The Commander's Dilemma: Violence and Restraint in Wartime 9781501726484

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THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA

THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA Violence and Restraint in Wartime Amelia Hoover Green

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2018 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2018 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hoover Green, Amelia, author. Title: The commander’s dilemma : violence and restraint in wartime / Amelia Hoover Green. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Based on the author’s thesis (Ph.D.)—Yale University, 2011. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018022560 (print) | LCCN 2018025452 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501726484 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501726491 (ret) | ISBN 9781501726477 | ISBN 9781501726477 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Political violence—Psychological aspects. | Command of troops— Psychological aspects. | Civilians in war—Violence against. | Control (Psychology) | Political violence—El Salvador—History—20th century. | Political socialization—El Salvador—History—20th century. | Civilians in war—Violence against—El Salvador. | El Salvador—Politics and government—1979–1992. Classification: LCC JC328.6 (ebook) | LCC JC328.6 .H67 2018 (print) | DDC 355.3/3041—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022560

To Jarrod and Henry

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

ix xi xiii

Introduction: Repertoires and Restraint

1

1.

The Commander’s Dilemma

25

2.

Civil War in El Salvador

59

3.

Comparing State and FMLN Institutions and Ideologies

79

4.

Institutions, Ideologies, and Combatant Experiences in FMLN Factions

109

Violence and Restraint in the Salvadoran Civil War, 1980–92

131

The Commander’s Dilemma beyond El Salvador

170

5.

6.

Conclusion: Policies for Restraint

200

Appendix Notes Works Cited Index

217 227 231 249

vii

Tables and Figures

Tables 0.1

Levels and repertoires of wartime violence

10

1.1

Armed-group institutions and modes of influence

42

1.2

General empirical implications of the Commander’s Dilemma framework

49

1.3

Indicators of armed-group and combatant characteristics

54

3.1

Formal education among FMLN and state recruits

83

3.2

Recollections of political education among FMLN and state recruits

90

Perceptions of discipline among FMLN and state ex-combatants

101

5.1

Lethal violence as reported by four datasets

140

5.2

Correlations between raw datasets and MSE estimates, by department (top rows) and year (bottom rows)

145

Repertoire elements as a proportion of total violence as reported by four datasets

147

Empirical implications of the Commander’s Dilemma and other approaches

151

6.1

Descriptive statistics: Three Mano River datasets

195

6.2

Probability of reporting sexual violence, given any report of violence by a group

197

3.3

5.3

5.4

Figures Comparing PTS and SVAC scores for seventy-five civil wars

11

Costs of compliance over time, discipline versus political education

45

1.2

From individual lists to multiple systems estimation

52

3.1

Pages from the 15 Principles

92

0.1

1.1

ix

x

TABLES AND FIGURES

Front covers of ERP political-education materials: levels one, two, and three

118

5.1

Overlap patterns among four Salvadoran data sources

142

5.2

Custom strata for global MSE estimates

144

5.3

Comparing MSE and raw data estimates of lethal violence by year

146

Comparing reported levels of different repertoire elements among four datasets

148

Proportion of survey respondents who “saw or heard about” rape, by year of recruitment and armed group

169

4.1

5.4

5.5

Acknowledgments

First and most important, I owe a debt of gratitude to the people who welcomed me to their homes and communities in El Salvador. Their observations are the backbone of this work, although I cannot name them here. I can and very happily do name my colleague Erika Murcia, who served as research assistant, translator, logistics point person, tour guide, and first sounding board for all ideas during each of my trips to El Salvador. Erika’s work made this book possible, and made it better, and I am so grateful for her work and her wisdom. Other colleagues whose research assistance has shaped this book include Quenten Hare, Greta Jusyte, Alexander Nadolishny, Ebony Pleasants, Belén Rodriguez, and Maggie Von Vogt. This book owes its existence to the steadfast support of my academic mentors, beginning with Carol Nackenoff, Ken Sharpe, and Rick Valelly at Swarthmore. I am grateful also to teachers who managed to give radically different pieces of advice that never tripped over each other or blocked my winding way. Stathis Kalyvas gave project-saving advice at some key, distressful moments. Patrick Ball provided invaluable methodological advice and instruction, unwavering practical support, and an activist’s passion for making work that matters in the world. And I am immeasurably grateful for the mentorship of Elisabeth Wood. Her support has been more important than I have adequate words to describe. Some of the words that come to mind, though: intellectually rich, constant, kind, generous, and deeply ethical. Libby believed in me during the moments when I did not quite believe in myself. My colleagues, near and far, old and new, junior and senior, long-term and short-, have provided invaluable feedback, conversation, and encouragement. Phillip Ayoub, Julia Azari, Maria Eriksson Baaz, Laia Balcells, Regina Bateson, Kanisha Bond, Zoltan Buzas, Karisa Cloward, Kerry Crawford, Kathleen Cunningham, Will d’Ambruoso, Stephen Engel, Lee Ann Fujii, Scott Gates, Anita Gohdes, Erin Graham, Tamy Guberek, Daniel Gúzman, Paul Kirby, Jeff Klingner, Jule Krüger, Milli Lake, Jason Lyall, Meghan Lynch, Devorah Manekin, Zoe Marks, Michele Leiby, Sarah Parkinson, Rob Person, Megan Price, Emily Ritter, Anastasia Shesterinina, Laura Sjoberg, Paolo Spada, Abbey Steele, and Scott Straus all contributed to this project, and I thank them. I am grateful also to the United States Institute of Peace, Jeff Checkel, Will Moore and Yonatan Lupu, Theo McLauchlin, Helen Kinsella, and Will d’Ambruoso, all of whom invited xi

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

me to workshops and seminars that shaped this final product. My coauthor and friend Dara Kay Cohen deserves special thanks for many years of discussions, ideas, and support. Several other scholars and former scholars contributed to this book by encouraging me to care for myself and by spending time commiserating about mental health in the academy. Things being what they are, I will not name them here. My editor at Cornell, Roger Haydon, has been patient and encouraging throughout the project, from a lengthy crack-of-dawn breakfast at the International Studies Association meeting in 2015, to the inevitable delays, to the lastminute questions of a first-time author. Thank you. I received funding at various stages of this project, without which it could never have been completed. I am grateful to the United States Institute of Peace Jennings Randolph Junior Fellows program; the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University; the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, also at Yale University; the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (then in incubation at the Benetech Initiative); and Drexel University. An Antelo Devereux Award for Excellence in Research allowed me to complete a final field visit to Morazán in 2015. I also thank the Museo de la Palabra y la Imágen, in San Salvador, for unfettered access to its archives. I spent most of the years I worked on this book living among housemates and friends. Everyone who shared a home with me during the last decade deserves my thanks for food, drink, shoulders to cry on, gossip, hootenannies, and enforced downtime. Louisa Egan Brad, Stephen Engel, Joe Blodgett, Joey Kotfica, Jamie Timmons, Elizabeth Eager, and Angelo Hernandez: I’m in your debt. Neighborhood friends who have made Philadelphia our forever home (and made parenting feel possible) include Jenny Lunstead, John Pappas, Carrie Fafarman, and Aaron Fafarman. The Scones had my back. Laurel Eckhouse and Emily Clough have taught me everything about friendships of character and surviving in the academy. Anne Bakken, my friend since childhood, always has Diet Coke and encouragement on hand when I need them. Finally, I could not have done this without my family. John and Betsy Hoover, Ray and Donny Hoover, you gave me my love of learning and helped me be my best nerd-self. Laury Fischer, Sue Schweik, Sara Dickey, Rob Jackson, Zach Fischer, Marria Kee, Solon Smith, and all: thank you for welcoming me and sharing my excitement about this work. Finally, to Jarrod, whom I met as I started this project, and Henry, who joined us as I raced toward its finish, thank you for making my life awesome every day: for devotion, conversation, hilarious antics, domestic and emotional labor, guitar tunes, big jumps, blueberry smiles, resilience, patience, and love. This book is for the two of you.

Abbreviations

AFL AFRC BIRI CDF CDHES CSC CVR ECOMOG ERP FAES FMLN FPL INPFL LURD MODEL MSE NGO NPFL PE PER PH PHR PTS PTSD RN RUF SJ SLA SOA SVAC

Armed Forces of Liberia Armed Forces Revolutionary Council Battallón de Infantería de Reacción Inmediata (immediate reaction battalion) Civil Defense Forces Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador criticism and self-criticism Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación de Perú (Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Perú) Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (Revolutionary Army of the People) Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador (Armed Forces of El Salvador) Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front / Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (Popular Forces of Liberation) Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Movement for Democracy in Liberia multiple systems estimation nongovernmental organization National Patriotic Front of Liberia political education political education for restraint Policia de Hacienda (Treasury Police) Physicians for Human Rights Political Terror Scale posttraumatic stress disorder National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional) Revolutionary United Front Socorro Jurídico Sierra Leone Army School of the Americas Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict xiii

xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

TL TRC TRC-L TRC-SL ULIMO UNTC WHINSEC

Tutela Legal Truth and Reconciliation Commission Truth and Reconciliation Commission–Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission–Sierra Leone United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA

Introduction

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

Repertoires are learned cultural creations. . . . They emerge from struggle. —Charles Tilly, “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834”

Over about three days in December 1981, an elite, American-trained battalion of the Armed Forces of El Salvador murdered approximately one thousand people in and around the village of El Mozote, in the department of Morazán. Rufina Amaya was one of the few eyewitness survivors to these killings. Her testimony, a version of which was published in 1996 as Luciérnagas en El Mozote, describes both the killings and the crimes that accompanied them: “[We] were taken out of the houses and had to lay face down in the street, including children, and [the soldiers] took everything: necklaces, money. . . . [The next morning the soldiers killed some of the men.] These they beheaded and threw into the convent. At noon, they finished killing all the men and went to get girls to take them to the hills [where many were raped]. . . . At five in the afternoon they took me with a group of 22 women. I was the last in line. I was breastfeeding my daughter. They took her from my arms. . . . The soldiers killed that group of women without realizing that I had hidden, and went to bring another group. About seven o’clock in the evening they finished. . . .” After joking about the “witches” burning in the sacristy, Amaya writes, soldiers looted snacks and drinks from the local store. Amaya crawled away and hid until the soldiers moved on, then took shelter in a cottage near the Rio Sapo. Eight days later, a local family found Amaya as they were bringing corn for storage; by Christmas, rebel forces had begun to inspect El 1

2

INTRODUCTION

Mozote and the surrounding hamlets, and to bury the dead. American reporters reached the area in early January. Both Raymond Bonner, in the New York Times, and Alma Guillermoprieto, in the Washington Post, interviewed Amaya for their stories about the massacre, published on January 27, 1982.1 Amaya quickly became the victim of a vicious smear campaign by US and Salvadoran officials, who claimed alternately that no massacre had occurred, or that civilians in northern Morazán were guerrilla sympathizers (Binford 2016, chap. 4; Bonner 1984; Guillermoprieto 2007). Yet Amaya lived to see her story vindicated by the Truth Commission at war’s end, played a key role in the exhumation and reburial of victims, and remained in Morazán until her death, in 2007. The El Mozote massacre, its truth no longer in doubt, has become the bestknown episode of violence against civilians during the Salvadoran civil war, and a stand-in for the brutality of state forces. Yet it is not a representative episode: when they killed, Salvadoran forces typically did so in ones and twos, or from a distance. Death squads seized individual victims from their homes and dumped their mutilated bodies at San Salvador’s giant municipal garbage dump; planes and helicopters dropped bombs that obliterated isolated villages. But nonlethal violence was at least as common: paramilitary security forces detained thousands of civilians, torturing them for information, punishment, and fun. Soldiers stole food, sexually harassed and raped women during operations in villages, and otherwise conducted an indiscriminate and deeply alienating campaign of terror against the civilian population. State violence in El Salvador contrasts starkly with violence committed against civilians by the opposing guerrilla forces, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional [FMLN]). Prototypical violence by the FMLN included the targeted assassinations of individuals thought to be collaborating with the government, including a number of mayors (Betancur, Figueredo Planchart, and Buergenthal 1993). Civilian massacres by FMLN cadres were nearly unheard of. Indeed, the most sustained campaign of FMLN murders appears to have occurred when the political-military commander of the paracentral region (the departments of Cabañas, San Vicente, and La Paz), known as Mayo Sibrian, spiraled into paranoia following a period of imprisonment in 1984–85. Between assuming command of the region in 1986 and his execution in 1991, Mayo Sibrian ordered the torture and killing of hundreds of guerrilla fighters and civilian collaborators on charges of infiltration (Galeas and Ayala 2008). Here too, a common pattern of violence emerges. A witness to the violence (quoted in Galeas and Ayala 2008, “Prologue,” part 1) testified: Ethel [Pocasangre Campos, a guerrillera known as “Crucita”] was accused of treason. . . . On the 22nd of September of 1986, at a place in

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

3

the village of San Bartolo, near a hill, her own guerrilla commanders tied her up and threw her, half-naked, into the mud. During several hours they tortured her, beating her with a club made of guava wood, while they demanded that she confess and give up her supposed accomplices. After that, she was executed and buried in a common grave, together with fifteen other combatants killed in the same way that day. Yet despite the climate of fear created by Mayo Sibrian’s actions, and despite what observers describe as “low morale” among his troops, it seems clear that the violence, while horrific, was also tightly controlled. Unlike the laundry list of state atrocities, there appeared to be little violence against nonaligned civilians. No clear instances of sexual violence, extortion, or theft are discussed, even by the most critical sources; the closest we come is the reference to Crucita’s having been “half-naked” as she faced torture. Across the span of the war, FMLN cadres committed low levels of violence overall, and extremely low levels of sexual violence and property crimes. The story of why and, more important, how the FMLN implemented this policy makes up an important part of this volume. A partial contrast to the Salvadoran war can be found in Perú, where Shining Path guerrillas were responsible for a number of brutal retributive massacres. Perhaps the most famous of these occurred in the village of Lucanamarca, where in 1983 Shining Path cadres murdered over sixty men, women, and children, using extraordinarily brutal, personal, performative violence. Antonio Quincho testified to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he returned to his home a few days after the massacre to find victims “with their hands and feet tied up, the braids cut off the young women, who had been cut with axes, knives, and picks; they had even thrown hot water on them. . . . We found children with their little hands burned, their little faces. . . . They had pulled out the guts of newborn babies and stomped their heads until the brains came out” (testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Perú [Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación de Perú (CVR)], vol. 7, chap. 2, sec. 6, 46; my translation). The Shining Path’s ideology was ostensibly similar to that of the Salvadoran FMLN, yet Shining Path cadres were responsible for vast and brutal lethal violence—approximately half of all killings during the Peruvian civil war (Ball et al., 2003). Much of the violence committed by Shining Path cadres could be described as “overkill”—violence in excess of that required to kill, including performatively gruesome acts such as those described above. Indeed, the Shining Path has been described as a “cult of violence,” in which violence became not only a means to exert control but a purifying force in itself. Yet in most times and in most areas, Shining Path cadres committed very few acts of sexual violence

4

INTRODUCTION

relative to government forces; in this regard, the Lucanamarca massacre looked very little like El Mozote. The conflicts in El Salvador and Perú featured leftist guerrilla forces fighting large, conventionally oriented state militaries. Post–Cold War conflicts, on the other hand, often pit weak state militaries, no longer propped up by Cold War superpowers, against nonstate actors whose political motives may be outweighed by their profit motives (cf. Collier 2000). S. J., a wealthy woman from Bombali District in northern Sierra Leone, was one of thousands caught in brutal fighting between the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) in 1999. In a 2003 Human Rights Watch report, she described murder, rape, torture, and pillage by RUF combatants: I saw them kill three people and were it not for God, I would have been the fourth. Then they burned thirteen houses and looted all our things. I ran with my four children to the house in the bush where we tend to the cows . . . Seven rebels surprised us there. . . . They started stealing what few possessions I had and then [the commanding officer of the unit] said that I should be raped. . . . Four raped me and the last one to rape me . . . put a knife to my throat and said he was going to kill me but the C.O. said I shouldn’t be killed. Then they tied my hands behind me and [the C.O.] burnt me. He scooped up hot charcoal from the fire we had been cooking with and tried to burn my face with it. I struggled and turned my face so he burned my chest instead. (Human Rights Watch 2003, 37) Across the country in Bonthe District, J. K. suffered violence at the hands of Community Defense Forces (CDFs), also known as Kamajors: One of the Kamajors called Kinie said that they had been told that my brother was in the village and was planning to attack them. I assured them no one knew where he was. During this argument, the other civilians in [the] village became afraid and fled into the bush. As soon as the Kamajors forced their way into my bedroom, I followed them to check up on what they were doing. Kinie and another Kamajor whose name I did not know pushed me to the ground, tearing off my clothes. I screamed for help but no one came to my rescue. Even my father who was in the house was unable to help me. They both raped me while the others stood around laughing. When they left the village, they looted some goats and chickens. There was no one to report the incident to and I had no money to pay for a hospital visit. I decided to leave everything to the Almighty God. (Human Rights Watch 2003, 47)

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

5

J. K.’s story is superficially similar to S. J.’s. Indeed, Human Rights Watch published both testimonies as part of a report documenting sexual violence by all parties to the conflict. But it is important to know that sexual violence by Kamajors was relatively rare, while sexual violence by RUF forces was common. While CDF violence was significant, it seldom featured sexual violence, amputation, or the other crimes for which RUF cadres were feared and reviled. Why? Why did Salvadoran troops massacre the village of El Mozote and terrorize the broader civilian population, while its rebel enemies carefully controlled violence against civilians? Consider for a moment the full range of abuses described in the firsthand narratives above. Soldiers steal animals, poison wells, and set fires. They sexually harass women and cut their hair. They rape and torture. They discuss, argue, accuse, joke, drink looted soda pop, and grab chickens on their way out of town. The nitty-gritty details of violence play an important role in eyewitness narratives, and to nonexpert readers they have a clear “feel”— regimented or berserk, ritualistic or oddly workmanlike. Yet many or most would be erased from systematic studies of wartime violence. Social scientists often strip away gore and complexity as we search for the “logic of violence” (cf. Kalyvas 2006). In particular, we often focus on lethal violence, excluding other forms from our analyses and our attention. The stories above are reduced to a list of body counts; stories that include horrific violence other than death are often erased completely. Unfortunately, the simple, compelling theories of (lethal) violence that are social scientists’ stock-in-trade offer few explanations for the abduction, destruction, detention, disappearance, disfigurement, displacement, sexual violence, slavery, theft, and torture that often accompany killings. But the fact remains that, despite an intense narrative and historical focus on death, most victims of atrocities during war survive. Disregard for living victims, I argue, is an analytical problem as much as a moral one. The main question of this book is, Why do some combatants and groups commit many types of violence, seemingly indiscriminately, while others carefully limit the forms or levels of violence they employ?

Repertoires of Violence Answering this book’s central question requires sustained, systematic attention to the repertoire of violence, which I define as the forms of violence frequently used by an actor, and their relative proportions. By “violence,” I mean direct physical aggression, either against persons or against immediate necessities such as food

6

INTRODUCTION

or shelter; or specific threats of imminent, direct physical violence. Murder, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, amputation, and other physical violence are included, but so—for the purposes of this volume—are looting, livestock killings, and the burning of homes. While I recognize institutional, structural, and psychological violence as elements of any repertoire, in this volume I generally focus on direct physical violence. (I understand, of course, that this means my own work is subject to the same concerns about ignoring analytically and morally consequential forms of violence that I raise about other works. My hope is that this book will be the first of many to systematically examine multiple forms of violence in conflict.) While some political scientists have examined repertoires of violence during individual wars (notably James Ron’s [1997] work on the Israeli Defense Forces; and Francisco Gutierrez Sanín’s [2004, 2008] work on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), none has theorized repertoires per se, and most (again, with notable exceptions: see Wood 2006b, 2009; Cohen 2013, 2016) have essentially ignored nonlethal violence. Among the most important goals of this book is to consider how, and how systematically, repertoires of violence differ from time to time, place to place, and group to group. As a concept, the repertoire of violence is a direct descendant of Charles Tilly’s (1993) concept of “repertoires of contention,” the definition of which serves as the epigraph for this introduction. Tilly was thinking about the nonelectoral ways that people, often organized in movements, push for political goals: boycotts, letter writing, demonstrations, sit-ins, riots, and so on. I am thinking about the violent acts that armed groups and fighters use (primarily, in this book, against civilians) for any reason or—and this will become important—for no apparent reason at all. But the analogies connecting repertoires in art, repertoires of contention, and repertoires of violence are complicated and incomplete. Tilly himself distinguishes, usefully yet confusingly, between the repertoire of improvisations available to jazz musicians and the tightly defined rotation of a repertory theatrical company. A sixteen-bar solo is a very different endeavor from a decision about Lear versus Godot. Tilly stresses that “repertoires are learned cultural creations. . . . At any point in history, however, [people] learn only a rather small number of alternative ways to act collectively” (1993, 264). For Tilly, what is interesting about repertoires of contention is their boundedness. He stresses improvisation, but also learning, deliberation, choice making, and strategy. One thing that sets repertoires of wartime violence apart from repertoires of peacetime contention, I argue, is the extent to which desperation or lack of information can destroy deliberation, choice making, and strategy. Repertoires of violence may change suddenly; changes may diffuse through larger groups quickly, or remain isolated. While

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

7

repertoires of violence are bounded, they are less constrained by external forces than repertoires of contention are. Repertoires of violence may be narrow, encompassing only a few tightly controlled forms of violence, or broad, comprising many forms. An armed group’s repertoire of violence may be uniform across individuals or subgroups, or nonuniform. Qualitatively, by “broad repertoire of violence” I mean a repertoire of violence in which many different forms of violence are represented, including both forms of violence that often require planning or infrastructure and are often ordered by commanders (killing, torture), and forms of violence that often happen in the absence of orders (sexual violence, looting, extortion). The FMLN, Shining Path, and Kamajors used narrow repertoires of violence in most times and places, contrasting with the Salvadoran Army, the Peruvian Army, and the Revolutionary United Front. In addition to describing repertoires of violence qualitatively, I often describe the breadth of a repertoire of violence using one of several rough numerical proxies: the number of forms of violence regularly used (although that measure requires defining “regularly”), the proportion of episodes of violence comprising a particular form of violence (often, as I describe in the next chapter, looting or sexual violence), or the ratio of lethal to nonlethal violence, for example. I refer to an actor’s violence as restrained when it uses low levels of violence (as measured by total incidents of violence), narrow repertoires of violence (specializing in one or a few types of violence), or both. Often, though, I eschew quantitative measures altogether, simply because accurate measurement of wartime violence is extraordinarily difficult. Where I do use quantitative measures, I use a variety of strategies to create repertoire estimates, and to check these estimates against qualitative and historical understandings. I have argued (and will argue at greater length in chapter 1) that repertoires and levels of violence are “analytically separable”; that is, it is both possible and fruitful to think of them separately. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge how repertoires and levels of violence affect one another. For example, in El Salvador—the site of much of the research for this book—the overall level of violence against civilians by state forces dropped significantly after Vice President George H. W. Bush, speaking at a gathering of Salvadoran business leaders, issued a warning to elites in late 1983 (quoted in Apodaca 2006, 89): “Providing assistance to you [the Salvadoran state] is not a popular cause in the United States. Publicity about death squads, great inequalities of income, the killing of American citizens, and military setbacks make it a very unpopular proposition in my country. . . . Without actions in these areas there is no point in trying to obtain additional funds for El Salvador, and to be honest, we will not even make the effort, because it will be fruitless.”

8

INTRODUCTION

Much of the drop in the government’s level of violence against civilians occurred because state forces lowered their level of lethal violence—the form of violence that, state leaders knew, most concerned their American patrons. In chapter 7, I find no evidence that levels of other forms of violence changed appreciably in either direction. There are two ways to evaluate this change. We could say that repertoires broadened: as killings declined, nonlethal violence necessarily formed a larger proportion of the overall repertoire. By another measure, the repertoire changed very little: killings declined, but they remained a significant part of the state’s repertoire, and consequently the most common forms of violence remained the same. By any measure, the repertoire was, and remained, broad. What can we infer from this pattern? Existing theories don’t provide full explanations. We know that the change in violence was not the result of rational calculation among enlisted people or low-level officers, because the decline occurred rather suddenly across many state forces. We know that it was not a response to changing rebel strategies, which were essentially static during this period. The state’s recruiting pool remained constant; it wasn’t suddenly recruiting people who would torture but not kill. The relative timing of the change visà-vis the Bush speech suggests that top Salvadoran leaders responded to threats and incentives from their American patrons, a dynamic more often associated with external sponsorship of rebels (e.g., Salehyan, Siroky, and Wood 2014). But even this doesn’t fully explain the change in some, but not all, forms of violence. How much control did Salvadoran leaders actually exercise over low-level officers and soldiers? The high command may have demanded explicitly that individual units decrease killings but continue other forms of violence. Or it may have instructed units only about killings, leaving lower-level personnel to determine a course of action regarding other forms of violence. Or perhaps the high command demanded limits on all forms of violence, but lower-level personnel couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fully comply. The evidence I present in chapter 4 suggests that top Salvadoran military leaders lacked both the will and the capacity to control violence against civilians. Orders from the top curtailed killings after late 1983, but the situation with other forms of violence was vastly more complicated. Some violence continued, with commanders’ knowledge, because it was less visible to American patrons than the death squad murders and massacres of 1979–83. Paramilitary security forces, in particular, maintained a relatively well-organized system of arbitrary detention and torture in jails and prisons around the country. Within regular-army units, on the other hand, much of the continuing violence was opportunistic, committed either in the absence of orders or against them.

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9

Why study repertoires? Repertoires are multidimensional; they are difficult to describe succinctly or measure systematically. My colleagues often, and rightly, ask, Why add complexity, when we already have enough difficulty understanding variation in single forms of violence? First, and most important, developing repertoire measures allows the researcher—particularly the quantitative researcher—to examine variation in violence on dimensions other than the number of killings. As Cohen (2016) has persuasively argued, to analyze killings exclusively is to ignore many women victims of violence, because killings are much more likely to target military-age men (cf. Carpenter 2006). Theidon (2004), examining the construction of memory in the highlands of Perú, describes how men steered public meetings toward episodes of slaughter, noting particularly a case in which a local man was burned alive. In a women-only setting, equally impassioned accounts emerged of soldiers destroying food stores, stealing prized livestock, and disappearing breadwinners. Women also discussed both the heroism of and the stigma attached to women who “agreed” to have sex with soldiers in exchange for the freedom of their spouses or other loved ones. For many of Theidon’s respondents, soldiers “shit[ting] in the wheat [stores]” was as threatening a demonstration of impunity as a murder or rape. Considering repertoires helps to retain some fidelity to these experiences and priorities, which have often been swept aside in the dramatic narratives of historical memory or social-scientific analysis. Analytically, examining repertoires overturns some common misunderstandings about violence, as a general phenomenon, that can creep into social-scientific accounts. Until relatively recently, nearly all quantitative research on wartime violence against civilians focused on killings as a stand-in for violence. Most scholars would describe this as an attempt to count systematically one war crime that can often be counted; others have more explicitly chosen to measure killing because of its presumed status as the ultimate atrocity—“the absolute violence” (Kalyvas 2006, 20, quoting Sofsky 1998, 53). This analytical move assumes, implicitly or explicitly, either that all types of violence have the same cause, or that nonlethal violence is purely anomic and random. Research on sexual violence demonstrates that at least this one category of nonlethal atrocities varies systematically, but not according to the same logics as lethal violence (Cohen, Hoover Green, and Wood 2013). Still, research on sexual violence often considers variation in rape and other sexual assaults in isolation, just as previous works did with lethal violence. As the narratives above suggest, there is often more—and sometimes much more— going on. I don’t think that quantitative scholars of wartime violence actually believe that uncounted, unanalyzed forms of violence are unimportant or purely random. Yet we have been slow to consider the analytical value of repertoires.

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INTRODUCTION

TABLE 0.1

Levels and repertoires of wartime violence LOW OVERALL LEVELS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS

HIGH OVERALL LEVELS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS

Broad repertoires

Exceptionally rare. Potential case:

Armed forces of El Salvador (1980–92);

of violence

Movement for the Liberation of

armed forces of Perú (1980–2003,

against civilians

Congo (Congolese militia active

particularly 1982–84); National

in Central African Republic,

Patriotic Front of Liberia (1989–97);

2002–3).

Revolutionary United Front (Sierra Leone, 1991–2002); Charlie Company (US in Vietnam, 1968).

Narrow repertoires

Farabundo Martí National

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path,

of violence

Liberation Front (El Salvador,

Perú, 1980–2003); Liberation

against civilians

1980–92); Civil Defense Forces

Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka,

(early period of civil war in

1983–2009).

Sierra Leone).

Often, in thinking about wartime violence against noncombatants, we place groups on a spectrum from “nonviolent” (or at least less violent) to “extremely violent.” Table 0.1 adds a dimension for repertoire, resulting in four rough quadrants: low violence and narrow repertoires; high violence and narrow repertoires; low violence and broad repertoires; and high violence and broad repertoires. In all quadrants except the upper left, I have chosen a few groups out of many to highlight. In the upper left, only one group is listed. No literature known to me clearly identifies an armed group that uses low levels of violence with a wide repertoire, but one unconfirmed exception to this rule is the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, a Congolese rebel group led by Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, which entered the neighboring Central African Republic to assist in defending against a coup during 2002–3. Amnesty International (2004) noted a pattern of “widespread” rape, looting, and pillage, often at roadblocks near the capital, Bangui. The Amnesty International report, which focused on the experiences of women, documented no killing. However, according to the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2007), “Civilians were killed and raped; and homes and stores were looted. The alleged crimes occurred in the context of an armed conflict between the government and rebel forces. This is the first time the Prosecutor is opening an investigation in which allegations of sexual crimes far outnumber alleged killings.” Existing theories of violence explain neither the Movement for the Liberation of Congo’s repertoire of violence in the Central African Republic nor the general absence of low-violence, wide-repertoire groups. To the extent that they compare incumbent and insurgent (i.e. state and non-state) violence, these theories might also describe violence by Shining Path cadres and the Peruvian army (for example), both clearly high-violence groups, as similar, since each perpetrated

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approximately half the lethal violence in the Peruvian civil war (Ball et al. 2003). But I believe this would be a mistake. The Peruvian state used a wide repertoire of violence in chaotic, highly variable ways, while the Shining Path employed considerable violence in ways that were usually regimented and ritualistic. Figure 0.1 gives a broader view. Here, I plot the relationship between scores on the Political Terror Scale (PTS, x axis) (Wood and Gibney 2010) and scores on the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict dataset (SVAC, y axis) (Cohen and Nordås 2014). Both the PTS and the SVAC are yearly indices assigned by coding qualitative reports. The PTS measures the overall level of government repression on a scale of 1 (very low violence) to 5 (widespread terror), focusing on lethal violence, torture, and detention. SVAC scores focus exclusively on sexual violence and are measured on a scale from 0 (very few reported cases of sexual violence) to 3 (widespread and/or systematic sexual violence). Figure 0.1 shows the maximum

Maximum SVAC score for actor

3

2

1

0

2

FIGURE 0.1

3 4 Maximum PTS score for actor

Comparing PTS and SVAC scores for seventy-five civil wars

5

12

INTRODUCTION

score assigned to each government that was engaged in at least one civil war between 1989 and 2009, inclusive (there are seventy-one such governments). Two observations about Figure 0.1 are important, for my purposes. First, the distribution of scores is neither linear, with levels of lethal violence predicting levels of sexual violence, nor random. Second, as with the missing northwest quadrant of table 0.1, there are zero governments whose highest level of sexual violence exceeded their highest overall level of “terror” during this period. Governments that perpetrate relatively high levels of sexual violence in the context of low overall levels of violence are extraordinarily rare. The reverse situation— high overall levels of violence with low levels of sexual violence—is relatively common.2 Standard theories of violence cannot explain this regularity. They tend either to view violence as a unitary phenomenon with a single underlying logic, and therefore to expect a more or less linear relationship between PTS and SVAC scores, or to assume that nonlethal violence occurs more or less randomly, at least with respect to lethal violence. The pattern here suggests that neither of these is the correct explanation—that repertoires of violence vary systematically, but not according to the same logic(s) as either individual forms or overall levels of violence.

Existing Literature An extensive literature in political science attempts to explain variation in violence against civilians, usually defining or measuring “violence” as lethal violence. A second set of findings considers variation in sexual violence, including rape, during wartime. However, while some existing theories of violence carry repertoire implications, none adequately explains the types of repertoire variations discussed above. Moreover, few incorporate insights from the large empirical literature on socialization, violence, and trauma. In this section, I outline several key theoretical approaches to violence against civilians in wartime and discuss how each contributes to a systematic study of repertoire variation. Ultimately, though, I believe that the profusion of theories of violence is evidence that we need an alternative approach—namely, a theory of restraint. Scholars have developed and tested several such theories in recent years, but even the concept of restraint is a contested one. For example, Stanton (2016, 30) defines restraint as “extremely low levels of violence,” including a “deliberate attempt to limit violence” against civilians. Yet by Stanton’s definition, the FMLN ends up in a nonrestraint category: “low-casualty violence” (21). I agree that the FMLN committed low-casualty violence, but I disagree that any intentional (lethal) violence implies nonrestraint. Jo (2015) avoids the term “restraint”

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altogether, investigating instead why some rebel groups comply with international law. She notes that compliance is different from, though related to, nonviolence. Operationally, though, “Non-compliance [is] defined as the indiscriminate and entirely avoidable killing of civilians” (24), while compliance is avoiding clearly unnecessary lethal violence. In focusing on restraint or restraint-like behaviors, both Stanton and Jo recognize that restraint is not only the mirror image of violence. While (dis)incentives for violence enter the equation for parties that use restraint, a decision in favor of restraint often also accounts for other factors, including normative factors such as legitimacy that hold importance beyond concrete short- and medium-term benefits. In Jo’s work, rebels comply when they seek legitimacy; for Stanton, armed groups opt for restraint when they answer to a broad constituency. Of course, rebel choices extend well beyond violence and restraint. Rebels may also initiate a range of costly state-like institutions, practices, and services, even in the midst of conflict (cf. Kasfir 2002; Mampilly 2011, 4). Scholars of rebel governance (or “social order,” the term preferred by Arjona [2016, 3]) investigate whether rebels seek to govern the territories they hold, what forms of governance they choose, and how successfully they implement their choices. Rebels create governance institutions ranging from garbage collection (Silverstein 2007) and taxation (Mampilly 2011) to judiciary systems (Loyle and Binningsbø 2018) and foreign diplomacy (Huang 2016). Yet while some rebels who govern employ limited violence, the association is far from universal; the decision to govern does not, itself, imply restraint. Nor do all armed groups that choose restraint govern, or have the option to govern. The fact that restraint, as a positive choice, emerges from a subtly different calculation than does simple absence of violence does not imply that these scholars have rejected rationalist assumptions about armed groups and armed conflict. Notably, Stanton and Jo treat armed groups as rational and unitary, an approach that differs from much rebel governance research but is very much in line with the broader literature. In this, they follow an important trajectory in political science, one that achieves parsimony by reasoning about the strategies of rational, unitary armed groups. Kalyvas (1999), for example, explicitly challenges the commonsensical view of violence against civilians as “wanton and senseless” (i.e., opportunistic, random, or trauma-induced); his 2006 volume presents a theory of violence in which unitary groups employ (lethal) violence rationally, with the goal of creating or reinforcing territorial control, ideally by means of selective violence. Kalyvas argues that indiscriminate violence is almost never strategically beneficial and that it should decline over time. Separately, he argues that selective violence (that is, individually targeted killings) will occur most frequently in areas under “contested control” (2006, 195–207). Similarly, in

14

INTRODUCTION

broad theoretical terms if not in empirical implications, Valentino (2013) views governments’ mass (lethal) violence against civilians as a rational response to civilian support for strong guerrilla groups. Downes (2006, 2008) suggests that state leaders target civilians in “desperate times,” when all else appears to have failed. “Desperation” sounds emotional, but the term is a red herring: Downes’s approach is fundamentally rationalist, with (mass, lethal) violence viewed as a strategy of last resort. It seems plausible to assume, as these authors do, that armed-group leaders would attempt to employ violence rationally. Yet in practice, what looks rational may vary considerably from leader to leader. More generally, levels and patterns of violence against civilians vary significantly even where armed groups enjoy complete control for long periods of time. This could be the result of contention between group leaders. Or it could result from failures of command and control, that is, from nonunitary armed groups. While both rationality and unitaryness seem to be plausible guiding assumptions, neither accurately describes how armed groups actually work. Rationalist theories touch only glancingly on repertoire; indeed, it is difficult to imagine how rationalist approaches could survive information about the full, bizarre, and counterproductive picture of wartime violence. One implication of a broadly strategic view of armed groups, though, is that violent acts with greater relative capacity to compel civilian compliance will be overrepresented. But which type(s) of violence are those, and how would we diagnose “relative capacity to compel”? More fundamentally, I argue in the next chapter, I believe that armed groups are seldom unitary and are often incapable of acting rationally. A competing set of theories draws on principal-agent theory, an approach originating with labor economics that attempts to understand what types of employment contracts maximize worker output, given that workers (in this framework) prefer less work than employers do.3 Mitchell’s (2009) volume Agents of Atrocity refers to principal-agent theory in a more heuristic way, assuming that some combatants prefer to “overwork,” rather than shirk, as in traditional principal-agent models. The resulting “agents of atrocity” are violence maximizers who commit significant levels of many types of violence. However, Mitchell’s model does little to explain restraint: agents are restrained when principals effectively control them, but there is little discussion of what makes for effective control. Weinstein’s (2007) principal-agent model suggests that resources available to insurgent elites at the outset of armed conflict determine the possibilities for “good behavior” (restraint) by insurgent forces. Groups that have access to material resources will offer them as payment to recruits, attracting “bad types,” who are more difficult to control and who prefer greater violence and broader repertoires. Combatant preferences are fixed: recruits are, and combatants remain,

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

15

“good” or “bad” types, regardless of variation in training and combat experiences. Weinstein considers repertoire variation but makes few systematic predictions. The basic prediction is that armed organizations with access to considerable tangible revenue streams will use broader repertoires of violence than other groups. But this doesn’t satisfyingly explain some cases. For example, Gutierrez Sanín (2008) shows that two groups with similar revenue streams in Colombia (right-wing paramilitaries and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) committed quite different repertoires of violence. In particular, paramilitary organizations committed much higher levels of sexual violence. Gutierrez Sanín suggests that the difference lies in the groups’ ideologies. Notably, while most political science literature focuses exclusively on lethal violence against civilians, a significant emerging literature addresses variation in sexual violence during conflict. These scholars tend to focus on institutional and ideational factors both as causes of sexual violence and as causes of restraint. For example, Cohen (2016) argues that gang rape during conflict is a form of violent socialization, more common when recruits do not know or trust one another. Both interview evidence from ex-combatants in Sierra Leone and an extensive crossnational quantitative investigation find strong evidence that violent recruitment is associated with increased rape. Wood (2009) focuses on sexual violence as a practice—that is, as a phenomenon that can emerge when armed-group leaders neither prohibit nor promote it. Baaz and Stern (2009) rely on ethnographic interviews with combatants in the Democratic Republic of Congo to show that rape may emerge for multiple reasons in the absence of strong control by group leaders. In my view, what ties these scholars together is the observation that rape is seldom directly addressed by armed-group leaders. Indeed, while the study of sexual violence in war emerged in response to cases (such as those of Bosnia or Rwanda) in which sexual violence appears to have been ordered, orders—either for or against—are rare. This raises several important questions for the study of repertoires more broadly. Can we anticipate which types of violence will be ordered, encouraged, ignored, or prohibited? When ignorance among leaders is the order of the day, as is common with nonlethal forms of violence, how do we explain the occasional emergence of restraint? Certainly incentives for restraint are part of the story, as Stanton (2016) and Jo (2015) argue. I am more interested in investigating the very significant variation within the set of groups with incentives to choose restraint. To do so requires turning to evidence from psychology and sociology. Where political violence is concerned, political science seems mostly to have ignored the (admittedly complex and occasionally self-contradictory) findings of social psychology. The first half of chapter 1 asks how we should take onboard empirical findings from psychology in building causal models of political violence

16

INTRODUCTION

and restraint, and so I only mention this vast literature in passing here. Factors shown to increase aggressive and/or violent behavior in experimental social psychology include obedience to violent authorities (Milgram 1974), adoption of a violent social role (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973), dehumanization of an out-group (Kelman 1973), ego threat (Baumeister, Smart, and Boden 1996), masculinity threat (Richardson 2015), diffusion of responsibility (Bandura 1999), fear, anger, uncertainty, and simple habituation. Many or most of these factors are present much of the time during military recruitment, training, and combat; few suggest particular repertoire hypotheses. Social psychology examines the responses of normal humans to social stimuli. A second psychological explanation for violence, which focuses on trauma and pathology, pervades common-sense understandings of violence against civilians. A narrative in which combatants “lose it” or “go berserk” after witnessing violent deaths underlies much of what we might know about wartime violence if our research were done mostly at the movies. And there’s something to it. Jonathan Shay’s well-researched, elegiac account of treating veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Achilles in Vietnam (1995), examines, as the subtitle puts it, “combat trauma and the undoing of character.” Trauma theories suggest some hypotheses about patterns of violence; for example, soldiers in units with greater casualties should be more likely to commit violence against civilians, as should those with more deployment time. But, again, these theories have little to say about the repertoire of violence. One implicit hypothesis may be that repertoires of violence become broader with greater trauma exposure; as Shay notes, the “berserk” state is associated with extreme, extralethal violence. Finally, the simplest theory of violence currently on offer is opportunism— the idea that combatants are violence maximizers who will commit as much violence as they can unless restrained. Mitchell (2009) works from this assumption in analyzing violence more generally, but opportunism has been especially present in prominent works on sexual violence in conflict, beginning with Brownmiller’s seminal Against Our Will (1975). However, as Wood (2006b) explains, this line of reasoning overpredicts sexual violence: in several cases, combatants had ready access to civilian populations and could have committed sexual violence without significant repercussions, but did not.4 When we instead consider the repertoire of violence, opportunism theories get a little more interesting: What, we ask, would an opportunistic repertoire of violence look like? That’s a complicated question, one that demands strong assumptions about combatant preferences. I discuss my approach to combatant preferences and psychology in the next chapter. The literature surveyed here only scratches the surface. In general, social scientists have found empirical support for an incredible profusion of causal theories

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17

to explain violence, operating at every conceivable level of analysis. Many, while mutually exclusive in terms of their theoretical assumptions, are observationally equivalent in many, if not most, situations. A reasonable reader, unacquainted with actual patterns of violence, could reasonably imagine maximal violence wherever war unfolds within reach of civilians. Broadening the scope of the investigation beyond killing makes the problem even more apparent.

The Commander’s Dilemma In chapter 1, I lay out a theoretical framework to explain variation in repertoires of violence. As a shorthand, I refer to this theory by the name of the problem that animates it: the Commander’s Dilemma. The Commander’s Dilemma, as I envision it, is a classic catch-22: to win (or at least avoid losing) a war, commanders must create and arm large groups of fighters willing and able to deploy considerable violence. But also, to win a war, commanders must retain at least some control over the timing, target, and type of violence. Much of a combatant’s experience, from recruitment to training to combat, increases predispositions to violence; consequently, I draw on literature from several disciplines to argue that restraint—in the level of violence, the repertoire, or both—occurs only when commanders exercise consistent discipline and fighters internalize messages that valorize limited, controlled violence. These types of messages get through only when commanders deliberately create institutions to spread and reinforce them. Thus the overarching hypothesis in this book is that, all else equal, armed groups with strong political education institutions use more restrained repertoires of violence than groups in which political education is weak or absent. I test this hypothesis primarily by examining variation in armed-group institutions and violence against civilians, across groups and over time, in the context of civil war in El Salvador (1980–92).

Scope Conditions This book leaves aside some important cases. For example, repertoires are necessarily restrained when soldiers have little or no face-to-face contact with civilians, limiting their opportunities to commit certain types of violence. In times and places when war is conducted primarily from the air, for example, we should expect to see high levels of killing, nonlethal injury, and property damage, but low levels of sexual violence, torture, detention, and extortion. Thus, the ideas that I lay out apply primarily to irregular wars in which soldiers interact directly with civilians. In these wars, as in most wars, restraint is a matter of internal

18

INTRODUCTION

control because peacetime institutions for detecting and punishing violence have collapsed, and/or these institutions do not exercise control over armed actors. The importance of internal control highlights another boundary condition: the analysis applies only to armed-group leaders who, for whatever reason, are interested in exerting some level of control over combatant violence. Those with no recognized strategic interest in controlled violence—such as violence-maximizing genocidaires, or those facing extraordinarily weak enemies—are not the subjects of this book. This boundary condition doesn’t imagine perfectly rational commanders, however. The leaders I have in mind are rational enough to oppose tactical decisions that are obviously harmful, but these rational-enough military leaders may well disagree among themselves about the optimal level of violence, including violence against civilians—or they may simply calculate incorrectly. This is a common point of contention among leaders whose organizations face strong (counter)insurgencies. For example, in his discussion of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, Ricks (2006) describes one such disagreement: “In the 4th Infantry Division . . . there were two brigade commanders whose sectors were side by side in the Sunni Triangle yet used vastly different approaches.” Both colonels believed their strategy to be superior; one said, “I really want to support civil affairs,” while the other stated that he was there to “kill the enemy, not to win their hearts and minds” (234). One notable difference between this book and others that seek to understand violence against civilians is that the theoretical approach applies equally to state and nonstate, insurgent and counterinsurgent, organizations. State and nonstate groups differ systematically in many ways that affect their internal institutions and strategic incentives, but the fundamental difficulty—maintaining control over combatant violence—affects leaders of all armed organizations.

Catch-22 For the groups and leaders I study in this book—those who have some incentive to control the timing, type, and targets of violence, and whose combatants are engaged in irregular wars with civilian contact—the Commander’s Dilemma illuminates some key problems. Perhaps the most important is that military training is a blunt instrument. “Learning to kill” (cf. Grossman 1996) increases recruits’ general propensity to use violence. This includes, but is not limited to, the propensity to kill under orders. Evidence from several fields suggests that members of the military are more prone to various forms of nonmilitary or unordered violence than civilians are. This is true even after controlling for the fact that, on average, people who join armed organizations are already somewhat more predisposed to violence than others. Combat increases this general propensity still further.

REPERTOIRES AND RESTRAINT

19

Again, though, maximal violence is seldom useful to commanders, who need to punish and intimidate enemies while minimizing harms to friends. Which mechanisms of control, if any, succeed? When we think of controlling soldiers’ behavior, we often think of “military discipline”—but I reject “discipline” as a useful general answer to the puzzle of restraint. Discipline is necessary but not sufficient to control violence, for any number of reasons. To the extent that combatants are predisposed to use violence but engage rationally with commanders’ rules, combatants may choose violence because they suspect they will not be caught, or will not be punished if caught. In addition to consistent rules, rewards, and punishments, controlling repertoires and/or levels of violence requires that commanders change combatants’ minds, convincing them of the rightness of the group’s cause and the importance of committing only ordered violence. This work is often, though not always, achieved through systems of political education, although political education may be reinforced or undermined by practices of recruitment, military training, and socialization.

Testing To test my theory, I rely primarily on evidence from a subnational comparison of armed groups that contested the civil war in El Salvador. Examining the Salvadoran case broadly, I find—unsurprisingly, and in line with other accounts— that the vast majority of fighters on the state side experienced no political training whatsoever, and that state forces committed vastly more violence, in vastly broader repertoires, than did rebels. This broad difference can be explained in many ways. The rebels needed civilian support more than the state did, and consequently had strong incentives to limit violence. They offered no pay and consequently recruited ideologically committed individuals (cf. Weinstein 2007). State forces faced a threatening guerrilla force with significant civilian support, which increases the likelihood of mass violence against civilians (cf. Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004). State forces were primarily forcibly recruited, a factor that often leads to increased sexual violence (cf. Cohen 2016). At the level of the conflict, many theories predict the huge asymmetry between state and rebel violence observed in El Salvador. More interesting are findings, presented in chapters 3 through 5, that test my theory against previous accounts over time and within groups. Drawing on approximately 120 in-depth interviews, a nonsample survey of 360 ex-combatants, and a set of archival documents from both state and FMLN forces, I create detailed “institutional biographies” of the two largest FMLN organizations, the Revolutionary Army of the People (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo [ERP])

20

INTRODUCTION

and the Popular Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Populares de Liberación [FPL]), and three key state institutions: the regular army, elite Immediate Reaction Infantry Battalions, and elite, paramilitary security forces. Unlike many previous accounts of the Salvadoran conflict, mine distinguishes between strategic coordination among FMLN groups and true unification, examining both ideological and institutional differences between the ERP and the FPL. From these institutional biographies, I develop a series of specific hypotheses about variation in repertoires of violence across and within the five groups under consideration. Data on repertoires of violence come from several sources: unprompted disclosures during interviews with ex-combatants, answers to survey questions, and, most important, a dataset of approximately sixty thousand reported incidents of violence from four sources.5 This allows me to pinpoint moments in which the Commander’s Dilemma theory can be tested directly against other approaches. These results support my contention that the dynamics of the Commander’s Dilemma played a key role as commanders in El Salvador attempted to shape their subordinates’ use of violence. For example, the FMLN’s generally low levels of violence against civilians can be explained by several different theoretical approaches. The rebels had consistently strong incentives to limit violence against civilians, and never offered pay to combatants (cf. Weinstein 2007). And indeed, overall violence against civilians by rebel forces was low. However, both former commanders and former combatants report significant problems with opportunistic violence against civilians— particularly sexual violence and food stealing—early in the conflict, prior to routinized political education. In addition, rebel forces did engage in some forced recruitment, particularly in the department of Morazán, during 1983–84. Yet I find no evidence that forced recruitment led to increased sexual violence by rebels during this period. Instead, both ideologically committed rebels and those who were forcibly recruited came to embrace the rebel agenda, including its emphasis on civilian protection. In addition to evidence from El Salvador, I review results from a crossnational quantitative study (Hoover Green 2016), which both supports the contention that political education produces narrower repertoires of violence and illustrates the difficulties associated with cross-national testing. I also test the implications of the Commander’s Dilemma in a very different context: the Mano River wars in Liberia (1989–2003) and Sierra Leone (1991–2002). Unlike the civil war in El Salvador, these conflicts lie at the very edge of the scope of the theory. In particular, it can be hard to see commanders’ incentives to protect civilians. Nevertheless, I show that the Commander’s Dilemma explains some key repertoire variations even in these complex and seemingly chaotic civil wars.

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Roadmap As I discuss above, my key goal in theorizing repertoires and restraint is fidelity to empirical evidence about commander and combatant decision-making. Much of chapter 1 is devoted to describing the body of evidence underlying a key assumption of the theory: that military training and combat each increase average combatant predispositions to all forms of violence, perhaps particularly sexual violence. This is a contentious claim, not least because it is often misread as “all combatants are violent.” In addition, I lay out the evidence underlying my claim that armed groups are not, and should not be treated as, unitary, and the evidence for preference change as a stronger form of behavioral control than “mere” discipline. Chapter 2 sets the context for the main empirical investigation, describing the history and causes of El Salvador’s civil war and placing it in a broader comparative context. Chapters 3 through 5 form the empirical heart of the book. Chapters 3 and 4 present the institutional biographies of FMLN and state forces, and in chapter 5 I test hypotheses about repertoires of violence derived from these biographies. In chapter 6, I branch out to consider crossnational evidence, discuss the difficulties of cross-national testing, and present evidence from Liberia (1989–2003) and Sierra Leone (1991–2002). A concluding chapter examines unconventional applications of the Commander’s Dilemma— such as police violence in the US and Islamist insurgencies—and considers its legal and policy implications.

Contributions This chapter began with firsthand narratives from three conflicts. Rufina Amaya, Antonio Quincho, S. J., and J. K. all experienced victimization at the hands of armed groups in irregular wars. All survived suffering that many us can scarcely comprehend. Yet in many academic works on violence against civilians, they would be excluded from the tally of victims of atrocity. My hope is that this book both enriches our understanding of violence against civilians in wartime and improves in some small way our ability to hold highlevel perpetrators accountable. I see three main intellectual contributions. First, this volume takes a new look at conflict dynamics, by arguing that the “baseline” conflict is violent, rather than nonviolent. Literature in the social sciences frequently has implicitly assumed that a “normal” war is free of atrocities, posing questions in the form, “Why so much violence against noncombatants?” The evidence I gather suggests that this is exactly backward, that violence is overdetermined, and that a more productive puzzle is, “Why so little violence?” or rather,

22

INTRODUCTION

“How and why do armed groups control violence against noncombatants?” Flipping the question this way is not simply rephrasing. If violence against civilians has many overlapping causes, then we might not expect the removal of any individual cause to have a significant impact. Instead, I argue, we should be looking not for the absence of hypothetical key causes of violence, but for additional factors that restrain violence despite the presence of many key causes. The evidence presented here suggests that political education, in one form or another, is that additional factor. Second, this project is the first systematic investigation of repertoires of violence in the political science literature. Until now, several analysts have suggested the importance of a systematic investigation of repertoires but have generally, and understandably, confined their own work to one form of violence. While repertoires of violence are linked to overall levels of violence, understanding the types of violence against civilians that armed groups encourage, tolerate, and/or prohibit is a separate analytical problem. As I hope I’ve shown above, examining only one type of violence can dramatically misrepresent the dynamics of violence, especially as repertoires evolve over time. This is certainly the case in El Salvador, where state forces’ use of lethal violence declined precipitously, but nonlethal violence, particularly arbitrary detention and torture, continued or increased. Third, I offer new empirical evidence about intragroup variation in El Salvador, based on extensive interviews with combatants from all rebel and state factions. I question the common assumption of internal FMLN cohesion, particularly with respect to behavior toward civilians. While joint military operations were generally carefully and thoroughly coordinated, key FMLN factions’ ideologies and behaviors toward civilians differed considerably, particularly early in the war. It is depressing to write about the policy implications of a study of wartime violence, largely because solutions are often vastly more complex than a single study can comprehend. There are a few potential lessons here, although their feasibility remains to be seen. While nonlethal violence against noncombatants has gained increasing attention in policy communities in recent years, no careful attention has been paid to repertoires of violence. Individual forms of nonlethal violence have received careful, concerted attention, for example via a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions specific to sexual violence during armed conflict. Increasing recognition among both aid workers and policy makers that most atrocity victims survive has created a significant push toward understanding these victims’ needs, whether those needs are physical, emotional, social, or economic in nature. Yet these efforts have often responded to individual forms of violence in

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a piecemeal fashion, rather than examining civilians’ experiences holistically. Differing repertoires of violence may have quite different impacts on the effectiveness of protection and reparation policies. Sexual violence may be epidemic, but if five times as many civilians have suffered forced displacement and desperately need temporary shelter and food, considering the two violence types in isolation makes little sense. The need to address multiple aspects of civilian suffering creates, in turn, an intense need for sound approximations of patterns and trends in nonlethal violence. Yet this imperative too often devolves into a simple desire for numbers, any numbers. As Dara Kay Cohen and I have argued (2012), the rhetorical power of numerical evidence of human-rights violations too often outstrips the quality of the evidence itself. The deep problems with statistics about even the most “countable” human-rights violations raise questions about how numerical evidence came to have so much power in the human-rights community, and how the intractable measurement problems afflicting wartime human-rights violations can be dealt with in a way that simultaneously addresses immediate needs and opens the door to long-term accuracy and understanding. After all, what underlies the proximate need for data on patterns and trends is a deeper need, for information about the causes and consequences of nonlethal violence and about interventions that can prevent or mitigate it. The findings here also imply significant shifts in focus for insurgency and counterinsurgency tacticians, suggesting that carefully controlled violence against civilians—a key goal for any insurgent or counterinsurgent organization—is likely to be a matter of repetitious, purposeful education about the goals of conflict, rather than a matter of tactical acuity. Counterinsurgent forces have long used “psychological operations” and “civic affairs programs” (to use their more innocuous monikers) in order to create civilian trust and support, and/or to create fear of enemy groups. My results suggest that such organizations should consider how they might bring these tactics to bear on themselves. More generally, the Commander’s Dilemma clarifies how traditional military training and culture, designed to condition recruits to fire in infantry battle, can undermine irregular warfare. The Commander’s Dilemma framework carries important legal implications as well. Article 28 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that a commander is responsible for the crimes of subordinates when he or she “knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes; and . . . failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission.” Despite these strong formulations of command responsibility, however, ICC prosecutors have faced difficulty in obtaining guilty

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verdicts based on command responsibility. After fourteen years in operation, the ICC obtained its first guilty verdict in a command responsibility case in 2016, in the case of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, who commanded the Movement for the Liberation of Congo as it perpetrated widespread violence in the Central African Republic during 2002–3. In this case, the prosecution felt it necessary to show that the crimes would not have been committed but for Bemba’s failures in the training and oversight of his fighters (Galand 2016). It is this “but for” causal connection that I hope this volume will strengthen.

1 THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA

The soldier’s real work is in killing. The soldier’s privilege to kill is unlike anything most other individuals have ever experienced, and the soldier who kills is permanently changed, fixed to the death he has made. —Theodore Nadelson, Trained to Kill

The interview designated US-5 took place in a sunny kitchen in a California city. The man sitting before me was cheerful, his hair pulled back from a round, slightly pocked face. The house was full of the arts and crafts of Central America, which I admired at slightly embarrassing length. He had asked that his wife be present, and she puttered around while we spoke, offering coffee and pasteles, occasionally interjecting. After we discussed his own recruitment to and training in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), I asked the man for more information about the final position he held, as a political officer of the Popular Forces of Liberation (FPL). Did he ever have problems with compas (shorthand for compañeros or compañeras, the most common term FMLN excombatants use to describe themselves and their colleagues) abusing civilians in any way? His face turned grave. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you can train them and train them, but you never know what will happen when they finally get the gun.” At the time I felt a little shocked. That night I wrote in my notes, “I guess I expected him to bullshit me?” Instead I’d heard stories of FMLN combatants “going down the mountain, harassing women and stealing food . . . it was just a disaster for us.” As I conducted more and more interviews—about 120 in all—I came to realize that “you never know what will happen when they finally get the gun” would be a guiding theme of my research. Armed-group leaders need combatants who will wield violence without hesitation. Anything less is an invitation to disaster, particularly in a guerrilla war where combat, such as it is, frequently 25

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CHAPTER ONE

occurs without warning and in close quarters. At the same time, most military leaders, whether state or nonstate, need combatants who will use violence in prescribed ways that do not make enemies of allies. This problem was particularly acute for the FPL in the early years of its war. As it was largely bereft of both arms and money, its civilian supporters were the insurgency’s only bulwark against starvation or extermination. Yet when the carefully vetted and extensively trained combatants did finally acquire guns, they occasionally used them to harass and steal from their supporters and protectors. Officers were aghast, but sometimes, they told me, even harsh punishments failed to prevent abuses. The measures that finally did work—routinized, ongoing, resonant political education, combined with rigorous discipline—are described at length in chapters 3 and 4. This chapter lays out the theoretical framework that motivated my study of Salvadoran armed groups, examining literature from sociology, social psychology, and economics to understand why restraint is rare, and when it can succeed. I look to three goals in developing this theory: explaining restraint, rather than adding another theory of violence; explaining variation in repertoires of violence; and, perhaps most important, crafting a theory that describes combatant and commander decision-making with reasonable accuracy, avoiding theoretical assumptions that are, on the basis of empirical evidence, untenable. I believe the Commander’s Dilemma framework, which I set out below, meets these goals. Still, I have necessarily sacrificed some accuracy in the name of parsimony. In this chapter and elsewhere, I often refer breezily to “commanders,” “combatants,” and “armed groups,” eliding differences and erasing unsightly outliers. For the sake of readability, I generally describe social psychological results as if they applied universally, when in fact psychology deals in average effects. My hope is that the chapters to follow—which describe how changes in institutions led to changes in combatant preferences and beliefs, and how these were reflected in changing repertoires of violence—will convince readers that the overarching framework is substantially correct. My theoretical approach rests on four claims: First, to succeed, commanders must increase combatants’ predispositions to violence. Yet—second—both training and combat durably increase combatants’ predispositions to violence in general, not only their predisposition to perpetrate ordered killings of enemy soldiers. Third, commanders wish to avoid violence that appears likely to threaten the group’s, or the commander’s, survival, including some unordered violence against civilians. This imperative conflicts with the necessity to increase violent predispositions, and I refer to these conflicting imperatives as the

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Commander’s Dilemma. Most commanders will make some attempt to solve the dilemma. Fourth, purely extrinsic incentives are not sufficient to halt unordered violence in irregular war, because so many violence-causing factors are present in most conflict contexts. Violence is, in a word, overdetermined. The rest of this chapter is devoted to unpacking these claims and laying out their implications for repertoires and restraint. In brief, I argue that what does work to control fighters’ violence is preference change: in addition to the all-butinescapable norms and practices that valorize violence, soldiers must internalize (believe, adopt) messages about the per se value of restraint.

