Giorgi

“In reality, there appears to be no alliance that is impossible because of identity differences. I relative power considerations dictate that two groups unite in an alliance, then the elites involved will always find some characteristic that they share and construct a justifying narrative around that attribute.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“Errors in diplomacy, stemming from faulty understanding of the origins of intergroup alliances and the causes of within-group instability, have undoubtedly led to the perpetuation of these wars and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

“Southern politics since World War II has not been normal. The key political institutions of the South were swept away with the end of de jure segregation. The essential rationale for the peculiar politics of the solid South had been to disfranchise and disempower black voters, and institutions created to limit black participation did so with remarkable effectiveness. As late as March 1965, only 7% of eligible black voters in Mississippi were registered.”
― Donald P. Green, Partisan Hearts and Minds

“There is no clear evidence that Pakistan was involved in the Taliban's inception per se, but it certainly featured in the Taliban's transformation from a movement of clerics from within the Jihad driven by their local agendas and supported by their peers to an organized political unit with countrywide objectives.”
― Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars