Mass Killings of Civilians in Counter-Insurgency: Killing More, Winning More?

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Insurgency, a form of war whose first manifestations could be traced back to antiquity, stands out as one of the deadliest and cruellest types of conflict. As a closer study of the recent political history reveals, mass killings of civilians by governments have occurred in much greater magnitude and frequency during COIN campaigns than conventional wars throughout the second half of the 20th century.[i] For example, some of the worst crimes against humanity and genocides in human history – e.g. the genocides during the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) and the War in Darfur (2003-2014)[ii] – occurred when governments tried to quash insurgencies by using mass violence against civilians.

At the dawn of the 21st century, mass violence – i.e. the systematic and intentional targeting of non-combatants by a government[iii] – remains one of the most prevalent types of state response against an insurgency. Assad, the absolute ruler of Syria, has repeatedly committed acts of mass violence against civilians (from indiscriminate aerial bombardments of towns and villages to the use of chemical weapons) in an endeavour to eliminate the armed opposition during the Syrian Civil War (2011-Present).[iv] Why does an established state authority like the Ba’athist regime in Syria strive to counter an insurgency by means of mass violence?

Various explanations have been propounded for the use of mass violence. The first category of explanations contains the various psychological reasons behind such violent policies: the blind fury of a government over the military failures at the hands of the insurgents or the terror of the insurgents against government loyalists (e.g. assassination of key political figures),[v] the growing despair of a government over the protracted and uphill struggle against an invisible enemy,[vi] the proclivity of the security forces of a government to pillage and terrorise civilians (e.g. due to the social and cultural background of the government troops)[vii] and even the salience of totalitarian ideologies (e.g. the Nazi ideology of race superiority) within a government’s security forces.[viii]

Another category of explanations concentrates on the impact of specific political and military variables on the overall policy of a government: the influence of a military culture that prioritises victory at all costs[ix] (e.g. the Japanese military ethos in the first half of 20th century), the despotic character of the political regime that permits the use of all means and methods possible in pursuit of victory[x] (e.g. the dictatorial regime of Assad in Syria) or the existence of belligerent factions within the state or security apparatus that push for aggressive policies (usually army officers who wish to crush opposition solely by brute force).[xi]

Finally, another explanation suggests that a government may use mass violence against non-combatants with the intention of isolating the insurgents from the (local) people who support the former.[xii] In such cases, a government does not treat civilians cruelly in a purposeless or random way; instead, a government implements a calculated policy to sever the ties of the (local) people with the insurgents and rout the weakened armed opposition. Why should a government strive to isolate the (local) people from the insurgents even at a cost of such violent methods? The answer lies in the crucial importance that the support of the population holds for the insurgents and the government alike.

Insurgency essentially amounts to a contest for the control of the population between a non-state actor (in particular, an organised armed movement) and an established state authority.[xiii] In other words, insurgency constitutes a war fought within the population of a particular society,[xiv] a war “waged by the few but dependent on the support of the many”.[xv] Mao Tse Tung – the widely celebrated theorist and practitioner of guerrilla warfare – encapsulated the importance of popular support in this type of conflict with a now famous metaphor: “Guerrillas are fish and the people are the water in which they swim. If the temperature of the water is right, the fish will thrive and multiply”.[xvi]

In summary, decisive support from the population constitutes the most crucial determinant for victory in this type of conflict; whichever side (the government or the insurgents) succeeds in imposing its control over the population will certainly prevail.[xvii] As numerous cases have shown, without concrete support from the population, neither the insurgents nor a government can secure victory[xviii] – unless of course external actors intervene in support of either side in a forceful way. For example, the communist government in Afghanistan (which was set up in 1978 after a coup) did not command strong support among the conservative and pious tribes of Afghanistan and, as a consequence, only the aggressive intervention of the Soviets in 1979 in support of their Afghan comrades sustained this unpopular regime for ten long years. How does the use of mass violence against non-combatants impact on the policy of a government against an insurgency? Does mass violence facilitate or hinder the isolation of the insurgents from the population?

The Impact of Mass Violence

One theorist on guerrilla warfare once asserted that “no measure is more self-defeating than collective punishment [of civilians]”,[xix] echoing the widely popular opinion among the academic community that mass violence against non-combatants markedly exacerbates an already difficult situation for a government. Another prolific scholar on the subject of civil conflict systematically studied a large number of historical case studies and concluded that mass violence against non-combatants has on most occasions reinforced rather than reduced the popularity and legitimacy of the insurgents.[xx] As a matter of fact, mass violence against non-combatants has on most cases proven militarily successful for a government in the short run and counter-productive in military and political terms in the long run.[xxi]

