Ukraine and Israel are the two places people think of most when modern conflicts are mentioned. What frustrates me is how little people know about all the other conflicts across the world, which are claiming lives and destabilizing entire regions home to millions of people.
Conflicts like these are surprisingly common in areas that were affected by decolonization, like Africa and the Middle East, and yet they only get a fraction of the attention they deserve from the global community.
One of these conflicts in the Middle East that warrants more awareness than it’s given is the perpetual conflict between all kinds of different extremist, peace keeping, and local militia groups in Syria. The country has been plagued by violence and fighting which has displaced millions and killed at least 500,000 people according to the United States Institute of Peace.
The Syrian government, led by the Assad regime which is backed by Russia, controls around 70 percent of their country. Conflict has slowed recently, which isn’t surprising considering it is almost 13 years old.
Moving down geographically, Yemen, a country on the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula has been in a state of civil war for 8 years. It originated in 2014, after the Arab Spring, which would cause a general uproar in most Islamic countries in North Africa and the Middle East. The government would be overthrown by the Houthis, an extremist religious organization which believes in Zaydi Islam, in opposition to the majority population of Yemen who believe in Sunni Islam.
The Houthis have started to attack trade in the Red Sea, causing economic issues for European trade.
When the Houthis succeeded in overthrowing the government and ousting the Sunni president, the neighboring Sunni-Majority powers, such as Saudi Arabia, led a coalition to reinstate the previous Sunni government. Conflict has raged in the country since, and it has resulted in around 4.5 million people being displaced from their homes, with 21.6 million needing aid. Around 377,000 people have died as a result of the combat, the UN estimates that of this number, 60 percent died as a result of non-combat reasons, like famine. Peace talks have happened, and seem to be getting more successful as time goes on, so there is hope for an end to the fight.
Sailing across the Red Sea, Somalia has been in peril since 2006 to 2007 depending on your preferred source. The country has been fighting an extremist Islamic group by the name of Al-Shabaab, this civil war has raged for a long time, but reached its peak in the mid to late 2000s.
Somali pirates have been somewhat less active as a result of the heightened protection and escort of trade ships through the Red Sea, but according to Safe Seas, a research network, many of the safety systems have been unmaintained or dismantled, and as a result may pose a risk to trade in the region in the future. A total of 650,000 people have been displaced, and 4.3 million are in a “urgent need of food assistance” according to the world report 2024.
While there are plenty of civil wars, armed conflicts, and regionally destabilizing disputes, there is not enough room in one column to even cover the highlights of all 110 conflicts raging across the globe. Maybe it’s worth learning about a few.