War & Conflict Archive

As residents flee the violence in Syria, some towns in the North have been turned into virtual ghost towns. World News Videos by NewsLook

A confidential report by a United Nations group of experts that was leaked to the media has led to rising tensions between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. The report follows recent allegations of Rwandan backing for a mutiny by elements of the Congolese army in April, when soldiers in eastern Congo defected and formed the March 23 Movement rebel group. The U.N. group of experts found that Rwanda has played a pivotal role by providing direct support not only to M23, but also to other armed groups in the area. “Apparently Rwanda has been involved in […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a warning to Syrian forces Tuesday to stay away from the border after Syria shot down an unarmed Turkish RF-4E reconnaissance plane last week. In an email interview, Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based writer and analyst, discussed the state of Turkey’s air force. WPR: What is the current state of the Turkish air force? Gareth Jenkins: Turkey has one of the largest and best-equipped air forces in the greater Middle East. Its main strike force consists of F-16s together with F-4s and F-5s. In recent years, the air force has received a disproportionately large […]

Syria shot down a Turkish warplane last week, raising tensions between the neighbors to an all-time high. In an email interview, Sean O’Connor, a contributor to IHS Jane’s and an expert in air defenses, reviewed the state of Syria’s air defenses. WPR: What are Syria’s current air defenses, and what are their particular strengths and vulnerabilities? Sean O’Connor: A comprehensive analysis of available commercial imagery indicates that Syrian strategic air defenses primarily consist of Soviet-era surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems occupying a total of 76 fixed-site locations. A further 101 fixed-site locations are present to serve as either defensive improvements employing […]

On Sunday, an old Army friend sent me a note to let me know that an officer with whom we both served had died in Afghanistan. I first fought in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, so the fact that friends are still fighting and dying there more than 10 years later gave me pause. Despite President Barack Obama’s promise to reverse the neglect of the Afghanistan War that had marked his predecessor’s time in office, most of the United States is eager to forget the war. So it will be interesting to see the reception that greets Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s […]

Yesterday’s NATO meeting on Syria’s downing of a Turkish RF-4 Phantom reconnaissance jet Friday underscores the growing importance of Turkey and NATO for each other. Syria claims that the shooting occurred when an unidentified jet made a low and threatening overflight deep in Syrian territory, while Turkey insists that Syria knew the plane was Turkish, and that it had already left Syrian air space when it was shot down. The Turkish government decided to invoke Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides for urgent consultations if a member state considers its security interests threatened. It did not call […]

Delivering a speech directed at his new government on state television, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said his country was in “a real state of war.” World News Videos by NewsLook

After three days of fighting with Israel, the military wing of Hamas announced Wednesday that it was ready to accept a cease-fire brokered by Egypt. The exchange of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket fire followed an Israeli retaliation against a Palestinian attack launched from the Egyptian-ruled Sinai Peninsula, which has seen a rise in violence amid that country’s broader upheaval. Yoram Meital, chair of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told Trend Lines that if the fighting in the Israel-Gaza-Egypt border junction continues, all three sides could be pulled into […]

Tens of thousands of Sudanese have flooded into South Sudan in the last month, fleeing the bombing and burning of their villages. World News Videos by NewsLook

A Pentagon official says the US believes three Russian ships carrying supplies and possibly personnel will be departing for Syria and the US has no reason to believe they are headed anywhere other than Russia’s naval base in Tartus. World News Videos by NewsLook

UN observers suspended their mission to Syria on Saturday, blaming intensifying violence as troops rained shells down on rebel bastions including Homs, where the opposition warned a massacre was imminent. World News Videos by NewsLook

China has taken an atypically strong stand in opposing efforts to force the Syrian government to end its brutal repression of anti-regime protesters. But China, unlike Russia, with which it has joined to block measures seeking to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office, is motivated primarily by principles rather than concrete strategic and economic interests in Syria. And China, unlike Russia, seems more open to changing its position. For the past two decades, Chinese leaders have typically opposed foreign military interventions seeking regime change. The Chinese government has traditionally sought to keep United Nations resolutions precisely worded to tightly […]

Since April, when two Tuareg rebel groups drove government forces out of northern Mali, the situation in the sparsely populated region has steadily worsened. The lightning advance of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA), which seeks independence for the Tuareg homeland, and Ansar Dine, which has an Islamist agenda, triggered a coup of disgruntled junior officers against President Amadou Toumai Touré, with the resulting political instability in Bamako leaving the army incapacitated and the rebels the effective rulers of roughly half the country’s territory. Though the two groups worked together to launch the rebellion, Ansar Dine […]

Refugees fleeing sectarian violence in Myanmar trying to enter Bangladesh by boat are turned away. World News Videos by NewsLook

Yemens Defense Minister made a visit to Zinjibar a day after the Yemeni army retakes the city from al Qaeda-linked militants. World News Videos by NewsLook

Fighting between Muslim and Buddhist mobs broke out in Myanmar’s coastal state of Rakhine over the weekend, with the violence between minority Rohingya Muslims and majority Rakhine Buddhists set off by the rape and murder of an ethnic Rakhine woman and the revenge attacks that followed. The unrest, which included arson, rioting and the killing of about 25 people, reveals some of the deep-rooted ethnic and religious tensions in the country, which has only recently begun to open up after decades of isolation and military rule. Jason Abbott, Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville’s Center […]

A few weeks ago, when I started this series of columns on the perils of the special operationalization of U.S. national security policy, I briefly argued that U.S. special operations forces are often not as good as they or their commanders believe them to be. I worried about a young Special Forces officer with six months of Arabic convincing himself he was “Sir Richard Burton in a green beret.” Some of my friends in the U.S. Army Special Forces demanded to know why I was picking on them, while others suggested my own service in the 75th Ranger Regiment explained […]