Conflicts

The Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Conflict is a recurring low-intensity confrontation along the Durand Line involving Pakistani security forces, Taliban-led Afghan border forces, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan activity, cross-border strike claims, and competing sovereignty narratives. The post-2021 Taliban takeover in Afghanistan changed the conflict's operating environment by giving Pakistan a new interlocutor in Kabul while failing to remove Pakistan's concern over TTP sanctuary and attacks. The conflict links border demarcation, militant safe haven disputes, Pakistani counterterrorism, Afghan Taliban diplomacy, propaganda around frontier clashes, civilian exposure in border communities, and the security politics of a disputed frontier. It is best tracked as a recurring crisis system rather than a single battle, because the dispute returns through repeated incidents, denials, and retaliatory pressure.

The Israel-Hamas War began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas and associated Palestinian armed groups launched a large surprise attack from Gaza into southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostages. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Israel declared war and responded with a major air, ground, and naval campaign aimed at destroying Hamas's military and governing capacity and recovering hostages, with the IDF advancing systematically through northern, central, and southern Gaza and causing massive destruction of infrastructure. The war became one of the most consequential conflicts of the 2020s because it combined massacre, hostage-taking, urban warfare, humanitarian collapse, mass displacement, regional escalation, U.S. policy pressure, and legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice. Gaza Health Ministry figures for October 2023 to January 2025 put Palestinian deaths at over 46,000, alongside widespread famine, the displacement of nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, and residential areas. Israel faced international criticism and an ICJ genocide case filed by South Africa. The conflict also expanded regionally, with Hezbollah opening a second front from Lebanon, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and Iranian missile strikes on Israel, while hostage negotiations remained a central issue throughout.

The Darfur Campaign in the Sudanese Civil War is the western theater of the war that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Darfur's conflict is shaped by the region's earlier war, the RSF's origins in Janjaweed-linked networks, local Arab and non-Arab militia politics, and the strategic value of state capitals, roads, camps, and border routes into Chad. The campaign has included urban sieges, mass displacement, attacks on civilians, ethnic targeting, sexual violence, looting, arson, and humanitarian collapse.

The Sudanese Civil War that began in 2023 is the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), after the collapse of Sudan's post-2019 transition. Fighting erupted on 15 April 2023 in Khartoum following a power struggle between the two military factions that had jointly overthrown the civilian government in 2021, and it quickly became a national conflict of urban battles, territorial contest, regional humanitarian spillover, and atrocity risk, with Darfur reactivated as one of its most dangerous theaters and ethnic cleansing reported in West Darfur. The conflict links military-state fragmentation, militia power, Khartoum urban warfare, Darfur violence, regional diplomacy, and one of the world's most severe displacement crises: over 12,000 killed by counts that are likely far too low, 8 million displaced internally, and 1.5 million refugees in neighboring countries. Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, sexual violence, and the targeting of humanitarian aid, and international mediation efforts, including talks in Jeddah, have failed to produce a lasting ceasefire.

The Fano Insurgency is an armed conflict in Ethiopia's Amhara region between Fano militia networks and Ethiopian federal forces, escalating after federal moves to disarm regional and irregular armed formations. The conflict includes urban clashes, rural guerrilla activity, emergency rule, drone strikes, mass arrests, disrupted hospitals, local sieges, and attacks affecting civilians and health services. The conflict sits at the intersection of Ethiopia's post-Tigray security settlement, Amhara grievances, contested territorial claims, fragmented militia command, state consolidation, local autonomy debates, and human-rights abuses by multiple parties. Militia fragmentation, counterinsurgency tactics, and civilian access problems shape the conflict's staying power.

The Russo-Ukrainian War's full-scale phase began on 24 February 2022, when Russia launched a multi-axis invasion of Ukraine after eight years of conflict following the annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas. It is the largest war in Europe since World War II and a central test case for modern conventional warfare, drones, air defense, sanctions, mobilization, and alliance support. The conflict cannot be reduced to a single battlefield narrative. It includes a failed Russian attempt to seize Kyiv, long attritional fighting in the east and south, missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian long-range strike adaptation, Russian mobilization and fortification, Western military assistance, and continuous information warfare.

