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Ordinary Rebels

Kolby Hanson

Published 2025 in Unknown venue

ABSTRACT

How do nonstate armed groups change when states look the other way? States rarely engage in total war with militants, even during long-running conflicts. Instead, militant groups often spend years or decades implicitly tolerated by state forces, treated as nuisances rather than existential threats. I argue that state toleration transforms armed organizations from the bottom up. First, because life is safer and easier for cadres, armed groups attract more recruits with few preexisting commitments to leaders or their goals. As a result, armed leaders find their organizations larger but more heterogeneous and difficult to wrangle, especially if they choose to go back into conflict. Second, because toleration opens opportunities for local governance and armed lobbying, recruits and supporters flock to factions willing to coexist with the state and pursue more modest goals. As a result, power shifts from extremists to moderates within an armed movement. These patterns explain why these ambiguous periods of state toleration can be so durable: armed groups grow larger and better resourced, but also they become better adapted for extended coexistence than for renewed conflict. This book draws from two major sources collected throughout seven months of fieldwork in Northeast India and Sri Lanka. First, a set of innovative survey experiments explores the preferences of nearly 400 likely recruits and 100 community elders in three conflict regions of Northeast India. Second, 75 in-depth interviews with current and former armed leaders, rank-and-file militants, and civilians trace the trajectory of four armed movements through crackdown and ceasefire.

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