How have certain modern conflicts been described as ‘New Wars?’ Essay

Whilst old wars eat up sometimes been referred to as interstate industrial state of war which involve wars among states being fought by armed forces in uniform, with decisive encounters being decided on one battlefield, in the raw wars dumbfound been described by Mary Kaldor as intra-state wars. In the last 20 years we commence seen a paradigm shift from armies with comparable forces doing battle on a field to strategic confrontation amid a range of combatants using different types of weapons .These so-c exclusivelyed new wars which involve the use of civilians as both targets and objectives to be won, have been said to have been led by globalisation, due to the fact that the integration created has led to fragmentation, as seen in the Yugoslav wars with these wars being wars on identity.An identity war is a encroach in which the quest for cultural regeneration, expressed through the demand that a peoples joint identity is publicly and policy-makingly recognised, is a prim ary motivation for conflict. These new wars have constructed new sectary identities (religious, ethical or tribal) that undermine the sense of a shared political community. They recreate the sense of political community along the new lines through purpose of fear and hate. These intra-state identity conflicts have been prominent in many recent conflicts, with the Iraq war and The Arab Spring seeing the recurrence of tensions between the Shia and Shiite Muslims. Furthermore, conflicts in the Congo, Rwanda and Sudan were also fought on the lines of ethnicity, with ethnicity also being a real cause in the Yugoslav wars with Slavic Christians being confront against Bosnian Muslims.Furthermore, new wars have differing characteristics to old wars. As mentioned earlier, old wars traditionally saw conventional armies flake against each other, however with new wars, we have seen a blurring between civilians and soldiers. This can be seen through the feminisation of war, which has been see n in conflicts such as Rwanda, and the use of child soldiers in conflicts throughout Africa including Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Congo.This change has meant that women and children have become the main targets and victims of war and armed conflict in todays conflicts. It estimated that 75% of all African wars are fought by children, and whilst rape has traditionally been a by-product of war for many centuries, it is like a shot judgment that War Rape is genuine military tactic. War Rape has been seen primarily in Rwanda where it is thought that 1 million women were raped and in the Yugoslavian Wars where Rape Camps were set up. As one UN peacekeeper on the job(p) in Africa put it, It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.New conflicts have also seen new tactics come in to play aside from War Rape. Often new conflicts have seen the occurrence of Asymmetrical wars. Asymmetric warfare exists when two combatants are so different in their characters, and in their areas of comparative advantage, that a confrontation between them comes to turn one sides ability to force the other side to fight on their own terms. Tactics used in these conflicts are often Guerrilla warfare and low-intensity hit and slant conflict. An obvious example of this is seen in the conflict in Afghanistan through the use of IEDS and roadside bombs. Essentially such strategies used in the war of the flea involve inflicting pain over time without suffering unbearable retribution in return.Lastly, new conflicts differ from old conflicts through their championship. Whilst old conflicts were funded through the state, as seen in the WW2 and the entering into total war, new wars are characterised by funding through the criminality of war. This illegal funding has been seen in Sierra Leone, where funding was acquired through the interchange of blood diamonds, in Afghanistan where the Taliban are funded through the selling of opium, and finally in th e Bosnian war, where counterfeit cigarettes funded Para-military groups involved in ethnic cleansing.To conclude, recent modern conflicts have been classified as new conflicts as they differ through their legitimacy, funding and tactics.