civil wars

What do you understand by civil war or civil conflict? What causes of civil war do you know? Let’s dig in and find out more about civil wars.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this topic, you are expected to:

• Understand the meaning of civil wars
• Understand the causes of civil wars
• Know the classification of civil wars
• Know the effects of civil wars.

Civil war is also referred to as intrastate war. It is a war between organized groups in the same country or state. The intention of one side can be to take control of a region or a country, in order to change government policies or achieve independence.

A civil war is a conflict with high intensity as it often involves the armed forces, which are large-scale, sustained and organized. Civil wars can lead to a large number of casualties as well as the consumption of many resources. Modern civil wars often involve the intervention of outside powers. It was reported by Patrick M. Reagan that, of the states or countries that experienced civil conflicts between the end of world war two and 2000, 138 intrastate conflicts saw international intervention, with the US intervening in 35 of them.

Since the end of the second world war, civil wars have lasted an average of 4 years. Between the periods 1900 and 1944, civil wars lasted for an average of one and a half years.

FORMAL CLASSIFICATION

Some political scientists describe a civil war as having more than 1 000 casualties, while others specify further that at least 100 must come from each side. A dataset that is widely used by the scholars of conflict known as the Correlates of war classifies civil wars as having more than 1000 casualties related to war per year. This rate represents a small fraction of the millions that were killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War but excludes conflicts like The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in apartheid era South Africa.

Based on the criterion of 1 000 casualties per year, there were 213 civil wars between 1816 and 1997, of which 104 occurred between 1944 and 1977.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) lists several conditions to be met to become a civil war. They are;

• The party in revolt against the de jure Government has an organized military force, acting within a determinate territory, having an authority responsible for its acts and having the means of respecting and ensuring respect for the convention.
• The legal government is obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents that are organized as military and in possession of a part of the national territory.
• The de jure Government has recognized the insurgents as belligerents; or
• It has claimed for itself the rights of a belligerent; or
• It has accorded the insurgents recognition as belligerents for the purposes only of the present convention.
• That the insurgents have an organization purporting to have the characteristics of a state.

CAUSES

There are three major explanations for the causes of civil war. They are: greed-based explanations, grievance-based explanations and opportunity-based explanations. Greed-based explanations involve the desires of an individual to maximize their profits. Grievance-based explanations involve the use of conflict as a response to political or socioeconomic injustice. Opportunity-based explanations involve factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilization.

Other causes of civil war include;

• Time. The more time that has passed since the last civil war, the less likely for a conflict to recur.
• Population size. An increase in the population of a country increases the risk of a civil war.
• Military advantage. High levels of population dispersion and the presence of mountainous terrain can increase the risk of conflict.
• Governance. This comes when leaders are not accountable to the public.
• Bargaining power.