The power to hurt in civil war: The strategic aim of renamo violence

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 821-834

  Hultman, Lisa ^a  

^a UPPSALA UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL WAR; MILITARY INTERVENTION; NEGOTIATION PROCESS; POLITICAL VIOLENCE;

MOZAMBIQUE;

EID: 75749117873     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070903313194     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. See, for example, Africa Watch, Conspicuous Destruction: War Famine & The Reform Process in Mozambique (New York, Human Rights Watch, 1992), p. 2.
2. H. Andersson, Mozambique: A War Against the People (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1992), p. 64.
3. A. Vines, Renamo: From Terrorism to Democracy in Mozambique? (York, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of York, 1996), p. 1.
4. A. Thomashausen, 'Preventive Diplomacy in Mozambique', in H. Solomon (ed.), Towards Sustainable Peace: The Theory and Practice of Preventive Diplomacy in Africa (Pretoria, Africa Institute of South Africa, 2003), p. 287.
5. J. Hanlon, Mozambique: Who Calls the Shots? (London, James Currey, 1991), p. 42.
6. S.N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006).
7. T. Young, 'The MNR/RENAMO: External and Internal Dynamics', African Affairs, 89, 357 (1990), p. 506.
8. See, for example, J. Hanlon, Peace Without Profit: How the IMF Blocks Rebuilding in Mozambique (Oxford, James Currey, 1996), p. 15.
9. P. Johnson and D. Martin, Apartheid Terrorism: The Destabilization Report (London, James Currey, 1989).
10. L. Hultman, 'Targeting the Unarmed: Strategic Rebel Violence in Civil War' (Ph.D. thesis, Uppsala University, 2008), pp. 15, 22-23.
11. T. Mkandawire, 'The Terrible Toll of Post-colonial "Rebel Movements" in Africa: Towards an Explanation of the Violence against the Peasantry', Journal of Modern African Studies (JMAS), 40, 2 (2002), pp. 181-215.
12. B. Egerö, Mozambique: A Dream Undone. The Political Economy of Democracy, 1975-84 (Uppsala, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1987), p. 93.
13. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, p. 171.
14. J.M. Weinstein and L. Francisco, 'The Civil War in Mozambique: The Balance Between Internal and External Influences', in P. Collier and N. Sambanis (eds), Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis, Volume One: Africa (Washington, DC, World Bank, 2005), pp. 184-5.
15. J.M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007).
16. J.-P. Azam, 'Looting and Conflict Between Ethnoregional Groups: Lessons for State Formation in Africa', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46, 1 (2002), pp. 131-53
17. G. Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War: The 'Congolese' Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (London, Hurst & Company, 2009), pp. 336-7.
18. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
19. Vines, Renamo.
20. Due to the theoretical focus, I concentrate on the impact of violence on the state. Concerning the impact of violence on the civilian population. see, for example, C. Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
21. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence.
22. L. Hultman, 'Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting', Terrorism and Political Violence, 19, 2 (2007), pp. 205-22.
23. A. Vinci, 'The Strategic Use of Fear by the Lord's Resistance Army', Small Wars and Insurgencies, 16, 3 (December 2005), pp. 360-81.
24. T. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1966), p. 6.
25. R.A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York, Random House, 2005).
26. See, for example, A. Kydd and B. Walter, 'The Strategies of Terrorism', International Security, 31, 1 (2006), pp. 49-80.
27. B. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York, Columbia University Press, 2006).
28. Vines, Renamo.
29. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
30. For an overview of the interaction between external and internal factors, and how RENAMO grew into a more independent organisation, see, for example, Weinstein and Francisco, 'The Civil War'.
31. G. Morgan, 'Violence in Mozambique: Towards an Understanding of RENAMO', JMAS, 28, 4 (1990), pp. 603-19.
32. Quoted in Vines, Renamo, p. 76.
33. W. Minter, 'The Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) as described by Ex-Participants', Development Dialogue, 1 (1989), pp. 107-8.
34. Vines, Renamo, p. 78.
35. See, for example, M. Hall, 'The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (RENAMO): A Study in the Destruction of an African Country', Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 60, 1 (1990), pp. 39-68;
36. Young, 'The MNR/RENAMO'.
37. J.M. Cabrita, Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000).
