Why They Fight Hypotheses On The Causes of Contemporary Deadly Conflict

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Why they fight: Hypotheses on

the causes of contemporary
deadly conflict
a
Daniel Byman & Stephen Van Evera

a
Policy analyst at the RAND Corporation,
Associate professor of political science,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Published online: 24 Dec 2007.
To cite this article: Daniel Byman & Stephen Van Evera (1998) Why they fight:
Hypotheses on the causes of contemporary deadly conflict, Security Studies, 7:3, 1-50,
DOI: 10.1080/09636419808429350
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WHY THEY FIGHT:

HYPOTHESES ON THE CAUSES
OF CONTEMPORARY DEADLY CONFLICT
DANIEL BYMAN AND STEPHEN VAN EVERA
HE COLD WAR'S end in 1989 evoked both euphoria and gloom about
the prospects for a peaceful world. Many greeted the fall of the
Berlin Wall as a harbinger of a tranquil new millennium. Then an
opposite view emerged as violence erupted in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans,
the Caucasus, Central Asia, and elsewhere: the world was falling into a "new
world disorder." One scholar claimed in 1992 that "while the end of die
cold war has greatly reduced the chance of global nuclear catastrophe, it
has, inadvertendy, increased the chances for lesser disasters such as regional
wars."1 Anodier argued in 1993 that "the key narrative of the new world
order is the disintegration of nation-states into ethnic civil war."2
What pattern has in fact emerged? Specifically, has violence increased or
diminished since die end of die cold war? Where is postcold war violence
located, and what form does it assumecivil or international? What are its
causes? What future for war can we extrapolate from current conditions?
These are the questions diis paper addresses.
We argue that the optimists of 1989 were closer to the truth than the
Cassandras: there is no "new world disorder." While the post-cold war
Daniel Byman is policy analyst at the RAND Corporation; Stephen Van Evera is associate
professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The authors would like to thank Michael Brown, Taylor Seybolt, Jeremy Shapiro, Benjamin
Valentino, and the reviewers of Security Studies for comments on earlier versions of this work.
1. Kim R. Holmes, "The New World Disorder," The Heritage Lectures no. 42, 22
October 1992.
2. Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (New York: Noonday Press, 1993), 5. Daniel
Schorr likewise noted in 1994 that the cold war's end had spawned "conflict and misery
more horrible than the theoretical visions of superpower collision. The danger now is not
bombs but people, people in rage against each other and people fleeing from the rage"
(Daniel Schorr, "End of Cold War Leads to Ethnic Strife," 6 September 1992, broadcast on
National Public Radio).
SECURITY STUDIES 7, no. 3 (spring 1998): 1-50

Published by Frank Cass, London.
SECURITY STUDIES 7, NO. 3
world is hardly tranquil, the number of active wars worldwide has fallen
markedly since 1989. The number of civil wars has fallen significantly
eleven states experienced civil wars in 1996 compared with seventeen in
1989and international conflict has nearly vanished, at least for now.
We hypothesi2e that seven causes of civil violence stand out in
importance (that is, in their potence and prevalence) in the cold war and
postcold war periods. They are: 1. The collapse of postSecond World
War empires; 2. A lack of regime legitimacy; 3. State weakness; 4.
Communal hegemonism; 5. Revolutionary ideology; 6. Aristocratic
intransigence; 7. Superpower proxy wars. Together, we argue, these seven
causes account for most civil violence in recent times. These hypotheses
were inferred by studying all the civil wars that have occurred since 1989.
Some also were borrowed from existing works on civil violence.
Our first hypothesis is that the collapse of empire, embodied in the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, generated a number of recent
wars. Imperial collapse spawns successor states that are primed for civil
war. These states often have illegitimate regimes, commingled hostile
populations, and contested borders. Moreover, no "rules of the road"
define the rights and responsibilities of the former metropole or other
external powers in the former imperial zone; hence outsiders often
intervene to claim a sphere of influence or to disrupt another power's
sphere, sparking civil conflict. These dangers caused considerable carnage
after many past imperial collapses. Massive killing occurred after the
3. We use the terms "civil war," "civil violence" and "civil conflict" interchangeably in
this paper. By these terms we include political conflicts with the following attributes: (1) at
least 1,000 deaths during the total span of the conflict; (2) the people involved in the violence
are geographically contiguous (to exclude European colonial wars); and (3) the people
involved are concerned about living together in the same political unit. This definition
includes organized civil wars and also communal riots, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other
instances where bloodshed was high but only one side was responsible for the killings while
the other side (or sides) suffered disproportionately.
This definition resembles the definitions other scholars use for civil war but is broader
than two commonly accepted definitionsthose of Roy Licklider and of J. David Singer and
Melvin Small. See Roy Licklider, "How Civil Wars End," in Roy Licklider, ed., Stopping the
Killing (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 9, and Melvin Small and J. David
Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816-1980 (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), 210.
Licklider defines civil war to include "large-scale violence among geographically contiguous
people concerned about possibly having to live with one another in the same political unit
after the conflict." For Licklider, however, civil war must also involve multiple sovereignty
a fact that distinguishes civil wars from other types of domestic violence. We do not,
however, include multiple sovereignty in our definition. In their definition of civil war, Singer
and Small are careful to exclude both "regional internal war"a situation where subnational
governments clashand communal violence, where there is no government. Our definition
of civil conflict would include both of these phenomena. Small and Singer also limit the cases
they examine to wars where over 1,000 people died in one year, while we also examine cases
where 1,000 people died during the total span of the conflict.
Hypotheses on the Causes of Contemporary Deadly Conflict
British, French, Ottomans, and Portuguese withdrew from their empires

earlier in this century. Chaos likewise followed the collapse of ancient
empires from China to Rome. The collapses of the Soviet and Yugoslav
empires resulted in massive bloodshed for similar reasons: they spawned
frail successor governments that ruled hostile intermingled populations and
often faced destructive interference by the former metropole.
A lack of regime legitimacy caused many civil wars both during and after
the cold war. Civil-war-causing crises of government legitimacy have sprung
from two main causes: the growth of restive middle classes in authoritarian
states, and a lack of regime accountability, which leads in turn to corrupt or
incompetent state policies. Such legitimacy crises cause violence both when
a regime tries to regain legitimacy and when a regime tries to suppress
dissenta dilemma we label "the reform trap."
To regain legitimacy, besieged authoritarian regimes may move to
democratize. Democratization, however, can spawn conflict as old elites
inflame and manipulate hatreds in an effort to gain or remain in power.
Democratization can also spawn conflict if majoritarian democratic rules
are adopted that cast all power to tyrannical majorities, driving oppressed
minorities to rebel. Finally, democratization can spawn war by giving
political space to hardened secessionist groups that cannot be appeased by
power-sharing and instead exploit democratic freedoms to organize for
war. Democracy causes peace between mature democracies, but
democratization is a dangerous cause of war in multiethnic authoritarian
states; hence crises of regime legitimacy that trigger democratization are
also causes of war.
Alternately, regimes that eschew democratization and instead attempt to
suppress dissent often "hunker down," relying on an increasingly narrow
core to defend them. Hunkering down may enable a regime to survive a
short-term challenge to its legitimacy, but it can cause violent resistance by
excluded social groups and does little to ease the original legitimacy crisis.
4. For works on the politics of empire, see Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986); D. K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from the
Eighteenth Century (New York: Dell, 1966); Richard L. Rudolph and David F. Good, eds.,
Nationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin's,
1992); and Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and InternationalAmbition(Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991). For an examination of the relationship between the collapse
of empires and war, see Jonathan Ladinsky, "After the Fall: The Collapse of Empires and the
Causes of War" (Ph.D. diss., MIT, forthcoming).
5. The "reform trap" is similar to the "King's dilemma" analyzed definitively by Samuel
Huntington. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968), 177-91. Huntington argues that a traditional leader seeking to
modernize may inadvertently create instability that, in the end, causes the collapse of the
traditional order.
This second war-cause grew more prevalent with the cold war's end, as
the collapse of communism and the triumph of free-market liberalism
discredited repressive and statist ideologies throughout the world. Regimes
that embraced these ideologies lost legitimacy and often undertook
destabilizing reforms.
A third leading cause of civil conflict is state weakness. The spread of
modern small arms among Third World populations has weakened
governments' relative position vis-a-vis potential civil opponents over the
past few decades. The end of superpower aid to beleaguered governments
has further weakened many authoritarian regimes since 1989. This
weakening, in turn, has made it easier for groups to challenge governments
by force.
A fourth cause is communal hegemonism the aspiration of ethnic,
religious, clan or class groups for hegemony over other groups. Violence
often results when hegemonistic groups seek to impose their way of life on
others, particularly on peoples that have a well-developed group identity of
their own. Peace is strongest when groups adopt a live-and-let-live stance
toward others.
The war-causing effects of communal hegemonism are catalyzed by the
first three causes. Submerged hegemonistic groups are freer to go on a
rampage, and are more likely to provoke defensive violence by others, when
an empire collapses, regime legitimacy declines, or central power weakens.
Fifth, revolutionary political ideas have caused civil war by leading
groups to adopt extreme goals and tactics that precluded peaceful
compromise with others. Marxist-Leninist ideas have fueled civil wars
worldwide since 1917, by leading movements of the disenfranchised to
embrace extreme communist political programs. Muslim revolutionary
movements have likewise triggered civil violence in the Arab world and
South Asia in recent years. By delegitimizing Marxist-Leninist political
ideas, the Soviet collapse vastly reduced the prevalence of this important
cause of war.
Sixth, aristocratic intransigencethe refusal of elites in some steeply
stratified states to share power and wealthhas triggered several recent
civil wars (for example, in Nicaragua in the 1970s and in El Salvador and
6. We use the term "communal" in this essay to encompass ethnic, religious, tribal, and
linguistic groups. A communal group is a group of people bound together by a belief of
common heritage and group distinctiveness, often reinforced by religion, perceived kinship
ties, language, and history. Examples of communal groups are Turks (a common language,
perceptions of a shared history) and Jews (belief in common ancestry reinforced by a
common religion and history). Large tribal groups and clans that perceive themselves as
having a common identity fall under this category as well.
Guatemala in the 1980s). This danger has diminished with the cold war's
end, as democratic norms have spread to conservative elites and as these
elites have lost unqualified U.S. backing. This loss has forced them to
moderate their behavior.
The fourth, fifth and sixth causes are all examples of a more general
phenomenonextremism in political ends and means. Peace among
groups, classes and movements is most threatened when they insist on
dominance and adopt take-no-prisoners tactics.
Seventh, the superpower competition for influence in Third World states
was a major cause of civil conflict during the cold war. A number of Third
World states (Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Ethiopia, among others) became cold-war battlegrounds
when one or both superpowers backed proxies or directly intervened to
support client groups. The cold war's end stopped this competition and
slowed or ended the civil violence it spawned.
All seven causes operated both during and after the cold war, but some
were more prevalent during the cold war while some have been more
prevalent afterward. Specifically, the first three causes listed above (collapse
of empire, regime illegitimacy, and state weakness) grew more abundant
after 1989, the fourth (communal hegemonism) stood roughly constant
across both periods, and the last three (revolutionary ideology, aristocratic
intransigence, and superpower competition) abated sharply after 1989. The
abatement of these last three causes largely explains the net decline in civil
violence since 1989.
The most important of these causes of war since 1989 were the loss of
government legitimacy and communal hegemonism. Of thirty-seven
countries that have suffered conflicts since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
conflict between a hegemonistic ethnic group and other groups helped fuel
twenty-five conflicts. The loss of regime legitimacy was a major cause of
nineteen wars. In fourteen conflicts the governments were too weak to
suppress or appease even minor rebellions, a weakness that led to a larger
conflagration. The collapse of empire also helped precipitate thirteen recent
conflicts, including five of the eleven "new" conflicts which were not active
before 1989. Revolutionary ideologies were a major cause of eleven
conflicts (with communism being the culprit ideology in five of these
eleven). Superpower competition was a major causes of eight conflicts;
aristocratic intransigence a major cause of four.
Table 1
LOCATIONS OF RECENT CIVIL VIOLENCE
Conflict
location
Conflict active in year

