On CIGI’s “Inside the Issues”
A conversation with David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, on civil society and peace advocacy.
Armed Conflict
Civilians still the primary victims of armed conflict
A new report from Oxfam, Protection of Civilians in 2010: Facts, figures, and the UN Security Council’s response (Report), offers a clear and disturbing account of the devastating impact of war, but goes on to present a compelling set of recommendations designed to enhance both national and international protections to vulnerable civilians.
Employing “all necessary measures” in Libya
UN resolution 1973 authorizes states to take all necessary measures[i] to protect Libya’s civilian population, but given that “all necessary measures”
is essentially UN-ese for military force, the one absolutely essential measure
needed to protect civilians in the long run, diplomacy, is largely ignored.
Afghans opt for reconciliation, will Canada join them?
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has famously said the US can’t get out of its wars by capturing and killing its way to victory,[i] and in Afghanistan Canada and NATO will have to learn that you can’t train your way out of a war either.
Are R2P interventions as inconsistent as the critics charge?
Why Libya and not Zimbabwe, or Somalia, or Bahrain? Are decisions on the responsibility to protect made according to clear criteria and principles, or is the doctrine invoked only to advance big power interests?
The first thing that must be said is that these are early days for the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) norm. That means its application will become more consistent only with time, with the accumulation of experience, and with difficulty. After all, the enforcement of international norms that have attained the status of law, notably international human rights and humanitarian law, also tends to fall well short of the consistency we expect of domestic law enforcement.
R2P is a new norm that calls first for a range of non-military measures to protect the vulnerable. This particular norm is confined to preventing and stopping a limited and specified range of crimes – all of which involve mass killings and/or displacements – namely, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. It obliges the international community to intervene under Chapter VI (non-coercive, peaceful means) to try to prevent these crimes where they appear imminent.
In the context of crises where there is escalating political violence, where mass crimes are an immediate threat or are already underway, the R2P doctrine calls for (but does not oblige) coercive action under Chapter VII to protect civilians from such crimes – when, and this is critical, there is a reasonable prospect that a military intervention will save lives and further stability.
R2P therefore includes provision for military enforcement without there being any real or proven experience, much less a tested body of tactics and rules of engagement, for the resort to multilateral force to protect vulnerable people in contexts of growing violence and repression – where the objective is the protection of people, not the overthrow of a government.[i] The UN of course has accumulated vast and relevant experience through peace support operations (e.g. the importance of linking military operations to intensive peace diplomacy), but in emergency protection operations, the multi-dimensional and comprehensive approach that characterizes UN-led peace support missions is unlikely to be available at the outset.
Without the benefit of collective experience in protecting civilians in complex political crises, there is to date in fact little collective confidence that direct interventions can be undertaken with credible assurances that they won’t make a situation worse or that a positive end will emerge within a time frame that is politically sustainable. As a result, the Security Council has been very reluctant to authorize intervention.
At the same time, all such reluctance and uncertainty must be weighed against the urgent need to come to the aid of populations in grave peril – against the apparent certainty in particular instances that without intervention large numbers of civilians will die, if not through genocidal attacks, then by war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a dilemma that is so daunting that to date there has been only one clear UN Security Council decision to invoke the R2P doctrine – and it is the many vulnerable civilians, not the cautious politicians and generals, that pay the price of inaction (just as they pay the price for misguided action).
The only specific R2P case to date is, of course, Libya – a decision that saw two permanent members of the Security Council abstain on the vote, though they still showed basic support for the resolution by foregoing their veto option.
Though reluctant, the international community’s appeal to the R2P doctrine in response to recent upheavals throughout the Arab world has in fact not been marked by inconsistency and uncertainty. There may be plenty of uncertainty about how best to respond in general to the dramatic political developments in the region, but on the question of how the principle of R2P might apply there has actually been clarity.
Given the understanding that the international community should over-ride national sovereignty to protect vulnerable people only in cases threatening large-scale crimes and loss of life, the international community has been rather disciplined in applying the R2P doctrine to recent events in the Arab world, confining it to the only case in which the levels of suffering and vulnerability can be said to have reached an R2P threshold.
Look at the non-Libyan cases. In none of these cases was R2P invoked, because none involved or immediately threatened large scale attacks on civilians. All of the cases are of great relevance and concern to the international community because they did and do all involve egregious violations of the rights of people, but R2P was correctly deemed not to be the relevant doctrine to shape an appropriate response.
