Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Violence against civilians has been a recurring part of civil wars for thousands of years. The people of Central Africa have experienced these horrors perhaps more than any other. One of the actors that targets civilians in this part of the world is the Allied Democratic Forces, a jihadist rebel group that despite its allegiance to the Islamic State has received relatively little scholarly attention. The phenomena of rebel violence against civilians has led to the emergence of an entire research field devoted to developing scholarly understanding and explanations. This research has largely focused on macro-level explanations of rebel violence rather than analyzing the origins of individual rebel groups in shaping their violence. By looking at the origins of the ADF’s organizational structure, specifically at the initial economic and social endowments, in order to explain the group’s use of violence against civilians, this thesis seeks to provide a new understanding of the case that is the ADF’s violence against civilians.The thesis finds that the initial economic and social endowments of the ADF did play both a direct and indirect part in affecting the ADF’s use of violence against civilians. However, it also finds that, in accordance with existing research, other macro-level factors too did shape that violence. It also shows the need for other explanations beyond Weinstein’s theory both in the case of the ADF and a general need for the research field of rebel violence to continue exploring alternative explanations