livelihood coping mechanisms, local intelligence, and the pattern of violence during the maoist...
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This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote]On: 06 December 2013, At: 13:51Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Livelihood Coping Mechanisms, LocalIntelligence, and the Pattern of ViolenceDuring the Maoist Insurgency in NepalMadhav Joshi aa Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of NotreDame , Notre Dame , Indiana , USAPublished online: 25 Nov 2013.
To cite this article: Madhav Joshi (2013) Livelihood Coping Mechanisms, Local Intelligence, and thePattern of Violence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, Terrorism and Political Violence, 25:5,820-839, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2012.700657
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Livelihood Coping Mechanisms, Local Intelligence,and the Pattern of Violence During the Maoist
Insurgency in Nepal
MADHAV JOSHI
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of NotreDame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
While fighting insurgency, both state and non-state groups depend on the localpopulation for valuable resources such as food, intelligence, and security. By usinga repertoire of subsistence coping mechanisms available to households in the contextof the local political economy as an indicator of grievances and mechanisms ofinteractions between local households and the state and insurgents, district leveldata from Nepal on Maoist conflict is used to test hypotheses regarding state andinsurgent violence. The analysis confirms that the state was more likely to kill peoplein a district where the number of households that borrowed to cope with subsistencewas high. The Maoists were more likely to kill in a district with a higher number ofsubsistence sufficient households.
Keywords insurgency, livelihood mechanisms, local intelligence, Maoistinsurgency, Nepal, targeted violence
The Maoist insurgency in Nepal began in February 1996, only six years after thecountry had transitioned to a parliamentary democracy. This transition took placein 1990, after a people’s movement brought the downfall of the king’s 30-year directrule under the panchayat system. In 1991, along with other political parties, the Maoistparty (at the time, known as United People’s Front Nepal, or UPFN) contestedthe first parliamentary elections. The democratic system introduced in 1990 affordedthe aggrieved segments of the population platforms for their political aspirations.This included the power to vote out the incumbent government and organize streetprotests. The power to replace the current government was actualized when theincumbent Nepali Congress Party lost the 1994 mid-term elections.1
Nepal also made gradual economic progress during this time. According to theWorld Bank, the GDP per capita in Nepal grew at the average rate of 5% from1990 to 1996. In the same period, the distribution of telephone lines doubled.2 Infantmortality declined from 99 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 63 in 2000. The youthliteracy rate increased from 50% in 1991 to 70% in 2001. Given that Nepal had
Madhav Joshi is a research assistant professor and associate director of the PeaceAccords Matrix (PAM) at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University ofNotre Dame.
Address correspondence to Madhav Joshi, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies,University of Notre Dame, 331 Hesburgh Center, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5677, USA. E-mail:[email protected]
Terrorism and Political Violence, 25:820–839, 2013Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09546553.2012.700657
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successfully transitioned to a parliamentary democracy and subsequently sustained areasonable economic growth, the country should have successfully avoided furtheroutbreaks of violent insurgency.3 After all, economic development should incentivizeavoiding costly conflicts.4 Similarly, democratic institutions are formed to channelopposition movements into electoral competitions, and opportunities to form polit-ical parties and vie for elected office should prevent a young democracy from slippinginto violence.5
Studies conducted by Hutt, Lawoti, Lawoti and Pahari, and Joshi and Masonemphasize that the structural persistence of poverty, as well as the socio-economicinequality and sustained marginalization of ethnic minorities from accessing statepower and resources, were conditions that catalyzed the outbreak of armed conflictin Nepal.6 Further studies of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal portray how the poorhouseholds that were prevented from voting for their preferred candidates were latermobilized by the Maoists, who promised to redress their socio-economic grievancesagainst the local patrons.7 Indeed, democratic change and sustained economic devel-opment in Nepal did not bring substantial political and economic opportunities forthose segments of the population whowere dependent on local patrons for subsistence.Local patrons, who are protected by political parties, can easily coerce a marginalizedsegment of the population to vote according to their own agendas. This is attested toby the fact that after 1991, most of the redistributive policies (i.e., education, publichealth, etc.), in Nepal were carried out in the capital and other urban centers whilethe socio-economic situation in the rural parts of the country deteriorated due to cutsin subsidies. The government’s inability to address the needs of the marginalizedsegments of the population provided an opportunity for the UPFN to mobilize thatpopulation for insurgency.8 However, the factors that explain the outbreak of theinsurgency are different from the factors that explain the pattern of violence usedduring the insurgency.
The structural conditions of inequality and marginalization might have played animportant role during the onset of violent conflict in Nepal. Kalyvas suggests thatinsurgent groups use both selective and indiscriminate violence against civilians inorder to establish control over territories and populations.9 However, the studies ofCollier and Hoeffler, and Fearon and Laitin contend that insurgents fight for individ-ual welfare.10 It is important to note, however, that resources are not equally distrib-uted or available for insurgents to seize during a conflict. Thus the level of violencemay vary depending on the availability of local resources.11 Furthermore, multiplearmed groups may vie for the same resources. Therefore, discriminate or indiscri-minate violence may vary depending on rivalry for resources and how armed groupscontrol or locate the resources necessary for their survival.12 The use of violence mayalso be a function of a rebel groups’ strength (for example, a rebel group that is weakor losing a battle may be more likely to increase their use of violence) or their capabili-ties.13 While these studies are important, they neither help us understand the variationin violence used by both sides of the conflict in the context of the local politicaleconomy nor explain how violence is utilized within a revolutionary insurgency that seeksto bring systemic change to the political, social, and economic spheres of a country.
While resources are critical for the survival of any movement, a group’s relation-ship with the local population is equally important to their survival. Rebel groupsshould not overlook the important relationship that exists between group and popu-lation, even when they are considering looting that population’s resources. This istrue particularly when a rebel group is fighting a revolutionary insurgency and the
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state counters the fighting in order to suppress the movement. Tangible resourceswere not available for looting in Nepal. Yet during the insurgency, the state andthe Maoists targeted their violence at very different segments of the population.What explains such variations? The fact that targeted violence can be used isa message to the community that the other side is unable to protect them. Mostof the combatants from both sides of the conflict generally do not come from thesame community. Therefore, targeted violence cannot be carried out without thecooperation of the local community. This premise is illustrated by a simple scenario:if the state is trying to locate Maoist insurgents or their supporters, how would theyfind them among the civilians? The answer is that they must have assistance from thecivilians in locating their targets. The same logic applies to the Maoists and their useof local intelligence to strategize their use of violence. This scenario emphasizes therole local intelligence plays in the planning and enacting of violence.
This study focuses on the different patterns of violence used by the state and theMaoist rebels during the insurgency between 1996 and 2006. In any armed conflict,control over territory and population is strategically significant. However, howviolence is targeted and utilized depends on whom the state wants to protect andwhat the insurgents intend to accomplish. The state often attempts to protect andmaintain the political and socio-economic status quo. The rebels generally want todemonstrate the weakness of the state, not only by protecting the population thatsupports them, but also by exhibiting their capability to redress that population’sgrievances by challenging the status quo.
