Conflicts

The Northeastern Syria Conflict (2026 phase) is the contemporary struggle over power, security, and territorial control in the Kurdish-led areas of northeastern Syria after the major shifts of the Syrian civil war and the collapse of the Assad regime. It combines local administration, Turkish pressure, ISIS afterlife, U.S. involvement, and uncertain reintegration into a changing Syrian state.

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 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 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.

The South Sudanese Civil War was a post-independence conflict that began in 2013 after a political split inside the ruling SPLM and escalated into a multi-sided war marked by ethnic mobilization, mass displacement, famine risk, and repeated peace efforts. It links Salva Kiir, Riek Machar, SPLA/SPLM history, South Sudanese state formation, oil politics, and UN reporting on atrocities. The war was a crisis of liberation-movement rule after independence. Institutions built during wartime struggled to manage factional rivalry, command integration, resource distribution, and civilian protection.

The Central African Republic Civil War began with the Seleka rebellion in 2012 and developed into a fragmented conflict involving former Seleka factions, anti-balaka militias, government forces, UN peacekeepers, foreign troops, Russian-linked security actors, and local armed groups. The war mixed political rebellion, sectarian violence, predatory control of territory, displacement, recurring peace-process failures, and disputes over who can provide security in a weak state. The conflict connects militia fragmentation, civilian protection, international intervention, resource politics, foreign security partnerships, and the limits of disarmament. Temporary reductions in fighting do not guarantee durable political settlement. Peacekeeping can stabilize some spaces without solving the underlying problem of armed fragmentation, local revenue extraction, and weak state reach.

The Mali War began in 2012 with a northern rebellion, state collapse after a coup, jihadist expansion, foreign intervention, and a long-running Sahel security crisis involving armed groups, local militias, state forces, and international actors. The conflict links weak governance, desert and border geography, counterterrorism, peacekeeping, civilian displacement, regional spillover, state legitimacy, and the difficulty of ending a conflict that keeps changing form.

The Syrian Civil War began in 2011 after protests against Bashar al-Assad's government escalated into armed conflict. It became a multi-sided war involving regime forces, opposition groups, jihadist organizations, Kurdish-led forces, foreign militaries, regional patrons, and repeated humanitarian crises. It links urban warfare, air power, sieges, chemical weapons allegations, ISIS, Kurdish autonomy, Russian and Iranian intervention, Turkish operations, U.S. counter-ISIS policy, refugees, and post-Assad transition uncertainty.

The Libyan Civil War began in 2011 during the Arab Spring, as protests against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule escalated into armed revolt, state repression, civil war, and international military intervention. Opposition forces, supported by NATO airstrikes, fought government loyalists across the country, and the campaign culminated in Gaddafi's capture and death in October 2011. Victory did not produce a settlement. Militias, tribal groups, and political factions competed for control, the country split between rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk with international powers backing different sides, and ISIS briefly established territory in the chaos. Fighting continued to 2020 amid multiple foreign interventions, proxy warfare, and humanitarian crises; estimated casualties range from 25,000 to 30,000 deaths, with hundreds of thousands displaced and infrastructure devastated. The war reshaped Libya's institutions and opened the path to fragmentation, encompassing protest escalation, regime coercion, rebel organization, NATO air power, civilian protection debates, and the unstable legacy of postwar state collapse.

The Iraqi Civil War was the most violent sectarian phase of post-2003 Iraq, driven by insurgent escalation, militia warfare, fragile state institutions, and the collapse of public security after the U.S.-led invasion. The conflict demonstrates how occupation, regime collapse, communal fear, and urban insurgency can produce civil war dynamics inside a nominally reconstructed state. It also shows how security breakdown can spread through neighborhoods, checkpoints, ministries, and mixed cities rather than along a simple front line. Linking political decisions, militia competition, and civilian displacement provides a picture of state fragmentation.

The War in Darfur began in 2003 when rebel movements including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement attacked Sudanese government targets, citing the marginalization of Darfur's population. The government responded with a severe counterinsurgency, backing Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, who conducted systematic attacks on African ethnic groups including the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massalit. Villages were destroyed, crops burned, and water sources poisoned, and mass killing, rape, and forced displacement were used as weapons of war in what many consider genocide. The crisis peaked between 2003 and 2005, with over 2.7 million displaced and estimated deaths of 200,000 to 400,000. International responses included AU and UN peacekeeping missions, ICC indictments against President Bashir, and a succession of peace agreements, but despite ceasefires low-level violence and humanitarian need continue. The conflict links rebellion, state violence, Janjaweed militia activity, displacement, ethnic targeting, international human rights reporting, and the later Darfur-centered dimensions of Sudan's wider wars.

