How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them: Intro & Chapter 1

As previously stated in my LinkedIn articles, the following are notes taken on the books or articles presented. It is an attempt to decipher and provide you and myself a better understanding of what has transpired, is ongoing and how we can move forward in a pursuit to retain our Democracy. Rather than rely on cable news or other online entities, as a scholar I take to reading, seeking the logic and math of it all in our actions and reactions, to determine the real truth. This particular article opens up about the US and its foreign allies and adversaries. It discusses and compares Civil War around the world and reveals the patterns sought out, determining what are the root causes, when did they occur, how did they occur, and who are involved.

If any comment on my part is made, I try not to have an opinion, not here anyway, it will be in italics. Otherwise, I'm only interpreting the author's story, for your review, your education and to encourage you to read the books themselves. They are all available at your local public library.

Introduction - when I first read about the plot to kidnap Governor Witmer in the fall of 2020, I was not surprised but alarmed. It fit a pattern that had been that I'd been researching about for decades. There have been hundreds of civil wars over the past 75 years, and many began in similar fashion. As a scholar and expert on civil wars I've had the opportunity to interview many leaders, members of the Hamas in the West Bank, ex-Sinn Fein members in Northern Ireland and former members of FARC in Columbia. And stood amongst those during the height of the Syrian civil war; driven across Zimbabwe as the military were planning a coup against Robert Mugabe; followed and interrogated by members of Myanmar's junta and on the wrong end of an Israeli soldier's machine gun.

I began my journey on civil wars back in 1990 a time when there was little data to work with while there were quite a few readings on them, especially those found in Spain, Greece, Nigeria and even the US's Civil War. But there were not common denominators laid out as to what they had in common, as each country believed theirs was unique in characteristics. Then the Cold War ended, which drove individual nations to have civil wars and scholars began to gather the data on all the aspects of the conflicts. Our largest database can be found at Uppsala University in Sweden. In collaboration with Peach Research Institute in Oslo, Norway (PRIO) and other agencies within their government have trained researchers on the collection and retention of this data. Today, we can access dozens of high-quality datasets on how civil wars begin, their retention, the number of deaths, and what were the direct correlations. Researchers are now able to follow a pattern of risk factors that can assist in predicting where and when a civil war will occur.

In 1994 a team of researchers belonging to the Political Instability Task Force (PITF) were asked to embark on a pursuit to map out when and where the US may find upheaval and discourse in the world, so as to be better prepared, was something unthinkable until now.

Unfortunately, as I began to study the data sets it became clear to me that some of these patterns were occurring on our own soil, for the last decade. These signs and patterns are emerging here, and a surprisingly fast rate.

The plot in 2020 of white nationalists, anti-government militia in Michigan was a clear sign. This new civil war is layered with predictable movements yet distinctly different from those in the past. The battlefields are gone, the armies and their conventional tactics. Today, the war spews its ammunition at ethnic and religious groups, by guerilla soldiers and militias, who often target the civil population. All of this was visible in Michigan.

The state of Michigan is divided deeply along racial and governmental lines: two major cities, Detroit and Flint are predominantly Black while the rural area around them is predominantly White. The decline of the economy in the state has created deep discontent, especially amongst the white labor sector and rural populations. This had led to anger, resentment and the radicalization of the militia, always a stronghold in the state.

Modern civil wars are beginning with vigilantes and armed militias who take violence directly to the people. The militia is a defining feature of conflicts around the world. In Syria, anti-governmental rebels were a hodgepodge of insurgents and freed prisoners, fighting alongside the violent extremist group ISIS. In fact, militias are now a defining feature of conflicts around the world. Even Syria's largest early rebel faction the Fee Syrian Army was a mix of small lose knit groups, rather than a centrally led organization. Ukraine's current civil war is being fought by bandits, warlords, private military companies, foreign mercenaries and regular insurgents. The same is true in Afghanistan and Yemen. The era o f a single, regimented, and hierarchical fighting force in official military uniform using conventional weapons is over.

