The destruction wrought on Granollers after a raid by German aircraft on the 31st of May 1938 during the Spanish Civil War illustrates the scale of modern internal conflict. A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state or country. The aim of one side may be to take control of the country, achieve independence for a region, or change government policies. James Fearon, a scholar at Stanford University, defines this as a violent conflict fought by organized groups aiming to seize power at the center or in a region. Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side must be the state itself. Stathis Kalyvas describes it as armed combat taking place within recognized sovereign boundaries between parties subject to a common authority at the outset. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1,000 casualties per year. Others specify that at least 100 casualties must come from each side. The Correlates of War dataset classifies these conflicts based on over 1,000 war-related casualties annually. This rate excludes several highly publicized conflicts like The Troubles of Northern Ireland. It also excludes the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa. Based on the 1,000-casualties-per-year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997. Of those, 104 occurred from 1944 to 1997. If using the less-stringent 1,000 total casualties criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007. As of 2007, there were 20 ongoing civil wars.
Greed Versus Grievance Theories
A comprehensive study by the World Bank team examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999. They compared this against 1,167 five-year increments of no civil war for statistical analysis. A high proportion of primary commodities in national exports significantly increases the risk of conflict. A country at peak danger with commodities comprising 32% of gross domestic product has a 22% risk of falling into civil war in a given five-year period. A country with no primary commodity exports has only a 1% risk. When disaggregated, petroleum dependence results in slightly more risk than other primary commodities. A second source of finance is national diasporas funding rebellions from abroad. Statistically switching the size of a country's diaspora from smallest to largest resulted in a sixfold increase in the chance of civil war. Higher male secondary school enrollment reduced the chance of conflict by about 3%. A growth rate 1% higher than average resulted in a decline in the chance of civil war of about 1%. Low per capita income was proposed as a cause for grievance but economic inequality proved insignificant. Most proxies for grievance were statistically insignificant including ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization. Only ethnic dominance increased the risk nearly twofold. The combined effects of ethnic and religious fractionalization mitigated each other in many cases. David Keen argues conflicts are too complex to be analyzed through simplified methods like greed versus grievance theory.