In the context of Nepal, the counterinsurgency measures adopted by the statewere designed to reinforce the political and socio-economic status quo. At the verycenter of this plan was the securing of local patrons who provided legitimacy to theregime and controlled local communities.14 The Maoists’ objective was to destroyevery barrier, and to overthrow the monarchy that reinforced the traditional allo-cation of power. In essence, the Maoists were challenging the state by targeting ruralpatrons, while the state was trying to protect the political and economic interests ofthose patrons in an effort to maintain the current structure of political power.
Unlike previous studies on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, in which socio-economic grievances are correlated to the level of violence, this study considershow the state and the Maoist rebels used targeted violence in the context of their ruralpolitical economy. The article also explores the relationship between households’livelihood conditions and the patterns of violence during the insurgency from 1996to 2006. This article contends that, while fighting insurgency, state and non-stategroups depend on the local populations for valuable resources like food, intelligence,and security.15 Both sides compete for control over territory and population bytargeting violence against the supporters of their rivals.16 In order to effectively utilizetargeted violence, the protagonists must identify the segments of the population thatare likely to provide useful intelligence. Targeted violence is efficient because it allowseither side to avoid indiscriminate violence, which subsequently helps the perpetratorsof violence maintain control over their territories and populations. This article, there-fore, goes beyond previous studies onMaoist insurgency in Nepal and helps to under-stand the dynamics of violence used by the state and the Maoists.17
Local populations are able not only to provide intelligence, but also to offera pool from which insurgent groups can recruit. In order to sustain an insurgency,groups must try to win over the hearts and minds of an aggrieved segment of thelocal population. This is best accomplished by using targeted violence to address
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the source of the population’s grievances. However, the state is also dependent onlocal patrons for valuable intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the insurgentsand their supporters. The differing subsistence coping mechanisms available tohouseholds, in the context of the rural political economy, may explain the variousways in which the local population and their patrons interact. If the local patronswere to address the grievances of the local population, then the local populationswould have no reason to engage in any activities that would undermine the influenceof their local patrons. But the relationship between local patrons and poorer house-holds is often vertical and exploitative.18 With such a marked imbalance of power, itis almost impossible for the poor to lift themselves up from their socio-economicconditions. Thus for an aggrieved segment of the population in Nepal, aiding theMaoists could provide an opportunity for redressing their grievances against theirlocal patrons. Similarly, since local patrons can easily identify those poorer house-holds embedded in the network of patron-client relationships, they would be wellplaced to cooperate with the state security forces. This theory leads to the hypothesisthat state violence in a district, when it is most effective, is targeted at the aggrievedsegment of the population. Following this, a second hypothesis is that the Maoists’use of violence in a district, in order for it to be most effective, should be targeted atthe local patrons. I utilize district level data from Nepal to test these hypotheses. Ifound that during the Maoist insurgency, the state was likely to kill more peoplein a district with a higher number of households that borrowed to meet their subsist-ence needs, whereas the Maoists were likely to kill more people in a district with ahigher number of subsistence sufficient households.
Following this introduction, this article is divided into four sections. In the fol-lowing section, I briefly discuss the evolution of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. Thesecond section reviews the existing literature surrounding the utilization of violenceby rebels and states in civil wars. After discussing the relevant literature, I thendevelop a rural political economic framework and employ it to explain the patternof targeted violence during the Maoist insurgency. From this I derived testablehypotheses. Section three develops a research design and empirically tests thehypotheses. The final section of this article concludes with a summary of the findingsand the theoretical and policy implications these findings have in addressingsocio-economic grievances.
Maoist Insurgency (1996–2006)
The Maoist insurgency, also known as the ‘‘people’s war,’’ began on February 13,1996, when supporters of the UPFN launched an armed attack on the police in themid-western districts of Rukum and Rolpa. Prior to the attack, the UPFN contestedthe 1991 and 1994 parliamentary elections. But during that time, structural inequalitylimited the party’s ability to build a significant electoral base among the marginalizedsegments of the populations because local patrons who control subsistence securityfor most rural voters forced them to vote for other parties or candidates against theirown economic interests.19 Their electoral defeat did not stop the UPFN from advo-cating remedies for the country’s underlying socio-economic grievances. On 4February 1996, the UPFN submitted a list of 40 demands to the government ofNepal. This list was ignored by the elected government.20 Though these demands weresubmitted with a 15-day window of consideration, the insurrection officially startedfour days before the allotted time period had ended. Before submitting the demands,
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the UPFN had carefully organized various cultural activities for public awareness inRukum and Rolpa. These were areas that the government had previously suppressedinNovember of 1995, when a commando force wasmobilized duringOperation Romeo.21
Following these activities, the insurgency soon spread into neighboring districts.Before 2001, the government’s strategy had been to fight the Maoist insurgency
through repression. Yet as the intensity of the conflict grew, the first ceasefire wasannounced in July 2001. The Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), a prominenthuman rights organization with representatives throughout Nepal, reported that atthe time of the ceasefire 1,689 people had been killed. Of these victims, 971 peoplehad been killed by the state and 718 had been killed by the Maoists.22 The ceasefirelasted less than four months, and the Maoists used it strategically. During this timethey were able to strengthen their military capability, release their supporters fromgovernment detention, and, more importantly, they intensified the insurgency withmore frequent attacks. In November 2001, the government declared a state of emerg-ency and, for the first time, mobilized the army to fight against theMaoist insurgency.
Over the next year, the conflict became more intense and more widespread as thegovernment’s counter-insurgency campaign penetrated into local communities in aneffort to locate Maoist combatants and their supporters. In 2002, it was reportedthat 4,500 people were killed as a result of the insurgency. The government’scounter-insurgency was partly successful in that it forced the Maoist party to returnto negotiations (for a second time) in January 2003. Yet these negotiations did notlead to long-lasting peace. Another three rounds of negotiations in August 2003 alsofailed. This was due in part to the fact that the Maoist were unwilling to discuss issuesother than the elections for the constituent assembly.23 By 2003, the Government ofNepal estimated that the Maoists had 5,500 active combatants, another 8,000 militia,4,500 full-time cadres, 33,000 hardcore followers, and 200,000 sympathizers.24
The patrons gradually lost their control over their local populations as the Mao-ists gained strength in the rural communities. During this time, the Maoists startedto announce their own people’s government, or ‘‘Jana Sarkar,’’ and their ownjudicial system, called the people’s court (or kangaroo court). The elected govern-ment’s inability to defeat the insurgency prompted King Gyanendra to dismiss thecivilian government in February of 2005, impose a state of emergency, and begin rul-ing directly. By curtailing civil liberties and suspending democracy altogether, KingGyanendra alienated civil society and the mainstream political parties. Discontentedby the king’s move, seven political parties in the parliament organized a non-violentpro-democracy movement. The Maoists began to negotiate with these seven politicalparties, and eventually asked to join the opposition movement in July of 2005. Theparties decided to allow the Maoists to join the opposition on the condition that theystop killing civilians. In April, the king restored the dissolved parliament, and thenew cabinet declared a ceasefire with the Maoists. A new round of peace talks began,and the final comprehensive peace agreement was signed on November 21, 2006.Before the constituent assembly elections, the Maoists shared power in both thetransitional government and the parliament. In the Constituent Assembly electionsof April 2008, the Maoist party won more seats than any other political party. Afterestablishing themselves as the largest party, the Maoists led a coalition governmentfor 8 months. The constituent assembly then declared Nepal a republic state and theking, relinquishing his role and power, left the palace.