Today rebel groups rely on guerilla warfare and organized terror: a sniper firing from a rooftop; a homemade bomb delivered in a package, detonated in a truck, or concealed on the side of a road. These groups are more likely to attempt to assassinate opposition leaders, journalists, or police recruits than government soldiers. Hamas's main tactic against Israel has been to target average Israeli citizens going about their daily business. Most Americans are unable to imagine another civil war here, in the US. They assume our democracy is too resilient, too robust to devolve into conflict. Or they assume our country's wealth and advancement to turn on itself. A rebellion would surely be stomped out quickly by our powerful government, allowing the pursuit of rebels no success. The Michigan kidnapping attempt along with January 6th insurrection are not isolated incidents, they are frustrated acts of a small group of extremists attempting to start a civil war.

An eruption of conflict requires a set of variables to build on one another, like winds gather in a storm. We have trusted, for too long perhaps that peace will always prevail, that our institutions are unshakable, that our nation is exceptional, and we've learned most recently we cannot take our democracy for granted, that we mut understand our power to our citizens.

Our demographics have shifted in the last decade, finding our country undergoing a seismic change in economic and cultural power. Inequality has grown, weakening our institutions that have been manipulated to serve the interest of some over others. And the citizenship is increasingly held captive by demagogues, on their screen or in their government representatives. Similar developments are occurring across the globe.

Since 2008 over 70 percent of extremist-related deaths in the US have been at the hands of people connected to the far-right or white-supremacist movements. Their growth may seem slow but it's clandestine in nature. Americans are no longer surprised to see armed men at rallies and paramilitary groups converging at protests. It has become commonplace to see Confederate flags for sale in Pennsylvania convenience stores, or American flags with a thin blue lie and insignias of all kinds. We are now beginning to understand that bumper stickers like the circle of stars around the Roman numeral III, the Valknot and the Celtic Cross are not innocent. Instead, they are symbols of America's far right militant groups, which are becoming quite vocal and dangerous.

The United States is a special country, but when you study the hundreds of civil wars that have broken out since the end of World War II, you come to understand that we are not immune to conflict. There is anger, resentment and the desire to dominate others. We fight for political power to protect a way of life. We buy guns when we feel threatened. And militias began to organize in the hills and suburbs. So, in the moments when I would prefer to look away and presume that No, it could never happen here, I think f all the political science has taught me. I think about the facts before us.

Chapter 1 - The Danger of Anocracy - (story about Noor in Baghdad). Over the past one hundred years, the world has experienced the greatest expansion of freedom and political rights in the history of mankind. Remember in 1900, democracies barely existed, but by 1948, post WWII, world leaders embraced a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by all of the UN member states. Within this document were the assertions that every person had the right to participate in his or her government, have the right to the freedom of speech, religion and the ability to assemble peacefully. All of this would be honored no matter the sex, language, race, color, religion, birth status, or political views. And today we find over 60% of world's countries are democratic.

It is quite visible to see that citizens of liberal democracies have more political and civil rights than those in countries without it. The citizens are able to participate more, while having more protections from discrimination and repression while receiving a larger percentage of the state's resources. Most are happier, wealthier, better educated and have a longer life expectancy than those populations living under dictatorships.

Another benefit of democratic governance is they are less likely to go to war against its own citizens or other countries' democratic citizens. The road to democracy is dangerous, to reach it, many countries must go through a civil war and as the democratic nations increased so did the civil wars in tandem. By 1992 there were over fifty. The Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks (fracturing Yugoslavia) were fighting amongst each other, while Islamist rebels turned on their governments in Algeria. Leaders in Somalia and the Congo were challenged, as in Georgia and Tajikistan. And soon two small group of natives were slaughtering each other in Rwanda and Burundi. In 2019 we have reached a new peak.

