The Geography of Civil War*
HALVARD BUHAUG
Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science &r Technology (NTNU) e& International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
SCOTT GATES
Department of Political Science, Michigan State University 6& International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue on Civil War in Developing Countries (Jul., 2002), pp. 417-433 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd
* An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual North American meeting of the Peace Science Society (International), Atlanta, GA, 26-28 October 2001. We thank the Research Council of Norway, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and the World Bank for funding various parts of the data collection. The work on locating the conflicts was conducted as part of a cross-disciplinary project at NTNU on geographic diffusion of conflict, where Haakon Lein and Jan Ketil Rod have made essential contributions.Furthermore, we are grateful to the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, for collaboration on the conflict data, Anke Hoeffler for providing data on mountainous terrain, and Nils Petter Gleditsch, Mansoob Murshed, and five anonymous referees for insightful comments on an earlier draft.
Abstract
Geographical factors play a critical role in determining how a civil war is fought and who will prevail. Drawing on the PRIO/Uppsala Armed Conflict dataset covering the period 1946-2000, the authors have determined the location of all battle-zones for all civil wars in this time period, thereby identify-' ing the geographic extent and the center point of each conflict. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimation techniques, factors are analyzed that determine the scope of the conflict (area of the conflict zone) and the location of the conflict relative to the capital. It is found that in addition to geographical factors such as the total land area of the country, scope is strongly shaped by such factors as the adjacencies of a border of a neighboring country, the incidence of natural resources in the conflict zone, and the duration of the conflict. The distance of the conflict zone from the capital is influenced by the scope of the conflict, the size of the country, whether or not the objective of the rebels is to secede, and whether or not the rebel group has a religious or ethnic identity. Also, evidence is found of an endogenous relationship between scope and location.
When I took a decision, or adopted an alternative, it was after studying every relevant ... factor. Geography, tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards - all were at my finger-ends.
T. E. Lawrence, Letter to B. H. Liddell Hart, June 1933 (Collins, 1998: 3)
Introduction
Lawrence of Arabia's observation is as true today as it was in his time. In recent years, our theoretical and empirical understanding of the factors identified by Lawrence as related to the onset and duration of civil war has progressed tremendously.1 Yet, despite important insights gained from this research, we have very little systematic knowledge about the actual fighting of civil wars. Ironically, one reason for the general lack of understanding in this regard is that there is little or no actual fighting or war in these models of war onset or duration. There are no battles, no deaths, no weapons, no guerrilla tactics, and no counter-insurgency activities. Territory and resources are never lost or gained. There are no victories and there are no defeats. Yet, motivations regarding peace and war are clearly linked to the prospects of winning or losing a civil war. In addition to securing wealth through the capture of resources, civil wars are often fought over a political objective - control over the apparatus of the state or the creation of a new sovereign state. Clearly, different objectives will alter the way a civil war is fought. A war over control of the state will fundamentally differ from a war of secession. Military historians and strategists have long understood how geographical factors play a critical role in influencing how a civil war is fought and who will prevail. Taking military history as a departure point, this paper examines how strategic objectives and geographical factors affect the location, relative to the capital, and scope (measured conflict area) of armed civil conflict.
Geographic Factors and Armed Civil Conflict
Physical Geographical
Factors The earliest military strategists understood the role of geography and conflict. In his Discoursi, Machiavelli (1517/1988: 52-53) wrote that a soldier must become 'familiar with the terrain: how mountains rise, how the valleys open out and plains spread out, as well as with the characteristics of rivers and swamps'. Keegan (1993) in his History of Warfare features the role of geographic variables and distinguishes between 'permanently operating' and 'contingent' factors. Permanent factors include terrain and climate. These factors have long been the focus of military tacticians and military historians.2 And presumably because such stories are more interesting, the majority of such studies have featured the catastrophic blunders caused by commanders ignoring geography, including the likes of Major General George McClellan at Antietem (1862), General Baron Levin Bennigsen at Friedland (1807), General Ludwig Benedek at Konnigratz (1866), and Lieutenant General Mark Clark at Rapido in the Battle for Italy (1944). In contrast, gifted generals, of course, consistently have taken such factors into account and, where possible, have used them to their advantage.
Keegan's second concept, contingent geographic factors, relates to the constraints on logistics and intelligence. To ignore these factors is to ignore Clausewitz's admonition, 'the end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the rightplace and the right time' (Murray, 1999: 210). Geography is not just important on the battlefield, but at the operational level as well. With ruinous results, such renowned military minds as Napoleon and the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) of Nazi Germany neglected these factors in their attempts to conquer Russia and the Soviet Union respectively. It seems that social scientists too, in their analyses of civil war, also have tended to ignore the role of geographic variables with regard to the fighting of civil war.
ــــــــــــــــــــــــ
I The other articles included in the special issue serve as
testimony to the tremendous strides we have made in
understanding the onset and nature of civil war in recent
years. See Sambanis (2002) and Gates (2001) for reviews
of the literature.
2 In addition to Keegan (1993), see Collins (1998) and
Murray (1999) for discussions regarding the role of geography
in warfar.
Influenced by classical theorists, most applications of geography to war have been geo-political analyses applied to military strategy or global security issues. The basic premise though almost seems too obvious - that the location and size of a country affect the design and nature of military strategy. Mackinder (1904) speaks of the pivot area, or heartland, while Ratzel (1896) draws on Darwin's survival of the fittest when arguing for a 'law' of territorial growth.3 For the most part, geopolitical strategic analysis has been global in perspective, applied to explain the international politics of Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Yet, even for civil war, such factors as the size of a country, its location, and the nature of its borders are extremely important, influencing temporal and spatial domain as well as the potentiality for diffusion.
Empirical studies addressing the geographic aspect of conflicts typically consist of statistical, nation/dyadic-level analyses regarding interstate war, and rest on different measures of proximity of states (Bremer, 1992; Diehl, 1991; Gleditsch, 1995; Vasquez, 1995). Following Boulding (1962), Sprout & Sprout (1965), and Richardson (1960), geography is treated primarily as a concept of contiguity and distance, affecting interstate interaction. These studies have demonstrated that inter-capital distance and number of borders are essential predictors of conflict proneness. However, such measures are less interesting when studying internal conflicts.
When it comes to exploring determinants of the location of conflicts, litde or no systematic effort has been made. Attributes of the conflictridden countries (topography, climate, population) as well as characteristics of the conflicts (severity, duration, goal of rebel group) have only to a limited extent been induded in quantitative conflict studies, and always as exogenous factors affecting outbreak or duration. Fearon & Laitin (1999) and Collier & Hoeffler (2001) both indude crude measures of mountainous terrain and forest cover as predictors of onset of conflict. And in an effort to determine relevant South American dyads, Lemke (1995) acknowledges the relevance of terrain by constructing a time-distance measure of interstate transportation cost.
________________
3 For more modern literature of this nature, see Pepper &
Jenkins (1985) and Kliot & Waterman (1991).
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