What Restrains Military from Targeting Civilians in Civil Wars?

ABSTRACT

What explains the role of restraints on military for limiting victimisation of civilians? We find that a higher number of officers trained on counterinsurgency are associated with a lower number of civilians killed by government forces in civil wars. We also find that the number of civilians killed by government forces reduces as the degree of military involvement in politics reduces, and as the judiciary becomes independent. These results suggest that if the goal is to curb indiscriminate civilian killings, better training in counterinsurgency, the existence of judicial checks, and lowering military influence in politics are practical policy tools.

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Acknowledgement

We thank to Mike Findley and John Ishiyama for their invaluable suggestions for the earlier versions of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term ‘officers’ refers to officers and non-commissioned officers.

2. The data provides the low, high and best estimate of the number of civilian killings by government forces. We use the best estimate of the number of civilian killings.

3. The original data source for military influence in politics and rule of law variables is ICRG data. There is some level of correlation between two (0.402), but it is not at the level that would hurt the reliability of our results.

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Notes on contributors

Mustafa Kirisci

Mustafa Kirisci is an assistant professor of homeland security at DeSales University. His research interests fall in civil conflict, terrorism, civil-military relations and interstate conflict.

Ibrahim Kocaman

Ibrahim Kocaman is an assistant professor of security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Daytona Beach. His research interests are civil-military relations, civil conflict and interstate conflict.