Teaching from experience: foreign training and rebel success in civil War

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between rebel training from external sponsors and civil war outcomes. While past research has examined how foreign support, broadly, shapes the dynamics of civil wars, little attention has been paid to how foreign training of rebel fighters affects civil wars. We theorize that rebels that receive training from formerly successful rebels are more likely to experience favorable conflict outcomes than those with no training or with training from sponsors inexperienced with fighting a civil war. These propositions are tested with a quantitative analysis of all intrastate conflicts from 1975 to 2010, providing support for our hypothesis.

Keywords

Civil war foreign sponsorship learning rebel training

Introduction

On 19 July 2017, The New York Times reported that the Trump Administration intended ending the controversial program of arming and training Syrian Rebels as part of the Free Syrian Army.¹ Since 2013, the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency have worked to mobilize an effective insurgency inside Syria that the US Government would feel more comfortable cooperating with in the post-Assad era (collaborating with more moderate rebel groups).² With over a billion dollars spent on training and equipping Syrian rebels, for much of the conflict the US Government has had little to show for it. Absent significant support from more capable Kurdish Militias (such as the YPG), Syrian Sunni Arabs equipped and trained by American advisors have shown little promise in holding their own against the Russian-backed Assad Regime or more radical rebel groups such as ISIS or the Al-Nusra Front. Although ISIS has largely been defeated, much of the military gains were made with Kurdish fighters who had received significant training and support from the PKK operating out of Turkey (although the YPG has received substantial assistance from the USA in recent years).

This is not to say that it is impossible to train effective rebel organizations. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, was able to achieve fairly rapid success against the Rwandan Armed Forces after the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Kagame and many RPF fighters had previously received training from and served in the forces of the successful insurgent campaign of Ugandan President Museveni.³ Kagame had previously served as head of Ugandan Army intelligence and his predecessor as leader of the RPF, Fred Rwigema, had served as Ugandan Defence Minister.⁴ The participation of RPF forces in the successful Ugandan insurgency and the subsequent lessons learned may have played a key role in their rapid military success several years later in 1994.

These divergent experiences present an interesting puzzle. While major powers such as the USA or France are capable of equipping, training and fielding their own troops, they often struggle with sponsoring effective insurgencies. On the other hand, fragile regimes such as Museveni’s Ugandan Government can provide critical lessons to nascent rebel organizations. What may explain these divergent experiences? New research suggests that part of the problem may be tied to the type of support offered to rebel groups (Sawyer et al., 2017). Building on these seemingly contradictory findings, we propose that one element of successful insurgency is the provision of training for rebels. We claim that rebels that receive training from successful rebels (former insurgents that have either won their war or fought the government to a negotiated settlement) are much more likely to prevail in their conflict as compared with rebels that do not receive training or receive training from sponsors that have little experience fighting a civil war. Assuming that successful insurgencies require a unique skillset, we argue that former insurgents are more likely to have learned critical lessons during their own revolution.

In the following section, we provide a brief overview of past literature on the role of third-party interventions into civil wars. We then provide a novel theory on the role of training and rebel success on the battlefield. We argue that training provided by successful rebels increases the likelihood that insurgents will prevail in their armed conflict. We then test these propositions with a large-N analysis of all intrastate conflicts from 1975 to 2010. The results provide robust support for our argument that external training provided by successful rebels significantly increases the likelihood of a rebel-favorable outcome in the conflict.

Literature

Despite a significant increase in the amount of research on external interventions into civil war, the literature is somewhat mixed as to the efficacy of third-party involvement in intrastate conflicts. Foreign governments intervene in civil wars for a number of reasons. For instance, international actors may intervene militarily or diplomatically because of humanitarian concerns (Regan and Aydin, 2006; Regan et al., 2009). Often, though, states intervene in civil wars in order to advance their own political interests (Salehyan et al., 2011) or balance against international rivals (Findley and Teo, 2006). Such interventions may also include the pursuit of more material interests, such as pursuing access to lootable goods (Findley and Marineau, 2015). In short, foreign governments often have myriad reasons to intervene in civil wars.

The literature appears to be more divided as to whether external support is beneficial or harmful to ending armed conflicts. In general, both rebel and government victories tend to emerge earlier in armed conflicts (Mason et al., 1999) but decline over the course of the war. This may be tied to a loss of the expected utility of future victories as both sides suffer losses over the course of the war (Mason and Fett, 1996). Similarly, the incumbent government’s expected utility of future victory is also expected to decline as rebel forces attack areas closer to major cities or the capital (Greig et al., 2018).

A significant number of past studies suggest that military interventions may complicate the theater of war, increasing the duration of conflicts (Balch-Lindsay and Enterline, 2000; Cunningham, 2006; Regan, 2002). As argued by Regan (2002), external intervention at the most basic level, irrespective of neutrality or bias, appears to extend the duration of intrastate conflicts. This may be due to the fact that, as additional third parties join armed conflict, they increase the number of veto players involved in civil wars (Cunningham, 2006, 2010). Each additional actor makes it more difficult for parties to find a suitable compromise as they may militarily challenge any settlement that does not meet their preferred outcome.

Alternatively, subsequent studies have argued that biased military interventions may be effective at supporting their particular protégé. Multiple studies have suggested that external support on behalf of a rebel group significantly increases the likelihood that dissidents will be successful in either winning the war outright or fighting the government to a settlement (Balch-Lindsay et al., 2008; Collier et al., 2004; Sullivan and Karreth, 2015). As opposed to military interventions on behalf of rebel groups, past work has been somewhat inconclusive as to whether military support on behalf of the government is effective. Although Gent (2008) posits that these findings may be driven by the fact that governments only receive military support in the direst of cases (when incumbent governments are likely to fall to rebel forces), past literature tends to support the notion that rebels do benefit from external support. As noted by Connable and Libicki (2010) in their extensive report for the RAND Corporation, insurgencies rarely endure without some form of external support.

