Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Embedded Files
Sources – Is War Over? 2024
Sources – Is War Over? 2024
We thank the following experts for their input and critical reading:
Dr Marc von Boemcken
Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC) gGmbH
Dr Claudia Breitung
Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC) gGmbH
– Ten years ago in 2014 we asked if “War was Over”. Based on long term trends in the last century, it seemed violent conflict was on the decline and the world more peaceful than ever.
Here you can check back on the 2014 video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbuUW9i-mHs
– First let’s get an overview of conflicts in the last decade.
Throughout the video we mostly use data from The Uppsala Conflict Data Project (UCDP). Types and number of conflicts, and death tolls are all from UCDP. We are aware that the death tolls might be higher than the ones that were recorded in the database, and there are also other sources and databases. However, UCDP is the most commonly used source that we could find, where one can find all relevant data which also makes comparisons between countries possible.
There were other countries in conflict back in 2014 in addition to the ones we mentioned in that video and there are also many other countries currently in conflict than the ones we mention in this video. However, we can not cover them all in one video. We picked some prominent examples which we believe to best summarize the status quo, in discussion with the experts. We hope to provide further reading and data sources below, if you want to learn more.
#Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2024)
Please also see the related publications:
#Sundberg, Ralph, and Erik Melander (2013): Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 50, (4)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343313484347
#Davies, Shawn, Garoun Engström, Therese Pettersson & Magnus Öberg (2024): Organized violence 1989-2023, and the prevalence of organized crime groups. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 61 (4)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00223433241262912
Also, UCDP classifies organized violence into three main categories: state-based armed conflict, non-state conflict and one-sided violence. We are mainly concerned with state-based conflicts in this video. We included some of the relevant definitions below. Further definitions can be found in the codebook of UCDP.
#UCDP Definitions. Retrieved November 2024.
https://www.uu.se/en/department/peace-and-conflict-research/research/ucdp/ucdp-definitions
Quote: "Non-state conflict
(relates to non-state)
The use of armed force between two organised armed groups, neither of which is the government of a state, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year.
One-sided violence
(relates to one-sided)
The deliberate use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formally organised group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths in a year.
Comment
Extrajudicial killings in government facilities are excluded.
Organized violence
(relates to state-based, non-state and one-sided)
UCDP collects data on state-based armed conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence. The categories are mutually exclusive and can be aggregated as ‘organized violence’. They also share the same intensity cut-off for inclusion – 25 fatalities in a calendar year.
State-based armed conflict
A state-based armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year.
Comment
"State-based armed conflict" is also referred to as “armed conflict”, as opposed to “non-state conflict”, in which none of the warring parties is a government.
Fatalities
(relates to state-based, non-state, one-sided)
Deaths incurred in the three categories of organized violence captured by the UCDP. For state-based armed conflict and non-state conflict these are defined as battle-related deaths (i.e. the use of armed force between warring parties in a conflict dyad, be it state-based or non-state, resulting in deaths). For one-sided violence these are deaths stemming from attacks carried out by organized actors, targeting unarmed civilians."
Due to strict definition of UCDP, some other experts suggested that the number of fatalities are underreported in UCDP database.
#Vesco et al. The underreported death toll of wars: a probabilistic reassessment from a structured expert elicitation. arxiv. 2024.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.08779
Quote: "We adopt an elicitation approach to estimate the uncertainty around the number of fatalities reported in the UCDP dataset for state-based, one-sided, and non-state violence, and across different countries and information contexts. The estimated probability distributions show similar patterns across different types of violence, although state-based conflicts appear to be slightly more certain than one-sided and non-state violence for a good information context, and slightly more uncertain for a bad information context. According to our simulations based on UCDP expert assessments, reported fatalities in the UCDP dataset generally suffer from under-reporting, especially at very low and very high levels. Extremely violent cases, with fatalities up to 100,000, are considerably more uncertain than conflict events with fatalities between 20 and 50, and are at risk of both over and under–reporting."
Also, each database have a specific inclusion criteria and definitions so it could be that they report different numbers. Following OWID article explains these differences. We found UCDP the most fitting for the purposes of this video.
#Bastian Herre (2023) - “How major sources collect data on conflicts and conflict deaths, and when to use which one” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved November 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/conflict-data-how-do-researchers-measure-armed-conflicts-and-their-deaths
Quote: "There is no single ‘best’ approach to measuring armed conflicts and their deaths. All sources put a lot of effort into measuring conflicts and deaths in ways that are useful to researchers, policymakers, and interested citizens.
The most appropriate source depends on what questions you want to answer. It is the one that captures the conflicts, deaths, and time you are interested in.
If you are interested in both big and smaller conflicts in recent years, in combatant and civilian deaths, or also non-state conflicts and acts of one-sided violence, UCDP is best.
If you are less interested in the most recent years and more in big and smaller conflicts that involve at least one state in the decades since World War II, PRIO data is best. If you also want the most recent years, you can use our combined UCDP+PRIO data.20
If you want to study long-term differences and changes over the last two hundred years and it is sufficient to focus on bigger conflicts, then Project Mars is best.
If you are especially interested in specific types of large conflicts over recent centuries, the Correlates of War data is best.
If, instead, you want to explore both big and small conflicts between states, the Militarized Interstate Events data is best.
If you want to explore the source that was researchers’ go-to for interstate conflicts for a long time and are fine with its less precise data, Correlates of War’s Militarized Interstate Disputes data is best.
And if you want to study bigger conflicts over more than the last half millennium and are willing to accept lower data quality, the Conflict Catalog is best."
Both in the rest of this document and for the video, we also used several charts and maps from Our World in Data (OWID) that were also based on the UCDP data. We cite both sources in the rest of the document wherever we used them as well.
#Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Max Roser (2024) - “War and Peace” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved November 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
– Some of the deadliest conflicts that were glowing hot in 2014 have since ended or significantly cooled down.
First, to get an overview of the all armed conflicts in 2014 and in 2023, we can check the OWID maps depicting the number of fatalities in conflicts in both years, based on the UCDP data.
#“Data Page: Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Max Roser (2024) - “War and Peace”. Data adapted from Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Natural Earth.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts-by-country
It might seem like nothing has changed when we look at the maps above, however death tolls of some of the 2014 conflicts, the countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan that we mention in the next paragraph, have decreased. We don't mean to downplay the current situation in those countries or claim that they are all living in peace today, we just compare them to ten years ago based on the best available data we could find. Humanitarian crises caused by these conflicts are still very much ongoing.
There were countries in conflict back in 2014 and there are other countries currently in conflict as well. However, we can not cover them all in one video. We picked some prominent examples which we believe to best summarize the status quo in 2014 and in 2023.
– The war in Afghanistan ended with the victory of the Taliban.
The Afghan War began in 2001 when the U.S. and allies invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power following the 9/11 attacks. Despite early successes, the Taliban regrouped and waged an insurgency. The U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban in 2020 and withdrew troops by August 2021, leading to the rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
#Ben Barry. Understanding the Taliban’s military victory. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2021
https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/online-analysis/2021/08/taliban-military-victory/
Quote: “Prior to the spring of 2021, the US had urged President Ashraf Ghani to withdraw Afghan troops and police from the many isolated checkpoints dispersed across rural areas surrounding provincial capitals. They also recommended that the Afghan forces concentrate on the defence of key towns, cities and Kabul. This way they hoped that the government could fight the Taliban to a stalemate. It does not seem that Ghani heeded this advice, but it is clear that the US and UK military hoped that he would. It may also be that Washington, London and Kabul thought that the Taliban would not start its offensive before the final withdrawal of US forces on 8 September.”
#CFR. The U.S. War in Afghanistan. Retrieved November 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
Quote: “October 7, 2001
The Opening Salvo
The U.S. military, with British support, begins a bombing campaign against Taliban forces, officially launching Operation Enduring Freedom. Australia, Canada, France, and Germany pledge future support. The war’s early phase [PDF] mainly involves U.S. air strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban forces that are assisted by a partnership of about one thousand U.S. special forces, the Northern Alliance, and ethnic Pashtun anti-Taliban forces. The first wave of conventional ground forces arrives twelve days later. Most of the ground combat is between the Taliban and its Afghan opponents.”
– While the Civil Wars in Yemen and Libya are all still ongoing, they turned mostly into stalemates.
The Yemeni Civil War began in 2014 when Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing President Hadi to flee. The conflict escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition intervened to restore Hadi's government. The war has caused a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread famine and disease. Multiple factions, including separatists in the south, complicate the conflict. Efforts for peace have made little progress, and the country remains divided and unstable.
#CFR. Conflict in Yemen and the Red Sea. 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen
Quote: “Fighting between Houthi rebels and the Saudi coalition that backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government has largely subsided, but Houthis have repeatedly attacked ships transiting the Red Sea in response to Israel's war on Hamas. Dialogue between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, along with Iranian-Saudi normalization, has provided hope for a negotiated solution. However, talks have yielded little progress and have been punctuated by violence. The Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also renewed calls for an independent southern Yemeni state, complicating peace prospects, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) attacks have surged. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis has not improved; 21.6 million people need aid, including 11 million children, and more than 4.5 million are displaced.”
2023 and 2024 were strongly influenced by the so-called Red Sea Crisis, i.e. Houthi attacks on international shipping. Regular updates can be found here, for example:
#Armed Conflict Location & Event Data. Yemen Situation Update. April 2024
https://acleddata.com/2024/05/06/yemen-situation-update-april-2024/
The Libyan Civil War began in 2011 with the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. After Gaddafi's fall, Libya descended into chaos with rival factions vying for power. Two main factions emerged: the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli, and the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Khalifa Haftar, controlling the east. Various militias, tribal groups, and foreign powers, including Turkey and Russia, further complicated the conflict. The war has caused significant humanitarian suffering and instability, with ongoing efforts for a political resolution.
#CFR. Civil Conflict in Libya. 2024
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-libya
Quote: “More than a decade after a U.S.-backed intervention toppled Libya’s authoritarian leader in 2011, political divisions and cascading security crises continue to threaten Libya’s stability. After a 2020 cease-fire ended the country’s six-year civil war between rival political factions, a UN-supported process led to the formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU). Due to rival factions’ unwillingness to agree on rules overseeing national elections scheduled for December 2021, the vote was postponed indefinitely. Widespread frustration from actors on both sides of the political divide has put pressure on the GNU to hold the long-overdue elections without delay, but little progress has been made. Reflecting the relatively low levels of violence since 2020, the humanitarian situation has eased in recent years. In 2023, approximately three hundred thousand people needed humanitarian assistance in Libya, down from 1.3 million [PDF] in 2016. But compounding threats have posed new challenges for the country, including the worsening effects of a precarious and oil-dependent economy, arms proliferation, climate change, and complex migration crises.”
– The proto state of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been wiped out.
#Ian J. McCary. The Islamic State Five Years Later: Persistent Threats, U.S. Options
Remarks. Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 2024
https://www.state.gov/the-islamic-state-five-years-later-persistent-threats-u-s-options/
Quote: “On March 23, 2019, almost exactly five years ago, the Coalition and its local partners liberated the final stretch of territory controlled by ISIS in Baghuz, Syria. This was and remains a milestone in our continued efforts to ensure ISIS cannot resurge.”
#Australian National Security Islamic State. 2024.
Quote: “Details of the organisation
Islamic State is a Sunni Islamic extremist group and self-declared pan-Islamic Caliphate with a historic base of operations within Northern Iraq and Syria. At its 2014 peak, Islamic State controlled large swathes of both countries, subsuming government resources and bureaucracy, along with commerce and industry. In March 2019, Islamic State lost the last of its territory in Iraq and Syria. As such, Islamic State has since reverted to traditional terrorist tactics in the region with an increasing degree of ferocity and tactical sophistication, including areas within Türkiye.
Islamic State continues to maintain an active presence around the globe through satellite entities, operationally active within declared ‘provinces’ (Wilayat). These include IS-Libya, IS-Sinai, IS-Khorasan Province, IS-East Asia, IS Somalia, IS West Africa Province, and the Abu Sayyaf Group, all of whom are listed terrorist organisations pursuant to Australia’s Criminal Code. Islamic State rejects existing national borders and opposes elected governments, seeking to remove them through violence.”
We use the following map in the video:
#BBC. Islamic State group defeated as final territory lost, US-backed forces say. 2019.
– The rebels just won the war in Syria last week.
#Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari. Reuters. Syrian rebels topple Assad who flees to Russia in Mideast shakeup. December 2024.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-rebels-celebrate-captured-homs-set-sights-damascus-2024-12-07/
Quote: "DAMASCUS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Syrian rebels seized the capital Damascus unopposed on Sunday after a lightning advance that sent President Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Russia after a 13-year civil war and six decades of his family's autocratic rule.
In one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations, the fall of Assad's government wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Moscow gave asylum to Assad and his family, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, said on his Telegram channel.
His sudden overthrow, at the hands of a revolt partly backed by Turkey and with roots in jihadist Sunni Islam, limits Iran's ability to spread weapons to its allies and could cost Russia its Mediterranean naval base. It could allow millions of refugees scattered for more than a decade in camps across Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to finally return home.
For Syrians, it brought a sudden unexpected end to a war in deep freeze for years, with hundreds of thousands dead, cities pounded to dust and an economy hollowed by global sanctions."
The Syrian Civil War, starting in 2011, began as a series of protests against President Bashar Assad's government, inspired by the Arab Spring. It escalated into a full-scale conflict involving various factions, including the Syrian government, opposition groups, Kurdish forces, and extremist groups like ISIS. Foreign powers, including Russia, Iran, the U.S., and Turkey, became involved, complicating the conflict. The war has caused massive destruction, a humanitarian crisis with millions displaced, and significant loss of life. Despite efforts for peace, the conflict continues with ongoing violence and instability.