1989
Afghanistan
Yes
1990
Yes
1991
Yes
1992
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Azerbaijan/Armenia
Burma
No*
?*
?*
Yes
No*
Chad
?*
Yes
Colombia
Yes
El Salvador
Ethiopia
Haiti
1996
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No*
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No*
Yes
P*
No*
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No*
No*
No*
No*
No*
No*
Yes
No*
Yes
Yes
No*
No*
Yes**
Yes
Yes
No*
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
?*
Yes
No*
No*
?*
?*
?*
Georgia
Guatemala
1995
Yes
Burundi
Cambodia
1994
Yes
Algeria
Angola
1993
No*
No*
No*
?*
No*
India***
Yes
(Punjab)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Indonesia
No*
Yes
No*
No*
Iraq
No*
No*
Yes
Lebanon
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Liberia
Mozambique
Yes
Yes
(Kashmir)
No*
No*
No*
Yes**
Yes**
Yes**
Yes**
Yes'
?*
Yes
?*
?*
?*
?*
Yes
Yes
?*
Yes
No*
No*
No*
Yes
Yes
Pakistan
Peru
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No*
Philippines
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No*
No*
Romania
Yes
Russia (Chechnya)
Rwanda
Yes
Yes
Sierra Leone
Yes
Yes
?*
?*
Yes
Somalia
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
?*
?*
?*
South
Africa****
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
?*
Sri Lanka
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
?*
Yes
(see key on pp. 8-9)
Table 1 (continued)
Conflict active in year
Conflict
location
1989
Sudan
Yes
1990
Yes
1991
Yes
Tajikistan
Turkey
No*
?*
?*
Uganda
Yes
?*
Yes
1992
1993
Yes
?*
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
1994
?*
1995
1996
Yes
Yes**
No*
No*
No*
Yes
Yes
Yes
?*
Yes
Yemen
Yugoslavia
(and successor
states)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Zaire
Yes
Total Wars
17
17
14
20
17
12
11
11
Total conflicts
active*****
23
23
23
23
24
25
23
22
Countries in italics are home to recurring or constant conflicts (that is countries that suffered internal wars on and off
or continually in the 1970s and 1980s.) Of the thirty-sevn conflicts listed above, twenty-six were recurring or constant
conflicts.
*
Conflict was active in the year in question but probably did not reach 1,000 deaths a year. A "no" in the box
indicates that data are available, while a "?" indicates that precise figures are not available. Conflicts with a "?"
and a "no" are not included in the "Total Wars" figure, but are included in the "Total Conflicts Active" box.
**
Conflict deaths probably reached 1,000 deaths a year, but precise figures are unavailable. In some cases, such
as the Sudan, it is highly likely that deaths from civil violence, exceeded the 1,000 death figure considerably.
***
India is home to both recurring conflicts (Punjab) and nonrecurring ones (Assam).
****
The South African conflict changed from an ANC-government struggle to one between Zulu groups and
ANC partisans.
An "active" conflict includes conflicts that reached the 1,000 deaths a year criteria and those that did not
reach this level but were not completely resolved.
*****
We list each conflict by location even though several locations (such as India) are home to multiple conflicts that often
have highly different causes. When a conflict occurred in an area under different sovereignties (for example the CroatSerb conflict occurred in both "Yugoslavia" and "Croatia") we list it according to where the conflict began. Thus,
conflicts in the former Soviet Union are generally listed under their successor states, as the fighting did not break out
until after the Soviet Union collapse. On the other hand, we count the former Yugoslavia as one location because the
fighting began there when the union was intact. Thus, other descriptions of civil violence might list more conflicts or
fewer, depending on how they code various conflicts. A change in coding, however, would not significantly change the
conclusions of this paper.
10
The next section defines civil violence and describes post-cold war
trends in its incidence and location. The subsequent section describes the
seven prime causes of recent (that is, since 1989) civil violence. Our
conclusion argues that civil war seems likely to diminish further in the
decades ahead, but one major cause of civil wardemocratization in
multiethnic stateswill raise serious risks down the road.
There is no widely used source that codes the causes of the civil wars we
discuss. Lacking such a source, our judgments on these wars' causes are
authors' estimates based on our survey of mainstream press accounts and
other secondary sources. Others would code many of these cases
differently, but we think our coding fairly reflects press and other
secondary accounts.
RECENT TRENDS IN THE INCIDENCE OF CIVIL CONFLICT
J-ylHREE SEPARATE measures of civil conflict indicate that it briefly

J . increased after the cold war ended, but it then quickly faded back to
levels at or below those of the late cold war. Although each measure uses
different criteria, all three show the same overall trend. The "new world
disorder" was short-lived, and the world today is becoming more peaceful.
The number of states experiencing civil conflict. It offers our count of the
number of states with major civil conflicts under way.8 Table 1 reveals that
the number of states with ongoing conflicts increased right after the end of
the cold war but then declined sharply, falling to levels well below late coldwar levels by 1995. In 1989 seventeen countries suffered civil conflicts
involving more than 1,000 deaths. The number of states with active civil
conflicts peaked in 1992, when twenty countries had major civil conflicts
under way. By 1996, however, the total number of countries experiencing
7. We examine all the instances of widespread civil violence active after the end of the
cold war. For the purposes of this article, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marks
the end of the cold war. Any widespread civil violence that broke out after that point is
examined in this study.
8. Our count was compiled primarily from descriptions in The Europa World Book series,
the Economist, the New York Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, articles in academic journals such as
Problems of Communism, Conflict Studies, and Current History, and selected works noted
specifically in the text. We also drew on Peter Wallensteen and Margareta Sollenberg, "The
End of International War? Armed Conflict 1989-95," Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 3
(August 1996): 353-70; Patrick Brogan, The Fighting Never Stopped: A Comprehensive Guide to
World Conflicts Since 1945 (New York: Vintage, 1990); Ruth Leger Sivard, World Miltary and
Social Expenditures 1996 (Leesburg, VA: WMSE Publicaitons, 1996); SIPRI Yearbook 1996 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (New
Brunswick: Transaction, 1996).
11
such major conflicts had fallen to eleven. Civil warfare had hardly
disappeared, but it was down from late cold war period.
The number of separate civil conflicts. A count of the number of dyadic civil
conflicts (that is, a count of each separate feud) by Peter Wallensteen and
Margareta Sollenberg reveals the same pattern. They report that the number
of civil conflicts under way rose from forty-four in 1989 to forty-six in
1990 and fifty in 1991, and then peaked at fifty-four in 1992. (See Table 4
below.) The number of conflicts then fell to forty-six in 1993, to forty-two
in 1994, and to thirty-fourwell below the 1989 countin 1995.9
Table 2
WORLDWIDE REFUGEES,
Year
1980-9510
Number of
refugees
(in millions)
1980
5.7
1981
8.2
1982
9.8
1983
10.4
1984
10.9
1985
10.5
1986
11.6
1987
12.4
1988
13.3
1989
14.8
1990
14.9
1991
17.2
1992
17.0
1993
18.2
1994
16.4
1995
14.4
9. Wallensteen and Sollenberg, "The End of International War?" table 2 on p. 354. Their
war-count is higher than ours because they count war-dyads instead of states with wars and
because they use a more inclusive definition of civil conflict than we do, including some
minor wars involving fewer than 1,000 total deaths.
10. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's'Refugees:In
Search ofSolutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 248.
Table 3
CAUSES O F R E C E N T CIVIL CONFLICTS
Conflict
Location
Major Parties Involved
Causes of the Conflict

Collapse
of empire Lack of
(postregime
1945)
legitimacy
Afghanistan
1. Mujahedin v. Sovietbacked government
Yes
State
weakness
SuperCommunal
Aristocratic Revolutionary power
hegemonism intransigence ideology
proxy*
Yes
Yes
Yes
2. Mujahedin v. other
Mujahedin factions
Algeria
Islamist (FIS, GIA) v.

government (FLN)
Angola
UNITA v. government
(MPLA)
Azerbaijan/ Armenians v. Azeris

Armenia
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
(v. Soviets
only)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Burma
1. Government v.
Yes
democratic opposition
2. Government v.
Karen ethnic group
Yes
Yes
(crushing
democracy
forces)
(Karen, Mong
Tai, other
ethnic
struggles)
3. Government v.
Mong Tai Army
4. Government v. other
ethnic groups
Burundi
Hutu v. Tutsi
Cambodia
Khmer Rouge v. rival

organizations (KPNLF,
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FUNCINEC)
Chad
1. Government versus
military faction and
Movement for the
National Salvation of
Chad
2. Clan infighting
(see key on p. 21)
Yes
Yes
Yes
(clan fighting)
Yes
Table 3 (continued)
Conflict
Location

Collapse
of empire Lack of
(postregime
1945)
legitimacy
Colombia
1. Government v. M-19,
FARC, EPLO, ELN, and
splinter groups
Yes
State
weakness
SuperCommunal Aristocratic Revolutionary power

proxy*
Yes
Yes
2. Guerrilla groups
fighting one another
El Salvador FMLN v. government
Ethiopia
1. Government versus Yes

Eritrean People's
Liberation Movement
Tigray People's
Liberation Front
other communal
factions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Georgia
1. Abkhaz v. Georgians Yes

2. Ossetians v.
Georgians
Guatemala
Government v. leftist
guerrillas
Yes
Haiti
Military government vs.

Aristide supporters
Yes
India
1. Government v.
Kashmiri separatists
Yes
Yes
(Kashmir) (Kashmir)
(Assam,
Hindu-Muslim
fighting)
3. Government v.
Assamese separatists
(and Bengalis v.
Assamese)
1. Aceh separatists v.
government forces
Iraq
1. Kurds (PUK, KDP) v.

