See the attached .pdf file for the rest of the story.


http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/DMMayJune06.pdf


By Col. Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Special to CDI



“Resistance is the right of every human

being whose country is occupied by

foreigners.”

Sheik Abdul Dhari, Fallujah Mayor

“WARS DECREASE”

Set against non-stop cable news broadcasts recounting

the ongoing daily carnage in Iraq and the resurgent

violence in Afghanistan, the headline “wars decrease”was

a jolt.

No less of a jolt was the tacit admission by one of the

original architects of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that

the whole operation could have been avoided. Carefully

hedging his statement, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary

of defense in the fi rst George W. Bush administration, observed

to Agence France-Presse: “If somebody could have

given you a Lloyds of London guarantee that weapons of

mass destruction would not possibly be used, one would

have contemplated much more support for internal Iraqi

opposition and not having the United States take the job

on the way we did.”

“IF YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN US A GUARANTEE ...”

Note that Wolfowitz does not say that with an ironclad

guarantee the war would not have occurred, but that

the United States would have approached the task differently.

The alternative mode arguably would have mirrored

Afghanistan by providing “much more support for

internal Iraqi opposition.”

THE WAR COUNT

As 2006 began, the Friends Committee on National

Legislation (FCNL) registered 15 signifi cant ongoing

armed confl icts (1,000 or more deaths) and another 23

“hot spots” that could slide into or revert to war. The total

number of signifi cant armed confl icts is eight less than

it was in 2005, marking one of the largest declines in any

one year and the lowest overall number at the beginning

of a calendar year since this survey began 17 years ago.

What did not change is the distribution pattern of

warfare across the continents. Africa accounted for fully

one-third of the total with Asia right behind with four.

The Middle East and the Americas each registered two

“wars,” with Europe adding one. The U.S.-proclaimed

and -led global war on terror, re-christened the “long

war,” rounds out the count at 15.

Since so many confl icts were dropped, this year’s report

looks fi rst at these eight as a group. Six of the eight

were shifted to the secondary “watch” list while the remaining

two were entirely dropped. The other initial

point to note is that all 15 signifi cant armed confl icts

are intra-state; there are no government vs. government

armed hostilities.

In general, civil wars usually end because one or more

of the following conditions develop:

• one side suddenly gains a decisive military advantage;

• both sides become exhausted by the length and intensity

of the fi ghting;

• outside mediation, arbitration, or international

pressure halts the confl ict; or

©2006 Center for Defense Information ISSN # 0195-6450 - Volume XXXV, Number 3 - May/June 2006