The Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration maintains 155 military cemeteries around the U.S. (The largest is actually not Arlington National Cemetery; it is Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island.) You can use this site to find a federal military cemetery near you: www.cem.va.gov/cems/listcem.asp
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Fighting broke out in Ethiopia almost exactly one year ago (Nov. 3, 2020). Earlier this week, the Ethiopian government issued a state of emergency as rebels from the Tigray Defense Forces (shown in light green on this map) advance south toward the capital of Addis Ababa (where the paths shown in red intersect). upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Ethiopian_Civil_War_%282020-present%29.svg/525px-Ethiopian_Civil_War_%282020-present%29.svg.png
The U.S. military departure from Afghanistan -- and the Taliban's resurgence in many parts of the country -- have been in the news this week. (All U.S. troops are scheduled to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by August 31, with most combat troops having already left.) This map from The Economist (UK) shows the situation on the ground in Afghanistan as of earlier this week: www.economist.com/img/b/300/400/90/sites/default/files/20210710_ASM111.png
This map, based on satellite imagery, shows the geography of recent Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The more urban northern part of Gaza, in and around Gaza City, shows the most destruction of buildings (389 building destroyed or severely damaged, in red, and 157 moderately damaged buildings, in orange). The more rural southern part of Gaza mostly shows impact craters in fields near the border with Israel, in gray. (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/11/gaza-damage-map-rebuilding-israel/.)
Dam projects around the world are sources of geopolitical conflict and intrigue. A dramatic drop in the quantity of water carried by the Euphrates River from Turkey into Syria is the latest to generate outrage, but, as with so much in Syria, it's complicated:
"The Euphrates River in Syria separates between the lands under the control of the Syrian government and the territories held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Syrian government controls the areas located south of the Euphrates and overlooking its right bank, including the areas extending to the southern countryside of the provinces of Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Manbij in the countryside of Aleppo. ... The SDF, meanwhile, controls the left bank of the river, which is seen as its first point of control that spans the areas of northeastern Syria, including the northern countryside of the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), backed by Turkey, controls the right bank of the Euphrates over a distance of no more than 6 kilometers into Syrian territories near Jarablus. Both the Syrian government and the SDF accuse Turkey of the dramatic drop in the levels of water flowing into the Euphrates River. The Syrian opposition, however, has remained mum, as it does not benefit from the river’s water. During a tour to check on the water situation at the Euphrates River on May 7, the Syrian government's Minister of Water Resources Tamam Raad called on Turkey to release water into the river according to Syria's and Iraq's fair share. He also urged the international community and international organizations to intervene in this regard." https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/05/syrian-government-calls-turkey-release-euphrates-water#ixzz6uuBj24da Fifty years ago, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped roughly 2 million tons of ordnance on Cambodia. Many of the bombs that fell in soft soil didn't explode, leaving a legacy of unexploded ordnance that affects patterns of agriculture in Cambodia to this day. www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/20/american-bombing-50-years-ago-still-shapes-cambodian-agriculture
A recent report by the U.S. Naval War College details the development of Sansha City, China's military-civilian effort to expand its claims to the South China Sea. "Sansha City was founded by China in 2012 and is the world’s largest city by area, covering 800,000 square miles of the South China Sea within the 'nine-dash line' that China claims for itself. That makes it 1,700 times the size of New York City. Most of Sansha City is salt water, although it includes the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam and Taiwan claim, and the Spratly Islands, various of which are claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. City Hall, so to speak, is on Woody Island, one of the Paracels. 'Once a remote outpost, Woody Island has become a bustling hub of activity,' says the 57-page, heavily footnoted report, which was written by China expert Zachary Haver for the War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. 'The island now boasts expanded port infrastructure, seawater desalination and sewage treatment facilities, new public housing, a functioning judicial system, 5G network coverage, a school, and regular charter flights to and from the mainland.' Beyond Woody Island, Sansha City is 'developing tourism in the Paracel Islands, attracting hundreds of newly registered companies, cultivating aquaculture, and encouraging long-term residency,' the report says. There are jails and a courthouse, where two people were tried and sentenced for buying and transporting endangered wildlife in the Spratly Islands. ... Sansha City, just nine years old, is evidence that China is settling in for a long stay. ... 'Through Sansha’s system of normalized administrative control, China is gradually transforming contested areas of the South China Sea into de facto Chinese territory.'"