Sunni Arab government
2. Shi'a v. Sunni Arab
government
(see key on p. 21)
Yes
Yes
2. Hindu v. Muslim
Indonesia
Yes
Yes
Yes**
Yes
Yes
Table 3 (continued)
Conflict
Location

Collapse
of empire Lack of
(postregime
1945)
legitimacy
State
weakness
SuperCommunal
Aristocratic Revolutionary power
proxy*
Lebanon
Sunnis, Shi'a, Druze,

Maronite Christians,
others against one
another and themselves
Yes
Yes
Yes
Liberia
Krahn, Gio, Mano, and

other tribes and their
associated militias
Yes
Yes
Yes
Mozambique RENAMO vs
Yes
government (FRELIMO)
Pakistan
Yes
1. Violence among
political parties, often
ethnically linked
Yes
(political
violence
2. Ann-mobajir violence
on
ty)
Yes
Peru
Government versus
Shining Path, Tupac
Amaru Revolutionary
Movement
Yes
Philippines
1. Government v. NPA
2. Government v.
Muslim groups (MNLF,
Yes
Yes
Yes
(v. Musi
groups)
MILF)
Romania
Armed forces/security
services v. National
Salvation Front and
popular backers
Russia
Russia v. Chechen
separatists
Yes
Rwanda
1. Hutu v. Tutsi
2. interha/mMuxn v.
Hutu moderates
Yes
Sierra Leone Government versus

Revolutionary United
Front forces
(see key on p. 21)
Yes
Yes
Yes
(Hutuv.
Tutsi)
Yes
(Hutuv.
Hutu)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Table 3 (continued)
Conflict
Location

Collapse
of empire Lack of
(postregime
1945)
legitimacy
Somalia
Clan-based political
fighting (USC factions,
Yes
State
weakness
Communal
hegemonism
Yes
Yes
SSDF, SPM)
South Africa 1. Apartheid

government versus
ANC, other antiapartheid forces
Yes
2. ANC-Inkatha fighting
Sri Lanka
1. Government v. Tamil
insurgents (LTTE, etc.)
2. Government v.
Sinhalese radicals (JVP)
Yes
SuperAristocratic Revolutionary power

intransigence ideology
proxy*
Sudan
Islamist, Arab
Yes
government v. Christian
and animist African
Yes
Yes
SPLA
Tajikistan
Tajik "old guard" and Yes

Uzbeks v.
democratic/religious
coalition (United Tajik
Opposition)
Turkey
Govt. v. Kurds (PKK)
Uganda
1. Government v.
Uganda People's
Democratic Army
2. Government v. Holy
Spirit Movement
Yemen
Former North Yemen

v. forces of former
South Yemen
(see key on p. 21)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
(Holy Spirit
Movement)
Table 3 (continued)
Conflict
Location

Collapse
of empire Lack of
(postregime
1945)
legitimacy
Yugoslavia
(and
successor
states)
1. Croat government Yes

and militias v. Serb
forces
2. Serb paramilitary
forces v. Muslim
militias and govt. forces
3. Muslim government
and militias v. Croat
government and militias
Zaire
Government v. Kabila's
movement.
Total number
37
13
State
weakness
SuperCommunal Aristocratic Revolutionary power

proxy*
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
19
14
25
11
*
**
We consider a conflict to be caused by a superpower proxy struggle if the superpower intervention caused, widened, or sustained the civil
war in question.
The Iraqi state in general was strong, but it hovered on the brink of collapse in 1991 after the Gulf War. This weakness encouraged
several repressed minorities to rise up.
The causes identified above were major and active factors at the time of the outbreak of the latest round of fighting. As such, they played a
important role in the concerns or motivations of the combatants. Determining the cause of a conflict is difficult and involves subjective judgments.
Moreover, several of the causes we identify function concurrently, making it hard to decide which one was the most important. To avoid "double
counting," we do not list "lack of regime legitimacy" as a cause when the lack occurs because an empire has collapsed, leaving illegitimate successor
states, or because hegemonistic communal groups or intransigent aristocrats hold power, alienating other groups. If these excluded cases were double
counted as cases of "lack of regime legitimacy," that category would be much larger.
The list of major parties involved includes only the primary movements or groups involved in the fighting. Many, indeed perhaps most, conflicts
involved a staggering array of small militias and factionsan array we often agglomerate into broad descriptive communal or political labels. Separate
groups are noted if the country experienced multiple, largely unrelated conflicts or if the groups in question had highly different motivations or are
easily distinguishable. Thus Burma, where the government v. democratic opposition conflict is quite different in nature from the government's
struggle against the Karen people, has multiple listings. Colombia's many guerrilla groups, while quite different in their particular agendas, all felt the
regime was illegitimate, considered themselves revolutionary, and took advantage of state weakness to carry out their struggle. Thus we list them as
one entry while noting the major groups. When a conflict cause applies to only one of the parties involved in the fighting, it is so noted in the table.
The purpose of this list is to describe the current state of violence and to help the reader understand our coding of certain conflicts, not to provide a
comprehensive account of the identity of the parties in each conflict.-). Although the patterns in this table might be examined further by more sophisticated quantitative techniques, we have chosen not to do so given the
ambiguous nature of the data and the high degree of uncertainty regarding many of the conditions necessary for the various causes to function. See
Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, DesigningSocialInquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative'Research(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994), 44, for an argument that quantitative indexes that do not relate closely to the events in question can actually increase measurement and causal
inference problems.
22
Total casualties, measured by counting total refugees. Counts of civil wars
measure global civil violence imperfectly because great and small wars
weigh the same in the measure. Estimates of total worldwide civil war
casualties would be a better measure, but casualty figures are unavailable or
unreliable for most civil wars. Hence any measure of total worldwide
casualties is also unreliable.
Global casualties can be measured indirectly, however, by counting the
global war refugee population. The refugee population is a useful surrogate
measure of war casualtiespeople flee in rough proportion to the violence
they sufferand like our "number of states with wars" measure it indicates
that the "new world disorder" is a myth. As Table 2 reveals, the global
refugee population rose slightly after the end of the cold war, from 14.8
million in 1989 to a peak of 18.2 million in 1993.11 Then the refugee
population fell back to 14.4 million in 1995, that is, roughly to late cold war
levels. Thus this refugee measure, like our "number of states with wars"
measure and Wallensteen and Sollenberg's "number of wars" measure,
indicates that the "new world disorder" was a spike phenomenon of the
early 1990s that quickly faded. Specifically, it suggests that violence in the
mid-1990s was above mid-1980s levels but slightly below the level of 1989.
Are the conflicts of the mid-1990s old or new? Of the thirty-seven wars
during the period 198996 listed in Table 1, twenty-six are "recurring or
constant," meaning that they easily span the cold war and postcold war
periods. The remaining eleven are "new" conflicts, meaning that they broke
out after the cold war ended and their causes are not rooted deeply in pre1989 events in their countries. Five of these eleven new conflicts erupted in
the former Soviet and Yugoslav empires and reflect the war-causing effects
of imperial collapse.
11. Refugee flows are a crude measure of civil violence. One important measure of
refugeesinternally displaced refugeesis not listed here though a more complete account
of refugee totals would include these individuals. Civil wars often generate massive refugee
flows within a country's borders, as individuals flee areas of fighting for relatively safer
regions. Historic data on such flows, however, are incomplete and probably would be
misleading for comparison purposes, as flows in wealthier states that receive more media
attention are more likely to be recorded. Moreover, refugees often remain in the country of
refuge even after a civil war in their country of origin ends. Furthermore, many refugees flee
for economic reasons, not because of civil violence. Refugee flow data also may be biased
due to changes in the policies of receiving states, which may take fewer refugees even though
the number of people wanting to flee remains unchanged. In general, however, there is a
high correlation between internal wars, particularly ethnic conflicts, and refugee flows. See
Myron Weiner, "Bad Neighbors, Bad Neighborhoods: An Inquiry into the Causes of
Refugee Flows," International Security21,no. 1 (summer 1996): 5-42.
23
Table 4
INTERSTATE AND INTRASTATE ARMED CONFLICT,
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
199
43
44
49
52
42
42
34
Intrastate with
foreign intervention
Interstate
All armed conflict
47
49
51
55
46
42
35
Type of Conflict
Intrastate
1989-95
Source. Wallensteen and Sollenberg, "The End of International War?" 354.
Where are recent civil wars occurring? Africa and Asia have had the most
(thirteen states in Africa and eleven in Asia have experienced civil wars
since 1989). Trailing are the Middle East (five states), the Western
hemisphere (five states), and Europe (three states).
What proportion of total warfare do these civil conflicts represent? In
recent years, civil war has replaced international war as the dominant form
of war and has nearly replaced it as the only form of war. Wallensteen and
Sollenberg report that purely intrastate wars outnumbered purely interstate
wars worldwide by 43-3 in 1989, 44-3 in 1990, 49-1 in 1991, 52-1 in 1992,
42-0 in 1993 and again in 1994, and 34-1 in 1995.12 Moreover, most of
these few interstate wars were small affairs: the Persian Gulf war of 1990
91 has been the only major old-fashioned interstate war since 1989.
12 .Wallensteen and Sollenberg, "The End of International War?" 354. Wallensteen and
Sollenberg also classify several wars as "intrastate with foreign intervention" and count them
as follows: one in 1989, two in 1990, one in 1991, two in 1992, four in 1993, and none in
1994 and 1995 (ibid.). For other works noting the importance of internal conflict since the
end of the cold war, see Ted Robert Gurr, "People Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict
and the Changing World System," International Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (September 1994):
347-77; Stephen R. David, "Internal War: Causes and Cures," World Politics 49 0uly 1997):
552-76; Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A. Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts
(Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1993); and S'laughter Among Neighbors: The Political
Origins of Communal Violence, Human Rights Watch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
Good discussions of the interplay between international conflict and internal conflict can be
found in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993); Myron Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and to
Human Rights (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic
Conflict in World Politics (Boulder: Westview, 1994); and Michael E. Brown, ed., The
International Dimensions of Internal Conflict (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).
24
This pattern continues a striking change in the nature of warfare that

began in the 1960s, a change revealed in data collected by Frank Whelon
Wayman, J. David Singer, and Meredith Sarkees and summarized in Table
5. It reveals a sharp drop in the number of international wars beginning in
the 1980s and a sharp rise in civil warfare beginning in the 1960s, causing a
marked rise in the proportion of all warfare worldwide that is civil in
nature. Some 60 percent of the 171 wars of the nineteenth century were
international. Some 51 percent of the 115 wars of 1900-60 were
international. The percent of wars that were international then plummets to
36 percent in the 1960s, 26 percent in the 1970s, and 17 percent in the
1980s. Only 10 percent of the conflicts in the 1990s were international. The
war problem is now largely synonymous with the civil war problem.
CAUSES OF CONTEMPORARY CIVIL CONFLICT
VIOLENCE has many causes, but several stand out in importance.

C
This section examines seven common and potent causes that together
explain the bulk of civil conflict since 1989. These seven causes are not
IVIL
wholly exclusive or unrelated. Several overlap or cause each other in ways

noted below.
13 .The count of recent civil wars by Wayman, Singer, and Sarkees is lower than ours
because they define civil war more restrictively than we do. See Frank Whelon Wayman, J.
David Singer, and Meredith Sarkees, "Intra-State, and Extra-Systemic Wars, 1816-1995"
(paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego,
Calif., April 1996), Table 1, 10.
14. Scholarly work on the causes of civil conflict is vast. Recent works include Roy
Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993,"
American Political Science Review 89, no. 3 (September 1995): 681-90; Chaim Kaufmann,
"Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security 20, no. 4
(spring 1996): 136-75; Stuart J. Kaufman, "Spiraling to Ethnic War: Elites, Masses, and
Moscow in Moldova's Civil War," International Security 21, no. 2 (fall 1996): 108-38; David A.
Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic
Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (fall 1996): 41-75; Barry R. Posen, "The Security
Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," in Brown, Ethnic Conflict and International Security, 103-24; and
Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security 18, no. 4
(spring 1994): 5-39. Classic works of value on internal war include Donald Horowitz, Ethnic
Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Myron Weiner, Sonsofthe
Soil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Robert H. Bates, "Modernization,
Ethnic Competition, and the Rationality of Politics in Contemporary Africa" in State Versus
Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. D. Rothchild and V. Olorunsola (Boulder
Westview, 1985).
25
COLLAPSE OF EMPIRE
Much post-cold war violence has occurred in the successor states of

