Myanmar to Haiti: Some conflicts that didn't grab the headlines in 2023

While the Russia-Ukraine war dominated global headlines for most of the year, followed, starting in October, by Israel’s brutal military offensive on Palestinians on Gaza, many deadly quarrels raged across various parts of the world throughout 2023.

From Myanmar to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti, political and military conflicts have taken many lives and catalysed mass displacements across multiple continents.

Despite the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of millions, the conflicts in the Global South did not garner much attention as Western media focused predominantly on the Russia-Ukraine conflict — until the eruption of Israel’s war on Palestine’s Gaza on October 7.

Here is a short, yet detailed, list of 2023’s other deadly conflicts:

Myanmar

Myanmar, a strategic ally of China, has long been controlled by military-led governments. This pattern changed for a brief time when Aung San Suu Kyi, a civilian leader, came to power in 2016, becoming the state counsellor of Myanmar, a position equivalent to a prime ministry post.

But Aung San Suu Kyi’s brief tenure — which had also been marred by violent attacks against the country’s minority group, Arakan’s Rohingya Muslims, which led to their forceful displacement — was disrupted in 2021 by a military coup. Since then, there have been violent clashes between the military and ethnic armed groups in different areas.

In 2023, tensions further escalated between the military and armed local groups, which formed the Three Brotherhood Alliance — comprising the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army — to fight against Myanmar’s army-led government, claiming a few victories and seizing hundreds of military posts and four crucial border crossings.

Armed clashes have killed thousands of soldiers and fighters on both sides and thousands of civilians have also fallen victim to the army’s indiscriminate bombing campaigns across the regions where the Alliance fighters have been active.

Some analysts believe that the Alliance’s campaign against the junta has a good chance of ousting the country’s military rulers. But others think it’s unlikely the opposition groups will topple the ruling junta anytime soon.

Sudan

Like Myanmar, Sudan has long been under military leadership. But in early 2019, there was hope that this trend might change and that the resource-rich country could transition to a democracy after large protests swept the country in December 2018.

While the military establishment ousted the country’s long-time military ruler Omar al Bashir in 2019 in line with the demands of civilian groups, allowing Abdalla Hamdok to partially govern the country as civilian prime minister, it did not make a clear commitment to a democratic transition.

In 2022, Gen. Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the country’s top general, launched another military coup to claim full power as Hamdok resigned in protest. But Burhan’s coup did not end the political turmoil.

Early this year, the country’s second most powerful general, Gen. Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), refused to accept that his forces be under the direct control of the army chief and the country’s de facto leader, Burhan, and in April, an escalating dispute between the two generals triggered a military conflict.

Since then, the war between the two generals has claimed nearly 10,000 Sudanese lives, forcing more than six million people to leave their homes. In 2023, Sudan went through one of the largest forced displacements across Africa, at some point even surpassing the displacements seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Additionally, more than half of the population requires humanitarian assistance and is just one step away from famine.

The conflict also renewed the fighting in Darfur, the site of a long-time war between the Sudanese government and local armed forces, killing many civilians of Masalit origin due to the RSF crackdown in the region.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

This year, the Central African country — which is the second largest African state in terms of surface area — reached a record number of seven million displaced people as militias allied with the DRC government intensified their fighting with local armed groups, mostly in eastern parts of the country.

“For decades, the Congolese people have been living through a storm of crises," said Fabien Sambussy, the International Organization for Migration’s Chief of Mission in DRC.

“The most recent escalation of the conflict has uprooted more people in less time, like rarely seen before. We urgently need to deliver help to those most in need,”  he added, referring to armed clashes in 2023.

The African country has long suffered from ethnic clashes between big tribal groups like the Tutsis and Hutus, as well as violent tensions with its neighbours, particularly Rwanda, which also went through a terrible civil war in the early 1990s.

Haiti

One of the world’s poorest countries, Haiti has long suffered from both political and economic instability. But since 2021, following the assassination of the country’s President Jovenel Moise, things have gotten completely out of control as big gangs began to control large parts of the Caribbean nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

In 2023, gang violence expanded across the country as mafiatic groups increased their grip on the capital, controlling more than 80 percent of the city. Over the course of the year, nearly 2.500 people were killed as a result of intergang fighting and gangs fighting against the government.

Abductions, robbery, extortion and sexual attacks also surged in 2023 and a deadly cholera outbreak hit Haitians, infecting more than 20,000 people. The UN and other international organisations announced a $720 million Humanitarian Response Plan to address the growing crisis.

In October, the UN Security Council also backed a Kenya-led multinational force aiming to counter worsening gang violence in the country. Some Haitian civilians also formed armed groups to defend their families and neighbourhoods against growing gang violence.

Like Myanmar, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti has experienced a series of bloody coups and political instability since its revolution in 1804.