In Egypt the death toll reached almost 400,[ii] but in a political context that was not spiralling out of control but was stabilizing. In Tunisia the death toll was under 100[iii] and after initial resistance, the Government soon fell and the situation began to stabilize. In Yemen the clashes continue and at least 115 people have died (including more than 30 children, according to UNICEF).[iv] There are real fears of escalation, but so far it has not reached or threatened to reach a magnitude to warrant consideration of an R2P-based intervention. In Bahrain a vicious Saudi-backed government response to protests has left more than 30 dead, some 300 hundred arrested, with reports of severe abuses against detainees.[v] In Syria rights group say more than 200 have been killed.[vi] In Algeria, with a population mindful of the mass killings in the 1990s, the protests have to date remained localized, with few reports of casualties.[vii]
These are all serious crises, but on questions of principle and practical capacity, direct coercive intervention as considered under R2P is clearly not warranted.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is obviously not a reflection of the “Arab spring” uprisings, but it is surely legitimate to ask the question – if intervention is warranted in Libya, why not Israel-Palestine? The long-standing conflict there has severe ongoing consequences for civilians. Estimates of direct conflict deaths vary, but in 2008 and 2009 they reached 1,000 – 2,000 each year.[viii] These are numbers that approach a definition of “large scale,” and crimes against humanity are clearly involved. It is, however, a conflict that has defied decades of peace-making efforts and continues in a destructive stalemate – one that demands ceaseless efforts toward resolution. But it seems highly unlikely that anyone could posit a credible military intervention scenario that would prevent further crimes, save lives, and de-escalate the conflict. The practicality of the matter is that such an intervention will not be proposed or considered and will not happen.
In Libya the circumstances were very different from all others in the region: well over two thousand people had been killed in a matter of weeks; the situation was escalating rapidly and no indication that the pace of violence would ease; the Government was threatening increased attacks, especially airborne attacks, on rebels and civilians in Benghazi and other rebel-held areas; and implementation of a no-fly zone was feasible and had the support of many in the region.[ix] Hence the international community acted in a timely and initially effective manner, and there can be little doubt that many lives were spared as a result. Whether those managing the intervention have a credible longer-term plan is another important question – for another time.
In the meantime, it is important to emphasize again that the R2P doctrine does not address every human rights violation or abuse of power, even when these are very serious, and it certainly does not empower or establish an obligation on the international community to respond by over-riding the offending state’s sovereignty and intervening with Chapter VII coercion. R2P calls forth action to prevent mass attacks or large scale violations involving genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. That doesn’t mean lesser violations are to be ignored – they must also be the focus of collective action in all the ways that the international community has developed to address human rights violations.
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R2P is a fledgling doctrine. Its application in the context of the “Arab spring” has been cautious and in accord with the General Assembly’s 2005 articulation of the doctrine and the Security Council’s subsequent adoption of it. The final outcome of its application in Libya remains uncertain; but we can’t forget that the outcome of inaction was reasonably certain. The international community was right to act to at least prevent that certainty.
Notes
[i] The 2001 ICISS report says: “the operation is not a war to defeat a state but an operation to protect populations in that state from being harassed, persecuted or killed.” (p. 63)
[ii] Wikipedia listed 384 deaths as of February 11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_revolution#Deaths.
[iii] BBC reported that as of January 19, five days after former President Ben Ali stepped down, the Government reported that 78 had been killed in the protests. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12157599.
[iv] “UNICEF Alarmed by Increasing Child Casualties,” 9 April 2011. http://nationalyemen.com/2011/04/10/unicef-alarmed-by-increasing-child-casualties/.
“Yemeni troops ‘open fire on protesters’,” 17 April 2011, Aljazeera. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/201141715495475107.html.
[v] Barbara Surk, “Bahrain: Gulf troops to stay as counter to Iran,” Associated Press, 18 April 2011, Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/bahrain-iran-gulf-troops_n_850442.html.
“Bahrain: Free Prominent Opposition Activist,” Human Rights Watch, 9 April 2011. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/09/bahrain-free-prominent-opposition-activist.
[vi] Borzou Daragahi, “Defiant crowds mourn slain Syrian protesters,” Los Angeles Times, 18 April 2011. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-syria-protests-20110419,0,3343661.story.
