Asian trends in warfare and major violence (1950-2012)

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capabilities for combat (cf. Vargas 1999; Norman 2017). The FARC dissolved in 2017 and is currently disarming.

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Figure VI-13 Clustered magnitude scores of warfare in Asia (1950-2012)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: Center for Systemic Peace

Asia was one of three world regions that exhibited independence warfare, the other one being Africa and Europe. As discussed above, independence warfare in Europe was limited to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. On the other hand, compared to Africa, independence warfare in Asia played only a minor role and was limited to two colonial territories in the 1950s. The most intense independence warfare in Asia occurred in French Indochina that was later to become Vietnam. It lasted from 1946 until 1954 and ended with the victory of the Soviet–supported Viet Minh over a U.S.-supported coalition led by France. The war caused several hundred thousand casualties. The second independence war was the previously discussed Malayan Emergency which was fought out between U.K.-led forces supported by the U.S., and the Malayan Communist Party supported by the Soviet Union and others. It cost several thousand lives (Hack 2009, 383).

The first Indochina war paved the way for the Vietnam War, also known as the second Indochina War. It had both an international and civil dimension and lasted from 1955 until 1975, killing more than one million people (cf. Miller and Vu 2009). The rise in the violence magnitude scores for Southeastern Asia depicted in Figure VI-14 was not only caused by the Vietnam war, however, but also by the Cambodian Civil War. In the aftermaths of both wars, eventually, a Cambodian-Vietnamese war and a war between China and Vietnam broke out.

Together with a number of border conflicts and insurgencies in Thailand and Laos, these wars

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were collectively known as the third Indochina War. All of these were driven by civil conflict, but heavily overshadowed by the international dynamics of the Cold War (cf. Westad, Westad, and Quinn-Judge 2006).

Figure VI-14 Clustered magnitude scores of warfare in Asian subregions (1950-2012)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: Center for Systemic Peace

Aside from the continued violence in Southeastern Asia, the 1970s also marked an increase in the magnitude of warfare in Western and Southern Asia which peaked in the 1980s. This regards most notably the war between Iran and Iraq that was driven by both ethnical and international conflict and lasted from 1980 until 1988 (cf. Karsh 2009). Apart from that, a number of wars between Israel and several Arab nations led to an increased warfare magnitude scores for several decades, e.g. the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and continued episodes of war in Lebanon that Israel participated in (cf. Bregman 2016).

Increases in the warfare magnitude score for Southern Asia towards the end of the 1970s are also linked to the Soviet-Afghan War which lasted from 1979 until 1989. That war was on one hand international, but exhibited also a strong dimension of civil conflict in that an U.S.-led coalition backed Mujahideen fighters against the Afghan government which in turn was supported by the Soviet Union (Grau 2004, 129; Lansford 2017, 112). The Soviet-Afghan war was succeeded by two civil wars in Afghanistan, and eventually the Afghan theatre of the Global War on Terror which is still ongoing (cf. Tomsen 2013).

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VI.1.4.2. Major violence in Asia

Besides a plethora of wars, many Asian countries have also seen major episodes of violence other than warfare throughout the second half of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century. Again, most of it was driven by ethnic and civil conflict, but also international violence played an important role.

Figure VI-15 shows how different forms of major violence other than warfare evolved since 1950. The highest values for major violence in Asia are centered around the same time as the highest values for warfare, namely the 1980s, and decreased thereafter. This was due to a growth in ethnic violence which pushed the overall levels up while the values for civil and international violence remained comparatively stable.

Figure VI-15 Clustered magnitude scores of violence other than warfare in Asia (1950-2012)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: Center for Systemic Peace

The increases in ethnic violence towards the 1980s were not caused by any single incident, but by concurrent developments in a number of countries. Throughout the observation period, 11 countries (accounting for 22% of all countries contained in the database) experienced ethnic violence. Roughly half of the magnitude was due to conflict between Kurds and the Iraqi government that intensified during the Iran-Iraq War. This conflict is widely credited as a genocide. Apart from that, also China, Indonesia and Pakistan saw rising levels of ethnic violence. In China, ethnic tensions occurred in Xinjiang (Davis 2008) and Tibet (Chandler 2017, 372). Almost half of Xinjiang’s population is made up by Uyghurs, a predominantly

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Islamic ethnic minority, while Tibet continues to be predominantly inhabited by Tibetans who are Buddhists. Both ethnic minorities were in conflict over autonomy from Han-dominated China. Ethnic violence in Indonesia, on the other hand, was linked to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor that lasted from 1975 until 1999 (cf. Nevins 2005), while Pakistan saw growing tensions between Pashtun and Urdu-speaking ethnic groups in the 1990s (cf. Waseem 1996).

A larger share of Asian countries, namely 20 (39%), experienced civil violence during the observation period. The largest intensity was measured for Indonesia during the second half of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s and was due to the increasingly authoritative rule of President Sukarno. This violence culminated in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965/1966 which caused several hundred thousand deaths. Due to their intensity, they are not visible as major violence in Figure VI-16, but as a spike in the Southeastern Asian warfare magnitude depicted in Figure VI-14.

Figure VI-16 Clustered magnitude scores of violence other than warfare in Asian subregions (1950-2012)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: Center for Systemic Peace

International violence was eventually experienced by 15 countries (29%). The largest magnitude was measured for China throughout the first half of the 1950s, linking to the annexation of Tibet (Chandler 2017, 361). An especially extended episode of international violence was also experienced, for example, by Cambodia between 1977 and 1987. This violence fell under the regime of the Khmer Rouge leadership and was in fact hard to

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distinguish from ethnic and civil violence, and warfare for that matter (cf. Kiernan 2002). A good deal of the violence was directed against Vietnamese people living in Cambodia, however, and was a main factor in causing the aforementioned Cambodian-Vietnamese War (cf. Morris 1999).