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DOI: 10.1177/0022343302039005007 2002; 39; 615 Journal of Peace Research

SOLLENBERG and HÅVARD STRAND NILS PETTER GLEDITSCH, PETER WALLENSTEEN, MIKAEL ERIKSSON, MARGARETA

Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset

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615

© 2002 Journal of Peace Research,vol. 39, no. 5, 2002, pp. 615–637Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks,CA and New Delhi)[0022-3433(200209)39:5; 615–637; 027799]

Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset*

NILS PETTER GLEDITSCH, PETER

WALLENSTEEN, MIKAEL ERIKSSON, MARGARETA

SOLLENBERG & HÅVARD STRAND

International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Department of Sociologyand Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology(NTNU), Department of Political Science, University of Oslo & Departmentof Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University

In the period 1946–2001, there were 225 armed conflicts and 34 of them were active in all of or partof 2001. Armed conflict remains a serious problem in the post-Cold War period. For three decades,the Correlates of War project has served as the main supplier of reliable data used in longitudinal studiesof external and internal armed conflict. The COW datasets on war use the relatively high threshold of1,000 battle-deaths. The Uppsala dataset on armed conflict has a lower threshold, 25 annual battle-deaths, but has so far been available for only the post-Cold War period. This dataset has now beenbackdated to the end of World War II. This article presents a report on armed conflict based on thisbackdate as well as another annual update. It presents the procedures for the backdating, as well astrends over time and breakdowns for the type of conflict. It assesses the criteria for measuring armedconflict and discusses some directions for future data collection in this area.

* This is a joint article from the Conflict Data Project in theDepartment of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala Uni-versity and the Conditions of War and Peace Programme atthe International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO).Work on this dataset was supported by grants to PRIO fromthe Development Economics Research Group at the WorldBank and the Research Council of Norway. The data collec-tion for the post-Cold War period has largely been fundedby the Ford Foundation, the Swedish Agency for Civil Emer-gency Planning, the Swedish International DevelopmentCooperation Agency (Sida), the Swedish Ministry of ForeignAffairs, and Uppsala University. We are grateful to severalcolleagues in our respective institutions for comments andsuggestions. The dataset also includes the geographicallocation data used in Buhaug & Gates (2002). Earlierversions of the article were presented to the 42nd AnnualConvention of the International Studies Association,Chicago, IL, 20–24 February 2001, to the conference on‘Civil Wars and Post-Conflict Transitions’ organized by theCenter for Global Peace and Conflict Studies & World Bankat the University of California, Irvine, CA, 18–20 May2001, and to the conference on ‘Identifying Wars: System-atic Conflict Research and Its Utility in Conflict Resolutionand Prevention’, Uppsala University, 8–9 June 2001. We

acknowledge support from the European Union for the basicgrant to the Uppsala Conference and from the World Bank,Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Swedish Agencyfor Civil Emergency Planning for additional financialsupport. We are grateful to Paul Collier, James Fearon, ScottGates, Håvard Hegre, Birger Heldt, Andy Mack, NicholasSambanis, Meredith Reed Sarkees, Dan Smith, and otherparticipants in these meetings for their comments, and toLars Wilhelmsen and Naima Mouhleb, both at PRIO, fortechnical assistance and comments. All five authors sharejoint responsibility for the article. Within our collaborativeeffort, Håvard Strand generated the candidate database andperformed all the calculations, while Margareta Sollenbergand Mikael Eriksson were responsible for checking whetheror not the conflicts conformed to the Uppsala coding criteriaand for identifying additional conflicts outside the candidatelist. Halvard Buhaug and Jan Ketil Rød, both of NTNU,calculated the location data. That work was supported by auniversity grant for cross-disciplinary research at NTNU andby the Research Council of Norway. The complete list of allthe armed conflicts, the statistical database in monadic and dyadic form, and the detailed list of definitions from the Uppsala Conflict Data project are available atwww.prio.no/cwp/datasets.asp and at www.pcr.uu.se.

SPECIAL

DATA

FEATURE

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The State of Armed Conflict

The end of the Cold War has not eliminatedarmed conflict. A total of 115 armed conflictshave been recorded for the period1989–2001. In all or parts of 2001, 34 con-flicts were active in 28 countries. Thisincluded outbreaks of four new armed con-flicts: In Macedonia in January, the UCK(Ushtria Çlirimtare Kombetare: NationalLiberation Army) launched a rebellion forconstitutional changes concerning the statusand rights of the Albanian population. In theCentral African Republic in May, a militaryfaction attempted a coup subsequently putdown by the government supported by troopsfrom Libya. In Guinea, the RFDG (Rassem-blement des forces démocratiques de Guinée:Rally of Democratic Forces of Guinea), whichhad launched a rebellion in September 2000,continued fighting in 2001 with the supportof former RUF (Revolutionary United Front)forces from Sierra Leone.1 In the USA, the 11September attacks on New York and Washing-ton, DC by Al-Qaeda (The Base) signalled amajor change in the activities of this organiz-ation, which had previously attacked USforces abroad in order to change US policy inthe Middle East. The 11 September eventsmade it clear that the aims had widened toinclude the destruction of the US economic,military, and political system. The attackswere followed by a worldwide campaign bythe USA and allied forces against Al-Qaeda,with the military focus on the organization’sbases in Afghanistan.2 There is much dis-cussion about the changing nature of violentconflict (Kaldor, 1999; Keen, 1998), butviolence persists. The study of patterns ofarmed conflict is not just of historical interest,but also a matter of current concern.

