes of

mobilization or radicalization that take place at the level of such groups.

The Syrian Civil War, which bro ke out in 2011 right after peace ful protests

against the government were violently crushed by Bashar al-Assad, is a good exam-

ple of how state violence can have an immediate effect on conflict dynamics (BBC

2017). Moreover, other examples show how victimized groups are frequently iden-

tified based on their ethnicity. The conflict in the Niger Delta that started around

2004 was preceded by a campaign of peaceful opposition to foreign oil corporations

by local ethnic groups. The Nigerian government, however, decided to respond with

violence, and local civilians were ethnically targeted (Human Rights Watch 1999).

During the Guatemalan Civil War, although initially the rebels only had marginal

support, the government engaged in a campaign of violence against the Maya,

which hardened the ethnic cleavage and increased support for the rebels.

In this article, we study whether states’ ethnic targeting of civilians affects the

outbreak and escalation of conflicts around the globe. We focus on instances of

state-led collective targeting of ethnic groups, that is, the killing of unarmed civilians

by state forces following ethnic identity lines, where civilians are targeted because of

their alleged ethnic identity and not their behavior or participation in political

activities. This form of violence is “group-selective” (Straus 2015) as it targets at

the level of groups but it is individually indiscriminate within those targeted groups

(Guti´errez-San´ın and Wood 2017). We argue that the state-led victimization of

ethnic groups increases the risk of civil war by enlarging the opposition

1200 Journal of Conflict Resolution 64(7-8)