Cultivating Violence In his classic Men against Fire ([1947] 2000), S. L. A. Marshall writes of the American military, Our weakness lies in this—that we have never got down to an exact definition of what we are seeking. . . . I say that it is a simple thing. What we need in battle is more and better fire. What we need to seek in training are any and all means by which we can increase the ratio of effective fire when we have to go to war. The discipline, the training methods, and the personnel policies of our forces should all be regulated to conform with this one fundamental need. (23) And, The fear of aggression . . . is [the combatant’s] great handicap when he enters combat. It stays his trigger finger even though he is hardly conscious that it is a restraint upon him. Because it is an emotional and not an intellectual handicap, it is not removable by intellectual reasoning, such as “Kill or be killed.” (78) Winning wars requires cultivating violence—that is, creating large groups of combatants who are uniformly, unhesitatingly willing to kill and maim people identified as enemies. To do this, armed-group leaders employ a variety of strategies. These strategies are vital: nearly everyone is capable of great violence in the correct circumstances, but violence is not a “natural,” or an obvious, response for most people (including most armed-group recruits). Commanders cannot rely on natural tendencies toward violence to create the type of fighting force that wins wars. This is a long-standing preoccupation of armed organizations; perhaps only the mastery of fear preoccupies military thinkers to a greater extent than the

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mastery of resistance. Both fear of killing and fear of dying represent psychological hurdles not easily overcome. Both—and this is the origin of military preoccupation with their elimination—contribute to nonfiring and other failures of combat discipline. According to the nineteenth-century French military theorist Ardant du Picq, “[Soldiers’] emotion never allows them to sight, or to more than approximately adjust their fire. Often they fire into the air. Cromwell knew this very well, dependable as his troops were, when he said, ‘Put your trust in God and aim at their shoe laces’” (chap. 2, n.p.). The Cromwell quote may be apocryphal—du Picq is its only source—but du Picq wrote from experience, having faced similar concerns as an officer in the Crimean War, during ethnic violence in Syria, and finally in the Franco-Prussian War, where he was killed in 1870. How, exactly, do armed organizations turn groups of raw recruits into effective (violent) fighters? Most cultivate violence through an array of interlocking practices. Both formal, top-down processes (such as vetting, recruitment, training, indoctrination, and disciplinary systems) and informal, though often tradition-bound, interactions with peers and officers contribute to changes in combatant predispositions; combat magnifies these effects. This is socialization: “a process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community, the endpoint of which is internalization” (Dawson, Prewitt, and Dawson 1977, 9; and see Checkel 2017). Erving Goffman (1961) famously described military barracks, like prisons and mental hospitals, as “total institutions.” Goffman’s total institutions were defined (roughly, in his own estimation) by four characteristics: eating, sleeping, and working are carried out in the same place; all daily activities occur in the company of many others in the same position (“batch living”); the day’s activities are tightly scheduled; and the schedule is part of a top-down, prearranged, and ostensibly rational plan. Moreover, most people who enter total institutions do so having already participated in a home culture. Thus, the total institution’s “job” consists largely in severing ties with key parts of the home culture and socializing the newcomer to the norms and practices of the total institution. As Goffman writes, “The recruit comes into the institutions with a self and with attachments to supports which had allowed this self to survive. Upon entrance, he is immediately stripped of his wonted supports. . . . He begins some radical shifts in his moral career, a career laying out the progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that he has concerning himself and significant others” (14). This might be laying it on a bit thick for some of the armed groups I consider in this book—groups for which there may be no formal training process, and certainly no special “boot camp” phase as in many state militaries. There may not be uniforms, or uniform weaponry. The recruit, like many of the FMLN combatants with whom I spoke, may choose to live at home as a militia member rather than

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“going to the camp.” Internalization is the ostensible goal of socialization, but not every process reaches its theoretical endpoint. Recruits experience socialization when they comply with armed-group norms and practices for instrumental reasons, as well as when they learn and perform roles that match group norms and practices. Even haphazardly organized, ill-equipped rebel forces engage in socialization practices that shift recruits toward increased violence, although these may differ significantly from the resource-intensive, ritualized practices of some state militaries. A common criticism of the idea that commanders must (and do) “turn recruits violent” concerns self-selection. It is true, at least in the set of rich democracies where the question has been studied, that military recruits differ somewhat from the general population in both durable personality traits and more ephemeral attitudes associated with the acceptance of violence. For example, in a large German sample, Jackson et al. (2012) found that military recruits were lower in agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience (three of the “big five” personality traits) than were those who did not intend a military career. In the US, two samples of male high school seniors (a 1976–85 cohort and a 1986–95 cohort) found that those entering the military held different attitudes than those intending a civilian career—views that diverged still more after one to two years of military experience (Bachman et al. 2000). Military recruits were already more likely than other high school seniors to endorse the idea that “the US ought to have much more military power than any other nation in the world.” However, these differences are relatively small—too small, I contend, for self-selection alone to create an obediently violent force of the type required by nearly all armed forces. And, more important, self-selection is irrelevant to the large number of armed groups, including many state militaries, that recruit by force or at random.

Becoming Violent In Wallace Terry’s Bloods (1985), Black American servicemen recount their experiences in, and leading up to, the Vietnam War. Specialist 4 Haywood T. Kirkland recalls, As soon as I hit boot camp in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, they tried to change your total personality. Transform you out of that civilian mentality to a military mind. Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call everybody gooks, dinks. Then they told us when you go over in Vietnam, you gonna be face to face with Charlie, the Viet Cong. They were like animals, or something other than human. They ain’t

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have no regard for life. They’d blow up little babies just to kill one GI. They wouldn’t allow you to talk about them as if they were people. They told us they’re not to be treated with any type of mercy or apprehension. That’s what they engraved into you. That killer instinct. (90–91) Commanders must, and do, cultivate violence to succeed; obedience to orders is a major cause of atrocities. It might be argued that obedience to violent orders is the foundation on which most violence by combatants, ordered and unordered, rests. Overcoming initial resistance to violence is difficult and can cause real distress (MacNair 2002). Once the initial hurdle is overcome, though, an array of social, psychological, cultural, and situational mechanisms pushes recruits toward greater violence. The total effect is a persistently increased predisposition to violence—not only strategic violence but violence of all kinds, toward all targets. In this section, I review the evidence that supports this basic contention. It starts with obedience. Obedience to orders, including distasteful, arbitrary, immoral, or dangerous orders, is an essential part of the fighter’s life. Most state military recruits are instructed that obedience to orders is not a viable defense in a war-crimes prosecution, but it is equally clear that disobedience brings harsh consequences. Even outside the military context, a simple order can induce terrifyingly violent behavior. Stanley Milgram’s infamous studies of obedience, carried out at Yale University in the 1960s, created some of the best-known findings in social psychology, although Milgram’s deeply unethical procedures have never been fully replicated. Milgram (1974) found that a majority of psychologically normal New Haven residents were willing to hurt, and in some cases kill, when pressed to do so by an authority figure. Milgram’s subjects believed they were taking part in an experiment on learning, and were instructed to punish a fellow participant (actually a Milgram confederate) with electrical shocks when the confederate answered incorrectly. The confederate screamed in “pain” at each “shock,” complained of heart trouble, and eventually went silent as the study subject turned a dial up through a red zone to an area clearly marked as potentially lethal. Participants were more likely to complete the experiment as instructed (that is, to “kill” Milgram’s confederate) when, for example, the laboratory assistant wore a white coat, or the experiment was conducted on campus rather than in an off-campus storefront. Notably, while a majority of subjects across all experimental conditions completed the experiment, most also offered resistance, demonstrating that Milgram’s findings depend on hierarchy rather than on innate comfort with violence (Hollander 2015). Violence is a skill; beyond obedience, it requires practice. Nearly all armed groups require continuous practice, and that practice builds both skills (maintaining a weapon, firing accurately, and so on) and habits of mind. In the United

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States military (and many other state militaries), marksmanship training has evolved from abstract target practice to relatively realistic simulation exercises that habituate recruits to the experience (or a simulacrum of the experience) of killing. Nonstate groups’ practices for desensitization vary more widely, from military-style simulation exercises in well-organized or well-resourced groups to forced violence against recruits’ communities of origin. To take an example of the latter type, children forcibly recruited to the Lord’s Resistance Army, in Uganda, frequently were required to commit acts of violence against community members and even family members. According to Beber and Blattman (2013, 86), “Such extreme violence served to break down abductees’ psychological defenses and desensitize them to violence.” As Marshall theorizes, “If resistance to the idea of firing can be overcome for a period, it can be defeated permanently. . . . As with every other duty in life, it is made easier by virtue of the fact that a man may say to himself: ‘I have done it once. I can do it again’” ([1947] 2000, 79). Indeed, the longer an individual soldier remains deployed, the higher the likelihood that he or she has participated in atrocities and/or approves of violence against civilians in certain circumstances (Manekin 2013). Knowing that violence is mandatory makes people more likely to endorse and prefer violence, via several routes. Most broadly, the extensive literature on cognitive dissonance, beginning with Festinger and Carlsmith’s 1959 article “The Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance,” shows how humans, making decisions large and small, change their preferences and beliefs to match their behavior. Cognitive dissonance can mean deciding that you really wanted a cupcake all along, just after finding that cupcakes are the only item on the menu. That is, in line with Festinger and Carlsmith and hundreds of other researchers, a cognitive consequence: behavior changes beliefs about preferences but not necessarily the emotions surrounding them. But violence is, to state the obvious, morally freighted in a way that patisserie is not. Cognitive dissonance about immoral behavior invokes strong emotional selfdefense mechanisms. Those who commit violence often need to re-understand their acts as morally neutral or even morally right—and they find ways to do so. This category of cognitive dissonance is known as moral disengagement. Bandura (1999), reviewing findings on moral disengagement, writes, “The conversion of socialized people into dedicated fighters is achieved not by altering their personality structures, aggressive drives, or moral standards. Rather, it is accomplished by cognitively redefining the morality of killing so that it can be done free from self-censure” (195). I disagree with Bandura’s unqualified statement about the origins of “dedicated fighters” but agree that active processes of cognitive redefinition play a role. Mechanisms of moral disengagement are familiar to all of us from reading the news. They include euphemism (“collateral damage”),

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displacement of responsibility (“just doing my job”), diffusion of responsibility among several perpetrators (“it might not have been me personally”), distortion of the consequences of one’s actions (“they didn’t suffer”), dehumanization of victims (“thugs”), and victim blaming (“should have followed the officer’s orders”). Several come into play in the brief oral history excerpt that began this section. Kirkland notes that recruits were instructed to use racial epithets rather than proper names (“gooks,” “dinks”), to dehumanize Vietnamese people (“like animals”), and to believe that their enemies brought their destruction on themselves (“no regard for life”). Social and cultural practices reinforce the internal changes that attend violent practices, both formally and informally. Particularly in state armed forces, new recruits are immediately stripped not only of reminders of home, but of markers of individual identity. Identical haircuts and uniforms create a sense of corporate identity, even anonymity, among new soldiers. Most armed groups explain that stripping recruits of identity markers is part of creating a disciplined, cooperative force. It is also the case, however, that removing individual identifiers is associated with increased aggression and violence (Diener et al. 1980), and with greater adherence to situation-specific norms (Postmes and Spears 1998). In practical terms, putting on a uniform, in the company of many other people in uniforms, makes the combatant more likely to do things stereotypical of soldiers, such as commit violence. The effect of deindividuation is separate (or at least separable) from both straightforward conformity pressures and from the theory of role adoption that animated the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973; and see Zimbardo 2008). In the dubious setup for the prison experiment, normal test subjects, placed in the context and uniform of prison guards, quickly began to abuse their power. The experiment has never been replicated, leaving its findings in doubt; it also remains unclear whether the behavior of “guards” resulted from role adoption, deindividuation, or something else entirely. Deindividuation effects can be subtle, and may not include direct pressure, either from peers or from authority figures. But relatively direct pressure is common as well, both from superiors and from peers. Armed groups inculcate fierce loyalty among small groups, recognizing that one of the few consistent drivers of courageous performance in battle is loyalty to one’s buddies. Indeed, the mere existence of “groupness,” even when groups are randomly assigned, leads to negative judgments of people outside the group. Stress heightens this effect and can cause individuals to abandon their own judgments in favor of a group decision. Milgram’s mentor Solomon Asch (1956) induced individual Swarthmore College students to abandon correct judgments about a relatively trivial question simply by having confederates (also students) uniformly or nearly uniformly disagree

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with the subject’s judgment. When all or nearly all of one’s immediate circle either internalizes the necessity of violence or publicly performs the stereotypical combatant role, very few “incorruptibles” (cf. Elizur and Yishay-Krien 2009) fail to go along— particularly where danger is, or feels, real. Obedience, skills practice, moral disengagement, deindividuation, and social pressure act on individual soldiers, but they do not act in the sort of cultural blank space that characterizes a social psychology lab. While military cultures vary significantly from group to group, common aspects include forceful, public veneration of bellicosity, traditional masculinity, and physical toughness, and denigration of the feminine—what Dunivin (1991, 1997) refers to as the “combat-masculine-warrior” paradigm. For example, male (American) enlisted soldiers endorse significantly more traditional, antifeminine, toughness-oriented masculinities than do civilian men (Kurpius and Lucart 2000). The result, in many armed groups, is the silencing of resistance to violence or violencecelebrating norms, first because recruits are led to believe they are alone or nearly alone in their positions, and then because of genuine internalization. Military culture appears to play a key role in the perpetration of sexual violence in particular. “Combat-masculine-warrior” views of masculinity are associated with endorsement of rape mythologies (e.g., Quackenbush 1989; Locke and Mahalik 2005), which itself is associated with self-reported propensity to commit sexual violence (e.g., Bohner, Siebler, and Schmelcher 2006). Armed-group training and culture frequently use misogynistic epithets as a tool in hazing and socialization processes, glorify the highly aggressive pursuit of sex, and celebrate power and domination (e.g., Burke 2004; Goldstein 2003). We might therefore expect that sexual violence would play an important role in “default” repertoires of violence against civilians—and, indeed, the evidence suggests that sexual violence is common in wartime even in the absence of orders or incitement (Cohen 2013). Notice that this section has so far considered only mechanisms that can operate prior to and outside combat, as well as within. Combat presents, additionally, a qualitatively different set of pushes toward violent behavior. As an experience, combat is inherently stressful, and often traumatic. It plays a key role in shifting combatants’ predispositions toward violence in general—but most combatants do not experience diagnosable aftereffects of trauma. For the significant minority who experience significant trauma, particularly those with diagnosable posttraumatic stress disorder, the risk of future violence is considerably heightened. In a national sample of Vietnam veterans, those with PTSD reported an average of 13.5 episodes of violence in the prior year, fully three times the non-PTSD average of 3.5 (Lasko et al. 1994), although studies also find that veterans with PTSD have greater exposure to violence and use more substances than those without, which is itself a risk factor for violence.

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Shay (1995) compares combat trauma to the rage of Achilles. In particular, he finds that among his PTSD patients, all entered a “berserk” state of uncontrolled rage and violence at some point in their combat experience. He writes, “I believe that once a person has entered the berserk state, he or she is changed forever” (italics in the original). Moreover, “This is not an historical curiosity. . . . The percentage of combat veterans who reported averaging more than one violent act a month was almost five times higher than among the sample of civilian counterparts. . . . My clinical experience with Vietnam combat veterans prompts me to place the berserk state at the heart of their most severe psychological and psychophysiological injuries” (98). What does it mean to be “changed forever,” in Shay’s words? Do the forever changes suffered by combatants who experience PTSD occur, at lower levels, in everyone who has experienced combat? I believe the answer is yes. That is not to suggest that all combatants and ex-combatants behave violently—many come home, particularly from wars in which their roles are perceived as just and supported, and live quiet, unexceptional lives. But the evidence suggests that even fighters who did not experience combat trauma, even those who did not see combat at all, experience a heightened risk of violence. This heightened risk is not confined to enemies, to the battlefield, or to lethal violence. Nicol, Charbonneau, and Boies (2007) found no significant difference in social dominance orientation between military-bound and civilian-bound high school seniors, but a large and significant difference at follow-up (i.e., after military recruits’ training period). Studies exploiting the randomness of Vietnam draft lotteries have shown a small but significant causal link between Vietnam draft status and increased violent crime (e.g., Rohlfs 2010). Among US Vietnam veterans in a nationwide survey, length of combat deployment predicts both increased “inappropriate” violence during conflict (Hiley-Young et al. 1995) and increased (self-reported) violent behavior in the postdeployment period. A more recent survey of enlisted men showed that length of deployment was positively and significantly correlated with the self-reported incidence of intimate partner violence, including physical abuse and sexual violence, during at least the year following deployment (McCarroll et al. 2000). In sum: during armed conflict, nearly every mechanism shown to increase violent and aggressive behavior is present, often simultaneously and at quite high levels. Moreover—as I discuss in the following section—conflict, particularly irregular armed conflict, is a terrifying environment even when fighters are not engaged in active combat. On the basis of this evidence, I conclude that armedgroup membership, and particularly the experience of combat, increases combatant predispositions to all types of violence, ordered and unordered, strategic and antistrategic. More particularly, the absolute necessity of turning recruits

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into killers means that combatants are, on average, more predisposed to commit violence than commanders prefer. This is not to suggest that commanders prefer nonviolence. (Otherwise, why turn combatants violent and risk losing control?) Violence, including violence against civilians, can be eminently logical and strategic—as a method of inducing compliance, as punishment for defection, or as a demonstration of power. Commanders and combatants may disagree about which violence is most preferred, but both face strong incentives to deploy it. Viewed in this light, violence against noncombatants is unsurprising. We might reasonably expect to observe broad, chaotic repertoires of violence against noncombatants in all conflicts. Yet as we know, repertoires of violence, like levels of violence, vary substantially between groups and across conflicts. In the following section, I consider how and under what circumstances commanders are able to ensure that fighters only perpetrate violence that matches commanders’ preferences.

The Failure of Discipline David Kreps (1997) lays out four reasons why combatants (or agents, more generally) would comply with (“adhere to,” in his language) principals’ preferences: “(i) Adherence is costless relative to violation and so, why not? (ii) Adherence is immediately personally beneficial because it permits coordination. . . . (iii) Adherence, while immediately costly, leads to better treatment by others than will violation. (iv) Adherence is desirable per se” (359). Kreps focuses, intently, on the relationship between (iii) and (iv); our task is to tell the difference between them. When fighters’ behaviors match commanders’ preferences (or not), is that because they have calculated that the expected value is positive (iii), or is it because they have internalized commanders’ preferences as their own (iv)? I argue that, in a large proportion of situations, adherence or nonadherence comes down to fighter predispositions, because discipline—the consistent imposition of a scheme of punishments for rule breaking, and rewards for rule following—doesn’t do the job. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a classic of Vietnam literature, constructed from harsh personal experience. O’Brien ([1990] 2009, 15) describes how combatants’ embodied, emotional experiences affected their calculations: “They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking . . . one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy. . . . Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. . . . They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous.”

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My goal in this section is to convince the reader that O’Brien’s grunts are normal creatures of wartime—that, in fact, most fighters are plodding along, their principles “in their feet.” To begin with, let me restate what I hope is an uncontroversial assumption: most armed-group leaders would prefer to keep some control over the violence wielded by their fighters. (This is also a boundary condition for my study: to the extent they exist, commanders with no incentive to control violence are not explained by this theory.) They may not want maximal control, preferring to leave room for plausible deniability in cases where abuses take place. But all prefer not to suffer mutiny or fragging, and most prefer that the violence troops inflict on civilians not damage their prospects for survival, either by increasing civilian defection or by incurring massive reputation costs with other audiences. Consider the case of the Salvadoran military. By 1984, even the extraordinarily violent, and heretofore entirely recalcitrant, Salvadoran high command conceded that scorched earth would lose the war, either via civilian defections to the FMLN or via the removal of American military aid. Yet—as I noted in the introduction—Salvadoran troops continued to commit atrocities. Killings decreased dramatically, and disappearances decreased somewhat. But other abuses continued apace, including torture, sexual violence, and property destruction. I contend this is because the only power Salvadoran commanders had over their personnel was discipline: rules, punishments, and occasional rewards. In chapter 3, I show that Salvadoran government recruits, even the minority who stated that their recruitment was fully voluntary, were governed almost entirely through fear. Most had no sense of the purpose of the war, beyond eradicating Communists and subversives, who were said to be everywhere. All faced legitimate risk of death at the hands of FMLN cadres. Officers strictly enforced military hierarchy, meting out physical abuse and public humiliation for infractions in barracks, but offered little guidance or instruction about behavior outside the direct view of higher-ups. O’Brien’s evocative statement—“their principles were in their feet”—tells us something about Salvadoran soldiers as well as American grunts in Vietnam: normal consciousness, the type of consciousness required for Kreps’s calculating third reason for adherence, easily falls by the wayside in combat. Often it is pushed aside with drugs or alcohol, as in the case of the child soldiers abducted and drugged by the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone (Denov 2010). More often, the cognitive and emotional load of irregular war overtaxes combatants’ ability to engage in rational decision-making about violence. If this is true, unordered violence will continue, even in the face of punishment, unless combatants internalize messages about the value of controlled (and perhaps restrained) violence.

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To better understand fighters’ responses to systems of rules, rewards, and punishments, I consider principal-agent models. In economics literature, principals are owners who delegate the production of some object (call it a widget) to agents (employees), in exchange for payment. Principals want maximum widget output for minimum price. Agents want maximum reward for minimum work. In this world, agents can produce only the correct number of widgets or some lower number signifying “shirking.” There is no option to overproduce widgets (the principal always wants more) or make some other widget instead. The agent decides whether to accept a given widget-production contract by determining whether its expected value is higher than the expected value of any alternative contracts (or no contract at all). The expected value of the contract is a function of the agent’s preferences (the intrinsic value of widget making to the agent, which may be negative), the terms of the contract (any baseline payment, plus per-widget payments, minus punishments for underproduction), and the agent’s beliefs about the likelihood that the principal will fulfill the contract. The standard principal-agent model misses wartime realities in significant ways. Principals are still delegating tasks to agents, but principals seldom want maximum violence; agents can and do overproduce violence. Overproduction includes the production of prohibited forms of violence, and so the question arises as to whether some forms of violence are more prone to overproduction than others. Given the basic mismatched-preferences structure of the principalagent problem, overproduction should be particularly problematic for types of violence that serve socialization or personal purposes (cf. Cohen 2013, on sexual violence), rather than strategic or military purposes, and maximally problematic when “private purpose” violence is militarily counterproductive, rather than simply extraneous. Qualitative evidence suggests that sexual violence and property crimes are more likely than killings or disappearances to serve private, rather than strategic, purposes; they are very seldom explicitly ordered. Consequently, I theorize that these are the forms of violence most likely to be overproduced in a group that relies on extrinsic incentives to control violence. War also creates exceptional difficulties with calculation. If the context of armed conflict were cognitively and emotionally similar to the widget factory, production issues could be solved analogously there: both shirking and overproduction could be prevented by delineating what behaviors were allowable, spelling out a series of rewards for proper behavior and punishments for improper behavior, and enforcing the contract. In some sense, this is precisely how military discipline is expected to work, albeit with a greater emphasis on punishment for wrongdoing than on rewards for rectitude. Every new recruit and every old veteran knows the punishments doled out for misbehavior in his or her group, whether those punishments come in the form of confinement, corporal

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punishment, pay docking, loss of leave privileges, kitchen patrol, or an infinite sequence of pushups and jumping jacks. However, these types of external incentives and disincentives, obvious and effective as they may seem, are frequently unenforceable in the military context— and seldom or never enforceable in the heat of battle. This is true for at least two reasons. First, enforceable contracts are possible only when the agent’s production is observable. (See Wilson [1991], on peacetime versus wartime military production.) The “information asymmetry” in a standard principal-agent model refers to the agent’s preferences rather than the agent’s behavior. In the military context, on the other hand, the relevant information asymmetry may expand drastically to include most or all of the combatant’s actions. Unobservable agent behaviors, as well as contexts that preclude rational calculation, significantly decrease the effectiveness of external incentives. In addition, standard principal-agent models generally assume risk aversion on the part of the agent. However, the extent to which participants in armed conflict are similarly risk-averse is debatable. As Weinstein (2007) notes, recruitment practices may skew the armed-group population toward particularly risk-loving individuals. These individuals may then influence those around them in similar directions, in line with the social psychology and military sociology literature discussed above. Moreover, both military socialization and the traumas of war desensitize combatants to various forms of risk—indeed, military socialization is designed with that purpose in mind (Watson 1997; Osiel 1999). The consequence might be described as decreased sensitivity to punishment, or a massive “discount factor” on the expected value of behavioral (dis)incentives. The inability of external behavioral incentives to consistently produce desired behaviors reflects the difficulty of rational calculation in a war zone. In some cases, participating in war crimes seems normal and even normative; those who refuse to participate are scorned, the victims “deserve it,” and so on. In other cases, soldiers understand that their behaviors are against the rules, but calculate that their behavior will not be detected, or that it will not be punished, or that the punishment is an acceptable cost. In many cases, however, participation in unsanctioned violence is the result of uncalculating panic or rage. Threats of punishment can only be credible when time horizons stretch sufficiently far into the future. Moreover, discipline alone creates little long-term commitment on the part of combatants; those who perceive that their actions are the result of external pressure rather than internal preference will not continue the behavior after the pressure is withdrawn (e.g., Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton 1981). Thus the effectiveness of behavioral incentives relies on the armed group’s continuing capacity to detect and punish. Considering results that suggest that combatants with

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greater combat experience appear to be increasingly prone to committing unordered violence (e.g., Hiley-Young et al. 1995, McCarroll et al. 2000), we might also hypothesize that punishment is inflationary: over time, higher-cost punishments (that is, punishments that have higher costs for both combatants and commanders) are required in order to achieve the same result. In short, attempts to control violence solely via the threat of punishment or the promise of reward are unlikely to succeed. In wartime, calculation of rewards and punishments beyond the present moment goes out the window. If commanders want to control violence, they must do so by shaping combatant predispositions, so that, as Kreps puts it, “adherence is desirable per se.” How this might be accomplished is the topic of the following section.

Internalization and Restraint Making adherence to group norms “desirable per se” is internalization, the theoretical endpoint of armed-group socialization. (Internalization is thus another near-synonym for preference change or predisposition change.) The question then is, What sort of armed-group socialization both creates sufficient violence to prosecute a war and controls violence sufficiently to succeed? To begin answering this question, I examine variations in some common institutions for armed-group socialization: recruitment, military training, political education, and disciplinary systems. First, though, I want to signal a shift in my use of the word “institution.” While the armed group is itself an institution in Goffman’s sense, for the remainder of the book I use the term differently. When I refer to armed-group institutions, I mean institutions within the group, rather than groups as institutions: “relatively enduring collection[s] of rules and organized practices, embedded in structures of meaning and resources, that are relatively invariant in the face of turnover of individuals, and relatively resilient to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations of individuals and changing external circumstances” (March and Olsen 2008, 3). In particular, I examine institutions for armed-group socialization, that is, institutions that instruct armed-group recruits in group norms and rules, with the (perhaps implicit) goal of internalization. For each type of institution I ask whether, and by what means, the institution advances internalization (as opposed to mere compliance or habitual role-playing). A number of political scientists have theorized that recruitment practices play a major role in violence against civilians. Weinstein (2007) suggests that recruitment via tangible incentives (money, loot) attracts “bad types,” who are more likely to commit violence against civilians. This assumes that combatant

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preferences are fixed, and that the intensity of armed-group recruitment and socialization has little effect, an assumption I find unsatisfying. Cohen (2016) proposes an alternate mechanism by which forced recruitment leads to high levels of gang rape. She argues that widespread rape occurs when combatants who have no prior knowledge of one another engage in violent socialization after forced recruitment. Recruitment provides new fighters with their first lessons about the group’s expectations and culture. In many groups it occurs over time, as recruiters vet potential candidates. (To take one example, a large number of FMLN excombatants stated that they began the process of recruitment to the FMLN before the founding of any of the FMLN’s five groups; see Hoover Green 2017.) Variation in recruiting can be extensive. It may occur suddenly or over a long period (e.g., when recruits join via religious organizations, school groups, or friendships), violently or peacefully; it may include offers of payment, or not; it may be forced or voluntary; it may be random or highly selective; and recruits may take an oath or not. Lengthy recruitment processes may carefully shape combatant ideology—although, as interview respondent US-5 noted, no amount of vetting can fully prepare a fighter to receive a deadly weapon—but the process occurs prior to the bulk of armed-group socialization, by definition. I expect that the effects of recruitment practices on combatant predispositions are mediated by postrecruitment socialization experiences, as Cohen (2016) suggests. Military training consists, minimally, of showing new combatants how to fire a gun before sending them into battle. More commonly (in state militaries, at least), training includes a period of intense physical training and drill (e.g., boot camp in the United States), designed to habituate recruits to the routines and demands of military life. Boot camp serves as both a period of skills training and a swift immersion into military culture and discipline. Fighters comply (perhaps fearfully or angrily), they learn to “act like a soldier” publicly, and they begin to identify themselves internally as members of the group, initiates and then experts in its particular culture and folkways. Most armed-group cultures are inhospitable to restraint as a general rule, focusing instead on increasing new fighters’ willingness and ability to kill. Military training varies in its length, its intensity, and its methods, but seldom advances the cause of restraint. Discipline makes up a third key set of formal institutions for socialization. Here it includes systems of behavioral rules, rewards, and punishments, and— importantly—the group’s capacity for enforcing them. Disciplinary systems vary in the extent to which they are intended to regulate combatants’ actions moment to moment, the level of detail and formality with which rules are promulgated, the extent to which disciplinary processes are routinized and bureaucratized, and the extent to which disciplinary policies are actually enacted. A rule is not a rule if it

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remains unknown or unenforced. Most disciplinary institutions focus exclusively on compliance, disregarding the reasons behind fighters’ compliance decisions. Military discipline generally cares little about whether discipline is maintained because combatant preferences match those of commanders, or because combatants calculate that they will receive greater expected utility for acting as if their preferences match those of commanders. Yet this difference, as discussed above, matters to behavior in the field. Finally, some—though far from all—armed groups offer political education (PE) as part of the training process, either as an element within the military training regime or separately. I define PE as “formal instruction that explains specific social or political purposes of a particular conflict, and connects conflict purposes to specific behavioral norms” (Hoover Green 2016, 624). PE is designed to increase fighters’ commitment to broader conflict goals, typically via direct instruction, structured conversations, or mandatory meetings. In its strong focus on the purposes of conflict and violence, political education focuses on changing minds, as opposed to simply controlling behavior. Moreover, unlike other institutions, which—to the extent they focus on internalization at all—typically focus on the internalization of traditional military norms, political education may focus on the internalization of norms about the per se (identity, ego, pleasure-in-agency, cf. Wood 2003) value of restraint. I identify the subset of political education that explicitly valorizes restraint (in level of violence, repertoire of violence, or both) as “political education for restraint” (PER) (Hoover Green 2016). While PE, in general, operates to bring fighters’ preferences in line with commanders’ preferences, PER brings fighters’ preferences in line with those of commanders who wish to pursue restraint. To the extent that PE emerges in response to the Commander’s Dilemma, we might expect that most PE is PER. And although few armed-group leaders would phrase their institutional decisions in those terms, this seems to be what we find. Among organizations known to have offered comprehensive PE (the FMLN, most Sendero Luminoso cadres [Taylor 1983, 14; Lázaro 1990; Zirakzadeh 2006]; Frente de Libertação de Moçambique [West 2000; Thaler 2012]; the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist [Eck 2010, essay 4]), PE instructed fighters both in the aims of the conflict and in the importance of civilian protection. Table 1.1 summarizes key armed-group institutions and their modes of influence on fighters. Political education as I have defined it takes place in a variety of ways. PE is a foundational institution for many Communist armed groups, many of which create political education programs and/or mandate “criticism and self-criticism” sessions, as prescribed by Mao. Doing so is both instrumental—PE serves as a source of information and a signal of organizational strength to both fighters and civilians—and more purely ideological (Gutierrez Sanín and Wood 2014).

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TABLE 1.1 INSTITUTION

Recruitment

Discipline

Armed-group institutions and modes of influence VARIATION ACROSS GROUPS

MODES OF INFLUENCE

Selectivity; voluntariness;

Shapes initial distribution of combatant

population available for recruitment;

preferences; shapes informal socialization

offers of payment/reward.

processes. Focus on compliance.

Formality; severity; willingness and

Transmits information: group norms,

ability to enforce; consistency of

practices, extrinsic incentives; shapes

enforcement.

combatant calculations regarding compliance. Focus on compliance.

Military

Formality; length of predeployment

Transmits information: norms, practices,

training

training; timeline (single period,

extrinsic incentives; skills acquisition;

regularly, or continuously).

habituation to violence. Focus on internalization of pro-violence norms.

Political

Existence; formality; length of

Transmits information: group norms,

education

predeployment training; timeline

practices, extrinsic incentives, origin/

(single period, regularly, or

purpose of conflict; social pressure/

continuously); content.

role adoption. Focus on internalization, potentially of norms of restraint.

PE may also recapitulate the structures and practices of related organizations. In El Salvador, for example, political education practices in the FMLN bear striking similarities to the religious-political education that occurred in Christian Base Communities, where Salvadorans gathered to read the Bible and educate themselves about “the reality of the country,” as many interview respondents put it. Before and during civil war in Sierra Leone, the norms of restraint that, at least intermittently, governed the behavior of Community Defense Forces (CDFs) were primarily taught via the Poro manhood societies out of which many CDFs emerged (Ferme and Hoffman 2004), and were reinforced by frequent cycling between fighting and home. Like PE as an institution, a norm of restraint can take many forms. Groups founded on a revolutionary platform may explicitly address equity and nonviolence in the “new society” and/or the military organization as the foundation of the revolutionary society. PE may also promote norms of asceticism, self-denial, and the nobility of sacrifice. For example, the Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE) instructed, and expected, combatants to remain celibate during much of the Sri Lankan conflict (Wood 2009). In Colombia, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC]) combatants were discouraged from sexual relationships and are generally stripped of individual property (Gutierrez Sanín 2004).

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The Tamil Tigers and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, like the FMLN, were highly ideological groups that envisioned very specific outcomes in the revolutionary society. (The FARC is, arguably, still such a group.) However, foundational norms that limit repertoires of violence need not be ideological in the narrow sense of an encompassing political world view. Nor is it necessary that the system we call an ideology be a complex, thickly described, or even coherent, whole. In keeping with much of contemporary social science, my view is that the sets of ideas and beliefs usable as ideologies vary considerably in scale, scope, and coherence (cf. Mildenberger and Maynard 2016). Indoctrination or political education may reinforce respect for noncombatants by reframing them as part of the group, rather than as subject populations, by suggesting that the purpose of the war is dignity for the noncombatant, or by appealing to heroic or protective identities. For example, although it is an explicitly (though not always actually) apolitical institution, the United States military increasingly stresses professional identity in its training and indoctrination. Professionals, in this narrative, are good guys who do a job well and correctly. Professionals obey the laws of war; that is what sets professionals apart from enemies. Narrative frames that provide combatants with an overarching sense of purpose in their “violence work” (cf. Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo 2002), and which make explicit connections to behavioral rules, are the frames (norms, ideologies) that succeed at limiting repertoires of violence against noncombatants. The case of Sierra Leone’s CDFs is another in which political education addresses not ideology in the traditional sense, but the fighter’s place in a historic tradition of protecting, and providing for, civilian populations. Up to this point, I have written as if internalization of group norms occurred separately from other factors affecting combatant behavior, such as extrinsic incentives, information, beliefs, and habits. This is obviously not so. Extrinsic rewards, perhaps particularly solidary rewards such as the praise and acceptance of peers and respected leaders, shape combatants’ receptiveness to information, persuasion, and habituation, as the architects of Goffman’s “total institutions” are well aware. Extrinsic incentives, information, persuasion, and habituation all contribute to internalization. But like much of the socialization literature, I view internalization (preference or predisposition change) as an end point, occurring after and in addition to other forms of socialization, rather than separately from them (Checkel 2017). And, I contend, it is internalization, not any of its components or precursors, that produces restraint. Nevertheless—particularly given the difficulty of pinpointing the space where information or beliefs end and preference change begins—it is worthwhile to examine some literature suggesting that changes in beliefs and information are associated with changes in broader mindsets and behavior. Several causal

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mechanisms link belief change to behavioral change, for better and for worse. One key benefit of political education is the provision of a cognitively accessible “default setting” in high-stress circumstances. Osiel (1999) suggests that a sense of purpose regarding violence and conflict underlay many American service members’ refusal to carry out illegal orders. The unifying theme among successful indoctrination efforts is the creation of commitment and group identification among recruits (Osiel 1999; Shibutani 1978). Small groups are more effective at assigned tasks, for example, when group members strongly identify with leaders (Bass 1990). Successful indoctrination is long-lasting and can affect institutional cultures. For example, pre-Communist national education programs affected postCommunist governance—although, importantly, education per se is not the key causal factor. Rather, the content and context of the education determines whether and how it affects politics (Darden and Grzymala-Busse 2006; Darden 2011). More generally, scholars of nationalism (e.g., Anderson 1983; Gellner [1983] 2006) have posited a link between literacy and schooling, on the one hand, and nationalist sentiment, on the other. They are referencing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century state building, but the sentiment is correct in application to the twenty-first-century army or insurgency as well. As I discuss in chapter 3, the FMLN, like many other insurgencies, featured literacy education as an element of its training regime. Like disciplinary regimes, behavioral control via preference change is relatively costly for armed groups. However, the costs of the two mechanisms are distributed differently. Training that includes political indoctrination is likely to be more time-consuming than strictly military instruction is, and building indoctrination institutions requires a sizeable up-front investment, as well as continuing indoctrination efforts throughout combatants’ period of service. Moreover, because so many individual-level triggers to violence result from continued combat exposure, messages of restraint must be taught and retaught. In contrast, disciplinary mechanisms may have much lower up-front costs; however, as discussed above, discipline through coercion becomes relatively more expensive as combatants spend more time in active combat. I sketch this intuition graphically in figure 1.1. Political education can and does fail. It fails when initial indoctrination is not repeatedly reinforced. More generally, over time it may fail to counterbalance the many factors that push combatants toward violence. Initially effective instruction can be undermined by a lack of commitment to behavioral enforcement, which signals that lessons learned in political education are disingenuous. And it can fail when it directly contradicts other messages of armed-group socialization. To take the example of the FMLN, which I expand and complicate in chapter 3, political education succeeded in producing extraordinarily limited repertoires

45

Cost of compliance

THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA

Discipline Political education Institutionbuilding

FIGURE 1.1

Recruitment

Training

Deployment/Combat

Time

Costs of compliance over time, discipline versus political education

and very low levels of violence against civilians. The mere existence of political education did not accomplish this goal; rather, commanders consistently reinforced and repeated lessons from PE, including both the virtue of restraint and its instrumental value. To summarize the argument: the Commander’s Dilemma refers to the competing imperatives armed-group leaders face. Leaders must turn combatants violent, and consequently most armed groups develop cultures and norms that valorize violence in general and perhaps sexual violence in particular, increasing combatant predispositions to violence of all types. In combination with the many overlapping strategic incentives to use violence, this implies that the “default” conflict is likely to feature high levels and wide repertoires of violence against civilians. Yet most commanders prefer to retain some control of combatant violence. To do so, they employ some mix of extrinsic incentives (discipline) and attempts to shift combatant preferences (i.e., to alter intrinsic incentives), but extrinsic incentives alone are not capable of producing restrained violence. Thus, the overarching hypothesis of the book: armed groups that employ rigorous political education use narrower repertoires of violence and/or lower levels of violence than other groups, all else equal. The final section of this chapter lays out several general implications of the theory, before describing how I tested the theory.

Research Design Armed conflict is a causally complex, logistically tricky, and ethically fraught topic for social science research, not least because, as the preceding sections make abundantly clear, people who have lived through conflict have often suffered

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considerable physical, cognitive, and/or emotional injuries. Had it been possible to adequately test the Commander’s Dilemma without making demands on war survivors, I would have done so. For reasons described at length in chapter 5, I did not believe that I could test my theory using already-available data. To ensure accuracy, I needed to conduct some process tracing: from institutions and institutional change, to combatant mindsets (preferences, beliefs), to violence against (or restraint toward) civilians. This, in turn, required a combination of interview, archival, and quantitative data. The remainder of this section describes the ethical issues I faced in attempting to test the framework, and how I worked to distinguish the empirical implications of my theory from those of other theories.

Ethical Considerations The ethical dilemmas associated with research in conflict and postconflict environments are daunting. El Salvador is unlikely to relapse into armed conflict after twenty-five years of peace, implying less immediate danger to research subjects there than to those in active war zones. Still, it has one of the highest reported murder rates in the world. Landlessness, inequality, poverty, and malnutrition are no longer as prevalent as they were before and during the war, but many of the ex-combatants with whom I spoke lacked potable water in their homes, steady work, or consistent housing. In this context it would be all too simple to create a situation in which speaking with me was not truly voluntary, or in which I inadvertently exposed respondents to physical, emotional, social, or financial risks. With respect to coercion: I am a well-to-do white American woman who drove rural El Salvador’s patchy roads in a rented SUV, when driving was necessary, and asked older people, predominantly men, to speak with me about their traumatic experiences. It was a measure of the straits some Salvadorans find themselves in that people too young to have served, or suspiciously uninformed about life in the groups they claimed to have joined, occasionally offered to speak with me. Most of these quickly revoked their offers when I clarified that I was unable to offer payment for interviews. To avoid confusing people who assumed that speaking with me was paid work, I learned to introduce the interview with that information. Still, I feel some residual unease about the circumstances that led people to agree to interviews. It will never be fully clear whether some respondents expected benefits from their interviews that they never received. The question of risk was thornier still. Bitterness about actions during the civil war is still very much alive in El Salvador, partially because the FMLN and the wartime right-wing party, ARENA, still vie for national political power. It is not unthinkable that exposing someone as a combatant, however accidentally, would lead to lost opportunities or even violence. I also worried that thieves would target

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my respondents, believing that I had given money or other valuables to the people I spoke with. In order to maintain the confidentiality of my interview respondents, I uploaded recordings to a secure server each night and then destroyed local copies, I avoided writing down names in my interview notes, and wherever I discuss specific interview respondents, I have altered identifying details. A more detailed discussion of ethical considerations is in the appendix at the back of the book.

Case Selection A classic comparative-politics approach takes two or more conflicts (countries) as cases, and compares these cases to identify and/or test the causes of political phenomena. More recently, a number of scholars have turned toward withincase comparisons, which allow researchers to hold some factors steady while examining significant amounts of variation. Having determined that the costs of sufficiently detailed process-tracing research in more than one postconflict setting would be prohibitive, I elected to follow this general plan, and selected civil war in El Salvador (1980–92) as the setting within which I would test the Commander’s Dilemma framework. Why El Salvador? I identify five key reasons. First and foremost, after significant preliminary research, I felt confident that I could, with appropriate precautions, interview ex-combatants from all factions without either coercing compliance or exposing my respondents to undue risks. Second, El Salvador shows significant variation in both armed-group institutions and armed-group violence, including both variation across armed groups and variation within armed groups. In particular, the massive asymmetry of violence between state and FMLN groups provides an opportunity to examine extremely clear variation, and the FMLN’s status as an outlier with extraordinarily narrow repertoires of violence (it is thought) also provides a strong opportunity to demonstrate the mechanisms I theorize at work. Third, detailed data on both institutions and violence are available for the Salvadoran conflict. Fourth, the relatively crisp boundaries between different Salvadoran armed groups provide a more solid basis for comparison than would, for example, a conflict in which many combatants served with or were trained by more than one side. Fifth and finally, El Salvador is one of several “Cold War cases” that have received renewed attention within the academic literature recently, as scholars of conflict have attempted to reconsider the role of ideology, emotion, and commitment among combatants and commanders (e.g., Gutierrez Sanín and Wood 2014). In chapter 2, I sketch the history of the Salvadoran context in greater depth. It is important at this stage to consider whether and how results of a subnational analysis in El Salvador will “travel” to other conflicts. El Salvador’s civil war was certainly ideological in nature, whereas recent conflicts have more often

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been characterized as nonideological (that is, as conflicts driven by “greed” rather than “grievance”), which raises the question of whether the theory is relevant in these settings. Yet ideology as it is usually conceived is not a necessary element of the theory. Groups need only construct institutions that provide purpose or positive group identity to combatants, and that connect these ideational factors to behavior toward civilians. Some state groups (including the US armed forces) have taken up this approach, with varying degrees of success. The theory also, in my estimation, should apply in interstate as well as intrastate conflicts. Fundamentally, this is a theory of armed-group institutions, and while it may have different implications, on average, for different types of institutions fighting different types of conflicts, it should apply in all cases where leaders have an incentive to control violence. In chapter 6, I examine institutions and violence against civilians in the Mano River civil wars (Sierra Leone, 1990–2002; Liberia, 1989–2003)—hard cases where this key boundary condition is concerned.

Empirical Implications of the Theory The overarching implication of the Commander’s Dilemma framework is that political education and other preference-change institutions create armed groups in which combatants’ predispositions toward violence are unusually tightly coupled to the preferences of commanders. Given that most commanders would prefer not to use strategically harmful violence, this means that PE groups should use narrower, more uniform repertoires of violence than other groups. It also means that in PE groups, the usual positive relationship between deployment time and violence is muted or absent. A number of hypotheses that follow from this general proposition are listed in table 1.2. There are two ways to read this table. A “weak” reading would suggest that, ceteris paribus, the hypotheses should hold. That is—to take Kalyvas’s (2006) central causal variable as an example—within a given conflict, in areas where they enjoy similar levels of territorial control, an armed group that employs PE will employ narrower repertoires of violence, and perhaps lower levels of violence, than a non-PE group with a similar level of territorial control. A “strong” reading of these hypotheses, by contrast, suggests that the dynamics I describe here will override or reverse the expectations of other theoretical approaches. To return to the example above: regardless of what level of territorial control each enjoys in what area, a PE group will employ narrower repertoires of violence and perhaps lower levels of violence than a non-PE group. In Chapters 5 and 6, I find clear evidence for the weaker reading—that is, clear evidence that the Commander’s Dilemma explains previously unexplained variation—and some evidence for a stronger one. One thing to notice in reading table 1.2 is the extent to which these empirical implications, while more specific than the overarching proposition that PE

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TABLE 1.2 General empirical implications of the Commander’s Dilemma framework VARIATION

HYPOTHESIS

Across armed

Groups with political education (“PE groups”) use narrower repertoires of

groups

violence than those without (“non-PE groups”). PE groups use more uniform repertoires of violence than non-PE groups. PER (political education for restraint) groups, and possibly PE groups in general, use lower levels of violence overall than non-PE groups. Relative to non-PE groups, PE groups are more likely to target military-aged men for violence than others. PE groups commit lower levels of sexual violence and other frequently opportunistic crimes than non-PE groups. PE groups are more likely than non-PE groups to commit violence in ways that appear “rational” (cf. Kalyvas 2006; Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004). Ideological armed groups are more likely to implement PE and therefore commit narrower repertoires of violence than nonideological groups (cf. Hoover Green 2016).

Over time

Individual combatants commit more violence as deployment time increases, but this effect is diminished or absent among combatants in PE groups (cf. Manekin 2013). Units commit more violence as deployment time increases, but this effect is diminished or absent among PE groups. Wider repertoires of violence follow unsuccessful engagements or casualties within a unit, but this effect is diminished or absent among PE groups. Repertoire changes follow changes in institutions for political education.

Across space

Among non-PE groups, units use wider repertoires as distance from command or other observers increases. Among non-PE groups, “new” forms of violence spread from unit to unit geographically (or following unit contacts), not simultaneously, as with orders from above.

narrows repertoires of violence, are still relatively general statements. Subnational testing allows me to test more fine-grained hypotheses, using institutional biographies of Salvadoran armed groups to create specific predictions about variation in repertoires of violence by those groups. It is important to say up front that this mixed-method strategy relies fundamentally on accurate representations of two variables that have proven extraordinarily difficult to measure accurately.

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On the independent-variable side, I attempt to reconstruct combatants’ experiences of armed-group institutions and ideologies, rather than relying on formal accounts. On the dependent-variable side, I have used a number of strategies to measure repertoires of violence, which I describe below. Readers wishing to consider the origins of my data more completely can read a thorough account in the methodological appendix, which can be found online.1

Dependent Variable: Repertoires of Violence The dependent variable in this book, as described above, is the repertoire of violence: the forms of violence commonly used by an armed group against civilians, and their relative proportions. Determining what factors contribute to repertoire variation is the primary empirical goal of this volume, and consequently some measurement of repertoire variation is necessary. Quantitative measurement of repertoires is extraordinarily difficult. Why attempt it? In my view, the key reason to measure repertoires of violence quantitatively is that qualitative measurement, on its own, may not provide reliable evidence of variation in the magnitudes or patterns of violence, especially at levels more disaggregated than the armed group. While individuals may provide excellent evidence regarding a localized phenomenon, my ability to compare across contexts using qualitative data would be limited by informants’ widely varying definitions of violence, as well as (it must be assumed) their varying levels of knowledge of the true state of affairs. On a more general level, many qualitative accounts provide extremely rich details about repertoires of violence, but this richness is frequently limited to a single subgroup or a single incident—often an unusual or extreme, and therefore unrepresentative, incident. For example, most American units in Vietnam were not involved in incidents like the My Lai massacre (Olson and Roberts 1998; Bilton and Sim 1992; but see Turse 2013, on the claim that more massacres were committed than are commonly known). Nevertheless, My Lai is often taken as an archetypal episode of American violence. To the extent that Americans are aware of atrocities in Vietnam, My Lai is what they are aware of. Yet while elements of the violence committed in My Lai were relatively common across Vietnam, very few American units committed massacres of this scale and ferocity. The bulk of the violence occurred in dribs and drabs, resembling the reign of terror of Tiger Force (Sallah and Weiss 2006) much more closely than Charlie Company’s outburst in Quang Ngai. The Salvadoran case is similar. A few highly visible cases of violence against noncombatants have been extensively researched and analyzed. The rape and murder of four American churchwomen in 1980, the Rio Sumpul massacre of May 1980, the massacre at El Mozote in December 1981 (see Danner 1993), and

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the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in 1989 have frequently been taken as evidence about patterns of violence by the Salvadoran military. Yet these narratives are not necessarily representative of violence by the Salvadoran military, and certainly not of violence in El Salvador. For example, far more common than the pattern of invasion and massacre at El Mozote was a quieter pattern of detention and torture, which appears actually to have escalated as lethal violence by state forces declined. Yet readers of qualitative literature hear less of the day-to-day aspects of state violence during the Salvadoran civil war. In addition to questions of accurate representation, my decision to rely primarily on quantitative data depends on the period in which El Salvador’s war took place. Nonlethal violence represents a majority of incidents reported in quantitative data, but it was seldom reported on during the war. The fact that the murdered American churchwomen were also victims of sexual violence is well known, but it remains unclear how many of the victims at El Mozote and the Rio Sumpul were victims of sexual violence, or what other types of violence took place alongside these killings. Repertoire, as a concept, does not necessarily lend itself to quantitative measurement; a full numerical accounting of the repertoire of violence in a given case would be a table, not a number, if it could be known with any confidence. However, various repertoire indicators are possible; a few are even practical. The most important of these speak to the relative ratio of ordered to unordered violence, or to the proportion of a given type of violence in a repertoire. In chapters 5 and 6, in presenting the results of my hypothesis tests, I use several different repertoire measures. These include the proportion of violence made up by commonly ordered forms of violence such as killing and torture, the proportion of sexual violence in the repertoire of violence, and the number of types of violence regularly observed by individual combatants. Violence data are always incomplete and usually unrepresentative of ground truth; consequently, scholars who wish to employ fine-grained quantitative data bear the responsibility for developing rigorous, statistically defensible estimates. Even though political scientists frequently use raw violence data in their analyses as if it were complete—rather than estimating patterns of violence—this is seldom a defensible choice. There is simply no reason to expect that measured patterns of violence match patterns of violence on the ground (see the online appendix for a discussion of this claim). In this book, I derive statistical estimates of patterns of violence in El Salvador using multiple systems estimation (MSE, also known as capture-recapture or multiple-recapture analysis). MSE allows researchers to model patterns of nonreporting—that is, it allows us to know how many cases, of what types, weren’t counted by any source. Cases that appear in multiple data sources (“overlaps”) form the basis for this inference, as shown in figure 1.2.

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FIGURE 1.2

From individual lists to multiple systems estimation

The most basic form of MSE involves just two overlapping lists, and assumes that the two lists are collected randomly, and independently of one another. If the two lists are independent random samples from the same population, we can derive the size of the population from the sizes of the lists and their overlap. This is so because the probability of selection into both lists (i.e., the probability of being in the overlap) is equal to the product of the probabilities of selection into the individual lists. Here is a trivial example: If I take two samples of three balls each, replacing the first sample before collecting the second, and my urn has three balls in total, I would have to select all three balls each time, resulting in a total overlap between samples. If I did the same procedure but the urn had nine balls, then the samples would likely have only one ball in common (three-ninths times three-ninths is one-ninth). Finally, if my urn had one hundred balls, the likelihood of any overlap between samples would be very low indeed (threehundredths times three-hundredths is 0.0009, or a little under one one-thousandth). All of which is to say that a bigger population means a smaller overlap between

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samples, if those samples are random. Of course, the samples in question here are not random or independent. However, with three or more datasets, it is possible to model list dependence (Chao and Tsay 1998, Chao 2001). The data on which my findings are based include approximately sixty thousand records of violent incidents from four different data collections. Two of the datasets I employ were scanned and digitized from the statistical annexes of the United Nations–sponsored Truth Commission for El Salvador (UNTC); one of these consisted of cases presented directly to the Truth Commission at the close of the war (UNTC1), while the other (UNTC2) was a collection of cases presented to the Commission indirectly, through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Two other datasets came from organizations that collected information on human-rights violations in El Salvador during the war. The nongovernment Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador (Salvadoran Commission for Human Rights [CDHES]) and Tutela Legal, the legal aid office of the Archbishopric of San Salvador, each amassed thousands of case files, which were meticulously coded for analysis. (CDHES completed its own coding project, while Tutela’s files were coded by the Los Angeles–based NGO El Rescate.) Both of these datasets include approximately twenty-two thousand incidents of violence. For all four datasets, each recorded case includes at a minimum the violation type, a rough date and location, the victim’s full name, and the perpetrating group. El Rescate and CDHES data also frequently include the victim’s age, sex, and occupation, as well as very specific information about the location and context of the violence. Unfortunately, there are instances in which it is impossible to produce a useful estimate with MSE. In general, this is because data, and in turn the overlaps between data, are too sparse (recall the probable overlaps between two samples of three from the one-hundred-ball urn). For example, while it is easy to derive precise estimates for the number of people killed by regular Salvadoran Army units in Morazán Department in 1985, the same figure for FMLN cadres is difficult to derive, largely because the FMLN committed too few acts of violence that department-year. Rigorous estimates of some forms of nonlethal violence are similarly elusive. This is in part because individuals may experience, and report, nonlethal violence more than once, a situation that leads to difficulties with determining overlaps. For example, for a given set of matching records, researchers need to determine both whether they refer to the same person and whether they refer to the same incident. In cases where I cannot produce MSE estimates, I supplement MSE data with data from my informal, nonsample survey of excombatants, examine overlap rates between datasets, and/or refer explicitly to raw data. In these situations, I have clarified exactly what assumptions underlie the use of raw data.

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Independent Variables: Institutions and Ideologies The Commander’s Dilemma theory views ideas about restraint, transmitted by specific armed-group institutions, as important causes of restrained individual and group behavior toward civilians. Thus, unlike the complex but fundamentally quantitative dependent variable, the independent variables in this book are built from thickly descriptive qualitative accounts, requiring more interpretation. To understand the institutional development of the armed groups contesting the Salvadoran war, and to understand how institutions affected combatants’ mindsets, I created institutional biographies for the FMLN as a whole, its two largest subgroups (the ERP and FPL), the state as a whole, regular Salvadoran Army units, elite immediate reaction battalions, and security forces. To construct these accounts and examine their effects on combatants, I developed multiple indicators of several key concepts, which are summarized in table 1.3. (The online appendix reproduces the interview questions I used with ex-combatants during my 2008–9 and 2015 rounds of interviews.) TABLE 1.3

Indicators of armed-group and combatant characteristics

CONCEPT

INDICATOR (FROM INTERVIEW OR ARCHIVAL EVIDENCE)

Recruitment

Do ex-combatants report joining voluntarily, or was recruitment forced? If

and initiation

forced: what was the process like? How detailed are descriptions? Do ex-combatants report a prerecruitment vetting process? Do they offer detailed descriptions? Do ex-combatants report that officers or veterans used tactics of (sexual) humiliation during recruitment? Do ex-combatants report that officers and veterans used violence or threats against new recruits? Is there a published oath or swearing-in statement? Do ex-combatants report learning any oath or swearing-in? Can they repeat it now?

Culture

What personal characteristics did combatants most respect in other combatants? What personal or professional characteristics did combatants most respect in officers? Do ex-combatants report experiencing physical abuse, by officers or fellow combatants? Under what circumstances? Do ex-combatants report experiencing sexual abuse or humiliation, by officers or fellow combatants? Under what circumstances? Do ex-combatants recall using alcohol or drugs frequently? Under what circumstances?

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How do ex-combatants describe interactions with combatants of other genders, if any? Did contemporary observers stress particular aspects of the group’s culture (e.g. machismo, religion)? Ideology

How do ex-combatants describe “the enemy”? How would enemies be identified? How do ex-combatants describe “civilians”? How would civilians be identified? What, in ex-combatants’ recollection, was the purpose of the war? How detailed is the description of purpose? Do combatants connect ideological statements to behavioral rules?

Political

Do ex-combatants report receiving education (via any medium) about “what

education

the war was about”? Do ex-combatants report receiving regular, ongoing instruction in political (as opposed to military) skills or information? How detailed are ex-combatants’ descriptions of political education processes? Do combatants recall the names and/or contents of political education materials they received? Is there archival evidence of a written and widely distributed political education program? If political education documents exist, do they connect combatant behavior to ideological precepts?

Discipline

What (do ex-combatants report) were the most important rules in [group]? What were common punishments/consequences for disobeying important rules? Do ex-combatants recall specific rules about how to treat civilians? If someone broke rules regarding how to treat civilians, what would happen? Do combatants report that rule-breaking was “usually” or “almost always” punished? Which punishments were considered to be the most severe? Why? Do combatants report improvements, declines, or relative stasis in the quality of discipline? Do medium- and high-level commanders recall frequent discussions of discipline among officers? Do internal documents show concern with discipline and disciplinary problems, however defined? (Continued)

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TABLE 1.3 (Continued) CONCEPT

INDICATOR (FROM INTERVIEW OR ARCHIVAL EVIDENCE)

Individual

Do ex-combatants independently (i.e., without direct prompting) recall that

mindset

ideological or strategic-invoking-ideological concepts shaped behavior? Can ex-combatants describe the main purpose(s) of the war now? Do ex-combatants report that they understood why they fought during their service? In descriptions of behavior, do ex-combatants frame personal decisions about behavior toward combatants in terms of individual or group purpose? Do ex-combatants report that (they still believe) the war was “important” or “necessary”? Is there evidence that combatants’ ideological indoctrination or armed-group socialization affects their present-day behavior, e.g., political engagement, violence, etc.? Do ex-combatants report feeling positively (proud, happy), negatively (ashamed, angry, sad), or in between about their group membership or their behaviors during the war?

Data Gathering I gathered information related to the indicators in table 1.3 from four main sources: in-depth interviews with approximately 120 ex-combatants in the United States and El Salvador; a survey of roughly 350 ex-combatants (all still living in El Salvador); about two dozen in-depth interviews with former American advisers to the Salvadoran armed forces; and several thousand pages of archival documents from the National Security Archives and the Museum of Word and Image (Museo de Palabra y Imágen), in San Salvador. Of these, interviews with ex-combatants were by far the most important source, since they provided my only measures of the effects of armed-group institutions on individual soldiers. It was important to avoid making inferences about low-level combatants’ experiences from highlevel policy and propaganda documents, or from secondhand accounts that often, I thought, inferred too much about individual combatants’ motives and beliefs. During field visits to El Salvador in 2008, 2009, and 2015, I conducted eightythree semistructured interviews with rank-and-file ex-combatants, former midlevel commanders, and former high-level officials from both FMLN and state forces. In addition, I interviewed twenty rank-and-file ex-combatants now living in the United States, and ten former American advisers to the Salvadoran armed forces. In these interviews, I obtained detailed oral histories of each respondent’s recruitment, training, indoctrination, and disciplinary experiences, as well as his or her recollections of human-rights practices toward noncombatants and

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enemy combatants. Interview times ranged from approximately thirty minutes to several hours over multiple days, but the mean interview time was approximately ninety minutes. In interviews with rank-and-file ex-combatants, my questions guided respondents through their experiences as combatants in roughly chronological order, beginning with the circumstances of recruitment and ending with the exit from the armed group, focusing on questions that provided evidence about armedgroup institutions and ideologies. Typically I closed interviews with a request for further reflections or “missing pieces.” I was continually surprised by the level of candor that greeted me. My Spanish is passable, not fluent. I presented myself as an outsider, with much to learn. However, a degree of fluster served me well in many situations; I may have appeared less intimidating than another researcher might because my expertise with the subject matter was not immediately apparent. While there are important tradeoffs in terms of memory loss (and memory construction), the lengthy period between the close of the conflict and my field visits to El Salvador also meant that some of the immediate risks to both investigators and respondents in earlier research efforts (see Wood 2003, 2006b)—and hence, in my interpretation, some of the typical reticence of ex-combatant respondents—had subsided by the time I reached the field. I also found that I was well served by employing a research assistant and translator. In addition to vastly speeding up the process of obtaining interviews, my research assistant provided valuable cultural translation as I began analyzing interview results. However, a large drawback of extended interviews is that some Salvadoran ex-combatants—especially those with little education—reported feeling intimidated by the prospect of extended interviews. In order to include the perspectives of this group, I designed an informal cluster sample survey of clients at several veterans’ organizations in thirteen of El Salvador’s fourteen departments. After obtaining permission, my research assistant visited these groups’ offices on randomly selected days and quickly interviewed anyone who consented. These brief interviews (ten to fifteen minutes each) consisted of about thirty closed-ended questions. As expected, the survey (N = 359 respondents) confirmed that extended interviews were skewed toward ex-combatants with slightly higher ranks and considerably more education, as well as ex-combatants living in urban areas. However, survey findings did not contradict the qualitative impressions of either state or insurgent forces formed from interviews and archival work. Memories are slippery data sources, liable to construction after the fact, rationalization, and simple forgetting. Interview data about experiences during a stressful time three decades ago must be treated with a “trust, but verify” level of care. Unfortunately, verification may not be available to researchers who conduct interviews with dozens or hundreds of people; we trade the opportunity to

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closely examine changing narratives and their present-day contexts for broader and potentially more representative data. A qualitative difference of particular interest, interpretively speaking, is the difference in narrative styles between ex-combatants interviewed in the United States and those still living in El Salvador. Most of the ex-combatants I spoke to in the US left El Salvador while the war was still ongoing. Unlike those still living in El Salvador, their (firsthand) exposure to Salvadoran politics—and to American researchers asking questions about the war—has been minimal. Salvadorans are thoroughly used to Americans asking questions about the civil war, and some excombatant narratives have a well-practiced quality that contrasts with the halts and hesitations that were more common among American respondents. (Occasionally during interviews within El Salvador, a respondent might exclaim, “Well, that’s a question I’ve never heard before!”) The substantive importance of differences in narrative style among my interviewees is unclear; the answers given were frequently similar in content but different in tone. Bay Area interviewees who had been associated with the FMLN seemed somewhat more ready to share information that might be described as damaging to the FMLN—for instance, reports of unordered violence against noncombatants, officer incompetence, or sexual harassment among the rank and file. Again, however, recollections of FMLN institutions did not differ significantly between the two groups. Survey respondents and interview respondents also crafted slightly different answers, even when questions were posed very similarly. Survey respondents, who were offered a list of actions that they might have witnessed, were more likely to affirm that they had witnessed violence against noncombatants than were interview subjects. However, the substance of survey responses regarding memories of training, discipline, indoctrination, and other armed-group institutions did not differ substantially from answers provided during in-depth interviews. The breadth of interview, survey, archival, and quantitative evidence available to researchers of the Salvadoran civil war is a tremendous boon. I believe these data present as clear a picture as is currently possible of the changes in both armed group institutions and repertoires of violence and restraint among Salvadoran armed groups. I believe that picture supports the Commander’s Dilemma approach. However, it is by necessity an incomplete picture. My goal in the chapters that follow is to assess the data transparently, considering both what is shown and what might be missing. MSE is one important way to assess patterns missing data, but it is not always possible to perform MSE. Extending the analysis to contexts other than El Salvador (such as the Mano River wars, or cross-nationally, as in chapter 6) is another element of this complex triangulation. Ultimately, though, the best test is time. I am acutely aware, as I hope readers and other conflict researchers will be, of the work that lies ahead.