Over the eleven years of conflict, more than 13,000 people lost their lives andover 1000 more were injured. Over 50 thousand people were internally displaced
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and more than 700 disappeared.25 This conflict significantly changed the politicallandscape in Nepal: Nepal became a republic state, and elections for the ConstituentAssembly (after almost 60 years of demanding that they take place) finally tran-spired. Issues related to the equality and representation of women, peasants,laborers, and marginalized ethnic minorities (including dalits and untouchables)got a reasonable amount of attention in the national political debate. However, therehas been little progress made towards socio-economic reform. The social, political,and economic influence of the local patrons (big landholders, moneylenders, localbusinessmen, and civil servants at local levels) declined drastically after the war. Thiswas due to the fact that the Maoists either killed these patrons or forced them toleave their villages during the conflict in order to free rural households from systemicrepression and exploitation.26
State Versus Insurgent Violence
Although the number of attacks against civilians has gone down since 1989, civiliansare still the primary victims of civil war violence.27 Civilians also incur most ofthe indirect and often longstanding costs of conflict such as diseases, famine, anddisplacement.28 The use of violence in armed conflict is strategic because the sideemploying it, either government or rebel, expects that it will yield cooperation fromcivilians. However, violence does not usually induce cooperation and the excessiveuse of violence can turn civilian supporters away. After all, revolutions are oftenfought over and decided by the support of non-elites.29 Control of territory and popu-lation is often the central goal of both sides of the conflict, because each side is awarethat the distribution of civilian support greatly affects the conflict’s outcome.30
The literature surrounding the topic of civilian support in civil wars suggests thatinsurgents, when they have received a high degree of civilian support, are less likelyto target the civilians. However, the same literature also notes that state forces aremore likely to use indiscriminate violence in an attempt to both punish civilianswho support the insurgency and eradicate the insurgency itself.31 However, thisindiscriminate use of violence by the state may assist rebels in recruiting and expand-ing their support bases.32
Yet such an expansion in force does not necessarily suggest that the rebelsare capable of providing civilians protection from indiscriminate violence.33 Mooresuggested that the indiscriminate use of violence only makes civilians indifferent toboth the state and the insurgents.34 According to Lyall, indiscriminate violence’seffects are not uniform and are conditioned on the nature of the insurgent organiza-tion itself.35 For example, after the state employed violence indiscriminately againstthe Chechen insurgents, the insurgent attacks decreased and an aggrieved segment ofthe population turned their support away from the rebels.36 The reasons the civilianshad for turning away from supporting the insurgents may be numerous, yet likelyprevalent among these was the fact that the rebels were unable to protect them.Rebel groups frequently rely on civilians for sanctuaries, information, recruits,and other resources.37 Thus, relatively weak rebels may use more violence in orderto induce civilian cooperation while relatively capable rebel groups, which can offersecurity or provide public goods to the civilians, can more easily avoid the needfor the excessive use of violence.38 As these previous studies suggest, indiscriminateviolence is not only counterproductive to a state fighting counterinsurgency, but alsocounterproductive for insurgents fighting against the state. And the use of violence
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by either side of the conflict is related to the level of civilian cooperation and theintelligence such cooperation provides.
Yet civilian cooperation is contingent on the local political economy: how indi-vidual households meet their basic subsistence needs and whether doing so involvesinteracting with local patrons. In the local political economic setting, individualhouseholds engage in various economic activities (i.e., farming, agricultural labor,etc.). Studies indicate that armed groups mostly recruit from poorer households,and that poor peasants are more likely to support or participate in an insurgency.39
The arrival of insurgency in a village disrupts the terms of interaction betweenpatrons and the clients who depend on them for subsistence security. An armed oppo-sition changes local balance of power in favor of rebel groups and its supporters. Byattacking patrons, the rebels undermine the local system that controls the economicactivities and political behavior of poor households. For a rebel group trying toexpand its support base, using selective violence serves two strategic objectives. First,it convinces poor or peasant households that their support of the insurgency will lib-erate them from the exploitation of the local patrons. Without credible commitmentsfrom the rebel side, it would be difficult for the local community to support the insur-gency. Therefore, the second objective for the insurgents is to use violence against thelocal patrons. This helps induce greater civilian cooperation. Achieving these twoobjectives, however, is not possible without the cooperation of local populations.In order for the insurgents to be successful, these populations must provide supportand sanctuary, and also gather intelligence. This intelligence is crucial to the successof the rebel group, who may not be privy to the nature of the grievances affecting theparticular area where they are fighting. A mistake in selecting a target could hurt thegroup’s reputation and could scare away civilian support. The insurgents can onlyachieve a higher degree of confidence in selecting a target when the local populationcooperates with them and provides them with the necessary intelligence.
The state will often protect a community where insurgency threatens localpatrons for two reasons. First, any state that depends on local patrons for the legit-imacy of their regime and structurally relies on these patrons to subdue rural insur-rection cannot afford to let the insurgents target local patrons for their economic andpolitical purposes. Economically, local patrons assist the state in extracting resourcesfrom small communities. The ability to extract these resources politically empowerslocal patrons, and they can use this capacity to control the political behavior of thehouseholds that are dependent on them for their basic needs.40 Therefore, providingsecurity to local elites is important for the state to maintain the political status quo.And second, local patrons are the primary source of information essential to thestate’s counterinsurgency strategy. It is almost impossible for the state’s securityforces to identify insurgents in a local community with which they are unfamiliar.In this regard, local patrons provide the necessary intelligence for the state’s securityforces.41 Households that depend on local patrons for subsistence and credits to meettheir basic needs have grievances against their local patrons. Furthermore, localpatrons can easily identify these households, which literature suggests have a greaterchance of supporting insurgency. Essentially, the state is able to use the local patronsand the intelligence they provide to construct a plan for targeted violence. Thisthereby enables them to create an effective counterinsurgency campaign. The localpatrons are essential to the state because they can identify the civilians who actuallyprovide support to the opposition. The state thus utilizes local patrons in order toundercut the insurgents’ fighting capacity and frustrate their ability to gather
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recruits, intelligence, and material support.42 Since poorer households pose greaterrisks to the status quo, the state is more likely to target those households that mostlydepend on local patrons to meet their basic needs.
