Rebel Recruitment and Information Problems 9781138182431, 9781315646466

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Rebel Recruitment and Information Problems

How do rebel groups decide how to recruit members? To answer this question, Obayashi classifies recruitment techniques of rebel groups into two types, coercion and inducement, and develops a theory of rebel recruitment that simultaneously addresses agency problems inside rebel groups and the rebel–state contest over information. Important themes such as desertion, counterinsurgency strategies including amnesties, and civil war termination, are also examined to further understand the dynamics of rebellion and violent disorder. The theory is applied to examine the changes in conflicts involving the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Kazuhiro Obayashi is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Law in Hitotsubashi University, Japan.

Routledge Studies in the Politics of Disorder and Instability

This series brings together research on issues involving dissent, disorder, rebellion, revolution, and governability at national, regional, and comparative levels. Focusing on the political, social, and economic causes of these phenomena and analysing case studies from around the world. It aims to develop our understanding of both the details of individual examples and the common characteristics of international trends. Rebel Recruitment and Information Problems By Kazuhiro Obayashi

Rebel Recruitment and Information Problems

Kazuhiro Obayashi

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Kazuhiro Obayashi The right of Kazuhiro Obayashi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-18243-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64646-6 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

I wish to dedicate this book to Tomoko and Masataka Obayashi.

Contents

List of Figures List of maps List of tables Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations

viii ix x xi xii xiv

1

Introduction

1

2

The informational theory of rebel recruitment

18

3

Changes in rebel organizations

43

4

Recruitment

70

5

Desertion

95

6

State’s counterinsurgency strategy – offer of general amnesty

113

7

Rebel decline

135

8

Conclusion

173

Index

183

Figures

2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 5.1 5.2 7.1 7.2 7.3

Rebel group’s choice of recruitment strategy Information leakage, rebel decline, and recruitment strategy Numerical strengths of the parties to civil war in Sri Lanka and Uganda The state military expenditures and road densities in Sri Lanka and Uganda Changes in the proportion of the LTTE’s territory in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka Desertion and a state amnesty offer Abduction, escape, and return over time in the LRA Information leakage and rebel decline Number of LTTE attacks and their fatalities per month in Sri Lanka Fatalities per LTTE attack for each month in Sri Lanka and in Colombo

33 35 49 50 55 99 107 137 148 149

Maps

Sri Lanka Uganda

xv xvi

Tables

2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2

Hypotheses Information asymmetry, cost of retention, and expected cost of desertion for the LTTE and the LRA Recruitment strategies of the LTTE and the LRA Abducted experience and former affiliation of the high-ranking LRA officers Desertion in the LTTE and the LRA Timing, political conditionality, and purpose of amnesty offer Level of state investment in amnesty offer Descriptive statistics of the amnesty offers to the LTTE and the LRA Amnesty offers to the members of the LTTE and the LRA Information leakage and declines of the LTTE and LRA Duration of service among the Ex-LTTE combatants detained by the Sri Lankan Government

36 47 71 86 101 116 118 121 122 142 152

Preface

In civil wars, forcible recruitment by rebel groups presents one of the most serious humanitarian challenges faced by international society. However, policymakers and scholars know little about the conditions under which a rebel group resorts to the use of force for recruitment. In this book, the author develops an informational theory of rebel recruitment to explain a rebel group’s choice between the use of incentives or force for recruitment. The theory directs the readers’ attention to two types of information problems that rebel groups face, agency problems with (potential) recruits and the contest over information with the state. Rebel groups vary in the extent to which they are vulnerable to these information problems and thus in the priorities they place on the different types of problems they face in recruitment such as under-participation, indiscipline, and a high turnover rate. In the meantime, the two recruitment techniques, inducement and coercion, vary in whether they amplify or mitigate these problems. Building on these assumptions, the author argues that three organizational variables – the level of information asymmetry between rebel leaders and potential recruits, the cost of retention mechanisms for the group, and the group’s expected cost of the agents’ desertion – explain the group’s choice of recruitment strategy or the proportion of inducement versus coercion used. The theory has implications for the desertion rates in rebel groups, the state’s counterinsurgency strategies, and the conditions conducive to rebel decline and civil war termination. I test the hypotheses with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, examining the variations in their practices over time and across functions. The theory explains, for example, why the Ugandan state nearly always offered amnesty to LRA members, while the Sri Lankan state did not. It also explains the Sri Lankan state’s victory over the LTTE in 2009, which surprised many observers. The findings in this study provide insights into the role of ethnicity in civil wars, studies of the duration and termination of civil wars, and the development of a political theory of organizations.

Acknowledgments

This book came out of my dissertation project at the George Washington University and benefited from the advice and support of numerous individuals and institutions. First and foremost, I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, James Lebovic, Martha Finnemore, and Gina Lambright. James Lebovic, the chair of the committee, was always supportive and admirably patient with my project, and I am highly grateful for those attitudes. Martha Finnemore was consistently the harshest, albeit constructive, critic of my dissertation project since the time it was just a two-page research proposal. I learnt much from Gina Lambright’s seminar on African Politics, and her presence often reminded me that I need to stay close to the field. Scott Gates at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the University of Oslo had a major influence over the theoretical development of this project and, despite my original expectation to the contrary, has been an important source of my confidence in this project. Deborah Avant, currently at the University of Denver, kept me on the right track whenever my perspective narrowed and I began to address a limited audience. A professor once told me that even long after completion of her dissertation, she could not help but imagine that whenever she began working on a new project, her advisors were still telling her that it was not good enough. For this project, my advisors played the same role both in reality and in my mind, and, fortunately or unfortunately, I believe that they will continue to nag me in the same manner even in their absence for the rest of my academic career. The Department of Political Science and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University kindly provided fellowships to finance my graduate study. I am grateful to these institutions for their magnanimous assistance. Among the current and former members of the GW, Bruce Dickson, Mike Mochizuki, Holger Schmit, Ikuko Turner and Erik Voeten deserve special mention. This project benefited from the financial support of the Norwegian Research Council and the Matsushita International Foundation. I am also grateful to two institutions that kindly provided me with affiliations. PRIO gave me a visiting researcher position when I was preparing the prospectus for my dissertation, and I benefited from the insights and advice of fellow scholars during my stay there.

Acknowledgments xiii I am especially grateful to Andrew Feltham, former Chief Administrator of the CSCW. The Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) gave me an affiliation during my field research in Uganda and supported my field research in various ways. I am also grateful to Seiji Utsumi, who kindly provided me with a joyful ride between Kampara and Gulu. I am further grateful to my friends at the World Bank, including Getahun Gebru, Jean-Pierre Manshande, and Khama Rogo. It was my experience at the institution as a consultant that gave me the ideas and motivation to work on this project. Scholars and friends from many parts of the world during my study at the undergraduate and graduate levels and thereafter gave me both impetus and support. Yoichiro Bando, Sharon Boak, Indra de Soysa, Yoshitetsu Fujisawa, Yohei Furuuchi, Enze Han, Kara Heitz, Toshihiro Higuchi, Helge Holtermann, Jeffrey Hornung, Rentaro Iida, Takashi Inoue, Yoichiro Iwai, Thomas Jackson, Stathis Kalyvas, Hiro Katsumata, Yangmo Ku, Yuichi Kubota, Yeh-Chung Lu, Jason Miklian, Takeshi Nobayashi, Ragnhild Nordås, Shingo Ogawa, Hirotake Ohmura, Sara Okada, Yasuhiro Okuno, Jennifer Dowler Patinella, Gonzalo Paz, Andrew Quin, Clionadh Raleigh, Gregory Reichberg, Koji Sakamoto, Yu Sasaki, Beata Söderberg, Injoo Sohn, Sugio Takahashi, Yu Takeda, Takahiko Tanaka, Ryuta Wada, Alexander Wendt, and Go Yamaguchi helped me to pursue this research in various ways. I am also grateful to the many individuals and institutions who provided support during my field research. Given the sensitivity of the issues discussed in this book, I do not mention their names here. However, I believe that they know that they have my sincere gratitude for their support. Former and current colleagues at Hitotsubashi University were also a source of significant support. I am especially grateful to Professors Ryo Oshiba, Atsushi Yamada, Nobumasa Akiyama, Toshihiro Aono, Maiko Ichihara, Setsuko Kawahara, Kyoji Kawasaki, Kwon Yongseok, Jonathan Lewis, Naoko Matsumura, Akira Mizutani, Yumiko Nakanishi, Tetsuo Sato, and Hitomi Takemura. This project also benefited from my conversations with students in the seminars and courses addressing relevant topics at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Hitotsubashi University. I am grateful to Chie and Kazuo Hayashi, Tokie, Wataru, Yumi and Koji Obayashi, and Chie and Isami Takaki. My parents, Tomoko and Masataka Obayashi, have always been a source of support and encouragement. They always trusted and supported my decision to pursue an academic career. I would also like to thank Simon Bates, ShengBin Tan and Yuvanes Yogaraja at Routledge, and Kate Fornadel and her team at Apex CoVantage for their patient guidance and support. Finally, I am most grateful to Yuto, Naoki, Yui, and Matsuno Obayashi. Without their support, understanding, and the occasional offer of distraction, I would not have completed this book.

Abbreviations

ADFL CFA CRA DRC EPDP EPLF EPRLF(V) EPRLF GOSL HSM IPKF LRA LTTE NRA NRM PLOTE RAW SLA SLMM SPLA SPLM TELO TMVP TULF UCDA UNLA UPDA UPDF UTHR(J)

Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Agreement on a Ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Central Republic of Africa Democratic Republic of Congo Eelam People’s Democratic Party Eelam People’s Liberation Front Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (Varathar) Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front Government of Sri Lanka Holy Spirit Movement Indian Peace Keeping Force Lord’s Resistance Army Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam National Resistance Army National Resistance Movement People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam Indian Research and Analysis Wing Sri Lankan Army Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Sudanese People’s Liberation Army Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers) Tamil United Liberation Front Uganda Christian Democratic Army Uganda National Liberation Army Uganda People’s Democratic Army Ugandan People’s Defence Force University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna

Sri Lanka Source: United Nations Department of Field Support Cartographic Section, Sri Lanka, no. 4172 Rev.3 March 2008.

Uganda Source: United Nations Department of Public Information Cartographic Section, Uganda, no. 3862 Rev. 4 May 2003.

1

Introduction

Puzzle How do rebel groups recruit their members? Why do rebel groups choose one recruitment technique over another, for example, inducement over coercion? The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), for one, is notorious for abductions (cf. Annan, Blattman, and Horton 2006, Pham, Vinck, and Stover 2007). The practice, however, became dominant only in approximately 1994, after the organization had been operating for several years (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999). The Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Maoists in Nepal, and the Congolese Patriotic Union/Popular Rally (UPC/RP) all developed systems in which villagers were given the responsibility of selecting soldiers to be conscripted over time at either the family or village level, although the LTTE originally relied strictly on volunteers (Singer 2006 on UPC/RP). Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) does not pay its soldiers, while Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) pays some urban soldiers but not other grassroots soldiers (Gutierrez Sanin 2004). What explains this variation over time and across rebel groups in their recruitment strategies? Furthermore, in cases where most of a group’s members are coercively enlisted, how does the group sustain its organization? In this study, I classify the recruitment techniques of rebel groups into two types – recruitment by force (coercion) and recruitment by incentive (inducement) – and explore the conditions under which rebel groups rely more on one technique than the other.

Why study rebel recruitment? Why is it necessary to study the recruitment techniques of rebel groups? I offer three answers: to enhance our theoretical understanding of the macrocharacteristics of civil wars; to seize the opportunity to develop a political theory of organization; and to formulate more effective policies to address the humanitarian concerns related to civil wars. First, a better understanding of rebel recruitment is important for enhancing theories about civil war. In the post-WWII period, and especially since the end of the Cold War, civil wars have been a major source of insecurity for the

2

Introduction

international community. Civil wars, however, vary in their macro-characteristics, including their duration, their mode, the timing of their termination, and the intensity of their violence. Questions around the duration and termination of civil wars in particular, have attracted wide scholarly attention because of their central role in explaining changes in the prevalence of civil war in the international community given its almost continual development throughout the post-WWII period (Hegre 2004). Theoretical and empirical studies note the importance of the commitment problem (Walter 2002, Fearon 2004, Cunningham 2006), state strengths (DeRouen Jr and Sobek 2004), rebel strengths (Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009), and the transnational environment (Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006, Salehyan 2009, Salehyan, Gleditsch, and Cunningham 2011). Both a rebel group’s military strengths and its capacity to make a credible commitment to a peace agreement depend on its success and failure in solving the problems associated with collective action, as well as its ability to maintain organizational cohesion. Studies on postwar stability and development also note the importance of these variables, as an organizational split in a rebel group constitutes a major obstacle to the consolidation of peace and development (Atlas and Licklider 1999, 2005a, Toft 2010). The current literature on civil war, however, does not sufficiently explain rebel groups’ success or failure to solve collective action problems and maintain group cohesion (Blattman and Miguel 2010). This deficit partially exists because the literature has not examined the relationship between a rebel group’s recruitment and its strategic interaction with the state, two factors that directly affect the level of organizational cohesion within a rebel group (cf. Kalyvas 2007). First, a rebel group’s choice of recruitment technique affects its numerical growth and organizational cohesion: this choice affects the number and types of recruits to be enlisted and the rebel leader’s ability to secure the members’ adherence. Second, the group’s interaction with the state also influences its level of organizational cohesion, as it affects the utility of outside options for rebel members. Importantly, these two factors do not work separately but instead interact. A study addressing this particular question is therefore essential to forming a solid micro-level theory of civil war dynamics that can explain the macro-level characteristics of civil war and postwar development. This book is unique because it simultaneously addresses two types of information problems in rebel recruitment: information asymmetry between a rebel group and its potential recruits and the group’s contest over information with the state. Admittedly, a few scholars have addressed the first problem by developing theories of rebel recruitment based on the new economics of organization (Olson 1993, 2000, Gates 2002, Weinstein 2005b, 2006, Beber and Blattman 2013). These studies explain a rebel group’s choice of recruitment techniques with reference to its resource endowment (Weinstein 2006) or in light of the costs of monitoring and sanctions within the group, the utility of outside options for the recruits, and the recruits’ susceptibility to socialization (Beber and Blattman 2013). Presumably due to their reliance on theories of the firm, however, these studies focus exclusively on the relationship between the group and the potential recruits and fail to model the group’s interaction with the state. Consequently,

Introduction 3 the rebel–state contest over information remains ignored in the literature. Only Gates (2002) locates rebel groups in a strategic interaction with the state, and this study focuses on their contest over manpower rather than over information.1 The omission is both striking and unfortunate because the literature on civil war has come to recognize that the contest over information constitutes one of the central dynamics of civil war (Leites and Wolf 1970, Kalyvas 2006, Butler and Gates 2009). This recognition forces scholars to conceptualize rebel members’ desertion (a human resource turnover) not only in terms of replacement cost – a conventional treatment from the study of the firm as well as in existing studies of rebel recruitment – but also in terms of the cost of information leakage to the state. This reconceptualization, in turn, points to a few previously neglected variables that affect patterns of rebel recruitment. The second reason for studying the recruitment techniques of rebel groups is that it also provides an important opportunity to develop a political theory of organization, as rebel groups constitute a distinct class of organization in contrast to firms (or states). The new economics of organization provides a useful starting point to study political organizations (Alchian and Demsetz 1972, Pratt and Zeckhauser 1985, Williamson and Masten 1995, Aoki 2001). Its application to political organizations, however, requires some modifications (Moe 1984, 2005, Brehm and Gates 1997, Miller 2005). Studying a rebel organization requires scholars to make a few analytical moves distinct from the conventional assumptions made in studies of the firm, such as increased attention to participation constraints, incorporation of the use of force into the theoretical framework, and situating the organization in a military contest with the state – a confrontation in which the contest for information is an intrinsic component. A few scholars of civil war have already seized this opportunity by addressing some of these characteristics (Gates 2002, Weinstein 2005b, 2006, Beber and Blattman 2013). Additionally, some scholars of forced labor (Fenoaltea 1984, Chwe 1990, Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2011) and organized crime (Gambetta 1993, Fiorentini and Peltzman 1997) have proposed modifications to the new economics of organization.2 Still, issues such as the organizational implications of a contest over information remain relatively unexplored. Such a reformulation of a theory of organization benefits not only studies of rebel groups but also those studies of the firm that highlight its “political” dimensions. The third and final reason for studying rebel group recruitment techniques is that questions of rebel recruitment also have important policy implications. Coercive modes of recruitment, such as abduction and conscription, constitute a mode of violence and are a humanitarian concern for the international society, especially when children are involved (International Labour Office 2005, Singer 2006, Gates and Reich 2010, Blattman 2012). Such practices are also frequently associated with atrocities conducted both within rebel organizations and in their interaction with civilians. One of the most remarkable examples is the practice of some rebel groups who, in their hostile treatment of abductees, assault the abductees’ families and neighbors to reduce their chance of returning home. While there has been some progress in developing policy in this area,

4

Introduction

especially as related to child soldiers, the problem is far from resolved. Moreover, beyond abduction and coercion, the question of rebel recruitment and retention is relevant for developing a better understanding of the conditions needed for the termination of a civil war, as noted above. In other words, an exploration of the question of recruitment is necessary, as it will help policymakers devise more effective measures for counterinsurgency, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace-building, including demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR).

Argument One premise of this study is that a rebel group’s chosen recruitment technique is part of the group leaders’ strategy for addressing the agency problem within the organization. This is particularly true in the context of a military contest with the state, in which a contest for information is an inseparable component. This study highlights, among other things, the relationship between the rebel group’s concern over the effective control of information and its recruitment practices. This book explores the conditions under which rebel groups use different recruitment techniques. It is highly risky for people to join a rebellion.3 Rebel leaders, therefore, need to solve an intensive collective action problem (Tilly 1978), while sometimes even mobilizing those who originally did not share a common interest with them.4 While rebel leaders have a variety of solutions at their disposal (Lichbach 1995), these solutions vary in their costs and benefits for the rebel organization. In this book, I classify the recruitment techniques of rebel groups into two types, coercion and inducement, and ask under what conditions a rebel group relies more on one or the other. This book focuses on the level of information asymmetry between rebel leaders and their potential recruits, the cost of retention mechanisms for the group, and the group’s expected cost of information leakage to the state through deserters as the primary explanatory variables. “Coercion” involves using force or the threat of force to convince a potential recruit to join a rebel group or to perform specific tasks under certain terms that the potential recruit might have rejected otherwise.5 “Inducement” refers to promising a specific positive incentive to convince a potential recruit to join a rebel group or to perform particular tasks. This study primarily focuses on the distinction between inducement and coercion in recruitment. Where necessary, however, I classify positive incentives into two types: pecuniary incentives and non-pecuniary incentives.6 Pecuniary incentives or “rewards” refer to any tangible or material benefit an organization promises to an agent and include benefits such as money, alcohol, drugs, and guns. Non-pecuniary incentives refer to any intangible benefit the group promises to a potential recruit and can be further divided into two types: functional and solidary incentives (cf. Gates 2002: 114–15).7 Functional incentives are benefits that a potential recruit derives directly from joining the group or performing tasks assigned by the group. Such benefits are an intrinsic part of the individual’s utility.

Introduction 5 Functional incentives include ideology, or what Peter Clark and James Wilson call purposive incentives (Clark and Wilson 1961); these appeal to the individuals with the sadistic tendencies to perform violence (Mueller 2000, Mueller 2004) and to seize opportunities to take revenge against (some members of) the opposition party. Solidary incentives are benefits that potential recruits enjoy through their social interaction with others. Such benefits may come from developing personal ties with other members of the group upon enlistment in the organization, from pre-existing ties with some of the group members (Gould 1991, Staniland 2012), and from the status that a recruit enjoys within or outside of the organization. Regarding the last element, membership in a rebel group sometimes generates respect for the individual in his or her immediate society, and the group may actively promote such a culture. It is also reported that possession of a gun through enlistment in a group sometimes gives the person a social status outside of the rebel group. This study starts with the premise that in the context of a military contest with the state – in which a contest over information is an inseparable part – a rebel group’s choice of recruitment technique is part of the group leaders’ strategy to address the agency problem inside the organization. This premise directs our attention to the variation across rebel groups in their organizational characteristics and strategic interactions with the state. The study highlights, among other things, that a rebel group’s vulnerability to information leakage affects the group’s choice of recruitment strategy, that is, the proportion of inducement and coercion in their recruitment practice. A rebel group is in a military contest with the state, and a contest over information is an inseparable part of such a confrontation. The group and the state strategically interact to choose their respective rebellion and counterinsurgency strategies. The interaction determines the relative vulnerability of the rebel group to the different types of costs inflicted, not only by the state but also by its own internal agency problem. A rebel group chooses its recruitment strategy while in this strategic contest. While the group necessarily incurs agency costs through its effort to recruit and retain its members, its choice of recruitment technique shifts the timing and types of costs experienced. The group, therefore, chooses its recruitment technique to minimize the negative effect on its organization and, in particular, on its military effectiveness. As rebel groups are often numerically inferior to the state, the group’s vulnerability to information leakage deserves keen attention. This study assumes that a rebel group chooses its recruitment technique in order to maximize its military effectiveness.8 Military effectiveness reflects the group’s capacity to create military power from its basic resources, such as wealth, technology, and human capital, to fight against a particular opponent.9 In a military contest, a rebel group (and a state) seeks to increase its power to hurt its opponent. This power turns on the relative magnitudes of two types of cost associated with war: the cost that a state must pay when its opponent tries to hurt it, and the cost that a state must pay to hurt its opponent (cf. Slantcheve 2003: 131). The contest has two interrelated dimensions: a competition for manpower and a

6

Introduction

contest over information. While the competition for manpower is symmetrical, the contest over information is asymmetrical. A rebel group is often numerically inferior to the state and thus seeks effective control over the information related to its organization, while the state seeks to acquire such information to make more effective use of its manpower (Butler and Gates 2009). In a military contest, under organizational constraints, a rebel group strategically interacts with the state to choose the optimal strategy for rebellion and to maximize its total military effectiveness on these two fronts simultaneously, while the state correspondingly chooses its optimal counterinsurgency strategy. In this context, a strategy of rebellion refers to a certain prioritization for both manpower and the control of information and involves choices in military technology, geographical location, possession of an external safe haven, and techniques of recruitment and retention. A counterinsurgency strategy similarly refers to a certain allocation of priorities between manpower and intelligence and involves decisions on analogous issues, including the state’s allocation of resources between the two areas. Optimal strategies vary considerably across rebel groups depending on their organizational characteristics and interactions with the state (cf. Kalyvas and Balcells 2010). A rebel group’s choice of strategy, then, defines its relative vulnerability to the state’s endeavor to inflict damage upon it (cf. Arreguín-Toft 2001). Vulnerability in this context refers to the probability that a particular incident, such as an attack by the state, incurs a certain cost for the group either directly or indirectly.10 Importantly, however, agency problems inside the rebel organization constitute another source of such costs to the group either independently or in conjunction with the state’s efforts. At an organizational level, a rebel group’s choice of techniques for recruitment and retention affects the timing, type, and intensity of agency costs inside its organization. In the recruitment and retention of its members, the group addresses the participation constraint, the adverse selection problem, the interim participation constraint (Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2011: 24), and the incentive compatibility constraint. These problems are interrelated, in the sense that a rebel group’s success in meeting the participation constraint, along with its failure to solve the adverse selection problem at the time of recruitment, amplifies the problems created by the interim participation constraint and the incentive compatibility problem for the group due to the enlistment of the “wrong types.” These wrong types include those with a higher propensity for desertion, sabotage, shirking, and/or incompetence.11 In this study, I label all of the agent behaviors that are not in line with the rebel group’s orders as defections.”12 A rebel group necessarily incurs agency costs of various kinds for the recruitment and retention of its members, such as under-participation (due to agents’ non-participation), indiscipline (due to agents’ incompetence, shirking, and sabotage), and a high turnover rate (due to agents’ desertion and capture by the state).13 I assume that the members who desert the group or are captured, by necessity, cooperate with the state. This means that a high turnover rate results not only in replacement costs but also in information leakage from the group. As discussed above, a rebel group’s choice of strategy, along with the group’s interaction with the state and its organizational

Introduction 7 characteristics, affects the relative vulnerabilities of the organization to different sorts of costs. As a rebel group’s choice of recruitment technique involves tradeoffs in the timing and types of agency costs experienced, the group makes the choice that minimizes the negative effects on the group’s military effectiveness. What, exactly, are the tradeoffs between different recruitment techniques for a rebel organization? Coercion allows a rebel group to solve the participation constraint by lowering the reservation utility of the potential recruits. However, the technique restricts the group’s ability to solve the adverse selection problem ex ante through agents’ self-selection.14 Coercion, therefore, tends to result in the enlistment of a larger proportion of “wrong types” and thus amplifies the problems stemming from the incentive compatibility constraint and interim participation constraint ex post recruitment. In other words, coercion mitigates the under-participation problem but at a higher cost in terms of indiscipline and human resource turnover. Inducement requires the group to make a higher level of investment to solve the participation constraint. The technique, however, allows the group to select its recruits ex ante, as a result of their self-selection. The technique therefore mitigates the problems of incentive compatibility constraints and interim participation constraints. In other words, inducement mitigates the problems of indiscipline and human resource turnover at the cost of under-participation. A rebel group’s retention mechanisms can, to some extent, moderate these problems of under-participation, indiscipline, and human resource turnover. However, such mechanisms barely change the fundamental tradeoffs associated with these recruitment techniques. Retention mechanisms can include a payment scheme, a monitoring and sanction regime, a socialization mechanism, and an ex ante reduction in the utility of the agents’ outside options. These mechanisms are often very costly. Moreover, an adverse selection problem in rebel organizations with less selective recruitment techniques tends to inhibit the selective application of these retention mechanisms, thus raising the average intensity and cost of these mechanisms throughout the organization. The same problem also causes their partial malfunction, providing incentives for some of the “wrong” types to remain in the organization and disincentives for some of the “right” types to do so. Finally, although a rebel group chooses its recruitment techniques to minimize the organizational vulnerability resulting from its choice of rebellion strategy, the group’s choice of recruitment techniques also constrains its choice of strategy, especially its choice of military technology. An acute problem of underparticipation, indiscipline, or human resource turnover can render certain military technologies infeasible. A group’s choice of military technology, then, is neither exogenously given (cf. Arreguín-Toft 2001) nor a sole function of the group’s interaction with the state (cf. Butler and Gates 2009). Building on this theoretical framework, this book presents three primary hypotheses: the lower the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the potential recruit is, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment (Ex Ante screening hypothesis); the lower the cost of the retention mechanism is for a rebel group, the more the group tends to rely on coercion

8

Introduction

for recruitment (Cheap retention mechanism hypothesis); and the lower the expected cost of the agents’ desertion from a rebel group is to the group, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment (Ex Post screening or invulnerability hypothesis). These hypotheses are based on four important assumptions. First, the rebel group should have a reasonably long time horizon. The group has a sufficient prospect for future survival, aims to maximize its “long-term” military effectiveness, and does not face an urgent need such as to secure a minimum number of recruits at any cost to meet the survival constraint. Second, installing an effective screening mechanism is highly costly for the rebel group. An effective screening mechanism significantly reduces the adverse selection problem and oftentimes the participation constraint as well. Eli Berman (2009) argues that certain types of radical religious groups are equipped with effective selection mechanisms. A group’s reliance on pre-existing social networks may also serve this purpose, as pre-existing networks strengthen ties among group members and reduce desertion (cf. Coleman 1990). Third, establishing effective retention mechanisms is highly costly for the rebel group. Effective mechanisms moderate problems of indiscipline and desertion and make adverse selection less of a concern for the group (cf. Gutierrez Sanin 2010, Beber and Blattman 2013). The cost of monitoring and sanction thus depends partly on the receptivity of society toward deserters (Costa and Kahn 2008). Fourth, the marginal costs of recruitment by coercion are lowest, followed by those for inducement by pecuniary reward, with inducement by task having the greatest marginal costs. The organizational background of the rebel group is one factor that affects the relative costs of these recruitment techniques. Changes in one or more of these assumptions affect the tradeoffs among different recruitment techniques and thus modify the prediction. In the book, I explore some implications of such changes in these assumptions. Given this study’s focus on the relationship between the agency problems inside a rebel group and the group’s strategic interactions with the state, this book also presents hypotheses on the desertion rates in rebel groups, the state’s counterinsurgency strategy, and the conditions conducive to the organizational decline of a rebel group; these hypotheses mainly focus on the group’s vulnerability to information leakage through deserters. If a rebel group is more reliant on secrecy for its power, it tends to experience a low desertion rate among its members. In the fight against such a group, the state is more likely to rely on intelligence penetration than on interest dealignment or power erosion for counterinsurgency. Information leakage to the state will significantly undermine the power of such a rebel group vis-à-vis the state and thus lead to its organizational decline and, possibly, to civil war termination.

Research design The unit of analysis in this study is a rebel group during a certain period. A rebel group is an organization that is in or in preparation for armed opposition to an internationally recognized state. Thus, a rebel group is different from

Introduction 9 paramilitaries, who are armed but fight alongside, rather than in opposition to, the state. A rebel group also differs from organized crime, which primarily operates in the shadow of the state and thus does not actively engage in military conflict with the state.15 A rebel group is also different from non-violent organizations opposing the state, such as non-violent protesters or a non-violent government in exile. In this book, I also differentiate a rebel group from rioters, who are in armed opposition to the state but lack organization. Positioned in opposition to the state, a rebel group usually starts out as an inferior force. This observation is critical for this study and for the development of the theory of rebel recruitment; it is developed into an explicit assumption in the next chapter. A rebel group is oftentimes, although not always, engaged in civil war. Civil war is an intensive and sustained armed conflict, primarily within the boundaries of an internationally recognized sovereign entity, between the state and one or more rebel groups. This definition departs from conventional classifications of civil war by recognizing that battles between two parties do not always occur within national boundaries.16 A rebel group often takes refuge in a safe haven abroad, which sometimes incites the state to military action against that location. To test the main hypotheses, I use the congruence method and conduct qualitative case studies on the recruitment techniques of the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the LRA in Uganda.17 The LTTE was formed in the mid-1970s and sustained an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state with the goal of seceding and establishing Tamil Eelam, or an independent state of Tamils. The group surrendered to the state military forces in May 2009, marking the end of its military struggle. The LRA was organized in the late 1980s by remnants of another rebel group, called the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM), and engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Ugandan state with the goal of a government takeover by northern Ugandans. The Ugandan state had chased the group out of the country by 2006, and the group is currently roving the border areas between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central Republic of Africa (CRA), and South Sudan. These cases were selected partly because they constitute deviations from Jeremy Weinstein’s prominent work on rebel recruitment, which focuses on the initial resource endowment of a rebel group in order to explain its recruitment technique (Weinstein 2005b). A closer examination of the two rebel groups also reveals some variations in their organizational properties and recruitment strategies over time. These variations allow me to test the validity of the hypotheses by using withincase analyses. As qualitative methodologists contend, within-case analyses are highly useful for testing the validity of a theory (e.g. George and Bennett 2005). The congruence method is, however, insufficient to test the validity of the causal mechanism proposed in the theory. One solution to this problem is to conduct process tracing to assess the validity of the proposed mechanism (George and Bennett 2005: 205–32, Gerring 2007: 172–85). The illegal nature of rebellion, however, renders it difficult for a researcher to access data that is required to conduct a satisfactory process tracing. For this reason, I conduct process tracing, but only to a limited extent. Thus, to fill the gap, I draw three additional testable hypotheses

10

Introduction

from the theory about desertion rates in rebel groups, states’ counterinsurgency strategies, and the effects of deserters’ information leakage on the survival of rebel groups. These hypotheses are tested against the cases of the LTTE and the LRA. In summary, this study explains a rebel group’s selection of a recruitment technique as part of its effort to address the two information problems the group faces: the contest with the state over information and the agency problems within the organization stemming from recruitment and the retention of recruits. Unlike some previous books on the micro-foundations of civil war whose ultimate goal is to explain the use of violence during war (cf. Kalyvas 2006, Weinstein 2006), this book ties the issue of rebel recruitment to other main themes in studies of civil war, such as the state’s counterinsurgency strategy and a civil war’s duration and termination.

Plan of the book In the next chapter, I will first review the relevant literature on rebel recruitment and organizations and develop an alternative theory. Most of the current literature on rebel recruitment draws insights from the new economics of organization. These studies, however, underestimate the potential costs incurred by rebel groups from defection and desertion by agents, especially those costs stemming from information leakage by defecting individuals. These studies also fail to recognize the variation across rebel groups in their means to achieve production, particularly their military strategies. Together, these limitations render the existing studies relatively silent about the differences and changes among rebel groups in their demand for certain qualities in their agents. To rectify these problems, I develop a theory of rebel recruitment that incorporates a rebel group’s strategic interaction with the state as a component of the group’s choice of strategy. This chapter is followed by Chapter Three, where I will discuss the changes in the organizational properties of the LTTE and LRA. The two rebel groups constantly faced a significant level of information asymmetry with potential recruits. These groups also lacked a cheap retention mechanism, and remained highly vulnerable to information leakage in their initial phases. In the mid-1990s, however, the LTTE diversified its military strategy to conduct conventional warfare, while increasing the amount of territory under its control. This increase in territory allowed the group to install an effective retention mechanism at a relatively low cost. In the meantime, the LRA obtained a safe haven in southern Sudan in 1994, significantly reducing its vulnerability to information leakage to the state. In the early 2000s, the two groups experienced serious crises of different kinds, which jeopardized their existence. In Chapter Four, I will combine a congruence test with process tracing to assess the plausibility of the theory against variations in the recruitment strategies between the LTTE and the LRA and within each group over time. Both the LTTE and the LRA initially relied on inducement for recruitment. However, the two groups increased their reliance on coercion in the mid-1990s. The theory explains the shifts in their recruitment strategies by reference to the shocks these groups experienced but identifies the two separate causal mechanisms through

Introduction 11 which these shifts occurred, that is, a reduction in the cost of the retention mechanism and a lowering of the expected cost of member desertions for the group. In Chapters Five through Seven, I will test the hypotheses on desertion rates in rebel groups, state counterinsurgency strategies, and the effects of massive desertions on the organizational decline of rebel groups. In Chapter Five, I will discuss the differences in desertion rates in the LTTE and the LRA, especially in their second phase, when both of these groups heavily relied on coercive recruitment, and I will explore the reasons for this variation. In Chapter Six, I will focus on one of the unlikely tools for state counterinsurgency attempts: amnesty offers. The Sri Lankan state more or less consistently refrained from offering amnesty to LTTE members, while the Ugandan state increasingly invested in these offers over time. The theory explains these variations by focusing on the relative efficiency of using a general amnesty to induce desertions from different types of rebel groups. In Chapter Seven, I will examine the factors that are conducive to the organizational decline of rebel groups. It was surprising to many observers that the Sri Lankan state decided to initiate the final war against the LTTE, one of the mightiest rebel groups in the world, and was able to successfully defeat it in May 2009 despite prior failures. The theory identifies the leakage of information from the LTTE to the state through Karuna as a key to explaining this success. The theory also explains why the Ugandan state nearly defeated the LRA in the early 1990s, failed to do so throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and finally chased them out of the country by 2006. The changes in the LRA’s organizational properties affected the effects of information leakage from the group to the state either through the state’s own intelligence mechanism or through deserters. The state’s ultimate success was not solely a product of information leakage but also of its state-building and diplomatic rapprochement with Sudan. In the final chapter, I summarize the findings of this research and return to some of the issues addressed in this introduction. I will discuss the implications of this research for studies of ethnicity, civil war duration and termination, levels of violence in civil war, and theories of organizations. I will conclude this book with a brief discussion of the potential directions for future research.

Notes 1 To the best of my knowledge, the only exception is James Fearon (2008). This study, however, ignores the first type of information problem in rebel recruitment. The study also assumes that the only way for a rebel group to reduce the risk of detection by the state is to keep its size small and fails to recognize alternative ways to lower the risk of detection, such as selective recruitment. Other studies on rebel recruitment that rely on contest models address neither of these two types of information problems (e.g. Grossman 1991). 2 See Schelling (1971) for an earlier analysis of organized crime. 3 Stathis Kalyvas and Matthew Kocher (2007) point out that there are exceptions to this observation. 4 See Mancur Olson (1971) and Russell Hardin (1982) for early formulations of the theories of collective action. Gary Miller (1992) discusses how hierarchy solves collective action problems.

12

Introduction

5 The definition draws on Daron Acemoglu and Alexander Wolitzky (2011: 6). The “threat” “is an incentive which when carried out makes both the principal and agent worse off” (Chwe 1990: 1110). See also Schelling: “The distinctive character of a threat is that one asserts that he will do, in a contingency, what we would manifestly prefer not to do if the contingency occurred, the contingency being governed by the second player’s behavior” (Schelling 2002/1960: 123). 6 These definitions build on preceding studies of the typology of incentives (cf. Clark and Wilson 1961, Salisbury 1969, King and Walker 1992, Brehm and Gates 1997, Gates 2002). 7 Elizabeth Wood (2003) calls these non-pecuniary incentives a “pleasure in agency.” John Brehm and Scott Gates (1997, 2008) conducted empirical analyses on the role of these different types of incentives in public bureaucracy. 8 Admittedly, rebel groups seek a variety of goals, from private economic gains to a change in political regime to secession. Still, a common defining aspect of rebel groups is that they are in a military contest with the state (Sambanis 2004, Kalyvas 2006). Furthermore, military effectiveness affects the group’s bargaining power in negotiations before, during, and after a civil war (Cf. Schelling 1966). Regardless of the group’s ultimate goal, therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a rebel group’s immediate objective is to maximize its military effectiveness. 9 The task of defining the concept of military effectiveness is not straightforward. Risa Brooks (2007) reviews the discussion and has newly defined it as the “capacity to create military power from a state’s basic resources in wealth, technology, population size, and human capital” (Brooks 2007: 9). My definition in part builds on hers. I adapt her concept slightly to fit rebel groups, as the types of resources rebel groups have and their relationships with their primary opponents – the state – vary from those of states. Most importantly, my definition of military effectiveness is relationship dependent, that is, a group can simultaneously be effective against one opponent but not against another. For an alternative definition, see, for example, Dan Reiter and Allan Stam III (1998: 261), who define battlefield effectiveness as the two levels of individual soldiering and organizational efficacy. 10 More precisely, “vulnerability” refers both to the probability that a particular incident will cost the rebel group and to the likely amount of the cost incurred by the group for the incident. Other scholars use different definitions of vulnerability. Robert Powell, for example, follows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and defines vulnerability more in line with its definition as “the probability that a particular attack will succeed against a particular target” (GAO 2005, quoted in Powell 2007: 528). This study refers to the first half of my definition above but not to the second half. In their study on interdependence, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye distinguish sensitivity from vulnerability (Keohane and Nye 2001: 9–17). According to Keohane and Nye, the main difference between the two is the chronological framework and the need for change in the policy of an actor. Sensitivity refers to the speed and magnitude of the cost of an event that one state imposes on another state in a short space of time. Here, the policy of the latter state is assumed to stay constant. Vulnerability, by contrast, refers to the magnitude of the cost an event in one state imposes on another state in the long run. Here, the latter state is assumed to have sufficient time to change its policy to reduce its dependence on the former state given that the latter has an alternative resource or policy to do so. In this study, however, I do not clearly distinguish the two concepts and use the term vulnerability to refer to both. This is partly because it is sometimes difficult to tell how much policy change is required to talk about “vulnerability.” 11 From a mathematical viewpoint, these are separate problems. Substantively, however, they are closely interrelated.

Introduction 13 12 This definition of defection is broader than that of Stathis Kalyvas, who defines ethnic defection as “a process whereby individuals join organizations explicitly opposed to the national aspirations of the ethnic group with which they identify and end up fighting against their coethnics” (Kalyvas 2008: 1045). 13 To moderate these problems, a rebel group can introduce a selection mechanism, a monitoring and sanction regime, or a socialization mechanism. These mechanisms simply shift the timing and types of agency costs incurred and do not eliminate them (Brehm and Gates 1997, Gates 2002). 14 The technique allows the group to select its agents by their level of competence ex post, either through the agent’s desertion, the state’s capture, or close monitoring and sanctions such as expulsion or execution, although these mechanisms never function perfectly. 15 Here, I differentiate a rebel group from organized crime by their relationships with the state. In contrast, Paul Collier (2000) focuses on their objectives and attributes the difference between rebellion and organized crime to the type of rent these organizations seek to predate on and, consequently, the number of agents they require. I find it more useful to leave room for rebel organizations to have a variety of goals, such as government takeover, secession, and natural resource predation. 16 Stathis Kalyvas defines civil war as “armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities” (Kalyvas 2006: 5, italics in original). Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis define it as “an armed conflict that pits the government and national army of an internationally recognized state against one or more armed opposition groups able to mount effective resistance against the state; the violence must be significant, causing more than a thousand deaths in relatively continual fighting that takes place within the country’s boundaries; and the rebels must recruit mostly locally, controlling some part of the country’s territory” (Doyle and Sambanis 2006). Sambanis (2004) discusses the implications of using different operational definitions of a civil war for statistical analyses of the conflicts. 17 The congruence method refers to a method of assessing the predictive or explanatory power of a theory against an empirical case by assessing the consistency between the sets of values for the independent and dependent variables posited in the theory and the observed values for these variables in an empirical case (cf. George and Bennett 2005: 181–204).

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Kalyvas, Stathis N. and Matthew Adam Kocher. 2007. “How ‘Free’ Is Free Riding in Civil Wars?: Violence, Insurgency, and the Collective Action Problem.” World Politics 59 (2): 177–216. doi:10.1353/wp.2007.0023. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. 2001. Power and Interdependence. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Longman. King, David C. and Jack L. Walker. 1992. “The Provision of Benefits by Interest Groups in the United States.” The Journal of Politics 54 (2): 394–426. doi:10.2307/2132032. Leites, Nathan and Charles Wolf. 1970. Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts, Markham Series in Public Policy Analysis. Chicago, IL: Markham Pub. Co. Lichbach, Mark Irving. 1995. The Rebel’s Dilemma, Economics, Cognition, and Society. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Miller, Gary J. 1992. Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy, the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Miller, Gary J. 2005. “The Political Evolution of Principal-Agent Models.” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (1): 203–25. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci. 8.082103.104840. Moe, Terry M. 1984. “The New Economics of Organization.” American Journal of Political Science 28 (4): 739–77. doi:10.2307/2110997. Moe, Terry M. 2005. “Power and Political Institutions.” Perspectives on Politics 3 (2): 215–33. doi:10.1017/S1537592705050176. Mueller, John E. 2000. “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’.” International Security 25 (1): 42–70. doi:10.1162/016228800560381. Mueller, John E. 2004. The Remnants of War, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action; Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Harvard Economic Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Olson, Mancur. 1993. “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.” American Political Science Review 87 (3): 567–76. doi:10.2307/2938736. Olson, Mancur. 2000. Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships. New York, NY: Basic Books. Pham, Phuong N., Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover. 2007. Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda. Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations Human Rights Center. Berkeley, CA: University of California. Powell, Robert. 2007. “Defending against Terrorist Attacks With Limited Resources.” The American Political Science Review 101 (3): 527–41. doi:10.1017/ S0003055407070244. Pratt, John W. and Richard Zeckhauser. 1985. Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business, Research Colloquium/Harvard Business School. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Reiter, Dan and Allan C. Stam III. 1998. “Democracy and Battlefield Military Effectiveness.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (3): 259–77. doi:10.1177/00220 02798042003003. Salehyan, Idean. 2009. Rebels Without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Introduction 17 Salehyan, Idean and K. Skrede Gleditsch. 2006. “Refugees and the Spread of Civil War.” International Organization 60 (2): 335–66. doi:10.1017/S0020818306060103. Salehyan, Idean, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and David E. Cunningham. 2011. “Explaining External Support for Insurgent Groups.” International Organization 65 (4): 709–44. doi:10.1017/S0020818311000233. Salisbury, Robert H. 1969. “An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups.” Midwest Journal of Political Science 13 (1): 1–32. doi:10.2307/2110212. Sambanis, Nicholas. 2004. “What Is Civil War?: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (6): 814–58. doi:10.1177/0022002704269355. Schelling, Thomas C. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Schelling, Thomas C. 1971. “What Is the Business of Organized Crime?” Journal of Public Law 20: 71–84. Reprinted in 1984. Choice and Consequence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 179–94. Schelling, Thomas C. 2002/1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Singer, P. W. 2006. Children at War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Slantchev, Branislav L. 2003. “The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict with Completely Informed States.” American Political Science Review 97 (1):123-33. doi: 10.1017/ S000305540300056X.” Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (1): 16–40. doi:10.1177/0022002711429681. Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Toft, Monica Duffy. 2010. “Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?” International Security 34 (4): 7–36. doi:10.1162/isec.2010.34.4.7. Walter, Barbara F. 2002. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2005a. “Autonomous Recovery and International Intervention in Comparative Perspective.” Center for Global Development: SSRN Electronic Journal. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1114117 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.1114117. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1114117. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2005b. “Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (4): 598–624. doi:10.1177/ 0022002705277802. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2006. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Williamson, Oliver E. and Scott E. Masten. 1995. Transaction Cost Economics. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

2

The informational theory of rebel recruitment

Introduction Rebel groups use a variety of incentives to recruit their combatants, including sometimes using force. However, political scientists know little about the conditions under which rebel groups use one or the other – incentives or force – as a means for recruitment. Traditionally, studies of civil war have focused much more on the motivation for individuals to organize or join a rebellion. These studies point to factors such as ancient hatreds (Kaplan 1994), fear and security concerns (Walter and Snyder 1999, Kalyvas and Kocher 2007), grievances (Gurr 1971), economic interests (Collier 2000, Collier and Hoeffler 2004), ideology, class interests, social networks (Fearon and Laitin 1996), religious polarization (Reynal-Querol 2002), ethnic identities (Sandbu 2007), and psychological mechanisms (Petersen 2002). With the rise of literature on the micro-foundations of civil war, there has been an increasing number of studies on the recruitment practices of rebel groups. However, the literature that addresses the conditions under which rebel groups recruit their agents by force (coercion) or by incentives (inducement) is still immature. The choice between the use of incentives versus coercion for recruitment and retention has been addressed in previous studies of slave-holding plantations and forced labor (Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2011, Chwe 1990, Fenoaltea 1984). However, rebel groups differ from slave-holding plantations in several aspects such as the lack of an external enforcement authority, geographical dispersion, and the intensity of competition between rival groups (Obayashi 2011). An application of the theories developed for these firms to the study of rebel groups, therefore, requires modifications. The main objective of this chapter is to develop an informational theory of rebel recruitment to explain rebel groups’ choice between inducement and coercion. Built on the new economics of organization, this theory highlights the importance of agency problems for a rebel group in its choice between inducement and coercion for recruitment. A civil war is often an example of asymmetric warfare, as a rebel group is often the weaker side in its fight against the state. The group, therefore, needs to be concerned about protecting its private information from the state and the state’s choice of counterinsurgency

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techniques. The informational theory of rebel recruitment places the two types of information problems that a rebel group confronts – agency problems with its agents and the contest over information with the state – at the center of the analysis and incorporates the strategic interaction between the group and the state in civil war. The informational theory predicts that rebel groups tend to resort to coercion when the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and agents is low, when the cost of retention is low, or when the group is invulnerable to information leakage to the state. This theory also produces hypotheses on variations across rebel groups in their desertion rates, the states’ choice of counterinsurgency strategies, and the conditions that are conducive to rebel decline and the termination of civil wars. Below, I will first review the existing theoretical works that address relevant questions on rebel groups. I will then develop the informational theory of rebel recruitment and present hypotheses on rebel groups’ recruitment techniques, the desertion rates in those groups, the states’ counterinsurgency strategies, and the conditions conducive to the decline of a rebel group.

Literature The number of studies on rebel recruitment has increased. The initial studies predominantly focused on voluntary modes of recruitment and either included minimal discussion of coercion or treated inducement and coercion more or less as functional equivalents. More recently, there have been a few studies focusing on the coercive mode of recruitment. However, these studies suffer from three limitations: the failure to incorporate the strategic interaction between a rebel group and the state, little attention to the informational cost of the agents’ desertion for a rebel group, and ignorance of the effect of rebel groups’ recruitment practices on the power balance between the group and the state.

Resource scarcity, power balance, and time horizon A primary benefit for an organization that resorts to coercive recruitment is that it requires few resources as long as the organization has the means to force the locals to enlist. For this reason, Kenneth Arrow (1985) noted that a lack of financial resources creates room for the use of force or other non-pecuniary incentives by the principal. In his discussion of roving and stationary bandits, Mancur Olson notes that it is not only the amount of resources that the group has that affects the group’s choice of recruitment technique (Olson 1993, McGuire and Olson 1996, Olson 2000). For the group to attract locals, it needs to have the capacity to commit itself to their welfare, and this depends on the power balance between the group and the state. Olson argued that the military strength of a rebel group

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moderates the commitment problem between the group and the local population by improving the likelihood that the group will be able to stay in the community and increasing the stakes for the group in the development of the local community. The long time horizon for the relationship between the group and the local population means that the group is less extractive, and the locals more cooperative, resulting in the institutionalization of the exploitative relationship between the two parties. An implication of Olson’s theory for rebel recruitment is that the powerful rebel groups tend to rely on inducement for recruitment, while those less powerful tend to rely on force. In line with these economists’ insights, Kristine Eck (2014) and Joanne Richards (2014) argue that a shortage of manpower, when combined with the lack of economic and social resources to attract new recruits and a short time horizon on the part of rebel leaders, will prompt a rebel group to resort to coercive recruitment.

Resource endowment and external accountability When a rebel group is in decline, however, the group does not always have to resort to coercive recruitment to continue fighting: it is also an option for the group to cease fighting either unilaterally or by signing a peace agreement with the state. The literature suggests that the initial resource endowment of the group and its accountability or dependence on humanitarian-minded sponsors affects how the rebel group makes this decision. Jeremy Weinstein (2006) provides insight on this point by developing what we call a resource curse theory of rebel groups.1 According to him, rebel groups that initially have abundant economic resources tend to recruit their combatants through economic incentives, while those with poor economic resource tend to rely on social endowments for recruitment. Weinstein further argues that resource-rich groups attract opportunistic members, show little institutional development, and tend toward violent interactions with society. Resource-scarce groups, in contrast, tend to rely on social endowments, recruit only dedicated members, develop institutions, and interact with society in a restricted and stable manner. What underlies this difference between the two types of organizations is the adverse selection problem: resource-rich groups tend to attract opportunistic members, who undermine discipline within the organization and make it difficult for the group to make a credible commitment to a stable relationship with local civilians. Additionally, the presence of opportunistic members has a crowding-out effect, reducing the number of those loyal to the political causes of the group. One implication of this theory, Weinstein argues, is that resource-rich groups tend to be more violent and to abduct locals when they are in decline, while resource-poor groups do not. One problem with Weinstein’s argument is that the tradeoff between social endowment and economic endowment that Weinstein proposes does not always hold. Rebel groups can have economic ‘and’ social endowments simultaneously, as we see with Hamas and the LTTE. A resource-rich organization can install

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a screening mechanism, restrict its payment to combatants, and develop social endowments. The question, therefore, is to understand when resource-rich groups will develop these attributes and when they will not. Similarly, a resourcepoor organization sometimes needs to engage in abduction and looting to secure the necessary human and economic resources. We need to understand when resource-poor groups will choose to carry out abductions and when they will cultivate social endowments. Overall, the relationship between resource endowments, recruitment practice, and institutional development in rebel groups is less deterministic than Weinstein’s theory suggests. Still, the resource curse theory is valuable in part because it focuses scholars’ attention on the selection effects of the different recruitment techniques. Scholars have also noted that a rebel group’s decision depends on its accountability relationship with external actors. As discussed above, a rebel group’s use of force for recruitment tends to alienate the local population (Eck 2014, Richards 2014, Olson 2000). This is problematic for rebel groups because support of the local population is often vital for them (e.g. Mao 1961, Kalyvas 2006). Coercive recruitment can also undermine a group’s relationship with valuable external sponsors such as foreign governments and the international community (Richards 2014). Hence, rebel groups who rely heavily on the local population or humanitarian-minded external supporters tend to rely on inducement rather than coercion for recruitment.

