EDITED BY: LOCAL DYNAMICS OF CONFLICTS IN SYRIA AND LIBYA (original) (raw)
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For many people the word 'Africa' has become synonymous with conflict and its various stages, all of which affect human security. The continent experiences continuing civil conflicts, countries in danger of descent into conflict, countries facing renewed conflict, countries economically, socially or militarily affected by, or directly involved in, neighbouring conflicts, and countries in transition from war to peace. There are now a growing number of new conflicts in Africa that are increasingly violent and protracted. This new generation of violence, apparently internal but with international elements, is particularly threatening, not only for the countries involved, but also more broadly for regional and international security. More importantly, peace is often fragile, making it difficult to apply the term 'post-conflict' to many countries-in most cases there is a precarious balance between renewed conflict and sustained peace. Increasingly we are seeing countries that are caught in the 'conflict trap'. Of the countries that are in the first decade of post-conflict peace, perhaps half will fall back into conflict within the decade. Africa's 'New Wars' The term 'New Wars' is increasingly being used to capture the changing nature of war, the gradual shift in its causes, the duration and growing incidence of regional conflicts. Conventional approaches to conflict analysis that looked for obvious causes and motives are of limited use in understanding the New Wars, which are ostensibly about identity politics or statehood, and are largely devoid of the geo-political or ideological goals that characterised earlier wars. We see, for example, that the number of conflicts apparently caused by a quest for national and indigenous self-determination has risen sharply. Nevertheless, ethnic tensions and political feuds driven by socioeconomic and political grievances, although important, are rarely the principal cause