Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War: Determinants of the Strategies of Warring Factions.

It is widely accepted that the toll of civil conflict is increasingly borne by the civilian population, as warring factions target non-combatants through campaigns of killing, rape, and pillaging. But significant variation exists in the extent to which warring groups abuse the civilian population: across conflicts, across groups, and within countries geographically and over time. Using a new dataset on fighting groups in Sierra Leone, this paper analyzes the determinants of the tactics, strategies, and behaviors that warring factions employ in their relationship with non-combatants. We show that the most important determinants of civilian abuse are internal to the structure of the faction. High levels of abuse are exhibited by warring factions that are more ethnically fragmented, use material incentives to recruit participants, have weak social capital, and lack mechanisms for punishing indiscipline. In addition, there is some evidence that the degree of contestation matters for the level of civilian abuse. Groups that are dominant in a particular geographic zone tend not to use high levels of violence, and wealthier regions are prone to experience higher levels of abuse. There is also some evidence that levels of abuse are a function of a faction?s ties to the local community. We find weak evidence that ethnic ties between the group and the community in which it operates result in lower levels of violence, but stronger evidence that levels of abuse are lower in situations where groups fight in their home area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]