Proxy Wars Effective Way to Destablize Adversaries

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

A proxy war is a conflict in which one party fights its adversary via another party rather than engaging that party in direct conflict.

In other words, one country tries to defeat another indirectly, by using non-state forces, typically terrorist or guerrilla movements, against the other country.

Herman Cohen, who served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1989 to 1993, has defined a proxy or surrogate war as “an internal conflict that has been orchestrated and supported almost entirely from the outside.”

Why collude with external forces rather than directly confront the enemy? Such states may want to avoid international condemnation, which could result in diplomatic and economic sanctions. As well, they may seek only to destabilize the other polity, rather than defeat it completely.

During the Cold War, when direct confrontation between the superpowers was unthinkable, proxy wars occurred in weak states such as Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and South Vietnam, as well as in many African countries.

In Afghanistan, the mujahedin fighting Mohammad Najibullah’s pro-Moscow government forced the Soviet Union to intervene in 1979. The Russians withdrew from the country in 1989 following a costly and humiliating defeat, partly due to American aid for the insurgents.

The reverse situation occurred in Vietnam in the 1960s-70s, where the American-backed regime, bolstered by a massive U.S. military presence, was defeated by the Communist Viet Cong, who had Chinese and Soviet support.

In Angola in the 1970s, Cuban troops were used by the governing side, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while the rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) were aided by South Africa and China, respectively.

In Mozambique, the main opposition group, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), supplied by neighbouring South Africa, challenged he governing Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in an insurgency lasting from 1975 to 1992, when support from Pretoria ended.

President Ronald Reagan backed the Contras against the Sandinista (FSNL) government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua during the 1980s. His administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin financing, arming and training the rebels, most of whom were the remnants of former dictator Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard.

In South Asia, Pakistan has backed Islamist groups operating against India in Muslim-majority Kashmir. The militants of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Lashkar-e-Taiba are provided with weapons, training, advice and planning assistance by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

For years, Syria and Iran used the Shi’ite militants of Hezbollah as their proxy in destabilizing multi-confessional Lebanon. The tables have now been turned, and a number of Sunni groups, especially the Islamic State, all financed by donors in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, are battling the Shi’ite regime of Bashar al-Assad. Tehran is also using various Shi’ite militias in Iraq to battle Sunni militants.

There are also cases where two states hostile to each other both use proxy forces against their adversaries, through cross-border rebel support.

Sudan’s Islamization program of the 1990s led the Christian-oriented government of President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda to conspire with the largely Christian Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) against the Khartoum regime in the north.

In turn, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir -- whose National Islamic Front saw Uganda as an obstacle to his desire to extend Islam further south -- provided aid to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), founded in 1987 by Joseph Kony. Not until the Sudanese civil war ended in 2005 did the proxy war with Uganda stop.

The Sudan-Chad proxy war began in 2003 when the conflict in Darfur started. Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, began to support Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Khartoum soon retaliated with support to rebel groups in eastern Chad. Chadian and Darfuri rebels each used the respective neighboring country as a base and recruiting ground.

In April 2006 Chadian rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkarim, having brought together several Chadian rebel movements of the United Front for Change, laid siege to Chad’s capital,  N’Djamena.

Two years later Chadian rebels under the banner of the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development, this time led by Mahamat Nouri, fought government forces in pitched street battles in N’Djamena.

A rapprochement agreement between Chad and Sudan, signed in 2010, marked the end of the five-year proxy war, though attacks on civilians in the area continue.

Proxy wars have proven difficult to end, and most attempts at implementing peace by outside parties have ended in failure. They only cease when it is no longer in the interest of the patron states to continue the destabilization of their neighbours.