REBEL FRATRICIDE IN STRONG STATES: INFIGHTING IN NORTHERN IRELAND’S REPUBLICAN INSURGENCY AND THE KURDISH REBELLION IN TURKEY

Why do rebels sometimes go to war with each other, weakening their position againsttheir common enemy, the state? This dissertation compares two cases of intra-rebel warthat pose an especially difficult puzzle for existing theories of intra-rebel war: thefighting between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA in Belfast (1969-1980) andwar among Kurdish revolutionaries in Turkey (1974-1980). These two cases are puzzlingbecause both occurred in areas where the state was strong, and therefore able to capitalizeoperationally and politically on rebel fratricide. By comparing these two cases, thisdissertation argues that broadly similar causal mechanisms can help to explain theseintra-rebel wars.In both cases, rebel organizations were shaped by their involvement in defensiveviolence in response to repression from the state and state-aligned attackers. Learning tocounteract this violence changed the operational and cultural character of theseorganizations, with downstream effects on how these organizations strategicallyappraised the costs and benefits of using violence against rivals. Furthermore, theseorganizational changes led to an increased frequency of violence that was non-strategic;that is, it was not performed as the result of a considered and thorough decision-makingprocess. In combination, these mechanisms promoted repeated spirals of fratricidal violence that progressively altered threat perceptions, and thereby encouraged riskier, more concerted applications of violence against rivals. This dissertation fashions thiscomparative explanation into a generalizable argument about the causes of intra-rebelwar in strong states, and provides initial testing of the arguments with two shadow cases,taken from the Algerian independence movement in France and the Sinhalese leftistinsurgency in Sri Lanka.