Paul Collier - Wars, Guns, and Votes

by Democracy in Dangerous Places (pdf)

  down the world’s leading geographer on mountainous terrain and

  commissioned him to build a quantitative measure of the proportion

  of a country’s terrain that could reasonably be judged mountainous.

  This measure has since become widely used, and in our new work we

  indeed find it to matter: mountains are dangerous.

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  Finally, let’s get to the politics. Surely that must be where the real

  causes of violent conflict are to be found. We investigated a range of

  political science variables, but focused on the one most widely used

  by political scientists, Polity IV. I have already described the results:

  in low-income societies democracy is dangerous, and in high-income

  societies dictatorship is dangerous. Other than this we could find no

  effects. Many people quite reasonably assume that violent internal

  conflict is the consequence of political repression, but we simply do

  not find evidence for this in the data. This does not, of course, mean

  that repression is all right. Repression is unjust by definition because

  it denies political rights. But this can be undesirable without making a

  society more dangerous. And it is danger that is my subject.

  It is time to try to make sense of this evidence. This involves an

  interpretive leap from the statistics. Some interpretations become

  implausible in the face of the statistical evidence, but more than one

  interpretation is possible, and my own may be wrong. With that ca-

  veat I propose the feasibility hypothesis. The feasibility hypothesis is that the key to understanding civil war is to focus on how rebellion

  happens rather than on what motivates it.

  Why focus on the rebels? Does that reveal a pro-government

  bias? The focus on the rebels is simply because it is the act of rebel-

  lion that defines the outbreak of civil war. All governments with the

  exception of Costa Rica and Iceland have armies, so these cannot

  be the defining feature. Sometimes a government army attacks its

  own defenseless citizens, but, disgusting as this is, it is a pogrom,

  not a civil war. The defining feature of the outbreak of civil war is

  that the usual monopoly of force held by the government army is

  challenged: a private organization within the society builds its own

  army. No government can tolerate the existence of a private army on

  its soil, and so even if it is the government that fires the first shot, it

  is the creation of the rebel army that defines the war.

  Because of the emphasis upon why the civil war is being fought,

  it has become natural to focus on what motivates the rebel group to

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  form an army. My own past work fed this perspective: a paper en-

  titled “Beyond Greed and Grievance” questioned the conventional

  view that rebels were motivated by a sense of grievance, introducing

  the idea that they might also be motivated by greed. But it was es-

  sentially a refinement within the motive-based explanation for re-

  bellion. I have now moved on from this view. It seems to me that the

  key insight into rebellion comes not from asking why it happens but

  how it happens. Usually rebellion, at least on a scale needed for civil war, is simply not feasible. The definition of civil war that I have

  used, which is conventional, is that at least one thousand people are

  killed in combat per year. On this definition the average civil war

  lasts around seven years. So we are looking for rebel organizations

  that can kill and be killed on a large scale and yet survive for years.

  Rebellion on this scale faces two major hurdles. One is money: a

  rebellion is going to be expensive. Someone has to pay for the guns,

  and someone has to pay for the troops.

  Often people think that a rebellion is just another form of po-

  litical protest: people fight when they can’t vote. What brought it

  home to me that rebellion is not simply a variant on other forms of

  political opposition was a comparison I made between the finances

  of a medium-size rebel group and a major political party. The rebel

  group I chose was the Tamil Tigers. As rebel groups go it is not

  out of the ordinary: northeastern Sri Lanka, where it operates, lacks

  high-value natural resources; this war is not financed by diamonds.

  I chose the Tamil Tigers only because, unusually, its finances have

  been reasonably well studied. Its annual revenue is around $350 mil-

  lion. This is around 28 percent of the GDP of North East Sri Lanka,

  although most of the money is generated outside Sri Lanka from

  donations by Tamils abroad.

  For a political opposition party I decided to look for a rich one. I

  chose the British Conservative Party, one of the longest-surviving and

  most successful political parties in history, which, being on the politi-

  cal right, is able to tap readily into financial support. I chose the elec-

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  tion year of 2005, when presumably its revenues were relatively high.

  This information was more accessible than that about the Tamil Ti-

  gers: its revenue was around $50 million. So one of the best-financed

  political opposition parties in the world had an income one-seventh

  that of a medium-size rebel movement. Recall that the revenue of the

  Tigers was 28 percent of the GDP of the area they sought to control;

  expressed in that way, the British Conservative Party was not one-

  seventh the size of the Tigers, it was one ten-thousandth. There is no

  simple passage from political opposition to private army: there is a

  cliff face in the form of a financial barrier. Most would-be rebels just

  cannot muster the money regardless of their motivation.

  The other hurdle is military. Under most circumstances if a

  small group of young men arm themselves and oppose the govern-

  ment army, either they confine themselves to the irritant of terror-

  ism aimed primarily against civilians or they die. Only if they are

  faced by a militarily weak government do they stand much chance

  of survival. While a rebel leader in Zaire, Laurent-Désiré Kabila,

  was able to hang on for many years, safe because President Mobutu

  had undermined all the organs of government, including the army.

  So what is the feasibility hypothesis? It is that in explaining

  whether a rebellion occurs, motivating factors are of little impor-

  tance compared to the circumstances that determine whether it is

  feasible. The tough version of the hypothesis, which I am reluctant

  to adopt but which I suspect is close to the truth, is that where a

  rebellion is feasible it will occur: the rebel niche will be occupied by

  some social entrepreneur, although the motivation might be any-

  thing across a wide range. Civil war is predominantly studied in

  political science departments and so naturally enough they interpret

  the motivation as political: sometimes it surely is, although even po-

  litical motivations might stray quite some distance from social jus-

  tice. Even rebellions that look entirely justified can sometimes be

  called into doubt.

  Take the rebellion, or rather rebellions,
in Darfur. Quite evi-

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  dently the government of Sudan is awful, and its conduct during

  the conflict has been murderous. But at least part of the impetus for

  the Darfur rebellion was the settlement of the rebellion in the South.

  The Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, which fought the rebel-

  lion in the South, won some remarkable concessions from the gov-

  ernment in the North: it was allowed to run its own government, it

  received a substantial share of the oil revenue, gilded by the promise

  of huge aid inflows from donors, and all this was capped with the

  promise of a referendum on full independence six years after the

  onset of peace. No sooner was this deal signed than the contingent

  from Darfur that had been fighting for the SPLA returned home

  and launched its own rebellion. You can certainly see why, with that

  precedent, rebellion might be attractive, at least for its leadership.

  The top dog would become a president, and the others would be-

  come ministers: secession has its rewards. The rebellion is, of course,

  justified in terms of the atrocious sufferings of the Darfur people.

  But to date the consequences of the rebellion for the people of Dar-

  fur have been catastrophic: surely far worse than any plausible alter-

  native scenario. Either the rebel leadership radically misjudged the

  consequences of its actions, or it was not genuinely motivated by the

  welfare of the people of Darfur. When the government was recently

  coaxed to the negotiating table, the key rebel organizations refused

  to attend. It is hard to see how a refusal to negotiate can be in the

  best interests of the people of Darfur.

  Sometimes the motivation for rebellion seems to be religious,

  with the rebel group more akin to the fringe religious groups such

  as those in Waco or Jonestown, but with the violence turned out-

  ward. For many recruits the motivation may well be the lure of

  violence: only a small minority of any society are psychopathic, but

  these people are likely to be in the front of the queue for rebellion.

  Sometimes it might even be sexual. Joseph Kony, the leader of the

  Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, has reputedly accumulated sixty

  wives: perhaps a young man’s dream come true?

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  The statistical results do not prove the feasibility hypothesis, but

  they are consistent with it. I used the results to simulate the risks of

  conflict in two hypothetical territories, in one of which rebellion was

  easier than the other. I varied only five characteristics that seemed

  to be most readily interpretable as differences in the feasibility of

  rebellion. One territory was very mountainous, the other was flat:

  mountains provide safe havens for rebels. One had a high propor-

  tion of young men; the other had a low proportion: young men are

  the recruits on which rebel organizations depend. Both territories

  had a population of fifty million, but one consisted of a single coun-

  try whereas the other was split into five identical countries, each of

  ten million: the small countries would be unable to reap economies

  of scale in security. One was dependent upon natural resource ex-

  ports, the other was not: such exports can provide finance for re-

  bellion. One was in Francophone Africa and so benefited from the

  French security umbrella, the other was not. All the other charac-

  teristics were the same and set at the average for all the countries in

  the analysis. I then predicted the risks for these two countries. The

  easy-rebellion territory faced a risk of 99 percent that conflict would

  break out in one or other of its countries during a five-year period:

  this territory was basically so dangerous that it was condemned to

  perpetual conflict. The difficult-rebellion territory faced a risk of

  less than 1 percent: basically it was safe, even over a century, it was

  highly unlikely to fall into violence.

