Civilian compliance and victimization in the Boko Haram insurgency

How does variation in civilian compliance strategies shape wartime victimization? Across civil wars, some contested communities are displaced while others remain in place despite exposure to armed actors. Existing research explains civilian victimization primarily through armed actors' strategies, with limited attention to how civilians shape its form. I argue that civilian compliance, defined as accommodating the demands of armed actors without formally joining them, is a self-protection strategy that can reduce immediate danger but shifts civilians' exposure toward different forms of victimization. Drawing on fieldwork and a subnational comparison of two contested communities in northeastern Nigeria, I show that variation in civilian compliance shapes how armed actors interpret civilian behavior. Fragmented compliance, in which civilians selectively comply with the actor they perceive as most threatening, produces signals that rival forces interpret as support for the opposing side, prompting punitive operations and displacement. By contrast, dual compliance, in which civilians accommodate both rebels and state forces while presenting compliance as exclusive to each, creates behavioral ambiguity. Lacking clear evidence that civilians assist their rival, armed actors tolerate civilian presence and rely instead on surveillance and coercive extraction. The findings show that patterns of civilian compliance shape armed actors' use of violence, producing displacement in some communities and in situ victimization in others. By identifying civilian compliance as the behavioral signal through which armed actors infer civilian support, the article nuances existing explanations of variation in wartime victimization.