#Mona Yacoubian. Syria’s Stalemate Has Only Benefitted Assad and His Backers. The United States Institute of Peace. 2023
https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/syrias-stalemate-has-only-benefitted-assad-and-his-backers
Quote: “Twelve years into Syria’s devastating civil war, the conflict appears to have settled into a frozen state. Although roughly 30% of the country is controlled by opposition forces, heavy fighting has largely ceased and there is a growing regional trending toward normalizing relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Over the last decade, the conflict erupted into one of the most complicated in the world, with a dizzying array of international and regional powers, opposition groups, proxies, local militias and extremist groups all playing a role. The Syrian population has been brutalized, with nearly a half a million killed, 12 million fleeing their homes to find safety elsewhere, and widespread poverty and hunger. Meanwhile, efforts to broker a political settlement have gone nowhere, leaving the Assad regime firmly in power.
[...]
The conflict in Syria is at a stalemate with little prospect for a political settlement any time soon. The Assad regime remains entrenched in power, controlling roughly 70% of Syrian territory. Levels of violence have diminished significantly from the conflict’s apex when the regime — backed by Russia and Iran — launched indiscriminate, large-scale offensives to claw back territory. While violence has diminished, small-scale skirmishes continue across conflict lines in northwest and northeast Syria. More broadly, the Syrian civil war has evolved into an internationalized conflict, with five foreign militaries — Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel and the United States — engaging in the Syrian battlespace as well as ISIS remnants undertaking periodic attacks.”
#Omar Albam and Abby Sewellap. AP. Violence in Syria is on the rise while aid is flagging as the civil war enters its 14th year. March 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/syria-civil-war-anniversary-violence-33c00a3ecc3fb7e1507afbe04c5a1040
Quote: “For years, Syria’s civil war has been a largely frozen conflict, the country effectively carved up into areas controlled by the Damascus government of President Bashar Assad, various opposition groups and Syrian Kurdish forces.
But as the conflict entered its 14th year on Friday, observers say violence has been on the rise again while the world’s attention is mostly focused on other crises, such as Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.”
– The extremely destructive civil war in South Sudan ended in a fragile peace agreement despite violence still flaring up in the devastated young country.
#CFR. Instability in South Sudan. 2024
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan
Quote: “Despite repeated attempts at peace agreements and cease-fires in 2015, 2017, and 2018, political violence and instability have persisted between government forces and opposition factions in South Sudan. After nearly five years of civil war, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar—the heads of the two main opposing political coalitions—participated in negotiations in June 2018, resulting in the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan. The peace deal led to a cease-fire and the formation of a unity government, but implementation of the agreement has been slow, and violence has persisted. In 2024, additional peacekeepers and urgent forces were deployed to hotspots in South Sudan after an escalation in inter-communal violence led to an increase in civilian deaths, abductions, and displacements. Meanwhile, South Sudan continues to suffer from one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, magnified by the worsening effects of climate change, macroeconomic shocks, and spillover from the nearby civil war in Sudan. Long-delayed elections are scheduled for December 2024. However, many fear the country is unprepared to hold free and fair elections and have advocated for their postponement.”
– Sadly the last decade saw a bunch of new conflicts erupt, or old unresolved issues turn violent.
#OWID. Number of new armed conflicts, World. 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-new-armed-conflicts
It is not possible for us to cover all the conflicts in the last decade but the following article provides a summary:
#Davies, S. et al. Organized violence 1989–2022, and the return of conflict between states. Journal of Peace Research. 2023.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433231185169
Quote: “This article reports on trends in organized violence, building on new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). In 2022, fatalities from organized violence increased by a staggering 97%, compared to the previous year, from 120,000 in 2021 to 237,000 in 2022, making 2022 the deadliest year since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The increase was driven by two, particularly deadly, state-based armed conflicts: the Russia–Ukraine war, and the war in Ethiopia against TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front). With more than 81,500 and 101,000 fatalities respectively, these are the two most deadly state-based conflict-years recorded in the post-1989 period. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the first large-scale interstate war in 20 years, and the first interstate armed conflict since World War II where a major power in the international system seeks both territorial gains for itself and the subjugation of another state through regime change. We have witnessed an emerging trend of increased conflict between states in the last decade, including cases where major powers support opposite sides in internationalized intrastate conflict. UCDP recorded 55 active state-based armed conflicts in 2022, an increase of one compared to the previous year. Eight of these conflicts reached the level of war. While the fatalities caused by non-state conflict decreased somewhat when compared to 2021, the number of non-state conflicts, as well as both the number of civilians killed in one-sided violence and the number of actors carrying out such violence, increased in 2022.”
– One of the main claims of our video ten years ago was that wars today are not between countries and this is still largely true. Civil wars are by far the most common type of state-based conflict in the world.
There is no definition of a “civil war” that is agreed upon by all literature. When we talk about “civil war” in this script, we basically mean intrastate wars. The database that we have used throughout the script, The Uppsala Conflict Data Project (UCDP), presents the following types of conflict: interstate, intrastate, nonstate, one-sided violence and extrasystemic. Among these intrastate is the closest to the civil war based on what we read in the literature. We added a few sources about the definition below.
#Kalyvas, Stathis N., and Paul D. Kenny. "Civil Wars." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. 20 Nov. 2017; Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.
Quote: “A civil war, also known as intrastate war, is a war between organized groups within the same state or country. It is a high-intensity conflict that often involves regular armed forces. One of the reasons for the lack of consensus in the study of civil war is disagreement over what exactly civil war means. Theoretically, civil war overlaps with other categories of armed conflict, particularly revolution, political violence, ethnic conflict, and terrorism. Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted for over four years on average, a considerable rise from the one-and-a-half-year average of the 1900–1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars has resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more, along with economic collapse. According to scholars of civil war research, the causes of civil war include economic motivations or greed, and political or social grievances. Greed-based explanations focus on individuals’ desire to maximize their profits, while grievance-based explanations center on conflict as a response to socioeconomic or political injustice. A third concept, opportunity-based explanations, talks about factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilization.
[...]
However, these difficulties aside, we believe we know what civil war is when we see it.
Many definitions of civil war are, of course, possible, but any definition should contain the
following key elements: (1) the goal of armed entities in civil war is power, (2) the entities that
participate in a civil war must be organized, (3) the means by which these goals are accomplished is violence, (4) the context in which a civil war takes place is the sovereign nation state, and (5) it is implicit in the definition that one of the participants is a government, although this final criterion is not necessary. A better term analytically for this phenomenon would be internal war (Eckstein 1965), but civil war is the expression that has become part of the everyday lexicon, and for better or worse, it is the one we are stuck with. Here, civil war is defined as armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign unit between organized entities subject to a common authority at the outset of hostilities (Kalyvas 2006)”
Some definitions put a threshold of one thousand fatalities to define a conflict as a civil war, even though there is no commonly agreed upon measure of violence to qualify a conflict as war.
#Johanna Granville, "Civil War." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, edited by P.N.Stearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Quote: “There is no comprehensive definition of a civil war that all scholars agree upon. The simplest definition is that of a violent conflict in which organized groups within a country fight against each other for political control (of the center, a region, or over a separatist state) or to change government policies. According to the fuller definition developed largely by J. David Singer and Melvin Small, a civil war is an armed conflict that has: (1) challenged the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state; (2) occurred within the recognized boundaries of that state; (3) involved the state as one of the principal combatants; (4) included rebels with the ability to mount an organized opposition; (5) involved parties concerned with the prospect of living together in the same political unit after the end of the war; and (6) caused more than one thousand deaths. Both government forces and an identifiable rebel organization must have suffered at least five percent of these casualties. Although the authors added this last condition on fatalities to rule out both terrorism or low-level political strife (that is, banditry), and state-led massacres where there is no organized rebel opposition, some social scientists claim this number is too low and prefer to stipulate that an average of one thousand people be killed per year. There is no clear threshold for how much violence is necessary to qualify a conflict as a civil war. Insurgencies, anticolonial wars, and wars of secession may at times be classified as civil wars by some historians if organized armies fight conventional battles, if there is prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country, and if they involve a total of one thousand deaths with a minimum of one hundred deaths annually. Civil wars are often triggered by coups d’état.”
The following source counts civil wars as one type of intrastate conflict whereas does not include non-state conflicts as civil wars.
#CFR. Understanding Intrastate Conflict. 2023.
https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/understanding-intrastate-conflict
Quote: “Civil war is the clearest case of intrastate conflict, and it generally takes two forms.
Wars of secession occur when people fight to form an independent country. One example is the American Civil War, in which southern, slaveholding states attempted to break away from the United States and form a new country—the Confederate States of America. The South’s secession was motivated primarily to protect the institution of slavery.
Wars of succession, in which people fight to overthrow ruling authorities, are the second type of civil war. The Arab uprisings in Libya, Syria, and Yemen—during which anti-government protesters fought to oust oppressive political leaders—devolved into prolonged and violent wars of succession.
However, civil wars are just one type of intrastate conflict. Groups fight for many reasons besides seeking independence or a new government. Criminal organizations like drug cartels and terrorist groups like the self-proclaimed Islamic State incite violence to control territory and people. Governments persecute minority groups to crush dissent or preserve social hierarchies; the United Nations accuses the Myanmar government of committing acts of genocide against a Muslim ethnic minority known as the Rohingya. Fighting erupts between citizens and governments over economic issues including corruption and lack of opportunity. Intrastate conflict can also occur due to competing claims to territory and natural resources.”
#Britannica. civil war. Retrieved October 2024.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/civil-war
Quote: “Civil war, a violent conflict between a state and one or more organized non-state actors in the state’s territory. Civil wars are thus distinguished from interstate conflicts (in which states fight other states), violent conflicts or riots not involving states (sometimes labeled intercommunal conflicts), and state repression against individuals who cannot be considered an organized or cohesive group, including genocides, and similar violence by non-state actors, such as terrorism or violent crime.
The definition of civil war clearly encompasses many different forms of conflict. Some analysts distinguish between civil wars in which insurgents seek territorial secession or autonomy and conflicts in which insurgents aim for control of the central government. Conflicts over government control may involve insurgents originating from within the centre or state apparatus, as in military coups, or challengers from outside the political establishment. Other analysts distinguish between ethnic civil wars, in which the insurgents and individuals in control of the central government have separate ethnic identities, and revolutionary conflicts, in which insurgents aim for major social transformation. Colonial conflicts are sometimes singled out as a type distinct from civil wars on a state’s core territory. Notwithstanding those distinctions, a given civil war will often combine several elements. For example, insurgencies may be both ethnic and ideologically based, and the insurgents’ aims can shift over time from secession for a limited territory to controlling the entire state.”
#Florence Gaub. Civil wars: a very short introduction. European Union Institute for Security Studies October 2013
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/pbei/weu/0029419/f_0029419_23869.pdf
Quote: “There are over 30 definitions of civil war. While some differentiate by motive, others use the number of causalities or the type of actors involved as criteria. One of the most comprehensive definitions is that of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which classifies non-international armed conflicts as a ‘situation of violence involving protracted armed confrontations between government forces and one or more organized armed groups, or between such groups themselves, arising on the territory of a State.’ A civil war is therefore different from isolated acts of terrorism, riots, civil unrest, genocide or a revolution in that there is a minimum degree of organisation and resistance on the non-state
side (with at least 5% of casualties inflicted by the weaker party), and a minimal level of intensity in the fighting.
But it is chiefly the existence of an organised, nonstate armed group (typically consisting of between 500 and 5000 members) which differentiates civil wars from other forms of conflict: a reason why the large-scale violence which plagued Iraq from 2006 onwards does not fall into this category. In the case of Syria, however, the ICRC declared the conflict to be a civil war in July 2012 based on a series of benchmarks, such as intensity of armed clashes, the type and numbers of government forces involved, and the number of casualties and damage caused.”
The following chart is also the one that we used in the video for this scene.
#OWID. Number of state-based conflicts, World. 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-state-based-conflicts?time=2011..latest
It is important to note that, when we include all types of conflicts, non-state conflicts are the highest in number.
#OWID (retrieved 2024): Number of armed conflicts, World
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-armed-conflicts?time=2003..latest
Unfortunately, intrastate conflicts, or civil wars, have been responsible for the highest death tolls up until the last two years.
#OWID. Deaths in armed conflicts, World. 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts-by-type?time=2013..latest
– We would wager that most of you have never heard about one of the deadliest civil wars in decades: The 2020 Tigray war in Ethiopia. It ended in 2022 with the victory of the Ethiopian and Eritrean government forces against rebel groups. Exact death tolls are unknown, but they may exceed half a million, mostly civilians.
The Tigray War was a civil war that killed over 500,000 people and displaced millions of people. At the height of the 2022 offensive, there were 100,000 battle-related deaths. For context, this is a tiny region in the north of Ethiopia that has a total population of 5.4 million.
#The Peace Research Institute Oslo. New figures show conflict-related deaths at 28-year high, largely due to Ethiopia and Ukraine wars. 2023.
https://www.prio.org/news/3058
Quote: “The war in Ethiopia's Tigray region accounted for over 100,000 battle-related deaths in 2022, even more than Russia's invasion of Ukraine which accounted for more than 81,000 deaths, according to new conflict trends data released today.”
#Tigray War Project (Ghent University) and Every Casualty Counts. Call for Input to inform the High Commissioner’s report to the Human Rights Council on the impact of casualty recording. Submission by the 2023.