former empires, especially the Soviet and Yugoslav empires.15 The reason
lies in the powerful war-causing effects of imperial collapse. Before the end
of the cold war, the collapse of the British, French, Portuguese, and other
colonial empires caused many conflicts in Asia and Africa, including some
conflicts that continued into the 1980s and 1990s. Imperial collapses also
account for a large share of recently erupting deadly conflicts. Specifically,
wars caused by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet and Yugoslav empires
explain much of the "spike" in conflict observed in 1992 and 1993.16
The collapse of an empire can cause conflict in five ways. (1) The
governments that emerge in the successor states often lack legitimacy,
hence suffering the neuroses of illegitimate regimes. (2) The successor
states' governments, even if legitimate, are often too weak to deter citizens
from violence or to reassure them that they need not use violence in selfdefense. (3) Successor states often have artificial borders that are unrelated
to local demography and are unsetded by formal agreement; this generates
border quarrels. (4) The populations of successor states are often
comprised of hostile groups who intermingled during imperial times. Their
proximity breeds mutual fear, hostility, and violence. (5) The rights and
duties of major powers in the zone of imperial collapse are often undefined.
As a result the former metropole and other outside powers often collide as
they contend for power in the zone of imperial retraction. The metropole
interferes to recover lost influence; outside powers interfere to prevent
disorder or to expand their influence. These causes are detailed below.
Illegitimate governments. Many of the successor governments that emerged
after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Yugoslavia had little
legitimacy. This lack of legitimacy encouraged a violent scramble for power
among leaders and interest groups and encouraged minorities to resist
incorporation into die successor state.
During the days of empire, local leaders depended on ties to the
metropole, not local communities, for their power and authority. When the
empires collapsed, these leaders suddenly found themselves governing
without institutions or a popular mandate, under challenge from rival elites.
15. For a complete treatment of the relationship between the collapse of empire and the
outbreak of war, see Ladinsky, "After the Fall."
16. Thus Kim Holmes notes that "we have witnessed the collapse of the world's greatest
land empire. As with the demise of other great empires in historywhether they be Spanish,
French, Turkish, Austro-Hungarian, Germany, or Britishwar is the fruit of disorder"
(Holmes, "The New World Disorder").
26
In Tajikistan, for example, Rakhmon Nabiyev and associated apparatchiks

essentially stumbled into power after his predecessor left due to popular
protests following the failed coup in Moscow. To stay in power, Nabiyev
played up nationalism, armed selected followers, suppressed opposition,
and otherwise strove to find substitutes for his regime's lack of legitimacy.
These substitutes failed to satisfy many residents. Democrats, Islamists, and
rival communal groups all rejected Nabiyev's bona fides and took up arms
to oust his government.
This lack of legitimacy invites rebellion by minorities in the new states.
Minorities that accepted a subordinate status in a large, multiethnic empire
often reject a minority status when an empire's collapse empowers an
ethnic rival. In Georgia, for example, Georgian nationalists led by Zviad
Gamsakhurdia took power as the Soviet Union collapsed, with widespread
support among ethnic Georgians. Two large minority communities in
Georgia, however, that had apparently accepted their minority status in the
Soviet Unionthe Abkhaz and the Ossetianstook up arms to prevent
their incorporation into the Georgian-dominated state. Similarly,
Moldova's nationalist movement alarmed residents in the Transdniesteria
region, which is 60 percent ethnic Russian and Ukrainian. These
Transdniestrian Russians and Ukrainians proclaimed the Transdniesterian
Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic and tried to remain attached to the
Soviet Union. Only the dispatch of Soviet troops prevented massive
violence.20 The Chechens in Russia and the Armenians in Azerbaijan also
resisted incorporation into a new state dominated by what they feared
would be their community's persecutors. In all these cases, minorities in a
multiethnic empire sought their own state after the empire collapsed in part
because they rejected the legitimacy of the successor government. (For a
17. Due to this illegitimacy problem, some parts of the Soviet empire resisted the empire's
collapse.
18. See Barnett Rubin, "The Fragmentation of Tajikistan," Survival35,no. 4 (winter 19931994): 71-91; and "Tajikistan: Islam wins," Economist, 21 October 1992, 32.
19. For an analysis of minority tension in the Georgian quest for independence, see
Darrell Slider, "The Politics of Georgia's Independence," Problems of Communism 40, no. 6
(November 1991): 63-79.
20. V. Solnar, "Hatred and fear on both banks of the Dniester," New Times International,
no. 14 (April 1992): 8-9; and William Crowther, "Moldova after Independence," Current
History 93, no. 585 (October 1994): 342-47. The Gagauzi, a Turkic-speaking, Orthodox
Christian people from Bulgaria, also resisted incorporation into the new state and proclaimed
their independence.
21. See Mark Saroyan, "The 'Karabakh Syndrome' and Azerbaijani Politics," Problems of
Communism 39, no. 5 (September 1990): 14-29, for information on the origins of the conflict
in Azerbaijan. For background on the conflict in Chechnya, see Christopher Panico, Conflicts
in the Caucasus: Russia's War in Chechnya, Conflict Studies no. 281 (Research Institute for the
Study of Conflict and Terrorism, 1995).
27
more detailed discussion of the problems that illegitimate governments

face, see "Loss of Legitimacy" below.)
Weak governments. Even legitimate successor governments often emerge
from collapsed empires in a frail condition. State security services and the
military must often be purged, reformed, or created out of whole cloth.
Frequently, the successor state relied on subsidies from the metropole and
now must do without. Thus, successor regimes often lack the resources to
deter, suppress, or buy off dissent. Tajikistan, for example, became
independent without a clear national identity, a strong economic base, or
national security forces.22 It quickly collapsed into civil war.
Successor governments also may have little control over government
institutions. In Georgia, the nationalist successor governments often lacked
control of the military and other institutions. Tengis Kitovani, who
controlled the Georgian National Guard, deployed troops to the capital of
Abkhazia and shelled the capital of South Ossetia, despite Georgian
President Shevardnadze's desire for peace talks. Similarly, paramilitary
leaders in Georgia often controlled the supply of food, fuel, and other
necessities. (We examine government weakness as a source of conflict in
greater detail in the section "Weak States" below.)
Artificial borders. Successor states often inherit artificial borders that
correspond poorly to natural boundaries or to local demography and have
not been settled by agreements with neighbors. These borders often follow
administrative boundaries that were imposed by the metropole without
regard for local feelings. As a result these borders bisect national groups
and create ethnic-minority enclaves. Thus, the European powers
partitioned Africa at the 1878 Congress of Berlin with little regard for the
unity of African peoples, drawing lines that seldom followed geographic or
communal boundaries.2 Later, Stalin drew borders that split the Turkic and
Muslim peoples of the Soviet Empire into different administrative units in
order to weaken their political strength.
Cursed with such borders, several successor states to the Soviet and
Yugoslav empires have fought bloody wars to resolve questions raised by
22. See Rubin, "The Fragmentation of Tajikistan," 75-78.
23. For an assessment of these divisions on conflict in Georgia, see "Georgia: Unholy
Trinity," New Statesman and Society 5, no. 219, 11 September 1992, 19-20; and "Georgia:
Tearing Apart," Economist, 3 October 1992, 55.
24. At the conference, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck "continually warned the
representatives of the Great Powers that their principal business was to reach a settlement
among themselves and not to worry unduly about the happiness of lesser breeds without the
law" (Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978],
112). For more on the European role in the creation of borders in Africa, see Thomas
Pakenham, The Scramblefor Africa (New York: Avon, 1991).
28
maldesigned boundaries. The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict stemmed from

Armenian demands that Nagorno-Karabakhan Armenian enclave within
Azerbaijanbe transferred to Armenia. The Serb-Croat-Muslim war of
199195 likewise stemmed from arbitrary borders that bisected the Serbian
and Croat nations, leaving each with large diasporas living as minorities
outside the national state. Each then fought to recover its diaspora.
Intermingled populations. Empires foster national intermingling that can
plague the politics of their successor states. During the imperial era,
individuals can more easily move about within the empire, causing
intermingling. Moreover, some empires deliberately intermingle the
empire's national groups by inducing or compelling cross-migration among
groups. As a result, the empire's successor states may have populations
composed of mutually antagonistic peoples. Stalin's forced marches of
millions of subjects are the most famous example of such enforced
intermingling, and they sowed the seeds of current conflict. The recent
conflict in Chechnya, for example, stems from Stalin's 1944 deportation of
the Chechens. Moscow allowed these Chechens to return to Chechnya in
1956, but on returning they met a hostile welcome from new, largely
Russian setders, who had been encouraged by Moscow to migrate there.
This settler-native tension fueled Chechen nationalism and secessionism.
Intermingling causes conflict by shoving antagonistic groups together
and by producing an ethnic security dilemma between diem (mat is, a
situation where the security of two groups is mutually incompatible, and
each group's efforts to secure itself reduce the other's security). Hostile
intermingled groups each must fear that the other may turn on them at an
opportune moment, leading each to think in turn that it should strike at a
time of its own advantage. Such thinking played a major role in fueling
Serbia's attacks on the Croatians and Bosnians in 199192 and in
motivating Armenia's war against Azerbaijan.
Metropole interference. Former metropoles often intervene in dieir former
empire, sometimes triggering new colonial wars. The metropole may be
animated by perceptions of a security threat, by claims to a sphere of
influence, or by the need to protect or recover diaspora populations in the
periphery. Moscow today, for example, claims the right to intervene in
25. "Azerbaijan," EuropaWorld Book 1994 (London: Europa Publications Limited, 1993),
438-40.
26. For works noting the importance of the security dilemma, see Posen, "The Security
Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict"; James Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War,"
International Organization 49, no. 3 (summer 1995); Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible
Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars"; and Barbara F. Walter, "The Resolution of Civil Wars: Why
Negotiations Fail" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1994).
29
parts of its former empire to protect Russian citizens. Many Russian

nationalists also assert that this area remains their sphere of influence, and
some Russians fear the possibility of former republics allying with outside
powers. Such thinking led Russia to intervene in conflicts in Moldova,
Georgia, and Tajikistan. In Moldova, Russian intervention probably
reduced civil violence, but in Tajikistan it probably fed a bloody civil war.
In Georgia its effects were mixed, sometimes fueling violence by
encouraging Abkhaz separatism, yet intervening in the end to help enforce
a cease-fire after Schevardnadze agreed to join the Commonwealth of
Independent States.
External intervention. Outside powers intervene in collapsed empires for
three reasons. First, these powers often see the successor states of a
collapsed empire as easy prey for their imperial ambitions. After the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, for example, Britain quickly abandoned
wartime promises to Middle Eastern leaders and divided much of the
Ottoman lands with France.29 Similarly, the European powers often clashed
over the Balkansmost notably in 1914after the Balkan states escaped
Ottoman rule. In 1975 Indonesia seized East Timor after the Portuguese
withdrawal, triggering a bloody neocolonial war.
Second, outside powers may intervene to avert threats that the imperial
collapse creates. Thus, after Portugal abandoned its empire, South Africa
fought bloody interventionary wars in Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique,
largely because it feared that the new black-ruled governments would
support South Africa's antiapartheid resistance.
Finally, outside powers may intervene to protect embattled co-ethnics in
the former empire. Thus, ethnic Tajiks in Afghanistan have lately provided
arms and a haven for Islamic rebels in Tajikistan, while Uzbekistan has
bolstered the Tajik government for fear that any alternative regime would
oppress ethnic Uzbeks living in Tajikistan. Mozambique supported black
liberation forces waging war against the white minority regime in Rhodesia
during the 1970s. This spurred Rhodesia to create the Renamo insurgency
that spread death and destruction in Mozambique into the 1990s.
27. Bruce D. Porter, "A Country Instead of a Cause: Russian Foreign Policy in the PostSoviet Era," in Order and Disorder after the Cold War, ed. Brad Roberts (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1995), 7-8.
28. Although accurate information is scarce, it appears that local Russian forcesperhaps
with encouragement from Moscowaided Ossetian and Abkhaz separatists in their struggle
against Georgian forces.
29. A good account of this process is David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of
the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Avon, 1990).
30. See Rubin, "The Fragmentation of Tajikistan."
30
Table 5
CIVIL AND INTERNATIONAL WARS,
Decade
Interstate
war
1816-1995: WARS INITIATED PER DECADE
Extrasystemic
(largely
colonial)
international
Subtotal
for international
war
war
Intrastate
war
Grand
total
Percent
of all
wars
that are
international
1816-19
(2)
67
1820-29
(8)
15
53
1830-39
(5)
10
15
33
1840-49
(11)
20
55
1850-59
(14)
21
67
1860-69
(13)
15
28
46
1870-79
10
(14)
22
64
1880-89
12
(15)
18
83
1890-99
16
(20)
29
69
19th C
total
30
72
(102)
69
171
60
1900-1909
(10)
17
59
1910-19
(14)
10
24
58
1920-29
(8)
12
20
40
1930-39
(10)
18
56
1940-49
(8)
9t
17
47
1950-59
(9)
10
19
47
1960-69
(9)
16
25
36
1970-79
(9)
25
34
26
1980-89
(4)
19
23
17
1990-95
(2)
19
21
10
20th C
total
49
34
(83)
135
218
38
Grand
total
79
106
(185)
204
389
48
31
Source: Frank Whelon Wayman, J. David Singer, and Meredith Sarkees, "Inter-State, IntraState, and Extra-Systemic Wars 1816-1995" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the
International Studies Association, San Diego, Calif., April 1996), Table 1, p. 10.
LOSS OF LEGITIMACY
Much of today's violence occurs in states whose governments have

