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Livelihood Coping Mechanisms, Local Intelligence, and the Pattern of Violence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal Madhav Joshi

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Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame , Notre Dame , Indiana , USA Published online: 25 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Madhav Joshi (2013) Livelihood Coping Mechanisms, Local Intelligence, and the Pattern of Violence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, Terrorism and Political Violence, 25:5, 820-839 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/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 Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA While fighting insurgency, both state and non-state groups depend on the local population for valuable resources such as food, intelligence, and security. By using a repertoire of subsistence coping mechanisms available to households in the context of the local political economy as an indicator of grievances and mechanisms of interactions between local households and the state and insurgents, district level data from Nepal on Maoist conflict is used to test hypotheses regarding state and insurgent violence. The analysis confirms that the state was more likely to kill people in a district where the number of households that borrowed to cope with subsistence was high. The Maoists were more likely to kill in a district with a higher number of subsistence sufficient households. Keywords insurgency, livelihood mechanisms, insurgency, Nepal, targeted violence

local

intelligence,

Maoist

The Maoist insurgency in Nepal began in February 1996, only six years after the country had transitioned to a parliamentary democracy. This transition took place in 1990, after a people’s movement brought the downfall of the king’s 30-year direct rule under the panchayat system. In 1991, along with other political parties, the Maoist party (at the time, known as United People’s Front Nepal, or UPFN) contested the first parliamentary elections. The democratic system introduced in 1990 afforded the aggrieved segments of the population platforms for their political aspirations. This included the power to vote out the incumbent government and organize street protests. The power to replace the current government was actualized when the incumbent Nepali Congress Party lost the 1994 mid-term elections.1 Nepal also made gradual economic progress during this time. According to the World Bank, the GDP per capita in Nepal grew at the average rate of 5% from 1990 to 1996. In the same period, the distribution of telephone lines doubled.2 Infant mortality declined from 99 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 63 in 2000. The youth literacy 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 Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre 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]

