Friend or Foe : Militia Intelligence and Ethnic Violence in the Lebanese Civil War

Under what circumstances are civil-war combatants more or less likely to commit ethnic violence? Nils Hägerdal examines the Lebanese civil war to offer a new theory that highlights the interplay of ethnicity and intelligence gathering. When civil conflicts break out in plural societies, violence often occurs along group divides—running the risk of spiraling into ethnic cleansing. Yet for militants who do not seek ethnic separation as a political goal, indiscriminate attacks are detrimental to their cause. Under what circumstances are such combatants more or less likely to commit ethnic violence? Nils Hägerdal examines the Lebanese civil war to offer a new theory that highlights the interplay of ethnicity and intelligence gathering. He shows that when militias can obtain reliable intelligence—particularly in demographically intermixed areas where information can cross ethnic boundaries—they are likely to refrain from indiscriminate tactics. Access to local intelligence helps armed groups distinguish between neutral and hostile non-coethnics to target individual opponents while leaving civilians in peace. Conversely, when militias struggle to access local information, they often fall back on ethnicity as a proxy for political allegiance, with bloody consequences. As intelligence capabilities shape the course of sectarian strife, the role of ethnicity can vary even within a particular conflict. Hägerdal conducted sixteen months of fieldwork in Lebanon, interviewing former militia fighters and commanders and collecting novel statistical evidence. He combines documentation by government agencies, NGOs, local news media, and the United Nations with firsthand narratives by participants to provide an unparalleled account of the processes that generate violence or coexistence when a diverse society descends into armed conflict. Theoretically innovative and descriptively rich, Friend or Foe sheds new light on the logic and dynamics of ethnic violence in civil wars. "In wars fought across an ethnic divide many combatants use ethnicity as a proxy for political loyalties because it is an easy informational shortcut. What is more difficult - for those armed groups that do not seek ethnic separation as a political goal - is to correctly identify non-coethnics who remain neutral and distinguish this group from those who pose a military threat. How do armed groups gather intelligence in civil wars? Under what conditions will they rely on ethnicity as a heuristic device, and when do they utilize other kinds of intelligence? In this book, Hägerdal argues that the role of ethnicity can vary even within the same conflict. When other modes of intelligence collection become too resource-demanding many armed groups resort to ethnic cleansing as a last option: information is costly, and ethnicity is a cheap source of an expensive good. Hägerdal explores the role of ethnicity, violence, and intelligence-gathering through the study of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990, using a novel nationwide dataset covering over 1,400 villages or neighborhoods and more than 70 interviews conducted in English and Arabic during 16 months of fieldwork. This novel study marks an innovative contribution to the literatures on ethnic cleansing, civil war violence, and the politics of sectarianism in the Arab World"-- Provided by publisher