Pattern of Violence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal
Along with intimidation and indoctrination, the Maoists utilized socio-economicgrievances to their fullest extent when they recruited combatants. The Maoists clearlylaid out socio-economic reforms in their 40-point demand that the governmentignored. And indeed many of these demands were set as pre-conditions for the peacetalks in 2003. Such demands included, among other issues, the abolishment of feudal-ism, fair land distribution, debt reduction and cancellation, employment creation,labour issues, and establishing a minimum wage.43 By the time the peace talks tookplace in 2003, the government did not disagree with any of the socio-economicdemands set forth by the Maoists. In fact, the government went a step further andproposed land reform, poverty reduction, and the implementation of equitable andbalanced regional development.44 Yet, the Maoists dismissed the government’sproposal as ‘‘cosmetic’’ and insisted that systemic change transpire, calling for a Con-stituent Assembly to write a new constitution.45 At the very heart of this demand wasthe Maoists’ commitment to addressing its support base’s socio-economic grievances.
The earlier section of the article develops the argument that both sides of theconflict used socio-economic factors to select the targets of their violence. In thecontext of revolutionary insurgency, insurgent violence is likely to be targeted atrelatively well-off households and against people who have exploited the community.In contrast, the state is likely to target the poorer households that could providerecruits, sanctuaries, intelligence, and other necessary support to insurgents. Thistheoretical argument helps to define the parameters of state as well as insurgentviolence used in the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. It leads us now to a considerationof how the subsistence security of households in a district can define the parametersof violence used by the state and the Maoists.
Subsistence Sufficient Households
Subsistence sufficient households belong to local patrons (moneylenders, landlords,government officials, or politically influential officials) who have either accumulatedwealth through exploitation or earn a regular income as a government employee.Households in this category often provide subsistence to poorer households by pro-viding lands for sharecropping or paying laborers, or a mix of both. These subsist-ence secure households also offer credit to poorer households that lack the collateralrequired to borrow money from formal sources.46 Such lending occurs frequentlysince borrowing from formal sources requires a guarantor, which is almost imposs-ible for a poorer household to secure. As a result, borrowing from local patronsbecomes a default option for poor households, which provides those giving the loansan opportunity to exploit those receiving them by imposing higher interest rates andother conditions for credits.
In rural communities, it was often these underprivileged people that providedinformation to the Maoists. They helped target those patrons that were perceived asexploiters of the poor. The Maoists admitted that their strategy was the ‘‘annihilationof the selected enemy.’’ This strategy involved violence targeted at local ‘‘feudalists’’
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and their representatives, local ‘‘semi-imperialists’’ and their representatives, surakis(informers), reputed social workers who refused the Maoists’ ideology, and local‘‘usurers,’’ moneylenders, ‘‘oppressors,’’ and ‘‘exploiters.’’47 People on the Maoist’sannihilation list were thus subsistence secure households. This, however, does notmean that the subsistence secure households could not be supporters of the Maoists.Some of them may have been ideologically sympathetic to the Maoists, and thus mayhave avoided becoming a target of their violence. Nevertheless, as Justino suggests,there were very few strong economic households that would support the Maoistsand their use of violence.48 Subsistence secure households in local communities arevulnerable to insurgent violence. Therefore, a district with a higher level of subsistencesecure households should experience higher level of Maoist violence. This leads to thefollowing hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1 (H1): The Maoists were more likely to perpetrate violencein districts with a higher level of subsistence securehouseholds.
Subsistence Insufficient Households
Subsistence insufficient households are those households that do not annually meettheir basic needs. Different mechanisms exist to overcome insufficiency. Theseinclude finding work as a laborer within the district, finding work as a laborer out-side the district but within the country, finding work as a laborer outside the coun-try, and remaining in the community and borrowing from local patrons. Somehouseholds may adopt more than one strategy to meet their needs.
Households that depend on credits from local patrons are compelled to borrowat higher interest rates. Sometimes their deals may include servitude to local patrons.In contrast, those households that avoid borrowing from the patrons are relativelyfree from their exploitation. Households that borrow from local patrons generallyremain within the community (in comparison to those households that seek laboringwork outside the community), and are therefore the group that accumulates grie-vances against local patrons. Therefore, when these households are offered a life freefrom the feudalistic economics, marginalization, and exploitation, they are the onesmost likely to support the Maoists. Since local patrons can easily identify them andhave incentives to share intelligence to the state, borrowing households’ dependenceon local patrons makes them vulnerable to state violence. As a result, the state ismore likely to target more economically deprived segments of the population. There-fore, a district with a higher number of substance insecure households is more sus-ceptible to state violence. This leads to the following hypothesis:
H2: The state is more likely to perpetrate violence in districts with ahigher level of subsistence insecure households that borrow in orderto meet their subsistence needs.
The logic of the theoretical argument presented above is based on the notion that astate, as well as insurgent groups, chooses its targets strategically and uses selectiveviolence. To carry out selective violence, cooperation with the local population,especially in the form of receiving intelligence, is crucial. Subsistence sufficient
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households are likely to maintain the status quo and cooperate with state securityforces. Subsistence insufficient households, particularly those that depend on localpatrons and borrow for subsistence, have more incentive to cooperate with theMaoist insurgents.
Research Design
I analyzed sub-national data from Nepal to test the stipulated hypotheses. Nepal isdivided into 75 districts, and the unit of analysis used here is a district. Thedependent variable is violence in a district measured in terms of the total numberof people killed during the insurgency by the state’s forces and the Maoists. Accord-ing to INSEC, a total of 13,347 people were killed in the insurgency. Of these victims,the state killed 8,377 and the Maoists killed 4,970 people.49 In the analysis, Icontrolled for the number of people killed by the Maoists when the number of peoplekilled by the state was used as the dependent variable, and vice versa. Controlling forthe number of people killed by the other side is important because many violentincidents might have taken place as a response to violence perpetrated by theopposite side.
In the theory section, I argued that the aggrieved segment of the populationwould support the insurgency because they had everything to gain if their grievanceswere addressed through the revolution’s social, political, and economic changes. Inorder to convince their supporters, therefore, the Maoists had to target patrons.An ideal test for this theoretical expectation would be to use the number of house-holds related to local patrons (big landholders, moneylenders, and local businessowners) in a district. But data with these economic characteristics does not exist.Nevertheless, there is data providing the number of sufficient households that existin a district. Sufficient households are the type of household that should containthe highest percentage of local patrons. Furthermore, these sufficiency householdsalso interact with poorer households. Therefore I hypothesized that the Maoistswould target more sufficiency households compared to the state (H1). Accordingto CBS-Nepal there were 1,337,965 sufficiency households.50
During the Maoist insurgency, as H2 suggests, the state was more likely to killborrowers. Given that the Maoists had received support from the aggrieved segmentof the population that had been oppressed and exploited by the local patrons andstructurally marginalized by the state, it was in the Maoists’ best interest to protectthe borrowing households. Any insufficient household, as it struggles to meet itsbasic needs, may have grievances. Yet the borrowing households are more likelyto be imbedded in the structure of patron-client relations. Since the local patronscould easily identify the borrowers that had greater incentive to join with the Mao-ists, the state targeted those borrowers. Household borrowing data comes from theCentral Bureau of Statistics of Nepal Government (CBS-Nepal) and its agriculturalcensus of 2001.51 In the analysis performed, I controlled for other coping mechan-isms adopted by insufficient households. According to CBS-Nepal, there were439,592 households that were insufficient for 1–3 months, 877,362 households thatwere insufficient for 4–6 months, 342,040 households that were insufficient for 7–9months, and 357,544 households that were insufficient for 10–12 months in a year.Among these households, 241,975 households opted to borrow; 1,390,038 house-holds earned income within the district, 174,393 households earned income withinthe country, and 266,421 households opted to earn income outside the country.
