Arms Acquisition Patterns and the Dynamics of Armed Conflict: Lessons from the Niger Delta

Arms acquisition is a crucial venture for armed insurgency groups for carrying out their militant activities. I argue that the specific manner in which these groups obtain weapons may have important consequences for the dynamics of violent intrastate conflict. While most previous studies of the relationship between arms acquisition and armed conflict have focused solely on the impact of arms availability, in this article I analyze the impact of two specific aspects of arms acquisition patterns—the methods and the degree of leadership control—on the dynamics and nature of armed conflict in a qualitative case study of the armed conflict in the Niger Delta (Nigeria) between 1995 and 2005. I conclude that the specific arms acquisition method and the degree of leadership control over this process have strongly affected the dynamics of the conflict.     

Who Are Pakistan's Militants and Their Families?

This article presents results of a survey of 141 Pakistani families of slain militants. This survey collected data about the militants and their households. While derived from a convenience sample, these data are unprecedented and offer a glimpse into the backgrounds of militants and the families who (mostly) supported their decision to join the jihad. Most militants served and died in Kashmir and seem to be “high quality” militants in that they, like their heads of household, are well educated and not predominantly coming from seminaries, as is often claimed. This analysis suggests that while the militants merit attention, so do the families that produce militants.     

Managing conflict in north-west Kenya: the siege of Loregon and its aftermath

Conflict management in the context of ethnic boundaries and a history of inter-ethnic violence remains a challenge in a range of socio-economic contexts. Conflict management in remote rural areas within developing states where state presence and capacity is relatively weak amidst a background of prolonged and ongoing inter-ethnic violence is particularly challenging. This article examines a case of successful bottom-up efforts to manage conflict at the micro level in northern Kenya. Focusing on the so-called siege of Loregon and its aftermath, this case study describes dynamics on one part of the ‘border’ between Turkana and Pokot ethnic groups, examining the causes and consequences of this violent episode, with a particular focus on recent successes at the local level in managing conflict and as a consequence in reducing the likelihood of future violence in a particular locality, despite ongoing violence in other parts of the interface between Turkana-Pokot ethnic groups.     

Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that particular religious structures are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes more likely. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, this assumption has not yet been backed by systematic empirical research on the religion–conflict nexus in the region. The following questions thus remain: Do religious factors significantly impact the onset of (religious) armed conflict? If so, do they follow the logic of the mobilization hypothesis and, if so, in which way? To answer these questions, this article draws on a unique data inventory of all sub-Saharan countries for the period 1990–2008, particularly including data on mobilization-prone religious structures (e.g., demographic changes, parallel ethno-religious identities) as well as religious factors indicating actual politicization of religion (e.g., inter-religious tensions, religious discrimination, incitement by religious leaders). Logit regressions suggest that religion indeed plays a significant role in African armed conflicts. These findings are compatible with the mobilization hypothesis, and stress the impact of conflict-prone religious structures, and particularly, the fact that overlaps of religious and ethnic identities are conflict-prone. Future research should investigate the religion-ethnicity-nexus in more detail.     

Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security: New Perspectives,Old Challenges,and Some Solutions

This article presents the Event Data on Conflict and Security (EDACS) dataset, discusses the inherent problems of georeferenced conflict data, and shows how these challenges are met within EDACS. Based on an event data approach, EDACS contributes to the growing number of novel georeferenced datasets that allow researchers to identify causal pathways of violence and the dynamics of (transboundary) violence through spatiotemporal disaggregation. However, the unreflected use of any of these datasets will give researchers unjustified confidence in their findings, as the pitfalls are many and propagating errors can result in misleading conclusions. To identify and handle the different challenges to overall event data quality, we argue in favor of transparency in the data collection and coding process, to empower analysts to challenge the data and avoid cascading errors. In particular, we investigate how the choice of news sources, the handling of geographic precision, and the use of auxiliary data can bias event data. We demonstrate how the EDACS dataset design enables the analyst to deal with these issues by providing a set of variables indicating the news sources, possible sources of bias, and detailed information on geographic precision. This allows for a flexible use of the data based on individual analytical requirements.     

