Search

What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Most current research on these topics either explicitly or implicitly separates the two, in spite of compelling reasons to consider them together. The few attempts to unpack the similarities between these types of political violence have either focused on creating actor-based categories that elucidate the different reasons for being a terrorist or insurgent or comparing and contrasting each type of violence to discern whether they have similar etiologies. In this paper, we examine the extent to which terrorism and civil war overlap and then unpack various temporal and categorical patterns. To accomplish this, we use newly geo-referenced terror event data to offer a global overview of where and when terrorist events happen and whether they occur inside or outside of civil war zones. We investigate in detail, furthermore, six separate violent campaigns occurring in systematically different contexts to illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war. The data show a high degree of overlap between terrorism and ongoing civil war and, further, indicate that a substantial amount of terrorism occurs prior to civil wars in Latin America, but follows war in other regions of the world. While the study of terrorism and civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer a possibility for future research by considering how geo-referenced terror and civil war data may be utilized together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil war combatants use terrorism frequently during civil wars, yet we understand very little about terrorism's effects on war resolution. It is generally assumed that the primary combatants to a war hold a veto over the resolution of the war, but less attention has been devoted to whether otherwise marginal groups can derail peace agreements. We contend that even terrorism, a generally low intensity form of violence, can make civil war peace processes less likely to end in a peaceful, durable resolution. Using a new and large geographically coded database of terrorism in civil wars, we find that terror tactics by even weak, marginalized actors can spoil peace processes by prolonging the time until the end of a war, or hastening the time until recurrence. Our argument and results add to the literature on civil wars by explicating the process linking terrorism to war duration and outcome. We also provide solid empirical tests, which have been lacking in past studies of spoiling and civil war resolution. More generally, the results underscore the importance of investigating different varieties of political violence during civil conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Recent attempts to un- pack the similarities between these types of political violence have either focused on creating actor-based categories (terrorists vs. insurgents) and elucidating the different reasons for being one or the other or comparing and contrasting each to discern whether they have similar etiologies. In contrast to previous approaches, we use geo-referenced terror event data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to show where and when terror happens and whether it occurs inside or outside of civil war zones. We investigate in detail six separate violent campaigns to illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war events. While the study of terrorism and civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer an exciting possibility for future research by merging geo-referenced terror and civil war data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]