“Syria ‘lifts emergency law’, Aljazeera, 19 April 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011419135036463804.html.
[vii] Lamine Chikhi and Christian Lowe, “Algeria protests challenge president’s authority,” Reuters, 14 April 2011. http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE73D0PG20110414.
[viii] Armed Conflicts Report, Project Ploughshares, http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-Israel.html.
[ix] See references at: “Did R2P Conditions Prevail in Libya?” Disarming Conflict, 18 April 2011. http://disarmingconflict.ca/.
Did R2P Conditions Prevail in Libya?
Was Libya on the verge of a major bloodbath in mid-March when the UN Security Council authorized intervention?[i] Or were the warnings of imminent mass atrocities simply part of the hype to justify military intervention by states looking for an excuse to attack the regime of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi?
The “responsibility to protect” doctrine (R2P) proposes UN Chapter VII interventions, including military, to protect civilians when “national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”[ii]
The formal doctrine makes no reference to the magnitude of existing or threatened war crimes or crimes against humanity, but the conventional understanding, as shaped by the earlier report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, is that to warrant military intervention these would have to be mass violations involving “large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended.”[iii]
That the regime of Col. Gadhafi was failing in its duty to protect its citizens is not in question, but whether it was of a magnitude that reached the “large scale” threshold and that demanded immediate intervention to protect vulnerable civilians is now increasingly debated.
One editorialist draws on a Human Rights Watch report that says the Gadhafi forces in Misrata in the west have not been targeting civilians – and concludes therefore that an attack on Benghazi, the prospect that was galvanizing international concern, would not have targeted civilians.[iv] Of course, that was not the tenor of the threat from Col. Gadhafi at the time. On March 18, with Gadhafi forces closing in on Benghazi he promised an attack without mercy, calling those who opposed him dogs and rats.[v] His threat was given urgency by reports of attacks on civilians, many by hired mercenaries, already taking place in Government-controlled areas.
But the sceptics include Richard Falk, the highly respected international law expert and human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, who recently wrote that “evidence” in support of the “prospect of dire bloodletting was never present much beyond the bombast of the dictator.”[vi]
On the other hand, both Human Rights Watch and the New York Times now report that attacks on civilians, including with cluster bombs and other munitions fired into civilian neighbourhoods, are a prominent feature of Government attacks on Misrata.[vii] At least 260 people have died there, with another 1,000 injured.[viii]
Estimates of overall deaths of combatants and civilians since the protests began in mid-February must now be put in the 4,000-plus range.[ix] Without any external intervention, those numbers could have more than doubled, with the possibility of Gadhafi back in full control of Libya and, with the UN having given intervention a pass, implementing a reign of terror and reprisal.
That is all speculation, of course, but it is the kind of scenario that the UN Security Council was facing – which explains why even those states with the greatest reluctance to intervene did not block the action. China and Russia each registered an abstention rather than a veto, emphasizing that none of the major powers wanted to risk being on the sidelines in the midst of the campaign of atrocities that was possibly coming.
The really high numbers apply to internally displaced persons and refugees. The UN is unable to estimate the number of displaced in the West of Libya because the UNHCR does not have access there. In the East, the UNHCR says it has staff in the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi that have identified at least 35,000 displaced people, mostly from Ajdabiyya and Brega – with a spokesperson saying it is likely to be around 100,000, since the population of Ajdabiyya is 120,000 and most people are thought to have left. UNHCR also estimates that more than 500,000 have fled Libya for Egypt, Tunisia, Niger, Algeria, Chad, Italy, Malta and Sudan.[x]
For some who oppose the intervention the question of magnitude is not particularly relevant because they oppose military interventions, period, and view R2P as just one more pretext for the powerful to invade the weak. For most, however, the question of magnitude is key. The numbers compared with Rwanda are small, but compared with most contemporary wars they are huge – for example, the annual war dead in Afghanistan, combatants and civilians, are estimated by the UN to have been 2,777 in 2010, with another 4,343 injuries.[xi] The WHO estimate of 2000 deaths by early March, before the intervention, reflected a combat death rate ten times that of Afghanistan.