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successfully transitioned to a parliamentary democracy and subsequently sustained a reasonable economic growth, the country should have successfully avoided further outbreaks of violent insurgency.3 After all, economic development should incentivize avoiding costly conflicts.4 Similarly, democratic institutions are formed to channel opposition movements into electoral competitions, and opportunities to form political parties and vie for elected office should prevent a young democracy from slipping into violence.5 Studies conducted by Hutt, Lawoti, Lawoti and Pahari, and Joshi and Mason emphasize that the structural persistence of poverty, as well as the socio-economic inequality and sustained marginalization of ethnic minorities from accessing state power and resources, were conditions that catalyzed the outbreak of armed conflict in Nepal.6 Further studies of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal portray how the poor households that were prevented from voting for their preferred candidates were later mobilized by the Maoists, who promised to redress their socio-economic grievances against the local patrons.7 Indeed, democratic change and sustained economic development in Nepal did not bring substantial political and economic opportunities for those segments of the population who were dependent on local patrons for subsistence. Local patrons, who are protected by political parties, can easily coerce a marginalized segment of the population to vote according to their own agendas. This is attested to by the fact that after 1991, most of the redistributive policies (i.e., education, public health, etc.), in Nepal were carried out in the capital and other urban centers while the socio-economic situation in the rural parts of the country deteriorated due to cuts in subsidies. The government’s inability to address the needs of the marginalized segments of the population provided an opportunity for the UPFN to mobilize that population for insurgency.8 However, the factors that explain the outbreak of the insurgency are different from the factors that explain the pattern of violence used during the insurgency. The structural conditions of inequality and marginalization might have played an important role during the onset of violent conflict in Nepal. Kalyvas suggests that insurgent groups use both selective and indiscriminate violence against civilians in order to establish control over territories and populations.9 However, the studies of Collier and Hoeffler, and Fearon and Laitin contend that insurgents fight for individual welfare.10 It is important to note, however, that resources are not equally distributed or available for insurgents to seize during a conflict. Thus the level of violence may vary depending on the availability of local resources.11 Furthermore, multiple armed groups may vie for the same resources. Therefore, discriminate or indiscriminate violence may vary depending on rivalry for resources and how armed groups control or locate the resources necessary for their survival.12 The use of violence may also be a function of a rebel groups’ strength (for example, a rebel group that is weak or losing a battle may be more likely to increase their use of violence) or their capabilities.13 While these studies are important, they neither help us understand the variation in violence used by both sides of the conflict in the context of the local political economy nor explain how violence is utilized within a revolutionary insurgency that seeks to 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 relationship with the local population is equally important to their survival. Rebel groups should not overlook the important relationship that exists between group and population, even when they are considering looting that population’s resources. This is true 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 resources were not available for looting in Nepal. Yet during the insurgency, the state and the Maoists targeted their violence at very different segments of the population. What explains such variations? The fact that targeted violence can be used is a message to the community that the other side is unable to protect them. Most of the combatants from both sides of the conflict generally do not come from the same community. Therefore, targeted violence cannot be carried out without the cooperation 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 they find them among the civilians? The answer is that they must have assistance from the civilians in locating their targets. The same logic applies to the Maoists and their use of local intelligence to strategize their use of violence. This scenario emphasizes the role local intelligence plays in the planning and enacting of violence. This study focuses on the different patterns of violence used by the state and the Maoist rebels during the insurgency between 1996 and 2006. In any armed conflict, control over territory and population is strategically significant. However, how violence is targeted and utilized depends on whom the state wants to protect and what the insurgents intend to accomplish. The state often attempts to protect and maintain the political and socio-economic status quo. The rebels generally want to demonstrate the weakness of the state, not only by protecting the population that supports them, but also by exhibiting their capability to redress that population’s grievances by challenging the status quo. In the context of Nepal, the counterinsurgency measures adopted by the state were designed to reinforce the political and socio-economic status quo. At the very center of this plan was the securing of local patrons who provided legitimacy to the regime and controlled local communities.14 The Maoists’ objective was to destroy every barrier, and to overthrow the monarchy that reinforced the traditional allocation of power. In essence, the Maoists were challenging the state by targeting rural patrons, while the state was trying to protect the political and economic interests of those patrons in an effort to maintain the current structure of political power. Unlike previous studies on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, in which socioeconomic grievances are correlated to the level of violence, this study considers how the state and the Maoist rebels used targeted violence in the context of their rural political economy. The article also explores the relationship between households’ livelihood conditions and the patterns of violence during the insurgency from 1996 to 2006. This article contends that, while fighting insurgency, state and non-state groups depend on the local populations for valuable resources like food, intelligence, and security.15 Both sides compete for control over territory and population by targeting violence against the supporters of their rivals.16 In order to effectively utilize targeted violence, the protagonists must identify the segments of the population that are likely to provide useful intelligence. Targeted violence is efficient because it allows either side to avoid indiscriminate violence, which subsequently helps the perpetrators of violence maintain control over their territories and populations. This article, therefore, goes beyond previous studies on Maoist insurgency in Nepal and helps to understand the dynamics of violence used by the state and the Maoists.17 Local populations are able not only to provide intelligence, but also to offer a 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 the local 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 on local patrons for valuable intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the insurgents and their supporters. The differing subsistence coping mechanisms available to households, in the context of the rural political economy, may explain the various ways in which the local population and their patrons interact. If the local patrons were to address the grievances of the local population, then the local populations would have no reason to engage in any activities that would undermine the influence of their local patrons. But the relationship between local patrons and poorer households is often vertical and exploitative.18 With such a marked imbalance of power, it is almost impossible for the poor to lift themselves up from their socio-economic conditions. Thus for an aggrieved segment of the population in Nepal, aiding the Maoists could provide an opportunity for redressing their grievances against their local patrons. Similarly, since local patrons can easily identify those poorer households embedded in the network of patron-client relationships, they would be well placed to cooperate with the state security forces. This theory leads to the hypothesis that state violence in a district, when it is most effective, is targeted at the aggrieved segment 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 at the local patrons. I utilize district level data from Nepal to test these hypotheses. I found that during the Maoist insurgency, the state was likely to kill more people in a district with a higher number of households that borrowed to meet their subsistence needs, whereas the Maoists were likely to kill more people in a district with a higher number of subsistence sufficient households. Following this introduction, this article is divided into four sections. In the following section, I briefly discuss the evolution of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The second section reviews the existing literature surrounding the utilization of violence by rebels and states in civil wars. After discussing the relevant literature, I then develop a rural political economic framework and employ it to explain the pattern of targeted violence during the Maoist insurgency. From this I derived testable hypotheses. Section three develops a research design and empirically tests the hypotheses. The final section of this article concludes with a summary of the findings and the theoretical and policy implications these findings have in addressing socio-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 the mid-western districts of Rukum and Rolpa. Prior to the attack, the UPFN contested the 1991 and 1994 parliamentary elections. But during that time, structural inequality limited the party’s ability to build a significant electoral base among the marginalized segments of the populations because local patrons who control subsistence security for most rural voters forced them to vote for other parties or candidates against their own economic interests.19 Their electoral defeat did not stop the UPFN from advocating remedies for the country’s underlying socio-economic grievances. On 4 February 1996, the UPFN submitted a list of 40 demands to the government of Nepal. This list was ignored by the elected government.20 Though these demands were submitted with a 15-day window of consideration, the insurrection officially started four 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 in Rukum and Rolpa. These were areas that the government had previously suppressed in November of 1995, when a commando force was mobilized during Operation 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 was announced in July 2001. The Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), a prominent human rights organization with representatives throughout Nepal, reported that at the time of the ceasefire 1,689 people had been killed. Of these victims, 971 people had been killed by the state and 718 had been killed by the Maoists.22 The ceasefire lasted less than four months, and the Maoists used it strategically. During this time they were able to strengthen their military capability, release their supporters from government detention, and, more importantly, they intensified the insurgency with more frequent attacks. In November 2001, the government declared a state of emergency and, for the first time, mobilized the army to fight against the Maoist insurgency. Over the next year, the conflict became more intense and more widespread as the government’s counter-insurgency campaign penetrated into local communities in an effort to locate Maoist combatants and their supporters. In 2002, it was reported that 4,500 people were killed as a result of the insurgency. The government’s counter-insurgency was partly successful in that it forced the Maoist party to return to negotiations (for a second time) in January 2003. Yet these negotiations did not lead to long-lasting peace. Another three rounds of negotiations in August 2003 also failed. This was due in part to the fact that the Maoist were unwilling to discuss issues other than the elections for the constituent assembly.23 By 2003, the Government of Nepal 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 Maoists gained strength in the rural communities. During this time, the Maoists started to announce their own people’s government, or ‘‘Jana Sarkar,’’ and their own judicial system, called the people’s court (or kangaroo court). The elected government’s inability to defeat the insurgency prompted King Gyanendra to dismiss the civilian government in February of 2005, impose a state of emergency, and begin ruling directly. By curtailing civil liberties and suspending democracy altogether, King Gyanendra alienated civil society and the mainstream political parties. Discontented by the king’s move, seven political parties in the parliament organized a non-violent pro-democracy movement. The Maoists began to negotiate with these seven political parties, and eventually asked to join the opposition movement in July of 2005. The parties decided to allow the Maoists to join the opposition on the condition that they stop killing civilians. In April, the king restored the dissolved parliament, and the new 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 the transitional government and the parliament. In the Constituent Assembly elections of April 2008, the Maoist party won more seats than any other political party. After establishing themselves as the largest party, the Maoists led a coalition government for 8 months. The constituent assembly then declared Nepal a republic state and the king, relinquishing his role and power, left the palace. Over the eleven years of conflict, more than 13,000 people lost their lives and over 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 political landscape in Nepal: Nepal became a republic state, and elections for the Constituent Assembly (after almost 60 years of demanding that they take place) finally transpired. 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, there has been little progress made towards socio-economic reform. The social, political, and economic influence of the local patrons (big landholders, moneylenders, local businessmen, and civil servants at local levels) declined drastically after the war. This was due to the fact that the Maoists either killed these patrons or forced them to leave their villages during the conflict in order to free rural households from systemic repression and exploitation.26

