The new year is fast approaching and with it a vast variety of possibilities for the future of the globe, some for better and some for worse. Though our species has managed triumph in cognitive thinking and population dominance, at least as far as our known world goes, we still squabble in petty conflict which costs us thousands of lives each year.
Wars still ravage the earth, whether it be over a tyrannical dictator or religious zeal all of these conflicts are similar in the destruction they manage to bring. Some of these ongoing calamities seem to go relatively unheeded by many of America’s youth today, and so this article will hopefully shed some light on turmoil stirring around the modern world of today.
The ongoing war in Afghanistan is characterized as a war against terror, however the civil war was did not begin with islamic extremists it began with the rise of the Marxist: People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan and their seizure of power. Nur Muhammad Taraki, the leader of the PDPA, had the former and first president of Afghanistan Muhammad Daoud executed after he rose to power in 1978. After Taraki’s policies of centralization failed he was soon beset by war with guerrilla rebel armies.
The PDPA would split into two factions the Khalq and the Parcham. The Parcham assumed control and the new President Hafizullah Amin and had Taraki executed in October of 1979. Amin requested aid from the Soviets to try and crush the islamic rebels but received an invasion from them instead.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in the December of 1979 followed suit, and when the Soviets gained control of the nation they murdered Amin to install the new puppet leader of Babrak Karmal. After the Soviet invaded it gained the attention of the bitter Cold War rivals of the U.S, U.K, China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. These nations began funneling military supplies to the islamic groups. After brutal conflicts between these Islamic extremists backed by western powers and the Soviet forces, the U.S.S.R withdrew on February 15th, 1989.
After civil discontent which lasted nearly ten years, Islamic extremist groups supplied with western weapons, including many from our own country, would oust the Communist PDPA, these groups would form a coalition government which would end with the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996. The Taliban with the support of Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaida organization would become the official governing power in Afghanistan.
A new military rebel group known as the United Front or the Northern Alliance which grew in the northern parts of Afghanistan. After narrowly avoiding war with Afghanistan, Iran would begin supplying the Northern Alliance with military arms in 1998. Al-Qaida would eventually be provoked by the United States leading to the tragic events of September 11th, 2001 and the beginning of the U.S’s involvement in the Afghan War.
Today, Osama Bin Laden is dead and we are told that soon we will be withdrawing from Afghanistan. Millions of Afghan lives have been lost to the war and it has stirred many radical groups throughout the Middle East.
Perhaps one of the more deeply rooted conflicts of our age, the Colombian Civil War has costed the country hundreds of thousands of deaths due to socioeconomic differences. In the early 1950’s the country of Colombia was run by the two ruling state powers of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Conservatives) and the Partido Liberal Colombiano (Liberals).
In 1946 a Conservative was elected as the President of the nation. Mariano Ospina Pérez is the first Conservative in office in sixteen years and the politically minority started to radicalize. Conservatives across the country started down a road of violence and Liberal factions mobilized.
Ospina, threatened by the Liberals continual exercising of their power in Congressional elections, enforced Conservative privileges in rural areas through the police, Liberals appointees in his coalition government resigned in protest. A popular Liberal figure, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, would be assassinated on April 9th, 1948 in the city of Bogotá, stirring an angry mob which would kill the assassin and result in the loss of 2,000 lives during the riot.
Between 1948 and 1966, 200,000 people would die in an undeclared civil war between Ospina’s government which grew more and more oppressive and lawless belligerents and Liberals. This period would be called La Violencia and with it the Colombian National Front would be established and with it guerilla groups would arise as a reaction to the marginalization of the rural poor.
The Fuerzas Armandas Revolucionarias de Colombia or FARC would be one of these guerilla groups to gain control of areas in Colombia. In 1964, influenced by the Communist Party, would announce to the country that it was a revolutionary army. Paramilitary forces created with aid from the United States, would begin combating the rebels and trafficking drugs such as cocaine.
Drug cartels would thrive during the war and both the guerilla and paramilitary forces would gain power from them. Peace talks failed during 2002 and the Colombian government would announce its plans to take offensive action against guerrilla forces.
The war has created suitable conditions for drug cartels prosper, much of the drugs from Colombia tend to find their way north in the borders of the United States. As it still rages on civilians continue to be kidnapped, attacked, and executed.
Somalia has been rated time and time again as one of the worst places in the world to live. Its president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, struggles to control his own capital from clan factions. Somalia’s civil war has accrued some 500,000 casualties as well as deaths from disease and famine.
