Articles

Every armed organization seeks the ability to turn violence on and off by getting fighters to fight when ordered and to stop fighting when similarly ordered. This ability is a defining feature of what makes organized violence, in fact, organized. While state militaries develop clear hierarchies and disciplinary procedures to accomplish this goal, the complexity of civil war makes the task more difficult for insurgent groups. The author argues that the leaders of insurgent organizations are able to turn violence on and off when they have deliberately established resource control through the direct, and exclusive, distribution of resources to their followers and those followers are socially embedded, meaning that members are united by strong horizontal ties and group norms.

During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan, the Pakistan army carried out a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in what was then East Pakistan. The perpetrators never faced trial. Archival documents reveal how India and Bangladesh sacrificed the opportunity for war crimes trials to gain Pakistan’s agreement on key security goals—the Simla peace agreement and recognition of Bangladesh’s independence. The legacy of this decision continues to blight Bangladesh’s politics.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

Many international peacebuilders have suggested that integrating opposing combatants into a national military after civil war helps prevent conflict from recurring. Analysis of eleven cases of post–civil war military integration, however, reveals little evidence to support this claim. Underlying political conditions, not military integration, determine whether peace endures.

Blood revenge is a crucial yet understudied contributor to many insurgencies and civil wars. Interviews with participants in and witnesses to the First and Second Chechen Wars reveal how a desire to avenge dead or injured relatives drove many Chechens to join insurgent groups.