MINISTRY OF DEFENCE STRATEGIC DOSSIERS GEOPOLITICAL OVERVIEW GEOPOLITICAL OVERVIEW OF CONFLICTS 2011 OF CONFLICTS 2011 ISBN 978-84-9781-714-1 SPANISH INSTITUTE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 9 7 8 8 4 9 7 8 1 7 1 4 1 2011 MINISTRY OF DEFENCE GEOPOLITICAL OVERVIEW OF CONFLICTS 2011 SPANISH INSTITUTE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES SPANISH OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS CATALOGUE http://publicacionesoficiales.boe.es NIPO: 075-11-280-9 (edición en papel) NIPO: 075-11-281-4 (onlinea edition) ISBN: 978-84-9781-714-1 Legal deposit: M-47573-2011 Printed by: Spanish Ministry of Defence Circulation unit: 800 ejemplares Relase date: november 2011 This book has been printed on chlonine-free papel medio from oertilled sustainable managed forest All Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies publiations may be downloaded free of charge in pdf format from the website: www.ieee.es SPANISH INSTITUTE MINISTRY FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES OF DEFENCE GEOPOLITICAL OVERVIEW OF CONFLICTS 2011 The ideas contained in this publication are the responsibility of their authors an do not necessarily reflect the opinións of the IEEE, which has sponsored their publication CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Author: Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Chapter I LIBYA: CIVIL WAR AND FOREIGN INTERVENTION Author: Carlos Echeverría Jesús Chapter II KOSOVO: A CONFLICT IN THE HEART OF EUROPE. PRECEDENT OR SPECIAL CASE? Author: Blanca Palacián de Inza Chapter III 7 THE MIDDLE EAST: IRREVERSIBLE CHANGE Author: Mario Ángel Laborie Iglesias Chapter IV THE CAUCASUS: NAGORNO-KARABAKH Author: Francisco José Ruiz González Chapter V SOUTH SUDAN: THE UNCERTAINTIES OF A NEW STATE Author: Pedro Baños Bajo Chapter VI SOMALIA: THE ARCHETYPAL FAILED STATE Author: Joaquín Castellón Moreno Chapter VII AFGHANISTAN: THE BEGINNING OF THE END Author: Francisco José Berenguer Hernández Chapter VIII THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: THE LONG-RUNNING CONFLICT IN KASHMIR Author: María José Caro Bejarano Chapter IX COLOMBIA: DISSUASIVE ALLIANCES FOR A NEW ANTI-GUER- RILLA STRATEGY Author: Jorge Bolaños Martínez Chapter X MEXICO AND DRUG TRAFFICKING Author: Miguel Ángel Serrano Monteavaro Chapter XI SOUTHEAST ASIA: NATIONALISM AND INSURGENCY IN THAI- LAND AND THE PHILIPPINES Author: María del Mar Hidalgo García Chapter XII KOREA: THE DREAM OF A REUNIFIED AND DENUCLEARISED PENINSULA Author: Ignacio José García Sánchez 8 INTRODUCTION Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Introduction ■ INTRODUCTION Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, said that war was a phenomenon that had accompanied mankind throughout history, with both evolving side by side. In the media, however, the word «war» is being displaced by the word «con- flict». There are several reasons for this, the first one being that more advanced cultures see war as an aberration of society, albeit sometimes inevitable; the second is that the Charter of the United Nations, as established in its preamble «We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding genera- tions from the scourge of war», prohibits the threat or use of force, except in the case of legitimate individual or collective defence(1). However, the absence of war is not incompatible with the absence of peace, and aversion towards war has often not provided sufficient motivation to find peaceful solutions to the controversies that lead inevitably to conflict, sometimes of a warlike nature, even if the word «war» is not used in refer- ring to it. The dictionary tells us that the word «conflict» comes from the Latinconflictus meaning combat, struggle, strife and even armed confrontation. Lewis Coser defined conflict as «the struggle over values, status, power and scarce resour- ces, in which the aim of the opponents is to neutralise, injure, or eliminate their 11 rivals«. Neutralisation does not necessarily imply the direct use of violence, so for this writer the concept of conflict is so broad that it ranges from classic wars to revolutions such as those currently underway in Tunisia and Egypt. It should be remembered that, regardless of the term used or who the protago- nists are, all conflicts are subject to the Laws of War. This broad view of conflict suggests a need for classification, which can be approached from the point of view of the extent of conflicts, the means and procedures used in them, or the causes which lead to them. In terms of the means and procedures used, conflicts can be classified as -nu clear, conventional, asymmetrical, subversive or revolutionary. From the point of view of geographical extension, conflicts can be classified as local when they are confined to one part of a country; national when they affect a large part of a state’s sovereign territory; regional when they affect several countries in a geopolitical region, as in the case of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and finally global, when they affect various geopolitical regions, as is the case with the terrorism of Al Qaeda. (1) Charter of the United Nations, San Francisco, 26th June 1945, Articles 2.4 and 51. Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Introduction Years ago the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies classified the causes of conflicts as having three levels: profound or permanent causes, intermediate or short-term causes, and superficial or disputatious causes. Profound or permanent causes include historical, ideological and religious ri- valries, ethnic confrontation, rival claims to geographical possessions of stra- tegic value, etc. Intermediate or short-term causes proliferate during external or internal politi- cal circumstances such as when weak political systems or institutions produce weak states in which non-state players are able to cause insecurity through the use of violence, seriously undermining the Rule of Law. Superficial or disputatious causes can be either geographical, as in the case of border incidents; political, when arising from political or constitutional struc- tures, public order, foreign policy, etc.; economic, as with financial and indus- trial disputes, etc.; military, as in the case of unwarranted increases in military power; or finally could derive from the personalities of certain government leaders. 12 Max Weber considered that conflict stemmed from the antagonism between values, which in the modern world are engaged in a relentless and intermina- ble struggle. Karl Marx, on the other hand, considered that the main causes of conflict were to be found in the injustice brought about by the division of labour. Durkheim considered conflicts to be anomalies that arise along the di- fficult path towards order and progress. Since the beginnings of sociology as a scientific discipline around the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of sociologists have seen conflict as an inherent feature of societies, along with empathy and compromise. When the parties in a conflict are armed and these arms play a role in the con- flict, we refer to it as armed conflict, which is considered to be warfare when these arms are used in combat. Armed conflict implies the participation of armed groups, even where no use is made of the weapons, whereas warfare involves military confrontation be- tween adversaries. The Institution charged with aiming to avoid and resolve conflicts is the United Nations, through its Security Council, which has passed more than 2,000 reso- lutions aimed at maintaining and restoring peace and stability. One of its main instruments for implementing these resolutions are the so-called Blue Berets (or sometimes Blue Helmets), who have carried out 67 peacekeeping missions. Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Introduction As well as the conflicts to which the Blue Berets have been dispatched, there have been many others where the stabilisation mission has been entrusted to other international organisations such as NATO, the EU, the OSCE or the Afri- can Union. Many have been resolved, with definitive solutions being accepted by all parties, while others remain in a state of calm but without having re- solved the underlying disputes. From its creation in 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (a period of 44 years), the Security Council passed 644 resolutions, and in the twenty years that have passed since then the number of resolutions passed has reached 1,366. This gives us some idea of how difficult it was for permanent members to reach agreements during the Cold War. In spite of this increased activity on the part of the Council, which is reflected in a smaller number of active conflicts, there are still too many conflicts for which no definitive resolution has been found. In figure I.1 we can see the trends in armed conflicts from the establishment of the United Nations through to 2009. Currently the United Nations has 19 active missions in conflict zones, and the OSCE for its part is present in five countries where there are latent conflicts. Additionally, NATO has troops in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean (Operation Active Endeavour), not to mention the monitor- ing and training operation with Iraqi forces. For its part, the European Union 13 Figure 1.1 Miguel Ángel Ballesteros Martín Introduction is present in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Somali Basin (Operation Atalanta) and Uganda, where it is training Somali troops. Adding to these the operations of US-led and other coalitions, the number of peacekeeping operations taken on by the international community amounts to 50, in some cases overlapping in the very same conflicts. The number of conflicts in which there is at least some kind of peacekeeping operation being carried out by the international community is 30. To these we can add other conflicts where violence is confined within the so- vereign national territory of the country, which is trying to smother it without outside involvement. Such is the case of conflicts like those taking place in Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, Georgia, Colombia, Mexico, etc. Since its foundation, the UN has proved highly effective in settling conflicts and wars between states, the so-called conventional or interstate wars (the red line in figure I.1), of which there have been relatively few: the Korean war, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Falklands war, the Iran-Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s troops, and very few others.