From protest to civil war: Explaining conflict onset in Syria and Libya

Written by Aman Rasheed

Any views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of any entities they are associated with or represent.

Conflicts occur when there is disagreement between stakeholders regarding a possible solution. They can be resolved either through dialogue or fighting. Military personnel, armed militias, foreign mercenaries etc., participate in modern conflicts. Economic inequality, ethnic rivalry and political repression are some of the common explanations for the emergence of violent conflicts. Case study literature suggests that the onset of contentious politics is marked by several interrelated mechanisms and processes, rather than discrete events (Tilly 1978; 2003; McAdam et al. 2001).

According to Davies (1962) and Gurr (1970), societies may engage in armed rebellion once they cross an aggregate threshold of resentment. The action-reaction sequences between challengers and incumbents at the outbreak of large-scale violence are known as the civil war onset. New research suggests that civil wars significantly vary in how they begin (Lacher 2022; McLauchlin 2022; Shesterinina 2022; Siberdt 2023). However, the agreed-upon definition of civil war is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in one calendar year (UCDP 2020).

Balcells and Kalyvas (2014) find that conventional civil wars tend to result in more battle deaths and end with rebel victory, while irregular conflicts generate greater civilian victimization and tend to be won by incumbents. Syria and Libya witnessed insurrectionary protests in 2011 as mass demonstrations in urban areas escalated into civil wars because protesters took up arms in response to violent state repression. Pearlman (2018) argued that arbitrary and excessive use of violence against protesters can trigger moral outrage that causes an escalation in unrest. Della Porta (2014) has pointed out that repeated clashes between security forces and protesters can encourage radicalization and a drive towards violent action.

Various studies have identified several variables that make countries vulnerable to civil war, such as poverty, weak institutions and natural resource deposits. Two broad causes of civil war are structural conditions/root factors that lead to the conflict and bargaining failures attributed to informational asymmetries or commitment problems. The defining characteristics of a civil war are high intensity, frequent violence and a significant degree of organization among the conflicting parties (Sambanis, 2004; Trinn and Wencker, 2018; Vit´ e, 2009). However, the variations in conflict onset across countries remain unexplained (Blattman and Miguel, 2010; Dixon, 2009; Florea, 2017; Walter, 2009).

Staniland (2014) argues that armed organizations are built out of pre-existing networks and that these “initial organizational starting points determine the most likely pathways of insurgent change over time”. In most cases, conflict does not begin with the onset of large-scale armed violence, and actors exist in some form before that point in time (Lewis 2020; Staniland 2014). However, these arguments do not apply to all empirically observable cases of violent conflicts, and I will demonstrate this using the case studies of Syria (2011–2019) and Libya (2011–2014).

The outbreak of the 2011 civil wars in Syria and Libya was due to pro-democracy uprisings against the government against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring began in December 2010 with the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit vendor decrying corruption, sparking major civilian protests against authoritarian regimes in many countries across the Middle East and North Africa. It is vital to understand the internal dynamics of escalation and political transformation to explain the outbreak of civil war in both countries, as actors took shape only during the escalation.

Case study: Syria

In March 2011, protests in Syria began after the arrest and torture of schoolchildren in Deraa, escalating into a widespread movement that demanded political reforms and the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The government framed these protests as a foreign plot. By July 2011, some soldiers defected to form the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which became fragmented over time with various groups opposing Assad, supported by countries like Turkey and Gulf States. The civil war intensified with the emergence of non-state actors, including ISIS, which grew in power by securing bases and mobilizing recruits. Ayman al-Zawahiri initially maintained Jabhat Nusra as an autonomous group, but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi pushed for its merger into ISIS, which captured Raqqa in late 2013.

The conflict resulted in significant violence against civilians, with the Assad regime employing aerial bombardments and chemical weapons against its own population. Third-party intervention played a role in prolonging the conflict, with major powers like the US, Russia, Iran and Turkey supporting different factions. Iran historically supported Assad, providing military assistance, while Hezbollah became heavily involved in the war. Proxies backed by Iran were crucial in combating rebel groups, and Russian air support since 2015 also aided the Assad regime, allowing it to reclaim significant territory.

Case study: Libya

In 2011, protests against Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime began in Benghazi, influenced by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, leading to civil war. The movement spread quickly, and protesters faced violent repression, prompting armed resistance and widespread defections from the regime. A National Transitional Council (NTC) emerged as the political representative of the uprising, gaining international recognition. NATO intervened with a no-fly zone and air strikes under Resolution 1973, leading to Qaddafi’s capture and death in October 2011. The NTC declared Libya liberated but struggled to disarm competing militias, resulting in the 2012 Benghazi attack and increasing instability. By 2014, a second civil war broke out due to the collapse of central authority. The UN recognized the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, while a rival group, the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar, operated from Tobruk with international support. The country remains divided among various factions vying for power.

Discussion

A growing body of literature examines patterns of violence and trajectories of civil wars as social processes (Bosi et al., 2016; Shesterinina, 2022; Wood, 2008). Self-reinforcing violent interaction between security forces and protestors fuelled a rapid escalation that forced actors to confront each other in a period of intense political instability. In Syria and Libya, the brutal force used on initial demonstrations resulted in rapid mobilizations across cities, thereby providing sufficient space for self-reinforcing escalatory mechanisms to unfold. Martin (2014), Pearlman (2017) and Schnell (2015) argue that violent suppression of protests and spontaneous revolts by the ruling establishment can have an unintended consequence of sparking a major uprising.