Quote: “The Tigray War Project estimated that there would be an average of 518,000 civilian victims in Tigray by the end of 2022, with a low estimate of 311,000 and a high estimate of 808,000. Around ten per cent would be caused by massacres, bomb hits, and other killings; 30 per cent by a total collapse of the healthcare system; 60 per cent by famine.”
#UN Migration. International Organization for Migration. Site Assessment Round 36 And Village Assessment Survey, Round 19, November 2023 - May 2024.
https://dtm.iom.int/report-product-series/national-displacement-report
Quote: “As of May 2024, an estimated 664,509 households comprising 3,306,693 IDPs were identified in 2,739 accessible sites across Ethiopia. Conflict was the primary reason for displacement reported nationally (68.7%), followed by drought (16.5%) (8.4%). Somali region hosts the highest number of IDPs primarily displaced by drought nationwide (an estimated 397,913 individuals or 73.1% of the national drought caseload), while Tigray region hosts the highest number of IDPs primarily displaced by conflict nationwide (an estimated 871,056 individuals or 38.3% of the national conflict caseload).” IDPs= internally displaced persons
#UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog. Crisis in Ethiopia: An Overview of the Conflict in Tigray. 2022.
– Aside from Tigray, a number of new civil wars have broken out since 2014 – although new is a bit misleading since the underlying issues were brooding at a smaller scale for a long time. The deadliest have been the Sudan Civil War, the Civil War in Yemen, and the Civil War in Myanmar.
The Sudan War is a civil war that broke out in April 2023, with fighting concentrated around the capital Khartoum and the Darfur region. The death toll is more than 20,000 and several million people have been displaced.
#International Rescue Committee. Crisis in Sudan: What is happening and how to help. 2024.
https://www.rescue.org/article/crisis-sudan-what-happening-and-how-help
Quote: “The power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into a large-scale conflict in April 2023 and has been driving humanitarian needs in the country ever since. Conservative estimates say the conflict has killed more than 20,000 people and injured more than 33,000 others.”
#CFR. Civil War in Sudan. 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/power-struggle-sudan
Quote: “As the civil war enters its second year, Sudan’s two warring factions remain locked in a deadly power struggle. Since the conflict began on April 15, 2023, almost 15,000 people have been killed, and more than 8.2 million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world. Nearly 2 million displaced Sudanese have fled to unstable areas in Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, overrunning refugee camps and prompting concerns that Sudanese refugees could soon attempt to enter Europe. The UN continues to plead for more support as more than 25 million need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.” Meanwhile, mediation efforts have failed to produce results as the leaders of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) refuse to halt their violence, and regional and international actors have taken sides in the war. As conditions further deteriorate, the World Food Programme’s Carl Skau warned, “we are running out of time.””
The Civil War in Yemen has been ongoing since 2014, and has recently flamed once again in the last year. 2023 and 2024 were also strongly influenced by the so-called Red Sea Crisis, i.e. Houthi attacks on international shipping.
#CFR. Conflict in Yemen and the Red Sea. 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen
Quote: “While hostility between the two warring sides remains low, AQAP’s political violence surged in May and June, reaching the highest monthly level since November 2022. Most of the violence has been centered around Yemen’s Abyan and Shawba governates, where AQAP has used drones and IEDs to target forces affiliated with the STC. In August 2023, AQAP launched an explosion that killed a military commander and three soldiers from the Security Belt Forces, an armed group loyal to the STC. Earlier that month, AQAP fighters killed five troops from another force affiliated with the separatist council. The recent use of drones by AQAP in Yemen’s south is likely an attempt to reassert its influence in the area despite its waning influence, and some speculate that this sudden and sustained use of drones signals external support. Additionally, AQAP has continued its anti-separatist efforts, with another attack in early October targeting and wounding five STC-backed fighters.
Three days following the October 7 attack on Israel, Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi warned that if the United States intervenes in the Hamas-Israel War directly, the group will respond by taking military action. In mid-October, U.S. officials announced that the USS Carney downed several Houthi cruise missiles and drones fired toward Israel. The Houthis continued to launch several rounds of missiles and drones until it officially announced entry into the war to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on October 31. Houthi attacks of the same nature continued into November. On November 19, the Houthis hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea and have since attacked at least thirty-three others with drones, missiles, and speed boats as of late January 2024. As a result, major shipping companies have stopped using the Red Sea—through which almost 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes—and have rerouted to take longer and costlier journeys around Southern Africa instead. The situation has resulted in heightened shipping and insurance costs, stoking fears of a renewed cost-of-living crisis. In response to the consistent Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, the United States and United Kingdom carried out coordinated air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on January 11 and January 22. It is unclear whether the attacks will cease in the near future, with the Houthis vowing to persist in their military operations until a ceasefire is agreed to in the Gaza Strip and aid is allowed into the enclave.”
The recent Myanmar civil war is a part of a decades-old conflict that’s had its fire recently stoked by new violence, with ceasefires being broken as recently as this week causing thousands of deaths and millions displaced.
#Center for Preventive Action. CFR. Civil War in Myanmar. 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/rohingya-crisis-myanmar
Quote: “In late October 2023, a coalition of three ethnic armed groups in Shan State launched a coordinated offensive against the ruling military junta, posing the strongest challenge to its rule since the February 2021 coup. A junta spokesperson said its forces were under “heavy assault” as insurgents use drones to bomb military and police outposts in eastern Kayah State, bordering Thailand; western Rakhine State, bordering India; and northern Shan State, bordering China. Amid the expansion of fighting, the United Nations reported over two million civilians have been displaced by the conflict.”
#David Rising. AP News. Fierce fighting breaks out as militias launch new attacks against regime in Myanmar’s civil war. July 2024.
Quote: “As the fighting has moved into more populated areas, about 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the start of the offensive in October, contributing to the more than 3 million internally displaced people in the country of some 56 million, according to the U.N.'s humanitarian aid agency.”
#AOAV (2024): Myanmar: three years of a devastating, under-reported war
https://aoav.org.uk/2024/myanmar-three-years-of-a-devastating-under-reported-war/
Quote: “The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) identifies Myanmar as the most violent among the 50 wars it tracks globally, with an estimated death toll of at least 50,000 since the 2021 military coup, including at least 8,000 civilians.”
We calculated the death toll of intra-state conflicts going on in 2014-2023 based on UCDP. The following table lists 20 countries with highest death toll.
– Multiple nations in Africa, like Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, Burkina Faso, and Mozambique are suffering from islamist insurgencies that destabilise countries and have cost tens of thousands of civilian lives.
#ACLED (2024): The Sahel: A Deadly New Era in the Decades-Long Conflict
https://acleddata.com/conflict-watchlist-2024/sahel/
Quote: “The central Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — all of which are now ruled by military juntas — are engulfed in a decade-long regional jihadist insurgency driven by al-Qaeda’s Sahelian branch Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (IS Sahel). ACLED data illustrate the deteriorating security situation in central Sahel as the region hit another record year of violence. In 2023, the number of people killed by acts of political violence doubled in Burkina Faso, placing highest after Nigeria in West Africa. Across central Sahel, conflict fatalities from political violence increased by a staggering 38%, and civilian deaths by over 18%. Mali and Burkina Faso, most affected by the crisis, are categorized as experiencing high levels of violence in the latest update to the ACLED Conflict Index. High levels of violence in all three central Sahel states are likely to persist in 2024 as counter-insurgency efforts escalate to meet the insurgency’s increasingly aggressive tactics.”
One can also find country specific summaries in UCDP database:
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Mali
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/432
Quote: “The main reason for the continued high level of fatalities from organized violence in Mali 2023 was developments in the state-based conflict category. While both the conflict between the Malian government and IS’ Sahel Province (ISSP) and the al-Qaida-loyal JNIM de-escalated, they remained extremely violent. Furthermore, during the year yet another state-based conflict erupted; the one fought between the government and the Tuareg umbrella group CSP-PSD with a dual incompatibility over the Azawad region and government power. It was a separatist conflict over the Azawad region that in 2012 jump-started the wave of violence that still continues. A peace agreement was signed in 2015, but implementation remained elusive and the relationship between the parties deteriorated over the last few years, especially after the ruling junta seized power in 2021. The constellation on the rebel side changed over the years, and by 2023, they had created the joint umbrella organization CSP-PSD, which included a broader set of groups than in 2012. This also meant that the goals of the group were less uniform, with certain sub-sections emphasizing the aim to expel the Malian army from Azawad, and for its army – the Azawad National Army – to protect and control its homeland, while others called for the more far-reaching goal of ousting the junta. Violence in the three state-based conflicts engulfed vast tracts of Mali’s territory, with JNIM’s geographical reach continuing to expand in central, north-east and south Mali, ISSP’s hold over north-eastern Menaka region tightening and CSP-PSD fighting from central Mali and north into the Kidal region.
After the dramatic all-time high in one-sided violence in 2022, 2023 saw a distinct de-escalation in the number of fatalities, going from more than 1450 to less than 500. The main driver behind this change was considerably fewer as well as less deadly attacks on civilians by ISSP. In 2022, the group had seized the opportunity and filled the security vacuum when France left Mali in general and the Menaka region in particular, exacting revenge on the civilian population that they deemed supported the pro-government militia MSA who they also fought in a non-state conflict. During the year the group carried out numerous massacres and killed almost 900 civilians. In 2023, this number was down to around 130. The main perpetrator of one-sided violence in 2023 was the Malian army, who killed more than 170 civilians, sometimes on their own, and sometimes together with Wagner soldiers.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Burkina Faso
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/439
Quote: “The security situation in Burkina Faso continued to deteriorate in 2023, with the death toll from organized violence increasing for the fourth consecutive year. The change from 2022 was dramatic, with numbers increasing by as much as 135 %, from 2600 to over 6100 fatalities. This escalation was driven by developments in both the state-based and one-sided categories of organized violence.
The two coups of 2022, which had been triggered by huge battle-field losses, failed to change the tide of the state-based conflicts; the bold stated goal of the new juntas. Instead, violence in the two conflicts in general, and the one between the government and JNIM, fought over government power, in particular, escalated markedly, causing almost 3800 battle-related deaths in 2023. Not only did the armed confrontations multiply and turn increasingly deadly, they also spread geographically, devastating areas that had previously been relatively spared, such as Centre Est’s Boulgou and Koulpélogo provinces, bordering Ghana and Togo. In addition, the conflict between the government and IS’ Sahel Province (ISSP), played out in the north-easternmost part of the country, also escalated during the year, with fatality numbers doubling from a little over 400 to more than 800, further amplifying the increase in state-based violence.
Developments in one-sided violence were no less dramatic. While not on the same scale as violence in the state-based conflicts, the number of fatalities soared, going from a little over 550 in 2002, to more than 1300 in 2023, well above the previous peak of just under 900 in 2019. All parties to the state-based conflicts targeted civilians, but the large increase was almost exclusively due to actions by JNIM, who targeted and killed more than 800 civilians across the country during the year. The jihadist group stepped up the number of attacks markedly, and as with the state-based conflict, its targeting of civilians also spread geographically; during the year new areas, such as the Boucle du Mouhoun region in Burkina Faso’s northwest, saw an explosion of violence. A common theme for all groups carrying out one-sided violence was that they targeted civilians perceived to support their opponents in the state-based conflicts. As such, both IS and JNIM e.g. attacked communities that they considered hostile to their cause, having taking part in the creation of the auxiliary unit to the armed forces, the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDPs). The government, for its part, followed the same logic, carrying out punitive attacks on villages held as supportive of the jihadi groups, albeit that their so-called support may have been limited to having been taxed by the islamists.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Nigeria
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/475
Quote: “Violence in the state-based category caused the highest number of fatalities in 2023. The Nigerian government remained challenged by two main Islamist groups fighting in two separate state-based conflicts; the Greater Sahara section of IS’ West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighting in a conflict over the territory referred to as the Islamic State; and the Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (JAS) fighting in a conflict over government. The territorial conflict between the Nigerian government and the Islamic State’s West African Province (ISWAP) which commenced in March 2015 has progressed over the years. An increase in violence was recorded in 2023 with the total number of fatalities equaling 1549, compared to 1034 fatalities in 2022. The fighting is mainly concentrated in Borno state, in Northwestern Nigeria, but the group spread into Yobe state during 2023. During the year, the Government of Nigeria heavily relied on airstrikes when targeting the group, which resulted in scores of IS fighters being killed. Compared to previous years, IS did not claim any reliable large-scale attacks in Nigeria during 2023.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Mozambique
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/541
Quote: “Since 2017, Mozambique's northernmost province Cabo Delgado has been torn by an Islamist insurgency. The insurgency was started by the previously largely unknown group Ahlu al-Sunna wa'l Jama'a (ASWJ), that since 2019 has developed into a franchise of the Islamic State (IS). The insurgency has been marked by its brutality, with the insurgents regularly massacring civilians and forcibly recruiting children. The government, itself marred by allegations of serious abuse of civilians, was unable to hinder the insurgency from escalating and capturing territory on its own. Since mid-2021, nine African countries have deployed military forces to help Mozambique combat the insurgency. The foreign intervention led the Mozambican government to recapture all previously lost major settlements and seriously hampered the insurgents’ ability to conduct large offensive operations, but has not succeeded in uprooting to insurgency. The conflict has called into question the expectation that Mozambique would become one of the world's largest natural gas exporters.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Somalia
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/520
Quote: “The conflict over government, pitting al-Qaida-linked group Al-Shabaab against the government of Somalia, was the main catalyst for the increase in state-based violence. Following the presidential elections, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud came to power in May 2022. In early August, President Mohamud declared an “all-out war” against Al-Shabaab. The first phase of the offensive continued into 2023. It was initially launched in Hishabelle state, which consists of the Hiran and Middle Shabelle regions. After liberating important locations, the Somali security forces moved to the neighboring Galgudud region, backed by the Ma’awisley clan militia and US air and drone strikes. The Somali forces faced setback in the first half of 2023 as some of the retrieved areas were attacked and recaptured by Al-Shabaab, which delayed the initiation of the second phase of the offensive. The second phase finally launched at the beginning of August, mainly centered in Galmudug state consisting of the Galgudud and Mudug regions. The heavy fighting resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Al-Shabaab militants as well as Somali forces throughout the year.
