Geography, Rebel Capability, and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Abstract

Why do some armed civil conflicts last longer than others? Drawing on a contest success function model, we show that geographic factors (such as location, terrain, and natural resources) interact with rebel fighting capacity and together play a crucial role in determining the duration of conflict. Using precisely dated duration data in event history models and geographic data for the conflict location, we find that conflicts located at considerable distance from the main government stronghold, along remote international borders and in regions with valuable minerals last substantially longer. In addition, we find that rebel military capacity in its own right increases the prospects of a civil conflict ending within a short time period. Our findings imply that the distances an army must travel to project power, rebel fighting capacity, and characteristics of conflict region affect how a civil war is fought and who will prevail.

Drugs Boosting Conflict? A Micro-Level Test of the Linkage Between Substance Use and Violence

“…For example, Buhaug, Gates and Lujala in their study on the variation of civil conflict duration, show that gemstones and petroleum production in conflict areas prolong conflict duration, but that drug is not related to civil conflict duration. 28 In some of their models, drugs have even the opposite effect of what was expected. Also Wood showed in his quantitative analysis on rebel violence that the presence of gemstones or drugs in the conflict zone is statistically unrelated to the level of rebel violence against the civilian population.…”

Relative rebel strength and the onset and outcome of civil war mediation

“…Incumbent's power is generally centered in the capital city, if the government is forced to fight over long distances its strength and strategic advantage is mitigated (Boulding, 1963;Buhaug et al, 2009). Relatively weak rebels are therefore more likely to be based in the periphery of the state, in a location that limits the ability of the government to project its force effectively (Buhaug, 2010;Buhaug et al, 2009;DeRouen & Sobek, 2004).…”

Visualizing the Influence of Geography, Oil and Geopolitics on Civil Wars in the Arab World: A Novel Application of Self-Organizing Maps and Duration Models

“…Natural logarithm of the distance between the capital and the conflict zone was used as a measure of distance 43 ). Following Buhaug and Gates (2009) 44 , distances were estimated using a geodesic measure.…”

“…Rebels fighting capacity data were coded using Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan's (2009) 45 classification which includes three categories (week, moderate, and strong). Following Buhaug, Gates and Lujala (2009) 46 , we operationalized this measure using a dichotomous variant since this was found to fit the data better. Finally, we code a dummy variable for the existence of oil in the conflict zone.…”

“…These coefficients are fairly easy to interpret with positive values indicate longer civil war duration, and negative values imply shorter duration. Following Buhaug, Gates and Lujala (2009) 74 , robust Z and robust standard error statistics are estimated by clustering observations on Arab countries. Although previous hazard models had identified several plausible factors that might affect the duration of civil wars, we only controlled for the post-cold war era (civil wars that occurred after 1989).…”