What is a Civil War?

December 2006 Issue of Prospect Magazine - What is a Civil War? by John Keegan.

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What is civil war? The question is often raised about the disorders in Iraq. Does the violence between Iraqi religious and political factions amount to civil war, or is it best described another way? The US-led coalition's spokesmen, echoing the views of the White House and Downing Street, refuse to call the disorders civil war. Presumably they believe that to do so would be to admit defeat in their project to set up a stable, legitimate new Iraq.

To assess the situation in Iraq, it is helpful to understand how a civil war differs from an inter-state, cross-border war. There are three principal defining aspects of a civil war, each with numerous subsidiary requirements. The basic formula is simple: the violence must be "civil," it must be "war," and its aim must be either the exercise or the acquisition of national authority.

The "civil" part of the definition means the struggle must be conducted within a national territory, and that it must be carried on largely by the people of that territory, fighting between themselves. It must also involve a significant degree of popular participation.

A civil war also has to be a war—what the dictionary calls a "hostile contention by means of armed forces." Does this definition require formal battles and campaigns? Or does factional or regional struggle suffice? For us the baseline is a minimum degree of organisation, formality and identifiability of the combatants. The battles do not have to be organised, in other words, but the people do. A civil war requires leaders who say what they are fighting for and why, and a public that understands what it is all about—the divisions, the people and the goals.

The third principal condition, authority, is just as important. The point of the violence must be sovereign rule: combatants must be trying either to seize national power or to maintain it. This is the difference between, for example, the Russian civil war and the tribal rebellions now taking place in 14 of India's 28 states, or the late 1990s insurgency of Subcomandante Marcos in Mexico. Revenge, struggles for rights, mass criminality and positioning for economic gain are not sufficient, individually or severally. The opponents must be fighting to rule.

To pass the test of posterity and achieve historical status as a civil war is extremely rare. We can think of only five clear-cut cases: the English (1642-49), the American (1861-65), the Russian (1918-21), the Spanish (1936-39) and the Lebanese (1975-90). There are, of course, thousands of other violent internal struggles in history. But few are remembered as civil wars. Some of those that are so remembered have been misnamed, at least according to our criteria. (The Irish civil war is a borderline case and depends on the extent to which the free-staters are judged to have been running the state.)...

Apart from attacks on the US-led coalition, the current violence in Iraq shows two signs of civil war: it is taking place within the national boundaries of a single country, and it primarily involves local people killing local people. It is civil, in other words. But is it war? And what about the question of authority?

There are three major categories of player in Iraq's domestic violence, each of which has important internal divisions. The Sunni insurgency dominated the violence until spring of this year, when its bombing of the mosque at Samarra finally delivered the long-standing goal of goading Shias into large-scale reprisals. The Sunni violence is composed of two principal parts, one motivated by hardcore Wahhabist and Salafist Islam, and the other by the secular outlook of Baathism.

The second main category is the Shia militias. The most dangerous and active of these is the Mahdi army associated with Muqtada al-Sadr, a fractious and nebulous phenomenon that includes many groups whose connection to the movement is nominal. The older and less active—though better organised—Shia militia is the Badr Organisation, formed during the Shia struggle against Saddam, and originally trained and based in Iran. Badr belongs to Sciri, one of Iraq's two main Iranian-backed political parties and is almost always at odds with the al-Sadr movement, which derives its popularity from Iraqi nationalism.

The third major player in the Iraqi civil killing is the tendency that fights on behalf of the Iraqi state against the sectarian agendas of the Sunni insurgency and the Shia militias. The Iraqi police, police commandos and other ministry of interior forces have been heavily infiltrated by the militias, especially the Mahdi army. The Iraqi army is far more independent. With almost 500,000 Iraqis serving with the police or army, it seems safe to say well over 100,000 Iraqis are fighting for the state against the militias and the insurgents. They represent a major armed faction whose agenda is the preservation of a unified, secular and pluralistic state.

The most striking feature of the civil violence in Iraq is that it is for the most part decidedly unmilitary. Despite the names of the two Shia militias, only the third group, the state forces, exhibits the military characteristics of the principal actors in the five conflicts that we recognise as civil wars: uniforms, clear chains of command, acknowledged leadership, and official, public war aims.

There are no, or almost no, battles in Iraq's domestic killing. Civilians are the principal targets. The looser definition of the "war" part of civil war nonetheless acknowledges that if factions or regions are killing enough people for enough time, it can be petty not to recognise the conflict as something very like a war. Iraq meets this standard only partly: the non-state players for the most part lack anything like the public character of players in civil wars to date. In other words, it is not so much that Iraq is a conflict without uniforms and fighting that prevents it from being a civil war, but rather that it is violence in which no player except the state and al Qaeda, which is a minor player, says what it wants, or indeed says that it wants anything other than the continuation of the country's elected government...