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Among the insufficient households, 165,793 were identified as having looked forother resources to cope with insufficiency.52 This last category of households is there-fore not used in the analysis.
In the analysis performed, I controlled for other theoretically relevant variables.Population pressure is related to higher state repression.53 The existence of a largerpopulation places stress on national resources and a state facing growing redistribu-tive demands has no option but to use repression.54 Therefore, I control for the sizeof district population. This variable is logged and comes from the population censusof CBS Nepal.55 Fearon and Laitin found a relationship between rough terrain andinsurgency.56 Rough terrain not only provides safe sanctuaries for rebels, it alsomakes it difficult for the state to project its authority and control populations. Nepalis divided into three different ecological zones: Mountain, Hill, and Tarai (plainland). In the analysis performed, I control for Hill and Tarai regions. These two vari-ables are coded dichotomously. Lawoti suggests that ethnic marginalization was oneof the factors that influenced the amount of support given to the Maoist insur-gency.57 Therefore, I also control for the caste and ethnic fractionalization. Thisvariable comes from Joshi and Mason.58
Previous studies found that a low Human Development Index (HDI) was relatedto a higher level of casualties during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.59 Therefore, Ialso control for the HDI for each district. I used the HDI index for 2001, whichcomes from the UNDP.60 Joshi and Mason used different types of land tenure pat-terns, including landlessness, in their analysis of the pattern of state killings duringthe Maoist insurgency in Nepal.61 Since this study conceptualizes grievances in termsof livelihood coping mechanisms of insufficiency households, the inclusion of landtenure variables do not add much. Furthermore, land tenure variables were highlycorrelated with the subsistence coping mechanisms of insufficiency households.Therefore, land tenure variables, including the landless variable, were not includedin the analysis.
Method
Because the dependent variables are count variables (the total number of people killedby the state and the Maoists), the use of either Poisson or a negative binomial esti-mation model is appropriate. However, the marginal error is estimated downwardin the Poisson model, which inflates the z-score and could lead to an erroneousinterpretation of the estimators.62 For count data, a negative binomial model is pref-erable because standard errors are not estimated downward and the z-score is notinflated.63 Therefore, I used a negative binomial estimation technique in the analysis.
Findings and Analysis
A series of models were estimated with the total number of people killed by the stateand the Maoists as dependent variables. Results are presented in Table 1 and Table 2.Four different models are presented in Table 1: Models 1 and 2 have people killed bythe state as the dependent variable and Models 3 and 4 have people killed by theMaoists as the dependent variable. Controls for rough terrains, measured in termsof Hill and Tarai region and populations (log), were dropped from Models 2 and4. Also, the models presented in Table 1 do not include the sufficiency householdsvariable as these models were intended to analyze the effects of different livelihood
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Table
1.Insufficienthousehold’s
subsistence
copingmechanism
andpatternofstate
andMaoistkillingsduringMaoistinsurgency
inNepal,1996–2006
Variable
Killedbystate
KilledbyMaoists
Model
1Model
2Model
3Model
4
HH
borrowing(1000)
0.081��
�(0.024)
0.063��
�(0.018)
�0.045��
(0.018)
�0.064��
�(0.016)
HH
earningwithin
districts
(1000)
�0.075��
�(0.018)
�0.032��
(0.010)
0.008
(0.017)
0.044��
�(0.010)
HH
earningoutsidedistricts
(1000)
�0.043
(0.047)
�0.023
(0.040)
�0.045
(0.034)
�0.041
(0.034)
HH
earningoutsidecountry(1000)
0.021
(0.015)
0.041�
(0.017)
�0.019
(0.016)
�0.012
(0.017)
Killedbystate
0.004��
�(0.001)
0.005��
�(0.001)
KilledbyMaoists
0.010��
�(0.001)
0.013��
�(0.002)
Population2001(log)
0.930��
�(0.262)
0.792��
�(0.238)
Hillregion
0.151
(0.141)
�0.312
(0.180)
Tarairegion
�0.050
(0.193)
�0.687��
(0.238)
Casteandethnic
fractionalization
0.343
(0.760)
0.483
(0.864)
2.691��
(1.009)
2.599�
(1.072)
HumanDevelopmen
tIndex
2001
�1.676
(1.364)
�0.355
(0.908)
�3.006�
(1.332)
�2.145�
(1.060)
Constant
�6.126�
(2.820)
3.719��
�(0.630)
�6.573�
(2.607)
1.836�
(0.908)
=lnalpha
�1.540��
�(0.207)
�1.183��
�(0.292)
�1.606��
�(0.222)
�1.396��
�(0.249)
LR
Chi2
131.034
89.407
114.046
66.135
pvalue
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
Logpseudolikelihood
�380.760
�394.316
�343.109
�352.551
Robust
standard
errors
reported.� p
<.05,��p<.01,��
� p<.001.
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Table
2.Sufficiency
householdsandpatternofstate
andMaoistkillingsduringMaoistinsurgency
inNepal,1996–2006
Variable
Killedbystate
KilledbyMaoists
Model
1Model
2Model
3Model
4
HH
sufficient(1000)
�0.002
(0.013)
�0.002
(0.008)
0.022�
(0.009)
0.029��
�(0.006)
HH
borrowing(1000)
0.082��
(0.027)
0.030�
(0.015)
�0.063��
�(0.019)
�0.043��
�(0.011)
HH
earningwithin
districts
(1000)
�0.076��
�(0.019)
0.013
(0.017)
HH
earningoutsidedistricts
(1000)
�0.042
(0.046)
�0.064
(0.033)
HH
earningoutsidecountry(1000)
0.020
(0.018)
�0.004
(0.017)
Killedbystate
0.004��
�(0.001)
0.004��
�(0.001)
KilledbyMaoists
0.010��
�(0.001)
0.012��
�(0.002)
Population2001(log)
0.945��
(0.341)
0.561�
(0.279)
Hillregion
0.148
(0.142)
�0.256
(0.179)
Tarairegion
�0.042
(0.208)
�0.825��
�(0.229)
Casteandethnic
fractionalization
0.345
(0.763)
�0.895
(1.000)
2.791��
(0.941)
2.752��
(1.009)
HumanDevelopmen
tIndex
2001
�1.681
(1.374)
�1.509
(1.092)
�2.908�
(1.262)
�0.760
(0.932)
Constant
�6.289
(3.667)
5.061��
�(0.738)
�4.245
(3.032)
1.299
(0.892)
=lnalpha
�1.540��
�(0.207)
�1.020��
�(0.259)
�1.696��
�(0.223)
�1.378��
�(0.261)
LR
Chi2
136.310
54.218
153.512
90.469
pvalue
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
Logpseudolikelihood
�380.751
�399.814
�340.750
�353.574
Robust
standard
errors
reported.� p
<.05,��p<.01,��
� p<.001.