somehow lost their legitimacy. ' This section discusses how legitimacy is
lost and why such losses cause civil conflict.
Causes of Legitimacy Loss
Four factors are frequent sources of lost legitimacy in states recently at war:
the discrediting of the Soviet model; poor economic performance; a lack of
regime accountability (which gives rise in turn to incompetent and corrupt
governance); and the rise of a restive new middle class that seeks a greater
political power. Each of these underlying factors, alone or in conjunction
with others, can discredit a regime and lead to civil violence.
The discrediting of the Soviet model. When the Berlin Wall fell, regimes that
relied on the Soviet Union as a model for their economies and politics
suffered a blow to their legitimacy. Indeed, throughout the Third World the
collapse of Communism discredited authoritarian regimes of all stripes,33
for example, many regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, and also those in Algeria
31. An illegitimate regime is one broadly believed by the public to have lost its right to
rule because of its perceived failure to provide for the common good.
32. Defeat in a war can also cause a government to lose its legitimacy. The dearth of
international war in the post-cold war period, however, has reduced the importance of this
cause of regime legitimacy loss.
33. Peter W. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace (New York: Scribner's, 1994), 532-33.
Rodman notes that Syria's dictator Hafez al-Asad was equated with Romanian dictator
Nicolae Ceaucsescu and East Germany's Erich Honecker. Similarly, the collapse of Eastern
European regimes strengthened African democratic forces and disheartened Africa's
autocrats. See Copson, Africa's Wars in the 1990s, 167. For information on the impact of the
spread of the liberal democratic model, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave:
Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
32
and the former South Yemen, which relied heavily on the state-led
34
economy and society.

Poor economicperformance. Regimes that preside over stagnating or declining
economies may lose legitimacy. Poor economic performance directly
generates popular unhappiness. Remedies to poor performance can also stir
public opposition if they require bitter medicine, such as trimming
government subsidies and payrolls. Such measures further decrease a
regime's legitimacy.
A lack of regime accountability. Regimes that are not accountable to their
populations have less incentive to serve their publics well, so they serve
them poorly. Incompetence and corruption are their hallmarks.3 They
often cannot be removed peacefully, moreover, compelling their opponents
to resort to force.
The rise of a middle class and resulting demands to democratize. Industrialization
and the spread of literacy are potent causes of democracy. The literate
middle classes that these processes create nearly always demand political
pluralizationa reality reflected in the close correlation worldwide between
levels of democratization and the size of literate middle classes.37 The
emergence of educated middle classes in authoritarian states is therefore
regime-delegitimating: it brings on the scene middle-class voices that will
reject the authoritarian old political order.
Response to Legitimacy Loss
The loss of legitimacy is the underlying cause of conflict, but the conflict's
proximate causes are the regime's responses to this loss of legitimacy.
Regimes losing their legitimacy often choose between two responses:
34. George Joffe, "YemenThe Reasons for Conflict," Jane's Intelligence Review (August
1994): 369; John P. Entelis, "The Crisis of Authoritarianism in North Africa: The Case of
Algeria," Problems of Communism 41, no. 3 (May 1992): 71-82.
35. Corruption often comes with a lack of accountability. In Pakistan and the Philippines,
for example, widespread corruption has discredited governments and led to the growth of
opposition movements. Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos stole with such abandon that
he became one of Asia's most wealthy men before he was ousted in 1986. In 1996
Transparency International ranked Pakistan the second most corrupt country in the world
after Nigeria. New York Times, 28 November 1996, C1.
36. In short, regime accountability often determines whether "voice" is expressed in
ballots or bullets. The definitive description of this tradeoff remains Albert O. Hirschman's
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States (1970; Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1981).

37. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1971), 62-80; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, exp. ed.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 27-63.
33
democratizing in an attempt to gain broader support and hunkering down

in order to weather any disgruntlement. 8
By democratizing, regimes can increase government accountability and
popular participation and thus dampen dissent. Democratization, however,
can also raise the risk of civil war. A large political science literature has
shown that democracy causes peace among mature democracies.
Democracy, however, is a Janus-faced phenomenon: democratization is
also a potent cause of civil conflict in multiethnic authoritarian states.
Democratic institutions are often poor vehicles for organizing the equal
division of power and privilege among hostile ethnic groups. Hence losergroups are often even more dissatisfied under democracy than they were
under the previous authoritarian regime. Democratic freedoms (of speech,
press, assembly, etc.) also give political space to determined secessionist
groups, allowing them more room to organize for war. Hence
democratization can unleash communal conflicts that lay dormant under
previous authoritarian regimes.
The alternative to democratization is hunkering down: relying
increasingly on one edinic, tribal, or religious group or one sector of
society, such as the military or members of wealthier social classes.
Hunkering down, in the short term, can allow a regime to weather a crisis
as it can count on the loyalty of key elites. In the long term, however,
hunkering down can provoke greater popular discontent with the regime.
Democratization
Democratization offers four paths to civil war. Incumbent authoritarian

elites may crush emerging democratic forces because they fear that the first
democratic victors will exploit state power to impose a new dictatorship)
what has been called "one person one vote once." Minorities may fight
because they fear that majority rule would install in power a permanent
elected majority that allows the minority no voice in decision making. After
democratic transitions, victorious groups may fight over the division of
spoils. Finally, democratization may empower hardened secessionists who
exploit democratic freedoms to organize secessionist rebellion. Several
recent conflicts, including those in .Algeria, Azerbaijan-Armenia, Chechnya,
Georgia, India (Kashmir), Pakistan, South Africa, Tajikistan, and the united
38. Regime responses to legitimacy loss are not limited to democratizing and hunkering
down. Regimes at time promote economic reform to recover their legitimacy. Other,
bloodier, alternatives include provoking an international conflict and blaming problems on
minorities or other scapegoats at home.
34
Yemen, stemmed in part from attempts at democratization and followed

one of these paths from democratization to war.
The Algerian case suggests a general lesson noted by Adam Przeworski,
who argues that a necessary condition of successful democratization is the
realistic expectation that relinquishing power now will not require doing so
for ever. In Algeria the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) elites refused
to concede a lost election in 1993 in part from fear that the Islamist
winners would impose a dictatorship once in power. This led the FLN to
hunker down instead of accepting the results of democratization.
In Georgia, democratization produced war by causing minority fears of
majority tyranny.40 As noted above, the minority Abkhaz feared that their
distinct cultures would be overrun by a power-monopolizing Georgian
majority. Hence they opted for violent resistance when Georgian
nationalists appeared poised to win elections. The experiences of Sri Lanka
and Northern Ireland teach the same lesson. In Sri Lanka, the majority
Sinhalese long monopolized power at the expense of the minority Tamils,
provoking the bloody Tiger rebellion.41 In Northern Ireland, the Protestant
majority monopolized power at the expense of the Catholic minority during
192269, provoking violent Catholic nationalism.
The victors of democratization can also quarrel over the spoils. South
Africa's transition to democracy led to increased tension between Inkatha
and the ANC over the division of power within the victorious African
39. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 26-34. The fear of the FLN was not without some merit. For discussions of why
Algeria's leaders were reluctant to surrender power and doubted the good faith of the
Islamists, see "Shooting or voting for Islam," Economist, 28 August 1993, 39; and Claire
Spencer, "Algeria in Crisis," Survival36,no. 2 (summer 1994): 149-63. For an overview on
the general question of the tension between democratic ideals and Islamic movements, see
John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996). The authors discuss Algeria on pages 151-72.
40. Discussion of majority tyranny traces back to James Madison, "The Same Subject
Continued..." (Federalist no. 10), The Federalist Papers, intro. Clinton Rossiter (New York:
New American Library, 1961), 77-84. Madison discusses the risks that arise when "a majority
is included in a faction" (80) and the dangers of tyranny by "the superior force of an
interested and overbearing majority" (77). Discussing remedies are Arend Lijphart, "The
Power-Sharing Approach," in Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies ed. Joseph V.
Montville (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990), 491-509; Kenneth D. McRae,

"Theories of Power-Sharing and Conflict Management," in Montville, Conflict and
Peacemaking, 93-106; Jurg Steiner, "Power-Sharing: Another Swiss 'Export Product?" in
Montville, Conflict and Peacemaking, 107-14; and Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International
Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1996), 34-45,
58-63.
41. An account is Brogan, Fighting Never Stopped, 221-34.
35
community. In Yemen, the former southern leaders felt cheated out of their
share of power after elections there.
The Chechen experience illustrates the risk that hardened groups will
exploit democratic freedoms to promote separatism. After suffering
repeated cruelties by Russian rulers, many Chechens want no part of the
Russian state, regardless of its government type or its respect for minority
rights. When given the right to assemble and speak freely, they found a
consensus on rejecting any ties to Moscowa position that triggered a
brutal Russian crackdown in which tens of thousands of Chechens and
Russians died.
Hunkering Down
Instead of democratizing, some regimes respond to pressure to pluralize by

