Posted on: February 27th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Between July 30 and August 4 this year, fighters of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and elements of the Mai Mai, a local militia, entered Luvungi and surrounding villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and, in one extended weekend, raped 150 to 200 women and children, including a number of baby boys. They then looted the area and moved on.[i]
News of the assaults did not reach international media outlets until weeks later, and when the UN then investigated, it established that the number of rapes in the reported incidents was actually 242. However, investigators also learned of another 267 rapes in the district that had not been previously reported.[ii]
The context was the ongoing civil war in the DRC, but somehow the term “war” doesn’t come close to capturing the scale of horror of Luvungi. The rapes are beyond extreme by any measure, but as part of the chaos and fighting that have engulfed the DRC since 1990, the Luvungi victims represent but the tiniest fraction of the war’s human toll. Five million deaths in the DRC are directly attributable to the war. Hundreds of thousands have been raped; untold millions are internally displaced. According to UNICEF, there are more than four million orphaned children in the DRC.[iii]
Contemporary war is largely “unofficial” and often unacknowledged. It is rarely declared; flags and bugles don’t herald its approach. The march to war is replaced by the gradual (or sometimes rapid) disintegration of order in severely troubled societies and the inexorable descent into political and criminal public violence.
Indeed, “public violence” may well be the more apt, though still emotionally inadequate, term for many of today’s armed conflicts. Public violence is invariably linked to longstanding social and political grievances that remain chronically unaddressed and are allowed to fester and undermine confidence in public institutions and processes. In turn, widespread rejection of public institutions is transformed into lawlessness and armed violence when ignored grievances are joined by a ready access to small arms – the pre-eminent hardware of public violence.
When a state finds itself in that deadly combination of circumstances – pervasive grievance, loss of confidence in government, and abundant supplies of user-friendly small arms – it finds it difficult to avoid the descent into chaos and the public violence that must finally be recognized as war.
Counting the wars
Since 1987 Project Ploughshares[iv] has been tracking global armed conflicts and issuing annually an Armed Conflicts Report. In 1987, there were 37 wars taking place on the territories of 34 states – Indonesia, the Philippines, and Iran were each the scene of two separate armed conflicts. Twenty-three years later, 2009 ended with a total of 28 wars on the territories of 24 countries – with the Philippines and Sudan both the scene of two separate wars, while Indian territory hosted three armed conflicts.
That is a welcome 25 per cent drop in the number of active armed conflicts, but it is a decline that masks a dynamic quarter-century of public violence and war in which many new wars began as others were ending.
In addition to the 37 conflicts under way in 1987, 44 new conflicts broke out in the ensuing 23 years, for a total of 81 separate wars during this period. Of those, 58 were resolved, but in 11 of those cases the peace didn’t last and war resumed (of the 11 resumed wars, six subsequently ended). All told, the planet thus hosted a total of 92 wars during the last quarter-century.
Not only do some conflicts reignite, but wars generally last a long time. Fully one-third of the conflicts under way in 1987 remain active today. Of the current 28 conflicts, only six are less than a decade old. Six have been under way for more than three decades, another seven more for more than two decades, and nine for more than one decade.
When public violence means war
While war is eminently recognizable, defining it is not so simple. Because contemporary wars are not declared and because, in most cases — especially civil/intrastate wars — they do not follow from a clear or official decision to go to war, it is often not at all obvious whether a country is “at war” or not. So, any effort to count wars must obviously include the application of some reasonably objective, measurable criteria for determining when a war begins and when it ends.
The tabulation of wars for the annual Ploughshares Armed Conflicts Report [v] is based on three basic characteristics:
- It is a political conflict;
- It involves armed combat by the armed forces of a state or the forces of one or more armed factions seeking a political end, such as gaining control of all or part of the state,
- At least 1,000 people have been killed directly by the fighting during the course of the conflict.
