The bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001 marked the beginning of the third major war in a decade. The first of these conflicts, the Gulf War of 1991, left 100,000 Iraqi conscripts and civilians dead. The second, the Balkan conflict of 1999, brought war involving the great powers to mainland Europe for the first time since 1945. But the most recent conflict is the most threatening because it is truly global in its consequences. Afghanistan is an impoverished country a little smaller than the state of Texas with little industry, minuscule armed forces and no central government. But, once it became the object of an armed imperial crusade, it stands at the centre of a widening circle of instability.
Two of Afghanistan’s bordering states, Pakistan and India, are nuclear powers. Since the bombing of Afghanistan began their dispute over Kashmir has once again resulted in armed clashes. The Saudi ruling elite, the largest single recipient of US foreign aid, is distancing itself from its paymasters in fear of revolt from below. Israel has taken its war against the Palestinians to unprecedented lengths, threatening a general conflict in the Middle East. Such a conflict will become almost inevitable if US government hardliners get their way and the war widens to include a renewed attack on Iraq.
The 1990s saw a new peak for the last century in the annual number of wars – 34 in 1992. And in 1994 we saw the highest number of war-related deaths since 1971. Regional and civil wars in Iraq, Somalia, the Balkans, Rwanda, Liberia, Turkey, Chechnya, Angola and Algeria have produced these records and increased the number of refugees by 50 percent during the last ten years. But if we want to understand why our world has become so much more unstable and violent we must examine the longer term economic and political processes that culminated in the wars of the last decade.
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