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Much more at the link...

Very interesting article. But this raises an interesting question.

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The third principal condition, authority, is just as important. The point of the violence must be sovereign rule: combatants must be trying either to seize national power or to maintain it. This is the difference between, for example, the Russian civil war and the tribal rebellions now taking place in 14 of India's 28 states, or the late 1990s insurgency of Subcomandante Marcos in Mexico. Revenge, struggles for rights, mass criminality and positioning for economic gain are not sufficient, individually or severally. The opponents must be fighting to rule.

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If a region wishes to seceede does that make it a civil war or not? Author considers ACW as a civil war because of it. Yet he doesn't seem to consider wars in Yugoslavia as such even though they were fought over same principle (and Bosnia was even more complicated as Bosnia wanted to seceed from Yugoslavia and Serb parts wanted to seceed from Bosnia). Ditto for Chechen war.

Also according to this you could call Korean war civil war as it was fought between Koreans in Korea (though divided in two states). It was the question of national authority (will ROK be part of DPRK and ruled from there or not).

Although I'm not a Keegan fan I do agree that he brings up a definitional issue that is often ignored. Not that I want to debate symantics per se, but catagorizing the nature of violence leads to a better understandings of how to deal with it.

Having said that, my issue with the terms "civil war" and "insurgency" as they are POPULARLY understood and in relation to Iraq is that they are too general and do not lend themselves to understanding the nature of the violence (note I did not use the term war) in Iraq. I would hesitate to use the terms civil war or insurgency to describe those aspects of the violence in Iraq that involves inter-tribal, ethnic, or religious groups, or that is due to the so-called "foreign fighters"

The term civil war and insurgency imply a polticial aspect that does not exist within the context of most of the violence in Iraq. Which is of course what adds to the confusion.

26 November NY Times - A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So? by Edward Wong.

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Is Iraq in a civil war?

Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that most of their number are in agreement that Iraq’s conflict is a civil war.

“I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” said James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford.

While the term is broad enough to include many kinds of conflicts, one of the sides in a civil war is almost always a sovereign government. So some scholars now say civil war began when the Americans transferred sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi government in June 2004. That officially transformed the anti-American war into one of insurgent groups seeking to regain power for disenfranchised Sunni Arabs against an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and increasingly dominated by Shiites.

Others say the civil war began this year, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a chain of revenge killings that left hundreds dead over five days and has yet to end. Mr. Allawi proclaimed a month after that bombing that Iraq was mired in a civil war. “If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,” he said.

Many insurgencies and ethnic or sectarian wars are also civil wars. Vietnam and Lebanon are examples. Scholars say the Iraq civil war has elements of both an insurgency — one side is struggling to topple what it sees as an illegitimate national government — and a sectarian war — the besieged government is ruled by Shiites and opposed by Sunni Arabs.

In Iraq, sectarian purges and Sunni-Shiite revenge killings have become a hallmark of the fighting, but the cycles of violence are ignited by militia leaders who have political goals. The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosovic, did this during the wars in the Balkans.

The civil strife in Iraq largely takes place in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas that include the cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Baquba. In Anbar Province, which is overwhelming Sunni Arab, much of the violence is aimed at American troops. Large swaths of Iraq have little violence, but those areas are relatively homogenous and have few people.

Governments and people embroiled in a civil war often do not want to label it as such. In Colombia, officials insisted for years that the rebels there were merely bandits...

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28 November LA Times - NBC to Use 'Civil War' to Describe Iraq by Matea Gold.

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NBC News said Monday that its reporters and anchors would begin referring to the ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq as a "civil war," a move that reflects the news media's use of increasingly stark language to characterize the escalating violence gripping the country.

NBC's decision, which came after a particularly deadly series of retaliatory attacks in Baghdad, makes it the first television network to officially adopt the term "civil war," a description the Bush administration has resisted.

The Times was the first major news organization to formally adopt the description when it began to refer to the hostilities as a civil war in October, without public fanfare. No other major media outlet has made the phrase a matter of policy, although it has cropped up in various news reports.

The White House has exerted pressure on the media not to use the term, journalists said, which led to newsroom caution over the issue. NBC's announcement spotlights a shift in semantics that has quietly taken place on the airwaves and in newsprint as the violence has worsened along with the public's view of the situation in Iraq...

