Widespread personal exposure to violence and its link to paramilitary support make conflict intractable.

Evidence

Hayes and McAllister (2002) propose that exposure to violence is one of the reasons for the intractability of the conflict. First, so many people have been victims of violence. Hayes and McAllister state that by 1998 about one in seven of the adult population reported direct experience of violence; one in five had had a family member or close relative injured or killed, and more than half personally knew someone who had been injured or killed. Second, in both communities exposure to violence is associated with public support for paramilitary groups; thus violence breeds violence. — Miles Hewstone and Ed Cairns and Alberto Voci and Juergen Hamberger and Ulrike Niens, Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and…, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s question about whether actual historical persecution vs. perceived threat produces different glorification trajectories - here exposure to actual violence is tied to paramilitary (glorification-adjacent) support, suggesting real victimization does fuel defensive escalation.