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

253 Pages·2014·2.32 MB·English

by  Shane Joshua Barter (auth.)

Civilian Strategy in Civil War
Politics, Economics, and inclusivE dEvEloPmEnt
Prepared under the auspices of the Pacific Basin Research Center,
Soka University of America
Series Editors
William Ascher, Claremont McKenna College
John M. Heffron, Soka University of America
Natalia Mirovitskaya, Duke University
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Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America
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Development Strategies, Identities, and Conflict in Asia
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The Economic Roots of Conflict and Cooperation in Africa
Edited by William Ascher and Natalia Mirovitskaya
Civilian Strategy in Civil War: Insights from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines
Shane Joshua Barter
Civilian Strategy in Civil War

Insights from Indonesia, Thailand,
and the Philippines
Shane Joshua Barter
civilian strategy in civil war
Copyright © Shane Joshua Barter, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-40298-1
All rights reserved.
Figures 3.1, 6.1 and 7.1 Copyright (c) Shane Joshua Barter.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify these documents
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license can be found at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world ,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978–1–349–48686–1 ISBN 978–1–137–40299–8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137402998
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barter, Shane Joshua.
Civilian strategy in civil war : insights from Indonesia, Thailand, and
the Philippines / by Shane Joshua Barter.
pages cm.—(Politics, economics, and inclusive development)

1. Civilians in war—Indonesia—History. 2. Civilians in war—
Thailand—History. 3. Civilians in war—Philippines—History.
4. Civil war—Indonesia—History. 5. Civil war—Thailand—
History. 6. Civil war—Philippines—History. I. Title.
U21.2.B367 2014
355.0218—dc23 2013043635
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1 Introduction: Civilian Strategy in Civil War 1
Chapter 2 Toward a Theory of Civilian Strategy 9
Chapter 3 Empirical Foundations, Aceh 33
Chapter 4 Aceh’s Civilians in War 59
Chapter 5 Explaining Civilian Strategies in Aceh 93
Chapter 6 Comparisons, Patani 127
Chapter 7 Comparisons, Mindanao 159
Chapter 8 Civilian Strategy: Theory and Practice 191
Notes 207
Bibliography 223
Index 239
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Illustrations

Figures
3.1 Map of Aceh 34
6.1 Map of Patani 128
7.1 Map of Muslim Mindanao and Sulu 160
Tables
2.1 Potential forms of civilian support for armed groups 18
2.2 Explanations for civilian strategies 26
3.1 Population of Aceh by ethnic group 35
3.2 Social groups and leaders in Aceh 52
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Preface

Civilians are typically characterized as the victims of war. While they
are indeed victims, focusing solely on their victimization obscures
the ways that civilians navigate bloody conflicts. What options are
available to civilians in times of war? I propose that civilians possess three
broad options: flight, support, and voice. This schema provides a memo-
rable, useful approach to understanding how civilians respond to war. They
may flee from violence for various lengths of time or distance; they may
support one or another armed group by providing supplies, labor, or infor-
mation; or they may protest, criticizing armed groups in an effort to shape
their behavior. While each of these phenomena has been studied extensively,
they are not always approached as choices and have yet to be seen as parts of
a broad menu of civilian strategy. Additionally, civilians may combine the
three options, for instance, mixing the support and voice strategies to trans-
form armed groups from within. These strategies not only help civilians
survive, they can even influence the course of a given conflict.
This book is based on multisite ethnographic research in three Southeast
Asian conflicts: Aceh, Indonesia; Patani, Thailand; and Mindanao,
Philippines. I conducted open-ended rural interviews with over three hun-
dred persons, mostly village chiefs and religious leaders. Following Kalyvas
(2006), I selected sites within each case according to zones of combatant con-
trol. I also disaggregated the broad category of “civilians” into different social
groups: farmers, village chiefs, religious leaders, women, and new notables.
The civilian perspective sheds new light on cases that have previously been
understood in terms of states, rebel movements, and civil society.
The flight, support, and voice schema allows for new insights into the
decisions made by those who choose not to fight. While by no means dis-
regarding security considerations in driving behavior, sociocultural factors
play surprisingly important roles in shaping civilian strategies. The domi-
nant approach to understanding civilians relates to zones of combatant