Abstract
Does the way a state fights shape how rebels treat civilians? Existing research explains rebel human rights violations largely through group-level characteristics such as ideology, recruitment, leadership, and internal discipline. This paper shifts attention to the broader conflict environment by examining whether state reliance on pro-government militias (PGMs) shapes rebel abuse and whether informal and semi-official militias exert distinct pressures on rebel behavior. Using rebel-group-year data from 1990 to 2018 and mixed-effects count and binary models, I find that both militia types significantly increase the likelihood that rebels commit human rights violations, with effects that are statistically indistinguishable from one another. Semi-official militias, however, emerge as the stronger and more consistent predictor of the breadth of abuse across multiple violation types. These findings suggest that rebel abuse reflects not only internal organizational traits but also strategic responses to the coercive environments produced by state counterinsurgency strategies.