State Versus Insurgent Violence Although the number of attacks against civilians has gone down since 1989, civilians are still the primary victims of civil war violence.27 Civilians also incur most of the indirect and often longstanding costs of conflict such as diseases, famine, and displacement.28 The use of violence in armed conflict is strategic because the side employing it, either government or rebel, expects that it will yield cooperation from civilians. However, violence does not usually induce cooperation and the excessive use of violence can turn civilian supporters away. After all, revolutions are often fought over and decided by the support of non-elites.29 Control of territory and population is often the central goal of both sides of the conflict, because each side is aware that the distribution of civilian support greatly affects the conflict’s outcome.30 The literature surrounding the topic of civilian support in civil wars suggests that insurgents, when they have received a high degree of civilian support, are less likely to target the civilians. However, the same literature also notes that state forces are more likely to use indiscriminate violence in an attempt to both punish civilians who support the insurgency and eradicate the insurgency itself.31 However, this indiscriminate use of violence by the state may assist rebels in recruiting and expanding their support bases.32 Yet such an expansion in force does not necessarily suggest that the rebels are capable of providing civilians protection from indiscriminate violence.33 Moore suggested that the indiscriminate use of violence only makes civilians indifferent to both the state and the insurgents.34 According to Lyall, indiscriminate violence’s effects are not uniform and are conditioned on the nature of the insurgent organization itself.35 For example, after the state employed violence indiscriminately against the Chechen insurgents, the insurgent attacks decreased and an aggrieved segment of the population turned their support away from the rebels.36 The reasons the civilians had for turning away from supporting the insurgents may be numerous, yet likely prevalent 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 order to induce civilian cooperation while relatively capable rebel groups, which can offer security or provide public goods to the civilians, can more easily avoid the need for the excessive use of violence.38 As these previous studies suggest, indiscriminate violence is not only counterproductive to a state fighting counterinsurgency, but also counterproductive 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 the intelligence such cooperation provides. Yet civilian cooperation is contingent on the local political economy: how individual households meet their basic subsistence needs and whether doing so involves interacting with local patrons. In the local political economic setting, individual households 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 between patrons and the clients who depend on them for subsistence security. An armed opposition changes local balance of power in favor of rebel groups and its supporters. By attacking patrons, the rebels undermine the local system that controls the economic activities and political behavior of poor households. For a rebel group trying to expand its support base, using selective violence serves two strategic objectives. First, it convinces poor or peasant households that their support of the insurgency will liberate them from the exploitation of the local patrons. Without credible commitments from the rebel side, it would be difficult for the local community to support the insurgency. Therefore, the second objective for the insurgents is to use violence against the local patrons. This helps induce greater civilian cooperation. Achieving these two objectives, however, is not possible without the cooperation of local populations. In order for the insurgents to be successful, these populations must provide support and sanctuary, and also gather intelligence. This intelligence is crucial to the success of the rebel group, who may not be privy to the nature of the grievances affecting the particular area where they are fighting. A mistake in selecting a target could hurt the group’s reputation and could scare away civilian support. The insurgents can only achieve a higher degree of confidence in selecting a target when the local population cooperates with them and provides them with the necessary intelligence. The state will often protect a community where insurgency threatens local patrons for two reasons. First, any state that depends on local patrons for the legitimacy of their regime and structurally relies on these patrons to subdue rural insurrection cannot afford to let the insurgents target local patrons for their economic and political purposes. Economically, local patrons assist the state in extracting resources from small communities. The ability to extract these resources politically empowers local patrons, and they can use this capacity to control the political behavior of the households that are dependent on them for their basic needs.40 Therefore, providing security 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 the state’s counterinsurgency strategy. It is almost impossible for the state’s security forces 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 security forces.41 Households that depend on local patrons for subsistence and credits to meet their basic needs have grievances against their local patrons. Furthermore, local patrons can easily identify these households, which literature suggests have a greater chance of supporting insurgency. Essentially, the state is able to use the local patrons and the intelligence they provide to construct a plan for targeted violence. This thereby enables them to create an effective counterinsurgency campaign. The local patrons are essential to the state because they can identify the civilians who actually provide support to the opposition. The state thus utilizes local patrons in order to undercut the insurgents’ fighting capacity and frustrate their ability to gather


