Varieties of civil war and mass killing
| Author | Daniel Krcmaric |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343317715060 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Varieties of civil war and mass killing:
Reassessing the relationship between
guerrilla warfare and civilian victimization
Daniel Krcmaric
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University
Abstract
Why do some civil wars feature the mass killing of civilians while others do not? Recent research answers this question
by adopting a ‘varieties of civil war’ approach that distinguishes between guerrilla and conventional civil wars. One
particularly influential claim is that guerrilla wars feature more civilian victimization because mass killing is an
attractive strategy for states attempting to eliminate the civilian support base of an insurgency. In this article, I suggest
that there are two reasons to question this ‘draining the sea’ argument. First, the logic of ‘hearts and minds’ during
guerrilla wars implies that protecting civilians – not killing them – is the key to success during counterinsurgency.
Second, unpacking the nature of fighting in conventional wars gives compelling reasons to think that they could be
particularly deadly for civilians caught in the war’s path. After deriving competing predictions on the relationship
between civil war type and mass killing, I offer an empirical test by pairing a recently released dataset on the
‘technology of rebellion’ featured in civil wars with a more nuanced dataset of mass killing than those used in several
previous studies. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find that mass killing onset is more likely to occur during
conventional wars than during guerrilla wars.
Keywords
civil war, civilian victimization, counterinsurgency, mass killing, technology of rebellion
Introduction
Civil wars show remarkable variation in terms of civilian
victimization. The recent Syrian civil war, for example,
has been devastating for the local population. Pro-regime
forces have violated nearly every law of war in a campaign
that has featured the shelling of residentia l neighbor-
hoods, the use of chemical weapons against civilians, and
other atrocities. Some observers estimate that the civilian
death toll in Syria is around 500,000 (Taub, 2016: 36).
1
Yet not all civil wars are so devastating for civilians. For
instance, during Britain’s counterinsurgency campaign
in Malaya, the British attempted to limit civilian causal-
ties and even took on ‘the role of protectors of the
population’ (Nagl, 2002: 71).
2
What explains this kind
of variation? More specifically, why do some civil wars
feature the state-sponsored mass killing of civilians while
others do not?
One prominent answer to this question takes a ‘vari-
eties of civil war’ approach by disaggregating civil con-
flicts according to the nature of fighting. In this
literature, scholars generally start with the assumption
Corresponding author:
daniel.krcmaric@northwestern.edu
1
Precise numbers should be interpreted with skepticism since
estimating death tolls is a notoriously difficult task, but the general
trend in Syria is clear. On the challenges of collecting and interpreting
conflict statistics, see Andreas & Greenhill (2010).
2
A word of caution about governments playing the role of ‘protectors
of the population’ is required. For example, while the British in
Malaya certainly refrained from civilian targeting and other massive
human rights violations, many civilians endured population
resettlement as a tool of counterinsurgency. More broadly, there
may be a substitution effect between mass killing and lesser human
rights violations.
Journal of Peace Research
2018, Vol. 55(1) 18–31
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343317715060
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