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coping mechanisms on the use of violence during the insurgency. Four additionalmodels are presented in Table 2, which includes sufficiency households. In Models2 and 4, all other types of insufficiency coping mechanisms were dropped, exceptborrowing households. These two models do not control for rough terrain andpopulation.
As expected, I found statistically significant support for the hypothesis that, dur-ing the insurgency in Nepal, the state’s use of violence was targeted at borrowinghouseholds. In other words, the number of people killed by the state was higherin a district with a higher number of households that borrowed to meet their basicsubsistence needs. The estimated coefficient is 0.063, which is statistically significant(p< .001, Model 2, Table 1). In contrast, the number of people the Maoists killedwas, in comparison, negative in a district with a higher number of households thatborrowed to meet their subsistence needs. The estimated coefficient is �0.064 andstatistically significant at the .001 levels of significance (Model 4, Table 1). TheMaoists did not target borrowing households.
These two findings held when I included sufficiency households in Models 1–4 inTable 2. This supports the argument that the aggrieved population assisted theinsurgency by providing intelligence, recruits, and shelter for the Maoist rebels. Asa result, they became targets of state violence. Since local patrons could easilyidentify potential supporters of the Maoists, state security forces cooperated withthese local patrons and received good intelligence from them. In the analysis per-formed, the estimated coefficient related to the number of killings perpetrated bythe state for the sufficiency households is negative but statistically insignificant. Thisfinding suggests that the state did not target the local patrons, which is consistentwith the theoretical argument. Yet the Maoists killed more people in those districtswith a higher number of sufficiency households, thus targeting their violence at localpatrons. The estimated coefficient for the sufficiency households is 0.029 and signifi-cant at the .001 levels of significance (Table 2, Model 4). This finding supports Joshiand Mason’s contention that it was a common occurrence for rebel combatants inNepal to storm patrons’ homes in order to destroy their records of credits givento the local peasants.64
When combined, these two findings suggest that the level of household subsist-ence is a factor that correlates with the use of violence. Killing by both sides duringthe Maoist insurgency in Nepal was not indiscriminate. Rather, both sides strategi-cally targeted their violence to achieve specific objectives. The state used violence inan attempt to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the local patronswho were providing them with support. The Maoists, in order to secure supportfrom the aggrieved population, used targeted violence against those who had econ-omically, politically, and socially oppressed the marginalized and insufficient house-holds.
Among other types of subsistence insufficiency coping mechanisms, the numberof people killed by the state is likely to decrease in a district with a higher number ofhouseholds that did not leave a district to find work as laborers. This finding is con-sistent across all models (Models 1 and 2 in Table 1 and Model 1 in Table 2). Theestimated coefficient is negative 0.032 and statistically significant (Table 1, Model2, p< .01). This finding is not surprising: households that seek to meet their subsist-ence needs by doing labor work within the district must move to follow work andtherefore cannot provide sanctuary for the Maoists. In the analysis performed, how-ever, I found a positive relationship between this type of household and the Maoist
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killings. But the relationship is statistically significant only in Model 3 when I controlfor Hill and Tarai regions. Even though this finding is inconsistent across the modelspresented in Table 1 and Table 2, it warrants some clarification. A partial expla-nation of this finding could lie in the Maoists’ strategy of intimidating and banishingthose with different political ideologies from their villages.65 In their strongholds, theMaoists purposefully killed or forced their political opposition out of the villages.Those who left their villages spent their lives as refugees, generally fleeing to a districtheadquarter where the state could provide security. Since the number of people killedby the state is negatively related to the households’ earnings within the district, butpositively related to the number of people killed by the Maoists, this is the onlyplausible explanation. Other subsistence mechanisms had no statistically significanteffect on the number of killings. Among other control variables, I found that HDI2001 had a negative effect across all models regardless of whether it was the Maoistsor the state enacting the killings. But the finding is significant only in Models 3 and 4(Table 1) and Model 3 (Table 2). This suggests that the Maoists were less likely to killpeople in a district with a higher HDI score. The estimated coefficient is negative2.791 and is statistically significant at the .01 levels of significance (Model 3,Table 1). This finding corroborates the earlier findings by Joshi and Mason as wellas those of Murshed and Gates.66
In the analysis performed, I found that the number of people the state killed waslikely to be higher in a district with a higher number of Maoist killings. This findingis significant across all models. The estimated coefficient is 0.010 for the Maoist kill-ings (Table 1, Model 2). Similarly, the Maoists were likely to kill more people in adistrict with a higher number of people killed by the state. The estimated coefficientis 0.004 and is statistically significant (p< .001, Model 4, Table 2). This findingsuggests a reciprocal strategy adopted by both sides of the conflict. Among othercontrols, I found a positive relationship between population (log) and state killing.This finding is consistent with the human rights literature that suggests that the stateis likely to use repression when faced with growing redistributive demands. Theestimated coefficient for the population is 0.954 (p< .001, Model 1, Table 2). Thesize of the population is also related to the number of people the Maoists killed.67
The estimated coefficient for the population and Maoist killing is 0.561 and isstatistically significant (p< .05, Model 3, Table 2).
I did not find any statistically significant support for the relationship betweenrough terrain and state killings. However, the estimated coefficient for the Tarairegion is negative, but the relationship is significant only for the Maoist killings. Thisfinding suggests that the Maoists were less likely to kill people in the Tarai region incomparison to the mountain region. The estimated coefficient is negative 0.687 andsignificant across all models (p< .001, Table 1). This finding is inconsistent withother quantitative studies on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. In their study, Joshiand Mason suggested rough terrain did not have any effect on the number of kill-ings.68 Since the conflict was felt across all ecological regions in Nepal to a varyingdegree, it is safe to say that this particular finding in this study is inconclusive.
Caste and ethnic fractionalization has a significant and positive relationship toMaoist killings. This suggests that the Maoists were more likely to kill people inethnically fractionalized districts. This finding is consistent with the argument thatgrievances along ethnic lines were a cause of the insurgency in Nepal.69 In Nepal,ethnic minorities and people in the lower castes were systematically marginalizedby state institutions and the civil administration. Their access to resources was
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limited. This provided an opportunity for the Maoists to mobilize the structurallymarginalized minority against the majority.