The M23 Offensive in Eastern DRC is the renewed campaign by the March 23 Movement in North Kivu and neighboring areas after years of relative dormancy. The offensive grew from unresolved grievances after earlier M23 demobilization, weak state control in eastern Congo, regional rivalry, contested citizenship and land issues, and allegations of external support. Since the resurgence, the conflict has included territorial advances, displacement around Goma, abuses against civilians, attacks on state forces, regional diplomatic initiatives, and pressure on MONUSCO. The offensive connects armed-group politics, Congo-Rwanda tensions, peacekeeping limits, mineral-rich borderlands, and civilian protection failures.

The Afghan Conflict after 2021 refers to the security environment that followed the Taliban's seizure of Kabul and the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Large-scale coalition war ended, but violence did not disappear. The Taliban became the de facto governing authority while facing ISIS-K attacks, anti-Taliban resistance activity, cross-border tension with Pakistan, sanctions pressure, humanitarian collapse, and deep restrictions on women and civil society.

The Myanmar Civil Conflict is the nationwide war that followed the military coup of 1 February 2021 and the violent suppression of anti-coup protest. It involves the Tatmadaw, the National Unity Government, People's Defence Force networks, ethnic armed organizations, local militias, and civilian communities caught between armed actors. The conflict transformed Myanmar's long-running peripheral wars into a broader struggle over state authority. It includes air strikes, village burnings, arrests, torture, economic collapse, displacement, parallel governance, and shifting alliances between pro-democracy resistance forces and ethnic organizations. The conflict connects coup politics, insurgency, minority conflict, state collapse risk, humanitarian crisis, and contested legitimacy.

The Tigray War was a 2020-2022 armed conflict between Ethiopia's federal government and forces aligned with the Tigray People's Liberation Front, with Eritrean forces, Amhara regional forces, and other actors playing major roles. The war began after a constitutional and political rupture between Addis Ababa and Tigray's leadership escalated into military confrontation. It included rapid offensives, shifting control of Mekelle and surrounding areas, alleged massacres, sexual violence, ethnic profiling, mass displacement, humanitarian obstruction, and famine-risk conditions. The Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement ended large-scale fighting but left unresolved questions over accountability, western Tigray, disarmament, and regional security. The conflict demonstrated how a state can combine federal authority, regional forces, and allied intervention while still failing to produce a durable political settlement. The challenge of restoring trust, services, and accountability persisted beyond the ceasefire.

The Ethiopian Civil Conflict encompasses overlapping internal wars and insurgencies that intensified after 2018, including the Tigray War aftermath, Amhara-Fano fighting, Oromo Liberation Army activity, intercommunal violence, and federal security operations. It is not a single linear civil war with one front or one settlement. The conflict involves federal forces, regional forces, Fano networks, OLA, Tigrayan actors, and concerns about Eritrean spillover, displacement, aid restrictions, ethnic targeting, accountability disputes, and the difficulty of applying one national narrative to multiple regional wars.

The Haitian Gang Conflict intensified from 2018 onward as armed groups expanded from chronic localized violence into a wider crisis of security, circulation, and governance. Gangs increasingly controlled neighborhoods, roads, ports, fuel routes, and commercial chokepoints while Haiti's political institutions, police capacity, and judicial systems struggled to contain or even map the changing balance of coercive power. The conflict connects territorial coercion, kidnappings, prison breaks, sanctions, international security missions, civilian displacement, and the transformation of gang networks into decisive political-security actors. Non-state armed groups acquired practical governing leverage over movement, markets, and public fear.

The Oromo Conflict is a continuing security and political conflict in Ethiopia centered on Oromia, the Oromo Liberation Army, federal and regional security forces, unresolved Oromo political grievances, and contested post-2018 reforms. The current phase intensified after parts of the Oromo Liberation Front's armed wing refused disarmament and continued fighting the Ethiopian state. The conflict connects Ethiopia's political transition, Oromia's strategic geography around Addis Ababa, failed settlement attempts, ethnic and regional tension, civilian attacks, and the overlap between local insurgency and national fragmentation. It remains one of Ethiopia's most persistent internal security crises.

The Mozambican Insurgency is an armed conflict centered on Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, where local militants commonly associated with Ansar al-Sunna and Islamic State-linked networks have attacked civilians, state forces, towns, and infrastructure since 2017. The conflict connects local grievances, transnational jihadist branding, coastal and forest terrain, liquefied natural gas projects, regional military intervention, and a major displacement crisis. The insurgency has survived by combining local roots with external branding and cross-border mobility.

The Cameroon Anglophone Crisis is an armed conflict in Cameroon's North West and South West regions that grew out of protests by lawyers, teachers, students, and civil society groups against perceived marginalization of Anglophone legal, educational, and political systems. State repression, arrests, internet shutdowns, diaspora mobilization, and separatist claims transformed the crisis into an armed rebellion involving Ambazonian separatist groups and Cameroonian security forces. The conflict has included attacks on schools, killings, village burnings, kidnappings, displacement, boycotts, and severe pressure on civilians. It is best understood as a transition from grievance to armed fragmentation. The conflict connects colonial language legacies, centralized governance, diaspora politics, unrecognized secession, and civilian protection. The state response and separatist mobilization both reinforced the breakdown of trust. The crisis also shows how fast a political dispute can become an armed conflict when institutions are unresponsive. What began as professional and educational grievance hardened into a security crisis involving competing claims to legitimacy, control, and representation. The conflict serves as a case study in how repression, identity, and armed fragmentation can feed each other. The Anglophone Crisis is both a rebellion and a governance failure. The civilian cost, the school closures, and the fragmented actor map are central to its significance.

The Rohingya Conflict is the long-running security and human-rights crisis involving Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State, Myanmar security forces, Rakhine Buddhist communities, Rohingya insurgent attacks, and mass displacement to Bangladesh. The conflict involves citizenship denial, communal violence, ARSA attacks, military clearance operations, alleged genocide, refugee camps, cross-border pressure, and Myanmar's wider civil war. The conflict is not only an insurgency; armed attacks by Rohingya militants occurred, but the central humanitarian scale came from state violence, village destruction, flight, statelessness, and the inability of civilians to return safely.

The Burkina Faso Insurgency is a Sahel conflict involving jihadist groups, state security forces, civilian auxiliaries, local communities, and a military-led government. Since the mid-2010s, violence has expanded from border areas into a national crisis marked by besieged towns, displacement, massacres, explosive devices, and severe limits on independent reporting. The conflict is now shaped by JNIM, IS Sahel, Burkinabe forces, Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, and communities caught between jihadist coercion and counterinsurgency reprisals. The conflict demonstrates how jihadist insurgency, coup politics, community self-defense, state abuses, and information control can combine in a rapidly deteriorating security environment.

The Niger Insurgency is a multi-front armed conflict shaped by Sahel jihadist expansion, Lake Chad Basin spillover, military counterinsurgency, border insecurity, and the political shock of Niger's 2023 coup. Armed groups linked to Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and ISWAP have attacked civilians, soldiers, villages, roads, aid corridors, markets, and border communities. Niger sits between Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Libya, and Algeria. The insurgency involves Tillaberi and Diffa regions, IS Sahel, JNIM-linked networks, Boko Haram, regional juntas, foreign military withdrawals, displacement, and civilian-protection failures.

The Yemeni Civil War is a multi-layered conflict that grew out of state collapse, Houthi expansion, regional rivalry, and the failure of Yemen's post-Arab Spring transition. The war combines insurgency, coalition air power, proxy competition, fragmentation of sovereignty, maritime-security implications, and one of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. It is at once a civil war, a regional proxy struggle, a state-collapse case, a humanitarian disaster, and a security problem for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The conflict also demonstrates how negotiations can stall when military reality, local fragmentation, and regional interests pull in different directions.

The War in Donbass began in 2014 as armed conflict spread across eastern Ukraine after Ukraine's Euromaidan revolution, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the collapse of the country's old political order. Pro-Russian separatists, backed by Russian military support, declared independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and Ukrainian forces engaged separatist militias and Russian volunteers in what became a hybrid and then increasingly conventional war. Key battles included the siege of Mariupol, Debaltseve, and Donetsk airport, and the fighting involved heavy artillery, tanks, and aircraft, causing significant civilian casualties. Repeated ceasefire efforts, including the Minsk I and II protocols, temporarily reduced hostilities but failed to end the conflict; over 14,000 people died and millions were displaced. The war became the enduring military core of the pre-2022 Russo-Ukrainian confrontation and a key case of deniable intervention evolving into sustained interstate war by proxy and direct support, before escalating into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.