Who is responsible for the terror, atrocities, and violations of human rights that occur in civil wars? Blame can be directly attributed to the actual perpetrators of the massacres, rapes, and pillaging - but it can also be placed on the leaders who often hide behind their ambivalent orders. Placing responsibility clearly in the hands of political leadership, Mitchell explores the interaction of leaders, their management practices and repressive policies, using the Arab-Israeli conflict and the English and Russian civil wars to shed light on when leaders are more or less likely to turn to atrocities to achieve their goals. With civil wars continuing to rage around the world, Agents of Atrocity provides a timely history of atrocities and the leaders and henchmen who carried them out, while providing a new context for understanding why they occur and how they can be prevented in the future.

A trenchant argument that political violence results from either the strategic calculations or the dogmatic adherence of leaders and their relations with followers

Introduction Machiavelli and the Inquisitor The 20,000 Day War The English Civil War The Land of the Grand Inquisitor On Cruelty: Machiavelli, the Inquisitor, and Count Tilly's Reward