Why Rebels Collide: Factionalism and Fragmentation in African Insurgencies

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Why Rebels Collide Factionalism and
Fragmentation in African Insurgencies

• Michael Woldemariam
• PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, Princeton
  University
• Africanist Doctoral Fellow, Woodrow Wilson
  International Center for Scholars

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Agenda

• The empirical puzzle
• Why should we care?
• Concepts and Definitions
• Existing explanations
• A new theoretical frame Rebel fragmentation and
  the problem of cooperation
• Fragmentation and Coups
• Conclusions

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The Empirical Puzzle

• Why do some organizations of violence maintain a
  high degree of solidarity while others succumb to
  the vagaries of political factionalism?
• More specifically, what explains spatial and
  temporal variation in the splintering of rebel
  organizations?
• A positive theory of rebel fragmentation
• Generalizable theory

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Why should we care? Rebel fragmentation and the
story of state failure

• Casual observations suggest that the
  fragmentation of rebel organizations is closely
  linked to patterns of state failure in late
  twentieth century Africa
• In many of Africas failed states of the 1990s,
  state failure was in part brought on by the
  inability of one or two original rebel
  organizations to seize and consolidate state
  power
• As the institutional edifice of the old state
  collapsed, rebel organizations often split into
  several opposing camps, turning what should have
  been a successful- albeit violent- political
  transition, into endemic chaos and chronically
  failing state institutions

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Why should we care? Rebel fragmentation and the
story of state failure?

• However, this all too common story stood in stark
  contrast to what we witnessed in several other
  African countries, where rebel organizations
  maintained internal cohesion, and successfully
  seized control of the apparatus of the state as
  the old regime collapsed
• These different trends are closely related to the
  distinction that Chris Clapham (1996) has drawn
  between state consolidating and state
  subverting insurgencies
• If we care about contemporary phenomenon of state
  failure, we should understand the causes of rebel
  fragmentation

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Somalia An illustration

• While there were several rebel organizations
  operating in Somalia following the collapse of
  the Siad Barre regime in Mogadishu in January of
  1991, the most likely to assume power were the
  Somali National Movement (SNM)- who occupied what
  is now Somaliland- and the United Somali Congress
  (USC)- who had taken Mogadishu and most of
  Central and Southern Somalia

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Somalia Contd

• However, leadership disputes between Ali Mahdi
  and Mohammed Farah Aideed lead to a bitter split
  in the USC along Hawiye sub-clan lines, and
  sectarian conflict in Mogadishu
• By contrast, the SNM held together, maintained
  its internal discipline, and effectively filled
  the political vacuum in Somaliland created by
  Barres departure
• As a result, Somaliland transitioned into a
  period of sustained peace and prosperity, while
  the rest of Somalia remained mired in conflict.

Mohammed Farah Aideed
Ali Mahdi
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Ethiopia and Eritrea

• Neighboring Ethiopia and Eritrea also presented a
  useful contrast to what was happening in
  Mogadishu in early 1991
• In Eritrea, the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front
  (EPLF) maintained its internal cohesion and
  successfully filled the power vacuum left by the
  collapse of the communist regime of Mengistu
  Haile Mariam
• In Addis Ababa, the Tigray Peoples Liberation
  Front (TPLF) emulated the EPLFs success in
  consolidating state power
• Events in Chad and Liberia at the end of the Cold
  War led to far different outcomes

Eritrea and Tigray Region of Ethiopia
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Why should we care?

• Splintering tends to tends to lengthen civil
  wars, because it creates veto-players (Cunningham
  2006) whose agreement is necessary to
  implementing a peace agreement
• Fragmentation can impact the effectiveness and
  ultimate success of rebel organizations
• Civil war literature tends to treat rebel group
  as black box whose members have uniform
  preferences and common identity (Kalyvas 2003)

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Concepts and Definitions What is a rebel
organization?

• The PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset defines a rebel
  organization as
• A non-governmental group of people, formally
  organized, having announced a name for their
  group
• Group should have used armed force to influence
  the outcome of the stated incompatibility
• Groups military activity must be part of a
  planned political campaign rather than
  spontaneous violence
• Group must be involved in military event
  resulting in at least 25 casualties

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Concepts and Definitions What is a rebel
organization?