Agents’ outside options and the cost of retention A problem with the theories of rebel recruitment discussed so far is that they do not discuss much about how rebel groups retain their agents after coercive recruitment. Even if a group has few resources or lacks local or international accountability, it would not make much sense for the group to rely on coercion for recruitment if the group cannot retain those agents. Theories of outside options provide a partial answer to this problem, suggesting that the groups tend to adopt coercive recruitment when it is relatively cheap to retain the forcibly recruited agents. According to the theories of outside options, rebel groups tend to adopt coercive recruitment when it is relatively cheap to retain the forcibly recruited agents. Coercive recruitment tends to result in the enlistment of less committed agents, increasing the agency costs for the rebel group, for example, indiscipline among the agents and the resultant compromise of military effectiveness, the desertion and defection of agents and the ensuing replacement costs, and the cost of monitoring and punishment (Gates 2002, Eck 2014, Beber and Blattman 2013). These costs increase when the agents have effective outside options such as desertion and defection, which in turn, depends on the distance between the rebel leaders and the agents, the power balance between the rebel group and the state, and the ages of the agents. Scott Gates, for example, argues that competition over manpower between the rebel group and the state generates a space of non-recruitment between the two parties, as the retention costs become too high for both sides.2 Additionally, building on Michael Suk-Young Chwe’s

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study of managers’ use of violence against child workers at the time of the British Industrial Revolution (Chwe 1990), Bernd Beber and Christopher Blattman contend that children are especially susceptible to abduction and violence within rebel groups because they have little chance of escape in comparison to adults. A rebel group’s control of a territory may also reduce the cost of retention, as it not only increases the incentive of the locals to cooperate with the group but also makes it cheaper for the group to punish the agents in the case of their defection and desertion (Eck 2014). It should be noted, however, that the theories that focus on outside options of the agents also have limitations. The retention mechanisms in rebel groups are often imperfect, and result in some desertions. In case of the LRA, for example, the group experienced a continuous drain of deserters. It is questionable, therefore, that the group recruited the agents coercively under the belief that most of the agents would stay with the group, as the theory suggests.

Rebel–state strategic interaction, informational cost, and the effects of rebel recruitment on civil war dynamics The literature on rebel recruitment identifies six factors as contributors to a rebel group’s use of coercive recruitment techniques: a short time horizon, a scarcity of resources for the rebel group, its weak military power vis-à-vis the state, a rich economic resource endowment, the lack of local or international accountability, and a cheap monitoring and punishment regime. The literature, however, has three limitations. First, except for those that focus on the agents’ outside options or the groups’ retention mechanisms, most of these theories do not address the question of how rebel groups retain their agents after coercive recruitment. These theories, therefore, do not explain a rebel group’s reliance on coercive recruitment as a longstanding policy. Second, contrary to the prediction of the theories of outside options, some rebel groups continue to rely on abduction despite massive desertions from the group. For such groups, therefore, the agents’ desertion does not appear to be a temporary failure in its retention mechanism but rather a part of its plan. Third, when a rebel group faces a short time horizon or a shortage of resources including manpower, it should be an option for them to refrain from recruitment and even from fighting the state. However, the literature does not specify the conditions under which a group chooses forcible recruitment over suspending recruitment, although the resource endowment and local and international accountability of the group may have some implications here. It is my argument that these limitations with of the extant literature on rebel recruitment have their roots in the following three problems. First, most of these studies assume that rebel groups are in an isolated environment and ignore the strategic interaction between the rebel group and the state (Kalyvas 2007), although there are a few exceptions that build on insights from contest success functions (Andvig and Gates 2010, Gates 2002, Fearon 2008).3 The lack of attention to the strategic interaction between the two parties

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generates endogeneity and misspecification problems and thus leads to biased predictions. Second, while the literature correctly identifies the intensified agency problem as a significant cost associated with coercive recruitment, these studies tend to underestimate the gravity of this problem by ignoring the risk of information leakage to the state through deserters from the group. It is worth emphasizing here that rebel groups are generally highly concerned about the leakage of information through deserters. The control of information is often a central issue in the interaction between rebel groups and the state. Leites and Wolf (1970: esp. 132–48) discussed the primacy of information in counterinsurgency. According to them, “Information, then, is more important in insurgent and counterinsurgent conflicts than in other forms of conflict. If, for example, one defines a side’s capabilities in terms of intelligence information (measured as the probability of observing or locating some activity or target), firepower (tons of ordnance deliverable per unit of time), and mobility (cargo or personnel lift capability per unit of time), improvements in intelligence are likely to be more important (productive) than increases in mobility or firepower” (Leites and Wolf 1970: 137). Stathis Kalyvas (1999) places control of information at the center of his analysis of the use of violence by state and rebel groups in a civil war. Moreover, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita (2005) argues that the state co-opts the moderates in a terrorist group to obtain information about the group, even at the risk of perverse effects on domestic order, i.e., a temporary increase in the use of violence by the terrorist group controlled by radicals. It is relatively well known that the control of information is vital for rebel groups’ survival and that agents’ defection and desertion are important pathways through which information leaks from rebel groups.4 Still, the existing literature says little about its implications for rebel groups’ recruitment and retention practices. These two problems – the neglect of rebel–state interactions and information cost – lead to the third problem with the literature: the existing studies ignore the effect of the rebel groups’ recruitment practices on the power relationship between the group and the state. Some scholars deliberately choose not to address this effect. For example, Weinstein (2006) avoids discussing the relationship between the type of rebel organization and its military effectiveness. Gates (2002) points out that the military balance between the two parties depends not only on the number of deserters but also on other factors. However, to the extent that the recruitment practice of the rebel group affects its power relations with the state, it is necessary to incorporate this effect into the analysis, as a rebel group can be reasonably expected to calculate this effect when choosing its recruitment technique. My argument is that by incorporating the vulnerability of the rebel group and the disclosure of information into the theory, it becomes possible to identify when agent desertions significantly influence the course of civil war and when they do not. To my best knowledge, only James Fearon (2008) explicitly models the rebel– state interaction over the recruitment of the agents while including the rebel group’s concerns over information leakage and its power relations with the

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state. In his theory, however, Fearon does not emphasize the distinction between inducement and coercion, claiming that the two recruitment techniques are functionally equivalent. This claim is problematic because, analogous to Weinstein’s distinction between inducement through social and material incentives, inducement and coercion vary in their selection effects. The former tends to attract relatively dedicated agents, while the latter tends to result in the enlistment of less dedicated agents. The types of agents that rebel groups recruit affect the risk of information leakage to the state and thus the dynamics of civil war.5

Private military corporations, foreign fighters, and child soldiers More recently, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies focusing on certain types of agents in rebel recruitment such as private military companies (PMCs), foreign fighters, and child soldiers. However, few of these studies address the question of how rebel groups, and oftentimes the state, recruit these agents. The literature on PMCs, for example, examines the conditions under which rebel groups and states employ PMCs and with what consequences (Avant 2005). The literature on foreign fighters mostly focuses on when and why these fighters join rebel and terrorist organizations overseas (Malet 2013, Hegghammer 2013) and how their participation is facilitated (Hegghammer 2010). Of course, it is to some extent reasonable to expect PMCs and foreign fighters to volunteer to work with rebels and states. The question of inducement and coercion, therefore, may not be highly relevant. Still, it is somewhat surprising that even the studies of child soldiers have rarely addressed the question of recruitment, with the exception of Andvig and Gates (2010) and Bernd and Blattman (2013). Most of the studies on child soldiers focus on the factors that affect the supply of children to rebel groups (Achvarina and Simon 2006).

The informational theory of rebel recruitment In the previous section, I showed that sufficient grounds exist to develop a new theory of rebel recruitment. In this section, I intend to develop the informational theory of rebel recruitment to explain rebel groups’ use of incentives and force for recruitment. To be more precise, I develop a theory of rebel recruitment that explains how a rebel group chooses the proportion of incentives versus force in its recruitment strategy, as rebel groups often combine the two techniques when recruiting their members. The informational theory of rebel recruitment identifies the primary differences between the two recruitment techniques – inducement and coercion – to be their selection effects and the timing of their costs (cf. Weinstein 2006, Eck 2014). Assuming information asymmetry exists between the rebel leaders and agents about the agents’ type, inducement is more selective than coercion. The former attracts only those who self-select into the group, while the latter tends to result in the enlistment of agents who find the rebel groups’ threats intolerable regardless of their capacity or interests.

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To induce agents to join the group, however, rebel groups first need to secure a sufficient amount of social or economic resources (Weinstein 2006) so that the agents find the group’s offer to be both credible and attractive. Once the agents participate in the group, however, the risk of desertion and defection becomes relatively low as long as the group continues to fulfill its promise. In contrast, coercion requires the group to have few resources for recruiting agents prior to their enlistment beyond weapons, which rebel groups usually possess. Once the agents are enlisted, however, the cost of retention and discipline is relatively high, as the group needs to maintain effective mechanisms of monitoring and sanctions or of socialization, which are often costly, or suffer the loss of human resources along with the information they possess. Additionally, coercion tends to alienate the local population, whose support is essential for a rebel group. These differences between inducement and coercion in their selection effects and the timing of the costs incurred suggest the conditions under which rebel groups are more likely to adopt one technique over the other. First, rebel groups are more likely to rely on coercion for recruitment when they have scarce resources and need to increase the number of members. Second, rebel groups are more likely to rely on coercion when they expect the ex post cost of coercion to be relatively low. This is the case when the level of information asymmetry between rebel leaders and agents are low, when the cost of the retention mechanism is low, or when the cost of agents’ desertion and defection is low. The last condition is particularly illuminating, as rebel groups vary substantially in their vulnerability to agent desertion and the resulting information leakage. Notably, the informational theory of rebel recruitment links the rebel groups’ choice of recruitment techniques with other important aspects of civil war such as desertion from rebel groups, the state’s counterinsurgency techniques, and the timing of civil war escalation and termination. The causal mechanism subsumed in the theory has clear, though not always easily observable, implications for these issues. In the rest of this chapter, I will present the hypotheses on these issues not only because these hypotheses are substantively important in themselves but also because they are useful for testing the empirical validity of the causal mechanism proposed in the theory.

Recruitment strategy The principal–agent model I start with a principal–agent model with rebel leaders as the principal and the potential members as the agents (cf. Arrow 1985). There are two sources of agency costs for the leaders: disjointed interest and information asymmetry. Rebel leaders seek to maximize the military effectiveness of the group, while the agents seek to maximize their personal interests, which tend to only partially coincide with the interests of the rebel leaders. Rebel leaders have limited information about the agents’ types prior to their enlistment and only partially observe the behavior of agents after their participation. Rebel leaders need to choose their

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recruitment technique to meet the participation constraint, incentive compatibility constraint, and interim participation constraint if they are to successfully recruit agents, secure their compliance, and retain them. The failure to meet these constraints results in scarce human resources (the under-participation problem), non-compliance (indiscipline), and the desertion and defection of agents (high turnover rate).

Inducement and coercion There is a tradeoff between the two recruitment techniques – inducement and coercion – when meeting the three requirements. Inducement requires an advance investment on the part of the rebel leaders to make a credible promise of social or material incentives to the agents, making it relatively costly for the leaders to meet the participation constraint. With inducement, however, the agents self-select into the group, moderating the adverse selection problem for the leaders. Consequently, the leaders are less likely to suffer from indiscipline or a high turnover rate. In other words, inducement lowers the cost of building an effective retention mechanism, the cost of agents’ non-compliance, and the risk of agents’ desertion. In contrast, coercion requires a relatively small initial investment from rebel leaders to recruit agents. As a party to a civil war, rebel groups are usually equipped with a certain number of weapons, which can be used to force agents to participate in the group. However, coercion does not involve a self-selection process and thus tends to result in enlisting not only capable agents with aligned interests but also agents whose interests diverge substantially from those of the rebel leaders and those who have insufficient capacity to perform the assigned tasks. As a result, coercion tends to increase the costs of monitoring and sanction, socialization and agent indiscipline as well as the risk of agent desertion. Given this tradeoff between the two recruitment techniques, rebel leaders will choose the optimal recruitment strategy or a specific mix of inducement and coercion.

The military effectiveness of a rebel group Rebel leaders’ choice of recruitment technique depends on how they weigh the tradeoffs between the different types of costs incurred by inducement versus coercion. Their evaluation, in turn, depends on how they define and measure their own goal, that is, the maximization of the group’s military effectiveness. In Chapter One, I defined the military effectiveness of a rebel group as its ability to create military power from its basic resources, such as wealth, technology, and human capital, to fight against a particular opponent. In civil wars, a rebel group seeks to increase its power to hurt or inflict damage upon the state. The group’s power to hurt depends on the two types of cost associated with war: the cost that the group can be made to pay when the state tries to hurt it and the cost that a group must pay to hurt the state (Slantchev 2003: 131). I call the former the rebel group’s power to resist and the latter its power to hurt. For a rebel group to stay in the battlefield, let alone win against the state, the group needs to maintain

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both its power to resist and its power to hurt. The loss of the power to resist means that the group can no longer withstand the state’s offensives, and the loss of the power to hurt means that the group has no resources to bargain with the state. Both the group’s power to resist and its power to hurt critically, though not exclusively, depend on two resources, secrecy and manpower (Butler and Gates 2009, Fearon 2008). A rebel group requires manpower both to resist the state’s offensives and to hurt the state, although both the amount and the quality of the required manpower vary. Additionally, a rebel group is often militarily inferior to the state, and thus the group requires secrecy or control over information to effectively resist and hurt the state.

The choice of recruitment technique The discussion so far suggests that a rebel group is more likely to increase its reliance on coercion, rather than on inducement, for recruitment when at least one of the following three conditions is met: (1) the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the agents is low; (2) the cost of retention – monitoring and sanction mechanisms or socialization – is low; and/or (3) the expected costs for the group of agents’ non-compliance and desertion is low. When the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the agents is low, the leaders screen the agents ex ante to recruit those whose interests are relatively closely aligned with theirs. Coercion, therefore, does not increase the cost of retention, non-compliance, or desertion. Admittedly, the leaders may find inducement as efficient as coercion in such a case. However, it is also possible that the leaders expect the preference of an agent to be time inconsistent, that is, they may not expect the agent to join the group voluntarily, but still remain in the group upon enlistment. A low level of information asymmetry between the two sides would facilitate the leaders’ decision to resort to coercion in this case. The information asymmetry between rebel leaders and agents tends to be low when the group is a home-grown militia or when the group recruits primarily from members of religious groups with strict codes of conduct (Berman and Laitin 2006). Rebel leaders can relatively easily identify those who would make good agents. This is also one reason that children are often the target of forcible recruitment (Annan, Blattman, and Horton 2006, Beber and Blattman 2013): children tend to be more susceptible to socialization than adults and are less able to desert the group. If the cost of retaining agents is relatively low, the rebel leaders do not need to be concerned about the negative side effects of coercive recruitment: indiscipline and desertion among agents. The monitoring and sanction mechanism tends to be cheap when the group controls a territory from which it recruits its agents. The group can not only take hostages from the families of their agents, which makes it easy for the leaders to impose sanctions in case of defection and desertion (Beber and Blattman 2013, Eck 2014), but can also generate a social environment that leads agents to become concerned about their reputations back home (Costa and Kahn 2003, 2008, 2004).6

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If the expected cost of agents’ non-compliance and desertion is low, coercion becomes more efficient for the rebel leaders because they can indiscriminately recruit the agents by force and then select loyal and capable agents to be retained ex post, allowing the rest of the agents to desert at their will. The expected cost of agent desertion may require compromises in the group’s power to resist as well as in its power to hurt. A notable example of the cost of indiscipline among agents is the alienation of local civilians through the agents’ (non-strategic) use of violence against them (Weinstein 2006). As Mao Zedong famously proclaimed, for a rebel group, the local civilians are like water for fishes (Mao 1961). They often provide food, clothes, and information about state military forces. Their silence against state military forces is also important for the survival and military effectiveness of rebel groups. The expected cost of the agents’ desertion is even more significant than that of non-compliance. It transfers not only human resources but also critical information from the rebels to the state. Given the power asymmetry between a rebel group and the state, secrecy is often critical to the rebel group’s ability to maintain the power to resist and to hurt. The leakage of information through deserters can undermine the rebel group’s power to resist state offensives, reduce its ability to inflict pain upon the state, and asymmetrically moderate uncertainty about the outcome of the state’s military operations, thereby raising the incentive of the state to conduct military offensives against the group (Berman and Laitin 2006, Bueno de Mesquita 2005, Kalyvas 2008, Staniland 2012, Lyall 2010). Regardless of the risk from increased state offensives, the rebel group will need to conduct costly reorganization to regain control over its private information. The magnitude of the expected cost of agent desertion depends both on the extent to which the group relies on secrecy for its power to resist and power to hurt and on the amount and quality of the information the deserters can leak to the state. The former – the group’s organizational property – influences the variation across rebel groups in their general recruitment techniques. The latter – the information deserters can leak – partly depends on the position the deserters occupied in the group, and thus affects the recruitment techniques the leaders employ for each position. The extent to which a rebel group relies on secrecy depends on two factors: the sources of the group’s power to resist state offensives and the military techniques the group employs to inflict pain upon the state. The group’s power to resist state offensives is highly dependent on secrecy if the power balance significantly favors the state, the group has no safe haven, and the terrain where the group operates is narrow. The group’s power to hurt the state is more secrecy-dependent for terror attacks, followed by guerrilla warfare, with conventional warfare being the least dependent on secrecy (cf. Berman and Laitin 2006, Butler and Gates 2009). The types of information relevant to the analyses here are those that affect the power of the rebel group or of its operations. The single most important piece of information is arguably the location of the organization. The site of its facilities, weapons, food, and human resources are all important and critical to the security of a rebel group. Another type of information critical to the survival of a rebel

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group concerns divisions within the group. Rebel groups often have some sort of intra-group conflict, though sometimes latent and with varying intensity (Pearlman 2009, Pearlman and Cunningham 2012, Staniland 2012, Driscoll 2012, McLauchlin and Pearlman 2012, Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour 2012, Asal, Brown, and Dalton 2012). Given the centrality of desertion and defection in the course of a civil war, as discussed above, a rival group can quickly seize an opportunity and utilize information to instigate desertion from a group. The third type of information critical to the security of a rebel group is that regarding its operational plan. Even relatively small rebel groups of 30 to 100 persons cannot move effectively without an operational plan being prepared a priori. Such a plan may concern, among others, a future attack on government facilities, an emergency plan in case of a state’s military assault, or battlefield logistics. The leakage of such information can jeopardize the routine operations of the rebel group and possibly undermine its security, especially if the group remains unaware of any defection and information leakage, so that no remedy is taken. True, deserters are not the only source of information about a rebel group for the state. The state has alternative sources of information such as the local population, intelligence satellites, and foreign government agencies. In fact, scholars and strategists of rebellion and civil war have repeatedly emphasized the need for rebel groups and states to win the hearts and minds of the local population to control or extract information (Mao 1961, Guevara 1998). Additionally, recent developments in civil wars highlight that states and their allies sometimes rely on satellite images to bomb the headquarters of rebel groups.7 Still, for the state, information gleaned from deserters is crucial to counterinsurgency efforts for at least three reasons. First, information from deserters tends to be timelier than that gained from other sources. Second, deserters tend to have more detailed information about the ‘decision making process’ of the rebel group, including internal conflicts. Third, deserters often have more information about the ‘future’ plans of the rebel group. These three features make information from deserters a highly valuable resource that increases the effectiveness of the state’s fight against a rebel group and thus represent a major concern for the rebel group. In summary, the informational theory of rebel recruitment presents the following three provisional hypotheses regarding the rebel leaders’ choice of recruitment technique or the combination of inducement and coercion. I call these hypotheses provisional, as I have not taken into consideration the strategic interaction between a rebel group and the state. First, a rebel group will tend to rely more on coercion for recruitment when the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the agents is low. Second, a rebel group tends to rely more on coercion for recruitment when the cost of an effective retention mechanism for the group is low. Third, a rebel group tends to rely more on coercion for recruitment when the expected cost of the agents’ desertion is low. Note that the first two hypotheses assume that a rebel group expects agents’ non-compliance and desertion to be highly costly and thus adopts coercion only when the group is unlikely to experience desertion, while the last hypothesis assumes that the group expects at least a portion of the enlisted agents to desert.

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Rebel–state interaction Thus far, I have developed the theory of rebel recruitment focusing on the relationship between the rebel leaders and the agents. In civil wars, however, the state is also an important actor that affects the incentive structures of the rebel leaders and the agents. It is therefore necessary to situate the principal–agent relationship between the rebel leaders and agents in the context of the rebel–state interaction, where the state makes strategic decisions to maximize its own interest in anticipation of the responses from rebel leaders and agents. As discussed above, the rebel leaders choose their recruitment techniques partly based on the rebel group’s organizational properties and their expectation for the agents’ behavior. In addition, however, the rebel leaders make their choice in anticipation of the state’s choice of counterinsurgency technique, as this will affect the relative costs and benefits of the recruitment techniques for the leaders. The state’s choice of counterinsurgency techniques also depends both on the extent of the rebel group’s dependence on secrecy and on the group’s recruitment strategy. It is important to note here that both the rebel group and the state seek to maximize their military effectiveness, as defined above. They do not necessarily seek to maximize the number of agents on their side (cf. Gates 2002) or to minimize the number of agents on the other side. The discussion thus far has identified the problems rebel groups face in recruitment: under-participation, indiscipline, and desertion. The group’s choice of recruitment technique partly depends on the extent of the information asymmetry between the group and the agents, the cost of retention mechanisms, and the expected cost of agent desertions. The expected cost of agent desertions for the group, in turn, depends on the extent to which the group relies on secrecy for its power to hurt and power to resist. Correspondingly, I classify the state’s counterinsurgency techniques into the following six types, depending on the function of each operation. First, the state has an option to deny the rebel group’s access to agents to intensify the underparticipation problem (access denial). This type of operation includes the encampment of citizens, ethnic cleansing, arming the locals to form self-defense militias, and tightening the national border to prevent the entry of foreign fighters. Second, the state can intensify the information asymmetry between the rebel group and agents to amplify the problems of indiscipline and desertion (confusion). Theoretically, it is possible for the state to encourage the wrong types to volunteer for the rebel group either by misinforming agents or by sending spies into the group (Gates and Podder 2015). Third, the state can increase the cost of the rebel group’s retention mechanisms to intensify indiscipline and desertion problems (retention price hike). Such counterinsurgency techniques include escape training for potential agents (Beber and Blattman 2013) and installing an enclave in the middle of rebel territories to facilitate the agents’ desertion from the group. Fourth, the state can dealign the interest of agents in general from those of rebel leaders to induce desertion (interest dealignment or instigation). The state, for example, can reduce the cost for agents to desert the group by

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offering a general amnesty, or it can increase the benefits by promising rewards. The state can also promise differential treatments for rebel leaders and agents through judicial measures such as a request for an International Criminal Court to investigate the rebel leaders for prosecution. The state may also invest in counter-socialization measures such as propaganda. The fifth and sixth types of counterinsurgency techniques directly target the main sources of rebel strength. Fifth, the state can increase the expected cost of agent desertion by undermining the non-secrecy-dependent sources of the rebel group’s power (power erosion). The type of operation the state undertakes will depend on what sort of resource the rebel group’s strength comes from. If the group relies primarily on the material support of a foreign government, the state will invest in diplomatic efforts to curtail that foreign assistance. If the group operates freely thanks to vast terrains and weak state institutions, the state can prioritize state-building. If the rebel group enjoys numerical strength, the state can intensify its own recruitment efforts to increase the size of its military forces. Sixth and finally, the state can penetrate the group and collect information through its own intelligence mechanism or through a small number of defectors (intelligence penetration). The state’s own intelligence mechanism includes sending in intelligence officers, intelligence collection through social networks among the locals, and the use of high-tech machines such as unmanned vehicles. When the state employs former rebels to collect information about the group or the terrain that the group operates in, this also counts as intelligence penetration. The state’s choice of counterinsurgency technique depends both upon the extent to which the rebel group depends on secrecy for its power and on the rebel leaders’ choice of recruitment strategy. If the rebel group is highly dependent on secrecy and relies primarily on inducement for recruitment, the group will experience an intensive under-participation problem but few problems from indiscipline and desertion. The state, therefore, will find it more efficient to invest in counterinsurgency techniques such as intelligence penetration. In anticipating this move by the state, rebel leaders will tend to further prioritize inducement over coercion. A rebel group is highly dependent on secrecy and tends to rely more on coercion when the group has either low information asymmetry with the agents (and thus screens agents ex ante) or has a cheap retention mechanism. The state therefore finds it more efficient to invest in counterinsurgency techniques such as intelligence penetration, confusion and a retention price hike to gather its own intelligence, to disturb the group’s ex ante screening and to increase the cost of retention, respectively. Anticipating the state’s choice of counterinsurgency technique, the rebel leaders will become even less likely to prioritize coercion over inducement unless the conditions are extremely favorable for coercion, that is, unless the information asymmetry between the group and the agents is very low or the group’s retention mechanism is extremely cheap. In such a situation, the state will find it inefficient to invest in confusion and a retention price hike. Therefore, the state will tend to invest in intelligence penetration, just as in the case where the rebel group is secrecy-dependent and prioritizes inducement in its recruitment.

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If the rebel group is not heavily dependent on secrecy, it will tend to rely on coercion for recruitment. This means that the group is susceptible more to indiscipline and desertion than to the under-participation problem. The state will then find it more efficient to invest in counterinsurgency techniques such as access denial and interest dealignment, not so much for intelligence as for manpower reduction in the rebel group and power erosion. Expecting this choice by the state, the rebel leaders will prioritize coercion over inducement in recruitment even more than otherwise. In essence, the state’s strategic choice of counterinsurgency technique tends to reinforce the rebel leaders’ choice of recruitment technique based on the group’s organizational property, that is, the extent to which the group relies on secrecy for its power. If the group is more reliant on secrecy, the rebel leaders will tend to prioritize inducement over coercion. If the group is less reliant on secrecy, the leaders will tend to prioritize coercion over inducement. The informational theory of recruitment therefore generates the following three hypotheses about a rebel groups’ choice between inducement and coercion (see Figure 2.1). Ex ante screening (low information asymmetry) hypothesis: The lower the information asymmetry is between the rebel leaders and the agents, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment.8 Cheap retention mechanism hypothesis: When a rebel group is vulnerable to information leakage, the lower the cost of the retention mechanism is for the group, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment. Ex post screening (invulnerability) hypothesis: The lower the expected cost of an agent’s desertion from a rebel group is, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment. Note here that the cheap retention mechanism hypothesis is conditional on the vulnerability of a rebel group to information leakage. If the group is invulnerable to information leakage, it need not be concerned with the likelihood of agent desertion. Also, the three hypotheses are based on an assumption that the rebel leaders have a reasonably long time horizon. Importantly, the informational theory of rebel recruitment developed in this section has observable implications for the level of desertions in a rebel group, the state’s counterinsurgency strategy, and the conditions conducive to a decline of rebel groups and civil war termination.

Desertion The informational theory of rebel recruitment has a clear implication for the desertion rates in rebel groups. The theory posits that the desertion rates in rebel groups are inversely correlated with the level of the group’s dependence on secrecy for its power to resist and power to hurt, irrespective of its recruitment techniques.

Informational theory of rebel recruitment

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Expected Cost for Rebel Group Inducement (Under-participation)

I

Cv Coercion Ci (High turnover rate) Cr

0

v

r

i

1.0 Proportion of Coercion (α)

Figure 2.1 Rebel group’s choice of recruitment strategy *The two solid lines I and C represent the expected cost for the group of its reliance on inducement and coercion, stemming from the under-participation and high turnover rate these two recruitment techniques incur as well as state counterinsurgency activities that exploit those problems. The two broken lines represent the expected cost of the group’s reliance on coercion when the group is invulnerable to information leakage (C i) or has a cheap retention mechanism (C r). αv, αi, and αr respectively represent the optimal recruitment strategies, or the proportion of coercion, to minimize the maximum expected cost for a rebel group vulnerable to information leakage, invulnerable to information leakage, and vulnerable to information leakage but equipped with a cheap retention mechanism. The figure is adapted from Figure 2.1 in Powell (2007: 529), with significant modifications. Source: Created by the Author.

The correlation is an outcome of the combined effects of the rebel groups’ recruitment strategies and the states’ counterinsurgency strategies. First, those groups that are highly reliant on secrecy, find information asymmetry with agents to be high, and find the retention system to be costly tend to rely on inducement rather than coercion for recruitment. The group therefore tends to suffer little from the adverse selection problem. Second, the groups that are highly reliant on secrecy and find either the information asymmetry with agents to be low or the retention mechanism to be cheap tend to rely more on coercion but still tend to experience little indiscipline or desertion. These groups effectively screen their agents ex ante, monitor and sanction them, or socialize them. Finally, the state’s choice of counterinsurgency strategy tends to reinforce the patterns of desertion in a rebel group. The state tends to invest less in instigating desertion and defection from rebel groups that are highly reliant on secrecy. The state takes this strategy because it is aware that the agents in those groups are less susceptible to instigation due to the rebel groups’ recruitment and retention strategies. Desertion hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the lower the group’s desertion rate tends to be (regardless of its recruitment strategies).

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States’ counterinsurgency strategy The informational theory of rebel recruitment posits that the state’s choice of counterinsurgency techniques depends on the type of rebel group it faces. If the rebel group is highly reliant on secrecy, the state will find it more efficient to engage in access denial and intelligence penetration. If the group is less reliant on secrecy, the state will find it more efficient to shift the priority in its counterinsurgency operations from access denial and intelligence penetration to interest dealignment and power erosion in an attempt to destabilize the source of the group’s power. The state chooses these techniques in anticipation of the group’s strategic choice of recruitment techniques. Counterinsurgency hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the more the state will tend to rely on intelligence penetration rather than on interest dealignment or power erosion for its counterinsurgency efforts. The dependent variable here is the state’s relative investment in different types of counterinsurgency techniques. Specific techniques often require unique resources, learning on the part of the state, institutional constraints, and so on. Therefore, the theory predicts what sorts of techniques a state tends to employ, but not exactly which techniques it will use.

Rebel decline: the escalation and termination of civil war The informational theory of rebel recruitment has implications for the factors that foster the decline of a rebel group and thus increase the chance of civil war termination. By rebel decline, I here refer to a situation in which the military effectiveness of a rebel group is severely curtailed, that is, there is a significant reduction in the rebel group’s power to resist and/or its power to hurt.9 In such a situation, it becomes highly likely that the civil war will be ended. A corollary of the informational theory of rebel recruitment developed thus far is that the conditions that are conducive to rebel decline depend on the primary resources on which the groups rely for their military effectiveness. Information leakage through either mass desertion or the states’ own intelligence mechanism threatens the survival of those rebel groups that are highly dependent on secrecy. Information leakage, however, will not lead a rebel group that is not reliant on secrecy to decline. It is the erosion of group power bases such as manpower and safe havens that put these groups in danger. Information leak hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the more likely it is that a significant amount of information leakage from the group will lead to its organizational decline. Note here that the recruitment strategy of a rebel group is not neatly correlated with the chance of its decline in the face of information leakage. Rebel groups that employ similar recruitment strategies are susceptible to different types of risks depending on the extent to which they are reliant on secrecy for power.

Informational theory of rebel recruitment

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Additionally, while these factors – information leakage and power base erosion – put rebel groups in danger and significantly increase the likelihood of civil war termination, they do not, in themselves, determine the outcome of a civil war or the pathways through which the civil war ends. A civil war can be terminated through military escalation and the victory of one party over another, the conclusion of a (de facto) peace agreement between two parties through peace negotiations, or a silent decline in rebel activities. The exact mode of civil war termination depends on several factors such as the expected efficiency of military escalation for the state and the intensity of the commitment problem between the two parties (Obayashi 2014, Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009, Walter 2002, 1997). Importantly, when a rebel group faces an organizational decline either through information leakage or through a serious erosion of its power base, the rebel leaders find themselves with an extremely short time horizon, and the cost of under-participation problem for the group sharply increases. In such a condition, if the group decides to continue fighting, it will find that one option is to resort Expected Cost for Rebel Group I vL Inducement

Coercion

I v, I i, I iL

Cv Ci

0

v

i iL

vL

1.0 Proportion of Coercion (α)

Figure 2.2 Information leakage, rebel decline, and recruitment strategy Note: The effect of information leakage through deserters on a rebel group is observable as an increase in the expected cost of its reliance on inducement. αv and αi respectively represent vulnerable and invulnerable rebel groups’ optimal recruitment strategies before information leakage. Information leakage through deserters increases the expected cost of inducement for a vulnerable rebel group for two reasons. First, the information leakage increases the efficiency of the state’s military operations against the group, and thus a certain level of under-participation or a human resource shortage for the group would have graver consequences than otherwise. Second, if information leakage is common knowledge among the potential recruits to the group, the efficiency of the group’s inducement activities would decline, as the same amount of investment in the technique will attract a smaller number of recruits. As a result, the optimal recruitment strategy for the group shifts from αv to αvL, increasing its reliance on coercion. The expected loss of inducement for an invulnerable group, in contrast, would remain unaffected by information leakage, and the optimal recruitment strategy for the group would remain the same. The high cost that recruitment strategy αvL would impose on the vulnerable group upon information leakage presents the group with a choice between continuing the recruitment, on the one hand, and reducing the level of its activity to seek a ceasefire, if only temporarily, on the other hand. Source: Created by the Author.

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to coercive recruitment, regardless of its vulnerability to information leakage or the effectiveness of its retention mechanism. In addition to the possible shortage of manpower on the part of the rebel group, its decline can reduce the supply of agents for the group in the face of potential military escalation by the state. The logic behind such a move, however, is different from that specified in the hypotheses above, as these groups resort to coercion as a last resort. While the informational theory of rebel recruitment provides a partial explanation of why such practice takes place, this practice is not necessarily the event that the theory purports to explain. It should rather be taken as a sign of rebel decline. Information leakage and power erosion do not determine the timing of civil war termination (Fearon 2004, Hegre 2004) either, as the state may find it more efficient to terminate the war later rather than sooner under certain conditions.10

A shift in recruitment strategies: punctuated equilibrium The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that rebel groups will change their recruitment strategies through changes in their organizational resources and in the state’s choice of counterinsurgency technique. However, shifts in the groups’ Table 2.1 Hypotheses Rebel Recruitment 1. Ex ante screening (low information asymmetry) hypothesis: The lower the information asymmetry is between the rebel leaders and the agents, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment. 2. Cheap retention hypothesis: When the rebel group is vulnerable to information leakage, the lower the cost of the retention mechanism is for the group, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment. 3. Ex post screening (invulnerability) hypothesis: The lower the expected cost of an agent’s desertion from a rebel group is, the more the group tends to rely on coercion for recruitment. Rebel Desertion 4. Desertion hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the lower the group’s desertion rate tends to be (regardless of its recruitment strategies). State Counterinsurgency Strategy 5. Counterinsurgency hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the more the state will tend to rely on intelligence penetration rather than on interest dealignment or power erosion for its counterinsurgency efforts. Rebel Decline 6. Information leak hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the more likely it is that a significant amount of information leakage from the group will lead to its organizational decline.

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recruitment strategies do not always occur swiftly. Each recruitment strategy is intertwined with other aspects of the rebel organization such as its military technique (Berman and Laitin 2006). The group’s decision may also be influenced by the prevailing world culture around the technology of rebellion (Kalyvas and Balcells 2010). The state also needs to learn efficient counterinsurgency strategies (Kalyvas 2004), and its decisions are often influenced by world culture (Lyall and Wilson 2009). As a result, each equilibrium is susceptible to path dependence. Hence, a change in a rebel group’s choice of recruitment technique occurs either through gradual learning on the part of the rebel leaders or through a ‘shock,’ as suggested by the theory of punctuated equilibrium (cf. Krasner et al. 1984).

Conclusion Over the last two decades, there was significant development in the studies of civil war. However, there has only been a limited number of studies on rebel recruitment, particularly in those addressing the choice between inducement and coercion. This void in the literature is surprising, given the centrality of rebel recruitment to the dynamics of civil war and the humanitarian implications of coercive recruitment. The existing studies on rebel recruitment tend to ignore the strategic interaction between a rebel group and the state, the gravity of the informational cost of agent desertion for a rebel group, and the implication of a rebel group’s choice of recruitment strategy for its power balance with the state. The informational theory of rebel recruitment places two types of information problems faced by rebel leaders at its center: the information asymmetry between rebel leaders and agents and the rebel–state contest over information. The theory also ties the issue of rebel recruitment with other significant aspects of civil war such as desertion from rebel groups, state counterinsurgency strategies, and rebel decline.

Notes 1 For a general discussion of the relationship between economic resources and rebellion, see, for example, Karen Ballentine, Jake Sherman and International Peace Academy (2003), Michael Ross (2004, 2006) and Beardsley and McQuinn (2009). 2 The risk of defection and desertion can be mitigated partly by the use of social incentives for recruitment or by the presence of social ties between the rebel leaders and agents (Bearman 1991, Gould 1991, Collier 2000, Gates 2002, Staniland 2012, Kubota 2013, Staniland 2014). 3 On the contest success function, see, for example, Jack Hirschleifer (2001) and Michelle Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas (1996). Michele Polo (1997) employs the function to analyze the internal cohesion of organized crime in competition with the state. 4 The cost of desertion by a member may be greater than that of the information outflow. In the case of ethnic groups, ethnic defection may prove vital to the credibility of the organization (Kalyvas 2008). 5 One of the insights provided by existing studies of the firm into an organization’s choice between inducement and coercion is the distinction between effort-intensive and care-intensive tasks within the organization (Fenoaltea 1984, Acemoglu and

38

6

7

8

9 10

Informational theory of rebel recruitment Wolitzky 2011). The literature on rebel recruitment has not yet systematically explored these implications for the rebel group’s choice of recruitment techniques, suggesting an opportunity for future study. The cost of retention can also be low when the group is already equipped with an effective socialization mechanism. However, it is often difficult to tell in advance which of the potential recruits are more susceptible to socialization. In this sense, socialization may not be as reliable as territorial control to reduce the risk of the agents’ desertion and information leakage, especially when the group is highly vulnerable to information leakage. In the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, the Ugandan military carried out an air attack on the headquarters of the LRA after the government identified its location using a satellite image provided by the United States. The leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony, narrowly escaped the offensive. The ex ante screening hypothesis is based on an assumption that the immediate marginal cost of recruitment by coercion is lower than that of recruitment by inducement, as stated in Chapter One. This assumption does not always hold, however, and the relative costs of the two techniques need be carefully examined for each rebel group. Still, in principle, a lower information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and potential recruits would increase the rebel group’s recruitment activity, regardless of its recruitment strategy See, for example, Jenna Jordan (2009) for her discussion of similar concepts such as organizational decline, organizational collapse, and organizational degradation. Jordan defines the latter two concepts as subcategories of the former. There is a significant number of studies on the duration and termination of civil wars (Hegre 2004, Fearon 2004, Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2004, Cunningham 2006, 2011, Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009, Walter 2009, Fearon and Laitin 2011).

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Petersen, Roger Dale. 2002. Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Polo, Michele. 1997. “Internal Cohesion and Competition among Criminal Organizations.” In The Economics of Organised Crime, edited by Gianluca Fiorentini, Sam Peltzman, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Great Britain, and Università di Bologna. Dept. of Economics, 87–109. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Reynal-Querol, Marta. 2002. “Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (1): 29–54. doi:10.1177/0022002702046001003. Richards, Joanne. 2014. “Forced, Coerced and Voluntary Recruitment Into Rebel and Militia Groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 52 (2): 301–26. doi:10.1017/S0022278X14000044. Ross, Michael L. 2004. “What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 337–56. doi:10.1177/0022343304043773. Ross, Michael L. 2006. “A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War.” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (1): 265–300. doi:10.1146/annurev. polisci.9.081304.161338. Sandbu, Martin E. 2007. “Ethnicity: Cause or Consequence of Conflict? A GameTheoretic Exploration.” In American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL. Slantchev, Branislav L. 2003. “The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict With Completely Informed States.” American Political Science Review 97 (1): 123–33. doi:10.1017/ S000305540300056X. Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (1): 16–40. doi:10.1177/0022002711429681. Staniland, Paul. 2014. Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Walter, Barbara F. 1997. “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.” International Organization 51 (3): 335–64. doi:10.1162/002081897550384. Walter, Barbara F. 2002. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Walter, Barbara F. 2009. “Bargaining Failures and Civil War.” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (1): 243–61. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.101405.135301. Walter, Barbara F. and Jack L. Snyder. 1999. Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2006. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

3

Changes in rebel organizations

Introduction In Chapter Two, I developed an informational theory of rebel recruitment that places a rebel group’s information problems, agency problems, and contest over information with the state at its center. In the rest of this book, I will assess the validity of the theory’s hypotheses when considering a rebel group’s choice of recruitment strategy, the desertion rate in the rebel group, the state’s counterinsurgency strategy, and the conditions conducive to the group’s decline and the termination of the civil war by conducting qualitative case studies of the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the LRA in Uganda. The purpose of this chapter is to lay the foundation for these analyses by examining the changes in the organizational properties of these two rebel groups. I divide the two rebel groups’ life spans into three phases, thus creating six cases for analysis. The first phase of the LTTE starts in 1976 and ends in late 1995. The second phase of the LTTE spans from late 1995 until March 2004. The third phase starts in April 2004, with the well-known defection of the group’s commander in the east, Karuna Amman, and ends with the group’s surrender to the Sri Lankan state in May 2009. The first phase of the LRA starts in 1988 with the inception of the group and ends in 1994. In the second phase, from 1994 until 2001, the group enjoyed a safe haven in southern Sudan. The third phase continues from 2002 until 2006, when the Ugandan state nearly completely ousted the group from the soil of Uganda. Below, I first discuss the measurements that I will use to measure the value of the independent variables of theoretical concern, i.e., the level of information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and potential recruits, the cost of the retention mechanism, and the vulnerability of the rebel group to information leakage. I will then discuss the constants and changes in the organizational properties of the LTTE and the LRA in each respective phase.

Measurements of independent variables The informational theory of rebel recruitment has three independent variables: the level of information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the agents,

44

Changes in rebel organizations

the cost of retention mechanism within the group, and the expected cost of the agents’ desertion from the group.

Level of information asymmetry The theoretical focus of this research concerns the level of information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and a majority of the agents at the time of recruitment. It is therefore important to examine whether the group recruits agents through a particular set of individuals whose qualifications can be learned by group leaders either directly or indirectly. I code the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and the agents as low if the group is a radical religious group or a local militia. A radical religious group can identify trustable agents by recruiting from religious associations and by observing the agents’ daily practice (Berman and Laitin 2006). The leaders of a rebel group organized by local militias can also identify trustable agents through their daily interactions with the local community.

Cost of retention mechanism I code a rebel group as having a cheap retention mechanism if the group has ‘territorial control.’ The cost of the retention mechanism for the group is negatively associated with the size of its territory. Territorial control makes the monitoring and sanctions system of a rebel group more effective and efficient in three ways. First, the group can take those close to an agent hostage, for example, family members or friends, enabling punishment if the agent should fail to fulfill the assigned tasks. Second, territorial control makes it more difficult for agents to desert and return home because the community would refuse to harbor them out of fear of retaliation from the rebel group. Third, the rebel group would possess a higher capacity to fend off attempts by rival groups to induce or coerce its members. Together, these effects of territorial control make it much easier for rebel groups to monitor and sanction their agents.

Expected costs of agent desertion (vulnerability) In this research, I measure the vulnerability of a rebel group to information leakage using four measures: its military strategy, its (non-) possession of a safe haven, geography, and institutional environment. These factors affect the extent to which information leakage from a rebel group would reduce its power to resist and to hurt. ‘Power relations’ is a concept that simultaneously refers to the absolute and relative strengths of the rebel group and the state. Stathis Kalyvas and Laia Balcells (2010), for example, classify the power relations in civil wars into four types: conventional, symmetrical nonconventional (SNC), irregular, and successful military coup. In conventional and SNC civil wars, the strengths of the two parties are more or less equal. In the former, both parties are fairly strong, while in the latter both are weak. In irregular civil war and successful military coup, one side is superior to the other: the state is stronger in an irregular civil

Changes in rebel organizations 45 war, and the rebel side is stronger in a successful military coup. The power of the rebel group and the state is often measured by their numerical strength or military expenditures. However, to capture their absolute strengths, it is necessary to control for the size of the terrain (Herbst 2000). If the group is situated within a vast terrain, it is relatively invulnerable: it can stay mobile and evade detection or state offensives, even if numbers decrease and information is lost through desertion. In contrast, groups located in small countries are much more vulnerable, as they have little space to escape from state military offensives. For this reason, I use the data on the rebel members’ density in the area of their operation to measure the rebels’ strength, the density of the state’s military personnel in its territory to measure the state’s strength, and the difference between the two values for their relative strengths.1 In addition, I will use the military expenditures per sq km of territory and road density to measure the state strengths. The ‘military strategy’ of the rebel group matters because vulnerability to the loss of human resources and information leakage varies across the military strategies. Rebel groups’ military strategies fall into three categories: terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional warfare. As Butler and Gates (2007) note, the primary factor that affects a rebel group’s choice of military strategy is the power balance between the group and its rival groups, including the state. If the group is very weak, it tends to resort to terrorism. However, the power balance is not the sole determinant of the rebel groups’ military strategies. Also, rebel groups sometimes combine multiple military strategies. If the group has a similar level of power to its rivals, it tends to adopt conventional warfare. It is those parties that fall in between that tend to engage in guerrilla warfare. Those groups resorting to terrorism require a relatively small number of agents. However, in order to make their strategy as effective as possible, the group needs to send its agents into the heart of urban areas where the state has the greatest control. In these areas, the psychological effects of violence can be maximized. Such operations require a high degree of secrecy, not only to keep the operation and the organization exempt from interference by the state but also to minimize investment by the state toward fighting the group (Hirshleifer 2001). However, the group and its operations are highly vulnerable to information leakage because the capture or betrayal of a single operative can destroy a long-planned operation (cf. Berman and Laitin 2006). A group that engages in conventional warfare against rival groups is highly visible from the outside. The group would therefore rely not so much on information asymmetries with the state as on its sheer military capacity for protection. This type of group requires a large number of soldiers to maintain its military power. Its strategy is also tailored to protect group-controlled territory, which results in an ongoing threat toward the groups’ agents.2 Therefore, conventional warfare is less vulnerable to the transfer of human resources and the leakage of information to the state. Guerrilla warfare is situated somewhere between terrorism and conventional warfare. A group that relies primarily on guerrilla warfare is usually at a military disadvantage compared to other groups and consequently will try to conceal its operations. However, unlike terrorist organizations, which endeavor to hide their

46

Changes in rebel organizations

location, guerrilla groups can, to an extent, afford to be visible. Hence, groups engaging in guerrilla warfare are moderately vulnerable. A ‘safe haven’ is another measure of a rebel group’s vulnerability. If the group has a safe haven abroad, it makes the group less vulnerable to the transfer of human resources and information from the group to the state. These groups can enjoy some level of assistance from foreign governments to curtail offensives by the state. In contrast, a safe haven inside the country has little impact on preventing state offensives against the rebel group. An example of an internal safe haven is a camp in mountainous terrain. While the terrain may help the group to defend itself from state military offensives, it is relatively vulnerable to information leakage through deserters. Deserters can, for example, covertly guide the state’s military through complicated pathways to reach the rebel camps. It is therefore the possession of an external safe haven by a rebel group that is meaningful. The ‘institutional environment’ also matters. By this term, I refer to the institutional strength of the neighboring states. If the group is located close to a state border and the neighboring state is relatively weak, the group is relatively invulnerable, as they can escape from any military offensives into the neighboring state. However, if the neighboring state is strong (and does not support the rebel group), the group is relatively vulnerable because it lacks space to retreat beyond the national border. When the neighboring state supports the rebel group and the group is fleeing the state military, it will probably be able to obtain a safe haven across the border. This situation is captured by the ‘safe haven’ variable above. The institutional environment reduces the vulnerability of a group if at least one weak state exists – potentially providing a safe haven to the group – along the borders of the area of conflict between the state and the rebel group. If the sea separates the neighboring country, however, the institutional environment is coded as strong, as the rebel group would find it difficult to move across the sea border swiftly, for example, to attack or escape the state military. In the rest of this chapter, I will discuss the constants and changes in the values of these measurements in the LTTE and the LRA. The results are summarized in Table 3.1.

Organization of the LTTE In this section, I will measure the level of information asymmetry between the LTTE leaders and their potential agents, the cost of monitoring and sanction mechanisms for the group, and the expected cost of an agent’s desertion for the group in each phase. The LTTE, as an organization, had two characteristics that remained more or less constant throughout its existence. First, the LTTE had a high level of information asymmetry with its potential recruits. Second, the LTTE was highly vulnerable to information leakage throughout its existence. The group was located in a coastal area, its numerical strength was inferior to the state’s military forces, and it lacked a safe haven abroad. These two factors remained unchanged throughout the three phases.

Long High No No Low Yes High Irregular T/G/C No Strong

High No No High→Low No→Yes High Irregular T/G Somewhat Strong

Late 1995– March 2004

Long

May 1976–1995

High No No Low Yes High Irregular T/G/C No Strong

Short

April 2004– May 2009

*T, G, and C stand for terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional warfare, respectively.

Precondition Time Horizon Independent Variable Information Asymmetry Radical religious group Local militia Cost of Retention Mechanism Territorial control Expected Cost of Desertion Power relations Military strategy* Safe haven Institutional environment

Period

High No No High No High SNC G No Weak

Long

1998–1994

High No No High No Low SNC G Yes Weak

Long

1994–2001

Phase II

High No No High No Low→High SNC G Yes→No Weak

Short

2002–2006

Phase III

Phase I

Phase III

Phase I

Phase II

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Table 3.1 Information asymmetry, cost of retention, and expected cost of desertion for the LTTE and the LRA

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Changes in rebel organizations

The organizational properties of the LTTE changed mainly in two areas. First, the cost of retention mechanism in the LTTE became lower over time, as the group increased the size of its territory in the northeastern part of the country. Second, the group diversified its military strategy from terrorism and guerrilla warfare to conduct conventional warfare, somewhat reducing its vulnerability to information leakage although to a limited extent. These two changes marked the shift from the LTTE’s first phase, which lasted from 1976 until late 1995, to its second phase from late 1995 to March 2004. In the third phase, from April 2004 until May 2009, the LTTE faced a serious challenge, as Karuna’s defection made it possible for the Sri Lankan state to exploit the vulnerability of the LTTE to information leakage, greatly increasing its risk of organizational defeat.

Constant characteristics of the LTTE I identify the factors that remained constant for the LTTE before discussing changes in its organizational properties. The level of information asymmetry between the LTTE leaders and their agents remained constant over time, as did some of the indicators that represent the organizational vulnerability of the group to information leakage such as the lack of a safe haven.

