IndexThe Greed ThesisThe Beginning of the Conflict in PeruThe Decline of the Bright PathConclusionThe study of civil wars has gained greater importance for both scholars and practitioners since the '90. With many concerned about finding causal factors that explain the onset and duration of internal conflicts. Scholars such as Hans Enzensberger (1993), Martin Van Creveld (1991), and Robert Kaplan (2000) have argued that modern civil wars are caused simply by: Nothing. That they were simply an outpouring of internal anger and ferocity, a return to the medieval impulses of rape and pillage. The Civil War, in their eyes, was simply war for war's sake. These arguments are, however, problematic, as there is an innate xenophobia in describing others, particularly in poor, war-prone countries, as savages, intent on killing for the sake of killing. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The works of Mary Kaldor and other "new warfare" theorists offer a much more subtle interpretation of the phenomenon of internal conflict in the post-Cold War era. For Kaldor, the new wars were primarily an excessive growth of organized crime and the conclusion of extreme identity politics. These factors, combined with the erosion of state power from above due to globalization and from below due to ethnic tensions, explode into a hitherto unknown form of warfare, focused more on prolonging hostilities than achieving military victory. As the conflict takes hold and becomes a profitable venture for the belligerents, they choose to continue fighting not to achieve political goals, but to accrue economic benefits. While Mary Kaldor extensively discussed the role of economics, primarily profits from a war economy, in sustaining and prolonging civil wars others such as Paul Collier, whose work and criticisms will be discussed more fully later in this essay , have brought greater attention to the role of economic factors in the initiation, duration, and termination of conflicts, with economics, or greed, for Collier, being the primary motivation behind conflict. This essay explores the role of economic factors, going beyond simple greed, in shaping civil wars. After offering a brief overview of Collier and his critics, it will examine the Sendero Luminoso insurrection in Peru (1980–present) and the factors behind its onset, duration, and end. The study concludes that while macro- and micro-economic factors have played a definite role in shaping the conflict, it is crucial to look at others, namely socio-cultural factors such as ethnic divisions and horizontal inequalities, and political ones such as the government's response, to achieve positive results. a better understanding of the insurgency. In summary, while it is impossible to understand civil wars without looking at the economics behind them, it is also impossible to understand them by looking solely at economic factors. The greed thesis. Much of the early attention on the role of economics in shaping internal conflicts stems from the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. In their seminal study on "Greed and Grievance in Civil War", they find that the vast majority of civil rebellions against an established government are caused and supported by greed to control natural resources, rather than by the pursuit of a cause or to remedy the past. complaints. The beginning and duration of a given conflict, for Hoeffler and Collier, would therefore be mainly explained byavailability of easily looted goods (Collier & Hoeffler, 2000, p. 590). The natural conclusion of this argument is that economic factors are therefore the main causal explanation of civil wars. Critics of Collier and Hoeffler, particularly Frances Stewart, point out that he neglects non-macroeconomic factors in his analysis of the rebellion. That is, horizontal inequalities: inequalities between different ethnic/religious groups rather than inequalities within them. For Stewart, easily plundered natural resources can increase the likelihood and intensity of conflicts, but only if they worsen existing horizontal inequalities between different groups (Stewart et al, 2008, p. 295). Others, such as David Keen, indicate that Collier uses variables to approximate greed and resentment that do not necessarily reflect them (Keen, 2012, p. 761). For example, Collier and Hoeffler code “lack of access to education” as a metric reflecting greed, while for Keen it is more closely related to complaints. For David Keen, some of the major weaknesses of Colliers' view of the Civil War are his excessive focus on the causes and motivations of the rebels rather than government forces, and the fact that, even when it concerns the rebels, Collier considers the actual declarations of the rebels about their reasons for fighting were irrelevant, as they would simply talk about grievances to justify them. For Keen, this amounts to saying that “the answer to questions about that conflict now appears to lie not in the wisdom of Darfur, for example, but in the wisdom of Oxford and the sophistication of Washington.” in PeruThe Partido Comunista del Peru- Sendero Luminoso, Communist Party of Peru-Camino Luminoso, which will henceforth be referred to in this essay as Sendero Luminoso or Sendero, began as a small, mainly university movement, in the late '60. Over the following decades it grew exponentially from its initial base in Ayacucho. By the mid-1990s, the Sendero uprising and the central government's response had caused 69,000 deaths. The group and its government opponents have carried out numerous massacres, targeting farmers, journalists and local officials. Sendero's rise culminated in 1992, when the group threatened to take control of the capital, Lima, and depose the then government. Marks and Palmer (2005) believe that Peru was a counterintuitive context for the emergence of a communist insurgency. By 1980, not only did Peru have decent relations with socialist states, but its own left-wing Marxist opposition was largely integrated into the broader political system. The Izquierda Unida, or United Left, which made up a variety of both centrist and more marginal left-wing parties, was the second largest party in parliament and held important regional offices such as the municipality of Lima. The vote was extended, De Jure, to the majority of the population, including illiterate peasants, many of whom were indigenous. However, indigenous majority areas, particularly Ayacucho, recorded the highest rate of electoral abstention in all of Peru. Of those who voted, they had the highest national rate of invalid and blank ballots, with up to 42% of all votes cast in the province casting blank ballots, compared to the 22% national average. Reflecting a lack of confidence in the democratic transition among residents. Overall, Peru's economy had undertaken steady growth since the 1940s, despite the hyperinflation that subsequently plagued the country during the 1980s, coinciding with Sendero's rise to national prominence. However, the indigenous-majority provinces of Ayacucho and its neighbors have registeredan opposite trend in previous decades, with an increase in poverty compared to the rest of the country (McClintock, 2001, p. 76). The areas where Sendero thrived and recruited the most were: Initially, the poor mountainous areas of Ayacucho, which had a predominantly Quechua indigenous population. In stark contrast to the economies of other parts of Peru, these regions had high rates of extreme poverty and failed to see the benefits of overall economic growth, along with systemic biases against the culture and language of their inhabitants (Marks & Palmer , 2006, page 91). However, despite low incomes compared to the national average, the population of Ayacucho was overall wealthier than its neighbors, primarily Apurimac and Huancavelica (Marks & Palmer, 2006, p. 96). What separated Ayacucho from these areas, however, was the greater access to education afforded to its residents. Increased literacy, as well as the wider availability of newspapers and TV, among Ayacucho's indigenous groups allowed them to see the their problems in a national context, contextualising their poverty in relation to the progress the rest of the country was making. The leaders of the Sendero Luminoso, however, especially in its early days, were not representative of the indigenous base. Rather, these were primarily middle- and upper-middle-class Spanish speakers from outside the region, who had met and begun to radicalize at university. Scott attributes the leftist shift on Peruvian campuses to broader trends occurring across Latin America, where from the 1960s onward, higher education began to expand its offerings outside of the establishment, allowing the takeover of more alternative left-wing policies. Scott also mentions the influence of the Cuban Revolution as an inspiration for other rebellions throughout Latin America. Unlike other Marxist factions in Peru and the region, the Sendero drew inspiration, training, and support from Maoist China rather than Soviet Russia, despite leader Abimael Guzman Reynoso's initial membership of the much more traditional Stalinist Peruvian Communist Party. Beyond this, they embraced a radical philosophy of indigismo, centered on the empowerment of indigenous peoples, and shaped the perfect communist utopia around the organization of traditional indigenous communities. Despite clear warning signs of the group's radicalization by the mid-1970s, the central government, then controlled by the Revolutionary Military Government, which took power in a 1968 coup, did not pay much attention to these developments, as Ayacucho was considered a remote and inconsequential province with little effect on broader political developments. of the country, and the central administration, following its own quasi-socialist tendencies, was more focused on threats coming from the right than from the left. This allowed the Sendero Luminoso plenty of time to grow silently in the shadows. By 1975, although Guzman Reynoso had gone into hiding, he had a large network of supporters throughout the region, and many of his former pupils had taken up teaching positions at other universities, where they recruited other numbers into the movement, which had been able to grow despite being cut off from China's financial and ideological support in 1976. Once it expanded beyond the intellectual elites, the Sendero appealed to existing horizontal inequalities to strengthen its ranks. They recruited indigenous fighters and sympathizers through food distributions, propaganda, and Robin Hood-style strategies by which they robbed wealthy landowners and traders, redistributing the profits to the poor (McClintock, 2001, p. 79). In Ayacucho, Sendero managed to tap into abroad and tacit support, with local journalists reporting near-unanimous support among indigenous youth. Beyond the charisma and networking power of its leadership, it becomes clear that many economic and non-economic factors contributed to the rise of the Shining Path, and thus the onset of the conflict. Although the uneven economic development present in Peru and the resulting horizontal inequalities have laid the foundation for deep grievances among the local population of Ayacucho, these have been exacerbated by new technologies, such as television and greater access to education. As well as both national and international political factors, such as the Sino-Soviet split, which led the Sendero leadership to separate from more traditional Peruvian communism, and the Peruvian government's early inaction against the growing insurgency. Duration and intensity of the Sendero Insurrezione LuminosoOnce the actual insurrection began in 1980, the government's response remained slow. Peru's first democratically elected president, Fernando Belaunde Terry, was reluctant to use military force against Sendero Luminoso, as he was concerned about empowering the army, shortly after handing over government to civilian power. He downplayed the level of insurgency in the media, despite recurring attacks, referring to the Sendero insurgents as "cattle rustlers" and refusing to employ adequate force until 1982. Once the army was allowed to enter Ayacucho, played right into the provocative tactics of the Sendero insurgents, reacting with brutal repression that caused 7,500 direct casualties, particularly among the impoverished rural indigenous population, and the flight of many others from the region, or their transformation into Sendero Sympathizers . It is possible that this excessive brutality, at the level of individual soldiers, was due to racism against the area's indigenous majority. After the military intervention, Sendero fighters fled to the Upper Huallaga Valley, a remote jungle area with a predominantly indigenous population, employed primarily in the cultivation of coca leaf, which accounted for 90% of the region's GDP (McClintock, 1988, p. 130). Initially Sendero acted against the cultivation of coca, denouncing it as contrary to the principles of Marxism, which led to conflicts with the local population. In contrast to its native Ayacucho, the Upper Huallaga Valley was a relatively affluent area, where the message of indigenous emancipation through Marxist revolution did not have the same resonance as it did in Sendero's early days. Sendero Luminoso then changed its message, offering protection to local cocaleros (coca growers and processors) against an increasingly aggressive eradication campaign led by the United States Felbab Brown, 2010, p. 43). Although the Sendero held very few full-time fighting forces, even at the height of the insurgency, with Scott (2017) estimating its local and regional base to be no more than 2,000 individuals. It was able to generate massive revenues from taxes and profits from the cultivation, processing, and trafficking of the coca leaf and its products, up to $10 million annually by 1989. In addition to generating profits, Sendero's involvement in the coca trade, especially the protection offered to farmers against eradication policies, allowed the group to gain the protection of the local population, who refused to provide information to the Peruvian army during the height of the eradication campaign. The presence of a thriving coca plantation trade in the areas where Sendero was most active, and the enormous profits that the group was able to generate lend some credence to the greed thesis in the context of Peru. However, it is.