The work of Connable and Libicki (2010) also suggests that external support for rebel groups is hardly limited to direct military support. Armed interventions on behalf of rebel groups is a rare event in civil wars, with most external support taking the form of territorial shelter, weapons, training and financing, as well as logistical support for rebels. Jones (2017) builds on this notion with this argument of indirect and direct external support for armed groups. The author posits that indirect support should be especially beneficial for rebel groups primarily early in the war. It appears that early intervention in support of rebel groups can be decisive, but if governments can withstand the initial operations of insurgents, and perhaps gain competencies in counter-insurgent operations, outside support is unlikely to turn the tides in favor of a rebel group. Indirect support may take multiple forms. Weapons, troops, training, logistic support, intelligence, safe haven, propaganda, money and political support are just a few of the potential types of support that can be provided. For instance, Byman et al. (2001) identify four forms of assistance as critical (safe haven and transit, financial resources, political/propaganda support, and direct military support) and an additional two as valuable (training and weapons/material).

While external support appears to be critical to the success of rebels during civil wars, recent research by Sawyer et al. (2017) suggests that some forms of support may complicate the bargaining process. Sawyer et al. (2017) posit that highly fungible forms of support (particularly weapons and financial assistance) lead to uncertainty about the ways in which these resources will be applied. Therefore, forms of support such as financial assistance and the provisions of weapons prolong conflicts, as opposed to direct troop support which increases the probability of conflict termination (Sawyer et al., 2017). These contradictory findings present a challenge to international actors hoping to shape the outcomes of ongoing conflicts. External support offered to rebels may be necessary for them to achieve success on the battlefield, but there is no guarantee that the support offered will actually be used appropriately by rebels (Salehyan et al., 2011, 2014). Specifically, once weapons or financial assistance are offered, rebel groups may not have the expertise to effectively translate external support into battlefield gains.

One way that third parties may attempt to mitigate this risk is by offering military training to rebel groups. Beyond tanks and bullets, rebels need the knowledge of how to build legitimacy, mobilize fighters, collect intelligence, avoid surveillance and provide services to local populations. Effective training by foreign patrons may be one way that rebels can gain these requisite skills.

Theory

We contend that some of these contradictory findings with regard to external support may be tied, in part, to the provision of effective training of rebel groups. Specifically, we contend that the provision of training by former rebels that were successful in their revolution will significantly improve the likelihood that insurgents will achieve a favorable outcome in their war against the state. Training provided by other states, including major powers, may be less effective given that they are generally unaware of the skills required to persist as an insurgency. This claim rests on a few critical assumptions. First, we make the assumption that successful insurgencies generally require a unique skillset. Outside of learning basic military skills such as weapons training or tactical coordination, prevailing in a civil war generally requires that insurgents evade capture by the state, build ties with sympathetic communities and identify and eliminate potential government collaborators, as well as many other military soft-skills. Second, we assume that former rebels that were successful in their revolution should be more aware of these military soft-skills as compared with other external sponsors that have never waged an insurgency. They should therefore be in a better position to pass on these skills to insurgents that they train.

Insurgency as a unique skillset

As noted earlier, one of our key assumptions is that insurgents require a unique skillset to survive and succeed during their war with the incumbent government. As noted by Bapat (2005), rebels often face extreme obstacles early in civil wars. One reason why governments feel little pressure to negotiate with dissidents early in intrastate conflicts is that rebel groups often pose little immediate threat. The size of rebel organizations tends to be small as large networks are vulnerable to leaking critical information. Rebels also tend to lack weapons or recruits who have adequate military experience. Unless insurgents are drawn from military units that have defected from the army, many rebel groups tend to lack the means to pose an immediate threat to the incumbent government. For instance, Young (1997) notes in his history of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that the early TPLF often gave their troops large sticks painted black so as to provide the illusion that their forces had enough guns to pose a threat.

One key finding of Bapat (2005) is that rebel groups that persist past this point of critical weakness perceive themselves as more likely to succeed on the battlefield. Although it is intuitive that rebels that have not been decisively defeated may have a more positive perception of their prospects, this finding may also underscore other key factors contributing to rebel success. Primarily, as the war persists, rebels may be gleaning key skills necessary for succeeding on the battlefield. As noted earlier, successful insurgencies may require more than just access to weapons and manpower. Lichbach (1995) points to numerous challenges rebels must face outside of simply being resource poor. In attempting to mobilize forces, rebels must contend with the incentive on the part of citizens in their communities to free ride. Equally, rebels also tend to have poor information (especially early in the war). To overcome these challenges, rebels must learn to operate clandestine networks to funnel resources and information to different parts of the country. Insurgents must also identify appropriate mechanisms to recruit and sustain adequate soldiers from an aggrieved population (Weinstein, 2007). Rebels must also be able to prevent locals from defecting and informing on them to the central government. These are just a few of the many skills necessary for insurgencies to succeed.

In essence, we assume that Bapat’s (2005) findings reflect a learning process that rebels undergo throughout the course of the war. Levy (1994: 283) defines experiential learning as a “change of beliefs (or the degree of confidence in one’s beliefs) or the development of new beliefs, skills, or procedures as a result of the observation and interpretation.” As noted by Lichbach (1995) and Linebarger (2016), the utility of rebellion increases as rebels experience a modicum of success (even if that success is limited to not being defeated). We argue that this increase in utility is tied in part to the unique lessons tied to their experience during the conflict. As rebels endure over the course of the war, they update their beliefs about which practices are necessary for surviving and which practices are of little use. Linebarger (2016), in his work on rebel learning, posits that, “rational actors engage in vicarious observation, estimating utility from the perceived success or failure of events in the past” (Linebarger, 2016: 635). Rebels may therefore draw on their own experiences, as well as the experiences of others, to inform their beliefs about which practices are necessary for succeeding in a civil war.

