What drives violence against civilians in civil war? Evidence from Guatemala’s conflict archives

Abstract

Dominant theories of mass violence hold that strategic concerns in civil war drive the deliberate targeting of civilians. However, the causal mechanisms that link strategic objectives to large-scale violence against civilians remain underspecified, and as such the causal logics that underpin each remain blurred. In this article, we identify and explicate four plausible mechanisms that explain why armed groups would target, for strategic purposes, civilians in war. We then turn to the peak period of violence during the Guatemalan armed conflict to assess which mechanisms were most prevalent. Specifically, we leverage unique archival data: 359 pages of military files from Operation Sofía, a month-long counterinsurgent campaign waged in the northwestern Ixil region. Through process tracing of real-time internal communications, we find that state actors most commonly described the civilian population as loyal to rebel forces; violence against civilians was a means to weaken the insurgency. Troops on the ground also depicted the Ixil population as ‘winnable’, which suggests that security forces used violence in this period to shape civilian behavior. These findings are most consistent with the idea that mass violence in this case and period was a coercive instrument to defeat insurgents by punishing civilians for collaboration. The evidence from this period is less consistent with a logic of genocide, in which the purpose of violence would be to destroy ‘unwinnable’ civilian groups. Our analysis illustrates how a mechanism-centered approach based on process tracing of conflict archives can help uncover logics underlying civilian killing.

New findings from conflict archives

“…In some cases, recent work has combined historical process tracing with conflict archives to study the mechanisms underlying important political phenomena and resolve persistent theoretical debates (e.g. Lawrence, 2013; Schwartz & Straus, 2018). Archives are particularly useful to undertake process tracing, as they can provide information on the wartime processes that are absent in other data sources.…”

“…Schwartz & Straus (2018) study a slightly different set of ideological trade-offs in their research focusing on mass atrocities in Guatemala. Following a recent trend in the field (e.g.…”

On the Beaten Path: Violence Against Civilians and Simulated Conflict Along Road Networks

“…Departing from this debate, a growing literature has sought to better understand VAC as a dependent rather than independent variable. Consequently, numerous studies have examined factors that may explain VAC, including ethnic fractionalization, territorial control, strategic incentives, and various geographic variables (Fjelde and Hultman 2014;Schwartz and Straus 2018;Raleigh 2012;Wood 2010;Schutte 2015Schutte , 2017. This chapter aims to contribute to this body of literature by using a geographic event-based approach to further investigate the occurrence of violence against civilians.…”

Analysis of Conflict Diffusion Over Continuous Space

“…This analytical strategy enables us to assess a range of conflict dynamics because large-scale violence encompasses episodes of random killing, violence against civilians as well as the use of selective or indiscriminate violence (Koc-Menard, 2006). These different types of conflict reveal various purposes and/or goals pursued by the actors engaged in conflicts, such as advancing military interests, social identity, or political loyalty (Schwartz and Straus, 2018;Valentino, 2014;Balcells, 2011). We believe it is theoretically meaningful to reexamine different types of conflict based on the actor-level characteristics because actors involved in these events vary with their motivation, strategic behaviors, and capabilities of appealing to violence, which could further lead to distinct conflict processes and patterns.…”