Abstract.
Violence against civilians is the mainstay of modern warfare, and claims 84% of the war-related casualties. Looting and terror are the two main reasons why the soldiers victimize the civilians from the other side. However, examples have been found (Congo, Sierra Leone,...) where the guerilla and the incumbent army abuse the civilians from their own side. The present paper offers a potential explanation for this phenomenon, based on strategic looting. It argues that this behavior helps drawing a line between thugs and legitimate rebels.
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Received: July 2004, Accepted: November 2004,
Accknowledgement. This paper is part of the PAC Project CIT-2-CT-2004-506084 funded by the European Commission. It has been presented at the ``Rationalist Approaches to War and Conflict'' Workshop at WZB in Berlin on July 17, 2004. Helpful comments by the participants, and in particular by the discussant Karl Wärneryd, as well as by Irwin Collier, David Dejong, Michelle Garfinkel, Anke Hoeffler, Karl Moene, James Morrow, Robert Powell and Gerald Schneider, are gratefully acknowledged, without implicating. Helpful comments by two anonymous referees are also acknowledged, with the same caveat.