In the battle against Al-Shabaab, the Somali government received armed support from both the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and individual actors such as the United States. AMISOM was a regional peacekeeping mission organized by the United Nations Security Council, consisting of troops contributed by the government of Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. AMISOM was expected to gradually withdraw its troops from the country by the end of 2021. However, the African Union, United Nations, and Somali government announced in early 2022 that on 1 April 2022, AMISOM would be replaced by the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). ATMIS is planned to operate until the end of 2024, after which Somali forces are expected to assume complete responsibility for security.”
– Lastly there are nearly sixty smaller unresolved state-based conflicts around the world, many going on for decades, that are smouldering but have a relatively low death toll in comparison.
The following is the map of active state-based conflicts in 2023 with more than 25 deaths. We used this map in the corresponding scene in the video.
#Davies, Shawn, Garoun Engström, Therese Pettersson & Magnus Öberg (2024). Organized violence 1989-2023, and the prevalence of organized crime groups. Journal of Peace Research 61(4).
https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/charts/graphs/png_24/WorldWap2023SB.png
The following map shows all armed conflicts in 2023:
#OWID. Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred, 2023. Retrieved November 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-state-based-conflicts?time=2007..latest
#OWID. Number of state-based conflicts, World. Retrieved November 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-state-based-conflicts?time=2007..latest
– Maybe the worst news is that we have been seeing interstate wars again.
#Davies, S. et al. (2023): Organized violence 1989–2022, and the return of conflict between states. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 60 (4)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433231185169
Quote: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is not only the first large-scale interstate war since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is also the first interstate armed conflict since World War II where a major power in the international system seeks both territorial gains for itself and the subjugation of another state through regime change. It represents the most blatant challenge to the rules-based world order upheld by US hegemony since Iraq’s attempted annexation of Kuwait. With the US less willing to act as the world’s police, this order has been increasingly challenged during the past decade. A widening array of states has engaged in interstate conflicts, as well as militarily supported non-state actors fighting against governments, challenging the norms of the international order. Increasingly adversarial relations between the USA and its allies and Russia and China risks causing not only increased proxy conflicts between these powers, but will likely open the space for more localized conflicts between states by diverting US attention.
With the invasion of Ukraine, a conflict over both territory and government, 2022 became the third consecutive year in which a new or long latent territorial dispute between states has flared into an armed conflict. Previously, in 2020, the China–India conflict over the Aksai Chin reignited after decades of quiet and in 2021 the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border conflict became active for the first time in UCDP data. Interstate conflicts have been breaking out with increased frequency in recent years, even if they remain a relatively rare occurrence. The first three years of the 2020s have already had eight active interstate conflict-years, the same number as the entire first decade of the 2000s.
As noted in Davies, Pettersson & Öberg (2022), internationalized intrastate conflict in which external states support non-state actors fighting against governments has increased in the last decade. This constitutes instances of state armies fighting each other outside of interstate conflicts, and 2022 saw a record number of such cases at five.13 Both 2020 and 2021 had four such cases each year. The entire first decade of the 2000s saw only seven such instances, whilst the 2010s witnessed 22. Just in the first three years of the 2020s, 13 have now been recorded. Increasing incidents of conflicts with two state armies involved against each other are especially concerning, as they carry the potential to be deadlier than other forms of conflict. The average number of battle-deaths per conflict-year is over three times higher compared to intrastate conflicts that are not internationalized.”
#Charaniya, A. (2024): The Territorial Roots of Interstate Conflict. The SAIS Review of International Affairs
https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/the-territorial-roots-of-interstate-conflict/#_edn1
Quote: “After a prolonged period of relative peace between states, the last fifteen years have seen an explosion of global interstate conflict, with conflict between military forces of sovereign nations spiking and continuing to rise.[1] Indeed, over the last eighteen months alone international news has been dominated, first, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, most recently, by the Israeli assault on Palestine following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli border settlements. These headlines bookend a period littered with conflicts between, among others, Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and China, and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Longstanding theories of international relations commonly attribute conflict to issues such as great power competition,[2] ethnic conflict,[3] or shifts in the distribution of power.[4] However, the regional spread and ethno-religious distribution of these conflicts necessitates an alternative framework to understand the rise of conflict.
(...)
The left-hand panel of the figure below demonstrates this trend empirically. Since 1980 there has been a steady decline in the percentage of global conflicts that are interstate (fought between two countries). However, in the last 10 years this figure has trended upward with more countries fighting wars with each other. The righthand panel of the figure illustrates the proportion of all conflict globally that involves disputes over territory. Issues of territory, land, and border integrity have always been motivators for conflict. However, the proportion of territorial conflict has risen sharply since 2010. Together, these two trends suggest that countries are fighting more wars and, now more than ever, territory is motivating it.
– There was the short lived 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia which redrew contested borders.
#CFR (2024): Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/nagorno-karabakh-conflict
Quote: “Since the bilateral acceptance of a ceasefire in 1994, which formally remained in force until September 2020, the use of attack drones, shelling, and special operations activities by Armenian and Azerbaijani troops have led to intermittent clashes. Early April 2016 witnessed the most intense fighting since 1994, leading to hundreds of casualties along the line of separation. After four days of fighting, the two sides announced they had agreed to cease hostilities. However, a breakdown in talks resulted in both sides accusing each other of ceasefire violations, and tensions remained high.
Following a summer of cross-border attacks, heavy fighting broke out along the Azerbaijan-Nagorno-Karabakh border in late September 2020. More than seven thousand soldiers and civilians were killed, with hundreds more Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers wounded. Both countries initially rejected pressure from the United Nations, the United States, and Russia to hold talks and end hostilities, and instead pledged to continue fighting.”
– Then there is the latest War between Israel and Hamas that turned into a regional crisis.
#CFR. Center for Preventive Action. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. October 06, 2024
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict
Quote: “Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, prompting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to engage in aerial campaigns and ground operations within the Gaza Strip. Efforts to free the more than one hundred remaining Israeli and foreign hostages taken by Hamas have been largely unsuccessful, and their location and health status are unknown. Almost two million Gazans—more than 85 percent of the population—have fled their homes since October 2023. Recent casualty estimates from the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry place the death toll in Gaza at around 42,000, though such numbers are challenging to verify due to limited international access to the strip. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is attempting to facilitate a ceasefire and hostage release deal between the two parties.
The conflict has sparked increased regional tensions across the Middle East. Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have engaged in cross-border skirmishes with the IDF, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have shot missiles at Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea, and other Iran-backed groups have launched dozens of attacks on U.S. military positions in Iraq and Syria.”
For further reading we have added more sources below.
There is also a one-year update article from the same source above:
#Elliott Abrams, Linda Robinson, Ray Takeyh, and Steven A. Cook. CFR. One Year After the October 7 Attacks: The Impact on Four Fronts. October 2, 2024.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict
One can find further data and analysis in ACLED on the crisis unfolding in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, the Red Sea, Iraq, and Syria. Also, there is a helpful Q&A piece
#ACLED. Middle East crisis: October 2023 – present. November 2024.
https://acleddata.com/middle-east-crisis-october-2023-present/
#Ameneh Mehvar. ACLED. Q&A: Behind the data on the Israel-Hezbollah war. November 2024.
https://acleddata.com/2024/11/01/qa-behind-the-data-on-the-israel-hezbollah-war/
– What is certainly the most disturbing new development, is the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It is the first large-scale interstate war in 20 years, and the first war since WW2 where a major power is trying to conquer territory and to subjugate another state. It followed an 8 year conflict that started with the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the War in the Donbass. Exact casualty rates for the war since 2022 are hard to verify, but they go as high as hundreds of thousands.
Here is a summary of the events in 2014 that preceded the 2022 invasion by Russia:
#Pettersson, T. & Wallensteen, P. (2015): Armed conflicts, 1946–2014. Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 52(4)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343315595927
Quote: “In November 2013, Ukraine was set to sign an association agreement with the EU. However, just a few days before the signing ceremony President Viktor Yanukovych decided to abandon the process and instead deepen the country’s ties with Russia. This triggered mass protests in the capital, Kiev. While starting out as a demonstration, the opposition, named Maidan after the Independence Square in Kiev, soon became more coherent, created a military force and demanded the resignation of the government. By the end of January 2014, Maidan had occupied a large number of administrative buildings, including the City Hall. The government resigned on 28 January, but the opposition continued to call for the president to step down. In late February, Yanukovych was dismissed by the Parliament and fled to Russia.
The pro-EU governmental change in Kiev, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March, led to the rise of a pro-Russian movement in the eastern parts of the country which later escalated into a series of territorial conflicts. One of the organizations formed was DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic). It demanded sovereignty over the Donetsk region and proclaimed its independence in April 2014. A military confrontation ensued, resulting in well over 1,000 battle-related deaths, and also led to events such as the downing of the civilian airliner MH17 while it was flying over the region on 17 July. Large-scale military operations by both sides, including heavy shelling and tank offensives, were observed, along with accusations of Russian support for the separatists.
Parallel to these developments, another separatist group had been emerging in Lugansk. LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic) was formed in April, in the same manner as DPR, and soon demanded independence for the territory of Lugansk. DPR and LPR became strong allies and supporters of each other. On 11 May, the LPR had secured sufficient territory to be able to run a referendum on the region’s independence from Ukraine which the group declared one day later. Heavy fighting followed in and around Lugansk city, forcing most residents to flee as much of the town was damaged.
Ukraine, DPR, and LPR reached a ceasefire on 5 September, under the auspices of OSCE; however, the agreement soon proved insufficient. In order to further their military offensive and have a stronger voice in the negotiations, DPR and LPR created a new, unified group called United Forces of Novorossiya on 16 September. The group had a new stated incompatibility, a region larger than Donetsk and Lugansk combined, referred to as Novorossiya. A ceasefire signed on 19 September with the Ukrainian government did not prevent fighting from continuing at high intensity.
The conflicts in Ukraine have pitted the USA and the EU against Russia and created a deadlock in diplomatic relations, as illustrated by the sanctions imposed on Russian individuals and organizations after the annexation of Crimea, along with further similar measures throughout the year. And while Russia bolstered its military presence along the border with Ukraine, Ukraine itself, in December, decided to drop its non-aligned status and announced that it is applying for NATO membership.”
#CFR (2024): War in Ukraine.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine
Quote: “Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in early 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The previous year, protests in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a deal for greater economic integration with the European Union (EU) were met with a violent crackdown by state security forces. The protests widened, escalating the conflict, and President Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014.
One month later, in March 2014, Russian troops took control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the rights of Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Crimea and southeast Ukraine. Russia then formally annexed the peninsula after Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation in a disputed local referendum. The crisis heightened ethnic divisions, and two months later, pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk held their own independence referendums.
Armed conflict in the regions quickly broke out between Russian-backed forces and the Ukrainian military. Russia denied military involvement, but both Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reported the buildup of Russian troops and military equipment near Donetsk and Russian cross-border shelling immediately following Crimea’s annexation. The conflict transitioned to an active stalemate, with regular shelling and skirmishes occurring along frontlines separating Russian- and Ukrainian-controlled eastern border regions.
Beginning in February 2015, France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine attempted to kickstart negotiations to bring an end to the violence through the Minsk Accords. The agreement framework included provisions for a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry, and full Ukrainian government control throughout the conflict zone. Efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement and satisfactory resolution, however, were largely unsuccessful.“
The following gives a brief overview of the events the days right before the full-scale invasion:
#CFR (2024): War in Ukraine.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine
Quote: “On February 24, 2022, during a last-ditch UN Security Council effort to dissuade Russia from attacking Ukraine, Putin announced the beginning of a full-scale land, sea, and air invasion of Ukraine, targeting Ukrainian military assets and cities across the country. Putin claimed that the goal of the operation was to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and end the alleged genocide of Russians in Ukrainian territory. U.S. President Joe Biden declared the attack “unprovoked and unjustified” and issued severe sanctions against top Kremlin officials, including Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; four of Russia’s largest banks; and the Russian oil and gas industry in coordination with European allies. On March 2, 141 of 193 UN member states voted to condemn Russia’s invasion in an emergency UN General Assembly session, demanding that Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine.”
The figures on casualties (dead and wounded) are difficult to quantify and of course depend on the site publishing these figures, as each side tends to downplay its losses and exaggerate enemy casualties.
The UN estimates around 30,000 civilian casualties in early 2024:
#UN (2024): Two-year update. Protection of civilians: impact of hostilities on civilians since 24 February 2022
Quote: “Thousands of civilians have lost their lives or sustained life-changing injuries – or have family members who have done so. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has verified that conflict-related violence in this two-year period killed more than 10,000 civilians and injured nearly 20,000. The actual numbers are likely significantly higher.”
#UN (2024): Russian Federation’s War Having ‘Appalling Impact’ on Ukraine’s Children, Under-Secretary-General Tells Security Council
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15559.doc.htm
Quote: “Since February 2022, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified 29,579 civilian casualties with 10,242 people killed, including 575 children.”
