Is world peace breaking out?

Many of us are emotionally attached to the idea that war is on the rise in the world. Those with pacifist, liberal leanings decry the war-mongers of the military-industrial complex. Those with a more conservative outlook call for strong national defense in a world growing more unstable and dangerous. Many of the religious-minded see increasing wars and “rumors of wars” as signs of the last days.

Trouble is, in the long-term, war is down. Disturbing news, if you’re heavily invested in either munitions companies or the idea that the world must inevitably get worse in your lifetime. Nevertheless, according to several scholarly groups looking at emperical data, war is actually down--peace is up.

Foremost among these is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). With a reputation for thorough research, SIPRI is about to publish the 35th edition of its yearbook, where in chapter 3 it enumerates and outlines the status of the world’s major armed conflicts.

According to SIPRI’s criteria, a “major armed conflict” is one that accounts for at least 1,000 combat-related deaths in a single year. The early 1990s saw a peak in wars that met that grim metric, with 33 major conflicts in 1991. Since then, the number has been dropping until, at the end of 2003, just 19 wars fit in SIPRI’s category. Other organizations--such as the Canadian Project Ploughshares--use different criteria, and come up with different numbers, but agree that armed conflict is down worldwide.

Most of today’s conflicts are of the intra-state variety (civil wars or insurgencies) rather than conventional inter-state contests pitting one country against another. Moreover, the numbers of people killed in wars has been dropping consistently over time. In 1951, around 700,000 people around the world died as a direct result of various wars. In the 1990s, annual totals ranged from 100,000 per year down to 40,000. According to the Canadian Human Security Centre, an estimated 20,000 were killed last year--including casualties from the war in Iraq.

Last year, three African wars--in Angola, Rwanda and Somalia--were judged to be effectively ended and removed from the list. And in India, the separatist war in the Assam province was not deadly enough to qualify. These were replaced by three new conflicts, however. The long-running Liberian civil war flared with renewed intensity last year, but things have settled down since then. Meanwhile, the brutal fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan rose to meet the “major conflict” threshold. And of course, there was that little dust-up in Iraq.

The Iraq war, by the way, was one of only two conventional wars between nation-states. The other being the fighting between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir that continued in the first part of 2003. Late last year, however, the two countries established a ceasefire and began formal talks in February 2004, so it looks like this conflict (a potential flashpoint for nuclear war) may be on the road to resolution.

Just for reference--and for those who need more justification for insomnia--here is SIPRI’s complete list of 19 major armed conflicts (we’ll go A-to-Z to keep it simple) with a few amplifying remarks:

• Afghanistan (SIPRI lumps this in with the U.S. war vs. al-Qaida)

• Algeria (government vs. Islamic insurgency)

• Burundi (government vs. Hutu rebels--peace process in place)

• Chechnya (Russia vs. Islamic insurgency)

• Colombia (government vs. Marxist rebels and drug runners)

• Kashmir (counted as a continuing insurgency, not the Indo-Pak conflict)

• Liberia (progress towards resolution--likely to be dropped next year)

• India-Pakistan conflict (ceasefire between the two armies now in effect)

• Indonesia (government vs. Islamic separatists in Aceh province)

• Iraq (now shifted to another intra-state conflict)

• Israel-Palestine conflict

• Myanmar (aka Burma--government vs. various insurgent groups)

• Nepal (government vs. Maoist insurgents)

• Peru (government vs. Maoist insurgents)

• Philippines insurgency (government vs. Maoist insurgents)

• Philippines insurgency (government vs. Islamic insurgents)

• Sri Lanka (government vs. Tamil separatists)

• Sudan (govt-supported militia vs villager & rebels in Darfur)

• Turkey (government vs. Kurdish separatists)

T.T.

©2004, WestRim Digital Arts