Information asymmetry The level of information asymmetry between the LTTE leaders and the group’s agents was relatively high. The LTTE’s objective was to achieve the independence of the Tamil population from the Sri Lankan state or, short of independence, to achieve its autonomy. While the group paid lip service to socialism (Pape 2003), it did not recruit its members its agents predominantly from a single extreme religious association or from the local community where the leaders originally lived. It is true that, the original leaders of the LTTE came predominantly from the same community and from the same social strata (Staniland 2012), but the group always targeted a wider community to recruit its rank-and-file as well as its leaders.

Expected cost of agent desertion: power relations, safe havens, and the institutional environment In terms of power relations, the LTTE was, for the most part, fighting an irregular war. The group was more vulnerable than the LRA, as will be discussed later in this chapter. This conclusion may sound contradictory. At its height, the LTTE is estimated to have had approximately 15,000 members, while the highest estimate for the LRA is approximately 6,000 members, with the actual number remaining much smaller most of time (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). The LTTE is also known to have had substantial economic assets, by and large, thanks to its extensive diaspora network. However, each group confronted a state with quite different strengths. The Sri Lankan state was much stronger than the Ugandan state was throughout the civil war periods of these two countries. The GDP per capita of Sri Lanka was $400 in 1978 (constant 2000 US dollars) and steadily developed to $1,199

Changes in rebel organizations 49 in 2008. Conversely, the GDP of Uganda was $172 in 1988 (The World Bank 2009). The military expenditure of the Sri Lankan government increased from $198 million in 1989 (constant 2005 US dollars) to $795 million in 2007, while that of Uganda changed from $88.6 million to $237 million during the same period (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 2009). The size of the Sri Lankan military was 22,000 in 1988 and 150,900 in 2007, while that of Uganda was 70,000 in 1988 and 40,000 in 2007 (International Institute for Strategic Studies various years; Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). The difference in the land size between two countries should also be taken into consideration. The land size of these countries was 64,630 sq km and 197,100 sq km, respectively, during these years (The World Bank 2009). Therefore, when figures on the numerical strength and military expenditures are converted into military persons per sq km, the Sri Lankan military had 0.34 persons per sq km in 1989. The Ugandan military, meanwhile, had 0.36 in 1989, decreasing to 0.20 in 2007 (Figure 3.1). The military expenditures per sq km for these two states illustrate their

Number of personnel per sq. km

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50

0.00

Year Armed force of Sri Lanka Armed force of Uganda

LTTE LRA

Figure 3.1 Numerical strength of the parties to civil war in Sri Lanka and Uganda Data Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies (various years), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2009), Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2009), and The World Bank 2009.

1.80

14,000

USD (Constant 2000)

1.40 10,000 1.20 8,000

1.00

6,000

0.80 0.60

4,000 0.40 2,000

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

0.20

1988

0

Length of Road per sq. km (km)

1.60

12,000

0.00

Year Sri Lanka: Military expenditure per sq. km Uganda: Military expenditure per sq. km Sri Lanka: Road density

Figure 3.2 State military expenditures and road densities in Sri Lanka and Uganda Data Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies (various years), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2009), Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2009), and The World Bank 2009.

differences more clearly. The Sri Lankan government’s military expenditures per sq km were $2,792 in 1988 and $10,589 in 2007, while those of the Ugandan government were $576 in 1991 and $1,021 in 2007. The density of the road network provides another measure of the strengths of these states. In Sri Lanka, the total length of the road network was 90,000 to 100,000 km, making the road density approximately 1.50 km per sq km (The World Bank 2009). In Uganda, the total length of the road network was approximately 70,746 km in 2003, with a density of approximately 0.36 km per sq km (The World Bank 2009) (Figure 3.2). At the beginning of its first phase, the LTTE had only a few hundred members. After the Black July incident in 1983, the number of LTTE members increased to reach more than 3,000 members in 1987 and approximately 7,000 in 1993 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 2009), meaning that the group’s manpower per sq km was 0.37 in the northeastern part of the country. The power difference

between the LTTE and the state, measured by the difference between the two parties in terms of their manpower, was 0.79 in 1993. Hence, while the LTTE possessed many military strengths that the LRA did not enjoy, the LTTE was in an inferior position to the LRA. The former stood against a Sri Lankan state that was far stronger than the Ugandan state that the LRA fought against. In the words of Kalyvas and Lilia Balcells (2010), the LTTE was engaging in irregular civil war throughout its three phases, while the LRA was engaging in an SNC civil war. The LTTE did not have an effective external safe haven or a weak institutional environment to retreat outside the country. It is true that the group had a safe haven in Tamil Nadu, an Indian province with a Tamil majority just 64 km away from the northern end of Sri Lanka (Palk Strait 2010), especially in the 1980s. However, Sri Lanka is an island country. Although the LTTE was based in its coastal areas, specifically in the Jaffna peninsula and the coastal areas of the northeastern part of the country, Tamil Nadu was located across a strait, and the Sri Lankan Navy’s presence in the Palk Straight made the transportation of personnel from Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu a high-risk venture. Therefore, even when the LTTE suffered a military setback from the state military forces, it was impossible for the group to massively retreat into Indian Territory. Moreover, the political relationship between the group and the Indian government was unstable. While the Indian government hosted some leaders of the LTTE and of other Tamil nationalist groups in the early 1980s, the government’s relationship with the LTTE turned sour in 1987. In this year, the IPKF entered into combat with the LTTE. Relations between the two were essentially severed in May 1991, when the LTTE assassinated the former Indian President Rajiv Gandhi. Consequently, the LTTE had two features that continuously marked its organization. First, the group was generally quite vulnerable as an organization, due in part to its military inferiority to the Sri Lankan state, its coastal location, and its lack of a safe haven abroad. Second, the LTTE experienced a significant level of information asymmetry with its potential recruits. Having identified these consistent features of the LTTE’s organization, I will now discuss the changes in the organizational characteristics of the LTTE, namely, changes in its military strategy.

Changes in the cost of retention and vulnerability of the LTTE to information leakage The primary changes in the organizational properties of the LTTE occurred in two areas, territorial control, which affected the cost of retention, and military strategy, which affected the group’s vulnerability to information leakage. In the first phase, the LTTE had little territorial control, particularly at its early stage. The LTTE conducted terrorism and guerrilla warfare, both of which are quite vulnerable to information leakage. In the second and third phases, the LTTE controlled a large portion of territory. The group also diversified its military strategy to conduct conventional warfare, somewhat reducing its vulnerability to information leakage, while increasing its demand for manpower.

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Changes in rebel organizations

Phase I (1976–late 1995): terrorism and guerrilla warfare with little territorial control As discussed above, the LTTE was quite vulnerable throughout its existence due to its military inferiority to the Sri Lankan state, its coastal location, and its lack of a safe haven abroad. In addition to these characteristics, in its first phase, the LTTE’s military strategy – terrorism and guerrilla warfare – also contributed to its vulnerability. Also, the LTTE had little territorial control, although the size of its territory increased over time. COST OF RETENTION: TERRITORIAL CONTROL

The LTTE retained control over some territories almost throughout its existence. However, the size of its territory significantly changed over time, affecting its ability to monitor and sanction its agents. In the first phase, the group controlled only a small portion of territory, which limited its ability to monitor and sanction its members. It was in the early 1990s that the group secured a large territory, controlling approximately 70 percent of the northern and eastern parts of the country. The changes in the size of the LTTE’s territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country are presented in the graph (Figure 3.1). MILITARY STRATEGY

Given the LTTE’s inferior power relations with the state, the group’s dominant military strategy in the first phase was terrorism and guerrilla warfare, which allowed it to maintain its power to hurt the state and its power to resist state offensives. Because these strategies required the group to conduct mostly covert operations, it was important for the group to keep information under its control. In the very early stages of the LTTE, terror attacks were a prevalent strategy, that is, it used violence against civilians or other targets of symbolic significance to affect the policy of the political authority.3 The following passage by Samaranayake captures this preference for this sort of violent tactics by the LTTE in the 1980s: [The LTTE violence] first concentrated on assassinating Tamil politicians and executing police informers. The violence was organized by the ‘Tamil Tigers’, prior to the factionalization, with the specific objective of strengthening the cause of Tamil guerrilla warfare. From 1977 the armed attacks focused on the police and the armed forces. The initial attacks on the police forces were confined to Tamil policemen who were conducting inquiries into guerrilla violence. The targets were later expanded to include Sinhala and Muslim members of the Police and servicemen. From 1977 to July 1983, 50 police officers and servicemen, 11 Tamil politicians, 13 police informants and 16 civilians were killed. Between 1981 and 1984, 34 police stations were attacked by the Tamil guerrillas. From 1984 Sinhala civilians residing

Changes in rebel organizations 53 in settlements and villages within the northern and eastern provinces became targets of terrorism. (Samaranayake 1997: 115) Notable examples of the LTTE’s terror attacks include the massacre of more than 200 civilians in Anuradhapura, May 1985; the killing of 65 civilians in the Mullaitivu district on the Kent and Dollar farms in November 1985; the destruction of an Air Lanka Tristar, killing 16 passengers in 1986; raids that killed at least 32 civilians in several Sinhala villages in the Ampara, Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts during the Buddhist festival Vesak in May 1986; and the shooting of 175 bus passengers in Trincomalee in April 1987 (Samaranayake 1997: 115, de Silva 2009). The primary targets of the LTTE violence were most often civilians and not state military forces. The group continued its terror attack campaign throughout the first half of the 1990s, when it was fighting Eelam War II. Some notable victims of LTTE assassinations during Eelam War II are Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) MP Sam Thambimuttu and his wife Kala, shot dead in Colombo in 1990; EPRLF chief Pathmanabha and 12 of his party members, including an MP and a former minister in the North Eastern Provincial Government (NEPG), shot dead in Madras in June 1990; Ranjan Wijeratne, the deputy Defence Minister of Sri Lanka, assassinated in March 1991; the Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy, Admiral Clancy Fernando, killed by a suicide bomber in Colombo on November 16, 2009;4 Rajiv Gandhi, former prime minister of India, killed by a suicide bomber near Madras on May 21, 1991; Lalith Athulathmudali, the former deputy Minister of Defence in April 1993; Ranasinghe Premadasa, former President of Sri Lanka, on 1 May 1993; and Gamini Dissanayake, a candidate for the presidential election, in November 1994 (Samaranayake 1997: 116, Swamy 2006: 318–19). Although the acts of terrorism continued, the LTTE shifted its emphasis to guerrilla operations around the mid-1980s for three reasons. First, the riot in July 1983 by the Sinhalese against the Tamil people led Tamils to become concerned about personal security.5 Between July 24 and August 1, the riots caused “471 deaths, 8077 cases of arson, and 3,835 cases of looting” (Tambiah 1996: 98).6 As a result, the number of applicants to the LTTE increased. Prior to the riots, the group had approximately 500 members. After the riots, however, the number of combatants increased to approximately 3,000, making it possible for the group to organize itself for guerrilla warfare. Second, the relationship between the LTTE and other Tamil groups worsened, and the LTTE started to fight not only the Sri Lankan military but also other Tamil militant groups. Approximately 30 Tamil militant groups existed, with the major groups including the EPRLF, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), and the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO). The LTTE started to confront these groups militarily around the mid-1980s and practically defeated the TELO in May 1986, followed by the EPRLF in late 1986, and then the PLOTE in July 1989.

54

Changes in rebel organizations

Third, the LTTE entered a fight against the IPKF in October 1987 that lasted until the IPKF’s withdrawal in March 1990. The IPKF entered the Northern and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka after the Indo–Sri Lanka accord signed in Colombo on July 29. However, the peace between the two nations did not last long. Prabhakaran was reportedly dissatisfied with the terms of the accord, and the LTTE failed to surrender most of their weapons, despite the requirement in the accord, only handing over old weapons to the IPKF. In October, the deaths of seven LTTE members in a Sri Lankan military base in Jaffna triggered a fullscale fight between the LTTE and the IPKF, with the IPKF initiating “Operation Pawan” against the LTTE (Swamy 2006: 269–317, esp. 269, 286). During the conflict, the number of IPKF soldiers increased from 5,000 to approximately 75,000 (Swamy 2006: 343). Additionally, the IPKF fought alongside other Tamil militant groups such as the ERPLF, the ENDOLF and the TELO. Given the numerical supremacy of the opposition and their direct military tactics, guerrilla warfare was the only viable option for the LTTE. According to Samanarayake, the LTTE “operated in densely populated areas from behind the cover of human shields of civilians. [. . .] Although Indian army managed to capture Jaffna [. . .] Eventually the LTTE retreated to the north-central jungles and eastern provinces, where they continued their guerrilla warfare until India withdrew at the end of the March 1990. India’s intervention cost the lives of over 1,155 Indian soldiers and officers and had 2,987 injured. Nearly 1,400 LTTE guerrillas were also killed” (Samaranayake 1997: 116). Upon the withdrawal of the IPKF, the LTTE continued its guerrilla strategy throughout Eelam War II and into the first few years of Eelam War III.

Phase II (late 1995–March 2004): conventional warfare and territorial control In the second phase, the LTTE secured a significant territory, which it maintained under its control. At the same time, the group diversified its military strategy to conduct conventional warfare while continuing to carry out terror attacks and guerrilla warfare. COST OF RETENTION: TERRITORIAL CONTROL

In this phase, the LTTE had a large territory under its control, although the size of territory fluctuated between 50 percent and 70 percent of the northern and eastern parts of the country (Figure 3.3). One important change in this period was the LTTE’s loss of Jaffna peninsula, which the group considered to be its homeland. The group never regained the peninsula.

MILITARY STRATEGY

The LTTE’s loss of Jaffna to the state military forces drove the group’s initial formation of a conventional army. On April 19, 1995, the Sea Tiger boats sank

Changes in rebel organizations 55 Eelam War I

Eelam War II

Eelam War III

Eelam War IV

80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

0%

Figure 3.3 Changes in the proportion of the LTTE’s territory in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka Data source: Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order (2009)

the Navy gunboats, Sooraya and Ranasuru, marking the start of Eelam War III. In response, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga initiated a so-called “War for Peace” policy, the aim of which was to forcibly undermine the military capacity of the LTTE and bring about peace negotiations. Under this policy, the state military forces advanced to take over the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. By December 1995, the LTTE had lost Jaffna and was forced to withdraw into the jungles of the Vanni area. This loss of the Jaffna peninsula was a “shock” for the LTTE leadership, including Prabhakaran. It forced LTTE leadership to seriously reconsider their guerrilla strategy, culminating in their decision to adopt a conventional war strategy to increase the group’s power to resist state offensives.7 The decision to engage in conventional warfare involved a few changes in the LTTE’s organization.8 On the military side, the LTTE decided to form defense lines on its territory. Prior to the 1995 military offensives, the LTTE had no defense line and instead utilized guerrilla tactics to target advancing military forces from behind. Prabhakaran decided that this strategy would not allow the group to defend its territories in the north and east. On the side of procurement, Prabhakaran authorized Shanmugam Kumaran Tharmalingam, alias KP, to take charge of overseas procurement and purchase artillery and mortars on the international market. Other military hardware acquired by the LTTE after 1995 included tanks and planes. With regards to military training and organization,

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Prabhakaran ordered one of his commanders, Bhanu, to form an artillery and an armory unit by 2000 (Jeyaraj 2000). The former was named Kittu and the latter Victor after notable commanders of the LTTE. While the LTTE initially seized hardware for these units from the state military after battles, they later secured it from overseas through their procurement units. The LTTE also set up an air wing called Air Tiger in approximately 1998 that was under the leadership of ‘Colonel’ Shanka.9 While the Air Tiger wing made its first attack in 2006, its presence was known before this time. Some of its members were sent abroad for training, and equipment was purchased abroad in countries such as France, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia (Asian Tribune 2007, Daily Monitor 2007). The conventional warfare strategy played an important role in the LTTE’s comeback from its initial losses during Eelam War III. Jeyaraj (2000) notes that Bhanu’s artillery and armored units played crucial roles in defending the Vanni area and in the LTTE’s capture of Elephant Pass for the first time in April 2000. Moreover, the artillery and armored units made it possible for the group to halt the advance of the state military forces from a relatively long range. At the beginning of Eelam War III in 1995, the LTTE controlled 67 percent of the Northeastern Province. Kumaratunga’s War for Peace offensives reduced this amount to 53 percent by 1999. At that point, however, the LTTE initiated counteroffensives and increased the size of the area under its control to 76 percent in 2000 (Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order 2009) (Figure 3.3). The end of Eelam War III did not change these characteristics of the LTTE’s military strategy. On February 22, 2002, the LTTE and the government, led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, entered a ceasefire agreement (2002 CFA).10 The Norwegian government facilitated the negotiation of this agreement and the subsequent peace process between the two parties. The agreement established the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which consisted of five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Admittedly, the observed patterns in the use of violence by the two parties changed after the signing of the 2002 CFA (Höglund 2005: 162–3).11 While the two parties experienced a few incidents of violence against each other, overall they showed restraint, and none of the incidents led to a major military confrontation. In July 2002, for example, an SLA soldier was killed in a buffer zone between the government-held area and the LTTE-controlled area in the Jaffna peninsula. In October 2002, the LTTE held six government soldiers hostage after the police arrested two rebels carrying arms in a government-controlled area. In March 2003, the Sri Lankan Navy sank an LTTE merchant ship. The LTTE is believed to have attacked a Chinese trawler and a troop transport ship off Trincomalee in the same month. None of these incidents led to a major confrontation between the two parties. However, the lack of a major confrontation does not mean that the LTTE dropped conventional warfare from its repertoire of military strategies. Despite the 2002 CFA, the LTTE continued to prepare for the resumption of military offensives. The group’s leadership used the time during the ceasefire to reorganize the group and prepare for another military confrontation. According

Changes in rebel organizations 57 to Karuna, Prabhakaran “wanted the talks dragged for at least five years till the LTTE obtained enough arms to strengthen itself further” (Sriram 2008).12 Therefore, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the LTTE established a conventional army and started to engage in conventional warfare against the state military forces. This change greatly reduced the vulnerability of its military operations to desertion on the side of the defense. Importantly, the shift in the power relations between the LTTE and the state occurred in the early 1990s. The group also controlled a substantial territory. Therefore, it was possible for the LTTE to change its military strategy and recruitment strategy. Still, it was only after the LTTE’s loss of the Jaffna peninsula that its leadership understood the urgency of changing both of these strategies. The change in the group’s strategy therefore did not follow automatically from a shift in the power relationship between the two parties: it required a ‘shock’ for the LTTE leaders.

Phase III (April 2004–2009): information leakage through Karuna In the third phase, the group’s organizational properties, that is, the group’s control over its territory and its military strategy, did not change. The group retained a substantial area under its control, and remained ready to engage in terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional warfare. Still, it is important to mark this phase as distinct from the second phase because the group experienced a massive desertion led by the group’s eastern commander Karuna Amman. It was in March 2004 that Karuna defected from the group.13 The event was extremely significant for the LTTE, as it seriously undermined the security of the group by removing approximately 5,000 cadres from its ranks and, more importantly, by disclosing confidential information about the group to the Sri Lankan state. This information leakage increased the efficiency of the military option for the state relative to the peace negotiations with the LTTE, shortening the time horizon for the LTTE leaders. After Karuna’s defection in March 2004, the LTTE (also called Vanni LTTE in this phase, to differentiate it from Karuna’s splinter group, which was based in the Eastern Province) initiated a guerrilla offensive against the Karuna group in April 2004 (e.g., International Crisis Group 2006: 8–9, Höglund 2005: 163–4). The LTTE swiftly defeated the splinter group. Karuna withdrew, disbanded his soldiers, and went into hiding. Karuna’s faction, however, regained its strength, and the fighting resumed in July 2004. A more important development, however, was that Karuna’s departure increased the prospect of an outright war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military, which eventually materialized two years later. Karuna not only left the LTTE but also aligned his faction with the government military forces. While the Sri Lankan government officially distanced itself from the conflict between Karuna and the Vanni LTTE, it started to provide some support to Karuna’s faction as early as in 2005: “In March 2005, it was revealed by journalist Amanatha Perera that there was some truth to these allegations [that the government forces were implicated in some of these killings of the LTTE

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members by the Karuna faction]” (Höglund 2005: 164). According to an ICG report, “By 2006 Karuna’s forces had become allies of the government and a key source of intelligence for its forces. His defection was an immense loss to the LTTE and boosted support among some Sinhalese leaders for a resumed military option” (International Crisis Group 2006: 9).14 The Karuna faction’s members also served as intermediaries between the state and potential defectors within the LTTE, facilitating the flow of information from inside the group to the state throughout the rest of the war.15 Given the LTTE’s reliance on information asymmetry for its survival, Karuna’s cooperation with the government meant that the Sri Lankan state military had vital information that allowed them to deal a severe blow to the LTTE. It is important to note that the informational theory of rebel recruitment does not fully explain the LTTE’s behavior or the course of war in this third phase. Given the critical situation that the LTTE found itself in after 2004, it should have been possible for the group to renounce civil war by sticking to the peace process with the government. The informational theory does not explain why the LTTE decided to continue fighting instead of concluding a peace agreement with the state. In the next chapter, therefore, I will discuss the factors that led the LTTE to choose a certain recruitment strategy following its decision to continue fighting the Sri Lankan state. In the meantime, I will discuss the reasons why the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state ended up fighting the last war – Eelam War IV – in this third phase, taking into account a few factors exogenous to the theory.

Summary To summarize, throughout its existence, the LTTE had two features that consistently marked its organization. The group had a significant level of information asymmetry with its potential recruits and was highly vulnerable to information leakage. The group substantially reduced the cost of its retention mechanism toward the end of its first phase, as the group increased the size of its territory. Additionally, in the second phase, the LTTE diversified its military strategy from terrorism and guerrilla warfare to conduct conventional warfare. This shift in military strategy somewhat mitigated its vulnerability of its power to resist the state’s offensives, and thus enabled the group to regain its territory in the northeastern part of the country from the Sri Lankan state in the late 1990s. The organizational vulnerability of the LTTE, however, remained mostly unchanged, and Karuna’s defection and subsequent cooperation with the Sri Lankan state sharply increased the prospect of the LTTE’s decline. Ultimately, the state defeated the LTTE in May 2009.

Organization of the LRA In this section, I will measure the level of information asymmetry between the LRA leaders and their potential agents, the cost of monitoring and sanction

Changes in rebel organizations 59 mechanisms for the group, and the expected cost of an agent’s desertion for the group in its three phases. The LRA had three characteristics that remained mostly constant throughout its existence. First, as with the LTTE, the LRA experienced a high level of information asymmetry with its potential recruits. Second, the LRA never controlled a territory. Third, in terms of power relations and military strategy, the group was in a position that was moderately vulnerable to information leakage. These three factors remained unchanged throughout the three phases. The primary change from the first to the second phases of the LRA was its acquisition of an external safe haven in southern Sudan. In the first phase, from the late 1980s to 1994, the group had no external safe haven, and thus was fairly vulnerable to information leakage. In the second phase, from 1994 until early 2000s, the group secured an external safe haven in southern Sudan with assistance from the Sudanese government. Stationed across an international border from the NRA, the group was invulnerable to information leakage in this phase. In the third phase, from 2002 until 2006, however, the group gradually lost its safe haven due to a rapprochement between Uganda and Sudan. With a constant outflow of deserters from the group, therefore, the prospect for the LRA’s survival became highly uncertain.

Constant characteristics of the LRA Before moving on to discuss what changed in the LRA, let me first identify the organizational characteristics of the LRA that remained mostly unchanged throughout the phases. The LRA had three features that consistently marked its organization. First, the information asymmetry between LRA leaders and potential agents was high. Second, the LRA had a fairly low capacity to monitor and sanction its agents due to its lack of any territorial control. Third, in terms of vulnerability, the LRA’s characteristics changed over time, but most of its indicator values remained more or less constant. The LRA faced a weak Ugandan state and a relatively vast terrain and was further surrounded by weak neighboring states, which, altogether, made the group moderately vulnerable to information leakage.

Information asymmetry The level of information asymmetry between the LRA leaders and the agents remained mostly low. The group was neither an extremist religious group nor a local militia. True, the LRA is often considered a radical religious group. However, unlike some other religious rebel groups that recruited their members mostly from the members of non-militant religious associations (Berman and Laitin 2006), the LRA did not have religious followers outside the group from which it recruited members after ascertaining their quality.

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Cost of retention mechanism The LRA also did not have a cheap retention mechanism, as the group never effectively controlled a territory beyond a few bases. This lack of territorial control made it difficult for the LRA to monitor and sanction its agents effectively.

Expected cost of agents’ desertion: power relations, military strategy, terrain, and institutional environment There are four indicators to measure the vulnerability of a rebel group: its power relations with the state; the rebel group’s military strategy; (non-) possession of a safe haven; and the strength of the neighboring states. Among these four indicators of vulnerability to information leakage, three indicators remained by and large constant for the LRA. First, regarding the power relations between the LRA and the Ugandan state, it is fair to say that both organizations were fairly weak, and thus fought an SNC civil war throughout the three phases. The highest estimate for the size of the LRA is approximately 6,000 agents, with the actual number remaining much smaller most of time (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). The group had few economic assets. The LRA, therefore, was much weaker than the LTTE, for example. The Ugandan state, however, was also very weak. The GDP per capita of Uganda was $172 in 1988 and $348 in 2008 (The World Bank 2009). The military expenditure of the Ugandan government shifted from $88.6 million in 1989 to $237 million in 2007 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 2009). The size of the Ugandan military was 70,000 in 1988 and 40,000 in 2007 (International Institute for Strategic Studies various years; Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). The land size of the country was 197,100 sq km (The World Bank 2009). When these figures are converted into military persons per sq km, the Ugandan military had 0.36 persons per kilometer in 1989 and 0.20 in 2007. The Ugandan government’s military expenditures per sq km of its territory were $576 in 1991 and $1,021 in 2007. The density of the road network provides another measure of the strength of the Ugandan state: the total length of the road network was approximately 70,746 km in 2003, with a density of approximately 0.36 km per sq km (The World Bank 2009). These figures are much smaller than the figures for the civil war in Sri Lanka (See Figures 3.2 and 3.3) Second, the LRA conducted neither terror attacks – for instance, urban terrorism – nor conventional warfare. The group engaged in guerrilla warfare, which was not as demanding as terrorism in terms of the skills and loyalty required of agents. This decision was especially important because the LRA operated across vast terrains, enjoyed safe havens outside of Uganda, and fought against the Ugandan state, which was much weaker than the Sri Lankan state. Third, in term of the institutional environment, the LRA was located in an area where Uganda shared its border with two weak states – Sudan and the DRC. Both states were fighting multiple rebel groups inside their territories. Consequently, it

Changes in rebel organizations 61 was relatively easy for the LRA to cross the border to escape from the Ugandan state military forces. Therefore, especially when compared to the LTTE, the LRA was in a relatively invulnerable position. Hence, throughout the LRA’s existence, the group had a high level of information asymmetry with its (potential) agents, lacked an effective retention mechanism, and remained moderately vulnerable to information leakage on at least three accounts: power relations, military strategy, and the institutional environment. Having identified these consistent features of the LRA, I now turn to a discussion of the changes in the organizational characteristics of the LRA that explain the temporal variation in its recruitment practice.

Changes in the vulnerability of the LRA to information leakage The most significant changes in the LRA’s organizational properties occurred in its acquisition and loss of external safe havens, which substantially affected its vulnerability to information leakage.

Phase I (1988–1994) – lack of a safe haven Kony created the LRA around the end of 1987 or early 1988. The name of the LRA changed from Lakwena 2 to the Holy Spirit Movement to the Ugandan Christian Democratic Army (UCDA) during this period (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2017). In this phase, the group lacked any safe haven and had to rely to a significant extent on the secrecy and capabilities of its agents for survival. In this phase, the LRA had approximately 2,000 to 3,000 combatants. As the LRA did not have sufficient military capability to directly confront the NRA, the group had to be constantly on the move, often hiding in the bush, and was thus unable to install a permanent camp. It was also reliant on local people for food, clothes, and other daily necessities. While the vast terrain and the weak states surrounding it mitigated some vulnerabilities for the LRA, the group was under the constant threat of NRA attacks. The LRA’s vulnerability in this phase was apparent in 1992, when the LRA suffered a near fatal blow, at which point Kony was left in the bush with only 52 others.16

Phase II (1994–2001) – acquisition of a safe haven In April 1994, the LRA moved from northern Uganda to Sudan. The Sudanese government offered a safe haven for the group in southern Sudan and provided material support. Therefore, the LRA became much less vulnerable to information leakage. This phase was marked by the support given by the Sudanese government to the LRA, especially its provision of the safe haven in southern Sudan. In 1993, after Operation North dealt a significant blow and a shock to the LRA, the Ugandan government and the LRA initiated peace talks, with Betty Bigombe

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representing the government. However, this process collapsed in early 1994. The LRA was reportedly communicating with the Sudanese government during this peace process and moved to southern Sudan as soon as the peace talks collapsed, setting up a camp there.17 The camp was located near Juba, then the only stronghold of the Northern Sudanese government against the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan. Observers argued that the Sudanese government was supporting the LRA in retaliation for the Ugandan government’s assistance to the SPLA. The LRA maintained camps in southern Sudan from 1994 until mid-2000, although rapprochement between the Sudanese and Ugandan governments gradually undermined the security of the group in the area in approximately 1999, an event that I will discuss later.18 The primary effect of the establishment of LRA camps in southern Sudan was that the group increased its power to resist and became much less vulnerable to information leakage or to the attacks by the Ugandan state military forces. However, two factors compromised the LRA’s security in Sudanese terrain. First, the state military forces occasionally pursued the LRA into Sudanese territory. Second, the SPLA was actively fighting against the Sudanese government in the area, resulting in sporadic skirmishes with the LRA. Still, the latter could count on the military support of Sudanese government forces in Juba, could obtain weapons, training, and food from the Sudanese government, and were able to fight against the Ugandan state military forces in a terrain that was unfamiliar to the latter. The Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF), the successor of the NRA under the 1995 constitution, is reported to have made at least two major attacks against the LRA camps during this period.19 In 1996, the UPDF attacked the LRA camp in southern Sudan with the SPLA and Ethiopian forces. In 1997, the UPDF and the SPLA attacked the LRA camp in Aruu Junction. Each time, however, the LRA fought with the support of the Sudanese military forces and escaped to set up a new camp. The LRA soldiers encountered the SPLA and the UPDF much less frequently in the southern Sudanese terrain than on the other side of the border. Therefore, the LRA fought the SPLA only when the two groups encountered each other by chance. When members of the LRA were in Sudan, they fought a battle roughly once every few weeks or even once a month. By contrast, in Uganda, they often fought a few battles with the UPDF each day.20 Additionally, the Sudanese government provided the LRA with uniforms, shoes, medicine, food, guns, and ammunition.21

Phase III (2002–2006) – amnesty law and loss of the safe haven In the early 2000s, three factors significantly altered the organizational properties of the LRA. First, the LRA had lost its safe haven in southern Sudan. The Ugandan state made significant efforts to reach an agreement with the Sudanese government. As a result, the UPDF gained approval from the Sudanese authority to enter its territory to hunt down the LRA. Second, the UPDF constructed military roads in northern Uganda. This road extension increased the mobility of the UPDF, allowing it to better pursue the LRA in this area. Together these two factors increased

Changes in rebel organizations 63 the vulnerability of the LRA to desertions, both in southern Sudan and in northern Uganda. The third factor was an increase in the number of deserters from the group. Importantly, due to the Amnesty Law of 2000, many of these deserters started to report to the Ugandan state. Consequently, in addition to the numerical loss, the group suffered from a near-constant leakage of information to the UPDF. These three factors significantly undermined both the LRA’s power to hurt the state and its power to resist state offensives, sharply shortening the time horizon for its leaders. It should be noted here that all these developments took place gradually from the late 1990s through the middle of 2000s. In this book, I take a pragmatic approach and identify the period between 2002 and 2006 as the third phase. The loss of the safe haven in southern Sudan and the 2000 Amnesty Law presented serious challenges to the LRA by 2002, and the group was effectively chased out of the country by 2006. In 1999, the Sudanese and Ugandan governments started to move for rapprochement. This change threatened the security of the LRA, as the Sudanese government officially permitted the UPDF to enter southern Sudan and track down the LRA. Consequently, the group’s security was gravely undermined. This new development did not alter the LRA’s method of recruitment, however, but affected its magnitude, as it sharply intensified abductions. The incursion into the LRA’s safe haven in southern Sudan proceeded incrementally. First, on December 9, 1999, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments reached the Nairobi Agreement, in which Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir agreed to disarm and disband the LRA.22 However, the relationship between the two countries remained fragile for another a few years, primarily due to continued LRA violence in northern Uganda that was launched from the group’s camps in southern Sudan.23 Second, in March 2002, after negotiations, the Sudanese government gave official permission to the Ugandan government to pursue the LRA in Sudanese territory (Feldman 2008). Accordingly, the UPDF made a large-scale attack against the LRA camps in southern Sudan. The effect of the campaign, however, did not exactly follow the expectations of the Ugandan military leaders. The agreement allowed the UPDF to operate only within 100 km of their border. The Sudanese government was not in a position to exercise tight control over its territory, as it was already facing several rebel groups, most notably the SPLA. Consequently, as the UPDF carried out Operation Iron Fist in 2002, the LRA discarded its camps near Juba and simply fled further into Sudanese territory. The group also sent troops into northern Uganda to divert the UPDF’s resources from southern Uganda and to procure human and other resources. Hence, the Ugandan agreement with the Sudanese government failed to put the LRA in a position that made it vulnerable to the UPDF attacks. Rather, it simply pushed the LRA further into Sudanese territory, where the UPDF had greater difficulty reaching the group. Third, in January 2005, the Sudanese government signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the SPLA, ending the civil war in the region. A primary motive for the Sudanese government to harbor the LRA in its territory was to retaliate against the Ugandan government, which supported the SPLA. The peace agreement, therefore, significantly reduced the incentive for Sudan to

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support the LRA. Fourth, in November 2005, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments reached yet another agreement that allowed the UPDF to further penetrate southern Sudan to exterminate the LRA (Royo 2008: 14). Therefore, the Ugandan government’s continuous efforts to negotiate with the Sudanese government from 1999 to 2005 culminated in the de facto removal of the LRA’s safe haven in southern Sudan. Thus, the UPDF, with its superior forces, could carry out direct attacks against the LRA, leaving the group in a more vulnerable position, as the locations of its camps were known to the UPDF. For LRA members, this meant that life in the bush became much more challenging and dangerous, as they constantly needed to move from one place to another to escape from the UPDF, all the while procuring food and other resources. The UPDF’s efforts also undermined the LRA’s power to resist. Since the beginning of Operation Iron Fist, the UPDF had been paving military roads across northern Uganda.24 As noted above, the LRA were invulnerable and used the villages in northern Uganda to recruit through abduction, partly because the Ugandan state’s presence was very weak in this area. The previous lack of an extensive road network was a clear indication of the state’s weakness. The development of the military road network, however, gave the UPDF unprecedented mobility, making it possible for them to pursue the LRA. Given the numerical advantage and the better equipment enjoyed by the UPDF, it gained supremacy over the LRA in its territory by 2004. In this phase, therefore, the LRA became highly vulnerable to information leakage for two reasons: first, the Ugandan state’s diplomatic efforts deprived the LRA of a safe haven in southern Sudan; second, the state’s construction of military roads also undermined the position of the LRA within northern Uganda. Consequently, the LRA avoided actively seeking to engage in conflict with the UPDF. According to a source, the LRA made no single direct attack on the UPDF between 2002 and 2006. In 2002, the LRA was estimated to have approximately 2000 soldiers but was spread widely, operating in bands of 20 to 50 members, to avoid a major encounter with the UPDF. In each band, roughly half of the members were believed to be carrying weapons, while the rest were without.25 This new vulnerability of the LRA was coupled with another new development. The number of those who deserted from the LRA and reported to the state increased. Most of the LRA members had joined the group through abduction, and consequently, there were frequent acts of desertion, and such individuals leaked information to the UPDF. The 2000 Amnesty Act increased the number of deserters from the group by promising security and rehabilitation programs for deserters. While the number of those who defected from the LRA to report to the state was initially not very large, their number increased over time. The installation of Mega FM in 2002 fostered this process (Allen 2006). This radio station broadcast a program in which ex-LRA members spoke of their experiences after reporting to the state, referring to current members of the group by their nicknames and encouraging them to surrender. Ex-LRA members also communicated directly with those in the bush using mobile phones. The state military interviewed these deserters at Child Protection Units (CPUs). Consequently, by

Changes in rebel organizations 65 the mid-2000s, the LRA experienced a continuous leakage of information to the state military forces. In the third phase of the LRA, these developments led the LRA and the Ugandan state to begin a complex process in which the two parties combined continued fighting with intermittent efforts to reach a peace agreement. As with the third phase of the LTTE, the events in this phase placed the LRA in critical condition, but the course of the civil war remained non-determinant. Eventually, however, the Ugandan state effectively defeated the LRA, and the group was forced out of the country. In the next chapter, I will discuss the LRA’s recruitment practice during this process, while the determinants of the overall course of war in this phase will be discussed in Chapter Seven.

Summary To summarize, the LRA had three characteristics that remained mostly constant throughout its existence. First, as with the LTTE, the LRA experienced a high level of information asymmetry with its potential recruits. Second, the LRA never controlled a territory. Third, in terms of the power relations, military strategy, and the institutional environment, the group’s position was moderately vulnerable to information leakage because of the stronger but still somewhat weak presence of the Ugandan sate, its reliance on guerrilla warfare, and the weak neighbor states. The group’s acquisition of an external safe haven in 1994, and the subsequent loss of this safe haven in the early 2000s, significantly affected its vulnerability to information leakage. The loss of the safe haven in southern Sudan sharply reduced the prospect for the LRA’s organizational survival.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed measurements for the independent variables of the informational theory of rebel recruitment, the level of information asymmetry between these groups and their potential recruits, the cost of retention mechanisms for these groups, and their vulnerabilities to information leakage. Then, I followed the constants and changes in these organizational characteristics of the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the LRA in Uganda. In doing so, I divided the life spans of each rebel group into three phases, generating six cases for study. In the following chapters, I will conduct congruence tests assessing whether the changes in those organizational characteristics of the two groups in each respective phase explain their recruitment strategies as well as the desertion rates, the state counterinsurgency strategies, and the conditions conducive to the organizational declines of these rebel groups.

Notes 1 Jack Hirschleifer discusses the pros and cons in the choice of the power ratio and the power difference between the two sides in conflict as a measurement for their power relationship (Hirshleifer 2001).

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2 Paul Collier (2000: 842–3) maintains that 500 to 5,000 agents would be needed for a rebellion, which, he claims, intends to exploit natural resources. 3 Prabhakaran is known to have committed his first murder on July 27, 1975, when he assassinated Alfred Duriappah, then Jaffna mayor, as a member of the Tamil New Tigers (TNT) (Swamy 2006: 56–7). 4 Clancy Fernando introduced the Sinhala communication system to the Navy as its commander. 5 For a discussion of this riot, see, for example, Tambiah (1986, 1996). 6 The details of the riot were as follows: “Colombo district topped the list with 227 deaths, 2,720 cases of arson, and 1,712 of looting; Kandy district suffered 31 deaths, 1,065 arson, and 132 of looting. Other districts where much violence occurred were Badulla (52 deaths, 838 cases of arson, and 630 lootings), Matale (3 deaths, 1,131 acts of arson, and 838 lootings), Kegalle (24 deaths, 390 cases of arson, and 195 lootings)” (Tambiah 1996: 98). The actual number of casualties from the riot should be higher, as the riot continued until August 5. 7 Interview, Colombo, March 10 (B), 2010. 8 Interview, Colombo, March 10 (B), 2010. 9 Colonel Shanka was the first senior leader of the LTTE to be killed by the Long Range Reconnaissance Program (LRRP) of the Sri Lankan military. He was assassinated by claymore attack on September 26, 2001 (TamilNet 2001). Interview, Colombo, March 20 (A), 2010. 10 The president of Sri Lanka at that time was Chandrika Kumaratunga of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). 11 Article 1.2 of the CFA states: “Neither party shall engage in any offensive military operation. This requires the total cessation of all military action and includes, but is not limited to, such acts as: a) The firing of direct and indirect weapons, armed raids, ambushes, assassinations, abductions, destruction of civilian or military property, sabotage, suicide missions and activities by deep penetration units; b) Aerial bombardment; c) Offensive naval operations.” 12 The Sri Lankan state also increased the size of its military during this period. It should also be noted that the ceasefire, in conjunction with the respective order of amnesty for army deserters, reduced the overall number of army deserters and led some of the deserters to report back to the SLA, contributing to its expansion. 13 It is not clear why Karuna decided to defect from the LTTE. The existing literature cites the longstanding conflict between Tamils from the northern and eastern regions and Karuna’s personal rivalry with Pottu Amman (the head of the intelligence wing) for the position of second-in-command within the group’s hierarchy. It is also possible that his decision was affected by his experience at the peace talk in Thailand, where he experienced the comforts of life outside the bush. 14 Gordon Weiss similarly writes “Karuna had been a senior commander since 1987, and the ensuing damage to the Tigers could hardly have been greater. His defection brought an unprecedented flow of intelligence that exposed the strength, displacement, training, scenario planning and fortifications of Tiger operations, bared its international operations and brought a force of 600 fighters over to the government.” (Weiss 2012: 80) 15 Interview, Trincomalee, March 22 (A), 2010. 16 Interview, Gulu, Uganda, March 27 (A), 2009. 17 Museveni issued an ultimatum to the LRA demanding an unconditional surrender within two weeks. Some analysts see this ultimatum as a sign that Museveni had never been sincere in this peace negotiation, while others point out that he considered the LRA’s secret communication with the Sudanese government to be

Changes in rebel organizations 67

18

19 20 21

22 23 24 25

evidence of its lack of commitment to the peace talk and thus decided to end the negotiation (cf. Gersony 1997, O’Kadameri 2002, Allen 2006). In 1994, after the LRA moved to southern Sudan, local leaders such as Anenda Okoto Ogonie and Lanan Olanya Langony started to communicate with the LRA to persuade it to cease its violence and return to the villages. However, the attempts at peace failed. Interview, Gulu, April 4, 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 17, 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, March 21 (B) and March 31 (A), 2009. The Sudanese government provided the following materials to the LRA: lorries, one Land Cruiser for Kony, one pickup, foods, uniforms, medicines, walkietalkies, solar panels, shoes, civilian attire, mosquito nets, and soaps. The Sudanese government also provided weapons such as bullets, anti-personnel mines (AP mines), anti-tank mines (AT mines), grenades, rocket propelled grenades, rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and mortars. The Sudanese government also sent soldiers to reinforce the LRA in five battles: Magwi in August 1994, Obo in August 1994, Pajok in December 1994, Pogeo in January 1995 and Owinykibu in February 1995. Interviews, Gulu, Uganda, March 31 (A), April 10 (A, B, C), 2009. Otto (2002) details the developing relationship between Uganda and Sudan right after the signing of the Nairobi Agreement. Sudanese material support for the LRA appears to have stopped around this time. However, the group maintained its presence in southern Sudan. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 1, 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 1, 2009.

References Allen, Tim. 2006. Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord’s Resistance Army, African Arguments. London, UK: Zed Books. Asian Tribune. 2007. “LTTE Air-Wing Connections in France, UK and Malaysia.” March 29, Accessed July 4, 2010. www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/5119. Berman, Eli and David D. Laitin. 2006. Hard Targets: Theory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks. Accessed September 26, 2007. http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/Hardtargets. pdf. Butler, Christopher K. and Scott Gates. 2007. The Technology of Terror: Accounting for the Use of Terrorism. www.unm.edu/~ckbutler/workingpapers/TechofTerror.pdf. Collier, Paul. 2000. “Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 (6): 839–53. doi:10.1177/0022002700044006008. Daily Monitor. 2007. “LTTE Air Wing Nine Years Old: Former RAW Chief.” Accessed July 4, 2010. www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2007/3/13355.html. de Silva, Jayatilleke. 2009. Chronology of LTTE Terror. 1st ed. Colombo: Associated Publishers Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. Feldman, Robert L. 2008. “Why Uganda Has Failed to Defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army.” Defense & Security Analysis 24 (1): 45–52. doi:10.1080/14751790801903210. Gersony, Robert. 1997. The Anguish of Northern Uganda: Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda. Submitted to United States Embassy, Kampala, and the USAID Mission, Kampala. Herbst, Jeffrey Ira. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Hirshleifer, Jack. 2001. “The Paradox of Power.” In The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory, 177–200, Reprinted from Hirshleifer, Jack. 1991. “The Paradox of Power.” Economics and Politics, vol. 3. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Höglund, Kristine. 2005. “Violence and the Peace Process in Sri Lanka.” Civil Wars 7 (2): 156–70. doi:10.1080/13698280500422843. Human Rights Watch. 2004. Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. November, 16 (3). Accessed July 10, 2007. www.hrw.org/en/ reports/2004/11/10/living-fear. International Crisis Group. 2006. “Sri Lanka: The Failure of the Peace Process.” Asia Report 124. Accessed January 20, 2010. www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/ south-asia/sri-lanka/124_sri_lanka___the_failure_of_the_peace_process.ashx. International Institute for Strategic Studies. various years. The Military Balance. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies. Jeyaraj, D. B. S. 2000. “The Taking of Elephant Pass.” Frontline 17 (10). Accessed April 15, 2010. www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1710/17100100.htm. Kalyvas, Stathis N. and Laia Balcells. 2010. “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict.” American Political Science Review 104 (3): 415–29. doi:10.1017/S0003055410000286. LexisNexis Academic. 2010. Accessed on June 17, 2010. http://www.lexisnexis.com/ hottopics/lnacademic/ O’Kadameri, Billie. 2002. “LRA and Government Negotiations 1993–4.” In Protracted Conflict, Elusive Peace: Initiatives to End the Violence in Northern Uganda, edited by O. Lucima, 34–41. London, UK: Conciliation Resources. Otto, Patrick Oguru. 2002. “Implementing the 1999 Nairobi Agreement.” Accord (11). Accessed September 11, 2011. www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northernuganda/implementing-nairobi.php. Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97 (3): 343–61. doi:10.1017/S000305540300073X. Royo, Josep Maria. 2008. War and Peace Scenarios in Northern Uganda, Peacebuilding Papers (Quaderns de Construccio de Pau). Bellaterra, Spain: School for a Culture of Peace (Escola de Cultura de Pau), Universitat Automa de Barcelona. Accessed March 31, 2017. http://escolapau.uab.cat/img/qcp/war_peace_uganda.pdf. Samaranayake, Gamini. 1997. “Political Violence in Sri Lanka: A Diagnostic Approach.” Terrorism & Political Violence 9 (2): 99–119. doi:10.1080/09546559708427405. Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order. 2009. The Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Terrorist Activities and Government Humanitarian Efforts 1981–2009. Accessed March 5, 2010. www.defence.lk/gis/Final_Final61. swf. A GIS-based visual file. Sriram, TV. 2008. “Rajapaksa Asks LTTE to Surrender.” The Press Trust of India. October 11, LexisNexis Academic. Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia.” International Security 37 (1):142-177. doi: 10.1162/ISEC_a_00091. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 2009. The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. http://milexdata.sipri.org. Strait, Palk. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica. Accessed June 26, 2010. www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/439879/Palk-Strait. Swamy, Narayan M. R. 2006. 1994. Tigers of Lanka, From Boys to Guerrillas. 7th ed. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.

Changes in rebel organizations 69 Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. 1986. Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. 1996. Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. 10. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. TamilNet. 2001. “LTTE Condemns Assassination of Senior Leader.” September 26. Accessed July 4, 2010. www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=6340. Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 2009. UCDP Database. www.ucdp.uu.se/database. Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2017. UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia. Accessed on June 16, 2017. www.ucdp.uu.se, Uppsala University. Weiss, Gordon. 2012. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. 1st ed. New York, NY: Bellevue Literary Press. The World Bank. 2009. World Development Indicators. Accessed April 30, 2010. http://databank.worldbank.org/databank/download/WDIandGDF_excel.zip.

4

Recruitment

Introduction In their initial phases, both the LTTE and the LRA started off mainly relying on inducement for recruitment. Over time, however, these two groups increased their reliance on coercion. What explains the changes in these two groups’ recruitment strategies? Did they increase their reliance on coercion for the same reasons? It is particularly striking that the LRA continued its coercive recruitment despite a continuous outflow of deserters from the group. Continuing coercive recruitment despite recognizing the high likelihood of recruits’ desertion from the group appears to be highly inefficient. If the leaders knew that many of the recruits would leave, why did they not stop recruitment or shift their recruitment technique to inducement? These questions are important not only for theoretical purposes but also for their implications for humanitarian policies. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains these variations in terms of the changes in the organizational properties of the LTTE and the LRA and resultant shifts in their recruitment priorities. In the following sections, I will discuss the variations within the LTTE and LRA, respectively, by first examining variation in the recruitment strategies of the LTTE and then in those of the LRA. In both cases, the primary focus will be to explain changes in the recruitment methods of each rebel group over time. In addition, I will conduct analyses of further variations in the recruitment strategies of the two groups along functional lines. This exercise provides me with an opportunity to further assess the validity of the informational theory. I will conclude the chapter with a brief summary of the findings from the analyses.