According to the UK Ministry of Defense (as of May 2024), Russia suffered 465,000 casualties:
#GOV.UK (2024): Over 465,000 Russian personnel killed or wounded since 2022 – a terrible human loss for Russians: UK statement to the OSCE
Quote: “a. 825. Today is 825 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
b. 465,000. Over 465,000 Russian personnel have been killed or wounded in that time.
c. 980. From January 2024 to April 2024, Russia’s daily casualty rate in Ukraine – the numbers of killed and wounded – was 980. Estimates in May, put that number over 1000 per day. That is around 30,000 per month. The highest rate it has been since the start of this war.”
While more conservative estimates suggest 75,000 dead Russian soldiers and around 200,000 casualties in late 2023:
#Meduza (2024): At least 75,000 dead Russian soldiers Meduza calculates that Moscow loses 120 men per day in Ukraine, and the rate isn’t slowing after two years of war
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/24/at-least-75-000-dead-russian-soldiers
Quote: “Meduza is now updating that research at the full-scale invasion’s two-year mark, drawing on data that covers the period between February 24, 2022, and late 2023. Using this information and our previous methodology, we estimate that roughly 75,000 Russian combatants have been killed in Ukraine, and Russia’s rate of losses is not slowing.
[...]
We base our calculations on reliable data, but these estimates concern only Russia’s killed soldiers. Irrecoverable losses in war traditionally also include combatants who are severely wounded or missing in action, but our methodology has no insights into trends among these soldiers (given that they are not reflected in inheritance records). In our previous study, Meduza discussed the challenges inherent in counting wounded and missed soldiers.
Since then, no new information has emerged that would allow us to refine our estimates. We can say only that the ratio of wounded to killed soldiers varies by the war and depends (among other things) on the types of injuries. A highly conservative assumption of 1.7–2 injured men for every soldier killed would mean Russia has suffered 130,000 wounded combatants, bringing the total casualty count to more than 200,000 men.”
US officials estimated 300,000 Russian and 180,000 Ukrainian military casualties by August 2023:
#The Guardian (2023): “Battlefield deaths in Ukraine have risen sharply this year, say US officials”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/18/ukraine-russia-war-battlefield-deaths-rise
Quote: “The number of battlefield casualties in Ukraine is approaching nearly 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, US officials have told the New York Times, marking a significant rise in the death toll this year following intense fighting in the east of the country.
Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, the officials claimed, with as many as 120,000 killed in action.
(...)
Ukraine was said to have close to 70,000 killed and 100,000-120,000 wounded. Russia’s standing army is between two to three times larger than Ukraine’s, and the country has a larger population from which to replenish its frontline soldiers.”
US declassified documents in late 2023 indicate that 315,000 russian soldiers and 70,000 ukrainian soldiers died in the conflict:
#Reuter (2023): U.S. intelligence assesses Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 casualties -source
Quote: “A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.”
“Kyiv treats its losses as a state secret and officials say disclosing the figure could harm its war effort. A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials as putting the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000.”
While Ukraine reports 31,000 soldiers of their soldiers had been killed by February 2024:
#AP (2024): 31,000 Ukrainian troops killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy says
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-troops-killed-zelenskyy-675f53437aaf56a4d990736e85af57c4
– If we add up the numbers we see a few things. Roughly, between 2004 and 2014 there were about 350,000 deaths from state-based conflicts worldwide. They were going down from 2014 to 2019 and then rose sharply in 2021. In total from 2014 to 2024 we saw about 1.2 million deaths. If we include all violent conflicts, like the Mexican drug war, the number rises to 1.5 million, 3 times higher than the previous decade. Actually 2022 had the highest death toll from violent conflict since the Rwandan Genocide in 1994.
We gathered the relevant data from UPCD for the last two decades regarding the death tolls from different types of conflicts. We included inter- and intra-state conflicts for the total fatalities from the state-based conflicts.
As we mentioned in the beginning of the document, fatalities reported in UCDP might have been underreported. There are several reasons for this including the definitions of conflict and inclusion criteria, reporting biases in the primary sources, also how the uncertainity around data is accounted for. UCDP for example is known to go with the more conservative estimates when in doubt. Following paper explains this issue.
#Vesco et al. The underreported death toll of wars: a probabilistic reassessment from a structured expert elicitation. arxiv. 2024.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.08779
Quote: "Empirical research on peace and conflict has increasingly relied on event datasets that provide information on armed conflict events and related deaths for multiple countries and over time. The majority of these datasets are based on automatic or manual coding of events from news and media sources, thus giving rise to potential reporting bias. However, common coding procedures lack a systematic approach to quantify the uncertainty about the reported values.
In general, there are two types of uncertainty and bias in conflict event datasets. One relates to the unknown and uncertain events that fail to be reported at all in the source material available; the other, to bias and uncertainty in the events that are actually reported by credible news sources, government and NGO reports, etc. In this article, we will focus on the latter source of bias and uncertainty.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is one of the most acknowledged and widely used among such datasets, reporting organized violence globally throughout the period 1989–2023. The UCDP data are hand-collected systematically, based on a rigorous and immutable definition of armed conflict as a set of events where the use of armed force results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year (Davies et al., 2024). The adoption of a rigorous definition of armed conflict, coupled with the application of systematic and transparent coding rules, enable UCDP to provide data that are comparable across cases and countries and over time. UCDP relies on local, national, and international news sources, as well as on IGO, NGO and research centers’ monitoring efforts. The UCDP has unrivalled experience and allocate considerable resources to assess reporting bias, using multiple sources for each event wherever feasible.1 Still, some bias is unavoidable. The magnitude of the reporting bias and uncertainty around the number of reported fatalities is hard to measure, and remains largely unknown. When in doubt, the UCDP is conservative in their estimates of deaths. Consequently, UCDP has a known tendency to be biased downward, but little is known about the amount of this bias, as the UCDP does not provide a simple, consistent estimate of their own uncertainty about the true number of deaths in the events they report."
One can also access the relevant datatables through OWID:
#OWID. Countries in Conflict Data Explorer. Retrieved November 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/countries-in-conflict-data?tab=table&time=latest&Measure=Conflict+deaths&Conflict+type=All+armed+conflicts&Conflict+sub-type=By+sub-type
#Davies, S., Engström, G., Pettersson, T., & Öberg, M. (2024). Organized violence 1989–2023, and the prevalence of organized crime groups. Journal of Peace Research, 61(4).
Quote: “In 2023, fatalities from organized violence decreased for the first time since the rapid increase observed in 2020, dropping from 310,000 in 2022 to 154,000 in 2023. Despite this decline, these figures represent some of the highest fatality rates recorded since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, surpassed only by those of 2022 and 2021. The decrease was primarily attributed to the end of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which accounted for about 60% of battle-related deaths in both 2022 and 2021. Despite this positive development, the number of active state-based armed conflicts increased by three in 2023, reaching the highest level ever recorded by the UCDP, totaling 59. Non-state conflicts and one-sided violence decreased in 2023 when compared to 2022, evident in both the reduction of the active conflicts/actors and the decrease in fatalities attributed to these forms of violence. However, despite this overall decrease, fatalities resulting from non-state conflicts remained at historically high levels in 2023. Analysis of non-state conflict data spanning the past decade reveals that it comprises the ten most violent years on record. Organized crime groups have predominantly fueled this escalation. Unlike rebel groups, organized crime groups typically lack political goals and are primarily motivated by economic gain. Conflicts between these groups tend to intensify around drug smuggling routes and in urban areas, driven by shifts in alliances and leadership dynamics among the actors.”
– The Tigray War and the War in Ukraine alone were responsible for the majority of lives lost, as both wars involved armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sometimes thrown against entrenched positions in human wave attacks.
#The Peace Research Institute Oslo. New figures show conflict-related deaths at 28-year high, largely due to the Ethiopia and Ukraine wars. 2023.
https://www.prio.org/news/3058
Quote: “According to the new figures, more state-based conflict battle-related deaths took place in 2022 than any year since 1994. The wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia were the primary contributors to over 237,000 battle-related deaths in 2022.”
#BBC (2022): Ethiopia civil war: Hyenas scavenge on corpses as Tigray forces retreat
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63291747
Quote: "There are at least 500,000 Eritrean and Ethiopian federal troops in active combat, plus 200,000 from the Tigrayan side," said Alex de Waal, the executive director of the US-based World Peace Foundation.”
#idw (2023): UCDP: Number of deaths in armed conflicts has doubled
https://idw-online.de/en/news?id=815707
Quote: “In both Ethiopia and Ukraine, fighting has been characterised by trench warfare, with warring parties being accused of using human wave tactics. This type of warfare has contributed to the high casualty numbers.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Ethiopia
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/530
Quote: “In 2023, the overall level of organized violence decreased vastly compared to 2022, going from more than 160 000 to just below 2000. 2022 was the year that saw the crescendo of the war between the Ethiopian government and TPLF, with fighting taking the form of a bloody infantry war that caused the highest fatality numbers ever recorded by UCDP. The war was terminated with a peace agreement in November of that year, and after that fighting in the conflict ceased, which explains the immense drop in fatality numbers in 2023.”
#UCDP (retrieved 2024): Ukraine
https://ucdp.uu.se/country/369
– So the last 3 years have been unusually violent. But if we zoom out a bit more, we can put those numbers into perspective: a terrible thing but nowhere near how bad it can get when the world goes to war. In the grand scheme of things, we are still living in relatively peaceful times. But the next decade will show if the trend will reverse or if the last few years were an anomaly. Unfortunately there have been “proper” wars between states again, so our prediction on wars between countries didn’t hold up.
UCDP doesn’t go as early as the beginning of the last century, it gathers data 1989 onwards. But there are other studies estimating the annual death toll due to armed conflicts in the last century.
The chart we use in the video is based in the high-estimates from Project Mars:
OWID (retrieved 2024): Deaths in wars
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-wars
Primary source for the chart:
Lyall, J. (2020): Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
– What is as true today as in 2014 is that almost all armed conflicts in the world are in countries that were under foreign occupation in the 20th century – either by colonialism or by the expansive Soviet dictatorship. Ethnic groups were split apart or forced together by arbitrary borders, resources unequally distributed or power vacuums created, which led to conflicts that are in many cases still unresolved.
If you compare the following maps, which show regions with current conflicts and the zones of influence of the colonial powers and the Soviet Union, there are clear similarities.
However, the effects of these centuries of oppression and violence are extremely complex and they partly overlap and can only be outlined here by way of example.
#OWID (retrieved 2024): Countries where armed conflicts took place
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/locations-of-ongoing-armed-conflicts
#CIA (1978): Changing face of Europe and colonial tension, late 1945.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g5701f.ct002763/?r=-0.089,-0.009,1.307,0.595,0
#Blanton, R. et al. (2001): Colonial Style and Post-Colonial Ethnic Conflict in Africa. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38 (4)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343301038004005
Quote: “One of the most profound legacies of the colonial period has been ethnic conflict. When the European powers imposed formal territorial boundaries throughout the continent in 1885, the seeds for ethnic conflict in post-colonial Africa were sown. Those boundaries were drawn with little or no consideration to the actual distribution of indigenous ethno-cultural groups. With the demise of colonial rule, the former colonies, with their colonial borders essentially intact, were transformed into some of the most ethnically fragmented states in the world.1”
#Bayeh, E. (2015): The legacy of colonialism in the contemporary africa: a cause for intrastate and interstate conflicts. International Journal of Innovative and Applied Research, Vol. 3 (2)
Quote: “Africa had been under the yoke of colonialism since the 19th century up until the 20th century. In this colonial era, Africa experienced an exploitative, brutal and harsh colonial administration. Colonialism terminated in Africa in 1994. Nonetheless, the physical departure of colonial powers does not make the continent free from the impact of colonialism. Thus, the legacy of brutal colonial rule remains intact. One major legacy of colonialism is intra and inter-state conflicts which emanated from the arbitrary boundary made by colonial powers. Colonial powers blindly carve up borders of states and thereby merged together different ethnic groups and fragmented same ethnic groups. This caused both intra and inter-state conflicts. Rwanda, Nigeria, and Sudan can be good examples for intra-state conflicts which are resulted from the fusion of incompatible ethnic groups into one country and the favor made to one ethnic group over the other at the time of colonization. The Kenya-Somalia and Ethio-Somalia conflicts are also best examples of inter-state conflicts which emanated from fragmentation of same ethnic groups across several states as the result of the creation of arbitrary boundary. In this case, Somali ethnic groups are dispersed to neighboring countries, namely Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. Thus, the ambition of Somalia to create a Greater Somalia by regaining those Somali ethnic groups in Ethiopia and Kenya has caused the aforementioned interstate conflicts. The recent North Africa‟s Arab Revolution is also attributed, inter alia, to the brutal experience with the colonial masters”
#ISPI (2024): Borders in the Post-Soviet Region: Unfinished Business?