2 CIVIL WAR IN EL SALVADOR

Che had to agree that El Salvador had no mountains to act as a sanctuary for a guerrilla movement. . . . Because of its inappropriate terrain, Che concluded . . . that El Salvador could only play a secondary role in the regional struggle. . . . “It wasn’t because of chauvinism that we rejected [Che’s] proposal,” wrote Marcial, “it was that we saw that El Salvador was a volcano in eruption, that, in addition, the class struggle in El Salvador had different characteristics to other Central American countries. . . .” “The people are our mountains,” Marcial used to say. —Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador

The empirical heart of this book is a subnational comparative account of armed groups that fought in El Salvador’s 1980–92 civil war. This chapter sets the stage for the detailed evidence to come, in two ways. First, I present a brief history of El Salvador, focusing on the social, political, and economic factors underlying the Salvadoran civil war, and on the development of the organizations that ultimately contested the war. I focus on the causes of war both for the sake of context and because the causes of war and the causes of violence were tightly coupled in El Salvador, perhaps more so than in some other cases. The military government’s intense, disproportionate repression of even moderate reformers both accelerated progress toward war and served as a tactic of war. Similarly, the histories, and prehistories, of both state and rebel organizations informed their strategies and tactics in conflict. After presenting this brief history, I turn to the comparative context. El Salvador’s civil war featured well-organized, ideologically sophisticated Communist rebels, who sought control of the state, rather than resource wealth, secession, or ethnic domination. Facing them was a generally inept and brutal state force, which ultimately required vast amounts of assistance from the United States, military and otherwise, to avoid losing the war outright. Yet there was little demographic difference between the fighting forces, in terms of age, education, ethnicity, or other factors. Readers interested in broader conclusions about violence and restraint will wonder whether the characteristics that make El Salvador’s civil war unique, or the characteristics that place it in a particular Cold War–era context, 59

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are the same characteristics that drive variation in violence. That is, is the analysis I present in the next few chapters generalizable to other conflicts? This chapter begins to answer that question, by examining some broad, structural similarities and differences between El Salvador’s war and others. Ultimately, I believe my analysis is generalizable not because the Salvadoran civil war is unexceptional, but because we can identify the Commander’s Dilemma at work across many very different cases.

Colonial Legacies, Inequality, and Repression The broad themes of the Salvadoran war can be found even in the country’s very early history. Its Spanish colonizers settled in Central America beginning in the fifteenth century, finally consolidating their rule only after a smallpox epidemic killed a large proportion of the area’s indigenous population (Dobyns 1993). El Salvador—unlike neighboring Spanish territories in present-day Guatemala or Mexico—lacked significant mineral resources (or so it was thought at the time; gold and silver mining are lucrative and increasingly divisive in El Salvador today); consequently, Spanish rule focused on exploiting the colony’s agricultural prospects. Initially, indigo played a major role in the colonial economy. The political and economic control of indigo production presaged the highly concentrated and coercive coffee economy that came to dominate El Salvador centuries later. Like Spanish colonies throughout the world, the Kingdom of Guatemala (as the whole of Central America was known during the early colonial period) relied on extraction of local resources rather than extensive settlement of Spaniards in the new territories or the construction of a significant administrative state. Spanish Central America created massive profits for the Spanish monarchy, for Spanish private enterprise, and—not incidentally—for the small cadre of Spanish officials residing in the colony to administer the system of extraction. Patch (1994) describes in detail how administrators (alcaldes mayores, gobernadores, or corregidores; the titles differed but the roles did not) in areas without significant mineral resources profited by controlling and coercing agricultural labor. In El Salvador (the departments of San Salvador and Sonsonate in the Kingdom of Guatemala), “the alcalde mayor practically monopolized the labor supply and therefore profited by charging Spanish landowners for the workers provided for the indigo plantations” (Patch 1994, 95). Central American governorships were generally purchased from the Spanish state and carried little or no salary; they were valued, instead, according to the profits that a governor, in control of coercive power, could wring out of local populations by straightforward coercion. In addition to normalizing coerced agricultural labor, the indigo system

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disrupted indigenous land-tenure systems, privatizing large swaths of land and transforming many indigenous Salvadorans from communally living subsistence agriculturalists into, roughly, serfs. Spain’s nearly three hundred years of colonial rule ended in 1821 with the Acta de Independencia, formally ceding control of the Kingdom of Guatemala, composed of present-day Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Chiapas, Mexico. In 1823, after a brief period during which the Central American countries—over the objection of Salvadoran elites—formed a part of the First Mexican Empire, the territory became part of the Federal Republic of Central America upon its official founding in 1824. In practice, the union lasted only thirteen years, although its formal dissolution did not come until 1898. Coffee rose to prominence in the early years of independence, following the worldwide collapse of the indigo market (Dunkerley 1982; Lauria-Santiago 1999). In order to support the coffee economy, the new republic formally institutionalized private agricultural property, promulgating laws in 1879, 1881, and 1882 that officially transformed El Salvador’s remaining indigenous communal lands into private fincas. The laws, which affected roughly one-quarter of the arable land in El Salvador (Byrne 1996, 18), forced still more peasants off the land, continuing the process begun with de facto colonial serfdom. This development underpins the system of agricultural wage labor still observable in El Salvador today. The institutions of seasonal labor changed over the course of the following century, but those changes tended, at least until the war, to increase the concentration of both land and wealth (Williams and Walter 1997, 87; Stanley 1996). After the 1950s sharecropping and the colonato system (whereby tenant farmers are granted land in exchange for labor) had largely given way to money rents and seasonal wages, a change that led to what many commentators have termed a “crisis of subsistence”: peasants who previously could make ends meet via small farming now were, for large parts of the year, both landless and wageless. Stanley (1996, 43) notes that, during the 1920s, rural wages in El Salvador declined dramatically relative to those in other Central American nations: they were among the highest at the beginning of the decade, and by 1929 they were the lowest. The increase in landlessness accelerated with the introduction of two additional export crops, cotton and sugar, following World War II (Williams 1986). In 1961, approximately 20 percent of El Salvador’s rural families owned no land; by 1975, it is estimated, the figure was approximately 40 percent (Cabarrús 1983). At the same time, a small number of wealthy families increased their holdings dramatically. According to Byrne (1996), by 1980 just 463 properties accounted for nearly 30 percent of all cultivable land. Wood (2003, 21) characterizes the Salvadoran economic elite as “a classic oligarchy.”

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Material inequality goes hand in hand with land concentration. “Prior to the civil war” (no date is given), 48.5 percent of children in rural El Salvador suffered from malnutrition (Haggerty 1990, sec. 3.3.2). Montes (1986, 98, quoted in Wood 2003, 24) estimates that the country’s illiteracy rate was nearly two-thirds (63 percent) in 1971, as the vast majority of the country’s population, especially in rural areas, attended no more than a year or two of primary school. By 1980, it is estimated that the poorest one-fifth of the population controlled just 2 percent of El Salvador’s wealth, while the top quintile controlled two-thirds (66 percent) of the country’s resources (Vilas 1995, 68). Wood (2003, 23) reports that in 1977 infant mortality was estimated at ninety-five out of one thousand live births— significantly higher than in other countries of El Salvador’s average income level. Byrne (1996, 23) characterizes the institutions that upheld this deeply unequal state of affairs as a “division of labor” between the oligarchy, which controlled the country’s economic affairs, and the military, which (as we will see) tightly controlled political action. Stanley (1996) characterizes the arrangement differently, arguing that the military governments were essentially running a protection racket: they would ensure cheap, plentiful, and unprotesting peasant labor via the provision of violence—just as long as civilian economic elites allowed them to maintain control of the government. Stanley notes, correctly, that this situation creates the possibility of competition between various government security forces; the particular competition under consideration is who can provide the most brutally efficient repression. Although there were important exceptions,1 the rural poor of El Salvador remained remarkably quiescent (at least outwardly) from the colonial period through much of the twentieth century. This is, to some extent, a natural response to extremely high levels of coercion on the part of the cooperative state and landowners. For example, Wood (2003, 14) notes that “many landlords were willing to pay for the billeting of members of the National Guard on their estates, a more draconian solution to ordinary problems of social order than most societies provide.” Explanations for state repression in general (e.g., Paige 1978; Williams 1986; Baloyra 1983) suggest that it is related to export agriculture. Stanley (1996, 18) remarks that this fits the picture in El Salvador “pretty well.” Williams and Walter (1997) provide a useful simplification of this causal chain: profitable export agriculture requires a large, cheap, seasonal labor force (as well as a significant amount of arable land), which “depends on a large coercive apparatus” (86). A traditional trigger of state repression in El Salvador was infrequent, but sometimes intense and violent, resistance to coerced agricultural labor. In 1932, following a stolen election (Communists had won at the polls), a peasant uprising led by the FMLN’s namesake, Farabundo Martí, killed perhaps 150 soldiers and noncombatants in western El Salvador. Both the Salvadoran Army and the

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National Guard, the country’s foremost rural enforcers, responded with overwhelming force to the Communist-supported uprising, conducting a massively disproportionate slaughter of perhaps ten thousand people, known as la matanza (the massacre) (Lauria-Santiago and Gould 2009, 209–39). The matanza followed patterns that became well known during the civil war, half a century later: scorched-earth campaigns targeted indigenous people, and alongside intense, indiscriminate lethal violence, informants recall significant opportunistic violence. Both agents of the state and their patrons, the hacendados for whom indigenous peasants labored, are said to have committed widespread rape. According to Lauria-Santiago and Gould 2009 (260), while there can be no independent confirmation of these abuses, it appears that the rate of illegitimate births in the area rose dramatically around the time of the massacres. Following the matanza, General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez—a major force in the slaughter, and soon thereafter president of the republic—successfully institutionalized a single official party, which handed down candidates for nearly uncontested elections for much of the next half century. In 1960, one of many coups briefly brought a military-civilian junta to power, but in general the military’s power held, as military forces alternated between harsh repression of perceived leftists and halfhearted attempts at agrarian reform. El Salvador’s repeated intramilitary coups, in Byrne’s formulation, typically occurred “when presidents failed to maintain the appropriate balance between repression and concession” (1996, 24); such coups occurred in 1944, 1948, and 1960. Yet the military (and, in particular, its most repressive incarnations) always returned swiftly to power. Stanley (1996) traces the origins of the military protection racket to this period, emphasizing particularly the military’s institutionalized corruption and its long-standing practice of repressing the nearly nonexistent “Communist enemy” in order to extort rents from a fearful economic and social elite. Wood (2003, 24, citing Paige 1997) writes that “the political culture of [El Salvador’s] economic elites combined paternalistic condescension with virulent anticommunism.” These elites, in turn, proved startlingly recalcitrant toward any and all reform attempts during the period of military rule, repeatedly undermining even modest measures to improve the well-being of El Salvador’s increasingly destitute landless peasant class. According to Stanley (1996), the Salvadoran armed forces (Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador, FAES) and its paramilitary security forces (the National Guard, National Police, and Treasury Police) engaged in inter- and intrainstitutional competition for oligarchs’ protection money, “bidding” by escalating their use of violence. Both the security apparatus and the oligarchy consistently failed, or refused, to distinguish between the moderate left and Communist revolutionaries. During the 1970s an opposition coalition including the Christian Democratic

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Party contested elections; however, a series of blatantly stolen contests (in 1972, 1974, and 1977) effectively destroyed opportunities for democratic reform. Massive repression against imaginary revolutionaries led to the development of actual revolutionaries.

From Opposition to Revolution A common question about revolution is, Why now? In some senses, very little changed during the mid-twentieth century in El Salvador. The military government produced brief openings for ineffectual reform efforts but continued its brutal repressive work. The grievances that underlay revolutionary efforts persisted. But there were important changes afoot, including a brief, tantalizing, and ultimately doomed political opening in the 1960s and 1970s; significant changes in the doctrine and work of the Roman Catholic Church’s Archbishopric of San Salvador; and Cold War dynamics that aided the formation of the FMLN. I address the church’s role first, before turning to other issues. The Roman Catholic Church, and its allied civil society organizations, played an unusually important role in the development of revolutionary ideologies and groups in El Salvador (relative to many other countries; see the concluding section of this chapter). The theology of liberation, in particular, tied El Salvador’s heretofore highly traditional Catholicism to the communal exploration of campesinos’ (rural peasants’) difficulties and aspirations (see, e.g., Gutierrez 1973; Berryman 1987). Particularly in the rural departments of Chalatenango, Morazán, and San Vicente, and in the poorest neighborhoods of the capital city, priests and lay workers trained thousands of lay catechists as Disciples of the Word (Byrne 1996, 26–27). Beginning in the community of Aguilares in 1972, priests and lay leaders organized Christian Base Communities, home Bible studies that asked campesinos and other poor Salvadorans to consider their lives in light of a Christ figure actively engaged in the lives of the poor, and actively concerned with justice. This vision of Catholic doctrine ties together several threads from the Catholic Social Teaching tradition following the modernizing impulse of the church in the 1960s and beyond. The second Vatican conference (Vatican II) can be seen as a starting point; in his encyclical “Populorum progressio” (On the development of peoples), Pope Paul VI (1967, para. 3) stated that Vatican II had “confirmed” that “the social question” (i.e., poverty) ties all men, everywhere, together. “Populorum progressio” quoted Saint Ambrose: “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The

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earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich” (para. 23). It also explicitly affirmed the necessity of expropriation when “certain landed estates” (para. 24) impede general development. Yet “Populorum progressio” is not a revolutionary document. It argues for “reform” and “balanced progress.” Liberation theology, as a body of work, goes further. Drawing on more radical strands of Catholicism such as the Catholic Worker movement, Gustavo Gutierrez ([1973] 1988, 160) popularized the notion that the Bible expresses God’s preference for the poor, and he urged Catholics to exercise a “preferential option for the poor.” Liberation theology, more than Catholic Social Teaching more broadly, sees poverty as an expression of social sin and asks societies to value, in some cases, justice over peace. Whatever the precise politics of the Christian Base Communities (and they clearly varied), they played an important role in the incipient revolution, not only by focusing poor people’s grievances on the structures creating inequality, but by imparting a sense of divine ordination and a “viable alternative vision” (Byrne 1996, 26). Liberation theology found its public voice in El Salvador in the somewhat unlikely person of Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Archbishop of the Diocese of San Salvador from 1977 until his death by assassination in 1980. Romero’s appointment was met with dismay by more radical priests and lay workers and was welcomed by the government. However, following the assassination of several priests (including Rutilio Grande, leader of Christian Base Communities in Aguilares and a friend), Romero revealed a heretofore unknown radicalism. He said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path’” (quoted in Hayes 2001, 48). In the years that followed, Romero was beloved for his radio sermons, which fearlessly addressed the injustice and violence of the state. Following his assassination on March 24, 1980, Romero became an important symbol of the Left in El Salvador (and, indeed, elsewhere). Images of the slain archbishop became a touchpoint for the FMLN in its community organizing, and Romero’s face remains a potent symbol in El Salvador today. Romero’s work took place during a period of intense turmoil and change within the Salvadoran military government. During the 1960s and 1970s, Salvadoran rulers oscillated toward the “concession” end of their precarious “repression and concession” balance. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church, spurred by the developments of Vatican II (1965) and the Latin American bishops’ meeting in Medellín, Colombia (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamerica, 1968), partially embraced the teachings of liberation theology. Funding for and admissions to El Salvador’s universities rose, and they became focal points for political organizing. Peasants’ unions, labor unions, and teachers’ unions formed or were reinvigorated. For example, the government formally

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recognized a leftist labor coalition, the Federación Unitaria Sindical de El Salvador, in 1965. Unions representing workers in the food, clothing, and textile industries, public-sector workers such as university employees, water and aqueduct employees, municipal workers, electrical workers, and others all received recognition during this liberalizing period (see Almeida 2003). Protest and demands for reform, building from this opening, increased dramatically during the 1970s. Land reform was a particularly vital issue. However, like land reforms in 1944, 1960, and 1972, a minimalist reform effort in 1976 met ferocious opposition from oligarchs and quickly failed (Walter and Williams 1993). It was poor timing: worldwide recession and rising oil prices combined to create a substantial increase in tension over land access in rural areas. Still, until relatively late in the 1970s, the armed Left represented just a small minority of overall opposition to the government. As the moderate protest movement gained power, however, state repression intensified dramatically. As Arnson (2003) and others have documented, most FAES detachments and all the security forces supported death squads beginning in the late 1970s. Despite the ouster of notorious figures such as Roberto d’Aubisson from the military hierarchy following a reformist coup in October 1979, state repression escalated after the fall of the Romero regime (1977–79) and the installation of a civilian-military junta. While casualties in 1979 are unknown, El Salvador was effectively at war well before its revolutionary group announced itself. Nonviolent gatherings, including a protest against the extravagant Miss Universe contest of 1979 and the funeral for Romero in March 1980, were routinely fired on by government forces. By the time of the FMLN coalition’s formation in October 1980, state violence had already killed thousands of noncombatants. FMLN factions had amassed tens of millions of dollars in ransom from kidnappings, engaged in gun battles with government’s rural “civil defense” organization (Organización Democrática Nacional [ORDEN]), and killed an unknown number of noncombatants suspected of supporting the government’s repressive efforts. Wood (2003, 27) writes, “Any possibility of a broad revolutionary alliance including centrist forces was eliminated” following the kidnappings and killings of six center-left leaders by state forces in November 1980. The FMLN was a coalition of five armed organizations, each springing from a somewhat different branch of revolutionary Communism (see, e.g., Montgomery 1995). The Popular Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Populares de Liberación [FPL]) was first to emerge, in 1970. A second Salvadoran Communist Party offshoot, the Revolutionary Army of the People (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo [ERP]), formed in 1972; the ERP split, producing the National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional [RN]), following the ERP execution of the poet Roque Dalton. The Communist Party itself, despite spawning several groups, did not itself form

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an armed wing until significantly later (1979). A fifth group, the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores Centroamericanos [PRTC]), came from a slightly different tradition, namely, the movement toward pan–Central American self-determination, and was founded in 1976. The five organizations, which had previously operated separately, formed a unified command structure in late 1980, uniting under the name of the leader of El Salvador’s ill-fated 1932 uprising, Farabundo Martí. The unification effort was brokered by the Cuban government, although Oñate (2011) emphasizes that “Havana did not give birth to the Salvadoran guerrillas or push them to opt for an armed insurgency that they would otherwise have avoided.” Nevertheless, “Cuba’s relationship with the Salvadoran opposition throughout the 1980s was extensive and consequential” (134). Interestingly, while the ERP’s militarist strategic orientation was inspired by the Cuban revolution, it was initially shut out of negotiations: Cuba had severed relations with the ERP five years before, following Dalton’s unjust execution. Cuba’s support was conditional upon the unity of the five revolutionary parties; throughout the war, Salvadoran rebels’ internal conflicts of strategy were often resolved “on the island.” Explicitly ideological conflicts were off the table during these negotiations. The Cubans judged that while strategic negotiations could occur, the ideological differences between the factions were irreconcilable.2 Thus the FMLN, though unified at the high-command level, maintained five separate chains of command at the operational level, and separate organizational structures and finances, throughout the war (Byrne 1996, 75–78). Additionally, the FPL and the ERP maintained separate geographic strongholds (in northern Chalatenango Department and northern Morazán Department, respectively) throughout the war. In several Salvadoran regions, FMLN organizations maintained joint command centers—for example, on the slopes of the Guazapa Volcano, northeast of the capital. For the most part, however, “liberated” areas were controlled by a single organization. Given all this, perhaps the most striking characteristic of the FMLN was its operational unity. Unlike many rebel groups, it managed to contain internal fractures and to translate decisions of the high command to tactics on the ground with excellent consistency. The five-person high command, based outside El Salvador throughout much of the conflict, was composed of one member from each of the five groups, despite their radically different relative sizes and considerably different ideological and strategic stances (Montgomery 1995). In the following chapters, I generally focus on the two largest FMLN subgroups, the FPL and the ERP; here, I briefly introduce key differences between the two. The most obvious difference between the FPL and the ERP concerned

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long-term strategy—at least, this was the difference that most separated the two organizations at the outset of the conflict. ERP leaders typically were more militaristic in orientation, following a Guevarist foco (focus) strategy, which holds that revolutionaries need not wait for optimal conditions. Rather, the military vanguard can strike at any moment, providing focus and inspiration for a largescale insurrection (Debray 1969). The FPL, by contrast, initially followed a strategy of prolonged popular war, as suggested by Mao and Vietnamese Communist leaders. In this revolutionary vision, military action was to follow political mobilization; indeed, military action was considered inadvisable until victory was assured (see the comments of FPL cadres in Pearce [1986] and Harnecker [1993]). These general strategic orientations had important implications for the groups’ relationships with civilians, as well as for relationships between cadres and their commanders, as I discuss below (though, as we will see, the linkages between strategy, ideology, and civilian relations were not always straightforward). These differences persisted in the groups’ rearguard areas even after the FMLN’s general plan of attack was unified in 1980. Several of Pearce’s (1986) interviewees in Chalatenango stated that they had been, if not militarily unprepared, then generally reluctant to stage a “final” offensive as early as January 1981, but they had believed that the ERP would proceed regardless. Operational unity was regarded as more important than ideological purity, and the offensive went ahead, effectively setting the military strategy for the FMLN over the next three years despite its failure to cause a Nicaragua-like popular uprising. My interviewees, especially those who joined the FPL prior to, or near the beginning of, the war, frequently commented that political organizing took precedence over military preparation at least through the first two to three years of conflict. Throughout the conflict, civilian communities were incorporated more thoroughly, and with greater seriousness, in FPL-held areas (primarily in the department of Chalatenango) than in ERP zones. While foquismo (and, by extension, the ERP) won the day at the outset of the conflict, the failure of the initial offensive to produce immediate victory led inexorably back toward prolonged popular war. Despite continuing to engage the Salvadoran military in large conventional war–style battles through approximately 1983, as early as late 1981 FMLN leaders had recognized that the war would be won or lost over a longer timescale and on political, rather than military, terms. As I discuss in the following chapter, the FMLN high command began training cadres for guerrilla warfare—in the sense of emphasizing political will and civilian relationships—well before it shifted its strategic line toward a traditional guerrilla approach.

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This study focuses primarily on three types of groups within the Salvadoran military apparatus: the regular army, immediate response battalions (battallónes de infantería de reacción inmediata [BIRIs]), and the state security forces (the National Guard, National Police, and Treasury Police). A number of informal state-affiliated organizations also played a major role in the state’s repressive efforts, including rural paramilitary organizations (referred to as civil defense forces) and death squads. Death squads frequently employed members of the army, BIRIs, or security forces, but did so in an unofficial, and consequently plausibly deniable, manner (e.g., Arnson 2003). State forces differed significantly in their recruit populations, recruitment tactics, training regimes, and disciplinary procedures. Regular-army units were recruited, usually forcibly, from among male Salvadorans aged approximately fourteen and up. In my survey data, a majority of veterans of regular-army units reported having been forcibly recruited. Those who joined during the earliest years of the war frequently reported little or no training, while those who served during later years typically reported a three-month training program focused exclusively on the operation of weapons and other standard tactical procedures. One former American adviser to the FAES noted in an interview that “most units were below strength for most of the war,” both because officers routinely reported “ghost soldiers” (see, e.g., Bacevich 1988) and because the pace of unit creation could not keep up with the pace of recruiting. (The Salvadoran Army increased in strength from approximately ten thousand personnel in 1979 to nearly sixty thousand in 1987; see Montgomery 1995, 149.) Veterans seeking to move up in the Salvadoran Army, rather than to leave as soon as the two-year term of service ended, frequently joined BIRI units. These were battalion-strength Salvadoran Army elements (six companies, one reconnaissance squad, all armed—like the Salvadoran Army more generally—with M-16 rifles), created under the supervision of the American armed forces. Most BIRI officers and many BIRI personnel trained at the School of the Americas (Gill 2004). Yet, while interviewees who served with BIRI units reported significantly higher morale and better military preparation than did those who served only in regular-army units, they were no more likely to have received humanrights training or to articulate ideas about the purpose of the conflict in their conversations with me. Formally, El Salvador’s security forces remained separate from the FAES throughout the period of conflict. Operationally, however, the National Police, National Guard, and Treasury Police formed a well-organized part of the larger military apparatus, committing the majority of reported acts of violence against civilians in the years leading up to the war (Stanley 1996, 115). This is consistent with the historical role of the security forces, particularly the National Guard,

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which had maintained “peace” in the countryside since the turn of the century. The Guard, originally formed in 1912, served as the de facto army of large rural landowners; National Police and Treasury Police forces operated similarly in the cities. Security forces generally required that recruits be both relatively experienced (many had previously served in the army) and minimally literate. This emphasis on literacy, as well as the generally high status of the security forces, meant that training included somewhat more instruction regarding the history and politics of El Salvador than did training for regular military personnel.

Civil War On January 10, 1981, FMLN forces attacked military barracks across the country, holding the barracks in San Miguel briefly. The FMLN high command had calculated—wrongly—that a show of force would induce a popular uprising such as that seen in Nicaragua in 1979. Yet despite failing to take significant military installations (the San Miguel barracks was retaken quickly, and just one barracks, in Santa Ana, deserted to the FMLN), the FMLN revealed itself as a serious adversary for what was then a small and unprofessional Salvadoran military establishment. Immediately following the final offensive, FMLN leaders shifted to a “resist, develop, advance” strategy that would build support in rearguard areas and prepare the organization for a more offensive posture. After this regrouping period, from mid-1982 through the end of 1983, FMLN forces were almost continuously on the offensive, mounting several major attacks and near-continuous smaller attacks. During one two-month period in late 1983, the government reported that over eight hundred soldiers had been killed. As it gained more territory, the FMLN moved to larger formations, including battalions of up to 1,200 fighters (Byrne 1996, chap. 5). As this move suggests, the FMLN waged war in a largely conventional manner during the early years of the war. It met Salvadoran forces in large pitched battles, its forces formed large encampments rather than small clandestine groups, and it held large swaths of territory even outside its strongholds in the departments of Chalatenango and Morazán and around Guazapa. By 1983, several commentators have asserted (see, e.g., Greentree 2008), FMLN forces were near victory in El Salvador. In the United States, the Reagan administration viewed El Salvador as an important Cold War battleground, pouring military assistance (including direct training and combat support, materiel, and cash) into the FAES and related forces, and ostensibly attaching human-rights conditions to continued aid. In the opinion of American policy and military analysts, American support for Salvadoran forces prolonged the war but failed on

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its own terms; that is, it failed to defeat the FMLN (e.g., Bacevich 1988; Schwarz 1991). Notably, US advisers recommended as early as 1981 that the FAES adopt a low-intensity war strategy: small, agile units conducting operations day and night, offensives to retake FMLN-held territory, and civic-action programs to rebuild trust in the government and undercut civilian support for the rebels. The American vision of counterinsurgency war was never realized, however. As Byrne (1996, 75–85) discusses, much of the FAES was slow to accept the new strategic orientation. Nearly half of the total manpower of the FAES was engaged in static defense of large infrastructure during 1980–82. Moreover, FAES units were taking heavy casualties, up to twenty per day during parts of 1981. The military continued to invest in huge, manpower-intensive hammer-and-anvil incursions, which generally trapped and slaughtered civilians (see, e.g., Danner 1993) without capturing the considerably more agile FMLN forces. (Indeed, one problem with the American push toward a more offensive posture was that officers willing to conduct offensive operations often failed to distinguish between FMLN fighters and civilian populations.) The Salvadoran military finally implemented a “first draft” of the American-imposed strategy in 1983. The National Plan, as it was known, was piloted in San Vicente and Usulután Departments, combining smaller, offensively oriented FAES units with civic-action programs. It is unclear whether, or to what extent, the National Plan affected the war. Far more important in turning the tide against the FMLN were American materiel and money. In particular, American observers called for (and received) a massive buildup in FAES manpower, doubling the size of the Salvadoran military between 1981 and 1984. The arrival of American helicopter gunships and a large and growing group of American military advisers in 1983 and 1984 ended the FMLN’s ability to operate as a conventional force. During the 1984–85 period, the FMLN transitioned to a classic insurgency model, using small and highly mobile forces to stage raids on larger and better-armed opponents. The insurgents’ superior relationship with noncombatants eased this transition, as American-supported civic-action programs (“candy and pep talks,” in the words of an American adviser I interviewed) failed to shift civilian loyalties. Opinions differ about whether the period between 1984 and early 1989 in El Salvador should be considered a stalemate. It is true that there were few changes in major zones of control. FMLN groups retained control over their traditional rearguard areas through most of the period, and the state maintained its hold on the West and the cities. Yet to characterize this period as static disregards some significant internal changes. In particular, while 1984–85 represented a low ebb for the FMLN, the shift to small-unit, guerrilla tactics seemed to bear fruit in 1986. By that year, the FMLN was operating in all fourteen departments of El Salvador. It mounted large attacks on Suchitoto (Cuscatlán Department) in

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November 1984, the FAES’s training facility in La Union in October 1985, and the Fourth Brigade, in Chalatenango, in April 1987. Rebels maintained a presence in San Salvador from 1985 onward. On the state side, the indifferently received National Plan, begun in 1983, was scrapped in favor of United to Reconstruct (Unidos para Reconstruir), which built an FAES presence in key municipalities of all fourteen departments starting in 1986; also that year, the state dislodged the FMLN from its long-held territory on the Guazapa Volcano. Territory seldom changed hands for long, but both sides expanded to maintain a constant presence across the country, adjusted tactics, and attempted to retain the loyalty of the civilian population. During 1987–88, the FMLN was again, though less dramatically, ascendant. It pushed government forces out of a large number of rural municipalities and prepared to attack the capital city of San Salvador in force. On November 11, 1989, the FMLN launched a second “final” offensive, this time on San Salvador. Like the 1981 final offensive, the November offensive failed to ignite a popular uprising. It did shift both sides’ incentives considerably, however (Holiday and Stanley 1993): each side now understood that it could not win, and each side understood that its international support would soon run out. In 1992, FMLN and government representatives reached a peace agreement. A ceasefire began unofficially on December 31, 1991, and officially took effect on February 1, 1992.

Postwar Civil war brought significant changes to Salvadoran society, as it does to many or most societies (Wood 2008). In the peace accords of 1992, the military relinquished its hold on national politics, formally agreeing to civilian control of the government and the security apparatus. The old, deeply abusive security forces were abolished in favor of a new force, known as the National Civil Police (Policía Nacional Civil [PNC]). Both parties to the Chapultepec accords agreed to a significant UN observer mission, which lasted through 1995 and was tasked with monitoring human rights, investigating alleged violations, and verifying and implementing the accords. The UN also sponsored the Commission for Truth, from which many of the data on violence against civilians in this book are drawn. Parties to conflict became political parties. In contrast to neighboring Guatemala, where neither the right-wing government nor leftist rebels retained credibility in the postwar period, ARENA—the rightist party founded by death squad leader Roberto d’Aubisson—and the FMLN remain important parties in El Salvador’s open-list, proportional-representation electoral system. The party

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system has stabilized, it seems, with peaceful transfers of power and, international observers report, free and fair elections. Yet polarization and mistrust are also stable features of the postconflict period. El Salvador’s economic recovery from war was steady but slow; its per capita GDP finally equaled its 1978 level in 1998. Simultaneously, El Salvador embraced neoliberal reforms. Like most Latin American countries, it has adopted “Washington Consensus” policies favored by international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, including trade liberalization, privatization of publicly held industries, and cuts to social welfare programs. Roberts (2014) notes that El Salvador is among a minority of Latin American countries whose party systems stabilized, programmatically and competitively, under this regime, theorizing that neoliberal reforms occurring under right-wing parties (such as ARENA, which held power from the close of the war through 2009) allowed left-wing challengers (primarily the FMLN) to stabilize around opposition to neoliberal reforms. El Salvador’s embrace of the Washington Consensus occurred primarily under its postwar ARENA presidents, Alfredo Cristiani (1989–94), Armando Calderón Sol (1994–99), Francisco Flores Pérez (1999–2004), and Antonio Saca (2004–9). In the 1990s, reforms included simplification of the tax structure, liberalization of finance and trade regulations, and decentralization and privatization in multiple sectors. The Salvadoran colón was pegged to the dollar as of 1993, and full, de jure dollarization occurred on January 1, 2001. Land reform was a central issue in peace negotiations and played an important role in the ultimate settlement. The country’s National Reconstruction Plan called for the distribution of about 12.5 percent of all agricultural land in El Salvador via three separate mechanisms. Yet as Thiesenhusen (1996, quoted in Vargas 2003, 12) notes, “If El Salvador were to provide all of the landless, land poor, and unemployed in the countryside a 3.5 hectare piece of land, together with the amount going to combatants as a result of the peace accords, it would require 1.2 million hectares of land, or 56 percent of the total land area” of the country. Landlessness, poverty, and unemployment remain significant problems in El Salvador, still the most densely populated country in Latin America. (The anthropologist Leigh Binford [2010] has referred to the postwar economy in the department of Morazán as “a perfect storm of neglect and failure.”) The proportion of the Salvadoran economy formed by remittances from workers in the US more than quintupled in the years between 1990 and 2005, and now accounts for almost 17 percent of the country’s GDP (Ratha, Eigen-Zucchi, and Plaza 2016, 139). By some estimates, as many as 25 percent of all Salvadorans today (over 1.5 million) live and work in the United States. Gammage (2006) suggests that migration, by increasing both access to employment and remittances to family

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members at home, may have been El Salvador’s most successful antipoverty “policy” in the years following the war. I first traveled to El Salvador in fall 2008, more than fifteen years after the Salvadoran war ended. On that trip, I traveled by taxi and went out for beers with friends in the evenings. I took public transport from my language school to my hosts’ house. The news was full of the upcoming presidential election pitting the FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, against the ARENA candidate, Rodrigo Ávila. Along main roads and highways, hand-painted signs proclaimed neighborhood political allegiances. The stilted conversations at my FMLN-affiliated language school revolved not around party politics but around specific activist issues: water privatization, genetically modified crops, and mining. These were and are pressing issues in El Salvador, but this oasis of studied inattention to the presidential contest surprised me. Perhaps, I reasoned, it was a signal of frustration among leftists? Funes, formerly a TV personality, describes himself as “centerleft” and was the first FMLN candidate not to have served as a combatant. The 2009 platform pledged to maintain dollarization, respect private property, promote business and investment, and adhere to free-trade agreements. Funes spoke frequently about building a constructive relationship with the United States. Funes’s single-round majority of about 51 percent made him the FMLN’s first president and marked the country’s first peaceful transition in power. The Salvadoran presidency is limited to one term; Funes’s vice president, Salvador Sanchez Cerén, succeeded Funes in a hotly contested 2014 election. Sanchez Cerén, known during the war as Leonel, had been an FPL leader and was among the FMLN signers of the 1992 peace accords. Funes and Sanchez Cerén faced problems similar to those of the ARENA presidents before them, particularly poverty, inequality, and rising gang violence. I returned to El Salvador in 2015, after several years without a visit. Circling Comalapa International Airport, I noticed for the first time that the airport had been renamed under the Funes administration for Archbishop Romero. Walking out of the terminal, I also noticed that my research assistant, Erika Murcia, waiting in the usual crush, seemed nervous. A native of Chalatenango who had lived in San Salvador for several years and studied in the United States, she had never looked apprehensive on earlier trips. Now she insisted that I leave my wedding band at home and drive with my windows up and my doors locked. El Salvador as a whole had the world’s highest reported peacetime murder rate in 2015, about one hundred people per hundred thousand. (For contrast: St. Louis, Missouri, had the highest reported murder rate of any US city in 2015, at about sixty per hundred thousand. The average rate for the US as a whole was about five per hundred thousand that year.) In rural Morazán, where I interviewed former members of the ERP, life remained peaceful. On the highway toward San

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Miguel, we slalomed through several police roadblocks. Later, I reflected that the concentration of violence in urban areas likely meant that a murder rate of one in one thousand underestimated the subjective sense of danger in San Miguel and San Salvador. Call (2003, 827) has claimed that “crime is the chief threat to support for democracy.” Certainly the gang-violence epidemic in postwar El Salvador has led to increased support for government repression, in the form of so-called mano dura (literally “hard hand,” but more colloquially “iron fist”) policies (see, e.g., Holland 2013), which include traditional crime-control policies but also include militarization of policing and weakened due-process guarantees. Support for ARENA in legislative constituencies plagued by crime has allowed the party to double down on relatively unpopular economic policies. Meanwhile, FMLN stalwarts suspect the Salvadoran Right of plotting a return to authoritarianism. Yet in other domains, the rule of law appears stronger than ever before. In particular, recent court decisions have overturned the postwar amnesty law, which allowed key human-rights violators to escape punishment, often by immigrating to the United States, for decades. This description of El Salvador almost exactly twenty-five years after the signing of the peace accords is a confusing and contradictory picture—certainly not the collectively owned utopia that combatants were taught to expect, but also, and perhaps more important, not the deeply coercive, unfree, unequal society of the seventies either.

Comparative Context The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to building a broader comparative view of the conflict in El Salvador. The goal is not comparison per se; rather, this discussion is intended to give readers tools to consider whether, and to what extent, theories tested on data from the Salvadoran case provide insights about violence against civilians in other conflicts. There are a number of dimensions that may be relevant. Underlying, structural causes of war shape the institutions and ideologies of armed groups to an extent, as do the historical moments and geographic neighborhoods in which they emerge. So do technologies of war and the resources (or lack thereof) available to armed groups. El Salvador’s was an ideological, revolutionary civil war, which grew out of a particular moment in the social and economic history of Latin America, and which was shaped (indeed, largely paid for) by a Cold War dynamic in which a tiny country took on outsize strategic importance for major powers. Always asymmetrical, it featured a more conventional early period and a more clearly irregular later period.

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Mahoney (2001) has argued that El Salvador’s military regime, like that in Guatemala, grew out of radical liberalization in the agricultural economy during the nineteenth century. In a comparative examination of five Central American countries, Mahoney contrasts El Salvador’s and Guatemala’s radical reforms— privatization, massive expansion of commercial agriculture, further integration into world markets, and extreme, state-supported coercion of peasant labor— with the more moderate reforms instituted in Costa Rica and aborted reforms in Honduras and Nicaragua. Costa Rica became a durable democracy, Honduras an unstable military dictatorship, Nicaragua a personalist dictatorship, and El Salvador and Guatemala stable military dictatorships featuring durable alliances with agrarian economic elites. Several commentators, most notably Paige (1978), have suggested that this agrarian class structure (landlessness and wage work, benefiting a primarily agricultural oligarchy and enforced by a military state) is more likely to lead to agrarian revolution than are other configurations. Both El Salvador and Guatemala experienced violent, long-lasting, ruralbased leftist revolutions, which ultimately ended with negotiated settlements. Yet the progress of the two wars differed considerably. The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (Unidad Revolucionario Nacional de Guatemala [URNG]), like the FMLN, was formed as an alliance between multiple leftist armed organizations with Cuban prodding. Yet this occurred only after several years of fighting. Guatemala also had a significant, geographically concentrated ethnic minority—Ixil Mayan people, primarily in highland departments. Via a genocidal scorched-earth campaign during 1982–84, the Guatemalan military government was able to destroy much of the URNG’s middle ranks, leaving it, in Allison’s (2016, 8) words, “an organization of commanders and foot soldiers,” largely lacking popular support. By the end of the war, according to Allison’s analysis of demobilization data, there were just 69 URNG cadres for every hundred thousand Guatemalans, versus 293 per hundred thousand for the FMLN. We might also ask whether institutions and ideologies in the Salvadoran case are fundamentally tied to the Cold War. That is, we might (should!) ask whether the insights of the Commander’s Dilemma, particularly its predictions about the conditions for restraint, apply to groups other than Marxist-Leninist organizations contesting states propped up by US support. More broadly, some analysts have suggested that civil wars in the post–Cold War era (“new wars,” cf. Kaldor 1999) are more likely to be criminal than political, and more likely to feature ethnic violence. As Kalyvas (2001) explains in his critical discussion of the new-wars hypothesis, “In old civil wars, acts of violence were controlled and disciplined, especially when committed by rebels; in new civil wars gratuitous and senseless violence is meted out by undisciplined militias, private armies and independent warlords for whom winning may not even be an objective” (102). Yet, as I argued

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in chapter 1, Communism is not the only source of ideology; nor is ideology as usually understood the only source of norms of restraint; nor is nonideological criminality the only source of gratuitous violence. A number of typologies have attempted to unravel the question of whether, and to what extent, different types of civil wars create inherently different types, or magnitudes, of violence. One problem with nearly all such accounts is poor data (see the online appendix for a thorough discussion). However, to whatever extent we assume that data regarding battle deaths are comparable over time and space, there are some significant regularities. Lacina (2006) finds that, after controlling for other factors such as duration and population, Cold War–era civil wars have significantly more casualties (reported battle deaths); civil wars involving democracies and those that are primarily ethnic in nature show significantly fewer casualties. Yet the variation within these categories is still significant and is likely more significant than the data can show, since numerical estimates of battle deaths (as opposed to indices or other rough measures) are subject to significant bias. Kalyvas and Balcells (2010) take a different look at the Cold War era, showing significant differences between technologies of rebellion by era. Symmetric nonconventional war (featuring a weak rebel meeting a weak state) was rare in the Cold War period, making up just 6 percent of civil wars between 1944 and 1990. This was true for a number of reasons, not least the fact that superpowers often propped up friendly governments (as in El Salvador). In the post–Cold War period, by contrast, symmetric nonconventional war makes up over one quarter of all civil wars. A separate set of questions concerns whether violence against civilians in interstate conflicts varies according to logics that are similar to those driving violence in civil wars, and/or whether it is reasonable to understand the dynamics of wartime abuses by state forces using the same analyses that we apply to rebel forces. The Commander’s Dilemma theory suggests that both conflict type and group type (state versus nonstate) leave much unexplained, but that both should be associated with some institutional and ideological regularities that, I would argue, affect patterns of violence against civilians. On average, we should expect to observe large differences between state and nonstate organizations—because states and rebels typically are in quite different strategic positions, and because state institutions are (often, not always) bound by longer histories. In this regard, the Salvadoran military resembles the US military as it embarked on the war in Vietnam. The institutions of the US Army began to develop during the period of the Revolutionary War. The institutions of the Salvadoran military began to develop at the time of independence. For most states, despite reforms, military organizations developed beginning with the nation’s founding and must be adaptable across many conflicts. State political-training regimes (such as they

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are) are often highly general and geared toward celebration or defense of the nation, rather than toward the specific political or societal goals of the current conflict. For example, while anti-Communism played an important role in the decision to embark on conflict in Vietnam, the US military was obviously not formed for the purpose of combating Communism, and US combatants learned only the simplest facts about Communism, anti-Communism, and Vietnamese history prior to deployment. Differences in resource sources and availability suggest another set of systematic differences in socialization between state and nonstate groups. The independent effects of being resource poor are unclear and have seldom been considered for state armed groups. Considering rebels, Weinstein (2007) predicts that resource-poor groups will create nontangible incentives via indoctrination, while Beber and Blattman (2013) predict that lack of resources will be associated with forced recruitment and coercion. We might expect nonstate organizations to display fewer formal mechanisms for socialization than state forces, and/or that the institutions developed by nonstate forces should primarily rely on investments of time, rather than money or materiel. Note that none of these differences has inherently to do with the “stateness” of state organizations. Moreover, there are exceptions to each of the generalizations above. For example, Communist state militaries often engage in lengthy, specific, and rigorous political education. States dominated by a particular religion may include considerable religious (or religio-nationalist) education (see, e.g., Fair’s [2014] description of religious reforms within the Pakistani military). State militaries may also suffer from endemic corruption, such that large military budgets nevertheless yield small, poorly trained, poorly equipped forces, as in El Salvador in the early 1980s. While the military held power in the country and received vast sums from the United States government, actual army units were often padded out with “ghost soldiers” whose pay ended up in the pockets of commanders (Stanley 1996). In general, while El Salvador’s civil war occurred in a specific region of the world and a particular moment in time, and while both rebel and state forces used particular technologies of war, none of these contextual variables fully explains the development of internal institutions or the interacting effects of ideology on state or FMLN behavior toward civilians. I take up these questions in greater detail in the following two chapters.

3 COMPARING STATE AND FMLN INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES

We were on our last legs. . . . We had to reform or we were going to lose. And it wasn’t because the guerrillas were so good; it was because the Army was so bad. . . . I mean, who ever got relieved [of command]? You could surrender with eighty-five men and nothing at all would happen to you. —Former American adviser to the FAES, quoted in Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote

“Blank stare = data.” According to my field notebook, that was the main insight from one frustrating day of interviews in July 2009. I’d spoken to several excombatants in a row from regular Salvadoran Army units, and in general they had a lot to say about their experiences. But when I asked what they had heard from officers about the reasons for the war, conversation ground to an awkward halt. I couldn’t decide whether these ex-combatants thought it was a stupid question or whether they were embarrassed about not having an answer. It was unnerving. Back at the hostel in the evening, I tried to reassure myself. I had, after all, expected state ex-combatants to have less to say about reasons and goals than FMLN ex-combatants. As the interviews continued (and, eventually, were supplemented by survey data), I got used to blank stares, furrowed brows, and irritated shrugs. This type of interaction is (a) awkward for all concerned and (b) consistent with my theory. This chapter and the two that follow make the case that state ex-combatants’ inability to recall their reasons for fighting is part of a broader pattern that makes sense of the wide and widely varying repertoires of violence employed by state forces. From chapter 1, recall the puzzle of restraint: following military training and deployment, there are so many reasons for combatants to commit violence—and so few sources of restraint—that low levels and/or narrow repertoires of violence should surprise us. When restraint does appear, I argue, it is likely because consistent discipline is accompanied by some mechanism for internalizing norms of restraint. Usually that mechanism is political education of some sort. 79

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In this chapter, I analyze interviews, archival research, and survey responses in an attempt to document broad differences between how FAES combatants understood themselves in relation to the war, and how their counterparts in the FMLN did. More important, I attempt to reconstruct the ways that formal armedgroup institutions affected combatants’ mindsets—their beliefs, identities, habits of mind, and behavioral predispositions. (Note that I use “mindsets” and “habits of mind” interchangeably to refer to these sets of combatant characteristics.) Political scientists have often sidestepped questions about combatants’ internal states, assuming that political ideologies (and other affective and cognitive factors) are irrelevant or epiphenomenal. Rational groups will betray their ideologies to whatever extent is strategically beneficial, and will converge to similar patterns of behavior, regardless of ideology (cf. Kalyvas 2006). Or, they develop ideologies as a substitute for other incentives (cf. Weinstein 2007). This can be read as a refusal to theorize about that which can seldom be empirically examined, or as a deeper suspicion about whether ideas—or, more specifically, ideologies—can have real effects in dire circumstances. Whatever the reasons, the specific links between ideology and behavior, particularly in war, are poorly understood. Kalyvas and Balcells (2010) have considered the relationship between ideology and violence at the global level, showing that wars involving what they term “Marxist” insurgencies are longer and deadlier (in terms of reported battle deaths) than others, and more likely to end via negotiated settlement. Building on Kalyvas and Balcells’s data, I find that Communist rebels committed lower levels of sexual violence than other rebel organizations, even after controlling for factors such as contraband funding, conflict intensity, recruitment tactics, and state failure (Hoover Green 2016). Communism makes a difference, somehow. Yet these large-N quantitative evaluations are unclear about the mechanism or mechanisms by which Communism is connected to differences in violence. Qualitative examinations have dug more deeply into the connections between ideology, strategy, and tactics. Gutierrez Sanín and Wood (2014) consider both instrumental and more purely normative roles for ideology: ideology as a commitment to a cause and/or as a constraint on particular strategies and tactics. Thaler (2012) argues, in line with Gutierrez Sanín and Wood’s theoretical approach, that ideology per se shaped the violence of two anticolonial MarxistLeninist organizations: Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Mozambique) and the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola. According to Thaler, neither resource availability nor ethnic cleavages shaped violence by these groups. Rather, violence was deployed against civilians who supported the enemy (as rationalist accounts would suggest) but also, crucially, against those who presented barriers to social transformation.

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In the Commander’s Dilemma framework, a baseline armed group—one that trains recruits to kill without providing internalized reasons for restraint, but does not demand systematic mass violence against civilians—should produce baseline violence against civilians: medium to high levels of violence, in broad and nonuniform repertoires. The FAES are just such a baseline group. Some branches and units employed consistent discipline, and the group’s broad incentives favored restraint toward Salvadoran civilians. But most combatants internalized no particular message about either the reasons for the conflict or their commanders’ vision of a postconflict future. Throughout the war, the FAES recruited with a mix of force and economic incentives; they offered competent, though conventional, military training and no political education to speak of. The FMLN also trained combatants to kill, but at the same time, it offered a comprehensive program of political education that focused on the important strategic role of civilians. Thus, if the Commander’s Dilemma theory is correct, we should expect to observe that, despite facing strategic incentives to avoid clearly excessive or unnecessary abuses, H1. state forces use broader repertoires of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict; H2. state forces use less uniform repertoires of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict; and H3. state forces use higher levels of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict. Of course, several other theories also predict these same broad differences. Thus, in this chapter and the next, I use detailed qualitative evidence about combatants’ experiences to build a set of more specific hypotheses about variation in patterns of violence against Salvadoran civilians. These chapters also do other work. Deferring until the next chapter the details of intra-FMLN ideological and institutional variation, I focus here on state-FMLN differences and intrastate differences over time. I also trace the relationship, including both continuities and discontinuities, between official (formal, on-paper) policies at the command level and practices at the combatant level. Combatants’ accounts of their experiences help to build a broad picture of the effects of state and nonstate armedgroup institutions on individual combatants’ mindsets. This is a vital piece of my argument, since—if the Commander’s Dilemma is correct—specific institutions, or the absence thereof, should have specific effects on combatant predispositions, beliefs, and identities. In order to get at the effects of institutions on combatants’ mindsets (and, indeed, to avoid mistaking institutions as they exist on paper for institutions that many or most combatants actually interact with), I rely on interview and survey data: about 120 in-depth, semistructured interviews,

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and a survey of about 360 ex-combatants from all parties to the conflict. Asking low-level ex-combatants about their experiences reveals both continuities and discontinuities with official stories about combatant experiences and command priorities. The chapter begins by comparing ex-combatants’ recollections of recruitment, training, and discipline in state and FMLN forces, deriving hypotheses about state-FMLN and intrastate variation in violence over the course of the war. Next I discuss the socialization experience more synthetically, considering both the effects of specific formal institutions and the ways in which those institutions, in combination with informal ones, reinforced or, occasionally, undermined one another. A concluding section summarizes the empirical implications of the findings and contrasts them with the empirical implications of competing theoretical approaches.

Recruitment One set of theories competing with the Commander’s Dilemma includes those, such as Jeremy Weinstein’s (2007), that imply that variations in an armed group’s recruit pool should map to broad variation in violence against civilians. In particular, Weinstein argues that rebel groups with access to material resources will offer those as recruitment incentives and will, in consequence, create adverse selection: a cadre made up of combatants lacking long-term commitment and motivated primarily by opportunism. Weinstein argues, and I agree, that opportunists are more difficult to control with behavioral incentives. The discontinuity between Weinstein’s approach and mine—and between traditional principalagent models and the Commander’s Dilemma approach more generally—lies in Weinstein’s assumption about preference change, namely, that it does not occur. Bad types are bad types, good types good. I begin to examine this approach by looking at the recruit pools for state and FMLN groups. Table 3.1 compares survey results about education and age at recruitment for FMLN, regular army, and elite state forces. (A residual category, “other/unknown state forces,” includes state ex-combatants who declined to identify their specific organization.) These survey results represent a broad cross section of Salvadoran excombatants. They were collected in thirteen of El Salvador’s fourteen departments. Respondents were all ex-combatants who had visited a veterans’ benefits center (either an official state center or an FMLN-specific center) on the day that my research assistant randomly selected to visit the center. Unfortunately, because the survey was primarily intended to provide information about experiences

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TABLE 3.1 Formal education among FMLN and state recruits % WITH NO FORMAL EDUCATION AT RECRUITMENT

% WITH 7+ YEARS OF FORMAL EDUCATION AT RECRUITMENT

GROUP

N

MEAN AGE AT RECRUITMENT (RANGE)

FMLN

165

20.4 (10–65)

37

7

Regular army

133

22.4 (10–45)

13

20

Elite state forces

46

19.0 (10–33)

15

40

Other/unknown state forces

15

19.4 (16–27)

40

13

after joining, it did not collect information on other potentially relevant prerecruitment characteristics. State and FMLN combatants joined at roughly similar mean ages, but with quite different experiences of formal education: nearly twofifths of FMLN ex-combatants reported no formal education at all before joining the group, while just 13 percent and 15 percent of regular-army and elite state forces, respectively, reported no formal education at recruitment. Nearly three times as many regular-army as FMLN ex-combatants reported receiving at least seven years of formal schooling prior to joining; 40 percent of elite state forces reported seven or more years. These differences were relatively stable across excombatants recruited during different periods of the war. While some FMLN leaders and combatants came from relatively privileged backgrounds, including significant formal education, most were drawn from El Salvador’s large population of landless peasants. Very few FMLN recruits (in this sample) were drawn from the capital city, San Salvador, while many state recruits were. As the war progressed, the two groups diverged further, again potentially reflecting geographic differences in the populations under FMLN and state control. None of the FMLN combatants in my survey sample who joined the group after 1983 had more than seven years of schooling. By contrast, respondents who joined state forces in the later years of the war were much more likely to report seven or more years of schooling than those who joined earlier. In interviews, I asked ex-combatants a broad set of questions about recruitment experiences: why they joined, how (that is, by what process) they came to join, what they knew about the war prior to joining an armed group, whether they were involved with community organizations prior to joining, and whether family members or friends also joined. Asking ex-combatants about their recruitment motivations (if any) and experiences allows me to examine whether and to what extent variation in recruitment practices over time, and/or in motivations among state and FMLN recruits, is associated with patterns of violence. I was alert to the fact that asking directly about past motivations can produce reconstructions that have more to do with present-day opinions and recent experiences

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than with past states of mind. In order to avoid this source of bias (to the extent it could be avoided), I opened my semistructured interviews with a series of “easy” factual questions: “Where were you living when you joined [group]?” “Who lived in your household?” “About how old were you?” When I asked respondents about their recruitment experiences, I began by asking them to tell me “the story of how you joined [group]” or to tell me “how you became a member of [group],” then asked clarifying questions as the narrative unfolded. I expected FMLN ex-combatants, more than state combatants, to report involvement with political activism or civil-society organizations, such as Christian Base Communities or school groups, prior to becoming fighters. This is certainly borne out by the interview data, in which vanishingly few state excombatants recalled being active with church or other community groups prior to recruitment. In general, FMLN ex-combatants tended to give “why” answers to “how” questions, responding with lengthy narratives about justice and ideological awakening. One respondent traced his “why” back to his mother: “She was really Christian. . . . We believed it was right.” This respondent’s actual process of recruitment was more complicated: in the mid-1970s, recruiters approached him at school because they believed (via contacts in his mother’s Bible study group) that he might want to join. “We talked for a year,” he reported, “and then they finally said, OK, you are on the right path, you can join.” This respondent dated his official involvement with the armed revolutionary movement to 1978. His experience was typical of early recruits to the FMLN. Equipment shortages, the need for intense secrecy, and a focus on political mobilization meant that many early recruits attended meetings and performed small tasks for months or even years before being mobilized to join an armed unit. The lengthy period during which compas moved, by degrees, from civilians to mobilized civilians to full-time fighters led to what I initially viewed as strange or mistaken estimates about dates: often, when I asked about when they “joined the FMLN,” early recruits gave answers that predated the formation of the FMLN, or even of their subgroup. For many of my respondents, joining the FMLN was less a single formal occurrence and more an unfolding set of changes in worldview. Notably, ex-combatants from all FMLN organizations reported significant changes in the vetting and recruitment process as the war went on, a change that I discuss at greater length in the following chapter. Ex-combatants from the FAES, to the extent that they reported any personal motivations for joining the armed forces, generally stated that they did so in order to escape poverty. This was true for state ex-combatants from all periods and unit types (including regular-army and elite organizations such as the paratroop battalion, air force, security forces, and immediate reaction battalions, who generally got their start in regular army units). This stark contrast with the

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reported motivations of FMLN ex-combatants suggests that the implications of adverse selection accounts should be broadly similar to H1–H3 above. That is, ideologically motivated FMLN recruits should be less abusive toward civilians than economically motivated (or simply unmotivated) state recruits. Yet, despite drawing primarily from the large segment of the Salvadoran population without significant prewar political commitments, in other ways adverse selection stories do not fit the Salvadoran military particularly well. In most times and places, recruitment into the Salvadoran military seemed haphazard, almost random. Moreover, recruitment during the war years was frequently involuntary. While compulsory military service had been the law of the land for decades, most analysts suggest that spots in the Salvadoran Army, which was relatively small prior to the war, were filled via voluntary enlistment for much of the twentieth century, such that compulsory service was never enforced. The army offered meager pay and no clear path to advancement, at least for front-line troops. So, while the military did not select for political commitment, as Weinstein’s “good” groups do, it also did not, intentionally or unintentionally, target selection particularly toward “bad” types. More generally, as I discussed at length in chapter 1, I simply do not believe that preferences regarding violence are fixed prior to recruitment. Combatant motivations and armed-group recruiting practices can be difficult to tease apart, particularly in retrospect. We might, for example, expect that forced recruits never recall their motivations for joining, and/or that voluntary recruits can always rationalize some reason. The reality is less clear-cut. Yet distinguishing why combatants join from how they join—that is, from recruitment practices—is theoretically important. Most principal-agent-type models of combatant behavior suggest that forced recruitment leads to a combatant pool whose preferences are, at least initially, further from command preferences than those of voluntarily recruited groups, and who are therefore more difficult to discipline (e.g., Gates 2017). Cohen (2016) suggests that forced recruitment should be associated with increased sexual violence, particularly gang rape, since forced recruitment leads to the formation of groups with little social trust and no reliable social hierarchy. Rape, in Cohen’s theory, is a form of violent socialization. Recruitment practices therefore may play an important role in shaping the repertoire of violence in an armed group, especially where sexual violence is concerned. Among my survey respondents, the majority of FMLN interviewees reported joining the organization voluntarily, while the reverse is true for regular army units (the picture is more complicated for elite state units).1 This was true in every period of the war. In the next chapter, I highlight particular moments and circumstances in which the FMLN used forced recruitment. Here, though, I focus on the broad differences between FMLN recruiting and state recruiting, and on

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differences within state forces, over time. The FAES more than quintupled in size over the course of the war, from approximately eleven thousand members (about 3.0 per one thousand Salvadorans) to sixty thousand members (11.1 per thousand) in 1990.2 Much of this increase occurred between 1981 and 1984. This dramatic increase coincided with the FMLN’s ascendancy; the average number of deaths among state combatants in 1982, for example, was twenty per day. Thus it is unsurprising that much of the recruitment during this period was “sort of voluntary” or forced outright. During this vast buildup, it appears, every FAES detachment and brigade had a separate process for recruiting or conscripting boys. Some “volunteered,” to avoid starvation or on the promise of a paycheck. But in interviews, the modal response to my question about the process of joining regular army units involved abduction, either off the street or from the respondent’s home. Two interview respondents (including one regular-army conscript and one from an elite unit) reported that they were thrown “in jail” for a period following their abduction. Keep in mind, also, that many of those abducted this way were children; while the formal minimum age of conscription during the war was eighteen, children as young as ten were often “recruited” this way, and abduction of boys ages twelve to fifteen was extremely common. In interviews, regular-army ex-combatants clearly recall feeling frightened and confused. One respondent, who later joined the paratroop battalion in 2009 and remained in the Salvadoran military, recalled that he had been walking to school in his village when “they grabbed me and threw me in the back of a truck. . . . I could see my school bag there on the ground when we drove away.” Notably, while very few state ex-combatants in interviews spoke about truly voluntary recruitment, among the state ex-combatants in my survey sample, the proportion of regular-army recruits reporting fully voluntary recruitment doubled over time, from about 15 percent during the prewar period to about 30 percent during the final years of the war. During this same period, the proportion of elite state forces reporting voluntary recruitment decreased. Overall, though, members of elite state groups are much less likely to report forced recruitment than members of the regular army, in both survey and interview data. Moreover, the extent of forced recruitment in these organizations is likely overstated in survey data, reflecting the fact that forcibly recruited regular-army personnel often stayed on, voluntarily, to transfer to elite forces. When I say elite forces, I mean any FAES or security unit other than the regular army. Every state ex-combatant I interviewed knew which groups were “elite”: immediate reaction battalions (batallones de infantería de reacción inmediata [BIRIs]) and the security forces topped the list, with the paratroop battalion and air force also identified. The willingness of combatants who had been recruited by abduction and “treated

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like shit” (a common statement about life in regular army units) to reenlist in the midst of a war in order to transfer to these units reflects both status seeking and a lack of other options. “What was I going to do in 1983?” asked one interview respondent. “Go get a job?” Both recruitment differences over time and recruitment differences between state groups carry empirical implications in an adverse-selection or recruitmentbased theory—but neither is expected to be extremely consequential in the Commander’s Dilemma framework. This is because I believe the most important part of preference formation among combatants occurs after recruitment, such that neither recruitment motivations nor recruitment type should play a large independent role. (Note that, here and in what follows, I denote hypotheses derived from alternative theories of violence with A, rather than H.) Thus, all else equal, we would observe that H4. changes in state recruiting practices are weakly related or unrelated to changes in state repertoires of violence. Alternatively, if Cohen’s (2016) theory is correct, we should observe that A1. regular-army units commit more reported cases of rape than do elite forces (per capita); A2. rape by elite forces increases over time, with the proportion of these forces reporting forced recruitment; and A3. rape by regular-army units decreases from the prewar period to midwar, as forced recruitment decreases.