"hunkering down"relying on a narrower base of support to stay in
power. Such a move, however, can provoke further dissent and violence.
The very problems that provoke a legitimacy crisis in the first place
corruption, a lack of accountability, demands for a say in decision making,
etc.are exacerbated by the hunkering-down process. Thus, even though
in the short term a regime may survive a challenge, in die long term die
scope and scale of dissent is likely to grow.
Hunkering-down behavior fueled many current disputes, including bodi
those that began before and after the end of die cold war. In Rwanda and
Burundi, for example, regimes have relied increasingly on edinic kinsmen
with no pretense of including others. Similarly, regimes in Burma, Chad, El
Salvador, Ediiopia, Guatemala, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Somalia, Uganda, and Zaire have relied more and more on one
particular ethnic, religious, or tribal group or one sector of society, usually
42. Joffee, "YemenThe Reasons for Conflict," 370-71.
43. The road to democracy contains other potential perils. In their work discussing the
relationship between democratization and interstate war, Mansfield and Snyder note that the
initial stage of democratization is extremely dangerous for several reasons. First, threatened
elites from the autocratic regime often use chauvinistic rhetoric as they compete for allies
among the populace. Second, social groups that might be losers in a mature democracy often
manipulate information and otherwise distort the democratic process. Third, a lack of strong
institutionsthe checks and balances that places power in the hands of a responsible, wellinformed votercan further increase the chances of war. All these reasons why
democratization can cause interstate war apply to internal conflict as well. Elites' chauvinistic
rhetoric can be targeted at ethnic minorities, particularly if they are traditional enemies, as
well as other countries. Beleaguered social groups often manipulate information and
demonize their opponents, making power-sharing extremely difficult. The lack of strong
institutions can allow a small number of individuals to take the steps necessary to bring about
internal war. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and the Danger of
War," International Security 20, no. 1 (summer 1995): 5-38.
36
the military, to govern after challenges to their legitimacy arose. This

reliance has created a self-sustaining cycle: as dissent increases, regimes fall
back more and more on "trusted" individuals from the same communal
group or sector; this reliance in turn increase resentment among the
excluded groups and engendered charges of corruption and favoritism.
The "Reform Trap"
Hunkering down often follows democratization when regimes face a

legitimacy challenge. Efforts to democratize lead to a growing governability
crisis, which in turn leads the regime to hunker down and abort its
democratization experiment. This "reform trap" generates further dissent
and leads to civil war.
The democratization process and subsequent hunkering down often
share the same cause: a regime attempting to stay in power while gaining
popular support for painful reforms. Algeria, for example, began its
democratization process after food riots in 1988, and Sierra Leone allowed
elections after it adopted unpopular economic reforms under IMF
pressure. The pain engendered by the economic reform process, however,
often leads the regime to lose the elections, causing it to hunker down in
order to stay in power.45
The "reform trap" is a common factor in civil wars throughout the world
today. Algeria, Burma, Pakistan, Somalia, and Tajikistan all initiated
hesitant democratization and then, when the results were not to the liking
of the regime or a powerful group, chose instead to hunker down and
ignore the elections. Algeria's experience illustrates the reform trap neatly.
In 1989 the ruling FLN leaders authorized elections in order to reach out to
a hostile society disgruntled by regime corruption, a lack of accountability,
44. On Sierra Leone, see Christopher Clapham "Recent History," Europa World Book
Africa 1995 (London: Europa Publications Limited, 1994), 803-7.
45. Angola's recent return to violence in 1992 illustrates the other side of this coin. There
UNITA, the leading opposition group, expected to defeat the government in elections and
returned to violence when it lost. For articles that note Savimbi's reluctance to accept the
obvious verdict of the polls, see Alex Vines, Angola and Mozambique: Aftermath of Conflict,
Conflict Studies 280 (Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, 1995); and
Andrew Meldrum, "Lessons from Angola," Africa Report 38, no. 1 Qanuary-February 1993):
22-24.
46. Such a tension is common in collapsed empires. As noted above, the governments of
the successor states often lack legitimacy and thus face the choice of democratizing to try to
gain popular support or hunkering down if they fear popular rejection. Furthermore, many
former empires, including both the Yugoslav and the Soviet Empire, often contain hostile
minorities. Thus, the polarization that makes democratization extremely difficult often is
present.
37
and economic stagnation. Reformers within the FLN hoped to use elections
to regain popular support and to acquire a mandate to carry out difficult
economic changes. Not surprisingly, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won
the elections, much to the horror of the FLN. The FLN then decided to
"hunker down." It nullified the elections and tried to disband the FIS.
Bloody civil war soon followed as the FIS resisted these measures.
WEAK STATES
Weakness in the capacities of states has been an important cause of current

civil violence. Defeat in war, loosened central control over economic
activity, and other factors that lessen a state's strength can spark civil
violence. Recently, states have been weakened by the end of the cold war,
which ended superpower aid to client Third World regimes, and by the
spread of powerful small armaments. The weakening of the state increased
the incidence of civil war in two ways: it decreased the state's coercive
power, and reduced its ability to co-opt opponents and rival groups.
A decrease in a state's coercive ability fosters civil conflict in two ways.
First, if the state is weak, restive ethnic groups or other threats to peace are
no longer reassured or deterred from organizing. Predatory groups plot war
because they are less deterred by fear of state repression. This alarms other
groups who then mobilrze for war in self-defense, taking security into their
own hands because they no longer trust the central state to provide it. Thus
as the weakness of the state in Lebanon became apparent in the early
1970s, various communal groups began forming militias for self-defense.
The second, related, impact of decreased state coercive ability is an inability
to defeat groups committed to violence. Even unpopular regimes can
stamp out potentially violent opposition when they have enough resources
to overwhelm the insurgents directly, arrest their leaders, or otherwise
47. A weak state is one that lacks financial, military, and institutional resources to
implement its policies. For works that note the importance of the strength of the state, see
Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of Nation
States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and Joel S. Migdal,
Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

48. One traditionally important cause of government weakness is defeat in an
international war. In the post-cold war period, however, only the Iraqi case fits this
patternan unsurprising development given the overall dearth of international conflict in
this period. The Second World War era conflicts in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Greece,
however, are examples of how an international conflict can weaken (or remove) state
governments, thus catalyzing groups for civil conflict.
49. Dilip Hiro, Lebanon: Fire and Embers (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), 12.
38
interfere with group organization before the violence becomes widespread.

When the state weakens, however, insurgencies become more difficult to
defeat. In Iraq, for example, Shi'a Muslim organizations had long opposed
the Ba'athist regime, but it was only after the near collapse of Saddam
Hussein's government following Operation Desert Storm that they gained
widespread support and almost toppled the government.50
Weakened states also have fewer resources with which to buy off
opposition.51 Somalia's economy collapsed in the 1980s as income from
remittances fell and the regime's appalling human rights record led to a
decrease in international aid.52 Hence, Siad Barre's government lost its
ability to play off various clans by dangling aid in front of them. As a result,
he was forced to consider elections, and the country soon unraveled.
Cold war factors. During the cold war both superpowers bolstered frail
Third World client regimes with arms, military training, money, and at
times troops. This aid lost its rationale as the cold war faded, hence the
superpowers sharply reduced their largesse. This caused a marked decline in
the strength of the superpowers' client regimes.53 Between 1981 and 1984,
the United States gave or sold $800 million (in current dollars) in arms to
Africa, while the Soviet Union delivered $11.1 billion. This pattern
continued from 1985 to 1988, widi Moscow sending over $13.5 billion in
arms and Washington sending $900 million. Deliveries plummeted after the
cold war ended. Between 1992 and 1994, the United States delivered $395
million in arms to Africa, while Russia sent $610 million worth of arms.54
If Western aid was given, it was now often conditioned on democratic or
market reforms. This reform pressure, in turn, often precipitated
50. For a discussion of the impact of the Gulf War on Iraqi Shi'a, see Yitzhak Nakash, The
Shi'is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 273-81. For a detailed analysis of
political Shi'ism in Iraq, see Joyce N. Wiley, The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shi'as (Boulder
Lynne Rienner, 1992).
51. If governments can win elites to their side and prevent them from encouraging
conflict, fighting may be mitigated despite widespread hostility on the part of the population
at large. Robert Dahl notes the importance of political activists in the stability of a system.
See Democracy and Its Critics, 261.
52. Patrick Gilkes, "Somalia: Recent History," Europa World Book 1995 (London: Europa
Publications, 1994), 820-26.
53. As Owen Harries noted at the end of the cold war, "Third World countries no longer
have a ready-made, automatic way of linking themselves to the central issues of world
politicsas counters in a game, as trophies to be won, or as reluctant neutrals to be
seduced" (quoted in Peter Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 528).
54. These estimates of arms deliveries were taken from World Military Expenditures and
Arms Transfers 1985 (U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1985), 45; World Military
Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1989 (U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1989),
120; and World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1995 (U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, 1995), 153.
55. Copson, Africa's Wars and the Prospectsfor Peace, 158.
39
politically difficult economic reforms. As noted above, in several countries

this led to bloody attempts at democratization as regimes tried to broaden
their bases of support without truly yielding a portion of political power.
Regimes that refused reform were crippled, sometimes fatally weakened,
by their loss of great power support. The case of Zaire during 1990-97
illustrates this phenomenon. Zaire possessed a respectable military in 1990,
built with major aid from several Western military powersthe United
States, France, Belgium, Italy, and Israel. They ended these aid programs in
1990. Zaire's army then rotted away, suffering decay so massive that a tiny
rebel force of only 6,000 experienced soldiers and 20,000 recent recruits
under Laurent Kabila could conquer the country and oust the corrupt
Mobutu regime with little loss in an eight-month campaign in 1996-97.56
Spread of weapons. The spread of lethal modern small arms is another
source of state weakness. Until recently, only governments had access to
large quantities of modern weapons, giving them a tremendous military
advantage over insurgents. Today, however, small arms are available in
many states to anyone with a litde money. In Uganda, for example, an AK47 costs roughly the same as a chicken.57 Thus, the state's monopoly on
violence is more easily challenged by armed citizens.
This cause of weak states is self-perpetuating: a weak state cannot stop
the flow of weapons across its borders, and this flow in turn further
weakens die state.
COMMUNAL HEGEMONISM
Some ethnic groups are not content with equality or social recognition.
Instead, they demand that their language be the only official language, dieir
religion be enshrined as the only permitted faith, and their culture and
customs be followed by the rest of society. Such hegemonic beliefs can
come from many sources, ranging from culture to ideology. What these
sources share is a common commitment to the idea that one particular
cultural system is more wordiy than others.
The quest for communal hegemonyand resistance to itis a major
source of conflict in the world today. Concerns about hegemony, both real
and imagined, contributed to the post-cold war conflicts that broke out in
Georgia, Indonesia (with the Aceh), Russia, and die former Yugoslavia.
56. Raymond Bonner and Howard W. French, "Rebel Army Captured Zaire in T-Shirts
and Tennis Shoes," New York Times, 19 May 1997, A1.
57. Swadesh Rana, Small Arms and Intra-State Conflicts, UNIDIR Research Paper no. 34,
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (1995).
40
This follows a pattern common before the cold war. Religious, tribal, or
ethnic hegemonism fed communal violence in Afghanistan, Angola, Burma,
Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Pakistan, Rwanda,
Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Turkey.
Hegemonism causes conflict in two fundamental ways. First, groups
often strive for preeminence by attacking, intimidating, and destroying
other communal groups. Bengalis in Bangladesh, Hutu interahamwe
murderers in Rwanda, and chauvinistic Hindus in India are but a few
examples of groups that used violence in their attempts to ensure
communal hegemony.58 The cause of conflictthe will to dominanceis
readily apparent. When other ethnic groups refuse to submit, the
hegemonic group imposes its will by force.
Second, hegemonism causes more conflict when it incites the defensive
concerns of odier communal groups. In Turkey, for example, the Turks'
desire to promote Turkish identity, language, and culture to the exclusion
of all others has provoked conflict with Turkey's Kurdish population (until
recently referred to by Turkish officials as "mountain Turks"), which
sought to preserve its traditions and way of life. The Kurds "began" die
conflict in the sense mat they took up arms or killed a Turkish official, but
from their point of view the first blow was struck by the laws that degraded
Kurdish identity.
Communal hegemonism does not always produce violence. Minority
groups frequendy live side-by-side with a dominant group without
bloodshed, accepting their inferior status as the price of communal peace.
Religious minorities in the Ottoman empire, for example, accepted their
second-class status for centuries with litde violence. Nation-building also
can lead subordinate groups not to embrace violence. Edinic, regional, and
tribal minorities have often embraced national identities, welcoming the
58. In Bangladesh the Chittagong Hills peoples have faced constant attempts at hegemony
by the Bengali majority. Bangladesh's first President Mujibur Rahman once declared, "Forget
your ethnic identity; be Bengalis." See "Bangladesh: Chittagong Chatter," Economist, 14
November 1992, 38. A Bangladeshi army commander in the area had similarly noted, "We
want the Soil but not the People of the Chittagong Hill Tracts." Richard A. Gray: "Genocide
in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh," RJR; Reference Services Review 22, no. 4 (winter
1994): 59-80. For works that address the tragedy in Rwanda and the role of a supremacist
racial ideology, see Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omaar, "The Genocide in Rwanda and the
International Response," Current History 94, no. 591 (1995): 156-61; James Fenton, "The
Rwanda Crisis," New York Review of Books 43, no. 3, 15 February 1996, 7-9; and Robert
Block, "The Tragedy of Rwanda," New York Review of Books 31, no. 17, 20 October 1994, 3 8. For an interesting analysis of Hindu fundamentalism in India, see Robert Eric Frykenberg,
"Hindu Fundamentalism and the Structural Stability of India," in Martin E. Marty and R.
Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993).
41
possibility of advancement as part of the new nation. Many Kurds in

