What drives violence against civilians in civil war? Evidence from Guatemala's conflict archives

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3917676
AutoresRachel A Schwartz (0000-0002-9047-0828, University of Wisconsin–Madison), Strau (0009-0009-1035-7576, University of Wisconsin–Madison), Scott Strau, Scott Straus (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Año2018
Volumen55
Número2
Páginas222-235
Fecha de publicación2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022343317749272
OpenAlexW2787234477
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas25
Referencias citadas35

Dominant theories of mass violence hold that strategic concerns in civil war drive the deliberate targeting of civilians. However, the causal mechanisms that link strategic objectives to large-scale violence against civilians remain underspecified, and as such the causal logics that underpin each remain blurred. In this article, we identify and explicate four plausible mechanisms that explain why armed groups would target, for strategic purposes, civilians in war. We then turn to the peak period of violence during the Guatemalan armed conflict to assess which mechanisms were most prevalent. Specifically, we leverage unique archival data: 359 pages of military files from Operation Sofía, a month-long counterinsurgent campaign waged in the northwestern Ixil region. Through process tracing of real-time internal communications, we find that state actors most commonly described the civilian population as loyal to rebel forces; violence against civilians was a means to weaken the insurgency. Troops on the ground also depicted the Ixil population as 'winnable', which suggests that security forces used violence in this period to shape civilian behavior. These findings are most consistent with the idea that mass violence in this case and period was a coercive instrument to defeat insurgents by punishing civilians for collaboration. The evidence from this period is less consistent with a logic of genocide, in which the purpose of violence would be to destroy 'unwinnable' civilian groups. Our analysis illustrates how a mechanism-centered approach based on process tracing of conflict archives can help uncover logics underlying civilian killing

Computer security · Criminology · Genocide · Insurgency · Leverage (statistics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Security forces · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Computer Science · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Demography · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance