The closest of enemies

Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our times--Afghanistan, Bosnia, the DR Congo, and Lebanon among others--are associated with the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups as well as with fragmentation within them. The resulting multiplicity of actors has paralyzed outsiders, who have often been unable to even follow the unraveling of the conflict's trajectory. This dissertation attempts to enhance our understanding of civil war processes through a closer look at alliance formation. Civil war alliances prove to be tactical, motivated by a concern with victory and the maximization of wartime returns. Noting that groups rapidly and seemingly incessantly change partners, I find that no identity principles--ethnic, ideological, or otherwise--generate stable cleavages. In principle, all groups want to be in a coalition large enough to attain victory, while small enough to ensure large per capita payoffs. But in practice, given the multitude of players and their instrumental calculus, this outcome proves difficult to secure. The result is a process of constant defection, alliance reconfiguration, and group fractionalization. Stability is only attained when an external arbiter can enforce cooperation.

Contrary to identity-based arguments, race, language, or religion do not appear to constrain the formation of alliances. Rather, alliance narratives prove to be a product of tactical preferences: warring elites pick their allies based on power considerations and then look to their identity repertoires for characteristics shared with their allies and not with their foes. My analysis relies on primary data collected over eighteen months of fieldwork including 120 interviews conducted in the respective local languages--in Afghanistan with leading experts, warlords, and mujahedin and in Bosnia with wartime politicians, generals, and convicted war criminals. It also draws on wartime declarations; ceasefire agreements; fatwas; memoirs; and the local and international press. In an effort to capture the changes in power and territorial control over the war years and their resultant effect on alliance formation, this work uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to geo-reference and digitize prewar Yugoslav municipal maps for Bosnia and Soviet declassified maps on the district level for Afghanistan.