The greatest advantage of the drug is that it is see content now cialis india online. cialis is Sildenafil citrate. If you have the funding, you must get the right resources or from people who may have used any sex pill before. cialis online pharmacy twomeyautoworks.com viagra generic sale It is relatively easy to use and does not require medical or physical condition. The causes are divided in two parts Marriage is an interpersonal association connecting a important site cialis online man and a woman creation all-time promise to every further.
In many contemporary armed conflicts the fighting is intermittent and involves widely varying levels of intensity. Afghanistan and Iraq experience persistent and ongoing armed clashes and attacks. Rwanda went from political tension to unprecedented levels of violence and back down again in a relatively short period of time. The wars in the Philippines and Burundi are examples of ongoing but relatively low-level conflicts, with annual combat deaths now often as low as about 100 – but, of course, with political, economic, and social disruption well out of proportion to the intensity of action on actual battlefields.
The definition of “political conflict” obviously cannot be technically precise. Nevertheless the distinction between political and criminal violence is significant and discernable. There are clear instances in which escalating violence that is clearly criminal becomes so extensive that it takes on significant political overtones and complications. The Mexican drug “war” is perhaps the most prominent case in point. The fundamental dispute is clearly not political – it is a matter of organized crime – but the impact on the country and on Mexico’s relations with its neighbours, including the US, is such that it engages government at the highest level, as well as the armed forces of Mexico.
Still, criminal violence remains distinct from the armed conflict of war, and Mexico is not included in the Ploughshares count of current wars. Criminal organizations employ violence in the pursuit of profit, not in pursuit of a political program. And while groups engaged in politically driven combat often pursue criminal activities for economic gain, the more basic objective of such groups, and the basic point of the violence they practice, is still the pursuit of military and political goals[vi].
Types of war
A relatively simple typology of armed conflict relies on four basic categories: international or interstate war plus three overlapping types of intrastate war (state control, state formation, and state failure).
Interstate wars
An interstate war is a war between two or more states and, for purposes of Ploughshares reporting, must also meet the 1,000-combat-death criterion. Though rare, international wars are not yet banished from history. But the distinction between interstate and intrastate violence is often obscured. Interstate wars are frequently fought on the territory of just one of the states in the conflict –as in the 2001-2002 US-led attack on Afghanistan and the 2003 US-led attack on Iraq. On the other hand, it is obviously also the case that virtually all civil or intrastate wars include extensive international involvement.
Intrastate wars
There are three basic types of intra-state conflicts.
State control wars obviously centre on struggles for control of the governing apparatus of the state. State control struggles are typically driven by ideologically defined revolutionary movements or decolonization campaigns, or are simply the means by which power transfers from one set of elites to another. In some instances, communal and/or ethnic interests are central to the fight to transfer power; in other instances religion becomes a defining feature of the conflict; and in others the differences are more ideological.
State formation wars centre on the form or shape of the state itself and generally involve particular regions of a country fighting for a greater measure of autonomy or for outright secession. Communal ethnic or religious claims are frequently an element of such wars.
Failed state wars are conflicts that are neither about state control nor state formation, but are focused on more local issues and become violent in the absence of effective government control. The primary failure is in the lack of government capacity, or sometimes will, to provide minimal human security to groups of citizens. Pastoralist communities in East Africa, for example, usually live well beyond the reach of the state. There are virtually no state security services or institutions present and no political means of mediating disputes over cattle raiding or access to grazing lands and water. Communities come into conflict; with access to small arms, an escalation of violence is almost inevitable. While the violence is political, it is over local issues and none of the parties has state-control or state-formation objectives. Such conflicts are included in the Ploughshares count when the threshold of 1,000 combat deaths is reached.
Of the 81 wars that occurred during the last 23 years, 51 per cent included state control objectives, 35 per cent included state formation objectives, 25 per cent reflected failed state conditions, and 11 per cent included interstate dimensions.[vii]
How wars end
No fewer than 64 wars ended during the past 23 years. In five cases governments defeated rebels or insurgents. In four cases the insurgents prevailed on the battlefield and had their demands met.