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Originally Posted by Ray Levesque

Although I'm not a Keegan fan I do agree that he brings up a definitional issue that is often ignored. Not that I want to debate symantics per se, but catagorizing the nature of violence leads to a better understandings of how to deal with it...

The term civil war and insurgency imply a polticial aspect that does not exist within the context of most of the violence in Iraq. Which is of course what adds to the confusion.

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Ray,

I agree with your assessment of Keegan in this realm; the good historian is better at analyzing more conventional arenas of conflict.

I disagree with your dismissal of ethnic or sectarian violence as non-poiltical. Such a dismissal is very much a mirroring of what we as as westerners consider political and what we do not--with an equally large fudge factor on our on behaviors. See the 700 Club et al for an example of sectarian based political activity--or the Pope for that matter.

In cases like Iraq or Rwanda, ethnic and/or sectarian violence is inherently political within that body politic because it defines power and who shares in it. If a Hutu decides to kill Tutsi because they "are not Rwandan," that is a political decision because the Hutu is making a definitive distinction between those entitled to power--the Hutu--and those not--the Tutsi. The same applies to Iraq and it is both macro in its application between major groups like the Sunnis and the Shias or the Arabs and the Kurds or micro inside those major groupings as in the divisions within the Kurds (papered over for now) or the Shias (very much operative).

Merely dismissing these schisms as non-political will get one into trouble.
quickly.

best

Tom

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Merely dismissing these schisms as non-political will get one into trouble.
quickly.

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On the drive in to work, a segment from NPR made mention of the POTUS's recent comments in Latvia: "There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal."

If we cannot take the Al Qaeda glasses off for even a few moments and stop dithering about with "opinions", we'll continue to get into trouble.

And then to say, "The Iranians and the Syrians should help _ not destabilize _ this young democracy," smacks of an inability to understand that our interests alone do not define the conflict. We may characterize Syrian and Iranian actions as destablizing, but we really have to get over ourselves and think about how they view things, from their perspective, for a change.

Syria and Iran are in the mix for political and ethnic reasons. The motives are blurred because every action is considered a threat to the democratic baby we have, but I seriously doubt that many regional actors see Iraq in that light.

Of course the sectarian violence has a political component. What is lacking in the context of the traditional civil war is the political factions engaging the government troops in a fight for control. Al Qaeda's objective appears to be to create a chaotic situation where Taliban type control would be embraced. Their media strategy appears to be directed toward creating the perception of chaos. The US media appears to be compliantly going along with this strategy, and the NBC decision on semantics certainly helps the enemy achieve that objective.

The media also does not recognize how it has been responsible for much of the violence against non combatants. These are mainly media events and photo ops used in the campaign to create the perception of chaos. If the media ignored them, they would be wholly militarily insignificant. By following the enemy's script they are promoting the killing of innocents.

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Originally Posted by Tom Odom

Ray,

I agree with your assessment of Keegan in this realm; the good historian is better at analyzing more conventional arenas of conflict.

I disagree with your dismissal of ethnic or sectarian violence as non-poiltical. Such a dismissal is very much a mirroring of what we as as westerners consider political and what we do not--with an equally large fudge factor on our on behaviors. See the 700 Club et al for an example of sectarian based political activity--or the Pope for that matter.

***snip***

Merely dismissing these schisms as non-political will get one into trouble.
quickly.

best

Tom

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Darn, I knew this was going to come back to bite me.:)

Just to clarify...on the one hand I'm very much a Clausewitzian when it comes to war being an extension of policy/politics by other means, and I agree that his trinitarian concept of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity applies even in the Iraq situation. I also agree that in a general sense it still applies as you stated above.

I most certainly agree that religious goals are still political goals -- even Al Queda's stated goals are political; driving westerners out of Saudi Arabia (Islam's home), destroying Israel, and converting the west, specifically the US to Islam. We've also heaed of the stated (political) goal of reestablishing the Caliphate. (Of couse, the integration of the political with the religious in Islam makes it difficult for we westerners to understand because we generally see religion as separate from the state, although our European ancesters in the 1500s and 1600s (and later in some cases) would have a better understanding of the integration of religion and state.)

However, I think we do have to consider "motivation" more specifically when it comes to analyzing the threat in Iraq. For example, violence that is directed at forcing the US and its allies out of Iraq is clearly political as is the violence being carried out by Iraqi groups to achieve political dominance within Iraq. However, revenge killings, tribal and family feuds, kidnappings for the purpose of making money do not have political motivations at their root.