38. Hoile, Mozambique: A Nation in Crisis (London, Claridge Press, 1989), p. 91.
39. A. Thomashausen, 'The National Resistance of Mozambique', Africa Insight, 13, 2 (1983), p. 127.
40. See 'The Gorongosa Documents' (extracts), 2nd edition (Published by the Mozambique Ministry of Information). André Thomashausen was engaged in teaching political science in the bush (interview with A. Thomashausen [academic; political adviser for RENAMO], 6 September 2007, Pretoria).
41. K. Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, 1987).
42. Vines, Renamo, p. 16.
43. D. Martin and P. Johnson, 'Mozambique: To Nkomati and Beyond', in P. Johnson and D. Martin (eds), Destructive Engagement: Southern Africa at War (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986), p. 6.
44. Johnson and Martin, Apartheid Terrorism.
45. J. Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (London, James Currey, 1986).
46. M. Hall and T. Young, Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique since Independence (London, Hurst & Company, 1997), pp. 122-5.
47. T. Ohlson, 'Strategic Confrontation versus Economic Survival in Southern Africa', in F.M. Deng and I.W. Zartman (eds), Conflict Resolution in Africa (Washington, DC, The Brookings Institution, 1991), p. 226.
48. 'Gorongosa Documents', entries in Desk Diary on 24 February and 21 June 1984.
49. Interview with R. Domingos (RENAMO chief of general staff; now party leader of PDD), 19 September 2007, Maputo.
50. Interview with M. Ngonhamo (RENAMO general; now general in Mozambique new army), 18 September 2007, Maputo.
51. Interview with H. Morais (RENAMO general; now member of Maputo municipal assembly), 17 September 2007, Maputo.
52. Interview with A. Dhlakama (president of RENAMO), 12 October 2007, Maputo.
53. J. Ciment, Angola and Mozambique: Postcolonial Wars in Southern Africa (New York, Facts on File, Inc, 1997), p. 194.
54. Hoile, Nation in Crisis, p. 90.
55. Interview with M. Moreno (RENAMO politician and personal friend of Evo Fernandes), 9 October 2007, Maputo.
56. Interview with R. Domingos.
57. Interview with M. Ngonhamo.
58. A. Nilsson, 'From Pseudo-terrorists to Pseudo-guerrillas: The MNR in Mozambique, Part I', Review of African Political Economy, 57 (1993), p. 67.
59. Hoile, Nation in Crisis, pp. 92-3.
60. Vines, Renamo; Minter, 'The Mozambique National Resistance', p. 94.
61. During the later phases of the war, RENAMO did also develop its political organisation, see C. Manning, 'Constructing Opposition in Mozambique: RENAMO as Political Party', Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), 24, 1 (1998), pp. 161-89.
62. C.A. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), p. 242; Cabrita, Tortuous Road.
63. Cabrita, Tortuous Road, p. 154.
64. Hall and Young, Confronting Leviathan, p. 128.
65. Hoile, Nation in Crisis, p. 78.
66. Thomashausen, 'The National Resistance', p. 128.
67. Interview with M. Ngonhamo.
68. Interviews with M. Ngonhamo, H. Morais, R. Domingos, and A. Dhlakama.
69. Vines, Renamo, p. 81.
70. Interview with R. Domingos.
71. Minter, 'The Mozambique National Resistance', p. 118.
72. Interview with J. Ngomacha (executive secretary for chief of RENAMO delegation during peace process), 11 October 2007, Maputo.
73. Interview with R. Domingos.
74. Minter, 'The Mozambique National Resistance', pp. 96-7.
75. C. Dolan and J. Schafer, 'The Reintegration of Ex-combatants in Mozambique: Manica and Zambezia Provinces' (Final report to USAID-Mozambique, Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford, 1997), p. 147.
76. J.P.B. Coelho, 'Reintegration of Maputo Ex-combatants' (Report commissioned by USAID/Mozambique, Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford, 1997).
77. C. Geffray, La Cause des Armes au Mozambique: Anthropologie d'une Guerre Civile (Paris, Karthala and Nairobi, Credu, 1990), p. 107.
78. Coelho, 'Maputo Ex-Combatants', p. 59.
79. C.P. Dodge and M. Raunedalen, Reaching Children in War: Sudan, Uganda and Mozambique (Bergen, Sigma Forlag, 1991), p. 57.
80. A. Honwana, Child Soldiers in Africa (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 73.
81. Interview with H. Morais.
82. Vines, Renamo, pp. 82 and 98.
83. Interview with S. Moyana (journalist), 3 October 2007, Maputo. Still today, there is a considerable silence about the violence committed by the government.
84. see V. Igreja, 'Memories as Weapons: The Politics of Peace and Silence in Post-Civil War Mozambique', JSAS, 34, 3 (September 2008), pp. 539-56.
85. Interviews with A. Dhlakama, M. Ngonhamo, R. Domingos, and H. Morais. One of the most debated cases is the massacre in Homoíne, Inhambane, in 1987.
