Decades long civil wars, battles over territory and fights for power have created a world with more individual conflicts than any other time in history.

The globe is now more mired in bloodshed, war-induced famine, and displaced persons than even during World War II.

The fighting and destruction in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan is served up 24/7 by global news services, but there are dozens of other conflicts simmering in far flung parts of the world.

Solutions to each of these conflicts may be difficult to identify and almost impossible to implement, but it’s important to understand the basic circumstances of these varied and complex clashes. 

Mexico

Organised crime in in Mexico has created a constantly disrupted and fear-filled country since 2006. Rival drug cartels vie for control of the lucrative North American trade and battle government forces, resulting in around 100,000 deaths of civilians, soldiers, and police.

Corruption, people trafficking, and occasional massacres are the notable impacts of rampant organised crime in the country.

Drug-related violence throughout Mexico and other Central American countries has also led to an unprecedented number of people, many of which are unaccompanied minors, fleeing to the United States in an attempt to find safety.

In the summer and fall of 2014, more than sixty thousand children were apprehended at the Mexico-U.S. border.

Despite the arrests of several kingpins, the security situation seems to be getting worse due to Mexico’s long history of weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions.

Colombia

In Columbia conflict has been going on since 1964 and involves left-wing guerrilla groups fighting government forces, right-wing paramilitaries and drug lords in a bid to increase their influence in Columbian territory.

The major left-wing guerrilla groups are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Though the FARC suspended a ceasefire after a Colombian army attack in May, the peace process still currently has momentum.

However the impacts of longstanding battle are huge, with at least 220,000 deaths occuring between 1958 and 2013, with four out of five fatalities being civilians. During the conflict 5.7 million people have been displaced and more than 25,000 disappearances have occurred.

Peru

As Peru has taken over as the world’s largest producer of coca, Maoist Shining Path rebels are now enmeshed in drug trafficking, further complicating the Peruvian police.

Since 1980 the fight for control of territory and the drug trade has resulted in huge numbers of drug-related attacks, kidnappings and killings, as well as reconcentrated 500,000 people in Lima slums during the conflict.

The 2003 Truth Commission estimates that between 1980 and 2000 69,280 were either dead or missing as a result of the Peruvian conflict.

Insurgency ended in 2000, but remnants still launch occasional attacks and help run the cocaine trade.

Senegal

The Casamance Conflict is a low-intensity struggle for independence by rebels from the marginalised Diola (or Jola) tribe in Casamance.

Since 1982 the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has called for the independence of the Casamance region, whose population is religiously and ethnically distinct from the rest of Senegal.

The conflict has resulted in between 3,000 and 5,000 deaths, up until 2010.

Thousands more have been displaced, landmines have crippled agriculture and tourism is virtually non-existent due to the conflict.

Western Sahara

The Algerian-backed Polisario Front of the Sahrawi people claim their region as an independent state from Morocco, though Morocco controls most of the territory.

The conflict is the continuation of the past insurgency by Polisario against the Spanish colonial forces in 1973-75 and the resulting Western Sahara War between the Polisario and Morocco which lasted until 1991.

Today the conflict is dominated by unarmed civil campaigns of the Polisario Front and their self-proclaimed SADR state to gain fully recognized independence for Western Sahara.

The war and 24-year stalemate has resulted in between 14,000 and 21,000 deaths and ten rounds of talks that have gone nowhere.

Arbitrary arrests and rights abuses are reportedly commonplace and between 50,000 and 150,000 Sahrawis live in refugee camps in Algeria.

North Africa

Since 2007 Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has aimed to rid North Africa of what they believe to be insufficiently Islamic governments and Western influence.

Hundreds of deaths, kidnappings, attacks on government and Western targets have helped destabilise Mali and the Maghreb.

Currently Al-Qaeda’s influence is waning as regional jihadis increasingly swear allegiance to self-declared Islamic State.

Mali

Over the last three years terrorist groups in Mali have grown in number and strength, undermining the government and threatening to destabilize neighboring countries.

Tuareg rebels that fight for autonomy in northern Mali, joined by Islamist groups wanting to impose sharia law, have created a country of constant uncertainty.

Conflict in Mali has led to almost 4,000 deaths and the displacement of 230,000 people, including more than 140,000 refugees.

Despite supposed progress in the peace process, regular attacks and clashes are still commonplace.

Kidnappings have dented tourism due to recent attacks that have targeted foreigners, such as the November 2015 kidnapping and mass shooting at a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital.