Training Institutions for training and indoctrination lie at the heart of my theory of repertoire variation. In the Commander’s Dilemma framework, political education, in particular, is the key mechanism commanders use to affect combatants’ predispositions toward violence, including preferences for restraint. Members of the regular army in my interview sample received, at minimum, a three-month course of formal training before entering combat operations; many received more. Among survey respondents, the differences were broader: about 60 percent reported three months or less of training, but the proportion receiving less than one month of training declined from about 15 percent, for those recruited prior to the war, to zero, during the final years. FMLN respondents report a much wider range of training times, including a significant minority (>10 percent across all periods) throughout the conflict who received less than two weeks of training. Notably, the reported length of FMLN training (used as a general

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term, “training” was universally understood to mean military training) declined considerably over the course of the war. Among FMLN ex-combatants in my survey sample, those who joined prior to the war or in its early years reported very similar variation in training times, and nearly half reported three months or more of training. Of those recruited in the later period of the war, however, only about one-tenth reported one month or more of training. By and large, both interview and survey respondents who had served in the FMLN reported rigorous discipline, exhausting marches, plenty of physical discomfort, and some frustration with political officers. However, only a minority reported physical or emotional abuse during training, a finding that seems borne out in other accounts. For example, Viterna (2013) finds a social divide emerging between women combatants in the Popular Forces of Liberation (FPL), namely, between physically tough rural women and those who came to guerrilla encampments from urban environments. While each FMLN faction developed its own training regime, all were designed and implemented by either defectors from the FAES or trainers from Nicaragua or Cuba. Daily routines during FMLN and state training were therefore rather similar. Combatants rose early, completed a course of physical exercises, ate communally, practiced drilling and marching in formation, learned to clean and assemble weapons, and so on. Both state and FMLN forces emphasized obedience to superior officers, although the interview evidence—considered further below in the section on discipline—suggests that state leaders demanded obedience for its own sake, while FMLN officers were more likely to reference the longterm purposes of disciplined behavior. According to my survey and interview samples, military training among Salvadoran state forces varied little over the course of the war, and basic training practices varied little across state organizations. Interviewees reported similar routines and hardships across multiple units. Some practices that stood out for respondents, decades later, included demands that they strictly follow a minutely detailed, yet seemingly arbitrary, schedule; extreme physical exertion; and violent physical punishments such as beatings. The skills content recalls basic training in the US armed forces. On enlistment, combatants typically received three months of training, the primary components of which (at least in the recollection of my interviewees) were learning to care for and use one’s rifle and drilling in formation. American analysts of the FAES (e.g., Bacevich 1988; Schwarz 1991; Greentree 2008) agree that most FAES officers failed to prepare troops adequately for combat, failed to provide decent accommodations, and—by reporting troops who did not exist, and pocketing the budget for these “ghost soldiers” (Williams and Walter 1997, 162)—made an excellent living doing so. Soldiers were and are highly critical of these practices; many ex-army interviewees recalled the

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bitterness of discovering that they were, essentially, captives to military leaders who kept them hungry while living in comparative luxury. Moreover, according to most state recruits, relationships between officers and enlisted men were marked by considerable violence, perhaps particularly during training. Roughly 40 percent of state ex-combatants responding to the survey reported having been hit, punched, beaten, tortured, or even shot by officers during training; approximately the same proportion reported having been “psychologically injured” by humiliation, threats, or other means. The corresponding figure for FMLN ex-combatants is approximately 15 percent for both categories of injury. Clearly, not all army recruits were harmed by their superior officers, and not all FMLN ex-combatants escaped such treatment, but the differences are notable. Gendered language and behavior played a key role in the training period for recruits to the Salvadoran Army, as in many state armed forces. In interviews, many regular-army ex-combatants described training practices in which poor performers were referred to as “ladies” (damas, señoritas), “girls” (niñas), or “pussies” (coños) (interviews 18, 20, 44, 45, and others). Some believed that the young age of most army recruits contributed to the strong effect of these particular insults. One stated, “It was always, ‘Are you a man? A real man?’ Because when you first came there, you were scared and crying like a little kid” (interview 45). Being a good (masculine) soldier meant physical strength, fearlessness, and a willingness to do violence. Training in the FAES frequently made use of sexual humiliation as a goad to better performance. One ex-combatant described a number of such incidents. In one conversation (interview 69), we discussed physical training exercises that took place during the army’s standard three-month training period. AHG: What about recruits who didn’t get things right? What would happen with them? Interviewee: All kinds of different things. The officers would yell at you or hit you with sticks and the older soldiers could make you do really embarrassing things. In my unit they would make you take off all your clothes and they would taunt you, yelling things about being a girl, and you would have to put on women’s clothes and run around the mess hall. [. . .] AHG: Why do you think they did that? Interviewee: I think it was meant as, “You are going to war now, you’re not a little boy. War is hard so you have to be hard. You’re not with your mother anymore. You have to be a man.”

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Whereas military training was—as in most state militaries—highly routinized among Salvadoran forces, no regular-army ex-combatants in my interview sample reported receiving any formal, ongoing training in topics other than military skills, routines, or obedience. A few interview and survey respondents reported that officers talked about “killing Communists [or ‘terrorists,’ or ‘subversives’]” during training exercises, but most suggested that after a period of hazing (on which more below), they entered combat with poor to moderate military skills and no sense of the goal or purpose of the war. FMLN combatants, on the other hand—even those who may not have received any significant military training—almost all report receiving significant, formal, ongoing instruction about the goals and purposes of the war. Table 3.2 shows some key differences among survey respondents on three key questions: During or after training, did you receive political education—for example, a class or lecture about the political reasons for the war? (Yes or no) During or after training, did you receive any books or pamphlets about history or political themes? (Yes or no) If you recall specific books or pamphlets, can you recall their titles, or what they were about? (Open text field) The largest single difference between state combatants and FMLN combatants— as reported in interviews, via the survey, and by American advisers to the Salvadoran military—was not their recruitment experiences or their backgrounds. What most starkly divided the two major groups was the length and content of their responses to the question, “What did you learn about why you were fighting?” State combatants occasionally responded that they had learned some reasons for the conflict, but none articulated an extensive or coherent rationale. FMLN combatants, on the other hand, often related lengthy, coherent stories about what they learned, and the reasons they fought. Education in the FMLN consisted of several prongs, which were conducted rather separately but which served similar purposes. Unquestionably, military training took priority across

TABLE 3.2

Recollections of political education among FMLN and state recruits

GROUP

N

ANY POLITICAL EDUCATION (%)

RECEIVED BOOKS OR PAMPHLETS (%)

RECALL SPECIFIC BOOKS OR PAMPHLETS (%)

FMLN

165

91

61

30

Regular army

133

21

12

11

Elite state forces

46

43

24

13

Other/unknown state forces

15

26

13

7

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91

all FMLN subgroups (though perhaps more so within the ERP than within the FPL, on which see chapter 4). More important for the purposes of this study, the FMLN also instituted rigorous and wide-ranging general and political education. FMLN ex-combatants had notably less formal education than state ex-combatants upon joining the organization; however, the FMLN venerated education as a means to self-determination and understanding. Several FMLN interview respondents reported that they learned to read during their first months in the group, often via hand-drawn cartoon pamphlets. “Popular education” (Hammond 1996; but see Freire [1968] 2000 for the original statement) was the model on which all FMLN curricula were based, both within the organization and among communities organized by the FMLN. This style of education was overtly political and extremely improvisational, employing teachers who themselves were often only semiliterate. Hammond (1996, 82) describes how an instructor in an adult literacy class connected wartime experiences to beginning literacy. Students learned to write “casa,” then “la casa de María,” and finally “La casa de María era quemada” (Maria’s house was burned down). To Hammond’s ears, “the words in Spanish have the simplicity of a first-grade text: instead of ‘See Spot run,’ la ca-sa de Ma-rí-a e-ra que-ma-da” (82). According to most FMLN interviewees, political education was somewhat less formal but also significantly more frequent than general education. Whereas instruction in basic literacy and arithmetic ceased in the run-up to major operations, unit commanders (responsables) were tasked with continuing political education every day, often by convening a meeting at which political topics were discussed. Frequently these evening sessions consisted of tuning into the ERP’s radio station, known as Radio Venceremos (Lopez Vigil 1994), then discussing the news or programming presented. So far as I can tell, before approximately 1982, no standardized political-education program existed within the FMLN; written curricula were standardized still later, perhaps as late as 1985, when the earliest remaining copies of the FMLN’s 15 Principles of the Guerrilla Combatant were produced (both interviewees and survey respondents reported receiving this document as early as 1982 or 1983, but the earliest copy I could find was dated 1985). Figure 3.1 shows two pages from the 15 Principles as they appeared in a 1985 copy. Principle 7 (on the left) reads, “We will fight against ignorance and we will always strive for cultural improvement. In this way, we will further strengthen our convictions and be more useful in the struggle.” Principle 8: “We should be friends to the people, know their problems in depth, orient them, and incorporate them to the struggle in all areas. In this way, we will make of our country an immense sea of guerrillas and organized people.” I leave a detailed discussion of intragroup and over-time variation in FMLN political education to the following chapter. However, it is useful here to

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FIGURE 3.1 Pages from the 15 Principles. Courtesy of Museo de la Palabra y la Imágen, San Salvador, El Salvador.

summarize some repeating themes. First and foremost, FMLN interview respondents of all factions repeatedly emphasized the importance of political education or conscientization to the war plan. It was seen as the most important aid to morale and the key to military victory. FMLN political education, whether formal (written, routinized, divided by level of study) or informal (conversations about Radio Venceremos programming or general discussion in meetings), emphasized a particular vision for postrevolutionary El Salvador: rule of law, “true” democracy, and an end to landlessness and injustice. These visions of the future—now often recalled with some chagrin—kept combatants going in the face of overwhelming state violence and the deaths and disappearances of many comrades. They also, by design and completely accurately, tied the fate of soldiers to the fate of civilians. FMLN interviewees discussed at length the multiple key roles played by civilians, from providing tortillas to providing intelligence. The picture on the state side was starkly different. Among my interview respondents, no regular-army ex-combatant who joined the state military prior to approximately 1983 reported receiving any formal training in human rights or civilian relations. Those who joined later may have received a cursory introduction to human rights and its importance, but neither regular-army ex-combatants

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nor higher-level ex-combatants from BIRIs or the security forces ever suggested that this training was institutionalized or repeated in a way that (my theory predicts) should lead to narrower repertoires of violence. One regular-army ex-combatant (interview 20) recalled with some irritation the imposition of human-rights training by Americans in the mid-1980s. I asked, “Did they ever tell you about human rights, or about how to treat civilians?” He answered, “There were no human rights until ’84, until the Americans came. Then we had to go listen to a speech about it.” He reported, however, that he never encountered the term “human rights” again until after the war (i.e., that the topic was never broached again during his army service). The experiences of both BIRI recruits and members of the security forces (the National Police, National Guard, and Treasury Police [PH]) differed somewhat from the confusion described by regular-army recruits. Both BIRIs and the security forces enjoyed higher status within the Salvadoran military establishment than did regular-army forces. (Ex-combatants who had served in the regular army frequently alluded to the fact that BIRIs and security-force members “lived better” than did members of the regular army.) Many BIRI officers, including both noncommissioned officers and higher-level officers, as well as a few BIRI enlisted soldiers who required special skills, reported receiving training at the US armed forces’ School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia. (In 2001 SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC.) Most of the BIRI personnel with whom I spoke who had attended SOA had attended the General Staff Officer course, a multicountry course designed “to teach them basic military skills and to prepare them to serve as leaders of infantry squads and platoons” (Gill 2004, 106). El Salvador, which had sent officers for training at SOA since the 1950s, increased its attendance “severalfold” (Gill 2004, 83) during the 1980s. Training at SOA—while it included “civic action” and “psychological operations” instruction designed to improve relations with civilians— included no regular human-rights instruction during the period of the Salvadoran war. Indeed, SOA/WHINSEC appears to have presented information from the so-called “Torture Manuals” (see, e.g., Gill 2004, 48–50) to Salvadoran officers throughout the war. Like Gill, most of my interviewees found the tactical (and, in one case, interrogation) training “useful,” but also mind-numbingly (“very, very, very, very, very”; interview 21) boring. There exists some evidence of formal training regarding the historical background and purpose of the war among BIRI and security-force combatants. Yet members of BIRIs Atlacatl, Bracamonte, Arce, and Atonal reported in interviews and surveys that this training (often, from approximately 1984 onward, performed by American trainers in El Salvador) was brief and perfunctory. One

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member of BIRI Atlacatl—the unit responsible, well before this fighter’s time, for the most notorious massacre of the conflict—stated, “We were, honestly, really scared of the Communists, you know, the terrorists and subversives. But I’m not sure we really knew why” (interview 47). Overall, the most remarkable aspect of political-education programs in state forces was their near-total absence. There were exceptions to this rule, most notably three former members of the security forces whom I interviewed. These men reported hearing repeatedly (and, in one case, reading) that they were fighting to defend the country (or “fatherland,” la patria) from Communism. Typically, they reported, “Communism” was a sort of all-purpose evil that would destroy El Salvador; only a few respondents (two veterans of the PH and one from the National Guard) reported knowing what the FMLN’s goals were, even in a general fashion, or what Communism meant politically or economically. One PH ex-combatant (interview 53), who had served in the Salvadoran Army since the 1960s and had transferred to the PH in the mid-1970s, allowed me to copy a PH training document that he believed to have originated in 1982 or 1983. The document was intended for members of the “interrogation group” (grupo de interrogadores) and was evidently designed both to familiarize personnel with the basic outlines of Communist thought and to convince them of the true danger of a Communist takeover. The final section of the fourteen-page document is titled “What Life Will Be Like in This Country If Communists Take Power,” and consists of a twenty-seven-point list of items such as “You will live in fear” and “The elimination of bourgeois morality will lead to corruption and sexual excesses among the youth.” Among my survey sample, as in my interviews, regular-army ex-combatants reported almost no training about the broader purposes of the war before the conflict, or in its first years. The situation appears to have improved somewhat, probably due to American prodding, after 1983. Regular-army ex-combatants who joined in or after 1983 were significantly more likely to report receiving some form of political education. Of those who mentioned political education, about half could recall relatively specific material. Of the few who recalled specific material, most named topics rather than titles: “something about MarxismLeninism,” for example. Among the specific titles mentioned were the Constitution of El Salvador, the Ordinances of the Salvadoran Military, and the Ten Commandments of the Salvadoran Soldier. Given the fact that the vast majority of Salvadoran soldiers received no written material about the war, a detailed consideration of these documents seems unnecessary. Yet to whatever extent they provide evidence about what combatants learned, that evidence is of a piece with the broader lessons of military policy. The focus in both the Ordinances and the Ten Commandments—both still in circulation today, albeit in revision—falls

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firmly on the glory and honor of dying for one’s country, and the necessity of swift obedience. There is no mention of civilians. Officially, with the advent of the American-imposed National Plan during 1983–86, the Salvadoran military embraced a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy that combined a larger and more offensively oriented Salvadoran military with civic-action campaigns and population movements, designed to deprive the rebels of civilian support both by physically removing civilians and by convincing civilians that the military had overcome its history of abuse. The National Plan began with major pushes into San Vicente and Usulután in 1983. In theory, this counterinsurgent strategy should have implied both major increases in the political training of state combatants and major reductions in violence against civilians—and some forms of violence did decrease during this period. But there is little indication that violence decreased because of the National Plan, not least because most FAES combatants were unaware of the plan at the time. Indeed, many officers were actively hostile to it. While the National Plan eventually expanded into nine of El Salvador’s fourteen departments, it appeared to make few inroads with the civilian population. Most analysts (e.g., Bacevich 1988; Schwarz 1991; Byrne 1996; Stanley 1996; Wood 2003) agree that government gains in 1984–85, the early years of the National Plan, were due largely to improvements in air power, which destroyed the FMLN’s ability to operate as a conventional army. Yet these same improvements in air power also produced significant civilian casualties. Of the documented civilian casualties in the mid-1980s, a majority were caused by aerial bombardment, not face-toface violence. Another key change in 1984–85 was the arrival of American trainers at each of El Salvador’s major barracks. Most American advisers embedded directly with the Salvadoran military were Spanish-fluent (or at least Spanish-capable) Army Special Forces personnel—the “quiet professionals,” as they frequently call themselves. Their involvement with the conflict in El Salvador was, for the most part, doggedly nonideological. The goal was to quickly turn what had been a “nineto-five” military into a force capable of winning a guerrilla war, while avoiding a major American incursion. My interviews with these Special Forces personnel suggested a strong, wary respect for FMLN forces and disgust with the recalcitrant Salvadoran officer corps. Trainers reported only middling success in “standing up” the Salvadoran Army, but their scorn was reserved for officers rather than combatants.3 What do these differences in training imply? The basic implications are those of the Commander’s Dilemma more generally (H1–H3). But the more nuanced story here also has implications for within-state variation. In particular, the fact that elite state groups received at least some political education, including

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education about the military importance of avoiding civilian abuses, implies that, all else equal, H4. elite state forces perpetrated narrower repertoires of violence than regular-army forces; and H5. elite state forces perpetrated more uniform repertoires of violence than regular-army forces. On the other hand, it is difficult to determine whether the PE that elite state forces received—particularly in the earliest years of the war—would have been sufficient, either in its strength (repetition, believability, memorability) or in its reach, to produce any type of restraint. After all, only a minority of elite state ex-combatants in my survey sample recall receiving any political education (compared to fully 90 percent of FMLN forces). Those who do recall receiving PE seldom recall specific lessons, books, or media. And in interviews, it is unclear precisely how much of the anti-Communist ideology expounded by armed-forces elites combatants actually learned, let alone internalized. I asked the PH veteran who shared training documents with me what he thought about the information he received regarding Communism and a Communist takeover. His answer was equivocal. “I think maybe I believed it,” he said. “But it didn’t play a big role in what we did every day.” At the command level, of course, the threat of global Communism and the maintenance of traditional hierarchies in El Salvador played a major role in the government’s rationale for war (e.g., Manwaring and Prisk 1995; Montgomery 1995; Stanley 1996). But these ideas are notably absent from most ex-combatants’ accounts of their service.

Discipline My claim in chapter 1 was that discipline alone should be insufficient to produce restraint in either levels or repertoires of violence, given the many incentives combatants face to commit many types of violence. Here, I explore differences between FMLN and state forces, and across state forces over time, in the consistency and content of disciplinary institutions. In this context, it is important to make a distinction between discipline as an armed-group institution and disciplined behavior by armed-group members. That is, it becomes tautological to ask whether discipline is effective at controlling behavior if discipline is measured by controlled behavior. Consequently, my interviews asked ex-combatants to recall not disciplined behavior but implicit and explicit messages about key rules and the likelihood of enforcement. Combatants tend to infer the importance of a rule from the severity of the punishment doled out for an infraction:

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really important rules are those whose violation results in the most severe penalties; rules for which violations go unpunished are seen as unimportant regardless of armed-group leaders’ formal positions. Both the content and the enforcement of rules are, in this sense, indicators of armed groups’ priorities. My interview data suggest a number of important connections between rules and disciplinary institutions, on the one hand, and ideas about the purposes and appropriate conduct of the war, on the other. Most generally, ex-combatants of state armed groups were more likely to associate discipline with obedience to superiors as opposed to broader standards of right behavior (a finding that holds true across various state organizations). To the extent that the state excombatants I spoke with connected rules and discipline to ideas about the war, the connection seems to have been through a generalized state of fear; fear of discipline based on physical attack and humiliation, fear of Communist evil, and fear of the enemy all played major roles in state ex-combatants’ mindsets about the war and about their experiences. Former American advisers to state armed groups suggested in interviews that the discipline they observed in Salvadoran Army units was inconsistent and based almost entirely on fear of punishment. By contrast, FMLN ex-combatants frequently reported that, in addition to simple obedience, independent standards of right behavior applied and were enforced. In both state and FMLN organizations, rules about behavior toward civilians, and one’s expectations regarding commanding officers’ responses to that behavior, were closely related to ideas about civilian status. One’s presumptive behavior toward a civilian was based less on rules regarding the treatment of civilians than on one’s habitual assumptions regarding whether civilians were really civilians. As in Kinsella’s (2011) account of state violence in Guatemala and El Salvador, if civilians are definitionally innocent, then there is no such thing as a non-innocent civilian; a civilian who crosses an armed group is no longer, in the group’s eyes, a civilian at all. My conversations with ex-combatants included three key questions about discipline: What was the most important rule in [group]? What made you think that was the most important rule? What happened to people when they disobeyed this rule? This tactic is designed to elucidate something about the existence and content of rules and punishments, as separate from questions about the extent of rule breaking. It is important to note that, while many interview respondents volunteered stories about committing or witnessing violence, I do not base my measurements of violence on these self-reports. In addition, I have attempted to separate rules—formal rules made clear by superior officers, either verbally or

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in writing—from norms or culture. In my interview protocol, questions about rules in armed groups typically followed questions about cultural practices and norms, and I signaled clearly the transition to speaking about more formal mechanisms. I asked respondents, A minute ago we were talking about unwritten rules, things that you learn without being told and have to go along with. But I want to change gears to talking about official rules. Were there a lot of official rules that were written down or that officers talked about in training? Thus the following discussion refers almost exclusively to formal rules and regulations, and to the probability that rule breakers would be punished. Occasionally I recapitulate some evidence regarding cultural norms or armed-group ideologies in order to consider how formal rules and procedures reinforced or undermined informal rules (or vice versa), but I have attempted to focus largely on combatants’ memories of formal rules. Most units in the regular Salvadoran Army, for most of the duration of the conflict, operated under both inconsistent discipline and extreme confusion or total apathy regarding the purposes of war and violence. American-trained BIRIs were better trained and better disciplined than their regular-army counterparts. (Like regular-army fighters, though, they were unlikely to report knowing the purpose of the war or understanding why they were asked to do the things they were asked to do.) Combatants who served in the security forces saw themselves as highly disciplined and “professional,” but were not, for the most part, embedded in a working military chain of command. Ex-combatants who served with regular army units overwhelmingly stated that the most important rule in their unit was obedience to the commanding officer’s direct orders, and that the most common punishment for disobedience was beating with fists or sticks. Many, seemingly echoing American military advisers’ influence on the Salvadoran Army (interviews 22, 4, 21, 80), noted that wearing one’s uniform correctly was very important. Others spoke about treating officers with respect (e.g., standing when an officer enters, saluting). In short, the most important rules in the Salvadoran Army, whether in the barracks, on patrol, or in battle, were those that formally signified respect for the chain of command. Yet, as one interviewee said, “those things don’t matter so much when you’re not in barracks” (interview 46). I heard little about the importance of rules other than those governing officer-enlisted relationships and in-barracks procedures. It was not difficult to imagine how, absent the direct control of armed group leaders, FAES fighters might behave more or less as they wished. What are rules for, exactly? I conducted my first informal interviews at a New Haven, Connecticut, senior citizens’ center in 2006, with veterans who had served in conflicts from World War II to Desert Storm. These American ex-combatants

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frequently spoke about respect for the chain of command, self-presentation, and similar issues as important to morale, and hence important to military effectiveness more generally. By contrast, questions about the military purpose of rules appeared to confuse many ex-FAES interviewees. (This was not a result of awkward Spanish. Even though I worked with a translator during interviews, she often made multiple clarifications before respondents understood that I was asking not about evidence that the rule was important, but about the reasons why it might have been important.) A few respondents said that “good discipline makes a good fighter” or “a good army” (interviews 43, 44, 65). Most indicated that they did not know the purpose of the rules they considered most important—or, indeed, that they found the question a little stupid. When I pressed ex-combatants about formal rules regarding civilians in particular, some noted that mistreating civilians was formally out of bounds. Yet few interview or survey respondents answered that soldiers in the regular army were likely to be punished when civilian abuses occurred and were reported. More often, respondents answered questions about rules governing the treatment of civilians with discussions of which supposed “civilians” were, and were not, “actually civilians.” Thus, while rules governing treatment of noncombatants existed, they did not generally apply. There were rules about civilians, yes. For example, it was illegal to kill them or to rob them. But there were no real civilians in our area. All the people there were with the enemy. (interview 51) You can never really know that somebody is a civilian, because the enemy hides among the civilians. Perhaps there were mistakes and some real civilians were mistreated. . . . (interview 69) Similarly, many interviewees clearly understood norms about the treatment of captured soldiers; many elaborated on answers about civilians by speaking about their group’s usual treatment of captured FMLN cadres. The precise connection between the two was unclear, but presumably the “civilian” category called to mind other categories of persons not to be abused. Interestingly, while many of my interviewees spoke about committing serious humanrights abuses (including murder and rape), none personally admitted to having killed a prisoner of war. In such narratives, killings of captured enemy soldiers were generally committed by “other guys,” out of the respondent’s sight. Responses from BIRI ex-combatants hewed to roughly the same line as responses from regular-army combatants, although a smart, martial appearance was mentioned more frequently. Interview and survey respondents who had served with the security forces frequently mentioned the Constitution of El Salvador when I asked about the “most important rule,” although few elaborated on this statement.

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A few FAES interview and survey respondents noted that they had been assigned kitchen duties as punishment for minor infractions. But the overwhelming majority of interview respondents who answered questions about punishment stated that punishment usually involved being berated or humiliated in front of one’s unit, or being beaten with fists or sticks. Some respondents reported punishments that amounted to torture, such as standing for many hours while holding water buckets aloft with each arm. Sexually humiliating punishments, such as forced undressing or forced cross-dressing, were reportedly common in the initial period of service, but few respondents brought up these types of episodes when interview questions were specific to “after training.” To state the case in general terms, punishments for wrongdoing were inconsistent, and they were more inconsistent when the infraction occurred outside the barracks. Formal rules about civilians existed, but were not seen as important or, in many cases, as applicable. Former American military advisers with whom I spoke assessed the situation similarly. Of his time with a regular-army unit, one former adviser (interview 81) stated, “They weren’t bad kids, in fact some of them were excellent. But they were always understrength, with new guys coming and going and so on. There was no discipline when I came along. We had discipline with training and so on after a while, getting up on time, showing up on time, all that. . . . Of course I was never allowed to go on operations [i.e., military objectives outside the barracks] with them, so who knows about that?” In general, American advisers faulted the Salvadoran officer corps for, in the words of one adviser, “caring more about the next promotion—which you know you’re going to fucking get anyway—than about doing their jobs” (interview 85). This is not to imply that rules and discipline in the Salvadoran Army were static. Across all periods of the war, according to ex-combatants surveyed, more of them perceived discipline as having improved than as having declined over time. Several factors, however, impeded serious changes in the overall nature of discipline in the Salvadoran Army. First, as Bacevich (1988) and others have noted, the recalcitrance of the commissioned officer corps toward any and all changes was immense. Despite its desperate need for military assistance, the military high command chafed at American impositions, including—or especially— regulations regarding the treatment of civilians. Second, there were vanishingly few experienced soldiers in most army units; service was compulsory for only two years and most who completed their time in the regular army either left military service or transferred to better positions, including BIRIs and security forces. One adviser said, “I was always just working on the basics with some new crowd of junior high kids” (interview 81). It is important to reiterate that formal rules and consistent discipline are necessary to, rather than sufficient for, limited repertoires of violence. Indeed,

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TABLE 3.3

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Perceptions of discipline among FMLN and state ex-combatants

GROUP

N

% SAYING DISCIPLINE “EXTREMELY IMPORTANT”

% SAYING PUNISHMENT FOR MISTREATING CIVILIANS “USUALLY” OR “ALWAYS”

% REPORTING RELATIONS WITH OFFICERS “MORE GOOD THAN BAD” OR “ALMOST ALWAYS GOOD”

FMLN

165

37

69

78

Regular army

133

46

56

38

Elite state forces

46

51

52

40

Other/unknown state forces

15

33

33

20

I would argue that variations in formal rules and their enforcement have limited utility in explaining variations in repertoires of violence, unless considered alongside institutions for training and indoctrination. For example, discipline in many Salvadoran Army units (not a majority of units, to be sure) was extremely strict; in terms of rule enforcement and organization, BIRI units were highly professional. Yet these disciplinary institutions were based largely on fear of punishment, that is, largely on external incentives. Salvadoran state ex-combatants were somewhat more likely than FMLN fighters to view discipline as “extremely important,” though somewhat less likely to say that mistreating civilians would “usually” or “always” lead to punishment by superior officers. Interestingly, the most significant difference between state and nonstate survey respondents’ perceptions of discipline concerned relations between officers and civilians. Very much in line with interview results, FMLN forces were about twice as likely as state forces to report that relations between officers and enlisted members were “more good than bad” or “almost always good.” More broadly, while obedience mattered on both sides, FMLN cadres seemingly had access to information about why discipline mattered that government forces generally lacked. Given the broad differences between FMLN and state violence, these results support my contention that disciplinary institutions alone explain little, especially insofar as they are considered without reference to the reasons behind the rules.

Institutions, Mindsets, and Violence The messages that Salvadoran combatants received via formal and informal institutions encompass both overt messages and “hidden curricula”: “tacit preparation for relating to” the social world “in a particular way” (Anyon 1980, 89–90).4 In many—perhaps most—instances, these two curricula reinforced one another. For example, FMLN combatants were explicitly instructed that the purpose of

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the organization was the reshaping of social, political, and economic relations and the flattening of hierarchies. The hidden curriculum reinforced this idea: officers were generally responsive to combatants, had good relationships with combatants, and shared combatants’ hardships. By contrast, state forces were officially (particularly following American demands that civilian killings decrease) fighting a “hearts and minds” counterinsurgent campaign. The hidden curriculum, though, suggested that civilians were likely to be, or at least to harbor, Communist enemies. More generally, while state forces faced both strong incentives and official policies to limit violence against civilians, they also received tacit, and in some cases explicit, messages suggesting that violence against civilians was to be expected. The institutions that Salvadoran combatants encountered also shaped a broad set of beliefs and habits of mind about gender and violence. Indeed, FMLN combatants often referred to the lessons of formal institutions as “completely holistic” (completamente integral)—that is, as reinforcing one another. Military tactics were in service of civilians and the future; FMLN combatants were taken to be guardians of both; civilians were at the center of FMLN strategy. While there were important exceptions to these interlocking lessons, they showed up at recruitment, in military training, in political education, and in the FMLN’s general disciplinary approach. Lessons about the role of civilians, particularly about gender and the nature of “the enemy,” are also ones that appear to have shaped combatants’ perceptions, beliefs, and habits in lasting ways. While a majority of FMLN ex-combatants reported positive memories of their “completely holistic” experiences, state ex-combatants emphasized a very different unifying theme: violence. Many were recruited violently, in a process that was confusing and frightening. Violence and humiliation were common features of both training and disciplinary practices in state groups. This type of topdown, institutionalized violent socialization is an interesting counterpart to the bottom-up violent socialization that Cohen (2013, 2016) associates with forced recruitment and the perpetration of gang rape. (However, Salvadoran state excombatants, unlike Cohen’s Revolutionary United Front respondents, seldom spoke about committing or witnessing sexual violence.) Notably, the state’s limited efforts at political indoctrination were based on demonization of the Communist enemy and the association of civilian communities with the subversive threat. As discussed above, military culture among state forces resembled military culture in other state forces in its approach to masculinity. Namely, the culture defined “real men” as those who could do, witness, and withstand violence, and feminized those viewed as weak. Sexual or gender-based humiliation appears in several state ex-combatants’ narratives of training and deployment. For members

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of the security forces in particular, misogynistic language and threats of rape or sexual mutilation were seen as routine elements of detention and interrogation. Sexual violence against detainees occurred with some frequency, according to interviewees, but sexually violent language, both among members of the security forces and toward detainees, was more common still. One National Guard veteran said that other National Guard members “talked a lot about what they were going to do to women subversives [actual or suspected FMLN supporters]. They called them lesbians and talked about raping them” (interview 54). Other respondents made similar statements about sexual violence and torture. In speaking about sexual violence they witnessed or heard about (very few excombatants admitted to having themselves committed sexual violence), nearly all ex-combatants—whether state or FMLN—distinguished between rapes committed because their usual partners were not available and those committed with extreme violence, for the (perceived) purpose of humiliation, domination, or injury (“lust rapes” versus “evil rapes,” cf. Baaz and Stern 2009). As Baaz and Stern have noted, this distinction is rooted in a belief that some rapes are, if not okay, then at least more okay than others. FMLN officers occasionally alluded to the former type of sexual violence. One officer stated, “It did happen, that guys would come down from the mountains, and they wanted a woman, and they would just sort of take one. That was terrible for our relationships with civilians, but it also made things difficult with the compañeras [female fighters]” (interview 5). This presents an extreme contrast to the explicit instruction that FMLN fighters received about the postrevolutionary world, and about the value of women fighters within the group (about one-third of FMLN members were women). Institutions also conveyed important messages, implicitly and explicitly, about civilians more generally. I asked interviewees a number of questions about civilians: “How can you tell if someone is a civilian?” “How can you tell that someone is not a civilian?” “Are civilians important?” “How are you supposed to behave toward civilians?” “Why?” Again, while persistent differences about identification and correct behavior are evident, these are less striking than between-group differences regarding why. Both state and nonstate ex-combatants identified many instances of maltreatment of civilians, but FMLN combatants were more likely to report (1) that those who mistreated civilians were punished, and (2) that there were specific reasons for the punishment. But significant and persistent differences between attitudes in different FMLN elements also appeared, and they were echoed in documents from the prewar years and the early years of the war. I take up these differences in chapter 4. As noted briefly above, state forces were deeply suspicious of civilians, and for good reason: civilians did harbor FMLN elements. Army ex-combatants appear to have shared their superiors’ belief that most civilians were “against”

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the army and that this state of affairs could not be changed. (Army higherups repeatedly failed to implement, bungled, or sabotaged American-imposed hearts-and-minds programs in contested areas.) The boundaries between living near the Communist enemy, harboring the Communist enemy, and being the Communist enemy were blurry at best and nonexistent at worst. This was not a wartime aberration; for example, the government had for many years failed to distinguish between a nonviolent reform movement and a violent revolutionary movement. Army ex-combatants’ interviews reflected this baseline suspicion of noncombatants. In at least some cases, the Salvadoran military’s scorched-earth policy was given explicit voice by military higher-ups. The country’s “red zones” (guerrilla-held territories) were ostensibly off-limits to “real” civilians; every person found in a red zone, regardless of other evidence, was assumed to be a guerrilla combatant. The implications of the Commander’s Dilemma for state-FMLN differences and intrastate differences are, as noted above, not strikingly different from the implications of other theories. Thinking back to the brief history of the conflict outlined in chapter 2, however, can provide some clues about the extent to which the Commander’s Dilemma and more rational/strategic accounts of violence against civilians would produce differing hypotheses. Broadly, unlike rational/strategic accounts, the Commander’s Dilemma suggests that, while strategic factors may be one of many causes of (changes in) violence, they need not be the only cause. In particular, the conflict’s history of shifts in control, variation in intensity, and strategic changes produces both critical moments and general trends for which different theories imply different patterns of violence.

Empirical Implications While a number of key hypotheses are laid out above, I conclude this chapter by drawing together more systematically the empirical implications of several competing theoretical approaches, in the hopes of telling the difference between theories of violence and restraint more than is possible via those broad hypotheses. First, let me restate the hypotheses and alternative hypotheses so far discussed. If the Commander’s Dilemma framework is correct, we should observe that: H1. state forces use broader repertoires of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict; H2. state forces use less uniform repertoires of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict;

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H3. state forces use higher levels of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict; H4. changes in state recruiting practices are weakly related or unrelated to changes in state repertoires of violence; H5. elite state forces perpetrate narrower repertoires of violence than regulararmy forces; and H6. elite state forces perpetrate more uniform repertoires of violence than regular-army forces. Alternatively, hypotheses derived from other theories of violence against civilians imply that A1. regular-army units commit more reported cases of rape than do elite forces (per capita) (cf. Cohen 2016, and in line with H5); A2. rape by elite forces increases over time, with the proportion of these forces reporting forced recruitment (cf. Cohen 2016); and A3. rape by regular-army units decreases from the prewar period to midwar, as forced recruitment decreases (cf. Cohen 2016). Of alternative hypotheses A1–A3, A1 and A2 are broadly consistent with the Commander’s Dilemma approach; only A3 diverges and can be used to test my approach “against” Cohen’s (2016). We can also derive some hypotheses from strategic accounts. Kalyvas (2006) assumes that a rational armed organization will commit decreasing amounts of indiscriminate (lethal) violence over time. Kalyvas predicts that targeted (lethal) violence should be highest where and when territorial control is contested—that is, where one group remains in nominal control of a territory but the enemy is frequently present. We can pinpoint several spatiotemporal “moments” where this should be true in El Salvador. First, while the FMLN held northern Chalatenango and northern Morazán for most of the conflict, towns and villages in the central and southern parts of these departments changed hands frequently. Second, while the state firmly held western El Salvador and most of the country’s cities, control over rural areas in the central and eastern parts of the country was contested throughout the conflict. Third, while the FMLN had retreated to its zones of control to regroup during 1984–85, in 1986 it was newly active in all fourteen departments, including western departments where it had little control: Ahuachapán, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate. Thus, all else equal, if Kalyvas’s theory is correct, we should observe that A4. lethal violence is higher in central and southern Morazán than in northern Morazán during most or all periods of the conflict;

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A5. lethal violence is higher in central and southern Chalatenango than in northern Chalatenango during most or all periods of the conflict; and A6. excepting areas of firm FMLN or state control, lethal violence is higher in rural municipalities in central and eastern El Salvador than in urban municipalities. Kalyvas’s theory also carries implications for change over time. Given observed changes in contestation and territorial control, we might expect that A7. selective lethal violence increases suddenly in 1986 in Ahuachapán, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate Departments. In addition, while the theory does not address repertoire variation, rationality implies convergence over time in both level and repertoire of violence, as groups “subject whatever institutional distortions they suffer from to the imperatives of their long-term interest” (Kalyvas 2006, 168). Presumably the repertoire implication here is that A8. repertoires of violence by both state and FMLN forces become more uniform over time. This contrasts with the over-time implication of the Commander’s Dilemma, in which non-PE groups such as the FAES find it increasingly difficult to control un-ordered violence over time. Consequently, we would expect to observe that H7. repertoires of violence by state forces widen over time. Note that, of the alternative hypotheses presented above, only A8 is mutually exclusive with the implications of the Commander’s Dilemma theory. Rational, strategic action is certainly one of the many drivers of violence against civilians in conflict—perhaps particularly lethal violence. So an observation that patterns of lethal violence responded to changes in contestation or control would not necessarily be surprising. An alternative group of rationalist theories, related to threat/ contestation, suggests that states engage in mass killings when (and perhaps where) civilians appear to support an insurgent organization that presents a significant threat (e.g., Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004; Valentino 2013). Thus we should expect mass killings in areas with significant FMLN support. There is no clear repertoire implication. More generally, common sense suggests that in irregular war—particularly in a densely populated country such as El Salvador—civilians are likely to face a choice between fleeing hotly contested zones and risking death by crossfire. We might infer from this type of theory that killings and forced displacement, but not other types of violence, should be correlated with battle deaths over time and space. That is,

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A9. areas and populations with significant FMLN support, such as those where prewar engagement with Christian Base Communities and unions was high, are more likely to face high levels of lethal violence by the state during the war; and A10. civilian deaths are correlated with combatant deaths over time and space. Because rationalist theories generally do not deal with intragroup (or intra“side”) variation, it is difficult to infer whether, or when, we should observe differences between regular-army units, BIRIs, and security forces, in terms of levels or repertoires of violence against civilians, except insofar as they operate in areas of the country with broadly different strategic outlooks. Another set of theories that conflicts, at some moments, with the Commander’s Dilemma are those that emphasize the importance of recruitment—either the population available for recruitment or the mechanism of recruitment—to patterns of violence against civilians. Cohen’s (2016) theory of wartime rape is represented above as A1–A3, but more generally, we should expect that violence against civilians varies with recruitment mechanisms over the course of the war. Weinstein’s (2007) theory suggests that as groups enjoy greater access to material resources, they will begin to recruit “bad types” who will commit both more violence and (implicitly) wider repertoires of violence. Thus, as patrons outside El Salvador pour increasing funds into both the state military and the FMLN over the course of the conflict, we should observe that A11. state forces commit increasing levels of violence over time, as the material and financial resources of the military increase; A12. state forces commit wider repertoires of violence over time, as the material and financial resources of the military increase; A13. FMLN forces commit increasing levels of violence over time, as the material and financial resources available to the FMLN increase; and A14. FMLN forces commit wider repertoires of violence over time, as the material and financial resources available to the FMLN increase. Again, notice that while A13 and A14 conflict with the Commander’s Dilemma—which suggests that the FMLN, whose institutions broadly supported restrained repertoires of violence, should experience little repertoire change as resources change—A11 and A12 do not. In chapter 5, I present several quantitative tests of the hypotheses laid out here. I begin by estimating broad differences between FMLN and state violence, and then examine intrastate and over-time differences in violence. But these tests are incomplete in at least two ways. First, in many instances opposing theories produce similar implications, and so few of the

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results represent conclusive evidence. Second, they cannot distinguish between competing institutional theories. Variation in institutions explains variation in violence more accurately than does variation in control or variation in contestation. But results based on FMLN-state differences and intrastate differences don’t provide sufficient leverage to consider whether the institution “doing the work” is political education (as I theorize), some other armed-group institution, or a combination. In the following chapter I build on the description of FMLN institutions presented above. In particular, I examine institutional differences, divergence, and convergence within the FMLN, in order to derive more specific hypotheses about variation in repertoires and levels of violence.

4 INSTITUTIONS, IDEOLOGIES, AND COMBATANT EXPERIENCES IN FMLN FACTIONS

“After the revolution.” The young compas of Chalate utter such phrases often, usually in the context of a humorous boast. . . . But these are more than mere slogans; they imply a kind of epigrammatic resolution about the future their efforts will bring. Sandra says “After the revolution” with the casual determination of a girl living in a nation at peace, a nation with regular, fair elections and a stable political system. . . . For Sandra, the phrase captures the meaning of her entire existence. —Jon Lee Anderson, Guerrillas

Jon Lee Anderson’s Guerrillas chronicles the FPL in the midst of its war. I don’t know who “Sandra” was, but my conversations with other former FPL women in Chalatenango during 2008 and 2009 rang with similar clarity about what a revolutionary future, and the people living that future, should be like. Of course, now the revolutionary future is a thing of the past. The list of political betrayals, large and small, is a little like a litany after you have heard it several times. Yet most FMLN ex-combatants I spoke with still hold closely (sometimes with a knowing smirk) the ideas they learned as fighters. The fact that my interview subjects spoke with such vigor and specificity about visions of the future imparted by long-ago revolutionary radio soaps, blotchy mimeographed pamphlets, and stern fireside lectures never ceases to impress me, particularly considering what has occurred in the meantime: the intense traumas of the war years, the bruising factional schisms in the postwar FMLN, and decades of daily grind. This chapter examines the ideologies and practices of the FMLN in greater detail. I describe variation in armed-group institutions across subgroups of the FMLN and over time. More important, I attempt to reconstruct the ways that institutional variation affected FMLN combatants’ mindsets. In particular I consider the relationships between ideological content and institutional form in the FMLN’s two largest subgroups. The experience of the FMLN suggests that group ideologies can affect habits of mind via formal institutions for recruitment, training, indoctrination, and discipline, and that armed-group leaders can and do build institutions for this 109

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specific purpose. The mindsets include beliefs about oneself as a fighter, about the purposes of the war more generally, about fellow combatants, about enemies, and about civilians. In most cases—as suggested by psychological findings on combat, stress, and cognition—such mindsets are both more and less than bodies of factual or theoretical knowledge. Political education in the FMLN appears actually to have changed combatants’ preferences. For example, as I discuss at some length below, a number of interview subjects who reported that they joined the FMLN for nonideological reasons (e.g., forced recruitment, desire for revenge, “nothing else to do”) nevertheless came to identify with the moral correctness of the FMLN’s fight and with the FMLN’s vision for the future of El Salvador. This in turn seems to have affected the types of violence that combatants were willing and able to commit, both against civilians and against enemy combatants. FMLN PE appears to have resulted in a set of durable, cognitively accessible “standard operating procedures” that effectively restrained combatant behavior even when combatants did not expect wrongdoing to be discovered or punished. In addition to bridging what may appear to be an empirical gap between ideologies, institutions, and combatant mindsets, this chapter provides a nuanced look at intra-FMLN ideological and institutional differences. A number of excellent accounts of the Salvadoran conflict focus on differences between FMLN and Salvadoran government institutions, but frequently this task is accomplished without reference to the often-significant differences between subgroups within the two “sides.” For example, several scholars have conducted field research with a specific FMLN faction but reported results about “the FMLN.” Yet the FMLN, despite close military coordination among its five subgroups throughout the war, was not a unitary organization but a coalition. Deep ideological differences between leaders of the five FMLN organizations strongly affected institutional decisions at the outset of the conflict. Oñate (2011, 139) notes that Cuban leaders, who worked to produce a unified FMLN, “sought a strategically united front, [but] understood that the different ideological positions of the Salvadoran groups were impossible to reconcile.” Indeed, leaders of the ERP—which grew to become one of the FMLN’s two main subgroups—were not even included in initial rounds of discussion about unification.1 With Cuban assistance, the FMLN forged a tensely—but closely—unified high command. Throughout the war, however, the FMLN maintained five separate chains of command at the operational level. The FPL and the ERP maintained separate geographic strongholds (in northern Chalatenango Department and northern Morazán Department, respectively) throughout the war. While FMLN organizations maintained joint command centers in some regions—for example, on the slopes of the Guazapa Volcano, northeast of the capital—“liberated” areas were generally controlled by a single organization. Where multiple factions

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converged for large operations, ex-combatants report, the groups kept largely to themselves. According to my conversations with ex-combatants, rumors and stereotypes were rampant, both during the war and after. FPL ex-combatants said ERP members were fanatical militarists; ERP ex-combatants in San Salvador derided FPL members as naive rubes; everyone, occasionally including National Resistance (RN) ex-combatants themselves, portrayed the RN as a bastion of fussy, overly intellectual city kids. Both close outside observers and members of the FMLN have noted the considerable differences among members of the coalition, particularly, though not exclusively, at the beginning of the war.

Ideological Differences Before examining individual combatants’ experiences of FMLN institutions, I compare the elite-level ideologies of the FMLN’s two largest factions, the FPL and the ERP, over time.2 This is an important starting point: in combination with information about institutions, it allows us to consider whether and how official armed-group ideologies can have independent effects on combatant behavior. The most obvious difference between the FPL and the ERP concerns ideology and its corollary (among Communists, at least), strategy.3 This was the difference that most separated the two organizations at the outset of the conflict and led, in part, to the exclusion of the ERP from initial unification talks. From its inception in 1972, ERP leaders adopted a militarist orientation, believing a small revolutionary vanguard would provide inspiration for a broader uprising among the people. Politics were secondary; indeed, the ERP formed a political wing only after several years of existence as an armed revolutionary organization. The ERP’s militarist approach emphasized the utility of civilians as allies to the military effort, rather than the inherent value of transformation and “conscientization” of civilian populations themselves. (As Byrne [1996, 37] puts it, “They put less emphasis on developing an independent peasant movement and more upon harnessing the grievances of the peasantry into military action against the regime.”) The ERP demanded loyalty both internally and externally and was clear in its statements that it would use violence to punish disloyalty or intransigent opposition to the revolutionary program. The FPL, by contrast, initially followed a strategy of prolonged popular war, as suggested by Mao and Giap. This approach emphasizes the political aspects of guerrilla war over the military aspects. It views civilians and civilian agreement as essential to the revolutionary project. The FPL implemented the prolongedpopular-war model in two major ways: it formed a nonviolent political wing, and, in its zones of control, it instituted (and in some cases even attended to

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the opinions of) citizens’ political committees. FPL leaders initially argued that military action was inadvisable until victory was assured (see the comments of FPL cadres in Pearce [1986] and Harnecker [1993]). Ideological differences persisted well after the joint high command formalized the FMLN’s plan of attack in 1980. Several of Pearce’s (1986) FPL interviewees stated that they had been, if not militarily unprepared, then generally reluctant to stage a “final” offensive as early as January 1981. However, they were led to believe, possibly correctly, that ERP leaders would go ahead regardless. Operational unity was regarded as more important than ideological purity; the 1981 “final offensive” set the military strategy for the FMLN over the next three years despite its utter failure to cause a Nicaragua-like popular uprising. While foquismo (and by extension the ERP) set the FMLN’s agenda at the outset of the conflict, the failure of the initial offensive to produce immediate victory led inexorably back toward prolonged popular war. Despite continuing to engage the Salvadoran military in large conventional war–style battles through approximately 1983, as early as 1981 or 1982, FMLN leaders had recognized that the war would be won or lost over a longer timescale and on political, rather than military, terms. To whatever extent the specific content of an ideology acts independently on its adherents, then, we might expect that the FPL would use greater restraint toward civilians than the ERP, which viewed them essentially as pawns, particularly during the earliest years of the war: A15. The FPL uses narrower repertoires of violence than the ERP, particularly during 1980–83. The Commander’s Dilemma theory suggests, though, that ideology, like discipline, is not sufficient on its own to produce restraint. Below, I suggest that the ERP’s more institutionalized, rigorous political-education system should produce narrower repertoires of violence during the early years of the war. Beyond issues of Marxist doctrine, a subtler—but no less important—difference between ERP and FPL ideologies concerns the role of individual transformation and moral uprightness, versus politico-military goals. Lower-level combatants of both the FPL and the ERP often joined the armed movement following intensive conscientization within liberation theology–inflected Bible study groups (Christian Base Communities or, more commonly in Morazán, Ecclesiastical Base Communities). But FPL leaders emphasized personal transformation for its own sake much more strongly than did ERP leaders. One might argue that this is a natural outgrowth of the emphasis within the FPL on broad-based, long-lasting political change as a necessary precursor to armed action. In any case, among my interview sample, FPL ex-combatants were much more likely to discuss the

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revolutionary “new man” than were ERP ex-combatants. The new man treated women equally (in theory). He was awake to the political realities of the times, having shaken off passivity and fatalism. And so on. This emphasis on individual moral-political transformation strongly affected daily life in FPL camps, particularly the rules and disciplinary procedures governing gender and sexual relations. Given the fact of its “irreconcilable” (Oñate 2011, 139) internal ideological differences and the suspicion that often characterized relationships within the high command, perhaps the most striking characteristic of the FMLN was its operational unity. The FMLN high command managed to suppress internal fractures—often with the assistance of Cuban interlocutors who acted as mediators—and to translate decisions of the high command to tactics on the ground with extraordinary coherence. But the question of precisely how FMLN ideology played a role in this tactical outcome remains. In the sections below, I examine in greater depth how FPL and ERP ideologies were enacted (or not) in formal institutions.

Recruitment For state ex-combatants, the modal answer in both surveys and interviews to questions about how they came to join their group was “I don’t know” or “Because I had to.” FMLN interview respondents were much more likely to report some reason, whether that reason was emotional, political-economic, or purely political. FMLN recruitment itself presents a puzzle for rationalist scholars of collective action. As Wood (2003) describes, FMLN membership was an extraordinarily dangerous choice, with little concrete expectation of victory and no selective benefits to joiners. Drawing on years of field work, Wood teases apart competing explanations for recruitment, showing that theories of collective action with no role for emotion fail to explain how, why, or when peasants chose to join the FMLN. They joined, in this account, not because of any expected gains, but because they had learned to value participation per se, as a show of defiance, or because of “pleasure in agency” (Wood 2003, 230–34). A second important work, that of Viterna (2013), shows how women FMLN combatants might be “pushed, pulled, or persuaded” to join the FMLN, adding to Wood’s (2003) account of the causal impact of family connections and community obligations. My interview and survey data accord broadly with Wood’s and Viterna’s— FMLN ex-combatants joined for many reasons—but in describing the recruitment processes, most of my respondents emphasized an awakening sense of injustice. At the same time, many also distinguished reasons to join from the

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set of circumstances that ultimately determined when and where recruitment took place. It seemed important to many of my FMLN respondents that they distinguish the manner of their recruitment from their reasons for joining.4 For example, among women recruits to the FMLN, many reported joining because of family ties or personal attachments, but most of these distinguished the immediate impetus for joining from broader (more political) reasons to join. Women ex-combatants I spoke with often reported that they had been involved with the revolutionary movement for some time before making the decision to join the armed group fully. Notably, FMLN recruits’ narratives varied with their date of recruitment. Early recruits (1983 and before) generally reported strong political or personal motivations and fully voluntary recruitment, whereas later recruits (1984 and after) were more likely to join because of social ties, for revenge, or because they lacked other options. Overall levels of forced recruitment by FMLN factions were low throughout the conflict. Yet, particularly in the FPL, both survey and interview data suggest that recruitment was not always fully voluntary. The proportions of ERP and FPL survey respondents reporting forced recruitment were similar: about 6 percent for the ERP, and about 7 percent for the FPL. Yet the proportions reporting “something in between” were quite different. One-fifth of FPL respondents reported nonforced, nonvoluntary recruitment, whereas just 6 percent of ERP respondents reported this. (To be clear, about 72 percent of FPL respondents reported fully voluntary recruitment; the number among state respondents was just 26 percent.) These broad figures mask significant change over time, at least within my sample. The proportion of FPL ex-combatants reporting something other than fully voluntary recruitment was lower among those recruited later in the war (meaning 1984 or later), decreasing from about 30 percent to about 20 percent. Among ERP respondents, the proportion of those reporting forced or “in between” recruitment more than doubled, from under 10 percent to over 20 percent, between the early and late periods. This may reflect the fact that, by 1984, ERP commanders had definitively (although temporarily, as it turned out) shifted to a program of forced recruiting. What set of practices does “in between” refer to? My interview data provide some clues. In some cases, respondents stated that they joined the FMLN to avoid forced recruitment by the army. Both ERP and FPL respondents reported having “had no other choice” but to join, for a variety of reasons. Some, particularly those who were young men in the early years of the war, felt they had to join the rebels or be conscripted into the state military. Others “had no choice” because family members had been hurt or killed by the regime. Still others, particularly during the FMLN’s expansionist period in 1982–83, felt they faced a choice between joining “voluntarily” and being forced to join the guerrillas. While I noticed little

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difference between ERP and FPL ex-combatants’ recruitment stories (for most of the war), survey results suggest either that FPL ex-combatants faced more pressure to join than ERP ex-combatants, or that they are more likely to identify “choices” between enlistment and conscription as having been not fully voluntary. A critical period for the purposes of this book is the period during 1983–84 when the ERP, but not the FPL, experimented with forced recruitment. According to a number of scholars, we might expect the level or repertoire of ERP violence against civilians to change during this time. As noted in the previous chapter, Cohen’s (2016) theory of violent socialization implies an uptick in sexual violence when groups implement forced recruitment. If this implication were true in the case of the FMLN, we should expect ERP cadres to report increased sexual violence during this period. The Commander’s Dilemma suggests, on the contrary, that even forcibly recruited combatants will engage in restrained violence if their broader socialization experiences, particularly their experiences of political education, result in internalization of norms of restraint. That is, all else equal, I expect to observe that H8. the period of ERP forced recruiting (roughly late 1983 through 1984) is not associated with a rise in rape (as a proportion of the repertoire) by ERP cadres. However, Cohen’s (2016) theory of violent socialization predicts, on the other hand, that A16. the period of ERP forced recruiting (roughly late 1983 through 1984) is associated with an increase in rape by ERP cadres. Both ERP and FPL cadres reported significant changes in prerecruitment vetting over the course of the war. In particular, whereas early recruits tended to speak at length about vetting processes that could stretch over years, later recruits reported both lower levels of ideological vetting and shorter recruitment processes. This occurred for a number of reasons. During 1981–82, as the FMLN extended its influence across the country and won a number of key battles, it received greater support from outside sources, primarily but not exclusively Cuba. This meant that, whereas early recruits frequently reported drilling “with sticks, in our regular clothes,” those who joined after the initial period of the war were outfitted with guns and camouflage. At the same time, FMLN leaders needed an ever-increasing supply of cadres in order to fuel advances. When the advance stalled in late 1983, leaders pulled back and reoriented toward small units and guerrilla warfare. These developments led to a period of low morale and high desertions, the “low ebb” (Byrne 1996, 146), which in turn led to increased need for new recruits.

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In one sense, this progression could be read as confirming Weinstein’s (2007) theory: prerecruitment ideological vetting certainly declined as FMLN organizations became more able to equip and provide for large bodies of troops, materially speaking. We know that the FMLN’s supply chain was sophisticated at all times, that it received material support (primarily from Cuba rather than the Soviet Union), and that its material situation improved as its military fortunes ascended in 1981–82. However, whereas Weinstein predicts that increases in available resources led to the recruitment of “bad types,” increased overall violence, and broader repertoires of violence, I predict no change. That is, all else equal, H9. increases in the FMLN material resources over time are not associated with changes in violence against civilians by FMLN cadres, i.e., repertoires of violence remain relatively constant between the 1980–83 period and the 1984–92 period. This contrasts with the implications of Weinstein’s (2007) adverse selection account, laid out in chapter 3. A13 predicts that FMLN forces commit increasing levels of violence over time, as the material and financial resources available to the group increase; A14 predicts broadening repertoires of violence by the FMLN, for the same reason. During the latter years of the war, both the ERP and the FPL controlled refugee camps in Honduras. Among FPL interview respondents—but not among the ERP interviewees in my sample—it was commonly reported that a key form of semivoluntary recruitment occurred among young people growing up in these guerrilla-controlled camps, both via FPL control of schooling and more directly. “Everybody knew that when you got older the political officer would talk to you and your parents about ‘getting more involved,’” one interviewee put it. While some camp children’s involvement was limited to rear-guard support tasks such as provisioning, others were pushed to become “runners”—messengers between the guerrilla organizations in the camps and fighters in El Salvador.

Training Both across and within FMLN factions, training varied appreciably, both by period of recruitment and by gender (a rough proxy for job classification). Prior to 1983, in keeping with the large encampments and conventional warfare that formed the heart of FMLN strategy, both ERP and FPL combatants were more likely to receive a “standard” course of military training, similar in content to the training experienced by state forces. Among ERP cadres, nearly 60 percent reported receiving one to three months of military training; in the FPL, the num-

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ber was more like 40 percent. Following the shift away from conventional tactics, however, training also shifted: in both the ERP and the FPL, many more combatants reported receiving essentially no training (under two weeks), but more also reported receiving extensive or specialist training (more than three months). While FMLN ex-combatants nearly always were able to articulate a reason for fighting, I observed notable (and, it would seem, durable) differences between the two major factions. First, ERP cadres were more likely, overall, to receive political education, and the amount received appears to have varied across ERP combatants much less than among FPL cadres. None of the ERP ex-combatants in my survey sample reported “never” having received political education, although among those who joined during the prewar period and early in the war, about 20 percent report receiving political education “rarely.” The modal category for this question was “sometimes.” Interestingly, FPL ex-combatants were both more likely to report “never” receiving political education and more likely to report receiving it “almost every day.” Second, FPL fighters were significantly more likely to speak about personal transformation, while ERP fighters emphasized more strongly the need for political revolution. And third, FPL fighters were more likely to invoke religious values or religious leaders than were ERP fighters. This is true even among those who joined well after the formation of a unified FMLN command structure. This is not to say that FPL fighters were unaware of, or paid scant attention to, the larger political goals of the FMLN. Instead, their interview responses tended to connect the FPL’s rhetoric of “the new man” to its revolutionary ideology for society, as well as to values that echoed religious asceticism. The new man would live a simple life (interviews 2, 10). He would not be macho but would respect women (interview 4). He would not drink alcohol (interviews 2, 20). He would not be promiscuous or tolerate promiscuity but would stay with just one partner in unofficial marriage. And all this, many respondents explained, was in order to bring about the revolution. I asked a high-ranking FMLN political officer, associated with the FPL, about differences between the cultures of the FPL and the ERP (interview 37; conducted in English). He responded this way: “Yeah, there were big differences. . . . For example, the RN was supposed to be kind of intellectual and superior, and the FPL was known as a very serious group. You weren’t supposed to have a life, really. Very religious. In Mexico City [the respondent had lived in Mexico City with the FMLN high command during the middle years of the war] we thought of the ERP guys’ place as the party house.” Yet this respondent also clarified that the “serious” approach of FPL leadership may not always have extended to cadres. Like several other FPL officers, he noted that the group suffered from “some discipline problems.” While he disapproved of the ERP’s generally more militant

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approach, he believed that the moral seriousness of FPL doctrine was not, on its own, capable of controlling combatant behaviors. The two factions’ separate political education programs in the initial period of the war reflected differing priorities. FPL cadres from this period frequently spoke about meetings when I asked how they learned about the purposes of the war or the history of El Salvador. In these meetings, a responsable would lead a conversation about some topic. These might include subjects belonging to the general category “liberation theology” (the preferential option for the poor, the martyrdom of the church), histories of El Salvador, or some new state atrocity. A few FPL veterans explicitly compared political-education meetings to meetings of Christian Base Communities (home Bible study groups, often tied to leftist priests) they had attended in the past. In addition to these meetings, which were explicitly instructive, meetings in the FPL were frequently also used for disciplinary purposes. While the FPL relied on informal, though relatively regular, meetings for several years, the ERP developed a written political-education program relatively early in the war. Its curriculum began with brief illustrated guides to the history of El Salvador and progressed to lengthier, and less heavily illustrated, outlines of Marxist principles (see figure 4.1). In general, early ERP recruits were significantly more likely than early FPL recruits to mention receiving printed matter, even though the levels of education and literacy reported by ex-combatants from the two factions were very similar. By the middle years of the war, however, political-education materials in the two factions had been unified. Nearly all

FIGURE 4.1 Front covers of ERP political-education materials: levels one, two, and three. Courtesy of Museo de la Palabra y la Imágen, San Salvador, El Salvador.