External support and rebel training

Training offered by foreign patrons is one way that sponsors of insurgencies may attempt to bypass this learning process. Intuitively, the process by which rebels update their beliefs about which practices are useful, and which are not, is time-consuming. Equally, Linebarger (2016) notes that the ability of rebels to adequately parse which lessons are valuable and which are not is limited by the cognitive ability of the rebels themselves. In other words, there is no guarantee that rebels will take away valuable lessons from their own experiences (especially, considering that most rebellions are unsuccessful). While all rebels may gain knowledge from having engaged in conflicts, many are not in the position to learn the “generalizable” lessons that can be of utility for future conflicts. The training of rebels is one way that a foreign patron may seek to ensure that dissidents have the requisite skills necessary to wage effective insurgencies. The military and intelligence officials of foreign governments hoping to assist rebels (and shape the course of the war) may send advisors or host rebel delegations for the purpose of training rebel soldiers.

We contend that the efficacy of the lessons offered by foreign patrons is limited to the knowledge of external sponsors on how to wage an effective insurgency. A patron’s knowledge may be gleaned from an analysis of past wars or patrons may have direct experience in waging an insurgency. We argue that the latter is more effective with regard to training rebel groups. Specifically, external sponsors (absent direct experience as an insurgent) should have limited knowledge of how to wage an effective insurgency. This lack of crucial knowledge should have a deleterious effect on their ability to adequately train rebel protégés.

Governments that have not emerged from rebellion may still attempt to offer training to rebel groups. This should be especially true of major powers who have a vested interest in shaping the international system. These governments certainly maintain a military intelligence apparatus that attempts to glean information from past rebellions and inform their policy toward sponsoring rebel groups in future conflicts. For instance, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States was active in “vetting” parts of the Free Syrian Army before offering assistance. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for policymakers to draw key lessons from the historical experience of others.⁵ As noted by Levy (1994: 283), “Learning is not a passive activity in which historical events generate their own lessons that actors then absorb … People interpret historical experience through the lens of their own analytical assumptions and worldviews.” Policymakers, in attempting to draw lessons from successful insurgencies, may interpret the experience of insurgents through the lens of their own preconceptions. This challenge is compounded by the fact that it is often difficult to draw broad lessons from conflicts with numerous unique features.

Tetlock (1999) offers a similar conclusion in his work on foreign policy experts and their ability to parse through the lessons of historical events. The author argues that history, in general, tends to be a poor teacher given that there is rarely an adequate counterfactual for policymakers to draw on when evaluating world events. In the absence of a suitable countervailing narrative, policymakers often attempt to fill in the gaps with their own theoretical conclusions. Tetlock (1999: 338) notes that, “observers are often too quick to fill in the missing control conditions of history with elaborate narrative sequences (scripts) that reflect deep-rooted ideological assumptions about both political causality and the characters of specific actors.” Taken together, even if major powers attempt to study the experiences of past insurgencies (both successful and unsuccessful), it is unlikely that policymakers and intelligence officials will draw clear, unbiased lessons on what made those rebellions successful.

This is not to claim that major powers, for instance, cannot succeed in providing support to rebel groups. One notable exception to the trend described above, for example, is US support to the Mujahedeen forces engaged in fighting the Soviet military in Afghanistan. The USA provided significant support in the form of funding, arms and intelligence, largely through the Pakistani security services. However even in this case there does not appear to have been significant direct training of mujahedeen by the USA. Rather, the USA provided training for Pakistani intelligence, who were the primary instructors for the Afghan fighters, helped establish training schools in Pakistan and were involved in the strategic and operational planning of mujahedeen efforts.⁶ This indirect training, in addition to the provision of funding and arms, appears to have been very effective in allowing the Mujahedeen to raise the cost of Soviet intervention and force their eventual withdrawal. Still, it is difficult to parse out (particularly from one example) how effective the external training was as compared with other forms of support provided by the USA.

We therefore expect that training provided by foreign patrons should be, in general, ineffective at promoting rebel group success. This should also apply to major powers, despite their extensive capabilities.

Hypothesis 1a: Rebel groups that receive training from external sponsors should be no more or less likely to achieve favorable outcomes in intrastate conflicts as compared with rebels that did not receive foreign training.

Hypothesis 1b: Rebel groups that receive training from major powers should be no more or less likely to achieve favorable outcomes in intrastate conflicts as compared with rebels that did not receive external training.

On the other hand, we contend that training by former successful rebels should significantly enhance the ability of insurgents to achieve favorable outcomes in intrastate conflicts. By former successful rebels, we refer to foreign governments that are led by former rebel groups that either overthrew the previous regime or fought the government to a negotiated settlement. This may include, but is not limited to, the Cuban Government or the ZANU-PF leadership of Zimbabwe. As noted earlier, we make the assumption that, as civil wars drag on, rebel groups update their beliefs about which practices are best suited for surviving (and even prevailing in) the conflict. We make an additional assumption that, in order to prevail in their own conflicts, successful former rebels should draw on their own experiences to identify which practices assist in achieving battlefield success and which practices hinder the chances of insurgents achieving favorable outcomes in intrastate conflicts. If rebel groups fail to identify best practices for waging a successful insurgency, it is likely that they will be defeated by the incumbent government. Therefore, the training that successful former rebels offer to protégé insurgents should be informed by the lessons they derived from their own conflict. This, of course, may be conditioned by the capacity of the state to invest in identifying and developing these skills. For instance, emerging from their war for independence, Eritrea may have fewer resources to invest in assisting nascent revolutions as compared with Stalin’s newly formed USSR.

