1996 armed conflicts report: world at war.

The forthcoming third annual Ploughshares Armed Conflicts Report shows no decline in the number of serious armed conflicts over the past year, confirming the tragic reality of a post-Cold War world steeped in persistent, devastating warfare. But while the killing fields continue to reap a grim harvest, there is no obvious evidence of some general, or regional, slide into ever-deepening conflict and chaos. Most current wars have been going on for a long time, and while some end, and new ones emerge, their longevity is perhaps the most damning testimony to the international community's continuing failure to master effective, alternative means of settling disputes.

Number of armed conflicts

At the start of 1996, 39 countries (about 1/5 of the countries of the world) played host to 44 separate armed conflicts. (1) Several states are the site of more than one arena of combat, and when separate arenas of conflict involve quite separate issues and groups (in which the resolution of one is unlikely to have much impact on the others) they are identified as separate armed conflicts (for example, India has separate conflicts in Kashmir and the Punjab). In one instance, two states are the site of a single conflict - the territories of Israel and Lebanon are both the site of the single armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Intensity

There was no clear trend in 1995 to indicate that worldwide fighting was either intensifying or subsiding. There were no sudden outbreaks of violence anywhere near the scale of Rwanda in 1994, yet almost one-third of the countries at war experienced an increase in the intensity of fighting. In one-fifth the fighting declined, and in the rest the level of fighting remained essentially unchanged.

Type

As has been the post-Cold War pattern, none of the current armed conflicts is between states. Some certainly involve neighbouring states, but the central issues and locations of current conflicts are invariably internal to a single state and are not fundamentally disputes between states. Of these civil wars, about one-half are state formation conflicts in which the key issue is the form of the state itself - involving secessionist movements or groups claiming a distinct identity pursuing autonomy or special group rights within a particular state. In about 40 per cent of the cases the issue is state control, in which the fight is basically about who controls the state.

Finally, a small but growing number of conflicts (just over 10 per cent) reflects the phenomenon of the failed state - a state in which central or national authority is seriously eroded, sometimes having essentially disappeared, or where such authority as remains has lost the capacity to maintain order, either throughout the country or in particular regions. Fighting in such situations tends to be about local issues such as land ownership, access to resources, and so on and frequently involves rival ethnic groups - with the added complication that the distinction between political conflict and straightforward criminality frequently becomes blurred. In some instances simply the sheer number of such local conflicts represents a broader breakdown of nationally maintained order. In the case of Burma, for example, an assertive central government remains in place, but with as many as five or six separate areas of serious disorder (ranging from regional secessionist movements, to ethnic clashes, to popular struggles for democratic governance), it is reasonable to place the Burmese armed conflict in the category of a failed state. The term "failed state" in this sense does not necessarily imply a total breakdown, but suggests a failed capacity to maintain order in the face of local disputes.

Changes from the 1995 report

The number of armed conflicts or of states hosting conflicts did not change from the 1995 report to the 1996 report, but there are some changes in the particulars. Haiti and Yemen were both listed in the 1995 report as armed conflict sites in 1994, but have been removed from the current map. In the meantime, two new conflicts have been added: Egypt and Pakistan. In both cases it is now clear that the death tolls have surpassed 1,000. Egypt is noted as a state control conflict inasmuch as militant Muslim dissidents continue their campaign to bring Egypt formally under Islamic rule. In the case of Pakistan, the conflict could be styled as a state formation conflict inasmuch as Mohaijirs are campaigning for a separate state. However, because there is a strong element of disorder in the growing violence in Karachi that is related to the operation of criminal elements, we have characterized it as a failed state conflict.

(1) An armed conflict is defined as a political conflict in which armed combat involves the armed forces of at least one state (or armed factions seeking to gain control of all or part of the state), and in which at least 1,000 people have been killed by the fighting during the course of the conflict.