It began in a nation that looked fairly promising as an independent African country. In military coup led by major Somali General Mohamed Siad Barre, the newly established Republic of Somalia was replaced in 1969 by the military reign of a government with Soviet ideologies and economic dependence.
The Cold War would create conditions for hostilities between the divided states of Somalia as well as the effects of a recent war with the neighboring Ethiopia. With the insurgency of a new group called the Somali National Movement, clan conflicts would escalate and by the end of the Cold War western aid would withdrawn making even harder for the state to sustain itself. Eventually Barre lost control of his country and was ousted from Mogadishu in 1991.
During the year after Barre’s deposition the country was in a state of complete chaos. People fought under clans and tore the nation apart trying to take whatever they could from the fractured state. The fighting would demand the attention of the UN, and peace talks would go unsuccessful.
In the December of 1992 the UN would deploy multinational forces that would include a large portion of US military into Somalia under the initiative of the UN’s UNOSOM operation. UNOSOM would succeed in taking control of Somalia and begin trying to lower the some of the tension in Somalia for the next three years.
UNOSOM would supply the country with the much needed food and resources it needed to expand its almost nonexistent business class. UNOSOM would reopen the sea and airports of the country’s capital in Mogadishu and improve national security.
UNOSOM had failed to disarm the warlords and its speculated that while the things UNOSOM
brought improved the lives of of many it had ultimately nurtured the clans’ power structures. Notable clan leader General Mohamed Farah Aideed would become entangled in conflict with UNOSOM leading to the notorious “Black Hawk down” event.
After a period of time in which small and fragile groups tried to govern the country, people took approaches to rebuilding the toppled government. Initiatives in Somalia would conflict with each other and Islamist groups would begin vying for control of the decentralized government. While Ethiopia and others tried to broker peace between the warring groups, others supported them.=
Succeeding a series of restabilization processes, the Arta process would begin a path towards national peace. Dividing the country into areas pledged to major clan families. The new National Transitional Government of Somalia took control of the country and became associated with the many islamist and clan factions of the country.
The TNG would be succeeded by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which would try and establish authority in unsuccessful diplomatic and military actions. Islamists would try and take control of country but fail and clan conflict still plagues the nation and its people. The TFG is still trying desperately to gain control of the country today but as it is fractured by warlords and islamist extremists they will not see that control anytime soon.
India is believed to be the birthplace of some of the world’s first major civilizations. Its history is brimming with spiritual and cultural virtues. Hinduism is said to have over 300 million gods and holds some of the most vibrant of traditions. However, ever since the western takeover and withdraw India has seen some very turbulent times. The chaotic stories of rebel outbreaks and muslim-hindu relations span the entire country over.
The religious divide between the Muslims and Hindus of the area has created a violent rivalry which has deteriorated into extremely racist attacks from both sides of India. In the North East scapes of India, as well as neighboring Burma and Bangladesh, the United Liberation Front of Assam has been attacking Hindi-speaking laborers since 2007.
The indian occupation of Kashmir has caused outbreaks ranging from mortar strikes to a protesters throwing rocks at authorities. Though India and Pakistan have maintained a ceasefire agreement since 2003 and has announced it would be withdrawing portions of troops from Kashmir, the occupation there remains a violent business as breaches of the agreement have totaled in the hundreds.
Pakistani and Indian relations remain adversary, both sides’ cooperation standing very fragile. The two nations involvement in Kashmir met on odd ends. When the two countries split off from the British empire, Pakistan had formed as the areas near India containing 75% or more muslims, everything else was Indias.
Kashmir was one of the newly free areas and had needed to decide to either join Pakistan, join India, or remain an independent nation. After remaining a neutral independent country, many of the civilian population called for help from either of the two potentially democratic nations. The first to respond were muslims from Pakistan. For the past 66 years the two countries exchanged fire and insults killing many.
In the state of Andhra Pradesh, Maoist Naxalite rebels have committed to attacking government authorities in order to begin what seemed to be an insurgency. Resistance to the Maoist insurgency has included ‘peace walks’ and both sides have been reported to have recruited child soldiers. The local population could be caught in a dangerous clash between the two groups in the future.
Though India remains a place with a deep cultural background, it has endured many internal and external struggles which have resulted in gross amounts of death since its independence in 1947. The relations of both the Pakistani and Indian peoples have been stricken with malice, but hopefully future stable cooperation can be established.
Now as we approach the holidays and new year we can hope that in 2014 progress towards peace in these calamities can be made. Truly peace is almost just as likely conflict if not more unlikely, but our country has promised it would begin its path towards peace soon withdrawing troops in the near future.