This article examines the impact and repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on patterns of armed conflict around the world. It argues that there are two main ways in which the pandemic is likely to fuel, rather than mitigate, conflict and engender further violence in conflict-prone countries: (1) the exacerbating effect of COVID-19 on the underlying root causes of conflict and (2) the exploitation of the crisis by governments and non-state actors who have used the coronavirus to gain political advantage and territorial control. The article uses data collected in real-time by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and the Johns Hopkins University to illustrate the unfolding and spatial distribution of conflict events before and during the pandemic and combine this with three brief case studies of Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Libya. Descriptive evidence shows how levels of violence have remained unabated or even escalated during the first five months of the pandemic and how COVID-19-related social unrest has spread beyond conflict-affected countries.

No abstract

Existing research has argued that terrorism is common in civil war because it is "effective." Surprisingly, however, only some groups use terrorism during civil wars, while many refrain altogether. We also see considerable variation in the use of terrorism over time. This article presents a theory of terrorism as a mobilization strategy in civil war, taking into account benefits, costs, and temporal dynamics. We argue that the choice and the timing of terrorism arise from the interaction between conditions for effective mobilization and battlefield dynamics. Terrorism can mobilize support when it provokes indiscriminate government repression or when it radicalizes rebels' constituency by antagonizing specific societal groups. The timing of attacks, however, is influenced by battlefield losses, which increase rebels' need to rally civilian support. The analyses of new disaggregated data on rebels' terrorist attacks during conflicts and of ISIS tactics in Iraq and Syria support our theoretical argument.

We examine the strategic rationale for terrorist tactics in civil war. We identify conditions that favor terrorism as a tactic in armed civil conflicts as well as the specific targets as a function of rebel characteristics, goals, and government responses to political demands. Terrorist tactics can be helpful as an instrument to coerce the government in asymmetric conflicts, as rebels are typically weak relative to the government. But terrorism can also help communicate the goals and resolve of a group when there is widespread uncertainty. We consider the strategic importance and rationale for terrorism in terms of the frequency of attacks and specific targets, and analyze our propositions using new data linking actors from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conflict Data and the Global Terrorism Database. Consistent with our expectations, we find that terrorism is used more extensively in civil conflicts by weaker groups and when attacks can help the group convey its goals without undermining popular support. Groups with more inclusive audiences are more likely to focus on 'hard' or official targets, while groups with more sectarian audiences are more likely to attack 'soft' targets and civilians.

Existing research on terrorism as a strategy has largely neglected the apparent differences in what groups target. Whereas some organizations primarily target undefended civilians, other attack mainly official and hard targets. I develop an explanation of terrorist groups' relative target preferences based on how a group's ties to its constituency and specific government repressive strategies either constrain or incentivize terrorist attacks against soft civilian vs. hard/official targets. Specific sources of support and the degree of out-group antagonism in their constituency shape terrorist groups' primary targeting strategy. While groups with transnational support are generally more likely to target primarily undefended civilians, not all groups with local support are restrained. Groups with low out-group antagonism and local civilian support incur high political costs for targeting civilians and focus primarily on official targets. Instead, groups with domestic support but high out-group antagonism have mixed incentives. When facing indiscriminate government repression these groups become more likely to target primarily undefended civilians, because they can justify such a response to their audience, direct attacks against out-group civilians, and radicalize local constituents. Indiscriminate repression, however, does not change the targeting strategy of groups who face high political costs for attacking civilians. I examine the observable implications of the theory in a comparative analysis of terrorist organizations (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) as well as an over-time analysis of repression and targeting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004), and find strong support for the theoretical argument.What explains these differences in terrorist targeting strategies? And when are undefended civilians more likely to be targeted in terror attacks? The primary purpose of this article is to answer these related questions from an actor-level perspective.Extant terrorism research has mainly focused on structural causes and determinants of attack frequency and lethality. While providing substantial insights, this approach cannot explain who is targeted in terrorist attacks and why. These are important questions because they tell us when specific targets are most at risk, and thus improve counterterrorism efforts, as well as mitigate the human costs of terrorism. 2 Of course, conflict scholarship has analyzed attacks against civilians, but it has typically looked at civilian targets in isolation, without considering the choice of such targets in the context of other available options (e.g., public officials, police, and low-casualty targets such as property). 3 This exclusive focus on soft civilian targets has several shortcomings. First, it has little to say about more discriminate terrorist strategies such as those of the NPA or FSA, and whether different targets ar...