The number of current armed conflicts in2001 was the same as the year before (with

the adjustment for Guinea in 2000), and thenumber of countries affected by armed con-flict also stayed the same. The number ofconflicts remains at a much lower level thanat the end of the Cold War and has beenfairly stable since 1995. In addition to thefour new conflicts already mentioned, oneconflict recommenced: Myanmar (Shan).Four conflicts listed for 2000 are no longeractive: Eritrea-Ethiopia, India (Manipur),Sierra Leone, and Uzbekistan. Two conflictsescalated (in Rwanda and in Nepal), whiletwo conflicts (in Mindanao in the Philip-pines, and in the Democratic Republic ofCongo) de-escalated. As in 2000, very fewconflicts were interstate – in 2001, the onlyinterstate conflict was the one between Indiaand Pakistan over Kashmir. The regionalpattern varied very little from earlier years:Most of the conflicts were in Africa (14) orAsia (13), while the Middle East continuedas the most conflict-prone region, measuredas the probability that a given country will bein conflict. The number of minor conflictswas down one, and so was the number ofwars (i.e. armed conflicts with more than1,000 battle-related deaths in the year).

j ournal o f PE AC E RE S E A RC H volume 39 / number 5 / september 2002616

1 Guinea was listed as an unclear case in 2000, but revisionshowed that it should have been listed as a minor armedconflict. This has now been rectified in the dataset and theappendices.

2 The USA and the Multinational Coalition also enteredthe internal armed conflict in Afghanistan supporting theUIFSA (United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanis-tan) in order to overthrow the government of Afghanistan.Although the conflict between Al-Qaeda and the USA wasmilitarily inseparable from the internal conflict inAfghanistan, the conflicts are treated as two separate con-flicts, as the incompatibility between Al-Qaeda and theUSA is unrelated to that of Afghanistan. The stated incom-patibility by Al-Qaeda is unique compared to govern-mental incompatibilities otherwise included in this dataset,in that the aim is the destruction of the United States, inparticular its military and economic system, rather thanintroducing a specific alternative to the status quo. Still, wehave judged it to concern governmental power in the USA.Al-Qaeda has several other stated incompatibilities withgovernments in the Middle East (e.g. Israel, Saudi Arabia,and Egypt), but they are not using armed force againstthose governments. It should also be noted that at the timeof the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanza-nia in 1998, the stated goal of Al-Qaeda was to change USpolicies in the Middle East, which is not covered by thedefinition of armed conflict. Thus, although those attacksmeet the criterion of more than 25 battle-related deaths,the 1998 events are not included in the dataset.




However, the number of intermediate con-flicts (i.e. conflicts with a cumulative numberof battle-related deaths exceeding 1,000) wasup two. Altogether, the overall picture ofglobal armed conflict remained very stable in2001, although the emotional and politicalrepercussions of 11 September will remainimportant.

A complete list of all armed conflicts thatwere active in 2001 is found in Appendix 1.A list of unclear cases in 2001 is found inAppendix 2.

Measures of Armed Conflict

For almost three decades, the Correlates ofWar project (Singer & Small, 1972; Small &Singer, 1982; Singer & Small, 1994) has sup-plied the leading dataset on armed conflictwith comparable data over a long timeperiod. Among the COW project’s manyvirtues is its emphasis on strict and trans-parent operational procedures. The COWproject requires a minimum of 1,000 battle-deaths for a conflict to qualify as a war. TheUppsala dataset on armed conflict, with alower threshold of 25 battle casualties, hasbeen updated annually in this journal since1993, but so far has covered only the post-Cold War period. This year, in addition tothe annual update, we are also able to presenta backdate for the entire post-World War IIperiod.

The relatively high COW limit of 1,000battle-deaths has some disadvantages. Whileit may seem intuitively reasonable to includethe Basque conflict, for instance, it has notaccumulated enough deaths to qualify byeven the most inclusive of the COW thresh-olds, 1,000 battle-deaths for the entire con-flict. The Northern Ireland conflict, whichbroke out in 1969, exceeded 25 annual battle-deaths every year during the period 1971–93,and again in 1998, has claimed more than3,000 casualties altogether, but does notqualify for the stricter COW threshold of

more than 1,000 deaths in a single year.3

Apart from the apparent anomaly of exclud-ing such well-known conflicts from a dataseton armed conflict, there is a statistical reasonwhy a lower threshold is useful. As multivari-ate models of conflict become more fullyspecified, there are simply ‘not enough wars’for statistical analyses over shorter periods oftime. Extending the analysis to a very longtime period in order to get enough data raisesseveral problems: Are the theoretical expla-nations equally reasonable for the wholeperiod? Do variables like ‘degree of democ-racy’ and ‘economic development’ mean thesame thing in 1825 as in 1985? Dividing thematerial into periods of more reasonablelength, on the other hand, may produceinsignificant results. Lowering the thresholdfor inclusion will yield more conflicts andthus more flexibility.

On the other hand, we do not want tolower the threshold too much, and concen-trate on a clutter of small incidents unlikelyto have much impact on political or econ-omic life. The lower threshold adopted here– 25 deaths in a single year – is high enoughfor the violence to represent a politicallysignificant event, although the precise localand international impact may vary.

Apart from the usefulness of this datasetfor statistical studies of conflict, data of highreliability and rigorous definitions should

Nil s Pe t t er Gledi t s ch e t a l . AR M E D CO N F L I C T 1946–2001 617

3 Small & Singer (1982: 55) set a threshold for interstatewars of 1,000 battle-deaths for the whole conflict. (A stateis considered a participant in such a war only if it suffers aminimum of 100 battle-deaths or commits a minimum of1,000 armed personnel to active combat within the wartheater.) For extra-systemic wars, the requirement was1,000 battle-deaths in a single year, and only the battlecasualties of the system member were counted (p. 56). Thestricter criterion was used in order to avoid the inclusion ofcolonial and imperial wars that dragged on for years withlittle activity. The stricter criterion was also applied to civilwars (p. 213). In the COW update for 1992, the thresholdwas lowered for civil war (Singer & Small, 1994: 2), andthis coding rule is repeated in the most recent projectupdate (Sarkees, 2000: 129). For extra-systemic war (nowcalled extra-state war), the stricter criterion is maintained(Sarkees, 2000: 129). The Northern Ireland conflict is stillnot included, however.




also be useful for descriptive purposes. Com-pilations of the number of conflicts are fre-quently given wide media attention, as aredescriptions – frequently misleading – ofdata from individual conflicts.4

The aim of this article is to present adataset based on the Uppsala criteriacovering the entire post-World War IIperiod. For the period 1989–2001, ourdataset is the same (but for minor adjust-ments) as that reported in articles in Journalof Peace Research in previous years. For theearlier years, we went through three stages.5

First, we generated a ‘candidate database’,drawing on information found in a dozendatasets from various research projects.6

These sources are listed in Gleditsch et al.(2001: 5). This procedure generated a list of4,219 candidate events, several of whichoverlapped.