The LTTE: from ex ante screening to effective retention In this section, I will conduct a congruence test to assess whether the informational theory explains the temporal variations in the recruitment practices of the LTTE. Their recruitment practice experienced a few changes across the phases under examination. In the first phase, from the late 1970s to 1995, the LTTE mostly recruited its members using incentives coupled with the use of social

Precondition Time horizon Independent Variable Information asymmetry Cost of retention mechanism Expected cost of desertion Priority in Recruitment Under-participation Indiscipline Turnover rate Dependent Variable Recruitment strategy

Period

Black Tigers

High Low High Yes No No

High High→Low High

No Yes Yes

Inducement Coercion

Long

Late 1995– March 2004

Long

May 1976– 1995

Coercion

Yes No No

High Low High

Short

April 2004– May 2009

No Yes Yes

High High High

Yes No No

High High Low

Long

1994–2001

Phase II

Inducement Inducement Coercion

No Yes Yes

Low Low Very High

Long

1998–1994

Phase I

Phase III

Phase I

Phase II

LRA

LTTE

Table 4.1 Recruitment strategies of the LTTE and the LRA

Collaborators

Coercion

Yes No No

Inducement

No Yes Yes

High High High High Low→High Very High

Short

2002–2006

Phase III

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incentives and intensive ex ante screening mechanisms. In the second period, from the end of 1995 to 2004, the group predominantly recruited its agents using force. However, the LTTE’s use of force was institutionalized, and consequently, it is more precise to label the group’s recruitment strategy in this phase as ‘conscription.’ In the third period, from 2004 until its demise in 2009, the group aggressively recruited its agents by force, both through and external to its conscription system. The alternative theories have limitations in explaining the changes in the LTTE’s recruitment strategy. The resource curse theory can explain the changes as long as we focus on the ‘relative’ change in the LTTE’s economic resources. Kyle Beardsley and Brian McQuinn (2009), for example, argue that the newly acquired economic resources made the LTTE more violent and less disciplined. The causal mechanism of the theory, however, does not fit the actual historical developments. In Weinstein’s discussion, a resource-rich rebel group uses extensive violence toward civilians and recruits them by force because the group’s resources attract opportunistic ones to the organization (Weinstein 2006). In case of the LTTE, however, its leadership composition did not change much between the different phases. It was, for example, Prabhakaran and other senior leaders who initiated coercive recruitment in the second phase. Also, Karuna Aman, who is often accused of heavy involvement in abductions, participated in the LTTE after Black July, presumably to secure his physical safety and revenge rather than to obtain pecuniary rewards. The theories of outside options also have difficulty explaining the changes in the recruitment strategy of the LTTE. These theories argue that rebel groups would resort to coercive recruitment when the utility of the outside options for the agents is low. During the course of the war, however, the utility of the outside options for the LTTE’s agents appears to have improved. The level of government protection for the Tamils or for the deserters from the LTTE did not change much over time. Sri Lanka’s economy grew steadily from the late 1970s to the 2000s (cf. The World Bank 2009). Therefore, the utility of the outside option for potential recruits appear to have improved, rather than declined, over time. True, the size of the area under LTTE control expanded gradually from the 1980s through the 2000s, meaning that the LTTE increased its ability to punish deserters by reducing the expected utility of desertion for its agents (cf. Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence 2009). However, it was not the expansion of the LTTE’s territory but its shrinkage, i.e., loss of the Jaffna peninsula to the state, that triggered the LTTE’s decision to initiate forcible recruitment. I admit that the LTTE’s control over a certain territory was an important factor that facilitated the group’s initiation of forcible recruitment. However, this control is not sufficient to explain the LTTE’s increased reliance on force for recruitment. The informational theory explains the LTTE’s shift from inducement in the first phase to the use of force in the second phase as a function of two factors: its territorial control and the diversification of its military strategy from terrorism and guerrilla warfare to conventional warfare. Territorial control gave the LTTE a relatively cheap monitoring and sanctions system to retain its agents, while the diversification of its military strategy somewhat reduced the potential cost

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of information leakage through deserters. It was the LTTE’s loss of Jaffna that triggered this latter change in the LTTE’s military strategy. As for the group’s intensified use of force for recruitment in the third phase, the informational theory explains this as a consequence of Karuna’s defection. The state obtained a significant amount of information about the LTTE through Karuna. This leakage of information, coupled with the organizational vulnerability of the LTTE, increased the possibility of the group’s demise. As a result, the LTTE resorted to mass abduction as a last resort. As this third phase is particularly important for testing the validity of the informational theory, I will discuss it briefly in this chapter and analyze it more extensively in Chapter Seven. Before concluding this section, I will make an additional analysis of the Black Tiger unit. In analyzing changes in the general recruitment strategy of the LTTE, I will not discuss the group’s policy toward Black Tigers. As Black Tigers conducted unique operations, the informational theory predicts that they were recruited in ways different from other members of the group. Therefore, I will examine whether the ways in which the LTTE recruited Black Tigers conform to the prediction of the informational theory.

Phase I: inducement From the latter half of the 1970s to the mid-1990s, the LTTE primarily relied on inducement with social incentives for recruitment. In this phase, the LTTE relied on terrorism and guerrilla warfare to fight the Sri Lankan state. The group’s operations, therefore, were highly vulnerable to desertion and especially to information leakage. This meant that the LTTE needed to only enlist loyal and capable agents and consequently, this is why the group used a highly selective recruitment strategy – the recruitment of volunteers using social incentives and social networks. For this reason, the LTTE avoided the use of pecuniary incentives or force, even when the group fell short of manpower. Instead, they sought the enlistment of new categories of people such as children (and Muslims, though this was arguably a futile endeavor) using social incentives. Given the LTTE’s inferior power relations with the state, the group’s dominant military strategy in the first phase was terrorism and guerrilla warfare to maintain its power to hurt the state and to resist state offensives. Because these strategies required the group to conduct mostly covert operations, it was important for the group to keep information under its control. Therefore, the group needed to restrict recruitment to those who would be loyal and capable, which was why it relied heavily on social incentives for the recruitment of its agents. The vulnerability of the LTTE’s military strategy to defection and information leakage in this phase is illustrated by the following example. During Eelam War II, on July 28, 1995, the LTTE launched an assault against the Weli Oya military facility of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA). However, the operation ended in complete failure, with the LTTE losing 300 of its combatants, while the SLA lost only two. This failure was allegedly due to an advanced tip-off from elements in the LTTE about the planned assault (Agence France Presse 1995). Arguably, the LTTE

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leadership could have alleged the existence of ‘spies’ within the group to avoid taking responsibility for the failure of the mission. It is very difficult to ascertain the truth, as allegations of tip-offs carry some credibility, but regardless, this episode indicates the vulnerability of guerrilla operations to defection from within. Consequently, enlisting only those loyal and capable became a crucial component of the LTTE’s ability to inflict damage upon the state, not to mention its power to withstand state offensives. This need for reliable agents further explains why the LTTE invested considerable resources into developing social incentives, relying on propaganda and social networks for the recruitment of new agents during this period. The principal social incentives the group offered included the personal security of its members, opportunities for revenge, and Tamil nationalism. The group initially relied on social networks to promote the cause and recruit its members, with most of its leaders originating from the same village and elementary school on the Jaffna peninsula (Staniland 2012). Moreover, most members of the group belonged to the same caste. As the group grew in number, the LTTE organized propaganda and printed newspapers and journals to reach out to more people. The LTTE issued newspapers and journals in Tamil and English and called for more volunteers and financial contributions (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1994: 49–50). The LTTE’s publications included Viravenkai (Brave Tiger, Tamil paper defunct by 1994), Tamil Voice International (English magazine), Tamil Ilam (Tamil magazine), Velliyakka (Revelation), Erimalai, and video tapes. While the EPRLF also published a journal Ilapporali: Iniye Tamil Makkal (Hence, Tamil People), the LTTE excelled at issuing these publications, which are indicative of its commitment to recruiting volunteers. The LTTE also organized ceremonies to glorify members who had died during their missions, the most famous of which was Heroes Day on November 27, at which Prabhakaran gave a speech to commemorate the dead. The LTTE abstained from the use of pecuniary incentives or force to recruit its members (Swamy 2003, 2006). Except for the provision of food and uniforms, the LTTE provided few material incentives. It also did not use force for recruitment. As the number of applicants increased, the group used a screening mechanism to tighten its recruitment process and keep out those less qualified. Even when the group required more combatants, it rarely resorted to force. Although observers noted some incidents of abduction by the LTTE in this phase, especially in the early 1990s, these cases appear to be marginal aberrations rather than a reflection of the LTTE’s general recruitment strategy. The LTTE’s concerns about the quality of its agents is evident in its introduction of additional selection mechanisms in the 1980s. When the number of applicants increased, the LTTE found that inducement with social incentives and self-selection by agents was unsatisfactory for keeping out unqualified members, and they subsequently introduced a screening mechanism. Three events increased the number of applicants, not only for the LTTE but also for Tamil militant groups in general (cf. Swamy 2003). First, in the early 1980s, the Indian government started to provide material support to Tamil militant groups and harbor them

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on its soil. In 1971, as the Indian government assisted Eastern Pakistan in gaining independence from Pakistan – as Bangladesh – Tamils in Sri Lanka expected India to do the same for them in the north of the island. This expectation for continuous support from India in the coming years reduced peoples’ perception of the personal risks involved in joining militant groups; some even expected to receive financial benefits through joining. The second event that increased the number of applicants to the LTTE was the Black July of 1983. After this event, many young Tamils sought security and revenge, and joined militant groups. The dramatic increase in the number of applicants resulted in greater diversity among its members, which consequently undermined the discipline within the militant groups. To minimize this problem, the LTTE introduced a screening mechanism, rejecting all applicants at their first and second visits to the group and recruiting only those who persevered and visited a third time (Swamy 2003). This practice discouraged those who were insincere and uncommitted from joining the group. These particular applicants either gave up joining any militant group or chose to participate in other Tamil militant groups. Finally, the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) operations in the late 1980s also encouraged Tamils to join the LTTE for security or for revenge. The IPKF reportedly committed indiscriminate violence against Tamil civilians and angered the local population. The most notable example is the female suicide bomber who assassinated Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991. IPKF soldiers had previously gang-raped her and killed all four of her brothers. Revenge was thus the primary motivation for her to commit herself to this assassination operation.1 It is noteworthy that the theories of outside options do not explain the LTTE’s reaction, especially to the 1983 riots. According to the theories of outside options, the LTTE should have shifted its recruitment practice from the use of incentives to the use of force in reaction to the riot. At the very least, the group should have reduced the amount of resources dedicated to recruiting new agents. The riot was significant, as it signaled the Sri Lankan’s lack of commitment to protecting Tamil civilians through its failure to protect them from the Sinhalese riot. This event, therefore, greatly reduced the utility of outside options for agents. In fact, the group invested more resources in the recruitment of agents by establishing a new selection mechanism (Swamy 2003). It is possible to explain this move by the LTTE only by considering the group’s concern over the quality of the agents it enlisted. The LTTE’s commitment to recruitment by inducement with social incentives is also observable through its reactions to shortages of manpower. Instead of providing material incentives or resorting to the use of force, the group intensified its propaganda and targeted a new pool of the population for recruitment. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, the group intensified its guerrilla activities, fighting battles not only with the state military forces but also with other Tamil militant groups and the IPKF. As a result, the LTTE found itself in need of more combatants. To meet this demand, they could have used force or pecuniary incentives to recruit more agents. However, the group did not use those recruitment techniques and instead resorted to two other measures.

76

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First, the group intensified its propaganda activities. According to Narayan Swamy, in the first half of the 1990s, the group “had been issuing appeals all over the Sri Lanka’s northeast urging Tamils to join its ranks. Many did join. Still, Kalathil repeatedly underlined the shortage of fighters and even moaned that the young did not seem to realize the gravity of the situation. LTTE literature said although its strength was massive, it was spread all over the sprawling northeast and the numbers present in Jaffna peninsula were not enough to prevent a largescale offensive by the Sri Lankan army” (Swamy 2006: 344). The second measure taken to recruit more members to the LTTE was to new categories of the population, such as Muslims and children. (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1994: 31 n90). In the beginning, the LTTE tried to attract the Muslim community, who comprised 17 percent of the population in the north and east. However, these attempts were not met with success. The majority of Muslims were extremely wary of the concept of an independent Eelam and unhappy with the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces. Moreover, in terms of religion, the majority of the members of the guerrilla groups were Hindus (Samaranayake 1997). Another population group that the LTTE tried to recruit was children (University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) 1995). According to the University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna (UTHR (J)), children were reportedly working as sentries for Tamil militant groups as early as the mid-1980s. However, the LTTE started to use children for combat around November 1987, as the group entered battles against the IPKF. The LTTE is reported to have used children as young as ten years old to carry out assassinations in Jaffna. The following excerpts are from a report of the UTHR (J) (1995). From 1990, the LTTE’s methods of enlisting children were initially relatively subtle. The methods employed included displaying cut outs and poster pictures of dead cadre all over, patriotic songs, exhibits of representations of Sri Lankan Army atrocities, meetings in schools, LTTE versions of history in school curricula with compulsory tests and a general exhibition of military glamour. Even children’s playgrounds and parks were designed with mock weapons to give children a feeling that they were playing in a battle ground. A common picture seen everywhere in Jaffna in 1990 was of an LTTE soldier holding children either side and walking towards a hill top where a gun was planted upside down. This symbolically portrayed the vision of the LTTE. From early March 1995 even as the recent peace talks were supposed to be going on, LTTE propaganda wing leader Thamil Chelvan addressed school children in the Rural North announcing preparations for the next round of war and calling for volunteers. Recruitment took an aggressive turn, particularly when the war became a physical fact from 19th April. There was a sharp increase in the invasion of schools and tutories in Jaffna by the LTTE to have recruitment sessions. A Student’s Revival Week was announced beginning 6th June targeting students in the mid-teens who were to be subjected to intense propaganda and the screening of action videos.

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Although the LTTE intensified its recruitment drive for volunteers, the group still refrained from acts of forcible recruitment during this period. Dagmar HellmannRajanayagam (1994) denied allegations of forcible recruitment by the LTTE, and Stephen Hopgood (2005: 60–1) endorsed her view. True, it seems implausible to deny any act of forcible recruitment, as the reports by UTHR (J) as quoted above suggest instances of forcible recruitment by the LTTE. Still, the number of such instances appears to be limited. For example, Chris Hobbs, Helga Hanks and Harendra de Silva interviewed nineteen former LTTE child soldiers in prison in 1994 and found that only one of them was forcibly enlisted in the group, while the other members were volunteers (Hobbs, Hanks, and Silva 2001). Overall, the group did not make it a part of its recruitment strategy to use force. To summarize, in its first phase, the LTTE relied primarily on inducement for recruitment because the group adopted terrorism and guerrilla warfare as its military strategies. In addition to other organizational features of the group, these strategies rendered the group’s operations highly vulnerable to information leakage. The LTTE also relied on social incentives and ex ante screening, so that it enlisted only those identified as loyal and capable. Even when the group fell short of human resources, the LTTE tried to solve the problem without resorting to other forms of recruitment. As explored below, these conditions changed in the second phase.

Phase II: coercion – conscription In the latter half of the 1990s, the LTTE started to use force to recruit its agents. This change was triggered by the group’s loss of the Jaffna peninsula to the state military forces in 1995. Through this military defeat, the LTTE learned that they needed to fight using conventional warfare to withstand the state’s military offensives. The establishment of a conventional army meant that the group would need to increase its numerical strength. Upon the successful establishment of a conventional army, however, the group’s military operations became somewhat less vulnerable to information leakage. In addition, the group controlled a substantial amount of territory in the northeastern part of the country and thus could install an effective monitoring and sanction mechanism at a relatively low cost. It became urgent for the group, therefore, to solve the under-participation problem even at the expense of a more intensive problem with indiscipline and desertion. As the LTTE started to prepare itself for conventional warfare, it faced a shortage of manpower.2 This problem was further aggravated by the government’s Operation Jayasikurui from 1997 to 1999, as this reduced the number of LTTE cadres to fewer than 4,000. If the group were to carry out only guerrilla warfare and terror attacks to harass the state military forces, this number might have been sufficient. In fact, in the late 1980s, when the group had only 3,000 combatants and had to fight against the IPKF with its approximately 75,000 soldiers, the LTTE still continued to depend mostly on the recruitment of volunteers using social incentives due to the critical importance of keeping only reliable members for guerrilla warfare. However, by 1997, the LTTE had a territory with an

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approximately 100 km defense line, and the group decided to defend it by forming a conventional army and fighting positional warfare. This strategy required a high number of combatants. More significantly, their military strategy for defense did not rely heavily on secrecy and surprise attacks. The decision to initiate forcible recruitment strategy was made easier, however, thanks to the group’s control of the territory in the northeastern part of the country. It was possible to install a conscription system and monitor and sanction their agents with some effectiveness. As a result, the group simultaneously increased its numerical strength and kept the problems of indiscipline and desertion under control through an effective monitoring and sanction mechanism in its territory. The importance of territorial control and of the monitoring and sanction capacity in the LTTE’s shift from social incentives to force is evident in the LTTE’s reliance not only on abductions but also on a conscription system. When the LTTE formed what they called a ‘volunteer force’ in approximately 1997, it consisted of forcibly recruited part-time combatants. Importantly, the LTTE ordered each family to offer one person to serve in the group for one week of every month. The size of this volunteer force approached 15,000 by 2004.3 However, this system did not solve the shortage of manpower. In 2002, the LTTE started conscription (a ‘one family, one person’ policy) to recruit one full-time combatant from each family.4 The following quotation from an interview with Harendra de Silva on August 4, 2004, then chair of the National Child Protection Authority of Sri Lanka, signifies the change in the LTTE’s recruitment practice: “In 1994, I found that one in nineteen child recruits was abducted. Now in 2004, the reverse is true and only one in nineteen is a volunteer” (Harendra de Silva, quoted in Human Rights Watch 2004: 16). It appears that the LTTE copied this policy from India. In the northern part of India, the government adopted this policy to secure soldiers to fight against Pakistan.5 The LTTE followed this example to solve its manpower problem. These practices effectively held the families of LTTE members hostage. If an agent deserted the group, the LTTE could pursue that agent to his or her home. If the agent escaped to the government-controlled zone, the group could still punish family members and those in his or her home community. This system thus contributed to the retention of agents inside the LTTE. It would require further investigation to ascertain the exact scale of this conscription system and how well it functioned. For example, Human Rights Watch reported that LTTE members visited villages and ordered residents to offer one child from each family at village meetings and through intermediary priests (Human Rights Watch 2003: 16–21, 23). However, most of the reported cases occurred in the Eastern Province, especially in Batticaloa. As for the control of agents recruited through conscription, existing reports indicate that the system was successful. The LTTE conducted a type of census to ascertain the number of residents in each village, recruited one person or sometimes more from each family, and found them back at their homes if they deserted. Additionally, since Tamil women usually keep their hair long, the LTTE had their female combatants cut their hair short so that it would be easier for the group to identify deserters in

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villages.6 However, there are also reports of attempts by deserters to avoid capture by the LTTE, sometimes escaping to cities without returning home or moving their families to other villages. For example, an LTTE cadre escaped from the group and reported to the military after staying one-year in a secret location and changing his name and religion (The Statesman 2003). The LTTE did not suspend its forcible recruitment drive even after the 2002 CFA.7 According to Höglund, the SLMM received 1,955 complaints against the LTTE between 2002 and 2005, of which 670 concerned the forcible recruitment of children and 348 of adults (Höglund 2005: 160–1). UNICEF documented 4,600 cases of child recruitment by the LTTE.8 Although the figure includes those who volunteered, it is safe to assume that most of the recruited were forced to join the group. Human Rights Watch also reported the LTTE to have resorted to force to recruit a significant number of children during the ceasefire (Human Rights Watch 2004).9 Human Rights Watch quotes a UNICEF representative, saying that “An enormous recruitment drive began with the ceasefire. Reporting increased, and we received SOS calls from schools. The LTTE had access to government-controlled area like never before” (Human Rights Watch 2004: 15). In 2003, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government signed the Action Plan for Children Affected by War. However, the plan turned out to be ineffective.10 While the LTTE released 831 children, from June 2003 through October 2004, UNICEF registered 1,424 cases of recruitment and 323 cases of re-recruitment by the group during this period (Human Rights Watch 2004: 50 n153). The initiation of recruitment by force did not lead the LTTE to discontinue its efforts to recruit volunteers using social incentives. The group persisted in its propaganda campaigns to enlist more volunteers than it did in the previous phase (Herath 2012, Human Rights Watch 2004: 21–4). Their cadres visited schools to give speeches and show films about the LTTE and assigned schools to set examinations on the history of the LTTE to their students. In August 2004, when the LTTE cadres made house-to-house visits in villages in Trincomalee district, they also performed street plays to motivate people to cooperate with them. To summarize, these two factors – the LTTE’s adoption of conventional warfare and its territorial control – fostered its use of force for recruitment in the second phase. The adoption of conventional warfare raised the priority of solving the under-participation problem and securing a greater number of members at the expense of the level of agent compliance. As a conventional army is relatively invulnerable to information leakage, the group did not automatically need its agents to be highly loyal. At the same time, while the group remained fairly vulnerable due to its inferior military power and geographical location, territorial control allowed the LTTE to effectively monitor and sanction its agents. Consequently, the group could afford to recruit those who were less loyal or capable while still keeping its retention rate relatively high. Together, these factors propelled the LTTE from its reliance on inducement with social incentives or ex ante screening to the use of force for recruitment with an effective retention mechanism in its second phase.

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Importantly, the shortage of manpower in itself does not explain the LTTE’s resort to the use of force as a means of recruitment. As discussed earlier in this chapter, in its first phase, the LTTE did not opt for such recruitment strategies, even when they fell short of manpower. It was only after the LTTE’s loss of the Jaffna peninsula that the leadership understood the urgency of shifting both of these strategies: it required a ‘shock’ for the LTTE leaders.

Phase III: coercion – conscription and abduction In the third phase, the LTTE remained fairly vulnerable to information leakage and required a high number of agents regardless of their quality to maintain conventional warfare. However, Karuna’s defection made it possible for the Sri Lankan state to exploit the vulnerability of the LTTE. The group’s vulnerability, combined with the leakage of information through Karuna, greatly increased the risk of organizational defeat for the LTTE. These changes explain why, in its third phase, the LTTE increased its use of force for recruitment through both abductions and its conscription system. Accordingly, while Karuna’s defection did not change either the LTTE’s military strategy or the nature of its recruitment strategy, it led the group to intensify its recruitment practices in anticipation of a fully fledged war against the state. Thus, the LTTE increased its forcible recruitment practices, mostly through conscription but also through abductions. This event and the subsequent responses by the state and the LTTE are of critical importance in testing the informational theory. However, I will defer an in-depth discussion of desertion and its impact on rebel groups to Chapter Seven. Here, I will just briefly summarize the impact of Karuna’s defection on the recruitment practice of the LTTE. In essence, the informational theory of rebel recruitment explains why Karuna’s defection motivated the LTTE to intensify its forcible recruitment drive, rather than recruiting by incentive, by highlighting how the information leakage from the LTTE to the state through the Karuna faction brought about the LTTE’s organizational decline and shortened the time horizon of its leaders. While the 2002 CFA and the presence of the SLMM exerted some pressure against the outright use of violence, the LTTE anticipated and prepared for a direct military confrontation with state military forces. Based on this anticipation, the LTTE started to recruit members more aggressively in the third phase. Right after Karuna’s defection, the LTTE tried to re-recruit cadres released by Karuna in the Eastern Province (Human Rights Watch 2004). As Eelam War IV erupted in Mavil Aru and Mutur in Eastern Province in July 2006, the LTTE further intensified its forcible recruitment practices, not only through the conscription system but also through abductions. While the LTTE engaged in terrorism in Colombo and other parts of the country and conducted air attacks, the group needed to rely on its conventional army to defend itself and thus recruited as many agents as possible to slow down state military offensives, although these

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actions were ultimately futile. During Eelam War IV, from July 2006 until the LTTE’s surrender in May 2009, the LTTE is reported to have recruited a large number of people, mostly by force. In the third phase, the LTTE intensified its recruitment drive by force. In addition to the conscription system, the LTTE started to use abduction to recruit more personnel. An analysis of a survey conducted by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence (MOD) among ex-combatants indicates the following trend: from the signing of the CFA in 2002 until 2004, the number of members recruited remained more or less constant (Ferdinando 2010). However, in 2005, the LTTE intensified its drive for recruitment, doubling the number of new recruits from the previous year. The figure further increased in 2006, when Eelam War IV started.11 Nevertheless, the analysis at this point is only indicative, as it is based on an analysis of a survey among ex-LTTE combatants captured by the Sri Lankan state.

Summary In this section, I have discussed the shifts in the recruitment practices of the LTTE, from its inception in 1977 to its demise in 2009. To explain these shifts, I focused on the relatively cheap retention mechanism available to the LTTE, the changes in its military strategy, and the leakage of information through deserters. These factors affected the LTTE’s priorities in solving the three types of agency problems – under-participation, indiscipline, and human resource turnover – and thus its recruitment strategies. The LTTE was initially reliant on terrorism and guerrilla warfare and thus required a relatively small number of agents with high loyalty and capacity. When the LTTE lost the Jaffna peninsula to the state military in December 1995, the group’s leadership realized that it needed to form a conventional army to defend the area under its control. Consequently, the group initiated the use of force for recruitment to meet the high numerical demand for combatants, to form long defense lines, and to effectively carry out positional warfare. An important point, however, is that the LTTE’s inferior position kept the group reliant on retaining its informational advantage. Accordingly, the group had to ensure high discipline among its cadres. The LTTE’s shift to the use of force for recruitment, then, was facilitated by its control of territory, which allowed the group to set up a conscription system rather than solely relying on abduction. As a result, the group had a relatively high ability to monitor and sanction its agents and thus did not need to select out those with low levels of loyalty. Karuna’s defection in April 2004 was a significant blow to the LTTE, however, undermining its security by providing the state with leaked confidential information and heightening the risk of full-fledged warfare, which eventually did materialize in July 2006. The LTTE, under risk of annihilation, initiated a full-scale forcible recruitment strategy to withstand the state military offensive, but their attempts were in vain.

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Additional analysis: internal variation across tasks – Black Tiger Before moving on to a discussion of the LRA, let me briefly discuss the recruitment of the Black Tigers. In this section, thus far, I have focused on explaining changes in the recruitment practice of the LTTE over time. It is, however, important to note that the LTTE used an additional procedure to select recruits to be assigned to a unit called the Black Tigers. This internal variation along a functional line provides another opportunity to test the relative explanatory power of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The LTTE had a suicide unit popularly known as the Black Tigers. While it is not clear exactly when the unit was formed, it is generally thought to have been in the late 1980s. Approximately 100 members belonged to the Black Tiger unit at any one time. The unit received orders directly from Prabhakaran and performed not only suicide missions but also missions that involved a high risk of death such as commanding dangerous guerrilla attacks on the state military forces (Hopgood 2005).12 These types of operations are highly vulnerable to information leakage. Additionally, these tasks demand extraordinary physical and mental strength from agents. The LTTE had an internal mechanism – through voluntary application – to select members of Black Tiger unit. The LTTE commanders usually kept the names of applicants to the Black Tigers in their own units. When the unit needed more agents, Prabhakaran informed the commanders of the number of agents and qualifications needed. The commanders then recommended eligible applicants from their lists. Applicants then went through a series of tests to join the Black Tiger unit. The identities of all Black Tigers were kept secret, with even their colleagues in their original units remaining unaware of their Black Tiger assignments. The LTTE made extensive use of social incentives to recruit members to the Black Tigers. The group used pictures of Black Tigers who died in operations on posters. They also ordered local Tamils to treat families of deceased Black Tigers with respect. It is reported, for example, that these families were given priorities in receiving food and other commodities from the LTTE. In addition, the LTTE provided a significant amount of money to the families of Black Tigers who committed suicide attacks. The rewards were made not to Black Tigers themselves but to their families, and they were only made after a Black Tiger completed an operation (Singer 2006). These conditions reduced the incentives for Black Tigers to defect in their operations. If they failed to complete the mission, their families would not receive the reward. More importantly, the LTTE knew the whereabouts of their families and could punish them if the agents defected to the state. To summarize, the high vulnerability of the Black Tigers’ operations to information leakage made the LTTE highly cautious and selective in recruiting its members. The group identified the candidates for the team only from among its longstanding members with recommendations from their commanders, significantly reducing the information asymmetry with the potential recruits. Upon

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recruitment, the group provided both social and material incentives coupled with an effective monitoring and punishment regime. The LTTE’s recruitment practice for the Black Tigers demonstrates that when a rebel group’s operations are extremely vulnerable to information leakage, neither an ex ante screening nor an effective retention mechanism will suffice in itself. The group, therefore, combined the two mechanisms to ensure a high level of discipline and a low risk of desertion among its members. This practice is consistent with, and provides an additional support for, the informational theory of rebel recruitment. Notably, the LTTE’s practice goes against the resource curse theory, which excludes the possibility that a resource-rich group would maintain high discipline among its members. The theories of outside options do not offer much explanatory power here, either, as these theories direct our attention to the variation across tasks in terms of the ease of monitoring and punishment but not in terms of the effects of the agents’ desertion and defection from the tasks on the group.

The LRA: from inducement with ex ante screening to coercion with ex post screening The LTTE maintained a consistent power relationship with the state, the same geographical location, and continued to lack a safe haven. Therefore, the changes in its military strategy and the size of its territory drove the alterations in its recruitment strategy from the first to the second phase. In the example of the LRA, however, the group’s military strategy mostly remained constant: it conducted guerrilla warfare against the Ugandan state. The group never effectively controlled a territory, either. While the LRA was weaker than the state military forces, the state’s presence was also weak. Additionally, the region in which the group operated was surrounded by weak states. What did change for the LRA, in contrast to the LTTE, was its acquisition of a safe haven. As a group acquires or loses a safe haven, the expected costs of agent desertion are altered, shifting the priority of concerns toward or away from the turnover rate for the group. Consequently, the group changed its recruitment strategies to meet the changing demands for human resources. The first phase started with the birth of the group in 1988 and ended in early 1994. In this phase, the group was vulnerable to information leakage and had no effective retention mechanism. Therefore, the group predominantly used incentives, particularly social incentives, for recruitment. The second phase began in 1994 and ended in 2001; during this period, the group significantly reduced its vulnerability to information leakage through the acquisition of an external safe haven in southern Sudan, and thus the group started to conduct large-scale abductions. The third phase commenced in 2002 and ended in 2006 when the group moved to the Garamba National Park in the DRC. The LRA’s loss of their safe haven in southern Sudan and mass desertions from the group together explain the group’s intensified abduction drive in this phase. These two factors significantly undermined the prospect of the LRA’s survival, shortening

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the rebel leaders’ time horizon. From this viewpoint, the LRA’s abduction drive was a part of its response to its own decline. Similar to the LTTE in its third phase, the LRA’s last phase is critical for testing the validity of the informational theory. I will discuss this point in more detail in Chapter Seven. The alternative theories do not explain these changes in the recruitment strategy of the LRA. For example, the resource curse theory does not explain the LRA’s shift from inducement to coercion. As in the case of the LTTE, the shift in the recruitment strategy of the LRA took place without a leadership change. As the resource curse theory explains variation in the recruitment practice of rebel groups as being based on the ‘types’ of the group members, the theory also does not hold in the case of the LRA.13 The theories of outside options do not provide a sufficient explanation, either. The government almost always offered amnesty to deserters from the LRA in the second and third phases, when the LRA relied on coercion for recruitment. The economy in Uganda made slow but steady growth over time, increasing the utility of the outside option for agents (cf. The World Bank 2009). Hence, the utility of the outside options for the recruits improved over time. The LRA lacked control over a defined territory, and thus also lacked an effective monitoring and punishment mechanism. Hence, while the theories of outside options predict that a rebel group will resort to coercion when it expects a low desertion rate, the LRA continued to rely on coercive recruitment even when they observed a continuous outflow of deserters from the group. Before concluding this section, I will briefly discuss the LRA’s recruitment of collaborators to demonstrate the validity of the informational theory, explaining the variation in the LRA’s recruitment strategy by the tasks the agents perform, although this attempt is exploratory rather than conclusive in its endeavor.

Phase I: inducement In this phase, the LRA lacked any safe haven. In fighting the National Resistance Army (NRA), therefore, the LRA had to rely to a significant extent on the secrecy and capabilities of its agents for survival. In this condition, it was necessary for the group to select only those who were loyal and capable. The demand for such agents was not so acute for the LRA as for the LTTE in its first phase; the Ugandan state was much weaker than the Sri Lankan state, and the LRA was operating in a relatively vast terrain with weak neighboring states. The LTTE, in contrast, was operating in the coastal area of an island country. Still, with the absence of an effective retention mechanism and the potential cost of information leakage to the state, it was important for the LRA to pay attention to the qualities of their agents to maintain internal discipline and suppress the turnover rate in order to survive, even at the expense of its numerical strength or under-participation problems. The group, therefore, recruited its agents primarily through inducement, especially with social incentives. In the first phase, the LRA primarily relied on social incentives to recruit volunteers, although the group also carried out abductions. The group exploited

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social networks, Acholi nationalism, personal security concerns, members’ desire for revenge, and Alice Auma’s religion of Lakwena to attract members. First, the group drew its members primarily from the remnants of Auma’s Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) and the Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA). Alice Auma claimed to be a medium of the Holy Spirit Lakwena and organized a rebel group called the HSM in December 1986 (The Associated Press 1987, Behrend 1998, 1999). The group engaged in conventional warfare – that is, positional warfare forming a frontline – and marched from Kitgum District, where they originated, through Gulu District toward Kampala, defeating the NRA contingents. It was only in Jinja, just 80 km away from Kampala, that the NRA finally defeated the HSM in November 1988. Alice Auma escaped to Kenya with seven of her followers, where she died in 2007. Some of the remnants of the group joined Kony in setting up the LRA. The UPDA was a secular rebel group fighting against the NRM government in northern Uganda.14 It mainly consisted of remnants of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). Under the leadership of Walter Ochola, the UPDA signed a peace agreement with the government on June 3, 1989. However, a large number of its members splintered away from the UPDA and continued to engage in guerrilla warfare against the government. According to a report, one breakaway member of the UPDA, Brigadier Odong Latek, joined the LRA with over 600 former UPDA soldiers and an estimated 500 militias (The Xinhua General Overseas News Service 1988).15 Second, the LRA provided protection and opportunities for revenge for the Acholis and other northerners in Uganda. The NRM/A took power in Uganda after six years of civil war in 1986. While the NRA was relatively well-disciplined (e.g. Weinstein 2006), the group still committed atrocities against civilians during and after the civil war. Although there exists no systematic record of the NRA’s violence against civilians during this period, a series of interviews conducted by Chris Dolan in 1999 revealed that the people in northern Uganda still remembered instances of NRA violence against them personally or their immediate acquaintances during this period (Dolan 2000). Third, Kony effectively utilized the symbolism of the HSM to attract and retain people in the LRA. Despite her ultimate failure, Auma’s march made a strong impression on the northerners, partly because of its mystical characteristics.16 Auma told her combatants that the arrows of the NRA would never kill them and that they could march while singing hymns, without the use of shields, as long as they were loyal to the Holy Spirit. Auma also armed the HSM with sticks and stones, claiming that the former would turn into grenades thanks to Lakwena’s power. However, what amazed the Acholi people was the near-success of the HSM’s rebellion to take over Kampala. Reportedly a cousin of Alice Auma, Kony was in a good position to cultivate the people’s memory of the HSM, and he further claimed to be another medium of the Holy Spirit to attract agents.17 Kony alleged that he was a medium of Lakwena and three other spirits, who gave him orders about how to carry out the rebellion. Kony attempted to utilize this cult to recruit the local population by engaging himself with them and their beliefs,

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introducing various HSM rituals into the LRA.18 Periodically, he would perform ‘miracles’ in front of the local population.19 He also organized Mass every day, bringing both his combatants and local villagers to the same site, although he also prevented communication between the two groups of people.20 As a result of these efforts, the LRA was popular among civilians and received local support, especially between late 1989 and 1990 or 1991. As the UPDA had signed a peace agreement with the Ugandan state, the LRA served as the only vehicle through which the Acholis could continue armed rebellion, protect civilians, and possibly avenge the NRA.21 However, popular support for the LRA started to wane in approximately 1990–1991, due to the near-defeat of the LRA by the government and the increase in LRA abductions.22 Admittedly, in this phase, the LRA also used force for recruitment. However, the bulk of its members remained volunteers (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999). Additionally, for abduction, they selected individuals aged between their high teens and mid-twenties who looked strong. The group, therefore, was relatively selective in identifying abductees.23 The LRA reliance on social incentives for recruitment can be seen in the ways that their high-ranking officials joined the group. Among the 18 high-ranking officers of the LRA identified, only three, or 17 percent, joined the LRA through abduction. This figure may sound high, but we should keep in mind two things: first, as discussed below, more than 50 percent of those who held a high rank in the LRA between 1988 and 2008 were former abductees. By comparison, 17 percent is quite low. Second, all three of the officers who were abducted were former members of the UPDA. Since the splinter group of the UPDA voluntarily joined the LRA, it is reasonable to expect that the LRA used their local knowledge to identify for recruitment those potentially loyal and competent among the former UPDA members. In other words, the LRA may have utilized a screening mechanism to identify targets for recruitment.

Table 4.2 Abduction experience and former affiliation of the high-ranking LRA officers Period

Abducted

ULA

UNLA

UPDA

HSM

NRA

Total

1988–1994

3 17% 11 42% 13 62% 17 77%

0 0% 1 4% 0 0% 0 0%

8 44% 10 38% 3 14% 2 9%

17 94% 19 73% 12 57% 6 27%

6 33% 8 31% 5 24% 2 9%

2 11% 3 12% 1 5% 1 5%

18

1994–2001 2002–2005 2006–2008

*Some officers had multiple affiliations in the past.

26 21 22

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Phase II: abduction In April 1994, the LRA moved from northern Uganda to Sudan. The Sudanese government offered a safe haven for the group in southern Sudan and provided material support. Therefore, the LRA became much less vulnerable to information leakage. This change in its environment shifted the group’s recruitment priority from mitigating the problems of indiscipline and desertion to moderating the under-participation problem, leading the LRA to rely more on incentives in recruiting members. Starting in 1994, the LRA began to rely mostly on force, rather than incentives, to recruit its members (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999). In carrying out abductions, the group not only increased the number of locals they recruited but also became less selective in choosing abductees. In 1994, the High Command of the LRA ordered its commanders to strengthen the group’s power through a sharp increase in the number of abductions.24 The order was given under the leadership of Omona Komakech Field, the Field Commander at that time. Prior to 1994, the LRA abducted approximately 50 individuals per operation. However, in 1994, the LRA increased this amount, abducting between 100 to 200 people per operation and sometimes as many as 800 persons. Additionally, the commanders were allowed to be less selective in choosing abductees. Prior to this initiative, the LRA abducted only those physically fit and of a certain age, that is, high teens and early 20s. Now, the group abducted both much younger and much older persons, even individuals over 30.25 The SWAY project reports that the average age of abduction by the LRA rose by nearly four years (or more) from early and mid 1990s to 2003 and 2004 (Annan, Blattman and Horton 2006: 59). As the LRA intensified its abductions and grew in size, it introduced a military ranking system in 1995.26 Prior to 1995, the LRA had only two ranks within the group – commanders and privates. Commanders used to be called ‘lapwony (teacher)’. In 1995, the LRA started to assign military ranks to its commanders, and they were referred to by this rank.27 Among the LRA leadership, the number of abductees increased from 3 out of 18 (17 percent) in the previous phase to 11 out of 26 (42 percent) in this phase (See Table 4.2). The group recruited few volunteers during this period. Apparently, in approximately 2000, one individual joined the LRA with all of his family members. However, he had been suspected by the UPDF of collaborating with the LRA and thus had no choice but to join the group for the safety of his family. Importantly, as will be discussed in Chapter Five, the number of deserters from the LRA increased in this second phase. This trend is puzzling, as the theories of outside options, for example, suggests that a rebel group would not recruit its agents unless the group sees a good chance of retaining the agents successfully. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains this apparently inefficient recruitment strategy of the LRA as a result of its invulnerability to information leakage. Even though the LRA still lacked an effective retention mechanism, the LRA’s recruitment strategy shifted from the ex ante screening of agents through inducement to coercion and ex post screening because the group’s priorities shifted away from internal discipline and a low turnover rate.

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Phase III: massive abductions In the third phase, approximately from 2002 to 2006, the LRA’s power to hurt and power to resist the state was severely undermined for two reasons. First, the LRA’s loss of the external safe haven in southern Sudan, coupled with the UPDF’s efforts to expand the military road network, substantially increased the group’s vulnerability to information leakage. Second, the Ugandan state’s introduction of the Amnesty Law attracted many deserters from the group to report to the state, generating a constant outflow of information from the LRA to the state. These two developments, together, undermined the LRA’s power to resist and to hurt the state. Confronting this new situation, the LRA and the Ugandan state had a few options such as seriously committing themselves to negotiating a peace agreement, escalating the war to try to end it, and so on. While the two parties explored both violent and non-violent solutions, the LRA initiated a massive recruitment drive, violently abducting civilians in northern Uganda, for two reasons. First, the LRA needed to secure its manpower to increase the likelihood of its organizational survival. Given the group’s information asymmetry with the locals and the high cost of retention, coupled with the low supply of volunteers, coercion and ex post screening were the only solution for the group to secure its manpower. Second, the LRA attempted to demonstrate its power to hurt through the abduction drive to enhance its bargaining position in the peace negotiation. A survey conducted by Berkeley and Tulane Universities shows that the LRA seized more than 4,000 people in 2002 and over 6,000 in 2003 (See Figure 5.1 in Chapter Five). The magnitude of this abduction drive was unprecedented, even within the LRA’s rather violent history. According to this survey, in the second phase, the group abducted fewer than 2,000 individuals every year. In fact, the number of abductees decreased between 1999 and 2001 to somewhere below 1,000. Hence, this sudden increase in the number of abductees in the early to mid-2000s was remarkable. It should be noted here that the LRA had the options to silently withdraw from the soil of Uganda and stay quiet in the Garamba National Park in the DRC or to seriously commit itself to a peace negotiation and agreement. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains why the LRA resorted to a massive abduction drive once it decided to pursue a military course. However, it does not directly address the question of why the LRA (or the Ugandan state) did not pursue a more peaceful or silent path. I will address this question in Chapter Seven.

Summary The LRA’s recruitment strategy went through two changes. In the first period, from the late 1980s to 1994, the group was relatively benevolent and tried to induce volunteers through social incentives. In the second period, from 1994 to approximately 2001, the group used coercive means to recruit its agents. The shift occurred because the LRA reduced its vulnerability to information leakage

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through acquisition of an external safe haven in southern Sudan. In the third period, from 2002 to 2006, the group further intensified its practice of abduction. For the group experienced a constant outflow of information, while its vulnerability to information leakage rose because of its loss of safe haven in southern Sudan.

Additional analysis: internal variation across tasks – collaborators Even in the second and third phases of the LRA, the group often recruited socalled collaborators using incentives. These so-called collaborators often received pecuniary incentives from the LRA. The types of tasks they performed varied from working as a sort of spy – obtaining information about the location or plans of the UPDF and providing them to the LRA – to purchasing foods or other commodities at a market in town. The total number of collaborators is unknown. Some estimated that there were approximately 200 intelligence officers in Gulu District.28 Local people in Gulu town often say that this or that building was built by a former collaborator with the LRA, although it is often difficult to verify the credibility of such claims. Given that most LRA members were forcibly recruited and received virtually no pecuniary incentive, the case of these collaborators constitutes a puzzle. When the group was invulnerable to information leakage and the number of required agents was limited, why did they use pecuniary incentives to attract and retain these collaborators? The informational theory of rebel recruitment suggests that this strategy would be due to the vulnerability of these tasks to information leakage as well as the high cost associated with monitoring and sanctioning the agents engaged in these tasks. The tasks performed by collaborators fit this characteristic. The tasks of collaborators share a few common traits. These tasks are performed often, although not always, in urban areas where the Ugandan state has a relatively strong presence and where the LRA would have difficulty monitoring its agents. The LRA often needed collaborators to bring commodities, including foods or medicines, and information such as locations or strategic plans of the UPDF. As some of the agents were engaged in these tasks for the LRA over a long period, they needed to be loyal and competent. They could not appear suspicious in the eyes of their neighbors or of government officials. Of course, the types of tasks that collaborators performed still varied, as did, more importantly, the magnitude of damage that information leakage to the government could bring to the LRA. It was a genuine risk for the LRA that a collaborator might cooperate with the UPDF and inform them of the locations of LRA units, for example. The UPDF also approached local civilians to gain information about the LRA and its operations in exchange for pecuniary and other incentives.29 Some civilians worked for both sides. If a collaborator’s role was such that the potential damage from information leakage was very high, the LRA needed the collaborator to be not only capable but also loyal to the group.

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For this purpose, when approaching a would-be collaborator for the first time, the LRA officers would first talk to him and observe whether he showed any sympathy to the group before asking him to work as a collaborator. Considering the potential damage of defection, however, this screening process sometimes proved insufficient for securing only loyal agents, and the group preferred to rely on social incentives. The informational theory predicts that if a task that a collaborator performs puts the group in a highly vulnerable position, the group will offer social incentives to induce the agent.30 This strategy was often used with some collaborators. Some collaborators played critical roles on occasions such as peace talks. These collaborators were recruited specifically for this purpose several years before the actual start of the peace talks. Their tasks involved communication with supporters of the LRA within and outside of Uganda, being present in discussions with Ugandan or foreign government representatives, and meeting – even periodically serving as a personal security guard – top leaders of the LRA. The LRA agents never offered these collaborators pecuniary or other material incentives except for payment for expenses directly related to the tasks performed. Instead, the LRA conducted an extensive screening process of several years to assess the agents’ loyalty and competence in performing the abovementioned tasks. To give a few examples of the screening process, the LRA checked background information such as the locations of birthplaces, clan backgrounds, and the occupations of families and relatives. The LRA visited these collaborators intermittently, always unexpectedly and sometimes after several months without communication. The group would also ask them to carry information from one supporter to another and then would call the latter to confirm that the information had been transmitted correctly and in a timely manner.31 In this section, I examined the validity of the informational theory against the internal variation of the LRA’s recruitment strategies by assigned task. Admittedly, the evidence presented in this section is neither comprehensive nor conclusive. To test the validity of the informational theory against the internal variation of the recruitment strategy based on the agents’ tasks, it is necessary to develop a typology of the tasks performed in the LRA and assess whether the informational theory correctly predicts the recruitment strategies the LRA adopted for each task or position. Given the lack of information, however, it is highly difficult to conduct such a comprehensive test. Still, the available evidence provides additional, although tentative, support for the informational theory.

Conclusion In this chapter, I assessed the relative explanatory power of the informational theory against that of the resource curse theory and the theories of outside options, conducting a congruence test and, where possible, process tracing. For this purpose, I examined changes in the recruitment strategies of the respective rebel groups.

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The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains the changes in the recruitment practices of the LTTE and the LRA as well as the differences between the two groups. Admittedly, the informational theory does not fully explain the two groups’ choice of mass abduction as a recruitment strategy in their respective third phases. While the informational theory explains why these groups resorted to mass abduction rather than other recruitment strategies in these phases, it does not make clear why these groups did not conclude a peace agreement with the states or voluntarily surrender at an earlier point in time. In this sense, the explanation of the informational theory remains partial. However, the observed behaviors of the LTTE and the LRA in those stages were consistent with the predictions of the informational theory in that both groups took a sort of crisis action. Overall, I believe that the informational theory better explained the recruitment practices of the LTTE and the LRA than the alternative theories.

Notes 1 Robert Pape (2005: 226–30) provides a brief description of Dhanu’s background and her operation. 2 Interview, Colombo, March 15 (A), 2010. 3 Interview, Colombo, March 15 (A), 2010. 4 For more information, see footnote 36. 5 Interview, Colombo, March 17 (B), 2010. 6 It was reported on June 27, 2003, that the LTTE’s female cadres took a 22-year old girl captive and demanded that her brother rejoin the group. The brother had become a member of the LTTE two years prior to this incident and had received training in the Tharavani camp in Batticaloa. The abducted girl was reported to have been kept in the same camp (The Statesman 2003). 7 It should also be noted that the 2002 CFA prohibited abduction but not recruitment in itself. In fact, the government also carried out a military build-up during this period (Höglund 2005: 16). 8 The LTTE released 1,208 children during the same period (Human Rights Watch 2004: 49). 9 According to the report, UNICEF documented 3,516 cases of child recruitment between the signing of the 2002 CFA and November 2004, with the largest number of abductions taking place in Batticaloa. Human Rights Watch, however, estimates that the UNICEF database reflects only approximately 25 percent of abducted children due to the difficulties in communication between UNICEF and parents (Human Rights Watch 2004: 15 n14). However, it is important to note that the figure includes children recruited both by force and by incentives. 10 For a summary of the facts relating to the action plan, see UNHCR (2010). 11 For details, see Table 7.2 and its explanation in Chapter Seven. 12 Interview, Colombo, March 15 (A), 2010. 13 In fact, some scholars find the LRA’s use of violence toward civilians to be strategic and organizationally rational rather than a symptom of internal indiscipline (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999, Van Acker 2004, Vinci 2006). 14 The LRA was apparently less popular than the UPDA among northern Ugandans. A local civilian leader attributed this difference to the following three factors: i) the LRA committed more atrocities against civilians; ii) its military strategy had – according to popular perception – proved a failure at the time of Alice Auma’s

92

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28

29 30

Recruitment rebellion; and iii) the LRA rarely engaged in political propaganda to mobilize the population. Interview, Gulu, April 4, 2009. Latek and his associates are also believed to have moved the LRA away from the use of traditional methods such as stones and magical oils to the use of more conventional weapons (The Xinhua General Overseas News Service 1988). For details on the HSM, see Behrend (1998, 1999). A former Ugandan Minster of Education, Professor Isaac Newton Ojok joined the LRA in his serious belief of Alice’s message. He later surrendered to the government forces and denounced Alice (Unston 1988). Kristof Titeca (2010) provides an insightful discussion of the religious aspect of the LRA including its rituals. Frank Van Acker argues that the LRA sincerely aimed to achieve its religious goals (Van Acker 2004). Here is an example of such a ‘miracle’ performed by Kony: women in a village used to climb a hill to reach a river and obtain water in containers. As the slope of the hill was steep and the containers heavy, the women could easily fall down and become seriously injured. One day, Kony met them at the river and told them to walk down the hill leaving all the containers behind. The women followed his instruction and walked down the hill to find their containers full of water at the foot of the hill. Interview, Kampala, Uganda, February 4, 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, March 21 (D), 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 4, 2009. Interview, Gulu,Uganda, April 4, 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 16 (H, I), 2009. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 16 (H, I), 2009. The LRA became more active in abduction throughout the rainy seasons than in the dry seasons. In dry seasons, more villagers sleep outside in the bush to avoid capture by the LRA. In rainy seasons, they tend to sleep at home to escape from the rain. Interview, Gulu, April 17, 2009. The LRA established twelve rules for its members, ten of which were 1) do not drink alcohol; 2) do not smoke; 3) do not seduce women; 4) do not rape civilians; 5) do not point guns at your fellow men; 6) do not wrestle with your friends; 7) do not escape. The penalty for escape is execution; 8) observe the fast; 9) do not use cash; 10) do not hold private communication with your family or friends unless permitted. The level of observance, however, is not clear. The frequency of their communication with the LRA varied considerably over time and across collaborators depending on whether the officer in charge of a collaborator operated in geographical proximity and the nature of the tasks s/he carried out. Interview, Gulu, Uganda, April 10 (B), 2009. The UPDF often relied on Local Councils (LCs). Interview, Gulu, April 1, 2009. As the primary purpose of this book is to explain a rebel group’s choice between inducement and coercion, I do not discuss the choice between social and pecuniary incentives in Chapter Two. One insight from the resource curse theory is that the use of social incentives in recruitment attracts more sincere and loyal agents than the use of pecuniary incentives (Weinstein 2006, 2005). However, the resource curse theory argues that the resource endowment of a rebel group determines the types of incentives the group uses for recruitment. The informational theory of rebel recruitment, in contrast, takes a functional approach and explains a rebel group’s choice of recruitment strategy or combination of recruitment techniques with reference to the function those techniques serve. This is why the discussion about the use of social incentives to recruit a certain type of collaborator is more in line with the informational theory than with the resource curse theory.

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31 As is the case in other parts of the world, once a peace talk starts, collaborators may receive material benefits, such as fine clothes, accommodation in comfortable hotels, and good food. However, it is not the LRA but the Ugandan government, foreign governments, and international organizations that provide these luxuries. Moreover, the LRA does not mention such benefits when it first approaches would-be collaborators for this purpose. In fact, it is most likely that the LRA members who first contact the collaborators are unaware of the role these collaborators may play in the proceedings. Therefore, it is unlikely that the prospects of these benefits lure them into a position of collaboration with erstwhile enemies. If anything, the LRA disguised the prospects for such potential benefits to make the screening process more effective.

