Beyond Ukraine: the major conflicts around the world

Although the war in Ukraine is the centre of attention, other conflicts continue to rage around the globe, with hundreds of thousands of people suffering and dying. Here are just some of them.

Myanmar

After the NLD party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the November 2020 general election by a landslide, there was a military coup in February 2021. The armed forces sided with the opposition, which had claimed there was widespread fraud in the polling. The electoral commission disputed this claim.

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Activists formed the Campaign for Civil Disobedience. Their strikes and mass protests against the coup were met with live fire, water cannons and rubber bullets from the military.

“What started as civil disobedience has now turned into essentially a civil war across Myanmar,” said the BBC. Militias have attacked military convoys and assassinated officials. In return, the regime has carried out violent reprisals, including torture and killing of civilians. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused the security forces of a “reign of terror”.

Estimates of overall casualties vary widely. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said 1,503 people have been killed but the US-based organisation Acled, which compiles figures from news and human rights organisations’ publications, said as many as 12,000 may have died.

Yemen

The war in Yemen is widely regarded as having turned one of the world’s poorest countries into a humanitarian catastrophe, with hundreds of thousands thought to have died.

Yemen has been troubled by civil wars for decades, noted The Guardian, but the current conflict erupted when a Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the government against Houthi rebels, who are aligned with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted during the Arab Spring.

The Houthis, who champion Yemen’s Zaidi Shia Muslim minority, seized control of their northern heartland of Saada province in early 2014 and then began advancing southwards.

The BBC noted that many ordinary Yemenis – including Sunnis – began to support them, and by 2015 the rebels held the capital, Sanaa. Saleh’s successor, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, fled to Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia was horrified by the march of a group it believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia power and rival, Iran. The Saudis and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states began an air campaign aimed at defeating the Houthis, ending Tehran’s influence in Yemen and restoring Hadi to power.

Saudi officials predicted that it would last only a few weeks but seven years on the fighting continues. Last month, Campaign Against Arms Trade calculated that the war in Yemen has killed an estimated 377,000 people, while many more have died of hunger and disease in the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. The conflict escalated in January when a Houthi drone attack hit oil facilities in the United Arab Emirates.

The Guardian said that the UK government supplies the bombs that fall on Yemen, as well as the “personnel and expertise that keep the war going”. Earlier this month, the UN accused the British government of imposing a “death sentence” on Yemen by drastically cutting UK aid to the poverty-stricken country.

Tigray

The fighting between the government of Ethiopia and forces in its northern Tigray region has left thousands of people dead and 350,000 others living in famine, said the BBC.

It started in November 2020, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive against regional forces in Tigray, following an attack on a military base.

However, the roots of the trouble stretch back further. Tigray’s dominant political party had been at the centre of power for almost 30 years but it was sidelined by Abiy after he took office in 2018.

Abiy accused Tigray’s leaders of corruption and repression. They, in return, regarded his reforms as an attempt to centralise power and destroy Ethiopia’s federal system, which had been in place since 1994.

Following the attack on the base, which Abiy blamed on Tigray forces, he ordered a military offensive in the northern Tigray region and promised that the conflict would be resolved quickly. Instead, said CNN, he is “presiding over a protracted civil war” that, say many, “bears the hallmarks of genocide”.

Israel/Palestine

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been particularly focused on Gaza since Hamas took control of the area in 2007. There have been several rounds of fighting between Israel and Gaza, most recently in 2021, when at least 255 people died, most of them Palestinians.

The broader conflict stretches back decades, to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1949. Jewish people considered the land their traditional home but the Arabs who lived there and in neighbouring countries felt differently. Thousands of Palestinians either fled or were driven out, ending up in Gaza and the West Bank. Tensions rose higher in 1967, when Israel occupied those two Palestinian areas.

Attempts at a peace deal have hit a number of obstacles, including Israel’s demand that the Palestinians accept its right to exist, the fate of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees. More than 4.6 million Palestinians are refugees and their descendants, many living in camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

The aftermath of the Afghan war

Following 20 years of conflict that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, the Taliban swept to victory when it captured Kabul on 15 August 2021.

In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, the US invaded and removed the Taliban from power, when the group refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, who was believed to be responsible for the terror outrages.

The militant group returned to power last year, when US and allied forces withdrew from Afghanistan following a deal between Washington and the Taliban.

Although this closed that chapter in the nation’s blood-stained history, the UN said last month that the worsening humanitarian situation has left over 20 million people in need of assistance. David Miliband, now president of the International Rescue Committee, told the BBC that nine million people (including a million children) in Afghanistan were now in a situation just short of outright famine.