We can see this to some extent by the similar structure employed by rebel groups who benefited from this form of training. For instance, during the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), rebel factions each received significant external support (Pearce, 2017). While both UNITA and the FNLA received training from South Africans intent on undermining the new MPLA government (and stymieing the spread of Socialism), most of UNITA’s military training occurred early through the Chinese Government during the first anti-colonial insurgency (Jackson, 1995). Although UNITA’s leadership was initially hostile to Chinese involvement in Angolan Affairs, Jonas Savimbi received extensive training in guerilla strategy from the Nanjing Military Academy in 1965 (Jackson, 1995: 397). In Pearce’s (2017: 21) history of the Angolan Civil War, he notes that Mao had advised Savimbi to, “establish a rear base in the remote woodlands of eastern Angola, as well as establishing a ‘fish in water’ relationship with the peasants of the more densely populated Central Highlands.” Although UNITA eventually broke ties with their Chinese patrons as the war shifted to battling the new MPLA government, the leadership of UNITA still employed the tactics they had learned during the anti-colonial civil war (Pearce, 2017).

The experiences of UNITA differ substantially from those of the FNLA. In the face of a brutal onslaught, FNLA forces crumbled under MPLA and Cuban advances (Davis, 1978). UNITA also faced similar pressure, and they were forced to flee from their stronghold in Huambo. Unlike the FNLA, though, UNITA had employed lessons developed from Chinese insurgent tactics. UNITA was able to rely on peasant support shortly after their military ouster from their stronghold (Pearce, 2017: 19). This allowed the organization to thrive and reorganize so as to restart its insurgency.

These successful former rebels should still be limited, though, by their own cognitive ability to discern best practices. Successful former rebels may place greater emphasis on certain practices that, in reality, play a smaller role in the success of an insurgency as compared with other strategies employed by the organization. For instance, certain rebel groups may place an emphasis on enforcing strict sectarian rules on a population as opposed to focusing on service provisions that build trust between insurgents and disaffected communities. Much like foreign governments that have not been engaged in a successful insurgency, the lessons that successful former rebels offer to their protégé insurgencies will be based on their perceptions of past experiences as opposed to an impartial assessment of what factors led to success on the battlefield. Such experiences may also be conditioned by the reception of rebel trainees. Foreigners are inherently perceived as outsiders, particularly for clandestine organizations. Sharing a similar ideology or ethnicity may make some foreign sponsors more effective in offering guidance to nascent rebel groups. Similarly, ideology may play a unique role in the type of training that rebels receive. As noted earlier, military hard skills such as weapons and tactical training may be more ubiquitous than the use of political education or community relations. Such softer military skills, though, may be intimately tied to left-wing insurgencies promoted by revolutionary regimes (Pearce, 2017).

Time may play a key role in obscuring key lessons derived from the past civil war. Shortly after defeating the incumbent government or fighting the state to a negotiated settlement, new rebel leaders may have a clearer appreciation of what tactics were more or less successful in ensuring the survival of the organization and facilitating gains on the battlefield. As time moves on since their victory, though, former successful rebels may lose perspective on their own experiences, leading former rebels to offer similar lessons to leaders that did not emerge from an insurgency.

Even accepting this potential bias, successful former rebels may still have a clearer understanding of what strategies will be the most useful in waging an insurgency as compared with other foreign governments that have not led a rebellion. The training provided by these external sponsors should therefore increase the likelihood that insurgents will achieve some success in their war against the state.

Hypothesis 2a: Rebels that receive training from former successful rebels are more likely to achieve favorable civil war outcomes as compared with rebels that do not receive such training.

Hypothesis 2b: External training provided to insurgents by former successful rebels should only be effective shortly after former rebels were successful in their conflict. As time increases since former rebels were able to achieve success, the training provided by former rebels will lose efficacy.

Research design

To assess these propositions, we examine the duration and outcomes of all intrastate conflicts from 1975 through 2010. Our sample of intrastate conflicts is drawn from the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset (Kreutz, 2010). This dataset includes data on the start and end dates of all conflicts with at least 25 battle-related deaths. Similar to previous studies on civil war dynamics, our unit of analysis is the civil war dyad year (Cunningham et al., 2009; Keels, 2019; Polo and Gleditsch, 2016, etc.). Of particular interest to our analysis, this dataset includes detailed information on the outcomes of each intrastate conflict. As we hypothesize specifically about the likelihood of success for rebels that receive adequate training, we replicate the conceptualization provided by Fortna (2016) and operationalization offered by Greig et al. (2018) for rebel-favorable outcomes. Specifically, a conflict is coded as terminating under a rebel-favorable outcome when the insurgents defeat the government through an outright victory or they fight the government to a negotiated settlement.^7,8 To assess the likelihood of this, we rely on competitive risk models. Competitive risk models predict the relative risk of an event occurring as compared with a rival event (Greig et al., 2018; Keels, 2019). For our analysis, we compete rebel-favorable outcomes against outcomes that are favorable to the government, specifically, whether the state achieves an outright victory or the insurgency ends through low activity. Ongoing conflicts past 2010 are censored.