Nigeria

Islamist extremist group Boko Haram’s desire to set up its own caliphate in northern Nigeria and beyond has created chaos since 2009.

According to the newly published Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram is the worst terror group in the world. The group is responsible for a spike in terror violence in Nigeria which has experienced the largest increase in terrorist deaths ever recorded by any country in 2014, up over 300 per cent since 2013.

Due to the presence of Boko Haram almost 45,000 people have been killed since 2011, 1.2 million people have been displaced internally including 200,00 refugees, and thousands of girls and women have been abducted and forced into slavery as rebel “wives”.

Recent gains by the Nigerian military have been offset by Boko Haram’s increased regional and international threat.

Libya

The fragile post-Gaddafi government has been struggling to keep the lid on widespread militancy between separatist, Islamist and criminal militias since 2011.

The strength of rebel militias has increased significantly over the last four years, with there now being approximately 1,700 armed groups, including fighters loyal to the Islamic State.

Much of the country remains lawless, which has resulted in people traffickers taking advantage of the power vacuum, and between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths.

The various rebel and militia group’s attempts to divide the country among political and tribal lines have created concerns for the permanent fracturing of Libya.

Central African Republic (CAR)

Following decades of violence and instability since gaining independence, mostly Muslim Séléka rebels went on a rampage after seizing power in 2013, leading to vicious reprisals by Christian anti-balaka vigilantes.

As a result a schism between Christian and Muslim communities has evolved throughout the country, adding a religious element to the violence that had previously been absent.

The country’s fragile transition, marred by weak governance and the collapse of law and order has created a consistently worsening humanitarian crisis.

Six thousand people have been killed and a quarter of the population has been displaced, with more than four hundred thousand refugees and three hundred thousand internally displaced persons.

Though a peace deal signed was signed on May 11 of last year it is still yet to be implemented.

Darfur

Darfuri rebel groups are fighting to end oppression by President Omar al-Bashir’s government forces and associated militias.

Bashir has been accused of war crimes from within Darfur and commentators internationally.

Since 2003 up to 300,000 deaths have occurred as a result of the conflict, as well as acute malnutrition throughout.

Up to 2.5 million people have been displaced, with 430,000 of them having been displaced since 2014.

The conflict has no hope of slowing down, with relentless fighting occuring amid a new outbreak of tribal clashes.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)     

Frequent clashes in the southern Katanga region between government forces and separatist Mai-Mai rebels have led to around 2,700 deaths since 1997.

The current violence has its origins in the massive refugee crisis and spillover from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when the Congolese government was unable to control and defeat the various armed groups after Hutu génocidaires fled to eastern DRC.

Now, weak governance and the prevalence of at least 70 armed groups have subjected Congolese civilians to widespread rape and sexual violence, massive human rights violations, and extreme poverty.

The fighting has caused huge numbers of civilians to flee their homes, with the United Nations estimating that currently there are at least 2.7 million internally displaced persons in the DRC and approximately 430,000 DRC refugees in other nations.

Despite the stabilizing presence of nineteen thousand UN peacekeepers, the stronger militant groups in the region continue to terrorize communities and control weakly governed areas of the country, financing their activities by exploiting the country’s rich natural resources.

Uganda/South Sudan

Since 1987 the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, attempts to gain control of government in order to allegedly create a state based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

At least 100,000 deaths have occurred as well as two million people being displaced at the height of the conflict.

Generations of both countries have been permanently altered, with 60,000 child abductions, many of which are kept as ‘soldiers’ and sex slaves.

Violence has prevented farmers from planting or harvesting crops, causing food shortages nationwide. In July 2014, the UN Security Council declared South Sudan’s food crisis the worst in the world.

The surrender of a senior aide in January means that the net could be tightening around Kony after a long manhunt, with leadership thought to be in South Sudan.

The most recent attacks by the LRA have occurred in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo more than Uganda.

South Kordofan/Blue Nile

Rebels fighting to end government oppression in South Kordofan and Blue Nile have allied themselves with Darfuri insurgent groups.

Relentless bombing has forced women and children to live in caves, with 500,000 in need of humanitarian assistance and 4,500 deaths since 2011.

Recently fighting has been intensifying and parallel peace talks with other Sudanese conflicts are going nowhere fast.

Sinai Peninsula

The Sinai insurgency is the conflict ignited by Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, which began after the start of the Egyptian Crisis in the 2011 revolution.

