The culmination of economic consequences, desperation, and food insecurity ensure war

Modern conflicts are almost never driven by a single cause. Food insecurity is often referred to as “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” or a “threat multiplier” in conflict events. It is true that food insecurity alone is often not enough to produce conflict; it must also be met with external motivators that cause people to resort to violence, and is strongly determined by the underlying social, political, and economic context. Those motivators can be captured in three interrelated concepts: desperation, grievance, and governance. Often, the strongest motivator for participation in conflict is economics. This is sometimes referred to as the opportunity cost thesis, which states that when incomes are low and expected returns from fighting outweigh the benefits of traditional economic activity, one’s motivation to join a militia or rebellion increases. Researchers refer to this motivator as greed, a reference to the material benefits—even extreme wealth—often anticipated by groups staging rebellion. In the case of recruitment of food insecure populations to extremist movements, though, it is not one’s desire for wealth but one’s inability to meet their basic needs that is exploited. This is not greed, but desperation. In interviews with former al Shabaab fighters in Somalia, socioeconomic conditions were the most common motivator for joining. The authors of that study, Anneli Botha and Mahdi Abdile, spoke to one fighter who explained that he and his friends were lured with promises of a mobile phone and $50 a month upon joining. Other terrorist organizations have employed similar recruitment tactics. The Islamic State, for example, offered refugees food and cash payments of up to $1,000 to join, and Boko Haram has been shown to provide meals and loans to prospective recruits. In many settings, violent extremist organizations are also known to capture the means of food production or agricultural resources in order to fuel their rebellion. Food insecurity can raise the cost of mounting an insurgency, leading to the victimization of people who produce and hold food. Violence against civilians, in other words, can be a resource mobilization strategy. The second category of motivation is grievance. One major criticism of the opportunity cost framework (i.e., individual greed or desperation) is its inattention to the collective action required for widespread rebellion. Although it is true that individuals are motivated to engage in violence due to unemployment, wage losses, and rising costs of living (including food costs), collective agency—or a force that brings people together—is also required for higher levels of violence. Food price riots are a good example of this grievance-based phenomenon, with high food prices (especially for foods of cultural importance) fueling frustration and mistrust that cuts across class and ethnic groups. Grievance, of course, can also be divisive. In grievance-motived instability involving food, food insecurity is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back and causes societies to cleave along preestablished lines over perceived or real inequalities or discrimination. Finally, food-related instability is made more likely through poor governance. The inability of a government to ensure an adequate food supply for its people can lead to questions over a government’s legitimacy and ability to fulfill its people’s most basic needs. In a 2017 report by the UN Development Program, the authors note that 71 percent of voluntary recruits (to extremist groups) identified government action as the final trigger that motivated them to join the organization. Limited government capacity to provide services or policing can create a “vacuum effect,” which is a dynamic that provides an opening for rebel groups to offer an alternative and suggest that they themselves could provide those basic services to people.