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This chapter discusses the resources and options available to those fighting in civil wars. Rebel groups need three main types of resources: military, economic, and political. Military resources include arms and ammunition, communications equipment, training, and manpower. Economic resources consist of financial means to purchase military goods and to pay soldiers; opportunities for looting, trade and barter, and agricultural production; and the profits made through the sale of natural resources. Political resources include access to information, diplomatic support, safe haven in a neighboring country, and legitimacy. Access to resources is central to defining the options available to a rebel group for continuing a war. As resources decline, a rebel group faces more limited options and finds it more difficult to sustain a war. The elimination of the war option provides the best opportunity for successful negotiations and the implementation of a peace agreement.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the transnational dimensions of civil wars. These include the trade of goods, the sale of natural resources, the movement of refugees and combatants, the intervention of external mediators, the provision of a safe haven, and the patronage of neighboring states. The level of access to economic profits, military resources, and political support underlies the capacity of rebel forces to wage war. Fighting factions with limited access to support will fare poorly on the battlefield, while those that are able to establish effective networks of support will prove difficult to defeat. However, while transborder linkages can provide necessary resources, there is no guarantee of continuous support. The rest of the chapter highlights common assumptions about rebel groups and the wars they fight.

By the early fifteenth century, the Gujarat sultanate was becoming more prosperous, as reflected by its expansion and increasing power. The state's prosperity could be attributed to the prevalence of trade, but there was a continuing tension between mobility and settlement. The early sultans ruled a loose but functional system of alliances, a system that they were able to enforce in the fifteenth century because of the availability of military resources (swords, boats, elephants, horses, and other weaponry) combined with their financial ability to recruit and employ men. They used revenues from trade to become among the most munificent employers of manpower in all of South Asia. This chapter examines army and military control in Gujarat from around 1390 to 1511, together with political Hinduism, revenue and administration, alliance, marriage, legitimation, language and literature, and the structure and legitimacy of the sultanate.

This concluding chapter argues that rebel groups fighting around the globe have demonstrated the capacity to develop a wide range of support networks to fuel their conflicts. Groups have sought financial resources from the sale of natural resources, donations from diaspora, support from sympathetic governments, and taxes on trade. They have also resorted to kidnapping and bank robberies to generate income to buy weapons. Moreover, rebel groups receive political support through diaspora pressure on governments, political legitimacy through external recognition, external state sponsorship in negotiations, and the provision of safe haven. Access to these resources determine the options available for rebel groups—whether to continue fighting or seek negotiations.

The large-scale violence was shaped less by extrinsic social and economic forces beyond the control of men than by the strategic concerns of the rebel leadership. The standard routes to political contention had offered no hope for the groups within the rebel organization, which chose violence instead. A particular convergence of events led to the 1728 violence. The 1727 Soron restoration was an important contingent factor, because it provided the rebels with access to state military resources that could be used to attack the court. By proposing the use of fifth columnists and the mobilization of government military resources against the state, the Musin rebels were attempting something that had been done several times before in the century prior to 1728. This fact makes the Musin Rebellion significantly different from contemporaneous mass rebellions in East Asia and from the nineteenth century Choson rebellions.