WAR AND SECURITY IN 2014 WAR AND SECURITY IN 2014 12/27/2014 1:44 PM REVISITING THE CONFLICT AND SECURITY-RELATED EVENTS OF 2014, you would be struck at the stories that had rapidly diminished, even if at the time they seemed like the biggest thing on the radar (Bowe Bergdahl) and the stories that persisted (Russian posturing and encroachment in the Caucasus, the rising death toll and overflowing refugee camps of Syria, the Islamic State’s brutal maneuverings). Some stories are more than persistent, like the evergreen news stories about Guantánamo Bay, drone war and mission framing in Afghanistan. It’s also obvious that many stories have failed to make real headlines, despite their bloody and tragic consequences (conflicts in African countries like the Central African Republic, the Congo, Sudan and South Sudan chief among them). Even clocking in at more than 4,000 words, this piece is only aspirationally comprehensive, but here was 2014, with its wars of the cold, hot and forever varieties, in all its fragmented, entangled and ruthless glory. THREE MONTHS of anti-government protests and violent clashes in Ukraine, which started in late 2013 and culminated at the end of February, toppled the pro-Russian presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. In the following months, pro-Russian Ukrainians staged escalating protests and revolts of their own. In March, Russia brazenly annexed Crimea, formerly part of Ukraine, in what was just the beginning of a long and bloody standoff. A month later, pro-Russian separatists declared themselves Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, and have since regularly battled government forces with help from Russia. A Ukrainian ceasefire this fall collapsed — if, as Julia Ioffe points out, you could ever say it had actually existed. The war’s overall death toll is nearing 5,000 and more than a quarter of those fatalities have occurred since the declared cease-fire. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine have ramped up fears and strained diplomacy in Europe and the former Soviet bloc. Worries have intensified not only in countries like Georgia and Moldova, but in Sweden, where the armed forces found hard evidence their waters were breached by a foreign submarine, likely Russian, in October. In mid-July, after a few months of fighting and shooting down Ukrainian aircraft, separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing all on board. The crash site and investigation became entangled in hostilities Despite some of its boldness, Russia’s economy is seriously suffering, largely as a result of dropping oil prices, but it’s also bending under the weight of sanctions, inflation and a compromised pension system. This year, Chechnya marked two anniversaries — the ten years since the awful Beslan school siege and the two decades since the beginning of the first Chechen war. This winter also saw some fresh violence - a gun battle between Islamist militants and government forces in Grozny this December left 20 dead and since then human rights workers who raised concerns about government actions have been seriously threatened and harassed. The Georgian government wants to prosecute former president Mikhail Saakashvili, who currently calls Brooklyn’s hip Williamsburg neighborhood home, for human rights violations. In other long-running conflict news, more than a dozen were killed this summer in fighting over the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. This was the worst such fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia since 1994. Azerbaijan also shot down an Armenian helicopter in November. Lebanon struggled with spillover from the Syrian conflict, particularly with handling the volume of refugees - turning some away. Meanwhile, more than a billion dollars of Iraq reconstruction money wound up in a Lebanese bunker. In January, an international tribunal opened hearings in the Netherlands regarding the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. A Jordanian court cleared radical cleric Abu Qatada, extradited last year from the UK, of all charges related to the Millennium Plot and released him from prison. This summer, Israel and Gaza engaged in a costly 50 day war in which nearly 2200 Gazans died, more than 1500 of them civilians and 500 of them children. From the 8th of July to the 26th of August, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip in Operation Protective Edge, a war begun after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers. Over the course of their onslaught against the densely inhabited strip of land, 18,000 houses were destroyed and many tens of thousands were damaged. 66 Israeli soldiers and 6 Israeli civilians, one of them a child, died in the fighting and return fire. Palestinian author Atef Abu Saif wrote a haunting war diary of eight days under fire in the Gaza Strip. The wholesale destruction is painfully evident in the photographs from Gaza during that period. Human Rights Watch investigated three attacks carried out by Israel against schools in Gaza, concluding that Israel had attacked well-marked schools where civilians were sheltering, in violation of the laws of war. Amnesty International also found evidence of Israeli violations, like failure to provide civilians with prior warnings, and describes the civilian costs as disproportionate to any successful targeting of militants. The United Nations began an inquiry this month into Israeli shelling of UN facilities and into the storage of rockets at vacated UN buildings, an inquiry with which Israel and Hamas have both promised to cooperate. Israel is refusing to cooperate with another inquiry, this one by the UN Human Rights Council into possible war crimes. At the very end of the conflict, Hamas executed dozens of unnamed Gazans for crimes of collaboration. This week Palestinians submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council which demands the withdrawal of Israeli troops by 2017. It isn’t remotely likely to pass, but it does complicate the international politics of supporting Israeli positions. Israel’s expansive settlement plans in Jerusalem this year have also drawn condemnation internationally. In early December, Israel’s Knesset voted to dissolve its parliament and hold early elections. Luke Somers, an American photojournalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African aid worker, both died during a failed special ops rescue attempt. They had been held by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and were killed by their captors during the mission. BuzzFeed’s Gregory Johnsen wrote about his own close call reporting in Yemen. Houthi rebels in Yemen overtook the capital in September, forcing the government to step down. The rebels, a Shiite force, are allied with those loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh against the current president. Their seizure of the capital met with Sunni attacks and car bombings. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has declared war on the Houthi and expanded its own operations against the military. The Houthi are also friendly with Iran, and Saudi Arabia has signaled its displeasure by pullingmost of its financial aid to Yemen. The parliament approved a new government in mid-December. The US has sanctioned Saleh and rebel leaders for threatening peace and stability in Yemen. The Syrian death toll is believed by some groups to have passed 200,000in a war that has raged for more than three years. The US launched airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and plans to begin training moderate Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic State. Here’s the text of the authorization for use of military force against IS – passed in December. Iran also launched air strikes against the Islamic State in the past month. In Syria, the Islamic State has engaged in tense rivalry with Al Nusra Front, also subject to American strikes The Islamic State has really defined war in 2014, at least for the West and the Middle East — and has been the subject of a great deal of fantastic reporting and academic analysis. Martin Chulov at the Guardian reportedon the group’s origins in Camp Bucca in Iraq. Charles Lister extensivelyprofiled the gro >
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 14:05:05 +0000
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