Civilian Strategy in Civil War : Insights From Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines

While typically the victims of war, civilians are not necessarily passive recipients of violence. What options are available to civilians in times of war? This book suggests three broad strategies - flight, support, and voice. It focuses on three conflicts: Aceh, Indonesia; Patani, southern Thailand; and Mindanao, southern Philippines. While typically the victims of war, civilians are not necessarily passive recipients of violence. What options are available to civilians in times of war? Offering a modification of Hirschman's class schema, this book suggests three broad strategies - flight, support, and voice - and various combinations that arise from them. This schema provides a useful tool for understanding how civilians react to a wide range of armed conflicts. By disaggregating "civilians" into regions and social group, the study moves toward a theory of civilian action that emphasizes socio-cultural norms as much as conflict dynamics and security concerns "A powerful and much-needed study on the role of civilians caught up in civil wars and conflicts. While most studies build on the false dichotomy of civilian and combatant, Barter's ethnographic work unearths the space in-between. This accessible book shatters facile notions of victimhood and is a necessary resource for anyone who wishes to understand wars, conflicts and paths to their resolutions."--Michael Jerryson, Youngstown State University, USA "This is an important book. Shane Barter upends conventional approaches to civil war by placing civilians and their strategies at the center of analysis. Instead of viewing ordinary people as mere passive victims of war, Barter shows how they are active agents in creating their own fates, weighing and deciding between often agonizing choices. Written with deep sensitivity, this book challenges how we think about civil war."--Edward Aspinall, Australian National University "This book offers a fascinating account of choices civilians make in civil war. Through an impressive array of interviews in difficult conditions, Barter unveils a much more complex fresco of the strategies that they adopt not only to survive but to defend their status or courageously defy their oppressors. Through the lens of intensive fieldwork primarily in Aceh, this study is a useful corrective to accounts of civil war that place too much emphasis on armed combatants, which sheds new light on how local people negotiate the surrounding violence and destruction.' - Jacques Bertrand, University of Toronto, Canada Cover 1 Civilian Strategy in Civil War 4 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Preface 10 Acknowledgments 12 Chapter 1 Introduction: Civilian Strategy in Civil War 14 Chapter 2 Toward a Theory of Civilian Strategy 22 Chapter 3 Empirical Foundations, Aceh 46 Chapter 4 Aceh’s Civilians in War 72 Chapter 5 Explaining Civilian Strategies in Aceh 105 Chapter 6 Comparisons, Patani 139 Chapter 7 Comparisons, Mindanao 170 Chapter 8 Civilian Strategy: Theory and Practice 201 Notes 217 Bibliography 232 Index 247 Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction: Civilian Strategy in Civil War....Pages 1-8 Toward a Theory of Civilian Strategy....Pages 9-32 Empirical Foundations, Aceh....Pages 33-58 Aceh’s Civilians in War....Pages 59-91 Explaining Civilian Strategies in Aceh....Pages 93-126 Comparisons, Patani....Pages 127-157 Comparisons, Mindanao....Pages 159-189 Civilian Strategy: Theory and Practice....Pages 191-206 Back Matter....Pages 207-245