How are civilians' attitudes toward combatants affected by exposure
to violence during wartime? Does civilian victimization affect these
attitudes differently depending on the perpetrator's identity? We
investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards
combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five
Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan --- the very heart of the
Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly
elicit truthful answers
to sensitive questions about attitudes toward combatants. Our
findings demonstrate that civilian
attitudes toward the combatants are asymmetric. Harm inflicted by
the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is met with
reduced ISAF support and increased Taliban support, but
Taliban-inflicted harm does not translate into greater ISAF
support. We combine a multistage sampling design with multilevel
statistical modeling to estimate support levels for ISAF and the
Taliban at the individual, village, and district levels, permitting
a more fine-grained analysis of wartime attitudes than previously
possible.
(Last revised, December 2011) |