• The sample of organizations that this study
  analyzes are the 160 odd African rebel
  organizations that PRIO has identified in the
  period 1946-2006, in addition to several other
  rebel organizations that have been identified
  over the course of this research

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Concepts and Definitions How do we define rebel
fracture/fragmentation?

• Fracture occurs when a non-trivial portion of a
  rebel organization formally exits that
  organization and either
• A) Establishes a new rebel organization or
• B) Joins another existing rebel organization
• Key issue What does non-trivial mean?

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Existing Approaches

• Civil war literature doesnt really address rebel
  fragmentation
• Old civil wars vs. new civil wars?
• Most versions of the distinction between old and
  new civil wars stress or imply that new civil
  wars are characteristically criminal,
  depoliticized, private, and predatory old civil
  wars are considered ideological, political,
  collective, and even noble. The dividing line
  between old and new civil wars coincides roughly
  with the end of the cold war (Kalyvas 2001)

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Existing Approaches

• Weinstein (2006) suggests that the structure and
  cohesion of rebel groups is a function of its
  resource base- a path dependent story
• Problem Addresses the propensity of movements to
  fragment but not the timing of fragmentation-
  that latter would require a more dynamic variable
  that can explain sudden events and rapid change

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Existing Approaches

• Gates (2002) argues that geography and ethnic
  composition exacerbate principal agent problems
  within rebel organizations and make it more
  difficult to police defection
• Shapiro (2007) suggests that state repression
  increases insecurity of rebel organizations,
  forcing decentralization and exacerbating
  principal agent problems, and making it more
  difficult to police defection
• Problem Focus on the capacity to fragment,
  rather than the motivations for fragmentation

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Existing Approaches

• A revamped, more interesting theory of rebel
  fragmentation, should explain the timing of
  fragmentation- and thus its precipitating causes-
  as well as the motivations of those who seek to
  splinter

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A plausible theory? Rebel fragmentation and the
problem of cooperation

• While one could view fragmentation from a variety
  of perspectives, I would argue that fragmentation
  represents a breakdown in a previously
  cooperative relationship between a leader and
  organizational elites
• Cooperation in rebel organizations exists because
  the interaction between a rebel leader and
  organizational elites is based on an implicit or
  formal contract through which the leader provides
  benefits to organizational elites, and in turn,
  organizational elites recognize the authority of
  the leader and obey his directives

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A plausible theory? Rebel fragmentation and the
problem of cooperation

• The fact that organizational elites challenge the
  authority of a leader through splintering, then,
  suggests that the conditions that sustained
  cooperation as an equilibria no longer obtain
• For whatever reason, certain shocks have occurred
  that change the underlying incentives that
  certain organizational elites have to remain in a
  rebel organization under the current leadership-
  in other words, cooperate
• By treating the fragmentation of insurgent
  organizations as a breakdown of
  intra-organizational cooperation, we can create a
  more fine-grained explanation that accounts for
  the timing of fragmentation as well as the
  motivations of those who choose to splinter

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Two paths to a breakdown of cooperation

• Preference divergence
• Ideology, policy differences
• Sudan- SPLA, Somalia- WSLF, Eritrea- ELF,
  OLF-Ethiopia
• Economic rewards (Collier and Hoeffler 2000)
• Liberia-NPFL, Somalia-USC

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Two paths to a breakdown of cooperation

• Commitment Problems (Shepsle 1991)
• Motivationally credible
• Somalia- USC
• Imperatively credible
• Sudan- SPLA

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A second piece of the puzzle? Fragmentation vs.
coups

• If splintering is an extra-legal action that
  subordinates use to usurp and challenge the
  ultimate authority of a rebel leader, then why
  choose splintering over a coup?
• In fact, a coup may often be the less costly
  option for subordinates dissatisfied with status
  quo
• Yet, if the success of a coup, either in the
  short or long term, is unlikely, fragmentation
  becomes the preferred option
• Furthermore, fragmentation may be a second order,
  unintended effect of a failed coup- Sudan, (SPLA)

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Conclusions

• Variation in the fragmentation of rebel
  organizations represents an empirical puzzle
• The fragmentation of rebel organizations is an
  important research question- both practically and
  theoretically
• In order to understand why rebels collide, we
  need to understand how and why they cooperate
• We need to think about relationship between the
  fragmentation of rebel organization and coups

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Towards the future

• Comparative case studies of rebel organizations
  in the Horn of Africa
• Statistical analysis?

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• mwoldema_at_princeton.edu