Quote: “Territorial revisions and conflicts following the collapse of the URSS in 1991 provoked increasingly contested spaces and borders. Even prior to its ultimate collapse, as Moscow’s central authority weakened, nationalisms and ethnic contrasts, previously suppressed by the common Soviet identity, began to resurface. In some of the 15 newly independent States, these tensions manifested in the form of territorial disputes and conflicts, resulting in the creation of several de facto states, i.e. separatist entities which are not recognised as sovereign states by the international community. Such entities are South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and more recently the so-called “People’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine. The republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Artsakh in Armenian, existed between 1991 and 2023, when Azerbaijan retook manu militari full control of the former de facto state prompting an exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenian refugees. Recent events in Ukraine and the South Caucasus show that this process is ongoing: military and political tensions, including over shared history, complicate an already challenging situation, and further destabilise borders.“
#Goodson, L. & Johnson, T.H. (2011): Parallels with the Past – How the Soviets Lost in Afghanistan, How the Americans are Losing, Orbis, Vol. 55 (4)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438711000688
Quote: “The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day of 1979 ostensibly to rescue a failing Communist government. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had overthrown the Mohammad Daoud government in April 1978 (Saur Revolution) and then engaged in bloody infighting and ambitious reforms that shocked Afghanistan’s largely rural and conservative population into rebellion. The Soviets brought with them in December 1979 a new president for Afghanistan, Babrak Karmal, who they installed in the Presidential Palace as soon as they had killed Hafizullah Amin, the existing president. The rebellion quickly turned into a national resistance movement and the Soviets responded with sweep and clear tactics aimed at depopulating the countryside that was supporting and aiding the Afghan mujahideen, especially in areas near the Afghan-Pakistani border. By1981, Afghanistan had the dubious distinction of producing the world’s largest single refugee population; most fled to Pakistan or Iran. Pakistan also became the base for most of the fledgling mujahideen, Muslim guerrilla warriors engaged in a jihad, who were eventually aided by the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries aligned against the Soviet Union in the last great battle of the Cold War.
By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was bogged down in Afghanistan even as a new generation of leadership was emerging in Moscow. The new Soviet leadership, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, realized that time was running out on their Afghan adventure, and they made significant strategic adjustments to try to rescue what they could from what was shaping up to be a failure of epic proportions. First, they shifted their military strategy away from combating a rural insurgency to controlling the population centers and the road corridor that connected them. Second, they tried to change the unpopular puppet government they had installed and took measures to boost its popularity, primarily through a reconciliation program. Third, the Soviets concentrated on building a competent Afghan army and security forces to which they could handoff the job of Afghan security. All of these strategies were pursued in the context of an overall Soviet policy to modernize Afghanistan that ultimately alienated many traditional Afghans who were satisfied with Afghan societal and political norms. As we will argue below, it appears that the United States is trying to do all of these things again today, as if the Soviet experience never happened.”
#EUAA (2021): 7.1.2. Past conflicts (1979-2001)
https://euaa.europa.eu/country-guidance-afghanistan-2024/712-past-conflicts-1979-2001
Quote: “The year 1978 was a turning point in Afghan history. On 27 April 1978, the Khalq faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, and supported by military officers, overthrew the government of President Muhammad Daud Khan, and executed him and most of his family members. This event is known as the Saur Revolution [Taliban strategies – Recruitment, 1.1, p. 13].
(...)
On 25 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and on 27 December of the same year, Soviet special forces attacked Taj Beg palace in Kabul, killed President Hafizullah Amin and his family members, and designated Babrak Karmal as the new President. The invasion was followed by a decade of armed conflict between the Afghan government, supported by Soviet troops, and armed opposition groups. The resistance became a jihad against ‘infidel invaders’ and ‘the puppet government’, uniting different armed factions, called the ‘mujahideen’.
(...)
In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.
(...)
Dr Najibullah managed to stay in control, largely depending on local commanders and their militias. The pressure from the burning insurgency caused the collapse of Najibullah’s government in April 1992. After the collapse of Dr. Najibullah’s regime in 1992, a period referred to as ‘Civil war’ saw different mujahideen groups making alliances, largely based on region and ethnicity.
(...)
During the chaos of the civil war, the Taliban took control of Kandahar City in 1994. In 1996, they conquered Kabul after taking Jalalabad and Herat. After entering Kabul, the group killed President Najibullah and his brother and hanged them in Ariana circle in the city. They carried out ‘public executions and amputations of one hand and one foot for theft’. They killed thousands of people, including the deliberate and systematic killing of Hazara civilians after the group captured Mazar-e Sharif on 8 August 1998. They captured Bamyan province in May 1999, where the group destroyed two giant Buddhas statues in March 2001. By 2001, the Taliban controlled most of the Afghan territory [Security June 2021, 1.1.1, p. 29; Taliban strategies – Recruitment, 1.2, p. 15].
Ethnic groups were split apart or forced together by arbitrary borders, resources unequally distributed or power vacuums created, which led to conflicts that are in many cases still unresolved.
– There have also been no wars between democracies, who seem uniquely unwilling to fight each other.
The statement above refers to the concept of the “democratic peace theory”.
#Altman, D. et al. (2020): An interactive model of democratic peace. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 58 (1)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336495979_An_Interactive_Model_of_Democratic_Peace
Quote: “In 1795, Immanuel Kant postulated that, in a world of constitutional republics, there would be no room for war. Thomas Paine (1776) and Alexis de Tocqueville (1835–40) also defended republics and democracies by stressing their lower propensity to war. However, it was not until the second half of the 20th century that these ideas gained empirical traction from the groundbreaking work of Babst (1964), Rummel (1983), and Doyle (1986). The combination of these ideas, hypotheses, and tests is collectively known as the theory of democratic peace.
Although diverse empirical tests confirm that wars (or military conflicts) between democracies are extremely rare – to the point of being almost non-existent (Gleditsch, 1992; Maoz & Russett, 1993) – according to the views of Paine and de Tocqueville, it is not that democracies do not go to war (they do); rather, they rarely go to war against each other (Bremer, 1992; Dixon, 1994). Consequently, the contemporary theory of democratic peace maintains that democracies are less likely to go to war with other democracies (Maoz & Abdolali, 1989).1 Empirically, evidence supporting the existence of democratic peace is so convincing that Jack Levy has claimed that the absence of war between democracies is the closest thing to an empirical law that exists in international relations (Levy, 1989: 270).”
#Hegre, H. et al. (2020): Civil Society and the Democratic Peace. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 64 (1)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022002719850620
Quote: “Our findings from this article have led us to reevaluate the structural basis for the democratic peace. By theorizing three different accountability mechanisms—(1) the electoral, (2) the horizontal, and (3) the social—we are able to specify the institutional sources of dyadic democracy’s ability to deter bellicose behavior. Specifically, we show that, when entered individually, all three mechanisms promote the democratic peace, when controlling for standard correlates of interstate disputes.”
– On the other hand, we see fewer civil wars end by diplomacy. Instead there is an increase in either victories or stalemates. These often aren’t permanent resolutions to the conflict, only pauses in the fighting, because the underlying causes haven’t been solved.
We have major examples of civil wars ended by force, notably the Iraq ISIS crisis, and those with a negotiated end, like in Libya. The real problem is that so few of these wars really have a clear-cut end to them.
#Reuters (2017): Iraq declares final victory over Islamic State
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/iraq-declares-final-victory-over-islamic-state-idUSKBN1E30B6/
Quote: “Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State on Saturday after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq's territory.
The announcement comes two days after the Russian military announced the defeat of the militants in neighbouring Syria, where Moscow is backing Syrian government forces.”
#United States government (retrieved 2024): Iraqi, Syrian Democratic Forces Destroy ISIS’ ‘Caliphate’
Quote: “While Iraqi security forces and Syrian Democratic Forces have destroyed the idea of an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ‘Caliphate,’ much work remains to be done against the terror group, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning said today.
Over the weekend, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that Iraqi security forces -- including Kurdish peshmerga forces -- had defeated ISIS in his country.”
#UN (2020): UN salutes new Libya ceasefire agreement that points to ‘a better, safer, and more peaceful future’
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/10/1076012
Quote: “Warring parties in Libya on Friday agreed an historic ceasefire, which was hailed by the head of the UN Support Mission in the country (UNSMIL), who led the mediation, as a courageous act that can help secure a “a better, safer, and more peaceful future for all the Libyan people”.
#Brookings (2022): Two years on from the ceasefire agreement, Libya still matters
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/two-years-on-from-the-ceasefire-agreement-libya-still-matters/
Quote: “Last month’s marking of the two-year anniversary of the Libyan ceasefire agreement offers an opportunity to take stock of the North African country’s trajectory. Libya’s wily and opportunistic post-2011 ruling elite – a network of security, political and economic actors – continues to prioritize patronage and its own transitory deals above the future of the country. While the ceasefire has overall been respected and the country has not witnessed a repeat of the large-scale violence of 2019-2020, Libya has slid backwards into institutional division, misgovernance, limited bouts of violence, and human rights abuses against Libyans and migrants alike.”
We can look at UCDP data on how wars end, up to 2020.
Data: https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/index.html#termination
Codebook: https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/monadterm/Conflict_termination_codebook_3-2021.pdf
If we filter by conflicts since 2003, and only by civil wars (category 3), we find 68 conflicts that ended in the period 2003 to 2013. Of those, 9 had a peaceful (1) outcome. That’s 13.2%. Then we find 67 conflicts that ended in the period 2014 to 2020. Of those, 3 had a peaceful (1) outcome. That’s 4.4%. It’s clear that a lot less civil wars have ended peacefully since 2014, though we do not have data that covers the most recent years from 2021 to 2024.
– For our claim about borders, we can see that most international borders in the world still hold up and are not challenged, but there are still a few dozen territorial disputes in the world, most of them in Africa and Asia.
#Monika Krautschneider and Camila Narbaitz Sarsur. Blurry Borders.
Overviews of the disputes specifically for Asia and Africa can also be found in ACLED:
#Regional Overview Asia-Pacific, April 2023. Retrieved November 2024.
https://acleddata.com/2023/05/05/regional-overview-asia-pacific-april-2023/
#Regional Overview Africa December 2023. Retrieved November 2024.
https://acleddata.com/2024/01/12/regional-overview-africa-december-2023/
– And some are getting hotter, like the border clash between India and China over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. China's claim to Taiwan, or Venezuela threatening to annex part of Guyana’s oil-rich province Essequibo.
#International Crisis Group (2023): Thin Ice in the Himalayas: Handling the India-China Border Dispute. Report No. 334
Quote: “The border dispute between India and China has again become a thorn in the two Asian giants’ sides. Rival claims as to where the frontier lies first flared into war in 1962, poisoning relations until a slow rapprochement began in the 1980s. Built on a willingness to set aside the quarrel given other shared interests, the precarious peace wobbled as China surged economically and militarily. Intensifying competition fuelled nationalism in both countries as well as fear of losing territory and status. A fierce round of fighting in 2020, the first in many years, seriously damaged Sino-Indian ties.
(...)
Frictions continued to rise under President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both nationalists who see their political reputations as intimately connected to sovereign assertiveness and power projection abroad. Growing rivalry between the two big powers magnified the fears of each about the other’s actions along their main shared flashpoint. Deepening security cooperation between the U.S. and India made China uneasy; China’s growing political, economic and military clout in India’s neighbourhood, as well as its evergreen support for Pakistan, jangled nerves in India.”
#USIP (2023): Why We Should All Worry About the China-India Border Dispute.
https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/05/why-we-should-all-worry-about-china-india-border-dispute
Quote: “The December 2022 clash between Chinese and Indian troops along the two countries’ 2,100-mile-long contested border — known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) — highlights a worrying “one step forward, two steps back” trend. This brawl was the worst since 2020, when fighting in the Galwan Valley took the lives of 20 Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers. Although these clashes are often followed by dialogue and other steps to reduce tensions, both sides have increasingly militarized their border policies and shown no indication of backing down. And the situation on the border remains tense, as Beijing and New Delhi are hardening their positions on either side of the LAC, with the potential for escalation between the two nuclear-armed powers.
Tensions over the border dispute are a particular cause for concern given the overall trajectory of the Sino-Indian relationship, which has soured significantly in recent years. If Beijing and New Delhi are to resolve these long-standing disputes, they have several challenges to face, many of which were only exacerbated by these recent clashes. These include militarization of the border, India’s increasingly assertive foreign policy and growing threats to regional strategic stability.”
#CFR (2024): Confrontation Over Taiwan
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/confrontation-over-taiwan
Quote: “Taiwan’s disputed status is a direct result of the Chinese Civil War, in which the defeated Nationalist (Kuomintang) government fled the mainland and moved its government to the island in 1949. While the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never exercised control over Taiwan, it claims that the island is an inalienable part of China that must be “reunified” with the mainland. In a 2022 white paper, the PRC said the resolution of the Taiwan question is “indispensable for the realization of China’s rejuvenation” and a “historic mission” of the Chinese Communist Party. The PRC has a stated preference for seeking reunification through peaceful means but reserves the right to use force to achieve its aims.”
#Reuters (2024): Venezuela creates new state in territory under dispute with Guyana
Quote: “Lawmakers in Venezuela allied with the government of President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday approved the creation of a new state in a territory that is the subject of a long dispute with neighboring Guyana, despite an ongoing international court case.
The approval is in line with recent rhetoric from Maduro about his country's supposed right to govern the 160,000-square-km (62,000-square-mile) Esequibo region, but will have no immediate practical effect.
(...)
Venezuela has in recent years revived its claim to the territory and to offshore areas after major oil and gas discoveries and amid internal political upheaval ahead of elections expected this year.”
#UN (2024): Security Council Press Statement on Guyana–Venezuela Situation
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15665.doc.htm
Quote: “The members of the Security Council expressed their concern about the possible escalation of tensions between Venezuela and Guyana. They urged the parties to exercise maximum restraint, reminding them of their obligations to comply with the Order of Provisional Measures issued by the International Court of Justice on 1 December 2023.