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recruits, intelligence, and material support.42 Since poorer households pose greater risks to the status quo, the state is more likely to target those households that mostly depend 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-economic grievances to their fullest extent when they recruited combatants. The Maoists clearly laid out socio-economic reforms in their 40-point demand that the government ignored. And indeed many of these demands were set as pre-conditions for the peace talks in 2003. Such demands included, among other issues, the abolishment of feudalism, fair land distribution, debt reduction and cancellation, employment creation, labour issues, and establishing a minimum wage.43 By the time the peace talks took place in 2003, the government did not disagree with any of the socio-economic demands set forth by the Maoists. In fact, the government went a step further and proposed land reform, poverty reduction, and the implementation of equitable and balanced regional development.44 Yet, the Maoists dismissed the government’s proposal as ‘‘cosmetic’’ and insisted that systemic change transpire, calling for a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution.45 At the very heart of this demand was the Maoists’ commitment to addressing its support base’s socio-economic grievances. The earlier section of the article develops the argument that both sides of the conflict used socio-economic factors to select the targets of their violence. In the context of revolutionary insurgency, insurgent violence is likely to be targeted at relatively well-off households and against people who have exploited the community. In contrast, the state is likely to target the poorer households that could provide recruits, sanctuaries, intelligence, and other necessary support to insurgents. This theoretical argument helps to define the parameters of state as well as insurgent violence used in the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. It leads us now to a consideration of how the subsistence security of households in a district can define the parameters of 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 accumulated wealth through exploitation or earn a regular income as a government employee. Households in this category often provide subsistence to poorer households by providing lands for sharecropping or paying laborers, or a mix of both. These subsistence secure households also offer credit to poorer households that lack the collateral required to borrow money from formal sources.46 Such lending occurs frequently since borrowing from formal sources requires a guarantor, which is almost impossible for a poorer household to secure. As a result, borrowing from local patrons becomes a default option for poor households, which provides those giving the loans an opportunity to exploit those receiving them by imposing higher interest rates and other conditions for credits. In rural communities, it was often these underprivileged people that provided information to the Maoists. They helped target those patrons that were perceived as exploiters of the poor. The Maoists admitted that their strategy was the ‘‘annihilation of 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’s annihilation list were thus subsistence secure households. This, however, does not mean 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 may have avoided becoming a target of their violence. Nevertheless, as Justino suggests, there were very few strong economic households that would support the Maoists and their use of violence.48 Subsistence secure households in local communities are vulnerable to insurgent violence. Therefore, a district with a higher level of subsistence secure households should experience higher level of Maoist violence. This leads to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1 (H1): The Maoists were more likely to perpetrate violence in districts with a higher level of subsistence secure households.

