Book Project

Armed Group Constellations: Patterns of Cooperation and Conflict in Multiparty Civil Wars (under contract with Cambridge University Press)

In December 2024, Syrian rebel groups successfully overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime after nearly 14 years of civil war. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) orchestrated and led the impressive operation, but it was a collective effort involving multiple organizations, including groups that had often clashed with each other throughout the conflict. This outcome raises important questions about how we understand rebel group behavior in multiparty civil wars.

Existing literature on civil wars expects rebel groups to engage in either cooperation or conflict, with alliances being fragile and constantly shifting due to commitment problems. Yet empirical evidence reveals a different pattern: groups repeatedly cooperate with the same organizations while simultaneously engaging in violent conflict with them.

This pattern appears across multiple contexts. Syrian rebel groups maintained working relationships with HTS despite ideological differences and concerns about the group’s radical orientation. Similar dynamics emerge in other conflicts, where militant groups frequently terminate and renew alliances with the same partners over extended periods.

This book introduces a new theoretical framework for understanding these interactions. Rather than viewing cooperation and conflict as mutually exclusive, I argue that rebel groups form distinct constellations—structured patterns of cooperation, conflict, and conflict management that emerge from the interplay of shared conflict goals, ideology, tactical interests, and personal ties.

These constellations vary along two key dimensions: geographic scope (local versus expansive) and thematic scope (single-domain versus multi-domain). Local single-domain constellations might involve brief military coordination or economic arrangements between otherwise opposed groups. Expansive multi-domain constellations feature institutionalized cooperation across military, governance, and political spheres, despite periodic violent disputes.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Syria and detailed case studies from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Myanmar, the book demonstrates how different combinations of similarities between groups intersect with territorial control to produce these distinct interaction patterns.

Understanding these constellation patterns offers insights into when rebel movements are likely to succeed, how cooperation can persist despite conflict, and why some constellations are associated with relatively peaceful consolidation processes, while others lead to the less sustainable rise of a dominant group through violent means alone. The framework moves beyond binary cooperation-conflict analyses to reveal the structured nature of rebel group interactions in complex conflict environments.