The Council also underlined the importance of maintaining regional peace and security and ensuring that the Latin America and Caribbean region remains a zone of peace. In this regard, it commended regional efforts which resulted in the conclusion of the Declaration of Peace and Dialogue of Argyle of 14 December 2023 in which Guyana and Venezuela, inter alia, agreed that any controversy between the two States will be resolved in accordance with international law, including the Geneva Agreement of 1966.”
#BBC (2023): Essequibo: Venezuela votes on claim to Guyana-controlled oil region
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67583582
Quote: “The Venezuelan government has called the referendum to measure popular support for its historical claim to a contested oil-rich swathe of jungle currently administered by Guyana.”
– One thing that makes wars so deadly, is that they are often supported by external powers. Many countries are providing support or arming up different sides or factions. Like the competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran for hegemony, with Iran being the main supporter for the Houtis, Hezbollah or Hamas. Or in the Ukrainian War, with the West supporting Ukraine while China, Iran and North Korea support Russia. But it is not just countries – external powers keeping conflicts alive can also be islamist groups like ISIS or criminal networks. Or even local elites that benefit from their own country being torn apart and effectively prevent conflicts from ending.
#IEP (2024): Global Peace Index 2024
https://www.economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GPI-2024-web.pdf
Quote: “The deterioration on the external conflicts fought indicator reflects the increase in external actors becoming involved in internal conflicts. The United States, Russia, Iran and France are amongst the countries with the highest scores. There were 67 countries with scores that deteriorated on this indicator, with five of the ten largest deteriorations occurring in countries in sub-Saharan Africa. There are 100 countries that were at least partially involved in some form of external conflict in the past five years, up from 59 in 2008. In most cases countries were offering support to an existing government in its conflict with an internal armed rebel or terrorist group.
(...)
The deterioration on the external conflicts fought indicator reflects the increase in external actors becoming involved in internal conflicts. In 2022 there were 92 countries who were at least partially involved in some form of external conflict, up from 59 in 2008. Of those 100, three were acting alone in an external conflict, 33 were involved in a small coalition, and 84 were involved in a large coalition of ten or more countries. In the majority of conflicts, countries were offering support to an existing government in its conflict with an internal armed rebel or terrorist group.”
Quote: “Definition: This indicator measures the number and duration of extraterritorial conflicts a country is involved in. Information for this indicator is sourced from the UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset. The score for a country is determined by adding all individual conflict scores where that country is involved as an actor in a conflict outside its legal boundaries. Conflicts are not counted against a country if they have already been counted against that country in the number and duration of internal conflicts indicator.”
The data from the following source only goes up to 2017, but still clearly shows a trend of external support in recent decades.
#Meier, V. et al (2022): External support in armed conflicts: Introducing the UCDP external support dataset (ESD), 1975–2017, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 60 (3)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00223433221079864
Quote: “In its most disaggregated form, the dataset consists of 10,363 observations across 2,234 unique conflict dyad-years for the period 1975-2017. The unit of analysis is the triad-year. The triad includes the external supporter, the recipient and the recipient’s opponent. The list of active conflict-dyads stems from the UCDP Dyadic Dataset 18.1 (Harbom, Melander & Wallensteen, 2008; Pettersson & Eck, 2018). The type of support is then coded along ten dimensions: troops, access to infrastructure and joint operations, weapons, materiel and logistics, training and expertise, funding, intelligence, access to territory, other, and unknown support.”
Figure 1. Frequency of support type by type of supporter and recipient, 1975-2017.
Figure 3. Number of external state and non-state supporters by year, 1975–2017
#UNU-CPR (2023): Fragile Contexts Are Increasingly Battlegrounds in Geopolitical Contests
https://unu.edu/cpr/project/fragile-contexts-are-increasingly-battlegrounds-geopolitical-contests
Quote: “Fragile contexts are increasingly becoming battlegrounds in regional and international geopolitical contests. Full-fledged wars between states remain rare, but the distinction between intrastate and inter-state conflicts is now often badly blurred. Of the 47 intrastate wars recorded by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in 2016, 18 (38%) were internationalized “in the sense that external states contributed troops to one or more sides of the conflict”. This figure is exceptionally high by post-Cold War standards. It may also underrepresent the number of internationalized civil wars as it does not include cases in which outside actors support combatants with arms, money or proxy forces rather than only troops.
While many studies of conflict-affected states now emphasize their local dimensions and small-scale conflict dynamics, the trend towards the internationalization of civil wars presents new worrisome challenges. As Erin K. Jenne and Milos Popovic have noted, studies show that external interventions make conflicts “far bloodier and more protracted than non-internationalized civil wars.” External actors offer combatants additional resources to sustain conflicts that would otherwise lose steam. They also complicate peacemaking by expanding the universe of interests and “veto players” involved in diplomacy and can get in the way of neutral mediation efforts.
Where global and regional powers support opposing sides in a civil war, a conflict can also poison broader international relations and undercut international institutions. The case of Syria has painfully illustrated all these trends since 2011. As more and more powers have become directly and indirectly involved in the multi-front conflict, the United Nations Security Council has been repeatedly deadlocked over how to deal with the crisis.”
#Sambanis, N. et al. (2020): External Intervention, Identity, and Civil War. Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 53 (14)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0010414020912279
Quote: “Our analysis suggests that as expectations or the reality of external intervention grow, so does the global problem of civil war. This is particularly true in ethnically divided countries where intervention can foster polarization. Not only can major powers funnel resources into ongoing intrastate conflicts and thereby prolong them, as is well understood in the previous literature, but, through a variety of mechanisms that we identify, the mere presence of increased interventionism in the international system can cause disputes within states to morph into violent conflicts. In a systemic setting conducive to high incidence of intervention, ethnic groups will be more likely to frame their understanding of social identity in ways that increase polarization, escalate demands for autonomy or control of the center, and fail to find waravoiding bargains.”
#Sawyer, K. et al. (2017): The Role of External Support in Civil War Termination.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 61 (6)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26363924
Quote: “Many studies highlight the role that international intervention can play in prolonging
civil wars. Yet, direct military intervention is just one way that external actors become involved in civil conflicts. In this article, a model is developed and analyzed that shows that when the government is unsure about how external support to the rebels will help rebel war-making capacity, it is the government that will continue fighting rather than settle the dispute. Different types of external support to rebels influence their fighting capacity differently, and some types of support create uncertainty about how new resources will translate into war-making ability. Specifically, more fungible sources of support (such as direct financial support) generate the most uncertainty for states as they attempt to estimate the effect of support to rebels on the conflict. Increased uncertainty inhibits bargained settlement, and disputes characterized by fungible external support are less likely to end than those where rebels receive different kinds of support. Empirical analyses demonstrate
strong support for this argument; rebels that receive highly fungible external support (money and guns) are less likely to see conflict termination than rebels that do not.
#Choi, H. J. & Raleigh, C. (2020): The geography of regime support and political violence. Democratization , Vol. 28
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2021.1901688#d1e174
Quote: “There is a distinct logic to the political violence that occurs in competitive autocracies and hybrid states. Conflict in these states is rarely a contest between a group(s) challenging the authority of the state and a government, and much more often the work of political militias hired and directed by political elites to contest the terms of inclusion.64 The logic on conflict in these states is to use non-state groups to alter the political playing field to increase the competitiveness of select elites – it is not to replace or challenge the government.”
#van Baalen, S. (2021): Local elites, civil resistance, and the responsiveness of rebel governance in Côte d’Ivoire. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 58 (5)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022343320965675#bibr4-0022343320965675
Quote: “This article advances knowledge on how civilians shape rebel governance. Building on studies theorizing that civil resistance plays a key role in shaping rebel behaviour (Arjona, 2016; Kaplan, 2017; Rubin, 2020), I argue that rebel responsiveness is greater in localities where local elites have strong clientelist networks than where they have weak clientelist networks. When clientelist networks are strong, local elites control resources and are embedded in local authority structures in a way that allows them to mobilize local citizens. Local elites that have strong clientelist networks can therefore mobilize both greater support for, and civil resistance against, the rebels. This mobilization capacity determines local elites’ bargaining power in negotiations over local governance, allowing some local elites to demand greater governance responsiveness than others.
(...)
To boost their governance, aspiring rulers therefore often seek to enlist local elites as brokers for their political project (Migdal, 1988: 141). Local elites can exercise autonomous control over society (Boone, 2003; Migdal, 1988; Utas, 2012) and are ‘individual actors outside the central leadership of a country who exercise influence over and demand loyalty from other political actors, including citizens’ (Reuter et al., 2016: 666–667). Local elites’ attractiveness as brokers hinges on their capacity to mobilize citizens for collective ends. This mobilization capacity constitutes a double-edged sword (Reuter et al., 2016: 667). Local elites with greater mobilization capacity are better at securing support for the rebels, for example, by assisting recruitment efforts, raising resources and providing intelligence (Rubin, 2020: 466). But local elites can also use their mobilization capacity to mount civil resistance against the rebels. Civil resistance here refers to collective opposition to a rebel group or its rule through the use of nonviolent methods like protests, strikes and demonstrations (Arjona, 2016: 63).”
– There is a lot of debate among experts about what factors make the world more or less peaceful but there are no easy answers. One of the major reasons the world has seen less conflict was that after the end of the cold war, many countries expected a sort of rules based world order. And for a time this worked somewhat.
#BIICL (2024): The Rules-Based International Order: Catalyst or Hurdle for International Law?
Quote: “The RBIO concept has been explained (here) as a system in which countries adhere to established norms, treaties, and agreements to govern their interactions. It seeks to establish a fair, just, open and predictable system of governance on the global stage by relying on 'core principles' such as "economic stability, nonaggression, and coordinated activity on shared challenges" (see here). The concept historically refers to the rules, norms and institutions assembled into a coherent system of global governance in the immediate post-World War II era and becoming fully globalized in the aftermath of the Cold War. However, it is also argued (here) that there is no single rules-based order or system, but rather that there are distinct orders stemming from the post-1945 international settlement. Indeed, there are narrower understandings of the concept, and the criticism most often heard in these regards is that the RBIO is a "central narrative in the US foreign policy" and there is an "imagined community populated by Western liberal democracies and the (US) allies and aggregate institutions that share such a common understanding, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Kenya, and the EU" (from the discussions at a BIICL conference, video link here).
Supporting the idea of one RBIO rather than distinct ones is not just a doctrinal issue, but has concrete consequences, because each order (if it is accepted that multiple orders exist) reflects power-based bargains between their members and tensions between the different orders/systems. One example is the difficulties associated with the implementation of humanitarian military intervention to prevent atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity - embodied in the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. Another example is the wide use of the RBIO concept in US policy documents and public speeches as a means to attempt justifying the US invasion of Iraq, which had taken place without a Security Council authorisation, as required by the UN Charter. A third example is the use of economic sanctions as a response to the behaviour of some states, which may in turn conflict with international law rules on trade.”
#Lieberherr, B. (2023): The “Rules-Based Order”: Conflicting Understandings. CSS Analyses in Security Policy, No. 317
Quote: “Policymakers and strategists increasingly refer to the “rules-based order” (RBO).
(...)
A RBO can be understood more generally as a joint commitment by states to conduct their activities in accordance with an existing set of rules. Many advocates argue that what they perceive as the currently existing RBO is under increasing pressure. This raises the question of what institutions, rules, and ideas govern the current international system in the first place. However, conceptualizing order is a difficult undertaking. The most prominent term to describe the order that emerged after the Cold War is the “liberal international order” (LIO). Central aspects of that order are free trade, multilateral institutions such as the UN and the International Monetary Fund, growth of democracy, and liberal values.”
Linked to this is another context for a phase of relative stability:
The term "The End of History" was introduced to a wider audience by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in 1989. Fukuyama argued that the global adoption of Western political liberalism and free-market capitalism marked the culmination of humanity's ideological evolution, with liberal democracy representing the ultimate form of human governance.
Fukuyama, F. (1989): The End of History? The National Interest, No. 16
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184
#European Parliament (2019): Mapping threats to peace and democracy worldwide. Introduction to the Normandy Index
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/637946/EPRS_IDA(2019)637946_EN.pdf
Quote: “The Normandy Index differs from other indices by adopting an approach tailored by and to the action of the European Union and by defining conflict (and conflictualité) as a product of factors linked to the main threats identified by the EU in its external action strategy. As described in the 2018 Peace and Security Outlook, the EU Global Strategy identifies the following 11 threats as the main current challenges to peace and security”
#Stewart, F. (2002): Root causes of violent conflict in developing countries. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), Vol. 324 (7333)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122271/
Quote: " –Wars are a major cause of poverty, underdevelopment, and ill health in poor countries
–The incidence of war has been rising since 1950, with most wars being within states
–Wars often have cultural dimensions related to ethnicity or religion, but there are invariably underlying economic causes too
–Major root causes include political, economic, and social inequalities; extreme poverty; economic stagnation; poor government services; high unemployment; environmental degradation; and individual (economic) incentives to fight
–To reduce the likelihood of wars it is essential to promote inclusive development; reduce inequalities between groups; tackle unemployment; and, via national and international control over illicit trade, reduce private incentives to fight”
– But things have been changing in the last few years. The world has become multi polar, with new alliances forming and the idea of a rules based world is being challenged.