When identity solidifies, individuals link themselves with a particular group, which enhances their collective risk-taking behaviours when faced with a potential threat. Thus, a group that once lacked cohesiveness and leadership suddenly transforms into a politically salient community that is strongly aligned with one side in a conflict (Lacher, 2020; Schnell, 2015). All of these mechanisms can take effect during periods that precede the outbreak of full-scale civil war, coalescing into transformational processes of escalation.

Violence is a strategy and consequence of interaction between rebels and governments. One approach views rebel organizations as social movements led by aggrieved groups that use violence in response to discontentment, generating rapid structural changes in society. Another approach considers rebel organizations as states in progress/states in the making, competing for control to protect their own interests in an environment characterized by anarchy.

The approach to rebel groups as in-progress states can, to a large extent, explain the service provision and governance in areas under their control/jurisdiction because they compete with the state/government to secure legitimacy and establish sovereignty. The most important collective good that rebel groups provide is security and protection from government forces because counterinsurgency operations by the state often involve the use of indiscriminate violence in civilian areas to eliminate militants.

Militaries often respond to major anti-authoritarian protests with disloyalty (Lutscher 2016; Morency-Laflamme & McLauchlin 2020; Neu 2022), making active forms of security defection more likely during mass protests (Albrecht 2019; Apolte 2022). In both Syria and Libya, fissures within the ruling elite led to defections that weakened the legitimacy of the government. Defection of security forces is key in shaping the outcome of nonviolent uprisings against regimes (Albrecht and Ohl 2016; Nepstad 2013).

The possibility of civil war looms perceptibly over political developments long before the advent of war, and actors use the threat of resorting to violence in their struggles with political adversaries. Therefore, most roads to civil war involve escalatory mechanisms that are beyond the control of pre-existing actors, and some form of political transformation is part of the escalation, which is itself instrumental to the outbreak of war.

Siberdt (2023) has developed a typology of civil war onset: peripheral challenge, state disintegration, coup attempts and insurrectionary protests. Insurrectionary protests, as in Syria and Libya in 2011, are cases of mass demonstrations, typically in urban areas in the periphery or in the capital, that escalate into civil wars as protesters militarize in response to violent state repression.

According to this typology, the escalation of insurrectionary protests results in symmetric warfare, at comparatively lower intensity and shorter duration. However, this has not been the case in Syria and Libya. These civil wars did not involve symmetric warfare, and they were high-intensity armed conflicts of long duration. The civil war in Syria came to an end only in December 2024 with a rebel victory. Libya continues to be in turmoil with multiple centres of authority that are unable to reach a consensus on power-sharing arrangements.

Lacher (2022) distinguishes between army splinter rebellions, coups and non-military rebellions. According to this framework, revolutionary conflicts, insurgencies and escalation of organized political adversaries are the three escalatory processes at the conflict level. Regarding Syria and Libya, the outbreak of large-scale violence is a key moment of transition in political competition, and the types of onset indicate different actor constellations.

During the onset in the form of insurrectionary protests, first movers initially deploy non-violent methods and later militarize for protection from violent state repression (della Porta et al. 2018; Lacher 2020; Pearlman 2021). When this action-reaction sequence takes place, armed groups are likely to be local and numerous. This is because repression often affects different localities unevenly, and these localities have different preferences and capacities for militarization. For example, during Syria’s civil war, militarization was the result of fear and revenge considerations rather than an overarching strategic decision (Bramsen 2020).

Organized violence is about ideas as well as power. Armed groups have to justify their conduct by invoking the principles of collective interest and public good. Sanin & Wood (2014) define ideology as “a systematic set of ideas that includes the identification of a referent group (a class, ethnic, or other social group), an enunciation of the grievances or challenges that the group confronts, the identification of objectives on behalf of that group (political change or defence against its threat), and a (perhaps vaguely defined) program of action”.

In both Syria and Libya, ideology influenced recruitment and propaganda, domestic and international alliances, and justifications for violence. Anti-authoritarianism was the primary ideological driver as people demanded political freedom, civil rights and democratic governance.

Wucherpfennig et al. (2012) found that civil wars in which rebel organizations recruit from and fight on behalf of excluded ethnic groups last longer than others, a finding they interpret in terms of the strong collective solidarity, high tolerance for risk and legitimacy among civilians on the part of the excluded group. The sectarian divide between the Sunni-Shia and other minorities like the Kurds in Syria was deepened with mass killings that fuelled mutual fear and polarization, hardening group identities. Tribalism and regional identity, while not formal ideologies, functioned as organizing principles for loyalty and mobilization in Libya.

A political opportunity emerged in both Syria and Libya as a result of the Arab Spring protests that made many regimes vulnerable across the region. People from various social, economic, political, religious and linguistic backgrounds or categories/affiliations who shared the goal of overthrowing the existing regime worked together to invest their time, energy, and resources in a military campaign. Weinstein (2006) has argued that the dynamics of a movement depend importantly on its resources and organization.

In terms of economic endowments, various Sunni rebel groups in Syria received money and weapons from external patrons. He used the concept of ‘social endowments’ to discuss the distinctive identities and interpersonal networks that can be mobilized in support of collective action. Sectarian tensions and ethnic rivalries served as tools for mobilization.

In conclusion, the dynamics of onset create long-lasting conditions that shape several key wartime dynamics. Escalatory processes play a very important role in the outbreak of civil war. Examining the civil wars in Syria and Libya requires taking into account the endogenous causal power of violent interaction and its potential for transforming the political landscape. Analysing the various paths to escalation before the formation and/or emergence of rebel groups is a novel contribution to the literature. It is a new, process-oriented macro-level research paradigm in the field of conflict analysis.

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