My research strategy relied principally on the collection of grassroots accounts of rebellion from diverse perspectives. The overriding goal was simple: to bring the tools of ethnographic research to bear on the internal dynamics of rebel organizations. To understand why rebel groups abuse civilian populations in some contexts and not in others, I spoke to rebel commanders, foot soldiers, civilians who lived in war zones, and government forces. I asked them to share their experiences of the war. The stories of commanders and combatants typically began with an account of how they came to join. Civilians shared first the rumors they heard about rebels living in the bush. As our conversations unfolded, my respondents talked about the internal characteristics of the organizations they built or their experiences of mobilization and repression. Together, these individual perspectives tell a story about the formation of rebel groups and their attempts to negotiate access to and acquiescence from those around them.

The challenges of conducting interviews in the midst or aftermath of conflict – often with the perpetrators of violence themselves – were complex. But for the comparative analysis of strategies, participant accounts offer unique and powerful insights into the choices individuals make and the operation of groups – insights that cannot be easily gleaned from traditional sources.

Because I interviewed participants to understand rebellion from the inside, I am able to shift focus away from the memoirs of elite revolutionary leaders that have been so important to the study of previous peasant insurgencies.