The definition of “large scale” is not precise, but it obviously implies more than isolated incidents. Just as obviously, Rwanda is not the standard. By any count, 4,000 dead and more than half a million people driven from their homes over little more than a 2 month period qualifies as “large scale.” There can still be credible reasons for opposing the intervention, and certainly reasons to be critical of the way the intervention has been managed and is evolving, but there is no reasonable argument that the conditions in Libya did not meet the threshold for an R2P intervention.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
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Notes
[i] UN Security Council Resolution S/RES/1973, 17 March 2011. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/268/39/PDF/N1126839.pdf?OpenElement.
[ii] General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/1 (2005), paragraph 139.
[iii] The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Soverereignty, December 2001, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.
[iv] Alan J. Kuperman, “False pretense for war in Libya?” The Boston Globe, 14 April 2011. http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions.
[v] Maria Golovnina and Patrick Worsnip, “Gadhafi promises ‘no mercy’ unless rebels quit: Libyan leader warns foreign powers any attacks will prompt swift response, Montreal Gazette, 18 March 2011, Reuters. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Gadhafi+promises+mercy+unless+rebels+quit/4461338/story.html#ixzz1JpOS8UcT.
[vi] Richard Falk, “Obama’s Libyan folly,” Aljazeera, 4 April 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/20114410410950151.html.
[vii] C.J. Chivers, “Qaddafi Troops Fire Cluster Bombs Into Civilian Areas,” New York Times, 15 April 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16libya.html.
[viii] “Mideast Notebook,” Toronto Star, 17 April 2011.
[ix] Robin Collins, in an April 14 email report on wikipedia’s tally of deaths – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_2011_Libyan_civil_war. “Based on the numbers, 1,694-2,224 opposition members/fighters (which includes also civilian supporters) and 757-830 Gaddafi loyalists have been killed by April 9, 2011, for a total of 2,451-3,054 reported deaths, of which some have not been independently confirmed….” Robin indicates these numbers are roughly in line with World Health Organization estimates of 2,000 deaths by early March and International Federation of Human Rights estimate of 3,000 deaths also by early March, or just three weeks into the crisis. Given the ongoing fighting since March, the number of dead could reasonably be expected to be twice those amounts.
[x] “Libya: UN warns funding shortfall could slow aid effort for victims of conflict,” The UN News Centre, 15 April 2011. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38122&Cr=libya&Cr1=.
[xi] “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/65/783–S/2011/120, 9 March 2011. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/250/34/PDF/N1125034.pdf?OpenElement.
On “The Sunday Edition”
On April 3 Ernie Regehr was on the CBC’s “The Sunday Edition” for an interview with Michael Enright. Topics covered include Libya, the responsibility to protect, and contemporary peace advocacy. To listen, go to:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1864773190
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eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Intervention or War in Libya?
The 2001 “responsibility to protect” report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS)[i] made a clear distinction between military protection operations and war.
With the first wave of attacks on Libyan military installations, following the UN Security Council’s unprecedented and welcome vote to authorize international action to protect vulnerable civilians in Libya,[ii] the pundits were already asking about what “the real” objectives and complaining about the lack of definition in the resolution.
But the Security Council’s action is straightforward. The objective is unambiguous – “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” The objective is not to overthrow the government of Libya, it is not only to establish a no-fly zone; it is to “protect” people who cannot protect themselves from attacks.
The resolution also calls for a ceasefire. A ceasefire with the Gadhafi regime still in control in Tripoli is a not the nightmare scenario that some commentators have suggested; rather a real ceasefire would mean civilians were not being attacked and it would present a critical opportunity for diplomacy. Some political leaders have insisted that Mr. Gadhafi must go – they are free to voice that preference, and many who favour democracy will agree, but the Security Council resolution does not mandate them to pursue that end.
If the current situation lacks clarity, that needs to be understood as an acknowledgement of reality rather than as a complaint against the Security Council. Civilians generally don’t need the protection of the international community in situations of clarity, or that are predictable and uncomplicated. The 2001 ICISS report anticipated this very uncertainty, assuming it to be endemic to protection operations. It anticipated that there would be “differences in objectives…in discussions over the ‘exit strategy,’ with some partners emphasizing the need to address the underlying problems, and others focusing on the earliest possible withdrawal.” The report also predicted that it would not be able to determine in advance how an intervention would finally play out: “Unexpected challenges are almost certain to arise, and the results are almost always different from what was envisaged at the outset” (p.59).
There was and still is no clarity on what the impact or consequences of the military attacks will be. Whether the international forces have been measured or excessive is certainly open to debate, and how effective they will be in stopping attacks on civilians is also not yet clear. What is clear is that until now the military action taken has been well short, and properly so, of a “war” on the Gadhafi regime.
One of the hardest things for weapons-laden Presidents and Generals to accept is that their military might does not confer on them the prerogative to pick winners and losers or to distinguish between “good guys” and “bad guys.” Such distinctions may be politically comforting, but rarely are they a true reflection of reality. Enough is known about the Gadhafi regime to know that it is not credibly in the “good guy” category, but there is not enough known about the opposition groups to know where they fit or the kind of regime that they would like to establish. All that can be said with some confidence is that it is the Libyan people who have to be given the opportunity to make the choices they want to make – and the current focus of the international forces is to try to allow them to make that choice without the threat of civilians being attacked.
Thus the objective is to prevent mass assaults on civilians and to reach a ceasefire. It is not to “win.” It is in that sense that the intervention in Libya to date is not a war and should not become a war. A “war” is the resort to military action for the purpose of determining a final outcome. In a war, political process is set aside and outcomes are to be decided by dint of force. Military action short of war is action that is not designed to determine political outcomes. It is not designed to circumvent politics; instead it is designed to make politics possible. It is designed to create conditions that allow for political processes to take place and through them determine political outcomes.
Success for the military intervention in Libya will be the prevention of further attacks on civilians and the creation of an opportunity for Libyans to seek political accommodation and politically determine the future of their country.
Most of the time it is seen that some men take the medicine from local chemist or through viagra 25 mg online pharmacies without having prescription from a healthcare provider. This starts when levitra on line respitecaresa.org the man starts to face improper erections when he is making love. Ed. teacher has a good idea as to what weight best price for viagra category a patient fits into. Erectile dysfunction occurs cialis 40 mg respitecaresa.org due to an insufficient blood flow into the penis, like happened naturally, when a man is unable to achieve or maintain an erection long enough to have sex. This very distinction between war and military force short of war was clearly made in the original R2P report by the ICISS. It said explicitly that protection operations are not to remove a government or to defeat a state but to protect people: “A critical factor which will impact on the intensity of operations is the need for cooperation from the civilian population once the immediate objective of stopping the killing or ethnic cleansing has been achieved. This means first and foremost not to conduct military actions which will result in widespread hatred against the intervening nations. To win the hearts and minds of the people under attack is presumably impossible during the attack but planning has to be done in such a way that not all doors will be closed when the armed conflict comes to an end. This means accepting limitations and demonstrating through the use of restraint that the operation is not a war to defeat a state but an operation to protect populations in that state from being harassed, persecuted or killed” (p.63).
That is wise advice. It reinforces the essential fact that the international coalition has no mandate to engineer Libya’s future. The international community has a role to play in ensuring that Libyans have an opportunity to plan their own future without suffering massive assaults and without becoming victims of crimes against humanity.
The Arab League and the African Union should both be particularly actively engaged in trying to bring the Libyan parties together in a governance arrangement that allows for a credible and participatory planning for the future.
The International Criminal Court, in a separate process, will presumably move forward in efforts to bring alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice.
If there is no possibility of protecting civilians without all-out war and regime change, then the intervention itself must be questioned. All-out war for regime change has not shown itself, from Kosovo to Iraq to Afghanistan, to create environments of safety for civilians. Under the fog of war many thousands of civilians are killed and hundreds of thousands are invariably driven from their homes. That kind of action has not been mandated by the UN.
Notes
[i] The Responsibility To Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. 2001. http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf.
[ii] United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 [S/RES/1973 (2011)], 17 March 2011. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/268/39/PDF/N1126839.pdf?OpenElement.
A quarter-century of warfare
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.
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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.
An R2P Intervention in Libya?
By all accounts a “mass atrocity event”[i] is unfolding in Libya. There is less certainty as to whether the international community will find the means to respond.
A group of NGOs under the leadership of UN Watch has issued an urgent appeal (see endnote for a link to full statement)[ii] to world leaders for international intervention in Libya: “We urge you to mobilize the United Nations and the international community to take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people. The inexcusable silence cannot continue.”
The NGOs describe a grim picture: “Snipers are shooting peaceful protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes. Hospital officials report numerous victims shot in the head and chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. The Libyan regime is seeking to hide all of these crimes by shutting off contact with the outside world. Foreign journalists have been refused entry. Internet and phone lines have been cut or disrupted.”
They describe conditions and events that they say are “systematic violations” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as “crimes against humanity” as defined by the Explanatory Memorandum to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. They refer to the Responsibility to Protect commitment made by the World Summit in 2005: “Because the Libyan authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from crimes against humanity, should peaceful means be inadequate, member states are obliged to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII.”
There have been several other calls for limited intervention to enforce a no-fly zone. Such a zone would be designed to end airborne attacks on civilians, and also to “prevent mercenaries and weapons from being shipped in.”[iii] The Libyan Ambassador, at least one of them, joined the call – referring to “genocide.”[iv] Enforcement forces mentioned include NATO and the Egyptian Air Force.
In his Foreign Affairs blog, Marc Lynch also calls for enforcement of a non-fly zone:[v] “This is not a peaceful democracy protest movement which the United States can best help by pressuring allied regimes from above, pushing for long-term and meaningful reform, and persuading the military to refrain from violence. It’s gone well beyond that already, and this time I find myself on the side of those demanding more forceful action before it’s too late.”
In a strong appeal issued before the current Libyan crisis, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called in general for “timely and decisive” responses. “How many children,” he asked, are in places of peril today and asking: “Is the world listening? Will help arrive in time? Who will be there for me and my family?”[vi]
Who, indeed?
Later on Feb 22, two additional statements were issued.
Francis Deng and Edward Luck, the UN Secretary-General’s advisers respectively on genocide the responsibility to protect, issued a statement which said in part: “We remind national authorities in Libya, as well as in other countries facing large-scale popular protests, that the heads of State and Government at the 2005 World Summit pledged to protect populations by preventing acts of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement. We join Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in urging all parties to exercise utmost restraint and to seek peaceful means of resolving their political differences.”[1]
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, also called for an immediate end to the human rights violations in Libya and for an independent international investigation. “The callousness with which Libyan authorities and their hired guns are reportedly shooting live rounds of ammunition at peaceful protestors is unconscionable. I am extremely worried that lives are being lost even as I speak,” Pillay said. She referred to the reported use of machine guns, snipers and military planes against demonstrators, calling such acts brazen violations of international law. “The state has an obligation to protect the rights to life, liberty and security,” she said. “Protection of civilians should always be the paramount consideration in maintaining order and the rule of law.”[2]
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Notes
[i] The term is used by Mark Leon Goldberg, “The Perils of a ‘No Fly Zone’ for Libya,” 21 February 2011. http://www.undispatch.com/the-perils-of-a-no-fly-zone-for-libya. A “mass atrocity” is usually defined as a minimum of 5,000 civilians killed intentionally. The Stanley Foundation, “Mass Atrocities and Armed Conflict: Links, Distinctions, and Implications for the Responsibility to Prevent, appendices to, 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/BellmayAppendices22011.pdf.
[ii] UN Watch, 20 February 2011. http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/02/20/urgent-ngo-appeal-to-world-leaders-to-prevent-atrocities-in-libya/.
[iii] “Calls for Libya ‘no-fly zone’,” AFROL News, 21 February 2011. http://www.afrol.com/articles/37390.
[iv] “Libyan Envoy to Ask UN Security Council to Impose No-Fly Zone,” Bloomberg, 22 February 2011. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/libyan-envoy-to-ask-un-security-council-to-impose-no-fly-zone.html.
[v] Marc Lynch, “Intervening in the Libyan tragedy,” Foreign Policy, 21 February 2011. http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/21/the_libyan_horror.
[vi] “Secretary-General sets out broad agenda for strengthening human protection,” UN News Centre, 2 February 2011. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37454&Cr=responsibility+to+protect&Cr1=#.
[1] Statement by the UN Secretary–General’s Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect on the situation in Libya, 22 February 2011. http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/UN_Secretary-General’s_Special_Advisers_on_the_Prevention_of_Genocide_and_the_Responsibility_to_Protect_on_the_Situation_in_Libya].pdf.
[2] “Pillay calls for international inquiry into Libyan violence and justice for victims,” 22 February 2011, Office of the High Commissioner of Human rights. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Media.aspx?IsMediaPage=true.