The National Resistance Army recruited educated university students, many with previous political involvement, through a clandestine urban network; ethnic appeals were among its most crucial tactics. Renamo enlisted discontented Mozambican exiles living in Rhodesia, most of whom had fought with the Portuguese against the liberation movement. Salaries were offered to sweeten the pot. The Shining Path mobilized rural communities in the Andean highlands and drew its recruits from schools of popular education that indoctrinated rural peasants in a new ideology. Its regional committee in the Upper Huallaga Valley, on the other hand, forged an alliance with farmers of coca and accepted all who wished to participate in Sendero's jungle campaigns.

This chapter asks why rebel groups, when faced with the similar challenge of building a military organization, adopt such different strategies of recruitment. It considers why some groups appeal to combatants' short-term, material interests and why others activate ethnic, religious, or ideological identities to motivate participation, as well as why some groups use preexisting social networks to screen potential recruits, while others open the doors to all who wish to join. It then shows how different recruitment strategies shape the characteristics of the membership that groups are able to attract. In exploring this process, I begin with the set of factors that shape how rebel groups recruit before turning to the consequences of these strategies.