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FMLN combatants reported receiving the 15 Principles by approximately 1985; similarly, nearly all reported a common format for political-education meetings, namely, the evening gathering around the radio, with themes chosen by local commanders. The available interview and archival evidence, as well as the work of Hammond (1996), suggests that the institutionalization of political education was a high-priority matter for the FMLN high command, especially following the turn toward more “traditional” irregular tactics (small, mobile units; hit-and-run attacks) in the mid-1980s. My interviews suggest that the popular-education format, with its similarities to Christian Base Community organizing in the 1970s, may have been a simpler “fit” for the FPL than for the ERP. Yet many ERP cadres similarly emerged from Christian Base Communities, and Binford (1997) has suggested that popular education was a common feature of life under the ERP as well. In addition to learning about one’s own role and identity as a soldier, armed-group institutions teach combatants what to think about others. Both state and FMLN forces trained combatants in particular ideas about other soldiers, about their superior officers, and about two key external groups: noncombatants and enemies. Formally and informally, combatants learned how to distinguish between enemies and noncombatants, what to expect from these groups, and how to treat them. Relations between FMLN officers and combatants changed over time. FMLN interview respondents who joined during the prewar period or the early years of the conflict (1980–82) report that relationships were more variable and more informal than do those who joined in later years, a fact that likely represents the increasing professionalization of the FMLN over the course of the war. For example, relative to those who joined during other periods, FMLN cadres who joined prior to 1980 report both slightly better relationships with responsables and much higher rates of physical injury or abuse by officers. The institutionalization of particular ideas about superior officers appeared with the FMLN’s first written political-education materials. According to the 15 Principles, combatants must obey all orders, but the relationship between officers and combatants is intended as one of “mutual respect and equality,” reflecting the FMLN’s more general aspirations toward a society of equals. Military sociology and psychology frequently focus on the importance of small-group loyalties and bonding—both the central role that such bonds play in military socialization experiences and the importance of small-group loyalty to military operations. Yet neither FMLN nor FAES combatants reported that bonds within small groups were of primary importance. Many interview respondents spoke about individual friends and the importance of knowing someone

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who understood them (e.g., interviews 50, 53, 54, 70), but few suggested that one’s squad was the primary social group for soldiers in this conflict. Loyalty to fellow soldiers in general, however, played a major role in interviews with FMLN ex-combatants. As I discuss in greater detail below, the individual combatant’s responsibility to his or her compas occupied a central place in the FMLN’s disciplinary systems. Via meetings as well as printed matter, FMLN combatants were exhorted to “criticize individualists and selfish people” (15 Principles) and to respect and support the group as a whole. However, suspicion of fellow combatants also played a role in many FMLN ex-combatants’ relationships with fellow fighters. Especially during the middle and later years of the conflict, both the FMLN high command and mid-level officers were increasingly concerned about spies in the ranks. For at least one FPL officer in San Vicente Department, this concern soured into a campaign of torture and execution among new recruits (see Galear and Ayala 2008). More generally, officers reflected, they worried that combatants would not be able to tread the line between loyalty to fellow fighters and loyalty to the group (interview 45). Yet in reality, most FMLN excombatants did not report difficulty with this dual mission. Most shared the opinion of this FPL ex-combatant: “We just had to trust each other and let the officers sort out people who didn’t belong there” (interview 47). FMLN attitudes toward the enemy were complex. Many FMLN fighters had joined the fight after witnessing atrocities by the army and were disinclined to view army combatants as victims in the struggle. In interviews, some FMLN combatants reported that those who joined the army did so for money, or because they were otherwise unemployed; a few went so far as to characterize state troops as “backward” (interviews 11, 15, 35)—essentially, the unteachably stupid of the peasant class. Frequently, these respondents suggested that the Salvadoran Army was uniformly incompetent and vicious, and that its military victories were entirely the result of American imperialists’ superior weaponry. Far more FMLN cadres, however, echoed the 15 Principles: enemy soldiers were victims of their situation who could and should be convinced to join the cause. Several interview respondents reported that they believed state forces were “better trained” than they were, and hence that convincing captured soldiers to defect was a net military benefit. In conversations about the enemy, FMLN cadres frequently made great efforts to distinguish between “enemy soldiers” and “the real enemy,” typically “the rich” (or oligarchs) and “the Americans.” Officers encouraged these interpretations both formally and informally, believing (correctly, in some places and times) that the FMLN could develop a reputation for treating prisoners kindly. FMLN attitudes toward civilians, while vastly more beneficent than state combatants’ attitudes in general, varied by faction. In particular, relationships

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between FPL cadres and civilians in their zones of control appear to have been significantly closer, and to have featured more mutual respect, than those between ERP combatants and civilians in their zones of control. This difference has been discussed in previous analyses of the FMLN (Montgomery 1995); interestingly, though, I find both in interviews and in survey data that the FPL/ERP differences faded over time. The change was to some extent related to strategic necessity: the FMLN realized that it would not achieve a quick military victory, and despite continuing ideological differences, the high command’s plans reflected this reality after 1985 (FMLN, 1982, 1985, 1986). In line with this general ideological difference, FPL and ERP ex-combatants spoke in subtly different ways about civilian populations. FPL ex-combatants frequently referred to civilians as “allies” or “partners” in the struggle, whereas ERP ex-combatants were more likely to assess the extent to which civilians in their zone were “conscientized” or “backward.” This is consonant with the ERP’s more general ideological position. Civilians are tactically important, but their role in bringing about the revolution is secondary to that of the more enlightened vanguard. While the foco strategy favored by the ERP faded from the unified FMLN’s strategic plan after the first years of the war, interview data suggest that the ERP’s attitude toward civilians and civilian participation in the war effort remained somewhat instrumental. While the ERP was willing to protect civilians, ERP excombatants were more liable to express the opinion that such protection—often accomplished via an agonizingly long, slow march to safer territory—was an imposition, something that “just had to be done.” FPL combatants, on the other hand, either did not share this feeling or were more able to mask it in interviews. They referred to civilians in their northern Chalatenango zone of control as “our people” and seemed to mean it. FMLN cadres appeared to make significantly finer-grained assessments of when a civilian was “not really a civilian” than did ex-combatants from state groups—but especially among ERP cadres, interviews showed agreement that certain noncombatants were not “real” civilians. In general, these “fake civilians” were orejas (ears), persons suspected of informing government forces on the whereabouts of FMLN cadres. However, rather than holding all noncombatants in suspicion on a permanent basis, as was common among state forces, ex-combatants of the FMLN frequently reported that they were surprised, hurt, and sad when civilians informed. Frequently, especially earlier in the conflict, informers were executed (interviews 24, 52; and see Anderson 2004). The ERP, over the objections of other FMLN groups, carried out two additional programs of violence against civilians in its zone of control. In 1983–84, the ERP high command implemented a system of forced recruitment in Morazán

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Department; between 1985 and 1989, the ERP authorized and carried out murders of municipal officials (alcaldes, mayors) who participated in planned national elections. Interviewees spoke differently about these officials than they did about orejas; orejas were spies, whereas the mayors targeted in the assassination campaign were “not really civilians” only in that they legitimized elections the FMLN considered to be illegitimate. On the basis of my interview evidence, I would argue that the differences between ERP and FPL cadres regarding civilians—who they were, what the role of a civilian was, and so on—were considerable. Many FPL cadres expressed sorrow about executions and emphasized the relationships they thought they had shared with the accused. ERP ex-combatants, on the other hand, were much more likely to speak about harms to civilians, both in general and in specific cases such as those of orejas or the assassinations of mayors, as a necessary means to an end. The differences between ERP and FPL combatants’ experiences of political education suggest, in line with the Commander’s Dilemma, at least two key hypotheses. If the institutionalization of political education is as important as (or more important than) ideology per se, then we might expect that H10. FPL repertoires of violence against civilians narrow between the beginning of the war and approximately 1984–85, as FMLN political education is standardized; H11. FPL combatants commit wider repertoires of violence than ERP combatants, particularly during the early years of the conflict; and, more generally, H12. FMLN repertoires narrow following standardization of political education; and H13. FMLN repertoires grow more uniform following the standardization of political education.

Discipline As I discussed in chapter 3, FMLN combatants were less likely to report that discipline was “extremely” important than were state combatants. Yet unlike state combatants, a majority of FMLN ex-combatants in the survey sample reported that discipline improved over the course of their time in the organization. Both ERP and FPL combatants, and those who joined during all periods of the conflict, shared similar reports. These survey results agree, in general, with interview data, in which combatants emphasized relatively good relationships with officers and the FMLN’s attempt to embody the respectful, nonhierarchical society it sought. Obviously, such high-mindedness had its limits. But as with most institutions, the contrast with state ex-combatants’ experiences is stark.

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However, according to former mid-level officers I interviewed, the high command felt that discipline was lax, or at least ineffective, during the early years of the war, despite the fact that many early combatants had been vetted—often at length—before being sent to the front. In particular, these officers noted, there were “significant problems on some of the fronts” (interviews 23, 24, 37) with civilian harassment of various types, and with summary execution of captured government soldiers. One officer said, “It was a real worry, because of course at that time we were recruiting as fast as we could, and we relied on civilians for food and so on. We wanted soldiers [of state forces] to join us, because they had some military training and it would deplete their ranks and increase ours. So obviously if you’re stealing from houses or harassing women or shooting [enemy] soldiers, there is going to be trouble” (interview 23). Rather than increasing punishments, the FMLN high command appears to have acknowledged that punishment was an ineffective deterrent. It responded to these disciplinary issues by amplifying and publicizing its rules, rather than by stepping up enforcement in a more traditional sense. By 1985 all FMLN cadres had received copies of the 15 Principles, which responded directly to the concerns of the high command regarding the treatment of prisoners and civilians. Principle 6, illustrated with a line drawing of a soldier (clearly army) receiving treatment from an FMLN medic, states, “We respect prisoners, and always work to convince enemy soldiers to abandon the army of the rich. We are not an army of vengeance, we are the army constructing the future of the poor.” Other principles discuss the relationship of the FMLN to the civilian population and exhort cadres to be (and behave as) “friends of the poor” (principle 8). The preface to the pamphlet instructs that cadres should consider these principles in their review of every mission and as a guide to every meeting. Of course, the fact that such a publication exists means little if combatants do not recall the rules, or if the rules so carefully laid out are seldom, in point of fact, actually considered. Both interview and survey data, however, confirm that FMLN excombatants do remember printed materials and did consider these rules to be among the most important formal rules for combatants. Of FMLN combatants in the survey sample, nearly all reported that they had received “books or pamphlets” pertaining to important rules, and nearly all of them could give examples of individual titles. The 15 Principles were among the written material most frequently mentioned. Several interview respondents essentially recited the principles from memory. But were these really the most important rules? Like their counterparts in the state military, FMLN militants frequently named obedience to superior officers as one of the most important rules; practical matters such as not smoking at night (which creates a target for

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snipers) also were commonly suggested. However, a majority of ex-FMLN interview respondents stated that the most important rule was “fidelity to the revolution” or “revolutionary values.” This is a vague concept—less a specific rule than a general principle—but my respondents, for the most part, clearly explained what it means to have fidelity to the revolution, frequently referencing more specific behavioral rules as they articulated their opinions: You cannot do anything that is against the cause. So, you have to comply with every order and you have to have discipline even if you are frightened or you disagree. It’s also really bad to steal from civilians or bother them in any way, because civilians are the main base of the movement. You’re supposed to be doing it for them. (interview 36) Revolutionary values, like humility and not being selfish, thinking of the group before you think of yourself. [AHG: So what would that mean? Can you think of an example?] One example is the marching. We would march for a really long time, and I would be tired, my feet got sores and blisters. But I had to keep going or I would endanger the compañeros. Also, things like stealing. Taking a chicken or whatever for yourself. We are all hungry, but you have to think of how that looks [to civilians]. (interview 30) Ex-combatants of the FMLN additionally reported that officers continually harped on “revolutionary values” and the connection between these values and correct combatant behavior. The rules, and the principles underlying those rules, and the utopian goals underlying the principles, were more or less constantly reiterated in daily life, at least for regular FMLN combatants (those living in encampments with other combatants, as opposed to militia members living at home). Notably, while meetings for political education were intended as education, combatants with less experience of formal schooling frequently viewed them as explicitly disciplinary procedures. In response to a general question about discipline, one FPL ex-combatant said, “Yes, everyone was very disciplined. There were meetings and you had to go, and sit, and listen, which was sometimes hard” (interview 51). In theory, the revolutionary ideology of the FMLN and its subgroups extended to full equality of the sexes. FMLN documents from throughout the war contain pictures of female front-line combatants and flowery prose about women’s roles in the group. On the ground, however, this idealistic approach coexisted somewhat uncomfortably with the traditional gender relations of rural El Salvador and the demands of militarism—a contradiction that extended to disciplinary systems. For example, ex-combatants of both the FPL and the ERP used

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the phrase “women’s work” to describe punishments for minor wrongdoings. Grinding corn and washing dishes, tasks generally associated with women, were looked on with considerably less respect than male-associated front-line positions. Just one interview respondent in this project reported receiving “no training at all”; this was a cook who served with the FPL during the final years of the war (1989–92). When I asked why she had received no training, she responded, “I was just a cook” (interview 18). Punishments for infractions viewed as severe could be draconian. For example, the punishment for rape was death, and according to at least some accounts this punishment was exacted. In extensive interviews with women in the FMLN, Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday (1996, 182–84) found that some women who suffered rape or attempted rape by comilitants did not report the attack to superior officers because they believed the death penalty to be too severe for such an offense. No FMLN ex-combatant with whom I spoke reported witnessing an execution for rape, but in several cases interviewees had witnessed or knew of executions for crimes such as killing prisoners. Many more had witnessed or heard of executions within the organization over actual or perceived disloyalty. Less severe offenses (falling asleep while on watch, for example) were frequently punished with additional physical labor, including temporary demotion to cook, or by taking the combatant’s firearm for a period of time. However, the most talked-about form of punishment in the FMLN, by far, was criticism and self-criticism (critica y auto-critica [CSC]). Here is how one former responsable of the FPL described the disciplinary use of CSC, in response to my question about what would happen if someone committed an offense such as stealing: OK, let’s say the guy comes to someone’s house in the zone under our control and says, you have to give me a chicken. That kind of stealing is a huge problem because it shows the population that when we have power we are just like the enemy. So, OK, I am his superior officer and I find out. I would probably punish someone like that by taking away his weapon, but also I would tell him, we are going to talk about this in the meeting. . . . Then I would tell everybody what he did, like, “So-andso stole a chicken, and it reflects badly on us.” Then he would admit to what he did, talk about why he did it, and we would discuss publicly why it was not correct. People learned from that because they knew they were betraying both the Frente [the FMLN] and their friends. They learned, but ooh [whistles], they hated it. (interview 43) While CSC was mentioned most frequently by ex-combatants of the FPL, veterans of all FMLN forces remarked on its power, both as an embarrassing

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spectacle and as an educational tool. One ex-combatant who had been caught stealing extra rations recalled her experience of CSC vividly, twenty-five years after the fact: “I had to come to the meeting as usual and admit to everybody that I took food from them. It was awful. Later when I was alone, I cried and cried” (interview 48). Differences in the style of discipline across FMLN factions were considerable. While CSC was an element of discipline in all five FMLN organizations, the emphasis placed on personal relationships and betrayals, and the connections made between these types of betrayals and betrayals of the revolutionary project, seems unique to the FPL. This is at least partially attributable to the different strategic approaches in which the FPL and the ERP originated.

Ideology, Institutions, and Gender Gender norms and expectations play an important role in most, if not all, armed groups (see, e.g., Enloe 2000; Burke 2004). The groups contesting the Salvadoran civil war were no exception to this rule, although the specifics of the required performance varied considerably across groups. These differences were, I argue, consequential to fighters’ mindsets regarding civilians (and particularly female civilians), and thereby affected the repertoires of violence committed by the different groups. The ways in which group cultures dealt with gender mediated combatant behavior in at least three ways: by informing their sense of what was required of a man (or woman); by contributing to a particular view of civilians; and by making some forms of violence—most notably sexual violence—more or less cognitively available to individual combatants. The role of gender in the FMLN was quite complicated, not least because of the presence of a significant female minority at the front lines. It has been estimated that approximately 30 percent of FMLN cadres were female, although women were disproportionately assigned to logistical roles such as cooks or radio operators (Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday 1996). Women ex-combatants’ attitudes toward their experiences of gender in the FMLN were complex. Most described their recruitment as voluntary, although frequently they also suggested that there had been few other choices available (c.f., Viterna 2006, 2013). Many suggested that the ideal of gender equality was not in operation on the ground, but many of those who indicated there were problems with gender relations within FMLN cadres also emphasized that their status in the FMLN was much higher than the status they had enjoyed at home. Frequently, women who had served with the

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FPL emphasized the importance of personal transformation, both with regard to themselves and among men in the group. The “new man” was a new model of masculinity for most cadres, a sort of revolutionary Promise Keeper. Whereas masculinity had previously been defined via provision for, and domination of, women and children, the new man was expected to avoid alcohol, to “respect women,” and, if necessary, to sacrifice himself for the future of the community. Whether coincidentally or not, in interviews former FPL cadres frequently referred to their mothers as key points of inspiration. A number of interviewees also discussed the prohibition on alcohol use in FPL-controlled zones in terms directly linked to manhood and dignity; frequently, they reflected on the humiliating inability of fathers to provide for their families, and the turn toward alcohol as an escape. FPL leaders—as discussed above—strongly valued both asceticism and general moral uprightness among cadres, at least initially. This approach was tested in some cases by the presence of women in the ranks. One high-ranking former FPL officer said, “People are going to have sex, but it can’t be a distraction. So what do you do?” For the FPL, the answer was full disclosure. Couples within the group were expected to be monogamous, and those outside the couple were expected to respect the pairing once it was announced. Typically, responsables publicly recognized the new couple, who then referred to themselves as “almost married” (Montgomery 1995; Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday 1996). One FPL ex-combatant explained, “They could see that it [the numerical imbalance between women and men at the front] was causing problems, because there was a lot of jealousy and mistrust. So they said, look, when a couple announces that they are together you have to respect that. Then you could only pursue someone who was free. I think it was good” (interview 42). However, as the ranks of FPL combatants grew, the group’s tight controls on personal relationships eased. Indeed, while many combatants recalled the strict oversight of the early days, most agreed that, overall, sexual liberty was much higher within guerrilla encampments than outside them. Anderson (2004, 143) quotes a male FPL combatant: “You could die tomorrow, and so people don’t worry so much about the usual rules.” Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday (1996) find that most women cadres agreed with this assessment of the state of affairs but tended to be more critical than their male colleagues of the lax sexual mores among cadres. Many, perhaps most, female cadres accepted and even enforced a sexual double standard (Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday 1996), giving lip service to the ideals of sexual equality but maintaining that men needed more sex than women, and that women who appeared to “want it” were inappropriate

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or morally suspect. In my interviews as well as in published works (Anderson 2004; Vasquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday 1996), FPL cadres frequently told stories about “la Pís-Pís” (roughly “Fuck-Fuck”). This possibly apocryphal figure offered herself to male cadres as, essentially, a morale booster. But while this behavior was seen positively by Anderson’s male informants, the women interviewed by Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday were scandalized and scornful. These authors, whose respondents were exclusively female, title their chapter on sexual behavior at the front “Free Love or Prostitution? Two Names for the Same Phenomenon.” Thus the ideological politics of equality and moral uprightness taught in FMLN training was not always on display on the ground. Certainly it was never applied simply. Further complicating the supposed politics of equality was sexual harassment and violence within the ranks. Female FPL cadres in particular were likely to report experiences of sexual harassment, including “nagging for sex” by men of their own rank. Women cadres in my interview pool suggested that this type of nagging was irritating, but that a firm “no” was usually—though not always—successful. AHG: What do you mean by “sometimes it doesn’t work”? FPL ex-combatant: Sometimes you just get tired of people constantly saying [makes gesture that can only be described as nudge-nudge, wink-wink], and it gets on your nerves, and you say, OK, I pick soand-so. There were also cases when compas got carried away and forced women [compas] to have sex, or tried to force them. AHG: What would happen then? Would you tell someone, or . . . ? FPL ex-combatant: Sometimes those things were reported, sometimes they weren’t. But when you did report there was usually a very hard punishment. (interview 20) In addition to sexual harassment and violence within the ranks, Vásquez, Ibáñez, and Murguialday (1996) and two interviewees from this project reported sexual exploitation by responsables. None seemed to believe that the problem was endemic, but both of the interviewees suggested that exploitative relationships with senior officers happened with some frequency. Both women and men whom I interviewed occasionally suggested that intragroup sexual violence and harassment was in effect a substitute for sexual violence and harassment toward civilian women. What of the ERP? Fewer female ERP cadres than FPL cadres reported sexual violence and harassment; the complexities associated with the FPL’s extremely restrictive early policies on fraternization were entirely absent from these interviews. Across the FMLN, however, the consensus among my interview subjects formed

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around the difficulties of applying progressive teachings on gender to recruits who had grown up in a society with extraordinarily restrictive gender roles.

Hypotheses The FMLN, while operationally unified, experienced considerable ideological, strategic, and institutional variation. ERP and FPL combatants reported significant differences in the comprehensiveness and routinization of political education, as well as in its content, particularly at the start of the war. They also had divergent experiences of sex and gender and differing expectations about religion and civilian control. Other theoretical perspectives on violence carry few repertoire implications. However, to the extent that their implications for variation in levels of lethal violence diverge from those of the Commander’s Dilemma, we can consider which perspective better explains intra-FMLN variation. Perspectives that privilege ideology per se would predict that the FPL commits less violence across the board due to the value it places on political organizing among civilians. If Kalyvas’s (2006) territorial-control argument is correct, we should expect to see increased FMLN abuse of civilians in areas still under contested control, as opposed to areas fully controlled by either the government or the FMLN. Principal-agent perspectives like Weinstein’s (2007) suggest that as the FMLN’s flow of tangible resources increases, we might expect widening repertoires of violence; empirically, that would mean increasing violence and perhaps widening repertoires after the earliest years of the war. A more general principal-agent approach, in line with Mitchell (2009), also suggests that FMLN cadres on missions away from commanders should commit more unordered violence (and therefore probably higher levels and broader repertoires of violence). This, in turn, implies that A17. FMLN repertoires broaden as the group turns toward small-unit tactics and long-range reconnaissance in 1984–85. The institutional and ideational differences described above fill a gap in recent studies of violence against noncombatants. I show that ex-combatants of the FMLN, even years after their experiences with the organization, recall both their training experiences and the content of the training with considerable clarity. I show how armed-group institutions reflected and transmitted armed-group ideological positions to even very poorly educated—and in some cases rather apolitical—recruits. The key lesson learned is that a highly ideological armed group is also a well-institutionalized armed group, in the sense that ideologies

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(and, more generally, cognitive frames for armed conflict and violence) must be carefully and repeatedly taught. While FMLN cadres became extremely fluent in the Marxist-Leninist (and Maoist, and Guevarist) language of their high command, this fluency required considerable practice. Yet the link between institutions and combatant mindsets is less elusive than the link between combatant mindsets and combatant behavior. In chapter 5 I test the hypotheses above, as well as those derived in chapter 3.

5 VIOLENCE AND RESTRAINT IN THE SALVADORAN CIVIL WAR, 1980–92

Accurate information. . . . I think we have all found out that is very hard to establish. —Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders, statement to House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, February 2, 1982, quoted in Didion, Salvador

Chapters 3 and 4 examined variation in institutions and combatant mindsets, across and within FMLN and state forces. In building these qualitative accounts, I also derived a number of hypotheses about patterns of violence. Many theories of violence and restraint have similar implications about the broad differences between FMLN and state forces. These theories often diverge, however, at the subgroup level, and/or over time. These diverging implications allow me to test which theory (if any) best explains variation in violence. In this chapter I show— to the extent that estimates of repertoires are available and believable for the Salvadoran case—that the Commander’s Dilemma framework explains patterns of violence that other theoretical approaches cannot. Yet the patterns themselves are difficult, and in some cases impossible, to pin down. Some of the hypotheses laid out in the preceding chapters cannot be tested with confidence here. Thus, this chapter opens with a discussion of the difficulty of accurately estimating patterns of violence, and the tendency of political scientists—who are primarily interested in causal inference—to avoid the prior and more serious problem of descriptive inference. The basic argument is that we ought not to attempt to explain a pattern unless we are reasonably confident that that pattern is real. I then turn to a surprisingly hard question: how many civilians died in El Salvador? Despite many years of scholarship on the conflict, researchers have only recently arrived at the first rigorous estimate of civilian deaths in the Salvadoran civil war. Using multiple systems estimation (MSE), my co-author Patrick Ball and I arrive at point estimates between about seventy thousand and about ninety 131

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thousand deaths, depending on the type of summation used (see Hoover Green and Ball 2018, and the discussion later in this chapter). This places El Salvador, finally, in the company of other irregular wars for which statistically defensible death tolls are available. We know, for example, that approximately two hundred thousand died in Guatemala (e.g., Davenport and Ball 2002); more than seventy thousand in Perú (Ball et al. 2003); nine thousand to twelve thousand in Kosovo (e.g., Spiegel and Salama 2000; Ball et al. 2002). The discussion of MSE in the context of overall civilian deaths should clarify the logic behind MSE estimates of other types of violence. Unfortunately, MSE cannot be used to estimate the incidence of every type of violence in every period of the war. Because it relies on overlaps between datasets to estimate the total number of episodes of violence (more on that below), it is difficult or impossible to use MSE where data are sparse, as they are for many of the types of violence wielded against civilians in El Salvador. Consequently, where MSE is not possible, I use a variety of strategies to consider variation in repertoires of violence. Qualitatively, I rely to a limited extent on interview data.1 Quantitatively, I have access to data from my ex-combatant survey, and from four large datasets, which provide a broader (though also incomplete and biased) look at patterns of violence. These datasets serve as the basis for multiple systems estimates where possible; where data are too sparse for MSE, as I explain in greater depth below, I compare reported patterns across datasets and consider the extent of overlap between datasets. After laying out my quantitative hypothesis tests, I ask, in general, How does the Commander’s Dilemma do, in comparison to alternative theories of violence?

On Violence Data At the Parque Cuscatlán, in central San Salvador, a black granite memorial wall stretches nearly three hundred feet. On it are inscribed the names of at least twenty-five thousand Salvadorans killed during the civil war, as well as a harrowing mural of scenes from the conflict. Nearby is another, smaller marker, added six years after the public opening of the memorial wall. “To the anonymous civilian victims,” it reads. “Among the 30,000 names carved in this monument to memory and truth, there are not written the names of thousands of civilian victims, who never became known. This space is dedicated to them as a sign of respect and admiration. Their name is Homeland.” I think about that plaque a lot, with its etchings of a boy, a girl, an ear of corn. The number of deaths during the civil war in El Salvador was hotly contested as the war progressed, as much in the United States as in El Salvador. To some

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extent, it remains so today. Stanley (1996, 1, 281n1) puts the figure at fifty thousand, noting that “many sources cite a figure of 70,000 without stating exactly how it was arrived at.” In a review of several books on the topic of the civil war, Mason (1999, 179) opens with, “The civil war in El Salvador lasted over a decade and took the lives of more than seventy thousand citizens. This much is common knowledge.” Wood (2003, 8) cites Seligson and McElhinny’s (1996) survey-based approach to argue that “the best estimate of total civilian and military related deaths in the Salvadoran civil war is between 80,000 and 94,000, of which between 50,000 and 60,000 were civilians.” Seligson and McIlhenny themselves, in an exhaustive review of expert guesses and convenience sources, settle on seventy-five thousand, a figure originally published by the nongovernmental Commission for Human Rights in El Salvador (Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador [CDHES]), which in turn compiled the number from both verified and unverified reports, as well as news media figures. (As Seligson and McIlhenny note, the US government eventually settled on a figure of fiftyfive thousand, derived from a tabulation of the monthly “grim-grams” compiled by the US embassy in San Salvador.) Other expert guesses range from about thirty thousand deaths on the low end (Rummel 1997) to a high of eighty-two thousand (Heldt, Wallensteen, and Nordquist 1992). Schwarz (1998), reviewing LeoGrande’s (1998) history of the war, puts the number at forty thousand. Allison (2012), writing on the unanswered questions of the war, states that the war claimed the lives of “approximately 75,000 Salvadorans.” Meanwhile, in summing up the most lethal period of the war, the Reagan administration was never willing to claim even so many as twenty thousand deaths (Valencia-Weber and Weber 1986). With the exception of Seligson and McElhinny’s, all of these estimates are what I term “expert guesses”: often-cited numbers emanating from conflict experts but not based on statistical estimates. To be clear, by “estimates” I do not mean estimates in the colloquial “best guess” sense, but rather statistical estimates. The hallmark of an estimate, in this definition, is a statistically valid margin of error (a confidence interval, in frequentist terms; a credible interval, for Bayesians). If the error attached to a number (say, “forty thousand deaths”) cannot be assessed statistically, then that measurement is not an estimate in the sense that I mean, because there is no systematic basis for descriptive inference, which I define as statistical reasoning from the available data to the ground truth. Both for the purposes of assessing competing claims about violent death in El Salvador and for the broader project of estimating repertoires of violence, I distinguish carefully between four key types of estimates: those derived from probability sample surveys, those derived by MSE from convenience data, those based on nonstatistical extrapolation from uncorrected convenience data, and expert guesses of

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the type listed above. By “convenience data” I mean any list not drawn from a probability sample. Convenience data include nearly all self-report systems, such as hospital records, NGO case files, police records, Truth Commission testimony, legal records, and so on. Surveys and MSE can lead to rigorous estimates, under certain conditions; uncorrected convenience data and expert guesses generally cannot. Surveys are a common feature of both epidemiological research on violence (e.g., Spiegel and Salama 2000; Amowitz et al. 2002; Johnson, Asher, and Rosborough 2008; Johnson et al. 2010; Roberts et al. 2004; Burnham et al. 2006) and political science inquiry. Humphreys and Weinstein (2006) conducted a survey of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone that yielded fascinating insights about discipline, unit cohesion, and violence against noncombatants, and Blattman (2009) surveyed a population of young adults who had been available for forced recruitment as children, during conflict in Uganda. Yet, for the Salvadoran case, surveys are a remarkably flawed tool—not least because the type of sampling that might have provided a rigorous estimate in the aftermath of the war was yet to be developed in 1992. Moreover, survey data on violent mortality are surprisingly unstable; estimates can depend on everything from the way the question is framed to the way that sampling is performed. In any case, for any number of reasons, there has been no systematic survey to measure the incidence of lethal (or nonlethal) wartime violence in El Salvador.2 Uncorrected convenience data have been used in a number of subnational studies of dynamics of violence. For example, Weinstein (2007) uses data gathered from newspaper articles as evidence that Sendero Luminoso cadres in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Perú were more violent than cadres elsewhere. Kalyvas (2006) bases his claims about dynamics of violence in the Greek civil war on data gathered from village archives and interviews. Condra and Shapiro (2012) use lists compiled by Iraq Body Count as the basis of a major analysis of civilian casualties. These are only a few of many convenience datasets cited in recent political science literature. Others include hospital records, police records, social-media evidence, casualty lists kept by NGOs, and newspaper reporting on casualties. Two characteristics of convenience data must be emphasized above all others: (1) they are incomplete—usually very incomplete, and (2) they are not verifiably representative. Furthermore, because an accurate sample frame is missing, the level of incompleteness and bias can seldom be estimated. This is obviously a problem for those of us intending to use raw violence data as an evidence base for causal claims about violence. How incomplete are convenience datasets? The answer varies by case. It is estimated, for example, that nearly all the deaths that occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina during 1992–93 have been reported (Ball, Tabeau, and Verwimp 2007). However,

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the Bosnia case is an outlier for several reasons: its prewar administrative systems were relatively sound, and a considerable amount of international attention followed the onset of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Another example from the Balkans, that of the civil war in Kosovo (1998–99), shows the limits of convenience data. In the Kosovo case, just over four thousand unique deaths were registered, but subsequent investigations, including a well-regarded survey (Spiegel and Salama 2000) and a multiple systems estimation (Ball et al. 2002), estimated that the true number of deaths was probably in the range of about nine thousand to twelve thousand. Much later, an analysis of the Kosovo Memory Book found closer to fourteen thousand unique reported deaths, meaning that survey and MSE estimates, while significantly closer to the true sum than raw data, still were conservative. Convenience data missed a genocidal campaign of violence in Guatemala, recording fewer than half of the (estimated) true number of deaths (Ball, Kobrak, and Spirer 1999). Likewise, in Perú, fewer than half of the deaths were registered by any source (Ball et al. 2003). Regardless of their startling incompleteness, much quantitative analysis of violence is based on convenience datasets of one type or another. In my experience, the decision to use uncorrected convenience data as a basis for analysis is defended in one of two ways: either underreporting is assumed to be even across all relevant strata, or the direction of bias is assumed. Neither of these assumptions is plausible. Political scientists, with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld, are quick to discuss “known unknowns”: problems that frequently characterize data on violent events, particularly biases toward events occurring in urban areas and biases toward large events. Newspapers are more likely to register an episode of violence when that violence is a massacre in an urban area. Yet these discussions of bias represent only a small fraction of the potential biases that affect convenience datasets. Moreover, to acknowledge urban bias or large-event bias is not to account for it. The effects of these and other biases vary across time, space, and other key strata. Implicit or explicit claims that most of the bias in convenience samples originates in one or a few main sources or dynamics are seldom tested. Data on violence are socially produced (Davenport and Ball 2002; see also Cohen and Hoover Green 2012 and Hoover Green 2013a, on sexual violence). The social production of data is different from, though linked to, the social construction of violence itself. Social production refers to a complex web of social networks, institutional allegiances, institutional priorities, and other factors. To take a hypothetical example from El Salvador, assume that everyone agrees that when a soldier kills Family X, civilians with no particular allegiance, this act is a crime of war and should be reported as such. Still, whether and to whom the murder of Family X is actually reported depends on an unknown and likely

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unknowable—but not random—combination of social factors. Whether Family X ends up on a list of civilian victims depends on the location and status of the victims, whom (if anyone) the victim’s neighbors trust, how many of those neighbors are still alive themselves, whether the victims were Catholic or Protestant, which offices are open on a given day, whether the roads are passable, whether there is extended family in the city where the data are being collected, and so on. That social networks of trust and affiliation should prove important in the construction of data during periods of armed conflict is not surprising. Social scientists’ blindness to the inaccuracies of convenience data is due at least partially to the nonexistence (for many conflicts) of multiple data collections, without which the large differences between datasets created by alternate networks may remain invisible to researchers. Yet, as Krüger, Ball, Price, and Hoover Green (2013) have shown, virtually every case in which more than one convenience dataset has been gathered shows major differences between those datasets. Still, convenience data can be extremely useful. I use convenience data to estimate, via MSE, the number of total violent civilian deaths (that is, civilian deaths via killing or disappearance) during the course of the war. In the Salvadoran case, common expert guesses about the total magnitude of violent death are surprisingly close to MSE estimates. So it may be worth explaining in some detail why rigorous estimation is even necessary. First, contrasting the Salvadoran case with others in which expert guesses, many of which become conventional wisdom, have been disproven underscores the extent to which “getting it right” by using convenience data or expert guessing is a happy accident, rather than a reliable technique. For example, as noted above, MSE estimates roughly doubled the expert guess about civilian deaths during the Guatemalan civil war, to approximately two hundred thousand (Davenport and Ball 2002; also see Ball, Kobrak, and Spirer 1999). This research ultimately led to charges that the Guatemalan armed forces had committed acts of genocide against highland Mayan people, who represented the bulk of unreported casualties. In East Timor, expert guesses and conventional wisdom had placed the number killed at approximately two hundred thousand; an MSE estimate of direct killings halved that estimate to approximately one hundred thousand. While this discussion concerns data on lethal violence, the problems with data on other forms of violence are, if anything, more severe (e.g., Roth, Guberek, and Hoover Green 2011; Palermo, Bleck, and Peterman 2014, on sexual violence data). More generally, estimates of the total magnitude of violence represent an important first step toward answering the terrifying methodological question “How bad can the bias be?” In political science, it can be difficult to determine whether undercounting (or, occasionally, overcounting) creates substantive

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problems. We know that, given a sufficiently small and sufficiently random amount of measurement error, the key findings from linear regression and related tools—the direction, magnitude, and significance level of estimated coefficients—do not change. Consequently, those of us who frequently employ regression analyses have a strong incentive to argue, often from little evidence, that missing data are few, or randomly distributed, or both. Unfortunately, what is known about the usual levels of missing data suggests that this very strong assumption is seldom warranted. In the online appendix to this book, I discuss some methods for diagnosing when missing data are likely to pose a problem in quantitative conflict research. In brief, when we judge, either from a statistical estimate or more qualitatively, that a convenience source includes 80 percent or less of the true number of episodes of violence, regression results based on that source tend to fail. As noted above, it is a rare enumeration that counts that much of the violence. Yet political scientists have tended to focus on what they can control: model specification and causal inference (Price and Gohdes 2013). This is putting the cart before the horse: violence researchers first need to consider the quality of descriptive inference. Suffice it to say, though, that estimates derived from convenience data, from MSE, and from survey reports are accurate only to the extent that their underlying assumptions are correct.

Killings and Disappearances in El Salvador, 1980–92 Like most of the empirical results in this chapter, my estimate of the total number of civilian deaths in El Salvador ultimately derives from four large datasets on violence against civilians during the Salvadoran civil war, each of which takes as its unit of analysis the victim-violation. That is, one row in the data represents one act that happened to one person. Across all violation types, and across all four datasets, the data include about sixty thousand episodes of violence. Some represent duplicates—indeed, duplication across lists is the basis for multiple systems estimation—but most are unique. Before describing my estimate of total killings and disappearances, I consider the origins of the data.

UN Truth Commission for El Salvador: Direct Testimonies As part of the ceasefire that formally ended the Salvadoran civil war in early 1992, both parties to the conflict (the government of El Salvador and the FMLN) agreed to cooperate with a United Nations–led truth commission process, as well

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as a UN peacekeeping mission. The Truth Commission’s (UNTC’s) primary data-collection process sought direct testimonials, which together documented approximately seven thousand individual acts of violence. To avoid confusion with a second UNTC data source discussed below, I refer to the Truth Commission, the organization, as the UNTC, and data from this particular UNTC data collection as “UNTC1.” Formally convened in July 1992, the data-collection period of just six months focused with extreme specificity on reports of lethal violence (killings and disappearances). While other types of violence (injury, torture, and sexual violence) were recorded, lethal violence dominates these data. After observations that lacked at least three or more key identifying fields (of four: name, department, year, violation type) were removed, the remaining data contained approximately 6,600 records. Unfortunately, these data, though based on direct testimonies, may not have coded all relevant information from a given testimony; a significant amount of victim information (sex, age, occupation, etc.) is not recorded in the data. In all, the data contain just nine fields: last name, first name, violation type, date, location, and four fields for institutional perpetrators. Rather little information is available regarding the process of coding data from testimonies to the UNTC, perhaps because El Salvador was one of the first conflicts about which systematic data were coded or collected. Contemporary accounts of the war and the truth commission process seldom discuss the role of numerical data in building historical memory of the war. It is commonly believed, though seldom clearly stated, that different FMLN fronts and commanders gave different orders to civilian supporters regarding reports to the Truth Commission.

UN Truth Commission for El Salvador: Indirect and Anonymous Testimonies A second annex to the report of the UNTC, which I’ll refer to as UNTC2, contains approximately fourteen thousand further records of human-rights violations. Like data derived from direct testimonies, indirect and anonymous testimonies to the Truth Commission suffered serious data loss because they were not digitized. To restore these data, I followed a process nearly identical to the process I used with direct testimony to the UNTC. Also similarly, indirect and anonymous data lack some important identifiers such as the victim’s name, age, and occupation. Indirect and anonymous data, though dealt with as a single source for the purposes of this project, comprise two subsets of data: all data received from any direct or indirect source from which full names have been expunged, and all data received from institutions rather than directly from testimony. It is difficult to determine precisely how these data were compiled. Annex 2 to the UNTC’s report (Betancur, Figueredo Planchart, and Buergenthal 1993) contains a list of

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organizations that contributed reports of violence, but the report contains no information regarding the method by which these reports were selected and/ or deduplicated, and no indication of which records were gathered originally by which third parties. However, because the intra-list duplication rate for UNTC2 data is quite similar to that of the other three datasets I use in the multiple systems estimations below, I opt to use these data despite lacking detailed information on their provenance.

El Rescate Index of Accountability El Rescate is a Los Angeles–based NGO that was formed in response to the influx of Salvadoran refugees to the Los Angeles area in the early 1980s. Originally focused on social-service provision, El Rescate made an institutional decision as the conflict in El Salvador went on that it should investigate and attempt to address the structural conditions creating refugee flows, rather than simply providing services and shelter (Howland 2008). A major part of this effort was the Index of Accountability, which attempted to document connections between individual military officers and reported human-rights violations. The Index of Accountability database, which I refer to as the Rescate data, was created by coding the published reports of Socorro Jurídico (SJ) and Tutela Legal (TL). (Both names translate roughly as “legal aid” or “legal assistance.”) Throughout the war, both the Salvadoran government and the US Department of State downplayed and attempted to discredit SJ/TL reports. Nevertheless, as Valencia-Weber and Weber (1986) make clear, SJ/TL reporting served as the only counterbalance to deeply, and intentionally, misleading State Department reports throughout the early and middle phases of the war. El Rescate’s coding project, although it covered the period from 1979 onward, did not begin until 1990, when the war was drawing to a close. At this point, El Rescate staff members coded all published SJ/TL materials, assigning each reported episode of violence one of twenty-two designations and recording a large amount of information about each victim, as well as a considerable amount of qualitative and contextual information regarding the location and circumstances of the crime. However, two problems with the Rescate approach stand out. First, it is possible that coding only published reports magnifies biases in the original publication process, particularly biases pertinent to repertoires of violence. For example, killings may be simpler to verify than other types of violence, and consequently, nonlethal forms of violence may be underrepresented. Second, El Rescate violence codes overlap to an extent. A single episode of violence (death in an aerial bombardment of a civilian area, for example) may be coded twice, once as a killing and once as “aerial bombardment.” In this analysis, I took the

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rather conservative approach of counting only violations that could be specifically tied to one individual; that is, I included the killing, but not the bombing itself. After removing episodes of violence that could not be matched due to missing data, I was left with just under twenty thousand episodes of violence coded and recorded by El Rescate.

Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador (CDHES) CDHES data, like Rescate data, were coded from contemporary reports—in this case, a nongovernmental (and non-church-affiliated) organization that began work toward the beginning of the conflict in El Salvador. Most CDHES data were coded from some nine thousand interviews conducted by the organization’s staff throughout the course of the war (1979–91) (Ball 2000b). The testimonies had been transcribed at or around the time of collection; beginning in 1992, CDHES staff attempted to code all nine thousand testimonies, with the aim of proving the responsibility of individual military officers for patterns of violence. CDHES data are dramatically less focused on lethal violence than are the other three datasets, making them an outlier in this regard. Together, killings and disappearances make up just 19 percent of the violence reported in CDHES data (see table 5.1), as compared to 39 percent of El Rescate violations, 91 percent of violations reported directly to the Truth Commission, and 82 percent of the violence reported anonymously or indirectly to the Truth Commission. In all, across four datasets, the number of unique civilian deaths documented in convenience data on the Salvadoran civil war is 20,055. This total represents a specific category of deaths: those in which a named victim, with a known department and year of death, was reported to an NGO or other organization collecting data on deaths in El Salvador. Of course, no one (I hope) believes the number of civilians killed in El Salvador was only 20,055. Thus, with colleagues at the Human Rights Data Analysis group, I used MSE to estimate how many cases went uncounted (Hoover Green and Ball 2018). Because this technique is still

TABLE 5.1 Lethal violence as reported by four datasets UNTC1

UNTC2

RESCATE

CDHES

Total violations

7329

12897

22029

17991

Killing as proportion of total

0.76

0.55

0.29

0.10

Disappearance as proportion of total

0.15

0.27

0.10

0.09

Unidentified lethal violations (missing name, year,

0.05

0.02

0.02

0.04

and/or department) as proportion of total

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unfamiliar to most political scientists, I review its background and theoretical underpinnings here. MSE was developed in the context of population biology (Petersen 1896), where it has become known as capture-recapture or multiple-recapture analysis (see, e.g., Darroch 1958; Edwards and Eberhardt 1967; Fienberg 1972; Burnham and Overton 1978; Chao 1987, 1989; Chao, Lee, and Jeng 1992; Darroch et al. 1993). Its first published application to a human population occurred in 1949, when Sekar and Deming used capture-recapture analysis to correct census figures for New Delhi. It has been used to determine the population of lesbians in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (Aaron et al. 2003), the population of drugabusing HIV-positive people in Bangkok (Mastro et al. 1994), the population of drug users in London (Hickman et al. 1999), and the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome in Alaska (Egeland, Perham-Hester, and Hook 1995). MSE was first used to estimate the magnitude of human-rights violations in the 1990s, when Ball, Kobrak, and Spirer (1999) used MSE to study killings during the Guatemalan civil war. Since that time, it has been used to estimate casualty counts during several conflicts, for example in Kosovo (Ball et al. 2002; Ball, Tabeau, and Verwimp 2007), Bosnia (Brunborg, Hovde Lyngstad, and Urdal 2003), Perú (Ball et al. 2003), East Timor (Silva and Ball 2006, 2007) and Colombia (Guzmán et al. 2007; Lum et al. 2010). As I discuss below, most MSE applications for human populations, including human-rights applications, require at least three separate datasets (or “systems”; hence the name “multiple systems estimation”). The basic intuition behind MSE comes directly from probability theory: When we take two random samples from the same population, the probability of selection into both samples is the product of the individual probabilities of selection. When we don’t know the size of the overall population, but we do know the size of both samples and the size of the overlap between them, we can derive the size of the population. Essentially, the smaller the overlap relative to the datasets, the bigger the undercount. Recall that this intuition, first introduced in chapter 1, is illustrated in figure 1.2. Of course, as discussed above, selection into lists is not random, or independent. However, with three or more lists, it is also possible to account for nonrandomness of selection. For the Salvadoran case, I have four datasets, as described above. During ten years of work with these data sources, I used several methods to determine the overlap between the CDHES, Rescate, UNTC1, and UNTC2 lists, including semisupervised machine learning and brute force (hand matching, primarily by one trained coder, with significant checking by myself and one other colleague). The estimates of lethal violence presented below are based on the brute-force method also described in Hoover Green and Ball (2018), but are similar to estimates I had previously derived via semi-supervised matching

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(Hoover Green 2011). At this point, it is important to note that this chapter provides a schematic, rather than a technical, discussion of MSE. (You’re welcome.) A more technical discussion of death estimates for El Salvador in particular, including details of the matching and merging processes, and the underlying loglinear models, can be found in Hoover Green and Ball (2018), while the technical details of the software we used to derive the estimates is in Johndrow, Lum, and Ball (2015), and the mathematical statistics underlying the software are described in Madigan and York (1997). In any case, when I refer to “we” in the context of estimates, I mean my 2018 co-author, Patrick Ball, and me. Of about twenty-nine thousand records of killings and disappearances, approximately two thousand lacked enough information to be matched and were set aside. Our hand-matcher judged that another six thousand were duplicate records. Figure 5.1 shows the overall pattern of overlap. Because estimates are more precise when they are drawn from a relatively small area (either spatial or temporal), we do not estimate the total number of killings using the overlap patterns for the conflict as a whole, summing instead over many smaller estimates. In what follows, when I refer to a “stratum” or

Unknown number of total killings

6,048 killings captured only in TRC2 TRC1, TRC2, and Rescate (66)

9,577 killings captured only in TRC1 TRC1, Rescate and CDHES (237)

FIGURE 5.1

TRC1, TRC2, and 499 in TRC1 89 in TRC2 CDHES (31) and CDHES and TRC2 3,049 killings captured only TRC2, in CDHES CDHES, and 122 in CDHES 1,052 in and Rescate Rescate and TRC1 6,256 killings captured only in Rescate

Overlap patterns among four Salvadoran data sources

Rescate (18) All 4 lists (22)

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“strata” I mean a small spatial, temporal, or spatiotemporal unit for which we would like to estimate the number of total civilian killings. Strata might include the year 1980 (across the whole country), or the department of Morazán (across the whole period of conflict), or the department of Morazán in 1980. For each stratum, our estimates employ Bayesian model averaging (Hoeting et al. 1999). The approach is Bayesian—as opposed to frequentist—in that it examines the data (in this case, the overlap pattern) in light of prior beliefs (if any), and estimates the most likely parameters, given those data and priors. (In this case, we used lognormal priors and employed only strata for which lognormal and uninformative priors produced similar results.) The “model averaging” part of Bayesian model averaging refers to the fact that, for every stratum, there are hundreds of possible models that could be fit, many of which fit the data approximately equally well. Model averaging does just that: averages across the most likely models, incorporating model uncertainty into the overall confidence interval (Hoover Green and Ball 2018). To sum up: for each stratum, we observe the pattern of overlap among the four datasets; we find the best-fitting set of models using a decomposable Bayesian graphical models approach (Madigan and York 1997; Johndrow and Lum 2015), and we take a weighted average of the estimates produced by those models (Hoeting et al. 1999). The result is an estimate that includes in its credible interval both uncertainty about data production and uncertainty about model fitting. In the Salvadoran context, the possibility of “capture” in each of the lists varied considerably over both time and space. Because capture heterogeneity is not modeled directly in Bayesian model averaging, the ideal stratum is one that contains enough data to produce a good-fitting model but is small enough that the variation in probability of being listed is relatively low. In line with common practice in political science, we would ideally like to produce estimates for all 182 department-years (fourteen departments times thirteen years of war), and sum over these strata to produce a final estimate. Instead, because some departmentyears are too sparse to be estimated, we sum over a combination of departmentyears, department-periods, region-years, and region-periods. We also produce simpler estimates over years, and over departments. Figure 5.2 shows how I summed over strata to produce one high-quality global sum. Summing over temporal strata (including each year in 1980–89 and an overall estimate for 1990–92), the estimate (with 95 percent credible interval) of total civilian deaths in El Salvador is 76,604 (65,025, 93,368). However, we know that geographic capture heterogeneity was considerable in El Salvador: people in some areas had little or no chance to report violations as they occurred. Summing across departments (i.e., lowering geographic capture

80

19

81

82 19 19

83 84

19

Custom strata for global MSE estimates

19

85

19

MORA-LAUN.8081 MORA-LAUN.8283 MORA-LAUN.8492

USUL-SANM.8081 USUL-SANM.8283 USUL-SANM.8492

FIGURE 5.2

LAUN

MORA

SANM

USUL

SANV

LAPA-SANV.8492

LAPA-SANV.8083

LAPA

86 19

19

87

WCENTRAL.8485 WCENTRAL.8688

WEST.8492

CABANAS.8492

CUSC-CABA.8083

LALI-SANS.8083

SANT-CHAL.8081 SANT-CHAL.8283

AHUA-SONS.8083

CABA

CUSC

SANS

LALI

CHAL

SANT

SONS

AHUA

19

88

89 19

19

90

WCENTRAL.8992

91 19

19

92

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TABLE 5.2 Correlations between raw datasets and MSE estimates, by department (top rows) and year (bottom rows)

CDHES

CDHES

RESCATE

UNTC1

UNTC2

MSE EST

1

0.57

0.35

0.64

0.60

1

0.57

0.79

0.75

1

0.82

0.76

1

0.81

Rescate UNTC1 UNTC2 MSE est CDHES Rescate UNTC1 UNTC2 MSE est

1 1

0.43

0.81

0.75

0.83

1

0.54

0.56

0.66

1

0.92

0.92

1

0.83 1

heterogeneity but increasing over-time capture heterogeneity), I estimate 91,866 (77,282, 108,401) civilian deaths. The estimate I prefer sums over 31 high-quality, mutually exclusive spatiotemporal strata. I prefer it because it eliminates as much capture heterogeneity as possible, and because its credible interval is therefore narrower. This estimate is 72,031 (61,120, 84,399). This represents a more-than-threefold increase over the total number of reported deaths, and a sextupling of the number of deaths recorded in the largest individual dataset. (Note that, while I have reported the exact point estimate of 72,031 in this case, elsewhere I round the point estimate to the nearest thousand and report only the credible intervals precisely. This is to indicate the imprecision associated with the estimates.) Table 5.2 shows Spearman rank correlations3 between killings as measured by each individual dataset and MSE estimates, across departments (top five rows) and years (bottom five rows). Notice that, while CDHES, UNTC1, and UNTC2 showed strong correlations with MSE estimates by year, CDHES showed much lower correlation by department, while UNTC2 performance, relative to MSE, improved significantly. This implies two important things. First, the largest dataset (UNTC2) is not always “best,” where fidelity to (estimated) ground truth is considered, and second, different datasets show different amounts of bias over different dimensions. Over-time estimates also appear to call into question some conventional wisdom about the conflict. While the general trend, in which lethal violence declined after the first few years of conflict, is confirmed, some specifics may be surprising. In particular, a massive spike in violence in 1982, shown in figure 5.3, suggests

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40,000

Lethal violence

30,000

20,000

10,000

92 19

91 19

90 19

89 19

88 19

87 19

86 19

85 19

84 19

83 19

82 19

81 19

19

80

0

Year Source CDHES MSE estimate Rescate UN−TRC UN−TRC−2

FIGURE 5.3

Comparing MSE and raw data estimates of lethal violence by year

far more deaths by aerial bombardment than have previously been recognized— most of these deaths are estimated to have occurred in rural, FMLN-held departments but to have been committed by state forces. Likewise, the level of underreporting varied significantly across departments. The lowest estimated reporting rate for lethal violence was in La Libertad Department, where the estimated reporting rate was just 0.17 (0.11, 0.25). The highest was in Morazán Department, where I estimate that about 0.53 (0.24, 0.59) of killings were reported. This illustrates how reporting dynamics can be cross-cutting: we might expect that rural departments would have poorer reporting than urban departments (cf. Kalyvas 2006), or that departments with strong networks among the Left would have stronger reporting structures, or that departments with high levels of violence would have a hard time keeping up and would therefore experience lower levels of reporting as a proportion of cases. In our case, reporting rates were not correlated with population density, with strong networks among the Left, or with the overall estimated per-capita level of violence (cf. Hoover Green and Ball 2018).

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Descriptive Statistics: Repertoires of Violence Killings and disappearances together make up just one-third of the total violations reported across the four datasets. And, as I have stressed, while killing may be the ultimate violation, it often represents just a minority of the violence committed. In this section, I take up the hypotheses proposed in chapters 3 and 4, before turning to alternative hypotheses. In some cases, there simply aren’t enough data to test a hypothesis quantitatively. In other cases, I use a combination of convenience datasets (singly or by using overlap analysis, as explained in the online appendix) and ex-combatant survey data. Where possible, though, I use MSE for hypothesis testing. Table 5.3 shows the differing repertoire emphases of the raw convenience datasets. Perhaps most obviously, both UNTC datasets focus nearly exclusively on lethal violations; killings and disappearances make up 90 percent of the episodes of violence coded from direct testimony to the Truth Commission. By contrast, only about 18 percent of CDHES data are made up of lethal violence. In addition, two key forms of violence that (perhaps) failed to meet the “grave episodes of violence” requirement of the UNTC’s mandate are not included in UNTC data at all: no episodes of detention or property damage are recorded in these data. Also notable are changes in reported repertoires between the early years of the war (1980–83) and the middle and later periods (1984–91). In three of the four datasets (El Rescate, UNTC1 and UNTC2) the proportion of reported violence falling in the top two violence categories declines considerably from the initial period of violence to the later period. Perhaps the most provocative finding from descriptive statistics is that FMLN fighters were named as perpetrators in only 2–6 percent of reported episodes of violence. It is frequently claimed that these findings represent bias on the part of the various data collection organizations. Yet despite this, the overlap rate (the proportion of cases appearing more than

TABLE 5.3 Repertoire elements as a proportion of total violence as reported by four datasets UNTC1

UNTC2

RESCATE

CDHES

Lethal violence

0.90

0.82

0.39

0.18

Torture

0.07

0.16

0.06

0.15

Abduction/detention

0.00

0.00

0.35

0.38

Sexual violence

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

Other nonfatal assault

0.02

0.01

0.02

0.02

Property crimes

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.05

Other

0

0.01

0.16

0.21

CHAPTER FIVE

All violence

148

2,000 1,000

91

92 19

90

89

88

UN-TRC

19

19

19

87

19

86

19

19

85

Year Dataset Rescate

CDHES Lethal violence

19

84 19

83 19

82 19

81 19

19

80

0

UN-TRC-2

2,000 1,000

UN-TRC

19 92

19 91

19 90

19 89

19 88

19 87

19 86

Year Dataset Rescate

CDHES

UN-TRC-2

CDHES

92

91

19

90

19

89

UN-TRC

19

88

19

87

Year Dataset Rescate

19

19

86 19

85 19

84 19

83 19

82 19

81 19

80

900 600 300 0

19

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once in any dataset), while lower for the FMLN than for state forces in the early years of the war, is considerably higher during the later years. MSE estimates leave the overall magnitude of violations by FMLN versus state fighters virtually unchanged. Figure 5.4 shows the broad patterns described by each of the four datasets, as well as some of the key over-time differences among the data sources. In particular, note that the raw data report nearly as many episodes of violence in 1989 as in 1981 or 1982; indeed, data from CDHES show more episodes of violence during 1989 than in any other year. This pattern does not accord with received wisdom about the severity of violence in El Salvador; it does, however, accord with the sense among many human-rights advocates that monitoring improved over the course of the war. The apparent spike in violence during 1989 and the more general apparent lack of variation in levels of violence can be traced to two

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factors. First, although there was significantly more violence during 1980–83 than during other periods of the conflict, reporting rates during this period were extremely low relative to the total amount of violence. Second, reporting rates of nonlethal violence increased dramatically in the second half of the conflict. Thus, the “first peak” in 1981–82 represents an extreme underestimate of killings and a near-total lack of reporting of other violence, while the “second peak” represents a much more significant level of reporting for both lethal and nonlethal violence. Because of sparse repertoire data, I also draw on survey results to consider variation in repertoires of violence, particularly variation across FMLN factions. My survey project asked 361 Salvadoran ex-combatants (vetted as ex-combatants by staff members at veterans’ organizations, where the respondents received benefits and where the survey was conducted) thirty-three closed-ended questions about their personal backgrounds and their experiences of training and combat

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(see the online appendix to this book for the questionnaire). While these results had primarily to do with Salvadoran ex-combatants’ experiences of armed-group institutions and cultures, two key questions touched specifically on repertoires of violence. The first asked whether ex-combatants had “seen or heard about” mistreatment of civilians. Interestingly, slightly more FMLN than state cadres reported having witnessed mistreatment of civilians. However, FMLN combatants were also much more likely to report low-level mistreatment, such as “using bad or abusive language,” than were FAES ex-combatants. My strong, though necessarily unproven, suspicion is that the higher likelihood of witnessing mistreatment among FMLN ex-combatants corresponds to higher behavioral standards, not higher levels of mistreatment. A second key question provided a list of several types of violence that combatants might have seen or heard about, ranging from “using bad or abusive language” to “killing people.” FMLN respondents reported witnessing or hearing about fewer types of violence. On average, FMLN cadres reported about 1.8 types of violence, whereas state cadres reported about 2.5. Just 4 percent of FMLN cadres reported witnessing or hearing about rape, whereas 17 percent of state combatants had.

Hypothesis Testing The most important test for the Commander’s Dilemma theory is that it improves on other explanations for patterns of violence and restraint—including, but I hope not limited to, repertoires of violence. The logical approach in this scenario (quantitative dependent variable, many competing theories) would usually be linear regression analysis or one of its cousins. Unfortunately, the available data do not support that approach, because it is impossible to derive MSE estimates for each department-year-perpetrator (or even region-period-perpetrator) stratum, particularly for nonlethal forms of violence. I use several strategies to get around this problem. As I noted above, I use ex-combatants’ assessments of violence by their forces, based on survey data. Where MSE estimates are unavailable, I also rely on raw violence data, to an extent. When I do so, I use overlaps between datasets to consider whether the pattern of variation I see is likely to be real. “Overlap analysis,” as I call it, is explained in greater depth in the online appendix. But the basic intuition is similar to the basic intuition of MSE: where overlaps are larger relative to the total number of cases reported, reporting rates are likely to be higher. However, unlike MSE estimates, I use overlap analysis only as a rough sort of triangulation. All the quantitative data underlying these analyses are available on my professional website. These include survey data (with some potentially identifying information removed); de-identified, deduplicated event data on violence; and the

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frequency tables underlying each MSE estimate reported below. I also provide the code to generate MSE and other results. As I examine patterns of violence, below, I look at durable variation across groups, then at spatiotemporal variation, rather than taking each hypothesis derived in chapters 3 and 4 in turn, because I think this makes for a more coherent discussion. Table 5.4 reviews these hypotheses.

TABLE 5.4 Empirical implications of the Commander’s Dilemma and other approaches THEORETICAL APPROACH

HYPOTHESIS

Commander’s

H1. State forces use broader repertoires of violence than FMLN forces

Dilemma

throughout the conflict. H2. State forces use less uniform repertoires than FMLN forces throughout the conflict. H3. State forces use higher levels of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict. H4. State recruiting practices are weakly related or unrelated to changes in state repertoires of violence. H5. Elite state forces perpetrate narrower repertoires of violence than regulararmy forces. H6. Elite state forces perpetrate more uniform repertoires of violence than regular-army forces. H7. Repertoires of violence by state forces widen more than FMLN repertoires over time. H8. The period of ERP forced recruiting (roughly late 1983 through 1984) is not associated with a rise in rape (as a proportion of the repertoire) by ERP cadres. H9. Increases in the FMLN material resources over time are not associated with changes in violence against civilians by FMLN cadres, i.e., repertoires of violence remain relatively constant between the 1980–83 period and the 1984–92 period. H10. FPL repertoires of violence against civilians narrow between the beginning of the war and approximately 1984-85, as FMLN political education is standardized. H11. FPL combatants commit wider repertoires of violence than ERP combatants, particularly during the early years of the conflict. H12. FMLN repertoires narrow following standardization of political education. H13. FMLN repertoires grow more uniform following the standardization of political education. (Continued)

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TABLE 5.4 (Continued) THEORETICAL APPROACH

HYPOTHESIS

Violent

A1. Regular-army units commit more reported cases of rape than do elite

socialization

forces (per capita).

(cf. Cohen 2016)

A2. Rape by elite forces increases over time, with the proportion of these forces reporting forced recruitment. A3. Rape by regular-army units decreases from the prewar period to midwar, as forced recruitment decreases. A16. The period of ERP forced recruiting (roughly late 1983 through 1984) is associated with an increase in rape by ERP cadres.