Our primary independent variable, Rebel Training by Former Rebels, is coded using the UCDP External Support Dataset (Högbladh et al., 2011). Specifically, the UCDP External Support Dataset includes detailed information on the annual provision of support by external sponsors to both the government and rebel groups. External support includes the provision of training, troops acting as secondary warring parties, financial assistance, weapons, logistical support, intelligence and the use of territory. In addition to including specific data on the type of third-party support, this dataset also includes information on which states are offering support. For the purpose of our analysis, we focus specifically on training provided by third parties. Training provided by successful rebels is coded for governments that are led by former rebels that either overthrew an incumbent government or came to power through a negotiated settlement. This is a binary variable coded as a one for all years after the training was offered and a zero otherwise. For example, military instruction offered by the Cuban, Ugandan, and (former) Taliban Governments are all coded as successful rebel training.⁹ This does not include perpetrators of coups as we treat coups d’état as a theoretically separate phenomenon from civil wars (see Thyne, 2017 for a more thorough discussion of this). For example, training provided by the Derg regime in Ethiopia is not coded as rebel training by former rebels while training offered by the TPLF/ EPRDF government is coded as rebel training by former rebels. A list of these former rebel regimes and the various groups these successful rebels have trained are included in the Online Appendix of this paper.

It should be noted that this definition differs somewhat from similar operationalizations used for “revolutionary regimes” (Colgan, 2012). Colgan (2012), for instance, offers a much broader scope when discussing revolutionary regimes. Similar to our approach, Colgan (2012) emphasizes the importance of leadership emergence and tenure in his definition of revolutionary regimes. Unlike our operationalization, Colgan allows revolutionary leaders to emerge from non-violent (or less-violent) events such as mass demonstrations and that revolutionary regimes must engage in significant domestic policy reforms. Given that our focus is on the skillset of new governments, we look specifically at governments that emerge from rebel organizations that were successful on the battlefield (as compared with other possible revolutionary regimes). This is one reason why we exclude post-coup governments from our analysis.

The work of Colgan (2012), though, points to a more challenging issue: when are revolutionary governments no longer revolutionary? As noted by Colgan (2012: 456), “The exact time at which a government ceases to be ‘revolutionary’ is a vexed question, to which there is probably no single answer.” Our approach of using the first rebel leader to take power is not without its own flaws. While it is similar to Colgan’s use of the first generation of revolutionary leaders, we do not include subsequent leaders that may also have experienced fighting in the civil war. Within our sample of former rebel governments, though, this largely applies only to training provided by the Chinese government.

To control for the effects of training more broadly, a control is included that measures whether or not the rebel group received training—irrespective of whether the trainer had been previously successful in past insurgency. This, of course, is a broad measure that ignores significant variation in who may be sponsoring rebel groups. It may, for example, be important to distinguish training offered by governments from similar support offered by active rebel groups. We therefore also include additional controls for whether training provided to rebel groups is offered by a foreign government, an active rebel group or a non-state organization (such as the World Anti-Communist League).

To account for the shifting effects of time on former rebel training, we generate a second version of our key explanatory variable that is weighted by the time in between when former successful rebels come to power and when training was offered to insurgents. This temporal variable is logged to account for the diminishing effects of consecutive years. Finally, we also include a measure for rebel training offered by major powers.

Figure 1 illustrates the number of active rebel groups that have received training from formerly successful rebel regimes. These data indicate that there is a clear bimodal distribution of groups between the Cold War era and the period following the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, revolutionary regimes such as Cuba and China used the training of violent non-state actors as a tool to spread left-wing ideological goals. As the Cold War drew to a close, though, many of these left-wing governments reduced the use of training as a foreign policy tool. On the other hand, many rebel groups that achieved success on the battlefield either through outright victory or through a negotiated settlement at the end of the Cold War began to also use this tool as a means to achieve their own foreign policy objectives. Starting in 1995, regimes headed by formerly successful rebel groups such as those in Ethiopia or Zimbabwe began to train other rebels to undermine regional rivals and expand their influence.

Figure 1.

Active rebels trained by former rebels.

To isolate the effects of rebel training by former rebels, we include controls for other forms of external support. Foreign support may take a number of different forms. Given the need to maintain parsimonious models, we attempt to replicate the approach taken by Sawyer et al. (2017), specifically including controls for whether foreign patrons offered rebel groups fungible support (weapons and financing), foreign troops, intelligence assistance and territorial shelter during the armed conflict. Each of these variables is treated as a binary measure in our analysis.

We also include a number of controls associated with the conflict. For instance, we include a control for rebel group strength (Cunningham et al., 2013). As noted by Cunningham et al. (2009), stronger rebels are more likely to achieve rebel-favorable outcomes such as military victories or a negotiated settlement. Equally, we include a control for whether the conflict was fought over territorial incompatibility as self-determination conflicts are often difficult to resolve (Walter, 2006). This variable is drawn from the UCDP Conflict Termination dataset. We also include a control for conflict intensity (Kreutz, 2010) as well as whether there are lootable goods available to insurgents (Lajula, 2009). Finally, we include measures for the relative wealth of the country (Gleditsch, 2002) as well as whether the civil war state is a democracy (Marshall and Jaggers, 2010).¹⁰

Results

The results from our analysis can be found in Table 1. The first pair of models examine the risk of each outcome type when we include our primary variables of interest as well as a simple binary control for whether rebels received foreign training in general. The second pair of models includes more specific controls for the variation in who is providing external support through training (foreign government, active rebel group, non-rebel non-state actor). All models are estimated with robust standard errors that are clustered on the civil war dyad.¹¹

Table 1.

