Autonomous cooperation: types of alliances between communities and combatants in civil wars

Civilian cooperation with armed actors has been widely studied by conflict scholars. However, one aspect remains conceptually overlooked: instances where civilian communities cooperate while retaining their autonomy. This article proposes alliance as the core concept to understand cooperative relationships between communities and armed groups, while communities maintain autonomous self-governance. The article introduces a descriptive typology of alliances and provides a theoretical framework explaining how civilian positions and types of territory shape the various forms that alliances take. Drawing on field-based original empirical material from three rural communities in Colombia, the article illustrates how community-combatant alliances work on the ground.