Territorial

A4. Lethal violence is higher in central and southern Morazán than in northern

control

Morazán during most or all periods of the conflict.

(cf. Kalyvas 2006)

A5. Lethal violence is higher in central and southern Chalatenango than in northern Chalatenango during most or all periods of the conflict. A6. Excepting areas of firm FMLN control, lethal violence is higher in rural municipalities in central and eastern El Salvador than in urban municipalities. A7. Selective lethal violence increases in 1986 in western El Salvador, as the FMLN contests state control. A8. State and FMLN repertoires become more uniform over time.

Adverse

A11. State forces commit increasing levels of violence over time, as the

selection

material and financial resources of the military increase.

(cf. Weinstein 2007)

A12. State forces use wider repertoires of violence over time, as the material and financial resources of the military increase. A13. FMLN forces commit increasing levels of violence over time, as the material and financial resources of the military increase. A14. FMLN forces use wider repertoires of violence over time, as the material and financial resources available to the FMLN increase.

Other

A9. Threat: Areas and populations with significant FMLN support are more likely to face high levels of lethal violence by the state during the war (cf. Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004). A10. Common sense: Civilian deaths are correlated with combatant deaths over time and space. A15. Ideology per se: The FPL uses narrower repertoires of violence than the ERP, particularly during 1980-83. A17. FMLN repertoires broaden as the group turns toward small-unit tactics and long-range reconnaissance in 1984–85, because troops are harder to discipline (cf. Mitchell 2009).

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Durable Repertoire Differences Durable differences between groups, and between groups’ areas of strength, are important starting points in considering whether the Commander’s Dilemma explains variation that other approaches do not. Here, I consider hypotheses H1–H3, H5, H6, and H10. As for competing theories, many are not mutually exclusive of my approach, often because they imply variation over different units of analysis than the group. However, some do envision durable differences between groups. In particular, Cohen (2016) predicts that voluntarily recruited combatants should use less sexual violence in their repertoires than forcibly conscripted combatants—that is, that the FMLN should employ lower levels of sexual violence than state forces, and that elite state forces should employ lower levels of sexual violence than regular army forces (A1). Note that these predictions generally align with those of the Commander’s Dilemma. We can operationalize the repertoire of violence in several ways. Here, I examine the proportions of lethal and nonlethal violence in the overall estimated number of incidents; the proportions of key forms of violence, including sexual violence and torture; and the number of forms of violence reported by survey respondents. MSE estimates show that, overall, nonlethal violence (i.e., violence other than killings and disappearances) made up a very significant portion of state violence throughout the war, and that the proportion of nonlethal violence by state groups increased over time. By contrast, nonlethal violence made up a lower proportion of FMLN violence. Raw data, MSE estimates, and survey data all suggest that FMLN repertoires of violence were considerably narrower overall than those of state or state-affiliated organizations. As I discuss in greater depth below, this is particularly true during the middle and later years of the war, when state violence “diversified,” to include fewer outright killings (e.g., village massacres such as those observed in Morazán and Chalatenango early in the war) and more nonlethal violence, such as detention, torture, and assault. Survey data confirm this finding; as noted above, of ex-combatant survey respondents who reported ever witnessing mistreatment of civilians, state ex-combatants reported witnessing a higher mean number of types of violence. If we assume that survey data reliably indicate what ex-combatants witnessed, then these data clearly indicate that sexual violence, in particular, characterized state violence much more frequently than it did FMLN violence. Of course, a number of issues may limit the reliability of this information. State ex-combatants generally were exposed to a much greater number of fellow soldiers, since they lived in barracks and frequently fought in large formations, whereas FMLN cadres, especially later in the conflict, lived and fought in smaller groups. It is also possible that FMLN ex-combatants are more attuned

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to the perception that sexual violence is, and should be perceived as, a highly stigmatized act, and that therefore FMLN ex-combatants are less likely in general to report sexual violence. However, the differences are striking. Just 6 out of 165 FMLN survey respondents (3.6 percent) report having witnessed or heard about sexual violence against civilians, whereas 33 of 194 (17 percent) of state ex-combatants had witnessed or heard about sexual violence. And while other quantitative data on sexual violence are too sparse to be useful, just 1 of the 430 cases of sexual violence reported across four raw datasets lists an FMLN cadre as the perpetrator. This matches what is known from qualitative discussions (e.g., Wood 2003). For other nonlethal violations as well, FMLN perpetration was generally dwarfed by state violence. For example, of the approximately fifty thousand episodes of torture I estimate occurred between 1980 and 1991, the Salvadoran Army, security forces, and paramilitaries are estimated to have committed over thirty-five thousand; another six thousand to eight thousand are estimated to have been committed by “other” perpetrators. No estimates converged for either FMLN or BIRI perpetration of torture, meaning that either these groups performed very significantly less torture or that reporting was extraordinarily sparse throughout the conflict. In the case of BIRIs in particular, because BIRIs are FAES units, data often identify violence by BIRIs as simply “FAES” or “Army” violence, implying that some BIRI violations are misattributed to regular-army units in this analysis. Survey data, however, also suggest that FMLN personnel typically did not observe or hear about the torture of noncombatants. My theoretical framework suggests that, while repertoire differences between FMLN and state organizations should be larger than repertoire differences among the various FMLN and state organizations, the differing cultures, training regimes, and disciplinary norms within each side should produce some notable and persistent repertoire differences. In particular, I hypothesized that the BIRIs, due to their volunteer status, literacy requirement, and more intensive training, would display significantly narrower and more uniform repertoires of violence—repertoires more focused on one or a few types of violence, with lower variation across units—than would regular-army units (H5, H6). This hypothesis is supported, with some caveats, by both MSE and survey data. Of the three types of state organizations contesting the war, I estimate that regular-army units used the most lethal repertoire of violence. For all acts of violence listed as involving the Salvadoran Army but not BIRI units or security forces, I estimate approximately 113,000 (106,880, 120,143) total episodes of violence (see Hoover Green 2011, chap. 8, for details of the estimation procedure). Of these, I estimate that approximately 34,000 (31,519, 36,934) (30 percent) were killings. By contrast, I estimate that BIRI units committed approximately 45,000

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individual acts of violence against noncombatants, although MSE estimates produce an extremely wide confidence interval of (29,472, 77,548). Of these acts, I estimate that roughly 10,000 (4,905, 23,384) (22 percent of all violations) were outright killings; estimates for disappearances failed to converge. Security forces are estimated to have committed about 56,000 (51,602, 61,369) total acts of violence, of which 8,000 (6,085, 10,885) (14 percent) were killings. In contrast to army units, elite state forces (defined here as security forces and BIRI units) appear to have specialized in nonlethal forms of violence, particularly torture. MSE estimates for these groups support the conventional wisdom that torture was a key repertoire element for all three types of formal state groups. However, it is also clear that torture played a significantly different role for security forces than it did for regular-army or BIRI units. I estimate that torture constituted approximately 28 percent of acts of violence committed by the security forces, while torture accounted for just 16 percent of army violence (including both violence by regular-army units and violence by BIRIs). However, these are relatively weak conclusions. For BIRI units in particular, the quality of estimates is low due to extremely sparse overlap, possibly owing to the misidentification problem considered above; of individual violation types by BIRIs, only torture, killing, disappearance, and detention show any overlap at all. MSE estimates suggest that violence by regular-army units was more likely to be lethal violence than was violence by BIRI units or the security forces, and that security forces were much more likely to use torture. Survey data echo this assertion, but because the unit of analysis is the individual ex-combatant (rather than the episode of violence), they also provide a second important perspective. Survey results show that regular-army ex-combatants are less likely than veterans of BIRIs or the security forces to report having witnessed or heard about members of their units committing violence against noncombatants (44 percent of army ex-combatants, 56 percent of BIRI ex-combatants, and 60 percent of former members of the security forces). However, of those ex-combatants who reported witnessing or hearing about violence against civilians, army ex-combatants reported a significantly mean number of total types of violence (3.12 types, versus 1.66 types for BIRI ex-combatants and 1.33 types for veterans of the security forces). Regular-army ex-combatants were also much more likely to report that they had heard about or witnessed killings than were members of security forces or BIRI units. In line with my hypotheses (but also, it is important to note, with the predictions of several other theoretical approaches), FMLN forces committed both vastly lower levels of violence against civilians than state forces, and much narrower repertoires of violence. A more interesting question concerns differences within the FMLN. Repertoire differences between FMLN organizations are quite

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difficult to estimate via MSE, largely because FMLN violence—particularly nonlethal violence—was rare relative to state violence. Moreover, because overlap rates vary so significantly between FPL and ERP cadres (and because ERP overlap rates vary considerably with time), it is difficult to use raw data to achieve useful conclusions about repertoires of violence. Thus, I focus here primarily on survey, memoir, and interview data. The most notable result to emerge from FMLN ex-combatant survey responses is a significant difference between the types of violence noted by ERP ex-combatants and those noted by FPL ex-combatants, a difference that persisted, to some extent, throughout the conflict (cf. H11). Ex-combatants of the FPL were slightly less likely than those who served with the ERP to mention having “seen or heard about” mistreatment of noncombatants (51 percent versus 48 percent); however, among those who knew of mistreatment, FPL ex-combatants reported a significantly higher mean number of types of violence (1.7, versus 1.1 for ERP cadres who witnessed civilian abuses). FPL cadres were more likely to have seen or heard about rape and sexual abuse (6 percent of cadres, versus zero ERP ex-combatants), property destruction (22 percent versus 6 percent), and killing of noncombatants (22 percent versus zero). ERP cadres, by contrast, were more likely to have witnessed theft of food or money and killing of livestock. These results are supported by MSE results, which show that the FMLN committed roughly twice as many killings and disappearances in the central region (including Chalatenango, Cabanas, and San Vicente) as in the eastern region of Morazán, San Miguel, and La Union. Data from in-depth interviews also support the view that ERP violence was, in general, rather better controlled than FPL violence (at least in terms of repertoires). As discussed above in chapter 4, FPL officers frequently referenced “discipline problems” related to noncombatant abuse, especially when speaking about the early years of the war. Lower-level combatants from the FPL were also more likely to speak about abuses such as sexual violence than were ERP ex-combatants. However, interview data also raise the possibility that ERP cadres are simply less likely to view civilians as civilians than are FPL cadres. In interviews, ERP cadres frequently referred to campaigns of lethal violence against (for example) mayors in Morazán Department as military actions with, they implied, military victims.

Repertoire Differences over Time and Space The Commander’s Dilemma approach suggests that the most important variations in violence and restraint should follow changes in internal group institutions, not conflict circumstances. In consequence, most Commander’s Dilemma hypotheses refer to variation across and between groups, and variation over

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time. Of the hypotheses and alternative hypotheses laid out in table 5.4, only a few (A7, A9, A10) are truly “spatiotemporal,” and these cannot be directly tested using the information available. However, change over time is an important part of the Commander’s Dilemma story; moreover, the fact that different FMLN factions controlled different regions of the country for much of the war presents an opportunity to test geographic variation, as well. In examining repertoire variations by geography, I focus on three areas: the departments surrounding San Salvador; the department of Chalatenango (controlled by the FPL); and the eastern region of the country, including the department of Morazán (controlled by the ERP). These departments are notable in that San Salvador, although controlled by government forces throughout the war, was strongly contested by FMLN forces at a number of junctures. By contrast, some areas of Chalatenango and Morazán were entirely guerrilla-held throughout the war. The state exercised, at best, contested control in these areas. In addition, FMLN cadres in Chalatenango were almost exclusively members of the FPL, whereas Morazán was held almost entirely by ERP forces. Consequently, examining repertoire differences between these three departments can provide an initial glimpse at the effects of contestation and territorial control (if any) on repertoires of violence. I considered several operational definitions of the “San Salvador region.” Because the city of San Salvador lies entirely within the boundary of San Salvador Department, it is possible to consider simply San Salvador Department. However, the metropolitan area of San Salvador extends westward into the department of La Libertad, where major suburbs lie. (One of these suburbs, Nueva Santa Tecla, is a city in its own right with over one hundred thousand residents.) Also within the boundary of San Salvador Department, though barely, is Guazapa Volcano, a major center of operations for all five FMLN subgroups. The Guazapa region extends to the northeast of the city of San Salvador, into Cuscatlán Department. Thus, when I consider results from the “San Salvador area,” I look at the San Salvador + La Libertad area (“San Salvador metro”), the San Salvador + Guazapa area (“Guazapa region”), and the combined (La Libertad, San Salvador, Cuscatlán) region, in addition to assessing results from the three departments individually. Within San Salvador Department, by summing across all violation types for which estimates converge, I estimate that approximately 70,000 total episodes of violence (66,381, 74,641) occurred. Unfortunately, however, estimates for individual armed groups do not converge. For the larger region, I estimate approximately 109,000 total episodes of violence, of which lethal violence makes up just over half. As in most areas of the country, FMLN violence in the San Salvador area is dwarfed by state violence and follows a remarkably different pattern with respect to repertoire. For no stratum in the region is FMLN nonlethal violence

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estimable; it appears that, in this hotly contested zone, the vast majority of FMLN violence was lethal. State organizations, by contrast, committed very large numbers of nonlethal violations in the San Salvador region throughout the war. While I can make only relatively weak inferences using raw convenience data, relatively similar overlap rates for FMLN and state organizations in the San Salvador area, as well as relatively similar overlap rates across types of violence and across periods of time, suggest that broad patterns (if not specific outcomes) in the raw data may prove accurate for this region. Within the raw data, the FMLN repertoire of violence is heavily concentrated in three violations: killing, disappearance (as also suggested by the MSE estimates presented above), and abduction. More than 80 percent of FMLN violations are concentrated in these three types of violence. State violence, by contrast, is dispersed among many more violation types. The top three violations—detention, torture, and killing—make up under 70 percent of the state’s repertoire in San Salvador Department. No cases of sexual violence or property crime by the FMLN were reported in San Salvador, while together these frequently opportunistic violation types made up about 9 percent (over seven hundred of nearly eight thousand) of reported state violations in the department. The differences observed in Chalatenango, where the FPL controlled territory and FMLN operations for most of the war, are similar to overall national differences between FMLN and state repertoires, and to differences in the San Salvador area, although nonlethal violence is significantly more difficult to estimate in Chalatenango, particularly for FMLN forces, because of sparse data. The raw data suggest that, as in other locations, sexual violence and property crimes by state forces were significantly more common than those crimes by FMLN forces. Also similarly, the extent to which state forces utilized torture and FMLN cadres did not is remarkable. In raw data, torture makes up less than 1 percent of FMLN violations but more than 10 percent of state violations. The FMLN, for its part, appears to have “specialized” in abductions at least as much in rural Chalatenango as elsewhere; the proportion of abductions in the FMLN repertoire, as captured in the raw data from Chalatenango, is about 24 percent over the course of the conflict. The department of Morazán is the stronghold of the ERP; as discussed in chapter 4, the ERP was a much more militant organization than the FPL, significantly less committed to treating civilian populations well for their own sake. Binford (e.g., 1997) has argued that the ERP’s political-education programs, including civilian popular education, were aimed much more squarely at creating social control than at ideological education per se. Arguably, the ERP’s more controlling approach is reflected in its repertoires of violence, although as with

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FMLN repertoires throughout El Salvador it is difficult to achieve reliable MSE estimates for nonlethal violence. Yet the overall differences between FMLN and state forces in Morazán nevertheless closely track the differences observed elsewhere in the country. I estimate that approximately 14,000 (12,500, 15,400) total violations occurred in the department of Morazán, the vast majority of which were perpetrated by agents of the state, and approximately half of which were lethal violations (killing or disappearance). Overlap rates in Morazán, while higher than overlap rates in most locations, vary considerably across armed groups and types of violence; consequently, even directional inferences from raw data are somewhat suspect. However, it is notable that FMLN violations committed in Morazán, while no more or less lethal than FMLN violations in other areas of the country, appear to have been more heavily weighted toward disappearance than outright killing. (The top three FMLN violations in Morazán were abduction, disappearance, and killing, in that order.) As in other locations, agents of the state perpetrated significant amounts of torture, sexual violence, and property crimes, while FMLN cadres refrained almost entirely from committing those crimes. Taken together, the repertoires of violence committed by state and FMLN forces in San Salvador, Chalatenango, and Morazán suggest that contestation and territorial control are less important to microvariation in repertoires of violence than we might have expected. In particular, differences between FMLN and state repertoires in San Salvador—an urban center over which the state exercised firm, if occasionally contested, control—were extremely similar to the differences between FMLN and state repertoires observed in two guerrilla-held zones, Chalatenango and Morazán. Turning to over-time variation, MSE results show several key repertoire shifts over time for both state and FMLN groups. Raw data and survey data generally echo these findings, which serve as tests of several hypotheses (H4, H7–H10, H13– H14). The proportion of lethal violence by state forces changed dramatically over the course of the conflict. In 1989, to take a key example, the state response to an FMLN offensive caused a massive spike in total violence, but a relatively small increase in lethal violence. The generally widening gap between total violence and outright killing represents, of course, the increasing reliance of armed groups (primarily state armed groups) on nonlethal forms of violence such as torture and detention. All groups, including the FMLN, relied increasingly on violence other than killings; yet it is important to note that different groups’ repertoires shifted very differently. For example, as I discuss below, FMLN cadres continued to rely primarily on lethal violence and abduction, shifting from outright killings to disappearances. By contrast, state organizations increased their (already

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significant) use of detention, torture, sexual violence, and property crime, while disappearances leveled off or increased only modestly. Throughout the conflict, FMLN violence remained concentrated in lethal violence and abductions. However, I estimate that the relative importance of killings and disappearances shifted significantly over time, and that other forms of nonlethal violence increased only negligibly during the final years of the conflict. I estimate nearly 2,200 outright killings by the FMLN between 1980 and 1983, but only about 700 during 1984–91, a pattern that is diametrically opposite to that estimated for FMLN-perpetrated disappearances. During the first four years of the conflict, I estimate just 400 FMLN disappearances, whereas during 1984–91 (the period of “true” guerrilla war) I estimate approximately 1,600 disappearances (i.e., roughly twice as many disappearances per year, on average). MSE estimates of FMLN nonlethal violence do not converge for any period. However, the proportion of total estimated violence taken up by killings and disappearances is relatively stable over time, implying that the proportion of nonlethal violence is similarly stable. Both survey results and interview results provide more detail than MSE estimates where over-time change in FMLN violence is concerned. In particular, while opinions varied as to the precise date of the change, FMLN combatants who joined prior to the “official” beginning of war in 1980, or during the earliest years of the war (1980–82), were more likely to report that discipline had improved during their time in the FMLN than were those who joined later. In the FPL—but not the ERP—earlier-joining combatants report witnessing or committing more forms of violence against civilians than those who joined later. No ERP survey respondent reported witnessing more than three forms of violence, whereas about 10 percent of FPL combatants who joined prior to 1983 reported more than three forms of violence. Earlier-recruited FMLN combatants and those recruited later were equally likely to report that officers “usually” or “always” punished abuses of noncombatants, implying that the likelihood of discipline was not the factor underlying changed behavior as the conflict wore on. Officers whom I interviewed suggested that the institutionalization of political education, and particularly its increasing emphasis on the importance of civilians as allies, played a major role in limiting violence against noncombatants to acts ordered by the hierarchy. While between-group differences in violence are incredibly stark, state organizations experienced some significant over-time changes as well. In particular, I estimate that all state organizations used far fewer killings in the middle and later years of the war, while disappearances did not change and nonlethal violence increased significantly. MSE results suggest that while the Salvadoran armed forces faced significant-enough military (and public-relations) pressure to cease

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civilian killings, violent repression—including both explicitly sanctioned forms of repression such as detention and torture, and “unofficial” repression such as extortion and opportunistic sexual violence—continued or increased through the remainder of the war.

Examining Alternative Explanations Given the obvious difficulties associated with attempting to prove the causal role of armed-group political-education programs (and other institutions) in repertoires of violence, it makes sense to examine whether other plausible mechanisms may have played a role in repertoires of violence during the civil war in El Salvador. To do this, I return to qualitative and historical evidence regarding the war, attempting to determine whether other common theories of violence can account for the repertoire changes observed. In general, these alternative causal stories—for example, the idea that FMLN repertoires of violence were better controlled because the FMLN had strategic incentives to control violence—provide good “first cut” analyses but do not tell the full story of dynamics of violence in El Salvador. I consider four types of alternative explanations for the variations in violence I observe: those emphasizing strategic logics in general; those related to territorial control in particular (cf. Kalyvas 2006); arguments based on adverse selection (cf. Weinstein 2007); and theories of wartime sexual violence based on violent socialization (cf. Cohen 2016). One plausible story to explain the differences between FMLN and state repertoires of violence concerns the two organizations’ differing strategic incentives. In this version of the Salvadoran conflict, insurgents “had to be nice” because of their reliance on civilians for information, food, transport, and other necessities. The state, in the strongest version of this theoretical view, had no special incentive to treat civilians well, largely because it possessed the capacity to survive without civilian support, and/or because it possessed the capacity to compel civilian “support.” This appears to be a reasonable assessment of the generalities of the state-FMLN differences, but it does a very poor job of explaining intrastate or intra-FMLN differences. It also fails, to a large extent, to explain differences over time. A narrower “strategy” explanation might hold that killing is more tightly coupled to strategic imperatives than are other forms of violence against noncombatants. Were this the case, we would expect to see killing vary with strategic incentives while nonlethal violence varied according to alternative logics. This potential explanation is slightly more promising, but, as I discuss below, ultimately unsuccessful—at least in the Salvadoran case. The most damning piece

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of evidence against a strategy story, in the Salvadoran case, is time. The strategic importance of restrained behavior toward civilians seems not to have varied over time with the actual behavior of armed groups toward civilians, especially where both lethal and nonlethal violence are taken into account. To take a more specific example, consider the two to three years (roughly 1980–82) during which the FMLN high command, though well aware of its need to guard relationships with civilians, nevertheless observed that significant numbers of unordered civilian abuses were occurring in its zones of control. Many or most of these abuses were not lethal; several mid- and high-level officers reported in interviews that “guys were coming down [from the hills] into town and abusing women” (interview 6) or that “we had a big problem with stealing” (interview 24). In the eyes of these officers, the fact that civilian protection was not just a strategic benefit but a strategic necessity made little difference without a reliable way to produce (or enforce) such protection. This is not to say that the FMLN behaved unrestrainedly or abusively, in general, toward civilians during the early years of the war or during any other period. As discussed at length above, the FMLN repertoire of violence differed considerably from the state repertoire, and the number of episodes perpetrated by the FMLN was dwarfed by state-perpetrated incidents, throughout the war. With respect to the repertoire of violence, it is notable that the FMLN excombatants and ex-officers with whom I spoke mentioned nonlethal violence specifically when they spoke about the comparative indiscipline of the early years of the conflict. One potential reading of this observation is that the FMLN, with its comparatively tight discipline throughout the conflict, was capable of closely controlling combatants’ use of lethal violence before it gained control over their nonlethal violence. This, in turn, could be considered evidence in favor of a strategic argument. The problem with a strategic explanation can best be expressed in terms of necessity versus sufficiency: strategic incentives may be necessary to restrain behavior, but they are far from sufficient. (In some instances, they may not even be necessary.) The literature on the Salvadoran war is replete with stories in which FMLN cadres protected civilians in a way that directly contravened their immediate or medium-term strategic interests. For example, FMLN retreats from state incursions frequently included large, slow columns of civilian supporters (e.g., discussions in Clements 1985; Leiva 2005). Compare this type of behavior to the actions of state forces. In general, groups associated with the state (including informal paramilitaries and death squads as well as the army, BIRIs, and security forces) behaved toward civilians in a way that most observers agreed could potentially have been (perceived as) strategically sound in the immediate term, but that was unsustainable in any medium- or

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long-term view. Despite intense pressure and considerable resources from its American patrons, the government of El Salvador repeatedly failed to produce a sustainable hearts-and-minds program; in 1984 and again in 1987, major initiatives were launched and very quickly failed (Bacevich 1988; Schwarz 1991). A variant strategic logic, described by Stanley (1996), views the state’s behavior toward civilians as strategic insofar as the military’s “strategy” was not winning a counterinsurgent war, but rather bidding for a protection contract. In this sense, the state’s violence could potentially be seen as rational or strategic—but this is a profoundly different sense of “strategy” than is usually intended in the literature on violence against noncombatants. State repertoires of violence included significant levels of unordered (though implicitly or explicitly tolerated) opportunistic violence against civilians who were not suspected of collaboration with the FMLN. In many cases, civilians who suffered state violence were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Violence against civilians who saw themselves as neutral or who supported the state was common, as was violence against civilians in areas of strong state control. Because of the significant intradepartmental and within-year variation in zones of control, no MSE estimates are available at a sufficiently disaggregated level to test strategic-targeting theories at the micro level. However, a significant qualitative literature describes a number of state attacks on civilians, from large massacres (e.g., Danner 1993, Binford 2016) to individual-level street harassment (e.g., Tula 1994). In his detailed account of the infamous December 1981 massacre at El Mozote (Morazán Department), Danner (1993) notes that many of those killed were civilians friendly to the government (largely evangelical Christians).4 In the course of the massacre, according to both Danner and forensic anthropologists consulting with the Truth Commission (Betancur, Figueredo Planchart, and Buergenthal 1993), a significant proportion of the women killed suffered rape or other sexual violence beforehand. Danner reports that many of these peasants were trapped by the army’s hammer-and-anvil operation because they did not heed FMLN warnings to leave the area (that is, precisely because they had sided with the government rather than the insurgency). Similarly, Wood (2003) finds that violence by the state frequently led previously quiescent Salvadoran peasants to support, or even join, the FMLN—in contrast to the typical “strategic” story in which support for the FMLN or its affiliated political organizations provokes government violence. If overall violence against noncombatants seems to have been only weakly related to strategic imperatives over the course of the war—and our qualitative sense of violence in El Salvador is tied largely to killings—then attempts to explicitly include repertoire elements other than killing in the analysis should only

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strengthen this conclusion. Outside of detention and torture, I found very little evidence that officers explicitly ordered nonlethal violence. For example, of the approximately ten state ex-combatants who disclosed sexual violence committed while they served in the armed forces, all but one stated that the violence had been unordered, though many instances occurred during military campaigns. The one ex-combatant who detailed ordered sexual violence specifically stated that it took place outside the context of any mission. He described this episode of violence as a hazing ritual that occurred toward the beginning of his service with BIRI Atlacatl (interview 70). As is some of the narratives described by Cohen (2016), this ex-combatant recalled being ordered to participate in a gang rape in which officers “went first,” followed by other combatants, according to their status in the group. FMLN excombatants who had heard about sexual violence similarly saw rape as an act of opportunism and/or a substitute for consensual sex, rather than as a strategic enterprise endorsed from above. There is a strategic logic available to explain opportunistic violence—namely, a story in which state organizations allowed “preferred” forms of violence to occur “for the sake of morale” or as “spoils of war”—and this may have been one of the dynamics by which such violence occurred. But like most theories of violence that implicitly view violence as exceptional rather than normal, this theory fails to explain times and places in which such violence did not occur. Several alternative approaches (cf. A4–A10) suggest that violence against noncombatants during armed conflict should be related to levels of contestation and/ or control. Unlike more general strategic accounts, these theories usually provide relatively crisp predictions regarding where and when the greatest amount of violence against civilians will be perpetrated. “Contestation” typically refers to the intensity of conflict, and a significant number of political science accounts have either assumed or tested the proposition that violence (usually meaning levels of lethal violence) against civilians increases with conflict intensity. “Control,” as conceptualized by Kalyvas (2006) and others, refers not to the overall intensity of conflict in a given region but to a given actor’s ability to impel or restrict particular behaviors over a particular territory. How should propositions regarding violence and control or contestation relate, not to the number or level of killings, but to variations in the types of violence committed? Francisco Gutierrez Sanín (2008) has suggested that, in Colombia, sexual violence as a repertoire element may have occurred primarily during lulls in fighting, after armed groups first entered villages or towns—but this is disaggregating further than most studies can manage, and more than most studies attempt. Accounts from El Salvador, by contrast, typically portray sexual violence and property crime by state agents as regular, though unofficial, elements (not

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aftereffects) of military incursions, as well as a routine element of detention and a frequently employed form of torture (e.g., Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador 1989). Kalyvas (2006) divides zones of control in irregular war into five types, from zone 1 (fully government-controlled) to zone 5 (fully insurgent-controlled). He argues that locales weakly controlled by one side in a civil conflict should be most likely to experience selective violence against civilians. In summing up his hypotheses regarding the effects of control and contestation, he writes, “Once control is achieved, violence becomes redundant. Therefore, the higher an actor’s level of control, the less likely that actor will use violence” (244). In addition, Kalyvas expects that over time, “political actors are likely to gradually move from indiscriminate to selective violence” (169). We might reasonably expect selective violence to be concentrated in particular types, most notably lethal violence. Unfortunately, the data available to us for testing offer little information on this front. In my reading, the evidence supports the view that state violence (i.e., the vast majority of the violence in El Salvador) grew significantly less lethal, but only somewhat less common, over the course of the war. Whether this apparent decline in frequency indicates increasing selectivity is extremely unclear. It may represent a shift in tactics, rather than a shift in selectivity. Certainly a tactical shift toward aerial bombardment is inconsistent with increasing selectivity. Whether the level of lethal or other violence by each major actor was highest in areas of greatest conflict intensity also remains unclear. Greentree (2008) suggests that the disposition of most of the country’s territory was relatively static throughout the war, with western departments (Ahuachapan, Sonsonate, Santa Ana) comparatively well controlled by the state; the northern areas of Chalatenango and Morazán almost entirely controlled by the FMLN; and much of the rest of the country contested or insecurely controlled by the government. Other accounts suggest that areas of control shifted more considerably over the course of the war. A more detailed account of areas of control and contestation would include FMLN “expansion zones,” in which cadres operated consistently but not freely. These expansion zones were among the most contested areas; according to general contestation theories, then, they should also have been the most violent. Given the scarcity of available data, and the mismatch between raw data and MSE estimates across departments, this proposition would be difficult to test. On a departmental level, it appears that the FMLN may have committed more violence where it held some degree of territorial control (notably in Chalatenango, Morazán, and San Vicente) than where it did not; the vast majority of FMLN violence was individually targeted. The Salvadoran armed forces maintained full control (in Kalyvas’s sense) only in areas the FMLN did not contest

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(Ahuachapán and Sonsonate in the West; La Union in the East). It enjoyed rather little grassroots support at any period in the war, but massed enough personnel to be roughly in control of San Salvador at most points. Yet violence in San Salvador (city and department) was never fully selective in the sense Kalyvas intends. Mass detentions and torture, especially, were common throughout the conflict. Over the course of the conflict in El Salvador, American support increased the size of the Salvadoran armed forces from approximately ten thousand to approximately sixty thousand personnel (see, e.g., English 1984; Bacevich 1988). The Salvadoran armed forces’ supply of helicopters increased to approximately thirty-five by 1985; in 1986, government press releases indicated that twelve of El Salvador’s fourteen departments had been bombed from the air (Edwards and Siebentritt 1991, 18). These statistics provide some approximation of the extent to which aerial bombardment had come to characterize the government’s approach to the conflict by the mid-1980s. The counterinsurgency strategy the United States pushed on the Salvadoran high command consisted, in its execution if not in the Americans’ intention, of massive campaigns of aerial bombardment, designed to push FMLN forces and “their” civilians out of large swaths of territory. This policy was to be coupled with hearts-and-minds campaigns that would eventually reconstitute and stabilize civilian centers after the FMLN presence had been eradicated. One might expect, then, that killings and injuries, rather than “face-to-face” crimes such as torture or sexual violence, would have dominated the Salvadoran government repertoire during this period. Not so. Instead, the period of “air war” (roughly the mid-1980s) shows a more or less constant amount of violence, a decreasing share of which is lethal violence. In general, it appears, violence against civilians by the Salvadoran Army had much more to do with location than with strategy or tactics. In interviews, a number of Salvadoran Army veterans stated that harassing civilians was, in effect, a way for soldiers to entertain themselves. Thus it appears that in addition to being somewhat unconnected to strategic imperatives, violence was not well connected to the tactics of war in general. Neither new weapons nor new strategic postures significantly altered the state’s repertoire of violence. Principal-agent accounts, like that of Weinstein (2007), predict that violence varies with the resources available to a given rebel movement. Groups that lack material support must use nontangible means (i.e., must change minds) to win new recruits. The long-term effect of this strategy, Weinstein predicts, is a highly disciplined fighting force that uses considerably less violence against noncombatants than do groups that recruit primarily on the basis of personal gain or advantage. Weinstein’s discussion of violence against noncombatants in Perú suggests that his conception of “more violence” includes both “more lethal violence” and

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“more types of violence.” The repertoire prediction, it would seem, is that groups with personal-gain recruiting tactics should use wider repertoires of violence, or at least that such groups should use repertoires of violence in which potentially personally gratifying forms of violence are overrepresented (A11–A14). Certainly, adverse-selection accounts correctly categorize the FMLN: as an organization, it lacked material resources to offer its recruits and instead relied on emotional and intellectual persuasion, and it used both low levels and carefully controlled repertoires of violence against noncombatants. However, on the level of its microfoundations, this theory appears to fail in two ways. It suggests, first, that preferences for violence are fixed prior to the recruit’s combat experience, and, second, that neither initial training nor subsequent experiences can change those preferences. However, the malleable nature of preferences for violence is clearly in evidence among the ex-combatants whom I interviewed for this project. In the Salvadoran case, many FMLN recruits joined the organization largely for reasons that could be adequately summed up with one word: revenge. A common narrative among the men and women I interviewed evolved from an initial revenge-fueled desire to “kill as many of them as I could” (interview 6) to an understanding that enemy soldiers were, in essence, victims of circumstance who deserved mercy. Officers, especially those who had been involved with recruiting in the early years of the conflict, also frequently spoke of the importance of training, not in terms of gaining skills but in terms of conscientization. Both recruits’ willingness to do violence to enemies and their ability to restrain violence toward non-enemies remained undeveloped, in this telling, until well after their recruitment to the group. Weinstein’s argument also seems to suggest that groups with better access to material resources at the outset of a conflict should have worse human-rights records, relative to other insurgent organizations. This is precisely the situation in which the ERP found itself. Although the FMLN as a whole can be said to have lacked material resources, the few resources it did have were not distributed equally, especially toward the beginning of the conflict. The ERP controlled supply routes from Nicaragua and consequently had access to both more weapons and other materiel than did the FPL or the other FMLN groups (Greentree 2008; Bracamonte and Spencer 1995). Yet while differences between FPL and ERP violence exist, they largely contravene the theoretical expectations of principalagent models: FPL cadres appear to have been responsible for more violence, and more types of violence, than were ERP cadres, despite being somewhat smaller in number for most of the conflict. Another set of alternative hypotheses (A1–A4) concerns the role of violent socialization in promoting rape, and particularly gang rape. Cohen (2016) argues

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that violent military socialization is likely to include gang rape, and therefore that armed groups that need (or “need”) violent socialization practices are more likely to use (gang) rape. Groups need violent socialization when there are no preexisting networks of trust between combatants—for example, when recruitment is forced. Cohen finds that armed groups using forced recruitment do, in fact, use higher average levels of sexual violence. In the Salvadoran case, her theory predicts accurately that Salvadoran state forces use higher levels of sexual violence than do FMLN forces, overall. In general, the predictions of Cohen’s theory are extremely similar to the predictions of the Commander’s Dilemma—because institutions are strongly correlated. Forced recruitment and lack of political education (and poor officer-combatant relations, and poor training overall) tend to go together (Hoover Green 2017). Thus, we have to look for critical moments at which Cohen’s theory diverges. There are two such periods in the Salvadoran conflict. The first is in Morazán during 1983–84. This is the period during which the ERP, while maintaining its political-education program, instituted a forced recruitment policy. During this period, Cohen’s theory predicts increased sexual violence by the ERP, while the Commander’s Dilemma does not. The second critical moment is between the early and middle phases of the war on the state side. During this period of time, forced recruitment by regular-army units appears to have decreased; there was no significant change in the (nonexistent) political-education regime among state forces during these years. The Commander’s Dilemma suggests that, recruitment notwithstanding, we should observe widening repertoires of violence (including increasing levels of sexual violence) during this timeframe. Cohen, by contrast, theorizes that the decreasing rate of forced recruitment should be associated with lower levels of sexual violence. There are no MSE estimates for either of these periods. However, both survey data and raw data suggest that the observed outcome is better explained by the Commander’s Dilemma. Figure 5.5 shows the proportion of FMLN and regular-army ex-combatants who witnessed rape by combatants in their units, by the year they joined the group. There is no change among FMLN combatants (from zero) after a brief increase in 1980. The proportion of regular-army forces who say they witnessed rape increases steadily over the course of the war. Overall, the picture of violence in El Salvador I have been able to reconstruct is patchy. Some patterns are clear: widening repertoires by regular-army forces over time; consistently narrow repertoires by ERP forces over time; narrowing repertoires by FPL forces after the first years of the war. Some of the hypotheses suggested by my theory (and others’ theories) aren’t testable using the information at hand. In general, though, where there are enough data to build a test, the tests seem to support the Commander’s Dilemma approach. The Commander’s

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0.40

Percent of recruits witnessing rape

0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05

Year Group FMLN

89 19

88 19

87 19

86 19

85 19

84 19

83 19

82 19

81 19

80 19

79 19

78 19

19

77

0.00

State

FIGURE 5.5 Proportion of survey respondents who “saw or heard about” rape, by year of recruitment and armed group

Dilemma makes sense of the strategically irrational abuse of civilians by regulararmy forces, and of the surprising differences between FPL and ERP repertoires in the early years of the war. Of course, El Salvador might be considered a likely case for the Commander’s Dilemma: a wantonly abusive state force meeting committed Communist rebels in a small country, without significant ethnic divisions. In chapter 6, I ask whether the theory can explain variations in violence in a very unlikely context: chaotic, generally nonideological, frequently horrifically abusive, interconnected civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Chapter 6 THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA BEYOND EL SALVADOR

Kamajor baa woteh. (Kamajor, do not turn [back].) —Quoted in Danny Hoffman, “The Meaning of a Militia”

Political education played a crucial role in restrained repertoires of violence by the FMLN in El Salvador. FMLN political-education practices created important changes in combatants’ mindsets, which in turn affected their default behavior toward civilians, resulting in generally restrained repertoires and levels of violence against civilians. Importantly, this was true regardless of changes in recruitment mechanisms, motives for joining the FMLN, territorial control, or conflict intensity. At the opposite end of the spectrum, state forces’ repertoires of violence against civilians remained wide (indeed widened, as its overwhelming use of killing declined). State repertoires responded little, if at all, to changes in territorial control, changes in FMLN strategy, or the imposition of American trainers. Overall levels of state violence, as well as levels of lethal violence, declined following American threats to cut off assistance. Yet, despite the strategic and reputational damage wrought by opportunistic violence, state forces continued their reign of terror via arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, property destruction, and other atrocities. Of course, variation within a single conflict, no matter how carefully mapped, cannot prove the broad utility of the Commander’s Dilemma framework. In my ideal world, this project would move from a detailed, subnational investigation to a cross-national test of the association between political education and repertoires of violence, with statistical controls for alternative hypotheses. Unfortunately, in the real world these data simply do not exist. There are approximations: in a 2016 article (Hoover Green 2016), I showed that 170

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Communist rebels used lower average levels of sexual violence—but not lower levels of lethal violence—than non-Communist rebels, after controlling for a number of other variables. All else equal, Communist rebels committed about half to three-quarters of a level (out of four levels) less sexual violence than did other rebels. For perspective, this is about the same decrease in reported wartime sexual violence that would be associated with increasing per-capita GDP from the tenth percentile (the GDP of a country like Chad) to the fortyseventh percentile (the GDP of a country like Bosnia), holding other variables at their means. It is a substantively large and statistically significant difference that is consistent with the Commander’s Dilemma theory. But it could be that Communists fight systematically different types of wars in a way not captured by my control variables. Readers of this book will be unsurprised to learn that I attributed the difference in repertoires (remember, the difference in levels of sexual violence was not matched by a statistically significant difference in levels of lethal violence) to political education. Communist armed groups are often built from foundational documents that give explicit blueprints for political education, both within the group and outside it. Still, Communism is a weak proxy for political education— and it is a proxy for only one type of political education. Not all Communist armed groups carry out political education; for many Communist groups it is difficult to tell whether founding documents actually inform behavior, at any level or rank. And while the quantitative results suggest this is rare, political education can be employed to broaden the repertoire of violence, or create rationalizations for violence, as well as to narrow and control it. To take just one example, both officers and recruits in the Red Army complained bitterly about the time they spent in political-education courses during World War II (Merridale 2006, 55–56), indicating commitment to PE on the part of elites. Yet as the war ground on, Red Army PE increasingly encouraged broad repertoires of violence, particularly the rape of German women (Beevor 2003, chap. 3). On reaching Berlin, Soviet troops perpetrated widespread violence, most notably rape (Grossman 1995; Anonymous 2005; Burds 2009). Another difficulty with my 2016 article is its unit of analysis: the “rebel group.” As we know from the Salvadoran case, groups coded as unitary often have multiple branches or factions, each of which may use different institutions over time. For many, there is no binary “political education yes / political education no” variable that applies over all factions or conflict periods. Ultimately, the problem boils down to data: reliable cross-national data on armed organizations’ internal practices do not exist, particularly if the question is whether (for a given period of time) a majority of front-line combatants received consistent military or political training. Policy documents are common, and a few authors have examined

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groups’ documents for evidence of internal institutions. Reliable evidence about policy implementation, however, is nearly nonexistent. Given these challenges, I turn in this chapter to evidence about a set of groups that I expect to pose a difficult test for the Commander’s Dilemma framework: organizations that contested the complex, interconnected conflicts in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) and Liberia (1989–2003). These wars—I refer to them together as the “Mano River wars”—certainly involved contact with civilians; hence they meet one key boundary condition of the theory. The second boundary condition is less clear. Recall from chapter 1 that the Commander’s Dilemma framework applies only to groups that face some incentive—strategic or moral—to control violence against civilians. Incentives for civilian protection in the Mano River wars are unclear. For example, Ferme and Hoffman (2004, 88) suggest that violence against civilians, particularly in later phases of the war in Sierra Leone, operated to gain concessions from an international community that would do nearly anything to keep combatants from “going back to the bush.” Widespread abuses against civilians seemed not to lead to negative military consequences but rather to increased bargaining power. Rebel groups, including the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), financed themselves via diamond proceeds and consequently were not necessarily beholden to civilians for food or funds. In the Salvadoran context, rebel groups maintained specific strongholds for much of the conflict, but rebels, rebels-in-government, and various progovernment militias and mercenary outfits in the Mano River wars held territory much less consistently than did any group in the Salvadoran context. Thus, in many of their particulars, the groups contesting these wars test scope of the theory. To examine this complex conflict, I use an abbreviated version of the testing strategy laid out in chapters 3 through 5: description of the conflict context— including both strategic developments and internal institutional changes— matched to detailed information about repertoires of violence. Unlike the testing strategy I employed in the Salvadoran case, I rely entirely on secondary sources for my information about armed-group institutions, practices, and ideologies. Perhaps uniquely among contemporary conflicts, there exists a large and detailed qualitative literature on Mano River fighters. Researchers from several disciplines have conducted a stunning variety of studies in Sierra Leone and Liberia, from ethnographic accounts (Richards 1996; Hoffman, 2004, 2007, 2011; Ferme and Hoffman 2004; Utas 2003, 2005; Wlodarczyk 2009) to interview-based studies (Coulter 2009; Marks 2013; Nuxoll 2014; Lidow 2016) to surveys (Pugel 2007; Humphreys and Weinstein 2006). Particularly with regard to Sierra Leone, some accounts span the history of the conflict beginning with its earliest origins (e.g., Abdullah 1998). From this rich literature, I construct abbreviated institutional biographies for

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Liberian and Sierra Leonean armed groups, drawing from these accounts several hypotheses for testing. I pay particularly close attention to places and times where implications of the Commander’s Dilemma diverge from those of other theoretical approaches, including strategic explanations of violence, adverse-selection models, and violent-socialization accounts. My data on violence are drawn primarily from testimonies to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of Liberia (Cibelli, Hoover, and Krüger 2009) and Sierra Leone (Conibere et al. 2004) and are supplemented, in the Sierra Leonean case, by survey data from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) (Amowitz et al. 2002). In addition to examining violence by the largest rebel groups in each country— the RUF and the NPFL, respectively—I describe the institutional development of state militaries: the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA). I also consider evidence about three additional nonstate groups: in Sierra Leone, those known collectively as Community Defense Forces (CDFs), and in Liberia, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). Despite the wide, seemingly chaotic repertoires that characterized the Mano River wars overall, I find some evidence that political education explains variation in violence that strategy, ideology, and discipline cannot.

The Mano River Wars The Mano River region comprises two to four West African nations, depending on whom you ask. Some discussions cite Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire (e.g., Silberfein and Conteh 2006). Others leave out Cote d’Ivoire (e.g., Sawyer 2004). Some restrict the region to the original members of the Mano River Union: Liberia and Sierra Leone. Although the region’s major wars, in those two countries, involved both actors and resources from Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea, I focus on the interrelated conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The histories of these wars are tightly linked, first and foremost by their joint villain, the Americo-Liberian warlord-cum-president-cum-prisoner Charles Taylor. Taylor, educated in the United States, took part in the 1980 military coup that placed Samuel Doe in the Liberian presidency and was rewarded with a plum position, as director general of the General Services Agency, the entity responsible for government purchasing in Liberia. Fired for embezzlement (a relative rarity in an administration riddled with corruption), Taylor returned to the United States, where he was captured and held pending extradition. He escaped (according to Taylor himself, with help from the CIA) and, via a roundabout route, landed in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan guerrilla training camp, the

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World Training Center. From Libya, where he met and trained with the eventual leaders of Sierra Leone’s RUF, Taylor made his way to Cote d’Ivoire, where in 1989 he founded the National Patriotic Front of Liberia.

The Liberian Civil War(s): 1989–2003 Taylor’s NPFL, initially just one hundred lightly armed irregulars, entered Nimba County from Cote d’Ivoire on Christmas Eve 1989, prompting the Doe government to send two battalions of soldiers from the Armed Forces of Liberia to defend against the invasion. The AFL, dominated by Doe’s Krahn coethnics, apparently behaved with extreme violence toward local civilians but considerable ineptitude toward the rebels. Partly as a result, the NPFL quickly gained recruits, growing as it proceeded westward across Nimba County, toward Gbarngna, in Bong County. By June, the NPFL was advancing on the capital, Monrovia, which lies toward the northern end of Liberia’s western (Atlantic) coast. By July, it controlled over 80 percent of Liberia’s territory. On August 24, 1990, troops from the Economic Community of West African States (whose peacekeeping arm was the Monitoring Group, ECOMOG) arrived in Monrovia as peacekeepers. Both NPFL forces and those of the splinter faction Independent NPFL (INPFL) pushed into Monrovia around the same time. On September 9, INPFL forces captured Doe, who had appeared at ECOMOG headquarters to complain about his treatment; they ultimately tortured him to death in an assault that was videotaped and widely shared in Monrovia. With limited interruptions, a stalemate—during which all parties to the conflict committed significant violence against civilians—persisted through much of 1991 and 1992. The NPFL, headquartered in Gbarngna, controlled most of the country, while ECOMOG troops secured the capital. And despite heavy fighting within Liberia, Taylor’s NPFL nevertheless managed to foment war in Sierra Leone during 1991, arming and training RUF forces and assisting with the initial attack, from NPFLheld Liberian territory into Kailahun, in Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province. Following the initial string of NPFL victories, AFL forces often deserted or were forced to flee; those that remained generally stayed in Monrovia, in barracks, under ECOMOG protection. Those that escaped to refugee camps in Sierra Leone regrouped, however. During early 1992, they founded a new group, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), which was trained, armed, and supported by the Sierra Leonean government. ULIMO entered the country from Sierra Leone via Lofa County, in the North, and moved quickly toward Tubmanburg, overtaking it in August 1992 and swiftly gaining control of much of the northern third of the country. The NPFL also faced increasing pressure from ECOMOG forces, which successfully blockaded

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NPFL-held areas. Taylor responded by ordering a siege of Monrovia, which held for two months between October and December 1992 before ECOMOG forces pushed NPFL forces back to Monrovia’s outlying suburbs. Summer 1993 brought another failed ceasefire attempt, this one negotiated in Cotonou, Benin, and a new player to the conflict: the Liberia Peace Council, which gained control of the country’s southern Atlantic coast during 1993–94, ultimately moving as far north as Buchanan, Liberia’s second-largest city and a major port. Above and beyond its failure to end the war, the Cotonou agreement ultimately increased the number of warring factions: disagreements regarding appointments in (the more or less hypothetical) transitional government led to an ethnic split within ULIMO. Krahn forces arrayed behind Roosevelt Johnson as ULIMO-J, while Mandingo troops followed Alhaji Kromah and became ULIMO-K. Other agreements failed in 1994 and 1995. The NPFL signed a major peace deal in 1996, leading to elections in 1997. Taylor won with 75 percent of the popular vote, but the result is widely considered a species of blackmail: “Elect me or I’ll keep fighting.” Following Taylor’s ascent, violence flared regularly as Taylor installed loyalists in key security positions. The fragile interregnum ended in 1999, as Liberian dissidents invaded Lofa County from Guinea and Sierra Leone. These groups, generally thought to consist of former ULIMO fighters in coalition with former Sierra Leonean CDF fighters, coalesced as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) in 2000. Taylor sought RUF assistance, and initially LURD was pushed back. But by 2002, both Guinea and Sierra Leone were supporting LURD. A new rebel organization, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), emerged in the south. Taylor’s government in Monrovia was squeezed from two sides and controlled only a third of the country’s territory. LURD besieged the capital in summer 2003, shelling the city almost constantly. US troops arrived to secure the American embassy, and the Economic Community of West African States sent two battalions of peacekeepers, including one arriving directly from Sierra Leone. Taylor, submitting to a fait accompli, resigned on August 11.

The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002) Sierra Leone’s civil war, though rooted in a history of gerontocratic, single-party rule, was more directly a result of Taylor’s (and, to some extent, Burkina Faso president Blaise Campaore’s) intervention. The NPFL, with Burkinabe fighters, trained and assisted Foday Sankoh’s RUF from the time of its inception through its first significant attack, from Liberia’s Lofa County, through Kailahun, in eastern Sierra Leone, and on toward the alluvial diamond mines of the Kono District. Opinions differ about the overall “character” of the RUF in these early days, but

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it is certain that NPFL fighters who crossed the border with the RUF committed extensive violence against civilians during the early days of the Sierra Leone civil war (Marks 2013). During this initial phase, the RUF made significant territorial gains, taking over much of Kailahun and Pujehun Provinces. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA) expanded rapidly, recruiting (or “recruiting”) large cadres of “urban youth” (Hoffman 2011, chap. 1) as it scrambled to defend against the RUF onslaught. In early 1992, facing new threats from ULIMO at home, Liberian NPFL fighters headed home, leaving the RUF a primarily Sierra Leonean force for the remainder of the war. On April 29, a haphazard but ultimately effective coup d’état unseated the disastrously unpopular president, Joseph Momoh, and a group calling itself the National Provisional Ruling Council installed itself in central government, increasing attacks against the RUF with the assistance of foreign factions, particularly ULIMO. State forces, now filled with irregulars and poorly paid foreign fighters, grew increasingly predatory toward civilians; according to Hoffman (2011, chap. 1), this was the birthplace of the Krio neologism sobel, a portmanteau combining “soldier” and “rebel.” “Sobel” refers to the fact that much of the violence committed by SLA forces was committed in the context of collaboration with the RUF or otherwise out of uniform. This was also the advent of the Community Defense Forces (CDFs). Beginning with a small but strikingly successful group of tamaboro hunters, the government mobilized many thousands of preexisting local defense forces, including kamajoh or kamajoisia (or, in its anglicization, kamajors). Along with loyal government forces, these proto-CDFs made quick military gains, nearly driving RUF forces back to Liberia. Beginning in 1994 and continuing through 1995 and 1996, CDF organization and centralization increased as, for example, “a group of ritual specialists . . . were invited to various chiefdoms to wash local fighters with powerful medicine that would protect them in battle” (Hoffman 2011, chap. 1). In 1995 the National Provisional Ruling Council government, its efforts against the RUF all but undone by sobel activity, hired Executive Outcomes, a South Africa–based mercenary company with ties to the former apartheid government, to defeat the RUF. As part of Executive Outcomes’ strategies, the government began to recruit and train kamajors and other ethnic hunter militias to fight as CDFs. As Hoffman (2004, 2007, 2011) and others have documented, the Executive Outcomes intervention produced significant changes in kamajor militias’ fighter populations, in their recruitment tactics, and in their systems of internal governance. According to Hoffman (2011, chap. 1), “Beginning with the appointment of [Sam Hinga] Norman to the SLPP government, the sense [among CDF fighters] of joining a collective body, albeit a decentralized one, grew increasingly important.” By the mid-1990s, CDFs had dramatically expanded and extended

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their geographic reach with support from Executive Outcomes and the government. In 1996, with the RUF in retreat, the parties signed a peace accord in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. An elected civilian government, albeit a weak one, was installed. The Sierra Leone People’s Party, under Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, supported the use of CDF forces, leading to tensions with the army. The SLA-CDF alliance was fragile. Following the departure of Executive Outcomes, a coup by officers opposed to the CDF alliance brought the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) to power on May 25, 1997. Together, AFRC and RUF forces took the capital, Freetown, with little resistance, leading to a wave of violence, largely against civilians. International actors again intervened: ECOMOG forces pushed the AFRC-RUF coalition out of Freetown on behalf of the civilian government but failed to secure the rest of the country. Following a bloody 1999 attack on Freetown, known as “Operation No Living Thing,” the RUF extracted important concessions in the July 1999 Lomé Peace Accords: Foday Sankoh received the vice presidency and personal control over diamond mining in the country. Technically, disarmament and demobilization began immediately following the Lomé Accords. More accurately, disarmament and demobilization began a year later, after a combination of British intervention, Guinean bombing raids on RUF-held villages, and pressure on the Liberian government to expel RUF fighters led to a decisive shift in power. President Kabbah declared Sierra Leone’s war officially over on January 18, 2002.

Comparisons While the Sierra Leonean and Liberian civil wars were closely intertwined and share many similarities, it is also important to note contrasts between the two. Although ethnicity played an important role in some moments, war in Sierra Leone was dominated not by ethnic conflict but by what authors have termed a crisis of patrimonialism (cf. Richards 1996) or a cultural crisis of “lumpen youth” (cf. Abdullah 1998, 207). In Liberia, ethnicity and tribe played an important role. Doe’s tribe, the Krahn, were seen as dominating government and resources during his rule, while the NPFL initially consisted primarily of Gio and Mano fighters. ULIMO’s J (primarily Krahn) and K (primarily Mandingo) factions split largely along ethnic lines. During the second period of war, both LURD and MODEL were strikingly cross-ethnic—groups forged in opposition to Taylor’s rule rather than in opposition to (or defense of) any particular ethnic group. For nonspecialists, the jumble of acronyms in the Mano River wars can be daunting. For clarity, let me restate the groups I’ll focus on below—noting, as I do so, that not enough information exists to adequately cover every organization that contested these wars. In Liberia, I track the institutions and ideologies

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of (1) the Armed Forces of Liberia (1989 through 1997, when the AFL was effectively overtaken by the NPFL); (2) the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL, 1989–2003, including the period, beginning in 1997, when Taylor held state power); (3) Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD, 1999–2003); and (4) the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL, 2003). In Sierra Leone, the groups I consider are (1) the Sierra Leone Army (SLA, 1991 to 1997, when it was subsumed or displaced—preferred characterizations vary— by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council–RUF alliance of 1997–99; (2) the Revolutionary United Front (RUF, 1991–2002, including its period of alliance with AFRC golpistas in 1997–99); and (3) the Community Defense Forces, both “organic” CDFs organized prior to Executive Outcomes training in 1996 and those organized after. Within this set of organizations, I pay particular attention to institutional and strategic shifts over time. Throughout this section, hypotheses derived from the Commander’s Dilemma framework are noted with (Hx).

Armed-Group Institutions in the Mano River Wars Violence against civilians during the Mano River wars has been characterized as, in addition to brutal, chaotic. In comparison to some other conflicts, this certainly is true. These conflicts seem to exemplify the paradigm of the “criminal rebel,” as in the work of Paul Collier (Collier 2000, Collier and Hoeffler 2004). To many observers, violence in these wars seemed illogical and deeply disorganized (“wanton and senseless,” in Kalyvas’s [1999] formulation); certainly that is how the press often portrayed the gruesome acts suffered by civilians. As one ex-combatant reported to Hoffman (2004), “hearts and minds” approaches to insurgent warfare have “no purchase” (222) in these conflicts. This is part of what makes the Mano River wars a hard case for the Commander’s Dilemma: commanders must have some incentive, whether ideological, strategic, or otherwise, to limit violence against civilians. Otherwise the catch-22 doesn’t catch. Leaders who will survive with or without civilian support have no practical reason, beyond avoiding mutiny, to control combatants’ violence. However, the common conception of the Mano River warscape as utterly opportunistic and violence maximizing does not hold up under scrutiny. None of the Mano River groups were ideological in the FMLN’s sense—with strong, well-known guiding ideologies, backed by highly institutionalized practices for teaching, maintaining, and enforcing those ideologies. At the same time, not all were ideologically rudderless over the whole course of the conflict. The Community Defense Forces, in Sierra Leone, were grounded in the traditions and practices of Poro manhood societies, and some of these traditions persisted

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through the Sierra Leone conflict and into a period of combat, alongside LURD forces, in Liberia. In its earliest days, even the RUF instituted training—including political training—for its soldiers. Identifying institutional variations, over time and across groups, allows us to form some hypotheses for testing. Below, I organize my discussion of armed groups by their year of entry into the Mano River warscape (cf. Hoffman 2011).

Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL, 1989–97) Little direct information about the inner workings of the AFL is available. But Utas (2009) views the AFL, and its institutional precursors, as key to understanding contemporary violence: “Colonial Liberia’s culture of military force forms a central source of information to understand current Liberian warfare” (276). Berkeley (2001, 31, quoted in Utas 2009, 278) writes that the AFL was “a malignant organism in the body politic, inherently opportunistic. . . . A gang culture flourished. Violence was rampant. Ties of blood and ethnicity were paramount. The construction of ethnic patronage systems by rival soldiers would become one of the most important causes of Liberia’s subsequent collapse.” In some ways, then, the AFL had much in common with the Salvadoran armed forces. Violence among fellow soldiers and violence directed toward civilians both were common. Corruption ruled, although in Liberia the corruption was shaped by ethnic ties that created vertical networks between officers and soldiers of the same tribes as a bulwark against coup d’état. In the (relatively) ethnically homogeneous Salvadoran forces, by contrast, officers’ opportunities for corruption were shaped by their military academy class under the tanda system. But the results were similar for civilians. Berkeley (2001, 31) notes that AFL enlisted soldiers “were mainly illiterate peasants, school dropouts and street toughs. In the hinterland areas under their control, they were kings—unpaid but able to plunder what they needed.” Also like the Salvadoran armed forces, AFL forces were trained by American patrons to put down uprisings among forced laborers in the countryside. Berkeley (2001) counts twenty-three such uprisings in the years following the AFL’s founding (as the Liberia Frontier Force) in 1907. The United States intervened directly in nine of these and established a permanent mission to Liberia, for the purpose of military training, by 1951. During the Reagan administration Liberia received more military aid, per capita, than any other sub-Saharan African country. Much of this aid went toward training the AFL, and in this regard it was a total waste. A RAND report prepared for the undersecretary of defense for policy includes, in its introductory matter, the section heading “Liberia: A Training Failure” (McCoy 1994, x). Frustratingly, none of the considerable number of US

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reports on the training missions to Liberia discuss in any detail the specifics of US training of Liberian forces, despite disclosing that by the 1980s, about 5 percent of the AFL was trained by American forces, either in Liberia via Mobile Training Teams, or in the United States. But McCoy (1994, xiin3), citing Schwarz’s (1991) RAND report on El Salvador, notes, “There is much evidence to suggest that certain militaries without a firm foundation in ‘service to nation,’ or militaries in countries with weak civilian leadership, may use IDAD [Internal Defense and Development] training for individual benefit or to strengthen the military’s control over its government.” It is difficult to gain a clear perspective on the internal workings of the AFL. Most commentators, and many academics, infer indiscipline, opportunism, and internal violence from the AFL’s undisciplined, opportunistic, and violent behavior toward civilians—just what I hope to avoid in examining the impact of institutions on repertoires of violence. However, the bulk of the evidence above suggests to me a nonideological force, concerned primarily with protecting its own position and avoiding retribution (ethnicity-based or otherwise) for past abuses. As the war progressed, many AFL soldiers defected to other Krahn-dominated factions, including ULIMO-J and the Liberian Peace Council, based in southeastern Liberia. Rather than espousing any particular ideology, AFL forces fluidly allied with any force neutral toward the Krahn ethnicity or primarily composed of Krahns. No analyst of the Liberian forces suggests that fighters had or were trained in any long-term political or social purpose of war or violence. None notes any significant institutional change in the AFL over the course of its engagement in the conflict, with the exception of its increased willingness to employ very young, and entirely untrained, fighters. The AFL’s ability to fend off NPFL advances on its own was so minimal that its defense of Monrovia was entirely supplanted by ECOMOG forces when they arrived in the capital in the fall of 1990. In fact, Podder (2011) summarizes the AFL’s 1995 “territory” as “barracks within ECOMOG zone” (table 3.1, citing Outram 1997, 356). Following multiple failed ceasefires and brutal preelection violence in Monrovia, the AFL ceased to exist independently with Taylor’s 1997 election. The Commander’s Dilemma framework predicts broad, and perhaps broadening, AFL repertoires of violence over time (H1), which proved remarkably resistant to either “service to nation” rhetoric or the more general professionalization training offered by its US patrons. In his relatively candid RAND report on the failure of US training, McCoy (1994, 22) observes that “despite U.S. attempts and over $200 million in military aid, the United States was not able to influence the AFL's actions; nor was the AFL receptive to advice when the insurgency began. Nothing of importance can be said of improvements in the overall readiness, training, professionalism, desire, or quality of the armed forces.”

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In addition to a relatively wide repertoire of violence against civilians overall, I expect consistently high, randomly varying levels of crimes often associated with opportunism, such as theft, extortion, and sexual violence, even during years when AFL troops lived and worked primarily under ECOMOG protection in Monrovia (H2). I expect civilian killings to increase—though perhaps less than rationalist accounts might predict—in periods and locales of battle such as the initial NPFL invasion (Nimba County, late 1989–1990) (H3).