Subsistence Insufficient Households Subsistence insufficient households are those households that do not annually meet their basic needs. Different mechanisms exist to overcome insufficiency. These include finding work as a laborer within the district, finding work as a laborer outside the district but within the country, finding work as a laborer outside the country, and remaining in the community and borrowing from local patrons. Some households may adopt more than one strategy to meet their needs. Households that depend on credits from local patrons are compelled to borrow at higher interest rates. Sometimes their deals may include servitude to local patrons. In contrast, those households that avoid borrowing from the patrons are relatively free from their exploitation. Households that borrow from local patrons generally remain within the community (in comparison to those households that seek laboring work outside the community), and are therefore the group that accumulates grievances against local patrons. Therefore, when these households are offered a life free from the feudalistic economics, marginalization, and exploitation, they are the ones most likely to support the Maoists. Since local patrons can easily identify them and have incentives to share intelligence to the state, borrowing households’ dependence on local patrons makes them vulnerable to state violence. As a result, the state is more likely to target more economically deprived segments of the population. Therefore, a district with a higher number of substance insecure households is more susceptible to state violence. This leads to the following hypothesis: H2: The state is more likely to perpetrate violence in districts with a higher level of subsistence insecure households that borrow in order to meet their subsistence needs. The logic of the theoretical argument presented above is based on the notion that a state, as well as insurgent groups, chooses its targets strategically and uses selective violence. 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 security forces. Subsistence insufficient households, particularly those that depend on local patrons and borrow for subsistence, have more incentive to cooperate with the Maoist insurgents.


Research Design I analyzed sub-national data from Nepal to test the stipulated hypotheses. Nepal is divided into 75 districts, and the unit of analysis used here is a district. The dependent variable is violence in a district measured in terms of the total number of people killed during the insurgency by the state’s forces and the Maoists. According 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, I controlled for the number of people killed by the Maoists when the number of people killed by the state was used as the dependent variable, and vice versa. Controlling for the number of people killed by the other side is important because many violent incidents might have taken place as a response to violence perpetrated by the opposite side. In the theory section, I argued that the aggrieved segment of the population would support the insurgency because they had everything to gain if their grievances were addressed through the revolution’s social, political, and economic changes. In order 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 households related to local patrons (big landholders, moneylenders, and local business owners) in a district. But data with these economic characteristics does not exist. Nevertheless, there is data providing the number of sufficient households that exist in a district. Sufficient households are the type of household that should contain the highest percentage of local patrons. Furthermore, these sufficiency households also interact with poorer households. Therefore I hypothesized that the Maoists would target more sufficiency households compared to the state (H1). According to CBS-Nepal there were 1,337,965 sufficiency households.50 During the Maoist insurgency, as H2 suggests, the state was more likely to kill borrowers. Given that the Maoists had received support from the aggrieved segment of the population that had been oppressed and exploited by the local patrons and structurally marginalized by the state, it was in the Maoists’ best interest to protect the borrowing households. Any insufficient household, as it struggles to meet its basic needs, may have grievances. Yet the borrowing households are more likely to be imbedded in the structure of patron-client relations. Since the local patrons could easily identify the borrowers that had greater incentive to join with the Maoists, the state targeted those borrowers. Household borrowing data comes from the Central Bureau of Statistics of Nepal Government (CBS-Nepal) and its agricultural census of 2001.51 In the analysis performed, I controlled for other coping mechanisms adopted by insufficient households. According to CBS-Nepal, there were 439,592 households that were insufficient for 1–3 months, 877,362 households that were insufficient for 4–6 months, 342,040 households that were insufficient for 7–9 months, 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 households earned income within the district, 174,393 households earned income within the 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 for other resources to cope with insufficiency.52 This last category of households is therefore 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 larger population places stress on national resources and a state facing growing redistributive demands has no option but to use repression.54 Therefore, I control for the size of district population. This variable is logged and comes from the population census of CBS Nepal.55 Fearon and Laitin found a relationship between rough terrain and insurgency.56 Rough terrain not only provides safe sanctuaries for rebels, it also makes it difficult for the state to project its authority and control populations. Nepal is divided into three different ecological zones: Mountain, Hill, and Tarai (plain land). In the analysis performed, I control for Hill and Tarai regions. These two variables are coded dichotomously. Lawoti suggests that ethnic marginalization was one of the factors that influenced the amount of support given to the Maoist insurgency.57 Therefore, I also control for the caste and ethnic fractionalization. This variable comes from Joshi and Mason.58 Previous studies found that a low Human Development Index (HDI) was related to a higher level of casualties during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.59 Therefore, I also control for the HDI for each district. I used the HDI index for 2001, which comes from the UNDP.60 Joshi and Mason used different types of land tenure patterns, including landlessness, in their analysis of the pattern of state killings during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.61 Since this study conceptualizes grievances in terms of livelihood coping mechanisms of insufficiency households, the inclusion of land tenure variables do not add much. Furthermore, land tenure variables were highly correlated with the subsistence coping mechanisms of insufficiency households. Therefore, land tenure variables, including the landless variable, were not included in the analysis. Method Because the dependent variables are count variables (the total number of people killed by the state and the Maoists), the use of either Poisson or a negative binomial estimation model is appropriate. However, the marginal error is estimated downward in the Poisson model, which inflates the z-score and could lead to an erroneous interpretation of the estimators.62 For count data, a negative binomial model is preferable because standard errors are not estimated downward and the z-score is not inflated.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 state and 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 by the state as the dependent variable and Models 3 and 4 have people killed by the Maoists as the dependent variable. Controls for rough terrains, measured in terms of Hill and Tarai region and populations (log), were dropped from Models 2 and 4. Also, the models presented in Table 1 do not include the sufficiency households variable as these models were intended to analyze the effects of different livelihood