Next, we examined critically the long listof candidate conflicts to see which of themfulfill the Uppsala criteria. This was primarilydone by checking all potential cases against aselection of available sources, notablyKeesing’s Contemporary Archives and referenceliterature on various countries and regions.Particular focus was given to disentanglingcomplex situations such as India and Burma,where conflicts have been lumped together inmost datasets including earlier versions ofour own.

The third step was to identify conflicts,

warring parties, and years of activity that hadnot been covered by any of the datasets. Allcountries were surveyed, and where there wasreason to suspect the incidence of conflict,these countries were selected for in-depthstudies. This exercise yielded a set of conflictsthat were not reported in any of the datasets,notably in the Soviet Union just after WorldWar II.

The conflicts that are included are as rig-orously coded as the annual updates from theUppsala group. There should be few false pos-itives. On the other hand, we may havemissed a few conflicts – but probably not toomany. Two of the datasets that we used gowell below what we are looking for in termsof casualties: The Militarized InterstateDispute Dataset includes militarized conflictswith no actual violence, and KOSIMOincludes a number of nonviolent actions.This makes it less likely that we have missedmajor events that should have been included.In Gleditsch et al. (2001: 14ff ), we have com-pared the new dataset to some other leadingdatasets and argue that any discrepancies aregenerally due to differences in coding criteriarather than omissions on our part. Manycandidate conflicts that look plausible at firstsight turn out upon close inspection not toinvolve organized resistance, while othershave an insufficient number of casualties.

Our work continues, particularly for theearly years after World War II. Informationis increasingly scarce the further back in timewe go – as is the bias toward the Westernhemisphere and the Great Powers – so thereis ample reason to give additional attentionto the earlier years of the period covered here.No dataset of this kind will ever be ‘final’, butwe are reasonably confident that this datasetis the best one available for the period.

Criteria and Definitions

An armed conflict is defined by the UppsalaConflict Data Project as a contested


4 A good discussion of conflicting estimates of casualties inthe 1991 Gulf War is found in Mueller (1995).5 The COW project initially followed a similar procedure.In compiling the original list of international wars, the firststep of Small & Singer (1972: 18–19) was to list in chrono-logical order all the deadly quarrels that had been identifiedas wars by Wright (1942/1965) and Richardson (1960),and others and subsequently weed out the ones that failedto meet their own criteria.6 In Gleditsch et al. (2001: Appendix 2), we discuss anothereight datasets that for various reasons were not included inthe candidate set. Several of them were used as sources ofreference when we identified additional conflicts notincluded in the candidate list. Including them in the candi-date list would have made little if any difference to the finallist.




incompatibility that concerns government orterritory or both where the use of armedforce between two parties results in at least25 battle-related deaths. Of these two parties,at least one is the government of a state.

A state is defined as an internationallyrecognized sovereign government controllinga specified territory, or a non-recognizedgovernment whose sovereignty is not dis-puted by another internationally recognizedsovereign government previously controllingthe same territory. For the purpose of thisarticle, we follow the COW set of nation-states. The COW country set differs margin-ally from that used in the data collection inUppsala.7 For the purposes for which we usethe data here, it makes little differencewhether we use the COW set or the alterna-tive set developed by Gleditsch & Ward(1999).

The Uppsala dataset includes in the defi-nition of conflict a definition of the type ofincompatibility involved: either government(type of political system, the replacement ofthe central government, or the change of itscomposition) or territory (a change fromone state to another in the control of terri-tory in an interstate conflict or demands forsecession or autonomy in an internal con-flict).

Armed conflict is divided into the follow-ing three subsets:

• Minor Armed Conflict: at least 25 battle-related deaths per year and fewer than1,000 battle-related deaths during thecourse of the conflict.

• Intermediate Armed Conflict: at least 25battle-related deaths per year and anaccumulated total of at least 1,000 deaths,but fewer than 1,000 in any given year.

• War: at least 1,000 battle-related deathsper year.

A more detailed explication of the codingrules can be found in Wallensteen & Sollen-berg (2001: Appendix 2) and in Gleditsch etal. (2001: Appendix 1).

The database distinguishes conflicts bytype, following the definitions used in theCOW project (Small & Singer, 1982: 51–52,210, 234):

• Interstate armed conflict occurs betweentwo or more states.

• Extrastate armed conflict occurs between astate and a non-state group outside its ownterritory. (In the COW project, extrastatewar is subdivided between colonial warand imperial war, but this division is notused here.)

• Internationalized internal armed conflictoccurs between the government of a stateand internal opposition groups with inter-vention from other states.

• Internal armed conflict occurs between thegovernment of a state and internal oppo-sition groups without intervention fromother states.

The term Internal armed conflict may alsobe used to denote the two last categories, andInternational conflict as used by the COWproject includes the first two. The dividinglines between the four categories, and evenbetween international and internal conflict,are not sharp. Recently, the COW project hasmodified its typology, and this has led to areclassification of a number of formerlyextrastate wars as internal wars (Sarkees &Singer, 2001: 10–11).

The database also contains data on thelocation of the conflict. For the internalconflicts, it includes the name of the oppo-sition organizations in the local language, ifavailable, and in English. We have no other information about these actors and


7 We have included Hyderabad as an independent state in1947–48. Since few if any of the standard datasets includedata for Hyderabad for any predictor or control variables,this conflict will drop out of any analysis beyond the simplecounting exercises performed here.

07gleditsch (ds) 2/8/02 1:30 pm 19



do not comment further on them in thisarticle.

The List of Armed Conflicts

The new list of armed conflicts contains atotal of 225 conflicts for the period1946–2001. A complete listing with loca-tions, actors, levels, and years of activity isgiven in Appendix 3, which is made availableon our websites (see www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.asp and www.pcr.uu.se). A list of allunclear cases is also found on these websites.

