Create compliance and cohesion: how rebel organizations manage to survive

Established conflict theories focus on the role of incentives in the decision to join, stay, or leave an insurgency. These theories, however, disregard the pressure that an organization can impose on its members. Similar to legal organizations, we assert that a rebel organization can sustain itself by effective human resource management. Using narratives resulting from psychological trauma therapy of former combatants of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), these management strategies are examined. The analysis shows that the LRA sustains itself in the first place by the use of brute force. However, they also manage themselves by a careful selection process of their fighters, by the conscious creation of social control, and by offering their members an alternative social network in which promotion and compensation play a role.