My argument is that we have to understand the motivation of the many different groups in Iraq that are carrying out violence. I didn't mean to "dismiss" sectarian or ethnic violence as non-political because in many cases it is definitely political; but at the same time some sectarian and ethnic violence is nothing more than revenge killings. The complexity of all the motivations at work in Iraq is what makes it difficult to find a solution; there is no single or simple solution, and any strategy must include social.

If the threat was limited to finding a solution for those who want political power in some form it would be a bit easier to find a solution. Unfortunately the politically driven violence sometimes disappears into the tapestry of violence that has different motivations at the root.

The reality is that there are some forms of violence, that can appear as acts of war, that are not politically driven. We need to be able to differentiate between the two in order to find solutions for how to deal with the differing threats.

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However, I think we do have to consider "motivation" more specifically when it comes to analyzing the threat in Iraq. For example, violence that is directed at forcing the US and its allies out of Iraq is clearly political as is the violence being carried out by Iraqi groups to achieve political dominance within Iraq. However, revenge killings, tribal and family feuds, kidnappings for the purpose of making money do not have political motivations at their root.

My argument is that we have to understand the motivation of the many different groups in Iraq that are carrying out violence. I didn't mean to "dismiss" sectarian or ethnic violence as non-political because in many cases it is definitely political; but at the same time some sectarian and ethnic violence is nothing more than revenge killings. The complexity of all the motivations at work in Iraq is what makes it difficult to find a solution; there is no single or simple solution, and any strategy must include social.

If the threat was limited to finding a solution for those who want political power in some form it would be a bit easier to find a solution. Unfortunately the politically driven violence sometimes disappears into the tapestry of violence that has different motivations at the root.

The reality is that there are some forms of violence, that can appear as acts of war, that are not politically driven. We need to be able to differentiate between the two in order to find solutions for how to deal with the differing threats.

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Hooah, Ray!

I agree on motivations--in fact I debated a guy on the AKO Intel forum a few weeks ago on this very point; he felt motivations were unattainable points of analysis. I argued that ignoring motivations is like ignoring the why and and only looking at the what; makes for decent basic journalism or even "history" but offers not a tinker's damn worth of predictive analysis.

On Iraq I would also agree that much of the violence is score settling in a society ruled by its own defintions of honor or just opportunism. When that violence occurs on an individual basis or a "gang" basis; I too would not call that political. But tribal conflicts when aimed at improving one group's status are inherently political. And yes that makes the situation very complex, one not given to the simple definitions and even simpler solutions that are tossed about by too many inside and outside the government.

On the other hand, I am equally tired of some very bright analysts like Keegan who seem to approach all of this as if he is going to be able apply very strict defintions to all of this when the truly operative definitions have to come from the Iraqi side--and then your points on motivation truly come into play.

Best

Tom

Tom Odom I remember when you had that discussion. I had just posted my comment about motive,means,and opportunity(this is my pet rock). If you can not figure out the motive you will never get anywhere, like you said it is what? without the why? Motive is simple. Ask who benefits by the action? That will give you the why and also the who if don't know.

I must say I have an increasing sense of deja vu in this debate/discussion over whether a civil war is going on in Iraq because the factions are aligned via sectarian or ethnic lines.

I am sickeningly reminded of the debate in the Clinton decisionmaking structure over whether we should have at that time labeled the genocide in Rwanda as such. Instead we engaged in flights of fancy spin, agreeing that there had been "acts of genocide" while remained hesitant to utter the "G-word" all by itself and tag it to Rwanda. Such verbal dodgeball led one frustrated reporter to ask "how many 'acts of genocide' does it take to make a genocide?" Of course, the answer was another dip away from the dodgeball. And all during this mincing over words, Radio-Telephone Milles Collines continued to pronounce it was the hardliner Hutu intention to kill all the Tutsis and any Hutus who supported them, leaving no doubt that the perpetrators of the genocide motivation was control of a post-conflict Rwanda cleansed of Tutsi.

So for me, the debate over the "C-word" in Iraq is all too familiar and equally bankrupt. In any case, the Iraqis will decide it for us.

Best all

Tom

War is war. Civil War is an oxymoron. An insurgency/counterinsurgency is a civil war. So was, "The War", as we call it in the South. I don't see the motive behind labeling Iraq a civil war at this point because that has always been the case long before the Persian Gulf War. Frankly, I view it as a sign on how inept America is about the history of Iraq. Calling it a civil war now is like a day late and a dollar short. Of course it is a civil war. It always has been a civil war. It has been a very bad place for a very long time. What NBC should have stated the other day was, "Gosh!, we're so stupid. Iraq is a civil war!...Duh!"