Distinguishing between different con-flicts within the same location is not atrivial problem. The actors may changeover time, and old conflicts may be revivedafter years of inactivity. Some countries areinvolved in several conflicts, but the actorsmay partly overlap. Our database distin-guishes between general and specific con-flicts: General conflicts are defined simplyby location (country) and incompatibility.There may be several territorial incompati-bilities in one location, but only oneincompatibility over government. To separ-ate the specific conflicts, we subdivide thegeneral conflicts: A new specific conflictstarts if the conflict changes from internalto internationalized internal, the mainactor on the opposition changes, or tenyears of inactivity have passed. This gives atotal of 286 specific conflicts. In the rest ofthis article, ‘conflict’ refers to ‘general con-flict’.

Going back to the 225 general conflicts,we find 163 internal conflicts (32 of whichhad external participation by other statesand 131 that did not), 21 extrastate con-flicts, and 42 interstate conflicts. Of the con-flicts, 110 had a peak level of war, 12 reachedthe level of intermediate conflict, and 103remained minor throughout. We examinethe data over time, first by level and then bytype.

Conflicts by Level of Violence

In Figure 1, we plot the number of conflictsby level of violence for every year from 1946to 2001. The post-World War II periodbegins with 17 ongoing armed conflicts anda local peak at the start of the Cold War (in1949), which is not exceeded until the early1960s. The number of armed conflicts risesthrough the Cold War and a little beyond(with a high of 55 ongoing conflicts in1992). It then drops precipitously. In 1998,there was a slight increase, but on the wholethis curve has been flat since 1995. Through-out most of the period, the minor, inter-mediate, and war categories have been aboutequally numerous. Initially, of course, therewere very few intermediate conflicts, becauseit takes several years for smaller conflicts toaccumulate 1,000 battle casualties.8

Most quantitative studies of armed con-flict use the country-year or the dyad-year asthe basic unit of analysis. The dependentvariable may be the onset of a new conflict, theonset of new dyadic conflict (a new countryjoining an ongoing conflict), or the incidenceof conflict in a given year. Scholars disagree asto whether or not the onset of war is likely tohave a different causation from the continu-ation of war. Incidence is the more reason-able measure if one is interested in questionsof the type ‘How much conflict occurred inthis period?’ or in estimates of human suffer-ing or material destruction. For analyses offactors associated with patterns of violence,the onset of conflict may be at least asimportant. Our database can just as easily be used to generate a dataset for onset of


8 We start almost from scratch in 1946 and have no dataon the previous history of these conflicts. But we haveassessed two of the internal conflicts in the Soviet Union –in Estonia and Latvia – as starting at the intermediate level.Both of these conflicts were direct continuations of con-flicts initiated during World War II, and the level of activitywas higher in earlier years. The other conflicts that wereclassified as minor in 1946 are judged not to have sufficientactivity in earlier years to yield a total of more than 1,000deaths up to and including 1946.




conflict as for incidence. In the presentarticle, however, we look only at incidence.

We correct for the rapidly increasingnumber of independent countries. In theCOW project, whose definition of the inter-national system we use, there are 66 coun-tries in 1946, 122 in 1964, 164 in 1982, and187 in 1994–2001.9 If we assume an equal apriori probability for all nations to get intoconflict, a higher number of nations shouldproduce a higher overall frequency of conflictor at least more country-years of conflict.Figure 2 shows the probability that anyparticular country is involved in a conflictthat year. If a country is involved in severalconflicts at the same time, only one country-year is counted. One result of this is that warsmake up a higher share of the armed con-flicts, since we count only the largest conflictthat the country is involved in that year.

Broadly speaking, the pattern over time forthe total amount of conflict is similar to thatof the previous figure. But we now see thatthe overall probability of conflict rose onlyslowly for the last two decades of the ColdWar. Moreover, the recent decline in armedconflict after the end of the Cold War hasnow brought the probability of a countrybeing in conflict to a level corresponding tothe end of the 1950s and lower than at anylater time during the Cold War.

There are several peaks in Figure 2. TheKorean War, which mobilized many partici-pants, stands out as a local peak in the early1950s. We find a smaller peak during theVietnam War at the end of the 1960s. Morerecently, the Gulf War (1991), the inter-national part of the Kosovo conflict (1999),and the Afghanistan War produce visible butshort-lived peaks. Thus, individual conflictscan have a very visible impact on the overallpattern of conflict. Not coincidentally, allthese conflicts involved coalitions led by the


Figure 1. Number of Armed Conflicts by Level, All Types, 1946–2001

9 The last year in the COW dataset that we have used is1994, and the same number of countries has been assumedto exist for the subsequent years.




world’s leading military power. Most of thecountries involved in these coalitions did notparticipate very actively in the combat oper-ations, if at all. When we look at the proba-bility that a particular country will be inconflict in a given year rather than thenumber of conflicts, we see a clear long-termdecline through the Cold War period,although the decline is interrupted by thesingle-year peaks for Kosovo and Afghanis-tan.

As already noted, the country-year figuresare inflated by peripheral participants in thelarge-coalition wars. For instance, in the GulfWar the two Nordic NATO countries arecounted as full participants. Denmark sent afrigate, which was kept well out of action,and Norway sent a supply ship to the Danishwarship. In all the coalition wars thatproduce local peaks in Figure 2, a number ofWestern countries participated in a way thatsignaled political solidarity even if it did not

make a notable difference in militarystrength. In a number of civil wars, otherstates have also participated at much lowerlevels than the main participants. We haveexperimented with a reduced dataset wheresuch war participants were eliminated. Inthis way, we succeeded in eliminating thelocal peaks, but otherwise the results werenot markedly different. Since we were unableto find satisfactory criteria for the elimi-nation of actors (or lacked the necessary data,such as casualty figures by participant), wehave put this exercise on hold.

