Abstract
The prevailing wisdom in the political science literature holds
that insurgent groups serve their own interests most effectively
when they use selective violence against suspected collaborators
hidden amongst their constituents. By targeting those that are
believed to be disloyal, the insurgents demonstrate their own
lethal efficiency while simultaneously undermining promises made by
the government to protect those that prove willing to provide
intelligence on local insurgent activity. As a result, selective
violence is assumed to have a deterrent effect, frightening would
be informers into toeing the insurgent line and ultimately making
the insurgent group itself more secure and increasing the
likelihood of insurgent victories on the battlefield . While this
is a compelling account of why insurgent groups kill suspected
collaborators, anecdotal evidence from places as diverse as
Northern Ireland and Afghanistan demonstrates that a wide range of
insurgent-against-civilian violence does not conform to this
paradigm. In addition to killing suspected informers, insurgent
groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the
Taliban also engage in other types of selective violence against
civilians. In particular, these groups have demonstrated a tendency
to establish their own systems of law enforcement to deal with
common criminals, such as thieves and vandals, in the territories
they seek to control. In this capacity, insurgents present the
bullet, the stone or the cudgel as alternatives to the prisons,
probation boards and parole systems administered by the governments
they hope to overthrow. These acts of rough justice serve as part
of the insurgent group's overall strategy to build institutions of
governance to replace those provided by the state. However, these
actions draw on the same pool of relatively scarce
resources---manpower, money, vehicles and the like---that
insurgents must also rely on in their pursuit of victory of
government forces on the battlefield. As a result, the institution
building and war-fighting goals of insurgent groups are often in
tension with each other. This dissertation seeks to explain how
insurgents resolve this tension in the context of their competition
with the state to become the dominant providers of law
enforcement.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction...1
2 Violence Against Civilians in Wartime...17
3 Punishment Attacks and Policing: A Game Theoretic
Approach...48
4 The People's Police?...76
5 'A Very Peaceful Area'...134
6 'The More the Better, the Sooner the Better'...171
7 'The Land Where All the Bad Things Happened'...201
8 The 'Real' People's Police?...238
9 Conclusion...281
About this Dissertation
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