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/china-has-an-800-000-square-mile-city-in-the-south-china-sea In advance of the fighting season that usually resumes with the spring, the Taliban is using armed drones and conventional fighters to squeeze Afghanistan's major population centers, taking control of key highways leading to Kabul and territory on the outskirts of Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south. Long War Journal, which has mapped shifting territorial control in Afghanistan since June 2014 when NATO ended its military mission in Afghanistan and switched to an “advise and assist” role, shows more than half of the country's population is living in areas either under Taliban control or actively "contested." www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan
Not enough domestic conflict for you? This article from Foreign Policy profiles 10 "conflicts to watch" in 2021: foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/29/10-conflicts-to-watch-in-2021-ethiopia-iran-yemen-somalia-venezuela
At least 100 villagers in southeastern Niger were killed earlier this week, most likely by a local Islamic State affiliate. Niger's Tillabéri Region (shown in red on this Voice of America map) borders Mali (to the north), Burkina Faso (to the west), and Benin (to the south). Over the last few years, jihadist violence has spilled over the border from Mali into both Burkina Faso and Niger. im-media.voltron.voanews.com/Drupal/01live-166/2019-04/C3B88A7B-EE15-4D42-80CF-676873F0E560.png
A recent report from the British nonprofit Save the Children finds that approximately one out of every six children on earth is living in a conflict zone, and "165 million of these children are affected by high intensity conflicts." This map shows the areas with the largest numbers of children living in conflict zones, including Honduras, with a total population of fewer than 10 million. For the complete report, see www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/education-and-child-protection/war_on_children-web.pdf
Earlier this month, the Congressional Research Service published a short primer on the linkages between geography and U.S. political/military strategy and design of U.S. forces. This article from the U.S. Naval Institute shares the CRS report and provides its own context: "Most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia." news.usni.org/2020/11/06/report-on-world-geography-and-u-s-strategy
Ethiopia's northernmost regional state of Tigray (shown in orange on this Al Jazeera map) has been in the news recently: after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) reportedly launched an attack on the Ethiopian military's northern command earlier this month, Ethiopia responded by declaring war on Tigray. Although ethnic Tigrayans account for about 6% of Ethiopia's population, TPLF ran Ethiopia, either directly or as the dominant partner in a coalition, for nearly 30 years until current prime minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. As a semi-autonomous state, Tigray itself has a military of roughly 250,000, suggesting any conflict could be prolonged and draw in neighboring states, including Eritrea (which is majority Tigrayan), Sudan, Somalia, and Djibouti. www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Etiopia-map-01.jpg (Map from www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/10/ethiopias-tigray-conflict-explained-in-500-words)
Some have argued that the recent war fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan foretells the end of tanks on the battlefield. Azerbaijan used relatively inexpensive drones (reportedly purchased from Turkey, Israel, and China) to destroy hundreds of Armenian tanks and artillery pieces as well dozens of Armenian air-defense systems, allowing the drones to pick off additional targets at will. This Forbes article provides a look at the military technology and its implications. www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/11/10/the-magic-bullet-drones-behind--azerbaijans-victory-over-armenia
Elections and wars are inflection points rich in counterfactuals. The series of maps in this BBC Future article considers alternate histories, which have become a field of serious historical scholarship: what if the U.S. had lost the American Revolution? what if WWII hadn't been fought? what if the states of the United States had splintered in line with some actual proposals? www.bbc.com/future/article/20201104-the-intriguing-maps-that-reveal-alternate-histories
Earlier this week, Armenia and Azerbaijan announced the end of months of fighting. Under the Russian-brokered peace deal, Armenia will be withdrawing troops from parts of Azerbaijan (shown in lighter blues on this BBC map), Russia will be deploying peacekeepers to much of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region within Azerbaijan (shown in brick red on this map), and Azerbaijan will be regaining control of Azerbaijani territory Armenia had previously been occupying (shown in dark blue on this map). ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/13DAC/production/_115342318_nk_peace_deal_detailed_map_640-nc-nc.png (from www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54324772)
As the U.S. continues to negotiate an end to its military presence in Afghanistan, it is publicly working with the Afghan military while also, according to a recent New York Times report, providing military support to the Taliban, mostly in the latter's internecine battle against the Islamic State in Afghanistan. This map from Long War Journal is updated regularly to show province-by-province control of Afghanistan (from www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan)