For example, the April Uprising (April-May 1876) by the Bulgarian nationalist insurgents was brutally quashed by the Ottoman Empire within two months. However, the atrocities committed by the Ottoman troops and paramilitaries against the civilian population of Bulgaria shocked the liberal public opinion and politicians of Europe (such as Gladstone in Britain) and prompted the Great Powers of Europe to jointly demand from the Sublime Porte the immediate cessation of the atrocities and the adoption of radical reforms in favour of the empire’s Christian subjects. A few months later, the Russian Tsar (the official protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire) declared war on the Sultan on account of the violent treatment of the latter’s Orthodox Christian subjects and defeated the Ottomans after a two-year savage war. Eventually, the routed Ottoman Empire ceded territory and recognised an autonomous Bulgarian state.[xxii]

Many scholars have remarked that the acts of mass violence against civilians by a government reduce or even remove the “collective action problem” of the insurgents.[xxiii] The “collective action problem” (also called the “rebel’s dilemma”) refers to the common difficulty of the insurgents to obtain recruits from the (local) populace. Indeed, the “insurgents must convince individuals to assume the private risks of combating the state, despite the obvious threat of costly sanction (i.e. death), when the benefits of insurgent victory are mostly non-excludable”.[xxv]

These scholars have reasoned that mass violence against non-combatants by a government has in countless cases compelled the victimised civilians to swell the ranks of the insurgents with the intention of wreaking vengeance upon their tormentors or securing protection from a murderous and unpredictable government.[xxvi] Mass violence fails to motivate the (local) population to work with a government against the insurgents: a brutal government will most likely punish the (local) population with savage reprisals for the activity of the insurgents whether the (local) people have indeed collaborated with the insurgents or not.[xxvii] For example, the three Axis Powers (Germany, Italy and Bulgarian) occupying Greece during World War II committed atrocities (e.g. induced hunger and mass killings) invariably against sympathisers and opponents of the Greek resistance organisations and, as a consequence, curtailed the incentives for collaboration among the Greek civilian population.[xxviii]

Unsurprisingly, in several cases the insurgents have welcomed and even incited cruel reprisals against civilians in order to turn the population against the government. For example, the Soviet partisans during World War II provoked the German occupying authorities (e.g. by torturing any captured soldiers) to commit atrocities against the (local) civilians with the aim of compelling the reluctant people to participate in the resistance.[xxix] The Germans eventually alienated their subject peoples in the Soviet Union with their ruthless reprisals – even those who had in the initial stage of Operation Barbarossa embraced the Germans as liberators from the Russian yoke and, above all, the Stalinist reign of terror.

However, a closer study of military history reveals surprisingly that the use of mass violence has been crowned with success on several occasions. The Ba’athist regime in Iraq under Saddam Hussein – though severely weakened by its crushing defeat in the Gulf War (1991) – drowned in blood the uprising of the Iraqi Shia in 1991 while the international community simply voiced its vehement disapproval of the regime’s atrocities.[xxx] Years earlier, the Bolsheviks had quelled the Tambov Rebellion (1919-1921) in Central Russia with extreme savagery. In fact, the Bolsheviks terrorised the peasantry into submission by using mass violence (such as the destruction of whole villages and the use of poisonous gases).[xxxi] As a matter of fact, the use of mass violence against civilians can, under very specific circumstances, exacerbate rather than eliminate the “collective action problem” of the insurgents.[xxxii]

Mass violence against non-combatants can indeed cause insuperable operational and logistical complications to the insurgents.[xxxiii] Indicatively, the deportation (in several cases under appalling conditions that caused many fatalities) of civilian populations (even whole tribes or nations) that supported the insurgents has been credited as the leading factor for the quashing of insurgencies over the centuries. For example, between 1928 and 1932 the Italian colonial authorities in Libya deported over half the total population of the Arab nomadic tribes of Cyrenaica to concentration camps under cruel circumstances: the deportees were ordered to travel across the desert to these camps without any provisions and the stragglers were shot. The civilians interned in the camps were not humanely treated either: within three years, 40% of them had succumbed to disease and starvation. The Italians thus deprived the insurgents from the Senussi nomadic tribe the popular support needed to continue their armed struggle.[xxxiv] Years later, the British forcibly resettled one million members of the Kikuyu tribe (the main ethnic group in Kenya) to special reserves in an effort to separate the Mau Mau insurgents (who were recruited predominantly among the Kikuyu people) from their principal source of internal support (the Kikuyu people) during the Mau Mau Uprising (1952-1960). The British did eventually isolate the insurgents from their friendly tribal population and overpowered the increasingly weakened insurgents; the Kikuyu, however, paid a terrible price: tens of thousands of internees perished due to starvation and disease.[xxxv]

In other words, mass violence could effectively separate the insurgents from the friendly local population. In several cases, civilians have appealed to the insurgents in earnest to suspend their operations near their settlements for fear that insurgent activity might provoke an overwhelming response from the side of the government; such incidents were recorded repeatedly in the Soviet Union and Greece during World War II since the civilians of the two countries dreaded the cruel reprisals perpetrated by the occupying troops of the Axis Powers.[xxxvi] And although the population may defect to the camp of the government for various reasons (e.g. the opposition to the policies of the insurgents or the promise of material benefits), the pursuit of protection from the vicious retribution of a brutal government does constitute a powerful incentive for such defections. For example, many villagers defected en masse to the side of the government to avoid cruel reprisals from the “death squads” that the omnipotent Guatemalan military had established and operated free from political supervision.[xxxvii] In the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), the savage retributions against the local Arab non-combatants by the French colonial army compelled many Arab villages to openly declare their support for the French rule.[xxxviii]

