Civil Wars and Intervention

Joanna Diane D. MortelAB Political Science II

Divine Word College of Calapan

Civil War

• involves armed conflict between competing factions within a country or between an existing government and a competing group within that country over control of territory and/or the government.

• Civil wars may initially pit factions within a country against each other, but they frequently become internationalized.

• This may occur as the conflict or its consequences spill over the country’s borders or if external parties become involved in the conflict.

Civil War

• a good example is the 2011 conflict in Libya, in which resistance to the dictatorship of Coronel Muammar Gaddafi and his 40- plus years of rule soon resulted in intervention by US and NATO forces, along with limited support from other states in region, to establish a no- fly zone and attack government forces and targets, in part to try to prevent wide- scale attacks on civilians.

Civil War

Civil War

• Other civil wars have been fought among ethnic rivals, religious rivals, and rival clans. Revolutions can spark civil wars as well.

Intervention

Intervention is a fairly common way for a third-party state to get involved in a civil war or a war between two or more other states.

• A state intervenes when it sends troops, arms, money, or goods to help another state that is already at war.

Intervention

• During the Cold War, the term intervention was used to describe one of the superpowers becoming involved in a smaller country’s war (often a developing country).

Intervention

But states sometimes intervene in order to bring peace. This type of intervention occurs when a country (or countries) sends military forces into another state to act as peacekeepers or to block other forces from attacking. Sometimes these interventions are organized or conducted bythe United Nations or another international governmental

organization.

Example: The United States, along with other NATO nations, sent troops into the former Yugoslavia on a number of occasions to protect people from war.

• A successful example of this peaceful intervention occurred during the 1999 U.S. bombing campaign in Kosovo, which helped stop a slaughter of Kosovars by attacking Serbs.

Intervention

• A less successful example was the U.S. intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s, an attempt to provide humanitarian aid that ultimately achieved little at the cost of American lives. This failed intervention culminated in the Battle of Mogadishu (dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down [2001]) October 3–4, 1993, which killed eighteen Americans and as many as a thousand Somalis.

Intervention

Reflections on Intervention

• Intervention=Invasion

• Article 2.7 of the UN Charter protects national sovereignty even from intervention by the United Nations itself.

(The article forbids the United Nations to intervene “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the state”.)

By Kofi Annan

Reflections on Intervention

“Our job is to intervene: to prevent conflict where we can, to put a stop to it when it has broken out, or- when neither of those things possible- at least to contain it and prevent it from spreading.”

By Kofi Annan

Reflections on Intervention

• The United Nations is an association of sovereign States, but the rights it exists to uphold belong to people, not government. By the same token, it is wrong to think the obligations of United Nations membership fall only on States.

• Each one of us has an obligation to do whatever he or she can to correct injustice and to prevent the infliction of suffering.

By Kofi Annan

Syria: The Story of Conflict

Almost 200,000 Syrians have lost their lives in the escalating conflict between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule. Syria's bloody internal conflict has destroyed entire neighbourhoods and forced more than nine million people from their homes. This is the story of the civil war so far, in eight short chapters.

BBC News, 8 December 2014

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

1. Uprising turns violent

• Pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011 in the southern city of Deraa after the arrest and torture of some teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. After security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing several, more took to the streets.

• The unrest triggered nationwide protests demanding President Assad's resignation. The government's use of force to crush the dissent merely hardened the protesters' resolve. By July 2011, hundreds of thousands were taking to the streets across the country.

• Opposition supporters eventually began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and later to expel security forces from their local areas.

2. Descent into civil war

• The conflict is now more than just a battle between those for or against President Assad. It has acquired sectarian overtones, pitching the country's Sunni majority against the president's Shia Alawite sect, and drawn in neighbouring countries and world powers. The rise of the jihadist groups, including Islamic State, has added a further dimension.

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

3. War crimes• A UN commission of inquiry, investigating alleged

human rights violations since March 2011, has evidence that those on both sides of the conflict have committed war crimes - including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. Government and rebel forces have also been accused by investigators of using civilian suffering, such as blocking access to food, water and health services, as a method war.

• The jihadist group, Islamic State, has also been accused by the UN of waging a campaign of fear in northern and eastern Syria. Its fighters have beheaded hostages and carried out mass killings of members of the security forces and religious minorities.Syria: The Story of

ConflictBBC News, 8 December 2014

4. Chemical weapons• Hundreds of people were killed in August 2013 after

rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin were fired at several agricultural districts around Damascus. Western powers, outraged by the attack, said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government. The regime and its ally Russia blamed rebels.

• Facing the prospect of US military intervention, President Assad agreed to the complete removal or destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal as part of a joint mission led by the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The destruction of chemical agents and munitions was completed a year later.Syria: The Story of

ConflictBBC News, 8 December 2014

5. Humanitarian crisis• More than 3 million people have fled Syria since

the start of the conflict, most of them women and children. It is one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. Neighbouring countries have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis, with Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey struggling to accommodate the flood of new arrivals. The exodus accelerated dramatically in 2013, as conditions in Syria deteriorated.

• humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence, and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. In armed conflict and beyond, humanitarianism is the organized efforts to alleviate suffering and protect non-combatants, such as the wounded or civilians

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

5. Humanitarian crisis

• The UN launched its largest ever appeal for a single crisis in December 2013, seeking $6.5bn (£4bn) to provide medical care, food, water, shelter, education and health services.

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

6. Rebels and the rise of the Islamists

• Capitalising on the chaos in the region, Islamic State (IS) - the extremist group that grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq - has taken control of huge swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria. Its many foreign fighters in Syria are now involved in a "war within a war", battling rebels who object to their tactics as well as Kurdish forces. In September 2014, a US-led coalition launched air strikes inside Iraq and Syria in an effort to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS.

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

7. Peace efforts

• In January 2014, the US, Russia and UN convened a conference in Switzerland to implement the 2012 Geneva Communique, an internationally-backed agreement that called for the establishment of a transitional governing body in Syria formed on the basis of mutual consent.

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

7. Peace efforts

• The talks, which became known as Geneva II, broke down in February after only two rounds. The then UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi blamed the Syrian government's refusal to discuss opposition demands and its insistence on a focus on fighting "terrorists" - a term Damascus uses to describe rebel groups.

• UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the organisation's long-term strategic objective remains a political solution based on the Geneva Communique. The new UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura has also proposed establishing a series of "freeze zones", where local ceasefires would be negotiated to allow aid deliveries in besieged areas.Syria: The Story of

ConflictBBC News, 8 December 2014

8. Proxy war

• What began as another Arab Spring uprising against an autocratic ruler has mushroomed into a brutal proxy war that has drawn in regional and world powers.

• Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support, providing it with an edge that has helped it make significant gains against the rebels. The regime has also enjoyed the support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.Syria: The Story of

ConflictBBC News, 8 December 2014

8. Proxy war

• The Sunni-dominated opposition has, meanwhile, attracted varying degrees of support from its main backers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states along with the US, UK and France. However, the rise of radical Islamist militia in rebel ranks and the arrival of Sunni jihadists from across the world has led to a marked cooling of international and regional backing.

Syria: The Story of Conflict

BBC News, 8 December 2014

References

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on International Politics.” SparkNotes LLC. 2010. http://www.sparknotes.com/us-government-and-politics/political-science/international-politics/ (accessed March 1, 2015).

Art & Jervis (2013). International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues: Pearson Education Inc.