What are the short-term consequences of rebel rule for post-conflict development? A burgeoning literature documents the legacies of violent conflict for long-term civil and economic development. Less evidence exists on why these legacies endure. We study the effect of rebel governance on resilience toward immediate post-conflict shocks. We argue rebel governance can have varying effects for post-conflict development depending on how it shaped community relations. We posit that duration of rebel governance as well as the identity of the community relative to the rebel group matter. Specifically, rebel groups who occupy areas composed of their ethnic in-groups differ in their operational behavior and use of violence, affecting social cohesion, and as such, occupied areas composed of ethnic in-groups differ in their capacity for post-conflict recovery. For the case of ISIS governance in Iraq, we expect Sunni-dominated communities who were exposed to ISIS governance for extended periods of time to have a higher capacity to deal with climate-related shocks in the immediate aftermath of conflict. We test our expectations combining highly disaggregated survey and remote sensing data on over 3,700 villages with focus group discussions from communities across Iraq. Our findings unveil insights into the differential permeation of legacies of rebel governance and offer potential entry points for interventions to facilitate recovery after war.