Civil War

It’s possible that one side’s objective is to either seize control of the whole country or of a specific region, win independence for that region, or alter the policies of the government.  The term is a calque of the Latin phrase “bellum civile,” which referred to the various civil wars that occurred during the time of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.

The Civil War

During the Battle of Helsinki on April 12, 1918, German artillery was stationed in Malmi. This conflict took place during the Finnish Civil War.

The devastation that was inflicted on Granollers as a result of an attack by German aircraft on May 31, 1938, which took place during the Spanish Civil War.

Intervention from foreign powers can be found in the majority of contemporary civil wars. According to the information provided by Patrick M. Regan in his book titled “Civil Wars and Foreign Powers” (2000), approximately two thirds of the 138 intrastate conflicts that occurred between the end of World War II and the year 2000 saw the intervention of international forces, with the United States taking part in 35 of these conflicts. 

A civil war is a conflict that is high in intensity, that lasts for an extended period of time, that is well organised, and that takes place on a large scale. It’s possible for civil wars to result in a significant number of casualties and the depletion of a significant amount of resources. 

The aftermath of the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg, which took place in 1863

Civil war is defined as “a violent conflict within a country that is fought by organised groups that aim to take power at the centre or in a region, or to change government policies,” according to James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University.

Ann Hironaka elaborates by pointing out that one of the combatants in a civil war is the state. According to the definition offered by Stathis Kalyvas, a civil war is “armed combat that takes place within the boundaries of a recognised sovereign entity between parties that are subject to a common authority at the beginning of the hostilities.”

Academics disagree on the level of violence that must exist before a civil unrest can be considered a civil war. Some political scientists consider a conflict to be a civil war if there are more than one thousand casualties,while others stipulate that at least one hundred casualties must be sustained by each side. According to the dataset known as The Correlates of War, which is frequently used by researchers who study conflict, civil wars are defined as having more than one thousand war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate accounts for a very small percentage of the millions of people who were killed, for example, during the Second Sudanese Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War. However, it does not take into account several conflicts that have received a great deal of media attention, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the fight of the African National Congress against apartheid in South Africa. 

According to the standard of one thousand deaths per year, there were 213 civil wars that took place between the years 1816 and 1997, 104 of which took place between the years 1944 and 1997.

If one uses the less stringent criterion of a total of 1,000 casualties, then there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 civil wars still ongoing as of 2007. 

Although the Geneva Conventions do not provide a precise definition for the term “civil war,” they do provide a framework for the responsibilities of parties involved in “armed conflicts that are not of an international character.” This includes civil wars; however, the text of the Conventions does not provide a specific definition of what is meant by the term “civil war.”

In spite of this, the International Committee of the Red Cross has made an effort to provide some clarity through its commentaries on the Geneva Conventions. It has been pointed out that the Conventions are “so general, so vague, that many of the delegations feared that it might be taken to cover any act committed by force of arms.” However, the International Committee of the Red Cross has made this effort. As a result, the commentaries outline a variety of ‘conditions’ that must be met before the Geneva Convention can be put into effect. These ‘conditions,’ however, are not meant to be taken in a strict sense, as the commentary makes clear. 

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provides the following conditions in its commentary:

During the Ethiopian Civil War, rebels seized the capital city of Addis Ababa, which resulted in tanks being deployed throughout the city (1991) that the Party in revolt against the de jure Government is in possession of an organised military force, an authority responsible for its acts, acting within a specific territory, and having the means to respect and ensure respect for the Convention is required.

That the legitimate government is obligated to make use of the regular armed forces in order to combat insurgents who have organised themselves into a military and are in control of a portion of the national territory.

a) That the de facto government has acknowledged the insurgents to be belligerents;

b) That the de facto government has claimed for itself the rights of a belligerent; or All three of these things.

c) That it has recognised the rebels as belligerents solely for the purposes of this Convention; or

(d) That the dispute has been admitted to the agenda of either the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations as being an act of aggression, a breach of the peace, or a threat to international peace.

The Armed Forces

(a) The insurgents have an organisation that portrays themselves as having the capabilities of a state.

(b) That the insurgent civil authority exercises de facto authority over the population within a predetermined portion of the national territory.

(c) That the armed forces are acting under the direction of an organised authority and are prepared to observe the ordinary laws of war.

(d) A statement from the insurgent civil authority stating that they are willing to be bound by the provisions of the Convention.

Causes

According to a study that reviewed previous research on the topic of civil war that was published in 2017, there are three primary schools of thought regarding the causes of civil war. These schools of thought are as follows: explanations based on greed, which focus on individuals’ desire to maximise their profits; explanations based on grievance, which focus on conflict as a response to socioeconomic or political injustice; and explanations based on opportunity, which focus on factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilisation.

Conclusion 

The study found that the opportunity-based explanation offered by James Fearon and David Laitin in their article published in the 2003 issue of the American Political Science Review was the most influential explanation for the beginning of the civil war.