Turkey have attained positions of social, economic, and political
prominence, but they have done so as Turks, not as Kurds.
When are subordinate groups more likely to rebel? Minority resistance to
attempted hegemony is made more likely by three factors: past bloodshed, a
strong, established culture, and progress on minority rights elsewhere. Past
bloodshed and a strong culture "harden" communal identity, thus
increasing the likelihood that the group will take up arms to preserve its
identity. In addition to hardening communal identity, a bloody past also
creates a sentiment of hostility toward the dominant group and makes
"security dilemma" situations far more likely. Finally, the fate of minorities
elsewhere can have a large impact abroad. The civil rights movement in the
United States, for example, inspired Catholics in Northern Ireland to
demonstrate for civil rights and equality.
REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY
Revolutionary ideology causes civil war by leading movements of the poor

and disenfranchised to adopt extreme goals and extreme tactics that
foreclose compromise with others. Common ground is hard to find with
movements that demand complete power and pursue social upheaval.
59. For example, Ismet Inonu, president from 1938 to 1950, was said to be a Kurd as was
Admiral Fehmi Koruturk, who also became president. David McDowall, A Modern History of
the Kurds (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 405-6.
60. Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," 153-54.
Whether group members are willing to change their identity depends heavily on the
emotional strength and malleability of this identity in the first placefactors that vary from
culture to culture. Past suffering and discrimination increases emotional ties to the identity.
The weight of many deaths is yet another attachment that individuals will form to their
communal identity. A strong culture, particularly a written record, reduces the malleability of
the identity by reducing the flexibility of its symbols. Obviously, even a written text can have
many meanings, but it is open to far fewer interpretations than an oral tradition.
Identity is not always fixed. In Nigeria the colonial power, by recognizing certain identities
as salient, reinforced them and gave a certain set of elites political power. David Laitin,
"Hegemony and Religious Conflict: British Imperial Control and Political Cleavages in
Yorubaland," in Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In, 285-316.
Other scholars who endorse the view that ethnic identity can be manipulated include
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(London: Verso, 1983); and Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Walker Connor proposes a reasonable
middle ground: that identities are social constructs but are solid ones, reinforced by both
culture and psychology, making them extremely hard to change. See Walker Connor,
Ethnonationalism: The Questfor Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
61. Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern
Ireland(AtlanticHighlands, N.J.: Athlone, 1993), 160.
62. A revolutionary ideology is one that seeks to impose a new social order and concept
of society on a nation or on the entire world.
42
Many civil conflicts were fueled by communist movements over the past
century. These include civil wars in Argentina, China, Finland, Germany,
Greece, Malaysia, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Uruguay, and the vast murders
by the communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot in the Soviet Union,
China, and Cambodia.
Since 1989 communist movements have fueled civil wars in Afghanistan,
Cambodia, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, the
Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Muslim and Christian revolutionary movements
have engendered civil wars in Algeria, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Uganda.
Communist movements, however, faded around the world after
communist ideology was delegitimi2ed by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet
Union, and by the economic and political failure that this collapse
symbolized. The communist idea is now a spent force, leaving Muslim
extremism as the only major live revolutionary ideology with wide appeal.
Thus the problem of revolutionary ideology, a cause of much civil war over
the past century, has largely abated worldwide and has abated almost
completely outside the Muslim world.64
ARISTOCRATIC INTRANSIGENCE
Aristocratic intransigence is the mirror image of leftist revolutionary

ideology: it breeds war by driving opponents to violence who otherwise
might accept compromise. Aristocratic oligarchies have often ended with
peaceful democratic transitions when oligarchs agreed to pluralize national
politics. Oligarchies, however, have provoked violent rebellion when they
have demanded all power and monopolized wealth and social privilege.
Such aristocratic intransigence helped spawn many of the great violent
upheavals of modern history, including the French, Mexican, Russian,
Chinese, Greek and Nicaraguan revolutions. It also played a major role in
sparking or sustaining die recent (since 1989) civil wars in El Salvador,
63. One source estimates that the Soviet regime murdered nearly 62 million people and
that the Chinese communist regime was responsible for over 35 million deaths, figures so
staggering as to almost defy comprehension. Rummel, Death by Government, 79-110. For more
on the killing in Stalinist Russia, see Robert Conquest, The Gnat Terror. A Reassessment (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
64. Many religious groups have agendas that are more communal than ideological. Hamas,
for example, organizes itself with a religious idiom, but its primary goalsthe establishment
of a Muslim-dominated Palestinian state to replace Israelreflects a strong communal
component as well as a new vision of society. Other Islamic groups, such as Hizballah in
Lebanon and Shi'a movements in Iraq, share this communal emphasis.
43
Guatemala, Haiti, and the Philippines. 5 It is now on the wane, however.

Aristocratic elites enjoy less support from the United States and face more
pressure to pluralize in the wake of the cold war's end. The spread of
democratic and human rights norms worldwide has also created pressures
to pluralize. As a result, many of the world's aristocratic oligarchies have
begun ceding power to popular movements they once dismissed. The old
elites in El Salvador now accept leftist election victories. The Marcos
oligarchy in the Philippines has been replaced by more plural politics.
Aristocratic oligarchs retain a tight grip on a few states (for example,
Guatemala), but even there they now concede more than they once did.
Overall, aristocratic extremism is a fading force worldwide.
SUPERPOWER COMPETITION
The cold war superpower competition caused or magnified civil conflicts

when the superpowers used Third World states as battlegrounds.67
Sometimes the superpowers aided proxy belligerents, sometimes they
intervened directly. Sometimes they sought to control the target states, and
sometimes they sought to bleed the other superpower by creating chaos in
its sphere of influence. In some cases they merely magnified conflicts born
of other causes; in others they helped trigger the conflict at the outset.
Superpower competition fueled several major wars between 1947 and the
late 1980s, including the Greek civil war, the Korean War, and the
Indochina War. The recent wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Ethiopia also were magnified by superpower
65. Accounts of the war in El Salvador include William Stanley, The Protection Racket State:
Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and the Civil War in El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996); and Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador. From Civil Strife to Civil
Peace (Boulder: Westview, 1994). Accounts on Guatemala include Sheldon H. Davis, "State
Violence and Agrarian Crisis in Guatemala: The Roots of the Indian-Peasant Revolt," in
Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties, ed. Martin Diskin
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), 155-72; and Suzanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels,
Death Squads and U.S. Power (Westview: Boulder, 1991). On the Philippines, see James Putzel,
A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines (London: Catholic Institute for
International Relations, 1992).
66. On the 1996 El Salvador election, see Tommie Sue Montgomery, "El Salvador's
Extraordinary Elections," LASA Forum 28, no. 1 (spring 1997): 4-8
67. The superpowers were not the only countries to use proxies to further their ends.
China supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Israel and Syria aided factions in Lebanon,
and Iran backed Shi'a groups around the world. The apartheid regime of South Africa was
particularly active, supporting antigovernment groups in Namibia, Mozambique, and Angola
as part of its effort to ensure white hegemony.
44
intervention.68 The Afghan war was triggered by the Soviet invasion of

1979;69 the long war in Angola traces back to the joint U.S. and Soviet
breakage of the Alvor accord in 1975;70 U.S. support for the antigovernment
insurgency in the 1980s lengthened die Cambodian war; the United States
sustained the Salvadoran regime early in the Salvadoran civil war; and
Soviet intervention magnified the conflict in Ethiopia.
Superpower competition will cause few civil wars in die future. The cold
war's end left the Third World more an object of neglect than of
competition.
There is some interaction among diese seven causes. Specifically, die
collapse of empire spawns illegitimate regimes and weak states; all three of
diese causes allow communal hegemonism to flourish. Aristocratic
intransigence and revolutionary ideology cause each other by driving
opponents to the odier extreme. Superpower competition weakens some
governments vis-a-vis dieir societies and can encourage both revolutionary
ideologies and aristocratic intransigence. Communal hegemonism,
revolutionary ideology, and aristocratic intransigence cause die
delegitimation of regimes when hegemonistic, revolutionary, or
aristocratically intransigent groups are in power (by leading others to view
the regime as illegitimate) and also when such groups are out of power (by
leading these groups to reject pluralistic regimes). Thus, these seven factors
are interconnected in important ways.
68. For an account of the war in Afghanistan, Angola, and Cambodia, see Peter J.
Schraeder, "Paramilitary Intervention," in Peter J. Schraeder, ed., Intervention Into the 1990s,
2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 131-51 at 137-49.
69. Accounts include Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet
Relationsfrom Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1985), 887-965; Brogan, Fighting
Never Stopped, 117-29.
70. A synopsis is Timothy D. Sisk, "Angola," in Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations 1, ed.
Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas G. Paterson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
79-81. A longer account is Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, 502-37.
71. An account is John McAuliff and Mary Byrne McDonnell, "The Cambodian
Stalemate: America's Obstructionist Role in Indochina," WorldPolicyJournal7,no. 1 (winter
1989-90): 71-106.
72. See Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, Brogan, Fighting Never Stopped, 414-25.
73. An account is Brogan, Fighting Never Stopped, 27-38.
74. Further research on all seven of these causes is necessary for a complete
understanding of their relationship to civil violence and to one another. Determining the
necessary and sufficient conditions for the operation of each cause is a first step. Work on
how to make more nebulous causes such as "a lack of regime legitimacy" operationalizeable
also would be useful.
45
THE FUTURE OF DEADLY CONFLICT
lS ARTICLE has argued that no new world disorder emerged after 1989.
X Rather, a brief surge of violence was soon followed by a growing calm.
Three causes of conflict were enhanced by the cold war's end and the
Soviet collapse, but their effects were overridden by the reduction of three
other important causes of conflict. The net impact of the cold war's end
has been to reduce civil violence. Recent wars have caused horrific
bloodshed, but things can beand for many years werefar worse.
What can we expect in the future? Most current trends are auspicious for
peace. Six of the seven causes of civil conflict noted above seem likely to
remain at current levels or diminish further in the future; only one seems
likely to grow more prevalent. If so, peace should grow in the years ahead,
although the question of how to respond to a lack of regime legitimacy
when the state in question faces communal tension poses an important
challenge.
The aftershocks of the Soviet imperial collapse will fade in time, and
imperial collapse is less likely to recur elsewhere since the world has fewer
major empires. This will reduce a major cause of recent civil violence. Few
empires remain in existence. Both China and Iran, for example, are states
where one group has conquered others and dominates politics. No large
colonial empires remain, however.
States are not likely to grow dramatically weaker in the future. The loss
of superpower support for despotic clients was a one-time event whose
effects are already felt. Superpower (that is, U.S.) aid to client regimes is
already so low that it cannot go much lower and is already often conditional
on respect for human rights.
Communal hegemonism should continue at current levels. We see no
remedy for it on the horizon, but we also see few reasons why it should
increase.
Communist revolutionary ideology will fade further until it becomes an
archaic relic. Other forms of revolutionary ideology (such as Islamic
extremism) will continue, but we see no reason why they should increase
and some reason to expect them to fade. Moreover, Islamic extremism
has litde appeal outside the Muslim world, which will limit its war-causing
effects considerably when compared with the more universal ideology of
communism.
75. For a superb assessment of why Islamic extremism may fade, see Olivier Roy, The
Failure ofPolitical Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
46