In Figure 2, we have also imposed a thirdpolynomial as a long-term trend line. An S-shaped curve is apparent: first a fairly steepdecline through the first years of the ColdWar and the de-Stalinization period, then along, slow increase during the greater part ofthe Cold War, and finally another steepdecline after the turbulence in certain partsof Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold


1946

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0.4

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Annual figures

Third polynomial

Figure 2. Probability that a Country Is Involved in Armed Conflict, All Levels, All Types, 1946–2001;Annual Figures and Long-Term Trend Line




War. The trend line ignores the sharpincrease in armed conflict immediately afterthe end of World War II, the decline ofarmed conflict in the late 1970s, and therecent local peaks. In order to pick up these,we would have to fit a much higher-orderpolynomial; a sixth polynomial, for instance,has basically the same S-shape.10

Figure 2 reinforces the picture of a slightupward trend in armed conflict during mostof the Cold War, and strengthens the con-clusion that the hazard of armed conflict wasreduced when it ended. This is more con-sistent with the optimistic assessments ofworld politics that emphasize the spread ofliberal factors (Gurr, 2000; Russett & Oneal,2001; Weede, 1996) than with realist, struc-tural, or cultural interpretations that empha-size rising anarchy (Mearsheimer, 1990;Kaplan, 1994; Huntington, 1996). But theworld total number of separate conflicts isstill high, twice as high as when the Cold Warbegan.

Conflicts by Type

In Figure 3, we present the armed conflictsby different types of international involve-ment, following the distinctions made in theCOW project.11 We confirm the commonobservation that internal conflict has beenthe dominant form of conflict throughoutmost of the post-World War II period, andcertainly since the late 1950s. There is ahump of civil conflict in the late 1960s,probably related to the decolonizationprocess. A limited proportion of the internalconflicts are internationalized, although thisphenomenon is rarely recorded before themid-1950s. Extrastate conflicts were com-

mon during the decolonization period, butare now on their way out, which is not sur-prising since the number of dependent terri-tories has declined markedly. The number ofinterstate conflicts is somewhat erratic butremains low during the entire period. Ofcourse, this category of war cannot be disre-garded. Some of the interstate conflicts, suchas the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and theIran–Iraq War, have claimed more than amillion battle casualties each. Interstate con-flicts have been a little less frequent in thepost-Cold War period, and for two years(1994–95) did not occur at all.12

Moreover, there have not been any verylarge interstate wars after 1988. John Mueller(1989, 2001) has argued that the institutionof war is in decline and that only ‘the rem-nants of war’, fought by thugs, now remain.Indeed, the World Bank’s major project oninternal armed violence in the Third Worldis titled ‘The Economics of Civil War,Crime, and Violence’ (World Bank, 1999),and the public debate after the 11 September2001 attacks on the World Trade Center andthe Pentagon has further stimulated the por-trayal of international violence as crime.

Where Are the Conflicts?

It is common to classify conflicts by region(e.g. Wallensteen & Sollenberg, 2001: 632,Table III). Such tables, or world maps withdistinctive coloring for countries in conflict,may be useful for understanding regionalconcerns and policies. But they may give amisleading impression of the size andlocation of the zones of peace and zones ofturmoil. For instance, the entire landmass ofRussia can be depicted as being in conflictbecause of the Chechnya War. A more realis-tic picture of the zones of conflict emergeswhen we plot the conflicts by their actual


10 However, the sixth polynomial picks up the increase inarmed conflict at the start of the period.11 There is a very similar figure in Gurr, Marshall & Khosla(2000: 7). Their Figure 3 (2000: 9) looks at the fraction ofstates affected by any armed conflict and by serious armedconflict and shows a trend reversal (from a steady rise to asteady decline) at the end of the Cold War.

12 But neither were there any interstate armed conflicts in1955 or 1960 – in the middle of the Cold War.




geographical location. A figure in theprevious issue of this journal (Buhaug &Gates, 2002: 423, Figure 2) represents a firstattempt at such a classification for the post-World War II period. A very different pictureemerges, with considerable clustering of theincidence of conflict. One zone of conflict isfound from Central America and theCaribbean and into South America, anotherfrom East Central Europe through theBalkans and the Middle East and India toIndonesia. The third conflict zone is Africa,and spans almost the entire continent. Theclustering is even more evident in a similarmap for just internal conflicts in the post-Cold War period, 1989–2000 (de Soysa &

Gleditsch, 2002: 50, Figure 11). In thissecond map, the conflicts are plotted on abackground of high, medium, or low GDPper capita, and provide a simple visualizationof the strong bivariate relationship betweenpoverty and internal armed conflict.

Studies of the diffusion of conflict wouldbenefit from using such data, which clearlydemonstrate the proximity of many conflictarenas. The figures just cited also exploitanother useful feature of our database,namely, that it allows several ongoing con-flicts in a single country. Work is in progressto build a flexible GIS application that willallow individual users to plot conflicts bylocation.


Figure 3. Number of Armed Conflicts by Type, All Levels, 1946–2001

In this figure, a conflict is coded by type for each year. Thus, a conflict can move from one type to another over time.For instance, the Kosovo conflict is coded as internal in 1998 and internationalized internal in 1999. In the aggregatefigures for conflict for the entire period, such conflicts are coded at the ‘highest’ (i.e. most internationalized) level.




Future Improvements

We appear to have a useful dataset for thepost-1945 period with clear definitions, withconsiderable face validity and a reasonable fitto (and explainable differences from) otherdatasets for this period. There are severalways to improve our data. We discuss themhere in an order mostly designed to go fromthe fairly easy to the very difficult.

First, we have collected start dates for allthe conflicts and hope to add end dates later.This is important for analyses using a hazardmodel, such as Raknerud & Hegre (1997)and Hegre et al. (2001). For studies of thedemocratic peace, for instance, the resultscan be quite misleading if the outbreaks ofconflicts and the regime changes are notdated precisely (McLaughlin et al., 1998).Studies of the duration of conflicts can benearly meaningless in the absence of precisedating: A two-week conflict around NewYear becomes a two-year conflict. Precisedates are available for the war data in theCOW project, as well as some other datasets.We include tentative start dates in the data-base associated with this article. Establishingend dates is more difficult because internalconflicts often peter out rather than end withan agreement. Also, even if there is an agree-ment, occasional violence may continue forsome time.

Second, we are interested in focusing onconflict resolution as well as the initiationand escalation of conflict, and therefore wishto add to the database information on howthe conflicts ended, whether by victory, bypeace agreement, or in other ways (see Wal-lensteen & Sollenberg, 1997: 342–344).

