UNC political scientist Stephen Gent and two former UNC Ph.D. students, Reed M. Wood and Jacob D. Kathman, were recently quoted in a New York Times article about the war in Syria.
Wood is now a political scientist at Arizona State University and Kathman is at State University of New York at Buffalo.
In the NYT piece,”Syria’s Paradox: Why the War Only Ever Seems to Get Worse,” Max Fisher writes:
“In most civil wars, the fighting forces depend on popular support to succeed. This ‘human terrain,’ as counterinsurgency experts call it, provides all sides with an incentive to protect civilians and minimize atrocities, and has often proved decisive.
Wars like Syria’s, in which the government and opposition rely heavily on foreign support, encourage the precise opposite behavior, according to research by Reed M. Wood, Jacob D. Kathman and Stephen E. Gent …”
Gent’s research focuses on the study of conflict processes, particularly the role of third parties in international and civil conflicts.
