Alliance Formation in Civil Wars Quotes

“In reality, there appears to be no alliance that is impossible because of identity differences. I relative power considerations dictate that two groups unite in an alliance, then the elites involved will always find some characteristic that they share and construct a justifying narrative around that attribute.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“Apart from the Croat-Muslim unifying narrative, the Ustashe also used overtly anti-Serb propaganda. They banned the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the Serb national alphabet, on April 25, 1941, and on May 3, 1941 passed legislation that viewed religious conversion for the Orthodox as the only way to grant them equal rights before the law.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“Najibullah abandoned all Marxist rhetoric and proceeded to change the name of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan to Party of the Homeland (Hizb-i-Watan). The party was now open to "believing and practicing Muslims," and Najibullah put mullahs on the civil servant payroll.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“April 27, 1978 coup that overthrew Mohammad Daoud's government ans led to the onset of the Afghan civil war. The communists cast the war as a fight of liberation against feudalism, armed opposition to powerful landowners (khans) who were exploiting the poor peasant-serfs (dehqan). The latter were, according to that narrative, subdued by religion and could not put up a fight for their rights. There was also a broader story as to how the Afghan communist movement was standing up to the preexisting regime's abuse and predation.
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On the opposing side were the mujahedin. They resisted what they perceived as a movement of forced modernization aiming to undermine Afghanistan's religion, culture, traditions, and family structure. They vehemently opposed a score of reforms the communists had tried to introduce, ranging from policies on land reform to education to family law. People were upset not only with the nature of the changes, but also with the style of their implementation. They joined the opposition willingly and in droves.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“There is no clear evidence that Pakistan was involved in the Taliban's inception per se, but it certainly featured in the Taliban's transformation from a movement of clerics from within the Jihad driven by their local agendas and supported by their peers to an organized political unit with countrywide objectives.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“Errors in diplomacy, stemming from faulty understanding of the origins of intergroup alliances and the causes of within-group instability, have undoubtedly led to the perpetuation of these wars and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars