Killing like a state: explaining the edge cases of rebel perpetration of wartime genocidal violence

Genocide scholarship overwhelmingly identifies states as the primary perpetrators of genocidal violence. While non-state armed groups, particularly pro-government militias, have been implicated in genocide, rebel-perpetrated wartime genocidal violence remains exceedingly rare. This paper argues that state-centric explanations of genocide can be exported to explain these edge cases. I argue that four high-threshold conditions must align for rebels to commit wartime genocidal violence: (1) effective territorial control, (2) the dispensability of civilian support, (3) a rigid and exclusionary ideological program, and (4) perceptions of threat, typically constitutive rather than military, where the target group is framed as incompatible with the nascent political order. These conditions provide rebel groups with both the strategic capacity and ideological justification for genocide. To illustrate this framework, the paper examines ISIS’ genocide against the Yazidis as a case study. ISIS’ state-like governance structures through consolidating territorial control, sectarian ideological rigidity, and strategic logic in targeting the Yazidis for extermination demonstrate how rebels can engage in genocidal violence as part of their state-building and order-making processes. This analysis contributes to understandings of genocide by highlighting that, under specific conditions, rebels can behave like states in their use of systematic mass violence.