Conflicts unfold as dynamic processes where the frequency and intensity of violence against civilians rise and fall over time. This study examines those temporal dynamics in two long-term civil wars—DR-Congo and Sudan—to identify the systematic and more random conditions that drive increases or decreases in civilian targeting and casualties.

📊 Data and Research Design

• Analysis focuses on violence, territorial changes, and actor networks in the long-running civil wars in DR-Congo and Sudan.
• Uses vector autoregression (VAR) techniques to trace month-to-month relationships among: violent events against civilians, territorial exchanges, and the number and entry of violent agents (rebels, militias, government forces).

🔎 Key Findings

• Violence by rival political actors, territorial exchange, and the number or addition of violent agents all strongly shape whether civilian targeting events and casualties increase or decrease over time.
• Three actor types—rebels, militias, and government forces—appear locked in spirals: violence against civilians by one actor tends to lead to subsequent civilian-directed violence by another actor.
• Rebels and government forces increase counterattacks on civilians in response to the other side’s acquisition of contested territory; this territorial-response effect is especially pronounced in DR-Congo.
• Growth in the number of active nonstate agents leads to higher violence rates in subsequent months.
• Of the factors examined, civilian targeting by rival actors is the single strongest trigger of follow-on violent events against civilians.
• Vector autoregression results reveal both general patterns and important country-level differences in these dynamics.

❗️Why It Matters

• Civilian targeting is not merely episodic or isolated: it is woven into interactive, escalating dynamics among multiple armed actors and territorial contests.
• Policies aimed at reducing civilian harm should account for spirals of reciprocal targeting, the incentive effects of territorial change, and the destabilizing role of rising numbers of nonstate violent agents.