German study counts seven full-scale wars this year

Dec 15, 2009, 12:33 GMT

Heidelberg, Germany - Seven full-scale wars occurred this year, a decline from the past, according to a German academic study Tuesday which counts armed conflicts around the world every year.

Analysts of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) said they counted 365 overall conflicts, 31 of which were classified as highly violent.

The seven events it counted as wars were in Somalia, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, Yemen, Sri Lanka and two separate conflicts waged by the Taliban in Pakistan against the government and tribal groups.

HIIK does not use any legal definition of war, but instead classified conflicts by the level of violence. Last year it counted nine wars.

'Despite the slight decrease of highly violent conflicts from 39 to 31, the analysts would rate any optimism as premature,' the institute said in a statement.

'The highly violent conflicts are usually part of larger regional conflict systems where conflict dynamics mutually incite each other. Thus, de-escalation of single conflicts is possibly only a temporary phenomenon,' said Lotta Mayer, a member of the HIIK board.

The institute at Heidelberg University has published its annual 'conflict barometer' since 1991. By that measure, highly violent conflicts peaked in 1992 at 51.