Information about insurgent groups is a central resource in civil
wars: counterinsurgents seek it, insurgents safeguard it, and
civilians often trade it. Yet despite its essential role in civil
war dynamics, the act of informing is still poorly understood, due
mostly to the classified nature of informant ``tips.'' As an
alternative research strategy, we use an original 2,700 respondent
survey experiment in 100 villages to examine attitudes toward the
Guardians of Peace program, a widespread campaign by the
International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to recruit
local informants. We find that coethnic bias --- the systematic
tendency to favor cooperation with coethnics --- shapes attitudes
about informing and beliefs about retaliation, especially among
Tajik respondents. This bias persists even after adjusting for
additional explanations and potential confounding variables,
suggesting that identity considerations such as coethnicity may
influence attitudes toward high-risk behavior in wartime settings.
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