  Dramatic as these differences are, they are not decisive evi-

  dence. Most of the differences in characteristics that I have used to

  construct easy-rebellion and difficult-rebellion countries could in-

  stead be interpreted in terms of motivation. For example, I have

  interpreted the increased risk of rebellion that mountains induce as

  being because they are safe havens for rebels. But here is an alterna-

  tive, motive-based explanation. The people living in the mountain-

  ous areas of a country are usually poorer than those in other parts of

  the country. They may storm down from the mountains to redress

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  this grievance: mountains matter, but because they create pockets of

  grievance. While I do not want to discount such alternative inter-

  pretations, I think it is striking that the most obviously grievance-

  related characteristics such as the polity do not seem to make much

  difference to risks, whereas these characteristics that at least have

  plausible interpretations in terms of feasibility have such a large ef-

  fect.

  Wh at d o e s c i v i l wa r ac h i e v e ? Most obviously, war kills and injures people. Most of the dying is not as a result of battle, but due

  to sickness. Mass flight takes people into unfamiliar places where

  they lack natural immunity, and public health systems collapse. Be-

  cause disease is highly persistent, much of the dying occurs after the

  war is over.

  Also pretty obviously, war is bad for the economy: not only does

  it destroy the economy of the country itself, it damages the neigh-

  boring economies. Again, these effects are highly persistent so that

  many of the economic costs occur after the war has ended. I estimate

  that for the typical civil war in a society of the bottom billion, these

  economic costs alone are the equivalent to losing around two years

  of income, or some $20 billion. However, I have come to realize that

  these estimates, though large, grossly understate the true cost.

  They make no allowance for the fact that the people affected

  by violent internal conflict tend disproportionately to be among the

  poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world. A dollar lost

  by someone who is poor should be valued more highly than a dol-

  lar lost by someone who is better off. The income differential be-

  tween the typical citizen in the countries of the bottom billion and

  a typical citizen of the other developing countries is already around

  one to five. Even within the bottom billion there is a wide range

  of incomes, with those countries that have recently been in conflict

  grouped right at the bottom. Not only are the war-prone already the

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  poorest, they are likely to stay the poorest. Since slow growth is itself

  a significant risk factor in violent conflict, the most violence-prone

  countries are systematically among the slowest growing.

  My estimates of cost also make no allowance for the fact that

  peace is fundamental to development, so that its absence frustrates

  all other potential interventions. The vaccination of children or the
>
  reliable provision of anti-retroviral drugs is virtually impossible in

  wartime conditions. This creates weakest-link problems in the pro-

  vision of global public goods. For example, smallpox was eliminated

  globally in a country-by-country campaign that was evidently a race

  against time: until it was eliminated everywhere there was a risk

  that it would break back out as a global disease. The last country

  on earth where it was eliminated was Somalia during the 1970s. It

  would now be impossible to eliminate smallpox: since 1993 Somalia

  has been a no-go area. The maintenance of peace is thus a logically

  prior investment that opens the possibility of all other interventions.

  It is even possible to dress this up in the language and formulas of

  technical economics. Financial economists now calculate option val-

  ues. The true return on a liquid asset such as a bank deposit is greater

  than the interest earned because it enables other investment oppor-

  tunities to be seized as they arise. Peace also has an option value.

  Finally, I have made no allowance for three global spillover ef-

  fects: crime, disease, and terrorism. Large-scale political violence

  and the resulting breakdown of the state create territories that have

  a comparative advantage in international criminality. They provide

  safe havens both for criminals themselves and for their material ac-

  tivities, such as the storage of illegal commodities, notably drugs.

  Some 95 percent of hard drug production is concentrated in civil

  war or post-conflict environments. Civil wars also create the con-

  ditions for the spread of disease: the breakdown in public health

  systems and the mass movement of refugees. Some of this spread

  of disease affects neighbors, and potentially it can also affect the

  entire world. One of the explanations for the origin of AIDS for

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  which there is some evidence is that it originated during a civil war.

  Finally, civil wars appear to assist terrorism. Al Qaida based its

  training camps in Afghanistan because the absence of a recognized

  government was convenient. Similarly, the American government

  finally decided that leaving Somalia without a recognized govern-

  ment was too dangerous, once evidence built up that Al Qaida was

  relocating there.

  Where this leaves us is that the cost of this form of political vio-