Nonlethal Violence in Armed Conflict: the Logic of Mass Kidnapping
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Nonlethal Violence in Armed Conflict: The Logic of Mass Kidnapping Marketa Kachynova Supervisor: Dr Lee J M Seymour Second reader: Dr Ursula Daxecker June 2015 Master thesis Political Science: International Relations Abstract Mass kidnapping occurred in 40 per cent of armed conflicts in the period of 1989- 2013, yet there have been only limited efforts to enhance the understanding of the dynamics of this phenomenon. This thesis aims to contribute to current debates on nonlethal violence against civilians in armed conflict. It elaborates a within-case longitudinal study of kidnappings carried out by the Nigerian rebel group Boko Haram. The study finds that mass kidnapping constitutes a revenge tool for insurgents, who kidnap civilians en masse in order to punish the state for targeting family members of rebel combatants. The theatricality of the act serves as a feasible means of exposing the inability of the state to protect its civilians. To assess the wider relevance of the central argument, the paper extends its analysis to a cross- case study of mass and selective kidnappings carried out by insurgent movements in Chechnya and the Philippines. 2 Table of contents 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 4 Kidnapping as an object of study in political science .............................................. 8 Definitions ............................................................................................................... 9 Functions of kidnapping ........................................................................................ 10 2 Theorizing civilian victimization .......................................................................... 12 Theoretical framework .......................................................................................... 14 Information and indiscriminate targeting ............................................................ 14 Organizational control and opportunism ............................................................ 16 Revenge and indirect retaliation ........................................................................ 18 Research design: within- and cross-case analysis ................................................ 20 Case selection ................................................................................................... 21 3 Boko Haram ....................................................................................................... 21 Nigeria’s struggles: background to Boko Haram’s origins ..................................... 22 The rise of Boko Haram ........................................................................................ 22 The group’s organization ...................................................................................... 24 A longitudinal study of Boko Haram’s kidnappings ............................................... 26 May 2011 – July 2014: selective kidnappings .................................................... 26 May 2013 – March 2015: mass kidnappings ..................................................... 27 Explaining Boko Haram’s mass kidnappings ........................................................ 30 Information and indiscriminate targeting ............................................................ 30 Organizational control and opportunism ............................................................ 32 Revenge and indirect retaliation ........................................................................ 34 Scope conditions ............................................................................................... 37 4 Comparative evidence ....................................................................................... 38 The Chechen insurgency ...................................................................................... 38 The Philippine insurgency: Abu Sayyaf ................................................................. 40 5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 44 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 47 Appendix I ................................................................................................................ 58 3 1 Introduction Why do rebel groups kidnap civilians en masse? How different are the dynamics of mass kidnapping and selective kidnapping? Kidnapping civilians in armed conflict is a type of nonlethal violence widely used by insurgents. It is a tactic that can yield many benefits to rebel groups: it can demonstrate a state’s inability to protect its populations, attract significant media attention, enrich the rebels with ransom money, and assist in pressuring the government to release incarcerated members. Simultaneously, it is a double-edged sword: it may alienate civilians from the insurgents’ cause, motivate them to organize themselves in order to retrieve kidnapped individuals, make the government deploy extra resources to tackle the group and draw in foreign governments seeking the release of kidnapped foreign nationals or locals. These effects may become fatal for the rebel movement. Yet despite the risks, kidnapping frequently forms an important part of insurgent violent strategies. Studying mass kidnapping has the potential of broadening the horizon of research on civil wars and political violence. One trend in recent research is looking beyond killing to understand different types of violence, including torture, repression, sexual violence and other forms of coercion in the repertoire of civil war violence (Balcells, 2015). Examining kidnapping as a distinct form of violence helps to broaden our understanding of who experiences conflict and how. Indeed, kidnapping affects a wide segment of the population in some conflicts, impacting not only those kidnapped, but also sowing fear of abduction, forcing people to struggle to free someone kidnapped, and traumatizing those affected by the abduction of friends or family. Those kidnapped, if freed, suffer emotional and behavioural difficulties, struggle with traumatic memories and may be stigmatized by their communities (O’Callaghan et al., 2014). As kidnappings expose the government’s inability to protect a population, they also form an important part of state reactions to insurgent violence. In sum, mass kidnapping has important effects on how states and societies experience violence. This work explores the logic and dynamics of mass kidnapping in armed conflict. The aim of this thesis is to identify the mechanism that explains why insurgent groups kidnap civilians en masse. To do that, it compares the processes underpinning 4 selective kidnapping and mass kidnapping. It also seeks to explain the factors that account for the variance in the use of this tactic within the development of a single group and across different rebel organizations. In other words, what accounts for a group’s decision to begin abducting civilians or for the shift from small-scale selective kidnappings to mass indiscriminate kidnappings? Research on kidnapping in armed conflicts can make a great contribution to debates on civilian victimization and rebel recruitment within current research: it is part of the different types of violence against noncombatants and is a crucial element of rebel recruitment due to forcible conscription. Furthermore, research of this sort is necessary as it significantly enhances our understanding of why and how civilians are targeted by armed organizations. Political science has contributed to explaining that civilian victimization is not a random, irrational and inevitable corollary of armed conflict, but a tactic that fulfils rational goals (Valentino, 2014). Progress in the analysis of different forms of violence against civilians is crucial for policymakers to devise adequate security strategies in conflict; understanding why insurgents kidnap can help to prevent kidnappings and thus reduce the harm inflicted on civilians. Current research has strikingly little to say about mass kidnapping in armed conflict considering the fact that it represents a wartime tactic documented since antiquity. Historical accounts describe particularly wartime mass abductions of women. The rape of the Sabine women, for instance, is an episode from the legends surrounding the founding of ancient Rome, in which the first generation of Roman men carry out a mass abduction of women from neighbouring Sabine families in order to form a stable population base for Rome. ―Rape‖ here derives from the Latin raptio, a term referring to large scale kidnapping of women either for marriage or enslavement, which underscores the close historical association of rape and kidnap (Ananda, 2015). References to kidnappings of women as spoils of war can be found in different parts of the Old Testament and are believed to have been widely practiced by the Vikings (Keil & Delitzsch, 2014; Jesch, 1991). Archived legal records suggest that abductions of females were a frequent issue in medieval England (Dunn, 2013). More recently, large-scale and small-scale kidnappings by insurgent groups have been seriously affecting developments in domestic as well as international politics. Israel, for instance, swapped 4,700 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for six 5 Israelis captured in Lebanon in 1983 (Tierney, 2010). The FARC used kidnappings to influence the course of elections: as part of