#Flockhart, T. & Korosteleva, E.A. (2022): War in Ukraine: Putin and the multi-order world. Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 43 (3)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13523260.2022.2091591?needAccess=true
Quote: “This article starts from the premise that the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 represents what the Germans have called a Zeitenwende— a major historical turning point that will have profound implications on everything from trade, production, supply, and wealth, to security, war, and the ability of the global international society to meet urgent challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequality, and global health. We argue that the Zeitenwende represents the final stages of the transformation of the global rules-based order into a new global ordering architecture characterized by diversity and plurality. Such a transformation has been thought to have been in process for years (Acharya, 2014; Kupchan, 2013), which prompted Flockhart (2016a) to suggest in the pages of Contemporary Security Policy that the global ordering architecture is transforming into a multiorder world rather than returning to multipolarity. We argue here that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a clear indication that a multi-order world is now a reality although its more specific characteristics are still unfolding. We therefore concur with the Germans that we are indeed at a Zeitenwende and that 2022 will be added to the historical dates that structure the study of International Relations (IR)—1648, 1815, 1919, 1945, and 1989. That the new global order will be “multi-order” rather than “multipolar” is no small matter. A multi-order global architecture constitutes a major change because the primary global governance dynamics of a multi-order world will be within and between different international orders, rather than between multiple sovereign states (Flockhart, 2016a). This means that the logic of anarchy applies in relations between international orders rather than between sovereign states, and that logics of hierarchy will apply within orders (Zarakol, 2017). In a globalized world, this constitutes a fundamental change and a tempering of the condition of anarchy that will place significant pressure on existing governance structures, especially on multilateralism and the rule of law—both key features of the current global rules-based order.”
#Acharya, A. (2017): After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order. Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 31 (3)
Quote: “While the West woke up to the threat to the liberal international order when Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, its decline was apparent even at the height of the Obama-Clinton era. What follows the end of the U.S.-dominated world order is not a return to multipolarity as many pundits assume. The twenty-first-century world—politically and culturally diverse but economically and institutionally interlinked—is vastly different from the multipolar world that existed prior to World War II. China and India are major powers now; and globalization will not end, but will take on a new form, driven more by the East than the West and more by South-South linkages than North-North ones. The system of global governance will fragment, with new actors and institutions chipping away at the old UN-based system. Liberal values and institutions will not disappear, but will have to coexist and enmesh with the ideas and institutions of others, especially those initiated by China. This “multiplex world” carries both risks and opportunities for managing international stability. Instead of bemoaning the passing of the old liberal order, the West should accept the new realities and search for new ways to ensure peace and stability in partnership with the rising powers.”
– China’s manufacturing capacity is now as big as the US and Europe's combined. With its massive economic development a new superpower has risen.
#World Economic Forum (2020): These are the top 10 manufacturing countries in the world
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/countries-manufacturing-trade-exports-economics/
#European Commission (2024): Understanding EU-China economic exposure. Economic brief n°4
Quote: “China is today a larger economy than the EU and a global leader in manufacturing. An important part of the EU’s increased exposure to China is the logical result of China’s explosive economic growth over the past two decades. The total size of the Chinese economy (18% of global GDP) is larger than the EU (17%), although still behind the US (25%). The total value added produced by the Chinese manufacturing sector (a 31% global share) is about equal to that of the US and EU combined.
China has gradually become “the world’s factory”. Parallel to its economic growth, China has rapidly become the leading global goods exporter (from 5% of global exports in 2000 to 18% in 2022). At the same time, the EU is still the world’s number one global exporter (as of 2022) thanks to stronger services exports. This prominent position in international trade (about equal to China, but significantly ahead of the US) continues as a strongpoint for the EU in an increasingly competitive and complex geopolitical environment.”
#IISS (2024): China’s defence budget boost can’t mask real pressures
– It is common knowledge that the US spends more on its military than any place in the world but this may no longer reflect the true balance of power. China doesn’t report all of its military spending like the US does, and it gets a lot more done with each equivalent dollar spent. Recent estimates trying to account for these differences tell us China’s effective military budget is now a significant portion of the United States’ budget.
There are multiple ways of calculating and comparing military budgets. The latest global dataset calculating purchasing power parity in military expenditure is by Peter Robertson from 2021.
At the same time, there are speculations that the budget could be higher for various reasons. All in all, however, there are hardly any reliable figures.
#Robertson, Peter .E., (2022). The real military balance: International comparisons of defense spending. Review of Income and Wealth, 68(3), pp.797-818.
https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12536
The chart is from the blog https://militaryppp.com/blog/ and based on the data in the above cited paper.
#SIPRI (2024): Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_milex_2023.pdf
#FP (2023): China’s Defense Budget Is Much Bigger Than It Looks
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/19/china-defense-budget-military-weapons-purchasing-power/
Quote: “U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan recently revealed that U.S. government estimates put the Chinese annual defense budget at around $700 billion. That is far higher than previous estimates and almost on par with the United States’ 2023 defense budget of just over $800 billion.
Sullivan’s number stands in stark contrast to other estimates of Chinese defense spending. One of the most respected independent sources of defense data, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, pegs China’s military budget for 2022 at only about $290 billion. The new, much higher number also completely contradicts the widespread assertion that U.S. defense spending is so lavish that it amounts to more than that of the next 10 countries put together.
(...)
Sullivan is not the only prominent figure in Washington to suggest that China spends much more than anyone thought. U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has repeatedly testified before the U.S. Senate that the widely circulating figures are misleading, not least because they don’t take into account China’s far lower domestic costs for wages, weapons, facilities, and other budget items. Because of these lower costs, China literally gets more bang for the buck.
(...)
But there is even more Chinese military spending that the adjusted figure fails to account for. China’s official defense budget excludes its paramilitary forces that can be deployed in a conflict, China’s militarized coast guard, and foreign weapons purchases—and probably also excludes extensive military-civilian fusion. The most glaring difference is in research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E), for which the U.S. military budgeted roughly $100 billion in 2021. China claims its RDT&E costs are included in its equipment budget, but this is unlikely given the massive investment needed for Chinese advances in aircraft, warships, and other capabilities over the last several decades. In China, most of these items come out of other budgets."
– And with Russia breaking the taboo of launching the first war of conquest by a major power in almost 80 years, Europe has begun the process of re-arming. It is slow because, well, Europe is slow, but it is happening.
#Euronews (2024): Military spending in Western and Central Europe higher than end of Cold War, data shows
Quote: “Military spending in Central and Western Europe is now higher than the last year of the Cold War, a new report has found.
According to new data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Europe has seen a widespread surge in military spending since the start of 2022, reaching a total of €552 billion in 2023.
The increase is 16% more than the countries concerned spent in 2022, and 62% more compared to 2014, where spending was €330 billion.
All but three European NATO member countries – Greece, Italy and Romania – increased their military expenditure in 2023.”
#SIPRI (2023): World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges
Quote: “Military expenditure by states in Central and Western Europe totalled $345 billion in 2022. In real terms, spending by these states for the first time surpassed that in 1989, as the cold war was ending, and was 30 per cent higher than in 2013. Several states significantly increased their military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while others announced plans to raise spending levels over periods of up to a decade.
#SIPRI (2024): Global military spending surges amid war, rising tensions and insecurity
Quote: “In 2023 the 31 NATO members accounted for $1341 billion, equal to 55 per cent of the world’s military expenditure. Military spending by the USA rose by 2.3 per cent to reach $916 billion in 2023, representing 68 per cent of total NATO military spending. In 2023 most European NATO members increased their military expenditure. Their combined share of the NATO total was 28 per cent, the highest in a decade. The remaining 4 per cent came from Canada and Türkiye.
‘For European NATO states, the past two years of war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed the security outlook,’ said Lorenzo Scarazzato, Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘This shift in threat perceptions is reflected in growing shares of GDP being directed towards military spending, with the NATO target of 2 per cent increasingly being seen as a baseline rather than a threshold to reach.’
A decade after NATO members formally committed to a target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on the military, 11 out of 31 NATO members met or surpassed this level in 2023—the highest number since the commitment was made. Another target—of directing at least 20 per cent of military spending to ‘equipment spending’—was met by 28 NATO members in 2023, up from 7 in 2014.”
The military spending has increased notably in absolute terms for European countries like Germany and France, though compared to GDP it has grown more slowly than that of India or the USA.
#SIPRI (2024): Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_milex_2023.pdf
– We are in the transition to a multi polar world again, with different nations and alliances claiming spheres of power they want to dominate. In this climate tensions and conflicts between states have been rising, even if most of them have not turned into wars yet.
There are signs that the bipolarity during the Cold War and the unipolar dominance of the USA after the end of the Cold War are changing, characterized by the emergence of new powers and substantial changes in global economic and political landscapes.
This topic is highly debated and there is no universal answer. There are different perspectives and assessments depending on the players involved. We would therefore like to provide an overview of various approaches by the UN and EU discussion in the following sources.
#United Nations (2023): A New Agenda for Peace
Quote: “We are now at an inflection point. The post-cold war period is over. A transition is under way to a new global order. While its contours remain to be defined, leaders around the world have referred to multipolarity as one of its defining traits. In this moment of transition, power dynamics have become increasingly fragmented as new poles of influence emerge, new economic blocs form and axes of contestation are redefined. There is greater competition among major powers and a loss of trust between the global North and South. A number of States increasingly seek to enhance their strategic independence, while trying to manoeuvre across existing dividing lines. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the war in Ukraine have hastened this process. The unity of purpose expressed by Member States in the early 1990s has waned.
Today, the national security doctrines of many States speak of intensifying geostrategic competition in the decades to come. Military expenditures globally set a new record in 2022, reaching $2.24 trillion.2 Arms control frameworks and crisis management arrangements that helped stabilize great power rivalries and prevent another world war have eroded. Their deterioration, at the global as well as the regional level, has increased the possibility of dangerous standoffs, miscalculations and spirals of escalation. Nuclear conflict is once again part of the public discourse. Meanwhile, some States have embraced the uncertainties of the moment as an opportunity to reassert their influence, or to address long-standing disputes through coercive means.
Geostrategic competition has triggered geoeconomic fragmentation,3 with fractures widening in trade, finance and communications and increasing concerns regarding transfers of technologies such as semiconductors. Efforts to secure access to both basic and strategic commodities, such as rare earth minerals, are transforming global supply chains. In some regions, polarized global politics are mirrored in the unravelling of several regional integration efforts that had contributed to regional stability for decades.”
#Borell, J. (2023): Multipolarity without multilateralism.
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/multipolarity-without-multilateralism_en
Quote: “This new multipolarity results from the combination of three dynamics. First, a wider distribution of wealth in the world, second, the willingness of States to assert themselves strategically and ideologically and third, the emergence of an increasingly transactional international system, based on bilateral deals rather than global rules.
In 1990, the G7 accounted for 67% of world GDP, today, that share has fallen below 40%. In 1990, China’s share of world GDP was 1.6%, today it stands at 18%. Inside of the G7, the United States' share has decreased but much less than that of Europe and Japan and, in the Western world, the United States continues to predominate clearly.
Beyond the G7, multipolarity is first and foremost the result of China’s impressive rise. Hence the reconfiguration of global relations around the United States and China. Together they account for more than 40% of global wealth and, as a result, exercise significant power over the international system. In coming decades, we could have also India catching up on China and the United States.
(...)
But multipolarity is not just the result of distribution of wealth. The new multipolar world is characterised also by a growing demand for sovereignty and identity. Especially in the so-called Global South, although it is a very heterogeneous group of countries.
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So, we have at the same time more and more influential players and more and more global challenges, but it is increasingly difficult to reach a consensus to face them.
– But with all the gloom, it is also true that we are still in a peaceful period of world history and the deaths by war are still at historic lows.
There is no single dataset known to us that encompasses all of the 20th century as well as the last ten years, whose development we are analysing. However, a partial comparison between different datasets is possible.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Project (UCDP) offers data on deaths in conflicts from 1989 to 2023.
#Uppsala Conflict Data Program: “Data explorer, fatalities view” (retrieved 2024)
https://ucdp.uu.se/
#Uppsala Conflict Data Program: “UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset ” (retrieved 2024)
Using the UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset, we calculate an average of battle deaths per year during the 21st century of 97,000 killed per year.
#Uppsala Conflict Data Program: “UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset ” (retrieved 2024)
https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/index.html#battlerelated
The Project Mars dataset records combat deaths of wars fought between 1800 and 2011.
#University of Alabama: “International Conflict Data Project: Project Mars” (retrieved 2024) https://internationalconflict.ua.edu/data-notes/project-mars/
It processes its data differently from the UCDP—for example, it doesn’t take into account non-state conflicts, which are responsible for a great number of deaths in the years that the UCDP covers— so the two datasets are not directly comparable. However, since the definition of conflict is more strict for Project Mars, which centres on conventional wars, we can use it as a lower bound for conflict deaths in the 20th and 19th centuries.
Using the replication dataset for the Divided Armies data of Project Mars get a lowest bound estimate of 120,000 killed per year in the 20th century.
#Lyall, Jason (2020): “Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War” (retrieved 2024)
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/DUO7IE
Since the lowest estimate for the 20th century is still above the estimate for the 21st century, we conclude that the 21st century experienced less deaths in wars.
The difference is even starker if we adjust for world population. Taking an estimate of 2.5 billion people living in the world on average in every year of the 20th century, roughly the world population in 1950, we obtain an average of 48,000 deaths per year per billion people during the 20th century. For what we have seen of the 21st century, taking an average world population of 7 billion, we estimate 14,000 deaths per year per billion people.
Following the same calculation with Project Mars replication data, we obtain an average of only 21,000 deaths in war per year during the 19th century, but adjusting for a total world population, which was about 1.2 billion people, it would still be higher than the present, with 18,000 deaths per year per billion people.
#Our World in Data: “Population, 1800 to 2023” (retrieved 2024)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1800..latest
This would mean that the 21st century is the most peaceful century in terms of deaths in wars per year and people as far back in the past as we have data.
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