6 - Comparative Evidence of the Sorting Logic

Summary

This chapter provides additional evidence for the sorting theory in a broader set of contexts. In order to demonstrate that the findings from Chapter 5 generalize beyond Uganda – and can account for the empirical associations found in Chapter 4 – it conducts “shadow” case studies of three civil wars from the Strategic Displacement in Civil Conflict dataset that experienced forced relocation. The three case studies are Burundian Civil War (1991–2005), the Aceh conflict in Indonesia (1999–2005), and the Vietnam War (1960–1975). These cases were selected for both methodological and practical reasons. Using process-tracing of secondary sources, the chapter finds that in all three cases, perpetrators used forced relocation to overcome identification problems posed by guerrilla insurgencies, specifically by drawing inferences about the identities and allegiances of the local population based on civilian flight patterns and physical locations. State authorities also used relocation to extract economic and military resources, notably recruits, from the displaced, which in some instances helped fill critical resource gaps. The evidence suggests that the theory and its underlying mechanisms are generalizable beyond Uganda and travel to other diverse contexts.