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The World at War January-June 1, 2006: Violence Redux

Unfortunately, some conflicts that had been quiescent seem to be gaining strength again.

The border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea continued to simmer but at a higher temperature. The UN Security Council imposed a mid-year deadline for Ethiopia to accept the boundary commission’s decision or face sanctions.

In the Pacific, Australian police reinforcements began to land in mid-April 2006 in the Solomon Islands after rioting broke out over the selection of a new prime minister. Some sections of the capital city have been destroyed. In 2003, Australia led a multilateral force that stopped an attempted coup.

While the Abu Sayyaf organization declined in 2005-2006, the Communist New People’s Army (NPA) became more active. Peace talks had broken off in August 2004 when NPA demands to be removed from the U.S. list of terror organizations were rejected. Targets of NPA activity have been police outposts – raided and stripped of their weapons – and army patrols. However, in November 2005, a band of 15 NPA insurgents invaded a church, killing three civilians and wounding three more.

On the other hand, negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front produced an agreement on ancestral lands that opens the way to a full peace treaty to be completed by September 2006.

Most worrisome is Sri Lanka. The December 2004 tsunami also struck Sri Lanka a highly lethal blow, killing 35,000. But unlike Indonesia, the natural disaster seemed to harden the positions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government in Colombo despite the fact that both sides nominally observed a cease fire and held negotiations. Violence involving government forces and LTTE rebels – and instances of rebel factions battling each other and conducting a targeted assassination campaign – accounted for approximately 250 war-related deaths in 2005 whereas only 109 died in 2004 from such confrontations. LTTE demands that the new government, elected in November 2005, produce a “reasonable political framework” by December 31st were brushed off by Colombo.

Going into 2006, the LTTE and the government continued to observe the formalities of the 2002 cease fire while underneath the surface the armed struggle continued. April, with some 200 deaths from the fighting, was the deadliest month since the 2002 truce, while in early May the LTTE demanded that it should be given control of the territorial seas off the land areas it controls. Further peace talks have been postponed twice – most recently at the end of April. Some 65,000 have died in the rebellion which began in 1983 over autonomy-independence for Tamil ethnic areas.

Sri Lanka is another prime candidate to be back on the main active conflict list next year.

The following chart lists the 23 “hot spots” where there is continuing low level violence or the real potential for war to resume.

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This analysis was prepared by Col. Dan Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.). Dan, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is FCNL's Senior Fellow on Military Affairs.

Reviewed: 05/31/2006

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