V. Armed conflict and peace processes in the Middle East and North Africa

Chapter:

2. Armed conflict and peace processes

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2019

Author(s):

Ian Davies

There were seven countries with active armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa in 2018: Egypt (high-intensity, subnational armed conflict), Iraq (internationalized civil war), Israel (low-intensity, extrastate armed conflict), Libya (internationalized civil war), Syria (major internationalized civil war), Turkey (high-intensity, extrastate and subnational armed conflict) and Yemen (major internationalized civil war).¹ Many of these conflicts were interconnected and involved regional and international powers as well as numerous non-state actors.² The conflicts have killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more. Security dilemmas—which occur when states attempt to increase their own security but trigger countermeasures that leave them even less secure—overwhelmed the region in 2018, shaped by three cross-cutting issues: (a) ongoing regional interstate rivalries with a shifting network of external alliances and interests; (b) continuing threats from violent jihadist groups; and (c) increasing competition over water and growing climate-change impacts.³ This section first briefly examines these three issues, and then describes developments in each of the armed conflicts and any related peace processes in 2018.