To summarize, the empirical findings presented in Tables 1 and 2 suggest thatthe level of violence by the state and the Maoists varied with the distribution ofhouseholds and different types of subsistence mechanisms in a district. The Maoistswere more likely to kill people in a district with high levels of subsistence sufficienthouseholds, and the state was more likely to kill those who borrowed to meet theirdaily subsistence needs. Both the state and the Maoists used targeted violence byutilizing local intelligence.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this study has theoretically clarified the importance of households’subsistence mechanisms and how certain households in a district are vulnerable toviolence depending on their subsistence security or insecurity. I presented theoreticaland empirical evidence of how economic interactions in the local setting provideddifferent mechanisms for mobilizing local populations during the Maoist insurgency.This mode of interaction, when the insurgency arrived in the villages, providedincentives for the borrowing households to cooperate with the Maoists in the hopethat the insurgency would redress their grievances against the local patrons whoexploited them. Therefore, the Maoists ended up targeting local patrons duringthe conflict. When they prevailed, the Maoists captured the property of the localpatrons and allowed the local peasants to utilize it. They also freed indebted house-holds by burning the mortgage documents they had obtained from those localpatrons.
On the other hand, given their proximity and the nature of their relationships,local patrons were able to identify Maoists as well as the members of their com-munity who were likely to be their potential supporters. As a result, local patronscooperated with state security forces and identified aggrieved households (bor-rowers) who were then targeted and killed by the state. While the prevalent theoriesof violent conflict have stressed the importance of the variation in social and econ-omic characteristics, studies have not considered the interplay between local patrons,local populations, and subsistence security. Nor have they considered how the inter-action of these factors can engender different mechanisms of violence perpetrated byboth sides of the conflict. This study has tried to address the gap in this literature byhighlighting the importance of understanding local economic interactions in order toexplain insurgency violence.
Findings from this study have some policy implications that are particularly rel-evant to avoiding a relapse of violent conflict in Nepal. During the conflict, the Mao-ists were able to recruit many supporters from the mid-western and far western partsof Nepal. These are areas where the subsistence security of households is very low. Itis also an area where, given their electoral performance in 1991, the Maoists clearlyhad cultivated a secure base. While the insurgency may have succeeded, locals stillstruggle to meet their subsistence needs.
After signing a peace agreement in November 2006, Nepal has made greatprogress towards political transformation. Despite the significant political progressmade in the post-accord period, the politics in Nepal has been embroiled in a powerstruggle amongst the major political parties. The Maoist party is no exception. Infact, internal division in the Maoist party has brought the peace process to the brink
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of collapse. This is mostly due to the fact that a hardliner faction, which hassympathy and support from foot soldiers, still prefers revolution to peace anddemocracy. This divisiveness has rendered the governance in post-conflict Nepalinstable and ineffective. As a result, economic and social reform agendas have beensidelined, and the peace dividend has not materialized. The marginalization and pov-erty that provided fertile ground for the Maoists to gain support remains unad-dressed and unchanged. Economic well-being is a proven factor in avoiding therecurrence of civil war.70 Walter contends that individuals ‘‘choose to re-enlist withrebel organizations when conditions at home are dire.’’71 Therefore, in order toestablish sustainable peace, policies that improve the material well-being of the poormust be pursued.
The focus should be on rebuilding Nepal’s infrastructure that was destroyedduring the conflict. Attempts should be made to engineer sustainable developmentprojects that create opportunities for the local population to earn their livelihood.A policy of accessible institutional credit would make peasant households lessvulnerable to local patrons. If Nepal fails to systematically change the pattern ofeconomic interactions in the local political setting, it is likely that those segmentsof the population that provided support to the Maoists would renew their supportof an armed insurgency. Therefore, economic reform in Nepal should focus on attain-ing sustainable development and human security by adopting a range of policies.In this regard, preferential policies that address the grievances of the poor and themarginalized segments of populations, policies that ensure the effective delivery ofpublic goods and services, policies that prioritize wealth creation and redistribution,human capital formation, and policies that promote inclusive economic growth,should all be promoted.
Without economic reform, the political and democratic change that led to thebirth of a republic nation might not be institutionalized. Greater economic opportu-nities would not only free poor households from the grip of local patrons but wouldalso incentivize reconciliations at the local levels in Nepal. Without socio-economicreforms, the class conflict will remain as is. This will, at the very least, exacerbatesocial harmony. At its worst, it could be the reason that Nepal sees a return tofull-fledged armed conflict.
Notes
1. Internal fractionalization within the Nepali Congress (NC) is often said to have beenthe cause of that party’s defeat. But the NC had contested elections as a unified party and theirelectoral vote increased=decreased from the 1991 to 1994 elections.
2. World Bank, World Development Indicator (Washington DC: World Bank, 2010),http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.
3. See Jeff Goodwin and Theda Skocpol, ‘‘Explaining Revolutions in the ContemporaryWorld,’’ Politics and Society 17, no. 4 (1989): 489–509, 495; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler,‘‘On Economic Causes of Civil War,’’ Oxford Economic Papers 50, no. 4 (1998): 563–573; andPaul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom, ‘‘Post-conflict Risks,’’ Journal of PeaceResearch 45, no. 4 (2008): 461–478.
4. Collier and Hoeffler (see note 3 above).5. Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, ‘‘Civil Wars in the Post-Colonial World,
1946–1992,’’ Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 275–299.6. Michael Hutt, ed., Himalayan ‘‘People’s War’’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 2004); Mahendra Lawoti and Anup K. Pahari, eds., The MaoistInsurgency in Nepal: Dynamics and Growth in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2009);
836 M. Joshi
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Mahendra Lawoti, Towards a Democratic Nepal: Inclusive Political Institutions for aMulticultural Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005); and Madhav Joshi and T. DavidMason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy, and Insurgency in Nepal: Peasant Support for Insurgencyversus Democracy,’’ Asian Survey 47, no. 3 (2007): 393–414; Madhav Joshi and T. DavidMason, Between Democracy and Revolution: Peasant Support for Insurgency versusDemocracy in Nepal,’’ Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 6 (2008): 765–782.
7. Joshi and Mason (see note 6 above).8. Ibid.9. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).10. James D. Fearon and David Laitin, ‘‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,’’ American
Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90; and Collier and Hoeffler (see note 3 above).11. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy M. Weinstein,‘‘Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War,’’ American Journal of PoliticalScience 52, no. 2 (2008): 436–455.
12. Claire M. Metelits, Inside Insurgency: Violence, Civilians, and Revolutionary GroupBehavior (New York: New York University Press, 2009).
13. Lisa Hultman, ‘‘Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting,’’Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 2 (2007): 205–222; and Reed M. Wood, ‘‘RebelCapability and Strategic Violence against Civilians,’’ Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 5(2010): 601–614.
14. Madhav Joshi and T. David Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy, and Patterns ofViolence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, 1996–2005,’’ Social Science Quarterly 91,no. 4 (2010): 984–1006.
15. Kalyvas (see note 9 above).16. Ibid.17. For pattern of violence explanation in previous studies, see Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land
Tenure, Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (note 14 above); S. Mansoob Murshed andScott Gates, ‘‘Spatial-horizontal Inequality and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,’’ Review ofDevelopment Economics 9, no. 1 (2005): 121–134.
18. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence inSoutheast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
19. Joshi and Mason (note 6 above).20. For the text of the Maoists’ 40-point demand, see South Asia Terrorism Portals,
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/nepal/document/papers/40points.htm.21. Bishnu Pathak, Armed Conflict and Peace Process in Nepal (New Delhi: Adroit
Publishers, 2008), 97.22. INSEC, No. of Victims Killed by State and Maoist in Connection with the ‘‘People’s
War’’ (Kathmandu: Author, 2006), http://insec.org.np/pics/1247467500.pdf.23. International Crisis Group, Nepal Backgrounder: Ceasefire—Soft Landing or
Strategic Pause,? Asia Report N�50 (Brussels: Author, 2003).24. South Asia Terrorism Portal, Nepal Terrorist Groups-Communist Party of
Nepal-Maoist, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/nepal/terroristoutfits/index.html.25. INSEC, Conflict Victims Profile (Kathmandu: Author, 2009), http://www.
insec.org.np/victim/.26. This is not meant to imply that the Maoists did not use repression and exploitation
during the insurgency. They used coercion, intimidation, and indoctrination while fightingthe insurgency. Also see, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, ‘‘Terror in a Maoist Model Village,Mid-western Nepal,’’ Dialectical Anthropology 33, nos. 3-4 (2009): 383–401.
27. For further information on civilian attacks in armed conflicts, see Kristine Eck andLisa Hultman, ‘‘One-Sided Violence against Civilians in War,’’ Journal of Peace Research44, no. 2 (2007): 233–246; for further information on civilian victims in armed conflict, seeBethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, ‘‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A NewDataset of Battle Deaths,’’ European Journal of Population 21, no. 3 (2005): 145–166.
28. Hazem Adam Ghobarah, Paul Huth, and Bruce Russett, ‘‘Civil Wars Kill and MaimPeople—Long After the Shooting Stops,’’ American Political Science Review 97, no. 2 (2003):189–202.
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29. T. David Mason ‘‘Non-Elite Response to State-Sanctioned Terror,’’Western PoliticalQuarterly 42, no. 4 (1989): 476–492, 469.
30. Kalyvas (see note 9 above).31. Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, ‘‘Draining the Sea: Mass
Killing and Guerrilla Warfare,’’ International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 375–407; andWood (see note 13 above).
32. T. David Mason and Dale A. Krane, ‘‘The Political Economy of Death Squads:Toward a Theory of the Impact of State-Sanctioned Terror,’’ International Studies Quarterly33, no. 2 (1989): 175–198; Mark Irving Lichbach, The Rebel’s Dilemma (Ann Arbor, MI:University of Michigan Press, 1995); and Kalyvas (see note 6 above).
33. Wood (see note 13 above), 603.34. Will H. Moore, ‘‘Rational Rebels: Overcoming the Free-Rider Problem,’’ Political
Research Quarterly 48, no. 2 (1995): 417–454, 434.35. Jason Lyall, ‘‘Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from
Chechnya,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 3 (2009): 331–362.36. Ibid. While it is true that popular support for the Chechen insurgency decreased in
Russia, this does not mean that the aggrieved segment of the population changed their mindand supported the government. The decline in insurgent attacks and civilian support was theresult of the state’s bombardments that forced the civilians to flee those areas.
37. Lichbach (see note 32 above); and T. David Mason, ‘‘Insurgency, Counterinsurgency,and the Rational Peasant,’’ Public Choice 86, no. 1 (1996): 63–83, 66.
38. Wood (see note 13 above). Recent studies have considered insurgent violencetargeting non-combatants from the perspective of availability of local resources, Weinstein;Humphreys and Weinstein (see note 11 above). Resources are not constant over time and mul-tiple armed groups can contest for the same pool of resources. Therefore, Metelits (see note 12above) presents a theory of resource competition.
39. Humphreys and Weinstein (see note 11 above); Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure,Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 13 above); Scott (see note 16 above); and Patri-cia Justino, ‘‘Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective on the Causes and Dur-ation of Warfare,’’ Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 3 (2009): 315–333.
40. See Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Insurgency’’ (note 6 above).41. Metelits (see note 12 above). Her work explains how local patrons (big land owners)
forged a coalition with the state military against the FARC, which led to the demise ofFARC’s political wing.
42. Kalyvas (see note 9 above); and Alexander B. Downes, ‘‘Draining the Sea by Fillingthe Graves: Investigating the Effectiveness of Indiscriminate Violence as a CounterinsurgencyStrategy,’’ Civil Wars 9, no. 4 (2007): 420–444, 421.
43. Pathak (see note 21 above).44. Hutt (see note 6 above), 16.45. Ibid.; International Crisis Group (see note 23 above).46. Madhav Joshi, ‘‘Between Clientelistic Dependency and Liberal Market Economy:
Rural Support for Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,’’ in Mahendra Lawoti and Anup Pahari,eds., The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Dynamics and Growth in the 21st Century (London:Routledge, 2009), 92–112.
47. Bishnu Pathak, Politics of People’s War and Human Rights in Nepal (Kathmandu:BIMIPA Publication, 2005), 98.
48. Justino (see note 39 above).49. INSEC (see note 22 above).50. Central Bureau of Statistics, Agriculture Census 2001: HMG Nepal (Kathmandu:
Author, 2001), http://cbs.gov.np/agriculture_district.php.51. Ibid.52. Ibid.53. Steven C. Poe and Neal Tate, ‘‘Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in
the 1980s: A Global Analysis,’’ American Political Science Review 88, no. 4 (1994): 853–872.54. Ibid., 875.55. Central Bureau of Statistics, Population Census 2001: HMG Nepal (Kathmandu:
Author, 2001), http://cbs.gov.np/national_report_2001.php.56. Fearon and Laitin (see note 10 above).
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57. Mahendra Lawoti, Towards a Democratic Nepal: Inclusive Political Institutions for aMulticultural Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005).
58. Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Between Democracy and Revolution’’ (note 6 above).59. Murshed and Gates (note 17 above); and Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure,
Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 14 above).60. UNDP, Nepal Human Development Report 2004: Empowerment and Poverty
Reduction (Kathmandu: Author, 2004).61. Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 14
above); Murshed and Gates also used landless gap (see note 17 above).62. J. Scott Long, Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997); and William H. Greene, Econometric Analysis (UpperSaddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002).
63. Ibid.64. See Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Insurgency’’ (note 6 above).65. Pathak (see note 21 above); and Lecomte-Tilouine (see note 26 above).
Lecomte-Tilouine provides an anthropological explanation of the terror used by the Maoistparty in a village fully controlled by the Maoists in the mid-western part of Nepal.
66. Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 14above); and Murshed and Gates (see note 57 above).
67. The number of Maoists killings is perhaps related to the way in which the governmentresponded to the Maoist insurgency.
68. Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 14above).
69. Lawoti (see note 6 above).70. Barbara F. Walter, ‘‘Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War,’’
Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 371–388.71. Ibid., 380.
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