Leading violent lives : on everyday life and its organisation in the Lord's Resistance Army

Intrastate wars dominate the nature of armed conflict all over the world. The macrodynamics of civil war – its causes, contexts and incentive structures – have been elaborated by a number of mainly quantitative studies. What is largely missing from the picture is an analysis of the internal dynamics of irregular warfare. We know a lot about how and why violence starts and possibly ends, but not how it happens. This thesis aims at addressing this gap by focusing on the microdynamics of organised collective violence. It departs from the case of the initially northern Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a now transnational rebel group that is characterised by its reliance on forced recruitment and the use of excessive violence.
What makes the continuous presence of the LRA possible? How can an organisation that has no popular support or financial means, one that relies on forced recruitment, sustain itself for such a long time? How does it manage to create compliance and even commitment among its mainly involuntary personnel? And how do the combatants themselves cope with these demands of violent action? What resources do they have to survive, get used to, and – for some – even come to enjoy an everyday life that is structured by violence and the threat of it? How does their violent lifestyle impact the way combatants think about themselves, and vice versa? In short: How do combatants cope with the violent demands of the LRA, and how does the LRA manage to enforce its violent demands? These are the questions motivating this thesis.