Risk of rebel and government favorable outcomes

	Rebel-favorable outcome	Government-favorable outcome	Rebel-favorable outcome	Government-favorable outcome
Competitive risk model	Model 1	Model 1	Model 2	Model 2
Rebel Training by Former Rebels	0.91** (0.38)	−1.02 (0.70)	0.77** (0.35)	−1.15 (0.75)
Rebel Training by Major Powers	−0.017 (0.40)	0.40 (0.41)	0.062 (0.38)	0.30 (0.44)
Training from Foreign Government			0.36 (0.27)	0.11 (0.24)
Training from Active Rebel Group			0.32 (0.33)	0.036 (0.35)
Training from Foreign Non-State Actor (non-Rebel)			0.76* (0.43)	−0.63 (0.98)
External Support for Government	−0.28 (0.28)	−0.21 (0.20)	−0.22 (0.29)	−0.21 (0.20)
External Rebel Support, Troops	0.77 (0.48)	−1.17 (1.14)	0.85* (0.48)	−1.18 (1.13)
Fungible Support for Rebels	−0.52 (0.36)	−0.50** (0.24)	−0.60* (0.31)	−0.57** (0.23)
External Rebel Support, Territory	−0.031 (0.28)	0.031 (0.23)	−0.068 (0.29)	0.011 (0.24)
External Rebel Support, Intelligence	−0.19 (0.35)	−0.43 (0.36)	−0.23 (0.36)	−0.48 (0.37)
Territory Incompatibility	0.13 (0.24)	−0.070 (0.19)	0.027 (0.27)	−0.061 (0.19)
Rebel Strength	0.62*** (0.16)	−0.50*** (0.16)	0.56*** (0.16)	−0.50*** (0.16)
Lootable Goods	−0.16 (0.21)	0.11 (0.17)	−0.13 (0.21)	0.11 (0.17)
Intensity	0.13 (0.31)	−1.01*** (0.37)	0.047 (0.32)	−1.01*** (0.37)
lnGDP	−0.15* (0.084)	−0.085 (0.070)	−0.17** (0.086)	−0.083 (0.072)
Democracy	0.41 (0.32)	−0.17 (0.24)	0.33 (0.33)	−0.20 (0.24)
External Rebel Support, Training	0.23 (0.44)	−0.16 (0.31)
Observations	1274	1274	1274	1274
Log-likelihood	−443.8608	−611.7301	−441.9187	−611.5696

Robust standard errors in parentheses. Clustered on civil war dyad.

***

p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1.

Figure 2.

Coefficient plot: Table 2 (rebel-favorable outcomes).

Figure 3.

Coefficient plot: Table 2 (government-favorable outcomes).

Our results appear to provide support for our proposition that training offered by former rebels significantly increases the risk that insurgents will prevail in the civil war. In each model predicting rebel-favorable outcomes, our variable Rebel Training by Former Rebels is statistically significant and in the predicted direction. This finding remains robust after accounting for other forms of support such as military assistance in the form of fungible goods (weapons and financing) or the provision of foreign troops. Similarly, there is some support that training offered by formerly successful rebels not only increases the risk that rebels will be successful on the battlefield but also decreases the risk that governments will achieve their goals of either outright victory or critically hindering rebel groups. Our results also demonstrate, though, that training offered by major powers plays little or no discernable role in increasing the relative risk that the civil war will terminate under rebel-favorable outcomes.¹² In other words, rebels that receive training from major powers are no more or less likely to prevail in armed conflicts.

To assess the marginal effects of our variables of interest, we calculate the subhazard ratio for our variable Rebel Training by Former Rebels. Similar to hazard ratios, values above one indicate a percentage increase in the predicted risk of an event occurring, while values below one suggest a percentage decrease in the risk of an event occurring. In other words, what is the predicted risk that insurgents that receive training from former rebels will achieve a favorable outcome in the civil war, holding all other variables constant? Our results suggest that rebels that receive training from governments led by successful former rebels are 148% more likely to end their conflict under rebel-favorable conditions as compared with insurgents that do not receive similar training.¹³ To further illustrate these findings, in Figure 4 we graph the cumulative hazard of rebel-favorable outcomes as compared with government favorable outcomes (and vice versa). Specifically, over time what is the relative risk that the rebels either win outright or force the government to negotiate a settlement to the conflict? As suggested by the steeper curves, insurgents that receive training from governments led by former rebels are much more likely to achieve favorable outcomes to their conflicts. This differs markedly from rebels that receive training from governments that have little experience fighting a civil war. A similar result emerges when looking at the additional controls for the type of rebel trainer. Foreign governments (in general) offer no significant advantage to rebel groups on the battlefield. Interestingly, training provided by active rebel groups also offers no real advantage to their protégés. This makes sense to some degree, as these groups have only accomplished not being defeated (as opposed to achieving real success on the battlefield). Rather, the real benefits emerge when rebel groups have previously been successful in their insurgency against the state. Interestingly, there is some support for the proposition that foreign non-state actors that provide training also increase the capacity of rebel groups to gain on the battlefield (although these effects are both statistically weaker and substantively smaller than training provided by former rebel groups) (Table 2).

Figure 4.

Cumulative subhazard rate.

Table 2.

