Working Paper: NBER ID: w21202
Authors: Francesco Trebbi; Eric Weese
Abstract: Insurgency and guerrilla warfare impose enormous socio-economic costs and often persist for decades. The opacity of such forms of conflict is often an obstacle to effective international humanitarian intervention and development programs. To shed light on the internal organization of otherwise unknown insurgent groups, this paper proposes two methodologies for the detection of unobserved coalitions of militant factions in conflict areas, and studies their main determinants. Our approach is parsimonious and based on daily geocoded incident-level data on insurgent attacks alone. We provide applications to the Afghan conflict during the 2004-2009 period and to Pakistan during the 2008-2011 period, identifying systematically different coalition structures. Further applications are discussed.
Keywords: Insurgency; Coalition Structures; Conflict Economics
JEL Codes: O1; P48
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Insurgent activity in Afghanistan (2004-2009) (F51) | Single organized group (F53) |
| Ethnic boundaries (J15) | Extent of insurgent group's operations (D74) |
| Multiple distinct insurgent groups detected in Pakistan (H56) | TTP as an umbrella coalition (D74) |
| Insurgents expand into adjacent districts over time (O17) | Oil spot strategy (L71) |
| Understanding internal organization of insurgent groups (D73) | Effective military operations (H56) |
| Understanding internal organization of insurgent groups (D73) | Humanitarian interventions (H84) |