Raging Conflicts Afflict the Middle East Region

Flaming conflicts have always ailed the world. Most of these disputes have erupted in the heart of the continents of the Old World (Asia, Africa, and Europe), and a few of them have affected the New World.

Today, the world stands afraid of a third world war raging out of escalated fighting in Ukraine. At the same time, there are other conflicts that are just as violent but have figured lower on the agenda of global concerns which is chiefly preoccupied with the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Mounting tensions continue to rage on the sides of the global map, and at the heart of it is the Middle East, which has the lion’s share of raging conflicts.

The Global Conflict Tracker of the US-based Council of Foreign Relations has identified 27 hot spots of live conflict that are still raging worldwide in 2022. The tracker categorizes conflict into three groups: “worsening,” “unchanging,” and “improving.”

Right now, there’s not a single conflict described as “improving.”

According to international experts and political analysts who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, the repercussions of raging conflicts in and around the Middle East seem more complex than many imagine.

This can be traced back to these tensions attracting interference from regional and international forces that seek managing their interests via local proxies. Not only does foreign interference prolong these conflicts, but it also constantly threatens to have them spill over to neighboring regions, doubling their risk and threat.

A report prepared by the International Crisis Group revealed that six out of ten world conflicts in 2022 are located within the Middle East region.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, upheaval in Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Iran as well as the spread of terrorism in Africa make the top of the list of the most prominent conflicts during 2022. Hot conflicts in Ukraine, Myanmar, China, Taiwan, and Haiti also make the list, according to the report.

Conflict hotspots in the Middle East aren’t exclusive to the Arab region. The African continent also seems to be a place for both risk and opportunity. A 2021 report prepared by the US-based think tank, the Fund for Peace, said that 11 of the 15 most fragile countries in the world are in Africa.

The slow collapse of states in the Sahel-Saharan region, the expansion of jihadist terrorist groups from Mali to neighboring countries, such as Niger and Burkina Faso, and turmoil following military coups in Mali, Chad and Guinea, put Africa at the heart of ever raging conflicts.

If we take into consideration the civil war in Ethiopia, the African “arc of conflicts” expands to include the east and west of the continent.

The Ethiopian conflict appears to be on the brink of the abyss. Its adverse effects have impacted the unity of the state and the safety of the countries of the region.

“Ethiopia is a large and important country in the region, and it has common borders with several countries,” affirmed International Crisis Group senior analyst William Davidson.

“The absence of strong and stable governments in the country often pushes matters towards volatility, which is reflected in the relations of Addis Ababa with the countries of the region,” explained Davidson to Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Internal crises and conflicts in Ethiopia have cast a shadow over the country’s relations with Egypt and Sudan,” added Davidson.

Ethiopia’s focus on taking vital diplomatic steps to reach a solution to the dispute with Cairo and Khartoum over the Renaissance Dam “is clearly declining with the increasing complexity of the internal crisis.”

The Ethiopian leadership appears to be “distracted” due to the security challenges and internal divisions that have escalated in the recent period, noted Davidson.

This prompted the government to “focus sometimes on the external dimension, blaming Egypt and Sudan to ease the pressures associated with the escalating internal crises.”

In such a case, Ethiopia’s internal crisis has become a key obstacle preventing an agreement between the three countries.

The protracted conflict in Ethiopia and its expansion to neighboring countries may produce serious repercussions throughout the Red Sea and Horn of Africa regions, according to Davidson.

Moreover, Davidson voiced his fears towards the Ethiopian crisis potentially leading to more disintegration and the emergence of more economic and social problems. This could make room for the activity of terrorist groups and irregular actors.

The crises in Syria and Libya represent another example of the overlap between internal and external conflicts, according to Maj. Gen. Sayed Ghoneim.

“It is absurd to imagine that there are cosmic conspiracies running the hot conflicts in the world,” Ghoneim told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Unfortunately, the theatre of conflict has expanded in our Arab region to include 5 countries: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Lebanon,” noted Ghoneim, adding that there are both Arab and non-Arab actors involved in those countries.

Ghoneim believes that many hotbeds of conflict in and around the Arab region attract the attention of regional and international powers in a remarkable way.

He considered this attraction as “natural” given the region’s global significance at the level of international energy and navigation security.

According to Ghoneim, the region oversees the most important straits that control the movement of global trade. Moreover, the region is home to some of the world’s largest oil and gas deposits.

Beyond resources and geography, the region is known for having one of the oldest live conflicts with no prospect for a solution soon. It is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“It is inconceivable that stability will occur in the region in light of the continuation of the Israeli occupation and its persistent violations of international law, treaties and covenants,” said Palestinian researcher Jihad al-Haziran.

Haziran believes that the international will of actors such as the US and some European countries could determine launching a successful peace track for Israelis and Palestinians.

“It seems that the policy of double standards is still in control as these forces provide legal and political cover for the Israeli occupation, through international mechanisms, including the right of veto,” added Haziran.

These facts raise more questions about the price the world is paying because of these flaming conflicts and raise more questions about the efficacy of the solutions being proposed.

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the armed group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”

Raging Conflicts Afflict the Middle East Region