How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

In Chapter 3, Walter continues to build on her theme that there are patterns and risk factors that predict where and when civil wars might break out by adding a third variable: when groups feel a loss of status or political power that they believe they are entitled to. Political scientists call this phenomenon “downgrading.” Walter notes that “human beings hate to lose” (65) and work to reclaim these losses, two points that psychological experiments have supported. As a result, downgrading is important because it goes against something that is innate in humans. This risk factor is especially important because it enables political scientists to predict which group in unstable political settings will initiate violence.

To illustrate this point, Walter returns to Yugoslavia. Serbs saw themselves as the rightful rulers of Yugoslavia since they once ruled over the territory in the Middle Ages, represented the largest ethnic group in the country, and occupied high-ranking government and military positions. With the death of Tito, the Serbs saw this power start to recede since other minority groups and republics began to call for secession and democratic reforms. Walter highlights that the loss of power is the reason why Serbs started the civil war instead of other ethnic or religious groups in Yugoslavia.

Walter also analyzes Matalam’s character. As governor of Cotabato after WWII, both Muslims and Catholics living in Mindanao initially loved Matalam. For this reason, it was a matter of some irony that Mindanao helped start “one of the world’s most persistent civil wars” (58). Matalam went from having power and influence as governor in the region to having no power at all with the rise of Ferdinand Marcos as president of the Philippines in 1965. Not only did Matalam lose status, but the government and his former colleagues also deeply insulted him after an off-duty government official shot his son and no one offered him condolences.

Matalam created the Muslim Independence Movement (MIM) in 1968 as a reaction to his loss of power. His manifesto demanded that the Moro secede from the Philippines and form their own country. Despite single-handedly starting the civil war, Matalam soon retired to his farm shortly after creating the MIM. This example highlights the dangers of loss of status since one person was able to kick-start violence that lasted for several decades in the Philippines.

Walter uses the case studies of the Moro in the Philippines, the Abkhazians in Georgia, and the Assamese in India to continue building on this third risk factor. All three groups are known as sons of the soil, which refers to groups that “are dominant because of majority status or because they inhabited or conquered the territory first” (67). Sons of the soil groups are especially prone to turning to violence for two reasons. The first is that they can organize themselves into a resistance movement since they are already well organized politically, socially, and ideologically within a country. The second is that they feel especially aggrieved when they lose power since they view power as inherent to their identity within a country. Part of this feeling is because leaders and the official language of a country stem from these sons of the soil groups. Therefore, the dominance these groups have over other groups in a country seems natural to them. Thus, when they lose power, they associate this loss with something unnatural. Walter underscores that sons of the soil groups lose sight of the fact that their power is a privilege.

Finally, Walter also refutes two commonly held beliefs. The first is that civil wars are more likely to break out in countries with a lower socioeconomic status than wealthier ones. The second is that greater income inequality distributions have higher chances of civil wars. Citing research from datasets and case studies, Walter shows how the data do not support either of these two assertions. Walter does underscore that economic and income inequality remain important risk factors, but immigration might be even more important. In the three cases Walter focused on in Chapter 3, immigration served as a “flashpoint for conflict” (76). Immigration is particularly worrisome to Walter in our current context. Human migration is on the rise due to climate change. Data already support that climate calamities exacerbate political instability. Thus, Walter argues that we will likely see even more civil wars due partly to worsening global climate conditions in the coming years.