The Political Use of Atrocities: Strategic Considerations Regarding the Use of War Crimes During Intrastate Conflict

Abstract

Does the use of human rights violations by a government during a civil war accelerate the end of the conflict and increase the probability of government victory? Intuitively, it appears the answer to this question would be yes; after all, studies concerning human rights violations have often documented and corroborated the effectiveness of the political use of atrocities by repressive leaders. However, the answer to this question is complicated by the possibility for external states and international organizations to intervene in the face of humanitarian crises that can increase the duration of war. These considerations motivate the central question of the ‘despotic leader thought experiment’: Are there incentives for repressive states to commit war crimes during civil wars? This thesis begins by proposing a theoretical model in which minimizing the duration of a civil war can decrease the costs of war for a government engaged in an intrastate conflict. This model prompts our investigation into the relationship between state-sponsored human rights violations and civil war duration, as it lays out the incentives for the repressive state to commit war crimes. To identify this relationship, this thesis relies upon a newly-created dataset relating human rights violations, a bevy of controlled variables, and the duration of civil wars. Through the use of hypothesis testing and Cox Proportional Hazards Regression, I find that while there appears to be little association between the use of human rights violations by governments in civil wars and international involvement of external countries in the conflict, there does appear to be a positive relationship between the use of political atrocities and civil war length. This relationship appears to be consistent across all models run, though some of the models lack statistical significance. Therefore, I investigate the relationship between human rights violations and civil war duration further by analyzing the Sri Lankan and Syrian civil wars. By considering the similarities and differences between these wars in their use of human rights violations and their respective war lengths, I find that human rights violations by the state are effective tools at decreasing the duration of conflict so long as they help push the state towards decisive victory. However, political atrocities alone cannot be effective at minimizing conflict duration, as weak political institutions and consolidation of power can perpetuate the duration of civil wars in some war-stricken countries. This thesis concludes with considerations of the nature of international interventions and protections for aid workers in civil war-torn states, reflections on the opportunities better data collection can offer conflict studies involving human rights violations, and thoughts on the ethical implications of the despotic leader thought experiment.