A good measure of countries moving toward democracy is to measure the experience of civil war. A move from autocracy to democracy isn't just performed in one step or procedure, and once it is achieved there is no guarantee that the government won't backslide in a pseudo-autocratic middle zone. Hungary is a good example; it became a full democracy in 1990 but slowly it nudged back toward a dictatorship. It is this middle zone that most of the civil war action will take place.

In 2003, there were many civil war experts that warned President Bush that an attempt to catapult Iraq from autocracy to democracy would most likely cause a civil war. Just as the Serbs went to war against the Croats once Yugoslavia began to democratize. And in Spain during the 1930's five years later the citizens rose up when the military attempted a coup.

Categorizing countries as democracies, autocracies or anocracies is difficult to perform, as so much detailed information must be evaluated, and it changes over time. There is a dataset that assists with the evaluation, and one of its key measuring points is the Polity Score Index, which determines just how democratic or autocratic a country is in any given year.

It is a 21-point scale that ranges from -10 (autocratic) to +10 (democratic). Those countries receiving a +6 to +10 are full democracies (a +10 means certified free & fair elections). Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Canada and until recently, the United States. On the othr end of the Polity scale of autocracies, receiving a -6 to -10 are North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.

Anocracies are countries found in the middle of the scale, they receive a score of -5 to +5. These countries allow their citizens to receive some elements of democratic rule, perhaps by voting for local officials, but their leaders are usually autocratic. Turkey is a good example of moving from democratic to an anocracy as in 2017. The citizens voted to change the constitution to vie unrestricted power to their President. Because of the rise of countries reverting back, a new scale was devised to alarm the world when a relationship between anocracy and violence would occur, two years in advance based on the political instability and armed conflict breaking out. This new Political Instability Task Force supplied multiple variables that would trigger a predictive model. What was discovered was anocracies especially those with some democratic features were twice as likely as an autocracy to experience political instability or civil war, and 3x as likely as democracies.

It wasn't the poorest countries that were at the higher risk of conflict or the most unequal, or the most ethnically or religiously heterogeneous, or even the most repressive. It was living in a partial democracy that made citizens more likely to pick up a gun and begin to fight.

Why Does Anocracy put a country in such danger of civil war? It is because share certain characteristics that are able to work together to magnify any potential for conflict. When a country first ventures toward democracy it is very fragile, especially compared to the previous regime. Politically, institutionally and militarily. Leaders under the anocracy aren't as powerful and unable to stop dissent or ensure any loyalty. And because it is a renewed government it can chaotic and disorganized.

These weaknesses set the stage for civil war largely due to the impatience of its citizenship, disgruntled military officers or anyone with ambition to start a revolution or uprising against the new government. One of the main reasons for revolt are the transitions taking place, the creation of new winners and losers, can shift and create a genuine social anxiety. Because the government is weak, it is susceptible and easy to spiral out of control, as in Indonesia in 1997.

A painful reality of democratization is that the faster and bold the reform efforts, the greater a chance for civil war. Rapid change almost precedes instability, and civil war. Today a full-scale civil war has broken out in Ethiopia where former officials from the previous government are rebelling and avowing to take back power and influence. Gaining democracy is worth the risk, it can be treacherous, but war diminishes as the country devolves into a stronger political system. Slow reform reduces uncertainty, and is less threatening to incumbents, resulting in less conflict.

Until recently, most countries that moved through the dangerous anocracy zone were overthrown or autocrats that were forced to embrace democratic reform, as the result of mass protests. Yet, in 2000, democratic leaders who came to power via elections have begun to consolidate authoritarian rule. Even once liberal nations such as the United Kingdom and Belgium saw their polity index scores lowered, and in Poland in 2015 the president, prime minister and deputy prime minister have systematically taken over all the court systems and has restricted free speech, targeted opponents and weakened the electoral commission.

