Abstract
People employ both violent and non-violent means to achieve political ends. Some suggest that grievances – actual or perceived, motivate people to adopt violence, while others argue that greed and opportunity structures stimulate violence - motivation is indeterminate. A plethora of the existing work explains motivations, operational methods, targets etc. of political violence and insurgencies; however, academic inquiry into intra-movement dynamics and its effects on achievement of their strategic objectives is scant. This paper employs Movement Structure Theory to unravel intramovement behavior of militant groups by disaggregating ethnic militancy in Balochistan, to answer some of the basic questions of what constitutes success / failure for non-state violence and which factors effect variation in polarity of Baloch movement. Better understanding of intra-movement dynamics would facilitate policymakers in estimating probability of successes/failures of ethnic movements and developing focused strategies to efficiently mitigate ethnic violence. Paper concludes that presence of multiple groups in a movement undermines its ability to achieve strategic objectives.
Keyword(s)
Intra-movement, Violence – motivation, Policymakers, Militancy, Environment