Third, we would like to find better waysof distinguishing between central andperipheral participants in a conflict. TheCOW criteria of requiring a certain numberof casualties (or a certain level of militarycommitment) would probably work reason-ably well for interstate conflicts and for

internationalized internal conflicts. Theinformation problems are, however, likely tobe formidable.

Fourth, it would be useful to have betterdata to study conflict escalation. At the inter-state level, several scholars (e.g. Partell &Palmer, 1999) have used the MilitarizedInterstate Dispute data for this purpose. Thedisputes are divided into four maincategories, ranked according to the degree ofintensity. However, the entire dispute iscoded for all years by the highest level ofintensity reached. Therefore, the MID datacannot properly be used to study escalatorybehavior within a dispute, although it may bepossible to study escalation from one disputeto the next (Gleditsch, 1999).

Fifth, in order to study the severity of war,and in particular its human cost, there is aneed for more accurate casualty statistics. Interms of countries participating, the Kosovoconflict in 1999 stands out as a larger eventthan any year of the Vietnam War. Theaverage annual loss of life was probably onthe order of 1: 100, illustrating that the prob-lematic aspects of country-years as a measureof conflict. For the higher levels of conflict,battle-related casualty statistics by conflictand by participant are available in the Cor-relates of War project.13 The Uppsala groupalso publishes casualty figures for the majorarmed conflicts (i.e. wars and intermediateconflicts). Unlike the COW figures, these aredisaggregated by year, not by actor, but arefrequently given as ranges, or in the form ofa lower threshold. For instance, the numberof casualties in the Chechen War is given as30,000–60,000, and the Sri Lankan conflictis reported as having at least 3,500 casualtiesin 1999 and at least 45,000 from the start(Sollenberg et al., 2000: 56). For smallerconflicts, there is no single reliable source. Inour project, we have concentrated on trying


13 For extrastate wars, the COW project has compiledbattle-death data only for the members of the internationalsystem, i.e. for the colonial powers.




to establish the thresholds with some degreeof certainty.

For internal conflict, the study of escala-tion is even more problematic. Except for theUppsala conflict data with its limited tem-poral coverage, none of the datasets that wehave used to create the candidate dataset dis-tinguish between intensity levels by year.Here, we follow the Uppsala criteria andcode each conflict-year by level. The inter-mediate level (1,000 battle-deaths or moreover the whole conflict) is not very useful inthis context, since it is an aggregate measurewhich by definition cannot occur in the firstyear of the conflict. Also, by definition, aconflict cannot go to the lowest level once ithas reached the intermediate level. However,the present dataset makes it possible to dis-tinguish between high and low conflictintensity for each year, which is an improve-ment over earlier datasets.14 Unfortunately,since the two thresholds that we use (25deaths for low, 1,000 for high) are themselvesannual aggregates, we cannot provide moreprecise timing for the shifts in intensity level.It might be possible to provide separate esti-mates of the conflict intensity for each party.The Gulf War in 1991 was certainly in thehighest category, but only one of the partici-pants (Iraq) suffered more than 1,000 casu-alties (in fact, most of them did not suffer25).

Sixth, an enduring controversy surround-ing this type of data concerns the require-ment that all parties to the conflict, in orderto be counted, must be organized – a govern-ment or an organization. At least one of theparties must be a government. Furthermore,the casualties must be battle-related. Similarcriteria govern the COW data collection. Afootnote to the Rwanda listing in the

Uppsala conflict list illustrates the problem:‘The massacres carried out by Hutu militiasand Hutu civilians in 1994 are often estimated as having resulted in500,000–800,000 deaths. The deaths are not classified as battle-related and are notincluded in this study’ (Wallensteen & Sol-lenberg, 1997: 352, note 22). Thus, Rwandain 1994 is listed as having only an inter-mediate conflict (and in the three subsequentyears, no conflict at all). Smith (1997) isamong those who classify Rwanda as havingbeen at war throughout the period 1990–94.The PIOOM data (Jongman, 2000) havetheir main emphasis on serious human rightsviolations and publish them jointly withtheir list of conflicts. Rather than expandingthe conflict list, there is a need for a separateaccounting of genocides and extremelyserious human rights violations.

A seventh point is that one might relax therequirement that at least one party to theconflict is a government, as long as both ofthem are organized parties. A case in point iswhere two communal groups fight while thegovernment is turning a blind eye, is tooweak to do anything about it, or has gone outof business altogether. Sarkees & Singer(1997: 10–11) announce a new category,Inter-communal war, as part of the COWexpanded typology of war, and report thatsuch a dataset is currently in development.With our low threshold for annual casualties,a similar expansion would be very labor-intensive.

Finally, we have collected information onthe names of the organized oppositiongroups in internal conflicts, but we have nofurther information about them. Character-istics such as their ideological orientation,size, ethnic, religious, and linguistic back-ground, geographical base, etc. are obviouslyof potential interest.

Other researchers may have differentneeds. We hope that they will contributenew variables to the present dataset, so that


14 This would reduce the four levels (war, intermediate,minor, no activity) to three, with intermediate conflictsclassified as minor. The information about the intermediatelevel could be used to create a separate variable for thecumulative severity of the conflict.




it may become a flexible and versatile instru-ment, widely used in the study of war andpeace.

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Appendix 1. Armed Conflicts Active in 2001

Location Incompatibility Opposition organization Year Intensity level

Europe

Macedonia Government UCK (Ushtria Çlirimtare Kombëtare: National Liberation Army) 2001 Minor

Russia Territory (Chechnya) Republic of Chechnya (Ichkeria) 1994 Minor1995–96 War2001 War

Middle East

Iran Government Mujahideen e Khalq 1979–80 Minor1981–82 War1986–88 Intermediate1991–93 Intermediate2000–01 Intermediate

Israel Territory (Palestine) Palestinian insurgents 1949–54 Minor1955–64 Intermediate1

PLO (Munazamat Tahir Falastin: Palestine Liberation Organization) 1965–2001 Intermediategroups, Non-PLO groups2

Turkey Territory (Kurdistan) PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan: Kurdish Workers’ Party) 1984–86 Minor1987–91 Intermediate1992–97 War1998–2001 Intermediate

AsiaAfghanistan3 Government Various organizations,4 Multinational Coalition5 1978–2001 War

Opposition organizations active in 2001 are marked in bold.1 It is unclear when the conflict changed from minor to intermediate.2 E.g. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command) and Hizbollah.3 Supported by the Soviet Union in 1979–88.4 PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan), Mujahideen (Afghanistan-based), Mujahideen (Pakistan-based), Mujahideen (Iran-based), Military faction, Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami,

Hezb-i-Wahdat, Jumbish-i Milli-ye Islami, Jami’at-i-Islami; the latter three developing into UIFSA (United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan).5 The Multinational Coalition, active in 2001, comprising troops from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom,

and the USA.