National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL, 1989–2003) Taylor’s NPFL changed with its fortunes; in particular, as Lidow (2016) discusses, Taylor initially envisioned, and partially enacted, a significant civilian-protection regime in areas under NPFL control. Lidow writes, “Taylor used his control over the group’s resources to provide spot payments to his top commanders, strengthening his control over their actions—and also his ability to punish them for misbehavior. . . . Taylor expected his commanders to maintain order and provide security for civilians. . . . Civilians held the key not only to NPFL’s food supply, but also to Taylor’s legitimacy” (120). Pugel’s (2007) survey of ex-combatants found that nearly 90 percent of former NPFL members reported that they had been “given instructions on how to treat the civilian population” (37). Yet according to Lidow, front-line soldiers and those in unstable areas “were not expected to be disciplined” (122). And more generally, “unless closely supervised by commanders, NPFL soldiers had little fear of being caught and punished for abusing civilians” (126). That is, it is difficult to tell whether fighters faced consistent discipline without a more disaggregated look at the times and locations in which individual fighters served. All we can reasonably conclude is that, particularly early in the war and when the group held significant territory, there was both a strong incentive and some level of effort to control violence against civilians. Having established this fact—that is, having established that the NPFL met the boundary condition for this study, because it attempted to control violence— the question is how it went about doing that. In a random sample of demobilized combatants, Pugel (2007, 36, fig. 16) found that only a small minority of NPFL ex-combatants reported joining for political reasons—although this was true of most factions included in Pugel’s sample. “Only” about 18.5 percent of former NPFL fighters reported abduction as a reason for joining, and just 4 percent cited money. The most common reasons for joining the NPFL were “protect family” (35 percent) and “scared” (20 percent). Howe (1997, 149) writes, “By July 1990, [the NPFL] had reached Monrovia’s outskirts. Although Taylor’s forces numbered perhaps 10,000, they lacked substantial military training, and about 30 percent of its fighters were under the age of 17.” While there is little

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basis for these particular numbers, the overall picture is of a predominantly young, poorly trained group, sent into battle with little sense of the overall purposes of the war. The NPFL offered soldiers some training throughout the conflict, although its initial, ambitious three-month training regime was starkly reduced almost from the outset (Lidow 2011, 122). In any case, no political education was offered. According to Lidow, “Recruits spent the first three weeks practicing military maneuvers with sticks before receiving rifles. Beyond physical exercise and basic drills, recruits were also instructed in guerrilla tactics and the ‘Eleven General Principles of Leadership,’ developed by the U.S. Marine Corps” (2011, 121). Notably, while these principles include some general moral instruction (“Know yourself and seek self-improvement. . . . Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. . . .”; cf. Lidow [2011, 121n10]), they include no information about the NPFL’s program or purpose in fighting and no mention of civilian protection, either as a strategic benefit or as a moral mandate. What media were NPFL fighters consuming? Richards (1994, 91) reports that “an eye-witness in NPFL headquarters town Gbarnga in 1990 described five generator-driven video parlours running 24 hours a day to supply young rebel fighters with a diet of Rambo and Terminator-style films.” Violent action movies are entertaining; they may also be instructive about the performance and practice of “manhood” in wartime. In the NPFL (and many other armed groups), militarized masculinity (cf. Enloe 2000) appears alongside what Utas (2005) terms “tactic agency.” Approximately 20 percent of demobilized NPFL ex-combatants were female (Pugel 2007, 31). It is difficult to create a clear picture of NPFL girls’ and women’s day-to-day lives, but it seems clear that their roles were insecure and limited, perhaps circumscribed by relationships with men (Utas 2003, 2005). Utas (2003) recalls a female NPFL member, Masa, who had been abducted and forced to labor on an officer’s farm (184–86). Of young women like Masa he writes, “A majority of the young women who fought in the civil war became involved through their boyfriends. Most of them never attended any formal training and many of them only went to the front with their boyfriends, and were thus never part of a regular force” (208). In Pugel’s (2007) survey data, women from all factions were much more likely than men to report that their work was “camp labor” (about 18 percent, versus about 4 percent for men). At the same time, 71 percent of women (and 87 percent of men) across factions reported that they served as combat soldiers. The stereotypical role for a female fighter—sex slave or “wife”—accounts for barely 5 percent of female respondents in any faction (Pugel 2007, 31). This picture of gender politics within the NPFL matches, roughly, the overall picture of the NPFL’s institutions: shifting, informal, and at odds with any simple description.

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In addition to over-time changes in the training of NPFL fighters, the group experienced considerable changes in its territorial control and its revenues over the course of the conflict. Lidow (2016, 118–19) describes the early years of the conflict (1990–93), during which the NPFL held much of Liberia’s territory outside Monrovia, as financially flush. In its area of control—“Greater Liberia”— Taylor’s system of governance produced huge revenues, both via direct sales of commodities and via quasi-state activities, such as corporate taxation. For example, the Firestone Company evacuated during the initial battles of the war but eventually negotiated a partnership with the NPFL under which the company would provide taxes and materiel to the NPFL, while the NPFL would guarantee its protection. The partnership held from early 1992 to Firestone’s second pullout in November of that year. However, “Greater Liberia” shrank considerably over the course of the war. The NPFL controlled nearly all of the country outside Monrovia by late 1990, but by 1995 it had ceded more than one-third of that territory to ULIMO factions and the Liberian Peace Council. Following the 1997–99 interregnum, during which Taylor held formal power over the whole of Liberia, NPFL control was squeezed again in 2002–3. By the close of the war, “Greater Liberia” consisted of a strip of land in central Liberia, roughly on a line from Monrovia to Gbarnga in the north and from Edina to Kpeaple in the south—perhaps one-quarter of the territory the NPFL held at its height. (For visualizations of territorial control, see Lidow 2016, chap. 4.) How should we expect the changes I have described to affect violence against civilians? Theories focused on contestation suggest that levels of (lethal) violence against civilians should be highest in mid-1990, during the NPFL’s initial run across the country, and then subside, peaking again with battles for control of key territories and remaining high along territorial divides such as the NPFLULIMO, and then NPFL-LURD, boundary from Monrovia to Gbarnga. Adverse-selection accounts (e.g., Weinstein 2007) imply that violence would be highest (and repertoires perhaps widest) during periods when the group was flush with cash, such as early in the war. Either might be true; neither has much to say about the NPFL’s repertoire of violence. The Commander’s Dilemma framework suggests few turning points, and consequently the main prediction is for consistently wide repertoires of violence. One potential exception is the earliest period of the war, during which Taylor apparently exercised considerable disciplinary control, via monetary incentives and punishments. Indeed, Lidow (2016, chap. 5) claims that Taylor was able to control looting somewhat during this period. Overall, though, the Commander’s Dilemma suggests that, in the absence of any significant political education, these shifts should have little effect on the repertoire of violence, which should remain relatively wide and perhaps widen over time (H4).

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Sierra Leone Army (SLA, 1991–97) Examining the institutions of Sierra Leone’s national army is difficult; as Kandeh (1999) notes, the army served mostly as an expression of a broader problem with Sierra Leonean politics: “Conversion of state offices and public resources into sources of private wealth has been the primary mode of accumulation among Sierra Leone’s political elite since independence in 1961” (351). Kandeh points to a broader “banalization” of violence and thuggery by prewar political elites (358) as a precursor to the “sobelization” of the SLA (362). Like many analysts of the Sierra Leone conflict (e.g., Abdullah 1998), Kandeh views the civil war as a product of a faulty lumpen youth culture. I find the “lumpen youth” explanation less than convincing as a cause of the war, because it elides causes and consequences, but I agree with Kandeh’s more specific assessment that “the ‘lumpenity’ of ‘sobels’ had more to do with their social background, ‘life world,’ and behavioral propensities than their social [class] location” (362). That is, socialization into the SLA, beginning with the recruitment process, was central to sobelization. During his period in exile following the AFRC-RUF coup, President Kabbah (quoted in Kandeh 1999, 362) released a statement from a London conference: “The government of the [prewar] day regarded the army as an instrument of the ruling party and not as a national institution. Its role was relegated to that of protecting the ruling party. . . . The army came to be composed almost entirely of men and women loyal only to the ruling party. . . . Every soldier had a political patron and collectively, those patrons belonged to the ruling party, to which the army owed its loyalty and allegiance, and not the nation.” That is, under Joseph Momoh and under previous Sierra Leonean administrations, SLA recruitment functioned as a patronage-based meal ticket. It is unsurprising, then, that SLA fighters might bolt for profit-maximizing activities during conflicts. This is particularly true of fighters enlisted during the radical expansion of the SLA that followed the RUF’s initial successes. Howe (2001, 57) writes, “A soldier received about six weeks of basic training from an overstretched NCO and was then sent to the front.” Unlike the AFL in Liberia, which received both direct military support and significant funding from American patrons throughout the Cold War, the SLA received comparatively little from the UK, its former colonizer, until after the war began (Horn, Olonisakin, and Peak 2006, 122n1). While some researchers consider SLA recruitment practices, and many discuss collaboration and collusion between the SLA and the RUF, few scholars have engaged in either sustained ethnographic work or systematic survey research involving other elements of SLA life. We have little reliable information about training, for example, or disciplinary practices; the internal dynamics of the organization remain opaque. Perhaps the fact of the sobel phenomenon is evidence

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enough that the SLA either lacked cohesion and discipline altogether, as some commentators have claimed, or held group norms that matched, broadly, those of RUF rebels. As Abdullah (1998, 229) writes, “The commonplace fraternization between the RUF and the [Sierra Leonean] military after the cease-fire in May 1996 had prompted RUF battle-group commanders to redefine their enemy as the Kamajor [CDF] and Executive Outcomes.” And with the AFRC coup in 1997, the RUF effectively gained control of the state force. Given the difficulty of closely observing internal SLA institutions, it is difficult to make clear predictions about repertoire changes over time and space. But given the apparent lack of both political education and consistent discipline, and the presence of extensive corruption, my empirical prediction is for broad and perhaps broadening repertoires of violence (H5), frequently featuring opportunistic violence such as sexual violence and looting (H6).

Revolutionary United Front (RUF, 1991–2002) The RUF is frequently held up as an avatar for “new wars”: apolitical, wantonly destructive, motivated primarily if not entirely by profit, and utterly unconcerned with civilian allegiances or governance. Still, the history of the RUF shows some significant changes within the organization. First and foremost, early recruits to the RUF were more likely to join voluntarily than were later recruits (Marks 2013). This does not mean that these early fighters joined for political (rather than pecuniary) reasons. Abdullah’s (1998) indictment of the RUF, “Bush Path to Destruction,” argues that the RUF was made up of lumpen youth—unemployed and unemployable, shiftless, prone to violence. In Krio, the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, they are known as rarray man, savis man, or dreg man. It was a “youth culture in search of a radical alternative (though without a concrete emancipatory program)” (Abdullah 1998, 204). Yet, as others have argued (e.g., Humphreys and Weinstein 2006), this was no more true of initial RUF recruits than of those who joined other groups. What types of training did these recruits receive? Theoretically, RUF recruits in the earliest days of the war received both military and ideological training, although it is difficult to tell, given later ideological window dressing and contemporary demonization, how consistent training practices were. Nuxoll (2014) documents an array of battle and “psych-up” songs taught to early RUF recruits, often sung in the Gio language of the NPFL special forces (paras. 12, 16–17). Nuxoll’s interviewees were RUF fighters, typically those who joined in the earliest years of the war, who reported that NPFL special forces trained RUF vanguards, both in Liberia and in Sierra Leone. According to Nuxoll, “The Gio dominance within the NPFL and their role as military training instructors for Sierra Leonean

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vanguards . . . is the reason why the RUF commando songs were coined and sung in the Gio [Dan] language” (para. 29). However, she notes, “early on in the war it became apparent that the Liberian forces neither identified with nor considered the—however weak—political agenda of the RUF with regard to their own military conduct” (para. 19). Nuxoll continues: “The pool of songs comprised jogging songs to inspire zeal in the fighters, praise songs for the rebel leadership, songs of advice, taunting songs or revenge songs, and more generally folk songs which weren’t necessarily attuned to the war effort” (para. 30). Unlike the musical repertoire of the FMLN, RUF commando songs played no role in combatant education—although such education apparently did exist. Marks (2013) suggests that NPFL commandos on loan to the RUF may have committed many of the rapes attributed to RUF soldiers in the earliest days of the war. Further, Marks writes, In training camps, “ideology training” consumed hours of each day, ingraining new members with revolutionary rhetoric. Recruits were made to copy into training manuals the group’s strict “Code of Conduct,” “Points of Order” and “Principles of Leadership,” and to recite on demand such instructions as “do not take a piece of thread or needle from the masses, e.g. do not steal.” However, the NPFL fighters skipped ideology training and had little investment in the RUF’s political aims. As described by a Liberian child soldier (and later RUF commander), they were “not respecting the norms of the revolution.” (361–62) That is, the RUF exercised, or intended to exercise, some control over levels and repertoires of violence during the first period of the war. Of course, it’s not clear from Marks’s interviewees whether this was an aspirational account or whether a majority of RUF fighters actually received this training in the early days. Policy documents and ideological materials from the RUF repeatedly cite both Maoist principles and Kwame Nkrumah’s Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968), which had circulated among radical student groups in Sierra Leone (Marks 2013, 377n20), but it remains unclear whether these documents were widely distributed. Marks (personal communication) states that rote memorization played an important role in ideological training during this period because most fighters were illiterate. According to Peters and Richards (2011, 384–85), “Ideological training the RUF seems to have been especially effective among combatants associated with the base camp . . . in the period 1994–1996, but the ideological element . . . eroded when the War Council was separated from the movement in the field as a result of the failed 1996 peace accord.” Abdullah (1998) is more skeptical, reserving particular scorn for the early leaders of the RUF. Although many were college students, they read in what Abdullah terms a “limited” way, instituting a Green Book study group but

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accepting Gaddafi’s vision with little criticism or discussion. He adds, “When the recruitment exercise commenced, there was no program of action, nor was there any guideline on the procedure and mechanism for recruitment” (215). Lumpen youth showed up, unvetted, in Libya, receiving some military training but no significant ideological or organizational capacity. While the RUF published a manifesto (Footpaths to Democracy), Abdullah claims that most fighters never read it. A key question for my purposes is whether, as Nuxoll and Marks suggest, there was an early period in which ideological instruction was common. If this was so, and my reading of the evidence suggests on balance that it was, then we should expect that repertoires of violence attributable to the RUF itself, as opposed to NPFL patrons, would be relatively narrower in the early years of the war. Like the NPFL in Liberia, the RUF was a male-dominated, but mixed-gender, force. Women and girls who lived with the RUF navigated complex, shifting, often life-and-death trade-offs as bush wives, camp laborers, and fighters. Within Coulter’s (2009) sample of female ex-combatants, about half the girls and women who served any rebel force stated that they had been trained as fighters, but most of them fought “only intermittently” (126).1 This echoes Utas’s (2003, 2005) discussions of Liberian girl fighters’ “tactic agency” in navigating relationships with “bush husbands,” fellow combatants, and other female rebels. As one fighter put it, “No woman that had spent a year with them was not trained how to fix gun and fire. This was for protection, maybe even among ourselves, if your companion want to kill you and you also know how to fire, you can retaliate” (Coulter 2009, 135). RUF discipline was harsh but spotty. Top commanders awarded ranks according to what Coulter (2009, 107) terms a “violent meritocracy.” One informant stated, “It can even be a very small boy. They choose the commander according to his wickedness” (107). Coulter’s account of girls and women living with the RUF contains many reports of strict discipline, including disciplinary measures against those who had committed (lethal) violence without the commander’s permission (105–6). But, as Coulter writes, “life with the rebels was described by most informants as one of hardship. . . . Although Musu [a key informant] said that there were rebel rules and regulations, her story is one of uncertainty and arbitrariness, about unpredictable commanders and massive drug use” (107). Coulter contrasts her informants’ experiences with those of female fighters in Mozambique’s war of liberation, where violence was framed “as purposive and meaningful” (138–39, quoting West 2000, 182). She writes, “The violence they committed was not emancipatory and in most cases was not perceived as meaningful in any ideological sense” (139). Unfortunately for my purposes, few accounts of life with the RUF give a clear sense of changes over time in combatants’ experiences, making it difficult to consider when and where we might expect repertoire variations to occur. Of

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accounts that do provide a sense of the group’s trajectory from invasion to war’s end (most notably Marks 2013), most seem to agree that the time of institutionalized ideology (political education, in other words) was extremely short, and that it was hindered from the outset by the presence of NPFL troops within RUF ranks. If it is true that RUF troops received some political training in the early days of the war, we should find that narrative accounts of opportunistic RUF violence from the first year of the war primarily feature NPFL fighters (see Marks 2013, 22), and/or that repertoires of violence widened considerably beginning in 1993 (H7), when the RUF, on the run from government forces, abandoned its “liberated zones” (including stationary training camps) and embraced “jungle warfare” (Marks 2013, 363).

Community Defense Forces (CDFs, 1991–2002) Sierra Leone’s war had no analog to the FMLN—no centrally organized, explicitly liberationist group whose systematic ideology carefully prepared its fighters to protect civilians. Community Defense Forces (CDFs) probably, in many times and places, came closest. The CDFs represent a particularly interesting test for the Commander’s Dilemma because their centralization and institutionalization coincided with ideological decline. As Hoffman (2011, chap. 3) writes, “It was increased institutionalization rather than the absence of controlling institutions that blurred the boundary between licit and illicit violence and helped to draw the exercise of violence into the sphere of exchange and ultimately into capital’s logic of surplus production.” If the Commander’s Dilemma framework is correct, a formal but nonideological force should commit wider repertoires of violence than an informal yet ideologically informed force. To be clear, “ideologically informed” need not mean ideological in a narrow sense; combatants might be “informed” about nearly any set of relatively coherent, agreed-upon principles regarding the purpose of fighting. Like the FMLN, CDFs were formed in opposition to an abusive other; while that other was ostensibly the RUF, against whom local militias were frequently employed by SLA forces, Hoffman (2011, chap. 2) makes the case that the SLA itself was the primary enemy force: “Fearing the military as much as the rebels, many communities organized civil defense committees or civil defense units, mostly groups of local youth manning roadblocks, interrogating strangers, or conducting defensive patrols.” He goes on to say that “although it was ostensibly the RUF against which the war was being waged, it was the untrustworthy and predatory state army that posed the greatest threat to Mende communities and against which the kamajors defined themselves. The kamajors became those whose first principle was to behave not as soldiers do” (chap. 2).

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Hoffman (2004, 2007, 2011) does not consider the kamajors, who ultimately came to form the largest part of the Civil Defense Forces employed to push back the RUF in 1996–97, a military force in the usual sense of the word. Rather, he views the command relationships within the CDF as a militarization of patronage. That is, unlike the RUF or the SLA, the CDF initially had no fixed military hierarchy. Its many “commanders” were often self-appointed—in other words, purely aspirational. Fighters were bound by patron-client relationships that spanned conflict and peacetime, and they moved back and forth relatively freely between serving as fighting-labor and laboring in timber and diamonds. These networks of trust, obligation, and tradition shifted considerably but remained important at least through the middle of the war. CDFs, writes Hoffman (2007), “located their activities within a conceptual field of rights, responsibilities, and obligations that predate the war” (646–47). Despite lacking traditional military institutions, CDFs and their predecessor organizations drew on strong, durable institutions that served to tell fighters what the social purpose of the war was. According to Hoffman (2007, 647), “The kamajors’ very identity is predicated on the protection of villages.” The rites of initiation, while they would likely appear unfamiliar to FMLN fighters, nevertheless included a similar “origin story” of community betterment, personal betterment, and civilian protection. Hoffman also considers a kamajor slogan, “kamajor baa woteh.” He writes, “‘Do not turn’ or ‘do not turn back’ was an injunction against retreat from the battlefield, but it was also a moral command not to betray the community one had been initiated to defend” (2007, 647). Ferme and Hoffman (2004) similarly argue that, particularly in the early years of the war, kamajor militias were extensively educated via the Poro manhood societies, and that this type of education, though not explicitly political, did structure both beliefs and behavior: “Kamajor identity is largely built around exactly those norms of right conduct that lie at the heart of international regulations and the discourse of human rights” (79). Wlodarczyk (2009) notes kamajors’ roots in the manhood societies, whose members had special access to spiritual practices that provided hunters with aid and protection. Together these institutions created a force (or, more accurately, a group of forces) whose members appeared to have a clearer sense of the purpose of violence than did members of other Sierra Leonean organizations. However, in Hoffman’s (2011) account, the durable social institutions on which CDFs were originally predicated—manhood societies, hunter societies, patron-client relations—came uncoupled from CDFs’ war-fighting function as the conflict ground on. In particular, when the Sierra Leonean government incorporated many thousands of new CDF fighters, to be trained by Executive Outcomes, in 1996–97, it attempted to retain CDFs’ recruitment structures and effectiveness, while centralizing state control of the organizations. Rituals

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of initiation, apparently viewed as key to CDF success, came under increasing central control (and, notably, the price of initiation rose considerably). But, detached from traditional training practices and relationships, initiation served not as the capstone of an educational process but as an entry point (Ferme and Hoffman 2004, 77). While the Commander’s Dilemma predicts overall narrower repertoires among CDF forces (H8), it also predicts wider repertoires following changes in institutional structures that occurred in 1995–96 (H9).

Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD, 2000–2003) LURD’s raison d’être was simple: force Charles Taylor from power. It entered Liberia from Sierra Leone in 1999 and 2000, mounting a number of basically unsuccessful cross-border raids. Hoffman (2011, chap. 1) describes LURD as “poorly trained and ill-equipped,” a motley band composed primarily of Liberian expatriates, held together entirely by the desire to unseat Taylor. As civil war in Sierra Leone ended, LURD’s ranks filled with formerly demobilized Sierra Leonean fighters, including many CDF members, who had been through disarmament and demobilization processes but who now viewed themselves as, effectively, mercenaries (Hoffman 2007). Its hit-and-run tactics, and its determination to attract international attention via spectacular damage, owed much to the RUF. Even at the top levels of the organization, there was little ideological vision, or even long-term planning. As Hoffman (2011, chap. 1) puts it, LURD leaders’ “plans for a post-Taylor Liberia were vague at best.” As CDF fighters moved from the Sierra Leone conflict into the ranks of LURD, it became clear to LURD leaders that the “norms of right conduct” that kamajors ostensibly brought with them were key to international approbation. Ultimately, LURD elaborated formal codes of conduct that included limited violence, and Ferme and Hoffman’s (2004) informants repeat the phrase “defense of life and property” (83) constantly. This strikes Ferme and Hoffman as indicative of “inculcation” (83) in international norms about the conduct of war, but there is little evidence that much beyond this phrase was taught. Hoffman (2007, 223) reports that LURD commanders might execute combatants for committing the same abuses as the commanders themselves. For our purposes, though, one of the most important institutional features of LURD was its adoption of former CDF fighters. According to Themnér (2011, 107–8), Even though CDF had been dissolved in early 2002 after having successfully assisted [the Sierra Leonean government] in defending its hold on

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power, an estimated 750 CDF ex-fighters chose to re-engage in organized violence by participating in the civil war in Liberia. In Liberia, most exCDF combatants fought together in a large LURD contingent based in northwestern Liberia close to the Sierra Leonean border. As LURD’s recruitment base was restricted to Krahns and Mandingos, two of the smaller ethnic groups in Liberia, the CDF reinforcements proved indispensable in their offensives against Monrovia and efforts to oust Taylor. Given that CDF members brought both their training and their organizational structures with them to the Liberian front, we might expect to see that LURD used a narrower repertoire of violence than other Liberian armed groups (H10a). On the other hand, Hoffman (2007, 219) reports that former CDF fighters joining LURD viewed themselves less as protectors than as soldiers for hire. And while LURD forces received at least some systematic training, particularly after 2001, there is no evidence of specifically political training. Thus, I expect it is equally likely that LURD forces would use broad repertoires of violence on the drive to Monrovia (H10b).

Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL, 2003) While LURD advanced on Monrovia from the north and west, MODEL—formed in Cote d’Ivoire in 2003—pushed from the east. LURD forces took Monrovia’s port on July 18. By July 28, MODEL controlled Buchanan, Liberia’s secondlargest city and its other major port. Both groups committed significant violence against civilians during their run to the capital. But little is known of the details of their origins. MODEL shared with LURD the desire to oust Taylor from power in Liberia, and a reliance on Liberian expatriates. To the extent that information about MODEL’s internal practices exists, it comes from news accounts of leadership behavior, and postwar surveys of Liberian ex-combatants. We know, for example, that a majority of MODEL ex-combatants report voluntary recruitment—even seeking out MODEL forces to enlist—and that a majority report receiving training about the rights of civilians (Pugel 2007). According to some accounts, MODEL’s early members included Ivoirean special forces, implying a relatively high standard of military training. MODEL’s very brief engagement with the Liberian civil war rules out over-time comparisons. But its training practices, at least on Pugel’s evidence, suggest a narrower repertoire of violence than the repertoires committed by those employed by other forces (H11). Clearly the Mano River wars represent a difficult test for the Commander’s Dilemma. For rebel organizations, there are few incentives to protect civilians when one’s opponents are weak, historically abusive, and open to collusion. For

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state militaries, there are few incentives to protect civilians when the historical role of armed forces has been the violent repression and extortion of these same civilians. Nevertheless, there is some clear evidence that several Mano River armed groups attempted to control violence against civilians, despite the absence of an obvious strategic imperative to do so. Whether they were, or could have been, successful is a different question. For at least three groups, there exist brief periods when political education could be said to have taken place, and therefore— if the Commander’s Dilemma framework is correct—we might plausibly expect more controlled (narrower, and perhaps more uniform) repertoires of violence. These include CDFs, certainly prior to their expansion and co-optation by the Sierra Leonean state and probably throughout the conflict; the earliest days of the RUF; and the one-year run of MODEL, in Liberia. Because of its inclusion of many former CDF fighters, we might also expect that LURD fighters committed somewhat narrower repertoires of violence, on average, than fighters of (for instance) the AFL or NPFL. Testing differences over time in CDF repertoires is particularly important, because, as I noted above, the advent of some formal, centralized CDF institutions coincided with the decline of quasiideological attachments to hunter militia ethics of protection (as in “kamajor baa woteh”). Consequently, examining variation in CDF repertoires offers some information about what aspect of armed-group institutions, if any, is doing the work of restraint. These empirical implications contrast, for some times, places, and groups, with those suggested by other theories of wartime violence. For example, rationalist theories suggest that levels of lethal violence should vary with strategic changes but make few predictions about repertoires of violence. Adverse-selection models suggest high violence and wide repertoires of violence in groups where combatants receive pecuniary benefits for participation. Cohen’s (2016) theory of violent socialization suggests that sexual violence, in particular, should be associated with forced recruitment, implying that this practice should escalate over time for all parties to the conflict, but perhaps most dramatically for the NPFL.

Repertoires of Violence While the Mano River wars were undoubtedly intertwined, data gathering about violence in the two conflicts proceeded largely independently, for better and for worse. With Human Rights Data Analysis Group colleagues, I assisted in the statistical analysis of statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Cibelli, Hoover, and Krüger 2009). Here, I examine these data with an eye to repertoires in particular. On the Sierra Leone side of the border,

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I examine statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Conibere et al. 2004), as well as data from a survey of internally displaced persons undertaken by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) (Amowitz et al. 2002). I find some support for the implications of the Commander’s Dilemma. In particular, CDF forces committed narrower repertoires of violence than other groups in the Sierra Leone conflict, particularly early on, but used wider repertoires following state co-optation and expansion in 1995–96. Evidence about the RUF is mixed. On balance, however, it suggests that the earliest period of the war featured narrower repertoires of violence by the RUF (in particular, a lower proportion of sexual violence among all acts of violence). There is no evidence of significant changes in NPFL repertoires, either over time or across space. Finally, data from 2003 show that MODEL used significantly less sexual violence than the groups it contested.

Data In measuring repertoires in the Mano River wars, I am particularly interested in sexual violence as an element of the repertoire. There exist few statistically defensible estimates of violence from either conflict; interestingly, for both wars, retrospective surveys of sexual-violence experiences exist while no systematic mortality survey was completed. To whatever extent the “usual numbers” repeated in media and academic sources about these conflicts are useful, most sources report about 50,000 deaths in Sierra Leone (from a 2000 population of about 4.6 million) and about 150,000 deaths in Liberia (from a population of about 2.9 million). If the estimates are correct—a big if—then mortality in Sierra Leone was similar to mortality in El Salvador’s civil war, while Liberia represents a slaughter on another level, with a risk of death almost five times higher than that in Sierra Leone. At this point, it is possible we will never know. Regarding sexual violence, in a survey of displaced persons, Amowitz et al. (2002) found that about 9 percent of Sierra Leonean women and girls reported an experience of sexual violence during the war. (The question was not asked of men in this conflict.) Johnson, Asher, and Rosborough (2008), using a nationwide household sample, estimated that some 40 percent of female ex-combatants, and about 10 percent of girls and women who had not been fighters, reported ever experiencing sexual violence. (The Johnson, Asher, and Rosborough survey instrument defines sexual violence to include “psychological” violence, and asks only about lifetime sexual violence.) In any case, these surveys confirmed what was already well known: sexual violence was common in both Mano River conflicts, as were other frequently opportunistic forms of violence: forced labor, theft, extortion, property destruction, and so on.

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To examine repertoires across time, space, and perpetrating group, I had access to three key sources of quantitative data (as well as to qualitative accounts by human-rights organizations and scholars). My largest data sources by far are Truth and Reconciliation Commission data from Liberia (TRC-L) and Sierra Leone (TRC-SL). The Sierra Leone commission completed its data-analysis process in 2004 (Conibere et al. 2004), ultimately analyzing 40,242 separate acts of violence against 14,995 victims—an average of about 2.7 acts of violence per reported victim. The 14,995 victims who reported to the TRC-SL make up approximately 0.3 percent of Sierra Leoneans. The Liberian TRC conducted a much more ambitious data-collection process, resulting in reports of 162,790 acts of violence against 86,220 victims, or 1.9 acts of violence per victim, on average; the 86,220 victims who reported represent almost exactly 3 percent of Liberia’s 2000 population. As with all truth commission data, TRC-L and TRC-SL data represent a broad, but still biased, sample: TRC statements were taken in multiple languages and in all regions but are still fundamentally self-reports. Self-reported data are not ideal for examining repertoires, both because deponents remember different types of violence with different degrees of accuracy, and because they face differing (dis)incentives to report across types, and contexts, of violence. Self-report mechanisms might magnify or flatten repertoire differences across groups. To take a hypothetical example, if Group X becomes known as the primary perpetrator of sexual violence, victims of sexual violence by Group X might be more likely to recall and report sexual violence than victims of sexual violence by other groups. On the other hand, if sexual violence had become a high-attention, highaid violation—as it appears it did in the Mano River wars (Utas 2005)—we might expect that, across perpetrating groups, victims of sexual violence would be relatively more likely to report their experiences to the TRC, leading to underestimates of overall violence but overestimates of sexual violence, by groups that, in truth, committed little sexual violence. One way to mitigate this problem is to privilege information from surveys over information from self-reports where the two conflict, and that is the strategy I use for data from Sierra Leone. Another is to transform the unit of analysis. For both sets of TRC data, the unit of analysis is the individual act of violence; each violation has a type (e.g., torture, rape, killing, etc.), a location and date (if known), one or more victims (with victim information, if known), and one or more institutional perpetrators (if known). In the analyses that follow, I primarily consider a more aggregated unit of analysis: the individual report, for TRC-L data, and the individual victim, for TRC-SL data. These more aggregated units of analysis are useful because they may contain multiple violations but generally refer to a single individual or family, since they represent reports from a single

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TABLE 6.1 Descriptive statistics: Three Mano River datasets MEASURE

IDP SURVEYa

TRC-SL

TRC-L

Total acts of violence reported

4,294

34,230

162,790

Number of reports

2,591

14,094

25,074

Mean violations per report b

1.66

2.43

6.49

Proportion of reports indicating sexual violence c

0.09

0.07

0.15

Proportion of reports indicating killing Most frequent perpetrator d Proportion of reports with unknown/other/multiple

0.09

0.27

0.50

RUF (56%)

RUF (63%)

NPFL (45%)

0.67

0.07

0.06

perpetrators a

IDP survey includes only subjects indicating face-to-face contact with any armed group. “Per report” means “per respondent, among respondents who reported experiencing any violence” for the IDP survey, “per victim*year” for TRC-SL data, and “per report*year” for TRC-L data. c “Proportion of reports” for the IDP survey means “proportion of the subset of respondents who reported experiencing any violence” (40% of respondents reported no violence). d “Most frequent perpetrator” means “most frequent perpetrator among reports with named perpetrators.” b

witness or victim. Table 6.1 shows descriptive statistics for each of the three datasets to which I have access. There are some important things to note. First, the IDP survey, although large and systematic, contains far fewer reports of violence than either TRC source. Second, the IDP survey shows far fewer acts of violence per victim, despite having asked—directly—about many more. Of the survey respondents who had met members of armed groups face to face, about 40 percent reported no acts of violence. Still more had never met face to face with a member of an armed group. From this I infer that victims who suffered greater numbers of violent acts were more likely to report to the TRC than were victims who suffered fewer (and, obviously, that victims of no acts of violence had nothing to report). This is, of course, a standard pitfall of TRC data. Given these differences, it is interesting to note where TRC-SL and survey data match: similar proportions of reports disclosed sexual violence, and both data collections showed the RUF as the most common perpetrator of violence.

Results Because the RUF (in Sierra Leone) and the NPFL (in Liberia) committed the vast majority of reported acts of violence against civilians, I use conditional probabilities to investigate repertoires. For each armed group in each data source, I asked how many witness reports (in Liberia) or victim statements (in Sierra Leone) that named a group as perpetrator in at least one act of violence contained information about sexual violence in particular. That is, conditional on

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being named a perpetrator of some violence, what is the probability that the group is named the perpetrator of sexual violence? Examining the conditional probability this way mitigates the bias introduced by disproportionately massive RUF and NPFL violence, and may also mitigate the bias introduced by differential reporting rates across violation types. I first investigate whether CDF repertoires in general, and particularly prior to 1996, were substantially narrower than those of other groups (H8, H9), since these are key implications of the Commander’s Dilemma framework. In general, the data support this prediction, although results from survey data are much clearer than those gleaned from TRC-SL data. Survey data from Sierra Leone clearly show the pattern I expect: CDF fighters are named in just 1 percent of all reported episodes of violence, and zero cases of sexual violence, in this sample. Of course, this is a sample of displaced persons, not of all Sierra Leoneans. In reports to the TRC, those who named CDF fighters as perpetrators reported sexual violence about 8 percent of the time, while those who named the RUF reported sexual violence in 11 percent of cases. This is a relatively small difference, but the direction of the difference is as I expect. These results mirror (to the extent possible, given their wildly different units of analysis) the ex-combatant survey results from Humphreys and Weinstein (2006). Their analysis showed little increase in (self-perceived) CDF abusiveness over the course of the war, whereas RUF abusiveness rose steadily (Humphreys and Weinstein 2006, 436). Moreover, Humphreys and Weinstein overturned a common theory of restraint—namely, that CDF fighters were less abusive, and committed narrower repertoires of violence, because they were more likely to be fighting on their “home turf.” As they put it, “Patterns of abuse in Sierra Leone, we find, are largely explained by characteristics of the fighting units themselves, rather than by the types of linkages that exist between combatants and communities or the degree of contestation between warring factions” (443). Or, “The inability of groups to police their members reduces their ability to engage cooperatively with communities” (444). This is broadly consistent with the Commander’s Dilemma approach, but it fails to explain why or how fighting units differ in their policing abilities. The results from TRC-SL data are much less conclusive. While the proportion of total CDF violence made up of sexual violence and property crimes does increase during the mid-1990s, the difference between RUF violence and CDF violence is not as stark as we might expect. As Ferme and Hoffman (2004) note, the CDF’s good reputation was damaged by increasing revelations of civilian abuse at war’s end. However, there is also reason to suspect that sexual violence was overrepresented among self-reports to the TRC (cf. Utas 2005). To be clear: my claim is not that sexual violence is overreported—that is, that false incidents appeared in the TRC data. Rather, because sexual-violence victims received

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TABLE 6.2 Probability of reporting sexual violence, given any report of violence by a group CONFLICT

Liberia

Sierra Leone

GROUP

DATA SOURCE

PROBABILITY . . .

That a given respondent

That rape is among

names group as

the violence reported,

perpetrator of any

given that group is

act of violence

named

AFL

TRC-L (self-report)

0.06

0.11

NPFL

TRC-L (self-report)

0.66

0.21

LURD

TRC-L (self-report)

0.20

0.20

MODEL

TRC-L (self-report)

0.15

0.16

SLA

PHR (IDP survey)

0.02

0.34

TRC-SL (self-report)

0.08

0.07

PHR (IDP survey)

0.56

0.12

TRC-SL (self-report)

0.63

0.08

PHR (IDP survey)

0.01

0.00

TRC-SL (self-report)

0.07

0.08

RUF

CDF

special attention and aid in the aftermath of the conflict (Utas 2005), it may be that people who experienced sexual violence, in particular, were more likely to report their experiences to the Truth Commission. Table 6.2 shows the results of this investigation for both Sierra Leone and Liberia. With respect to the RUF in particular, I hypothesized narrower repertoires (hence, a lower proportion of RUF violence made up of sexual violence) in the early years of the conflict (H7). On balance, I believe this hypothesis is upheld. While the difference between the proportion of RUF reports indicating sexual violence in 1991–92 and those in 1993 and onward is not significant (0.076 versus 0.082), Conibere et al. (2004, 31) note that “RUF incidents in which Liberians were documented in the early years of the war showed a declining involvement, from 78 percent in 1991 to 69 percent in 1992, to 21 percent and 13 percent in 1993 and 1994. This information is consistent with the theory that a substantial proportion of the Liberians had departed from Sierra Leone by 1993.” Marks (2013) confirms the NPFL expulsion around this time. In short, while the RUF was nearly as likely to be named as a perpetrator of sexual violence in the early years of the war as in the later years, the majority of RUF violence in these early years was actually committed by Liberian troops.

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Moving to data from Liberia, the results are much less clear. Here (restricting our view for the moment to only reports that named the AFL, NPFL, LURD, or MODEL), it appears that MODEL repertoires were somewhat less likely to include sexual violence than either LURD or NPFL repertoires, in line with my expectation. But it remains unclear whether this is a significant difference, or whether it can be interpreted in line with the Commander’s Dilemma model. After all, as I noted above, the only Mano River armed groups that should certainly use narrow repertoires of violence are CDFs in the early years of Sierra Leone’s war. The slightly lower reported incidence of sexual violence by MODEL forces could be consistent with several explanations: perhaps MODEL’s lower likelihood of forced recruitment, relative to LURD, led to restrained sexual violence (cf. Cohen 2016). It might equally well be read as evidence that better military training or discipline (recall, MODEL fighters included a significant number of Ivoirean special forces) led to somewhat more restrained violence, or as evidence that the political education that CDF forces received as they joined LURD forces did not effectively restrain their violence in the new context. Or— particularly given the significant differences between patterns reported by survey data in Sierra Leone and those reported to the Sierra Leone TRC—it could be measurement error. Repertoires are hard to discern from these data. What is clear—both from survey data and from TRC data—is that the RUF and the NPFL, and groups directly connected with them, committed the overwhelming majority of violence against civilians in these wars and committed wide and widely varying repertoires of violence. This, too, is consistent with my expectation, for two reasons. First, the NPFL conducted almost no political education of any kind. While the NPFL sought to rule Liberia (and then to profit from that rule), it never produced any political platform. Although the RUF maintained a program of ideological training early in the conflict and attempted to control levels and repertoires of violence against civilians (Marks 2013, Peters and Richards 2011), these institutions were largely defunct by midwar. During much of the conflict, discipline in both the NPFL and RUF—as in the Salvadoran Army at some points—served primarily to maintain internal hierarchies. Second, during some periods, the Mano River wars lie at the outside limit of a key boundary condition for this study: strategic incentives to treat civilians civilly. Armed groups in these wars faced little opposition and no counterinsurgent opposition. Whether because “hearts and minds [strategy] has no purchase” (Hoffman 2004) or because no faction was strong enough to protect civilians, factions faced little or no strategic punishment for their mistreatment of civilians. Quite the opposite: as Hoffman points out, ex-CDF fighters who joined LURD were well aware of the strategic benefits of being utterly terrifying (2007, 218).

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Recall the testimonies from Sierra Leone that I presented in the introduction. S. J. was one of dozens who testified to horrifying violence by RUF fighters, including gang rape, torture, looting, and other crimes. J. K.’s story of rape by CDF fighters was among the few such testimonies that Human Rights Watch published. While CDF “restraint” looked unlike the restraint of the FMLN, it does seem that—particularly during the period when most CDF fighters had experienced the political and social indoctrination of the Poro manhood societies—CDF repertoires were narrow, and their overall levels of violence low. When CDF recruitment expanded so that fewer fighters had this political-educationlike experience, levels of violence increased, and repertoires expanded.

Conclusion

POLICIES FOR RESTRAINT

This book is a first attempt to explain what violence against civilians—as opposed to how much (implicitly lethal) violence against civilians—armed groups perpetrate in wartime. In developing a theory about repertoires of violence, I found it necessary to reframe violence against noncombatants as the baseline state of affairs in armed conflict, and to consider what methods of behavioral control are available to armed-group leaders. The approach that ultimately developed—the Commander’s Dilemma—makes sense of many patterns that other theories do not, or cannot, consider. But, of course, many questions about repertoires of violence against noncombatants remain unanswered. In this concluding chapter, I briefly summarize the main argument and evidence, noting key contributions before moving on to some key problems and blind spots. I discuss whether and to what extent the Commander’s Dilemma framework can encompass violence-maximizing armed-group leaders, including Bosnian Serb militias, the Islamic State, and—maybe—the Red Army, marching on Berlin. This section also considers some standard yardsticks for a work of political science: the reliability and validity of the statistical evidence, the utility of the methods, and the generalizability of the results. I also address briefly the possibility that political education is fundamentally epiphenomenal: that only armed groups of type X implement political education. This is one way we might read adverse-selection accounts, for example. Finally, I discuss the broader implications of the Commander’s Dilemma, particularly for state militaries and other armed organizations of the state. Because I am an American scholar, and the 200

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issue remains terrifyingly relevant, I focus on American atrocities. In addition to its implications for US commanders, I consider what lessons this book holds for international policy makers, including “early warning” projects, donors, directaid providers, human-rights advocates, and legal bodies such as the International Criminal Court.

Summary and Contributions Research in social psychology and military sociology shows that attempts to violentize military recruits are generally effective but are (1) overly general and (2) extremely durable. The effect is a combatant who is primed for violence both when it is necessary and when it is arbitrary, excessive, and counterproductive. Yet, having created combatants with this generalized propensity for violence—having, in fact, strongly valorized violence in general—armed-group leaders must also maintain operational control over the violence that combatants commit. At the very least, they must control violence sufficiently to avoid mutiny. This is the Commander’s Dilemma; commanders’ attempts to resolve the dilemma are at the root of repertoire differences. Based on results from economics and psychology, I identified two main routes to resolution: external behavioral incentives in the form of rewards and punishments, and attempts to change combatants’ mindsets (cognitions, emotions, beliefs, or assumptions) regarding violence. I argued that behavioral rules and consistently applied systems of punishment and reward were insufficient to control violence. The evidence I introduced, primarily from psychology literature (including clinical psychology findings regarding veterans and posttraumatic stress disorder), suggests that stressful situations such as combat and military socialization both increase obedience, conformity, and aggression and lower combatants’ ability to make fully rational decisions. In particular, combatants’ time horizons are dramatically shortened, such that even credible threats of future punishment are discounted. The solution to this type of cognitive context is standard operating procedure, essentially a default menu of options. If certain forms of violence are preemptively foreclosed by one’s education or socialization experience as a combatant, then, even under conditions of stress, combatants are less likely to commit these acts. In the military context, standard operating procedures and habitual cognitions about noncombatant status are formed via training and socialization. In particular, training and socialization institutions that explicitly discuss the purposes of the war and the relationship between positive combatant self-identity and positive interactions with civilians are required if leaders wish to control

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either the repertoire or the level of violence against civilians. Moreover, institutions that valorize controlled violence are unlikely to be successful if they are not consistently reinforced. Thus, I hypothesized that controlled repertoires are most common among armed groups and subgroups that institutionalize regular political education, and whose political-education programs focus on limited violence as a necessary component of war aims, loyalty to the group, or positive combatant identity. I hypothesized, also, that institutional change rather than strategic or resource changes would be associated with changed repertoires of violence. Considering institutions among armed groups in El Salvador, I found nonobvious but behaviorally significant differences between the two largest FMLN groups, and more obvious differences between the three state organizations responsible for the majority of violence against noncombatants. The Popular Forces of Liberation (FPL), whose stronghold was primarily the north-central department of Chalatenango, espoused a radically ascetic lifestyle for a time, including explicit regulation of combatants’ sexual relations, but nevertheless struggled with opportunistic violence during the earliest years of the war. Based primarily in the department of Morazán, the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP) focused on military goals over political organizing during the first years of the war, in line with its doctrine of foquismo. The ERP was, by most accounts, less moralistic and ascetic than the FPL, but more committed to educating its cadres in Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The ERP developed both the FMLN’s first written political-education curriculum and its training camps. Ex-combatants from the two groups were roughly equally likely to articulate a political, economic, or historical reason for the war, but FPL fighters were significantly more likely to give answers in terms of personal transformation, while ERP ex-combatants were more likely to remember book titles and other texts. FMLN violence was sparse, as were data on FMLN violence, and consequently estimations of FMLN repertoires rely in many cases on overlap data rather than on MSE estimates; thus, my conclusions regarding intra-FMLN repertoire differences were measured. However, it did appear—as hypothesized—that FPL repertoires narrowed after the introduction of political education, and that FPL and ERP repertoires became more similar as the two forces harmonized their political-education programs. On the state side, I showed differences in rules, discipline, and morale among the Salvadoran Army, immediate reaction battalions (BIRIs), and the state security forces. State ex-combatants were, in general, dramatically less likely than FMLN ex-combatants to articulate any type of reason for the war. While security forces were relatively professionalized and BIRIs frequently were highly disciplined in strictly military terms, all three state groups tended to prize obedience

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to one’s superiors over noncombatant protection; the result, at the national level, was a series of failed “civic action” programs. At the group level, state forces showed quite different repertoires of violence, including a marked propensity to replace more closely watched forms of violence (e.g., killing) with less obvious forms (e.g., detention, torture) as the war went on. The sequence and timing of these empirical results cannot be explained by other theories of violence. I also showed that the Commander’s Dilemma correctly predicts patterns of violence even in a “least likely” context: the Mano River civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. While it is true that the groups in this conflict seldom had strong incentives to protect civilians, many nevertheless attempted to do so, at least in some times and places. In particular, it appears that the incidence of sexual violence by non-NPFL troops fighting with the RUF was probably lower in the first years of the war than later, as the theoretical framework here would suggest (and as discussed by Marks 2013). Also, CDFs and MODEL appear to have committed different repertoires of violence than those committed by other parties to these conflicts (including the SLA, AFL, RUF, NPFL, and LURD). As I see it, this book makes three key contributions to the political science literature on conflict and violence. First, it provides a new look at conflict dynamics by arguing that the “baseline” conflict features high levels and wide repertoires of violence. Social scientists frequently, if implicitly, assume a baseline of nonviolent war, posing puzzles in the form of “Why so much violence against noncombatants?” The evidence here supports the proposition that we might more fruitfully ask, “Why, in some conflicts, so little violence?” or rather, “How and why do armed groups control violence against noncombatants?” Flipping the question this way is not another way of asking the same questions. As policy literatures have repeatedly discussed (cf. Pierson 2000), removing the factors that caused some process often fails to reverse it. Moreover, many of the causes shown to increase violence, at either the individual or group level, are more or less omnipresent in the context of armed conflict. Thus, the idea that restraint, rather than violence, should be puzzling to analysts of conflict represents a step forward in our thinking about the dynamics of violence. Second, this book provides proof of concept for the application of multiple systems estimation (MSE) in political science. While MSE has a long history in demographic and public-health investigations, scholars have usually employed it to measure gross magnitudes. I use it rather differently, estimating magnitudes for smaller spatiotemporal strata, which enables me to analyze variation in estimated patterns of violence, as opposed to variation in unpredictably biased but nonrandomly biased raw data. While the number of strata I estimate in this project is insufficient to conduct traditional quantitative analysis (e.g., linear

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regression and related tools), it provides more realistic descriptive inferences than other approaches might. Often, the reliability and validity of the data used in quantitative conflict studies seem not to reach the standard required by the causal models being estimated. Put more simply, our data often bear no necessary relationship to the reality on the ground. My hope is that the decision to highlight the difficulties of descriptive inference sparks conversations within our discipline and elsewhere about the use (and misuse) of violence data. Finally, this project is the first systematic investigation of repertoires of violence in the political science literature. While the term has been in increasing use since its first appearance in James Ron’s (1997) “Varying methods of state violence,” most analysts have suggested the importance of a systematic investigation of repertoires but have generally confined their own work to one form of violence, or one conflict. While repertoires of violence are linked to overall levels of violence, understanding the types of violence against civilians that armed groups encourage, tolerate, and/or prohibit is a separate analytical problem. As we have seen, examining only one type of violence can dramatically misrepresent the dynamics of violence, especially as repertoires evolve over time.

Missing Pieces Readers may (and certainly will) assess this project on any number of dimensions, from its theoretical coherence to its empirical acuity to its writing style. Perhaps the most useful question is, Does the analysis do what it claims to do? Methodologically, I claimed that I would demonstrate serious problems with raw convenience data and the substantive importance of the measurement model. Theoretically and empirically, I claimed I would show a causal relationship between armed-group institutions and combatant psychology, and between combatant psychology and repertoires of violence. I hope I was successful on these counts, despite the difficulties inherent in this research area. As I noted above, quantitative conflict research is rife with data-quality problems. This project is no exception—although I have done my best to mitigate problems and remain humble in the face of uncertainty. While the Salvadoran conflict is one of the few for which researchers collected data on many types of violence against noncombatants, data on nonlethal violence were sufficiently sparse to make measuring violence via MSE difficult or impossible across many times, places, and perpetrating groups. Nevertheless, I was able to show significant differences both between and within Salvadoran armed groups. Perhaps a more challenging criticism of data quality in this project concerns qualitative data. A few gaps in the qualitative picture of armed-group institutions stand out.

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First, while I focused carefully on recruitment, training, discipline, and political education, some related institutions received short shrift in my qualitative accounts. For example, while relationships between FMLN governance of civilian populations and its intragroup discipline and cultural norms have been considered in the social science literature to some extent (e.g., Pearce 1986; Montgomery 1995; Hammond 1996; Binford 1997), I focused intently on intragroup institutions, to the detriment of my understanding of relations between civilians and FMLN combatants. Yet, as a growing literature in rebel governance reminds us, nonstate armed groups build institutions for many purposes that are not warfighting. They provide basic modern-state functions like garbage pickup; they tax (Mampilly 2011); they adjudicate disputes (Arjona 2016); they educate (Hammond 1995, Binford 1997); and they conduct diplomacy (Huang 2016). The fact that many of these statelike endeavors are fundamentally related to warfighting makes it all the more important to integrate literatures on armed group violence with literatures on rebel governance. It remains opaque, for example, exactly how armed groups’ institutions for command and control and their institutions for governance reinforce or constrain one another. Similarly, while I focused extremely intently on rules and potential punishments, intragroup judicial processes to determine guilt and innocence are less clear from my account. It seems obvious that the (internally) perceived legitimacy of a group’s disciplinary practice should bear on its culture, norms, and behaviors—yet this aspect of discipline is missing, to an extent, from my account. I remain convinced of the essentials of the processes I describe; for example, although I frequently asked how it was decided that FMLN cadres were guilty of some infraction, most ex-combatants seemed simply to assume that those about whom rule violations had been reported were guilty as charged. An emerging strand of the rebel governance literature examines judicial processes initiated by armed groups during conflict (e.g., Loyle and Binningsbø 2018), and this literature, like the rebel governance literature more broadly, could consider whether, how, and under what circumstances intragroup judicial proceedings are used to control combatant violence toward civilians. A second challenge with qualitative data about wartime experiences is their ongoing politicization. The FMLN and the Salvadoran military are still thriving and highly political organizations. Members and ex-members have strong incentives to tell some stories and elide or simply hide others. While—again—I remain convinced of the veracity of the broad sweep of institutional histories as they were told to me, it is nevertheless possible that I, an outsider whose time in El Salvador was relatively short, was on some key point or points confused or simply misled. (For example, gaining access to state training curricula proved exceedingly difficult for a number of reasons; does this actually imply that state training

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in the war era lacked a routinized curriculum?) There are points on which my account differs from some other published accounts. Assuming for a moment that the information presented here is largely correct, did the research design adequately connect institutions and repertoires of violence? As I envisioned it in my theoretical framework (and my qualitative evidence), institutions for discipline and political education primarily affect combatant behavior via combatant decision processes, habits of mind, instincts, or standard operating procedures. This requires showing a causal connection both between institutions and combatant cognitions and between combatant cognitions and repertoires of violence. The first is relatively straightforward; indeed, the level of combatant recall about institutional matters strongly suggests a connection between institutions and cognition. The second causal connection is more difficult to establish. This is so especially because I cannot show (indeed, do not claim or attempt to show) that institutions or ideologies are the explanatory factors underlying repertoires of violence. Armed groups must face some strategic incentive to limit repertoires of violence, for example. Yet one can imagine a situation in which sufficient data were available to propose a quantitative research design that would point very strongly to the level of independent explanatory power of institutions. This type of design might include both a process-tracing exercise of the type that I conduct and a more traditional linear regression model. Unfortunately, I am unwilling (and more to the point, unable) to use a traditional linear regression analysis with the data available for this project. Thus, I carefully measure repertoires, demonstrate repertoire differences between groups and subgroups, and show repertoire changes over time; then I revisit the qualitative record for information related to the causal mechanisms in which I am most interested. To some extent, one’s willingness to accept (or indeed one’s preference for) this type of mixedmethod analysis is a matter of taste. The distance between the proposed causal mechanism and the evidence is rather wide for my own taste. I still believe that descriptive confidence should be prioritized over causal inference where the two conflict, and for better or worse, that is the course I have taken here. External validity represents another key challenge to this work. If we accept the evidence from El Salvador as a demonstration that, in this case, subnational variation in repertoires can be seen as the effect of institutional variation, then the obvious next step is to attempt a systematic analysis of other cases. I made a start on this process in chapter 6, where I determined that the Commander’s Dilemma theory lines up with evidence from the Mano River wars, “hard cases” as far as the boundary conditions of the theory are concerned. Even groups almost universally derided as “criminal rebels” were able, at some times and in some places, to control violence using institutions for political education. One potential next

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piece of this work would be the collection of a larger dataset on armed group institutions. Thus far, work on armed group institutions has proceeded roughly one variable at a time, with separate research groups receiving separate funding for the quantitative analysis of (ostensibly) separate institutions, from recruitment practices to judiciary processes to elections to diplomacy (to name a few). Bringing together these efforts with a systematic attempt to understand military and political training would provide, finally, a clear sense of the shape and patterns of institutional covariation. A more difficult set of missing pieces falls in the “maybe you should have written a different book” category. For example, when I present this work, people often ask, “What about commanders who prefer maximal violence?” What indeed. The easy answer is, “They are outside the scope of this study.” A slightly more rigorous answer is, “They are outside the scope of this study, and they are relatively rare.” The problem with the second answer is, of course, that commanders’ preferences are often purposely hidden. This is one reason why rationalist theorizing about strategic behavior is so appealing—no messy commander preferences, just nice crisp predictions. Even in conflicts where it appears certain that rape and other nonlethal violence were explicitly ordered (or at least explicitly condoned), it is surprisingly difficult to find evidence of orders. The answer that I actually prefer for questions about violence maximizers is that they find it easy to get what they want, assuming that their fighters have experienced many of the things that fighters frequently experience. The sobering reality is that in modern irregular wars, commanders who want maximalist violence against civilians, for whatever reason, may not need to order it. A related difficulty concerns groups—not contemplated in my theory— that encourage sexual violence specifically. Most of the evidence in this book suggests that sexual violence is not usually used as systematically as commonsense understandings, informed by reporting from Bosnia or Rwanda, might have us believe. Behind that empirical argument lies an assumption: that most commanders, given the reputational costs of rape, would rather avoid it. They may not particularly care about sexual violence, but they understand (as American officers did in Vietnam) that the optics are bad. But one of the most talked-about groups in contemporary armed conflict, the Islamic State, gives the lie to that assumption—or serves as the exception that proves the rule. The Islamic State, as a matter of policy and ideology, condones and even celebrates systematic sexual violence. Szekely (2017) suggests that in Syria in particular, gender ideologies have become an important signal of one’s “side” in the conflict: “For both the Syrian Kurdish PYD (the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, or Democratic Union Party) and ISIS, their ideologies of gender— and not merely their behavior with regard to women—represent defining

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features of their organizations. This emphasis has forced other parties to the conflict—the Assad regime and the Free Syrian Army and its backers—to engage with this cleavage as well” (11). I would argue that this is a case of “leaders who want maximal violence get what they want,” a finding that is consonant with my broader theoretical framework, if not one that is particularly interesting. The political education that Islamist fighters typically receive is madrassa based where it exists, but I know of no clear evidence that most Islamic State fighters receive political training. If they did, the Commander’s Dilemma framework would predict not a narrow repertoire of violence—as Szekely establishes, restraint is not the goal—but more uniform repertoires of violence across subgroups. While I don’t dispute the existence of (many) exceptions to the general predictions offered by the Commander’s Dilemma framework, some Islamist groups, during some periods, do appear to use narrow repertoires of violence. Gates (2012, 9), examining the early years of the Taliban, notes that “the use of rape or even other forms of sexual violence against women is persistently absent until allegations of the Taliban trafficking women, especially non-Pashtun women, into the sex trade emerge after 1998.” Gates argues convincingly that the general absence of sexual violence by Taliban fighters during this period is not an artifact of poor data collection: “The cultural context and insecure environment did not prevent the collection of reports of rape during the mujahidin era before 1994 or by mujahidin parties during their conflict with the Taliban” (9). This unexplained difference between mujahidin and the Taliban is puzzling, no less because of the high-level acceptance of sexual violence after 1998 than because of the decision to eschew the practice at the outset. The final, and certainly most difficult, set of criticisms to this argument concerns the emergence of institutions. My hope is that this book clarifies the fact that the relationships between good institutions and good behavior are complex, rather than determined; that both ideological content and institutional strength matter for creating restraint; and that teasing apart which factor does the work at any moment represents a worthwhile challenge. Against that hope, I often hear arguments that suggest, in effect, that internal armed-group politics and institutions are more or less epiphenomenal: both good institutions and good behavior emerge when groups have the incentive and the capability to create them. Of course, this also leaves many questions unanswered. What would it mean to be capable of building a given institution? I disagree that institutions for political education (and for preference change more generally) emerge only when groups are too resource-poor to recruit via other means (cf. Weinstein 2007). At the same time, institutional blueprints do not fall out of the sky. One way of asking this question usefully might be, Of the crop of Communist armed groups during

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the Cold War, many of whom had access to the same blueprints, which successfully implemented them, and why? A final missing piece, or perhaps outstanding question, in this book concerns my decision to compare state and non-state armed organizations directly. I remain ambivalent about this choice. When my focus is on individual soldiers’ experiences and mindsets, the comparison looks apt. When my focus is on the fundamentally different tasks facing state and non-state armed groups, it can look a bit silly. In truth, the most important defense of the comparison, from my perspective, lies in the considerable organizational similarities between state and non-state groups. Both tend toward hierarchy; all must recruit; most must train. It is fascinating, though, that the same organizational characteristics are treated very differently in literature about state militaries than in literature about rebel groups. Rebels who coerce recruitment are committing war crimes and creating mutinies; rebels who pay are getting “bad types.” Yet the literature on state militaries focuses on the morale problems of all-volunteer forces and derides nonpayment of fighters as unprofessional. This odd institutional disconnect seems related to the improbably bright line that most literatures have drawn between state and rebel forces.

American Atrocities Because I am an American, some of my work will always be an attempt to understand how (if) the US armed forces—the military and, increasingly, police too—can stop hurting and killing people, including civilians, in a variety of illconceived military adventures; civilians in the streets of US cities; and soldiers themselves. In this section I briefly consider what the Commander’s Dilemma might have to say about American atrocities. On March 16, 1968, a company-sized US Army group entered a complex of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam, on a search-and-destroy mission. Over the course of several hours, the soldiers of Charlie Company murdered hundreds of civilians in the hamlet known as My Lai 4. Pham Thanh Cong, who was eleven years old at the time, told an American reporter (Cordall 2013), “A soldier called us out, and we stood there not knowing what was happening. The white soldiers guarded us while the black soldier shot our cows, then set fire to our barn. . . . The soldiers stepped away, discussing what they were going to do next. As they were talking, my mother guessed what was happening and told us. We started to cry. Then the soldiers forced us back into the bunker. My mother got in last. I think she was trying to protect us. Then they threw the grenade in.” Cong was the family’s only survivor.