The Ivorian Civil War was the conflict that began with the failed coup and rebellion of September 2002, splitting Cote d'Ivoire between a government-held south and rebel-controlled north. It reflected unresolved struggles over citizenship, political exclusion, succession after Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and the militarization of national identity. The war links coup failure, partition, French intervention, electoral legitimacy crises, and the long afterlife of contested national belonging in West African politics.

The Second Chechen War began in 1999 when Russia re-entered Chechnya after the failures of the first war and moved to destroy Chechen separatist autonomy through a much harder, more sustained campaign, officially termed a counterterrorism operation. It followed Chechen incursions into Dagestan and apartment bombings in Russian cities attributed to Chechen terrorists. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russian forces applied overwhelming firepower and siege tactics learned from the first war, including the massive bombardment of Grozny in the second battle for the city in 1999 and 2000 and operations against highland strongholds. Russian methods included zachistka sweep operations and the establishment of pro-Russian Chechen leadership under Ramzan Kadyrov, while the war evolved into an insurgency of guerrilla warfare in the mountainous regions, frequent attacks, and counter-operations. Terrorist attacks included the Beslan school siege and the Moscow theater crisis, and human rights violations by both sides were extensively documented. Approximately 25,000 to 50,000 people died. The conflict officially ended in 2009, with Chechnya under tight federal control through local strongman rule. It links state restoration by force, insurgency persistence, rights abuses, jihadist spillover narratives, and the long transformation of a separatist war into a controlled but deeply violent security order.

The Second Liberian Civil War was the renewed phase of major conflict in Liberia from 1999 to 2003, when Charles Taylor's post-election rule faced armed challenge from new rebel groups and the country fell back into siege, displacement, and regional emergency. It showed that the apparent closure of the first war had left the deeper coercive structures of instability intact. The fighting began when Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), based in Guinea, attacked Taylor's forces, and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) later opened a second front from Côte d'Ivoire. The war was fueled by Taylor's involvement in Sierra Leone's civil war, regional tensions, and domestic opposition to his authoritarian rule, and was fought for control of key towns, diamond mining areas, and the capital. Taylor's side combined government troops with various militia groups, while the rebels drew support from neighboring countries. International pressure mounted through UN sanctions and war crimes indictments, ECOWAS peacekeeping forces again intervened, and Monrovia endured siege conditions and mass civilian displacement. Approximately 50,000 people died. The war ended with Taylor's exile to Nigeria in 2003 and the Accra agreement, which established a transitional government and opened a credible path out of Liberia's war order toward democratic elections.

The Second Congo War of 1998-2003, known as Africa's World War or Great War, drew nine African nations and numerous armed groups into fighting across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It began when Congo's government turned against the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that had helped install Laurent-Désiré Kabila in power; Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe then supported Kabila's government, while Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi backed rebel movements including the RCD and MLC, alongside local militias. Ethnic tension, resource extraction in diamonds, gold, and coltan, and regional power struggles fuelled the war, which combined conventional battles across eastern and central Congo with widespread targeting of civilians. An estimated 5.4 million people died, mostly from disease and starvation. The war formally ended with the Pretoria Accord, but instability persists in eastern Congo. It links state collapse, Rwandan and Ugandan security concerns, mineral economies, militia violence, UN peacekeeping, mass displacement, contested mortality estimates, and the unresolved eastern Congo conflict system.

The Kosovo War was the 1998-1999 conflict involving Yugoslav and Serbian forces, the Kosovo Liberation Army, Kosovo Albanian civilians, NATO intervention, mass displacement, and the postwar international administration of Kosovo. The conflict linked insurgency, counterinsurgency, ethnic cleansing allegations, airpower, humanitarian intervention, alliance politics, and unresolved sovereignty. The war also became a template for later debates about humanitarian intervention. Supporters treated Kosovo as proof that alliance force could stop mass violence when diplomacy had failed; critics treated it as a warning that moral urgency can outrun legal clarity and produce long aftereffects that are hard to govern. The war's meaning did not end in 1999, because the postwar status dispute became part of the conflict itself.