In the Eye of the Storm: Rebel Taxation of Artisanal Mines and Strategies of Violence

• Author: Mario Krauser
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002720916824
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

In the Eye of the Storm:

Rebel Taxation of

Artisanal Mines and

Strategies of Violence

Mario Krauser

1

Abstract

According to the resource curse theory, persistent violence in developing areas

results from rebels’ ability to finance warfare with natural resource revenues. Sur-

prisingly, this overlooks the complexities of raising revenue from a mobile mining

population that values security as well as income. The literature thus neglects a

fundamental question: what are the incentives of rebel groups to prevent or per-

petuate conflict in mining areas? This paper delineates a rational to both increase and

decrease violence. Protecting a mine should allow rebels to extract taxes in return.

Simultaneously, to maintain this demand for security, rebels may need to destabilize

the wider area. The hypotheses are tested with novel data on rebel taxation at over

3’000 artisanal mines in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Supporting

the hypotheses, the results show that rebel-taxed mines appear exempt from vio-

lence nearby but imperiled at the perimeter.

Keywords

internal armed conflict, natural resources, political economy, armed groups

1

Graduate School of Decision Sciences, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of

Konstanz, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Mario Krauser, Graduate School of Decision Sciences, Department of Politics and Public Administration,

University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.

Email: mario.2.krauser@uni-konstanz.de

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(10) 1968-1993

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002720916824

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Referring to the phenomenon described as the resource curse, many political actors

highlight the importance of natural resources such as minerals, diamonds, or oil in

conflict zones. These valuables may have aggravating effects if they form a financial

base for armed groups which exacerbate violence (see, e.g., Enough Project or

Global Witness). Academic research predominantly corroborates this picture of

adversity natural resources can bring about where they coincide with conflict—both

qualitatively and quantitatively (Le Billon 2001; Ross 2006).

Public pressure to curtail the effects of minerals on conflict—for instance, in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—has not been without policy impacts. In

2010, the US Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Act, which required companies listed

on the US stock exchange to check their products against minerals connected to the

financing of armed groups. To this law, most manufacturers reacted with an outright

ban of Congolese minerals since shifting supply chains was more practicable than

assuring conflict-free sources. As a consequence, this legislation unintendedly had a

paralyzing effect on the regional economy, leading to “[ ...] rising levels of unem-

ployment, school abandonment, armed group recruitment, criminality, insecurity

and indebtedness” (Cuvelier et al. 2014, 10).

Why should a policy targeting this highly visible and intuitive link between

natural resources and conflict fail? This article addresses a crucial research question

which so far remains neglected. Namely, how does access to natural resources affect

the incentives of rebel groups to use violence? Despite its variety,

1

the current

literature appears confined with explaining why but not how violence could occur

in resource-rich environments. The overemphasis on reasons for violence, however,

comes at the cost of more nuanced microlevel explanations for the resource curse

capable to shed light on a puzzling finding: according to a recent data set on artisanal

mining in the DRC, 56 percent of the 239,700 recorded artisanal miners are affected

by the presence of armed groups, but only 5 percent are subjected to forced labor

(Weyns, Hoex, and Matthysen 2016). This indicates that miners could be able to

eschew rebels should they wish to do so. If violence committed by groups profiting

from natural resources is as pronounced as the current discourse suggests, its toler-

ance therefore poses a puzzle.

I theorize that rebels have incentives to decrease violence in the immediate

surrounding of a mine if they extract taxes from it since they exchange protection

for revenues. Within a commensurate area beginning at a distance which miners

cannot easily escape from, in contrast, taxing rebels actively incite violence. This

serves to maintain the violence-ridden environment which creates the demand min-

ing populations have for protection. I test my hypotheses with new data on over

3,000 artisanal mines in the eastern DRC and show that—in line with my theory—

rebels create environments around an artisanal mine resembling the eye of a storm:

their mines form centers of an area that is exempt from violence at its core but

exposed to it at the periphery.

This differentiated result may be interesting to policy makers seeking to limit

rebels’ ability to finance warfare with natural resources while preserving mining

Krauser 1969