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Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya

Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jlyall{at}princeton.edu.

	Abstract

Does a state’s use of indiscriminate violence incite insurgent attacks? To date, most existing theories and empirical studies have concluded that such violence is highly counterproductive because it creates new grievances while forcing victims to seek security, if not safety, in rebel arms. This proposition is tested using Russian artillery fire in Chechnya (2000 to 2005) to estimate indiscriminate violence’s effect on subsequent patterns of insurgent attacks across matched pairs of similar shelled and nonshelled villages. The findings are counterintuitive. Shelled villages experience a 24 percent reduction in posttreatment mean insurgent attacks relative to control villages. In addition, commonly cited "triggers" for insurgent retaliation, including the lethality and destructiveness of indiscriminate violence, are either negatively correlated with insurgent attacks or statistically insignificant.

First published on February 12, 2009, doi:10.1177/0022002708330881

Journal of Conflict Resolution 2009;53:331.

A more recent version of this article appeared on June 1, 2009


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