86. Interviews with S. Moyana, and J.P.B. Coelho (academic), 1 October 2007, Maputo. In particular, some attacks on convoys in the Maputo province, for which the government blamed RENAMO, are likely to have been carried out by government soldiers (interview with J. Cabrita (journalist), 22 September 2007, Mbabane, Swaziland).
87. This approach is similar to that taken by Kalyvas in his study of atrocities in the Algerian war; see S.N. Kalyvas, 'Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria', Rationality and Society, 11, 3 (1999), pp. 243-85.
88. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, pp. 231-3.
89. Ibid., p. 234.
90. Vines, Renamo, p. 98.
91. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, p. 233.
92. Vines, Renamo, p. 98.
93. Vines, Renamo, p. 98.
94. Egerö, Dream Undone, p. 90.
95. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, p. 233.
96. Vines, Renamo, p. 98.
97. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, p. 236.
98. W. Finnegan, A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992), p. 72.
99. J. Schafer, 'Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?', African Affairs, 100, 399 (2001), p. 219.
100. Interview with J.T. Bila (FRELIMO economic adviser; former humanitarian emergency aid worker), 6 October 2007, Inhambane.
101. Interview with C.B. Caixote (academic), 10 October 2007, Maputo.
102. Egerö, Dream Undone, p. 93. Poor people with a low level of education also tended to be more favourable of RENAMO.
103. see H. Abrahamsson and A. Nilsson, Mozambique: The Troubled Transition: From Socialist Construction to Free Market Capitalism (London, Zed Books, 1995), pp. 88-92.
104. O. Roesch, 'RENAMO and the Peasantry in Southern Mozambique: A View from Gaza Province', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26, 3 (1992), p. 479.
105. Interview with R. Domingos.
106. Interview with A. Dhlakama.
107. J. McGregor, 'Violence and Social Change in a Border Economy: War in the Maputo Hinterland, 1984-1992', JSAS, 24, 1 (1998), pp. 37-60.
108. Interview with H. Morais.
109. Interview with J. Cabrita.
110. S.C. Lubkemann, 'Migratory Coping in Wartime Mozambique: An Anthropology of Violence and Displacement in "Fragmented Wars"', Journal of Peace Research, 42, 4 (2005), pp. 493-508.
111. Interview with F.B. de Lima (journalist), 11 October 2007, Maputo.
112. Quoted in K.B. Wilson, 'Cults of Violence and Counter-Violence in Mozambique', JSAS, 18, 3 (1992), p. 527.
113. Interview with J. Bila.
114. Interview with J.M. Manjate (academic; former army advisor in Zambezia), 1 October 2007, Maputo.
115. Interviews with R. Domingos, H. Morais, and M. Ngonhamo.
116. Interview with R. Domingos.
117. Hall and Young, Confronting Leviathan, p. 51
118. S. Chan and M. Venâncio (with contributions from C. Alden and S. Barnes), War and Peace in Mozambique (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998), p. 8.
119. Indeed, there is also evidence that RENAMO used coercive tactics to enforce co-operation with the traditional chiefs.
120. Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story, p. 55.
121. Hall and Young, Confronting Leviathan, pp. 175-6.
122. Interview with J. Cabrita.
123. Interview with H. Morais.
124. See R. Gersony, 'Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experience in Mozambique' - Report submitted to Ambassador Jonathan Moore and Dr. Chester A. Crocker (Bureau for Refugee Programs, US Department of State, April 1988).
125. According to an anthropological study of a district in central province of Manica, violence was also shaped by local social struggles, compared to, for example, the south, where massacres were not only more savage to their nature, but also more shaped by ethnic and political tensions.
126. see S.C. Lubkemann, 'Migratory Coping in Wartime Mozambique: An Anthropology of Violence and Displacement in "Fragmented Wars"', Journal of Peace Research, 42, 4 (2005), pp. 493-508.
127. Gersony, Mozambican Refugee Accounts, p. 11.
128. Interview with A. Dhlakama.
129. Interview with R. Domingos.
130. D. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 78.
131. I. Abdullah and P. Muana, 'The Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone', in C. Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (Oxford, James Currey, 1998), p. 183.
132. M. Humphreys and J. Weinstein, 'Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War: Determinants of the Strategies of Warring Factions', American Political Science Review, 100, 3 (2006), pp. 429-47.
133. J.-P. Azam, 'On Thugs and Heroes: Why Warlords Victimize Their Own Civilians', Economics of Governance, 7, 1 (2006), pp. 53-73.
134. M. Bøås and K. Dunn (eds), African Guerrillas: Raging against the Machine (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007).
135. Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 2.