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Charlie Company’s crimes extended well beyond killings. The Army journalist Jay Roberts recalled his impressions during the massacre: I recall one of [the soldiers] saying how hard cows died, because they had shot them a few times, and they all had bayonets mounted, and they stabbed the cows a couple of times. . . . The next thing that happened was they brought out some people, women and children. . . . They were yelling at them “VC, boom, boom” [“boom boom” was commonly used as slang for prostitutes by American servicemembers in Vietnam], and things like that. . . . They grabbed one of the girls and started to tear her blouse off. . . . Haeberle [the photographer] went to take a picture of this thing, and they spotted him and his camera, and everybody froze and turned their backs and said, “Watch it. He’s got a camera!” . . . There was some discussion of what they were going to do with them, and somebody said, “Kill them.” (sworn statement, December 17, 1969, in Department of the Army 1970, 2:21–22) Several soldiers admitted to raping women that day. The total number of sexual assaults in My Lai remains unknown. For many Americans, scholars included, My Lai is the archetypal case of American violence against Vietnamese civilians. And evidence has emerged that American forces committed many massacres that, despite lacking My Lai’s scale and coordination, showed similar patterns and combinations of violence, including murder, rape, and the burning of homes (Turse 2013). Yet this repertoire was not the norm; My Lai was not “representative” violence in either scale or repertoire. Another infamous American unit, known as Tiger Force (Sallah and Weiss 2006), murdered and mutilated dozens of civilians, but it committed just (“just”) one documented rape. Only rarely did US soldiers commit more than one rape in the same incident, as at My Lai. And while many units committed frequent rapes, many—perhaps a majority—committed few or none. Just one low-level American officer, Lt. William Calley, was convicted of crimes at My Lai. He was, of course, later pardoned. The architects of the American attrition strategy in Vietnam faced no formal reckoning, either in Quang Ngai or for similar, though smaller-scale, abuses throughout the country. Yet commanders knew this type of violence was a failed strategy. In the American defense community, “Vietnam” quickly became a synonym for “what not to do.” The failures of Vietnamese counterinsurgency underlay the Carter and Reagan administrations’ policies in El Salvador; during the conflict in El Salvador a major American priority was the avoidance of “another Vietnam,” a losing effort, extrication from which became more, rather than less, difficult

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as the conflict wore on. Vietnam, unfortunately, has also become a leading case study in what not to do to combatants. Vietnam veterans have about twice the suicide rate of nonveteran men from their age cohort, after controlling for factors like substance use and demographics (Kaplan et al. 2007). Service during the conflict in Vietnam provides an object lesson in the permanence of the psychological change required to create combat soldiers, as well as the effects of combat experience on recruits’ general propensity to violence. But what are the effects of these changes on repertoires of violence? If the Commander’s Dilemma is correct, we should expect “baseline” violence—high levels, and wide, varied repertoires of violence against civilians— particularly in places far from the direct observation of commanders, and when individuals or groups had been deployed for relatively longer. Unfortunately, there are no clear, systematic descriptions of repertoires of violence against civilians for American troops, let alone for the North Vietnamese Army or the Vietcong. Stories about violence usually focus on particular notorious subgroups, like My Lai’s Charlie Company (see Bilton and Sim 1992; Olson and Roberts 1998) and Tiger Force (see Sallah and Weiss 2006). Accounts that attempt to deal with the American war front in Vietnam as a whole are frequently overly general, stating or implying with little evidence that uncontrolled violence against noncombatants was normal behavior for every American unit in Vietnam (e.g., Brownmiller 1975; Greiner 2009), or, less commonly, whitewashing the American effort in Vietnam as relatively safe for noncombatant populations. Accounts that attempt to discover systematic variation (e.g., Kalyvas and Kocher 2009) usually interest themselves only in lethal violence. A more nuanced account of repertoires in Vietnam—such as that suggested by Bacevich, Moise, and Lawrence in their critiques of Greiner (2009)—would consider simultaneously the newsworthiness of certain extreme violence, the incredibly boring quotidian life of the infantryman in Vietnam, and the impenetrability of the war front in information terms. Surveying the memoir literature as well as historical and journalistic accounts of particular units suggests that repertoires varied from scrupulous control to total mayhem. Accounts of total mayhem, including those of Bilton and Sim (1992), Sallah and Weiss (2006), and many of the testimonials in Shay (1995), bear some similarities. In most such accounts, perpetrators of violence against civilians are “long-timers,” those who have been in-country more than a year or who have more than one tour. Even more consistently, units that perpetrate “berserk” violence (Shay 1995) frequently are units that have experienced defeat or the death of a comrade. This was the case for Charlie Company in My Lai, and according to Sallah and Weiss (2006), Tiger Force violence against civilians frequently increased after attacks and casualties.

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Repertoires of violence varied strikingly from subgroup to subgroup, both among groups of combatants known to be “violent” and among those engaged in the more quotidian violence typical of the war. According to both Olson and Roberts (1998) and Bilton and Sim (1992), a number of Charlie Company combatants “impulsively” forced women from My Lai 4 to perform oral sex on them, at gunpoint. On the basis of available evidence, it is unclear whether members of Charlie Company perpetrated offenses like these in other cases. Given the era of the incident, killing received the lion’s share of the media’s attention to the massacre. Rape, when considered at all, seems to have been regarded as a mark of senseless brutality rather than as violence to be understood in its own right. By contrast, Tiger Force was not implicated in sexual violence; rather, its “calling card” forms of violence included summary execution of civilians and the desecration of corpses. The form of desecration most frequently associated with Tiger Force—the taking of ears, tongues, and lips—has also been noted in a number of other memoir accounts of the war, including Herr (1977) and Caputo (1977). More recently, Turse (2013) has suggested that massacres were more common and systematic than had been known before. Examining a previously unknown cache of archival documents, he finds that “atrocities were committed by members of every infantry, cavalry, and airborne division, and every separate brigade that deployed without the rest of its division—that is, every major army unit in Vietnam” (21–22). The directive to “kill anything that moves” came from the top of the chain of command. Body count was paramount. In some units—probably many—opportunistic, nonlethal violence was standard operating procedure. At the same time, we have this passage, from Norman Poirier’s 1969 account of a massacre at Xuan Ngo: He had lied in his radio report, the lieutenant said, because he had not wanted to go on the air with talk of civilian killings. . . . Captain Sullivan was irritated by the report. Only three days before General Westmoreland had issued a directive warning against mistreatment of Vietnamese, “physical and otherwise,” because of the resultant bad publicity in the Saigon press. The publicity, the directive pointed out, was “damaging to the image of the Marine Corps.” Henceforth, the directive went on, all such incidents of mistreatment would be reported up through channels to his office. The captain did not relish being brought to General Westmoreland’s attention in this capacity. . . . He set off in a jeep for the office of the commanding officer of the battalion. The colonel was just then listening to a Navy doctor who was relaying a Vietnamese woman’s claims of rape and murder.

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Captain Sullivan was irritated. The military investigated. When massacres became known, the consequences were serious. The chain of command recognized that they were damaging to the war effort. Yet the atrocities continued. What remains vague—from Turse’s work as well as from the vast number of other documentary efforts—is precisely how common sexual violence, destruction, and other unordered crimes were. Turse’s account, like all the chronicles of Vietnam atrocities, relies on a combination of internal investigative documents and hearsay; the investigative documents are gut-wrenchingly detailed but cover a tiny fraction of the atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians, while the hearsay is hearsay. Many individual soldiers say rape and other nonlethal violence was commonplace, but even critical accounts (such as the Winter Soldier testimonies) seem to show significant unit-to-unit variation. One solid fact: in a nationally representative sample, the Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Survey, fully 40 percent of respondents stated that they “had witnessed or were directly involved in acts of abusive violence while deployed in Vietnam” (Currier et al. 2014, 73). American soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan also show a muchhigher-than-average risk of suicide, after controlling for demographic factors. Like soldiers deployed to Vietnam, ground troops in these areas are fighting a counterinsurgency war against an enemy that frequently uses civilian populations for cover, or has significant civilian support. Unlike soldiers deployed to Vietnam, most “War on Terror” soldiers are voluntary enlistees, not draftees. At the outset of these wars, many new recruits felt a clear sense of mission. Yet, like those deployed to Vietnam, many or most fighters in these twenty-first-century wars are unsure about their overarching mission, the role of civilians, and the purposes of violence. Consequently, their approaches to civilians have varied wildly. As Ricks (2006, 234) notes, midlevel commanders in neighboring areas have taken radically different approaches to civilian protection (or “protection”): In the 4th Infantry Division in particular, noticed an Army intelligence officer, there were two brigade commanders whose sectors were side by side in the Sunni Triangle yet used vastly different approaches. On the west bank of the river, around Samarra and Balad, was Col. Frederick Rudesheim. “Rudesheim said, ‘I really want to support civil affairs.’ He gave them augmentation [additional troops], security. He said that civil affairs was his bread and butter” [recalled Maj. Christopher Varhola, an Army Reserve specialist in civil affairs]. Meanwhile, on the east side of the Tigris River, around Baqubah, Col. David Hogg was operating on a war footing that focused much more on action against the insurgents and intimidation of others. . . . [According to Varhola,] Hogg said that his forces were there to “kill the enemy, not to win their hearts and minds.”

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Colonel Hogg’s pronomial fuzziness is telling. Are civilians and insurgents the same “they”? More to the point of this book, I wonder about the extent to which repertoires of violence against civilians in these strategically similar areas have varied. Perhaps, as Kalyvas (2006) suggests, strategic approaches to civilians converged after the period that Ricks documents. Perhaps neither brigade faced the sort of daily contact with civilians that can produce widely varying repertoires. The Commander’s Dilemma suggests that, to whatever extent Colonel Rudesheim managed to convey the strategic and moral importance of civilians to his troops, we should see narrower repertoires around Samara and Balad than around Baqubah. Of course, there is no clear evidence about American repertoires of violence against Iraqi civilians. We do know that American soldiers returning from Iraq generally do not report experiencing a purposeful, nationbuilding conflict. Soldiers belatedly received cultural training about the mission, but they generally understood specific prohibitions rather than overall purposes. Brown (2008, 445) discusses in particular the idea that soldiers were never meant to “show Iraqis the soles of their feet,” and its disconnection from a broader sense of cultural awareness or civilian protection. We might also ask whether, or how, the insights of the Commander’s Dilemma apply to US police forces. While shootings of unarmed people, particularly Black people, have sparked nationwide protests in recent years—including comments from military veterans about poor fire discipline—the broader repertoire of police violence remains underexplored. In Oakland, California, a broad circle of police officers was involved in the sexual abuse of a teenage girl (Swanson and Barron 2017). Nationwide, police theft by way of civil-asset forfeiture has also gained widespread attention. Both of these crimes call to mind the ways in which soldiers, empowered by their weapons and their organizational position, may abuse civilians in wartime. As one victim of illegal civil-asset forfeiture put it, “They had guns and badges and they just took it” (Williams et al. 2010, 36). If the theoretical approach in this book has anything to say about policing, it is probably an echo of policy solutions already on the ground in some communities. The chief of police of Richmond, California, known for its remarkably low rate of police violence, has emphasized community connections and cultural change within the department, holding back significant numbers of senior officers from expected promotions (Weise 2015). In Dallas—another police-reform success story—the outward story is also one of trust and connection. Less visibly, officers socialized in the department’s old culture are leaving in droves (Haugh 2016). Notably, a significant element of the overall reform, which appears to have lowered police shootings, was a declaration that traffic tickets are not revenue generators. But, also notably, both the Richmond and Dallas police departments have changed their recruitment and training practices, as well as their rules.

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Legal and Policy Implications My hope is that a better understanding of violence against civilians is a key to controlling it. I see several legal and policy implications arising from this work. The first of these concerns prosecutions. Because they seek to hold individuals accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, international courts are particularly concerned with nonstructural—that is, humanly controllable— causes of violence against civilians. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (see United Nations 1998), the court has jurisdiction over the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression (Article 5); nonlethal violence against noncombatants is explicitly considered under the definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In addition to killing and extermination, crimes against humanity include deportation, imprisonment, and sexual violence. Article 28 provides that, in addition to other grounds of criminal responsibility under the statute, (a) A military commander or person effectively acting as a military commander shall be criminally responsible for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed by forces under his or her effective command and control, or effective authority and control as the case may be, as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such forces, where: (i) That military commander or person either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes; and (ii) That military commander or person failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution. Despite the strong formulations of command responsibility in the Rome Statute, however, prosecutors at both the International Criminal Court and the various ad hoc war-crimes tribunals have sometimes faced difficulty in showing command responsibility for war crimes or crimes against humanity without also showing a plan or policy originating with the commander in question—despite the fact that the statute’s language of “plan or policy” is attached very specifically to war crimes only and is an element of jurisdiction, not of criminal responsibility (Article 8). In attempting to demonstrate commanders’ specific intent, commentators sometimes overstate the facts on the ground. This is particularly true concerning cases, such as those arising from sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where negligence—responsibility arising from failure

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to act, as specifically intended in Article 28(a)—is a better description than “plan or policy” (e.g., Pritchett 2008). It is correct to say that these commanders are responsible, but arguments about direct intentions or orders often do not bear scrutiny. This is especially so in the case of nonlethal repertoire elements, such as sexual violence, which are unlikely to be ordered explicitly. But “knew or should have known” is at the heart of the Commander’s Dilemma. A fact I believe I have established is that commanders, having done the work to make combatants violent, generally know, or should know, what combatants might, given the right circumstances, do. The evidence presented here suggests that arguments about “bad apples” are almost universally disingenuous, designed to help commanders evade responsibility for crimes stemming from institutional failures. A second set of policy implications is primarily directed at policy elites in international organizations, governmental and nongovernmental. While it may be that the vogue for “early warning” systems to predict humanitarian disaster is waning, it remains true that humanitarian actors, governments, and human rights advocates face an incredible array of emergencies at any given moment. My results suggest that the most violent and chaotic emergencies, with the least restraint and the widest repertoires of violence against civilians, will be those in which armed actors lack systems of internal control, particularly political education. A final policy implication concerns wars themselves. The findings here suggest that restraint happens when combatants understand what they are doing and why. Restrained (and therefore effective) combatants understand and internalize both the purposes of the war and the ways that their behavior affects those purposes. Returning to the consideration of American atrocities, I would argue that it is exceptionally difficult to retain the sense of “fighting a good fight” when the war is being waged under what are essentially false pretenses. That certainly applies to the American effort on behalf of the Salvadoran state. It also applies to American wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Unjust wars lead to unjust warfighting— unrestrained fighting that maims, kills, and displaces civilians. In the chaos and fear of battle, restraint is a product of purpose.

Appendix ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

At various points in chapters 2–5, I assure the reader that my research was conducted ethically. In this appendix, I lay out some of the steps I took toward that goal, as well as some ethical dilemmas I faced that may never be fully resolved. For readers who might not be familiar with the ethical frameworks that guide social science researchers, I lay out those general principles first before moving on to a discussion of my specific questions. Legally and intellectually, research ethics conversations in the United States are shaped fundamentally by the study now known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. (Its chilling formal title was the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”) Between 1932 and 1972, the United States Public Health Service, in cooperation with a small group of researchers at the historically Black college, then called the Tuskegee Institute, persistently lied to a group of six hundred African American men and their families, causing early deaths, needless syphilis infections, and untold suffering (Heller 1972, Jones 1993). The disclosure of the study, in 1972, led to the immediate shutdown of the program and, shortly thereafter, to the creation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, known as the Belmont Commission for the conference center at which it convened. The Belmont Commission report, formally issued in 1979, consists of an economically-worded recommendation about appropriate ethical considerations for scientists and several thousand pages of supporting documentation. The report was almost immediately incorporated into US federal law and then into the research administration practices of every US university and college. In short, the report suggests that researchers should be guided by three ethical principles, each with a key practical implication. The principles are respect for persons, beneficence, and justice; in practice they demand informed consent, risk balancing, and fair subject selection. The Belmont principles are the foundation for the so-called Common Rule, the federal regulation initially drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services and later adopted verbatim by all other federal agencies.1 The principles also form the basis for human subject protections around the world (Hoover Green and Cohen 2018, 5n9). The Belmont principles provide clear, basic guidelines for ethical behavior in conflict research. But they are not exhaustive; in particular, they are silent about what is due, ethically, to persons other than subjects (cf. Cronin-Furman and 217

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Lake 2018) and about professional ethics. Both issues cause a significant amount of hand-wringing among political scientists, but only the latter has provoked formal action by members of the discipline: a series of policy statements, emanating from an invite-only workshop in 2010, that aim to increase the transparency and replicability of political science research (Lupia, Elman, and Kapiszewski 2015). This initiative is known as “Data Access and Research Transparency” or DA-RT. The most important DA-RT work product, from the perspective of many conflict scholars, was the Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement (JETS, 2014), which mandated that journals signing on to the policy “require authors to ensure that cited data are available at the time of publication through a trusted digital repository . . . If cited data are restricted (e.g., classified, require confidentiality protections, were obtained under a non-disclosure agreement, or have inherent logistical constraints), authors must notify the editor at the time of submission. The editor shall have full discretion to follow their journal’s policy on restricted data, including declining to review the manuscript or granting an exemption with or without conditions” (n.p.). While the motives behind DA-RT and JETS are laudable, changing the “default setting” to an explicit requirement that all data be publicly available represents a significant ethical challenge for microlevel and/or ethnographic scholars of highrisk situations. Notably, according to the DA-RT project’s history (Lupia, Elman, and Kapiszewski 2015), no microlevel scholars of conflict, or of politics under authoritarianism, were included in the drafting of JETS or of other DA-RT policy documents. Below, after discussing how I reasoned about the Belmont principles in my work, I consider my approach to professional ethics as a scholar who works with both quantitative and qualitative data.

Respect for Persons and Informed Consent The first Belmont principle is respect for persons, meaning that researchers are generally required to treat all potential research subjects, except those with significantly diminished capacity, as autonomous individuals “capable of deliberation about personal goals and of acting under the direction of such deliberation” (Belmont Commission 1979, part B, section 1). Doing so requires that researchers give potential subjects accurate and complete information about the project, ensure that the information is understood, and not render this information in a way or context that makes participation less than voluntary (Belmont Commission 1979, part C). In university human subjects processes, the typical requirement is that researchers get participants’ consent, in writing. I argued (I believe correctly)

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that written consent would create a paper trail that might put participant confidentiality at risk, and that in any case many of my subjects did not read and would find a written document incomprehensible and intimidating. I settled on a script, with several stopping points at which I got consent for different parts of the interview. Here is the version from my 2015 interviews in Morazán: Hello, thank you for meeting with me today. My name is Amelia Hoover Green. I am a researcher from Drexel University in the United States. This is my research assistant, Erika Murcia, who will be helping with the interview today. I’m doing research about training and discipline in different armies, and I am focusing on El Salvador. As part of that research, I am interviewing ex-combatants from all of the groups that were involved in the civil war in El Salvador. Today I plan to ask some questions about your experience during the civil war in El Salvador. I will ask some questions about how you joined [the guerrillas/the army/the security forces], some questions about the training you received, and some questions about discipline while you were in [the guerrillas/the army/the security forces]. The interview should take about one to two hours. Being interviewed is completely voluntary, and you can stop the interview at any time. Do you want to go ahead with the interview? [Wait for response.] It is helpful to have a record of your exact words. I will keep these recordings secure and private. I keep all the recordings in a secure computer file and I do not share them with anyone, even Erika. You do not have to consent to have your interview recorded, and you can ask me to stop recording at any time, and I will stop. Do I have your consent to record? [Wait for response.] You can refuse to answer any question, or stop the interview at any time. I will do everything possible to keep our conversation confidential. I will never identify you by name in any of my writing, and I will not use any information that would allow someone to guess your identity. I will be taking notes today, but without using names. As soon as I take my notes, they are stored in a safe, locked place. This paper explains your rights as an interviewee. If you have any problems related to this interview, you can contact me, or my colleague George, who speaks fluent Spanish, or the office at Drexel that protects people involved in research. Do you have any questions before we begin? [Wait for response.] OK. Considering everything that you heard, do I have your consent for this interview? [Wait for response.]

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The paper referred to above was a half-sheet of paper, in Spanish, that summarized the respondent’s rights and gave contact information for me, for a (nowformer) departmental colleague who speaks fluent Spanish, and for the university’s Human Subjects Protection office. I never received any feedback via any of those avenues (and several interview participants declined to take the paper, in any case). I feel confident that interview respondents had accurate information, understood what the interviews were going to be about, and knew I would protect their information in a somewhat risky environment. However, on the topic of voluntariness: readers will notice that the informed consent script contains no discussion about payment, or nonpayment, for participation. That conversation occurred prior to the interview itself, when we discussed meeting places and other logistics, and it was often much longer. Payment for research participation presents both ethical and methodological challenges. On one hand, we ought to compensate people for their labor, including the emotional labor of speaking about what was often a difficult or even traumatic time in their lives. On the other hand, offering payment is a good way to get bad information, from respondents who would otherwise not speak with me. Particularly during my 2015 trip to Morazán, Erika and I discussed this problem at length. There were some informal solutions at hand: I gave rides to and from some interviews, bought the occasional meal for participants, and in a few instances purchased respondents’ products, like hand-made lotions or revolutionary books. (In truth, this is how I came by some of the most compelling combatant memoirs I have read.) To me, this sort of interaction, though clearly transactional, seemed like part of the (limited) relationship-building process that occurs in any interview. Buying dinner for someone felt more like admiring a child’s carefully posed First Communion or high school graduation portrait, or asking about the weather, than it felt like saying “I will give you ten dollars to talk to me.” Yet my feelings on this matter shifted constantly and uncomfortably. Was I violating an unspoken contract if I didn’t buy that copy of Las Cárceles Clandestinas (The Secret Prisons, FMLN leader Ana Guadalupe Martínez’s memoir, of which I owned one copy prior to the Morazán trip and four after)? Why did I feel so much more uncomfortable about interview respondents offering items for sale before the interview than after, if I had already acknowledged that purchases from interview respondents were more transactional than not? But I recognize the importance of the “to me” above. Genuine informed consent is difficult to achieve in situations of structural inequality. It is easy to imagine that ex-combatants agreed to speak with me in a half-consenting way. Perhaps they preferred not to speak about the war, for any number of reasons—but they might also calculate that participating could lead to material benefits too important to pass up, even though I clearly stated that I could not pay research

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participants. At the same time, it is important to distinguish situations of structural vulnerability, like the poverty in which many of my respondents lived, from actual diminished capacity. Most of the people I interviewed seemed extraordinarily capable: tough, hard-working, reflective, smart, and articulate, as well as kind and generous with their time.

Beneficence and Balancing Risk The peace agreement that formally concluded the Salvadoran civil war was signed in 1992. I began work on this project in 2007, as the fifteenth anniversary of the peace accords was celebrated, and completed its final substantive revisions in early 2017, just in time for the twenty-fifth anniversary. It has been a while, and it is clear that some things have changed. One mentor, having completed her field work in El Salvador during and immediately after the war, warned me that people would be deeply suspicious of me, and that many would refuse interviews. I did not encounter this barrier. Yet political affiliations, including some forged during the war, remain subjects of debate and recrimination in El Salvador. Additionally, El Salvador—still a poor country—suffers from one of the world’s highest reported rates of violent crime. The Belmont principle of beneficence demands risk balancing: anticipating both likely and unlikely risks to participants, and considering whether those risks are balanced by the study’s potential benefits (Belmont Commission 1979, part C, section 2). This is one of the places in which it becomes exceedingly clear that the Belmont principles were not written for qualitative social scientists. Will the results of my research sufficiently benefit the world that the costs (in both actual costs and risks) borne by participants is outweighed? Even knowing where to begin answering that question requires some metaphysical calculation that, after ten years of work, still seems beyond me. As the Commission itself states dryly, “The metaphorical character of these terms [‘balanced;’ ‘favorable ratio’] draws attention to the difficulty of making precise judgments” (1979, part C, section 2). But the language draws attention to (what ought to be) the purpose of conflict research, namely, understanding conflict so as to mitigate its worst effects on people and communities. Researchers cannot do good work when they are not fascinated by their topic. But nor is fascination, in my opinion, an adequate replacement for broader purpose. The interview respondents I spoke with faced different risks based on their location, their socioeconomic status, and their experiences during the war. In general, these risks were related to three factors: the possibility of physical harm, the possibility of psychological harm via the interview process itself, and the

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possibility of social, economic, or psychological harm due to failures in confidentiality. Ensuring respondents’ physical safety in general is impossible in the Salvadoran context. For example, while I do not keep contact or other information about respondents on file, I do occasionally hear news of my interview participants. At least one has been murdered since our conversation. The circumstances are such that I can, in this particular case, feel relatively confident that my interview did not get this person killed—but this confidence is not always assured. In situations of scarcity, with weak or corrupt local law enforcement, being seen to converse with an American researcher might make an interview respondent a target for robbery. I remember being appalled at the initial insistence of Drexel’s Human Subjects committee that I seek the formal approval of local authorities before beginning my project. Were information to be released that suggested interview respondents had betrayed confidences or spoken ill of powerful people, they could be targeted for violence (or other sanctions) for those reasons as well. For example, Salvadoran ex-combatants, both in El Salvador and in the United States, often are embedded in tight social networks. It is possible that statements perceived as false, negative, or disloyal could cause social, professional, or financial retribution, either against the informants themselves or against their family and friends. Former American military advisers, especially those still associated with the US armed forces, can and do face professional consequences if they make or appear to make negative statements about the US military’s role in El Salvador. As Parkinson and Wood (2015) have noted, there is no clear assurance that what was safe to say in 2008, 2009, or 2015 remains safe today. Thus, ensuring respondents’ safety is to some extent a question of data security. I took three types of precautions to ensure data security: I carefully screened and trained everyone who worked with the interview data in any capacity, particularly my research assistant; I encrypted all the digital files relevant to the interviews (transcripts, notes, digital audio recordings, etc.) and kept written notes in a lockbox while in El Salvador; and I provided my research assistant with a computer in order to input survey data. She uploaded the data to a secure remote server as they were entered. Thus, my assistant’s computer never contained information for more than one survey form. A common concern for researchers who work with postconflict populations— particularly those for whom there remains little access to social safety nets or mental health care—is that speaking with the researcher will itself cause the respondent harm. Yet evidence for retraumatization, at least as a common phenomenon, is relatively thin (see review in Wood 2006a). In my experience, and in the experience of many qualitative researchers, it seems that people who speak with a researcher are often pleased at the opportunity to tell their stories. In rural El Salvador, where many ex-combatants have been interviewed time and time

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again, often-retold stories of the war have developed a smooth rhythm that contrasts with responses to “new” questions. My impression has been, not that telling these stories has become humdrum or rote—they are dramatic, tragic, sad, exciting stories—but that telling them, particularly to those from “outside,” has become part of the routine of maintaining historical memory of the war. That is, telling these stories is a community good in the eyes of at least some residents. I observed few signs of overt distress among my interview respondents. Rarely did ex-combatants halt, cry, or sigh as they shared difficult stories. When they did, I stopped recording or taking notes and asked whether the respondent wanted to stop the interview. Most did not.

Justice and Subject Selection The Belmont Commission writes (1979, part C, section 3): “Just as the principle of respect for persons finds expression in the requirements for consent, and the principle of beneficence in risk/benefit assessment, the principle of justice gives rise to moral requirements that there be fair procedures and outcomes in the selection of research subjects.” We do not think about this requirement very much in conflict research, but it nevertheless plays a role at individual, community, and case levels. At the level of individual respondents, it is important to remember that both qualitative and quantitative conflict research reflect a complicated web of social networks and community hierarchies. My experience in El Salvador is that, in nearly every small town, researchers must talk to certain key informants—not necessarily holders of formal power in the community, but rather those who are seen as authorities on the war—who send you to others in their network. This is a significant methodological problem, since these webs of respondents differ from the broader population ex-combatants. (I discuss the methodological aspects of the problem in chapters 2–4.) However, this situation also presents ethical challenges, at least for those of us who do not become fully immersed in the communities we study. (My impression is that researchers who connect in deeper, more long-term ways with communities have more opportunities to look outside their initial circle of informants.) The benefits and risks of our research, such as they are, fall disproportionately on certain groups of individuals. For me, though, the more vexing question is not about individuals but about communities and countries. Why did I choose El Salvador? The “correct” answer, and the answer I emphasize in chapter 2, has to do with effective research design: El Salvador’s conflict included significant variation in institutions, ideologies, and repertoires of violence against noncombatants. The more fully honest answer is that I was interested in El Salvador,

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because El Salvador had been written about compellingly many times before. Also, there were data about El Salvador. Also, it is a single five-hour plane flight from my home. Also, you do not need a visa or even to exchange currency. And so on. None of these factors was determinative for me, and most are not determinative for other researchers, either. But they certainly shaped my work. One reason these factors shaped my work has to do with me and my capacities. As it turns out, not everyone who cares deeply about a given subject ought to be doing field research on that subject. Like me, for example. My physical, mental, and emotional capacities are just not best served by living away from my family or working in a language in which I am not fluent. Working in El Salvador allowed me to do comparatively short trips rather than long stays; it allowed me to be in frequent contact with my family and friends. Still, my choices and capacities reflect those of many others: El Salvador’s is among the best-studied civil wars of the past fifty years (along with more recent conflicts in, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Dozens of other equally harrowing, interesting conflicts have received relatively little academic notice. As with individual subject selection issues, this is both a methodological and an ethical problem. What (types of) conflicts are we ignoring? And, relatedly: whose conflict experiences are we, as a discipline, actually working to mitigate?

Scientific and Professional Ethics Scientific and professional ethics are not directly addressed in the Belmont principles, yet questions of professional ethics unavoidably raise questions about ethical interactions with the individuals and communities we study, and vice versa (Hoover Green and Cohen 2018). Note that in this section, when I say “professional ethics,” I include issues related to transparency, replicability, collegiality, and intra-disciplinary hierarchies. I am talking about our responsibilities to our discipline and our colleagues, rather than our responsibilities to the people and communities we study. One issue, best addressed first, is the insufficiency of that division: many of our colleagues are also people we study. This is particularly true for researchers who employ local staff, but it also affects those of us who conduct interviews with local elites. To take one example, I generally avoided interviewing FMLN ex-combatants who served as officers, because I wanted to understand what ex-combatants had actually experienced, rather than what policies suggested they should have experienced. In a few cases, however, I met with former officers who had become academics. In these cases, I tended to experience a moment of double vision. Was I talking to a fellow professional researcher about a research topic of shared

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interest? Or was I here for a “normal” interview, in which I asked for personal experiences and did not feel the need to discuss theories of prolonged popular war? In the end both happened at once. It was a fascinating conversation. But this distinguished intellectual is now cited in my book as one of many anonymous interviewees, rather than in a named acknowledgement. Similarly, although I name my colleague Erika Murcia and her contributions at various points in the text, I question whether the designation “research assistant” gives sufficient credit for her work. On a separate but related note, Erika’s work was, at times, like that of a key informant rather than a logistical point person. I hung out with Erika’s adorable cousins and conducted interviews in Erika’s home town. Stories related informally by Erika and her family shape some of the analysis in the book. Both of these examples highlight a key issue of professional ethics, namely, do local colleagues receive adequate credit for their intellectual work? “Credit” might include payment; it might also include the opportunity to co-author works, present at conferences, and so on. As Cronin-Furman and Lake (2018) observe, research access is not an equally distributed phenomenon. The colleagues who make access for us (the predominantly white, relatively rich “us—that is, affiliated with universities in the United States and Europe) during field work might not have the same access extended to them, a problem that compounds the injustice done when we credit inadequately. That is to say, this is a problem about replicating intradisciplinary hierarchy as much as it is a problem with failure to do right by individual staff members. The tradeoffs faced by qualitative scholars looking to compete in mainstream political science highlight a second issue of intradisciplinary hierarchy. As a number of authors have discussed (Parkinson and Wood 2015; Cramer 2015; Pachirat 2015; Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2016) the JETS “default setting”—that all data are public—does little to improve, and may actually harm, qualitative research. While my work is more empirical than interpretive, I share Cramer’s (2015) concern that another researcher, granted access to my field notes (or even audio recordings), might or might not reproduce the qualitative results underpinning chapters 3 and 4 of this volume. This particular point is moot in my case: my Human Subjects agreements forbid, for the protection of interview subjects, any dissemination of notes or audio. It is unclear to me whether a journal editor would view that as grounds for declining to review, but it is certain that having to defend a confidentiality decision before a manuscript is even reviewed represents a significant hurdle. Moreover, it is unclear to me that all editors (or even most editors) have the type of in-depth knowledge required to judge accurately whether a given data restriction is worth an exception. This sense of transparency, premised on the value of replication, seems to me fundamentally quantitative and empirical, and unfriendly in the extreme to

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qualitative and/or interpretive methods, particularly in dangerous or unsettled situations. As a researcher who extensively uses both qualitative and quantitative methods, I think the demands levied by journal editors who endorse JETS are significantly easier for quantitative than for qualitative researchers to fulfill. I favor an approach that values production transparency as well as analytic transparency. As the American Political Science Association states the obligation in its 2012 guide to professional ethics, “Researchers providing access to data they themselves generated or collected should offer a full account of the procedures used to collect or generate the data” (10). For the quantitative researcher, analytic transparency means that readers are able to access one’s data and code, run the code, and achieve the same output as the researcher herself. The usual practice is to submit a final dataset, absent any information about the provenance of the values in the dataset. Small wonder, then, that many qualitative researchers are concerned about unequal burdens. If, for example, each cell in a dataset is derived from research in several secondary sources, considered and coded by a team of researchers, production transparency—not analytic transparency—requires the publication of an account of the process by which every cell value was arrived at. Some quantitative researchers have taken on this challenge, and the results are illuminating. I am thinking in particular of Lacina and Uriarte’s (2009) guide to coding decisions for the Peace Research Institute of Oslo’s battle-deaths data. In my own case, making the quantitative data and code for chapters 5 and 6 available is, for what it is worth, analytically transparent. People can recreate the same numbers that I create, and they can merge (some of) my data with their own. But analytic transparency is meaningless without production transparency (see, e.g., discussions of the Michael LaCour scandal, such as Aschwanden and Koerth-Baker 2016). The vastly more important question for scholars wishing to evaluate my work is, Where on earth did the data themselves come from? What is likely to be missing? How has she matched and merged across datasets? I have tried to answer these questions, both in chapter 5, above, and in the online methodological appendix. My experience has been that focusing on production transparency requires similar levels of effort (lots) in my quantitative and qualitative work. Leveling this particular playing field is important, both because methodological pluralism in conflict research is important per se and because methodology is correlated with race, gender, sexuality, and other identity dimensions along which power and participation in political science, and the academy in general, are unfairly, or at least very unevenly, distributed.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Bonner wrote, “In some 20 mud brick huts here, this reporter saw the charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams and shattered tiles. There were more along the trail leading through the hills into the village, and at the edge of a nearby cornfield were the remains of 14 young men, women and children.” Raymond Bonner, “Massacre of Hundreds Reported in Salvador Village,” New York Times, January 27, 1982, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/27/world/massacre-of-hundreds-reportedin-salvador-village.html. 2. It is possible that these results are reporting artifacts—that is, that sexual violence is more likely to be reported when it is accompanied by extreme violence of other types. Based on my readings of both first-person narratives and statistical evidence, however, I believe this graph provides a rough view of real facts on the ground. 3. Gates (2002) provides an initial formalization of the principal-agent model for armed groups; without assuming any particular set of command or combatant preferences regarding violence, Gates’s model suggests that “distance” (physical, ethnic, ideological, or preferential) makes enforcement of group norms (and command decisions) more costly. 4. Few authors have systematically examined opportunism arguments in the case of lethal violence, since the prediction that all combatants maximize killings, given access, is clearly incorrect. 5. As I discuss at greater length elsewhere in the book, I am pessimistic about the prospects for accurate measurement from individual convenience data sources. Thus, where possible I describe repertoires of violence using results from multiple systems estimation (MSE) or survey data, rather than relying on descriptive inferences from raw self-report data. CHAPTER 1. THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA

1. The online appendix for this book can be found at www.ameliahoovergreen.com/ book.html. CHAPTER 2. CIVIL WAR IN EL SALVADOR

1. For more information on exceptions in the colonial period, see the discussion in Kincaid (1987, esp. 471–72). One key exception, which bears some striking resemblances to later local uprisings, was the Nonualco Rebellion of 1832–33. Like the uprising of 1932, this period of unrest responded to landlessness and coerced agricultural labor—and, importantly, was organized around indigenous (Nonualco) identity. Its leader, Anastasio Aquino, is poorly documented, but he led several thousand lightly armed peasants in battles that eventually controlled several cities, towns, and estates. The tide turned in early 1833, when the Salvadoran government received reinforcement from the Guatemalan military. 2. Cuba provided significant operational and diplomatic support, but was unable to provide significant financial support to the FMLN, whose income consisted largely of

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ransoms from kidnapping operations, remittances from solidarity organizations, and inkind support (often in the form of air travel vouchers, according to Oñate 2011) from other governments. CHAPTER 3. COMPARING STATE AND FMLN INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES

1. Many interviewees suggested that FMLN recruiting efforts strongly benefited from the army’s forced recruiting practices. More than a dozen FMLN respondents suggested that boys approaching military age (typically twelve to fifteen years old) during the conflict felt they would be press-ganged into the state army if they did not join the FMLN first. 2. For reference, during this period the military population per thousand in the United States hovered around 9.5; in the Soviet Union, the number was about 16; in the United Kingdom, about 6. These data are from the US Department of State’s World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers data, published annually between 1964 and 1994. Each year’s volume contains data for the preceding ten years; where numbers differ from volume to volume I have chosen the newer number. 3. I was struck by former advisers’ respect for the FMLN. For example: “They were just incredibly good. And I think that if I’d been in their place—I mean if I had grown up there and all—I’d probably have sided with them” (interview 81). The same interviewee complained bitterly about the Salvadoran Army’s promotion system, which consistently moved subpar and corrupt field-grade officers forward, and its lack of a noncommissioned officer corps. Another retired Special Forces trainer told me, “I never really saw the point of the whole ‘killing Commies’ thing. They were Communists, but also, they weren’t the ones out there abusing people” (interview 85). 4. Anyon was discussing the hidden curriculum of social class. She investigated how schools reproduced children’s class roles by offering (for example) rote, repetitive, unexplained tasks to the children of working-class parents and analytical, evaluative, creative tasks to the children of affluent professionals. But the concept of the hidden curriculum has been employed across a variety of contexts. CHAPTER 4. INSTITUTIONS, IDEOLOGIES, AND COMBATANT EXPERIENCES IN FMLN FACTIONS

1. Leaders of the five factions were deeply suspicious of one another. Perhaps no one engendered as much suspicion as Joaquín Villalobos, the leader of the ERP. In 1975, ERP leaders assassinated the revolutionary poet Roque Dalton, a move that severed ties not only with Havana but also with other revolutionary organizations and led to the formation of the National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional [RN]), one of the five groups with which the ERP later allied to form the FMLN. 2. Without dismissing the contributions of the other FMLN organizations, dataavailability issues on the dependent-variable side have pushed me to focus on the two largest groups. In particular, violence by FMLN factions is identified in all datasets simply as “FMLN” violence. Understanding the geographic bases of the groups helps to identify which organizations committed what “FMLN” violence, but this strategy is mainly helpful for the ERP and FPL because of their large, consistent, and well-defined territories. 3. See, e.g., the discussion in Gutierrez Sanín and Wood (2014). In this piece, the authors argue that many of the institutions common to most Communist armed organizations are either laid out or suggested in the writings of key Communist military leaders, including Mao, Giap, Lenin, and Guevara. 4. “How” versus “why” differences are important because they provide some ability to distinguish between the effects of recruitment practices per se and the effects of ideology, as transmitted by political education. If, for example, prerecruitment ideology tracked

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combatant behavior more closely than postrecruitment ideological training, this would suggest that the Commander’s Dilemma framework, insofar as it assumes preference change among combatants, is incorrect. However, this is not what I find. CHAPTER 5. VIOLENCE AND RESTRAINT IN THE SALVADORAN CIVIL WAR, 1980–92

1. I never rely on interview data exclusively—both because it cannot be verified and because I believe it to be unethical to ask ex-combatants about their participation in violence. Thus, interview accounts of violence consist only of anecdotes offered by respondents without prompting. 2. The survey that I conducted is a survey of ex-combatants’ perceptions, including perceptions of violence against civilians. Recall, though, that this does not represent a “true” survey sample, because the sample frame (ex-combatants by group) remains unknown. Thus, no margin of error can be computed, and the information from my survey should be taken as systematic but fundamentally qualitative. 3. Rank correlations represent a lower bar than standard (Pearson) correlation measures, because there is no question of predicting relative sizes, as with Pearson scores. 4. Note, though, that Binford (2016) questions this assertion, and several other details of Danner’s account, in his more thoroughly researched work. Binford claims that while the people of El Mozote and surrounding hamlets generally remained as neutral as they could within the constraints of survival, there were FMLN supporters in the area. CHAPTER 6. THE COMMANDER’S DILEMMA BEYOND EL SALVADOR

1. While Coulter’s (2009) informants seldom specified which rebel force they were with (266n3), the chances are good that “rebels” were RUF, given the relative sizes of the different forces. APPENDIX

1. US Department of Health and Human Services, n.d. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/ regulations-and-policy/regulations/common-rule/index.html.

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Index

Individual hypotheses constituting the Commander’s Dilemma and alternative hypotheses are indicated by H1–13 and A1–17; these are spelled out on pp. 151–52. 15 Principles of the Guerrilla Combatant, 91, 119, 120, 123 AFL, 173, 178 defections to other factions, 179 institutional biography, 179–81 Krahn (tribe), 179 repertoires of violence, 179–80 US support, 184 US training, 179–80 violence, acts of, 174, 179 AFRC, 177, 178 ARENA, 46, 72, 75 Armed Forces of El Salvador decrease in level of state violence, 8 non-lethal violence, 36 use of fear and discipline, 36 violence against citizens, 1 Armed Forces of Liberia. See AFL Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. See AFRC armed-group institutions, 48 baseline armed group behavior, 203 belief change, 43–44 Belmont Commission, 217–18, 221, 223 Bemba Gombo, Jean-Pierre, 10, 24 BIRIs, 20, 69, 86–87, 202–3 combatant understanding of rules and regulations, 97–98 gender-based humiliation, 102–3 institutional biography, 54 nonlethal violence, 154 political education, 95–96 recruitment, 83t repertoire factors, 154–55 School of the Americas, 69, 93 sexual violence, 163 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 134–35 Calderón Sol, Armando, 73 Campaore, Blaise, 175

CDF (El Salvador). See Kamajors (El Salvador) CDFs, 42 CDFs (Sierra Leone), 173, 175, 176–77, 178, 189 absence of sexual violence, 196 Commander’s Dilemma, 193 institutional biography, 188–90 patron-client relationships, 189 and Poro manhood societies, 178, 189 repertoires of violence, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 199, 203 restraint, 196, 199 rituals of initiation, 189–90 warring against RUF, 188 CDHES, 53, 132 CDHES data, 139, 147 Central African Republic, 10, 24 Chalatenango, 64, 109, 157, 158 Chapultepec accords, 72 child soldiers, 31 Christian Base Communities, 64, 112, 118, 119 Civil Defense Forces (El Salvador). See Kamajors (El Salvador) cognitive dissonance, 31, 31–32 Cohen, Dara Kay, 9, 15, 23, 40, 85, 87, 102, 105–6, 115, 152t, 153, 167–68, 192 Colombia, 15, 164 combatant “combat-masculine-warrior” paradigm, 33 reporting of experiences, 50 Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador. See CDHES Commander’s Dilemma, 44–45, 115, 168–69, 170 American atrocities, 209–14 baseline armed group behavior, 81 complete hypothesis, 151t–52t and death tolls, 106–7 defined, 26–27, 201 disciplinary systems, 198 empirical implications, 48–49 H1, 81, 85, 95, 104, 151t, 153 H2, 81, 85, 95, 104, 151t, 181 H3, 81, 85, 95, 105, 151t, 181

249

250

INDEX

Commander’s Dilemma (continued) H4, 87, 96, 105, 151t, 183 H5, 96, 105, 151t, 153, 154, 185 H6, 105, 151t, 154, 185 H7, 106, 151t, 153, 159, 188, 197 H8, 115, 151t, 159, 190, 196 H9, 116, 151t, 159, 190, 196 H10, 122, 151t, 153, 159 H11, 122, 151t, 156, 191 H12, 122, 151t H13, 122, 151t incentives for civilian protection, 172, 201 Liberia, 179–80 Mano River wars, 191–92, 193, 203 PER, 41 political education, 87, 95–96, 105–6, 122 preference change, 48, 87 recruitment, 105, 198 repertoires of violence, 104, 105, 106–7, 112, 129, 156–57, 159–60, 168 restraint, 54, 77, 201 socialization modes, 201 strategic factors and violence, 104 training, 198 US police forces, 214 War on Terror, 214 Commission for Human Rights in El Salvador. See CDHES Communist Party El Salvador, 66–67 of Nepal-Maoist, 41 Communist rebels, 228 armed groups and political education, 41–42 and sexual violence, 170–71 Community Defense Forces (Sierra Leone). See CDFs compensation, ethics of, 220–21 Constitution of El Salvador, 94 contestation and control, 164–65 the Cotonou agreement, 175 Cristiani, Alfredo, 73 criticism and self-criticism (critica y auto-critica [CSC]), 125–26 Cuba, 67, 76, 227–28 support of FMLN, 88, 110, 115–16 Dalton, Roque, 66, 228 DA-RT, 218 Data Access and Research Transparency. See DA-RT Democratic Republic of Congo, 215–16 disciplinary systems, 44, 96–97, 122–26 dispositions of military recruits, 29 Doe, Samuel, 173, 174, 177 du Picq, Ardant, 28

East Timor, death toll, 136 Ecclesiastical Base Communities, 112 ECOMOG, 174–75, 177, 179 Economic Community of West African States, 174 El Mozote massacre, 1–2, 50–51, 163 El Salvador, 46–48. See also FMLN; FMLN branches agriculture, 60–62 Christian Base Communities, 42 civil war, 19, 59–64, 76 Cuban support, 227–28 death toll, 131–33, 137, 140, 142–43, 145–46 democratic reform, failure of, 63–64 history of, 59–64, 227 intramilitary coups, 63 massacres, 1, 2, 4, 50–51, 163 military government, 63 murder of churchwomen, 51 murder of Jesuit priests, 51 oligarchy, 62, 63, 66, 76, 120 post-Civil War, 221–24 post-war reforms, 73 ERP, 19, 66, 67 access to resources, 167 attitudes toward civilians, 111, 120–21, 156 culture, 111, 202 ideology, 117, 121 institutional biography, 54 Morazán, 67, 110, 157, 168 murders of alcaldes, 121–22 perceptions of FPL, 111 political education, 117, 118, 158, 202 recruitment, 114–15, 121–22, 168 repertoires of violence, 158–59, 168–69, 202 sexual violence, 115 strategy, 67–68 training, 116–17 Villalobos, Joaquín, 228 ethical considerations, 45–47, 217–29 compensation, 220–21 informed consent, 218–20 professional ethics, 224–26 Executive Outcomes mercenary company, 176–77, 178, 189 external incentives, 37–39 FAES as baseline armed group, 81 and civilians, 71, 102, 103–4, 162–63 fear and discipline, 97 fear of Communism, 94, 102, 104 gender-based humiliation, 89, 100, 102–3 internal violence, 89

INDEX

political education, 81, 89, 92–93, 94, 101–2 recruitment, 81, 83, 84–85, 113 removal of FMLN from Guazapa Volcano, 72 repertoires of violence, 158, 159, 163, 164–65, 170 San Salvador region, 157–58 sexual violence, 158, 164–65, 168 spatiotemporal change in repertoire, 160–61, 166 strategy, 102, 166 support by US, 71, 95, 166 torture, 158 training, 88 FARC. See Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia fear and discipline, 27–28, 36, 38 Flores Pérez, Francisco, 73 FMLN, 7, 12–13, 43, 46, 53, 54. See also individual branches abductions, 159–60 attacks, 70–72 attitudes toward FAES forces, 120, 123 and civilians, 97, 102, 103, 120–21, 123, 160, 162 conventional warfare, 70 criticism and self-criticism (critica y autocritica [CSC]), 125–26 culture, 119–20 discipline, 101, 120, 125, 160 education level, 90 enemy identification, 120 formation and structure, 66–67, 102, 110 and gender, 103, 113–14, 124–25, 126–29 ideology, 92, 97, 123–24 importance of Romero, 65 lethal violence, 157–58, 159–60 Maoist influence, 130 membership as defiance, 113 obedience to orders, 123 political education, 41, 42, 44–45, 81, 90–92, 101–2, 110, 118–19, 160, 170, 202 as a political party, 72, 75 popular education, 44, 91, 119 recruitment, 83–85, 113–15, 167, 228–29 repertoires of violence, 122, 129, 154, 155–56, 162, 170 restraint, 110, 199 San Salvador region, 157–58 sexual violence, 103 strategy, 68, 112, 167 training, 87–88, 116 Footpaths to Democracy, 187 foquismo, 112

251

forced recruitment and sexual violence, 85, 87, 168 FPL, 20, 25–26, 66, 67, 110, 128, 157 abductions, 158 and civilians, 111, 111–12, 120–21, 156 culture, 112–13, 117, 127, 202 discipline, 117–18 female combatants, 88, 109 ideology, 117, 127 institutional biography, 54 Maoist influence, 68 perceptions of ERP, 111 political education, 68, 111, 117, 118 recruitment, 114–15, 116 repertoires of violence, 122, 168–69, 202 sexual relations between combatants, 127–28 strategy, 67–68, 111 training, 116–17 Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, 41, 80 Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador. See FAES Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. See Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Funes, Mauricio, 74 Gaddafi, Muammar, 173 Grande, Rutilio, 65 Green Book, 186 Guatemala civil war, 76 death toll, 132, 135, 136 Guazapa region, 67, 70, 72, 110, 157 Guerrillas (Anderson), 109 Guevara, influence on ERP, 67–68 Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (Nkrumah), 186 Honduras, 76, 116 human rights concerns. See also sexual violence; individual Truth and Reconciliation Commissions commission of violations, 99 datasets, 53, 138–39 Human Rights Watch, 4–5 impacted by availability of combat resources, 167 quantifying, 23 training, 69, 92–93 UN observer mission, 72 US influence on FAES, 70, 93 Human Rights Data Analysis Group, 140 hypotheses, alternate A1, 87, 105, 107, 152t, 153, 167 A2, 87, 105, 107, 152t, 167

252

INDEX

hypotheses, alternate (continued) A3, 87, 105, 107, 152t, 167 A4, 105, 152t, 164, 167 A5, 106, 152t, 164 A6, 106, 152t, 164 A7, 106, 152t, 157, 164 A8, 106, 152t, 164 A9, 107, 152t, 157, 164 A10, 107, 152t, 157, 164 A11, 107, 152t, 167 A12, 107, 152t, 167 A13, 107, 116, 152t, 167 A14, 107, 116, 152t, 167 A15, 112, 152t A16, 115, 152t A17, 105, 129, 152t IDP survey data, 195t Independent NPFL. See INPFL Index of Accountability. See Rescate data informants, 121 informed consent, ethical considerations, 218–20 INPFL, 174 institutional biographies, 54–56 institutions, defined, 39 institutions for socialization, 42t and costs of compliance, 45f disciplinary systems, 39, 42t, 45f political education, 39, 41–44, 42t, 45f recruitment, 39–40, 42t, 45f training, 39, 42t, 45f internalization, 44, 85, 110, 167 Islamic State (ISIS), 207–8 Israeli Defense Forces, 6 JETS, 218 Johnson, Roosevelt, 175 Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement. See JETS Kabbah, Ahmed Tejan, 177, 184 Kalyvas, Stathis N., 13, 48, 76, 77, 80, 105–6, 129, 152t, 164–166 Kamajors (El Salvador), 7, 69 political education, 43 sexual violence, 4–5 kamajors (Sierra Leone), 176, 188, 189 Kosovo, death toll, 132, 135 Krahn (tribe), 174, 175, 177 Kromah, Alhaji, 175 land reform, 73 liberation theology, 64–65, 112, 118 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. See Tamil Tigers

Liberia Frontier Force, 179 Liberian conflict (1989–2003), 172, 193 history of, 174–75 role of ethnic division, 177 US troop involvement, 175 violence against civilians, 179–80 Liberian Peace Council, 183 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. See LURD Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 192–93 Liberia Peace Council, 175 literacy education, 44 Lomé Peace Accords (1999), 177 Lord’s Resistance Army, 31 LTTE. See Tamil Tigers LURD, 173, 175, 178 and former CDF fighters, 190–91 institutional biography, 190–91 sexual violence, 198 Mano River wars, 20, 48, 58, 172–80 Commander’s Dilemma, 191–92, 203 incentives for civilian protection, 172 nonlethal violence, 193 repertoires of violence, 192–93 sexual violence, 193, 203 strategy, 198 territorial-control, 172 violence against civilians, 178 Mao, influence on FPL, 68 Maoist influence, 41, 68, 130, 186 Martí, Farabundo, 67 Martinez, Hernandez, 63 massacres, 3–4 El Salvador, 227 My Lai, 50, 209–11 Xuan Ngo, 212–13 la matanza, widespread rape, 63 methodology, 23, 56–57, 147–48, 150–51, 192–96, 202, 229 adverse selection, 85, 200 Bayesian model averaging, 143 bias, 135–36, 136–37 cluster sample survey, 56–57 convenience data, 133–36, 138–40 descriptive inference, 137 estimation, 133, 136 ethical considerations, 217–29 interviews and surveys, 81–82, 132, 134, 149–50 interviews with American advisers to Salvadoran armed forces, 56–57 interviews with ex-combatants, 56–58

INDEX

Mano River wars, 172–73 MSE, 51–53, 58, 131–32, 135–36, 140–46, 147, 203–4 overlap analysis, 150 principal-agent model, 227 qualitative gaps, 205–7 regarding FMLN units, 155–56 sociology and psychology, 33–38, 119, 201 Spearman rank correlations, 145 Milgram, Stanley, 30 Miss Universe contest (1979), 66 MODEL, 173, 175, 178 institutional biography, 191 repertoires of violence, 191, 193, 198, 203 sexual violence, 198 Momoh, Joseph, 176, 184 Morazán, 1, 53, 64, 112, 157, 158–59, 168 Movement for Democracy in Liberia. See MODEL Movement for the Liberation of Congo, 10, 24 Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, 80 Museum of Word and Image (Museo de Palabra y Imágen) (San Salvador), 56 National Civil Police. See PNC National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. See Belmont Commission National Patriotic Front of Liberia. See NPFL The National Plan, 95 National Provisional Ruling Council, 176 National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional), See RN National Security Archives, 56 the “new man,” 113, 117, 127 “new wars,” 76 Nicaraugua, 76 support of FMLN, 88 non-lethal violence, 147 NPFL, 172, 173, 174–75, 178 and female combatants, 182 Gio (tribe), 177 institutional biography, 181–83 Mano (tribe), 177 political education, 198 repertoires of violence, 183, 193, 198 sexual violence, 185, 196, 198 territorial control, 183 training, 182 treatment of civilians, 175–176, 181 violence, acts of, 198 and violent action films, 182 witness reports, 195–96

253

obedience to orders, 30 online appendix, 51, 54, 77, 137, 150, 227 “Operation No Living Thing,” 177 opportunism, theories of, 16 ORDEN, 66 Ordinances of the Salvadoran Military, 94 Organización Democrática Nacional. See ORDEN Parque Cuscatlán, 132 peace agreement (1992), 72 Perú, death toll, 132, 135 Perú, violence in, 134 Physicians for Human Rights, 173, 193 PNC, 72 Policía Nacional Civil. See PNC political education, 44, 129–30, 200 mediating effect on forced recruitment, 115 and relationship between violence and deployment time, 48 restraint of violence, 110 role in Communist state militaries, 78 political organizing, 68 Political Terror Scale (PTS), 11–12 Popular Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Populares de Liberación). See FPL “Populorum progressio” (papal encyclical), 64–65 Poro manhood societies, 42, 178, 189, 199 posttraumatic stress disorder. See PTSD preference change. See internalization principal-agent model, 14–15, 37–38, 129, 167, 166167 proportional-representation electoral system, 72 PRTC, 67 PTSD, 16, 33–24 Radio Venceremos, 91 Reagan administration, 179 human rights concerns, 70 support of FAES, 70–71 recruitment, 113–16 age, 83t education level, 83, 83t impacted by availability of combat resources, 116 relationship to violence against citizens, 82, 85 Red Army and broadening repertoires of violence, 171 and political education, 171 remittance-based economy, 73 repertoires of contention, 6–7 repertoires of violence, 5–7, 9, 17, 26, 50, 147–55, 166–67, 200, 201–2, 204 and adverse selection, 161, 167

254

INDEX

repertoires of violence (continued) Armed Forces of El Salvador, 7, 10t Armed Forces of Perú, 10t CDF, 10t CDFs (Sierra Leone), 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 199, 203 ERP, 158–59, 168–69, 202 FAES, 158, 159, 163, 164–65, 170 FMLN, 7, 10t, 122, 129, 154, 155–56, 162, 170 FPL, 122, 168–69, 202 importance of internal incentives, 100–101 Kamajors, 7 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, 10t limiting factors, 43 Mano River wars, 192–94 MODEL, 198, 203 National Patriotic Front of Liberia, 10t NPFL, 198 Peruvian Army, 7 and political education, 171 role of disciplinary systems, 100–101 RUF, 7, 10t, 197 Salvadoran Army, regular forces, 154–55, 168, 202–3 Shining Path, 7, 10t and strategic logic, 161–64 and territorial control, 161, 165–66 United States military, 10t, 209–12 and violent socialization, 161, 167–68 El Rescate, 53, 139 Rescate data, 139–40 resistance, mastery of, 27–28, 30 resource availability, 78 restraint, 43 explained, 26 internal controls, 17–19 theories of, 12–13, 15, 79 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 6, 42–43 Revolutionary Army of the People (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo). See ERP Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores Centroamericanos). See PRTC RN, 66, 228 culture, 117 perceptions by FMLN, 111 Roman Catholic Church, 64–65 Romero, Oscar Arnulfo, 65, 66 Rome Statute, 23, 215 RUF, 7, 172, 173, 175–77, 178, 184 child soldiers, 36 discipline, 187

female combatants, 187 Footpaths to Democracy, 187 institutional biography, 184–88 internal violence, 187 “lumpen youth,” 184 Maoist influence, 186 political education, 179, 186–87, 198 recruitment, 184 repertoires of violence, 187–88, 193, 197 restraint, 198 sexual violence, 102, 186, 196, 197 training, 184–85 victim statements, 195–96 violence, acts of, 198 Saca, Antonio, 73 Salvadoran Armed Forces. See FAES Salvadoran Army, 53, 63 recruitment, 83t Salvadoran Army, elite immediate reaction battalions. See BIRIs Salvadoran Army, regular forces conscription, 86 death squads, 66 institutional biography, 54 lethal violence, 155 recruitment, 69, 85–86 repertoires of violence, 154–55, 168, 202–3 training, 69, 79, 87, 97–99 Salvadoran Army, security forces, 202–3 death squads, 66 institutional biography, 54 recruitment, 86 repertoires of violence, 155 torture, 155 violence against civilians, 69 Salvadoran Commission for Human Rights. See CDHES Salvadoran National Guard. See Salvadoran security forces Salvadoran National Police. See Salvadoran security forces Salvadoran security forces, 63 Salvadoran Treasury Police. See Salvadoran security forces Salvadoran war memorial, 132 Sanchez Cerén, Salvador, 74 Sankoh, Foday, 175, 177 San Salvador region FAES repertoire, 157–58 FLMN repertoire, 157–58 San Vicente, 64 School of the Americas, 69, 93 Torture Manual, 93

INDEX

Sendero Luminoso, 134 and political education, 41 sexual violence, 51, 185, 227 Armed Forces of El Salvador, 2 BIRIs, 163 and Communist rebels, 80, 170–71 in conflict, 15–16 Democratic Republic of Congo, 215–16 effect on female combatants, 103 ERP, 115 “evil rapes,” 103 FAES, 158, 164–65, 168 FMLN, 103 and forced recruitment, 19, 85, 114–15, 168 and gender stereotypes, 33 Kamajors (El Salvador), 4–5 Liberia, 196–97 LURD, 198 “lust rapes,” 103 Mano River wars, 193, 203 MODEL, 198 NPFL, 198 and political education, 87, 171, 198 RUF, 4–5, 102, 186, 196, 197 San Salvador region, 158 Sierra Leone Civil War, 193, 196–97 theories of, 87 threats of, 102–3 US police forces, 214 Vietnam War, 211–13 as violent socialization, 15, 85, 167, 168, 169f Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict dataset (SVAC), 11–12 Shining Path, 7 Sierra Leone Army. See SLA Sierra Leone Civil War, 172 death toll, 193 history of, 175–77 “lumpen youth,” 177, 184 and patrimonialism, 177 sexual violence, 193 sobelization, 176, 184–85 violence against civilians, 172 Sierra Leone People’s Party. See SLPP SLA, 173, 176–78 institutional biography, 184–85 recruitment, 184 UK support, 184 SLPP, 176 SOA. See School of the Americas social dominance orientation, 34 socialization, 32–33, 40–41, 43, 43–44 Socorro Jurídico, 139 Stanford Prison Experiment, 32

255

Tamil Tigers, 42–43 Taylor, Charles, 173–75, 181 Ten Commandments of the Salvadoran Soldier, 94 territorial control, 105–6, 129 The Things They Carried (O’Brien), 35–36 Tilly, Charles, 6 Torture Manual, 93 “total institutions,” 28 training, 95, 116–22 trauma theories, 16 TRC-L, 173, 194–95 TRC-SL, 173, 194–95 reports of sexual violence, 196–97 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. See TRC-L Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone. See TRC-SL Truth Commission for El Salvador. See UNTC Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 217 Tutela Legal, 53, 139 typologies of civil wars, 77 Uganda, 31 ULIMO, 174, 176, 183 ULIMO-J, 175, 177 ULIMO-K, 175, 177 Unidad Revolucionario Nacional de Guatemala. See URNG Unidos para Reconstruir. See United to Reconstruct United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy. See ULIMO United States sexual violence, police forces, 214 Vietnam War, 29–30, 33–34, 209–11, 212 United States military training, 98–99 training of international forces, 1–2, 71–72, 95, 166, 179–80, 184 United to Reconstruct, 71–72 UN observer mission, 72 unsanctioned violence, 38 UNTC, 53, 72, 137–39, 147 UN Truth Commission for El Salvador. See UNTC urban violence, 74–75 URNG, 76 Vatican II, 64 victims of atrocities, 4 Vietnam War, 29–30 My Lai massacre, 50, 209–11 PTSD, 33–34 repertoires of violence, 212 violence, acts of, 209–11

256

INDEX

Villalobos, Joaquín, 228 violence, acts of against community members, 31 control over, 35–36 and deliberation, 6 desensitization toward, 31, 38 and desperation, 6 and information, 6 internalization, 39 predispositions, 18, 26, 35, 39 rationality of, 13–14 relationship to material resources of recruiting unit, 107 relationship to recruitment strategies, 107 reporting, 140, 143, 146, 147–50 role of combat environment, 33–34

selective, 13–14 as a skill, 30–31 socialization toward, 27–29, 35, 38 strategic, 13, 17–19, 27 violence, defined, 5–6 violence data, social production of, 135–36 War on Terror and civilians, 213–14 repertoires of violence, 214 Washington Consensus, 73 Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). See School of the Americas World Training Center, 173–74