Would be autocrats such as Orban, Erdogan, Putin, or Bolsonaro have placed their political goals ahead of the needs of their people while exploiting their citizenship. They persuade them to believe that any future democratic venue will lead to further unaccountability, more corruption and a poorer economy. And if successful their rhetoric, the people will give up their freedom for safety, and once in power, these leaders exploit the weaknesses, appoint partisanship staff, execute orders and stop parliamentary votes - leading the country to autocratic rule.

The moment of peak risk occurs smack in the middle of the zone between -1 and +1 - when a government is at its weakest, institutionally and legitimately. The risk of civil war remains low for autocracies in the initial stage of democratization; the risk doesn't surge until almost at a -1. For a decaying democracy, the risk of civil war increases as soon as it become less democratic. As the democracy drops in the country, the policy index has fewer restraints, and it steadily increases. This risk peaks at +1, -1 when citizens face the prospect of autocracy. The chance of civil war drops, as it become more authoritarian, unless it should change course back to democracy.

In Ukraine during 2013 citizens took to the streets to protest the autocratic leader Viktor Yanukovych, a member of a pro-Russian party. His predecessor a pro-European, anti-corruption moderate had been in office for more than five years, during Ukraine's increase of their polity index to +7, but Yanukovych made the mistake of running against the West and increasing ties with Putin and Russia. The young people many from western Ukraine decided they'd had enough, and demonstrations began and spread across the country. Yanukovych was ousted and new elections were ushered in 2014, along with a new president, Petro Poroshenko, an ethnic Ukrainian businessman intent on integrating with Europe.

Just as there is winners there are also losers, and the losers in Ukraine during that period were the old-school Russians (ethnic from the Soviet Union), they spoke Russian and had emigrated from there years prior, and they were dependent on the trade from Russia. They feared they'd lose representation, so they began to form enclaves of militias and declaring their territory to be autonomous states - the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, leaving Ukraine's polity score to decrease to +4, nearing the area for civil war.

By March many of the citizens avowed to fight for their country and wanted to join the armed forces, but when they arrived at the recruitment center, it'd been closed. Slowly the realization creeped in, there was no government, no state, no constitution, no party, no police. By April, weeks after protests, Yanukovych resigned, a pro-Russian activity took control of the region's security services and began to arm themselves with automatic weapons. They were going to defend their claim to independence, and with the Ukrainian Army in disarray, that left the weak government helpless. Soon Ukranian volunteers formed a parliamentary force, and by June, the clashes turned into conventional battles, as Russia supplied the separatists.

Democratization has marked the 20th century from beginning to end. And its first ending was in 2006, when a number of democracies reached their peak. Even those thought to be secure such as France and Costa Rica have experienced erosion, as Iceland, who have not protected rights and freedoms equally across all social groups.

Not every country that becomes an autocracy experiences civil war, such as Singapore, which remained autocracies for years and never descended into violence; they find peace and stability in the middle zone. Other countries such as the Czech Republic and Lithuania moved rapidly through the middle zone form autocracy to democracy with few consequences. While other countries such as Venezuela, have crossed into anocracy resisting civil war by resorting got straight-up repression, by unleashing security forces, postponing regional elections, replacing parliament, and rewriting the constitution to expand the executive power. Others have evaded civil war gradually, diminishing policies and laws slowly and quietly, these leaders maintain a guise of democracy but cement their popularity with effective propaganda, control of the media, and sometimes xenophobia.

So, why do some countries navigate through the anocracy zone better than others? The answers differ but in Iraq it was when ordinary citizens were having to describe themselves either as Shia or Sunni, as it wasn't visible to anyone. They'd never described themselves this way, they'd always labeled themselves just as Iraqis.

Chapter 2 - The Rise of Factions

Chapter 3 - The Dark Consequences of Losing Status

Chapter 4 - When Hope Dies

Chapter 5 - The Accelerant

Chapter 6 - How Close are We?

Chapter 7 - What a War Would Look Like?

Chapter 8 - Preventing a Civil War