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ID: 152229

External resources and indiscriminate violence: evidence from German-Occupied Belarus / Zhukov, Yuri M

Zhukov, Yuri M	Journal Article
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Within a single conflict, the scale of government violence against civilians can vary greatly—from mass atrocities in one village to eerie restraint in the next. This article argues that the scale of anticivilian violence depends on a combatant's relative dependence on local and external sources of support. External resources make combatants less dependent on the local population, yet create perverse incentives for how the population is to be treated. Efforts by the opposition to interdict the government's external resources can reverse this effect, making the government more dependent on the local population. The article tests this relationship with disaggregated archival data on German-occupied Belarus during World War II. It finds that Soviet partisan attacks against German personnel provoked reprisals against civilians but that attacks against railroads had the opposite effect. Where partisans focused on disrupting German supply lines rather than killing Germans, occupying forces conducted fewer reprisals, burned fewer houses, and killed fewer people.

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Indiscriminate Violence ; External Resources ; German-Occupied Belarus

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ID: 151271

Rebel leaders, internal rivals, and external resources: how state sponsors affect insurgent cohesion / Tamm, Henning

Tamm, Henning	Journal Article
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Civil wars often feature insurgent groups with external sponsors. Yet, we know little about the impact of such sponsorship on insurgent cohesion. Indeed, researchers disagree about the conditions under which state sponsorship encourages or discourages organizational splits. This article presents a theory that reconciles these disagreements. I focus on how the allocation of external resources affects the intra-group distribution of power between rebel leaders and their internal rivals. Sponsors that help maintain an imbalance of power in favor of the leader foster cohesion; those that help flip the imbalance in favor of a rival increase the likelihood of an internal coup within the group. Only when sponsors contribute to a shift from an imbalance of power to balanced power is the rebel group more likely to split into competing organizations. I further argue that sponsors reallocate their resources in favor of a rebel leader’s internal rival in order to punish the leader for undesired behavior. Case studies of two major insurgent groups—the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army and the Lebanese Hezbollah—illustrate the explanatory power of my argument.

Key Words

Internal Rivals ; Insurgent Cohesion ; Rebel Leaders ; External Resources ; State Sponsors ; Civil Wars and Violence

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