References Agence France Presse. 1995. “Tigers Execute 10 Tamil Dissidents.” August 16, 04:40 Eatern Time, Lexis Nexis Academic. Annan, Jeannie, Christopher Blattman, and Roger Horton. 2006. “The State of Youth and Youth Protection in Northern Uganda: Findings From the Survey for War Affected Youth.” In A Report for UNICEF Uganda. Accessed October 31, 2011. http://chrisblattman.com/projects/sway/ The Associated Press. 1987. “Kenya Captures Ugandan Rebel Priestess.” December 30, LexisNexis Academic. Beardsley, Kyle and Brian McQuinn. 2009. “Rebel Groups as Predatory Organizations: The Political Effects of the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (4): 624–45. doi:10.1177/0022002709336460. Behrend, Heike. 1998. “War in Northern Uganda: The Holy Spirit Movements of Alice Lakwena, Severino Lukoya & Joseph Kony (1986–1997).” In African Guerrillas, edited by C. S. Clapham, 107–18. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers. Behrend, Heike. 1999. Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985–97, Eastern African Studies. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers. Dolan, Chris. 2000. “What Do You Remember? A Rough Guide to the War in Northern Uganda 1986–2000.” COPE Working Paper. ACORD, London, UK. Doom, Ruddy and Koen Vlassenroot. 1999. “Kony’s Message: A New Koine? The Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda.” African Affairs 98 (390): 5–36. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a008002. Ferdinando, Shamindra. 2010. “Survey Reveals How Tigers Threw Untrained Children into Vanni Battle.” The Island, March 15. Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar. 1994. The Tamil Tigers: Armed Struggle for Identity, Beiträge zur Südasienforschung Bd. 157. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Steiner. Herath, Tamara. 2012. Women in Terrorism: Case of the LTTE. London, UK: Sapge Publications. Hobbs, Chris, Helga Hanks, and Hd de Silva. 2001. “Conscription of Children in Armed Conflict – A Form of Child Abuse: A Study of 19 Former Child Soldiers.” Child Abuse Review 10 (5): 299. doi:10.1002/car.708. Höglund, Kristine. 2005. “Violence and the Peace Process in Sri Lanka.” Civil Wars 7 (2): 156–70. doi:10.1080/13698280500422843. Hopgood, Stephen. 2005. “Tamil Tigers, 1987–2002.” In Making Sense of Suicide Missions, edited by Diego Gambetta, 43–76. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Human Rights Watch. 2003. “Sri Lanka: Political Killings During the Ceasefire.” August 7. Accessed February 7, 2010. www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/asia/ srilanka080603.htm. Human Rights Watch. 2004. “Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.” November, 16 (3). Accessed July 10, 2007. www.hrw.org/en/ reports/2004/11/10/living-fear. LexisNexis Academic. 2010. Accessed on June 17, 2010. http://www.lexisnexis. com/hottopics/lnacademic/ Pape, Robert Anthony. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. 1st ed. New York, NY: Random House. Samaranayake, Gamini. 1997. “Political Violence in Sri Lanka: A Diagnostic Approach.” Terrorism & Political Violence 9 (2): 99–119. doi:10.1080/09546559708427405. Singer, P. W. 2006. Children at War. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order. 2009. The Spatial And Temporal Distribution of Terrorist Activities and Government Humanitarian Efforts 1981–2009. Accessed March 5, 2010. www.defence.lk/gis/Final_Final61. swf. A GIS-based visual file. Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (1): 16–40. doi:10.1177/0022002711429681. The Statesman. 2003. “Tigers Abduct Trainee’s Sister.” June 28, LexisNexis Academic. Swamy, Narayan M. R. 2003. Inside an Elusive Mind, Prabhakaran: The First Profile of the World’s Most Ruthless Guerrilla Leader. Delhi: Konark Publishers. Swamy, Narayan M. R. 2006. 1994. Tigers of Lanka, From Boys to Guerrillas. 7th ed. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications. Titeca, Kristof. 2010. “The Spiritual Order of the LRA.” In The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality, edited by T. Allen and K. Vlassenroot, 59–73. London, UK: Zed Books. UNHCR. 2010. Fact Sheet: Action Plan for Children Affected by War, 2010. Accessed July 9, 2010. www.unicef.org/media/media_14893.html. University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Sri Lanka (UTHR (J)). 1995. Children in the North-East War: 1985–1995. Briefing 2. Accessed January 25, 2010. www.uthr.org/Briefings/Briefing2.htm. Unston, John. 1988. “Evil Alice.” Sunday Mail (QLD), June 12, LexisNexis Academic. Van Acker, Frank. 2004. “Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army: The New Order No One Ordered.” African Affairs 103 (412): 335–57. doi:10.1093/afraf/ adh044. Vinci, Anthony. 2006. “Greed-Grievance Reconsidered: The Role of Power and Survival in the Motivation of Armed Groups.” Civil Wars 8 (1): 25–45. doi:10.1080/13698240600886032. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2005. “Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (4): 598–624. doi:10.1177/ 0022002705277802. Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2006. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. The World Bank. 2009. World Development Indicators. Accessed April 30, 2010. http://databank.worldbank.org/databank/download/WDIandGDF_excel.zip. The Xinhua General Overseas News Service. 1988. “Former Upda Military Commander to Join ‘Holy Spirit Movement’.” August 23, LexisNexis Academic.

5

Desertion

Introduction In the previous chapter, I tested the validity of the informational theory of rebel recruitment against the recruitment practices of the LTTE and the LRA using congruence tests and process-tracing. The theory, however, also has implications for other aspects of rebel groups and states, such as the desertion rates within these groups, the states’ counterinsurgency strategies, and the conditions conducive to rebel decline and the termination of civil war. The main purpose of this and the subsequent two chapters is to assess the empirical validity of the causal mechanism contained in the informational theory of rebel recruitment by assessing the validity of these hypotheses against the cases of the LTTE and the LRA. More specifically, in this chapter, I will examine the patterns of desertion from rebel groups. In Chapter Six, I will assess whether the Sri Lankan and the Ugandan states strategically employed general amnesties as a part of their counterinsurgency strategies against the LTTE and the LRA, respectively. In Chapter Seven, I will examine whether the primary factors that led to information leakage from the rebel groups to the states, that is, massive desertions, constituted primary causes of the organizational declines of the LTTE and the LRA. Beyond the immediate purpose of testing the validity of the causal mechanism in the informational theory of rebel recruitment, I believe that these issues of desertion, state response, and rebel decline are in themselves of significant theoretical and policy concern, especially given the recent scholarly interest in the duration of civil wars (Fearon 2004, Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2004, Cunningham 2006). There are numerous anecdotes that indicate the significance of desertion and defection to the course of civil war, in particular, its conclusion. However, few theoretical studies place rebel member desertion at the center of their analyses, let alone its relationship with civil war termination.1 Without such analysis, the validity of the existing studies on the duration and termination of civil wars remains dubious, as they potentially suffer from missing variable bias. The analyses in this and the next two chapters are intended to fill this gap: to delineate the theoretical link between rebel members’ desertion and the termination of civil wars, or the lack thereof, so that political scientists can improve the existing studies on civil war termination.

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The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the validity of the hypothesis of the informational theory of rebel recruitment for predicting the desertion rates in rebel groups by assessing the patterns of desertion from the LTTE and the LRA. An initial assumption of the informational theory is that the recruitment techniques of rebel groups vary in their selection effects. This means that desertion rates from rebel groups are partly a function of the recruitment technique. The rebel groups, however, choose their recruitment techniques strategically in anticipation of these selection effects while being simultaneously mindful of the state’s potential response to exploit these effects. These factors, together, affect the desertion rates in rebel groups. My hypothesis is that the more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the lower the desertion rate in the group tends to be, regardless of its recruitment strategy. The informational theory’s implications for the desertion rates in rebel groups is compared with those of the alternative theories, which makes it feasible to assess the explanatory power of these theories. Below, I will first review the literature on rebel recruitment and desertion. I will then identify the observable implications of the informational theory for the desertion rates in rebel groups. I will then assess the validity of these implications in turn, conducting case studies on the LTTE and the LRA for various time periods.

Literature Despite its importance, the number of studies on desertions from rebel groups remains limited. In Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Albert Hirschman studied the choices made by members of an organization when the organization is in decline (Hirschman 2004). Hirschman noted that the decline of an organization prompts desertion, while a high level of loyalty among its members can keep them inside the organization and increase its chance of reforming. On the question of what raises the level of loyalty among the members of an organization, Peter Bearman (1991) and Roger Gould (1991) noted the significance of the relationship between the formal structure of an organization and the informal social networks among its members in the context of armed conflicts. They argued that when members of each unit in an organization share a preexisting social network, the unit tends to experience a low level of desertion. Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn (2003, 2004, 2008) have a similar finding in their studies on the American Civil War but go beyond the other studies by exploring the mechanism that lowers the desertion rates in those units in which members share a preexisting social network, such as a common neighborhood of origin. Costa and Kahn find that the deserters from those cells tend to move far away from their area of origin after their desertion and concludes that it is the reputational cost back home that lowers the risk of desertion among the members of those cells. This literature, therefore, indicates that the desertion rate tends to be higher during the organizational decline of a rebel group and that the desertion rates tend to

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be lower in groups that organize units based on members who share common networks due to the high reputational cost if they desert the group. These studies, however, share a limitation in their focus on unit-level loyalty. High unit-level loyalty does not necessarily translate into group-level loyalty. To keep a group cohesive, therefore, it is necessary to organize it so that the members from distinct preexisting networks develop horizontal ties among themselves (Johnson 2003, Staniland 2012).2 What are the implications of the alternative theories of rebel recruitment when explaining desertion rates in rebel groups? To assess the explanatory power of the informational theory of rebel recruitment, I will compare it with that of the theories of outside options because these theories have clear implications to this issue. Scholars of the resource curse theory for example, do not directly discuss the risks of desertion by rebel members. True, the theory posits that a resource-rich group is likely to attract those with short time horizons, while a resource-poor group tends to recruit those dedicated to the cause of the group. The implication could be that the former is more likely to experience a higher rate of desertion, while the latter is less likely to do so. Still, a problem remains with applying the theory here because neither the LTTE nor the LRA offered pecuniary incentives to its members, as discussed in Chapter Four. The LTTE was initially poor and accumulated economic resources through its extensive diaspora network. However, the group refrained from using pecuniary incentives to attract or maintain its members except for compensation to the families of suicide attackers. The LRA was poor more or less throughout its existence. When these two groups found social incentives insufficient to attract new recruits, they turned to coercion. The resource curse theory does not have much to say about the possibilities of desertion by coercively recruited members. An important implication of the theories of outside options is that desertion rates across rebel groups are constant and low except in cases of exogenous shocks. The theory assumes that rebel members have higher incentives for desertion when they find better options outside the group. However, they also predict that rebel groups are likely to adjust the amount or types of incentives, so that they maintain an equal chance of retaining all the members. From the perspective of these theories, organizational structure of a rebel group is also endogenous to the likelihood of the agents’ desertion. The theories also predict that rebel groups tend not to recruit those who have a high chance of desertion. For this reason, Scott Gates (2002) predicts the existence of a zone of non-recruitment between rebel groups and states. Of course, this does not mean that the utility of outside options does not affect rebel agents’ behavior. A sudden and radical increase in the relative utility of life for agents outside of the group, in comparison to life inside the group, can increase the likelihood of members’ desertion from the group. A sudden military setback or its prospect is an example. However, the effect of such an event should not be long-lasting, as these theories predict that the rebel group will adjust its recruitment practices and incentive structures to reduce the desertion rates.

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Importantly, the implications of the theories of outside options differ from those of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The most significant difference is the question of whether the theories expect rebel leaders to recruit agents even in anticipation of their desertion. The former theory does not expect this and instead assumes that the rebel leaders will maximize the efficiency of the organization by providing an appropriate amount of incentives (positive or negative) to retain members without incurring costs by recruiting those with a high chance of desertion. In contrast, the informational theory of rebel recruitment suggests that rebel groups may or may not recruit those with a high risk of desertion, depending on the groups’ types. If the group is vulnerable to information leakage, it would not recruit agents who are disloyal to minimize the risk of information leakage. However, if the group is not vulnerable to information leakage, they are more likely to recruit those with a high risk of desertion because they want to increase the group’s size and because they know that some recruits, though not all of them, will be of high quality and loyal to the group.

Information problems, rebel recruitment, and desertion The thrust of the prediction of the informational theory of rebel recruitment for desertion from a rebel group is that the desertion rate in a rebel group is dependent on the vulnerability of the group to information leakage, that is, the extent to which the group is reliant on secrecy for its power to damage and power to resist the state. Importantly, this holds true regardless of the recruitment strategy employed. The informational theory of rebel recruitment starts with the assumption that the two recruitment techniques, inducement and coercion, vary in their selection effects. The former tends to reduce the problems of indiscipline and desertion, while the latter tends to amplify them. However, these selection effects do not directly affect the desertion rates in rebel groups due to the rebel group’s strategic choice of recruitment strategy. A rebel group that is highly vulnerable to information leakage will tend to rely on coercion for recruitment only when the group has little information asymmetry with the agents or when the group has a cheap retention mechanism. The group takes such a strategy partly because it is aware of the selection effects of the two recruitment techniques and partly because it anticipates that the state will attempt to exploit the negative selection effect of coercion. As a result, rebel groups that are highly reliant on secrecy for power tend to experience a low desertion rate regardless of the recruitment strategy they employ. In contrast, a rebel group with low vulnerability to information leakage tends to rely more on coercion because it will not suffer much from members’ indiscipline or desertion. Rather, unlike predictions of the theory of outside options, it is a part of the group’s strategy to recruit a relatively large number of agents indiscriminately and select their agents ex post, with unqualified agents deserting the group. Rebel groups with low vulnerability to information leakage, therefore, tend to experience a high desertion rate.

Desertion Vulnerability to Information Leakage

Vulnerable

Vulnerable

Invulnerable

Cost of Retention Mechanism

High

Low

High/Low

Recruitment Strategy

Inducement

Coercion

Coercion

99

Low

No

Low

No

High

Yes

Desertion Rate

State offers Amnesty for Interest Dealignment

Desertion Rate

State offers Amnesty for Interest Dealignment

Desertion Rate

State offers Amnesty for Interest Dealignment

Figure 5.1 Desertion and a state amnesty offer Source: Created by the author.

Desertion hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the lower the desertion rate in the group will tend to be regardless of its recruitment strategies. The informational theory of rebel recruitment permits the possibility that a rebel group adjusts its organizational structure to moderate the likelihood of agents’ desertion, as the theories of outside options suggest. Still, the informational theory predicts that the groups more vulnerable to information leakage tends to experience a lower desertion rate because these groups tend to make it higher a priority to reduce their desertion rates.

Method A problem in testing this implication is the availability of data. Ideally, data should be acquired on all members of the LRA and the LTTE and on the number and timings of desertions from these groups. However, it is unfeasible to compile or find comprehensive data on deserters or on all the members of these groups. In the case of the LRA, I will rely on the report on the survey results compiled by the Berkeley–Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations Human Rights Center (Pham, Vinck, and Stover 2007). The Survey of War Affected Youth (SWAY) project, and the Ugandan Amnesty Commission and the International Organization for Migration also conducted surveys among the local population or among deserters (Annan, Blattman, and Horton 2006, Bean 2008, Beber and Blattman 2013). While these surveys lack information regarding those who still remain in the

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LRA or those members who died, they are still invaluable sources of data. I focus on the Berkeley–Tulane Initiative data because this project is the most comprehensive of the three. The SWAY project focused on Kitgram and Pader, two provinces in Northern Uganda, and the Amnesty Commission compiled data from only those who reported to the Amnesty Commission. The problem is much harder to solve in the case of the LTTE. After the LTTE surrendered to the government in 2009, a few agencies conducted a survey among ex-LTTE members, most notably the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). However, due to concerns over security for these ex-rebels, these organizations deny third parties access to the data. To conduct the analysis on the LTTE, therefore, I rely on data on desertion compiled from news reports in LexisNexis Academic (2010) and from qualitative accounts. Although a reliance on these data sources constitutes a problem, it is still possible to observe some desertion patterns.

Explanatory variables The informational theory of rebel recruitment directs our attention to the rebel groups’ vulnerability to information leakage. The theory predicts that a rebel group more vulnerable to information leakage will experience a smaller number of deserters. The theory also predicts that state amnesty offers will affect the likelihood of desertion. However, the theory predicts that the state’s decision to offer amnesty is itself affected by the rebel group’s vulnerability to information leakage. In this chapter, therefore, I will not treat the state’s amnesty decision; I relegate the discussion on amnesties to Chapter Six. The theories of outside options predict that a sudden shift in the power relations from the group to the state or the prospect of such a shift will temporarily increase the number of deserters, but not for long. I will therefore pay attention to military setbacks for the rebel groups. Finally, I will also discuss changes in the size of rebel groups, as this should also affect the number of deserters. I will assess whether the actual change in the number of deserters from the group conformed to the predictions of the informational theory, as well as the explanatory power of the theories of outside options.

The LTTE The observed changes in the LTTE’s rate of desertion support the informational theory. While the alternative theories’ predictions also conform to large trends in desertion from the LTTE, a closer examination reveals problems with these theories.

Prediction The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the desertion rates in the LTTE would be low in the first and second phases of the group and relatively high in the third phase. In the first phase, the LTTE faced information asymmetry

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with potential recruits, lacked an effective monitoring and sanction mechanism and was highly vulnerable to information leaks. Thus, the group relied primarily on inducement for recruitment. In the second phase, the group shifted its recruitment strategy to rely more on coercion. This shift occurred partly because a relatively cheap retention mechanism was available in the areas of their territorial control and partly because the group found it necessary to increase its numerical strength even at the expense of discipline and retention in order to shift its military strategy from terrorism and guerrilla warfare to conventional warfare. This diversification was a response to the loss of the Jaffna peninsula to the state military forces, which shocked LTTE leadership. Given the continuing vulnerability of the group to information leakage in the second phase, however, the informational theory of rebel recruitment posits that the group shifted its recruitment strategy out of confidence and only to the extent that the state’s efforts to induce desertions from the group would be ineffectual. The theory therefore predicts that desertion rates in the group would remain low in the second phase. The informational theory also predicts that the desertion rate in the LTTE would increase as the group shifted from the second phase to the third phase. The major event that marked this transition was Karuna’s defection. His defection was important for the LTTE not only because the group lost some 5,000 members but also because Karuna and his followers had vital information about the LTTE’s organization and strategy. The group expected this leakage of information to the state military forces to have a disastrous effect on its security, shortening the

Table 5.1 Desertion in the LTTE and the LRA LTTE

Period

LRA

Phase I

Phase II Phase III

May 1976– 1995

Late 1995– March 2004

April 1998– 2004– 1994 May 2009

1994– 2001

2002–2006

Long

Short

Long

Long

Short

High

High

High

High

High

Low

Low

High

High

High

High

High

High

Low

Low→High

Low

High

Low

High

High

Precondition Time horizon Long Independent Variable Information High asymmetry Cost of retention High→Low mechanism Expected cost of High desertion Dependent Variable Low Desertion rate

Phase I Phase II Phase III

102

Desertion

time horizon of the rebel leaders. The LTTE, therefore, further intensified its recruitment drive, even abducting children to augment its numbers. The informational theory predicts that this shift in the LTTE’s recruitment strategy further increased the number of disloyal or incapable members and additionally increased the desertion rate in the group.

Observed pattern of desertion in the LTTE In the first phase of the LTTE, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the group experienced only a small number of deserters. In the second and third phases, from the late 1990s to 2009, the most significant desertion was that led by Karuna. However, there were some reports of other desertions throughout this period. The number of deserters increased dramatically as the 2002 CFA was abrogated and the group neared its demise.

Phase I: organizational vulnerability and low desertion rate In the early 1980s, the LTTE had only several hundred members (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). Black July in 1983 increased the number of LTTE members to more than 2,000, and by 1995, the LTTE numbered 7,000. In this period, there were only a few reports of desertion from the LTTE. The first notable incident of desertion was led by Uma Maheswaran. Once a leader of the LTTE, Maheswaran broke away from the group with his followers. Some LTTE members were reported to have deserted the group around October and November 1988, in the face of the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). Otherwise, no LTTE member was reported to have left the group to side with the IPKF until its withdrawal in early 1991. Possibly the largest case of defection from the LTTE in this period was that of Mahattaya (e.g. Rajasingham 2002). The LTTE took custody of its former deputy leader and executed him on December 28, 1994, for an alleged plot to assassinate Prabhakaran in cooperation with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India. Except for these cases, there was almost no report of deserters from the group, except for a few cases mentioned during the fight between the LTTE and the IPKF from 1987 to 1990 and Eelam War II from 1990 to 1994.

Phase II: organizational vulnerability and low desertion rate In the second phase, the size of the LTTE ranged between 6,000 and 8,000 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). However, the number of deserters mostly remained low, although there were some hikes in the number of desertion incidents in the mid-1990s when the LTTE experienced a series of military setbacks. The first signs of change in the LTTE were reported in the mid-1990s as Eelam War III started. Previously, most LTTE members would take a cyanide capsule or at least try to commit suicide if they were arrested by the government. However, according to a comment by a police officer in the Special Investigation Unit in December 1995, newly arrested members of the LTTE stopped trying to take

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cyanide and, instead, easily confessed information during government interrogations (SLBC Radio External Service 1995). This was the first such report on the demoralization of LTTE cadres. The number of deserters increased in the late 1990s. From 1996 to 1998, as the state military forces advanced under the War for Peace program, there were several reports of LTTE members voluntarily surrendering to the government or attempting to do so. The scale of desertion was still small, however, ranging from one or two individuals to approximately 20 or 30 at any one time. Relatively largescale desertions occurred in late 1998 and early 1999. In October 1998, over 20 senior officers of the LTTE resigned their posts, claiming that the organization had little chance of military victory over the government forces (Xinhua News Agency 1999). On March 29, 1999, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) announced the surrender of more than 189 LTTE members upon the government’s takeover of Madhu in northern Vavuniya, the first incident of mass desertion in LTTE’s history (Agence France Presse 1999). Conversely, between April 1999 and the end of the second phase in March 2004, there were practically no reports of desertion from the LTTE. During this period, the LTTE made a significant military comeback with the introduction of forcible recruitment or conscription and positional warfare. By the early 2000s, the LTTE reached the crest of its territorial control, keeping more than 70 percent of the Northern and Eastern Provinces on its grip (see Figure 3.1). Hence, in phase II, the LTTE experienced a small number of deserters considering its size. President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s military initiative, ‘War for Peace’ and its success in undermining the LTTE’s territorial control including the Jaffna peninsula resulted in a few incidents of desertion from the group. However, even a series of military setbacks did not produce a continuous outflow of deserters. The LTTE appears to have been conscious of its organizational vulnerability, and initiated forcible recruitment because the group expected its monitoring and sanction mechanism to effectively moderate the negative effects of such practice.

Phase III In the third phase, the size of the LTTE initially dropped due to Karuna’s split from the group. The LTTE, however, hastened to recruit new members while rerecruiting the old, maintaining and even increasing its size to somewhere between approximately 7,000 and 11,000, at least until 2007 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 2009). The number of deserters from the group, however, increased dramatically during this period. The largest case of desertion occurred in March 2004 when Karuna split from the LTTE and released approximately 4,000 to 6,000 cadres, including 1,800 children under his control (e.g. International Crisis Group 2006: 8–9, Human Rights Watch 2004: esp. 58).3 The event itself marked the start of the third phase. Karuna’s defection was followed by an increase in the number of deserters from the group. Starting in 2006, a number of LTTE cadres deserted following the renewal of state military offensives against the group. Upon the government takeover of all areas formerly under LTTE control in Eastern Province, more than 500

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cadres surrendered to government forces. By the time of the official surrender in May 2009, more than 10,000 LTTE cadres had surrendered to government forces. Hence, in this phase, the number of LTTE deserters increased, first with Karuna’s defection and second with a significant military setback for the LTTE between the summer of 2006 and May 2009, which ultimately brought the group to its end.

Assessment The changes in the number of deserters from the LTTE roughly follow the prediction of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The theory does not explain some of the hikes in the number of desertions. The theories of outside options appear to be useful to explain these incidents, although they do not constitute anomalies to the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The informational theory is more persuasive in explaining why Karuna succeeded in defecting with so many followers.

Theories of outside options The theories of outside options explain the changes in the number of desertions from the LTTE to some extent. They predict that the desertion rates in the LTTE would be more or less constant and low and that they would rise when there are military setbacks for the LTTE. The observations in the first and second phases of the LTTE mostly conform to these predictions. An advantage of the theories of outside options is that they can explain some of the temporal increases in the number of deserters in the late 1980s in the first phase and in the late 1990s in the second phase. In both cases, many observers thought that the LTTE’s relative military power was in decline, and some of the group members most likely shared these perceptions. In 1987, the IPKF intervened and soon started fighting with the LTTE. While the LTTE eventually drove the IPKF off the island, it was to be expected that some of the group’s members would become pessimistic about the future of the group at this point, given the IPKF’s significant numerical advantage, and consider it safer to leave the group. The situation was similar in the late 1990s, when the then-president of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Kumarasinghe, initiated a so-called ‘War for Peace’ to exterminate the LTTE, investing a large amount in the state’s military assets. Consequently, the LTTE reduced the size of its operations from approximately 65 percent of the Northern and Eastern Provinces to approximately 50 percent, if only temporarily (Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence 2009). Therefore, it is not surprising that some of the LTTE members observed better opportunities for existence outside of the group. Another advantage of the theories of outside options is that they can explain some of the logic behind the defection by Karuna’s faction in the third phase. Compared with the LTTE members in the north, Karuna and his followers in the East were located closer to the state military forces. Additionally, the ethnic composition of the Eastern Province was more mixed than that in the north, which was predominantly Tamil. In the Eastern Province, Tamils constituted only about

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a third of the population, and the rest were Sinhala and Muslims. Accordingly, the LTTE leadership had less capacity to monitor and punish its members in the Eastern Province than leaders in the north had with their groups. Finally, the theories of outside options explain the sharp rise in the number of deserters from the LTTE between 2007 and 2009 as a result of military setbacks.

Informational theory of rebel recruitment The changes in the desertion rates in the LTTE are also consistent with the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The theory posits that a group vulnerable to information leakage tends to experience a low desertion rate because the group relies on inducement to screen its potential recruits ex ante and, when a cheap retention mechanism is available, relies on coercion only to the extent that the group’s retention mechanism allows. In the first and second phases, while the theories of outside options explain why some members deserted from the LTTE during IPKF intervention and Chandrika Kumarasinghe’s ‘War for Peace,’ the informational theory explains why, in spite of these prospective or actual military setbacks, the desertion rates in the LTTE remained low. Given the LTTE’s vulnerability to information leakage, the LTTE relied on inducement and additional tools to screen its recruits. Even after its shift to conscription in 1997, the number of deserters remained low. This fact reflects that the continuing vulnerability of the LTTE to information leakage led the group to introduce coercion only to the extent that its territorial control and retention mechanism allowed. As for the third phase, the informational theory better explains Karuna’s defection. While it does not clarify why Karuna decided to defect to the state, it does explain why it was possible for him to do so. The Karuna faction is known to have been more reliant on conscription and abduction for recruitment than the LTTE in the north. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the LTTE members in the East were less loyal to the group’s leadership than those in the north. Accordingly, Karuna anticipated little opposition to his defection from the members under his control. This is evident, for example, in the report from the Human Rights Watch (2004), which notes that none of the former members of the LTTE in the east felt anger towards Karuna or thought it necessary to punish him for his defection, although many of them were surprised and confused by it. The theory also explains the sharp rise in the number of deserters between 2007 and 2009. At the time of the IPKF intervention in the late 1980s and the “War for Peace” in the mid-1990s, the LTTE relied mostly on inducement, and thus its members stayed more or less cohesive in spite of actual or prospective military setbacks. From 1997 on, and especially in the third phase, the LTTE relied heavily on coercion for recruitment. Once the state undermined its territorial control and retention mechanism, therefore, many of the LTTE members deserted the group without hesitation. Hence, while the theories of outside options explain the rise in the number of deserters solely by the military decline of the LTTE, the informational theory explains it also by noting the type of the members inside the group.

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Admittedly, though, the three military setbacks for the LTTE – the IPKF intervention, the ‘War for Peace,’ and President Rajapaksa’s aggression in the late 2000s – are not of the same magnitude. Therefore, it is not easy to verify the validity of this explanation that the change in the type of LTTE members resulted in a larger number of deserters in the third incident. This explanation, therefore, remains speculative and requires further examination in future. In this section, I assessed the relative explanatory powers of the informational theory and its alternatives for considering desertion rates in the LTTE. The evidence shows that both the informational theory of rebel recruitment and the theories of outside options explain the variation in the desertions from the LTTE over time.

The LRA I will now turn to the case of the LRA. The observed pattern of desertion from the LRA conforms to the prediction of the informational theory. Admittedly, the evidence also, upon first glance, conforms to the predictions of the theories of outside options. However, upon closer examination, the informational theory better explains the changes in desertions from the LRA.

Prediction The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the desertion rate in the LRA would increase over time. The LRA was relatively selective in its recruitment during the first phase. In Chapter Four, I argued that due to the group’s location inside Uganda, it was quite vulnerable to information leakage. As the group was militarily inferior to the state military forces, it was constantly on the move. Secrecy and mobility were indispensable assets to ensure the group’s survival. However, in 1994, the Sudanese government offered the LRA a safe haven in southern Sudan, making it more difficult for Ugandan military forces to pursue the group to its bases. This relocation to Sudan greatly reduced the LRA’s vulnerability to information leakage. Consequently, the group became less concerned about the quality of its combatants and intensified its recruitment drive by force. As a result, the size of the LRA increased, while the proportion of those either disloyal or incapable also rose. The informational theory predicts that the shift in its recruitment practice from inducement to coercion will result in a change from a relatively low desertion rate in the first phase to a much higher rate in the second phase. Moreover, the informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the LRA – in the third phase – will have an even higher desertion rate. The conditions for the LRA changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Ugandan and Sudanese governments reached some agreement that authorized the Ugandan military forces to hunt down the LRA in southern Sudan. In 2005, the LRA eventually lost its safe haven in southern Sudan. Throughout this period, until the group found its next safe haven in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic

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Republic of Congo (DRC), the LRA’s survival was at serious risk. In desperation, the group responded by intensifying its assaults on civilians – in the hope of making the UPDF reluctant to chase the group – additionally carrying out massive abductions. Accordingly, the share of disloyal and/or incapable members in the group dramatically increased in this third phase. Importantly, this shift in the LRA’s recruitment practice coincided with the Ugandan state’s legislation of the Amnesty Act in 1999. This shift also helped to increase the number of deserters from the group. For this reason, the informational theory of rebel recruitment expects the group to experience a large number of deserters during this phase.

The observed pattern of desertion in the LRA The number of deserters from the LRA was not particularly large in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is shown in Figure 5.2. In this period, the size of the LRA was approximately 500 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). However, after the group moved to Sudan in 1994 and initiated large-scale abductions, the number of deserters rapidly increased. The size of the LRA rose to reach 4,000 in 1999. Although its numerical strength declined to approximately 1,000, the group again increased its size and harbored approximately 2,000 to 3,000 members between 2004 and 2006. Approximately 5,000 abductees escaped from the group between 1995 and 1999. It is also apparent that the number of abductees further increased in the early 2000s.

Assessment The observed variation in the desertion rate in the LRA conforms to the prediction of the informational theory. The theory explains the rate based on changes in the recruitment practice of the LTTE.

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Theories of outside options The theories of outside options also appear, at first sight, to explain the variation in LRA desertion rates. In the first instance, the number of deserters decreased as the group moved to southern Sudan, as the geographical distance made it more difficult for LRA members to desert. Then, the number of deserters increased as the government introduced the Amnesty Act in 2000. An important problem with the theories of outside options, however, is their failure to explain why the LRA continued to recruit so many people in its second and third phases despite the large number of deserters, especially after the 2000 Amnesty Law. Why did the LRA continue the practice of abduction? The theories of outside options do not have an answer to this question because these theories – both those propounded by Beber and Blattman and those of Scott Gates – assume that the group would maximize its efficiency by refraining from recruiting those with a high risk of desertion. Hence, if a mass desertion occurs, it should be merely a temporary phenomenon that results from a sudden decrease in the group’s resources or a significant military loss. Upon such an event, the group should adjust the number of new recruits to keep it under the group’s retention capacity. However, in the case of the LRA, the group continued to experience a high desertion rate, yet continued to recruit new agents by force.

The informational theory of rebel recruitment The informational theory explains this paradox by referring to the invulnerability of the group to information leakage and ex post selection. The LRA’s operation required a certain number of members because the group engaged in guerrilla warfare. However, the group could not attract a sufficient number of members by inducement in its second phase due to its resource constraints and geographical location. Additionally, the group did not possess sufficient local knowledge about the population to identify those who would be sufficiently loyal and capable. As a result, the group conducted mass abductions to recruit a large number of people. For the LRA, their agents’ subsequent service within the LRA functioned as a natural ex post selection mechanism to identify those who were capable and would remain loyal to the group. Those agents who did not have such qualities would either die or desert the group. The LRA could engage in this strategy in its second period because the group had a safe haven in southern Sudan and thus remained invulnerable to information leakage through deserters. Therefore, the LRA continued recruiting new members and losing a significant portion of them. By contrast, in the third phase, the gradual loss of their safe haven made the LRA desperate to secure a high number of members to fight against the UPDF. In this section, I assessed the relative explanatory powers of the informational theory and its alternative against variation in the desertion rates of the LRA. The available evidence indicates that the informational theory explains this variation more comprehensively than the theories of outside options.

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Comparison of the LTTE and the LRA In this section, I briefly compare the desertion trends of the LTTE and the LRA. The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the desertion rate of the LRA would be higher than that of the LTTE. On the one hand, both of these groups changed their recruitment from inducement to coercion. On the other hand, the LTTE’s recruitment practices were always less conducive to desertion than those of the LRA. Therefore, the prediction of the informational theory is that the LRA would suffer from a higher rate of desertion. While I have already discussed the desertion rates between the LTTE and the LRA, the data I used for the analysis of the two cases are very different. Regardless, the variation in the number of deserters from the two groups is clear. The largest desertion from the LTTE was that of Karuna with approximately 5,000 members. This event occurred only approximately 25 years after the group was created. In contrast, the LRA experienced a large number of deserters, especially starting in the mid-1990s. In the latter half of the 1990s, approximately 5,000 deserters left the group. The number of deserters went up further in the next five years, exceeding 10,000 overall. The informational theory explains the difference in desertion rates between the LTTE and the LRA by attributing it to two factors: the variation in their recruitment strategies and the difference in the states’ counterinsurgency strategies. These two factors are closely related, and I will discuss the states’ counterinsurgency strategies in the next section. The theories of outside options do not explain the difference between the two groups; these theories assume that rebel groups maximize their internal efficiencies by minimizing the likelihood of their members’ desertion, and consequently predict that the groups would have experienced equally low desertion rates, except when sudden changes occurred to their resources or their relative military capacity. Therefore, these theories cannot explain the significant and continuous gap between the two groups in their desertion rates. Instead, they argue that if a group’s desertion rate becomes high, the group should adjust the number of agents it recruits to reduce the cost of excessive recruitment beyond its own retention capacity. The LRA did not implement such a policy.

Conclusion In this section, I assessed the explanatory power of the informational theory of rebel recruitment against its alternative, the theories of outside options, using desertion rates in the LTTE and the LRA. More particularly, I assessed whether the informational theory explains changes in the respective group’s desertion rates, as well as the differences between the two groups. The analysis demonstrates that only the informational theory explains all three variations. The theories of outside options fail to clarify the differences between the LTTE and the LRA in their desertion rates. Additionally, while their predictions coincide with

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observed changes in the desertion rates of the two groups, closer scrutiny found important deviations from the theories of outside options that the informational theory can explain. This is particularly true for the second phase of the LRA. While the theories of outside options explain why the LRA relied on coercion, they do not explain why the LRA failed to quickly adjust and minimize the number of deserters. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains this puzzle by identifying the LRA’s invulnerability to information leakage and its resultant reliance on coercion and ex post selection.

Notes 1 One exception is Leites and Wolf (1970). 2 These studies together suggest the need to distinguish two types of desertion: individual desertion and unit- or preexisting network-based desertions. One study builds on Hirschman’s work and argues that the former tends to be prompted by hikes in membership prices, while the latter tends to be fostered by declines in the (subjective) qualities of the membership experienced by the deserting agents (Obayashi 2011). 3 Though not a clear case of desertion, the LTTE was forced to release some of its child soldiers. The UNICEF reports that the LTTE released 1,702 child soldiers in the three years between January 2002 and October 2004 under pressure from UNICEF and the parents of the local children while newly recruiting another 3,755 children. The figures are cited in Human Rights Watch (2004: 59). As UNICEF recorded only those for whom the LTTE issued official letters of release, the actual number of children who left the LRA is likely to be larger than this figure. The incident shows that the LTTE could afford to leak the information associated with the release of these combatants. This is partly a reflection of the 2002 CFA and the presence of the SLMM and partly a result of the LTTE adopting conventional warfare as its military strategy, which, to some extent, reduced the group’s vulnerability.

References Agence France Presse. 1999. “Sri Lankan Army Claims Surrender of 189 Tamil Rebels.” March 29. Annan, Jeannie, Christopher Blattman, and Roger Horton. 2006. “The State of Youth and Youth Protection in Northern Uganda: Findings From the Survey for War Affected Youth.” In A Report for UNICEF Uganda. Accessed October 31, 2011. http://chrisblattman.com/projects/sway/ Bean, James. 14 November 2008. “Preliminary Analysis: Reporter Profiling From the Amnesty Commission of Uganda.” ICRS Database. Uganda Amnesty Commission, USAID, UNDP and IOM. Accessed March 31, 2017. http://uganda.iom. int/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Preliminary.Analysis.07.12.08%20_finalAC. rev.8_.pdf. Bearman, Peter S. 1991. “Desertion as Localism: Army Unit Solidarity and Group Norms in the U.S. Civil War.” Social Forces 70 (2): 321–42. doi:10.1093/sf/70. 2.321. Beber, Bernd and Christopher Blattman. 2013. “The Logic of Child Soldiering and Coercion.” International Organization 67 (1): 65–104. doi:10.1017/ S0020818312000409.

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Collier, Paul, Anke Hoeffler, and Måns Söderbom. 2004. “On the Duration of Civil War.” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 253–73. doi:10.1177/0022343304043769. Costa, Dora L. and Matthew E. Kahn. 2003. “Cowards and Heroes: Group Loyalty in the American Civil War.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2): 519–48. doi:10.1162/003355303321675446. Costa, Dora L. and Matthew E. Kahn. 2004. “Shame and Ostracism: Union Army Deserters Leave Home.” NBER Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Costa, Dora L. and Matthew E. Kahn. 2008. Heroes & Cowards: The Social Face of War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cunningham, David E. 2006. “Veto Players and Civil War Duration.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (4): 875–92. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00221.x. Fearon, James D. 2004. “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last so Much Longer Than Others?” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 275–301. doi:10.1177/0022343304043770. Gates, Scott. 2002. “Recruitment and Allegiance.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (1): 111–30. doi:10.1177/0022002702046001007. Gould, Roger V. 1991. “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871.” American Sociological Review 56 (6): 716–29. doi:10.2307/2096251. Hirschman, Albert O. 2004. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Human Rights Watch. 2004. “Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.” November 16 (3). Accessed July 10, 2007. www.hrw.org/en/ reports/2004/11/10/living-fear. International Crisis Group. 2006. “Sri Lanka: The Failure of the Peace Process.” Asia Report 124. Accessed January 20, 2010. www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/ Files/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/124_sri_lanka___the_failure_of_the_peace_ process.ashx. Johnson, Douglas H. 2003. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, African Issues. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Leites, Nathan and Charles Wolf. 1970. Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts, Markham Series in Public Policy Analysis. Chicago, IL: Markham Pub. Co. LexisNexis Academic. 2010. Accessed June 17, 2010. www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/ lnacademic/. Obayashi, Kazuhiro. 2011. Why Does the LRA Continue Abduction? An Intra-group Politics Approach. Paper prepared for presentation at the 69th Annual National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, IL, on March 31-April 3, 2011. Panel 18–28, “Rebel Organization and Behavior during Civil Conflict.” Pham, Phuong N., Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover. 2007. Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda. Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley and Payson Center for International Development, Tulane University. Accessed October 31, 2011. http://escholarship.org/ uc/item/7963c61v. Rajasingham, K. T. 2002. “The Execution of Mahattaya in ‘Sri Lanka: The Untold Story’.” Asia Times Online. Chapter 56. Accessed June 15, 2010. www.atimes. com/atimes/South_Asia/DI07Df01.html. SLBC Radio External Service. 1995. “Other Reports: Captured Suicide Bombers Reportedly Fail to Take Cyanid.” December 30, LexisNexis Academic.

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Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order. 2009. The Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Terrorist Activities and Government Humanitarian Efforts 1981–2009. Accessed March 5, 2010. www.defence.lk/gis/Final_Final61. swf. A GIS-Based Visual File. Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia.” International Security 37 (1): 142–77. doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00091. Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 2009. UCDP Database. www.ucdp.uu.se/database. Xinhua News Agency. 1999. “S. Lankan Rebels’ Regional Leaders Desert LTTE.” January 7.

6

State’s counterinsurgency strategy – offer of general amnesty

Introduction The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the variation in states’ counterinsurgency strategies. In the previous chapters, I demonstrated that the level of information asymmetry between rebel leaders and potential recruits, the cost of a rebel group’s retention mechanism, and its organizational vulnerability to information leakage affect its recruitment strategy and the likelihood of desertions. As a primary participant in a civil war, the state has a major interest in closely observing the organization and behavior of a rebel group. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect the state to tailor its counterinsurgency strategy to exploit the weaknesses of the group in the context of a strategic interaction with them. The LTTE and the LRA changed their organizational characteristics and thus their recruitment practices over time. The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the states of Sri Lanka and Uganda would accordingly have changed their counterinsurgency strategies. If they did, it provides additional evidence for the theory. To examine their counterinsurgency strategies, I will focus on an unlikely tool for fighting counterinsurgency: an offer of general amnesty. The main hypothesis is that the state tends to rely on intelligence penetration rather than on interest dealignment or power erosion for counterinsurgency when a rebel group is highly reliant on secrecy for its power. I will particularly focus on an offer of general amnesty as a sample of an interest dealignment technique and test whether a state facing a rebel group with less reliance on secrecy would be more likely to make use of an offer of general amnesty than a state facing a rebel group less reliant on secrecy. I will focus on the state’s offer of general amnesty to rebel members as an instance of a state counterinsurgency techniques for three reasons. First, there is a dearth of literature on amnesty as a counterinsurgency technique. The literature on counterinsurgency does not mention amnesty.1 State offers of amnesty have mostly been discussed in the literature of transitional justice. True, while many studies discuss it from a normative standpoint, some studies analyze amnesty and other transitional justice techniques from a practical or utilitarian standpoint and find amnesty to have positive effects on postwar stability, human rights and democracy (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003/04, Olsen, Payne, and Reiter 2010a,

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Vinjamuri and Snyder 2004). However, it is problematic to see amnesty only as an instrument for postwar order and justice. Many times, amnesty is offered during the course of armed conflict. It is only reasonable, therefore, to expect states to make use of it as a part of their counterinsurgency strategy. It is therefore necessary to examine the conditions under which a state is more likely to employ amnesty for counterinsurgency, when the technique is more effective, and what the consequences are when a state uses it. The informational theory of rebel recruitment produces a novel prediction about the condition that makes the state more likely to employ the technique. Second, an offer of general amnesty is one of the most visible among the counterinsurgency techniques states employ. A state can employ a variety of counterinsurgency measures. However, many of these are not easily observable due to their secrecy. Finally, I will discuss the other two types of counterinsurgency techniques, intelligence penetration and power erosion, at least partially in Chapter Seven in connection with the organizational decline of rebel groups. Below, I will first develop a hypothesis on the state’s use of general amnesty. Then, I will conduct case studies of the Sri Lankan state facing the LTTE and the Ugandan state facing the LRA at different periods. Neither of the two alternative theories of rebel recruitment – the resource curse theory or the theories of outside options – has much to say about the state’s choice of counterinsurgency techniques. For this reason, I will assess the extent to which the informational theory of rebel recruitment explains the variation across the cases and do not examine its relative explanatory power against the alternatives.

State counterinsurgency strategy The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the state’s choice of counterinsurgency strategy, that is, its relative investment in a range of counterinsurgency techniques, is a function of the extent to which the rebel group fighting the state is reliant on secrecy for its power to hurt and power to resist. As discussed in Chapter Two, the theory identifies six counterinsurgency techniques, i.e., access denial, confusion, retention price hikes, interest dealignment, intelligence penetration, and power erosion. The first four techniques are intended to magnify the different types of agency problems that rebel groups experience. Access denial intensifies the under-participation problem, while confusion, retention price hikes, and interest dealignment respectively increase the problems of indiscipline and desertion by intensifying the information asymmetry between the rebel leaders and agents, increasing the cost of monitoring and sanctioning agents for the rebel leaders, and separating the interests of the agents from those of the rebel leaders. The last two techniques of intelligence penetration and power erosion are expected to directly undermine the main sources of the rebel group’s power to inflict damage and power to resist, that is, the group’s control over its private information from the state, and other sources of its power such as a high number of human resources and an external safe haven.

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 115 When a rebel group is highly reliant on secrecy, the state tends to prioritize intelligence penetration over other techniques. A rebel group that is vulnerable to information leakage tends to prioritize inducement over coercion in recruitment, thereby screening its potential recruits ex ante through self-selection. When the rebel group has little information asymmetry with its agent or a cheap retention mechanism, then it may use coercion. Moreover, these groups employ coercion only when they anticipate that the state will be ineffectual at exploiting the potential pitfalls of coercion. When the groups are vulnerable to information leakage, therefore, the state will find it more efficient to rely on intelligence penetration and to obtain information itself about the rebel groups than to utilize the counterinsurgency techniques intended to magnify the problems of indiscipline and desertion. In contrast, when a rebel group is less reliant on secrecy, the state is more likely to prioritize interest dealignment and power erosion. The group expects a low cost from the problems of indiscipline and desertion among its members and thus tends to prioritize coercion over inducement and rely on ex post screening to select its members. The state, therefore, does not find it profitable to invest much in confusion but will find it relatively efficient to invest in interest dealignment in the hope of instigating the desertion of a large number of agents. Many members may be on the verge of desertion, and a small investment by the state could foster their decision to leave the group. Given the group’s invulnerability to information leakage, the state should also find it more efficient to invest in power erosion to undermine the source of rebel strength rather than in intelligence penetration.

General amnesty as a tool for interest dealignment To assess the validity of these propositions for the state counterinsurgency strategy, I will now focus on the amount of resources the state invests in one example of interest dealignment techniques: the offer of general amnesty to rebel group members. The hypothesis is that the state is more likely to offer a general amnesty to the rebel members when the rebel group is less vulnerable to information leakage.

Purposes of the amnesty offer A state offer of amnesty is a promise to exempt rebel members from judicial repercussions for their acts during a civil war. From a utilitarian standpoint, the immediate purpose of an amnesty offer is to moderate rebels’ concerns over their personal security or reduce the commitment problem. A state amnesty offer can be classified into three types, depending on the power relations between the state and the rebel group. The first type of amnesty offer presumes the current power relations as given, the second type is intended to shift power relations in favor of the state, and the third type aims to deter a shift in power relations against the state. All of these types can serve the purpose of terminating a civil war, either by force or through a negotiation.

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In the first type, the state considers the current power balance with the rebel group as given and seeks to assure rebel leaders (and their followers) of their personal safety to facilitate the peace process ex ante to its conclusion. Therefore, the primary target of the amnesty is the rebel leaders, and the offer is associated with political conditionality. Political conditionality here refers to the demands the state makes to the rebel leaders regarding an action of the group, such as a ceasefire or the acceptance of a particular political regime. In the second type, the state aims to shift the power balance to its favor by undermining the manpower of the rebel group and securing the leakage of information through a dealignment of the interests of the rebel members from those of their leaders. The primary target of the amnesty, therefore, is rebel members. The offer is given ex ante to their desertion and is often free of political conditionality to increase the incentive to desert the group, although the state may require some personal conditionality such as a surrender of their person or of their weapons to the state. The state may also promise additional personal incentives to attract desertions such as a rehabilitation package. In the third type, the state seeks to deter a shift in the power balance against the state by preventing the rebel leaders or members who have left the group from returning to the group or initiating a new rebellion. The primary target of the amnesty, therefore, is leaders or members of a rebel group who are already out of the bush. The offer is given ex post to their return from the bush and is free of political conditionality. The state may require personal conditionality or promise additional personal incentives to discourage them from returning to rebellion. The distinction between the three types of amnesty offers is analytical rather than categorical, and a single offer of amnesty can serve multiple functions. For example, the state may offer amnesty to those rebel members already out of a rebel group to deter a negative shift in its power relations with the rebel group (the third type). Simultaneously, however, the state may intend to build a reputation that reduces the commitment problem with the rebel leaders or the members still within the group. The amnesty offer, then, falls into the first and the second types, as well. Table 6.1 Timing, political conditionality, and purpose of amnesty offer Type

Power Relations

Target

Political Conditionality

Timing

1

Current power relations as given Shifting the power relations in favor of the state (through interest dealignment) Deterring a shift in the power relations against the state

Rebel leaders

Yes

Ex ante

Rank-and-file

No

Ex ante (ex post)

Rebel leaders and/or rankand-file

–

Ex post

2

3

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 117 The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine amnesty offers as a tool for interest dealignment in the state’s counterinsurgency operations. I therefore focus on the second type of amnesty offers, which is intended to shift the power relations between the two parties in favor of the state through interest dealignment.

The level of state commitment to the amnesty offer It is important to note that an offer of amnesty to a rebel group comes with some costs for the state. The state may suffer the political cost of an accusation by domestic or international actors that it is being too gracious to the rebels, especially if they committed inhumane activities in the past. The offer may also incur a financial cost if the state decides to offer some rehabilitation package to the rebels. The offer may also entail some military costs, given the risk that the rebel leaders or their followers accept the offer as a way to buy time to prepare for another offensive against the state or to collect resources including information for the group. A rebel group and its members will not easily take the state’s amnesty offer at face value for at least two reasons. First, the information asymmetry between the state and the rebel group makes it difficult for the rebel members to tell whether the state has both the resolve and the ability to pay those costs and fulfill the promises associated with amnesty. Second, the rebel group is aware of the incentive for the state to renege on its promise once the rebel members fulfill the conditions associated with the amnesties such as a ceasefire, demobilization, and disarmament. For the state to make its offers credible, therefore, the state needs to send a costly signal to the rebel members or tie its own hands so as not to revoke the offer (cf. Fearon 1997). To make amnesty offers more credible and attractive, the state has at least potential six measures, three of which concern decision making and communication procedures and the other three of which address the conditions in the offer. In terms of the decision making and communication procedures, the state can make the offer more credible by announcing the amnesty offer in public rather than in private, through an interlocutor of high authority such as a cabinet member rather than through a low-ranking official, and by passing legislation or signing a treaty rather than making a solely administrative decision such as a presidential decree. In terms of the conditions attached to the amnesty offer, the offer becomes more attractive if the state grants a longer grace period, demands less personal conditionality such as the submission of arms, and promises some personal incentives such as a rehabilitation package. In other words, the state’s investment in these aspects of amnesty offers reduce the information asymmetry with their target, moderate the commitment problem, and make the offers more attractive. Otherwise, the rebel members could dismiss the state’s offer as an empty promise, rendering it ineffectual, regardless of its type. As mentioned above, the main hypothesis of this chapter is that a state that faces a rebel group with high vulnerability to information leakage tends to rely more on intelligence penetration than on interest dealignment or power erosion for counterinsurgency. To assess the validity of this hypothesis, I will particularly focus on

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Table 6.2 Level of state investment in amnesty offer Level of commitment Decision making and communication process Conditions of the offer

Authority of interlocutor Publicity Legislation Personal conditionality Personal incentive Grace period

Low

High

Low Private No Many No Short

High Public Yes Few Yes Long

amnesty offers and test the following hypothesis deduced from the counterinsurgency hypothesis presented in Chapter Two: the more vulnerable a rebel group is to information leakage, the less the state tends to invest in amnesty offers for interest dealignment (Type 2 amnesty offers).

