Finding the Frontline in Civil Conflict: Looting and Recruiting in African Refugee Camps

Despite the recent emergence of subnational civil conflict data, subnational conflict theory remains underdeveloped.For example, why are some locations more conflict prone than others?In addition, refugee studies continue to aggregate refugee flows, ignoring the differences between refugee movements and refugee camp locations.This study seeks to fill these gaps while incorporating theory on transnational rebels.This paper argues that refugee camps provide lootable goods and potential recruits, which facilitates a rebel group's capacity to wage war effectively.Rebel groups can access refugee camps located outside of refugee origin states and take advantage of any available material and human resources.Quantitative analyses using UCDP conflict data exhibit a negative relationship between conflict and the distance from a given grid cell centroid and the nearest refugee camp, diamonds, and gemstones.These findings indicate a need to devote greater attention to refugee camps in order to ameliorate the negative externalities of civil war.