It’s Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq
By NICHOLAS SAMBANIS
New York Times
HAS the conflict in Iraq turned into a civil war?
Civil wars are defined as armed conflicts between the government of a sovereign state and domestic political groups mounting effective resistance in relatively continuous fighting that causes high numbers of deaths. This broad definition does not always distinguish civil wars from other forms of political violence, so we often use somewhat arbitrary criteria, like different thresholds of annual deaths, to sort out cases. Depending on the criteria used, there have been about 100 to 150 civil wars since 1945. Iraq is clearly one of them.
Many people might have a narrowly construed idea of what constitutes a civil war based on familiar examples, like the American Civil War. Civil wars, however, actually vary widely. They include bloody yet short-lived coups (Argentina in 1955); organized civilian massacres by the warring parties (Burundi in 1972 and in 1988); guerrilla warfare combined with genocide (as in Cambodia and Guatemala); recurrent bouts of factional conflict in the military (Central African Republic from 1996 to 1997); combinations of criminal and political violence (Chechnya and Algeria in the late 1990’s); self-determination struggles (Sri Lanka since 1983, Bangladesh in 1971 and Sudan from 1983 to 2005, when Khartoum and southern rebels signed an accord); or warfare between large, well-organized armies (China from 1927 to 1949, El Salvador from 1979 to 1992, Mozambique from 1976 to 1992, Croatia in 1991, and Angola from 1975 to 2002). Some unlucky countries have had combinations of all the above — the Congo is the best example.
Sometimes we cannot tell if a civil war has started until long after the fact, when a minor conflict that has gone on for years suddenly spikes into large-scale violence.
Conversely, it is sometimes hard to know when a civil war ends, as wars can turn into long-lasting minor insurgencies, like the conflict between Indonesian security forces and the Free Papua Movement.
What’s more, civil wars are sometimes limited to peripheral areas (as in Uganda’s war against the Lord’s Resistance Army) or they can engulf the whole country, as in Greece (1944 to 1949) or Bosnia (1992 to 1995). In some countries — like Chad, Colombia and Myanmar, which have been in and out of civil war for more than 40 years — civil war becomes a fact of life rather than an anomaly.
The question of whether a country has fallen into civil war is often deliberately muddied for political reasons. States avoid using the term to play down the level of opposition to them. Thus, for example, the Kenyan “shifta” war of the 1960’s against secessionist Somalis in the Northern Frontier District may have technically been a small civil war, but in the historiography of the country and in the minds of many Kenyans, it was just banditry (“shifta” means bandit) or a border conflict with Somalia.
(The rest is here.)
New York Times
HAS the conflict in Iraq turned into a civil war?
Civil wars are defined as armed conflicts between the government of a sovereign state and domestic political groups mounting effective resistance in relatively continuous fighting that causes high numbers of deaths. This broad definition does not always distinguish civil wars from other forms of political violence, so we often use somewhat arbitrary criteria, like different thresholds of annual deaths, to sort out cases. Depending on the criteria used, there have been about 100 to 150 civil wars since 1945. Iraq is clearly one of them.
Many people might have a narrowly construed idea of what constitutes a civil war based on familiar examples, like the American Civil War. Civil wars, however, actually vary widely. They include bloody yet short-lived coups (Argentina in 1955); organized civilian massacres by the warring parties (Burundi in 1972 and in 1988); guerrilla warfare combined with genocide (as in Cambodia and Guatemala); recurrent bouts of factional conflict in the military (Central African Republic from 1996 to 1997); combinations of criminal and political violence (Chechnya and Algeria in the late 1990’s); self-determination struggles (Sri Lanka since 1983, Bangladesh in 1971 and Sudan from 1983 to 2005, when Khartoum and southern rebels signed an accord); or warfare between large, well-organized armies (China from 1927 to 1949, El Salvador from 1979 to 1992, Mozambique from 1976 to 1992, Croatia in 1991, and Angola from 1975 to 2002). Some unlucky countries have had combinations of all the above — the Congo is the best example.
Sometimes we cannot tell if a civil war has started until long after the fact, when a minor conflict that has gone on for years suddenly spikes into large-scale violence.
Conversely, it is sometimes hard to know when a civil war ends, as wars can turn into long-lasting minor insurgencies, like the conflict between Indonesian security forces and the Free Papua Movement.
What’s more, civil wars are sometimes limited to peripheral areas (as in Uganda’s war against the Lord’s Resistance Army) or they can engulf the whole country, as in Greece (1944 to 1949) or Bosnia (1992 to 1995). In some countries — like Chad, Colombia and Myanmar, which have been in and out of civil war for more than 40 years — civil war becomes a fact of life rather than an anomaly.
The question of whether a country has fallen into civil war is often deliberately muddied for political reasons. States avoid using the term to play down the level of opposition to them. Thus, for example, the Kenyan “shifta” war of the 1960’s against secessionist Somalis in the Northern Frontier District may have technically been a small civil war, but in the historiography of the country and in the minds of many Kenyans, it was just banditry (“shifta” means bandit) or a border conflict with Somalia.
(The rest is here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home