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Previous research has indicated that democracy decreases the risk of armed conflict, while increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks, but we know little about the effect of democracy on violence against civilians in ongoing civil conflicts. This study seeks to fill this empirical gap in the research on democracy and political violence, by examining all rebel groups involved in an armed conflict 1989–2004. Using different measures of democracy, the results demonstrate that rebels target more civilians when facing a democratic (or semi-democratic) government. Democracies are perceived as particularly vulnerable to attacks on the population, since civilians can hold the government accountable for failures to provide security, and this provides incentives for rebels to target civilians. At the same time, the openness of democratic societies provides opportunities for carrying out violent attacks. Thus, the strength of democracy—its accountability and openness—can become an Achilles heel during an internal armed conflict.

Theories and counterinsurgency doctrines emphasize the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. Yet, many operations produce large numbers of so-called collateral civilian deaths. I present two competing arguments for when collateral deaths occur. One the one hand, they could be the unintentional result of offensives when trying to maintain force protection; on the other hand, they could be the result of a deliberate choice of relying on indiscriminate violence when pressured on the battlefield. I use new data on violence in Afghanistan 2004–2009, disaggregated by province and month, to examine what type of battlefield dynamics are more likely to produce high levels of collateral civilian casualties. The results show that civilian casualties are particularly high after counterinsurgency forces suffer losses in combat.

The current counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan has failed to defeat the insurgency and levels of violence have increased over time. Even though there are several potential factors explaining this development, it prompts the question of how effective the military offensives are at weakening the insurgents and their ability to carry out violent attacks. I propose that targeted killings of insurgents reduce their fighting capacity in the short term, which leads to fewer attacks against government targets as the insurgents shy away from costly combat. However, as a way of adapting to a temporary reduction in capacity, insurgents may instead increase their targeting of the civilian population with the purpose of undermining the legitimacy of the government and the international forces. This potential double effect of military offensives is examined using monthly data on violence in Afghanistan by each province, 2004–2009. The findings provide some support for the contention that killing insurgents can reduce their attacks against government targets, but at the same time risk leading to an increase in attacks against civilian targets. The use of force thus seems to be a double-edged sword in the struggle against the insurgents in the present war in Afghanistan.

In some ethno-separatist wars, rebel groups direct a large share of violence against members of their own ethnic community. But why do rebels target the co-ethnics they claim to represent in the war against the government? Our aim in this paper is to provide the components for a conceptual framework that we assess using unique disaggregated casualty data on violence committed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against co-ethnic Tamils in territories claimed for the Tamil Eelam state in the early phase of the Sri Lankan conflict, 1985-88. We propose that there are two distinct processes of intraethnic violence: violence against co-ethnic civilians and violence against co-ethnic rivals. While the former aims at controlling the population to win the war against the government, the latter aims at establishing leadership dominance over the ethnic minority. We examine the role of ethnic homogeneity in shaping the use of violence directed against the two types of co-ethnic targets in the buildup phase of ethno-separatist war. We conclude that ethnic demographic structures matter for how the rebels treat co-ethnics in the early phase of war before they have established territorial control.

This article develops a theoretical explanation for the seemingly indiscriminate violence used by RENAMO during the civil war in Mozambique, a phenomenon that dominant theories on civil war violence cannot account for fully. The analysis builds on interviews with the RENAMO leadership and Mozambican academics as well as secondary sources on the patterns of violence. It concludes that RENAMO used mass violence to weaken the support for the government and create war fatigue. The main strategy was to cause enough damage to pressure the government into entering negotiations. The use of most violence against civilians in those areas where the population was believed to support the government, in combination with a clear objective to destabilise the government and a disciplined military organisation, support the argument that mass violence was employed to demonstrate 'the power to hurt'.