Currently viewing the tag: "new wars"

In this fascinating, occasionally frustrating, book,  Rosa Brooks examines the blurring of the boundaries between war and peace that has evolved over the past 25 years, especially, though not entirely, as a result of 9/11. Bringing to bear a rather unusual combination of perspectives—daughter of peacenik activists, international law professor, former DOD staffer, and special […]

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Somalia allegedly is at war since 1991, though armed violence started more than 10 years before. To a large extent, because of this duration, Somalia has been used as a case test for many paradigms of the post 1989 wars (“state collapse”, “resource war”, “greed and grievance” and “old/new wars”). Yet, it would be easy […]

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It is hard to say even when armed conflict began in Colombia. Most descriptions of the fighting date it back to 1964, the year that the country’s two leftist guerrilla groups emerged. But the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) sprang up after only a brief lull following ten years […]

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There is an emerging trend among international counter insurgency (COIN) experts to claim that Afghanistan was a ‘mission impossible’ in terms of national building endeavors. Others contend that after a planned US withdrawal in 2014 (which will likely trigger a quick EU/NATO exit) a devastating civil war will be the fate of Afghanistan, leading to another Taliban rise. These negative assumptions have created a dismal future scenario. Many analysts, writers and even policy experts are now more inclined to accept war and conflict as a new normal in Afghanistan. Even hopelessness has crept in. Consequently, policy makers in important capitals of the world are now thinking more in terms of ‘crisis management’ rather than ‘conflict resolution’. This approach is counterproductive and even self-defeating

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In 2002, the various warring parties in the Congo signed a peace deal that brought about a formal end to the war that had lasted since 1998. While the peace deal was successful in reuniting the country in a transitional government, and producing credible elections in 2006, it did not bring an end to the […]

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President Bush described the War on Terror as a ‘new kind of war’ and he used the term to justify a reinterpretation of the international law rules governing the use of the armed force and the conduct of armed force in expansive ways. Even though the Obama Administration does not use the phrase ‘War on […]

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