Sierra Leone Paper
Kristen Finkbiner
TA: Nell Streitz
Sierra Leone Case Study
Between the years 1991 and 2002, tens of thousands died and more than two million people were displaced in the Republic of Sierra Leone (BBC News). This paper will be evaluating the conflict of Sierra Leone in the context of general theories of civil conflict. It will define and discuss the actors involved, time span, deaths, causes, and other concepts regarding civil war. This paper will discuss how these major concepts relate to the Sierra Leone conflict and how typical or atypical these theories are.
PT 1: ONSET
1 Defining Civil War
Defining civil war and coding it can be difficult. Many civil war lists use the Correlates of War project (COW). Various coding rules can cause doubt about whether different definitions create different results. Nicholas Sambanis (2004) proposed a new coding for civil war that attempts to avoid the problems that other civil war coding lists have. In this paper, his coding has been used to identify if Sierra Leone is classified as a civil war. It is important to realize that it is impossible to get a single definition and measurement by different coding rules and that no single coding can be classified as the best one (Sambanis 2004).
One way to classify a conflict as a civil war is if the war takes place within the territory of a state that is a member of the international system with a population of 500,000 or greater (Sambanis 2004). Sierra Leone has a population of 5.7 million people, is a member of the international system, and the conflict took place within Sierra Leone’s territory (BBC News). Throughout a civil war the weaker party must have effective resistance. Effective resistance is measured by at least 100 deaths inflicted on the stronger party (Sambanis 2004). In the Sierra Leone conflict, the weaker party had effective resistance and killed more than 100 people among the stronger party (Armed Conflicts Report). Another coding rule requires that the parties
TA: Nell Streitz
Sierra Leone Case Study
Between the years 1991 and 2002, tens of thousands died and more than two million people were displaced in the Republic of Sierra Leone (BBC News). This paper will be evaluating the conflict of Sierra Leone in the context of general theories of civil conflict. It will define and discuss the actors involved, time span, deaths, causes, and other concepts regarding civil war. This paper will discuss how these major concepts relate to the Sierra Leone conflict and how typical or atypical these theories are.
PT 1: ONSET
1 Defining Civil War
Defining civil war and coding it can be difficult. Many civil war lists use the Correlates of War project (COW). Various coding rules can cause doubt about whether different definitions create different results. Nicholas Sambanis (2004) proposed a new coding for civil war that attempts to avoid the problems that other civil war coding lists have. In this paper, his coding has been used to identify if Sierra Leone is classified as a civil war. It is important to realize that it is impossible to get a single definition and measurement by different coding rules and that no single coding can be classified as the best one (Sambanis 2004).
One way to classify a conflict as a civil war is if the war takes place within the territory of a state that is a member of the international system with a population of 500,000 or greater (Sambanis 2004). Sierra Leone has a population of 5.7 million people, is a member of the international system, and the conflict took place within Sierra Leone’s territory (BBC News). Throughout a civil war the weaker party must have effective resistance. Effective resistance is measured by at least 100 deaths inflicted on the stronger party (Sambanis 2004). In the Sierra Leone conflict, the weaker party had effective resistance and killed more than 100 people among the stronger party (Armed Conflicts Report). Another coding rule requires that the parties