The following paragraph is from Poverty and Conflict:  The inequality link written by Ravi Kanbur, 2007  (Coping with Crisis Crisis working paper series from International Peace Academy)

The focus of this paper is on conflicts within states.  These range from the full scale armed conflict of a civil war (between two “states within states”), through relatively isolated and contained low intensity insurrection against the state, to regular bouts of communal violence in a “well functioning” state.  I wish to ask how poverty and inequality causally interact with these phenomena. The causality from conflict to poverty is not much in doubt and stands to reason—conflict destroys or impairs incentives for productive economic investment and innovation at all levels. However, the precise nature of  causality in the other direction, from poverty and inequality to conflict, is more ambiguous and subject to greater debate…Certain types of inequality, in particular, will be seen to be particularly fertile ground for conflict; other types may be more benign. And if the attempts to reduce poverty through economic growth lead to initial increases in the “wrong” type of inequality, the conflicts this engenders may dissipate beneficial effects of poverty reduction on conflict.