Thirty-three conflicts (52 per cent) ended through negotiated settlements. This does not mean that what happened on the battlefield was not a significant factor in shaping the outcome. Military force certainly influenced or even determined the outcomes of negotiations. For example, in many cases rebel groups would never have gained a place at a negotiating table without an armed campaign. But negotiators took over and reached a political conclusion.
In the remaining 22 cases (34 per cent), the fighting essentially dissolved. While the conflicts were not resolved, the fighting gradually dissipated. In Guinea, for example, fighting by the Revolutionary United Front was supported by Liberia, but Guinea gradually persuaded both Liberia and Sierra Leone to end their support of the rebels, leading to a gradual decline in violence.
War prevention a collective responsibility
It is tempting to blame the current and still high levels of internal or intrastate wars on the inability of states to build conditions that serve the social, political, and economic welfare of their people. But those failures to achieve human security at the national level are heavily shaped by external factors, notably the creation of international economic and security conditions that shift benefits prominently toward dominant economic and military powers.
Thus war prevention, including the prevention of civil wars, is a collective international responsibility. And a world in which 28 wars still rage, and in which the rapes of Luvungi are not an isolated horror, is a world that is not close to meeting its responsibility.
(From the Winter 2010 Ploughshares Monitor.)
Notes
[i] Kaufman, Stephen. 2010. Clinton – Rape of civilians was ‘horrific attack’. AllAfrica.Com, August 26. http://allafrica.com/stories/201008270260.html.
[ii] The Globe and Mail. 2010. Prosecute to help stop rape in Congo. Editorial, September 4. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/prosecute-to-help-stop-rape-in-congo/article1700260/?cmpid=rss1.
[iii] More information about the number of rapes and orphans can be found on the UNICEF website: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/drcongo.html.
[iv] Armed Conflicts Report 2009. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePage.html.
[v] Defining armed conflict. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-DefinitionArmedConflict.htm.
[vi] Ballentine, Karen & Heiko Nitzschke. 2005. The Political Economy of Civil War and Conflict Transformation. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. 2005. http://www.berghof-handbook.net/documents/publications/dialogue3_ballentine_nitzschke.pdf.
[vii] The total is more than 100 per cent because 12 conflicts involved a combination of types.
Posted on: February 14th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
It seems impertinent, so soon after the extraordinary unity displayed through the independence referendum, to ask whether South Sudan is likely to face renewed armed conflict. Unfortunately, the question is both appropriate and timely. The recent clashes in Jonglei point to conditions for war that are prominently present and to prevention strategies that are urgently needed.
The roots of war of are myriad and context specific. Last week’s fighting in Jonglei state involved a complex set of personal and public factors specific to that north-eastern area of South Sudan, but it also reflects a country structured for more of the same.
The renewal of ongoing armed conflict is certainly not inevitable, but a wealth of research data correlates armed conflict with certain structural realities in South Sudan. When the following conditions are present, war tends to follow:
- Intergroup competition and conflict;
- Deeply felt political, economic, and social grievances;
- The capacity to take up arms;
- The absence of trusted mechanisms for national decision-making and mediating political conflict.[i]
The persons mailbox may be buy viagra online completely filled, or put on disabled – You can’t do anything about this except for contacting the mailbox holder another way and let him/her know about the problem. Cheap free sildenafil samples Kamagra Suppliers are able to offer anti ED medicines that offer the same quality. In order to take actions on treatment and expect buying generic cialis an improvement in sexual satisfaction and general quality of life. Here some experts suggest that levitra on line hartbuildersinc.com Diuretic and anti-inflammatory pill will help you get rid of prostatitis problems, and then solve the problem of male infertility.
All of these conditions are present in abundance in South Sudan.
First, intergroup suspicion and conflict are definitely present now, as they have been historically.[ii] To say that ethnic conflict is present is, however, not to say that ethnic enmity is the reason. It is to recognize, rather, that ethnic and regional divisions (sometimes manifested in conflicts between tribal groups, sometimes within tribal groups and between clans) have become the focus of conflict even though the roots of conflict are elsewhere – for example, in scarce resources and the absence of public institutions to mediate disputes. There is a danger of conflating the symptom of tribal conflict with its external causes,[iii] but it is present[iv] and is one important predictor of armed conflict.
