10 major conflicts to watch out for in 2024

War has been on the rise since about 2012, after a decline in the 1990s and early 2000s. Initially, it was the conflicts in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, triggered by the 2011 Arab uprisings. Libya’s instability spilled south, helping to set off a crisis in the Sahel region. A fresh wave of major combat followed: the 2020 Azerbaijani-Armenian war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region that began weeks later, the conflict prompted by the Myanmar army’s 2021 power grab, and finally Russia’s 2022 assault on Ukraine. Add to those 2023’s devastation in Sudan and Gaza. Around the globe, more people are dying in fighting, being forced from their homes, or in need of life-saving aid than in decades. Military leaders are resorting to military means to solve conflicts. And they believe they can get away with it, though large numbers of people are being displaced or killed. Israel-Gaza War The Hamas-led attack on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent destruction of Gaza have taken the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict into an awful new chapter. Nearly three months later, it is clearer that Israel’s military operations will not finish off Hamas, as Israeli leaders argue, and that trying to do so could finish off what remains of Gaza. The distrust many felt toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the attack has deepened due to his government’s failure to prevent it. Still, Israelis overwhelmingly agree with Netanyahu that they cannot live alongside Hamas. They consider the threat it poses too severe. Wider Middle East War Neither Iran and its non-state allies nor the United States and Israel want a regional confrontation, but there are a number of ways that the Israel-Hamas war could trigger one. In some ways, the war plays into Iran’s hands. It has frozen, for now, a US–brokered deal that Iran disliked, which would have seen Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel, Tehran’s sworn foe. It has also revealed the reach of the so-called axis of resistance, a collection of Iran-backed armed groups—Hezbollah in Lebanon, various militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, plus Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad—over which Tehran exercises varying degrees of control. These groups have turned the temperature up (when Israeli ground troops entered Gaza) and down (during the weeklong truce in Gaza when hostage-prisoner exchanges were conducted) in a manner that shows they can act in concert. Tehran welcomes the anger directed at Israel and the United States across the Middle East. Sudan In April, friction between two Sudanese military factions—the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—erupted into all-out war. Their fighting since then has left thousands of people dead, displaced millions more, and brought Sudan to the brink of collapse. As the spectre of genocide again haunts the western region of Darfur, RSF forces, which are responsible for much of the killing, may be poised to seize the country. The war is rooted in struggles inside the military following strongman Omar al-Bashir’s ouster during a popular uprising in 2019. Bashir had empowered the RSF as an unofficial praetorian guard, trying to insulate himself from coup threats. The RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemeti, first attained notoriety as the commander of the janjaweed militias that viciously put down rebellions on Bashir’s behalf in Darfur in the mid-2000s. Ukraine The Russia-Ukraine war has become a political football in Washington, but what happens on the battlefield will define Europe’s future security. The 600-mile front is barely moving. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has tapered off, with its army having gained little ground, let alone breaching Russian defences in the south, as Kyiv aspired to do. Ukrainian generals fear a Russian attack in the east or north, though Russia’s attempt in late 2023 to take the eastern city of Avdiivka met fierce resistance, suggesting that any Russian advance will be a slog, provided Ukraine has enough arms. The Kremlin calculates that time is on its side. Russia is on a war footing, expanding its military and spending massively on weaponry. Despite Western sanctions, Moscow has exported enough, thanks to windfall energy profits, to keep the war chest full while importing enough to keep arms factories running around the clock. President Vladimir Putin has bound the Russian elite’s fate to his own. He has consolidated power within the military after the failed mutiny in June 2023 by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Fresh spending has rewarded a new class of loyalists. Myanmar A rebel offensive that routed the army from tracts of Myanmar’s northeast and fighting elsewhere pose the biggest threat yet to the junta that seized power nearly three years ago. Over the course of 2023, a grim pattern had set in. Resistance forces—disparate militias that grew out of post-coup protests crushed by the junta—launched ambushes across a swath of the country. The Myanmar military used airstrikes, artillery, and mobile units to put down the uprising and punish civilians. For the first time in decades, violence engulfed Myanmar’s lowlands. The army targeted people from the Bamar majority, using the same savage tactics it has long deployed against ethnic armed groups in the highlands. Ethiopia Ethiopia started 2023 with good news but ends it with plenty to fear. At the beginning of the year, a brutal war centered on its northernmost Tigray region was winding down. Fighting that pitted Tigrayan rebels against federal forces—together with militias from the Amhara region, which borders Tigray, and Eritrean troops—had killed hundreds of thousands of people, according to some estimates, and cut off countless more from food and services. Tigrayan forces had nearly marched on the capital of Addis Ababa before beating a hasty retreat. Federal forces then gradually hemmed the Tigrayans in, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed struck a deal with the region’s leaders to cement his win. A November 2022 agreement brought relief to Tigray. But it set the stage for fighting elsewhere. The Sahel In 2023, Niger’s military toppled Mohamed Bazoum, a reformist president friendly with the West, cementing army rule across the Sahel region—after coups in Mali and Burkina Faso. The officers in power have promised to curb the violence tearing apart the countryside, but beyond switching foreign partners and buying new weapons, they have offered few fresh ideas, instead doubling down on offensives that have been failing for years. The wave of coups heralds a new chapter in a crisis dating back to at least 2012. Haiti Haitians hope that foreign forces set to arrive early in 2024 will tackle the hyper violent gangs that over the past few years have torn the country apart. But the Kenyan police set to lead the planned mission have their work cut out against heavily armed groups in dense shantytowns, particularly given the disarray in Haitian politics. Armenia-Azerbaijan Last year, Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh prompted the exodus of almost all of those living there—more than 100,000 people. The question this year is whether Azerbaijan will go further or, with talks in late 2023 seeming to yield some progress, it and Armenia will finally find a way to peace. Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh operation appears to bring to a close, at least for now, a decades-long conflict over the contested enclave. In the 1990s, the area’s ethnic Armenian majority, backed by Armenia, declared their own republic, and in the ensuing war ousted Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas. For years, talks between Baku and Yerevan went nowhere. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, built up its military and, in 2020, with Turkey’s backing, took back districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and part of the enclave itself. After six weeks of brutal fighting, Russia stepped in to mediate a truce, which it sent peacekeepers to police. US-China A November meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping sought to reset what had been a sharp slide in the two countries’ relations. But their core interests still collide in the Asia-Pacific region—and Taiwanese elections and South China Sea tensions could test the thaw. Beijing and Washington have been angling for some time to ratchet down tensions. Xi wants to focus on the ailing Chinese economy and forestall further U.S. trade restrictions (Washington has recently tightened limits on the sale to China of high-end technology, adding to an array of other tariffs and restrictions.). The Biden administration wants some calm ahead of the 2024 U.S. vote and to reassure other capitals worried about hostility between the two giants that it can responsibly manage competition.