The Sinai Peninsula has had a deteriorating security situation since Israel withdrew in 1982, and has long been known for its lawlessness.

Since 2011 several hundred people have died, with attacks recently steadily increasing in number and scale and now appear to be targeting tourist sites.

Sinai’s tourism sector could take a hit if the tactical shift onto Western targets rather than security forces is confirmed.

Israel/Palestine

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily over territory and dates back to 1948, when after the Arab-Israeli war the Holy Land was divided into three parts.

Israel aims to consolidate territory and defend the state, while Palestinians seek the formation of an independent state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

More than 120,000 have been killed as result, 98 of which died during fall of last year with near-daily stabbings of civilians and Israeli security force crackdowns.

Israeli settlement expansion in Palestinian areas continues to thwart any attempts at dialogue, causing concerns that a third intifada could break out after renewed tensions in October.

The conflict has been a major source of Arab and Muslim grievance, and has fuelled Islamist extremism, as well crippling Palestine’s economy.

Syria

The Syria crisis involves a civil war between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and opposition rebels, enjoined from Iraq by the self-declared Islamic State.

The multisided armed conflict with international interventions began in 2011 within the context of Arab Spring nationwide protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government, whose forces responded with violent crackdowns.

The conflict morphed into an armed rebellion, now having killed around 300,000 people, left 7.6 million internally displaced, four million refugees and 12.2 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

The self-declared Islamic State now has control over territory home to some 10 million Iraqis and Syrians.

Ukraine

Since 2014 Ukrainian security forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists who hold large swathes of eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

The death toll, which is currently around 6,500, is increasing rapidly as skirmishes claim lives on an almost daily basis despite the 2014 February ceasefire.

Around 1.2 million in rebel areas remain in need of aid and the risk of a new Cold War developing between Russian and the West increases daily.

Turkey

The Kurdish–Turkish conflict is an armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which have demanded greater rights and autonomy for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority.

Between 33,500 and 45,500 people have been killed since fighting erupted in 1984 and the Turkish government has labeled the PKK as a ‘terrorist group’.

The PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan ended the armed struggle in March, and the PKK helped fight the self-declared Islamic State but conflict erupted again in July.

Iraq

Iraqi security forces and Shiite militia, backed by the US and Iran, fight predominantly Sunni Islamic State militants.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since June 2014, when the Islamic State advanced into Iraq from Syria and took over parts of Iraq’s Anbar Province in western Iraq.

Over the past year, the international coalition to counter the self-proclaimed Islamic State has conducted more than 8,200 air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Progress to retake territory remains limited, however, as the Islamic State has consolidated its control in Iraq.

Iran

The conflict is an Iranian offshoot of Kurdish separatism, with the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) battling the Islamic regime.

Since the conflict begun in 2004 several hundred people have been killed.

Tensions run high among Iran’s Kurdish minority, with occasional skirmishes, guerrillas remain well-armed.

In the face of a common enemy in the self-declared Islamic State, Kurds in the region are building closer unity.

Chechnya

What began as an independence struggle in Chechnya is now largely an Islamist insurgency waged across the region by Caucasus Emirate, a militant Jihadist organisation predominantly active in southwestern Russia.

Fighting and terrorist attacks since 1999 have resulted in the deaths of between 25,000 and 100,000 people.

Caucasus Emirate has been weakened by defections to the self-declared Islamic State, but insurgency is far from over.

Repression, corruption and a sense of impunity have fanned Islamist radicalism throughout the Chechen Republic.

Armenia/Azerbaijan

Ethnic Armenians seized control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region within Azerbaijan in 1993-1994 and the Azeris continue to fight to take it back.

Since 1988 around 30,000 people have been killed, along with 230,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan and 800,000 Azeris in Armenia and Karabakh displaced by the initial conflict.

Currently the ‘frozen’ conflict flares up sporadically, with decades of negotiations having made little headway.

Yemen

Forces loyal to ousted President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi-led coalition air strikes, fight pro-Iranian Houthi rebels and ex-President Saleh’s forces.

With the country in constant upheaval since 2004, citizens’ everyday way of life has been dramatically altered.

Not only are there chronic fuel shortages, but also a lack of food and water has led to malnutrition at emergency levels

Around 11,000 people have been killed as a result of the conflict and 334,000 have been displaced.

The conflict continues to rage, with regular airstrikes and ground clashes.

Ethiopia

For the last twenty years the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has been fighting for an independent state in eastern Ethiopia.

