War & Conflict Archive

On April 16, a Chadian helicopter with at least three people aboard crashed in Adre, a town abutting the border with Sudan in the desert region shared by the two countries. One person died in the crash, while two were injured. The incident was an unwelcome reminder of five years of conflict between the two impoverished nations — even as that conflict finally shows signs of winding down. On April 17, the two countries re-opened their official border crossings. “Sudanese taxis are going back and forth and so are the people,” a government official in Adre told AFP. Until a […]

Most people look back upon the 20th century as the deadliest in human history, with scholarly estimates suggesting that close to 200 million people died in all the wars, revolutions, genocides and totalitarian purges of those bloody decades. As a result, we regard the entire century as the age of total war, even though we have not experienced great-power war since 1945. Even more telling, state-based war almost completely disappeared as the century drew to a close, leaving us with primarily civil strife, failed states, and the transnational bad actors they both spawn. But instead of celebrating the peaking and […]

Last month’s terrorist bombings of the Moscow Metro along with other indicators of surging Islamic-inspired violence in southern Russia suggest that the Kremlin has yet to overcome longstanding Muslim hostility to Moscow’s control of the North Caucasus. Although the Russian federal government adopted a new strategy a year ago that might eventually overcome some persistent problems, the Moscow massacre risks triggering another wave of escalating reciprocal violence. Throughout the past year, the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia have experienced increasing terrorist violence (.pdf). In Chechnya, for example, the number of violent deaths nearly doubled in 2009 compared […]

Is there a method to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s “madness”? At first glance, his recent actions — including harsh criticism of U.S. policies, a threat to join the Taliban resistance, diplomatic maneuverings in recent visits to Tehran and Beijing, and outreach to former domestic enemies — might seem “troubling” at best, and “troubled” at worst. But on closer inspection, they all appear to have a logical purpose: to hedge Karzai’s bets. From Karzai’s perspective, there are three foreseeable outcomes of the Obama administration’s “surge” in Afghanistan — and only one would be particularly beneficial to his interests. That would be […]

KUNAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Gunfire and rockets erupted on both sides of the American patrol the night of March 28 in Kunar province, along the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan. The ambush was one of at least two apparently coordinated attacks that struck U.S. Army forces operating from two small bases in the province’s main river valley. The rockets exploded harmlessly against the sides of the thickly armored American vehicles. And though the soldiers — from 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, based in Italy — would later complain about the deafening noise they made, it was another weapon that troubled […]

BAGHLAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan — The man standing up at the provincial governor’s audience seemed agitated but forceful. He told of a dream in which the Prophet Mohammed had instructed him to go forth and tell the people that the foreigners are the enemies of Islam, and that the faithful should all join the Taliban to fight them. The man was quickly ushered out, while the governor visibly rolled his eyes. But it was a clear reminder of how close to the surface animosity against foreigners runs in this previously stable part of Afghanistan. The security situation in Baghlan, hitherto a […]

When asked for his assessment of the French Revolution’s historical impact, Zhou Enlai famously replied, “It is too early to tell.” Historians are fond of citing the quotation, but at times ignore its fundamental insight: that they often arrive at their judgment of historical events prematurely. Nowhere does this seem truer than in the case of America’s controversial intervention in Iraq. For most historians, the narrative of the Iraq War terminates decisively with failure in 2006, even as the chronology of its costs is generously extended decades into the future (e.g., the famous $3 trillion estimate). Meanwhile, any successes — […]

Five years ago, in an essay in National Interest, Paul Saunders and I attempted to address the question of what victory in Iraq would look like. We concluded that success would include depriving al-Qaida of a base, closing Iraq’s borders to foreign fighters, and the emergence of a central government capable of ensuring some degree of stability, without repressive methods or too close an alignment with Iran. “Americans and others will recognize victory,” we wrote, “if we have managed to break the back of al-Qaida in Iraq and left in place an Iraqi government committed and able to prevent the […]