Table 6
WORLD DEMOCRATIZATION AND ETHNIC DIVISION
Number
of
homogeneous
states1
Number
of
heterogeneous
states2
Total
number
of states
Population in
homogeneous
states3
Population in
heterogeneous
states3
Total
population (in
(thousands)
Free
42
(62)
27
(38)
69
(100)
862,127
(82)
185,302
(18)
18
(31)
41
(69)
59
(100)
509,659
(22)
15
(29)
36
51
(71)
(100)
Partly free
and not
free total
33
(30)
77
(70)
110
(100)
1,471,85
3
(67)
1,978,51
2
(44)
1,811,99
0
(78)
714,975
(33)
1,040,42
9
(100)
2,318,64
9
(100)
2,186,82
8
Partly free
Not free
Grand
total
75
(42)
Degree
of democratic
freedom
104
(58)
179
(100)
2,526,96
5
(56)
(100)
4,505,44
7
(100)
2,840,63
2,527,15
5,367,78
(53)
(47)
(100)
1. One ethnic group is 80 percent or more of total population (percent in parentheses).

2. No ethnic group is 80 percent of total population (percent in parentheses).
3. In thousands (percent in parentheses).
Sources and methods:
Data on degrees of democratic freedoms are from: Adrian Karatnycky et al. (Freedom House
Survey Team), Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1995
1996 (New York: Freedom House, 1996), 541, which classifies states as "free," "partly free,"
and "not free." Data on state populations are from ibid., passim. Data on the degree of
ethnic heterogeneity are from three sources: ibid.; Robert Famighetti, ed., The World Almanac
and Book of Facts 1997 (Mahwah, N.J.: K-III Reference, 1996), 737-837; Central Intelligence
Agency, World Factbook 1992 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, n.d.). A
state is coded "homogeneous" if one ethnic group comprises 80 percent or more of its total
population, and "heterogeneous" if no ethnic group comprises 80 percent of its total
population. Coding was performed as follows. If Freedom in the World offered a statistical
breakdown of a state's population by ethnic group, its numbers were followed. If not,
numbers were taken from the World Almanac and the CIA World Factbook. If no numbers
estimating group sizes were found in these sources, a state was coded "homogeneous" if the
language in these three sources indicated that one group was an overwhelming majority or
that the state population comprised a homogeneous blend of several ethnic stocks. A state
was coded "heterogeneous" if any source mentioned four or more major groups without
claiming they were blended. Also, a state was coded homogeneous if more than 80 percent
Hypotheses on the Causes oj"Contemporary Deadly Conflict
47
of its population was composed of voluntary immigrants, even if Freedom in the World broke
these immigrants into sub-groups. (Under this rule the United States got a "homogeneous"
rating, as it otherwise might not). Finally, we coded Lebanon "heterogeneous" to recognke
divisions among its religious groups, despite its Arab preponderance. Our sources provided
insufficient data to code the ethnic heterogeneity of ten states, having a total population of
106,011,000. These states are omitted from Table 5.
Aristocratic intransigence, already much faded, will wane further as more

egalitarian norms infuse the world's remaining aristocratic oligarchies and
external pressures compel them to pluralize.
Superpower competition requires competing superpowers. Today the
world has only one superpower, and it competes only mildly with the other
great powers. An early return to cold-war levels of hostility between great
powers seems unlikely. The current hiatus in superpower competition will
not last for ever, but a new cold war seems far over the horizon.
The future of regime legitimacy is more worrisome. Three of the four
ingredients leading to a lack of regime legitimacy discussed above should
remain constant or diminish, which augurs well for peace. The discrediting
of the Soviet model is a one-time event whose effects will fade as the
world's last communist regimes are overthrown or evolve away from
communism. An across-the-board increase in poor economic performance
by governments seems plausible only in event of a global economic crises, a
danger that seems remote. Regimes seem likely to become more
accountable as the global trend toward pluralization continues. The fourth
ingredient of lost regime legitimacy, howeverthe rise of the middle
classes and resulting demands to democratizeseems bound to increase.
Authoritarian states will respond by hunkering down or by
democratizing. Both responses raise the risk of war. Hunkering down risks
war for reasons outlined above: groups excluded from governance grow
more dissatisfied and willing to use force against regimes that hunker down.
Democratization will risk war because venues for future democratization
will be less auspicious than past venues. Past waves of democratization
occurred largely in fairly ethnically homogeneous societies (Scandinavia,
Japan, Australia) or in immigrant societies with cultures of mutual tolerance
among the migrants (the United States, Argentina, Israel). In contrast,
future democratization will occur largely in multiethnic states with an
authoritarian tradition. Burma, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan, Angola,
Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Zaire, Guatemala,
Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are among the diverse
and divided lands where future waves of democratization will break.
48
Table 6 summarizes this trend. It cross-tabulates the states of the world

by their degree of ethnic heterogeneity and by their degree of
democratization, using a three-way scale of democratic freedoms ("Free,"
'Tartly Free" and "Not Free") developed by Freedom House. It shows that
the world's democratic states are somewhat more homogeneous than its
nondemocratic states. Specifically, 62 percent of the world's democratic
states are homogeneous (that is, one ethnic group comprises 80 percent or
more of their population), but only 30 percent of the world's partly
democratic and nondemocratic states are homogenous. Hence our past
experience with democratization is a poor guide to the future: past
democratization has been focused in more homogeneous places than future
democratizations. Table 6 also shows that die absolute number and
population of the world's heterogeneous authoritarian states is large. Over
700 million people live in 36 "not free" heterogeneous states, and over 1.8
billion people live in 41 "partly free" heterogeneous states. This warns that
if the democratization of multiethnic authoritarian states sparks war, future
democratizations may spawn substantial violence.
Can multiedinic authoritarian states democratize peacefully? Three
remedies have been offered to the risks raised by democratization in
divided societies, but none has proven reliable. Power-sharing
("consociational") democratic constitutional designs have succeeded in
some settings (for example, in Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands)
but require a culture of mutual tolerance and compromise that is often
missing in today's multiethnic authoritarian states.7 "Integrative" electoral
rules diat reward politicians who form multiethnic coalitions have been
proposed but often are not successfully used. Finally, some suggest that
heterogeneous societies can be made more homogeneous by somehow
causing ethnic identities to fade, but die ethnic identities of literate
nonimmigrant edinic groups have proven intractable. In past centuries
illiterate groups often lost their identities by forgetting diem, and immigrant
groups have often melded their identities with cultures dominant in dieir
new homes. Very few nonimmigrant ethnic groups widi a written history
and culture, however, have ever let dieir identities fade. Even Stalin's harsh
totalitarian rule could not melt die identities of non-Russian Soviet citizens,
for example.
This suggests a grim forecast: democratization is inevitable, but it will
often happen in multiethnic states where it will unleash the dogs of war.
76. For a summary of the consociational approach, see Sisk, Power Sharing and International
Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts, 34-40.
77. For a discussion, see ibid., 40-45, 58-63.
49
Three prescriptions follow:

Democratize deliberately. Pressing for democratization in all situations is
unwise. In some contexts, such as when regimes lack legitimacy or when
intransigent aristocrats are in power, democratization can ease civil conflict
and promote social peace. As this paper has argued, however,
democratization in multiethnic authoritarian states has often led to war.
Democratization requires preparation to dampen the risks that it poses.
Without strong state institutions and credible guarantees of minority rights,
the risks of democratization causing war are greater. Until these are in
place, a patient approach that defers active pressure for democratization is
best. In the meantime, policy should focus on creating the preconditions
for peaceful democratization. Aid should be linked to the protection of
minority rights, the dampening of ethnic hate-propaganda, and other
factors that will decrease the probability of conflict. Governments that
accept these reforms should be strengthened to help them overcome
violent resistance by groups with extreme agendas. Only after these efforts
bear fruit should democratization be pushed.
Foster power-sharing in democratizing states. Despite their mixed records,
consociational and integrative political systems should be fostered in

democratizing multiethnic states. Elections are not the panacea many in the
West consider them to be unless they are coupled with institutional
protections of minority rights. Pure majoritarian systems should be
avoided. Although our above discussion of power-sharing suggests that
such attempts are likely to fail, they are nevertheless worthwhile given the
paucity of peaceful alternatives.
Consider partition as a last resort. Some multiethnic states simply cannot be
democratized peacefully. If so, the partition of these divided societies into
smaller, more homogeneous units should be considered as an alternative.
Partition would often involve large social disruption and injury to individual
rights. It would require large transfers of minority populations caught
behind new partition boundaries. It could not be achieved peacefully
without active management and assistance by outside powers. Partition,
78. Making this argument is Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic
Civil Wars." An antipartition argument is Robert Schaeffer, Warpaths: The Politics of Partition
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1990). A comparison of both pro- and antipartition arguments
can be found in Daniel L. Byman, "Divided They Stand: Lessons about Partition from Iraq
and Lebanon," Security Studies7,no. 1 (autumn 1997): 1-29.
79. We have argued that the Bosnian and Kurdish conflicts are best resolved by partition.
See John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera, "When Peace Means War," New Republic,
18 December 1995; and Daniel L. Byman, "Let Iraq Collapse," The National Interest (fall
1996): 48-60.
50
however, is still the better option if the alternative is massive civil violence
of the kind lately seen in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Rwanda.

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Why they fight: Hypotheses on

Daniel Byman & Stephen Van Evera

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WHY THEY FIGHT:

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DANIEL BYMAN AND STEPHEN VAN EVERA

SECURITY STUDIES 7, no. 3 (spring 1998): 1-50

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SECURITY STUDIES 7, NO. 3

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Hypotheses on the Causes of Contemporary Deadly Conflict

British, French, Ottomans, and Portuguese withdrew from their empires

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SECURITY STUDIES 7, NO. 3

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Hypotheses on the Causes of Contemporary Deadly Conflict

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Conflict active in year

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(see key on pp. 8-9)

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SECURITY STUDIES 7, NO. 3

RECENT TRENDS IN THE INCIDENCE OF CIVIL CONFLICT

J-ylHREE SEPARATE measures of civil conflict indicate that it briefly

Hypotheses on the Causes of Contemporary Deadly Conflict

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Major Parties Involved

Causes of the Conflict

1. Mujahedin v. Sovietbacked government

Islamist (FIS, GIA) v.

Azerbaijan/ Armenians v. Azeris

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Khmer Rouge v. rival

(see key on p. 21)

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Major Parties Involved

Causes of the Conflict

SuperCommunal Aristocratic Revolutionary power

1. Government versus Yes

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1. Abkhaz v. Georgians Yes

Military government vs.

1. Kurds (PUK, KDP) v.

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Major Parties Involved

Causes of the Conflict

Sunnis, Shi'a, Druze,

Krahn, Gio, Mano, and

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Sierra Leone Government versus

(see key on p. 21)

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Major Parties Involved

Causes of the Conflict