Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen, 21st December 2008

A new report on states in conflict shows greater internationalization of local armed conflicts, leading to poorer chances for peaceful settlements and increased risks that the conflicts will spread to neighboring states.

The latest ‘States in Armed Conflict’ report just published by Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research as part of its Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) contains both positive and negative news about the developments in the world’s conflicts.

The report reiterates previous observations that the general fall in the number of armed conflicts since the early 1990s now has definitively stopped. Instead, the number of such conflicts rose from 2006 to 2007, although larger wars (in which the number of people killed in combat in a year exceeds 1,000) continues to be at an historically low level.

As 2008 nears its end, certain other trends can also be identified.

“We can note that 2008 looks like being the fifth year in row without a conflict between states,” said Lotta Harbom, who heads the program’s data collection function. “This period is thus the longest registered period without conflicts between states since 1946. A palpable and complicating development is that the conflicts have seen a rising degree of internationalization, in the form of active involvement of foreign troops in a country’s internal conflict.”

“Many of these conflicts are connected with the so-called war on terrorism,” added Ralph Sundberg, one of the UCDP researchers.

The US-led war against terrorism has resulted in a number of internal conflicts being internationalized to a greater degree, the report said.

The war in Iraq is only one example of this; international involvement in Afghanistan is also considerable, with fighting units under the NATO flag from a large number of western nations, including Sweden. The conflict of the US and its allies against al-Qaeda has continued in a number of other countries.

The internal conflict in Somalia had an evident engagement of Ethiopian troops during 2008. These troops entered Somalia as early as 2006 to support a frail provisional government against the so-called Islamic Courts.

In 2008 there have been further attempts at internationalization The peace process that has been ongoing between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) since 2006 now seems to have completely fallen apart and in mid-December Uganda attacked the rebels’ bases in eastern Congo along with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

In Africa, the extent of Rwanda’s involvement in the conflict in eastern Congo is also unclear. Much indicates that Rwanda’s government is giving considerable support to Laurent Nkunda’s rebels, who are responsible for the most recent flights of refugees in the country.

Another example is Russia’s intervention in the conflict between Georgia and the break-away republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008.

“This level of internationalization has not been seen since the start of the 1980s,” said professor Peter Wallensteen, who heads the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.

He believes that internationalization worsens the chances for a peaceful solution and increases the risk that the conflicts will spread to neighboring countries.

The conflict in Afghanistan has already had large negative impact on Pakistan and thereby also indirectly on India.

The local actors also lose influence to the strong external nations coming in from the outside – which can have their own reasons for prolonging the conflicts.