Hiring and Firing: How Crackdown and Truce Shape Rebel Organizations

• In Event: Rebel Institutions and Interests

Abstract

In the past three decades, more than two dozen civil conflicts have ended or frozen for a decade or more with the government offering a long-term truce to rebels. What happens to rebel organizations when the government permits them to operate and recruit freely? Contrary to scholars’ and policymakers’ assumptions, such truces actually undermine rebel organizations by attracting selfish, opportunistic recruits who are prone to desert, defect, and disobey. I test these assumptions with an innovative recruitment experiment in three separatist regions of Northeast India. By mimicking militant recruiting strategies, I gather nearly 400 potential recruits and have them evaluate randomly-generated hypothetical rebel groups, testing what factors make them more willing to join. I then explore how armed leaders respond to these recruit-side motivations through 75 in-depth semi-structured interviews of current and former militants in Northeast India and Sri Lanka, where governments have suddenly and haphazardly offered long-term truces to rebel movements at various points in history. The findings show that the safety and material benefits of long-term truces disproportionately attract uncommitted and selfish recruits who undermine rebel groups. Moreover, even strong rebel leaders struggle to deter or control these new uncommitted recruits due to intra-movement recruitment competition and lack of bureaucratic capacity. As a result, states may undermine rebel competitors more effectively with forbearance than with violence.

Author

• Kolby Hanson, Dartmouth College