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Robust standard errors reported. p < .05,

HH borrowing (1000) HH earning within districts (1000) HH earning outside districts (1000) HH earning outside country (1000) Killed by state Killed by Maoists Population 2001 (log) Hill region Tarai region Caste and ethnic fractionalization Human Development Index 2001 Constant =lnalpha LR Chi2 p value Log pseudolikelihood

Variable

p < .01,

(0.001) (0.262) (0.141) (0.193) (0.760) (1.364) (2.820) (0.207)

(0.024) (0.018) (0.047) (0.015)

p < .001.

0.010 0.930 0.151 0.050 0.343 1.676 6.126 1.540 131.034 0.000 380.760

0.081 0.075 0.043 0.021

Model 1

0.483 0.355 3.719 1.183 89.407 0.000 394.316

(0.864) (0.908) (0.630) (0.292)

0.013 (0.002)

(0.018) (0.010) (0.040) (0.017)

Model 2 0.063 0.032 0.023 0.041

Killed by state

0.792 0.312 0.687 2.691 3.006 6.573 1.606 114.046 0.000 343.109

0.045 0.008 0.045 0.019 0.004

(0.238) (0.180) (0.238) (1.009) (1.332) (2.607) (0.222)

(0.018) (0.017) (0.034) (0.016) (0.001)

Model 3

2.599 2.145 1.836 1.396 66.135 0.000 352.551

0.064 0.044 0.041 0.012 0.005

(1.072) (1.060) (0.908) (0.249)

(0.016) (0.010) (0.034) (0.017) (0.001)

Model 4

Killed by Maoists

Table 1. Insufficient household’s subsistence coping mechanism and pattern of state and Maoist killings during Maoist insurgency in Nepal, 1996–2006


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Robust standard errors reported. p < .05,

HH sufficient (1000) HH borrowing (1000) HH earning within districts (1000) HH earning outside districts (1000) HH earning outside country (1000) Killed by state Killed by Maoists Population 2001 (log) Hill region Tarai region Caste and ethnic fractionalization Human Development Index 2001 Constant =lnalpha LR Chi2 p value Log pseudolikelihood

Variable

(0.001) (0.341) (0.142) (0.208) (0.763) (1.374) (3.667) (0.207)

p < .01,

p < .001.

0.010 0.945 0.148 0.042 0.345 1.681 6.289 1.540 136.310 0.000 380.751

(0.013) (0.027) (0.019) (0.046) (0.018)

0.002 0.082 0.076 0.042 0.020

Model 1

(0.002)

(1.000) (1.092) (0.738) (0.259)

0.895 1.509 5.061 1.020 54.218 0.000 399.814

0.012

(0.008) (0.015)

Model 2 0.002 0.030

Killed by state

0.561 0.256 0.825 2.791 2.908 4.245 1.696 153.512 0.000 340.750

0.022 0.063 0.013 0.064 0.004 0.004 (0.279) (0.179) (0.229) (0.941) (1.262) (3.032) (0.223)

(0.009) (0.019) (0.017) (0.033) (0.017) (0.001)

Model 3

2.752 0.760 1.299 1.378 90.469 0.000 353.574

(1.009) (0.932) (0.892) (0.261)

0.004 (0.001)

0.029 (0.006) 0.043 (0.011)

Model 4

Killed by Maoists

Table 2. Sufficiency households and pattern of state and Maoist killings during Maoist insurgency in Nepal, 1996–2006