Risk of rebel and government favorable outcomes

	Rebel-favorable outcome	Government-favorable outcome	Rebel-favorable outcome	Government-favorable outcome
Competitive Risk Model	Model 1	Model 2	Model 1	Model 2
Rebel Training by Former Rebels (Weighted by Time)	0.36** (0.15)	−0.37 (0.43)	0.31** (0.15)	−0.40 (0.44)
Rebel Training by Major Powers	0.055 (0.40)	0.38 (0.39)	0.086 (0.40)	0.36 (0.41)
Training from Foreign Government			0.44 (0.30)	0.073 (0.22)
Training from Active Rebel Group			0.29 (0.34)	0.13 (0.31)
Training from Foreign Non-State Actor (non-Rebel)			0.78* (0.44)	−0.57 (1.00)
External Support for Government	−0.30 (0.29)	−0.18 (0.20)	−0.24 (0.29)	−0.18 (0.20)
External Rebel Support, Training	0.35 (0.42)	−0.25 (0.31)	0.066 (0.45)	−0.31 (0.31)
External Rebel Support, Troops	0.96* (0.50)	−1.24 (1.13)	1.02** (0.50)	−1.24 (1.13)
External Rebel Support, Intelligence	−0.15 (0.36)	−0.45 (0.36)	−0.18 (0.37)	−0.47 (0.37)
External Rebel Support, Territory	−0.094 (0.31)	0.069 (0.23)	−0.12 (0.30)	0.067 (0.23)
Fungible Support for Rebels	−0.49 (0.38)	−0.55** (0.24)	−0.59 (0.37)	−0.54** (0.24)
Territory Incompatibility	0.066 (0.23)	−0.053 (0.19)	−0.026 (0.25)	−0.049 (0.18)
Rebel Strength	0.61*** (0.16)	−0.51*** (0.16)	0.55*** (0.16)	−0.51*** (0.16)
Lootable Goods	−0.12 (0.21)	0.10 (0.17)	−0.083 (0.21)	0.10 (0.17)
Intensity	0.059 (0.32)	−0.96*** (0.37)	−0.011 (0.32)	−0.94** (0.37)
lnGDP	−0.15* (0.086)	−0.086 (0.068)	−0.17* (0.088)	−0.083 (0.070)
Democracy	0.37 (0.33)	−0.13 (0.24)	0.28 (0.34)	−0.15 (0.24)
Observations	1274	1274	1274	1274
Log-likelihood	−444.7835	−612.8871	−442.4860	−612.6346

Robust standard errors in parentheses. Clustered on civil war dyad.

***

p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1.

Interestingly, our models appear to provide little support for Hypothesis 2b. Rather, the results run contrary to our expectations. Training provided by former rebels becomes more effective the longer the duration between former rebel success and the provision of training to protégé rebel groups. There may be a number of alternative explanations for this result. For example, these results may suggest that perhaps the time in between rebel group success and their involvement in foreign conflicts allows former dissidents to reflect on the best practices for launching an insurgency. The biases of the military establishment may be stronger shortly after the new rebel regime takes power, reducing the willingness of elites to entertain contrary opinions that challenge the narrative surrounding their success. On the other hand, as time moves on, the military establishment may be more open to revisionist histories of the war, thereby allowing for a more impartial examination of the past conflict. This may explain why Cuban efforts to foster an insurgency in Bolivia failed in the 1960s but were more successful in Namibia throughout the 1970s. It may also be the case that revolutionary regimes gain greater capacity to train foreign rebel groups as more time passes. To test this alternative proposition, we ran an additional robustness check where we included the logged CINC scores of foreign trainers (see our Online Appendix for the results). When solely looking at the military capacity of foreign patrons, there was no noticeable change in the ability of rebels to succeed on the battlefield. With that said, capacity may take a number of different forms outside of military spending. This should be examined through further analysis. Figure 5 charts the cumulative hazard for our alternative measure, increasing the time from former rebel success to the provision of training to protégé rebel groups. As this indicator increases, the predicted risk of a rebel-favorable outcome increases as well.

Figure 5.

Cumulative subhazard for rebel-favorable outcomes.

Our control variables are also illustrative. Similar to Sawyer et al.’s (2017) findings, the provision of fungible support to rebels by external sponsors appears to significantly undermine the likelihood that conflicts will be terminated. As financing and weapons are fungible, they generate greater uncertainty on the part of the incumbent government, thus reducing their willingness to settle the dispute. It should be noted, though, that weapons and financing appear to be more deleterious to the efforts of the government than to the rebels. The provision of fungible goods significantly (and consistently) reduces the risk that governments will be able to win outright on the battlefield. When external sponsors deploy their own troops to support the rebels, insurgents are significantly more likely to either win outright or achieve a negotiated settlement. Finally, our results also suggest that governments offering external support to incumbent regimes play little discernable role in preventing rebel-favorable outcomes.

There may also be key factors that shape the efficacy of rebel training by foreign patrons. For instance, shared ideological goals between the foreign patron and the rebel protégé may make the transfer of information more effective. We therefore run additional analyses where we include a control for shared ideology between rebels and their foreign patron (see the Online Appendix). It may also be the case that trainers that have had past experience fighting an insurgency may be effective at training new rebel groups. Through the course of defeating a rebel group within their own country, foreign leaders may have intimate knowledge of how rebel groups operate and how they persist (and even succeed). The knowledge that is offered by these successful counterinsurgents may be as valuable as the knowledge gleaned by formerly successful rebels.

As part of an additional analysis, we examine this and find that past successes in defeating insurgents do make foreign trainers more effective in assisting rebels achieve success on the battlefield (though their efficacy is less than formerly successful rebels). Figure 6 illustrates the cumulative subhazard of rebel-favorable outcomes over time. While more theoretical work is needed to fully flesh out how successful counterinsurgents learn from their opponents, this finding should inform future research (particularly in looking at assisting incumbent governments defeat rebels). The details of this analysis can be found in the Online Appendix.

Figure 6.

Risk of rebel favorable outcomes: rebels with counterinsurgent training.

