5 - Forced Relocation in Uganda

Summary

This chapter tests the book’s arguments in a case study from Uganda. The Ugandan government faced a series of armed rebellions throughout the country from 1986 to 2006, and it forcibly relocated civilians while fighting some rebel groups but not others. This chapter draws on a wealth of information collected during six months of fieldwork in 2016 and 2017 on how, when, where, and why authorities employed displacement. By exploiting within-case variation in the location and timing of relocation by the same government, the chapter conducts a structured, controlled comparative analysis. Drawing on original data – including archival materials, subnational violence and displacement data, and hundreds of interviews and surveys with political officials, military officers, rank-and-file soldiers, civil society groups, journalists, community leaders, and civilians – it traces the decision by Ugandan counterinsurgents to employ forced relocation, examine the observable implications of the theory, and demonstrate the assortative logic of displacement. It also shows that alternative logics are insufficient to explain variation in this case.