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Burma/ Territory (Shan) SSA (Shan State Army), SSIA (Shan State Independence Army) 1960–63 MinorMyanmar6 1964–70 War

SSNPLO (Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization), SSRA Shan State Revolutionary Army, MTA (Mong Tai Army), PSLO (Palung State Liberation Organization) 1976–88 IntermediateMTA (Mong Tai Army) 1994 War

1995 IntermediateSSA (Shan State Army), SURA (Shan United Revolutionary Army), SSNA 1997–99 Intermediate(Shan State National Army) 2001 Intermediate

Territory (Karen) KNU (Karen National Union), KNDO (Karen National Defence Organization) 1948–49 War1950–91 Intermediate7

1992 War1993–95 Intermediate1997–2001 Intermediate

India8 Government Naxalites/ CPI-M (Communist Party of India – Marxist)9 1967–72 MinorNaxalites/ PWG (People’s War Group), MCC (Maoist Communist Centre) 1989–94 Minor

1996–2001 Minor

Territory (Tripura) TNV (Tripura National Liberation Front) 1978–88 MinorATTF (All Tripura Tribal Force) 1993 MinorATTF (All Tripura Tribal Force), NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) 1995–2001 Minor

6 Due to the complex situation that has existed in Burma since independence, it is hard to find any reliable casualty figures that can be related to specific groups. Thus, the data onBurma 1948–88 are estimates. From 1989 onwards, the data are more exact.7 Possibly war in 1991.8 Due to the complex situation that has existed in India since independence, it is hard to find reliable casualty figures that can be related to specific groups. Thus, the data on India1948–88 are estimates. From 1989 onwards, the data are more exact.9 The CPI-M (Communist Party of India – Marxist) split in 1969 into CPI-ML (Communist Party of India – Marxist-Leninist) and MCC (Maoist Communist Centre). The CPI-MLhas since then split into numerous factions, one of the most important being People’s War Group (PWG).


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Territory (Kashmir) Kashmir insurgents10 1989 Minor1990–93 War1994–98 Intermediate1999–2001 War

Territory (Assam) ABSU (All Bodo Students Union), BPAC (Bodo People’s Action Committee), 1989–90 MinorULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) 1991 WarBDSF (Bodo Security Force), ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam), ULFA faction, BLTF (Bodo Liberation Tigers Force), NDFB (National Democratic Front for Bodoland) 1992–2001 Intermediate

India – Territory (Kashmir) 1947–48 WarPakistan 1964 Intermediate

1965 War1971 War1984 Intermediate1987 Intermediate1989–90 Intermediate1992 Intermediate1996–98 Intermediate1999 War2000–01 Intermediate

Indonesia Territory (Aceh) GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka: Free Aceh Movement) 1989 Minor1990 War1991 Intermediate1999–2001 Intermediate

10 A large number of groups have been active. Sixty groups were reported active in 1990, 140 in 1991, and 180 in 1992. Some of the larger groups have been JKLF (Jammu andKashmir Liberation Front), the Hizb-e-Mujahideen and, in recent years, also the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, and Jesh-e-Mohammadi.


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Nepal Government CPN-M (Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist)/UPF (United People’s Front) 1997–2000 Minor2001 Intermediate11

Philippines Government NPA (New People’s Army), RAM-SFP (Reform Movement of the Armed 1972–80 MinorForces – Soldiers of the Filipino People),12 Military faction 1981 Intermediate

1982–86 War1987–88 Intermediate1989–92 War1993–94 Intermediate1999–2001 Intermediate

Territory (Mindanao) MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) 1970–71 Minor1972–77 Intermediate1978 War1979–80 Intermediate1981 War1982–88 Intermediate

MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), Abu Sayyaf, MNLF (Moro 1994–99 IntermediateNational Liberation Front) faction 2000 War

2001 Intermediate

Sri Lanka Territory (Eelam) LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation 1983–84 MinorOrganization), PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) 1985–88 Intermediate13

1989–93 War1994 Intermediate1995–2001 War

11 Possibly war in 2001.12 In 1991, renamed RAM (Revolutionary Alliances of the Masses).13 Possibly war in 1985–88.


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Africa

Algeria Government FIS (Al-Jibhat al-Islamiyya li-l-Inqadh; Front islamique du salut: Islamic 1992 MinorSalvation Front), Expiation and Sin, Exile and Redemption, 1993–2001 WarThe Faithful of the Sermon, The Brigades of God, GIA (Groupe islamiquearmé: Armed Islamic group), Al-Da’wa wa-l-Jihad (Appeal and Struggle)

Angola14 Government15 UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola: National 1975–94 WarUnion for the Total Independence of Angola), South Africa, FNLA 1995 Intermediate17

(Frente Nacional da Libertação de Angola: National Front for the 1998–2001 WarLiberation of Angola), MPLA faction,16 Zaire

Burundi Government Ubumwé, Palipehutu (Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu: Party for the 1990–92 MinorLiberation of the Hutu People), CNDD (Conseil national pour la défense de 1995–96 Minor18

la démocratie: National Council for the Defense of Democracy), Frolina 1997 Intermediate19

(Front pour la libération nationale: National Liberation Front), CNDD-FDD 1998 War(Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie-Forces pour la défense de 1999 Intermediate20

la démocratie: National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for 2000–01 Warthe Defense of Democracy)

Central Government Military faction 2001 MinorAfrican Republic21

14 Supported by troops from Cuba until 1989. Supported by troops from Namibia in 2000–01.15 From 1990, only activity involving the government of Angola and UNITA.16 MPLA faction only active in 1977.17 Possibly war in 1995.18 Possibly intermediate in 1995–96.19 Possibly war in 1997.20 Possibly war in 1999.21 Supported by troops from Libya.


