In: It will be published in 2022 in the International Law Studies online journal of the Stockton Center at the US Naval War College as a contribution to an ongoing project entitled "Exploring the Twilight Zone of the Law of Armed Conflict"
1. Introduction -- 2. The Islamic law of qital -- 3. The Islamic law of qital among Muslims -- 4. The Islamic law of qital and the law of armed conflict -- 5. Fighting the Taliban -- 6. War crimes in the armed conflict in Pakistan -- 7. Concluding remarks.
During 2011 the sudden and dramatic popular uprisings in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, which together constituted the Arab Spring, produced diverse patterns of conflict. The events of the Arab Spring were not, however, isolated in terms of contemporary conflict trends. Rather, developments across the region served to underline some of the long-term changes that have occurred in armed conflict over recent decades. This has involved important shifts in the scale, intensity and duration of armed conflict around the world, and in the principal actors involved in violence. Together these changes point to the emergence of a significantly different conflict environment than that which prevailed for much of the 20th century. Adapted from the source document.
In 2011-12 conflict continued to be a major concern for the international community, most notably in the Middle East, western Asia and Africa, but also with increased levels of interstate tension in East Asia. Nevertheless, deaths resulting from major organized violence worldwide remained at historically low levels. Perhaps the biggest single factor that has shaped the significant global decline in the number of armed conflicts and casualty rates since the end of the superpower confrontation of the cold war has been the dramatic reduction in major powers engaging in proxy conflicts. However, the relationship between states and conflict may be changing once again. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of intrastate conflicts that are internationalized -- that is, that have another state supporting one side or another. Such involvement often has the effect of increasing casualty rates and prolonging conflicts. Shifting interests and changing capabilities as a result of a weakening of the unipolar post-cold war security balance and the emergence of elements of multipolarity are clearly affecting the overall international order, even while levels of conflict remain relatively low. Nevertheless, some developments in 2011-12 could be seen as warning signs that if the positive trends in conflict that emerged in recent decades are to be sustained, new ways need to be found to build cooperative international relations to manage the changing global security order. Adapted from the source document.
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments. But neither approach captures the diverse ways in which contemporary social science theorizes the causal connection between ideas and action, and both struggle to reconcile the apparently strong effects of ideology on conflict at the collective level with the relative rarity of 'true believers' at the individual level. This article addresses such problems by providing key microfoundations for conceptualizing ideologies, analyzing ideological change, and explaining ideologies' influence over conflict behavior. I emphasize that ideology overlaps with other drivers of conflict such as strategic interests and group identities, show how ideologies can affect conflict behavior through four distinct mechanisms – commitment, adoption, conformity, and instrumentalization – and clarify the role of both conflict pressures and pre-existing ideological conditions in ideological change. These microfoundational claims integrate existing empirical findings and offer a foundation for building deeper explanations and middle-range theories of ideology's role in armed conflict.
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments. But neither approach captures the diverse ways in which contemporary social science theorizes the causal connection between ideas and action, and both struggle to reconcile the apparently strong effects of ideology on conflict at the collective level with the relative rarity of 'true believers' at the individual level. This article addresses such problems by providing key microfoundations for conceptualizing ideologies, analyzing ideological change, and explaining ideologies' influence over conflict behavior. I emphasize that ideology overlaps with other drivers of conflict such as strategic interests and group identities, show how ideologies can affect conflict behavior through four distinct mechanisms – commitment, adoption, conformity, and instrumentalization – and clarify the role of both conflict pressures and pre-existing ideological conditions in ideological change. These microfoundational claims integrate existing empirical findings and offer a foundation for building deeper explanations and middle-range theories of ideology's role in armed conflict.
At a time of escalating global conflict and instability, this book examines international efforts to protect children from the effects of war and armed conflict through the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), especially article 38, and the Convention's Optional Protocol on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC). The principal focus of the book is on the existing UN established machinery for implementing the CRC and OPAC - the Committee on the Rights of the Child and its
Major armed conflicts in 2000 revealed a diverse set of antagonistic groups, variously driven by political ambitions, economic motives, ideology, & fear. The ultimate objective of all the antagonists was to secure control of governmental power or territory. In addition, individuals within the groups & their outside supporters sometimes were motivated by personal greed. Communal identity was a common tool used by leaders to define & motivate a group. It did not appear to be a cause of violence by itself. All but two major armed conflicts in 2000 were intrastate. However, the vast majority of them exhibited transnational characteristics that threatened regional stability. Virtually all the conflicts elicited the direct political, economic, or military involvement of other states & multinational organizations. Adapted from the source document.
<i>Mediation is one of the most commonly used methods for solving armed conflicts due to its flexibility allowing parties to freely decide about their participation in the mediation, the choice of a mediator, and accepting or rejecting the conditions of conflict resolution established during the mediation process.</i><br><br> <i>The article looks at various approaches to mediation, leading to an indication of the nature and attributes of this method of solving armed conflicts. It also analyses the motives of the main actors of mediation - the parties' of the conflict and the mediator, which are taken into consideration when they decide to start mediation.</i><br><br> <i>The research allows a better understanding of the complexity of mediation in an armed conflict. It enables the motives of the conflicting parties and mediator which have an impact on the mediation process and result to be identified.</i>
The article reviews the literature on the relationship between democracy and armed conflict, internal as well as interstate. The review points to several similarities between how democratic institutions affect both conflict types. It summarizes the main empirical findings and discusses the most prominent explanations as well as the most important objections raised to the finding, empirically and theoretically. To a large degree, the empirical finding that pairs of democratic states have a lower risk of interstate conflict than other pairs holds up, as does the conclusion that consolidated democracies have less conflict than semi-democracies. The most critical challenge to both conclusions is the position that both democracy and peace are due to pre-existing socio-economic conditions. I conclude that this objection has considerable leverage, but it also seems clear that economic development is unlikely to bring about lasting peace alone, without the formalization embedded in democratic institutions.