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coping mechanisms on the use of violence during the insurgency. Four additional models are presented in Table 2, which includes sufficiency households. In Models 2 and 4, all other types of insufficiency coping mechanisms were dropped, except borrowing households. These two models do not control for rough terrain and population. As expected, I found statistically significant support for the hypothesis that, during the insurgency in Nepal, the state’s use of violence was targeted at borrowing households. In other words, the number of people killed by the state was higher in a district with a higher number of households that borrowed to meet their basic subsistence 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 killed was, in comparison, negative in a district with a higher number of households that borrowed to meet their subsistence needs. The estimated coefficient is 0.064 and statistically significant at the .001 levels of significance (Model 4, Table 1). The Maoists did not target borrowing households. These two findings held when I included sufficiency households in Models 1–4 in Table 2. This supports the argument that the aggrieved population assisted the insurgency by providing intelligence, recruits, and shelter for the Maoist rebels. As a result, they became targets of state violence. Since local patrons could easily identify potential supporters of the Maoists, state security forces cooperated with these local patrons and received good intelligence from them. In the analysis performed, the estimated coefficient related to the number of killings perpetrated by the state for the sufficiency households is negative but statistically insignificant. This finding suggests that the state did not target the local patrons, which is consistent with the theoretical argument. Yet the Maoists killed more people in those districts with a higher number of sufficiency households, thus targeting their violence at local patrons. The estimated coefficient for the sufficiency households is 0.029 and significant at the .001 levels of significance (Table 2, Model 4). This finding supports Joshi and Mason’s contention that it was a common occurrence for rebel combatants in Nepal to storm patrons’ homes in order to destroy their records of credits given to the local peasants.64 When combined, these two findings suggest that the level of household subsistence is a factor that correlates with the use of violence. Killing by both sides during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal was not indiscriminate. Rather, both sides strategically targeted their violence to achieve specific objectives. The state used violence in an attempt to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the local patrons who were providing them with support. The Maoists, in order to secure support from the aggrieved population, used targeted violence against those who had economically, politically, and socially oppressed the marginalized and insufficient households. Among other types of subsistence insufficiency coping mechanisms, the number of people killed by the state is likely to decrease in a district with a higher number of households that did not leave a district to find work as laborers. This finding is consistent across all models (Models 1 and 2 in Table 1 and Model 1 in Table 2). The estimated coefficient is negative 0.032 and statistically significant (Table 1, Model 2, p < .01). This finding is not surprising: households that seek to meet their subsistence needs by doing labor work within the district must move to follow work and therefore cannot provide sanctuary for the Maoists. In the analysis performed, however, 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 control for Hill and Tarai regions. Even though this finding is inconsistent across the models presented in Table 1 and Table 2, it warrants some clarification. A partial explanation of this finding could lie in the Maoists’ strategy of intimidating and banishing those with different political ideologies from their villages.65 In their strongholds, the Maoists 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 district headquarter where the state could provide security. Since the number of people killed by the state is negatively related to the households’ earnings within the district, but positively related to the number of people killed by the Maoists, this is the only plausible explanation. Other subsistence mechanisms had no statistically significant effect on the number of killings. Among other control variables, I found that HDI 2001 had a negative effect across all models regardless of whether it was the Maoists or 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 kill people in a district with a higher HDI score. The estimated coefficient is negative 2.791 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 well as those of Murshed and Gates.66 In the analysis performed, I found that the number of people the state killed was likely to be higher in a district with a higher number of Maoist killings. This finding is significant across all models. The estimated coefficient is 0.010 for the Maoist killings (Table 1, Model 2). Similarly, the Maoists were likely to kill more people in a district with a higher number of people killed by the state. The estimated coefficient is 0.004 and is statistically significant (p < .001, Model 4, Table 2). This finding suggests a reciprocal strategy adopted by both sides of the conflict. Among other controls, I found a positive relationship between population (log) and state killing. This finding is consistent with the human rights literature that suggests that the state is likely to use repression when faced with growing redistributive demands. The estimated coefficient for the population is 0.954 (p < .001, Model 1, Table 2). The size 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 is statistically significant (p < .05, Model 3, Table 2). I did not find any statistically significant support for the relationship between rough terrain and state killings. However, the estimated coefficient for the Tarai region is negative, but the relationship is significant only for the Maoist killings. This finding suggests that the Maoists were less likely to kill people in the Tarai region in comparison to the mountain region. The estimated coefficient is negative 0.687 and significant across all models (p < .001, Table 1). This finding is inconsistent with other quantitative studies on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. In their study, Joshi and Mason suggested rough terrain did not have any effect on the number of killings.68 Since the conflict was felt across all ecological regions in Nepal to a varying degree, it is safe to say that this particular finding in this study is inconclusive. Caste and ethnic fractionalization has a significant and positive relationship to Maoist killings. This suggests that the Maoists were more likely to kill people in ethnically fractionalized districts. This finding is consistent with the argument that grievances along ethnic lines were a cause of the insurgency in Nepal.69 In Nepal, ethnic minorities and people in the lower castes were systematically marginalized by 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 structurally marginalized minority against the majority. To summarize, the empirical findings presented in Tables 1 and 2 suggest that the level of violence by the state and the Maoists varied with the distribution of households and different types of subsistence mechanisms in a district. The Maoists were more likely to kill people in a district with high levels of subsistence sufficient households, and the state was more likely to kill those who borrowed to meet their daily subsistence needs. Both the state and the Maoists used targeted violence by utilizing 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 to violence depending on their subsistence security or insecurity. I presented theoretical and empirical evidence of how economic interactions in the local setting provided different mechanisms for mobilizing local populations during the Maoist insurgency. This mode of interaction, when the insurgency arrived in the villages, provided incentives for the borrowing households to cooperate with the Maoists in the hope that the insurgency would redress their grievances against the local patrons who exploited them. Therefore, the Maoists ended up targeting local patrons during the conflict. When they prevailed, the Maoists captured the property of the local patrons and allowed the local peasants to utilize it. They also freed indebted households by burning the mortgage documents they had obtained from those local patrons. 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 community who were likely to be their potential supporters. As a result, local patrons cooperated with state security forces and identified aggrieved households (borrowers) who were then targeted and killed by the state. While the prevalent theories of violent conflict have stressed the importance of the variation in social and economic characteristics, studies have not considered the interplay between local patrons, local populations, and subsistence security. Nor have they considered how the interaction of these factors can engender different mechanisms of violence perpetrated by both sides of the conflict. This study has tried to address the gap in this literature by highlighting the importance of understanding local economic interactions in order to explain insurgency violence. Findings from this study have some policy implications that are particularly relevant to avoiding a relapse of violent conflict in Nepal. During the conflict, the Maoists were able to recruit many supporters from the mid-western and far western parts of Nepal. These are areas where the subsistence security of households is very low. It is also an area where, given their electoral performance in 1991, the Maoists clearly had cultivated a secure base. While the insurgency may have succeeded, locals still struggle to meet their subsistence needs. After signing a peace agreement in November 2006, Nepal has made great progress towards political transformation. Despite the significant political progress made in the post-accord period, the politics in Nepal has been embroiled in a power struggle amongst the major political parties. The Maoist party is no exception. In fact, 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 has sympathy and support from foot soldiers, still prefers revolution to peace and democracy. This divisiveness has rendered the governance in post-conflict Nepal instable and ineffective. As a result, economic and social reform agendas have been sidelined, and the peace dividend has not materialized. The marginalization and poverty that provided fertile ground for the Maoists to gain support remains unaddressed and unchanged. Economic well-being is a proven factor in avoiding the recurrence of civil war.70 Walter contends that individuals ‘‘choose to re-enlist with rebel organizations when conditions at home are dire.’’71 Therefore, in order to establish sustainable peace, policies that improve the material well-being of the poor must be pursued. The focus should be on rebuilding Nepal’s infrastructure that was destroyed during the conflict. Attempts should be made to engineer sustainable development projects that create opportunities for the local population to earn their livelihood. A policy of accessible institutional credit would make peasant households less vulnerable to local patrons. If Nepal fails to systematically change the pattern of economic interactions in the local political setting, it is likely that those segments of the population that provided support to the Maoists would renew their support of an armed insurgency. Therefore, economic reform in Nepal should focus on attaining sustainable development and human security by adopting a range of policies. In this regard, preferential policies that address the grievances of the poor and the marginalized segments of populations, policies that ensure the effective delivery of public 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 the birth of a republic nation might not be institutionalized. Greater economic opportunities would not only free poor households from the grip of local patrons but would also incentivize reconciliations at the local levels in Nepal. Without socio-economic reforms, the class conflict will remain as is. This will, at the very least, exacerbate social harmony. At its worst, it could be the reason that Nepal sees a return to full-fledged armed conflict.

