Control, Contestation, and Violence in Civil War: Evidence From Iraq

This thesis uses a new dataset to test the importance of territorial control as a determinant of violence patterns in Anbar Province, Iraq from 2004-2006. The data show that the combination of the local balance of territorial control and active contestation is a better predictor of violence than control alone. This suggests that belligerents have more agency in determining violence patterns because they make critical strategic decisions about where and when to contest control. This insight also suggests that conceptual distinctions between different “technologies of warfare” (e.g. irregular, conventional) are not particularly useful in predicting violence patterns.

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