Method With these issues in mind, I will examine the investments in amnesty offers to members of the LTTE and the LRA by the Sri Lankan and the Ugandan states respectively.

Potential selection bias and omitted variables problem Admittedly, an offer of general amnesty is just one of many tools the state can use to induce defection from a rebel group. The question remains, therefore, how representative the amnesty offers are of the state’s overall investment in interest dealignment techniques. Additionally, interest dealignment is only one of several counterinsurgency techniques the state can employ. Ideally, to assess the state’s counterinsurgency strategy, I need to examine the state’s allocation of resources across all counterinsurgency techniques at its disposal. However, it is not practical to conduct such an analysis because many of the counterinsurgency techniques a state employs are covert operations, making data collection highly complicated. Therefore, at this point. I focus on amnesty offers. This means that I make two assumptions. First, I assume that the state’s investment in other tools for interest dealignment are constant or positively associated with the state’s investment in amnesty offers. Second, I assume that the state’s investment in intelligence penetration remains constant or negatively correlated with its investment in amnesty offers. Though not ideal, I believe that this approach is a practical and defensible way to solve the problem of data collection.

Data To conduct an analysis of the amnesty offer, I compiled data on amnesty offers by the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states to the LTTE and the LRA, respectively (See

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 119 Appendices 1 and 2). I reviewed news reports in LexisNexis Academic (2010) and other sources to compile data on amnesty offers. Admittedly, by now, there exist a few datasets on amnesty offers, including the Beyond Legalism Project database, Transitional Justice Database (TJDB), and the During Conflict Justice (DCJ) dataset, that focus on the use of judicial measures during armed conflicts (Beyond Legalism Project 2010, Mallinder 2008, Olsen, Payne, and Reiter 2010b, Loyle and Binningsbø 2016). While these datasets are useful, they lack information about less formal forms of amnesty offers or information about their details. For example, states often make announcements or drop leaflets about offers of amnesty from the air to the battlefield to communicate their intentions to rebels. For this reason, in addition to TJDB and Mallinder’s dataset, for which I had access to, I reviewed news reports in LexisNexis Academic (2010) and other sources to compile data on amnesty offers made by the two states.

Coding To identify the amnesty offers aiming for interest dealignment, I will focus on the ‘target’ of the amnesty offer, whether it was associated with ‘political conditionality,’ and its timing. I code an amnesty offer as a tool for interest dealignment if the offer targets the rank-and-file of the rebel group rather than rebel leaders only and if it has no political conditionality. I consider interest dealignment to be the primary purpose of an offer if the offer was made ex ante the target’s departure from the group and secondary if the offer was made ex post. The credibility of the offer depends on the ‘authority of the interlocutor,’ its publicity, and the supporting ‘legislation.’ I code the authority of the interlocutor to be high if the interlocutor is a cabinet member or a high-ranking military official. An offer is public if the amnesty offer was officially made public and reported in the media. I consider the offer to have been made through legislation if the legislature passes a bill for the offer or the offer is a part of an official international agreement. The content of the offer is more attractive to its targets if the offer is free of ‘personal conditionality’ such as weapon submission or voluntary surrender, sets an extensive ‘grace period’ for targets to accept the offer, and specifies ‘personal incentives,’ such as physical security or economic gain and including the provision of vocational training. I code personal conditionality to be present if the offer sets any personal condition. The grace period is considered long if it lasts more than one month. A personal incentive is coded ‘yes’ if the offer includes a rehabilitation package or vocational training.

Criteria for evaluation The informational theory of rebel recruitment makes three predictions: first, the Sri Lankan state would make more effective offers of general amnesty in the third phase of the LTTE than in the first and second phases; second, the Ugandan state would make more effective offers of general amnesty in the second and third phases of the LRA than in its first phase; and third, on average, the Ugandan

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state’s offers of amnesty would be more successful than similar offers by the Sri Lankan state. In this chapter, I will not assess the ‘relative’ explanatory power of the informational theory against that of the resource curse theory or the theories of outside options. As discussed previously, these alternative theories do not have clear implications for the state’s counterinsurgency strategy or, more specifically, for amnesty offers. If the informational theory does explain most of the variations in the two states’ amnesty offers, therefore, it is indicative of a novel prediction made by informational theory and provides additional evidence in support of the theory.

Overview of the data on amnesty offers to the LTTE and the LRA A cursory overview of the data on the states’ amnesty offers to the members of the LTTE and the LRA provides support for the informational theory of rebel recruitment. The theory predicts the states’ investment in the amnesty offers for interest dealignment to correlate with the likelihood of desertions from a rebel group, which reflects the group’s organizational characteristics and recruitment strategy (see Figure 5.1). In the case of the LTTE and the LRA, as will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, the theory predicts the states in Sri Lanka and Uganda to have invested little in amnesty offers in their first phases. It also predicts that while the former would increase its investment only in the third phase, the latter would increase it in the second and third phases. An initial look at the data on amnesty offers betrays the prediction of the theory, as the Sri Lankan state made 20 offers of amnesty in the LTTE’s first phase, of which 11 were for interest dealignment (Table 6.3). However, a closer look at the data reveals that the state made little effort to make these offers credible or attractive to the LTTE members. None of these offers were associated with legislation, a significant grace period, or personal incentives for deserters. Hence, the state’s amnesty offers in this phase are at most cheap talk. The trend remains the same in the second and third phases, except that the Sri Lankan state made only one offer in the second period. Only cheap talk in the third phase betrays the prediction. This deviation most likely reflects the state’s confidence in defeating the LTTE without inducing a significant number of deserters, given Karun’s cooperation with the state. The changes in the number of the Ugandan state’s amnesty offers follow the predictions of the theory. The state made few offers for interest dealignment in the LRA’s first phase; this number increased to 11 offers in the second period, and then to six. None of the offers in the first phase was associated with legislation, a significant grace period or personal incentives. In the second and third phases, however, the Ugandan state invigorated its efforts to make the offers both credible and attractive to the LRA members by passing legislations, admitting longer grace periods of sometimes two years, and promising and actually delivering rehabilitation packages for deserters.

Table 6.3 Descriptive statistics of the amnesty offers to the LTTE and the LRA LTTE

LRA

Phase I Phase II Period

May 1976– 1995

Phase III

Phase I

Phase II

Late 1995– April 1998–1994 1994– March 2004 2004–May 2001 2009

Phase III 2002– 2006

Amnesty Offers Amnesty 20 1 8 2 15 20 (Total) 11 1 6 1 11 6 Amnesty (Type 2) Ex ante 10 1 6 1 9 2 Measurements of the State’s Investment in Amnesty Offers for Interest Dealignment Interlocutor of 6 1 3 1 10 6 high authority Publicity 10 1 6 1 10 6 4 6 Legislation 0 0 0 0 Personal 3 0 0 0 3 0 conditionality Grace period 0 0 0 0 1 2 4 5 Personal 0 1 0 0 incentive Level of the State Investment in Amnesty Offers for Interest Dealignment Moderate High Low Low Low Low State (no offer) (cheap (no offer) (cheap investment talk) talk) in type 2 amnesty* * See Appendix 1 and 2 for the raw data on the state amnesty offers to the LTTE and the LRA. ** An amnesty offer is coded Type 2 if the offer’s targets explicitly include the rank-and-files of the rebel groups, and no political conditionality is attached to the offer. The figures for Ex ante, Speaker, Publicity, Legislation, Personal conditionality, Grace period, and Personal incentive show the number of offers that meet each criteria among the amnesty offers of type 2.

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Table 6.4 Amnesty offers to the members of the LTTE and the LRA LTTE

Period

LRA

Phase I

Phase II

May 1976– 1995

Late 1995– April 2004– 1998– 1994–2001 2002–2006 March May 2009 1994 2004

Precondition Time Long horizon Independent Variable Information High asymmetry Cost of High→Low retention mechanism High Expected cost of desertion Dependent Variable Low State investment in type 2 amnesty*

Phase III

Phase I Phase II

Phase III

Long

Short

Long

Long

Short

High

High

High

High

High

Low

Low

High

High

High

High

High

High Low

Low

Low

Low

Low→High

Moderate High

Keeping these trends in mind, I will discuss the details of the changes in the two states’ amnesty offers for interest dealignment below.

The Sri Lankan state’s amnesty offers to the LTTE One implication of the informational theory is that the Sri Lankan state would refrain from general amnesty offers in the first and second phases of the LTTE but would increase its investment in amnesty offers in the third phase of the LTTE’s operations. The Sri Lankan state’s policies in the respective phases support this proposition.

Prediction of the informational theory of rebel recruitment The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the Sri Lankan state would refrain from general amnesty offers in the first and second phases of the LTTE but increase use in the third phase, making these offers more effective and credible due to an increase in their efficiency as a counterinsurgency technique. In the first phase, the LTTE was highly vulnerable to information leakage and

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 123 therefore relied on inducement and additional techniques for ex ante screening to mitigate the problems of indiscipline and desertion. This recruitment strategy rendered the state’s offer of general amnesty and other techniques for interest dealignment unlikely to be successful. In the second phase, the group shifted its recruitment strategy to recruit a number of agents through conscription. However, the continuing vulnerability of the group to information leakage indicates that the LTTE made this shift because the group expected its retention mechanism to be effective even if the state intensified its effort for interest dealignment. The theory therefore predicts that the Sri Lankan state would continue refraining from offers of general amnesty given the minimal likelihood that it would be successful in inducing desertions from the group and the high political cost associated with such offers. In the third phase, however, the LTTE intensified its coercive recruitment efforts to compensate for the loss of human resources due to Karun’s defection and the prospect of a renewed fight against the state, which shortened the time horizon for the group. This shift in the LTTE’s recruitment strategy improved the potential effectiveness of the state’s offers of general amnesty to attract desertions from the group. The theory, therefore, predicts that the state would have increased its investment in offers of general amnesty in the third phase. Below, I will review the changes in the Sri Lankan state’s amnesty policies.

Observed patterns of amnesty offers Phase I From 1976 to 1995, The Sri Lankan state made little serious effort to induce defection from the LTTE through offers of general amnesty. It is true that in July 1987, the state offered general amnesty to LTTE members. However, this offer was part of the Indo-Lanka Accord between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments (Landay 1987). The Accord set an important political condition for amnesty by demanding that the LTTE renounce the use of violence. However, the LTTE was not a part of the Accord and refused to accept the demand from the state. Consequently, the Sri Lankan state withdrew the offer after a few months, by October 1987 (Kelliher 1987, Athas 1987). Therefore, it appears that the Sri Lankan state offered amnesty not to induce defection from the LTTE but to use the group as a component of the political bargaining with its leaders. After 1987, the Sri Lankan state offered general amnesty to LTTE cadres on several occasions. However, these offers of amnesty were tactical and short-lived, carrying little credibility overall. As noted above, the Sri Lankan state first expressed its intention to grant general amnesty to the LTTE in the Indo-Lanka Accord, signed in May 1987, between Sri Lanka and India.2 On August 6, state officials ordered the release of approximately 800 political prisoners. By early October, the state claimed to have released approximately 3,500 Tamil political prisoners (Athas 1987). However, there was political conditionality attached to this offer: the two governments

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demanded that LTTE members, along with those of other Tamil militant groups, surrender their weapons and participate in the democratic political process. When the LTTE initiated guerrilla warfare against the IPKF, President Junius Jayewardene and the Indian Defence Minister, K.C. Pant, revoked their amnesty offer to the LTTE on October 9. The Sri Lankan government also announced that it rescinded amnesty to the remaining 800 Tamils in prison. Both the Indian and the Sri Lankan governments announced amnesty to LTTE cadres – but not necessarily to LTTE leaders – until the IPKF’s withdrawal in April 1990. However, as part of these offers, LTTE members were required to voluntarily surrender to the government with their weapons. Moreover, following the government dismissal of the Indo-Lanka Accord, the legal basis for these offers became unclear, damaging their credibility. After the IPKF’s withdrawal during Eelam Wars II and III, the Sri Lankan state offered amnesty to LTTE members approximately seven times. However, their offers did not carry much credibility and were not attractive to potential deserters. Additionally, there was no legislation to verify these offers of amnesty and no guarantee by a third party. The amnesty offer by President Ranasinghe Premadasa in May 1991, for example, demanded that the rebels surrender during a unilateral three-day ceasefire (Agence France Presse 1991a). However, this was too short a time to convince the rebels of the government’s sincerity. The offer in November 1991 targeted only civilians who supported the LTTE (Agence France Presse 1991b). Three subsequent communications of general amnesty were made through military airdrops of leaflets in Jaffna or Vavuniya. Thus, the Sri Lankan state appears to have made minimal effort to increase the credibility or attractiveness of its amnesty offer to LTTE members. Defence Secretary General Cyril Ranatunga’s remark, at the beginning of Eelam War II, illustrates this point well. In May 1991, after the three-day grace period for Premadasa’s amnesty offer ended – with no surrender from the LTTE – the defence secretary admitted that he had not anticipated desertion from the group (Agence France Presse 1991a). During this period, high government officials mentioned general amnesty on only two occasions. In December 1995, President Chandrika Kumaratunga announced that the government would offer amnesty to those who surrendered (1995, Eliatamby 1995, David 1995).

Phase II and III In the second phase of the LTTE, between 1995 and March 2004, the Sri Lankan state hardly offered amnesty except as a part of peace negotiations. In May 1996, Army Chief and Lieutenant General Rohan Daluwatte made a reference to amnesty, mentioning the prospect of vocational training for LTTE members who surrendered (1996). However, from that time until the 2002 CFA, there were no reports of offers of amnesty and vocational training to deserters from the LTTE. In the third phase, as the war resumed, the Sri Lankan state suggested amnesty and called for the surrender of the LTTE cadres. Being announced by

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 125 high-ranking government officials, these offers carried more credibility than earlier offers, although legislation had to wait until the LTTE’s surrender and the end of war in May 2009. During the second phase of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan state made little investment in amnesty to its members. This omission is consistent with the informational theory of rebel recruitment. Given the continuing vulnerability of the group to information leakage, the LTTE would not adopt conscription unless it was confident that it could retain its members effectively against the state’s intensified effort to encourage desertions. It was reasonable for the state, therefore, to expect the chance of desertion from the group to be low and therefore to avoid offering general amnesty, which could be highly costly. Instead, the Sri Lankan state started to prepare itself for intelligence penetration by sending military personnel for training in the United States. Two factors possibly contributed to the state’s decision: first, the government’s advance into the LTTE-controlled area during Eelam War III had run into trouble by 1999. While the Sri Lankan military narrowed the size of the LTTE-controlled area from 67 percent of the Northeastern Province in 1994 to 54 percent by 1999, the LTTE made a surprising counter-offensive and enlarged the area under its control to 76 percent by 2001 – the greatest extent since the war started in northern Sri Lanka (Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence 2009). It is reasonable to assume that the government did not expect a significant number of deserters from the group during the LTTE’s comeback. Second, the signing of the 2002 CFA and the start of peace negotiations between the two parties made it difficult for the Sri Lankan state to publicly encourage desertion from the rebel group. Such a move would have undermined the basis of the negotiations. In fact, when Karuna defected from the LTTE, both the government and the SLMM initially avoided openly involving themselves in this matter, claiming that the split was a matter internal to the LTTE. In June 2004, in frustration, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the government of Sri Lanka to declare an amnesty to all child soldiers under 18 years who had returned home (Agence France Presse 2004). Still, the Sri Lankan state did not follow the demands of the HRW. The state’s response shows how sensitive the issue was for the state in the context of the peace negotiation with the LTTE. After Karuna defected from the LTTE and the war resumed, the Sri Lankan state made several offers of amnesty. First, the government granted de facto amnesty to Karuna and his followers, although it is unclear exactly when this was granted. However, Karuna’s faction adopted the name Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) and registered itself at the parliament in 2007, marking the first official recognition of its status. Second, in August 2007, after the SLA took over the entire Eastern Province from the LTTE, President Rajapaksa called for the remnants of the LTTE in the area to surrender in exchange for amnesty. Finally, from the beginning of 2009, important government officials, such as President Rajapaksa and Army Chief Sarath Fonseka, called for their surrender (Sriram 2009). Importantly, Rajapaksa clearly denied amnesty to Prabhakaran and his close associates (2009). It is evident, therefore, that the

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state predominantly sought to encourage desertion from the LTTE with these offers of amnesty. However, bargaining with the LTTE leaders was not a part of the state’s tactic. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains this shift in the state’s counterinsurgency strategy with reference to changes in the LTTE’s position and recruitment strategies. The LTTE installed territorial control and diversified its military strategy in the late 1990s and started to organize a conventional army. As a result, the group installed a conscription system to recruit many of its agents.

Assessment The state’s policy regarding the LTTE in each phase of the group coincides with the prediction of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. In the first phase, the group was vulnerable to information leakage and thus relied on inducement. This practice discouraged the state from using general amnesties to induce defection from the LTTE. It is politically costly to offer general amnesty, and the state did not anticipate that offers of amnesty would produce a large number of deserters from the group. In the second phase, the group remained somewhat vulnerable but shifted its recruitment strategy from inducement to coercion based on the availability of a cheap retention mechanism and the need for greater numerical strength to fight positional warfare. The LTTE changed its recruitment strategy because the group anticipated that the desertion rate would remain low even if the state invigorated its efforts to induce desertion from the group through interest dealignment. Accordingly, the Sri Lankan state never offered general amnesty during this period, at least not in the public domain. The LTTE’s military comeback in this phase and the start of peace negotiations only further discouraged the state from offering general amnesty, as the prospect of attracting deserters from the LTTE even further diminished and the issue of general amnesty was politically sensitive. In the third phase, as the LTTE was reliant on conscription for recruitment, the state did expect offers of general amnesty to produce some deserters. More importantly, Karuna’s defection and the resultant leakage of information significantly undermined the security of the LTTE, making many of its members pessimistic about the future of the group. These factors led the state to intensify its efforts to induce more defections by offering general amnesty to deserters. Overall, the patterns of the state’s amnesty offers were consistent with the predictions of the informational theory of rebel recruitment.

Ugandan state’s amnesty offers to the LRA Similar to the case of the Sri Lankan state, the informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the Ugandan state would have intensified its offers of amnesty to the LRA over time because the LRA reduced its vulnerability and shifted its recruitment strategy from inducement to coercion. The observed pattern of the LRA conforms to this prediction.

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 127 Prediction The informational theory predicts that the Ugandan state would have made its amnesty offers more effective and credible over time because the relative efficiency of using amnesty offers increased over time. On the one hand, the LRA’s acquisition of a safe haven in southern Sudan made the group less vulnerable to information leakage. On the other hand, however, the LRA’s possession of the safe haven shifted the group’s recruitment strategy from inducement to coercion, for example, mass abduction. This shift in recruitment strategy meant that the problem of indiscipline within the group would be intensified, and the risks of agent desertion increased. It became easier for the Ugandan state to induce defection from the group at a lower cost per individual and undermine the group’s manpower. Amnesty offers became more effective and efficient over time. Therefore, the informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that the LRA would have invested more in amnesty offers, making them more attractive and credible over time. In the next section, I will review the changes in the Ugandan state’s amnesty policies.3

Observed pattern of amnesty offers Phase I (1987–1994) In this period, the Ugandan state effectively did not offer general amnesty (see Appendix 2). The informational theory explains this phenomenon as a result of the group’s reliance on inducement for recruitment.4 The group enjoyed a relatively high level of discipline among its members, and the risk of desertion from the group was low. The Ugandan state, therefore, did not consider it feasible to induce defection from the group through the use of general amnesty.

Phase II and Phase III In 1994, as the LRA commenced mass abduction, the Ugandan government started to offer near-constant amnesty for rebels. In fact, amnesty was granted to almost all former LRA members, regardless of whether they voluntarily surrendered or were captured by the army. Additionally, while the state set deadlines for its amnesties, it also kept extending them. These offers lacked credibility at first, although later, especially after the involvement of World Vision, an international NGO, and the introduction of the Amnesty Law in 2000, the state’s offers became both credible and attractive to rebels. This credibility was more the case in Uganda than it was for similar offers by the Sri Lankan state. Initially, the Ugandan state pardoned LRA members through presidential amnesties. Although the Sri Lankan government offered amnesty only to those who surrendered voluntarily and often made weapon surrender a condition, from the beginning, the Ugandan state granted amnesty not only to those who

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surrendered but also to those who were captured. President Museveni announced this policy in December 1995 (Borzello 1995). While the UPDF’s high command ordered an exclusion of the captured from the amnesty in May 1997, the government apparently revoked this new order and continued to offer amnesty to the captured (Agence France Presse 1997a, b). While presidential amnesties were granted ex post to the capture or surrender of the rebels, the offers carried some credibility, as nearly all of the deserters and captives were granted amnesty. It also helped that the UPDF cooperated with World Vision and other NGOs in rehabilitating former child soldiers (Borzello 1997). Still, despite all of the efforts of the Ugandan state, the effectiveness of its offers of amnesty through ex post presidential orders appears to have been limited. In Figure 5.2, we can see that despite the large number of deserters between 1995 and 1999, less than a third reported to the Ugandan state for amnesty. The credibility of the Ugandan state’s offer of amnesty increased when the parliament passed the Amnesty Act in December 1999. While the Act set a six-month deadline for rebels to accept the amnesty, it also allowed for an extension by the government. Accordingly, since 2000, amnesty has been readily available both to deserters and captives from the LRA. The act had two effects. First, it encouraged deserters from the group to report to government agencies, such as the UPDF and the Amnesty Commission. We can see this effect clearly in Figure 5.2. The percentage of deserters who reported to the state drastically increased starting in 1999. From January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2006, 12,119 ex-LRA members reported to the Amnesty Commission (Ugandan Ministry of Internal Affairs 2010). Second, the act encouraged desertion by middle- to high-ranking commanders of the LRA. In 1999, an LRA commander left the group and reported to the UPDF with twelve other members. This incident was the first case of LRA commanders making a collective decision to desert with their teams. It is also reported that Kony executed Alex Otti Lagony, then second-in-command of the LRA, because Lagony was considering deserting the LRA and reporting to the government. According to a report by a female deserter, “two of his [Kony’s] commanders, Okello Director and Otti Lagony, told some rebels to come back to Uganda and report [to the government].” The plan, however, failed. “Kony got to know of the plan. He arrested them and put them in a deep pit. They killed them to instill fear among those who were planning to escape and come back home” (FEMRITE and IRIN 2008: 26). Admittedly, the state’s investment in general amnesty was not the only factor that made the offer effective. There were at least two other factors that contributed to the credibility of the offer to potential deserters within the LRA. First, in 2002, the British government subsidized the establishment of Mega FM, a radio station in Gulu. Mega FM broadcasted programs in which ex-members of the LRA talked about their experiences after their desertion from the group and called for combatants still in the group to report to the government. An important feature of this program was the ex-rebels’ use of nicknames for their former combatants, allowing those still in the bush to confirm the identity of the speakers on the radio, thus adding credibility to their words. A significant

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 129 number of rebels deserted the group because they heard the voices of their friends on the radio. A further factor that contributed to the credibility of the offers to desert was through the introduction of mobile and satellite phones into the LRA. While the group most likely introduced this new technology to improve its internal communication, it inadvertently made it possible for its members to maintain communication with deserters and others outside of the group. It was James Opoka who brought mobile phones and satellite phones to the LRA in 2002. In addition to high-ranking commanders, unit commanders, and intelligence officers also received mobile and satellite phones, greatly improving communication within the group, as previously they had only backpack radios. However, these phones also allowed deserters from the group to inform those still within its ranks of their experience with the Ugandan state and NGOs after desertion. Moreover, mobile phones allowed members – individually or collectively – to coordinate their desertion plans with the UPDF, aid workers, and those who had already deserted. The Ugandan state’s purpose in offering the general amnesty became apparent in 2005 when President Museveni sued Kony and other leaders of the LRA at the International Criminal Court (ICC) (Branch 2007). The simultaneous offer of general amnesty to LRA members clearly distinguished the leaders from the other members of the group; it reflected the state’s attempt to dealign the interests of the LRA members from those of their leaders, encouraging the former to desert from the latter. Therefore, the installation of the radio station using foreign aid and the improvement in communication systems within the LRA significantly benefitted the Ugandan state’s attempts to encourage desertion from the group. However, it remains the case that the legislation of the Amnesty Act by the Ugandan state acted as the main force behind the increase in deserters and informers from the LRA.

Assessment Unlike the case within the Sri Lankan state, the Ugandan state made clear shifts in its policy on granting amnesty to LRA members. In the beginning, the group did not highly value offers to individual members, and it relied mostly on its own intelligence capacity and selective cooperators. When the LRA moved to Sudan, the state started to offer amnesty to deserters and those who surrendered under the government policy. As no political condition was attached to these offers, it is clear that the primary target was not the LRA leaders but its members. The credibility of the state policy was further increased once the state introduced the 2000 Amnesty Act. The changes in the state’s policy conform to the prediction by the informational theory of rebel recruitment. As the LRA’s recruitment strategy shifted from inducement to coercion, the state strengthened its amnesty offers, making them more comprehensive and credible. The theory explains these changes as a result of an increase in the proportion of members with a higher propensity for indiscipline

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and desertion, as well as the group’s reduced vulnerability to information leakage. These changes made it more efficient for the state to rely on amnesty offers to attract a large number of deserters, to undermine the numerical strength of the LRA and, to a lesser extent, to acquire information to make a military difference.

Comparison of the amnesty offers by the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states At this point, I believe that the general differences between the two states’ amnesty offers are evident. In general, the Ugandan state made considerable efforts to ensure that its amnesty offers were both comprehensive and credible; the state offered amnesty to all deserters and defectors in an unconstrained manner directly after the LRA moved to southern Sudan. Its policy gained more credibility once it introduced legislation and received support from international organizations and NGOs. Conversely, the Sri Lankan state’s offers of amnesty were much more limited both in time and in scope and consequently lacked credibility. The Sri Lankan state’s amnesty offers were mostly associated with political demands against the group’s leadership. Additionally, the offers frequently set deadlines for LTTE members to surrender and targeted only those members who voluntarily surrendered. Those captured by the state military forces were not eligible for amnesty. This condition left high levels of uncertainty for potential deserters because one of the few opportunities they encountered for desertion and defection was on the battlefield, where it is difficult to distinguish those who volunteered to desert from those who were forced to surrender by the state. The informational theory of rebel recruitment explains this difference as a function of the difference between the two groups’ vulnerabilities to information leakage and their recruitment strategies. The LTTE, despite its military strength, was far more vulnerable to information leakage than the LRA. Therefore, for the most part, the LTTE adopted relatively selective recruitment strategies. This decision meant that the Sri Lankan state anticipated little opportunity for defection by LTTE members and had to focus its resources on other counterinsurgency techniques. In contrast, the LRA was much less vulnerable to information leakage, especially after its move to Sudan in 1994. As a result, the Ugandan state foresaw an opportunity to induce defection by LRA members. Furthermore, the group’s vulnerability to information leakage meant that if any leaked information were to make a substantial military difference, its quality and amount needed be considerable. Consequently, the state tended to introduce highly credible amnesty policies with broad coverage to attract the defection of highly capable agents with important information about the group.

Conclusion The primary purpose of this section was to assess whether the state, in a situation of civil war, behaved in a way consistent with the informational theory. As the state closely observes rebel groups, its behavior is likely to reflect the

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 131 organizational characteristics of the groups they are fighting. For this purpose, I discussed the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states’ use of interest dealignment as a counterinsurgency technique against the LTTE and the LRA, respectively. I particularly focused on their offers of amnesty to group members, including their coverage and credibility. The informational theory explains variations in the amnesty offers across both states and throughout the time examined. Comparing Sri Lanka and Uganda, the latter state made more serious attempts to induce defection by keeping the opportunity for amnesty open for deserters and captives from the rebel group. The Ugandan government also made its offer of amnesty credible and attractive, introducing the Amnesty Act, involving third parties, and offering personal economic incentives.5 The Sri Lankan government was less enthusiastic in its offer of general amnesty, presenting it within limited timeframes and setting personal conditionality. Regarding the changes over time in the two countries, both the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states intensified their efforts to offer credible and attractive amnesty to rebels, as the LTTE and the LRA, in turn, shifted their recruitment practices from inducement to coercion. In the first phase, the Sri Lankan state initially offered amnesty as a part of political negotiations with the rebel leaders and then, with a tactical goal, to marginally increase the efficiency of its military operations. Although the state did not offer amnesty for desertion in the first several years of peace negotiations, after the 2002 CFA, as the war resumed, it made considerable efforts to induce desertion from the group through general amnesty. The Ugandan state offered amnesty in an ad hoc manner prior to 1994. However, as the LRA initiated forcible recruitment on a larger scale in 1995, the Ugandan state started to continually offer amnesty to both deserters and captured rebels. The 2000 Amnesty Act and its subsequent extension made the offer of amnesty credible and attractive, contributing to an increase in desertion from the LRA. The findings therefore provide a support for the theory. Nevertheless, it is important to note two limitations in this exercise: first I have not analyzed the complete set of counterinsurgency techniques of the two states but only examine their amnesty offers. This omission arguably constitutes a selection bias because there may exist a correlation between the state’s investment in amnesty offers and its investment in some other counterinsurgency techniques such as intelligence penetration. If the correlation is positive, it undermines the reliability of my analysis in this section. In this sense, it is still necessary to conduct a more comprehensive analysis of the states’ counterinsurgency strategies. However, given the difficulties in obtaining information about the intelligence strategies of states, I believe a concentrated analysis of amnesty offers is justifiable. Moreover, a cursory review of the counterinsurgency strategies of the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states shows that the former invested much more in selective counterinsurgency strategies – that is, intelligence operations – than the latter. The Sri Lankan state devoted a significant proportion of resources to developing its own intelligence capacities in the form of unmanned vehicles and a long-range reconnaissance program. In contrast, the bulk of the Ugandan state’s efforts focused on diplomatic efforts to curtail Sudanese support for

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the LRA and the construction of military roads in the north, where the bush inhibited the state’s counterinsurgency efforts. Therefore, concerning the comparison between the two states, I anticipate that a more comprehensive analysis would confirm, rather than challenge, the findings in this section. Second, as the alternative theories do not have clear implications for the counterinsurgency strategies, I did not test the explanatory power of the informational theory against that of other theories. Still, by assessing the two states’ investments in amnesty offers in the respective phases, I successfully conducted a partial test of the informational theory.

Notes 1 Stathis Kalyvas (2004, 2006) discusses the state’s choice between selective and non-selective counterinsurgency strategies. While relevant, his theory differs from my focus on two accounts. First, Kalyvas focuses on selectivity in the use of force – negative incentives – while my focus is more on the use of negative and positive incentives. Second, in Kalyvas’s work, the immediate target of the state counterinsurgency strategy is the local population, whereas I discuss state strategies that directly target rebel members. 2 Article 2.11 of the accord said, “The President of Sri Lanka will grant a general amnesty to political and other prisoners now held in custody under The Prevention of Terrorism Act and other emergency laws, and to combatants, as well as to those persons accused, charged and/or convicted under these laws. The Government of Sri Lanka will make special efforts to rehabilitate militant youth with a view to bringing them back into the mainstream of national life. India will cooperate in the process” (1987: 110). 3 See Appendix for a list of the Ugandan state’s amnesty offers to the LRA. 4 There are reports that the Ugandan government promised amnesty to members of the UDCA who gave up fighting ex ante to their surrender. According to the report, 3,000 rebels accepted the offer and surrendered to the government, leaving only a few hundred in the group (Peterson 1992, Minorities at Risk Project 2004). However, I could not obtain detailed information about this case if it did actually happen, as it appears to be an isolated incident, and thus would require further information. 5 Foreign donors, including the World Bank, provided financial aid to finance the program.

References Agence France Presse. 1991a. “Shattered Buddhist Truce Set to End Without Result.” May 29. Agence France Presse. 1991b. “Tigers Kill Eight Soldiers Despite Ceasefire.” May 28. Agence France Presse. 1996. “Sri Lanka Offers Amnesty to Surrendering Tiger Rebels.” May 26. Agence France Presse. 1997a. “Uganda Says, No Amnesty for Active Rebel Fighters.” May 19. Agence France Presse. 1997b. “Ugandan Rebel Leader Wants to Move to Kenya: Official Press.” September 15. Agence France Presse. 2004. “Norway Begins Fresh Bid to Salvage Sri Lankan Peace as Tigers Face Flak.” June 29.

State’s counterinsurgency strategy 133 Agence France Presse. 2009. “No Amnesty for Cornered Tiger Leader: Sri Lanka President.” April 22. Athas, Iqbal. 1987. “Land Mines Kill 22 in Latest Tamil Violence.” United Press International, October 8. Beyond Legalism Project. 2010. Amnesty Law Database. Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Accessed June 23, 2010. www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/Research/InstituteofCriminologyand CriminalJustice/Research/BeyondLegalism/AmnestyLawDatabase/. Borzello, Anna. 1995. “Uganda-Politics: Murder, Rape as Lord’s Army Marches on.” IPS-Inter Press Service, December 5. Borzello, Anna. 1997. “Kidnapped to Kill: Thousands of Schoolchildren Have Been Snatched From Their Villages in North Uganda to Be Used as Hostage-Soldiers by a Fanatically Religious Rebel Army. But It Was One Courageous Group of Convent Girls, Pressganged a Year Ago, Who Have Brought Their Plight to the Attention of the World – Including the Pope. A Handful Who Escaped Told Anna Borzello of Their Terrifying Ordeal”. The Guardian, October 11, LexisNexis Academic. Branch, Adam. 2007. “Uganda’s Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention.” Ethics & International Affairs 21 (2): 179–98. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.2007.00069.x. David, Anthony. 1995. “Carrot-and-Stick Policy Holds Promise of Peace for Sri Lanka.” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 25, LexisNexis Academic. Eliatamby, Niresh. 1995. Associated Press Worldstream, December 8, LexisNexis Academic. Fearon, James D. 1997. “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1): 68–90. doi: 10.1177/ 0022002797041001004. FEMRITE and IRIN. 2008. Today You Will Understand: Women of Northern Uganda Speak Out: IRIN. Accessed September 14, 2009. www.irinnews.org/pdf/ IRINFemrite-TodayYouWillUnderstand-Uganda-Publication-July2008.pdf. Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2004. “The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War.” Journal of Ethics 8 (1): 97–138. doi:10.1023/B:JOET.0000012254.69088.41. Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Keethaponcalan, S. I. 2009. “Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement to Establish Peace and Normalcy in Sri Lanka, 1987.” In Conflict and Peace in Sri Lanka: Major Documents With an Introductory Note on Each Document, edited by S. I. Keethaponcalan, 107–13. Colombo: Kumaran Book House. Kelliher, Adam. 1987. “New Attacks on Tamil Strongholds.” United Press International, October 9, LexisNexis Academic. Landay, Jonathan S. 1987. “August 5, 1987, Wednesday, PM Cycle.” United Press International, August 5, LexisNexis Academic. LexisNexis Academic. 2010. Accessed June 17, 2010. www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/ lnacademic/ Loyle, Cyanne E. and H. M. Binningsbø. 2016. “Justice during Armed Conflict.” Journal of Conflict Resolution. doi:10.1177/0022002716655441. Mallinder, Louise. 2008. Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions: Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide, Studies in International Law. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing. Minorities at Risk Project. 2010. Chronology for Acholi in Uganda 2004. Accessed June 23, 2010. www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/469f38ea1e.html.

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Olsen, Tricia D., Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter. 2010a. “The Justice Balance: When Transitional Justice Improves Human Rights and Democracy.” Human Rights Quarterly 32 (4): 980–1007. doi:10.1353/hrq.2010.0021. Olsen, Tricia D., Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter. 2010b. “Transitional Justice in the World, 1970–2007: Insights From a New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 47 (6): 803–9. doi:10.1177/0022343310382205. Peterson, Scott. 1992. “Doubts About Army and Rebels Persist in Northern Uganda.” Christian Science Monitor, March 17. Snyder, Jack and Leslie Vinjamuri. 2003/4. “Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice.” International Security 28 (3): 5–44. doi:10.1162/016228803773100066. Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order. 2009. The Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Terrorist Activities and Government Humanitarian Efforts 1981–2009. Accessed March 5, 2010. www.defence.lk/gis/Final_Final61.swf. A GIS-based visual file. Sri Lankan president offers amnesty to Tamil rebels. 1995. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 6. Sriram, TV. 2009. “Govt Offers Amnesty to Surrendering Tigers, Rejects Dialogue.” The Press Trust of India, February 5. Ugandan Ministry of Internal Affairs. 2010. Reporters Granted Amnesty. Accessed July 13, 2010. www.mia.go.ug/page.php?1=reporters&&2=Reporters Granted Amnesty. Vinjamuri, Leslie and Jack Snyder. 2004. “Advocacy and Scholarship in the Study of International War Crime Tribunals and Transitional Justice.” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (1): 345–62. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104755.

7

Rebel decline

Introduction1 In previous chapters, I demonstrated that the informational theory of rebel recruitment explains not only the recruitment practice of a rebel group but also the desertion rate in the group and the states’ choice of counterinsurgency strategy by examining the cases of the LTTE and LRA. In this chapter, I will test the third implication of the theory: the conditions that are conducive to the organizational decline of a rebel group and, consequently, to the termination of a civil war. I will focus in particular on the effects of massive desertions from a rebel group on the chances that the rebel group declines through their impacts on the group’s power to hurt and power to resist the state. More specifically, I will discuss instances where the LTTE and LRA experienced mass desertions, within certain periods, and examine the extent to which they suffered as a result of those desertions. Although this discussion has been left to the last of the three chapters that examine the observable implications of the theory, this issue is arguably the most important part, as it directly addresses a major part of the causal mechanism of the informational theory: the impact of information leakage on the survival of rebel groups. In addition, this chapter serves two purposes. First, I examine the validity of my coding of the vulnerability of the LTTE and LRA in each period. Second, I develop a novel hypothesis on the conditions that facilitate the termination of a civil war by focusing on variation across rebel groups in their organizational properties. In Chapter Two, I defined the vulnerability of rebel groups in terms of the impact of agents’ desertion on those groups. Consequently, I anticipate that the actual cost of agents’ desertions for rebel groups will correlate with their vulnerabilities within certain phases. The argument is that massive desertion from a rebel group makes the group more prone to organizational decline if, and only if, the group is vulnerable to information leakage. Information leak hypothesis: The more reliant a rebel group is on secrecy for its power, the more likely a significant amount of information leakage from the group leads to the organizational decline of the group.

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Literature Three strands of literature address the effect of desertion and defection on civil war. These studies focus on the relationship of defection with actor fragmentation, spoiler problems, or the state’s counterinsurgency. When defectors from a rebel group form their own group, the number of actors in a war increases. Many studies on the duration and termination of civil wars focus on the initial conditions at the time of the onset of civil wars to explain their duration (Hegre 2004, Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2004, Fearon 2004, Lyall 2010b, Lyall and Wilson 2009). While it is reasonable to focus on such factors to avoid the problem of endogeneity, doing so necessarily leaves out potentially important factors that arise in the course of a civil war and that affect the chance of the war’s termination, such as desertions from both sides of the conflict. David Cunningham (2006) focuses on changes in the number of parties to a civil war and argues that this actor fragmentation in the war increases its duration. This is because fragmentation makes it difficult for actors to find a solution that is acceptable to all of them, increases information asymmetry among them, and makes alliances more fluid, resulting in unstable preferences.2 The literature on spoiler problems argues that defection reduces the likelihood of a negotiated settlement and prolongs a civil war (e.g. Stedman 1997, Kydd and Walter 2002, Bueno de Mesquita 2005). Such studies focus on instances in which peace negotiation intensifies internal conflict between hawks and doves in a rebel group. The defection of moderates from the group to advance the peace process therefore provokes the hawks in the group to escalate the level of violence in the war, thus hampering the peace process. These two strands of literature primarily focus on the question of whether parties within a conflict become more or less likely to reach a negotiated settlement. Civil war can nevertheless terminate if one party is victorious, and defection can prompt the termination process. The third strand of studies examines the effect of defection from a rebel group on state counterinsurgency operations, which is found to have a positive effect on the termination of civil war. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita (2005), for example, argues that a state induces defection by moderates in a rebel (or terrorist) group in order to gain information about the rebel group. According to this author, defection from a rebel group leads hawks in the group to intensify the level of violence in the conflict, while state counterinsurgency efforts become more effective owing to information from defectors. Stathis Kalyvas (2008) and James Lyall (2010a) argue that when there are ethnic defectors from a rebel group, the effectiveness of state’s counterinsurgency operations increases, although Kalyvas focuses more on the negative effect of ethnic defection on the legitimacy of the rebel group. This third strand of literature, however, does not directly address the question of when defection from a rebel group induces a state to escalate its counterinsurgency operations and possibly leads to the termination of civil war if the state is victorious. The literature is also relatively silent about what sort of information from defectors is important and how such information affects a state’s decision regarding military escalation.

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Information leakage and rebel decline The informational theory of rebel recruitment posits that a significant amount of information leakage from a rebel group that is highly reliant on secrecy fosters the organizational decline of the group, while information leakage from a rebel group that is less reliant on secrecy does not have a similar effect. Rebel groups of the latter type are more likely to face organizational decline when the group’s primary power bases, such as manpower and safe havens, are severely curtailed. While there are several ways through which information leakage from a rebel group can occur, I focus on massive desertion from a rebel group as a form of information leakage from the group to the state, as it lies at the center of the informational theory of rebel recruitment, which places the rebel–state contest over information and the agency problem inside a rebel group at its core.

Desertion and information leakage In general, massive desertion from a rebel group and subsequent information leakage from the group to the state tend to improve the absolute efficiency of the state’s military operations against the group. This is because such information improves the military decisiveness of the conflict partially in favor of the state and reduces the level of uncertainty asymmetrically in favor of the state. The term ‘military decisiveness’ refers to the degree to which a certain level of improvement in one side’s military capacity, relative to the other side’s, translates into a higher chance of military victory by the former over the latter.3 It is a function of two

- Vulnerability of the rebel organization to information leakage - Credibility of the leaked information Information from rebel deserters to the state

Absolute efficiency of military solution for the state -

State’s offensive efficiency 㻌 State’s defensive efficiency Subjective uncertainty for the state

Figure 7.1 Information leakage and rebel decline Source: Created by the author.

Peace negotiation

State military escalation

Maintenance of the status quo with or without a future military escalation

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types of efficiency in conflict: (the state’s) offensive efficiency and (the state’s) defensive efficiency.4 First, information from defectors improves the efficiency of the state’s offensives against the rebel group by raising the state’s power to hurt the group and by reducing the group’s power to resist.5 This happens in three ways. Firstly, the information allows the state to overcome the information asymmetry with the rebel group and more efficiently employ its offensive military capacity. Oftentimes, the main reason for a military stalemate in a civil war is not the balance of power but the information asymmetry between the parties, which prevents the stronger party from effectively using its offensive capacity to defeat the weaker party. The sort of information that works in this manner includes knowledge about the location of the rebel group’s headquarters, the sources of its resource procurement, and the geographical terrain in the conflict area. Secondly, information from deserters can help the state prevent a rebel group from surviving state military offensives by shifting its military strategy to a less decisive one or by moving into a new safe haven. Defectors often provide information about the group’s plan, military or diplomatic, to counter the state’s would-be final offensives or offer information regarding the precise locations of rebel leaders.6 This sort of information allows the winning state to avoid being confined to a less decisive and protracted war. Thirdly, information from defectors can affect the efficiency of the state’s offensives in a non-military manner. For example, the state can exploit information about divisions within the rebel leadership to intensify distrust within the leadership and thus undermine the cohesion of the group and induce more defection. Such distrust and further defection weakens the numerical power of the rebel group. In addition, some information about the rebel group, such as information about the group’s practice against humanity, can reduce the political cost of the state’s offensives against the group. Second, information from defectors raises the efficiency of the state’s defense against the rebel group’s military offensives by reducing the rebel group’s power to hurt the state and by improving the state’s power to resist. The state’s resort to a military solution tends to intensify the rebel group’s effort to hurt the state militarily, which raises the costs of such a solution for the state. Information from rebel defectors can mitigate these costs. For instance, information about a rebel group’s plan for an attack against a state or civilians often allows the state to preempt their strikes or improve its defensive and protective measures. In this way, the state can not only reduce the military cost of military escalation but also effectively reduce the political and economic costs associated with it. Third, information from defectors asymmetrically reduces uncertainty in civil war. The fog of war often prevents a state from initiating battles against a rebel group, even when the objective distribution of power promises a good chance of victory for the former. A high level of uncertainty often prevails – both in the distribution of power between the two parties and in the cost of such battles (and a potential defeat) on military, political, and economic fronts. Information

Rebel decline 139 from defectors then reduces the subjective uncertainty and makes the state more confident in its decision to escalate the war, when such a decision is appropriate. Admittedly, a reduction in the level of uncertainty is often associated with a lower risk of war (e.g., Fearon 1995). Such a reduction may occur if the state reveals its knowledge of the rebel group with the group itself, in order to improve the state’s bargaining position against the group. However, certain kinds of information would only be useful to the state if it utilizes it in a surprise military operation against a rebel group (cf. Axelrod 1979). Hence, the state oftentimes has greater incentive to conceal their knowledge about the group – acquired from rebel defectors – from the group itself. To summarize, the three identified effects of information leakage to the state from rebel defectors improve the expected efficiency of the state’s military solution. The state is thus more likely not only to increase its investment in the military sector but also to escalate its military operations against the rebel group. These moves, in turn, increase the likelihood of the state’s victory in a civil war. Admittedly, information from other sources, such as local civilians and the state’s own intelligence mechanism, can function as substitutes for information from defectors. Still, as discussed in Chapter Two, information from defectors is distinct from these other sources in at least three respects. First, defectors can provide information about a rebel group at both an organizational and local level. Second, they can provide information not only about the past and current status of the group but also about its future, such as its plans for procurement and military operations. Third, they can often sustain a continuous inflow of information from the group to the state, either by remaining inside the group or by maintaining their social ties with those who remain part of the group. This aspect has likely been strengthened by the spread of mobile phones in the past two decades. Of course, the extent to which information leakage from the group improves the absolute efficiency of the state’s military operations also depends on the content and credibility of the information the deserters provide the state. The commitment problem between the rebel deserters and the state can inhibit the state from swiftly making use of the acquired information (Bueno de Mesquita 2005).

Vulnerability of a rebel group to information leakage The magnitude of these effects critically depends on the extent to which the rebel group relies on secrecy for its power to hurt the state and its power to resist the state’s offensives. If the group is highly reliant on secrecy for power, the leaked information significantly improves the efficiency of the state’s military operations, leading to the organizational decline of the group. In contrast, if the group is less reliant on secrecy, the leaked information has only a marginal effect on the efficiency of the state’s military operations. It is rather the erosion of the group’s alternative power bases, such as manpower and safe havens, that puts the group in organizational decline.

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Rebel decline and the course of civil war The effect of massive desertion from a rebel group on the course of civil war depends on the relative efficiency of the alternative courses of action for the state. Upon reception of the leaked information, the state has three options: resorting to military escalation, negotiating peace with the rebel group, and maintaining the status quo. First, the state has an option to make use of the leaked information to defeat the rebel group through military escalation. However, a military solution is costly both for the parties to the conflict and also for society. Second, the state can seek a negotiated settlement, where it can use the acquired information to advance its position at the bargaining table rather than to put it into an actual use for a military victory. This move will then be reciprocated by the rebel group, as it seeks to avoid total defeat. An intensive commitment problem between the state and the group, however, can render a negotiated settlement unfeasible and increase the chance of military escalation (Fearon 1995, Powell 2002, 2006, Walter 1997). Third, the state can maintain the status quo of a relatively low intensity conflict. This option is attractive for the state especially when the state expects the efficiency of the military escalation or bargaining to improve substantially in the future, as in the case where the state is undergoing rapid economic development or where a foreign government plans to change its policy toward the conflict soon. However, maintaining the status quo entails at least two kinds of costs: the deterrence cost and the damage from the rebel offensives. The state needs to invest resources to deter the rebel offensives against the state and civilians (cf. Powell 2006), and to the extent that the deterrence fails, the state suffers from the rebel offensives of relatively low intensity.7 Examples of these structural changes include rapid economic development in the country and a change in foreign governments’ policies toward the conflict. Hence, massive desertion tends to foster military escalation when the state finds resorting to military escalation to be more efficient than the alternatives, namely, negotiating a settlement with the rebel group and maintaining the status quo. This is the situation when the state and the rebel group experience an intensive commitment problem, when the costs of maintaining the state quo are high for the state, and when the state lacks a reason to believe that its position vis-à-vis the rebel group will significantly improve in near future. Massive desertion tends to result in a negotiated settlement when the commitment problem between the state and the group is low and when the state finds the costs of maintaining the status quo relatively high. Finally, massive desertion is likely to produce no observable and immediate effect on the course of a civil war when the commitment problem between the state and the rebel group is high, when the costs of deterrence and damage from the rebel offensives are low, and when the state expects its position vis-à-vis the rebel group to significantly improve in future.

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Method I will assess the validity of the implications of the informational theory of rebel recruitment by examining the six cases of the LTTE and the LRA. The predicted association between desertion, information leakage, and the chance of the rebel group’s survival is a novel one, and alternative theories do not have clear implications on the subject. Scholars of the resource curse theory do not discuss this issue. Further, theories concerning outside options do not have clear predictions on this point. For example, Bernd Beber and Christopher Blattman’s study exclusively focuses on the interaction between rebel leaders and members (Beber and Blattman 2013). In this chapter, therefore, I do not compare the explanatory power of the informational theory with those of alternative theories. Still, it is possible to test the validity of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. Scott Gates (2002) explicitly models the interaction between a rebel group and its rival groups and discusses the role of a power relationship between the two. However, he intentionally omits the link between desertions from the two sides and the power balance between the groups and the state. An implication of the informational theory is that Gates correctly notes the nonmonolithic relationship between the number of deserters and the shift in the balance of power between the rebel group and the state. However, the theory also suggests that Gates prematurely abandoned the entire causal relationship between the two variables. Instead, this theory propounds that the type of rebel group – whether vulnerable or invulnerable to information leakage – directly affects whether desertion affects the power balance between rebel groups and the state, in the course of a civil war. Therefore, if desertions turn out to have no direct effect on the power balance between the two parties and on the course of civil war, the evidence undermines the credibility of the informational theory of rebel recruitment. However, if we observe that desertions have some effect on the course of civil war, in line with the prediction of the informational theory, the findings support it. The limited availability of data and the problem of selection bias present a challenge in an assessment of temporal variation in the effects of information leakage on the survival of rebel groups. The informational theory predicts that massive desertion was unlikely to occur in the first phases of the two rebel groups, which I somewhat demonstrated in Chapter Five. This lack of an observance of mass desertion makes it impossible to assess the impact of mass desertion on the groups across the assessed phases. Still, it is possible to assess the instances in which rebel groups experienced some level of desertion or in which the state arrested a significant number of group members – a functional equivalent of mass desertion. By examining the effects of these events on rebel groups, I can test an implication of the informational theory: rebel groups with different recruitment strategies vary in their degree of vulnerability to deserters.