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Chad Government FARF (Forces armées pour la République fédérale: Armed Forces of the 1997–2001 Minor22

Federal Republic), MDJT (Mouvement pour la démocratie et la justice au Tchad: Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad)

Democratic Government RCD (Rassemblement congolaises pour la démocratie: Congolese Democratic 1998–2000 WarRepublic of Rally), RCD-ML (Rassemblement congolaises pour la démocratie-Mouvement 2001 Intermediate24

Congo23 de libération: Congolese Democratic Rally-Liberation Movement), MLC (Mouvement de libération congolais: Congolese Liberation Movement), Rwanda, Uganda

Ethiopia Territory (Ogaden) ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) 1996 Minor1998–2001 Minor

Territory (Oromiya) OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) 1999–2001 Minor

Guinea Government RFDG (Rassemblement des forces démocratiques de Guinée: Rally of 2000–01 Minor25

Democratic Forces of Guinea)

Liberia Government LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) 2000–01 Minor26

Rwanda Government Opposition alliance27 1998 War1999–2000 Intermediate2001 War

22 Possibly intermediate in 2001.23 Government of DRC supported by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad in 1998–99, and by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia in 2000–01.24 Possibly war in 2001.25 Possibly intermediate in 2001.26 Possible intermediate in 2001.27 Consisting of former government troops of the Forces armées rwandaises (Rwandan Armed Forces) and the Interahamwé militia.


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Senegal Territory MFDC (Mouvement des forces démocratiques de Casamance: Movement of 1990 Minor(Casamance) the Democratic Forces of the Casamance) 1992–93 Minor

1995 Minor1997–2001 Intermediate

Sudan Territory (Southern SPLM (Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement), Faction of SPLM, NDA 1983–92 WarSudan)28 (National Democratic Alliance)29 1993–94 Intermediate30

1995–2001 War

Uganda Government LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), WNBF (West Nile Bank Front), ADF 1994–95 Minor(Alliance of Democratic Forces) 1996–2001 Intermediate

Americas

Colombia Government FARC (Fuerzas armadas revolucionarias colombianas: Revolutionary Armed 1965–79 Minor32

Forces of Colombia), ELN (Ejército de liberación nacional: National 1980–88 Intermediate33

Liberation Army), EPL (Ejército popular de liberación: People’s Liberation 1989–90 WarArmy), M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril: April 19 Movement), Faction of 1991 IntermediateFARC, Faction of ELN, MAO (Movimiento de autodefensa obrera: 1992–93 WarWorkers’ Self-Defence Movement), Quintin lame31 1994–97 Intermediate

1998–2001 War

USA34 Government Al-Qaeda (The Base) 2001 War

28 By 1997 the incompatibility had widened to concern governmental power in addition to the territorial dispute. 29 NDA includes SPLM as its largest member organization.30 Possibly war in 1993–94.31 Only FARC and ELN active in 1992–99.32 It is unclear when the conflict changed from minor to intermediate.33 Possibly war in several of the years.34 Supported by the Multinational Coalition, comprising troops from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.


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Appendix 2. Unclear Cases in 2001Cases which have been completely rejectedon the grounds that they definitely do notmeet the criteria of armed conflict are notincluded in the list below. For the conflictslisted here, the available information suggeststhe possibility of the cases meeting the criteriaof armed conflicts, but there is insufficientinformation concerning at least one of thethree components of the definition: (1) thenumber of deaths (e.g. there are reports on

the use of armed force, but the number ofdeaths cannot be verified); (2) the identity orlevel of organization of a party‚ or (3) thetype of incompatibility. For a complete list ofunclear cases 1946–2000, see the website forthe data (www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.asp orwww.pcr.uu.se). Unclear cases are also dis-cussed in appendices to the earlier annualarticles in JPR by Wallensteen & Axell andWallensteen & Sollenberg.


Location/government Incompatibility Opposition organization

Angola Territory (Cabinda) FLEC (Frente da Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda:Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda)

China Territory (East Turkestan) Uighur organizationsEthiopia Government EPPF (Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front)Ethiopia Government/Territory BPLM (Benishangul People’s Liberation

Movement)India Territory (Manipur) UNLF (United National Liberation Front), PLA

(People’s Liberation Army)India Territory (Nagaland) NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland)-

Khaplang factionIndonesia Government/Territory Laskar JihadIraq Government SAIRI (Supreme Assembly for the Islamic

Revolution in Iraq)Myanmar Territory (Kaya) KNPP (Karenni National Progressive Party)Peru Government Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)Tajikistan Government/Territory Forces of Rahmon Sanginov

NILS PETTER GLEDITSCH, b. 1942,Mag.art. in Sociology (University of Oslo,1968); Research Professor, International PeaceResearch Institute, Oslo (PRIO); Editor,Journal of Peace Research; Guest professor ofPeace and Conflict Research, Uppsala Uni-versity (1991, 1999); Professor of Inter-national Relations, Norwegian University ofScience and Technology (NTNU).

PETER WALLENSTEEN, b. 1945, PhD in Political Science (Uppsala University,1973); Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peaceand Conflict Research, Uppsala University(1985– ). Most recent book in English:Understanding Conflict Resolution: War, Peaceand the Global System (Sage, 2002).

MIKAEL ERIKSSON, b. 1976, MA in SocialScience, Major in Peace and Conflict Research(Uppsala University, 2001); Research Assistant,Uppsala Conflict Data Project and the Stock-holm Process on the Implementation of Targeted Sanctions.




MARGARETA SOLLENBERG, b. 1968,Fil.kand. in Peace and Conflict Research(Uppsala University, 1994); ResearchAssistant, Uppsala Conflict Data project andPhD candidate in Peace and ConflictResearch, Uppsala University. Co-author ofthe annual armed conflict updates in JPR since1995.

HÅVARD STRAND, b. 1975, Cand.polit.in Political Science (NTNU, 2001);Research Assistant (1999–2000), Researcher(2001– ), PRIO; Research Fellow and PhDstudent in Political Science, University ofOslo (2002– ).





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