Combatant Composition and Peace Durability: A Historical and Empirical Dive into Rebel Group Fragmentation as a Determinant of Conflict Relapse

Abstract

Nearly all regions of the world have observed repeated cycles of violence involving anti-state militias and domestic or international terrorist groups since the end of World War II. A 2020 UN Human Rights Office report on conflict-related civilian casualties revealed that 5 out of 100,000 civilians are killed every year due to conflict (UN| SDG Indicator 16.1.2, 2020). War is costly, and sustainable war resolution efforts are complicated by the socio-political and economic contexts on which wars' characteristics are contingent. By granularly examining wars in their respective contexts, however, peace-building literature has uncovered rebel group fragmentation, the process by which rebel organizations splinter into distinct armed entities, as an increasingly common characteristic of armed conflict. . . . A similar history of complex, and often overlapping, changes in rebel group composition has sophisticated many government-rebel wars. Rebel infighting, typically provoked by socio-political or economic divergences, often increases the number of incompatibilities necessitating government attention. In the case of Myanmar, fragmentation not only increased the number of rebel groups fought by the government at a given time, but additionally diversified reasons of contention from, for instance, the seeking of an autonomous state to the seeking of a socialist autonomous one. These effects of fragmentation are certainly evident in Mali's conflict history, too. . . . These cases of Myanmar and Mali demonstrate both the commonality of fragmentation and its influence on conflict outcome. The aim of this paper is to examine its effect specifically on war recurrence. Peace building literature has identified an increase in "conflict trap," the tendency for countries to become trapped in repeated cycles of violence (Collier & Sambanis, 2002). A current challenge in peace-building, therefore, is not only punctually and effectively preventing new-war onset but intercepting the relapse of old ones. This paper, to that end, will examine the effect of rebel group fragmentation on war recurrence. [From Introduction]