Escalating fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been in the news this week as the two countries battle, again, over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The end of World War I saw both the emergence of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Treaties of the 1920s ceded Ottoman territory in the Caucasus Mountains to the Soviet Union. This territory became, in part, the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Soviet leader Josef Stalin chose to make the (Armenian, Christian) enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh part of the (Turkic, Muslim) Soviet republic of Azerbaijan but gave it limited self-government as an "autonomous oblast." In the waning days of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh saw an opportunity to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia. Azerbaijan, first as a Soviet republic and a few years later as an independent country, did not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh's demands to secede, and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh have been frozen in conflict, with occasional bursts of fighting, ever since. Nagorno-Karabakh's territorial claims vary, but this map shows the borders as inherited from the Soviet Union: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Location_Nagorno-Karabakh2.png/375px-Location_Nagorno-Karabakh2.png
The economic and political fallout of the coronavirus pandemic threatens to destabilize many countries. This map from Foreign Policy looks at the likelihood of large-scale internal violence, including civil war, developing around the world over the next two years. It is useful to remember that "certainty" is a probability of 1, meaning that an increase of 0.25, shown in red, or even 0.10 (or more), shown in yellow, is not trivial. (The countries shown in gray are already experiencing internal armed conflict.)
foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/War-Corona-Map_newsletter-white.png The Sahel is the wide, lightly populated band of shrubland at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. From northern Nigeria to Mali to, more recently, Burkina Faso, the Sahel has seen a surge in violence over the last decade. This map, from The Economist (UK), underscores the geographic concentration of violence in the Sahel over the last 18 months. www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/06/20/fighting-in-the-sahel-has-forced-17m-people-from-their-homes
Different countries have different approaches to policing. This geo-graphic shows, in alphabetically order, the 18 nations that do not routinely arm their police. www.statista.com/chart/10601/where-are-the-worlds-unarmed-police-officers
Earlier this week, Donald Trump announced his intention to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Germany by roughly one-third on the grounds that Germany does not devote 2% of its GDP to defense spending. This series of maps based on YouGov polling in various NATO countries about a year ago shows which other countries the residents of Germany, France, the UK, and the U.S. are willing to fight to defend. (Note: Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine are not NATO member countries.) d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2019-04-03/NATO%20willing%20to%20defend-01.png
Borders in the western Himalayas have long been disputed by India, China, and Pakistan. Fighting recently broke out between Chinese and Indian troops in Ladakh's Galway Valley, with at least 20 Indian soldiers killed, several reportedly beaten to death. This map from the BBC shows the Galwan Valley, which was also the site of a 1962 India-China conflict, within the broader, geopolitically complex region.
ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/410/cpsprodpb/125B7/production/_112919157_kashmir_military_clash_x2_640-nc.png The countries shown in red on this map have been engaged in armed conflicts, usually against one or more rebel group, during the first four months of this year. www.statista.com/chart/21652/countries-with-armed-clashes-reported
Although West Africa and the Sahel have seen a surge in terrorist activity over the last decade, this article from Foreign Policy argues that the problem is likely to get worse soon as terrorist groups spill out of Burkina Faso, where more than 150,000 people were displaced primarily by jihadi groups in February, and where upcoming regional elections present an opportunity for violence: "In the coming weeks, West Africa’s terrorist groups are set to encroach further into Togo, Benin, and Ghana. This year’s presidential elections and their associated impact in Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Togo may create further tensions for terrorist groups to exploit. ... A combination of weak border security forces, the growing capabilities of terrorist groups in Burkina Faso, and an apparent interest in extending operations into neighboring countries all point to an increasing risk in Togo, Benin, and Ghana. For jihadi groups, including Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), financial incentives and prestige are attached to moving into neighboring countries. By establishing further control over parts of West Africa, they could access ports, control trade, and benefit from the funds generated. They could also attempt to gain control of the gold mining industry. ... The movement of these groups into West Africa is aided by weak border controls, experienced smugglers, trafficking networks, and local corruption. West Africa is a major transit point for drugs smuggled from South America and Asia into Europe. Other goods such as people, migrants, and weapons are also trafficked across the borders."
foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/04/west-africa-is-increasingly-vulnerable-to-terrorist-groups |
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