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This article investigates whether United Nations peacekeeping deployments not only reduce battlefield violence during civil wars, but also encourage warring parties to negotiate rather than continue fighting. Drawing on monthly disaggregated data from African conflicts between 1989 and 2009, the authors find that large UN troop presences alone do not reliably lead to peace negotiations. Crucially, the likelihood of talks increases when rebels use terrorism: in such cases, peacekeepers can unintentionally shift the “power to hurt” in favor of rebel groups, creating incentives for negotiation. The study’s relevance to the contemporary era is notable: as many civil conflicts today involve non-state armed groups and terror tactics, understanding how peacekeeping affects negotiation dynamics is essential for international policymakers, mediators, and peacebuilders seeking to design more effective peace operations and avoid reinforcing perverse incentives.This article is a significant and insightful scholarly contribution. It advances theory and empirical understanding of the complex interplay between peacekeeping, terrorism, and civil war resolution, offering important implications for both academic research and practical peacebuilding policy.Evaluation Strengths: The paper’s use of high-frequency (monthly) data over long time periods and across multiple African conflicts gives its empirical analysis strong credibility. Its novel focus on how rebel tactics (specifically terrorism) condition the effect of peacekeeping is an original contribution – many prior studies only assess violence reduction, not negotiation incentives. The authors also offer clear policy-relevant implications, helping bridge the gap between scholarly research and real-world peace operations. Weaknesses: One limitation is external validity: the study is confined to African civil wars from 1989–2009, so the results may not generalize to other regions or more recent conflicts. The measure of “terrorism” used may also oversimplify the variety of rebel tactics, and the study may not fully account for other variables (e.g., mediation from third parties, negotiation contexts) that influence whether negotiations happen. Additionally, while the “power to hurt” argument is compelling, it rests on assumptions about how peacekeeping shifts capabilities, which could benefit from supplementary qualitative case studies. Unique Contributions: Compared with canonical works in peacekeeping efficacy (e.g., Fortna’s work on peacekeeping reducing recurrence or violence), this article goes further by linking peacekeeping to negotiation incentives in the presence of terrorism. The coupling of terrorism studies with peacekeeping literature is relatively rare and thus enriches both fields significantly.