Notes 1. Internal fractionalization within the Nepali Congress (NC) is often said to have been the cause of that party’s defeat. But the NC had contested elections as a unified party and their electoral 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 Contemporary World,’’ 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; and Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Ma˚ns Soderbom, ‘‘Post-conflict Risks,’’ Journal of Peace Research 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 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Mahendra Lawoti and Anup K. Pahari, eds., The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Dynamics and Growth in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2009);



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Mahendra Lawoti, Towards a Democratic Nepal: Inclusive Political Institutions for a Multicultural Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005); and Madhav Joshi and T. David Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy, and Insurgency in Nepal: Peasant Support for Insurgency versus Democracy,’’ Asian Survey 47, no. 3 (2007): 393–414; Madhav Joshi and T. David Mason, Between Democracy and Revolution: Peasant Support for Insurgency versus Democracy 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 Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008): 436–455. 12. Claire M. Metelits, Inside Insurgency: Violence, Civilians, and Revolutionary Group Behavior (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, ‘‘Rebel Capability 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 of Violence 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 and Scott Gates, ‘‘Spatial-horizontal Inequality and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,’’ Review of Development Economics 9, no. 1 (2005): 121–134. 18. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast 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 fighting the 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 and Lisa Hultman, ‘‘One-Sided Violence against Civilians in War,’’ Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 2 (2007): 233–246; for further information on civilian victims in armed conflict, see Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, ‘‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset 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 Maim People—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 Political Quarterly 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; and Wood (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 Quarterly 33, 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 mind and supported the government. The decline in insurgent attacks and civilian support was the result 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 violence targeting 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 multiple armed groups can contest for the same pool of resources. Therefore, Metelits (see note 12 above) 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 Patricia Justino, ‘‘Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective on the Causes and Duration 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 of FARC’s political wing. 42. Kalyvas (see note 9 above); and Alexander B. Downes, ‘‘Draining the Sea by Filling the Graves: Investigating the Effectiveness of Indiscriminate Violence as a Counterinsurgency Strategy,’’ 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 a Multicultural 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 (Upper Saddle 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 Maoist party 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 14 above); and Murshed and Gates (see note 57 above). 67. The number of Maoists killings is perhaps related to the way in which the government responded to the Maoist insurgency. 68. Joshi and Mason, ‘‘Land Tenure, Democracy and Pattern of Violence’’ (see note 14 above). 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.