Revisiting Representation: Communism,Women in Politics,and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia

This research note evaluates one of the commonly used measurements for political gender equality: representation of women in parliaments. It demonstrates that caution is called for when interpreting results where this variable is used, because parliamentary representation implies different things in different settings. Societies with more women in parliament tend to have fewer intrastate armed conflicts. We investigate this statistical association with a particular focus on East Asia. This region has seen a shift from extremely intense warfare to low levels of battle deaths at roughly the same time as great strides have been made in the representation of women in parliaments. This research note shows, however, that this statistical association is driven by authoritarian communist regimes promoting gender equality as a part of communist ideology, and these countries’ representative chambers have little influence over politics. Using statistical tests and empirical illustrations from East Asia, the note concludes that the political representation of women is an invalid indicator of political gender equality in East Asia. There is thus a need for nuance in assessing the picture painted in earlier research. In addition, the suggestion that more women in parliament will lead to fewer armed conflicts runs the risk of being forwarded as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem, and we briefly discuss the instrumentalization of gender equality in peace and security studies.     

马来西亚妇女非政府组织的发展

本文首先回顾了马来西亚妇女非政府组织的发展历程,然后对独立后马来西亚主要的妇女非政府组织及其活动进行介绍,最后对马来西亚妇女非政府组织与马来西亚政府的关系进行评估和分析。     

More Combatant Groups,More Terror?: Empirical Tests of an Outbidding Logic

We examine and test the logic that outbidding among insurgent groups results in more suicide terrorism specifically and more terrorism of any type, which has become a popular argument in recent years. A global analysis of terrorism from 1970–2004 provides scant support for the notion that outbidding increases suicide terrorism. An extension of the argument to all types of terrorist attacks provides even less support. The logic of outbidding has received considerable attention in academic and policy circles in recent years. ¹ Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism,” International Security 31 (2006): 49–80. Similar to the argument that democratic occupation increases suicide terror, ² Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terror (New York: Random House, 2005). our lack of empirical support suggests that considerable cross-national work is still needed to understand suicide terror adequately. We suggest some reasons why this may be the case, drawing particular attention to the problem of overgeneralizing from a limited set of cases.     

菲律宾的非政府组织发展及其原因

菲律宾是拥有全球第三大非政府组织的发展中国家,其国内的非政府组织发展良好,组织完备。菲律宾的非政府组织发展经历了三个阶段,即从慈善取向的市民社会组织到发展取向的非政府组织,以及获得授权型的非政府组织。推动菲律宾非政府组织发展的因素是多方面的,历史传统的沉淀,国内、国际意识形态领域斗争的需要,以及战后菲律宾政府、外国政府和国际组织的发展援助。     

Anchoring the Peace: Civil Society Actors in Peace Accords and Durable Peace

Is peace more likely to prevail when the peace accord includes civil society actors such as religious groups, women's organizations, and human rights groups? This is the first statistical study that explores this issue. The article develops key claims in previous research regarding the role of civil society actors and durable peace, and proposes a set of hypotheses that focus on legitimacy in this process. The hypotheses are examined by employing unique data on the inclusion of civil society actors in all peace agreements in the post–Cold War period. The statistical analysis shows that inclusion of civil society actors in the peace settlement increases the durability of peace. The results further demonstrate that peace accords with involvement from civil society actors and political parties in combination are more likely to see peace prevail. The findings also suggest that inclusion of civil society has a particularly profound effect on the prospects for overall peace in nondemocratic societies.     

Class conflict,state terrorism and the Pakistani military: the Okara Military Farms dispute

In their dispute with their tenants, in what is known as the Okara Military Farms dispute, army landlords in the Punjab province of Pakistan resorted to state terrorism conducted by paramilitary troops, in alliance with other state agencies, in an unsuccessful attempt to break farmer resistance to attempts to remove their security of tenure. Analysis of the dispute provides strong support for the argument that state violence can, in some instances, be categorised as a specific form of terrorism. The article, therefore, aims to contribute to the growing literature on state terrorism which has been neglected as a legitimate and important topic for scholarly inquiry.     

Child soldiers as peace-builders in Colombian peace talks between the government and the FARC–EP

Children, especially girls, are considered victims in armed conflicts. Children who participate in conflicts, as combatants, sexual servants, spies, informants and messengers, may be considered perpetrators of atrocities. These two classifications of children in armed conflicts do not consider their roles as agents who may also participate in peace-building efforts. This paper analyses how children involved in armed conflicts are classified and represented in the current peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). We aim to understand if children are recognised in this peace process as participants and, in some capacity, as peace-builders. Dialoguing with the literature on critical security studies and childhood studies, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of the peace agreement documents. The study of the Colombian case enables an empirical analysis in which child soldiers are categorised as victims with the possibility of participating in peace-building and, at the same time, as potential challengers to the peace process.