The fight over area in Ethiopia’s Somali region, which is known locally as the Ogaden, flared up in 2007 after an attack on a Chinese-run oil field by the ONLF.

Since then the conflict has resulted in the deaths of up to 3,600 people and alleged rights abuses by Ethiopian forces.

The conflict flared up again after ONLF Commander Mustafe Haybe was killed earlier this year, heightening fears that links could develop with al-Shabab in Somalia.

Somalia

Somalia’s civil war has largely given way to an insurgency by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremist group al-Shabab.

As a result more than 1.1 million people have been internally displaced, and more than a million refugees have been created since 1988 as well as between 300,000 and 550,000 killed.

The conflict has also gone beyond its borders, with various terrorist attacks being carried out in Kenya.

Even as the government enjoys greater stability in Mogadishu, al-Shabab expands regional recruitment.

Pakistan

Baluchi nationalists have been fighting for an independent state, predominantly in southwestern Pakistan, since 2004.

More than 3,300 have died (not including thousands of disappearances) and alleged human rights abuses have occurred including thousands of disappearances, torture and political assassinations.

A spotlight is beginning to fall on Pakistan’s “hidden” war as alleged military abuses multiply.

Afghanistan/Pakistan

Afghan government forces, backed by the United States and NATO, have been fighting a Taliban insurgency and Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups since 2001.

There has been a huge toll on civilians with 1.2 million children acutely malnourished and 225,000 Pakistani refugees that need emergency aid.

Around 149,000 (including Pakistanis) have been killed in the last 15 years due to the conflict.

Afghan forces, especially the police, have taken big hits and lost ground since the US withdrawal in 2014.

Kashmir

In Kashmir a territory dispute between India, Pakistan and Kashmiri rebel groups has been ongoing since 1947.

Between 47,000 and 100,000 deaths have occured since the territory dispute begun in 1999.

The territory has been a flashpoint between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and spawned Islamist extremist groups in Pakistan.

Though there have been intermittent clashes along the de facto border called the Line of Control, there has been no major conflict recently.

India

The Maoist (or Naxalite) insurgency in central and eastern India seeks to address regional marginalisation and economic inequality.

Hundreds of thousands have been displaced since 1980 and at least 10,000 deaths have occurred due to the conflict.

April saw a spike in violence with three deadly attacks on consecutive days in Chhattisgarh.

A dozen or so separatist rebel groups are pushing various demands for greater autonomy or independence in northeast India

Since 1979 around at least 40,000 have died as a result of these struggles. But the real number is unknown as these deaths go massively under-reported in India.

Fatalities looked to be declining from a 2008 peak, but picked up again in 2014, particularly in Assam.

Thailand

Conflict in Thailand involves a separatist insurgency in the majority Buddhist nation’s predominantly Muslim southern states.

Since 2004 the conflict has had a high toll on civilians with car bombings, beheadings, and the targeting of schools and hospitals creating widespread fear.

Between 2004 and April 2014 over 6000 people were killed, many of which were civilians.

Though regular bomb and grenade attacks continue there have been no large-scale engagements recently.

Philippines

Since 1969 Maoist rebels from the New People’s Army (NPA) have been attempting to overthrow the government and set up a communist state.

As many as 40,000 deaths have occurred due to regular small-scale attacks

Peace talks have been suspended as hundreds of extrajudicial killings and disappearances take place.

Also, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) seek the creation of an autonomous Muslim region in the southern parts of the mainly Christian Philippines.

At least 100,000 people have been killed since 1971, as well as several million being displaced.

Decades of conflict have also left countless communities impoverished.

The conflict seems to be winding down however as a 2014 peace deal remains on track despite a major one-off clash in January.

Indonesia

Indonesia’s conflict involves a long-term seperatist struggle by indigenous people in Indonesia’s Papua and West Papua states, the western half of New Guinea.

At least 100,000 deaths have occurred since the confict began in 1969, as well as impoverishment of the rural areas where the indigenous people mostly live, due to demographic imbalance.

Low-level conflict persists despite flawed referendum said to be acceptance of Indonesian sovereignty

North/South Korea

The 250-kilometre long, 4-kilometre wide no man’s land straddling the ceasefire line at the end of the (1950-1953) Korean War remains a flashpoint.

More than 900 deaths have occurred as occasional incursions ramp up tensions on the world’s most heavily militarised frontier

The narrow strip of land has unexpectedly become one of the world’s best-preserved nature parks.

Laurie Nowell
AMES Australia Senior Journalist