Student Essay on Conflicts in the Third World

In this essay I will discuss why the Third World has been the sight of most of the world's conflicts since 1945. The conflicts that have transpired have been mostly internal and not just between these countries and their neighbors. They range in wars regarding religion, liberation, rebelling, and civil wars to name a few. I will consider these conflicts and their make up in regards to countries involved in the most serious conflicts along with the impact on their infrastructures, and how these wars have been fought.

There have been over 9.5 million refugees and hundreds and thousands of people have been slaughtered in Africa that came from wars and conflicts in this third world country (globalissues.org). There are civil wars going on currently and in recent years such as Angola, where 500,000 people have been killed in the last 15 years due to fighting for rich resources such as diamonds and offshore oil. Many different groups within Angola continue to fight for these resources with the government supporting their actions. Resources from the land alone is often responsbile for groups within

countries to battle for their stake in them (globalissues.org). The rich resources alone are not the root cause of internal conflict within this nation. Political corruption, human rights violations and no laws being followed, all have a hand in the civil wars and conflicts that go on.

Another example of internal fighting over rich resources was talked about in our Part 4 reading about Nigeria ( Lesson 13). Nigera was bogged down in conflict between 1966 and 1970 when southern Biafra tried to declare its independence. Cetrain groups in charge of controlling the government did not want to allow this oil-rich area to break off causing them to block around the region. This led to starvation and other hunman rights violations. These are just a few of the example regarding the civil wars that have damaged the countries as a whole due to fighting over the land's resources.

Liberia has continued to struggle with its internal battles stemming from corrupt and unjust governments and leaders. As stated in our readings, ( CW/Lesson 13 West Africa), large scale fighting has erupted as recent as the year 2000 over the fight for leadersip in this country. Groups such as LURD rebels have takn over many areas north and west of Liberia, MODEL rebels have cut off income from the south and east which is rich in timber, and the presidents own armed forces have treid to gain and keep control around the capital, Monrovia. The two rebel groups, LURD, and MODEL, now have two-thirds of the country under their control and own the majority of military power as well. This violence has also taken advantage of human rights by enlisting boys as young as ten years old to fight for these rebel groups.

Other areas of Africa such as, Sierra Leone, have been involved in human rights violations since 1991 when the civil war erupted. According to Human Rights Watch, over 50,000 people have been killed to date, with over one million people having been displaced (afrol.com). This also stems from rebel groups such as RUF, Revoluntionary United Front, stating that the various governments are dishonest and do not manage the diamond and minerals in the country like they should. This group alone has been responsible for committing abuses among its people. They are known to rape, amputations, and murdering people who do not follow their lead. The sad part is they started out as a group with positive ideas. They were touched by corruption and attracted others who see the RUF as a way to get at the diamonds and profit from it (Stohl 2000).

Sierra Leone is another government who used a large number of child soldiers The UN estimates that of those fighting with Sierra Leone government forces, one-fourth are under the age of eighteen ( afrol.com). Despite any peace agreements, Human Rights Watch reported that human rights abuses were still taking place up through 1999. The UN has tried to get the rebels staked out near dimond and mineral areas to disarm by persecution and force. This did not happen, however, because extra UN troops were needed for deployment elsewhere. For a long time, a number of UN peace keepers were also held by rebels. The government in Sierra Leone is responsible for bombing areas they thought were guarded by rebels, but ended up killing thousand of civilizans. Unfortunetely greed within ones own country and government can take over and cause internal fighting that will never be gotten over. The RUF has been using the diamonds it mines along with the timber to keep the conflicts running by using the money to buy additonal weapons to use within their own country (globalissues.org).

Ethiopa and Eritrea are two countries who have had continuoues battles over their border controls especially when Eritrea wanted to become an independent country. This was as recent as 1997. This conflict ha been fed by the fact that that Ethiopia no longer has a border along the Red Sea and has to go through other countries, such as Eritrea, in order to ship and trade goods along that line (globalissues.org). This shows that internal wars and conflicts are the results of not only monitary gains, but fighting over land right-a-ways as well.

We can't forget that ethnicity is also a major player in conflict in third world nations. Rwanda is an example of this. Ethnic violence was at its highest during the 1990s. As the London Observer stated in 1998-SEP, "Most global conflict can be blamed on a basic imbalance: mankind is made up of 5,000 ethnic groups with only 190 countries to live in." Ethnic tension, between groups known as the Hutu and Tutsi group, has been going on for over a hundred years. Between April and August of 1994, however, more than 1 million people, primarily Tutsi, were killed, and 2 million more turned into refugees, in one of the most terrible acts of genocide of the 20th century (Byers 1995). Overpopulations and poverty, mixed in with corrupt governmental regimes have all had a hand in this as well. This conflict was not the first in Rwanda. The Hutu "revolt" of 1959 led to Rwandan independence in 1962 that caused segregation and discrimination according to Percival and Homer-Dixon (1995). These ethnic issues continued over the lack of available land, civil wars, decrease in coffee prices, and the location of Rwanda as a land-locked country.

As I once learned in a psychology class, there are four factors involved in conflict. Triggers are events that set off a conflict, pivotal factors lay the foundation for the conflict, mobilizing factor which have to do with which groups go into the conflict, and aggravating factors. The last factor has to do with the additional reason for conflict to transpire. Any of the above conflicts that were discussed started out as a situation or event that created a conflict. It then escalated from there due to lack of education or strong governing bodies, rebel groups not having a "true agenda", or just basic human injustices that citizens were no longer willing to tolerate.

The above issues were considered as I discussed various countries within the third world and their civil wars and conflicts. There will never be a set of rules to help us understand the triggers or factors involved in this interstate violence, because much of it has been going on for years and citizens involved in these battles view them as a way of life.