Center For Defense Information Finds Wars on the Increase

Washington, D.C. - In its annual snapshot of major conflicts raging at the start of each calendar year, the Center for Defense Information says that the number of such conflicts increased by two over the 1998 total - to 23 on January 1, 1999.

Colonel Daniel Smith, the Center's Chief of Research, said that two regions, Africa and Europe, registered renewed or new conflicts that pushed up this year's count. "In Africa, pitched battles between the Angolan government and Jonas Savimbi's Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shredded what was left of the 1994 Lusaka peace accord. Just to the north, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world turned upside down as Rwanda and Uganda lent support to rebels opposed to the government of Laurent Kabila." Smith noted that Kabila gained power largely because of aid from Rwanda and Uganda, who now accuse him of allowing cross-border attacks by opponents of the Rwandan and Ugandan governments.

The fighting in the Kosovo region of the Yugoslav Republic, which only started in 1998, was sufficiently bloody to surge past the generally accepted figure of 1,000 casualties to be deemed a "major" conflict. Smith observed that this figure for the Kosova fighting does not include any casualties among refugees who fled or were driven from their homes into the mountains.

Some progress was made in resolving conflicts. Most notable, said Smith, was the end of the 30 year Northern Ireland conflict. "The Good Friday Peace Accord was almost sabotaged by the fire bomb that killed three children and the subsequent bomb planted by an IRA splinter group that killed 23. It was close, but the people, not the terrorists, prevailed."

The most deadly of the other major conflicts on CDI's list are all civil wars, including those in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Sudan. Israel and Hamas and Hizbollah continue their struggle in southern Lebanon, the Colombian government is still under siege from Marxist rebels and drug lords, and the long running struggle by the Kurds against Turkey, Iran, and Iraq seems destined to go on for some time.

The 70 hour U.S.-British assault on Iraq in late December and the continued exchanges with Iraqi surface-to-air missile sites are not included in the list of major conflicts because casualties were low. "However," said Smith, the U.S.-Iraqi situation is on our list of potential flashpoints."

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