According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, there are currently 17 United Nations peace support operations around the world. Those include longstanding, and modest missions, such as the United Nation Truce Supervision Organisation [Middle East], or UNTSO, established in 1948 and composed of 150 personnel; to the larger United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, established in 1976 (on a six-month mandate) which has been reinforced more recently and beefed up to 11,563 personnel, the majority of the troops being supplied by France and Italy. Currently the largest peace mission is the United Nations/African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur; it consists of 25,987 personnel.
15 April 2008: Khaleej Times
BY CLAUDE SALHANI (View from Washington)
15 April 2008 - NOT all conflicts are created equal, at least so far as policymakers in Washington and major European capitals are concerned. There are, at the very moment, dozens of armed conflicts flickering around the globe; from Columbia in South America where the government has been fighting the FARC guerrillas for over a decade, to Myanmar in the Far East; and the never-ending wars and civil wars being fought at any one time in Africa.
But even being a conflict requires luck, especially if one of the objectives of the combatants is to make headlines and in the process reach through to public opinion, which in turn will pressure their respective governments to act.
According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, there are currently 17 United Nations peace support operations around the world. Those include longstanding, and modest missions, such as the United Nation Truce Supervision Organisation [Middle East], or UNTSO, established in 1948 and composed of 150 personnel; to the larger United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, established in 1976 (on a six-month mandate) which has been reinforced more recently and beefed up to 11,563 personnel, the majority of the troops being supplied by France and Italy. Currently the largest peace mission is the United Nations/African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur; it consists of 25,987 personnel.
Additionally, there are 23 non-UN peace support operations: from the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (North/South Korea), established in 1953 and consisting of five observers; to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (41,820 strong).
Yet the one conflict that seems to grab the world's attention on a semi-perpetual basis is the Middle East conflict in general and the Arab-Israeli dispute in particular.
Maybe the reason for the West's preoccupation with the Middle East is its geographic location, its closeness to Europe and its strategic placement as far as US interests are concerned. Perhaps it's the oil, that precious commodity, so vital to the West's infrastructure. And perhaps it's the inner guilt of the Europeans and Americans of not having acted to save millions of Jews from the Nazis gas chambers and death camps during World War II. Perhaps it's a combination of all.
Or perhaps it's the morbid fascination with figures, as far as numbers mean anything anymore with the one side trying to inflate the figures and the other trying to play it down. Despite the contested tally, the bottom line remains that the various Mideast conflicts have been devastating.
The Algerian civil war (1954-1962) claimed 100,000 Algerian lives. The insurgency (1962-1963) caused the death of 2,000 more. And the most recent disturbances involving Islamists and government forces took the lives of more than 100,000, possibly even twice as many.
The Arab-Israeli dispute, now going into its 60th year, has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Egypt: the Suez crisis in 1956, 2,000 lives; the June 1967 Six Day War felled close to 22,000 soldiers; 21,000 on the Arab side and 779 on the Israeli side.
The October 1973 War, or the Yom Kippur War, was responsible for the deaths of between 8,000 to 15,000 Arab troops and 2,656 Israelis.
The 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's forces and the subsequent liberation of the tiny oil-rich emirate by a U.S. led coalition cost the lives of 20,000 people, mostly Iraqi troops; and Saddam's insane eight-year war against Iran killed nearly a million people on both sides.
The Lebanese civil war, which was officially said to have ended in 1991 -- the spectre of which was never completely buried and has in fact resurfaced -- has claimed anywhere between 100,000 to 150,000 lives. It is doubtful that there will ever be an exact count, just as the country has avoided any official census in decades out of fear that the community that emerges as the majority will demand a greater say in the running of the country. As is happening now.
With a total of some 40 conflicts or potential conflict zones around the globe what is it that draws the world's attention to the Middle East? Why is the US ready to intervene militarily in Iraq and Kuwait but not in Rwanda, where over the course of about 100 days at least 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of Hutus were killed during the genocide? Some estimates put the death toll even higher, around 800,000 to 1,000,000.
And finally Iraq where 160,000 US troops are currently deployed - 4,000 of whom have been killed in action --the rest remain for all intents and purposes hostage to the evolving situation.
Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times and a political analyst in Washington, DC