Relations between the Dinka and Nuer communities were deeply fractured, and led to a number of schisms, throughout the South’s decades-long war with Khartoum. And the same fracture is present in the clashes between a break-away militia led by George Athor, a former commander in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the SPLA itself in Jonglei, killing more than 100 people, more than a third of them civilians, over two days of fighting last week.
Second, that there are deeply felt political, economic, and social grievances in South Sudan is hardly news. In the most immediate sense South Sudan faces a humanitarian crisis, as was confirmed in the most recent report of the UN Secretary-General on the situation there: “While good harvests are expected in 6 of the 10 States of South Sudan, food security remains precarious, especially in the greater Bahr El Ghazal region and Jonglei State, where hundreds of thousands of people are at risk. In six States in South Sudan, malnutrition rates are above the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization.”[v]
Beyond that are the understandably high expectations among South Sudanese that independence, self-rule, access to oil revenue, and peace itself should yield immediate and tangible benefits – expectations that will transform into even more deeply felt grievances if change isn’t soon demonstrated.
Third, the capacity for dissident groups to take up arms is not in question. Five decades of almost uninterrupted warfare have left a legacy of small arms and well established supply chains for ammunition. Furthermore, that same half century of conflict has built a political culture of legitimacy for armed resistance to mistrusted authorities.
And fourth and finally, it should not be a surprise that the absence of trusted public institutions for mediating disputes and promoting economic equity defines South Sudan. A decade ago the the OECD Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development Cooperation reflected the findings of peacebuilding research when it concluded that “sustainable development must …be underpinned by institutions capable of managing socio-political tensions and avoiding their escalation into violence.”[vi] South Sudan is building public institutions from scratch. It won’t happen quickly, and the danger is that it might not happen soon enough.
War prevention obviously involves attention to all four categories of conditions that are conducive to war. The need for attention to inter-group confidence building, tobasic grievances, and to small arms control is obviously recognized and relevant efforts are underway, but those are generations-long projects. To have confidence in the future South Sudanese need to see evidence of such effort, and that in turn will help with addressing what is really the most urgent requirement – that is, addressing the fourth condition by building the institutions or mechanisms capable of managing socio-political tensions and expectations.
In other words, for a real change, the people of South Sudan need a credible alternative to fighting for change.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Alex J. Bellamy, “Mass Atrocities and Armed Conflict: Links, Distinctions, and Implications for the Responsibility to Prevent,” Policy Analysis Brief, The Stanley Foundation, February 2011. http://www.stanleyfoundation.org/publications/pab/BellamyPAB22011.pdf.
[ii] Jaimie Grant, “Sub-Ethnic Division is Being Embedded into the DNA of South Sudan’s Emerging State,” Think Africa Press, 11 January 2011. http://thinkafricapress.com/article/sub-ethnic-division-being-embedded-dna-south-sudan%E2%80%99s-emerging-state.
[iii] Mareike Schomerus and Tim Allen, research team leaders, South Sudan at odds with itself: Dynamics of conflict and predicaments of peace, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics, 2010, p. 8. http://www2.lse.ac.uk/businessAndConsultancy/LSEConsulting/pdf/SouthSudan.pdf.
[iv] International Crisis Group, Jonglei’s Tribal Conflicts: Countering Insecurity in South Sudan, Africa Report No. 154, 23 December 2009. http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/horn-of-africa/sudan/154-jongleis-tribal-conflicts-countering-insecurity-in-south-sudan.aspx.
[v] Report of the Secretary-General on the Sudan, United Nations Security Council, 31 December (2010S/2010/681). http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/708/16/PDF/N1070816.pdf?OpenElement
[vi] DAC Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development Co-Operation, The Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, Paris, 1997 (p. 9). http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/smallarms/eguide.pdf.