Sudanese army soldiers, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, sit on top of a tank in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, on April 20, 2023.
– | Afp | Getty Images
With the world’s eyes on the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, an unprecedented number of potentially “catastrophic” conflicts are flying under the radar, analysts warn.
The International Rescue Committee earlier this month released its emergency watchlist for 2024, documenting the 20 countries at greatest risk of security breakdown. These countries account for about 10% of the world’s population but about 70% of its displaced people, along with about 86% of global humanitarian needs.
The UN estimated in October that more than 114 million people have been displaced by war and conflict worldwide. That number is probably higher now.
IRC President and CEO David Miliband said that for many of the people his organization serves, these are the “worst times,” given exposure to climate risk, impunity in an ever-growing number of conflict zones and revolving public debt meets “dwindling. international support.”
“Today’s headlines are rightly dominated by the crisis in Gaza. There is good reason for that – it is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a civilian.” Miliband said.
“But the Watchlist is an important reminder that the rest of the world is burning, too, for structural reasons related to conflict, climate and the economy. We must address more than one crisis at once.”
Isabelle Arradon, director of research at the International Crisis Group, told CNBC earlier this month that conflict deaths around the world are at their highest since 2000.
“All the red flags are there, and on top of that, there is a lack of ways to resolve the conflict. There is a lot of geopolitical competition and less appetite for resolving deadly conflicts,” he added.
Sudan
The No. 1 on the IRC’s watchlist is Sudan, where fighting broke out in April 2023 between two factions of the country’s military, and internationally brokered peace talks with Saudi Arabia have not yielded a solution.
The conflict has now expanded into “massive urban warfare” that is getting “minimal” international attention and poses a serious risk of regional spillover, the IRC said, with 25 million people in urgent humanitarian need and 6 million the displaced.
The Rapid Support Forces — led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti) and allegedly supported by the UAE and Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar — has expanded a multi-pronged offensive from the heart of the conflict in the capital Khartoum, leaving a trail of alleged is cruelty. in the western region of Darfur.
METEMA, Ethiopia – May 4, 2023: Refugees who crossed from Sudan to Ethiopia wait in line to register at the IOM (International organization for Migration) in Metema, on May 4, 2023. More than 15,000 people fled Sudan through of Metema since the outbreak of hostilities. in Khartoum in mid-April, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, with around a thousand arrivals registered per day on average
AMANUEL SILESHI/AFP via Getty Images
The RSF has reportedly been pushed into central Sudan for the first time in recent days, prompting further mass exodus of people from areas previously held by the Sudanese Armed Forces.
ICG’s Arradon told CNBC that alongside the continued risk of more widespread atrocities in Darfur is the possibility of an “all-out ethnic conflict” leading to more armed groups from the region.
“There are very limited initiatives for peace at the moment. Clearly, at the international level, there is a lot of unrest, and so the situation in Sudan is one where I don’t think there is enough serious engagement right now at a high level for a cessation – fire negotiations, and so there needs to be a bigger push,” he said.
The flow of refugees into neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia, which are themselves ravaged by internal conflict, the effects of climate change and severe economic hardship, increases the risks of spillover, analysts believe.
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda
Last week’s chaotic elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo marked just the beginning of a new electoral cycle that will continue until 2024 against a fractious backdrop.
Voting was marred by long delays at polling stations, with some failing to open throughout the day and voting extended into Thursday in some areas of the massive mineral-rich nation with 44 million registered voters.
Some opposition candidates called for the election to be cancelled, the latest controversy after a campaign marred by violence as 18 candidates challenged incumbent President Félix Tshisekedi for the leadership.
Partial preliminary results suggest Tshisekedi is ahead in the vote, but the government on Tuesday anti-election protests were banned called by five opposition candidates.
The political upheaval comes amid ongoing armed conflict in eastern DRC and widespread poverty, and ahead of further regional elections early next year.
The likely protracted contestation of results, fueled by long-standing suspicions among Tshisekedi’s fragmented opposition over the independence of the electoral commission, could spark further conflict with implications for the wider region, crisis analysts believe.
“We are very worried about the risk of a serious crisis. We saw in 2018 how the contest of the vote was a big problem, but now we have it above the M23. [rebels]which is supported by Rwanda, which it is increasingly fighting and is very close to [the city of] Rubber,” Arradon said.
M23 rebels re-emerged in North Kivu province in eastern DRC in November 2021, and were accused of human rights groups of many perceived war crimes since late 2022 as they expand their offensive.
Neighboring Rwanda has reportedly deployed troops to eastern Congo to provide direct military support to the M23, fueling tensions between Kigali and Kinshasa, and prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to repeatedly express concern about the risk of a “direct confrontation.”
The combination of a fractured and unreliable political background, an ongoing armed rebellion and intense socioeconomic pressures provide the region with fertile ground for conflict next year.
Arradon described the situation in the DRC and other active and potential conflict zones around the world as “catastrophic.”
“DRC, we’re talking about 6 million displaced. If you look at Myanmar, of course you have this huge population in Bangladesh of displaced Rohingyas, and also displaced within Myanmar itself,” she said.
“We’ve never seen so many people moving around the world, mainly because of conflict. It’s not just people moving, it’s the fact that often civilian populations live next to armed groups, and that the case in Myanmar, that is the case in the east of the DRC, as well as in Sudan, in the west and Darfur.”
Myanmar
Myanmar’s civil war has erupted since a February 2021 military coup, and the subsequent brutal crackdown on anti-coup protests has fueled a long-running insurgency from ethnic armed groups across the country.
Government forces were accused indiscriminate bombing and both the IRC and IGC fear that tactics could be escalated in 2024 as ethnic armed groups and resistance forces make significant gains in the north of the country.
The military currently faces challenges from an alliance of three ethnic armed groups in northern Shan state, along with one of the country’s largest armed groups in the northwestern region of Sagaing and smaller resistance forces in Kayah state. , Rakhine State and along the Indian border in the west.
“For the first time in decades, the military will have to fight multiple, determined and well-armed adversaries simultaneously in multiple theaters; this could redouble brutal efforts to turn the tide on the battlefield, including tactical to scorched-earth and indiscriminate bombing in the coming weeks,” analyzed the IGC’s latest CrisisWatch report.
The Sahel
Countries across the Sahel have experienced multiple military coups in the past few years, partly in response to increased instability as governments struggle to deal with Islamist militant insurgencies spreading across the region.
The Sahel covers the north-central belt of Africa between the Sahara Desert and the savanna regions, and includes Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.
Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Chad have all suffered coups and severe instability in the past three years. The IGC’s Arradon said security issues have been deepened by the fallout from the civil war in Libya to the north, which has seen a deluge of arms move south to supply armed groups in countries with a large proportion of their populations in “peripheries that felt neglected.”
“So the general security context of populations that feel neglected, together with the easy access to weapons, has really created a growing security risk in the Sahel region, and the discontent from these populations is grow up,” he added.
… and much more
Alongside these, the IGC also has serious concerns about potential outbreaks of armed conflict in Haiti, Guatemala and Ethiopia, along with the well-documented risk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and its global geopolitical implications.
