Civil War in Syria

I was surprised to learn that there's an official, or at least generally accepted, definition of civil war in terms of numbers. The issue is tackled in the US political blog The Monkey Cage. Blogger Erica Chenoweth gives the following definition:

• two or more armed groups are fighting within state borders over some incompatibility (change of leadership/government, territory, or major policy issue);


• one of the combatant groups is the government;


• at least 1,000 people have died due to combat; and


• at least 100 people have died on either side of the conflict.

It's certainly the case that the Syrian conflict meets these criteria. My first thought, though, was whether the Troubles in Northern Ireland also qualify as civil war?

According to Wikipedia the total number who died in the Northern Ireland conflict from the late Sixties to 1998 is 3,526. Of those 1,855 were civilians. At least 100 died on either side of the conflict, counting British military and police as one side and various paramilitaries (who in reality often killed each other) as their opponents. The British army suffered over 500 dead. The IRA - the biggest paramilitary force involved - lost nearly 300 members.

So, it seems that a civil war started in the UK in the late Sixties and continued till the late Nineties. But the term was never accepted among the general populace on the British mainland, and never gained mainstream political currency at Westminster.