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Table 7.1 Information leakage and declines of the LTTE and LRA LTTE Phase I Period

LRA Phase II

Phase III Phase I

May 1976– Late 1995– April 1998– 1995 March 2004 2004– 1994 May 2009

Independent Variable Information High asymmetry Cost of High→Low retention mechanism Expected cost High of desertion Dependent Variable Organizational (No)* decline after information leakage

Phase II Phase III 1994– 2001

2002–2006

High

High

High

High

High

Low

Low

High

High

High

High

High

High

Low

Low→High

(No)*

Yes

Yes

No

No

*The incidents of information leaks through People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and Uma Maheswaran did not benefit the Sri Lankan state.

Impact of desertions on the LTTE In Chapter Four, I showed that the LTTE was highly vulnerable to desertion in its first phase and was therefore highly reliant on inducement in recruitment. The group then reduced its level of vulnerability in the second phase, when it adopted conventional warfare as its military strategy. However, this alteration in the group’s organizational characteristics was limited. It did not fundamentally transform the LTTE from a vulnerable group to an invulnerable one. The group did start to use force for recruitment in its second phase; however, this was partly because of the availability of a cheap retention mechanism as a result of its territorial control, and it installed a conscription system instead of solely carrying out abductions. The prediction of the informational theory of rebel recruitment is then that if the LTTE experienced mass desertion in the first phase, this process should have severely damaged the group – forcing it either to engage in ‘crisis behavior’ or cease operations. If the group experienced mass desertion in the second phase, it should have also incurred serious damage. The next section’s analysis demonstrates that the LTTE suffered from some level of desertion in its first phase. In apparent contradiction to the informational theory, however, the deserters did

Rebel decline 143 not cause significant damage to the group. I will therefore point out that one of the assumptions of the informational theory does not hold in these cases. Consequently, these events act as deviations that confirm the logic of the informational theory. In the second phase, the LTTE suffered from massive desertion, namely, the defection by Karuna and his followers. The event turned out to be a significant blow to the LTTE and slowly brought about military defeat for the group. This finding provides support for the informational theory.

Prediction The informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that mass desertion would have similar effects on the LTTE in the first and second phases. In the first phase, the group was highly vulnerable to information leakage, and it thus relied on inducement for recruitment. In this phase, mass desertion would have immediately undermined the power of the organization. In the second phase, the group was still structurally in a position where it was vulnerable to information leakage. The group did become somewhat less vulnerable in its defense or its power to resist, and it diversified its military strategy to conduct conventional warfare. However, the group initiated forcible recruitment only because it expected the desertion rate to remain low, as the group had a relatively cheap monitoring and sanction system owing to its territorial control. Accordingly, mass desertion would have also seriously affected the LTTE in the second phase.

Phase I It is difficult to assess the implications of the informational theory of rebel recruitment on the first phase of the LTTE. As discussed in Chapter Five, from 1976 to the mid-1990s, there is no record of mass desertion from the LTTE to the state. This observation, in itself, fits the prediction of the theory: the LTTE, as a group that was vulnerable to information leaks and that relied heavily on inducement and other ex ante screening mechanisms, experienced a low rate of desertion in its first phase. However, this fact also makes it difficult to test the impact of massive defection on the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state. There were incidents when some members left or betrayed the LTTE, however. The first such occurrence was led by Uma Maheswaran (Swamy 2002, Staniland 2012). Maheswaran and his followers split from the LTTE in 1980 and formed a new militant group called the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). Maheswaran is known to have had a personal rivalry with Prabhakaran, in seeking the leadership of the LTTE. Since Maheswaran’s defection, the Sri Lankan state neither carried out a military assault against the LTTE nor initiated peace talks with the group, thus ensuring its survival. Therefore, it is possible to assume that this case goes against the informational theory. This incident does not constitute an anomaly for the informational theory, however, for two reasons: First, instead of cooperating with the Sri Lankan state, Maheswaran formed a new independent militant group for Tamil secessionism,

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indicating that Maheswaran and his followers did not leak security information to the Sri Lankan state. Second, the number of deserters who joined Maheswaran in forming PLOTE was small, meaning that in terms of military and human resources, PLOTE was not in a position to defeat the LTTE, even with the information they possessed about the group. While PLOTE was larger than the LTTE at certain points in time, it was always weaker than the Sri Lankan military. In fact, while PLOTE had several military confrontations with the LTTE from 1980 onward, the group never gained ascendancy over the LTTE. The second instance of betrayal from the LTTE was that of Mahattaya (Rajasingham 2002, Staniland 2012). Mahattaya was the second-in-command of the LTTE after Prabhakaran. Although he did not physically leave the LTTE, Prabhakaran had him arrested and executed in 1994, with 200 others, reportedly because Mahattaya betrayed the LTTE and leaked information to its enemy. However, it is not clear whether Mahattaya’s alleged betrayal had any negative effect on the group. It did not directly result in a military offensive by the Sri Lankan state, nor did it endanger the LTTE’s survival. This incident, however, does not effectively constitute a case against the informational theory, either. Mahattaya had reportedly been cooperating, not with the Sri Lankan government, but with the Indian government, especially its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). It is therefore not clear how much information the Sri Lankan state received from Mahattaya through RAW. Still, it is an important question why the Indian state did not carry out a military offensive against the LTTE upon cooperation with Mahattaya in the early 1990s. However, this fact in itself does not go against the informational theory. Even if the Indian government had gained sufficient amounts of information from Mahattaya to defeat the LTTE, it would have been extremely difficult for the government to carry out such a military operation, as the Indian government would need to secure consent from the Sri Lankan government for a military operation on its soil. Moreover, difficulties in gaining consent would have arisen because the Sri Lankan people had previously had bitter experiences with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s. Indeed, the Sri Lankan government even cooperated with the LTTE on this point – to remove the IPKF from the country. More importantly, Indian domestic politics would have prevented its government from such an undertaking, owing to their own negative experience with the IPKF. To summarize, the incidents of desertion and information leakage from the LTTE in the first phase constitute a moderate test for the informational theory of rebel recruitment, though not a critical one. Indeed, the apparent deviations from the prediction of the theory in these instances turn out to provide support for the theory, as the deserters did not directly cooperate with the Sri Lankan state after their desertion.

Phase II and III In the second and third phases of the LTTE, the group remained somewhat vulnerable to information leakage. It was certainly less vulnerable to desertion in

Rebel decline 145 these phases than in its first phase because of a change in its military strategy to prepare for a positional warfare. However, the LTTE was located toward the edge of the island country, it lacked an effective safe haven nearby, and the Sri Lankan state was developing itself economically and militarily. Therefore, the group remained fairly vulnerable to information leakage throughout this period. In the meantime, the group had a large number of deserters, the most important being the defection of Karuna and his followers, who subsequently cooperated with the Sri Lankan state. Consistent with the informational theory of rebel recruitment, this event slowly undermined the security of the LTTE, culminating in Prabhakaran’s death and the group’s surrender in May 2009. In the latter half of 1990s, the LTTE started to recruit new agents by conscription. Initially, the agents worked on a part-time basis, and later full time. This change in the group’s recruitment practice was accompanied by an increase in the desertion rate among its members. However, in terms of information leakage, the most important case of desertion was that of Karuna, who left the LTTE in March 2004 and released approximately 5,000 of his cadres, of whom 2,000 were women. After leaving the LTTE, Karuna and his followers cooperated with the Sri Lankan state. The most important part of their assistance was the provision of information about the LTTE to the government. A significant part of this information, of course, concerned the LTTE’s presence in the Eastern Province, such as the location of secret camps, and the identification of collaborators in towns and villages. However, the government also obtained information about the LTTE’s organizational structure and its activities in other parts of Sri Lanka, such as its strategy to defend Mullaitivu in case of an offensive by the state military. The informational theory of rebel recruitment therefore provides a compelling account of the termination of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, with a reference to Karuna’s defection. Importantly, it explains two puzzles of the event to the conventional wisdom in studies of civil war and counterinsurgency.

The LTTE’s decline and the termination of civil war in Sri Lanka In May 2009, the LTTE leadership surrendered to the Sri Lankan state military forces, marking the end of Eelam War IV, which started in the summer of 2006. The surrender also ended the longstanding military conflict between the Sri Lankan state and both the LTTE and other Tamil militant organizations, which had lasted for approximately thirty years.8 The swift termination of Eelam War IV, with complete state victory, surprised many observers, for two reasons. First, virtually no one expected such a thorough and swift military victory by the state. The LTTE was deemed one of the richest and most powerful rebel groups in the world. In fact, the state suffered a bitter defeat in Eelam War III between 1995 and 2002, in which it lost a huge portion of territory after its initial military success in taking over Jaffna. In addition, the LTTE was expected to survive a defeat in a conventional war by returning to its old military strategy of guerrilla warfare. However, the LTTE failed to resort to

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its old strategy to ensure its survival. Consequently, “[the Sri Lankan] government won a military victory [against the LTTE] against all the odds and despite the predictions [of failure] of military experts throughout the world” (Moorcraft 2012: 165). Second, with its military strategy in Eelam War IV, the state was apparently indiscriminate in its use of violence. Recently, both scholars of civil war and practitioners of counterinsurgency came to accept the idea that the selective use of violence against rebels and their collaborators is critical to win a civil war (United States Dept. of the Army and United States Marine Corps 2007). Some also argue that it is important to win the hearts and minds of the local population (Mao 1961). These dictums follow on from the idea that an effective counterinsurgency requires the successful collection of intelligence from locals. Hence, for example, Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson (2009) argue that the mechanization of the state military reduces the effectiveness of its counterinsurgency operations. The Sri Lankan state’s military success betrayed conventional wisdom. In fact, the level of mechanization in the Sri Lankan state military at the beginning of Eelam War IV was higher than that at the start of Eelam War III.9 Ashok Mehta even argues that the case set ‘a new paradigm’ for counterinsurgency (Mehta 2010: 23). The informational theory of rebel recruitment provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Karuna’s defection in March 2004 and his leakage of information about the group to the state thereafter fostered the state’s escalation of the military conflict to Eelam War IV, with the information improving the expected efficiency of the military solution for the state. This hypothesis explains why Eelam War IV ended so swiftly with the state’s victory. Additionally, the theory suggests that the Sri Lankan state’s solution to the civil war – the use of mass violence with little consideration for civilian casualties – is feasible only under limited conditions.

Karuna’s defection, information leakage, and the state’s military escalation Karuna defected from the LTTE in March 2004. Upon his defection, Karuna’s faction provided certain kinds of information that improved the efficiency of the state’s military engagement against the LTTE in three ways: by improving the efficiency of the state’s offensives, by improving the efficiency of their defensives, and by reducing the level of uncertainty for the state. First, information from the Karuna faction improved the efficiency of the state’s offensives. Three sorts of information from defectors served this function. First, the state learned the locations of the LTTE’s camps, hide-outs, stocks of munitions, and food and clothing supplies, as well as their pathways to advance through the terrain (Mehta 2010).10 This information made the state offensive more efficient and effective, especially in the east, where Karuna was previously head commander of LTTE troops. “Military success in the east was made easy due to Karuna’s sterling assistance . . .; he had valuable information of LTTE

Rebel decline 147 locations, resources and hideouts” (Mehta 2010: 6, 6). Though not from Karuna’s faction, the state military forces also benefited from this sort of information from ex-members of other Tamil militant groups. When the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) advanced to the north in the later years of Eelam War IV, ex-militants guided their way through jungles in the area, since the SLA had not been present in the region for decades. Second, Karuna provided the state with information about the LTTE’s military plan to counter a massive military offensive by the state,11 which was to withdraw itself to Mullaitivu. The SLA, accordingly, made sure that they completely surrounded the area so that the LTTE combatants could not escape the area to any safe haven abroad. Third, even after his defection, Karuna utilized his social network with those still inside the group to learn the whereabouts of the LTTE leaders, including Prabhakaran. According to an interviewee close to ex-LTTE combatants, Prabhakaran executed one of the senior members of the group, as he had allegedly leaked information about Prabhakaran’s location through Karuna to the government.12 This cadre’s execution occurred only a day before Prabhakaran himself was killed by the government. The information that the state received from cooperators inside the LTTE, through Karuna, was thus vitally important for them in the successful killing of Prabhakaran and other leaders.13 Together, these three types of information effectively raised the efficiency of the state’s offensives and prevented the war from deteriorating into guerrilla warfare. The improvement in the state’s offensive efficiency is observable in the rapid shrinking of the LTTE’s territory during Eelam War IV, in comparison to the state’s military performances in the previous Eelam wars (see Figure 3.3). During the three years of Eelam War IV from June 2006 to May 2009, the state took over the entire area controlled by the LTTE, which constituted 74 percent of the northern and eastern parts of the country. The state’s military expenditure from 2006 through 2009 was 3.12 billion USD (constant 2000) in total, making its annual expenditure 0.78 billion USD on average. In comparison, during nearly seven years of Eelam War III from April 1995 to February 2002, the state lost seven percent of the territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Further, the state’s military expenditure from 1995 through 2001 was 4.95 billion USD, making its average annual military expenditure 0.71 billion USD. Hence, despite the similarity in the state’s annual military expenditures, the state military forces performed much more effectively in Eelam War IV than in Eelam War III. Furthermore, information from Karuna’s group improved the efficiency of the state’s defensive operations. The state’s military offensives in the north raised the incentive for the group to conduct terror attacks in Colombo and other areas of the country, in order to increase the political cost of these state offensives and deter their further advancement. An interviewee close to the state security apparatus noted that Karuna and his associates provided the state with information regarding the whereabouts of so-called ‘sleepers’ or LTTE operatives under cover in Colombo and other parts of the country, as many of them originally came from

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the east.14 This information allowed the state to arrest operatives and weaken the group’s network used to carry out these terror attacks. Hence, it reduced the LTTE’s power to hurt the state and thus increased the military and political cost incurred by the LTTE through the state military operations in the north and east. A cursory review of data on the LTTE’s terror attacks demonstrates this point. The number of LTTE’s terror attacks increased with the commencement of Eelam War IV, rising to a level similar to that during Eelam War III from 1995 to 2002 (Figure 7.2). However, the number of casualties from these attacks remained relatively lower than that from attacks during the Eelam III. The total number of LTTE attacks during Eelam War III was 466, while it reached only 298 during Eelam War IV. Between the two Eelam Wars, the number of attacks per month increased from 5.61 to 8.51, an increase of 52 percent.15 The number of fatalities incurred in these attacks, however, dropped from 43.34 to 33.91, a decrease of 22 percent. Consequently, the average number of fatalities per LTTE attack decreased from Eelam War III to Eelam War IV by approximately 48 percent. If we focus on LTTE attacks in Colombo, the figure decreased by 55 percent. These trends are observable in Figure 7.2 and Figure 7.3.

Figure 7.2 Number of LTTE attacks and their fatalities per month in Sri Lanka Data source: Global Terrorism Database (2010); National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 2010a, b). The data for 1993 are missing. The vertical dashed lines indicate the month of Karuna’s defection, April 2004.

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Figure 7.3 Fatalities per LTTE attack for each month in Sri Lanka and in Colombo Data source: Global Terrorism Database (2010); National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 2010a, b). Data for 1993 are missing. The vertical dashed lines indicate the month of Karuna’s defection, April 2004.

These figures and graphs demonstrate that the effectiveness of LTTE attacks dropped sharply from Eelam War III to Eelam War IV, especially in Colombo, the support of whose citizens was vital for the political survival of the ruling government. The information from Karuna’s group helped the state reduce the political, economic, and military cost of offensives against the LTTE by damaging the group’s network and capabilities to carry out terror attacks against civilians and state facilities. Third, information from Karuna’s group reduced the elements of uncertainty that are almost always associated with civil wars. Their information about the current status of the LTTE – including its size and resources – helped the state more accurately and confidently assess the distribution of power between the two parties and allowed the state to assess the potential cost of large-scale operations especially in the east, including the expected duration of war, and the political pressures from domestic and international actors against such operations. Though the state’s intelligence activities to some extent reduced uncertainty in these areas, information from those who defected was of great importance. Karuna’s defection and the consequent shift in the expected efficiency of the military operations for the state affected the state’s behavior at least on two

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fronts – with respect to both its military expenditures and attitudes toward the 2002 CFA. The LTTE also responded accordingly. First, in 2004, when Karuna defected from the LTTE, the government’s military expenditure increased for the first time since 2001. In 2000, during President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s “War for Peace” operations against the LTTE, the government military expenditure hit 56.9 billion rupee, the highest since 1991 (The World Bank 2009). After 1991, partly owing to the 2002 CFA, the military expenditure continued to decline, reaching 47.0 billion rupee in 2003. However, in 2004, the military expenditure rose again to the pre-CFA level of 56.3 billion rupee, and it continued to increase dramatically until 2008, when it reached 133 billion rupee. The increase in military expenditure is partly a reflection of the growth in the country’s economy; however, beyond the increase in overall military expenditure, its shares in gross domestic product (GDP) and in the central government expenditure also started to increase in 2004. Hence, the state started to allocate a higher proportion of government resources to the military sector, in order to the improve prospects of defeating the LTTE. Furthermore, the expected efficiency of the military operations also changed the state’s policies toward the 2002 CFA and the LTTE. Since the signing of the CFA, the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE refrained from overt military operations against each other except for a few small incidents (Höglund 2005). However, in July 2006, the state military forces carried out a direct military offensive against the LTTE in Mavil Aru. As the immediate trigger of the operation, the LTTE halted water supply from the Mavil Aru reservoir to the surrounding area, which affected the lives of 6,000 Sinhala farmers residing in the government-controlled area. Previously, the government used to solve such altercations with the LTTE through negotiation, owing to the 2002 ceasefire agreement and the presence of the SLMM to oversee the agreement. However, this time, arguably to the surprise of the LTTE, President Rajapaksa initiated a military attack not only to force the LTTE to reopen the gate of the reservoir but also to assume control over the gate (Hariharan 2006). From this time onward, the government took any opportunity to initiate a military offensive and take over the control of areas from the LTTE. By July 2007, the government force captured Thoppigala, which was the last remaining base of the LTTE in the east, effectively liberating the entire Eastern Province. Of course, it was not only the state that responded to Karuna’s desertion and consequent shift in the expected efficiency of the state’s military operations. Arguably anticipating military escalation by the state, the LTTE intensified its recruitment drive. Data on the ex-LTTE combatant detainees of the Sri Lankan state indicate that the number of new recruits per year increased in about 2005 (Table 7.2). From the signing of the CFA in 2002 until 2004, a gradual increase in the number of recruits occurred, with a rate of increase between 9 percent and 34 percent each year. However, in about 2005, the rate increased to more than 100 percent. This trend was intensified further by the start of Eelam War IV in 2006. Of course, the figures in the table are only indicative and do not reflect the precise changes in the number of new recruits in the LTTE over the years. The

Rebel decline 151 data for this table are based on a survey conducted by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence (MOD) among the ex-LTTE members detained by the government in 2009. Therefore, the data leave out all the members of the LTTE who either died during the conflict or remain alive and escaped the government’s search operations. Hence, in using these data to analyze the trends in the recruitment practices of the LTTE, I assume that the proportion of the number of those detained by the government for each year remained mostly constant. Because I will confine my analysis to the years after the conclusion of the CFA in 2002, I do not anticipate this assumption to be highly problematic. In addition, I have assumed that all the detainees left the LTTE sometime in the first half of 2009 and computed the approximate years of recruitment. It was necessary to make this assumption since there were no data on the year of recruitment, or of detention, in the published data. While the assumption may not be precise, I believe it is acceptable and does not severely bias the analysis, since there were few reports on the detention of ex-LTTE members prior to 2009. Therefore, overall, it appears that the LTTE resorted to a mass recruitment drive after Karuna’s defection in order to compensate for the loss of its human resources and prepare for a major military offensive from the state military forces. To summarize, the Sri Lankan state obtained several types of information about the LTTE from Karuna. This information improved the expected efficiency of a military course of action for the state,16 which contributed to the state’s decision to engage in a large-scale military operation to take over the east in the summer of 2006. The LTTE had also anticipated such a move, and it resorted to a massive recruitment drive beginning in 2004. However, the swift success of the state’s military operations in the east made the state leaders confident. As early as 2007, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa surprised foreign representatives in one of the meetings by informally suggesting that the Sri Lankan government was confident that it would defeat the LTTE in two to three years, even though the state was yet to denounce the CFA 2002.17 This confidence enabled President Rajapaksa to decide to further pursue the LTTE into the north, thus achieving complete military victory over the group.

Explaining the timing of the state military escalation At this point, two questions regarding the timing of the Sri Lankan state’s military escalation in the summer of 2006 remain. On the one hand, it is necessary to explain why the state did not immediately resort to an escalation of military activity upon Karuna’s defection, if his defection was the primary cause of the military escalation. Such an explanation is especially necessary if the main effect of Karuna’s defection on the state’s decision was its numerical implication, rather than its informational effect, as the state could expect the LTTE to regain its numerical power over time. On the other hand, it is also necessary to explain why the state did not wait longer before initiating military escalation. The state should have waited longer in order to further reduce the cost of a military offensive if, for example, international financial bans against the LTTE reduced the LTTE’s

Table 7.2 Duration of service among the Ex-LTTE combatants detained by the Sri Lankan Government* Duration of Service

Year of Recruitment**

Number of Ex-combatants

Rate of Increase from the Previous Period***

less than 01 year 01 to 02 years 02 to 03 years 03 to 04 years 04 to 05 years 05 to 06 years 06 to 07 years 07 to 08 years 08 to 09 years 09 to 10 years 10 to 11 years 11 to 12 years 12 to 13 years 13 to 14 years 14 to 15 years 15 to 16 years 16 to 17 years 17 to 18 years 18 to 19 years 19 to 20 years 20 to 21 years 21 to 22 years Total

2008–2009 2007–2008 2006–2007 2005–2006 2004–2005 2003–2004 2002–2003 2001–2002 2000–2001 1999–2000 1998–1999 1997–1998 1996–1997 1995–1996 1994–1995 1993–1994 1992–1993 1991–1992 1990–1991 1989–1990 1988–1989 1987–1988

3,518 1,435 1,921 940 413 378 282 240 190 152 125 84 62 81 85 53 38 60 57 46 15 13 10,188

2.45 0.75 2.04 2.28 1.09 1.34 1.18 1.26 1.25 1.22 1.49 1.35 0.77 0.95 1.60 1.39 0.63 1.05 1.24 3.07 1.15 0.00 1.34

*The table was created by the author by using the data on the number of detained ex-combatants and their duration of service from Ferdinando (2010). **The year of recruitment was calculated based on the assumption that all the ex-combatants were detained sometime in the first half of 2009. Although this assumption is questionable, it is not wholly inaccurate, since there were few reports on deserters or surrenders from the LTTE prior to 2009. ***The figure was calculated by dividing the total number of detainees for each period by the number for the previous period.

Rebel decline 153 military capabilities and fostered the state in engaging in military escalation. I argue that the informational theory of rebel recruitment provides a coherent answer to these two questions. First, why did the state not initiate military escalation right after Karuna’s defection? Some may argue that it was the numerical implication of Karuna’s defection that reduced the size of the LTTE forces rather than any resultant leaking of information that led to the state’s military escalation.18 While Karuna relieved approximately 6,000 combatants under his command at the time of his defection (Human Rights Watch 2004, International Crisis Group 2006), the numerical effects of Karuna’s defection on the state’s military escalation should not be exaggerated. Even in the 1990s, the state had a significant numerical advantage over the LTTE (see Table 3.1). The numerical gap between the two parties after Karuna’s defection was therefore not novel. More importantly, if the state’s military escalation was a response to the numerical reduction in the LTTE owing to Karuna’s defection, the state should have hastened in targeting the LTTE after his defection, in fear that the group would regain its numerical power. The state, however, did not pursue this course of action. In this sense, the timing of the state’s military escalation was too late to be explained by the numerical impact of Karuna’s defection. From the viewpoint of the informational theory of rebel recruitment, I argue that three factors explain this ‘delay’ in the state’s response to Karuna’s defection: an impending presidential election; the state’s need to solve the commitment problem with Karuna; and its need to learn the efficiency of an alternative option to pursue a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The delay in the state’s response partly resulted from the political clock. A presidential election was scheduled to take place in 2005, and the schedule made it difficult for the state to take drastic action against the LTTE before the completion of the election. The election, however, does not fully explain the timing of the military escalation, as the state further waited until the summer of 2006 – long after the completion of the election. Two other factors explain this temporal gap. First, it took some time for the state to obtain credible information from the Karuna faction after its defection. According to a report, Karuna was in full cooperation with the state by 2006 (International Crisis Group 2006). I attribute this delay to the state’s need to solve commitment problem with him to gain credible information about the LTTE. For Karuna and the state to establish effective cooperation, the former needed to assure the state of the credibility of the leaked information, while the latter needed to convince Karuna of his physical and political security.19 Second, the state did not learn how best to utilize the alternative courses of action until 2006. Despite Karuna’s cooperation, large-scale military operations were highly risky for both the state and the regime. For the state to engage in such an operation, the state needed to be assured of the relative inefficiency of the alternative options, such as negotiating a peace agreement with the group and maintaining the status quo. While President Rajapaksa won the 2005 presidential

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election in alliance with Sinhara nationalist parties, through advocating a hawkish position against the LTTE, he engaged in military escalation only when the inefficiency of such alternative options became apparent. President Rajapaksa found peace negotiations to be futile by 2006. The state held peace negotiations with the LTTE in Oslo and Geneva in 2005 and 2006. Neither bore a credible process conducive to a peace agreement. As a NGO official bitterly reported, “peace talk was a waste. It was a total failure.”20 In the meantime, in April 2006, the LTTE attempted to assassinate then-Army Commander Sarath Fonseka. In the Mavil Aru Incident in June of the same year, the group also closed the gate of a water reserve, denying predominantly Sinhara farmers access to water, in an area in the east of the country. These two events, alongside the failure of the two peace negotiations, appear to have convinced the Sri Lankan state of the futility of peace negotiations and possibly the cost of continuation of ceasefire.21 22 Furthermore, why did the state not wait longer before initiating military escalation? From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, more than 30 states – including India, United Kingdom, and the United States – barred financial transactions with the LTTE, which harmed its extensive diaspora network and prevented its procurement of financial resources.23 In fact, it appears plausible to conjecture that this international financial ban led President Rajapaksa to initiate military escalation against the group. However, this explanation is problematic partly because the effect of the international financial ban appears to have been limited. Even in 2007, a UK-based think tank ranked the LTTE as the second richest rebel group in the world, with its annual revenue roughly grossing $200–300 million (Reuters 2007).24 In addition, the international financial ban does not explain the timing of the state’s military escalation. Despite its efficiency relative to the previous Eelam Wars, Eelam War IV was still very costly for the state. The state military expenditure from 2006 to 2009 was 3.12 billion USD (constant 2000 USD) (The World Bank 2012), and the state military suffered 6,261 casualties during these three years (Agence France Presse 2009). If the Sri Lankan state found the international financial ban to be effective in reducing the LTTE’s power, the state should have postponed military escalation to further reduce the cost of a military solution. The informational theory of rebel recruitment provides an explanation about the ‘swiftness’ in the state’s military escalation with reference to two factors: the high cost of maintaining the status quo and the time-bound nature of the utility of information from Karuna’s group. After the 2002 CFA, the state and LTTE had little direct military confrontation until 2006. Still, the LTTE continued to carry out terror attacks, as shown in Figure 7.2 (cf. Höglund 2005). The targets of violence were civilians, state facilities, and state officials. For the state, maintaining the status quo therefore meant suffering the political and economic costs of these terror attacks while maintaining investment in the military sector to deter further LTTE offensives by terror attacks or by conventional warfare. More importantly, however, the state could not count on the usefulness of the information from Karuna’s group for any duration of time. In reaction to

Rebel decline 155 Karuna’s cooperation with the state, the LTTE may adjust its organization (by moving their hide-outs, for example) in order to counter state offensives acting on the leaked information from Karuna. In addition, Karuna’s social network with some of the leaders in the group may be severed, owing to either a change of heart for those leaders within the LTTE or Prabhakaran’s detection of their treachery. Therefore, to ensure the state made good use of the leaked information, the state needed to urgently engage in military action with the LTTE.

Assessment The analysis of the LTTE reveals that the effects of mass desertions on the LTTE, in its first, second, and third phases, were consistent with the informational theory. In the first phase, the LTTE experienced some desertions and defections. As the LTTE was vulnerable and reliant on inducement for recruitment, the informational theory predicts that the group have suffered from severe damage. However, these desertions did not result in the demise of the LTTE; consequently, these cases may be considered anomalies to the theory. The analysis above demonstrates that the defectors did not turn to the Sri Lankan state for collaboration. Rather, they either created an independent rebel group against the state or cooperated with the Indian government, which had little incentive or capacity to intervene in the civil war at that time. Therefore, these defections did not lead to significant information leakage from the group to the Sri Lankan state and did not force the group to exit the war. To an extent, these events turned out to be deviations that confirm the informational theory, as they show the importance of the information leakage. In the second and third phases of the LTTE, the group experienced the desertion of Karuna and his followers. The effect of his defection was considerable. Again, it is possible to see this effect as a deviation from the informational theory. From the late 1990s, the LTTE adopted conventional warfare as its military strategy and became less vulnerable to information leakage. The group also started to use force for recruitment. Therefore, massive desertion should not have had a significant impact on the LTTE. However, I argue that the LTTE to some extent remained vulnerable to information leakage even into its second phase. The group remained positioned toward the edge of an island country and lacked a safe haven abroad. The LTTE continued to rely on terrorism – operations highly vulnerable to information leakage – and faced the strong Sri Lankan state. Consequently, the group built a conscription system instead of resorting to abductions as a means of recruitment. For this reason, I also argue that Karuna’s desertion had such a significant impact on the LTTE. Karuna brought information to the Sri Lankan state, which greatly increased the efficiency of state military operations against the LTTE. For this reason, the LTTE resorted to mass abduction after Karuna’s defection and ultimately lost the conflict with the state. A possible criticism for the analysis in the second and third phases is that it was not the information from Karuna’s group but the Sri Lankan military’s buildup of its intelligence mechanism and information from them that fostered the

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state’s military escalation. Admittedly, the state’s build-up of its own intelligence mechanism contributed both to its decision to engage in Eelam War IV and to its victory in that conflict. The kind of information that the state gained from defectors, however, is not completely substitutable by intelligence information from the state’s own mechanism – especially with regard to the group’s future plans. In this sense, the two sources of information – defectors and the state’s own intelligence – were complementary.

Impact of desertions on the LRA As I discussed in Chapter Three, the LRA was highly vulnerable to information leakage in its first phase of operations. In the second phase, however, the group acquired a safe haven in southern Sudan and thus became much less vulnerable. Consequently, the group shifted its recruitment strategy from inducement with social incentives to mass abduction. My argument implies that if mass desertion occurred in the first phase, it should have caused significant damage to the LRA. If it happened in the second phase, however, mass desertion should not have had such an impact on the LRA. The available evidence shows that mass desertion, or its equivalents, occurred in all the three phases of the LRA. At first sight, these events appear to have had equally severe effects on the LRA, which, if true, defies the prediction of the informational theory. However, closer observation reveals that the two events varied in their effects on the LRA. In the first phase, an equivalent of mass desertion – the government’s mass arrest of LRA members and collaborators – had a severe blow on the LRA. In the second phase, however, mass desertion from the LRA did not significantly damage the group. Rather, it was the Ugandan state’s efforts to undermine the invulnerable position of the LRA that caused such damage. The state intensified its diplomatic efforts to stop Sudan from offering a safe haven to the LRA. The Ugandan state also built new military roads in the north to increase mobility and pursue the LRA within that region. The findings so far are thus consistent with the informational theory. Below, I will first identify the predictions of the informational theory for the effects of mass desertions on the LRA, and I will then discuss the available evidence, which provides support for the informational theory.

Prediction The LRA was vulnerable in its first phase. As a result, the group relied primarily on inducement, especially inducement with social incentives, for recruitment. If the group had suffered mass desertion in this phase, it would either have taken a ‘crisis action’ or demised. However, the problem of endogeneity presents a challenge in testing this implication. The group experienced a low desertion rate in this period because it relied on inducement with social incentives for recruitment. One way to mitigate this problem is to focus on an event qualitatively similar to mass desertion and to assess its impact on the LRA. Such an event was the state’s

Rebel decline 157 arrest of LRA members and collaborators in 1991, which should have resulted in the leakage of important information from the LRA to the Ugandan state. The informational theory therefore predicts that the LRA took a ‘crisis action’ or demised as a result of this event. In the second phase, the LRA commenced mass abduction, because the group acquired a safe haven in southern Sudan and consequently became far less vulnerable to desertion. The informational theory of rebel recruitment expects that the group will have suffered little from mass desertion and any resultant information leakage. In Chapter Five, I noted that the LRA, in its second phase, experienced a large number of desertions. The case therefore allows me to examine whether these desertions had significant negative effects on the survival of the group. If these desertions resulted in major setbacks for the group, they provide evidence against the informational theory. However, if they did not, the evidence supports the informational theory. Finally, in the third phase, the LRA lost its external safe haven and became vulnerable again. The desertions from the group, therefore, should have had a significant impact on them. It should be noted, however, that the LRA’s loss of an external safe haven occurred gradually and that the group was operating in the area close to another weak state, the DRC. These factors could have moderated the impact of desertions on the group.

Phase I As the LRA was vulnerable to information leakage in its first phase, the informational theory of rebel recruitment predicts that massive desertion from the group would increase the state’s military investment and operation and that the rebel group neared exit from the war. However, as in the case of the LTTE in its first phase, the LRA did not experience mass desertion during this period. While this fact supports a main argument of this book – that a group reliant on inducement for recruitment is likely to experience a low desertion rate – it poses a problem in assessing the validity of the hypothesis on the relationship between mass desertion from a rebel group and the ensuing impact on the state’s behavior and the rebel group. To mitigate this problem, I will focus on the 1991 incident of the mass arrest of rebel members and their collaborators by the Ugandan state. Of course, those arrested by the state may be different from deserters, in both their incentives and the state’s perceptions of them. However, concerning information leakage from the group, it is reasonable to assume that the state arrest of rebel members would have a similar impact as their desertion from the group by their own initiative. Therefore, a study of the case provides me with an opportunity to examine what sort of effects massive desertion from the LRA would have had on the Ugandan state and on the LRA during this period.25 The Ugandan state military and police commenced a four-month operation to arrest members and collaborators of the LRA on March 31, 1991. The Minister of State for Defense, Maj. Gen. David Tinyefuza, initiated this operation, which

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was later called Operation North. The immediate purpose of the operation was to capture rebel collaborators. The state used arbitrary arrests and blanket cordon and scorch operations to arrest rebels (O’Kadameri 2002: 35). While the scale of the entire operation is unclear, in the initial one and a half months of the operation, the Ugandan state is reported to have arrested at least 1,600 people, of whom 150 were “confirmed rebels” (Agence France Presse 1991a). The list of the arrested individuals included prominent politicians, such as Foreign Affairs Minister Daniel Omara Atubo; former Ugandan high commissioner to London and rehabilitation minister in the post-Idi Amin government Andrew Adimola; and National Resistance Council members Zachary Olum and Irene Apiu Julu (Agence France Presse 1991b).

State response and impact on the LRA The mass arrests of LRA collaborators and the subsequent NRA offensive against the LRA had two effects on the group. First, the LRA suffered a severe military loss owing to the state military offensives. While there are no reliable data on the exact number of LRA members in this period, the NRA announced that the number of the LRA members declined from thousands to hundreds by 1992 (O’Kadameri 2002: 35–6). News reports from the late 1980s estimated the size of the LRA to be about 1,000 or 2,000. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program estimates that the size of the LRA declined from 500 in 1991 to 200 in 1994 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2009). In 1992, owing to NRA offensives, Kony was left in the Pararoch bush with only 52 others and survived without food for approximately a week.26 As the LRA continued to harass civilians throughout the early 1990s, it is obvious that the LRA survived the UPDF offensive and either maintained or regained its numerical strength. Still, the NRA’s offensives during this period unquestionably severely impacted the LRA. Second, as a consequence of this military loss, the LRA participated in peace negotiations, for the first time, with the Ugandan government, with the two parties signing a ceasefire agreement. Admittedly, it was not the LRA but the government – Betty Bigombe, the Minister of State in Office of the Prime Minister, Resident in Northern Uganda – who initiated the process. However, the LRA did not present any political demands on postwar Northern Uganda. Rather, their demands mostly concerned the guarantee of LRA members’ personal security and the recognition of the legitimacy of the group and its members. For example, in the first formal meeting between the LRA and the state on November 25, 1993, the LRA delegates said that they set no condition for the peace talk. The LRA requested that the government take the following steps: issue general amnesty to all the members of the LRA; recognize the LRA as a partner for peace and not a surrendering force; exclude ex-UPDA officials from the talk; formalize the ceasefire with the LRA; give the LRA time to reorganize itself for demobilization; and treat sick and wounded members of the LRA in government hospitals (O’Kadameri 2002: 37–8). These requests from the LRA indicate that the group was desperate to halt the offensive with the

Rebel decline 159 NRA, although it is difficult to ascertain whether they sincerely sought a peace agreement or just temporary relief from the offensive to reorganize itself for yet another conflict.27 The peace talks between the two parties brought a tentative peace in Gulu and Kitgum, especially after Kony and Bigombe met in the second meeting held in Pagik on January 11. At the fourth meeting on February 2, 1994, at Tegot-Atto, LRA’s Field Commander George Omona and the NRA’s Fourth Division Commander Colonel Wasswa signed a ceasefire agreement. To summarize, the mass arrest of the LRA members and their collaborators by the state appears to have caused significant information leakage from the group to the Ugandan state. Consequently, the NRA intensified its military operations, causing severe military casualties for the LRA, which was highly reliant on secrecy for its power to hurt and power to resist the state. The LRA thus positively sought a peace agreement with the government, where it entered a ceasefire agreement with them. The peace process between the two parties broke down in February 1994, however. On February 6, Museveni visited Gulu and announced a seven-day ultimatum to the LRA to surrender their arms and personnel. Two weeks later, the LRA fighters moved into southern Sudan to install camps. Earlier, the Sudanese government had decided to harbor the LRA in its territory, for two reasons: first, it wanted to have the LRA fight against the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM); second, the Sudanese government sought to counteract the Ugandan government’s support for the SPLM. This decision on the part of the Sudanese suddenly changed the situation for the LRA, which significantly reduced the vulnerability of the group, so they could afford to quit the ceasefire agreement or the ultimatum from Museveni. In other words, the group regained its power to resist the state offensives, as well as its power to hurt the state through its offensives against the civilians. The two parties thus returned to war. This change in the LRA’s policy confirms, rather than contradicts, the logic of the informational theory. The LRA had little choice but to seek a peace agreement with the Ugandan government before they secured support from the Sudanese government. However, once they received assurance from Khartoum for the security of their safe haven, it significantly increased the group’s power to resist the state offensives, making it possible for them to ignore the government’s ultimatum.

Phase II and III When the LRA crossed the border from Uganda to southern Sudan and installed camps in that locale, the group became much less vulnerable to information leakage than before their relocation. Consequently, the LRA started to rely almost exclusively on abduction for the recruitment of its new members. As discussed earlier in Chapter Five, this shift in the LRA resulted in an increase in the number of deserters. However, the desertions in themselves did not cause significant damage to the LRA.

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As we can see in Figure 5.2, the number of deserters (Escaped) increased from 1994 onward and basically paralleled changes in the number of the abducted. In 1996, the number of deserters per year exceeded 1,000 for the first time. After a decrease 1999 and 2001, the number suddenly increased to more than 2,500 in 2002 and rose again to approximately 6,000 in 2003. However, as the analytical focus of this research is on information leakage from the rebel group to the state, it is more useful at this point to focus on the changes in the number of deserters received by the state. Here, we can see that the number of those received by the government exceeded 500 every year between 1998 and 2005. This figure first increased in 1997–1998, with much sharper rises from 2002 to 2005.

State response The increase in the numbers of deserters and reporters in themselves, however, did not significantly affect the state’s military operations against the LRA. Admittedly, a cursory review of the data regarding the Ugandan government’s military expenses and its battles with the LRA gives a different impression. The increase in the number of deserters from the LRA in the early 2000s was accompanied by the government’s efforts to mobilize more resources in the military sector. However, a closer look at the data and the history suggests that this correlation is spurious. It was not the variation in the number of deserters or defectors from the LRA that affected the government’s military expenditure and military operations against the group. Rather, it was changes in the level of the group’s vulnerability that was behind the state’s intensified offensives. Moreover, it was the Ugandan state’s own diplomatic and military efforts that effectively undermined the LRA’s position and raised its vulnerability. In fact, the success of the state appears, to some extent, to have increased the number of deserters from the LRA, which is why there is some correlation between the number of deserters from the LRA and the state’s mobilization of its resources to fight the group. In the second and third phases of the LRA, between 1995 and 2006, the state’s military expenditure and its share in the country’s GDP increased simultaneously on several occasions. This increase occurred in 1996, 1998–1999, 2002–2003, and 2005. During some of these years, the UPDF carried out major offensives against the LRA. In 2002, the UPDF conducted Operation Iron Fist, and in 2005, it carried out Operation Iron Fist II. At the same time of the increases in state military expenditure – in the years 1997–1998 and 2002–2003 – an increase in the amount of information leakage from the group occurred. The association between these two occurrences indicates that an increase in the number of reporters from the LRA caused an increase the state’s military expenditure. It is, however, reasonable to assume that the increase in the state’s military expenditures and its intensified military operations against the LRA augmented the number of deserters from the group – rather than vice versa. A qualitative analysis of each period supports this conjecture. First, the UPDF carried out major operations against Allied Democratic Force (ADF) in the western part

Rebel decline 161 of Uganda from 1997 to 1999, and the increase in the military expenditures in 1998–1999 is reflective of these operations. Second, it was due to the sudden rise in the vulnerability of the LRA that the increases in state military expenditure occurred in 2002–2003. In March 2002, the Ugandan government reached an agreement with the Sudanese government in Nairobi. This agreement allowed the UPDF to conduct military operations against the LRA in Sudanese territory, within 100 km of the border between the two countries. This agreement increased the optimism of the Ugandan government regarding the prospect of a military victory over the LRA. In the same month, the UPDF commenced Operation Iron Fist, a massive offensive against the LRA camps in southern Sudan, such as those in Bin Rwot and Lalaa. Two things should be noted here: First, a sudden increase in the number of deserters from the LRA, which was not precipitated, followed, with the March 2002 agreement and the initiation of Operation Iron Fist. Therefore, it was not the inflow of information from deserters that motivated the government to conduct the Operation Iron Fist but the opposite. Second, the operation failed to achieve its objective – to finish off the LRA – and the LRA consequently initiated large-scale retaliatory attacks on civilians inside Uganda, from August 2002 through 2003. The UPDF was forced to respond to these attacks, resulting in large military expenditures throughout the same period. Third, the increase in the government military expense in 2005 resulted from the undermined security of the LRA and the UPDF’s expectation for the group’s demise because of the political developments in Sudan. While attempts for peace negotiations continued throughout 2005, the Ugandan government’s inclination for a military solution over peace negotiations soon became apparent. Royo writes: “In the second half of the year [2005], various donor countries including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, decided to cut their aid to the Ugandan government because Yoweri Museveni was prioritizing the military campaign over the peace negotiations” (Royo 2008: 14). However, behind these actions was not an increase in the flow of information from deserters but the changing situation in Sudan itself, which ultimately undermined the security of the LRA. First, in January 2005, the Sudanese government and SPLM/A signed a peace agreement, thus increasing the chances of a UPDF victory. Consequently, the Sudanese government now had much less of an incentive to support the LRA than previously. As early as 1999, in the Nairobi Agreement, the Sudanese government promised the Ugandan government that they would not support the LRA. While the Khartoum government had arguably ceased its support for the LRA since 1999, local military units were reported to have continued their assistance to the LRA. Therefore, the peace agreement in Sudan raised expectations that the Sudanese government would ultimately curtail its support for the group. Another event that destabilized the position of the LRA was yet another agreement between the Ugandan and Sudanese governments, which allowed the UPDF to operate in Sudanese territory. The two governments signed the agreement in November 2005 to give permission for the UPDF to go further into Sudanese territory to find the LRA.

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Therefore, in 2005, with the changes in the Sudanese government’s policy on southern Sudan, coupled with the UPDF’s Operation Iron Fist II launched in March 2004, there occurred a serious undermining of the LRA’s position, which was reliant on the safe haven in southern Sudan and material support from the Sudanese government. The ensuing damage is evident in the LRA’s attempt to escape from Uganda and Sudan, to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The first section of the LRA, led by Vincent Otti, moved to the Garamba National Park in September 2005, to set up a base.28 The group’s incurred damage is also evident in the reduced number of cases of abduction (see Figure 5.2). Given these developments, the Ugandan government saw an increase in the relative efficiency of military offensives against the group, and it invested more in its military sector. To summarize, during the second and third phases of the LRA, the large number of deserters from the LRA and their reports to the Ugandan government did not significantly affect the Ugandan investment in military actions. While mass desertion from the group and the high military expenditure by the government coincided in some years, the concurrence is more likely to have resulted as a result of a third factor: the Sudanese government’s cooperation with the Ugandan government or a potential for such collaboration, which effectively undermined the invulnerable position of the LRA. Consequently, the Ugandan government’s military operation against the LRA improved in efficiency, which is why the government was more inclined to pursue military campaigns against the LRA. Owing to the government’s military action, the number of deserters from the LRA increased.

Impact on the LRA Mass desertion from the LRA, in itself, had little impact on the behavior of the group. If the group was highly vulnerable to information leakage, in the case of massive desertion, the informational theory of rebel recruitment would predict that the group would initiate a peace process, carry out mass abduction and launch a preemptive attack – or suffer significant damage at the hands of the state military forces. As the LRA was primarily reliant on its safe haven in Sudan, however, the theory predicts that desertion had little effect on its behavior, a prediction supported by the available evidence. Indeed, the LRA did take ‘crisis actions,’ such as initiating peace processes and carrying out preemptive attacks. Moreover, the group suffered significant military setbacks. Yet, mass desertion from the group was not the primary cause for these events. As partly discussed above, other factors, such as the Sudanese government’s cooperation with its Ugandan counterpart and the state’s construction of military roads in the north of Uganda, played a more important role in the LRA’s participation in the peace processes, its military losses to the UPDF, and its relocation to Garamba. First, it was not the desertions but the increases in its vulnerability and resultant reduction in the group’s power to resist the state’s offensives that made the LRA join the peace processes. Further, it is not clear how serious the LRA, or at least Kony, was about these processes, as they often used such occasions to reorganize

Rebel decline 163 the group for future battles. While there were a few attempts by third parties to initiate peace processes in the 1990s, none of them included peace talks between the two parties. Since the mass desertions from the LRA in 1998, the group entered in formal or informal communication with the government at four points in time: July 2002, November 2004, February 2005, and May 2006.29 Three of these processes started after the LRA’s vulnerability was severely increased. The July 2002 process started after the Uganda–Sudan agreement to allow the former to enter the latter’s territory in pursuit of the LRA as part of the UPDF’s Operation Iron Fist. The February 2005 process then commenced after the signing of the peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the SPLA. The May 2006 process was initially called for by the Ugandan government and the LRA in November 2005, after the Uganda–Sudan agreement, allowing for the UPDF’s deep penetration into the latter’s territory, it forced the LRA across the border to the Garamba National Park in the DRC. The LRA’s, or more specifically Kony’s, insincerity in the peace process was signified by the surrender of Sam Kolo, the LRA’s principal delegate to the 2005 peace process. Kolo was reportedly disappointed by Kony’s lack of commitment to the peace process and defected from the LRA. In addition, in the Juba Peace Process, despite the lengthy communications between the two parties from May 2006 to March 2008 – to prepare the Final Peace Agreement – Kony failed to appear for the signing of the agreement, on April 10, 2008.3031 The ICC’s refusal to withdraw its prosecution against Kony was one of the factors that made Kony hesitate to sign a peace agreement (Branch 2007). In 2005, the Museveni government requested that the ICC prosecute Kony, and the ICC subsequently decided to prosecute Kony and three other LRA leaders for committing 30 crimes. This ICC prosecution is possibly a factor that prompted Kony to take part in the peace processes; he believed that the ICC would drop the case once he signed a peace agreement. In fact, the Museveni government requested that the ICC withdraw the prosecution when his government and the LRA neared the conclusion of a peace agreement. As a judicial organization, however, the ICC refused to drop the case against the LRA leaders, and Kony subsequently refused to sign the peace agreement (Kelly 2008, Hanlon 2007). Therefore, mass desertion in itself did not bring about the demise of the LRA. If it did, it was only when it was coupled with the state’s diplomatic efforts to curtail the Sudanese support for the LRA and when the state created military roads in the north of Uganda. These initiatives by the state increased the vulnerability of the LRA and resulted in the demise of the group.

Assessment In this section, I examined whether LRA members’ desertions significantly damaged the group in its first and second phases. The purpose of this exercise was to assess whether the effects of mass desertion on the LRA were consistent with the informational theory. From the first phase to the second phase, the group’s recruitment strategy changed from inducement by social incentives to mass

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abduction. The informational theory explains this change as a result of the dramatic decrease in the group’s vulnerability in 1994, when the group moved to southern Sudan. An implication of the theory is therefore that the group became less vulnerable to information leakage through deserters than previously. Mass desertions should thus have significantly damaged the LRA in its first phase and somewhat in its third phase, but not in its second phase. Because the LRA did not experience mass desertion in its first phase, I examined the impact of the state intelligence activities on the LRA throughout this period and then the effects of mass desertion on the group in its second and third phases. As all of these incidents involved the flow of information from the LRA to the state, it is methodologically acceptable to compare their effects. The findings from the analyses showed that in the first phase, the state intelligence activity did significantly affect the LRA and almost forced it out of the civil war, as the size of the group was significantly reduced by 1992 and as the group was seriously considering a compromise with the state. If not for the Sudanese government’s offer of a safe haven, the LRA might have concluded a peace agreement or been defeated by the UPDF. In the second phase, the group experienced a huge number of deserters. However, these incidences had little effect on the position of the LRA. It was only in the third phase that the information from these deserters came to have some impact on the LRA. In 2005, the group was forced to move to the Garamba National Park. The group then fled the park to drift around the region in late 2008. These changes in the group’s position did not result primarily from the information leakage through deserters. The Ugandan state’s diplomatic efforts and military build-up, which were aimed at increasing the vulnerability of the LRA, played a major role in this process. Therefore, my conclusion is that the observed effects of mass desertion on the Ugandan state and the LRA, in certain phases, were consistent with the informational theory, which explains the changes in the variation in the effects of massive desertion on the LRA over time.