Mass violence against civilians could reinforce the perception within the population that the insurgents “cannot credibly protect the population nor respond in kind”.[xxxix] In essence, the people may view the insurgents as the weaker side in the conflict whose actions threaten the lives of the civilians. Such an impression may generate a strong desire among the suffering population for a quick termination of the conflict no matter how violently the government may have behaved in previous times.[xl] The Kurds in Turkey, for example, suffered severely at the hands of the Turkish state authorities during the separatist Kurdish insurgency (1984-1999): in fact, several hundred villages were forcibly evacuated and destroyed, while thousands of supporters of the insurgents disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Since the insurgents could not protect the Kurdish civilian population from ruthless reprisals and the repression by the Turkish state authorities did not cease, a substantial section of the minority grew tired of the cruel conflict and greeted the end of the war in 1999 with relief – even though the Turkish government had won.[xli]

Alexander Downes, a scholar who has written extensively on the occurrence of mass violence against civilians in war, outlined four principal conditions under which mass violence could be crowned with success: a) a small population to target with mass violence b) a small geographical region within which to undertake military operations, c) the parallel isolation of the insurgents from their external allies and d) the solid commitment of the local population to the cause of the insurgents. He warned, nonetheless, that only when all four conditions are met can a government wipe out an insurgency through mass violence against non-combatants.[xlii]

The recent victory of the government of Sri Lanka over the separatist insurgency of the Tamil Tigers (1983-2009) validates Downes’ theories. Between 2006 and 2009, the government of Sri Lanka pursued a military-intensive policy with the intention of routing the prolonged insurgency of the Tamil Tigers conclusively. Several characteristics of the insurgency played into the hands of the government in Colombo. The insurgents received support only from a small section of the population – the Tamil minority which inhabited principally the northern and eastern areas of the island and strongly supported the armed struggle of the Tamil Tigers for an independent Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka. The Indian Ocean separated the insurgents from their supportive co-brethren in southern India and, consequently, the insurgents remained isolated from the outside world. In the final months of the war, the Sri Lankan army staged vigorous offensives against the insurgents and used mass violence against Tamil civilians to sever the ties between the minority and the insurgents. Isolated from the outside world, weakened by the steep decrease in support among the civilian Tamil population and overwhelmed by an enemy with improved tactics and combat strength, the Tamil Tigers were swiftly crushed.[xliii] However, victory came at a heavy cost as thousands of Tamil civilians perished due to acts of mass violence.[xliv]

The above practice of targeting non-combatants remains “selective at the collective level, but indiscriminate at the individual level”. In effect, the government uses a method of “profiling” to identify those social, religious and/or national groups that support the insurgency, isolates them from the rest of the population and subjects them to mass violence.[xlv] In other words, this method of “profiling” serves the strategic objective of the government – though in an “unorthodox” and ruthless way: to seize control of the population and overwhelm the (weakened) insurgents. The Greek monarchist regime used such a method of “profiling” during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). The regime identified those segments of society that supported the communist insurgents (namely, the lower middle class, the workers and the peasants of Northern Greece) and subjected them to ruthless repression: thousands were imprisoned and executed and hundreds of thousand villagers (over 700,000 souls) were evacuated to refugee camps under tragic conditions.[xlvi]

Mass Killings of Non-Combatants in Perspective

In summary, various trends can be identified with regards to the use of mass violence against civilians by a government in a COIN campaign. A government, for example, might commit acts of mass violence against civilians owing to the heavy influence of a racist ideology or even the authoritarian nature of the regime. Occasionally, however, a government targets non-combatants with mass violence in the context of a calculated policy to sever the ties of the (local) population with the insurgents and, as a result, deprive the latter of the means necessary to continue their armed struggle.

The effectiveness of mass violence against non-combatants in the context of COIN still sparks controversies among academics. A detailed study of the RAND Corporation examined 30 case studies of insurgencies that occurred between 1978 and 2008, analysing systematically the core policies adopted by the governments in each case. The study showed that mass violence against civilians succeeds militarily in the short run but produces adverse effects in the long run (such as a relapse to violence after a short period of time).[xlvii]

Quashing an insurgency has always been a challenging task for any government – no matter how much power the latter might wield.[xlviii] Insurgencies erupt more frequently and endure much longer than conventional wars as a careful study of military history demonstrates. Insurgencies have by far outnumbered conventional wars since World War II and, in addition, have required an investment in blood, treasure and time since “on average, the successful counterinsurgent will need 12 to 15 years to defeat an insurgency”.[xlix] Henry Kissinger’s classic aphorism reminds the theorists and practitioners of COIN that “the conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose”.[l]