Another key dynamic that our analysis should take into consideration is when and where formerly successful rebel groups attempt to use foreign training as a policy tool. Beyond ensuring that our results remain robust, conceptualizing this relationship also allows us to provide more insight into when revolutionary regimes deploy these tools to disrupt the international system. Given this point, training provided by former rebels may not be randomly distributed through our sample of intrastate conflicts. In other words, our results may be biased by underlying selection effects. To address this possible shortcoming in our analysis, we estimate an additional model where we account for this potential bias through the inclusion of an inverse Mills ratio (DeMeritt, 2015; Uzonyi and Hanania, 2017). Drawing on work by DeMeritt (2015) and Uzonyi and Hanania (2017), we re-estimate our model with the inclusion of an inverse Mills ratio that accounts for the underlying selection effects regarding which groups receive training from successful rebels and which do not receive similar support. As part of the first stage, we estimate a logistic regression that predicts the offer of training by successful former rebels. Assuming that many insurgencies are driven by left-wing ideological goals,¹⁴ we expect that governments run by former rebels are more likely to target ideological opponents (specifically, right-wing governments). We also expect that rebels that have a strong political education are likely to receive this type of training. Our key predictors of whether formerly rebel successful rebel groups provide training is whether the incumbent government maintains a right-wing economic ideology and whether the rebel group operates a political wing. Data on the economic ideology of governments are drawn from the World Bank Database of Political Institutions and data on rebel political wings are drawn from the Cunningham et al. (2013) dataset. The results from the logistic regression suggest that, in fact, that former rebel governments are significantly more likely to offer training to rebels fighting a right-wing government. Model 2 also demonstrates that right-wing government ideologies play no discernable role in shaping the likelihood that rebels will achieve a favorable outcome in the civil war. This suggests that this variable satisfies the exclusion restriction. Finally, after estimating the inverse Mills ratio from Model 1, the results of Model 3 suggest that training by formerly successful rebels increases the risk of rebel-favorable outcomes, although our initial results are weakened somewhat (Table 3).

Table 3.

Foreign support and risk of rebel favorable outcomes

	Logistic regression	Competitive risk	Competitive risk
	(Model 1)	(Model 2)	(Model 3)
Rebel Training by Former Rebels		0.95** (0.41)	0.80** (0.40)
Rebel Training by Major Powers		−0.0024 (0.39)	−0.025 (0.43)
External Support for Government		−0.27 (0.28)	−0.29 (0.27)
External Rebel Support, Training		0.23 (0.44)	0.22 (0.44)
External Rebel Support, Troops		0.78 (0.49)	0.74 (0.49)
External Rebel Support, Intelligence		−0.20 (0.35)	−0.17 (0.34)
External Rebel Support, Territory		−0.036 (0.28)	−0.0100 (0.28)
Fungible Support for Rebels		−0.52 (0.36)	−0.50 (0.38)
Rightwing Government	1.22** (0.60)	−0.14 (0.40)
Territory Incompatibility	−0.43 (0.69)	0.13 (0.25)	0.24 (0.26)
Rebel Strength		0.63*** (0.17)	0.57*** (0.18)
Lootable Goods	0.050 (0.52)	−0.14 (0.22)	−0.19 (0.21)
Intensity	0.24 (0.52)	0.11 (0.32)	0.099 (0.32)
lnGDP		−0.14 (0.087)	−0.17* (0.092)
Democracy		0.42 (0.32)	0.39 (0.31)
Legal Wing	0.22 (0.77)
Cold War	−0.28 (0.57)
Inverse Mills ratio			−0.28 (0.30)
Constant	−3.06*** (0.83)
Observations	1776	1274	1274
Log-likelihood	−398.9204	−443.7822	−443.3631

Robust standard errors in parentheses. Clustered on civil war dyad.

***

p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1.

Conclusion

In this piece, we have contributed to the work on the role of external support in conflict duration by examining how the provision of training to rebel groups shapes the dynamics of armed conflicts. Our study looks at how the backgrounds of foreign sponsors affects their ability to successfully train rebel groups. The effectiveness of rebel training by foreign governments is largely a function of the sponsor’s experience fighting civil wars. External sponsors that participated in a successful insurgency have acquired a skillset that allows them to effectively train insurgents and increase their likelihood of attaining a favorable conflict outcome.

These results illustrate the salience of the “skillset” acquired by rebels while waging a successful insurgency. The knowledge gained by groups during this process appears to be transferable to future rebel groups. Interestingly, training provided by major powers appears to not be effective at ensuring rebel success on the battlefield. We believe that these findings have great pertinence for the policy community. For example, the USA has spent much on training and equipping rebel fighters to contest state control (e.g. Syria). While some of these efforts are bearing fruit with the defeat of ISIS, there is no guarantee that sponsored rebel groups will be able to effectively oppose the brutal Assad regime. Policymakers may wish to reassess the general utility of training and equipping rebel groups to contest state control. Policymakers may wish to weigh alternative mechanisms to promote stability that have a stronger track record, such as diplomatic interventions (i.e. mediation).

We also see several fruitful avenues for future research. Further disaggregation of the dichotomous Rebel Training by Former Rebels is warranted and could provide more detail regarding the component pieces of the training process. Additionally, future research should explore the actual implementation of the “skillset” and lessons passed down by successful rebels. This can be accomplished by comparing the rebel organizational structure, leadership structure, diplomacy efforts, provision of governance in controlled territory and rebel tactics employed by rebels vis-à-vis the corresponding efforts and decisions made by the former rebel trainers during their conflict experience. This could reveal a great deal about the transmissibility of the rebel skillset and unpack the theoretical mechanism offered in this paper. Finally, future research should explore whether successful rebels make better counterinsurgents (both within their own countries and in their use of foreign training).

Supplemental Material

Online_Appendix_Supplemental_material – Supplemental material for Teaching from experience: foreign training and rebel success in civil War

Supplemental material, Online_Appendix_Supplemental_material for Teaching from experience: foreign training and rebel success in civil War by Eric Keels, Jay Benson and Michael Widmeier in Conflict Management and Peace Science

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the excellent comments and suggestions from the editors of Conflict Management and Peace Science and the three anonymous reviewers.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Eric Keels

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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