Comparison of the LTTE and LRA It is useful at this point to compare the two groups in their second phases, as such analysis constitutes a critical test for the informational theory of rebel recruitment. While both groups carried out forcible recruitment in their second phases, their practices differed to a significant extent. The LRA simply carried out mass abduction, whereas the LTTE, by contrast, adopted a more systematic means of recruiting its members through conscription. The latter strategy reduces the risk of members’ desertion, owing to the capacity of the group to go after the deserters and punish their families. In Chapter Four, I argued that the difference between the two groups in their recruitment practices originated from the variation in their levels of vulnerability to information leakage. The LTTE was much more vulnerable to leakage of information than the LRA. Consequently, the LTTE relied on a recruitment strategy that ensured desertion rates remained

Rebel decline 165 low. Therefore, an implication of the theory is that once massive desertion occurs, it should have more seriously undermined the security of the LTTE than that of the LRA. The discussion above conforms to this prediction. Karuna’s defection in 2004 had fatal consequences for the LTTE, although its effects took several years to materialize. The LTTE surrendered to the state military forces in May 2009, with as yet little possibility of its return. The LRA also experienced a large number of deserters from 1994 onward, with the total number of deserters being far larger than that of the LTTE. Still, the group continued operations unaffected throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. The difference in the effects of massive desertions on the two rebel groups is also observable in the state’s military expenditures in those periods. While massive desertions from the LTTE led the Sri Lankan state to increase the share of the military expenditures in the central government expenditures over the next several years, desertions from the LRA did not have a similar effect. Only after the two governments in Uganda and Sudan initiated rapprochement – and gradually removed the safe haven for the LRA – did the group find itself in trouble. Therefore, the informational theory explains the differential effects of mass desertion on the two groups in their second phases, by referring to the difference in their vulnerabilities to information leakage, which were associated with their chosen recruitment strategies.

Conclusion The primary purpose of this section was to examine the validity of my coding of the vulnerability of the LRA and the LTTE in each of its phases and to determine whether their members’ desertions had effects predicted by the informational theory. For this purpose, I analyzed the effects of massive desertion from the LTTE and the LRA on the course of civil war in both Sri Lanka and Uganda. While it was not possible to conduct a proper analysis on the LTTE in its first phase, owing to the lack of mass desertion in this period, the analysis of the other cases – Karuna’s defection from the LTTE, the NRA’s arrest of LRA collaborators in 1991, and the mass desertions from the LRA in late 1990s and 2000s – provides support for the informational theory. As the alternative theories do not have clear implications concerning the impact of desertions on the survival of the rebel groups, the criteria that I set to test regarding whether the available evidence from the cases of the LTTE and the LRA conforms to the predictions of the theory. The clearest evidence comes from a comparison of the two groups in their second and third phases. Both groups experienced massive desertion. However, as predicted by the informational theory, their effects on the two groups differed. The Karuna faction’s desertion gave a fatal blow for the LTTE. The group suffered not only a loss of human resources but also information leakage from Karuna. The latter led the Sri Lankan state to intensify its investment in military operations, including intensive intelligence operations, while pessimism about

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the future of the group led some of the remaining members to covertly cooperate with Karuna, providing a continuous outflow of information from the group. The LTTE ultimately surrendered to the state military forces in May 2009. In contrast, desertions from the LRA in its second phase had relatively limited effects on the fate of the group. In the third phase, the LRA was gradually weakened militarily and was forced to move from southern Sudan to Garamba in the DRC, ceasing its violent activities in the Ugandan soil. However, mass desertion was not the main cause of these problems, despite their frequency and size. Rather, these problems were more due to the diplomatic efforts of the Ugandan state and the changes in the political environment within Sudan. This difference conforms with the prediction of the theory: massive desertion has a more serious effect on a group that was more vulnerable to information leakage than on those less vulnerable to information leakage, regardless of their recruitment strategies. The findings in this section demonstrate that the effect of desertions from a rebel group on its power balance with the state and that the fate of the group depends on the vulnerability of the rebel group to information leakage. While it is necessary to conduct a more comprehensive cross-sectional and time-series analyses on desertions and rebel groups, to determine whether the findings have external validity, the conclusions in this section provide a sufficient reason to carry on such an analysis.

Notes 1 The discussions in this chapter, especially those in the sections on theory and the LTTE, heavily draw on the author’s article that originally appeared in the International Area Studies Review (Obayashi 2014). I am grateful to SAGE Publishing for kindly permitting the reuse of the article. 2 A few other studies focus on the changes that take place in the process of civil war but not on those related to desertions (e.g., Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009). 3 See Hirshleifer (2001a, b) for more discussion of the concept of decisiveness. 4 My analysis here draws some of the insights from Jack Hirshleifer’s analysis of the contest success function (Hirshleifer 2001a, b) and Robert Powell’s analysis of the initiation of war (Powell 1993, 2006). 5 In his discussion of ‘power to hurt,’ Branislav Slantchev differentiates two types of abilities: “[t]he ability to bear costs associated with the opponent’s effort to inflict pain” and “the ability to bear costs associated with this effort [to inflict pain on the opponent]” (Slantchev 2003: 127). 6 Hirshleifer (2001b) notes this possibility. 7 The time discount rate of the state matters here. 8 For existing analyses of Eelam War IV, see, for example, Lionel Beehner (2010), Ryan Clarke (2011), C.A. Chandraprema (2012), Neil DeVotta (2009), Ashok Mehta (2010), Paul Moorcraft (2012), Niel Smith (2010), Narayan Swamy (2010) and Don Wijewardana (2010). 9 In 1994, one year prior to the start of Eelam War III, the number of soldiers in the Sri Lankan military was 110,000, and the number of mechanized vehicles was 244, making the solider-to-mechanized vehicle ratio 450.82. In 2005, right before the beginning of Eelam War IV, the number of soldiers was 151,000, and the number of mechanized vehicle was 473, with a ratio of 319.23. Hence, the

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10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21

level of mechanization in the Sri Lankan military did not significantly change between the two wars; if anything, it increased only marginally. For the number of the military personnel, I follow Lyall and Wilson and use the Correlates of War (COW) dataset (Correlates of War 2012, Singer 1987, Singer et al. 1972). To identify the number of mechanized vehicles, I count the number of main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), and towed artilleries as recorded in Military Balance (International Institute for Strategic Studies various years). Interview, a NGO official, Colombo, March 10 (A), 2010. Interview, a government official, Colombo, March 10 (B), 2010. Interview, Trincomalee, March 22, 2010. Why did these senior cadres cooperate with Karuna? I conjecture that two factors were in play. First, after Karuna’s defection, senior LTTE cadres foresaw the possibility of the group’s defeat by government military forces and tried to secure their individual survival by cooperating with Karuna. Their fear of a defeat, however, may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy to some extent. Second, a collective action problem might have been operating within the group. Given Karuna’s defection and the pessimistic prospects for the group’s survival, the senior cadres might have become increasingly suspicious of each other and thus began to defect to the state to avoid being left behind when the group collapsed. Interview, Colombo, March 10 (A), 2010. The figures were computed based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (2010, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 2010a, b) Some even claim that the Sri Lankan military was confident that they could defeat the LTTE as early as in 2005. Interview with Major General Prasad Samarasinghe, Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, Colombo, March 23, 2010. Interview with an ex-military personnel, Colombo, March 20, 2010. Interview, a foreign government official, Colombo, March 12, 2010. Kalyvas (2004) notes that a wide disparity in power existing between two parties in a civil war may lead the more powerful party to employ a military strategy with massive collateral damage to civilians. A few factors contributed to solving the commitment problem between the Karuna faction and the state. On the one hand, the Vanni LTTE’s military assault on Karuna and his followers in April 2004 helped assure the state of his sincerity (International Crisis Group 2006, Human Rights Watch 2004). On the other hand, three factors contributed to the state’s success in convincing Karuna of his personal safety and guaranteed rewards. First, there were the state coopted former insurgent leaders in the late 1980s, some of whom later occupied senior positions in the government (Swamy 2006). This history may have contributed to its reputation as able to guarantee Karuna’s safety. Second, Karuna himself was arguably confident that it would be useful for the state to keep him alive and use him for counterinsurgency rather than imprisoning or executing him. He had enough information and social networks with remaining LTTE members. Moreover, he could assure the state of its need to secure his cooperation by leaking information in stages and by promising a continuous flow of information from informants inside the group. Third, the state allowed Karuna to establish a new political party, Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), which was registered with the parliament in 2007. The use of this legal measure to assure Karuna of his personal status certainly added credibility to the state’s promises to him. Interview with a NGO official, Colombo, March 9, 2010. For details on these events, see, for example, International Crisis Group (2006) and Asho Mehta (2010).

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22 Two factors made it difficult for the two parties to reach a viable agreement in these peace negotiations. First, the conflict in Sri Lanka was the so-called ‘Sons of the Soil (SoS)’ conflict, which tends to be associated with an extreme commitment problem between the parties to the conflict (Fearon 2004, Fearon and Laitin 2011). Second, there was no third party intervention strong enough to solve the commitment problem between the two parties (cf. Walter 2002).The SLMM entered Sri Lanka to support the peace process upon the conclusion of the ceasefire agreement in 2002 (CFA 2002). However, they lacked the necessary military capacity. Moreover, both parties to the conflict were skeptical of their neutrality (Höglund and Svensson 2008). Chanaka Talpahaewa (2015) provides a critical assessment of the role that Norway played in the peace negotiations. 23 For discussion of the LTTE’s international financial network, see, for example, Daniel Byman (2001) and Rohan Gunaratna (2003). 24 More conservative estimates place the figure at about $80 million (Mehta 2010). In addition, even if the group suffered a severe financial blow, the LTTE still held a significant amount of weapons and ammunitions. The Sri Lankan military found them in the former LTTE territories upon its victory over the group. Interview, Colombo, March 9, 2010. 25 Of course, the question of why the state conducted mass arrests remains. I consider the operation to be indicative of the state’s attempt to induce information leakage from the group by use of force. The strategy differs from the conventional use of the military force to directly target the rebel group, as well as from the strategy to induce defection in a non-selective manner, namely, a public offer of amnesty. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the informational theory of rebel recruitment posits that for the state facing a vulnerable group, a selective attempt to induce an information leak from the group or intelligence penetration is more efficient than general amnesty. Hence, it supports the argument of the theory that the Ugandan state conducted mass arrests of the LRA members and collaborators. 26 Interview in Gulu on March 27 (A), 2009. 27 In contrast, the Ugandan government’s stance toward the peace negotiation was more ambiguous (O’Kadameri 2002). While Bigombe was fully committed to the success of the peace talk, she had never gained public support from President Museveni, although he is said to have been supportive of her effort. Prime Minister George Cosmas Adyebo – Bigombe’s immediate boss – even refused logistical support for her progress within the peace process. Although only some took part in the peace process, the NRA commanders were reluctant to fully endorse the process, and their behavior at the negotiation table reportedly caused tensions with the LRA delegates. While their negative attitudes toward the peace process may be a reflection of their personal stakes in the war, it also supports the analysis that the NRA’s offensives caused significant damage to the LRA; thus, they had fewer reasons to seek a peace agreement than the LRA. 28 Interview, Gulu, March 31, 2009. 29 As such communications typically started in secrecy, with communications through third parties, mostly local NGOs, it is difficult to ascertain exactly which side initiated these communications. 30 The agreement was originally set to be signed in March 2008. As Kony did not show up on this date, the signing of the agreement was postponed twice, first to April 5 and then to April 10. Kony failed to appear on any of these dates. 31 It is possible that the 2000 Amnesty Act in fact discouraged the LRA from fully committing to the peace process, because the Act allowed some of the LRA leaders, those more inclined to reach a peace agreement with the government, to desert the LRA. In the 2000s, some LRA leaders sincerely sought a peace agreement with the government. However, their voices were never dominant within the LRA leadership, partly because these doves decided to leave the group and enjoy the benefits

Rebel decline 169 of the Amnesty Act rather than to stay inside the LRA and try to change the course of its policy. If the Amnesty Act did not exist, it is likely that these doves would have taken one of the following two ways: first, they could have united themselves and made the LRA commit itself to the peace process; or second, they might have organized themselves as well as their combatants and negotiated peace with the government. This second case differs from what actually happened because, without the Amnesty Act, they would have seen the need for bargaining with the government for the conditions for their desertion and thus organized more of their combatants to increase their bargaining power, as Karuna in the LTTE did. Hence, the 2002 Amnesty Act not only created an option for doves to desert the LRA but also prevented negotiation between themselves and the government on the terms of their surrender by legally tying the government’s hands on this issue. Consequently, the Act not only prevented the LRA from reforming and committing itself to the peace process but also discouraged a major split of the group on this matter.

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Conclusion

Summary of findings This book aimed to develop an informational theory of rebel recruitment that explains a rebel group’s choice between inducement and coercion and to test its plausibility with case studies of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. The theory focuses on two types of information problems faced by rebel leaders: agency problems of various kinds inside the rebel organization and the contest over information with the state. A rebel group seeks to maximize its bargaining power vis-à-vis the state by maximizing its powers to hurt and resist the state. As groups vary in their organizational characteristics, a group chooses a recruitment strategy or a proportion of inducement and coercion to minimize the negative effects of agency problems, such as under-participation, indiscipline, and desertion, on its bargaining power in anticipation of the state’s choice of counterinsurgency strategy to exploit those problems. The theory posits that a rebel group is more likely to increase its reliance on coercion over inducement when the group has a low information asymmetry with its potential recruits, has a cheap retention mechanism, or expects a lower cost from its members’ desertion of the group. Regarding the costs of the agents’ desertion, the theory highlights the cost of the information leakage from the group to the state through deserters. Information leakage can severely undermine the bargaining power of the group vis-à-vis the state by reducing the group’s power to hurt and power to resist. The informational theory of rebel recruitment also presents hypotheses on desertion rates in rebel groups, the state’s counterinsurgency strategies toward them, and the conditions conducive to the rebel decline. A group vulnerable to information leakage tends to experience a low desertion rate, regardless of its recruitment strategy. The state facing a group vulnerable to information leakage is more likely to rely on intelligence penetration rather than on interest dealignment, such as general amnesty, for counterinsurgency. As a rebel group becomes more reliant on secrecy for its power, a significant amount of information leakage from the group is more likely to lead to the group’s organizational decline. This theory explains the reasons why the LTTE and the LRA first relied on inducement for recruitment and later increased their reliance on coercion, albeit

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for different reasons. Since their inception, the two groups had faced information asymmetry with their potential recruits. Without an effective retention mechanism, and with their organizations highly vulnerable to information leakage, these groups initially relied on inducement to minimize the risk of information leakage through members’ desertion. However, in the mid-1990s, the LTTE was shocked by its loss of the Jaffna peninsula to the state and recognized the urgent need to increase its manpower. The group’s control of a territory allowed it to have a cheap retention mechanism and, thus, to increase its reliance on coercion or conscription. The LRA also increased its reliance on coercion in the mid-1990s. Their decision, however, was prompted by their acquisition of an external safe haven in southern Sudan, which sharply reduced the expected cost of the members’ desertion and resultant information leakage from the group to the state. The variation in desertion rates over time and across the LTTE and the LRA indicate that the two rebel groups shifted their respective recruitment strategies for different reasons. Both the LTTE and the LRA experienced a fairly low desertion rate in their initial phases. Thanks to its effective retention mechanism, the LTTE continued to experience a relatively low desertion rate until Karuna’s defection, even after it adopted coercive recruitment. In contrast, the LRA experienced a much higher desertion rates from the mid-1990s, as they effectively screened their recruits ex post. The difference between the two groups in their vulnerabilities to information leakage explains this gap in their desertion rates. Accordingly, the Sri Lankan and Ugandan states responded to the LTTE and the LRA in different ways. This book highlighted their difference by focusing on general amnesties, a costly but potentially effective means to induce rebel members’ desertion. The Sri Lankan state invested little in amnesties to the rank-andfile in the LTTE, as the group kept the likelihood of their members’ desertion low by relying first on inducement and later on retention mechanisms. In contrast, the Ugandan state began to grant amnesties to LRA members in the mid-1990s, when the group shifted its recruitment strategy from inducement to coercion. Both the LTTE and the LRA experienced severe declines in their bargaining power against the state periodically. However, the factors that led these groups to their organizational declines varied both over time and across groups. At inception, the two groups were highly vulnerable to information leakage, which pushed the LRA close to signing a peace agreement in 1994. The LTTE remained vulnerable to information leakage and thus experienced an organizational decline after Karuna’s defection in 2004, which ultimately led to the group’s military defeat to the state. Upon its move to southern Sudan in 1994, however, the LRA remained invulnerable to information leakage through its massive number of deserters; it suffered a fatal blow only when the group lost its external safe haven. In other words, the deserters and their leakage of information did not present a significant challenge for the group before then. Now that I have reviewed the findings of this research, I will return to the issues raised in the introduction and discuss the implications of this research regarding these concerns.

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Theoretical implications In this section, I discuss the implications of this study for the three areas of political science research: ethnicity, the duration of civil wars, and the political theory of organizations. Here, it is important to acknowledge that this study raises further questions for scholars in this area.

The role of ethnicity in rebel recruitment This study’s findings question the relationship between ethnicity and ‘ethnic’ rebel groups’ recruitment practices. While studies on ethnicity and the use of violence are voluminous, relatively few works address questions about ethnicity and rebel recruitment, such as ‘do ethnic groups use recruitment strategies different from other sorts of rebel groups?’ or ‘when and why do ethnic rebel groups recruit those who are not co-ethnics?’ Admittedly, this research does not directly take on the issue of ethnicity in civil wars. Still, it is useful to reflect on the concept and its relevance to the organization of rebel groups, given the theoretical and empirical findings in this study partly because of the growth in the number of studies on ethnicity and conflict1 and partly because the two groups analyzed in this research were both ethnic rebel groups. In the literature, there are two ways to determine whether a rebel group is ethnic. One is to examine the discourse of the rebel group, and if the group defines its goal or the potential beneficiaries of its military struggle in terms of certain ethnic groups, the group is coded as ethnic (e.g. Sambanis 2001). The other way is to assess the ethnic composition of the rebel group and code it as ethnic if the proportion of its members who are of the majority ethnic group exceeds a certain threshold (Fearon and Laitin 2003). The LTTE and the LRA qualify as ethnic rebel groups according to both of these criteria. The research implies that there is no inherent connection between a rebel group’s ethno-nationalist claims and its recruitment practices. The existing literature tends to associate ethnic rebel groups with the voluntary participation of their members. However, the LTTE and the LRA used both inducement and coercion in their recruitment. Admittedly, the point in question is not novel to this research. John Mueller (2000, 2004), for example, addressed how economic incentives and force were used for recruitment in supposedly ‘ethnic’ wars. Moreover, David Laitin (1999) examined the use of violence by the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Homeland and Freedom) for recruitment. In addition, to properly assess the relationship between rebel groups’ ethno-nationalist claims and their recruitment practices, it is necessary to conduct further research to address this issue. Still, a cursory observation of these two ethnic rebel groups and other rebel groups across the world suggests that there may not be a significant relationship between ethnic (or certain other political) claims of a rebel group and its recruitment strategy, at least in terms of the choice between inducement and coercion. The second and related implication of this study is that, in rebel recruitment, strategic consideration of the survival of the group may prevail over the ethnic

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consideration. Although the LTTE and the LRA advocate ethnic agendas and have dominant ethnic groups in their ranks, both groups recruited or at least tried to recruit their members from other ethnic groups: the LTTE attempted to recruit Muslims, and the LRA abducted those who were Teso. While both groups were not blind to the ethnicity of the potential recruits, they were certainly not ethnically exclusive in their recruitment strategy. When they had insufficient numbers of volunteers or targets for abduction, these groups intentionally targeted members of other ethnic groups. The question then shifts to the role that ethnicity plays in ethnic rebel groups’ recruitment strategies; the answer could be social networks. Because co-ethnics tend to share common social networks, an ethnic group has more local knowledge about co-ethnics than about those from other ethnic groups. The group, therefore, can utilize its local knowledge about co-ethnic individuals as a screening mechanism and select targets for recruitment, mitigating the adverse selection problem. Those in the same network may also have something akin to a personal bond, which strengthens the relationship between the rebel leaders and the combatants. Either way, these logics imply that the recruitment of co-ethnics is more efficient for leaders of ethnic rebel groups because it reduces the risk of desertion and defection by its members. This situation may be the case so long as the group relies on voluntary recruitment methods. Lucian Pye, for example, shows how the communist movement in Malaysia relied on an ethnic network of those of Chinese descent (Pye 1956). However, when the group uses coercive recruitment methods, the issue is not so simple. On one hand, a rebel group can use its local knowledge about co-ethnics or personal ties between its members and civilians to select targets for recruitment. Groups can also use such knowledge to enforce an effective monitoring and punishment mechanism. On the other hand, the group also has an incentive to cut off the existing ties between its members and civilians or among its members. The former is necessary to reduce the risks of desertion and defection by the forcibly recruited, while the latter is aimed at preventing collective dissent against the rebel leadership. In such cases, therefore, it may ultimately be costly for the rebel group to rely on social networks among co-ethnics for recruitment. Evidence from Sierra Leone’s civil wars is consistent with the discussion in this section. While social ties with members of a rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), increased the likelihood of the non-members joining the group voluntarily, those ties also decreased the possibility of the group abducting individuals (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008). The second way to understand the role of ethnicity in rebel recruitment is to focus on its function as an information cue.2 When local information regarding the preferences and the capacity of the local population is scarce, leaders of ethnic rebel groups might expect the preferences of co-ethnics to be similar to those of the leaders. In addition, co-ethnicity may suggest that they share the same cultural codes (c.f. Wedeen 2002) and, thus, can be more easily assimilated into the group than others. While the social network perspective assumes that the rebel group has some knowledge about individual co-ethnics, this second perspective

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assumes the group has little knowledge about individuals, whether they are co-ethnics or those from other ethnic groups. Facing uncertainty about the traits of individuals, the group uses ethnicity as a clue to build expectations about their traits. The third way to conceptualize the relationship between ethnicity and rebel recruitment is to see it as an epiphenomenon of accessibility. As co-ethnics tend to live in close geographical proximity, particularly in Africa, a rebel group that forms in a region might simply find the members of the ethnic group majority in the area more accessible than other ethnic groups and, thus, recruit more of them. The evidence from the RUF case provides support for the second and third views on ethnicity. Mende was an ethnic group over-represented in the RUF. Humphreys and Weinstein’s (2008) analysis shows that, when controlling for the social ties, being a Mende is still associated with higher likelihood of membership in the group. However, this result is driven by the fact that a Mende is more likely to be abducted by the RUF. Being a Mende, in the meantime, did not guarantee a higher likelihood of joining the group voluntarily. Consequently, the RUF preferred to abduct Mendes over members of other ethnic groups either because Mendes were more accessible or because the RUF thought that Mendes would make better fighters for the group. However, in this case, accessibility is not a function of geographic isolation. Humphreys and Weinstein control for the effects of geographical isolation with a variable called ‘villages accessible by foot or boat only’. Therefore, it is more likely that accessibility is a function of the RUF’s power relationship with the state and other rebel groups. Therefore, it matters which concept best captures the role of ethnicity in rebel recruitment, for it has implications not only for the group’s recruitment practices but also for the state’s counterinsurgency strategy and for postwar Disarmament, Demobilization, and Rehabilitation (DDR) programs.

Duration and termination of civil wars An obvious implication of this research for the literature on the duration and termination of civil wars is that it is necessary to pay attention to the characteristics of rebel organizations. Many existing studies in the literature use country-specific variables to conduct statistical analyses on the duration of civil wars (e.g. Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2004). While these studies incorporate environmental factors and state-side variables, they mostly ignore variation across rebel groups, particularly in their organizations. At this point, there exist few studies that take a dyadic approach to analysis of the duration and termination of civil wars (Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009). Among these, Cunningham et al. conceptually differentiated rebel groups’ offensive capacity from the ability of rebel groups to withstand or evade state offensives, which is similar to the concept of (in-)vulnerability in this study. This study argues the need to further develop such studies, particularly in the following three aspects: first, it is necessary to compile data on the factors

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that affect the rebel groups’ organizational properties including their information asymmetry with potential recruits, retention mechanisms of various kinds, and their vulnerability to information leakage, and assess their impacts on the dynamics of civil war. Second, this study suggests that the number and quality of deserters or defectors from the group affects the duration of the civil war when the rebel group is vulnerable to information leakage. It is therefore necessary to compile data on deserters and defectors from rebel groups, although the compilation of comprehensive data on deserters from a single rebel group is often impractical, as such incidents frequently occur under cover. Still, it is possible to utilize survey data to approximate the number of deserters and its changes over time or to identify ‘major’ cases of desertion in which a large number of combatants deserted together or high-ranking members of the group deserted. Third, foreign aid may have different effects on a civil war’s duration, depending on the content of the aid and the type of the rebel group. Some scholars have found that third-party intervention has no effect on the duration of civil wars. Elbadawi and Sambanis endogenized intervention by external actors in their model and found that expected intervention has a positive relationship with war duration (Elbadawi and Sambanis 2002). Others found that only third-party intervention by rebels shortens the duration of a civil war, while intervention in support of the state has no significant effect. However, the kind of support third parties provide to the government may matter. This research suggests that third party intervention could prove effective in shortening civil wars if it involves the build-up of state intelligence capability and the rebel group in the conflict is vulnerable to information leakage. If the group is invulnerable to information leakage, however, foreign aid in the build-up of intelligence capacity may not effectively shorten the duration of the war. Rather, third-party intervention may be more effective if it involves measures that undermine the security of the group, such as making diplomatic efforts to curtail external support for the rebel group or sending troops to increase the size of the state military. Fortunately, Patrick M. Regan (2002) compiled a dataset on foreign intervention in civil wars, which differentiates the different types of military intervention, including the provision of intelligence.3 In contrast, a general amnesty law during a civil war in itself would not be so effective for war termination. General amnesty is important for humanitarian reasons, such as encouraging those who seek an escape from abuse within the rebel groups and to facilitate their smooth transition to civilian life. However, informational theory suggests that the state seriously offers general amnesty when it is fighting against rebel groups that are invulnerable to information leakage. Hence, general amnesty in itself is unlikely to contribute to the termination of the war, at least not through the leakage of information. Moreover, general amnesty potentially has two perverse effects: first, if the rebel group loses a large number of combatants due to the state’s general amnesty, the group may seek to replace them by intensifying its forcible recruitment practices; second, it may hamper the process of organizational reform within the group or its shift toward peace. The state’s offer of general amnesty tends to encourage moderates within the group to desert the group, meaning that those who may otherwise have made an

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effort to reform the organization – that is, to improve its relationship with civilians or to seek a peaceful solution to the war – tend to move out of the group, leaving it to the hands of extremists.4 Bueno de Mesquita (2005) made a similar point in his work, showing that the state’s conciliatory policy toward terrorists may result in a temporary intensification of terrorist violence due to moderates’ defection to the state side. Informational theory suggests that this policy may still prove effective to end the war if the rebel group is vulnerable to information leakage. However, if the group is not vulnerable to information leakage, the negative effect of a conciliatory policy, such as an offer of general amnesty, may prove greater than predicted by Bueno de Mesquita; the state is likely to fail to terminate the war, and the consequent intensification of the rebel violence may not be a temporary result.

Political theory of the organization In this study, I assumed that a rebel group would seek to maximize its bargaining power vis-à-vis the state and emphasized the importance of the level of vulnerability of rebel groups and their operations to information leakage in order to analyze rebel leaders’ choice of recruitment strategies. In addition, a logical extension of this focus on rebel groups’ vulnerability leads us beyond the principal–agent model (PA model) to a bargaining model. In the PA model, the principal is assumed to design the organization singlehandedly to maximize the group’s own interests. In the case of rebel groups, however, rebel leaders (principal) are sometimes vulnerable to information leakage by rebel members (agents); therefore, rebel members sometimes have bargaining power against rebel leaders in designing the organization of the rebel group. Of course, this point is not entirely novel. Hirschman (2004), for example, noted that agents chose between two options: organization reform or group exit. However, in his analysis, the decision-making process of the organization (and, thus, the chance for an agent to materialize the reform) was a given. Indeed, the decision-making process itself may be a subject for potential reform. Currently, several studies take a bargaining approach to institutional development (Knight 1992). Fearon (1996) and Robert Powell (2004) developed models that incorporate the dynamic aspects in interactions between two players over forms of an organization. These studies provide a starting point for political scientists to develop a theory that explains the interaction between rebel leaders and rebel members over organizational reform and defection. Recently, some studies addressed the issue of internal conflict within rebel groups (e.g., Pearlman 2009, Pearlman and Cunningham 2012). Still, it is necessary to further explore its implications to the dynamics of civil war by situating it in a strategic interaction between a rebel group and the state.

Policy implications The informational theory of rebel recruitment has a number of policy implications for those who seek the termination of a civil war, some of which are obvious from the discussion so far.

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First, if an external actor will provide assistance to the government to swiftly end the war, the actor needs be attentive to the type of the rebel group and support the government in the area in which it can directly assist the government in ending the war. If the group is vulnerable to information leakage, for example, the external actor should support the government in providing intelligence and improving the government’s and its own intelligence capacity. In contrast, if the group is invulnerable to information leakage because of the size of its military force or its safe haven abroad, the actor should either provide military personnel or make diplomatic attempts to curtail neighboring countries’ accommodation of the group inside its territory. Second, an external actor needs be aware of the limitation and the potential negative effects of the general amnesty offered during a civil war for peace and stability if the actor is to support the action financially. This study suggests that, in order to discuss the costs and benefits of the amnesties during a conflict, it is important to classify them into three types, focusing on their purported effects on the power balance between the two parties. A few scholars have emphasized the benefits of amnesty from utilitarian standpoints (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003/04, Vinjamuri and Snyder 2004). However, they remain ambiguous as to which types of amnesties they address. Also, it is necessary to recognize that amnesty and other types of judicial measures can be employed not only after but also during the conflict (cf. Loyle and Binningsbø 2016). This study suggests that amnesty offers for interest dealignment, i.e., those that purport to shift the power balance in favor of the state by inducing desertions may not be very effective in themselves; these amnesties are effective in inducing desertions only when the group is invulnerable to information leakage and, thus, relies on coercion. When the group is vulnerable to information, the group is more likely to rely on inducement or an effective retention mechanism and severely curtail the risk of members’ desertions. In fact, a general amnesty law may intensify coercive recruitment practices by the group or its use of violence against civilians. Not only the government but also external actors need to recognize the issues involved in the use of amnesty offers and weigh them against each other before deciding to support the action. Overall, the findings in this research highlight several directions for further research on ethnicity in civil war, the duration of civil war, and the political theory of organization.

Notes 1 For useful reviews of the literature on ethnicity and conflict, see, for example, Lars-Erik Cederman (2002), Fearon and Laitin (2000) and Kanchan Chandra (2006). 2 On the use of ethnicity as an information cue, see, for example, Chandra (2004). In this study, voters use the ethnic standpoints of political parties as information cues to decide which party to vote for. 3 Regan, Richard W. Frank, and Aysegul Aydin (2009) compiled a dataset on diplomatic interventions by foreign actors in civil conflicts. Their analysis demonstrated that diplomatic interventions contribute to the termination of civil war and postwar

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stability. It appears important to incorporate this form of intervention into the analysis on the effects of military and economic interventions on war duration in order to avoid missing variable biases. Of course, the relationship between these three modes of intervention seems complicated and requires the development of theoretical and empirical studies for scholars to adequately model these variables simultaneously. 4 The insight comes from Hirschman’s study of organizations in decline (Hirschman 2004).

Reference Cederman, Lars-Erik. 2002. “Nationalism and Ethnicity.” In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, 409–28. London, UK: Sage. Chandra, Kanchan. 2004. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chandra, Kanchan. 2006. “What Is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (1): 397–424. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404. 170715. Collier, Paul, Anke Hoeffler, and Måns Söderbom. 2004. “On the Duration of Civil War.” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 253–73. doi:10.1177/0022343304043769. Cunningham, David E., Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan. 2009. “It Takes Two: A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (4): 570–97. doi:10.1177/0022002709336458. de Mesquita, Ethan B. 2005. “Conciliation, Counterterrorism, and Patterns of Terrorist Violence.” International Organization 59 (1): 145–76. doi:10.1017/ S0020818305050022. Elbadawi, Ibrahim and Nicholas Sambanis. 2002. “How Much War Will We See?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (3): 307–34. doi:10.1177/0022002702046003 001. Fearon, James D. 1996. Bargaining Over Objects That Influence Future Bargaining Power. Unpublished manuscript. Chicago, IL: Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. Fearon, James D. and David D. Laitin. 2000. “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity.” International Organization 54 (4): 845–77. doi: 10.1162/002081800551398. Fearon, James D. and David D. Laitin. 2003. Replication Data for Fearon and Laitin (2003). Accessed December 12, 2012. www.stanford.edu/group/ethnic/publicdata/publicdata.html. Hirschman, Albert O. 2004. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Humphreys, Macartan and Jeremy M. Weinstein. 2008. “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (2): 436–55. Knight, Jack. 1992. Institutions and Social Conflict, the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. Laitin, David D. 1999. “Nationalist Revivals and Violence.” In Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture, edited by John R. Bowen and Roger D. Petersen, 21–60. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Loyle, Cyanne E. and Helga Malmin Binningsbø. 2016. “Justice during Armed Conflict: A New Dataset on Government and Rebel Strategies.” Journal of Conflict Resolution. doi: 10.1177/0022002716655441. Mueller, John E. 2000. “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’.” International Security 25 (1): 42–70. doi:10.1162/016228800560381. Mueller, John E. 2004. The Remnants of War, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pearlman, Wendy. 2009. “Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process.” International Security 33 (3): 79–109. doi: 10.1162/isec.2009.33.3.79. Pearlman, Wendy, and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham. 2012. “Nonstate Actors, Fragmentation, and Conflict Processes.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (1): 3–15. doi: 10.1177/0022002711429669. Powell, Robert. 2004. “Bargaining and Learning While Fighting.” American Journal of Political Science 48 (2): 344–61. doi:10.1111/j.0092-5853.2004.00074.x. Pye, Lucian W. 1956. Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, Its Social and Political Meaning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Regan, Patrick M. 2002. “Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (1): 55–73. doi:10.1177/00220027 02046001004. Regan, Patrick M., Richard W. Frank, and Aysegul Aydin. 2009. “Diplomatic Interventions and Civil War: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 46 (1): 135–46. doi:10.1177/0022343308098408. Sambanis, Nicholas. 2001. “Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (3): 259–82. doi:10.1177/00220027 01045003001. Snyder, Jack and Leslie Vinjamuri. 2004. “Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice.” International Security 28 (3): 5–44. doi:10.1162/016228803773100066. Vinjamuri, Leslie and Jack Snyder. 2004. “Advocacy and Scholarship in the Study of International War Crime Tribunals and Transitional Justice.” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (1): 345–62. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104755. Wedeen, Lisa. 2002. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 713–28. doi:10.1017/ S0003055402000400.

Index

Page numbers in italic indicate a figure or table on the corresponding page. abduction 1; phase (LRA) 87, 88 access denial, intensification 114 Adimola, Andrew 158 agents: desertion, expected cost (LRA) 60–1; desertion (vulnerability), expected costs 44–6; expected costs 48–9, 52; non-compliance/desertion, expected cost 28; outside option 21–2; retention cost 27–8 Agreement on a Ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (CFA) 57, 79; abrogation 102; pressure 80–1; signing 150–1; war resumption 131 al-Bashir, Omar 63 American Civil War, studies 96–7 Amman, Karuna: defection 43, 58, 73, 101, 146–51; faction, defection 104; information leakage 57–9, 146–51; Vanni LTTE, conflict 58 amnesty. See general amnesty Amnesty Act (1999) 107, 128 Amnesty Act (2000) 65, 129 Amnesty Commission data 99 Amnesty Commission report 128 Amnesty Law 88 amnesty offers: credibility/attractiveness 117; grace period 119; types, distinction 116 Arrow, Kenneth 19 Athulathmudali, Lalith (assassination) 54 Atubo, Daniel Omara 158 Auma, Alice 85–6 Beardsley, Kyle 72 Bearman, Peter 96

Beber, Bernd 22, 141 Bigombe, Betty 62, 158; meeting 159 Black July 72 Black Tiger: members, LTTE selection 82; tasks, internal variation 82–3 Blattman, Christopher 22, 141 British Industrial Revolution 22 ceasefire agreement 57 Central Republic of Africa (CRA) 9 CFA. See Agreement on a Ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Chelvan, Thamil 76 Child Protection Units (CPUs) 65 child soldiers, impact 24 civil war: duration 177–9; dynamics, rebel recruitment (effects) 22–4; parties, numerical strengths (Sri Lanka/Uganda) 50; power relations 44–5; rebel decline, relationship 140; termination 34–6, 177–9; termination (Sri Lanka) 145–6 coding, usage 119 coercion: conscription (LTTE) 77–80; conscription/abduction (LTTE) 80–1; ex post screening, usage (LRA) 83–90; involvement 4; recruitment techniques 24–5 co-ethnicity 176–7 collaborators (tasks), internal variation (LRA) 89–90 Colombo, fatalities per LTTE attack 149 Congolese Patriotic Union/Popular Rally (UPC/RP) 1 congruence method 9–10

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conventional civil war 44–5 conventional warfare, territorial control (relationship) 55–7 Costa, Dora 96–7 counterinsurgency: hypothesis 34; technique, state strategic choice 32 Cunningham, David 136 Daluwatte, Rohan 124 defections, rebel group order 6 Deisarmament, Demobilization, and Rehabilitation (DDR) programs 177 de Mesquita, Bueno 179 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 9 deserters, information source 29 desertion 95; analysis, method 99–9; assessment (LRA) 107–8; assessment (LTTE) 104–6; comparison 109; expected cost 47; explanatory variables 100; hypothesis 34, 36, 98; impact 142–56; information leakage, relationship 137–9; information problems 98; literature 96–8; LRA 106–8; LTTE 100–6; observed pattern (LRA) 107; observed pattern (LTTE) 102–3; prediction (LRA) 106–7; rates, rebel recruitment (informational theory) 32–4; rebel recruitment, relationship 98; state amnesty offer 99; vulnerability, expected costs 44–6 de Silva, Harendra 77, 78 Director, Okello 128 Dissanayake, Gamini (assassination) 54 Dolan, Chris 85 During Conflict Justice (DCJ) dataset 119 Eck, Kristine 20 Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (ERPLF) 55 Eelam War II 54, 57; IPKF withdrawal 124 Eelam War III 102; IPKF withdrawal 124; LTTE attacks 148–9; LTTEcontrolled area, government advancement 125 Eelam War IV 80–1; cessation 145; LTTE territory, decrease 147; military strategy 146 Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) 1 Elephant Pass, LTTE capture 56

Erimalai 74 ethnicity, role 175–7 ethnic wars 175 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) 175 ex ante reduction 7 ex ante screening: hypothesis 7–8; LTTE 70–83; usage (LRA) 83–90 Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Hirschman) 96 ex post recruitment 7 external accountability 20–21 Fearon, James 23–4 Fernando, Clancy (assassination) 54 Final Peace Agreement 163 Fonseka, Sarah: assassination attempt 154 Fonseka, Sarath 125–6 foreign fighters, impact 24 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) 1 Gandhi, Rajiv (assassination) 52, 54, 75 Garamba National Park: LRA movement 83–4; Otti, movement 162; safe haven 106–7 Gates, Scott 141 general amnesty 113; importance 178–9; interest dealignment tool 115–18 general amnesty offer: data, overview 120–2; patterns, observation 123–4; political conditionality 116; purposes 115–17, 116; state investment level 118; statement commitment level 117–18; timing 116 Gould, Roger 96 grace period 119 guerrilla warfare 52–5; location 45–6 Hamas, economic/social endowments 20–1 Hanks, Helga 77 Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar 77 Hirschman, Albert 96 Hobbs, Chris 77 Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) 9, 61; members, impact 85 Hopgood, Stephen 77 Human Rights Watch, LTTE report 78–9 Ilapporali: Iniye Tamil Makkal (journal) 74 independent variables, measurements 43–6

Index Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) 52, 75; deployment 102; experiences, problems 144 Indo-Lanka Accord 123–4 inducement: ex ante screening (LRA) 83–90; explanation 4; LTTE 73–7; phase (LRA) 84–6; recruitment techniques 24–5 informational theory 105–6; explanatory powers, assessment 108, 120; prediction 122–3 information asymmetry 47, 48; level 27, 44; LRA 60 information cost 22–4 information leakage 35; desertion, relationship 137, 137–9; hypothesis 135; impact 35, 139–40; Karuna 57–9, 146–51; LRA vulnerability, changes 61–5; LTTE retention cost/vulnerability, changes 52–9; rebel decline, relationship 137–40; vulnerability 139; vulnerability, absence 178–9 information problems 98 institutional environment 48–9, 52; importance 46; LRA 60–1 intelligence capacity 180; build-up 178 interest dealignment tool 115–18 interlocutor, authority (impact) 119 International Criminal Court (ICC), Kony suit 129, 163 irregular power relations 44–5 Jaffna, LTTE loss 56, 80, 174 Julu, Irene Apiu 158 Kahn, Matthew 96–7 Kalathil 76 Kony, Joseph: agreement appearance, failure 163; HSM members, impact 85; Lagony execution 128; LRA creation 61–2; meeting 159 Kumaratunga, Chandrika Bandaranaike: amnesty offer 124; ‘War for Peace’ policy 56–7, 103–5 Lagony, Alex Otti (execution) 128 Laitin, David 175 Latek, Odong 85 leaflets, military airdrops 124 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE): agent desertion, expected

185

costs 48–9, 52; agent quality, concern 74–5; attacks/fatalities 148; characteristics 48–52; characteristics, constancy 46; child recruitment 79; coercive recruitment efforts, intensification 123; combatants, service duration 152; conscription 125; conventional warfare preparation 77–9; conventional warfare, territorial control (relationship) 55–7; decline 142, 145–6; deserters, increase 103–4; economic/social endowments 20–1; ex ante screening 70–83; external safe haven, absence 49, 52; force, shift (monitoring/sanction capacity) 78; formation 9; general amnesty offers 122; guerrilla operations, emphasis 54–5; inducement 73–7; inducement shift, informational theory (impact) 72–3; information asymmetry 47, 48; information leakage 142; information leakage (Karuna) 57–9; information, state usage 146–7; institutional environment 48–9, 52; international financial bans 151, 153; large-scale operations, cost 149; mass desertions 135; military comeback 126; military strategy 53–5, 56–7; military strategy, diversification 48; military strategy, Karuna defection (impact) 80; organization 46–59; organizational properties 46, 48; organizational properties, changes 10; outside options, theories 104; phases 52–9, 73–81; power relations 48–9, 52; recruitment strategies 71, 72; recruitment techniques, congruence method/qualitative case studies 9; retention cost 47, 52–3, 55–6; retention cost, changes 52–9; retention, effectiveness 70–83; retention mechanism, cost (reduction) 46, 48; safe havens 48–9, 52; Sri Lankan state amnesty offers 122–6; surrender 43; tasks, internal variation 82–3; territorial control 52–3, 55–6; territory, decrease (Eelam War IV) 147; territory, proportion change 53; terror attacks 53–4, 148–9; terrorism 52–5; vulnerability, changes 52–9 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) amnesty offers: data overview

186

Index

120–2; descriptive statistics 121; patterns, observation (phases) 123–6 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) coercion: conscription 77–80; conscription/abduction 80–1; ex post screening, usage 83–90 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) desertion 100–6, 101; expected cost 47; impact 142–56; impact, assessment 104–6, 155–6; LRA, comparison 109; observed pattern, phases 102–3; phases 143–56; prediction 100–1, 143; rates, informational theory explanation 109 long-term military effectiveness 8 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA): abduction 1, 107; abduction phase 87, 88; agent desertion, expected cost 60–1; amnesty offers, data overview 120–2; amnesty offers, descriptive statistics 121; characteristics 59; collaborators, NRA arrest 165; collaborators, tasks (internal variation) 89–90; constant characteristics 60–1; crisis action 157; declines 142; escape 107; external safe haven, acquisition 65–6; general amnesty offers 122; High Command, group strengthening 87; high-ranking officers, abducted experience/former affiliation 86; inducement (phase) 84–6; inducement, ex ante screening (usage) 83–90; information asymmetry 60; information leakage 142; information leakage vulnerability, changes 61–5; institutional environment 60–1; mass abduction 127; mass desertions 135; members, Ugandan state pardon 127–8; military strategy 60–1; neardefeat 86; organization 9, 59–66; organizational properties, changes 10; outside options, theories 108; phases 61–5, 84–8; power relations 60–1; rebel recruitment, informational theory 108; recruitment strategies 71; recruitment techniques 9; resistance power, UPDF (impact) 64; retention mechanism, cost 60; return 107; safe haven, incursion 63–4; safe haven, Sudanese offer 106; secrecy, loss 63–5; size, increase 107; terrain 60–1; territory control, absence 84; Ugandan government pursuit

63–4; Ugandan state amnesty offers 126–30; vulnerability 161 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) desertion 101, 106–8; assessment 107–8; LTTE, comparison 109; observed pattern 107; prediction 106–7; rates, informational theory explanation 109; state response, impact 158–9 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) desertion, impact 156–63; assessment 163–4; phases 157–63; prediction 156–7 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) safe haven: absence 61–2; acquisition 62–3; loss 63–5 loyalty, level (increase) 96–7 Mahattaya, command 144 Maheswaran, Uma: defection 143–4; desertion 102 Maoists (Nepal) 1 mass desertion 135; evidence 156 Mavil Aru Incident 154 Mavil Aru reservoir, water supply (cessation) 150 McQuinn, Brian 72 Mega FM: establishment 128–9; installation 65 Mende, ethnic classification 177 military coup, success 44–5 military escalation, fostering 140 military road network, UPDF expansion 88 military strategy 45; diversification 48 military strategy (LRA) 60–1 military strategy (LTTE) 53–5, 56–7 Mueller, John 175 Museveni, Yoweri: Gulu visit 159; Kony lawsuit 129; military campaign, prioritization 161; policy 128 Nairobi Agreement 63 National Child Protection Authority 78 National Resistance Army (NRA) 59; confrontation 62; defeat 85; fighting 84; LRA collaborator arrest 165; offensive 158; vengeance 86; violence 85 Ochola, Walter 85 Olson, Mancur 19 Olum, Zachary 158 omitted variables problem 118

Index Omona, George 159 Operation Iron Fist II 162 Operation Iron Fist, initiation 161 Operation Jayasikurui 77–8 Operation North, impact 62, 158 Otti, Vincent 162 outside options 21–2; theories 75, 104, 108; theories, problem 108 Pant, K.C. 124 People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) 55, 143 personal conditionality 119 political conditionality 116 power balance 19–20 power base erosion 35 power relations 48–9, 52; concept 44–5; LRA 60–1; types 44–5 Prabhakan 56–7, 72 Premadasa, Ranasinghe (assassination) 54 principal-agent (PA) model 25–6 private military corporations (PMCs), impact 24 punctuated equilibrium 36 Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya: aggression 105–6; election, win 153–4; LTTE surrender call 125–6; military attack 150 rebel decline 34–6, 35, 135; analysis, method 141; civil war, relationship 140; hypothesis 36; information leakage, relationship 137, 137–40; literature 136 rebel desertion, hypothesis 36 rebel group: choice 33; defeat, leaked information (usage) 140; desertion rates 32–4; ethnicity, role 176; information leakage vulnerability 139; military effectiveness 26–7; military strategy 45; resource curse theory 20–1; secrecy dependence 31–2; vulnerability 98 rebel members: information leakage, vulnerability 179; state general amnesty offer 113–14 rebel organizations: changes 43; political theory 179–80 rebel recruitment: agents, outside options 21–2; desertion, relationship 98; effects 22–4; ethnicity, role 175–7; external accountability 20–21; findings, summary 173–4;

187

hypotheses 36; inducement/coercion 26; information problems 98; initial resource endowment 20–21; literature 19–24; policy implications 180–1; power balance 19–20; resource scarcity 19–20; retention, cost 21–2; technique, choice 27–9; theoretical implications 175–80; time horizon 19–20 rebel recruitment, informational theory 18, 24–36, 58–9, 105–6, 173; corollary 34–5; LRA 89, 108; prediction 122–3, 142–3 rebel recruitment strategy 25–32, 35; rebel group choice 33; shift, punctuated equilibrium 36 rebel recruitment, study: argument 4–8; reason 1–4; research design 8–10 rebel-state interaction 30–2 rebel-state strategic interaction, information cost 22–4 rebel strength, sources (targeting) 31 recruitment 70 recruitment techniques 24–5; rebel leader selection 30 Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) 102, 144 resource curse theory 20–1, 72, 83–4, 97; prediction 109 resource endowment 20–21 resource scarcity 19–20 resources, state allocation 118 retention: cost 21–2, 47; cost, territorial control (relationship) 52–3, 55–7; effectiveness (LTTE) 70–83; mechanism, cost 44; mechanism, cost (LRA) 60 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 176–7 Richards, Joanne 20 road densities (Sri Lanka/Uganda) 51 safe havens 48–9, 52; absence (LRA) 61–2; acquisition (LRA) 62–3; loss (LRA) 63–5; vulnerability measure 46 secrecy, loss (LRA) 63–5 selection bias 118 self-defense militias, formation 30–1 self-selection 115 Sri Lanka: civil war, parties (numerical strengths) 50; civil war, termination 145–6; collaboration 155; fatalities per LTTE attack 149; Karuna

188

Index

defection/information leakage, impact 146–51; land size 49; LTTE attacks/fatalities 148; northern/ eastern regions, LTTE territory (change) 53; road densities 51; state military escalation 146–51; state military escalation, timing (explanation) 151–5; state military expenditures 51; state, strength 48–9 Sri Lankan Army (SLA): LTTE member surrender announcement 103; northern advancement 147; Weli Oya military facility, assault 73–4 Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) complaints 79 Sri Lanka, state amnesty offers 122–6, 184–6; assessment 126; comparison 130 state amnesty offer 99; Sri Lanka 122–6; Uganda 126–30 state counterinsurgency strategy 34, 114–18; analysis, method 118–20; coding 119; data 118–19; evaluation, criteria 119–20; general amnesty 113; hypothesis 36; omitted variables problem 118; selection bias 118 state counterinsurgency techniques, classification 30–1 state general amnesty offer 113–14 state investment level 118 state military: escalation (Sri Lanka), timing (explanation) 151–5; operations, information leakage (impact) 139–40 state military expenditures (Sri Lanka/ Uganda) 51 Student’s Revival Week 76 Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) 1, 62, 159 Suk-Young Chwe, Michael 21–2 SWAY project, focus 99–100 symmetrical nonconventional (SNC) civil war 44–5, 49, 60–1 Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) 55 Tamil Ilam (magazine) 74 Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), name adoption 125–6 Tamil Voice International (magazine) 74 territorial control 44, 52–5; conventional warfare, relationship

53–6; importance 78; retention cost 52–3 terrorism 52–5 Thambimuttu, Sam/Kala (assassination) 54 Tharmalingam, Shanmugam Kumaran 56 time horizon 19–20 Tinyefuza, David 158 Uganda: civil war, parties (numerical strengths) 50; GDP, increase 160; land size 49; military, size 61; road densities 51; state military expenditures 51; state military/police, operation 157–8; Uganda-Sudan agreement 163 Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), members (presence) 85 Ugandan Christian Democratic Army (UCDA) 61–2 Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF): chase 106–7; impact 62–3; military road network expansion 88; Operation Iron Fist II 162 Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA), members (impact) 85 Uganda, state amnesty offers 126–30, 187–91; assessment 129–30; comparison 130; pattern, observation 127–9; prediction 127 UNICEF, child recruitment documentation 79 University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), child sentries 76 Uppsala Conflict Data Program 158 Velliyakka (Revelation) 74 Viravenkai (Brave Tiger) 74 volunteer force 78 ‘War for Peace’ policy 56–7, 103–5 Weinstein, Jeremy 20 Weli Oya military facility, assault 73–4 Wickremasinghe, Ranil 57 Wijeratne, Ranjan (assassination) 54 World Vision: involvement 127; UPDF cooperation 128 Zedong, Mao 28